knew that it was hell let loose with Whittaker as the instigator of
the horror. In the ante-chamber to the cells, some of the guards
were standing, swinging night sticks in a menacing manner. We were
thrust into cells; the ventilators were closed. The cells were
bitter cold. There was an open toilet in the corner of the cell,
which was flushed from the outside. We had to call a guard who had
previously attacked us to flush them. The doors were barred, there
were no windows. The doors were uncurtained, so that through the
night the guard could look into the cell. There was no light in the
room, only one in the corridor. Three of us were thrown into every
cell. There was a single bed in each room and a mattress on the
floor. The floors were filthy as were the blankets.
In the morning, we were roughly told to get up. No facilities for
washing were given us. Faint, ill, exhausted, we were ordered before
the superintendent. It was eight o’clock and we had had no food
since the preceding day at twelve. None had been offered us, nor
were any inquiries made about our physical condition. Whittaker
asked my name; then whether I would go to the Workhouse and obey
prison regulations and be under the care of the ladies. I told him I
would not. I would not wear prison clothes, and I demanded the
rights of political prisoners. He interrupted me with, “Then you’ll
go to the male hospital”—he emphasized the “male”—“and be in
solitary confinement. Do you change your mind?” I said “No!” and was
taken to the hospital by a trusty.
Then followed a series of bullying, of privileges, and of curtailing
them. The first day at three o’clock milk and bread were brought to
the room. After I refused it, it was taken away. That evening some
more milk and bread were brought. These were left in the room all
night. The second day toast and milk were brought. These were left
in the room all night. The third day the matron suggested an egg and
coffee for breakfast. I told her I did not want anything to eat.
This day at lunch time fried chicken and salad were brought in.
Later Miss Burns passed a note which read, “I think this riotous
feast which has just passed our doors is the last effort of the
institution to dislodge all of us who can be dislodged. They think
there is nothing in our souls above fried chicken.” No matter what
was offered, a glass of milk and piece of bread were left from meal
to meal, and once bouillon and bread was left.
The fast did not make me ill at this time, only weak. The second day
there was slight nausea and headache; the third day, fever and
dizziness; the fever remained, causing very dry, peeling skin and
swollen lips. By the third day, I was rather nervous—there were no
other manifestations except increasing weakness and aphasia. I could
remember no names, and it was quite impossible to read.
We were summoned so often and so suddenly from our rooms to see
Whittaker, or to have the rooms changed—we were in the same room
scarcely two consecutive nights—that one was never sure when she
would be searched and when the few remaining treasures would be
taken from us, so I hid stubs of pencils in my pillow, ripping the
ticking with a hairpin, and one pencil in the hem of the shade. The
dimes and nickels for the trusty I placed in a row over the sill of
the door, paper behind the steam radiator pipes. It was difficult to
find places to secrete anything, for the only furniture in the room
was a single iron bed and one chair. Notes to one another are passed
by tapping furtively on the steampipe running through the walls;
then, when the answer comes, passing the note along the pipe.
Everything is conducive to concealment.
The second day our writing materials were asked for (I did not give
up those I had hidden). Then we were summoned to Whittaker—each of
the hunger-strikers. (There were now seventeen of us.) He had a
stenographer with him. He asked my name; then, “Are you
comfortable?” His manner was quite changed; he was as civil as he
could be. I answered him with the little formula, “I demand the
right to be treated as a political prisoner. I am now treated as a
common criminal.”
He: If you have steak and vegetables, will you go to the Workhouse
and obey rules?
I: I will not.
He: If you will promise not to picket any more and to leave
Washington soon, I will let you go without paying any fine and I’ll
take you to Washington in my own automobile.
I: I will not promise this.
He: What is it you want?
I: The right to keep my own clothes, to have nourishing food
permanently, which will not be taken away and given back at your
will, the right to send and receive mail, and above all, the right
to see counsel and have fresh air exercise.
He: If I grant you all these things, will you go to the Workhouse
and work?
I: I will not.
He: Are the matrons and interns kind to you?
I: Yes.
He: What food is left in your room?
I: Chiefly bread and milk, once bouillon and toast.
He: Anything else?
I: No.
He: Have you any request?
I: That I receive the rights due me—those of a political prisoner.
Whittaker will use these interviews in expurgated form, I am sure.
When I said anything which did not please him, he said to the
stenographer, “You needn’t put that down.”
After the above interviews, he absolutely refused to let our counsel
who came from Washington see us.
After my visit to Whittaker this day, I was summoned to the
Workhouse. My clothes were listed—those I wore—before two matrons,
just as those of criminals are listed; then I was obliged to undress
before the two matrons and two trusties, walk to a shower, take a
bath, and dress before them in prison clothes. The clothes were
clean, but so coarse that they rubbed my skin quite raw. They have
two sizes of shoes for the prisoners—large and small.
The only message which reached me from “outside” was a telegram from
a friend asking that I allow my bail to be paid. I answered that I
would not. This day six girls in our section were taken away
“somewhere.” The sense of some unknown horror suddenly descending is
the worst of the whole situation. Whittaker’s suave manner was
interrupted for a moment this day when he came into the hospital
ward and saw Julia Emory in the corridor—she was returning from the
wash-room—and taking Julia by the neck he threw her into her cell.
“Get in there,” he snarled, or words to that effect.... I was coming
out of an adjoining wash-room at the moment, and saw this.
This night I had a most vivid dream. The interne brought in a
rabbit. He held it up and told us he would cook it for us. The
women—our women—did not wait for him to cook it, but rushed toward
him, pulled it from his hands, and tore the living animal into
pieces and ate it. I awoke, sobbing.
Next evening, there was great commotion in our corridor. The doors,
which did not lock, were held; there were rapid footsteps to and
fro. Distressed sounds came from the room adjoining mine, and soon
it was evident that Miss Burns was being forcibly fed. Half an hour
earlier, her condition was found normal by the doctor, who strolled
casually through our ward, looked in at the door, nodded, felt her
pulse, and went on. Now Miss Burns was being forcibly fed. What
could it mean? Then there were more hurried steps, and the men went
to Mrs. Lewis’s room. Fifteen minutes later, they were both hurried
into an ambulance and taken away—no one told us where. We had
visions accentuated that night, of being separated, hurried out of
sight to oblivion, somewhere away from every one we knew.
A detachment of the United States Marines guarded the place. The
prisoners were kept incommunicado. That meant, not only were they not
allowed visitors, but they were not allowed counsel—and counsel is one
of the inalienable rights of citizenship.
In the meantime at Headquarters, the Suffragists, under the leadership
of Doris Stevens, now that Alice Paul and Lucy Burns were both in
prison, could not even find out where the prisoners were. They had
received a jail sentence but were not in the District Jail. Katherine
Morey, in great anxiety in regard to her mother, who was one of the
prisoners, came from Boston to see her. She could not even locate her.
Finally, she hit on the device of meeting the morning train, on which
released prisoners always came from Occoquan, and one of them informed
her that her mother was at the Workhouse.
In the meantime, sixteen of the women had gone on a hunger-strike. They
were committed to Occoquan on Wednesday, November 14. By the following
Sunday, Superintendent Whittaker became alarmed. He declared he would
not forcibly feed any of them unless they signed a paper saying that
they themselves were responsible for any injury upon their health. Of
course, they all refused to do this, whereupon Superintendent Whittaker
said: “All right, you can starve.” However, by Sunday night, he was a
little shaken in this noble resolution. He went to Mrs. Lewis, and asked
her what could be done. Mrs. Lewis answered that all they asked was to
be treated as political offenders, which provided for exercise,
receiving of mail and visitors, buying food and reading matter. He asked
her to write this statement out in his name, as though he demanded it.
On Monday he brought the statement to the Commissioners of the District
of Columbia. Commissioner Gardner gave out a statement that such demands
would never be granted.
In the meantime too, Matthew O’Brien, the counsel for the Woman’s Party,
succeeded in getting an order from the Court which admitted him to
Occoquan. He saw Mrs. Lewis, Mrs. Brannan, and Miss Burns once; but
afterwards in spite of his Court order, they refused him admission.
It had been part of the system in attempting to lower Miss Burns’s
morale to take her clothes away from her. When Mr. O’Brien visited Miss
Burns she was lying on a cot in a dark cell, wrapped in blankets. He
came back to Headquarters filled with admiration for her extraordinary
spirit. He said that she was as much herself as if they were talking in
the drawing-room of Cameron House. Mrs. Nolan, released at the end of
her six day sentence, also brought the news of what happened back to
Headquarters. These were the things that made the Suffragists determine
on habeas corpus proceedings. Mr. O’Brien applied to the United States
District Court at Richmond for this writ. It was granted returnable on
November 27. Mr. O’Brien, however, afraid that, in combination with the
indignities to which they were being submitted, the women would collapse
from starvation, made another journey to Judge Waddill, who set the
hearing forward to the 23rd.
The next step was serving the writ on Superintendent Whittaker. This was
done by a ruse. On the night of the 21st, Mr. O’Brien called at
Superintendent Whittaker’s home. He was told that the Superintendent was
not there. Mr. O’Brien went not far away, and telephoned that he would
not return until the morning. Then he returned immediately to
Superintendent Whittaker’s home, found him there, of course, and served
the papers.
In the meantime, Superintendent Whittaker began to fear that Mrs.
Lawrence Lewis and Lucy Burns would die. Unknown to the other
prisoners—and thereby causing them the most intense anguish—he had them
taken to the hospital of the District Jail. They had been forcibly fed
at Occoquan, and the feeding was continued at the jail.
Mrs. Lewis writes:
I was seized and laid on my back, where five people held me, a young
colored woman leaping upon my knees, which seemed to break under the
weight. Dr. Gannon then forced the tube through my lips and down my
throat, I gasping and suffocating with the agony of it. I didn’t
know where to breathe from, and everything turned black when the
fluid began pouring in. I was moaning and making the most awful
sounds quite against my will, for I did not wish to disturb my
friends in the next room. Finally the tube was withdrawn. I lay
motionless. After a while I was dressed and carried in a chair to a
waiting automobile, laid on the back seat, and driven into
Washington to the jail hospital. Previous to the feeding I had been
forcibly examined by Dr. Gannon, I struggling and protesting that I
wished a woman physician.
Lucy Burns was fed through the nose. Her note, smuggled out of jail, is
as follows:
Wednesday, 12 M. Yesterday afternoon at about four or five, Mrs.
Lewis and I were asked to go to the operating room. Went there and
found our clothes. Told we were to go to Washington. No reason, as
usual. When we were dressed Dr. Gannon appeared, said he wished to
examine us. Both refused. Were dragged through halls by force, our
clothing partly removed by force, and we were examined, heart
tested, blood pressure and pulse taken. Of course such data was of
no value after such a struggle. Dr. Gannon told me that I must be
fed. Was stretched on bed, two doctors, matron, four colored
prisoners present, Whittaker in hall. I was held down by five people
at legs, arms, and head. I refused to open mouth, Gannon pushed the
tube up left nostril. I turned and twisted my head all I could, but
he managed to push it up. It hurts nose and throat very much and
makes nose bleed freely. Tube drawn out covered with blood.
Operation leaves one very sick. Food dumped directly into stomach
feels like a ball of lead. Left nostril, throat, and muscles of neck
very sore all night. After this I was brought into the hospital in
an ambulance. Mrs. Lewis and I placed in same room. Slept hardly at
all.
This morning Dr. Ladd appeared with his tube. Mrs. Lewis and I said
we would not be forcibly fed. Said he would call in men guards and
force us to submit. Went away and we not fed at all this morning. We
hear them outside now cracking eggs.
We resume Paula Jakobi’s account:
We were summoned two days later to appear at Alexandria jail next
day, Friday of that week—that would make nine days spent in the
Workhouse.
A writ of habeas corpus had been issued for our unjust imprisonment
at Occoquan when we had been sentenced to Washington jail. This day
I fainted. It was now seven and a half days since I had started
hunger-striking. Three young doctors came in to have a look at the
hunger-strikers. They did not take our pulse; they just gazed and
departed. Later in the day, I was told that I could not go to court
next day if I did not eat, as they would not take the responsibility
for my trip. They prepared to forcibly feed me. I concluded to eat
voluntarily, since I had to break my fast, so that evening I had a
baked potato and a baked apple. Next morning I ate no breakfast, but
was threatened with forcible feeding at noon if I did not eat, so I
ate again.
The next day we were taken to Alexandria Court House. There we found
out why Miss Burns and Mrs. Lewis had been taken away from Occoquan.
It was to prevent their appearance at Court, although it was shown
that Whittaker had been removed after he had received the writ of
habeas corpus. Our counsel pleaded for their appearance in Court.
