Jailed for Freedom

by Doris Stevens

Contents

Illustrations

Alice Paul
Mrs. O.H.P. Belmont
Democrats Attempt to Counteract Woman’s Party Campaign
Inez Milholland Boissevain
Scene of Memorial Service-Statuary Hall, the Capitol
Scenes on the Picket Line
Monster Picket—March 4, 1917
Officer Arrests Pickets
Women Put into Police Patrol
Suffragists in Prison Costume
Fellow Prisoners
Sewing Room at Occoquan Workhouse
Riotous Scenes on Picket Line
Dudley Field Malone
Lucy Burns
Mrs. Mary Nolan, Oldest Picket
Miss Matilda Young, Youngest Picket
Forty-One Women Face Jail
Prisoners Released
“Lafayette We Are Here”
Wholesale Arrests
Suffragists March to LaFayette Monument
Torch-Bearer, and Escorts
Some Public Men Who Protested Against Imprisonment of Suffragists
Abandoned Jail
Prisoners on Straw Pallets on Jail Floor
Pickets at Capitol
Senate Pages and Capitol Police Attack Pickets
The Urn Guarded by Miss Berthe Arnold
The Bell Which Tolled the Change of Watch
Watchfire “Legal”
Watchfire Scattered by Police-Dr. Caroline Spencer Rebuilding it
One Hundred Women Hold Public Conflagration
Pickets in Front of Reviewing Stand, Boston
Mrs. Louise Sykes Burning President Wilson’s Speech on Boston Common
Suffrage Prisoners

To
Alice Paul

Through Whose Brilliant and Devoted Leadership the Women of America Have Been Able to Consummate with Gladness and Gallant Courage Their Long Struggle for Political Liberty, This Book is Affectionately Dedicated

PREFACE

This book deals with the intensive campaign of the militant suffragists of America [1913-1919] to win a solitary thing-the passage by Congress of the national suffrage amendment enfranchising women. It is the story of the first organized militant ,political action in America to this end. The militants differed from the pure propagandists in the woman suffrage movement chiefly in that they had a clear comprehension of the forces which prevail in politics. They appreciated the necessity of the propaganda stage and the beautiful heroism of those who had led in the pioneer agitation, but they knew that this stage belonged to the past; these methods were no longer necessary or effective.

For convenience sake I have called Part II “Political Action,” and Part III “Militancy,” although it will be perceived that the entire campaign was one of militant political action. The emphasis, however, in Part II is upon political action, although certainly with a militant mood. In Part III dramatic acts of protest, such as are now commonly called militancy, are given emphasis as they acquired a greater importance during the latter part of the campaign. This does not mean that all militant deeds were not committed for a specific political purpose. They were. But militancy is as much a state of mind, an approach to a task, as it is the commission of deeds of protest. It is the state of mind of those who is their fiery idealism do not lose sight of the real springs of human action.

There are two ways in which this story might be told. It might be told as a tragic and harrowing tale of martyrdom. Or it might be told as a ruthless enterprise of compelling a hostile administration to subject women to martyrdom in order to hasten its surrender. The truth is, it has elements of both ruthlessness and martyrdom. And I have tried to make them appear in a true proportion. It is my sincere hope that you will understand and appreciate the martyrdom involved, for it was the conscious voluntary gift of beautiful, strong and young hearts. But it was never martyrdom for its own sake. It was martyrdom used for a practical purpose.

The narrative ends with the passage of the amendment by Congress. The campaign for ratification, which extended over fourteen months, is a story in itself. The ratification of the amendment by the 36th and last state legislature proved as difficult to secure from political leaders as the 64th and last vote in the United States Senate.

This book contains my interpretations, which are of course arguable. But it is a true record of events.

DORIS STEVENS.

New York, August, 1920.

“I do pray, and that most earnestly and constantly, for some terrific shock to startle the women o f the nation into a self-respect which mill compel them to, see the absolute degradation o f their present position; which will compel them to break their yoke of bondage and give them faith in themselves; which will make them proclaim their allegiance to women first . . . . The fact is, women are in chains, and their servitude is all the more debasing because they do not realize it. O to compel them to see and feel and to give them the courage and the conscience to speak and act for their own freedom, though they face the scorn and contempt of all the world for doing it!”

Susan B. Anthony, 1872.

Part I
Leadership

Chapter 1
A Militant Pioneer—Susan B. Anthony

Susan B. Anthony was the first militant suffragist. She has been so long proclaimed only as the magnificent pioneer that few realize that she was the first woman to defy the law for the political liberty of her sex.

The militant spirit was in her many early protests. Sometimes these protests were supported by one or two followers; more often they were solitary protests. Perhaps it is because of their isolation that they stand out so strong and beautiful in a turbulent time in our history when all those about her were making compromises.

It was this spirit which impelled her to keep alive the cause of the enfranchisement of women during the passionate years of the Civil War. She held to the last possible moment that no national exigency was great enough to warrant abandonment of woman’s fight for independence. But one by one her followers deserted her. She was unable to keep even a tiny handful steadfast to this position. She became finally the only figure in the nation appealing for the rights of women when the rights of black men were agitating the public mind. Ardent abolitionist as she was, she could not tolerate without indignant protest the exclusion of women in all discussions of emancipation. The suffrage war policy of Miss Anthony can be compared to that of the militants a half century later when confronted with the problem of this country’s entrance into the world war.

The war of the rebellion over and the emancipation of the negro man written into the constitution, women contended they had a right to vote under the new fourteenth amendment. Miss Anthony led in this agitation, urging all women to claim the right to vote under this amendment. In the national election of 1872 she voted in Rochester, New York, her home city, was arrested, tried and convicted of the crime of “voting without having a lawful right to vote.”

I cannot resist giving a brief excerpt from the court records of this extraordinary case, so reminiscent is it of the cases of the suffrage pickets tried nearly fifty years later in the courts of the national capital.

After the prosecuting attorney had presented the government’s case, Judge Hunt read his opinion, said to have been written before the case had been heard, and directed the jury to bring in a verdict of guilty. The jury was dismissed without deliberation and a new trial was refused. On the following day this scene took place in that New York court room.

JUDGE HUNT (Ordering the defendant to stand up)-Has the prisoner anything to say why sentence shall not be pronounced?

Miss ANTHONY—Yes, your Honor, I have many things to say; for in your ordered verdict of guilty, you have trampled under foot every vital principle of our government. My natural rights, my civil rights, my political rights, my judicial rights, are all alike ignored. Robbed of the fundamental privilege of citizenship, I am degraded from the status of a citizen to that of a subject; and not only myself individually, but all my sex are, by your Honor’s verdict doomed to political subjection under this so-called republican form of government.

JUDGE HUNT—The Court cannot. listen to a rehearsal of argument which the prisoner’s counsel has already consumed three hours in presenting.

Miss ANTHONY—May it please your Honor, I am not arguing the question, but simply stating the reasons why sentence cannot in justice be pronounced against me. Your denial of my citizen’s right to vote, is the denial of my right of consent as one of the governed, the denial of my right of representation as one taxed, the denial of my right to a trial by jury of my peers as an offender against law; therefore, the denial of my sacred right to life, liberty, property, and——

JUDGE HUNT—The Court cannot allow the prisoner to go on.

Miss ANTHONY—But, your Honor will not deny me this one and only poor privilege of protest against this highhanded outrage upon my citizen’s rights. May it please the Court to remember that since the day of my arrest last November this is the first time that either myself or any person of my disfranchised class has been allowed a word of defense before judge or jury

JUDGE HUNT—The prisoner must sit down, the Court cannot allow it.

Miss ANTHONY—Of all my persecutors from the corner grocery politician who entered the complaint, to the United States marshal, commissioner, district attorney, district judge, your Honor on the bench, not one is my peer, but each and all are my political sovereigns . . . . Precisely as no disfranchised person is entitled to sit upon the jury and no woman is entitled to the franchise, so none but a regularly admitted lawyer is allowed to practice in the courts, and no woman can gain admission to the bar-hence, jury, judge, counsel, all must be of superior class.

JUDGE HUNT—The Court must insist-the prisoner has been tried according to the established forms of law.

Miss ANTHONY—Yes, your Honor, but by forms of law, all made by men, interpreted by men, administered by men, in favor of men and against women; and hence your Honor’s ordered verdict of guilty, against a United States citizen for the exercise of the “citizen’s right to vote,” simply because that citizen was a woman and not a man . . . . As then the slaves who got their freedom had to take it over or under or through the unjust forms of the law, precisely so now must women take it to get their right to a voice in this government; and I have taken mine, and mean to take it at every opportunity.

JUDGE Hunt—The Court orders the prisoner to sit down. It will not allow another word.

Miss ANTHONY—When I was brought before your Honor for trial I hoped for a broad interpretation of the constitution and its recent amendments, which should declare all United States citizens under its protecting aegis . . . . But failing to get this justice, failing even to get a trial by a jury-not of my peers-I ask not leniency at your-hands but rather the full rigor of the law.