The warden of the Washington jail, where they now were, was so
solicitous for their health that he feared to move them. Mr. Dudley
Field Malone asked him whether they were being forcibly fed. The
warden replied that they were. “How many men does it take to hold
Miss Burns?” Mr. Malone quietly questioned, “while she is being
forcibly fed?” Zinkham answered, “Four.” “Then, your Honor,” asked
Mr. Malone, “don’t you think that if it takes four men to hold Miss
Burns to give her forcible feeding, she is strong enough to appear
in Court?”
Next day, both Mrs. Lewis and Miss Burns were at the trial.
It was found that our detention in the Workhouse was illegal and we
were given our freedom on parole. I refused to accept it, and with
twenty-two other prisoners was taken to Washington jail to finish my
term of imprisonment.
The Suffragists were brought from Occoquan to the Court on November 23,
according to schedule. Their condition was shocking. They all showed in
their pallor and weakness the effect of the brutal régime to which they
had been subjected. The older women could hardly walk, and were
supported by their younger and stronger companions. When they reached
their chairs, they lay back in them, utterly worn out. Mrs. John Winters
Brannan collapsed, and had to be taken from the Courtroom.
As Paula Jakobi has stated, Judge Waddill decided that the thirty-one
Suffragists had been illegally committed to Occoquan Workhouse, and were
entitled to liberation on bail pending an appeal or the return to the
District Jail. Rose Winslow, it will be remembered, was tried at the
same time as Alice Paul and received a sentence of seven months. Here
are some extracts from the prison notes of Rose Winslow smuggled out to
friends:
The women are all so magnificent, so beautiful. Alice Paul is as
thin as ever, pale and large-eyed. We have been in solitary for five
weeks. There is nothing to tell but that the days go by somehow. I
have felt quite feeble the last few days—faint, so that I could
hardly get my hair combed, my arms ached so. But today I am well
again. Alice Paul and I talk back and forth though we are at
opposite ends of the building and a hall door also shuts us apart.
But occasionally—thrills—we escape from behind our iron-barred doors
and visit. Great laughter and rejoicing!...
I told about a syphilitic colored woman with one leg. The other one
was cut off, having rotted so that it was alive with maggots when
she came in. The remaining one is now getting as bad. They are so
short of nurses that a little colored girl of twelve, who is here
waiting to have her tonsils removed, waits on her. This child and
two others share a ward with a syphilitic child of three or four
years, whose mother refused to have it at home. It makes you
absolutely ill to see it. I am going to break all three windows as a
protest against their boarding Alice Paul with these!
Dr. Gannon is chief of a hospital. Yet Alice Paul and I found we had
been taking baths in one of the tubs here, in which this syphilitic
child, an incurable, who has his eyes bandaged all the time, is also
bathed. He has been here a year. Into the room where he lives came
yesterday two children to be operated on for tonsillitis. They also
bathed in the same tub. The syphilitic woman has been in that room
seven months. Cheerful mixing, isn’t it? The place is alive with
roaches, crawling all over the walls everywhere. I found one in my
bed the other day....
In regard to the forcible feeding, she said:
Yesterday was a bad day for me in feeding. I was vomiting
continually during the process. The tube has developed an irritation
somewhere that is painful....
I fainted again last night. I just fell flop over in the bathroom
where I was washing my hands, and was led to bed, when I recovered,
by a nurse. I lost consciousness just as I got there again. I felt
horribly faint until twelve o’clock, then fell asleep for awhile....
The same doctor feeds us both.... Don’t let them tell you we take
this well. Miss Paul vomits much. I do, too, except when I’m not
nervous, as I have been every time but one. The feeding always gives
me a severe headache. My throat aches afterward, and I always weep
and sob, to my great disgust, quite against my will. I try to be
less feeble-minded.
The final barbarity, however, in the treatment of the pickets came out
in the experience of Alice Paul. Of course, the Administration felt that
in jailing Alice Paul, they had the “ringleader.” That was true. What
they did not realize, however, was that they had also jailed the
inspired reformer, the martyr-type, who dies for a principle, but never
bends or breaks. Miss Paul was arrested, it will be remembered, on
October 20. The banner that she carried had, in the light of later
events, a grim significance. It bore President Wilson’s own words:
THE TIME HAS COME TO CONQUER OR SUBMIT. FOR US THERE
CAN BE BUT ONE CHOICE. WE HAVE MADE IT.
Her sentence was seven months.
“I am being imprisoned,” said Miss Paul as she was taken from the
District Police Court to the patrol wagon that carried her to jail, “not
because I obstructed traffic, but because I pointed out to President
Wilson the fact that he is obstructing the progress of justice and
democracy at home while Americans fight for it abroad.”
When Alice Paul reached the jail, she found ten other Suffragists who
had been brought there four days before from Occoquan. The air of this
jail was stifling. There were about seventy-five women prisoners locked
in three tiers of cells, and no window had been opened. The first appeal
of the Suffragists to Alice Paul was for air.
Alice Paul, not committed to her cell yet, looked about her. High up she
saw a little, round window with a rope hanging from it. She asked the
matron why they did not open the window. “If we started opening windows,
we should have to give the colored women more clothes,” the matron told
her.
With her usual promptness and decision Alice Paul crossed the corridor
and pulled the window open. There was no place to fasten the rope so she
stood there holding it. The matron called for the guards. Two of them,
unusually big and husky in comparison with Alice Paul’s ninety-five
pounds, tried to take the rope away. It broke in her hands, the window
closed, and the guards carried Miss Paul to her cell.
Alice Paul had brought, in the pocket of her coat, a volume of Browning.
Before they closed the door, she threw it with what Florence Boeckel
describes as a “desperate, sure aim,” through the window.
Miss Paul’s confrères say that it is amusingly symbolic of the
perfection of her aim in all things that she hit one of the little panes
of that far-away window. As the glass had not been repaired when the
Suffragists left jail, they had the pure air they demanded. They said
that the old-timers told them it was the first good air they had ever
smelled in jail.
Alice Paul and Rose Winslow went on hunger-strike at once. This strike
lasted three weeks and a day. The last two weeks they were forcibly fed.
Both women became so weak that they were finally moved to the hospital.
Two or three alienists with Commissioner Gardner were brought in to
examine Alice Paul. They usually referred to her in her presence as
“this case.” One of the alienists, visiting her for the first time, said
to the nurse, “Will this patient talk?” Alice Paul burst into laughter.
“Talk!” she exclaimed. “That’s our business to talk. Why shouldn’t we
talk?”
“Well, some of them don’t talk, you know,” the alienist said.
“Well, if you want me to talk——” Weak as she was, Miss Paul sat up in
bed and gave him a history of the Suffrage movement beginning just
before the period of Susan B. Anthony and coming down to that moment. It
lasted an hour. This alienist told the present writer that in his report
to the authorities he said in effect:
“There is a spirit like Joan of Arc, and it is as useless to try to
change it as to change Joan of Arc. She will die but she will never give
up.”
Alice Paul says that she realized after a while that the questions of
the alienists were directed towards establishing in her one of the
well-known insane phobias—the mania of persecution. The inquiries
converged again and again toward one point: “Did she think the President
personally responsible for what was occurring?” As it happened her
sincere conclusion in this matter helped in establishing their
conviction of her sanity. She always answered that she did not think the
President was responsible in her case—that he was perhaps uninformed as
to what was going on.
Notwithstanding the favorable report of the alienist, after a while they
removed Alice Paul from the hospital to the psychopathic ward. The
conditions under which she lived here are almost incredibly sinister. It
is difficult to avoid the conclusion that it was hoped that they would
affect Alice Paul’s reason; would certainly discredit the movement she
led by making the world believe that she was mentally unbalanced. The
room in which she was confined was big and square, pleasant enough. It
had two windows, one of which they boarded up. They took off the wooden
door and replaced it with a grated door. All day long patients—mentally
unbalanced—came to that door and peered in at her. All night long,
shrieks rang in her ears. Just before dawn would come an interval of
quiet, then invariably it was broken by the long, harrowing, ululating
cries of a single patient who kept this up for hours.
One of the alienists told the nurse to keep Miss Paul under observation.
This observation consisted of flashing a light in her face every hour
all night long. This—naturally—brought her with a start out of her
sleep. She averaged, she says, only a little sleep between flashes. Of
course one cannot but think that if she had been trembling on the verge
of insanity, this process would certainly have pushed her over the edge.
The women nurses were almost unfailingly kind and thoughtful. One
carried her kindness to the point of saying once, “You know, I don’t
think you are insane.” Alice Paul says, it was staggering to have people
express their friendliness for you by assuring you that they thought you
were in your right mind. The doctor who forcibly fed her protested
against having to do it. She was kept in the psychopathic ward a week
incommunicado. When it was discovered where she was, Dudley Field Malone
got her removed back to the hospital. Of course the forcible feeding
went on.
In the files at Headquarters, there are dozens of affidavits made by the
women who went to jail for picketing. It is a great pity that they
cannot all be brought to the attention of a newly enfranchised sex. More
burningly than anything else, these affidavits would show that sex what
work lies before them, as far as penal institutions are concerned. I
quote but one of them—that of Ada Davenport Kendall—because it sums up
so succinctly and specifically the things that the prison pickets saw.
I went into Occoquan Prison as a prisoner on September 13, 1917.
I went in with the idea of obeying the regulations and of being a
reasonable prisoner.
While there I saw such injustice, neglect, and cruelty on the part
of the officials that I was forced into rebellion.
During my thirty days’ imprisonment I saw that commissioners and
other officials made occasional visits but that the people in charge
were usually warned and used much deception on the occasion of these
visits. Specially prepared food replaced the wormy, fermenting, and
meager fare of ordinary days. Girls too frail to work were hurried
off the scrubbing and laundry gangs, and were found apparently
resting. Sick women were hidden. Girls were hurried out of
punishment cells as the visitors proceeded through the buildings,
and were hidden in linen rooms or rooms of matrons already
inspected.
While there I was treated with indignities. I was insulted by
loud-mouthed officials at every turn, was stripped before other
women, stripped of all toilet necessities, warm underwear, and
ordinary decencies, was deprived of soap, tooth-brush, writing
materials, and sufficient clothing and bed coverings. I was dressed
first in clean garments, but the officials later punished me by
putting me in unclean clothing and into a filthy bed in which a
diseased negress had slept. In the hospital I was obliged to use the
toilet which diseased negro women used, although there was a clean
unused toilet in the building.
With the four other women who were sentenced with me I was fed food
filled with worms and vile with saltpeter; food consisting of
cast-off and rotting tomatoes, rotten horse meat and insect-ridden
starches. There were no fats: no milk, butter, nor decent food of
any kind. Upon this fare I was put at hard labor from seven a.m.
until five p.m., with a short luncheon out. We were not allowed to
use the paper cups we had brought, but were forced to drink from an
open pail, from common cups.
After several days of driven labor this group was ordered to wash
the floors and clean the toilets in the dormitory for the colored
inmates. I protested for the whole group: said we would not do this
dangerous work. For this I was put in solitary confinement which
lasted for nearly seven days. Water was brought three times in the
twenty-four hours, in a small paper cup. Three thin slices of bread
were brought in twenty-four hours. Several times matrons with
attendants came in and threatened me and threw me about. They
searched me for notes or any writing, and threw me about and tore my
clothes. I was allowed no water for toilet, and the only toilet
convenience was an open bucket. No reading nor writing materials
were allowed. Mail was cut off, as it was nearly all of the time
while I was in prison. I was not allowed to see an attorney during
this period. The bed had been slept in and was filthy, and there was
no other furniture. After six days, influential friends were able to
reach my case from outside the prison, and I was taken out of
solitary confinement.
While in prison I heard men and women crying for help, and heard the
sound of brutal lashes for long periods,—usually in the evening,
after visitors were not expected.
I saw a woman have a hemorrhage from the lungs at nine in the
morning—saw her lie neglected, heard the matrons refuse to call a
doctor; and at eleven saw the woman carry a tobacco pail filled with
water to scrub a floor; saw her bleeding while she was scrubbing,
and when she cried a matron scolded her.
Saw a young dope fiend who was insane run out of a door, and heard a
matron at the telephone order men to loose the bloodhounds upon this
girl in the dark. Soon heard the dogs howling and running about.
Saw men with fetters on legs being driven to and from work.
Saw matrons choke and shake girls.
Was continually disgusted with lack of fair play in the institution.
Inmates were set to spy upon the others, and were rewarded or
punished, as they played the game of the matrons.
Saw sick girls working in laundry. Saw diseased women sleeping,
bathing, and eating with other inmates.
Saw armed men driving prisoners to work.
Saw milk and vegetables shipped to Washington, and rotting
vegetables brought up from city market.
Saw unconscious women being brought from punishment cells.
Saw sick women refused medical help, and locked in the hospital
without attendance to suffer. Saw them refused milk or proper food.
Saw them refused rest, and once I saw the only medical attendant
kick at a complaining inmate and slam the office door in her face.
Found that while the institution was supposed to build and improve
inmates, they were ordinarily not allowed any recreation nor proper
cleanliness. No classes were held, and no teaching of any sort was
attempted. They were deprived of all parcels, and mail was usually
withheld both coming and going. Visitors and attorneys were held up,
and the prisoners usually absolutely shut away from help.
Found that no rules governing the rights of the prisoners had been
codified by the Congressional Committee responsible for the
institution, and was told by the superintendent that the prisoners
had no rights and that the superintendent could treat the inmates as
he liked.
Under that management, the matrons, while apparently ordinarily
decent and often making a good first impression, were found to be
brutal and unreasonable in their care of inmates.
The inmates were driven, abused, insulted. They were not allowed to
speak in the dining-room or workrooms or dormitories. It was a place
of chicanery, sinister horror, brutality, and dread.
No one could go there for a stay who would not be permanently
injured. No one could come out without just resentment against any
government which could maintain such an institution.
As has been told before Judge Waddill decided that the pickets had been
illegally transferred from the Jail to Occoquan and they were sent back
to the Jail. But between Occoquan and Jail occurred one night, in which
the pickets were released in the custody of Dudley Field Malone, their
counsel. They went immediately to Cameron House and broke their
hunger-strike—spent the evening before the fire, talking and sipping hot
milk. The next day they were committed to jail again and immediately
started a new hunger-strike.
The government, however, undoubtedly appalled by the protests that came
from all over the country, and perhaps, in addition, staggered at the
prospect of forcibly feeding so many women, released them all three days
later.
A mass-meeting was held at the Belasco Theatre early in December to
welcome them. The auditorium was crowded and there was an overflow
meeting of four thousand outside on the sidewalk. The police reserves,
who had so often, in previous months, come out to arrest pickets, now
came out to protect them from the thousands of people who gathered in
their honor. Elsie Hill addressed this overflow meeting, which shivered
in the bitter cold for over an hour, yet stayed to hear her story.
Inside, eighty-one women in white, all of whom had served in the Jail or
the Workhouse, carrying lettered banners and purple, white, and gold
banners, marched down the two center aisles of the theatre and onto the
stage. There were speeches by Mrs. Thomas Hepburn, Dudley Field Malone,
Mrs. William Kent, Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont, and Maud Younger. Then came an
interval in which money was raised. Two touching details were sums of
fifty cents and thirty cents pledged from Occoquan “because the
Suffragettes helped us so much down there.” And Mrs. John Rogers, Jr.,
on behalf of the pickets gave “tenderest thanks for this help from our
comrades in the Workhouse.”
Eighty-six thousand, three hundred and eighty-six dollars was raised in
honor of the pickets.
On that occasion, prison pins which were tiny replicas in silver of the
cell doors, were presented to each “prisoner of freedom.”
As Alice Paul appeared to receive her pin, Dudley Field Malone called,
“Alice Paul,” and the audience leaped to its feet; the cheers and
applause lasted until she disappeared at the back of the platform.
* * * * *
It is a poignant regret to the present author that she cannot go further
into conditions at the District Jail and at Occoquan in regard to the
other prisoners there. But that is another story and must be told by
those whose work is penal investigation. The Suffragists uncovered
conditions destructive to body and soul; incredibly inhumane! One of the
heart-breaking handicaps of the swift, intensive warfare of the pickets
was that, although they did much to ameliorate conditions for their
fellow prisoners, they could not make them ideal. Piteous appeal after
piteous appeal came to them from their “comrades in the Workhouse.”
“If we go on a hunger-strike, will they make things better for us?” the
other prisoners asked again and again.
“No,” the Suffragists answered sadly. “You have no organization back of
you.”
However, in whatever ways were open to them the Suffragists offered
counsel and assistance of all kinds.
* * * * *
I asked one of the pickets once how the other prisoners regarded them.
She answered: “They called us ‘the strange ladies.’”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
II
TELLING THE COUNTRY
IN the meantime, the country had not been kept misinformed or uninformed
in regard to the treatment of the pickets. Of course, the press teemed
with descriptions of their protests and its results. Again and again
their activities pushed war news out of the preferred position on the
front page of the newspapers. Again and again they snatched the
headlines from important personages and events. But despite flaming
headlines, these newspaper accounts were inevitably brief and
incomplete; sometimes unfair. The Woman’s Party determined that the
great rank and file, who might be careless or cautious of newspaper
narration, should hear the whole extraordinary story. Picketing began in
January, 1917. By the end of September, long before Alice Paul’s arrest
and through October and November, therefore, speakers were sent all over
the United States. Alice Paul divided the States into four parts, twelve
States each: Maud Younger went to the South; Mrs. Lawrence Lewis and
Mabel Vernon to the Middle West; Anne Martin to the far West; Abby Scott
Baker and Doris Stevens to the East. Ahead of them went the swift band
of organizers who always so ably and intensively prepared the way for
Woman’s Party activity.
Public opinion became more and more intrigued, began to blaze oftener
and oftener into protest as successive parties of pickets were arrested.
The climax, of course, was the climactic Administration mistake—the
arrest of Alice Paul. And as it began to dawn on the country that she
was kept incommunicado ... that she was in the psychopathic ward ...
alienists ... hunger-striking ... forcible feeding....
The speakers had extraordinary experiences, especially those who went
into the strongholds of the Democrats in the South. Again and again when
they told about the jail conditions, and how white women were forced
into association with the colored prisoners, were even compelled to
paint the toilets used by the colored prisoners, men would rise in the
audience and say, “There are a score of men here who’ll go right up to
Washington and burn that jail down.” It has been said that Warden
Zinkham received by mail so many threats against his life that he went
armed.
From Headquarters, telegrams were sent to speakers as the situation grew
at Washington, informing them as to the arrests, the actions of the
police, sentences, et caetera. Often these telegrams would come in the
midst of a speech. The speaker always read them to the audience. Once
after Doris Stevens had read such a telegram, “Do you protest against
this?” she demanded of her audience. “We do!” they yelled, rising as one
man to their feet.
Suddenly while everything was apparently going smoothly, audiences
large, indignantly sympathetic, actively protestive, change came.
Everywhere obstacles were put in the way of the speakers. That this was
the result of concerted action on the part of the authorities was
evident from the fact that within a few days four speakers in different
parts of the country felt this blocking influence.
In Arkansas they recalled Mabel Vernon’s permit for the Court House. In
Connecticut, newspapers began to call Berta Crone pro-German, to attack
her in a scurrilous manner.
Anne Martin’s meeting throughout the West had gone on without
interruption of any kind. When, however, she arrived in Los Angeles, she
was met by a Federal officer and told that there could be no meeting in
Los Angeles. Miss Martin’s answer was to read to him a section on the
right of free speech and assemblage, to inform him that he could not
prevent the meeting, to assure him that he was welcome to attend it, and
to invite him to arrest her if she made any seditious remarks. The
attempt was then made to get her right to use the hotel ball-room, in
which she was to hold the meeting, canceled. However, when Miss Martin
told the management that she had made the same speech at the St. Francis
Hotel in San Francisco, they agreed to let her have the hall. Federal
officers sat on the platform and interrupted her speech, saying, “You’ve
said enough about the President now.” Anne Martin replied, “If I’ve said
anything seditious it’s your duty to arrest me. Otherwise I’m going on
with my speech.” The audience applauded. Within a few minutes, five
hundred dollars was collected in that audience for the struggle in the
Capitol. Later, one of the Secret Service men warned Miss Martin not to
make the same speech in San Diego. “I told him,” Miss Martin said, “to
follow me and arrest me at any time he wished to, but in the meantime to
stop speaking to me.” She had no further trouble in California.
Maud Younger’s experiences in the South and West were so incredible in
these days of free speech that it deserves a detailed narration.
She had passed through nine southern Democratic States. Every speech had
been received enthusiastically, with sympathy, and without question.
Suddenly the cry of “Treason,” “Pro-German,” was raised. She was to
speak at Dallas, Texas, on Monday, November 18. But the organizer found
she could not engage a hall nor even a room at the hotel in which Miss
Younger could speak. The Mayor would not allow her to hold a street
meeting. Miss Younger, whose speeches are always the maximum of
accuracy, informedness, feeling—coupled with a kind of diplomatic
suavity—offered to submit her speech for censorship. They refused her
even that. Finally on Monday morning a hall was found and engaged. The
people who rented it canceled that engagement on Monday afternoon. The
reporters flocked to see Miss Younger, who astutely said to them, “Of
course the President is not responsible for—etc, etc.”—ad libitum—not
responsible, in brief, for all the things she would have said in her
speech. Miss Condon, who was organizing in that vicinity, had a little
office on the top floor and decided to hold a meeting there. Miss
Younger spoke to a small audience drummed up as hastily as possible,
notifying newspaper and police when the audience was about to arrive.
There were detectives present. Miss Younger takes great joy in the fact
that in attending this meeting, these detectives, following the accepted
tactics of detectives, heavy-handedly—or heavy-footedly—got out of the
elevator on the floor below; tiptoed solemnly up to the floor of the
meeting, thus proclaiming loudly to the world that they were detectives.
In Memphis, Miss Younger had the assistance of Sue White, who, not then
a member of the Woman’s Party, became subsequently one of its most
active, able, and devoted workers. Miss White who is very well known in
her State, had just gained great public approbation by registering fifty
thousand women for war work. She fought hard and constantly to preserve
Miss Younger’s speaking schedule in the nine Tennessee towns. But it was
impossible in many cases. Everywhere they were fought by the Bar
Association and the so-called Home Defense Leagues; and often by civic
officials. The Bar Association et caetera appointed a committee to go to
all hotels, or meeting-places, to ask them not to rent rooms for Miss
Younger’s meetings, and to mayors to request them not to grant permits
for street meetings. The Mayor of Brownsville, for instance, telephoned
to the Mayor of Jackson: “I believe in one God, one Country, and one
President; for God’s sake keep those pickets from coming to
Brownsville.” Fortunately everywhere, as has almost invariably happened
in the Suffrage movement, Labor came to their rescue.
In the towns where it was impossible to get a hall, Miss Younger did not
stay to fight it out. First of all, she felt the situation had developed
into a free speech fight between the people of these towns and their
local governments. It was for them to make the fight. Moreover, she
wanted as far as possible to keep to her schedule.
Sue White went on ahead to Jackson, which was her own home town, and
appealed to the Judge for the use of the Court House. The Mayor said he
could not legally prevent the meeting. Miss White opened the Court House
and lighted it. In the meantime, the Chief of Police met Miss Younger in
the Court House before the meeting began. He told her if she said
anything against the President, he would arrest her. He came to the
meeting that night, but left as soon as he discovered how harmless it
was—harmless, that is, so far as the President was concerned. The
audience unanimously passed a resolution asking the Mayor of Nashville,
which was the next stop, to permit Miss Younger to speak.
However, when she got to Nashville, the Home Defense League had brought
pressure on the local authorities and it was impossible for her to get a
hall. The organizer had hired the ball-room of the hotel, had deposited
twenty-five dollars for it; but the manager broke his contract, refused
to allow them to use it, and refunded the money. The prosecuting
attorney, months later, boasted, “I was the one that kept Miss Younger
from speaking in Nashville.”
The next two towns were Lebanon and Gallatin. In Lebanon, although they
could get no hall, they were allowed to speak in the public square. Sue
White introduced Miss Younger. It was a bitter cold day; but the weather
was not colder than the audience at first. Gradually, however, that
audience warmed up. When Miss Younger finished, they called, “We are all
with you!” When the Suffragists reached Gallatin, they secured the
schoolhouse. There was no time for any publicity, but Rebecca Hourwich
hired a wagon and went about the town calling, “Come to the schoolhouse!
Hear the White House pickets!”
In Knoxville, they met with the same hostility from the Bar Association.
Their permit to speak in the town hall was revoked, and even the street
was denied to them. Joy Young, thereupon, went to Labor. The local Labor
leader, who was the editor of the Labor paper, saw at once that it was a
free speech fight. He said that Labor would make the fight for the
Suffragists. He also pointed out that though the Mayor was a Democrat,
the Judge was a Republican. He went to the Judge and asked for the Court
House. The Judge said that it was not within his power to grant the
Court House; that three county officials, to whom, twelve years before,
jurisdiction in this matter had been given, must decide the question.
These county officials agreed to the proposition. Again the Bar
Association interfered. All day long telephone pressure, pro and con,
was brought to bear on these county officials. In the end it was decided
to have a preliminary rehearsal of Miss Younger’s speech.