JUDGE HUNT—The Court must insist (here the prisoner sat down). The prisoner will stand up. (Here Miss Anthony rose again.) The sentence of the Court is that you pay a fine of $100.00 and the costs of the prosecution.

Miss ANTHONY—May it please your Honor, I will never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty . . . . And I shall earnestly and persistently continue to urge all women to the practical recognition of the old Revolutionary maxim, “Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God.”

JUDGE HUNT—Madam, the Court will not order you stand committed until the fine is paid.

Miss Anthony did not pay her fine and was never imprisoned. I believe the fine stands against her to this day.

On the heels of this sensation came another of those dramatic protests which until the very end she always combined with political agitation. The nation was celebrating its first centenary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence at Independence Square, Philadelphia. After women had been refused by all in authority a humble half moment in which to present to the Centennial the Women’s Declaration of Rights, Miss Anthony insisted on being heard. Immediately after the Declaration of Independence had been read by a patriot, she led a committee of women, who with platform tickets had slipped through the military, straight down the center aisle of the platform to address the chairman, who pale with fright and powerless to stop the demonstration had to accept her document. Instantly the platform, graced as it was by national dignitaries and crowned heads, was astir. The women retired, distributing to the gasping spectators copies of their Declaration. Miss Anthony had reminded the nation of the hollowness of its celebration of an independence that excluded women.

Susan B. Anthony’s aim was the national enfranchisement of women. As soon as she became convinced that the constitution would have to be specifically amended to include woman suffrage, she set herself to this gigantic task. For a quarter of a century she appealed to Congress for action and to party. conventions for suffrage endorsement. When, however, she saw that Congress was obdurate, as an able and intensely practical leader she temporarily directed the main energy of the suffrage movement to trying to win individual states. With women holding the balance of political power, she argued, the national government will be compelled to act. She knew so well the value of power. She went to the West to get it.

She was a shrewd tactician; with prophetic insight, without compromise. To those women who would yield to party expediency as advised by men, or be diverted into support of other measures, she made answer in a spirited letter to Lucy Stone:

“So long as you and I and all women are political slaves, it ill becomes us to meddle with the weightier discussions of our’ sovereign masters. It will be quite time enough for us, with self-respect, to declare ourselves for or against any party upon the intrinsic merit of its policy, when men shall recognize us as their political equals . . . .

“If all the suffragists of all the States could see eye to eye on this point, and stand shoulder to shoulder against every party and politician not fully and unequivocally committed to ‘Equal Rights for Women,’ we should become at once the moral balance of power which could not fail to compel the party of highest intelligence to proclaim woman suffrage the chief plank of its platform . . . . Until that good day comes, I shall continue to invoke the party in power, and each party struggling to get into power, to pledge itself to the emancipation of our enslaved half of the people . . . .”

She did not live to see enough states grant suffrage in the West to form a balance of power with which to carry out this policy. She did not live to turn this power upon an unwilling Congress. But she stood to the last, despite this temporary change of program, the great dramatic protagonist of national freedom for women and its achievement through rebellion and practical strategy.

With the passing of Miss Anthony and her leadership, the movement in America went conscientiously on endeavoring to pile up state after state in the “free column.” Gradually her followers lost sight of her aggressive attack and her objective-the enfranchisement of women by Congress. They did not sustain her tactical wisdom. This reform movement, like all others when stretched over a long period of time, found itself confined in a narrow circle of routine propaganda. It lacked the power and initiative to extricate itself. Though it had many eloquent agitators with devoted followings, it lacked generalship.

The movement also lost Miss Anthony’s militant spirit, her keen appreciation of the fact that the attention of the nation must be focussed on minority issues by dramatic acts of protest.

Susan B. Anthony’s fundamental objective, her political attitude toward attaining it, and her militant spirit were revived in suffrage history in 1913 when Alice Paul, also of Quaker background, entered the national field as leader of the new suffrage forces in America.

Chapter 2
A Militant General—Alice Paul

Most people conjure up a menacing picture when a person is called not only a general, but a militant one. In appearance Alice Paul is anything but menacing. Quiet, almost mouselike, this frail young Quakeress sits in silence and baffles you with her contradictions. Large, soft, gray eyes that strike you with a positive impact make you feel the indescribable force and power behind them. A mass of soft brown hair, caught easily at the neck, makes the contour of her head strong and graceful. Tiny, fragile hands that look more like an X-ray picture of hands, rest in her lap in Quakerish pose. Her whole atmosphere when she is not in action is one of strength and quiet determination. In action she is swift, alert, almost panther-like in her movements. Dressed always in simple frocks, preferably soft shades of purple, she conforms to an individual style and taste of her own rather than to the prevailing vogue.

I am going recklessly on to try to tell what I think about Alice Paul. It is difficult, for when I begin to put it down on paper, I realize how little we know about this laconic person, and yet how abundantly we feel her power, her will and her compelling leadership. In an instant and vivid reaction, I am either congealed or inspired; exhilarated or depressed; sometimes even exasperated, but always moved. I have seen her very presence in headquarters change in the twinkling of an eye the mood of fifty people. It is not through their affections that she moves them, but through a naked force, a vital force which is indefinable but of which one simply cannot be unaware. Aiming primarily at the intellect of an audience or an individual, she almost never fails to win an emotional allegiance.

I shall never forget my first contact with her. I tell it here as an illustration of what happened to countless women who came in touch with her to remain under her leadership to the end. I had come to Washington to take part in the demonstration on the Senate in July, 1913, en route to a muchneeded, as I thought, holiday in the Adirondacks.

“Can’t you stay on and help us with a hearing next week?” said Miss Paul.

“I’m sorry,” said I, “but I have promised to join a party of friends in the mountains for a summer holiday and . . .”

“Holiday?” said she, looking straight at me. Instantly ashamed at having mentioned such a legitimate excuse, I murmured something about not having had one since before entering college.

“But can’t you stay?” she said.

I was lost. I knew I would stay. As a matter of fact, I stayed through the heat of a Washington summer, returned only long enough at the end of the summer to close up my work in state suffrage and came back to join the group at Washington. And it was years before I ever mentioned a holiday again.

Frequently she achieved her end without even a single word Of retort. Soon after Miss Paul came to Washington in 1913, ;she went to call on a suffragist in that city to ask her to donate ;some funds toward the rent of headquarters in the Capital. The woman sighed. “I thought when Miss Anthony died,” she said, “that all my troubles were at an end. She used to come to me for money for a federal amendment and I always told her it was wrong to ask for one, and that besides we would never get it. But she kept right on coming. Then when she died we didn’t hear any more about an amendment. And now you come again saying the same things Miss Anthony said.”

Miss Paul listened, said she was sorry and departed. Very shortly a check arrived at headquarters to cover a month’s rent.

A model listener, Alice Paul has unlimited capacity for letting the other person relieve herself of all her objections without contest. Over and over again I have heard this scene enacted.

“Miss Paul, I have come to tell you that you are all wrong about this federal amendment business. I don’t believe in it. Suffrage should come slowly but surely by the states. And although I have been a life-long suffragist, I just want to tell you not to count on me, for feeling as I do, I cannot give you any help.”

A silence would follow. Then Miss Paul would say ingenuously, “Have you a half hour to spare?”

“I guess so,” would come slowly from the protestant. “Why?”

“Won’t you please sit down right here and put the stamps on these letters? We have to get them in the mail by noon.”

“But I don’t believe …”

“Oh, that’s all right. These letters are going to women probably a lot of whom feel as you do. But some of them will want to come to the meeting to hear our side.”

By this time Miss Paul would have brought a chair, and that ended the argument. The woman would stay and humbly proceed to stick on endless stamps. Usually she would come back, too, and before many days would be an ardent worker for the cause against which she thought herself invincible.

Once the state president of the conservative suffrage forces in Ohio with whom I had worked the previous year wrote me a letter pointing out what madness it was to talk of winning the amendment in Congress “this session,” and adding that “nobody but a fool would ever think of it, let alone speak of it publicly.” She was wise in politics; we were nice, eager, young girls, but pretty ignorant—that was the gist of her remonstrance. My vanity was aroused. Not wishing to be called “mad” or “foolish” I sat down and answered her in a friendly spirit, with the sole object of proving that we were wiser than she imagined. I had never discussed this point with anybody, as I had been in Washington only a few months and it had never occurred to me that we were not right to talk of getting the amendment in that particular session. But I answered my patronizing friend, in effect, that of course we were not fools, that we knew we would not get the amendment that session, but we saw no reason for not demanding it at once and taking it when we got it.

When Miss Paul saw the carbon of that letter she said quietly, pointing to the part where I had so nobly defended our sagacity, “You must never say that again and never put it on paper.” Seeing my embarrassment, she hastened to explain. “You see, we can get it this session if enough women care sufficiently to demand it now.”

Alice Paul brought back to the fight that note of immediacy which had gone with the passing of Miss Anthony’s leadership. She called a halt on further pleading, wheedling, proving, praying. It was as if she had bidden women stand erect, with confidence in themselves and in their own judgments, and compelled them to be self-respecting enough to dare to put their freedom first, and so determine for themselves the day when they should be free. Those who had a taste of begging under the old regime and who abandoned it for demanding, know how fine and strong a thing it is to realize that you must take what is yours and not waste your energy proving that you are or will some day be worthy of a gift of power from your masters. On that glad day of discovery you have first freed yourself to fight for freedom. Alice Paul gave to thousands of women the essence of freedom.

And there was something so cleansing about the way in which she renovated ideas and processes, emotions and instincts. Her attack was so direct, so clear, so simple and unafraid. And her resistance had such a fine quality of strength.

Sometimes it was a roaring politician who was baffled by this non-resistant force. I have heard many an irate one come into her office in the early days to tell her how to run the woman’s campaign, and struggle in vain to arouse her to combat. Having begun a tirade, honor would compel him to see it through even without help from a silent adversary. And so he would get more and more noisy until it would seem as if one lone shout from him might be enough to blow away the frail object of his attack. Ultimately he would be forced to retire, perhaps in the face of a serene smile, beaten and angered that he had been able to make so little impression. And many the delicious remark and delightful quip afterward at his expense!

Her gentle humor is of the highest quality. If only her opponents could have seen her amusement at their hysteria. At the very moment they were denouncing some plan of action and calling her “fanatical” and “hysterical” she would fairly beam with delight to see how well her plan had worked. Her intention had been to arouse them to just that state of mind, and how admirably they were living up to the plan. The hysteria was all on their side. She coolly sat back in her chair and watched their antics under pressure.

“But don’t you know,” would come another thundering one, “that this will make the Democratic leaders so hostile that . . .”

The looked-for note of surprise never came. She had counted ahead on all this and knew almost to the last shade the reaction that would follow from both majority and minority leaders. All this had been thoroughly gone over, first with herself, then with her colleagues. All the “alarms” had been rung. The male politician could not understand why his wellmeaning and generously-offered advice caused not a ripple and not a change in plan. Such calm unconcern he could not endure. He was accustomed to emotional panics. He was not accustomed to a leader who had weighed every objection, every attack and counted the cost accurately.

Her ability to marshal arguments for keeping her own followers in line was equally marked. A superficial observer would rush into headquarters with, “Miss Paul, don’t you think it was a great tactical mistake to force President Wilson at this time to state his position on the amendment? Will it not hurt our campaign to have it known that he is against us?”

“It is the best thing that could possibly happen to us. If he is against us, women should know it. They will be aroused to greater action if he is not allowed to remain silent upon something in which he does not believe. It will make it easier for us to campaign against him when the time comes.”

And another time a friend of the cause would suggest, “Would it not have been better not to have tried for planks in party platforms, since we got such weak ones?”

“Not at all. We can draw the support of women with greater ease from a party which shows a weak hand on suffrage, than from one which hides its opposition behind silence.”

She had always to combat the fear of the more timid ones who felt sure with each new wave of disapproval that we would be submerged. “Now, I have been a supporter of yours every step of the way,” a “fearful” one would say, “but this is really going a little too far. I was in the Senate gallery to-day when two suffrage. senators in speeches denounced the pickets and their suffrage banners. They said that we were setting suffrage back and that something ought to be done about it.”

“Exactly so,” would come the ready answer from Miss Paul. “And they will do something about it only if we continue to make them uncomfortable enough. Of course even suffrage senators will object to our pickets and our banners because they do not want attention called to their failure to compel the Administration to act. They know that as friends of the measure their responsibility is greater.” And the “fearful” one was usually convinced and made stronger.

I remember so well when the situation was approaching its final climax in Washington. Men and women, both, came to Miss Paul with, “This is terrible! Seven months’ sentence is impossible. You must stop! You cannot keep this up!”

With an unmistakable note of triumph in her voice Miss Paul would answer, “Yes, it is terrible for us, but not nearly so terrible as for the government. The Administration has fired its heaviest gun. From now on we shall win and they will lose.”

Most of the doubters had by this time banished their fears and had come to believe with something akin to superstition that she could never be wrong, so swiftly and surely, did they see her policies and her predictions on every point vindicated before their eyes.

She has been a master at concentration, a master strategist-a great general. With passionate beliefs on all important social questions, she resolutely set herself against being seduced into other paths. Far from being naturally an ascetic, she has disciplined herself into denials and deprivations, cultural and recreational, to pursue her objective with the least possible waste of energy. Not that she did not want above all else to do this thing. She did. But doing it she had to abandon the easy life of a scholar and the aristocratic environment of a cultured, prosperous, Quaker family, of Moorestown, New Jersey, for the rigors of a ceaseless drudgery and frequent imprisonment. A flaming idealist, conducting the fight with the sternest kind of realism, a mind attracted by facts, not fancies, she has led fearlessly and with magnificent ruthlessness. Thinking, thinking day and night of her objective and never retarding her pace a moment until its accomplishment, I know no modern woman leader with whom to compare her. I think she must possess many of the same qualities that Lenin does, according to authentic portraits of him-cool, practical, rational, sitting quietly at a desk and counting the consequences, planning the next move before the first one is finished. And if she has demanded the ultimate of her followers, she has given it herself. Her ability to get women to work and never to let them stop is second only to her own unprecedented capacity for work.

Alice Paul came to leadership still in her twenties, but with a broad cultural equipment. Degrees from Swarthmore, the University of Pennsylvania, and special study abroad in English universities had given her a scholarly background in history, politics, and sociology. In these studies she had specialized, writing her doctor’s thesis on the status of women. She also did factory work in English industries and there acquired first hand knowledge of the industrial position of women. In the midst of this work the English militant movement caught her imagination and she abandoned her studies temporarily to join that movement and go to prison with the English suffragists.

Convinced that the English women were fighting the battle for the women of the world, she returned to America fresh from their struggle, to arouse American women to action. She came bringing her gifts and concentration to this one struggle. She came with that inestimable asset, youth, and, born of youth, indomitable courage to carry her point in spite of scorn and misrepresentation.

Among the thousands of telegrams sent Miss Paul the day the amendment finally passed Congress was this interesting message from Walter Clark, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of North Carolina, Southern Democrat, Confederate Veteran and distinguished jurist:

“Will you permit me to congratulate you upon the great triumph in which you have been so important a factor? Your place in history is assured. Some years ago when I first met you I predicted that your name would be written ‘on the dusty roll the ages keep.’ There were politicians, and a large degree of public sentiment, which could only be won by the methods you adopted . . . . It is certain that, but for you, success would have been delayed for many years to come.”

Part II
Political Action

Chapter 1
Women Invade the Capital

Where are the people?” This was Woodrow Wilson’s first question as he arrived at the Union Station in Washington the day before his first inauguration to the Presidency in March, 1913.

“On the Avenue watching the suffragists parade,” came the answer.

The suffrage issue was brought oftenest to his attention from then on until his final surrender. It lay entirely with him as to how long women would be obliged to remind him of this issue before he willed to take a hand.

“The people” were on the Avenue watching the suffragists parade. The informant was quite right. It seemed to those of us who attempted to march for our idea that day that the whole world was there—packed closely on Pennsylvania Avenue.

The purpose of the procession was to dramatize in numbers and beauty the fact that women wanted to vote—that women were asking the Administration in power in the national government to speed the day. What politicians had not been able to get through their minds we would give them through their eyes—often a powerful substitute. Our first task seemed simple—actually to show that thousands of women wanted immediate action on their long delayed enfranchisement. This we did.

This was the first demonstration under the leadership of Alice Paul, at that time chairman of the Congressional Committee of the National American Woman. Suffrage Association. It was also the beginning of Woodrow Wilson’s liberal education.

The Administration, without intending it, played into the hands of the women from this moment. The women had been given a permit to march. Inadequate police protection allowed roughs to attack them and all but break up the beautiful pageant. The fact of ten thousand women marching with banners and bands for this idea was startling enough to wake up the government and the country, but not so startling as ten thousand women man-handled by irresponsible crowds because of police indifference.

An investigation was demanded and a perfunctory one held. The police administration was exonerated, but when the storm of protest had subsided the Chief of Police was quietly retired to private life.

It was no longer a secret that women wanted to vote and that they wanted the President and Congress to act.

A few days later the first deputation of suffragists ever to appear before a President to enlist his support for the passage of the national suffrage amendment waited upon President Wilson.[1] Miss Paul led the deputation. With her were Mrs. Genevieve Stone, wife of Congressman Stone of Illinois, Mrs. Harvey W. Wiley, Mrs. Ida Husted Harper, and Miss Mary Bartlett Dixon of Maryland. The President received the deputation in the White House Offices. When the women entered they found five chairs arranged in a row with one chair in front, like a class- room. All confessed to being frightened when the President came in and took his seat at the head of the class. The President said he had no opinion on the subject of woman suffrage; that he had never given it any thought;[2] and that above all it was his task to see that Congress concentrated on the currency revision and the tariff reform. It is recorded that the President was somewhat taken aback when Miss Paul addressed him during the course of the interview with this query, “But Mr. President, do you not understand that the Administration has no right to legislate for currency, tariff, and any other reform without first getting the consent of women to these reforms?”