At high noon, therefore, Maud Younger went to the Court House. The
prosecuting attorney opened the proceedings by reading from a big book
an unintelligible excerpt on sedition. Miss Younger then made her
forceful, witty, and tactful speech. Of course they gave her the Court
House. The prosecuting attorney said, “For an hour I argued against you
with the Judge. Now, I don’t see how he could possibly refuse.” The
Judge said, “You women have a very real grievance.” Late as it was, Joy
Young got out dodgers, inviting the town to the meeting and scattered
them everywhere, and the afternoon papers carried the announcement.
That night at dinner, the editor of the Labor paper called. He told them
that the Sheriff had suddenly put up the claim of jurisdiction over the
county Court House taken from him twelve years ago, and that he would be
there with a band of armed deputies. “_But_,” said the Labor leader,
“_Labor will be there with eighty armed Union men to meet them_.” Of
course the two Woman’s Party speakers did not know what would happen.
But the only thing they did know was that they would hold the meeting as
usual. So Maud Younger and Joy Young proceeded alone to the Court House.
They both expected to be shot. The Sheriff with his deputies, instead of
surrounding the building, went inside, holding the place against
Suffrage attack. The Labor men stationed themselves in front of the
door. The steps were filled with audience. Joy Young introduced the
speaker. Maud Younger took up her position, and they held their meeting
outside. Miss Younger always says: “The Sheriff had the Court House, but
I had the audience.”
At Chattanooga, Joy Young had explained the situation; The Mayor was
with them; the Bar Association, the Chief of Police, the Sheriff were
against them; so the Mayor with the assistance of Labor and the
newspapers took up their fight. No hall was to be had, _and someone in
the Bar Association instructed the Chief of Police to enter any private
house and break up any meeting the Suffragists might hold; and the
Sheriff to do the same in the country outside the city limits_. But
Labor was not to be outwitted. They were holding a scheduled meeting in
their own hall that night. Labor canceled that meeting and offered Maud
Younger the hall free. They said they would like to see any police break
up a meeting in _their_ hall. All day long there was a stormy session of
the Commissioners as to whether or not she might speak. But in the end
she did speak.
* * * * *
Later, when Maud Younger returned to Washington, she met Senator
McKellar in the course of her lobbying activities. Of course, she was
astute enough to know that orders for all this persecution had come from
above. She referred quite frankly to his efforts to stop her in
Tennessee. With equal frankness, Senator McKellar said: “I wasn’t going
to have you talking against the President in Tennessee.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
III
MORE PRESSURE ON CONGRESS
THE various activities described in the last six chapters all took place
in the year 1917. But during all this year—when the picketing, the
arrests, the imprisonments, were going on—work with Congress was of
course proceeding parallel with it. It now becomes necessary to go back
to the very beginning of the year to follow that work.
It will be remembered that early in this year there occurred in
Washington an event of national political importance. The Congressional
Union for Woman Suffrage and the Woman’s Party merged into one
organization.
This union of the Congressional Union with the Woman’s Party occurred on
March 2. On March 3—the last day of his first Administration—President
Wilson despatched the following letter to the Hon. W. R. Crabtree, a
member of the Tennessee Legislature.
May I not express my earnest hope that the Senate of Tennessee will
reconsider the vote by which it rejected the legislation extending
the Suffrage to women? Our Party is so distinctly pledged to its
passage that it seems to me the moral obligation is complete.
WOODROW WILSON.
On April 26 occurred a hearing before the Senate Committee; Anne
Martin presided. The note she struck in her opening speech sounded
all through the hearing—the somber, sinister note of the Great War;
and the necessity of accepting the Suffrage Amendment as a war
measure.
“We regard it as an act of the highest loyalty and patriotism,”
she said, “to urge the passage of the Amendment at this time,
that we may, as fully-equipped, fully-enfranchised citizens, do
our part in carrying out and helping to solve the problems that
lie before the government when our country is at war.”
Madeline Doty, who had traveled in Germany and in England since the
beginning of the war, gave her testimony in regard to the degree of war
work women were contributing in those two countries. Others spoke: Mary
Beard, Ernestine Evans, Mrs. Richard Wainwright, Alice Carpenter, Hon.
Jeannette Rankin, and Dudley Field Malone, at that time still Collector
of the Port of New York.
Altogether, there was a different sound to these Suffrage arguments.
Women had discovered for the first time in the history of the world that
they were a national necessity in war, not only because they bore the
soldiers who fought, not only because they nursed the wounded, but
because their efforts in producing the very sinews of war were necessary
to its continuance.
* * * * *
On May 14, the Committee appointed by the National Party (the Party
formed by the former Progressive leaders): J. A. H. Hopkins, Dr. E. A.
Rumley, John Spargo, Virgil Hinshaw, Mabel Vernon, called on the
President for the purpose of discussing the passage of the Federal
Suffrage Amendment as part of the war program.
Mabel Vernon described the interview afterwards:
The President said frankly that the lines were well laid for the
carrying out of a program in this session of Congress in which
Suffrage, he intimated, has not been included and expressed his
belief that the introducing of the question at this time might
complicate matters. He seems to feel, however, that the coming of
war has put the enfranchisement of women on a new basis.
He showed his appreciation of the rapid gains Suffrage has made
through the country when he said, “Suffrage is no longer creeping,
but advancing by strides.”
The President told the Committee as proof of his willingness, as he
said, “to help Suffrage in every little way,” that he had written a
letter to Representative Pou, Chairman of the Rules Committee of the
House, saying he would favor the creation of a Woman Suffrage
Committee.
The next day, May 15, a hearing was held before the Judiciary Committee
of the House. The Progressive Committee, who had visited the President
the day before, spoke, and also a group of the Woman’s Party leaders:
Mrs. William H. Kent, Mrs. John Rogers, Mrs. Donald R. Hooker, Lucy
Burns, Anne Martin, Abby Scott Baker. Again the note of the Great War
sounded through all the speeches, and the impatience of women because
everything in the way of war service was demanded of them, but nothing
given in return.
Mrs. Rogers said:
You men sit here in Congress and plan to take our sons and husbands
and every cent in our pockets. Yet you say to us: “Do not be
selfish; do not ask anything of the government now, but do your
part.”
Mrs. Rogers quoted the words of Lord Northcliffe:
The old arguments against giving women Suffrage were that they were
useless in war. But we have found that we could not carry on the war
without them. They are running many of our industries, and their
services may be justly compared to those of our soldiers.
“It has taken England nineteen hundred years to find this out,” said
Mrs. Rogers.
Also, stress was laid on the fact that, since the last hearing before
the Judiciary Committee, six States had granted Presidential Suffrage to
women.
In this connection, a letter written by Chairman Webb of the Judiciary
Committee to J. A. H. Hopkins of New Jersey, is interesting.
Mr. Hopkins wrote Mr. Webb:
The suggestion in your letter, that your caucus resolution provides
that the President might from time to time suggest special war
emergency legislation, puts the responsibility for the inaction of
your Committee upon the President. As the President has already
stated that he will be glad to do everything he can to promote the
cause of Woman Suffrage, it seems to me quite evident that he has at
least given your Committee the opportunity to exercise their own
authority without even the fear that they may be infringing upon
your caucus rules.
In the answer which Chairman Webb sent to Mr. Hopkins, he put the
responsibility of the inaction in regard to the Suffrage situation
directly on the President.
He said:
The Democratic caucus passed a resolution that only war emergency
measures would be considered during this extra session, and that the
President might designate from time to time special legislation
which he regarded as war legislation, and such would be acted upon
by the House. The President not having designated Woman Suffrage and
national prohibition so far as war measures, the Judiciary Committee
up to this time has not felt warranted, under the caucus rule, in
reporting either of these measures. If the President should request
either or both of them as war measures, then I think the Committee
would attempt to take some action on them promptly. So you see after
all it is important to your cause to make the President see that
Woman Suffrage comes within the rules laid down.
In May, the Rules Committee of the House of Representatives granted a
hearing to Suffrage bodies on the question of the creation of a Suffrage
Committee in the House. It will be remembered that this is the first
time since December, 1913, that the Rules Committee had granted this
request, although women have worked for the creation of a Suffrage
Committee in the House since the days of Susan B. Anthony. Chairman Pou
presided.
A few days before, he had received a letter from President Wilson, in
favor of the creation of a Suffrage Committee. For a long time now, the
President had not been saying anything about the State by State method
of winning Suffrage, but this was the first time that he had shown a
specific interest in the Federal Suffrage Amendment.
The meeting was open to the public, and the room was crowded. The
members of the National American Woman Suffrage Association spoke; a
group of Congressmen from the Suffrage States, and the following members
of the Woman’s Party: Anne Martin, Maud Younger, Mrs. Richard
Wainwright, Mabel Vernon.
Mrs. Richard Wainwright said:
One of the members of the Commission from England said: “We came to
America that America may not make the mistakes that we have! One of
the mistakes that England is now trying to rectify is not giving
justice to her women. I should like the Congress of the United
States to remember what Wyoming said when asked to join the nation:
‘We do not come in without our women.’”
Miss Younger said in part:
We regard this, however (the formation of a Suffrage Committee in
the House), Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the Committee, as only one
step toward our goal. We will not be satisfied with this alone. It
will not in any way take the place of the passage of the Amendment.
Nor are we interested in any mere record vote which might come from
the Suffrage Committee. We are working only for the passage of the
Amendment at the earliest possible date....
We ask for this measure now in war time, because the sufferings of
war fall heavily upon women. In case of an invading army the
greatest barbarities, the greatest cruelties, fall upon the women.
In this war, as never before, the burdens are borne by women.
Secretary Redfield said yesterday that three armies are necessary to
the prosecution of this war, the army in the field, the army on the
farm, and the army in the factories. In these two armies at home the
women are taking an increasingly large part and the efficiency of
their work depends largely upon the conditions under which they do
this work. In England the output of munitions was not satisfactory.
The government appointed a commission to investigate. They found
that the trouble lay in the conditions under which the women worked,
with the overlong hours. They could not get the best results under
such conditions. In America today there is an effort to break down
the protective legislation that through the years has been built up
around women and children. And so for efficiency in the war as well
as for the protection of the women, we urge Suffrage upon you now.
We do not know when this struggle may end nor to what extent the
women here may replace men. An English shipbuilder said recently
that should the war last two years longer he would build ships
entirely with women. We know that all over Europe today they are
doing men’s work, in field, in factory, and in office. When the war
is over and the armies march home, whether in victory or defeat,
they will find the women in their places. Not without a struggle
will the women give up the work, but give it up they probably will.
And then, without the means of livelihood, many of them without
husbands, with the men of their families killed in war, without the
chance to marry, to bear children, they will turn to America. We can
then look forward to an immigration of women such as this country
has never known. Before that time comes we want the power to protect
the women who are here, and to prepare to meet the new conditions
that we may not be swamped by them.
We are asking for Suffrage in war time because other nations at war
are considering it now. Over a year ago, in the Hungarian
Parliament, a deputy asked the prime minister, “When our soldiers
return from fighting our battles, will they be given the vote?” We
find men everywhere in Europe asking for Suffrage for themselves now
in war time. In Germany today the most powerful political party is
urging the vote for women as well as for men. Russia, England, and
France are on the verge of enfranchising their women. But two days
ago in the British Parliament the Under Secretary of State for the
Colonies urged the immediate passage of the Suffrage measure that
the government might not be hampered by domestic problems when, at
the end of the war, international problems will cry for settlement
and a unified nation will be needed. In the period of reconstruction
also we feel that women have something to contribute, that we may be
of help in solving the new problems which will arise from the war
and which will tax all the resources of the people. We ask you now
to release to other service the time, the energy, the money that is
being poured into the Suffrage movement.
Lastly, we urge this now that we may prove to other nations our
sincerity in wanting to establish democracy and our unselfish
motives in going into the war.
I think of that night on the 2nd of April when, from the gallery of
the House, we heard President Wilson read his war message. We were
going to war not for any gain for ourselves but to make the world
safe for democracy. We sat there and heard him read, and, gentlemen,
you applauded, “we shall fight for those things which we have always
carried nearest our hearts, for democracy, for the right of those
who submit to authority to have a voice in their own government.”
And while you applauded, some of us there in the gallery thought of
the 20,000,000 of women in our own country who “submit to authority
without a voice in their own government,” which is the President’s
definition of democracy. We thought, too, of the women of other
nations on the verge of enfranchisement themselves, and we wondered
how they would welcome the United States at the peace council, to
establish democracy for them—the United States, which does not
recognize its own women.
And we went out into the night. The Capitol looked very beautiful
and shining white against the dark sky. It seemed a great beacon
light to the nations of the world. Suddenly a dark shadow fell
across our path—the shadow of a mounted soldier. A troop of cavalry
had encircled the Capitol holding back the people. We walked down
the marble terraces and started across the Avenue. There, again, the
troop of cavalry winding down the hill blocked our progress.
Suddenly it seemed so symbolic of what war meant, the armed force,
centralized authority, blocking progress, encroaching upon the
people. And it came to us that our greatest foe is not the enemy
without but the danger to democracy within. We realized then that
the greatest service we could render today would be to fight for
democracy in this country.