[1] There had been individual visits to previous presidents.

[2] At Colorado Springs in 1911, when Mr. Wilson was Governor of New Jersey and campaigning for the Presidential nomination, a delegation of Colorado women asked him his position on woman suffrage. He said, “Ladies, this is a very arguable question and my mind is in the midst of the argument.”

“Get the consent of women?” It was evident that this course had not heretofore occurred to him.

“This subject will receive my most careful consideration,” was President Wilson’s first suffrage promise.

He was given time to “consider” and a second deputation went to him, and still a third, asking him to include the suffrage amendment in his message to the new Congress assembling in extra session the following month. And still he was obsessed with the paramount considerations of “tariff” and “currency.” He flatly said there would be no time to consider suffrage for women. But the “unreasonable” women kept right on insisting that the liberty of half the American people was paramount to tariff and currency.

President Wilson’s first session of Congress came together April 7th, 1913. The opening day was marked by the suffragists’ second mass demonstration. This time women delegates representing every one of the 435 Congressional Districts in the country bore petitions from the constituencies showing that the people “back home” wanted the amendment passed. The delegates marched on Congress and were received with a warm welcome and their petitions presented to Congress. The same day the amendment which bears the name of Susan B. Anthony, who drafted it in 1875, was reintroduced into both houses of Congress.

The month of May saw monster demonstrations in many cities and villages throughout the country, with the direct result that in June the Senate Committee on Suffrage made the first favorable report made by that committee in twenty-one years, thereby placing it on the Senate calendar for action.

Not relaxing the pressure for a day we organized the third great demonstration on the last of July when a monster petition signed by hundreds of thousands of citizens was brought to the Senate asking that body to pass the national suffrage amendment. Women from all parts of the country mobilized in the countryside of Maryland where they were met with appropriate ceremonies-by the Senate Woman Suffrage Committee. The delegation motored in gaily decorated automobiles to Washington and went direct to the Senate, where the entire day was given over to suffrage discussion.

Twenty-two senators spoke in favor of the amendment in presenting their petitions. Three spoke against it. For the first time in twenty-six years suffrage was actually debated in Congress. That day was historic.

Speeches? Yes. Greetings? Yes. Present petitions from their constituencies? Gladly. Report it from the Senate Committee? They had to concede that. But passage of the amendment? That was beyond their contemplation.

More pressure was necessary. We appealed to the women voters, of whom there were then four million, to come into action.

“Four million women voters are watching you,” we said to Congress. We might as well have said, “There are in the South Sea Islands four million heathens.”

It was clear that these distant women voters had no relation in the senatorial mind to the realism of politics. We decided to bring some of these women voters to Washington: Having failed to get the Senate to act by August, we invited the Council of Women Voters to hold its convention in Washington that Congress might learn this simple lesson: women did vote; there were four million of them; they had a voters’ organization; they cared about the enfranchisement of all American women; they wanted the Senate to act; suffrage was no longer a moral problem; it could be made a practical political problem with which men and parties would have to reckon.

Voting women made their first impression on Congress that summer.

Meanwhile the President’s “paramount issues”—tariff and currency—had been disposed of. With the December Congress approaching, he was preparing another message. We went to him again. This time it was the women from his own home state, an influential deputation of seventy-three women, including the suffrage leaders from all suffrage organizations in New Jersey. The women urged him to include recommendation of the suffrage resolution in his message to the new Congress. He replied:

“I am pleased, indeed, to greet you and your adherents here, and I will say to you that I was talking only yesterday with several members of Congress in regard to a Suffrage Committee in the House. The subject is one in which I am deeply interested, and you may rest assured that I will give it my earnest attention.”

In interesting himself in the formation of a special committee to sit on suffrage in the House, the President was doing the smallest thing, to be sure, that could be done, but he was doing something. This was a distinct advance. It was our task to press on until all the maze of Congressional machinery had been used to exhaustion. Then there would be nothing left to do but to pass the amendment.

A fourth time that year the determination of women to secure the passage of the amendment was demonstrated. In December, the opening week of the new Congress, the annual convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association was held in Washington. Miss Lucy Burns, vice chairman of its Congressional Committee and also of the Congressional Union, was applauded to the echo by the whole convention when she said:

“The National American Woman Suffrage Association is assembled in Washington to ask the Democratic Party to enfranchise the women of America.

“Rarely in the history of the country has a party been more powerful than the Democratic Party is to-day. It controls the Executive Office, the Senate and more than two-thirds of the members of the House of Representatives. It is in a position to give us effective and immediate help.

“We ask the Democrats to take action now. Those who hold power are responsible to the country for the use of it. They are responsible not only for what they do, but for what they do not do. Inaction establishes just as clear a record as does a policy of open hostility.

“We have in our hands to-day not only the weapon of a just cause; we have the support of ten enfranchised states—states comprising one-fifth of the United States Senate, one-seventh of the House of Representatives, and one-sixth of the electoral vote. More than 3,600,000 women have a vote in Presidential elections. It is unthinkable that a national government which represents women, and which appeals periodically for the suffrages of women, should ignore the issue of the right of all women to political freedom.

“We cannot wait until after the passage of scheduled Administration reforms . . . . Congress is free to take action on our question in the present session. We ask the Administration to support the woman suffrage amendment in Congress with its whole strength.”

This represented the attitude of the entire suffrage movement toward the situation in the winter of 1913. At no time did the militant group deviate from this position until the amendment was through Congress.

It was difficult to make the Administration believe that the women meant what they said, and that they meant to use everything in their power and resourcefulness to see it carried out.

Men were used to having women ask them for suffrage. But they were disconcerted at being asked for it now; at being threatened with political chastisement if they did not yield to the demand.

In spite of the repeated requests to President Wilson that he include support of the measure in his message to Congress, he delivered his message December end while the convention was still in session, and failed to make any mention of the suffrage amendment. He recommended self-government for Filipino men instead.

Immediately Miss Paul organized the entire convention into a fifth deputation to protest against this failure and to urge support in a subsequent message. Dr. Anna Howard Shaw led the interview. In reply to her eloquent appeal for his assistance, the President said in part: “I am merely the spokesman of my party . . . . I am not at liberty to urge upon Congress in messages, policies which have not had the organic consideration of those for whom I am spokesman. I am by my own principles shut out, in the language of the street, from ‘starting anything.’ I have to confine myself to those things which have been embodied as promises to the people at an election.”

I shall never forget that day. Shafts of sunlight came in at the window and fell full and square upon the white-haired leader who was in the closing days of her power. Her clear, deep, resonant voice, ringing with the genuine love of liberty, was in sharp contrast to the halting, timid, little and technical answer of the President. He stooped to utter some light pleasantry which he thought would no doubt please the “ladies.” It did not provoke even a faint smile. Dr. Shaw had dramatically asked, “Mr. President, if you cannot speak for us and your party will not, who then, pray, is there to speak for us?”

“You seem very well able to speak for yourselves, ladies,” with a broad smile, followed by a quick embarrassment when no one stirred.

“We mean, Mr. President, who will speak for us with authority?” came back the hot retort from Dr. Shaw.

The President made no reply. Instead he expressed a desire to shake the hands of the three hundred delegates. A few felt that manners compelled them to acquiesce; the others filed out without this little political ceremony.

Alice Paul’s report to the national convention for her year’s work as Chairman of the Congressional Committee of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, and as Chairman also of the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage, showed that a budget of twenty-seven thousand dollars had been raised and expended under her leadership as against ten dollars spent during the previous year on Congressional work. At the beginning of the year there was no interest in work with Congress. It was considered hopeless. At the close of the year 1918 it had become a practical political issue. Suffrage had entered the national field to stay.

At this point the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage was obliged to become an independent body in order to continue this vigorous policy which the conservative suffrage leaders were unwilling to follow.

Hearings, deputations to the President, petitions to Congress, more persistent lobbying, all these things continued during the following year under Miss Paul’s leadership with the result that a vote in the Senate was taken, though at ran inopportune moment,—the first vote in the Senate since 1887. The vote stood 86 to ’84-thereby failing by 11 votes of the necessary two-thirds majority. This vote, nevertheless, indicated that a new strength in the suffrage battle had forced Congress to take some action.

In the House, the Rules Committee on a vote of 4 to 4 refused to create a suffrage committee. We appealed to the Democratic caucus to see if tie party sustained this action. We wished to establish their party responsibility, one way or another, and by securing the necessary signatures to a petition, we compelled the caucus to meet. By a vote of 128 to 57 the caucus declared “ . . . that the question of woman suffrage is a state and not a federal question,” as a substitute for the milder resolution offered, providing for the creation of a committee on woman suffrage. If this had left any doubt as to how the Democratic Party, as a party, stood, this doubt was conveniently removed by Representative Underwood, the Majority Leader of the House, when he said on the floor of the House the following day: “The Democratic Party last night took the distinctive position that it was not in favor of this legislation because it was in favor of the states controlling the question of suffrage . . . . I not only said I was opposed to it, but I said the Party on this side of the Chamber was opposed to it, and the Party that has control of the legislation in Congress certainly has the right to say that it will not support a measure if it is not in accordance with its principles.”

Meanwhile the President had said to a deputation of workingwomen who waited upon him in February, “Until the Party, as such, has considered a matter of this very supreme importance, and taken its position, I am not at liberty to speak for it; and yet I am not at liberty to speak for it as an individual, for I am not an individual.”

“But we ask you to speak to your party, not for it,” answered Mrs. Glendower Evans, Chairman of the deputation, amid evident presidential embarrassment.

Those women who had been inclined perhaps to accept the President’s words as true to fact, entertained doubts when a .few days later he demanded of his party in Congress the repeal of the free tolls provision in the Panama Canal tolls act. In so doing, he not only recommended action not endorsed by his party, but he demanded action which his party had specifically declared against.

It was necessary to appeal again to the nation. We called for demonstrations. of public approval of the amendment in every state on May 2. Thousands of resolutions were passed calling for action in Congress. These resolutions were made the center of another great demonstration in Washington, May 9, when thousands of women in, procession carried them to the Capitol where beautiful and impressive ceremonies were held on the Capitol steps. The resolutions were formally received by members of Congress and the demonstration ended dramatically with a great chorus of women massed on the steps singing “The March of the Women” to the thousands of spectators packed closely together on the Capitol grounds.

And still the President withheld his support.

Under our auspices five hundred representative club women of the country waited upon him in another appeal for help.[1] To them he explained his “passion for local self-government,” which led to his conviction “that this is a matter for settlement by the states[2] and not by the federal government . . . .”

Women had to face the fact that the 63rd Congress had made a distinctly hostile record on suffrage. The President, as leader of his party, had seven times refused all aid; the Democratic Party had recorded its opposition through an adverse vote in the Senate and a caucus vote in the House forbidding even consideration of the measure.

It became clear that some form of political action would have to be adopted which would act as an accelerator to the Administration. This feeling was growing momentarily among many women, but it was conspicuously strong in the mind of Mrs. Oliver H. P. Belmont, recognized as one of the ablest suffrage leaders in the country. Anticipating the unfriendly record made by the Democrats in the 63rd Congress, Mrs. Belmont had come to Miss Paul and to her vice-chairman, Miss Lucy Burns, to urge the formulation of a plan whereby we could strike at Administration opposition through the women voters of the West. Miss Paul had the same idea and welcomed the support of this plan by so able a leader.

[1] 7th deputation to the President, June 30, 1914.

[2] This amounted to virtual opposition because of the great difficulties, (some of them almost insuperable) involved in amending many state constitutions.

Mrs. Belmont was impatient to do nationally what she had already inaugurated in New York State suffrage work—make suffrage an election issue. She was the first suffragist in America to be “militant” enough to wage a campaign against office-seekers on the issue of woman suffrage. She was roundly denounced by the opposition press, but she held her ground. It is interesting to record that she defeated the first candidate for the New York Assembly ever campaigned against on this issue.

She had associated herself with the Pankhursts in England and was the first suffrage leader here publicly to commend the tactics of the English militants. Through her, Mrs. Pankhurst made her first visits to America, where she found a sympathetic audience. Even among the people who understood and believed in English tactics, the general idea here was that only in the backward country of England was “militancy” necessary. In America, men would give women what women wanted without a struggle.

Mrs. Belmont was the one suffrage leader who foresaw a militant battle here whenever women should determine to ask for their freedom immediately. In a great measure she prepared the way for that battle.

Since the movement had not even advanced to the stage of political action at that time, however, Mrs. Belmont realized that political action would have to be exhausted before attempting more aggressive tactics. Not knowing whether Miss Paul had contemplated inaugurating political action in the national field, she sought out the new leader and urged her to begin at, once to organize the women’s power for use in the approaching national elections.

Those interested in the woman’s movement are fairly familiar with Mrs. Belmont’s early state suffrage work and her work with the militants in England, but they do not know as much about her national work. It is not easy for a woman of vast wealth to be credited with much else in America than the fact of generosity in giving money to the cause in which she believes. Wealth dazzles us and we look no further. Mrs. Belmont has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to suffrage, both state and national, but she has given greater gifts in her militant spirit, her political sagacity and a marked tactical sense. She was practically the only leader formerly associated with the conservative forces who had the courage to extricate herself from the old routine propaganda and adventure into new paths. She always approached the struggle for liberty in a wholesome revolutionary mood. She was essentially a leader, and one who believed in action-always action.

Until the movement in America regained its militant spirit, her heart was primarily with the English women, because she thought their fight so magnificent that it would bring suffrage to women in England sooner than our slow-going methods would bring it to us. In 1910, when English militancy was at its height, Mrs. Belmont gave out an interview in London, in which she predicted that English women would have the suffrage before us. She even went so far as to say that we in America would have to create an acute situation here, probably a form of militancy, before we could win. At the same time the President of the International Suffrage Alliance said in London: “The suffrage movement in England- resembles a battle. It is cruel and tragic. Ours in America is an evolution-less dramatic, slow but more sure.” Facts sustained Mrs. Belmont’s prophecy. Facts did not sustain the other prediction. English women got the vote in 1918. American women were not enfranchised nationally until August, 1920.

The following is the political theory and program approved by Mrs. Belmont and submitted to the Congressional Union, by its chairman, Alice Paul, at a conference of the organization at the home of Mrs. Belmont in Newport in August, 1914:

The dominant party (at that time the Democratic Party) is responsible for all action and therefore for action on suffrage.

This party’s action had been hostile to this measure.

The dominant party in the approaching election must be convinced, and through it all other parties, that opposition to suffrage is inexpedient.

All parties will be convinced when they see that their opposition costs them votes.

Our fight is a political one.

We must appeal for support to the constituency which is most friendly to suffrage, that constituency being the voting women.

An attempt must be made, no matter how small, to organize the women’s vote.

An appeal must be made to the women voters in the nine suffrage states to withhold their support from the Democrats nationally, until the national Democratic Party ceases to block the suffrage amendment.

This is non-partisanship in the highest degree, as it calls upon women to forego previous allegiance to a party. If they are Democrats in this instance, they must vote against their party. If the Republican Party were in power and pursued a similar course, we would work against that party.

The party which sees votes falling away will change its attitude.

After we have once affected by this means the outcome of a national election, even though slightly, every party will hesitate to trifle with our measure any longer.

All candidates from suffrage states are professing suffragists, and therefore we have nothing to lose by defeating a member of the dominant party in those states. Another suffragist will take his place.

Men will object to being opposed because of their party responsibility in spite of their friendliness individually to suffrage. But women certainly have a right to further through the ballot their wishes on the suffrage question, as well as on other questions like currency, tariff, and what not.

This can only be done by considering the Party record, for as the individual record and individual pledges go, all candidates are practically equal.

We, as a disfranchised class, consider our right to vote, preeminently over any other issue in any party’s program.

Political leaders will resent our injecting our issue into their campaign, but the rank and file will be won when they see the loyalty of women to women.

This policy will be called militant and in a sense it is, being strong, positive and energetic.

If it is militant to appeal to women to use their vote to bring suffrage to this country, then it is militant to appeal to men or women to use their vote to any good end.

To the question of “How will we profit if another party comes in?” our answer will be that adequate political chastisement of one party for its bad suffrage record through a demonstration of power by women voters affecting the result of the national election, will make it easier to get action from any party in power

Amidst tremendous enthusiasm this plan was accepted by the little conference of women at Newport, and $7,000 pledged in a few moments to start it. There was a small group of women, an infinitely small budget with which to wage a campaign in nine states, but here was also enthusiasm and resolute determination.

A tiny handful of women-never more than two, more often only one to a state—journeyed forth from Washington into the nine suffrage states of the West to put before the voting women this political theory, and to ask them to support it.

Chapter 2
Women Voters Organize

It can’t be done.” “Women don’t care about suffrage.” I “Once they’ve got it, it is a dead issue.” “To talk of arousing the Western women to protest against the Congressional candidates of the National Democratic Party in the suffrage states, when every one of them is a professing suffragist, is utter folly.” So ran the comment of the political wise acres in the autumn of 1914.

But the women had faith in their appeal.

It is impossible to give in a few words any adequate picture of the anger of Democratic leaders at our entrance into the campaign. Six weeks before election they woke up to find the issue of national suffrage injected into a campaign which they had meant should be no more stirring than an orderly and perfunctory endorsement of the President’s legislative program.