We are going into this war. We will give our service, our time, our
money. We may give our lives and what is harder still, the lives of
those dear to us. We lay them all down upon the altar for the sake
of an ideal. But in laying them down let us see that the ideal for
which we sacrifice shall not perish also. Let us fight to preserve
that ideal, to make this a real democracy. And, gentlemen, the first
step toward that end lies with you here today. We ask you to take
that step and help make this nation truly a beacon light to nations
of the earth.
Although—following the hearing before the Senate Committee, on May
15—the Chairman, Senator Jones of New Mexico, was unanimously instructed
to make a report on the Amendment, he failed to do so. When so requested
by the Woman’s Party, he refused. After three months the minority
(Republican) leaders of the Committee, led by Senator Cummins of Iowa,
and backed by Senator Jones of Washington and Senator Johnson of
California, attempted to get the Suffrage Amendment on the Senate
Calendar by discharging the Senate Suffrage Committee from its further
consideration.
In his own defense, Senator Jones of New Mexico pleaded lack of time and
desire to make a report that would be “a contribution to the cause.”
Another Democratic member, Senator Hollis of New Hampshire, brought
forward the picketing of the Suffragists as a reason for withholding the
report. He expressed the amazing reason for not acting, his fear that
this “active group of Suffragists” would focus public attention and “get
credit.” The Chairman of the Committee who had neglected week after week
to make the report which he had been authorized to make by the
Committee, was finally galvanized into action by a visit to the
imprisoned pickets at Occoquan. Immediately, September 15, he made his
report to the Senate. On September 24, the creation of the House
Suffrage Committee came up for heated debate in the House of
Representatives, though its passage was a foregone conclusion. Of
course, there was much discussion of the picketing which was still going
on. Many of the speakers harped on the note that this late action in
regard to the creation of a committee, which the Woman’s Party had been
working for ever since 1913, would be interpreted by the country as
being the result of the picketing. This was a quaint argument on their
part, because of course, it _was_ the result of the picketing. Why else
would it have come so swiftly?
During this discussion, Mr. Pou, the Chairman, made the following
statement:
I want to say in conclusion, Mr. Speaker, that this is no
proposition to pack the Committee for a particular purpose. The
friends of this resolution have distinctly stated time and again
that they do not expect action at this session of Congress (first
session of the Sixty-fifth Congress). The appointment of a Committee
only is asked; but after this Committee is appointed, in the next
Congress they expect to go before the people of America, and if the
returns justify, then in the Sixty-sixth Congress, they will ask for
Congressional action.
This boiled down meant of course there was no intention of passing the
Suffrage Amendment before the Sixty-sixth Congress. However, the
Administration was to reverse its policy on this point less than three
months later.
The House Suffrage Committee was created by a vote of one hundred and
eighty-one yeas and one hundred and seven nays.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PART FOUR
VICTORY
“The vast and beckoning future is ours.”
_The Suffragist._
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I
THE NEW HEADQUARTERS AND THE LATER YEARS
AT the opening of the year 1918, the Woman’s Party made another change
in the location of its headquarters. It will be recalled that during the
first part of its history, it had premises in F Street. In the middle
years, it was located at Cameron House. It was now to go directly across
the Park to 14 Jackson Place. Like Cameron House, this new mansion had
had a vivid and picturesque history. It was built by the Hon. Levi
Woodbury while he was serving in the cabinet of President Jackson and
President Van Buren. Later, it became the home of Schuyler Colfax, when
he was Vice-President. During the Civil War, Postmaster William Denison,
a member of Lincoln’s cabinet, lived there. And perhaps it was at this
period that the house achieved the apex of its reputation for official
hospitality. Later, it was the scene of the tragic triangle of General
Sickles, his beautiful young Spanish wife and the brilliant Barton Key.
Still later it fell into the hands of Mrs. Washington McLean, and then
of her grandson’s family—the Bughers. Then it was turned into the Home
Club.
It is a charming house. The façade is a pleasing combination of
cream-colored tiling trimmed with white. Immediately, of course, the
Woman’s Party adorned that delicate, lustrous expanse with the red,
white, and blue of the big national banner, which always flies over
their Headquarters, and the purple, white, and gold of the equally big
Party tri-color. Later, in the little oval made by the porte-cochère,
they erected a bulletin board presented by Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont. By
this means the casual passer-by was kept informed, by bulletin and by
photographs, of the activities of the Woman’s Party.
Inside there are rooms and rooms, rooms big and small, rooms of all
sizes and heights. A spacious ball-room on the second floor with a
seating capacity of three hundred, was of course of great practical
advantage to the Party. The other rooms on this floor were made into
offices; the rooms on the floor above into bedrooms. Mrs. Lawrence Lewis
and Mrs. William Kent raised the money for the maintenance of this huge
establishment.
Alice Paul, always economically inclined where expenditure is not
absolutely necessary, immediately asked for contributions of
furnishings. All kinds of things were given of course, from pianos to
kitchen pans. From Mrs. Pflaster of Virginia came a load of heirlooms,
in various colonial patterns—furniture which makes the connoisseur
positively gasp. Chairs of the Hepplewhite and Sheraton periods; tables
made by Phyffe; tables in the most graceful style of Empire furniture;
mahogany cabinets, delicately inlaid—they gave the place an
extraordinary atmosphere. Huge, dim, old-gold-framed mirrors and a few
fine old paintings reinforced the effect.
Alice Paul’s office, which is on the second floor, was done in purple
and gold; the woodwork of gold, the furniture upholstered in purple
velvet.
Later, a large room, originally a stable at the rear of the first floor,
was transformed into a tea-room. Vivian Pierce had charge of the
decorations here; and she made it very attractive. The brick walls were
painted yellow, the tables and chairs black. The windows and doors were
all enclosed in flat frames of brilliant chintz, of which the background
was black, but the dominating note blue. The many hanging lights were
swathed in yellow silk. The tea-room rapidly became very popular in
Washington; and, as rapidly, became one of the most interesting places
in the city. Visitors of many distinguished kinds came there in
preference to the larger restaurants or hotels. They knew the members of
the Woman’s Party who lived in the house, and they gradually came to
know the habitués of the tea-room. At meals, separated parties were
always coalescing into one big party. People wandered from table to
table. There was an air of comradeship and sympathy. Afterwards, groups
often went up the little flight of stairs which leads to the ball-room,
and sitting before the fire in the huge fireplace, drank their
after-dinner coffee together. These talks sometimes lasted until
midnight.
As for the atmosphere of the place itself—it can be summed up by only
one word, and that word is—youth. Not that everybody who came to
Headquarters was—as years go—young. There were, for instance, Lavinia
Dock who was sixty, Mary Nolan who was seventy, and the Rev. Olympia
Brown who was an octogenarian. Of course, though, when one considers
that the Rev. Olympia Brown took part in that rain-drenched and
wind-driven picket deputation of a thousand women on March 4, and that
Mary Nolan and Lavinia Dock both served their terms in prison, one must
admit that they were as young in spirit as the youngest picket there.
But young pickets were there—I mean, young in actual years; young and
fresh and gay; able and daring. Alice Paul, herself, whimsically relates
what an obstacle their very youth seemed to them during the early part
of the movement. When first they began to wage their warfare on the
Democratic Party, old Suffragists rebuked them; and rebuked them always
on the score that they were too young to know any better. “How hard we
tried to seem old,” Alice Paul said. “On all occasions we pushed elderly
ones into the foreground and when Mrs. Lawrence Lewis became a
grandmother, how triumphant we were. Oh, we encouraged grandmotherhood
in those days.” But now—triumphantly successful—they were no longer
afraid of their own youth. They knew it was their greatest asset. They
made the place ring with its gaiety. They made it seethe with its
activity. They made it rock with its resolution. “The young are at the
gates!” said Lavinia Dock. And these were young who would not brook
denial of their demands.
As you entered Headquarters, that breath of youth struck you in the face
with its wild, fresh sweetness. It was as pungent as a wind blowing over
spring flowers. It was as vivid as the flash of spring clouds hurrying
over the new blue of the sky. In actuality, youthful activity rang from
every corner of the house. In the white entrance hall, a young girl sat
at the switchboard; and she was always a very busy person. To the left
was the Press Headquarters, full of that mad turmoil which, seemingly,
is inevitable to any Press activity. Upstairs, Alice Paul was always
interviewing or being interviewed; reading letters or answering them;
asking questions or giving information; snatching a hurried meal from a
tray; dictating all manner of business; or giving the last orders before
she darted east, west, north, or south. She was sure to be doing one of
these things, or some of them, or—this really seems not an
exaggeration—all of them.
All about and from the offices that ran beside the ball-room sounded the
click of typewriters—some one counted twenty-four typewriters in the
house once. Everywhere, you ran into busy, business-like stenographers
with papers in their hands, proceeding from one office to another. If it
were lunch time, or dinner time, pairs of young girls, with their arms
around each other’s waists, chattering busily, were making their way to
the tea-room. At night, the big ball-room was filled with groups reading
magazines at the big (and priceless) tables; or talking over the events
of the day ... Congress ... the picketing. Late at night, the
discussions still went on. Upstairs, they followed each other from
bedroom to bedroom, still arguing, still comparing notes, still making
suggestions in regard to a hundred things: organizing, lobbying,
personal appeal to political leaders, et caetera, ad infinitum. The
huge, four-poster bed—big enough for royalty—in Mrs. Lawrence Lewis’s
room was the scene—with ardent pickets sitting all over it—of many a
discussion that threatened to prolong itself until dawn.
And all day long, and all evening long—any time—organizers with their
harvests of facts and ideas were likely to appear from the remotest
parts of the country. Young, enthusiastic, unconscious of bodily
discomfort, if the beds were all full, they pulled a mattress onto the
floor and slept there or curled up on a couch—anything so long as they
could stay at the friendly, welcoming Headquarters. To middle age, it
was all a revelation of the unsounded, unplumbed depths of endurance in
convinced, emancipate, determined youth. There was no end to their
strength apparently. Apparently there was no possibility of palling
their spirit. Arriving at nine at night from Oregon, they would depart
blithely the next morning at six for Alabama. To those women who had the
privilege of taking part, either as active participants, or enthralled
lookers-on, this will always stand out as one of their most thrilling
life experiences. Katherine Rolston Fisher’s fine descriptive phrase in
regard to it all inevitably recurs: “It was,” she says, “the renaissance
of the Suffrage movement.”
Speed was their animating force: “The Suffrage Amendment passed at
once,” their eternal motto.
In the nomenclature of the Great War, the pickets were the shock troops
of the Suffrage forces. They took the first line trenches. The forces of
the organization back of them secured and maintained these positions;
held those trenches until the time came for the next advance. As for the
organizers working all over the country, they were the air force
and—still using the nomenclature of that great struggle—they were like
the little, swift, quickly-turning chase-planes which so effectually
harassed the huge enemy machines.
The Woman’s Party never grew so big nor its organization so cumbrous
that its object was defeated by numbers and weight. It was distinguished
always by quality rather than quantity, and its mechanical organization
was sensitive and light. It lay over its members as delicately as a
cobweb on the grass; and it responded as instantly as a cobweb to the
touch of changing conditions. News from Washington went to the uttermost
parts of the country as swiftly as electricity could bear it. The
results in action were equally swift. That was because youth was
everywhere, not only youth of body, but, perhaps more important, youth
of spirit. Senators and Representatives frequently marveled at the power
and strength of an organization which had come to fruition in so few
years. Had they all visited Headquarters—as some of them did—I think
that all would have understood.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
II
LOBBYING
I HAVE left until now all consideration of a department which had been,
almost from the very beginning, of great importance to the Woman’s
Party; the most important department of all; the crux of its work; a
department which steadily augmented in importance—the lobbying.
From the moment in 1912 that the Suffragists started their work in
Washington, relations had to be established with the House and the
Senate. At first, tentative, a little wavering, irregular, the lobbying
became finally astute, intensive, and constant. The lobby grew in
numbers. After the Congressional Committee had become the Congressional
Union, and had separated from the National American Woman Suffrage
Association, the latter body sent its own lobbyists to Washington. The
anti-Suffragists sent lobbyists too. By 1914, the stream had grown to a
flood. The halls of Congress were never free from this invasion. The
siege lasted without cessation as long as a Congress was in session.
“This place looks like a millinery establishment,” a Congressman said
once.
In the early days, the reception of the lobbyists at the hands of
Congressmen lacked by many degrees that graciousness of which, at the
very end, they were almost certain. A story of this early period taken
from the Woman’s Party card-index, is most illuminating.