The campaign became a very hot one during which most of the militancy seemed to be on the side of the political leaders. Heavy fists came down on desks. Harsh words were spoken. Violent threats were made. In Colorado, where I was cam- paigning, I was invited politely but firmly by the Democratic leader to leave the state the morning after I had arrived. “You can do no good here. I would advise you to leave at once. Besides, your plan is impracticable and the women will not support it.”

“Then why do you object to my being here?” I asked.

“You have no right to ask women to do this . . . .”

Some slight variation of this experience was met by every woman who took part in this campaign. Of course, the Democratic leaders did not welcome an issue raised unexpectedly, and one which forced them to spend an endless amount of time apologizing for and explaining the Democratic Party’s record. Nor did they relish spending more money publishing more literature, in short, adding greatly to the burdens of their campaign. The candidates, a little more suave than the party leaders, proved most eloquently that they had been suffragists “from birth.” One candidate even claimed a suffrage inheritance from his great-grandmother.

This first entry of women into a national election on the suffrage amendment was little more than a quick, brilliant dash. With all its sketchiness, however, it had immediate political results, and when the election was over, there came tardily a general public recognition that the Congressional Union had made a real contribution to these results. In the nine suffrage states women vote3 for 45 members of Congress. For 43 of these seats the Democratic Party ran candidates. We opposed in our campaign all of these candidates. Out of the 43 Democratic candidates running, only 9.0 were elected. While it was not our primary aim to defeat candidates it was generally conceded that we had contributed to these defeats.

Our aim in this campaign was primarily to call to the attention of the public the bad suffrage record of the Democratic Party. The effect of our campaign was soon evident in Congress. The most backward member realized for the first time that women had voted. Even the President perceived that the movement had gained new strength, though he was not yet politically moved by it. He was still “tied to a conviction”[1] which he had had all his life that suffrage “ought to be brought about state by state.”

[1] Statement to Deputation of Democratic women (eighth deputation) at the White House, Jan. 6, 1915.

Enough strength and determination among women had been demonstrated to the Administration, however, to make them want to do something “just as good” as the thing we asked. The Shafroth-Palmer[1] Resolution was introduced, providing for a constitutional amendment permitting a national initiative and referendum on suffrage in the states, thereby forcing upon women the very course we had sought to circumvent. This red herring drawn across the path had been accepted by the conservative suff- ragists evidently in a moment of hopelessness, and their strength put behind it, but the politicians who persuade them to back it knew that it was merely an attempt to evade the issue.

[1] This resolution was introduced in the Senate by Senator Shafroth of Colorado, Democrat; in the House by Representative A. Mitchell Palmer of Pennsylvania, Democrat, later Attorney General in President Wilson’s Cabinet. Both men, although avowed supporters of the original Susan B. Anthony amendment, backed this evil compromise.

This made necessary a tremendous campaign throughout the country by the Congressional Union, with the result that the compromise measure was eventually abandoned. During its life, however, politicians were happy in the opportunity to divide their support between it and the original amendment, which was still pending. To offset this danger and to show again in dramatic fashion the strength and will of the women voters to act on this issue, we made political work among the western women the principal effort of the year 1915, the year preceding the presidential election. Taking advantage of the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco, we opened suffrage headquarters in the Palace of Education on the exposition grounds. From there we called the first Woman Voters’ Convention ever held in the world for the single purpose of attaching political strength to the movement. Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont was chairman of the committee which signed the convention call.

Women from all the voting states assembled in a mass convention September 14, 15 and 16. There is not time to describe the beauty of the pageantry which surrounded that gathering, nor of the emotional quality which was at high pitch throughout the sessions. These women from the deserts of Arizona, from the farms of Oregon, from the valleys of California, from the mountains of Nevada and Utah, were in deadly earnest. They had answered the call and they meant to stay in the fight until it was won. The convention went on record unanimously for further political action on behalf of national suffrage and for the original amendment without compromise, and pledged itself to use all power to this end without regard to the interests of any existing political party.

Two emissaries, Sara Bard Field and Frances Joliffe, both of California, were commissioned by women voters at the final session, when more than ten thousand people were present, to go to the President and Congress bearing these resolutions and hundreds of thousands of signatures upon a petition gathered during the summer. They would speak directly to the President lest he should be inclined to take lightly the women voters’ resolutions.

The envoys, symbolic of the new strength that was to come out of the West, made their journey across continent by automobile. They created a sensation all along the way, received as they were by governors, by mayors, by officials high and low, and by the populace. Thousands more added their names to the petition and it was rolled up to gigantic proportions until in December when unrolled it literally stretched over miles as it was borne to the Capitol with honor escorts.

The action of the convention scarcely cold, and the envoys mid- way across the continent, the President hastened to New Jersey to cast his vote for suffrage in a state referendum. He was careful to state that he did so as a private citizen, “not as the leader of my party in the nation” He repeated his position, putting the emphasis upon his opposition to national suffrage, rather than on his belief in suffrage for his state. “I believe that it (suffrage) should be settled by the states and not by the national government, and that in no circumstances should it be made a party question; and my view has grown stronger at every turn of the agitation.” He knew women were asking the powerful aid of the President of the United States, not the aid of Mr. Wilson of Princeton, New Jersey. The state amendment in New Jersey was certain to fail, as President Wilson well knew. Casting a vote for it would help his case with women voters, and still not bring suffrage in the East a step nearer.

The envoys’ reception at the Capitol was indeed dramatic. Thousands of women escorted them amid bands and banners to the halls of Congress, where they were received by senators and representatives and addressed with eloquent speeches. The envoys replied by asking that their message be carried by friends of the measure to the floor of the Senate and House, and this was done.

The envoys waited upon the President at the White House. This visit of the representatives of women with power marked rather an advance in the President’s position. He listened with an eager attention to the story of the new-found power and what women meant to do with it. For the first time on record, he said he had “an open mind” on the question of national suffrage, and would confer with his party colleagues.

The Republican and Democratic National Committees heard the case of the envoys. They were given a hearing before the Senate Suffrage Committee and before the House Judiciary in one of the most lively and entertaining inquisitions in which women ever participated.

No more questions on mother and home! No swan song on the passing of charm and womanly loveliness! Only agile scrambling by each committee member to ask with eagerness and some heat, “Well, if this amendment has not passed Congress by then, what will you do in the elections of 1916?” It was with difficulty that the women were allowed to tell their story, so eager was the Committee to jump ahead to political consequences. “Sirs, that depends upon what you gentlemen do. We are asking a simple thing——” But they never got any further from the main base of their interest.

“If President Wilson comes out for it and his party does not” from a Republican member, “will you——”

“I object to introducing partisan discussions here,” came shamelessly from a Democratic colleague. And so the hearing passed in something of a verbal riot, but with no doubt as to the fact that Congressmen were alarmed by the prospect of women voting as a protest group.

The new year found the Senate promptly reporting the measure favorably again, but the Judiciary Committee footballed it to its sub-committee, back to the whole committee, postponed it, marked time, dodged defeated it.

The problem of neutrality toward the European war was agitating the minds of political leaders. Nothing like suffrage for women must be allowed to rock the ship even slightly! Oh, no, indeed; it was men’s business to keep the nation out of war. Men never had shown marked skill at keeping nations out of war in the history of the world. But never mind! Logic must not be pressed too hard upon the “reasoning” sex. This time, men would do it.

The exciting national election contest was approaching. Party conventions were scheduled to meet in June while the amendment languished at the Capitol. It was clear that more highly organized woman-power would have to be called into action before the national government would speed its pace. To the women voters the Eastern women went for decisive assistance. A car known as the “Suffrage Special,” carrying distinguished Eastern women and gifted speakers, made an extensive tour of the West and under the banner of the Congressional Union called again upon the women voters to come to Chicago on June 5th to form a new party,—The Woman’s Party[1]—to serve as long as should be necessary as the balance of power in national contests, and thus to force action from the old parties.

[1] The Woman’s Party started with a membership of all Congressional Union members in suffrage states. Anne Martin of Nevada was elected chairman.

The instant response which met this appeal surpassed the most optimistic hopes. Thousands of women assembled in Chicago for this convention, which became epoch-making not only in .the suffrage fight but in the whole woman movement. For the first time in history, women came together to organize their political power into a party to free their own sex. For the first time in history representatives of men’s political parties came to plead before these women voters for the support of their respective parties.

The Republican Party sent as its representatives John Hays Hammond and C. S. Osborn, formerly Governor of Michigan. The Democrats sent their most persuasive orator, President Wilson’s friend, Dudley Field Malone, Collector of the Port of New York. Allan Benson, candidate for the Presidency on the Socialist ticket, represented the Socialist Party. Edward Polling, Prohibition leader, spoke for the Prohibition Party, arid Victor Murdock and Gifford Pinchot for The Progressive Party.

All laid their claims for suffrage support before the women with the result that the convention resolved itself into another political party—The Woman’s Party. A new party with but one plank—the immediate passage of the federal suffrage amendment—a party determined to withhold its support from all existing parties until women were politically free, and to punish politically any party in power which did not use its power to free women; a party which became a potent factor of protest in the following national election.