Two Suffrage lobbyists were calling on Hoke Smith. “As you are
Suffragists,” Mr. Smith said, “you won’t mind standing.” He himself sat,
lounging comfortably in his chair. He took out a big cigar, inserted it
in his mouth, lighted it. The two women said what they had to say,
standing, while Mr. Smith smoked contemptuously on.
Those two women were Emily Perry and Jeannette Rankin.
* * * * *
The lobbying for the Woman’s Party was directed at first by Alice Paul
and Lucy Burns. Mrs. Gilson Gardner was the pioneer lobbyist, and the
first-year lobbyists were all women voters. They made reports to Alice
Paul and Lucy Burns every day. First these were oral; later they were
written. This was the nucleus of the Woman’s Party card catalogue which
has since become so famous. Finally, these written reports were put in
tabulated form by Mrs. Grimes of Michigan.
As the work grew, unenfranchised women lobbied as often as enfranchised.
The early lobbyists were: Mrs. Gilson Gardner, Mrs. William Kent, Mrs.
George Odell, Lucy Burns, Abby Scott Baker, Mrs. Lowell Mellett. But not
only the experienced lobbied. As has before been set down—following that
wise instinct which impelled Alice Paul to give her workers glimpses of
all phases of the movement—as fast as the organizers came back to
Washington, she sent them up to the galleries of Congress to listen; she
made them lobby for a while. And, as has elsewhere been stated, this was
found to be a mutual benefit. Organizers took the temper and atmosphere
of Congress back to the States, and sometimes to the very constituents
of the Congressmen with whom they had talked; they put Congressmen in
touch with what was happening at home. Whenever a woman visiting
Washington called at Headquarters, Alice Paul immediately sent her to
the Capitol to lobby the Congressmen and Senators of her own State.
In November, 1915, Anne Martin, as Chairman of the Legislative
Department, became the head of the lobbying. Miss Martin is a born
general. She brought to this situation an instinct for the strategy and
tactics of politics. She supervised the work of those who were under
her, sent them up to Congress with specific directions; received their
reports; collated them; made suggestions for the next day’s work;
developed a closer relation with the constituents and kept local
chairmen in touch with the States of their own Congressmen and Senators.
In 1916, Anne Martin ran for Senator in Nevada. She had of necessity to
relinquish active work in Washington for the Woman’s Party.
In the spring of 1916, therefore, Maud Younger who was in a position to
give her whole time to it, became Chairman of the Lobby Committee and
chief lobbyist for the Amendment.
At all times this work was hard, and sometimes intensely disagreeable.
Maud Younger in her _Revelations of a Woman Lobbyist_, gives some of the
actual physical strain. She says:
The path of the lobbyist is a path of white marble. And white
marble, though beautiful, is hard. The House office building runs
around four sides of a block, so that when you have walked around
one floor, you have walked four blocks on white marble. When you
have walked around each of the five floors you have walked a mile on
white marble. When you have gone this morning and afternoon through
several sessions of Congress you have walked more weary miles on
white marble than a lobbyist has time to count.
But the Woman’s Party lobbyists were not balked by the mere matter of
white marble. In a week they were threading that interminable intricate
maze of Congressional alleys with the light, swift step of familiarity
and of determination. All day long, they drove from the Visitors’
Reception Room to Senatorial offices, and from Senatorial offices back
to the Visitors’ Reception Room. They flew up and down in the elevators.
They found unknown and secret stairways by which they made short cuts.
They journeyed back and forth in the little underground subway which
tries to mitigate these long distances. At first Congressmen frankly
took to hiding, and the lobbyist discovered that the Capitol was a nest
of _abris_, but in the end, even Congressmen could not elude the
vigilance of youth and determination. As for the mental and spiritual
difficulties of the task—at first, Senators and Congressmen were frankly
uninterested, or, more concretely, irritated and enraged with the
Suffrage lobbyists. It is not pleasant to have to talk to a man who does
not want to hear you. The lobbyists had to learn to be quiet;
deferential; to listen to long intervals of complaint and abuse; to seem
not to notice rebuffs; to go back the next day as though the rebuff had
not occurred. This is not easy to women of spirit. Perhaps it could not
have been borne, if it had not been a labor of love. Many times these
women had to bolster a smarting sense of humiliation by keeping the
thought of victory in sight.
In her _Revelations of a Woman Lobbyist_, Maud Younger tells
interestingly and with a very arch touch some of these experiences:
Mr. Huddleston, the thin, blonde type of Congressman, sat at his
desk in his low-ceilinged, well-lighted office.
“What is it?” he greeted me when I entered. His manner was very
brusque, but I refused to be repelled by it. I began to speak.
“There’s always some one hippodroming around here with some kind of
propaganda,” he snapped, interrupting. “We’re very busy, we’ve got
important things to do, we can’t be bothered with Woman Suffrage.”
He made a jerky motion, rattling the papers on his desk, and turning
his head to look through the window. I thought of several things to
say to Mr. Huddleston, but this was obviously the time to say none
of them. So I murmured, “Thank you,” and withdrew....
Mr. Whaley’s face is red; his head is prematurely gray outside and
his thoughts prematurely gray inside. “We don’t need women voting in
South Carolina,” he said with a large masculine manner. “We know how
to take care of our women in our State. We don’t allow divorce for
any reason whatever.”
He was continuing with expressed contempt for Suffrage and implied
contempt for Suffragists, when the door opened and a negro,
evidently a clergyman, entered.
“Get out of here!” said Mr. Whaley. “You stand in the hall till
you’re called.” As the negro hastily retreated, Mr. Whaley turned to
me and said with pride, “That’s the way to treat ’em.”...
A few minutes later, I opened Mr. Sisson’s door and saw him, very
large and rugged, standing with some letters in his hand and
dictating to a stenographer.
“I can’t discuss that subject,” he interrupted at my first words,
and then he discussed it at length. He had meant that I was not to
discuss it. He spoke of women in the kitchen, in the nursery, in the
parlor. He spoke of her tenderness, her charm, her need for shelter
and kindness. Wearily shifting from one foot to the other, I
listened. At last I opened my mouth to speak, but he silenced me
with a brusque gesture.
“The reason I’m so lenient with you,” he explained—for he had
allowed me to stand and listen to him—“is because you’re a woman. If
you were a man——” He left the end of the sentence in dark doubt.
What would he have done to a man standing dumbly in my place,
holding tight to a muff? I shall never know. Discretion did not
allow me to ask him.
Mr. Reed sat at his mahogany desk—a large, rather good-looking
Senator, with gray hair. His record in our card-index read: “He is
most reactionary, not to say antediluvian.” So I was not surprised
to hear him say slowly and solemnly:
“Women don’t know anything about politics. Did you ever hear them
talking together? Well, first they talk about fashions, and
children, and housework; and then, perhaps about churches; and then
perhaps—about theatres; and then perhaps——” At each “perhaps,” he
gazed down at his finger-tips where his ideas appeared to originate,
looking up at me at each new point. “And then, perhaps—about
literatoor!” he ended triumphantly. “Yes, and that is the way it
ought to be,” he added, satisfied.
“But don’t you believe that voting might make women think?”
At this suggestion he recoiled, then recovered and grew jocose.
“Do you think I want my wife working against my interests? That’s
just what she’d be doing—voting against me. Women can’t understand
politics.”
I began to tell him about California women voters, but he
interrupted. “Women wouldn’t change things if they did vote. They’d
all vote just like their husbands.”
Sometimes they said to Miss Younger, “If you were a voter——”
“But I am a voter,” Miss Younger, who is from California, would reply.
Their attitude invariably changed.
Miss Younger comments: “They _said_ they respected femininity, but it
was plain that they _did_ respect a voter.”
It was hard, hard work.
The lobbying was immensely more detailed and complicated than an
outsider would ever suspect. All the time, of course, they were working
for the passing of the Anthony Amendment. That was their great
objective, but, as in all warfare, the campaign for the great objective
was divided into many tiny campaigns. At the beginning of the
Congressional Union work in Washington, for instance, they lobbied
Senators and Representatives to march in the big parade of March 3,
1913. Later they lobbied them to go to mass-meetings, to attend
conventions. In 1916, when they were having such difficulty with the
Judiciary Committee, they lobbied Republicans and Democratic members of
that Committee to get them to act. By a follow-up system, they sent
other lobbyists in a few days to see if they had acted. When the
Suffrage Envoys came back from the West, they lobbied Congressmen to
receive them. In the Presidential election of 1916, they lobbied
Congress first to get Suffrage planks in both Party platforms and when
these planks proved unsatisfactory, they lobbied the Republican
Suffragists in Congress to get Hughes to come out for the Federal
Amendment and when Hughes came out for it, they lobbied the Democratic
Congressmen to get the President to come out for it. When the Special
War Session met, in April, 1917, fifty Woman’s Party lobbyists lobbied
Congress—covering it in a month. When the Irish Mission visited
Congress, and two hundred and fifty voted for the freedom of Ireland,
they lobbied these Congressmen to vote for the freedom of women. When
the arrests of the pickets began, they lobbied their Congressmen to go
to see their constituents in jail. The Woman’s Party kept track of how
Congressmen voted on different measures and wherever it was possible,
they linked it up with Suffrage. To the Congressmen who voted against
war, they sent lobbyists who could show what an influence for peace the
women could be. To those who voted for war, they sent the women, who
were war workers, to show how women could work for war.
Before the six years’ campaign of the Woman’s Party was over, the
Republicans were sometimes sending Congressmen of one State to convert
the unconverted ones of another, and, in the end, the young Democratic
Senators had actually appointed a committee to get Suffrage votes from
their older confrères. After Congress passed the Amendment, they lobbied
the Congressmen to write the governors to call special sessions of the
Legislature in the interests of ratification; then they lobbied them to
write the Legislators; then they lobbied them to write political
leaders.
Perhaps the hardest interval in their work was that which followed the
campaign of 1916. Wilson had been elected again on the slogan, “He kept
us out of war.” The Republicans did not want to hear anything about the
women voters of the West. The Woman’s Party lobbyists, who were often
more informed on the Republican situation in parts of the West than were
the Republicans themselves, had to educate them. They had to show them
how remiss the Republicans themselves had been during that campaign, how
Hughes for instance came out for Suffrage in the East, where women did
not vote, and never mentioned it in the West, where they did. It was not
easy work. Sometimes Congressmen would take up papers or letters and
examine them, while the lobbyist was talking. Nevertheless, she would
continue. And then, inevitably the degree of her information, her clear
and forceful exposition of the situation, would arouse interest. Often
in the end, the erstwhile indifferent Congressman would shake hands and
bow her out.
As to the mechanics of lobbying work, perhaps nothing is more
interesting than the cards themselves of the famous card-index.
No. 1—Contains the member’s name and his biography as contained in
the Congressional Directory.
No. 2—A key card has these headings:
Ancestry, Nativity, Education, Religion, Offices Held, General
Information.
No. 3—A sub-card under the foregoing, as are those yet to be given,
contains these headings: Birth, Date, Place, Number of Children,
Additional Information.
Nos. 4, 5, and 6—Are respectively for Father, Mother, Brothers. They
have headings to elicit full information on these subjects, as
Nativity, Education, Occupation.
No. 7—Education: Preparatory School and College.
No. 8—Religion: Name of Church, Date of Entrance, Position Held in
Church, Church Work.
No. 9—Military Service: Dates, Offices, Battles, Additional
Information.
No. 10—Occupation: Past, Present.
No. 11—Labor Record.
Nos. 12 and 13—Are set aside for Literary Work and Lecture Work.
No. 14—Newspapers: Meaning what newspapers the member reads and
those that have the most influence over him.
Nos. 15 and 16—Are respectively for Recreation and Hobbies.
Nos. 17 and 18—Are devoted to Health and Habits.
No. 19—Political Life Prior to Congress: Offices Held. Whether
Supported Prohibition Amendment, Offices Run For.
No. 20—Political life in Congress: Terms, Date, Party, Bills
Introduced, Bills Supported, Committees.
No. 21—Suffrage Record: Outside of Congress, In Congress.
No. 22—Votes cast in Election of Member.
In an interview in the _New York Times_ of March 2, 1919, Miss Younger
describes the working of this system.
If a Congressman said to a lobbyist, for instance, “I do not think
my district is much interested in Woman Suffrage, I get very few
letters in favor of it from my constituents,” then, immediately, by
means of the information gained through the card-index, a flood of
pro-Suffrage letters would descend upon him. Always, as far as
possible, these letters would come from people he knew or who were
influential.
If a Congressman had a financial backer, they tried to get at him.
If he were from a strong labor district, they appealed to Labor to
bring its influence to bear upon him.
When the lobbyist started for Congress, she was given a lobbying
slip which had a list of entries printed on it. For instance, one
heading was “Exact statements and remarks.” Miss Younger told me of
one Congressman who said to her: “Put me down on the mourners’
bench. I am thinking about it.” Immediately Headquarters became very
busy with this Congressman.