This first step towards the solidarity of women quickly brought results. The Republican National Convention, meeting immediately. after the Woman’s Party Convention, and the Democratic National Convention the week following, both included suffrage planks in their national platforms for the first time in history. To be sure, they were planks that failed to satisfy us. But the mere hint of organized political action on suffrage had moved the two dominant parties to advance a step. The new Woman’s Party had declared suffrage a national political issue. The two major parties acknowledged the issue by writing it into their party platforms.

The Republican platform was vague and indefinite on national suffrage. The Democratic Party made its suffrage plank specific against action by Congress. It precisely said, “We recommend the extension of the franchise to the women of the country by the states upon the same terms as men.” It was openly stated at the Democratic Convention by leading Administration Democrats that the President himself had written this suffrage plank. If the Republicans could afford to write a vague and indefinite plank, the President and his party could not. They as the party in power had been under fire and were forced to take sides. They did so. The President chose the plank and his subordinates followed his lead. It may be remarked in passing that this declaration so solidified the opposition within the President’s party that when the President ultimately sought to repudiate it, he met stubborn resistance.

Protected by the President’s plank, the Democratic Congress continued to block national suffrage. It would not permit it even to be reported from the Judiciary Committee. The party platform was written. The President, too, found it easy to hide behind the plank which he had himself written, counting on women to be satisfied. To Mrs. D. E. Hooker of Richmond, Virginia, who as a delegate from the Virginia Federation of Labor, representing 60,000 members, went to him soon after to ask his support of the amendment, the President said, “I am opposed by conviction and political traditions to federal action on this question. Moreover, after the plank which was adopted in the Democratic platform at St. Louis, I could not comply with the request contained in this resolution even if I wished to do so.”

President Wilson could not act because the party plank which he had written prevented him from doing so!

Meanwhile the women continued to protest.

Miss Mabel Vernon of Delaware, beloved and gifted crusader, was the first member of the Woman’s Party to commit a “militant” act. President Wilson, speaking at the dedication services of the Labor Temple in Washington, was declaring his interest in all classes and all struggles. He was proclaiming his beliefs in the abstractions of liberty and justice, when Miss Vernon, who was seated on the platform from which he was speaking, said in her powerful voice, “Mr. President, if you sincerely desire to forward the interests of all the people, why do you oppose the national enfranchisement of, women?” Instant consternation arose, but the idea had penetrated to the farthest corner of the huge assembly that women were protesting to the President against the denial of their liberty.

The President found time to answer, “That is one of the things which we will have to take counsel over later,” and resumed his speech. Miss Vernon repeated her question later and was ordered from the meeting by the police.

As the summer wore on, women realized that they would have to enter the national contest in the autumn. Attention was focussed on the two rival presidential candidates, Woodrow Wilson and Charles Evans Hughes, the Republican nominee, upon whom the new Woman’s Party worked diligently for prompt statements of their position on the national amendment.

The next political result of the new solidarity of women was Mr. Hughes’ declaration on August 1st, 1916: “My view is that the proposed amendment should be submitted and ratified and the subject removed from political discussion.”

The Democratic Congress adjourned without even report ing the measure to that body for a vote, and went forthwith to the country to ask reelection.

We also went to the country. We went to the women voters to lay before them again the Democratic Party’s record—now complete through one Administration. We asked women voters again to withhold their support nationally from President Wilson and his party.

The President accepted at once the opportunity to speak before a convention of suffragists at Atlantic City in an effort to prove his great belief in suffrage. He said poetically, “The tide is rising to meet the moon . . . . You can afford to wait” Whatever we may have thought of his figure of speech, we disagreed with his conclusion.

The campaign on, Democratic speakers throughout the West found an unexpected organized force among women, demanding an explanation of the past conduct of the Democratic Party and insisting on an immediate declaration by the President in favor of the amendment. Democratic orators did their utmost to meet this opposition. “Give the President time. He can’t do everything at once.” “Trust him once more; he will do it for you next term.” “He kept us out of war. He is the best friend the mothers of the nation ever had” “He stood by you. Now you women stand by him.” “What good will votes do you if the Germans come over here and take your country?” And so on. Enticing doctrine to women—the peace lovers of the human race.

Although we entered this contest with more strength than we had had in 1914, with a budget five times as large and with piled-up evidence of Democratic hostility, we could rot have entered a more difficult contest. The people were excited to an almost unprecedented pitch over the issue of peace versus war. In spite of the difficulty of competing with this emotional issue which meant the immediate disposal of millions of lives, it was soon evident that the two issues were running almost neck and neck in the Western territory.

No less skilled a campaigner than William Jennings Bryan took the stump in the West against the Woman’s Party. At least a third of each speech was devoted to suffrage. He urged. He exhorted. He apologized. He explained. He pleaded. He condemned. Often he was heckled. Often he saw huge “VOTE AGAINST WILSON! HE KEPT US OUT OF SUFFRAGE!” banners at the doors of his meetings. One woman in Arizona, who, unable longer to listen in patience to the glory of “a democracy where only were governed those who consented,” interrupted him. He coldly answered, “Madam, you cannot pick cherries before they are ripe.” By the time he got to. California, however, the cherries had ripened considerably, for Mr. Bryan came out publicly for the national amendment.

What was true of Mr. Bryan was true of practically every Democratic campaigner. Against their wills they were forced to talk about suffrage, although they had serenely announced at the opening of the campaign that it was “not an issue in this campaign.” Some merely apologized and explained. Others, like Dudley Field Malone, spoke for the federal amendment, and promised to work to put it through the next Congress, “if only you women will stand by Wilson and return him to power.”

Space will not permit in this book to give more than a hint of the scope and strength of our campaign. If it were possible to give a glimpse of the speeches made by men in that campaign, you would agree that it was not peace alone that was the dominant issue, but peace and suffrage. It must be made perfectly clear that the Woman’s Party did not attempt to elect Mr. Hughes. It did not feel strong enough to back a candidate in its first battle, and did not conduct its fight affirmatively at all. No speeches were made for Mr. Hughes and the Republican Party. The appeal was to vote a vote of protest against Mr. Wilson and his Congressional candidates, because he and his party had had the power to pass the amendment through Congress and had refused to do so. That left the women free to choose from among the Republicans, Socialists and Prohibitionists. It was to be expected that the main strength of the vote taken from Mr. Wilson would go to Mr. Hughes, as few women perhaps threw their votes to the minority parties. But just as the Progressive Party’s protest had been effective in securing progressive legislation without winning the election, so the Woman’s Party hoped its protest would bring results in Congress without attempting to win the election.

History will never know in round numbers how many women voted against the President and his party at this crisis, for there are no records kept for men and women separately, except in one state, in Illinois. The women there voted two to one against Mr. Wilson and for Mr. Hughes.

Men outnumber women throughout the entire western territory; in some states, two and three to one; in Nevada, still higher. But, whereas, in the election of 191, President Wilson got 69 electoral votes from the suffrage states, in the 1916 election, when the whole West was aflame for him because of his peace policy, he got only 57. Enthusiasm for Mr. Hughes in the West was not sufficiently marked to account entirely for the loss of these 12 electoral votes. Our claim that Democratic opposition to suffrage had cost many of them was never seriously denied.

The Democratic Judiciary Committee of the House which had refused to report suffrage to the House for a vote, had only one Democratic member from a suffrage state, Mr. Taggart of Kansas, standing for reelection. This was the only spot where women could strike out against the action of this committee—and Mr. Taggart. They struck with success. He was defeated almost wholly by the women’s votes.

With a modest campaign fund of slightly over fifty thousand dollars, raised almost entirely in small sums, the women had forced the campaign committee of the Democratic Party to assume the defensive and to practically double expenditure and work on this issue. As much literature was used on suffrage as on peace in the suffrage states.

Many Democrats although hostile to our campaign said without qualification that the Woman’s Party protest was the only factor in the campaign which stemmed the western tide toward Wilson, and which finally made California the pivotal state and left his election in doubt for a week.

Again, with more force, national suffrage had been injected into a campaign where it was not wanted, where the leaders had hoped the single issue of “peace” would hold the center of the stage. Again many women had stood together on this issue and put woman suffrage first. And the actual reelection of President Wilson had its point of advantage, too, for it enabled us to continue the education of a man in power who had already had four years of lively training on the woman question.

Chapter 3
The Last Deputation to President Wilson

Of the hundreds of women who volunteered for the last Western campaign, perhaps the most effective in their appeal were the disfranchised Eastern women.

The most dramatic figure of them all was Inez Milholland Boissevain, the gallant and beloved crusader who gave her life that the day of women’s freedom might be hastened. Her last words to the nation as she fell fainting on the platform in California were, “Mr. President, how long must women wait for liberty?” Her fiery challenge was never heard again. She never recovered from the terrific strain of the campaign which had undermined her young strength. Her death touched the heart of the nation; her sacrifice, made so generously for liberty, lighted anew the fire of rebellion in women, and aroused from inertia thousands never before interested in the liberation of their own sex.