Another said, “Women in my State do not want it.” Miss Younger,
commenting on that, said that it was always an encouraging case. We
see immediately that he gets shoals of letters and telegrams from
his State. One Congressman on whom such a campaign was waged said
finally: “If you will only stop, I will vote for the Amendment. It
keeps my office force busy all day answering letters about Suffrage
alone.”
The hardest Congressmen to deal with were those who said, “I will
not vote for it if every voter in my State asks me.” To such a one,
we would send a woman from his own district. In one case, the
Congressman was so rude to her that she came back to Headquarters,
subscribed a hundred dollars to our funds, departed, and became a
staunch Suffragist. We kept a list of men of this type and we sent
to them any woman who was wavering on Suffrage. It never failed to
make her a strong Suffragist.
Any bit of information on these cards might be used. If a man played
golf, that might be a happy moment for a member of the Woman’s Party
to talk Suffrage with him. If he had the kind of mother who was an
influence in his life, they tried to convert the mother. If it was
the wife who was the ruling influence, they tried to convert the
wife. They were careful even in regard to brothers. The habits of
Congressmen as disclosed by this index were of great importance.
Some of them got to their office early, and that was often the best
time to speak with them. If a Congressman drank, it was necessary to
note that. Then when the lobbyists found him muddled and
inarticulate, they knew to what to impute it.
Of course information of a blackmailing order was occasionally
offered from outside sources to the Woman’s Party, but, of course,
this was always ignored.
From 1916 on, the years in which Maud Younger was in charge of the lobby
committee, twenty-two Senators changed their position in favor of
Suffrage.
I have said that it was difficult for a Congressman to elude these swift
and determined scouts of the Woman’s Party. But harder still was it to
elude a something, an unknown quality—an x—which had come into the
fourth generation of women to demand enfranchisement. That quality was
political-mindedness. Congressmen had undoubtedly before run the gamut
of feminine persuasiveness; grace; charm; tact. But here was an army of
young Amazons who looked them straight in the eye, who were absolutely
informed, who knew their rights, who were not to be frightened by
bluster, put off by rudeness, or thwarted either by delay or political
trickery. They never lost their tempers and they never gave up. They
never took “No” for an answer. They were young and they believed they
could do the impossible. And believing it, they accomplished it. Before
the six years and a half of campaign of the Woman’s Party was over,
Congressman after Congressman, Senator after Senator paid tribute—often
a grudged one—to the verve and _élan_ of that campaign.
But though they talked man fashion, eye to eye, the lobbyists, when
returned to Headquarters, were full of excellent information and
suggestions and all that mysterious by-product which comes from feminine
intuition.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
III
ORGANIZING
ALTHOUGH it is impossible to do justice to any department of the
National Woman’s Party, it seems particularly difficult in the case of
the organizers. The reason for this is not far to seek. These young
women were turned loose, sometimes quite inexperienced; sometimes only
one to a State, with the injunction to come back with their shield or on
it. They always came back with their shield—that is to say an
organization of some sort in the State they had just left. As has been
before stated, the National Woman’s Party has organized in every State
in the Union at some time during its history—that is between the years
1912 and 1919. As has also been stated, the organizers divided into
three groups—those who worked in the first two years; those who worked
in the middle two; those who worked in the last two.
It has been shown with what careful instruction Alice Paul sent these
young adventurers into the wide wide world of unorganized States; but
perhaps justice has not been done to the trust she placed in them and
the consequent extraordinary results. She kept in close telegraphic
communication with them all the time—and yet always, she left them free
to make big decisions and sudden changes in policy. “She made us feel
that we could do it in the first place,” one of them said to me, “and
somehow we did. That sense we had of her—brooding and hovering back
there in Washington—always gave us courage; always gave us the physical
strength to do the things we did and the mental strength to make the
decisions we made.”
As one looks through the lists of these three groups of organizers, one
is astounded at the various kinds of work they did; their versatility.
Mabel Vernon for instance. Her activities form an integral part of the
Woman’s Party history. Mabel Vernon traveling ahead of Sara Bard Field
in her spectacular automobile trip across the country, was more
responsible than anybody, except Mrs. Field herself, for the success of
that trip. Mabel Vernon challenged the President in the course of his
speech at the laying of the corner-stone of the new Headquarters of the
American Federation of Labor in Washington. Mabel Vernon was one of the
women who dropped the banner in the Senate when the President came to
speak before them. Mabel Vernon picketed and went to jail. Mabel Vernon
_seems_ to have organized or spoken in every State in the Union.
Elsie Hill, Doris Stevens—you find them everywhere, luminous spirits
with a new modern adjunct of political-mindedness. Abby Scott Baker was
always on the wing.
One’s mind stops at the names of Vivian Pierce, Lucy Branham, Mary
Gertrude Fendall, Hazel Hunkins. How many and what varying and difficult
things they did! Vivian Pierce in addition to speaking and organizing
and picketing activities, edited the _Suffragist_, and designed the
charming tea-room at Headquarters. As for Lucy Branham—she must have
seemed a stormy petrel to all opposing forces—she had so much the
capacity of being everywhere at once.
When one comes to the last group, a sense—almost of awe—is leavened by a
decided sense of amusement. Julia Emory, Betty Gram, Anita Pollitzer,
Mary Dubrow, Catherine Flanagan are all _little_ girls. But in Suffrage
work, they were active, insistent, and persistent in inverse ratio to
their size. In ratification, that legislature was doomed on which any
two of them descended.
What they accomplished! Once Alice Paul turned Anita Pollitzer loose on
the entire State of Wyoming and Anita Pollitzer brought Wyoming into
camp. It is impossible to do justice to all of them, to any of them. But
as an example of how they worked, I am quoting from letters written by
Anita Pollitzer describing various experiences in her work of
organization. I use Miss Pollitzer’s letters, not because they are
exceptional but because they are typical. Space will not permit me to do
equal justice to any of the others. But perhaps some day all those
marvelous narratives will be collected. Miss Pollitzer writes me as
follows:
Wyoming
“Campaign against the party in power”—late October, 1918—snow on the
ground and no friends in the State—traveled miles to get help of most
influential woman, found her lying on the floor of a church with brass
tacks and a hammer—She said she was “chairman of the committee on laying
carpets in the church,” and that was all she could undertake.
Cheyenne wonderfully beautiful—plains—most exceptional place for
campaign purposes—forty minutes between street cars—snow miles high and
every woman demanding a separate visit. Influenza epidemic so bad that
it was considered immoral for six women to meet in a parlor—only way was
to campaign by dodgers and street signs—Got permission from owner of
building to put a forty-foot purple, white, and gold sign, suspended it
from the most prominent building—Town literally gathered in groups to
see it—I got up next morning at seven and sign was down—I had
“antagonized”—so I went to call on the Mayor and we toured the town, and
rehung the sign on an even more important street, and I had double
publicity, the Mayor taking full responsibility for the sign even
inquiring if it would “run in the rain.”
Such fearful snow, could get no billboard men to put up my big paper
signs outside of the cities, and I wanted them on cross-country roads. I
met a woman delivering newspapers, explained our campaign and my
difficulties, and she offered us her eighteen-year-old daughter and a
box of stickers, and we tramped the automobile roads and papered the
tree trunks—Posters.
This is my first National Woman’s Party trip. Wyoming a real
adventure—South where I have always lived (Charleston, South Carolina)
so utterly unlike—When I went out to mail my thousands of circular
letters each night at two A.M. funny Filipino bell boys and other kinds
would escort me and carry the thousands of circular letters to mail box.
Local post-office _really_ asked me to be “more considerate.”
South Carolina
Getting Senator Pollock’s vote seemed largely a question of getting the
farmers of South Carolina. If Pollock (the Progressive) was to beat
Senator Smith (the Reactionary) he must please the farm element.
So I journeyed out to Mayesville—arrived on hog-killing day—at the house
of Dabs—impressive person, leading farmer of South Carolina. We ate all
day, and sat around a glorious fire, and in the afternoon Mr. Dabs wrote
a letter that he gave me to take to town to mail that helped more than
we’ll ever know. In the letter Dabs spoke for the farmers, urged Pollock
to declare for the Suffrage Amendment, and ended, “We farmers are doing
little talking but a lot of thinking.”
I always believed if Pollock voted, he would vote “Yes.” But Mrs.
William P. Vaughan of Greenville, our State Chairman, and I tramped the
State up and down, saying, “There’ll be no vote—unless Pollock
declares.”
Finally one night Senator Pollock’s secretary appeared at my hotel in
Columbia, and he said, “Don’t say again that Pollock is defeating
Suffrage by delay.” I said, “Well, then, get him to declare.” He said,
“I’m going to Washington, going tomorrow. Good night. We will have a
surprise for you within a week—within three days.” And at once, after
weeks and weeks of campaigning, Senator Pollock of South Carolina broke
the Conservative record of his State, declared “Yes,” and voted “Yes,”
on the freedom of American women.
When it was all over—his vote and our campaign to get him to declare—I
came back to Washington, had lunch with him at the Capitol, and sat,
while he told me of the numerous people in South Carolina who had asked
him to vote “Yes!” “You’ll never know the sentiment that exists in South
Carolina,” was all he said. But I felt we knew.
Florida
Getting the South Florida Press Association at its annual meeting to
endorse the Federal Suffrage Amendment was marvelous fun—I learned that
Senator Trammell had gotten solid support from two counties, and owed
this support to a man named Goolsby—editor. So I hired a car and made
for Goolsby. He is a very powerful newspaper man. We sat around a log
fire, with the wife, a parrot, and a cat, and finally he said he was
going in two days to a meeting of the South Florida Press Association,
and that he was President. I said, “I’m going too.” He said, “Well,
there’s hope while there’s life—they’re against you, but you can try.” I
felt that we could do it, talked it all over with him, and said that I
would be down to put the resolution in regardless of the results—but
that I knew it could pass.
Two days seemed like years. At daybreak—five—I climbed in a Ford and
arrived at the Press Conference at ten. Goolsby was the only one I knew.
He introduced me to the Resolutions Committee. I sat through speeches
and speeches. At noon came a luncheon. The Chairman of the Resolutions
Committee took me to that. Then an auto ride all through the orange
groves—we got out and picked them, talking Suffrage all the while. Only
the Resolutions Committee and I were in the car. The Chairman of the
Committee finally said out of a clear sky to the elderly gentleman at my
left—a strong anti—“I believe we ought to pass a resolution or
something, don’t you, thanking Miss Pollitzer for coming?”—all in joke.
I said: “No, but you ought to pass a resolution urging your own Florida
Senators to stand behind President Wilson. They’re not.” He said, “They
should.” I said, “Well, let’s pass it.” So in the car, speeding along,
thanks to the marvelously smooth roads and my luncheon friend—we wrote
the resolution. The old editor said, “What? Suffrage!” My young one
said, “Yes; Suffrage; standing back of President Wilson.” When we got
back, my old editor said: “Say, let’s make that strong—we’ve got to go
on record unmistakably for Wilson.” He worked—Goolsby worked—of course
the young one worked. I sat and ate oranges. It was all done—in less
than fifteen minutes. The Resolutions Committee reported out a glorious
resolution, calling on Senators Trammell and Fletcher to support the
Susan B. Anthony Amendment, and it passed unanimously. The Resolution
read: “Be it resolved that we stand with President Wilson in his
advocacy of Woman Suffrage, and we urge our Representatives in Congress
to vote for the enfranchisement of women!!!”
The most exciting adventure of my life was “holding up the Florida
legislature” till midnight so Governor Catts could send a resolution in
asking Trammell and Fletcher (Senators) to vote for Suffrage. I saw
Senator Trammell in Washington, and he said he had not decided how he
would vote on the Amendment. That his vote would represent “the
people”—I asked him if in our government a State legislature didn’t
represent “the will of the people.” He said, “Yes, but I don’t intend to
instruct my legislature.” I said: “No, but maybe your legislature will
instruct you.” I came home and told Miss Paul, who said, “Will you go
down to Florida tonight?” and Bertha Arnold and I went. Helen Hunt, a
capable young Jacksonville lawyer, joined us, and the campaign began.
It was absolutely essential to get Governor Catts to send in the
Resolution, as messages from the Governor only took a majority—others a
two-third vote, but we didn’t want this too soon. When we had our votes
all there in the Senate, the leader, anti, moved that no new business
not already in by noon, could come up at all—the legislature barring
everything, to save themselves from Suffrage. This was fearful, as the
House was most difficult, and we had planned to attack the Senate first.
At four o’clock the last afternoon of the special session, called simply
to discuss prohibition, we flew to the Governor’s office. Helen Hunt, a
senator, a member of the House, and I got Governor Catts to say he’d
send a message at once. 4.30 came—5.30 came—no message. In terror, I
flew down. The Governor’s office was locked—I got one of the House to
move a night session—we lobbied for that, it carried. The Night Session
began at eight—Governor Catts still nowhere to be found. Finally, after
phoning his home every five minutes it seemed—I called at ten and they
said, “Governor Catts is in bed.”—I said we had to have him. The person
who answered the phone said nothing could be done. His secretary had the
office keys; he was ill at home; his stenographer had the desk keys; she
was at a movie. These obstacles to be overcome, and Governor Catts to be
rushed to the Capitol. I flew back to our night session at the Capitol.
I sent in a little slip-written message to Mr. Stokes, saying: “Trust
us—you said you’d help—keep this session going—filibuster—do
anything—don’t let them adjourn.” I stood in the door and saw him nod
“All right,” and flew.
Bertha Arnold in a taxi secured the outer key from the secretary—after
arousing secretary and encountering a storm.
Helen Hunt in another taxi called for Governor Catts, waited till he got
up from bed and dressed, and brought him and his daughter, Ruth, to the
Capitol. I meanwhile stopped at a Western Union Office and got a
messenger boy. He said, “What am I to take?” I said, “Me!” He knew the
way, and together we ran through the streets of Tallahassee at midnight,
covered every movie, and had the stenographer paged—brought her and her
escort to the Capitol—produced the desk keys—got the resolution. Never
was any sound more marvelous than Governor Catts’ thud when he walked up
those Capitol steps at midnight—instantly he rushed it up—the door of
the House opened—there stood my man Stokes, talking and hoarse. He had
kept them there. The secretary announced, “Message from the Governor,”
and our resolution was read!
The vote was closer than close—didn’t pass, but they had to stay till
the next day at two—we stayed too, and in the morning—of the last day—we
got a majority petition from the Florida legislature which showed
Trammell and Fletcher that Florida wanted their Suffrage votes.
When I heard that Senator Trammell was arriving in Lakeland, I wired
Miss Paul I would stay—Such a hectic and great day. I saw him with four
antis in the hotel lobby. He looked dumbfounded, shook hands, discussed
the climate, and acted as though I were touristing because Florida was
beautiful—but he knew.
Then I went out of his life—but sent others in—all day I got out little
delegations to him—the State Senator from that district—his
minister—president of the Bank—leading Labor man—his editor. Mr.
Trammell’s one day in Lakeland was a Woman’s Party event. I asked Mr.
Smailes—a strong Labor man—boyhood friend of Trammell’s, to see him.
That night they all came to me at the hotel and each reported his
achievement with Park Trammell.
Smailes said: “I looked at him and said, ‘Park—it’s funny you can’t see
it and those you were brought up with all can,’ and Park looked at me,
and he said, ‘Well, there’s one thing worrying me a little. I don’t want
women to get more than their share of electors.’ I just looked at him,
and I said: ‘Park, you know Mrs. Smailes don’t want more than her share,
but she ain’t got her share yet; that’s what she’s asking for.’”
I said, “Mr. Smailes, what do you think that Senator Trammell will do?”
He said, “I don’t know. I’ve known him since we were babies, but he’s a
Senator now.”
Helen Hunt met Trammell in Jacksonville when he arrived—on his “one day”
to Lakeland. He said, “Where is _she_?” (meaning me). “Is she still in
the State?” (Miss Younger thinks this funny because it shows how scared
they are of the Woman’s Party—even one of us.)
Virginia
I think our hotel experiences are so funny.
We had a terrible time getting any one to consider taking action on
Suffrage ratification at the Special Session. Virginia legislature
called just for good roads—I went to Roanoke to see floor-leader Willis
(strongest Suffragist in the House) and he announced he was scheduled
himself to introduce a bill saying that nothing but good roads would
come up. After a morning’s work with Willis, he decided he would bring
up Suffrage provided Senator Trinkle agreed. He promised to see Trinkle
the next morning, so I decided I’d better see Trinkle that night.
Fortunately a train was leaving in ten minutes. I arrived at Wytheville
at nine p.m. It was black. Senator Trinkle was on the platform. I picked
him out because he was the biggest man obviously and I asked where
Senator Trinkle lived and he said, “I am Senator Trinkle.” When my
interview was at an end and it was fixed, he said that the last train
out had left, and that I should go to the hotel, and say to the owner
that he said to give me the best room. To my great consternation, the
hotel proprietor escorted me into a room the size of a young stable,
which contained six beds, explaining, “This is our best room. I’ll call
it a single room for tonight.” Never can I describe the creaks of the
empty five beds all night long. It doesn’t sound funny, but it was—I and
six beds, some of them double, and a box of Uneeda crackers and
Hershey’s milk chocolate.
The way we got the University of Virginia mass-meeting was amusing. I
taught art at the University of Virginia Summer School. We had just
staged a big pageant at the University. Director Maphis was grateful and
said he’d do anything I wanted. That afternoon, Senator Martin arrived
in Charlottesville, his home, and so I went to see Mr. Maphis to tell
him I wanted Cabell Hall, the real University of Virginia Hall, and he
said, “Yes.” I phoned Miss Paul and she sent Lucy Branham—we advertised
with huge sheets on the front of each of the eight street cars, in
Charlottesville and hand-made slides at movies and posters that my Art
classes all were given to do as a “problem.”
The Hall was full and the wonderful old Jeffersonian University held its
first Federal Suffrage Mass Meeting and passed resolutions urging
Senator Martin to vote for the Amendment. Lucy Branham and I drove to
his home the next morning, presented him with the resolutions, and
described the meeting of his own constituents to him.
Here perhaps is the place to describe the work of the Political
Department, of which Abby Scott Baker was Chairman. The Political
Department supplemented the work of the Legislative and Organization
Departments. Whenever the work of the National Woman’s Party demanded
instant pressure on Congress and on State Legislatures, Alice Paul
despatched Mrs. Baker at once to the power who could exert that
pressure. She was a kind of perpetual flying envoy for the Woman’s
Party.
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IV
THE PRESIDENT CAPITULATES AND THE HOUSE SURRENDERS
IT will be remembered that after the eight months in which the Woman’s
Party picketed the President, the House of Representatives created a
Suffrage Committee in September, 1917. It will also be remembered that
during the discussion on the floor, in regard to that Committee, Mr.
Pou, Chairman, made the statement that there was no intention of passing
the Amendment before the Sixty-sixth Congress. That Congress adjourned
on October 6, 1917. Also, it will be remembered that that day, Alice
Paul marched over to the White House gates carrying a banner inscribed
with the words of the President:
THE TIME HAS COME WHEN WE MUST CONQUER OR SUBMIT.
FOR US THERE CAN BE BUT ONE CHOICE. WE HAVE MADE IT.
It will be remembered too that Alice Paul was arrested and sentenced to
seven months in jail.
Following the publicity which came from the Woman’s Party speakers all
over the country and from the newspapers, protests of all descriptions
began to pour into the White House and to the Democratic leaders:
letters, resolutions, petitions.
Again it will be remembered that a week before Congress reconvened on
December 3, 1917, all the imprisoned women were suddenly released.
In the new Session—a direct reversal of Mr. Pou’s announcement of two
months earlier that the House would not pass the Amendment before 1920—a
day was set for the vote on the Suffrage Amendment, a week after
Congress assembled.
Again, it should be pointed out that all these things happened after
those eight months of picketing.
That important day which the House set was January 10, 1918. In
September, the Suffragists lacked seventy-three votes of the passage of
the Amendment. Naturally all December was spent in working up that vote.
The National Woman’s Party secured statements from Republican leaders
like Mondell and Kahn, stating the strong Republican support of the
measure and blaming the Democrats if it were defeated. The National
Woman’s Party worked up the Republican majority from three-quarters of
the House to five-sixths. The Democrats began to be frightened at the
press statements of the Republicans. They began to work to increase
their showing, as they feared the country would blame them if the
Amendment were defeated.
But more important than any of these things was the capitulation of the
President which won, as the Woman’s Party contended it would, the
necessary votes in the house. On January 9, 1919, one year from the day
the Inez Milholland Memorial Deputation visited him, President Wilson
made his declaration for the Federal Amendment, and on January 10, the
Amendment was passed in the House by a vote of two hundred and
seventy-four to one hundred and thirty-six.
This important epoch in the history of the Suffrage Movement, Maud
Younger describes in her _Revelations of a Woman Lobbyist_.
The atmosphere had changed when I returned to Washington. Republican
Congressmen had suddenly realized what an asset to the Republican
Party would be their support of Suffrage. Democrats, seeing the
blame that would attach to them for its defeat, were becoming
alarmed.
“The country is fixing to blame the Democrats,” said Mr. Hull, of
Tennessee, very thoughtfully, but not quite thoughtfully enough. As
a member of the National Executive Committee of the Democratic Party
he was thoughtful. As a Congressman with a vote in the House he was
not quite thoughtful enough.
We lacked sixty votes in the House, and had only three weeks to get
them. We worked day and night. Our friends in Congress, brightly
hopeful, told us we had votes to spare, but we knew the truth. We
lacked forty votes, then twenty, then ten, but we kept this to
ourselves. Unless something happened we could not win.
Then, on January 9, the day before the vote, it happened. Late on
that afternoon the President invited a deputation of Democratic
Congressmen to wait on him. Knowing of the appointment, we went
through the halls of Congress, on wings, all day. When the
Congressmen went into the White House, a small group stood outside
in the snow waiting for the first word of that interview. After what
seemed an interminable time, the doors opened. Out came cheery Mr.
Raker with the news: “The President has declared for the Susan B.
Anthony Amendment, and will stay home from his game of golf tomorrow
morning to see any Congressman who wishes to consult him about it.”
Thus, just a year from the day he had told us we must concert public
opinion, President Wilson declared for Suffrage.
There was a feeling of victory in the air as we went through the
corridors that night. Yet our secret poll showed that we still
lacked votes. We could do nothing more. We could only wait and see
how much force the President would put behind his declaration.
Scrub women were still at work with brushes and buckets of soapsuds
when I reached the Capitol that fateful morning. From the front row
of the gallery we looked down on the floor of the House, with its
seven rows of empty seats rising in semi-circular rows like an
amphitheatre. A few people scurried here and there, the galleries
were rapidly filling. We watched the Congressmen come in, sit down,
walk about, or stand in groups talking and looking up at the
galleries.
At the stroke of eleven all eyes turned toward the door of the
Speaker’s lobby. Chattering ceased. The door opened, and a Roman
mace appeared and advanced, supported by the Deputy
Sergeant-at-Arms, who held it in his two hands before him. Very
solemn, very mindful of his step, he ascended the three steps to the
Speaker’s stand, followed by the Speaker, Champ Clark, dignified and
magnificent in a tan frock coat, with a white flower in the
buttonhole. Having ascended, the Sergeant-at-Arms laid the mace
against the wall where all the Congressmen could look at it, and
came down again with a little skip on the last step, while the
Speaker impressively faced the House.
Prayer and routine business finished, the speeches began. Most of
them were prosy and dull, delivered not for those who heard them,
but for constituents hundreds of miles away. In the galleries we
listened wearily. We had brought luncheon with us, which we ate as
unobtrusively as possible. We would lose our seats if we left them,
for through the ground-glass doors we dimly saw waiting multitudes
trying to come in. All day the largest crowds the doorkeepers had
ever known pressed against the doors. Inside the speeches droned on.
“What a dull ending for such a dramatic struggle,” said a newspaper
man, leaning over from the press gallery. I could have wished it had
been duller, for we never for an instant forgot we still lacked
votes. We did not know how far the President’s message had carried
since our last possible poll.
Suddenly a wave of applause and cheers swept over the floor. Every
head turned toward the Speaker’s door, and there, on the threshold,
we saw Mr. Mann, pale and trembling. For six months he had lain in a
hospital—his only visitors his wife and secretary. It had been said
that he would never come back to the House. Yet he had come to vote
for our Amendment.
Now, through the skylight, we could see that the afternoon had gone,
and evening had come. At last the time for speech-making ended and
the vote was taken. Forty years to a day from the first introduction
of the Susan B. Anthony Amendment in Congress, one year exactly from
the time the first picket line went to stand before the White House,
the Federal Suffrage Amendment passed the House of Representatives.
It passed with just one vote to spare. Six votes came to us through
the President. He had saved the day!
Outside the doors of the gallery a woman began to sing, _Praise God
from whom all blessings flow_. Others took it up, more and more
voices joined, and through the halls of the Capitol there swelled
our song of gratitude. Louder and louder it rose and soared to the
high arches, and was carried out into the night to die away at last
in the far distances. And still in our hearts we sang, _Praise God
from whom all blessings flow_.
But our minds were not at rest, nor our thoughts quiet. Our victory
was worth nothing unless we could consolidate it quickly. To do this
we had to win the Senate. And the Senate is farther from the people
than the House, and much, much harder to move.
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