Memorial meetings were held throughout the country at which women not only paid radiant tribute to Inez Milholland, but reconsecrated themselves to the struggle and called again upon the reelected President and his Congress to act.

The most impressive of these memorials was held on Christmas Day in Washington. In Statuary Hall under the dome of the Capitol—the scene of memorial services for Lincoln and Garfield—filled with statues of outstanding figures in the struggle for political and religious liberty in this country, the first memorial service ever held in the Capitol to honor a woman, was held for this gallant young leader.

Boy choristers singing the magnificent hymn

“Forward through the darkness
Leave behind the night,
Forward out of error,
Forward into light”

led into the hall the procession of young girl banner-bearers. Garbed in simple surplices, carrying their crusading banners high above their heads, these comrades of Inez Milholland Boissevain seemed more triumphant than sad. They seemed to typify the spirit in which she gave her life.

Still other young girls in white held great golden banners flanking the laurel-covered dais, from which could be read the inscriptions: “Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friend” . . . “Without extinction is liberty; Without retrograde is equality” . . . “As He died to make men holy let us die to make men free” . . .

From behind the heavy velvet curtains came the music of voices and strings, and the great organ sounded its tragic and triumphant tones.

Miss Maud Younger of California was chosen to make the memorial address on this occasion. She said in part:

“We are here to pay tribute to Inez Milholland Boissevain, who was our comrade. We are here in the nation’s capital, the seat of our democracy, to pay tribute to one who gave up her life to realize that democracy . . . .

“Inez Milholland walked down the path of life a radiant being. She went into work with a song in her heart. She went into battle with a laugh on her lips. Obstacles inspired her, discouragement urged her on. She loved work and she loved battle. She loved life and laughter and light, and above all else she loved liberty. With a loveliness beyond most, a kindliness, a beauty of mind and soul, she typified always the best and noblest in womanhood. She was the flaming torch that went ahead to light the way—the symbol of light and freedom . . .

“Symbol of the woman’s struggle, it was she who carried to the West the appeal of the unenfranchised, and carrying it, made her last appeal on earth, her last journey in life.

“As she set out upon her last journey, she seems to have had the clearer vision, the spiritual quality of one who has already set out for another world. With infinite understanding and intense faith in her mission, she was as one inspired. Her meetings were described as ‘revival meetings,’ her audiences as ‘wild with enthusiasm.’ Thousands acclaimed her, thousands were turned away unable to enter . . .

“And she made her message very plain.

“She stood for no man, no party. She stood only for woman. And standing thus she urged:

“‘It is women for women now and shall be until the fight is won! Together we shall stand shoulder to shoulder for the greatest principle the world has-ever known, the right of self-government.

“‘Whatever the party that has ignored the claims of women we as women must refuse to uphold it. We must refuse to uphold any party until all women are free.

“‘We have nothing but our spirits to rely on and the vitality of our faith, but spirit is invincible.

“‘It is only for a little while. Soon the fight will be over. Victory is in sight.’

“Though she did not live to see that victory, it is sweet to know that she lived to see her faith in women justified. In one of her last letters she wrote:

“‘Not only did we reckon accurately on women’s loyalty to women, but we likewise realized that our appeal touched a certain spiritual, idealistic quality in the western woman voter, a quality which is yearning to find expression in political life. At the idealism of the Woman’s Party her whole nature flames into enthusiasm and her response is immediate. She gladly transforms a narrow partisan loyalty into loyalty to a principle, the establishment of which carries with it no personal advantage to its advocate, but merely the satisfaction of achieving one more step toward the emancipation of mankind . . . . We are bound to win. There never has been a fight yet where interest was pitted against principle that principle did not triumph!’

“ . . The trip was fraught with hardship. Speaking day and night, she would take a train at two in the morning to arrive at eight; then a train at midnight to arrive at five in the morning. Yet she would not change the program; she would not leave anything out . . .

“And so . . . her life went out in glory in the shining cause of freedom.

“And as she had lived loving liberty, working for liberty, fighting for liberty, so it was that with this word on her lips she fell. ‘How long must women wait for liberty?’ she cried and fell-as surely as any soldier upon the field of honor—as truly as any who ever gave up his life for an ideal.

“As in life she had been the symbol of the woman’s cause so in death she is the symbol of its sacrifice. The whole daily sacrifice, the pouring out of life and strength that is the toll of woman’s prolonged struggle.

“Inez Milholland is one around whom legends will grow up. Generations to come will point out Mount Inez and tell of the beautiful woman who sleeps her last sleep on its slopes.

“They will tell of her in the West, tell of the vision of loveliness as she flashed through on her last burning mission, flashed through to her death—a falling star in the western heavens.

“But neither legend nor vision is liberty, which was her life. Liberty cannot die. No work for liberty can be lost. It lives on in the hearts of the people, in their hopes, their aspira- tions, their activities. It becomes part of the life of the nation. What Inez Milholland has given to the world lives on forever.

“We are here to-day to pay tribute to Inez Milholland Boissevain, who was our comrade. Let our tribute be not words which pass, nor song which flies, nor flower which fades. Let it be this: that we finish the task she could not finish; that with new strength we take up the struggle in which fighting beside us she fell; that with new faith we here consecrate ourselves to the cause of woman’s freedom until that cause is won; that with new devotion we go forth, inspired by her sacrifice, to the end that her sacrifice be not in vain, for dying she shall bring to pass that which living she could not achieve—full freedom for women, full democracy for the nation.

“Let this be our tribute, imperishable, to Inez Milholland Boissevain.”

Miss Anne Martin of Nevada, chairman of the Woman’s Party, presided over the services. Other speakers were Honorable George Sutherland, United States Senator from Utah, representing the United States Congress; and Honorable Rowland S. Mahany, former member of Congress and lifelong friend of the Milholland family.

Mrs. William Kent of California, wife of Representative Kent, presented two resolutions which the vast audience approved by silently rising. One resolution, a tribute of rare beauty, prepared by Zona Gale, a friend of Inez Milholland, was a compelling appeal to all women to understand and to reverence the ideals of this inspiring leader. The other was an appeal to the Administration for action.

The pageantry of surpliced choristers and the long line of girl standard-bearers retired to the strains of the solemn recessional. The great audience sat still with bowed heads as the voices in the distance dropped in silence. Instantly the strains of the Marseillaise, filling the great dome with its stirring and martial song of hope, were taken up by the organ and the strings, and the audience was lifted to its feet singing as if in anticipation of the triumph of liberty.

The women were in no mood merely to mourn the loss of a comrade- leader. The government must be shown again its share of responsibility. Another appeal must be made to the President who, growing steadily in control over the people and over his Congress, was the one leader powerful enough to direct his party to accept this reform. But he was busy gathering his power to lead them elsewhere. Again we would have to compete with pro-war anti-war sentiment. But it was no time to relax.

Following the holiday season a deputation of over three hundred women carried to the White House the Christmas Day memorial for Inez Milholland and other memorials from similar services. The President was brought face to face with the new protest of women against the continued waste of physical and spiritual energy in their battle. There is no better way to picture the protest than to give you something verbatim from the speeches made that memorable day. This was the first meeting of suffragists with the President since the campaign against him in the previous autumn. It was only because of the peculiar character of the appeal that he consented to hear them.

Miss Younger presented the national memorial to him and introduced Mrs. John Winters Brannan, who made no plea to the President but merely gave him the New York memorial which read as follows:

“This gathering of men and women, assembled on New Year’s day in New York to hold a memorial service in honor of Inez Milholland Boissevain, appeals to you, the President of the United States, to end the outpouring of life and effort that has been made for the enfranchisement of women for more than seventy years in this country. The death of this lovely and brave women symbolizes the whole daily sacrifice that vast numbers of women have made and are making for the sake of political freedom. It has made vivid the ‘constant unnoticed tragedy of, this prolonged effort for a freedom that is acknowledged just, but still denied.’

“It is not given to all to be put to the supreme test and to accept that test with such gallant gladness as she did. The struggle, however, has reached the point where it requires such intensity of effort—relentless and sustained—over the whole vast country, that the health of thousands of noble women is being insidiously undermined. If this continues, and it will continue until victory is won, we know only too surely that many women whom the nation can ill spare will follow in the footsteps of Inez Milholland.

“We desire to make known to you, Mr. President, our deep sense of wrong being inflicted upon women in making them spend their health and strength and forcing them to abandon other work that means fuller self-expression, in order to win freedom under a government that professes to believe in democracy.

“There is only one cause for which it is right to risk health and life. No price is too high to pay for liberty. So long as lives of women are required, these lives will be given.

“But we beg of you, Mr. President, so to act that this ghastly price will not have to be paid. Certainly it is a grim irony that a Republic should exact it. Upon you at this moment rests a solemn responsibility; for with you it rests to decide whether the life of this brilliant, dearly-loved woman whose glorious death we commemorate to-day, shall be the last sacrifice of fife demanded of American women in their struggle for self-government.

“We ask you with all the fervor and earnestness of our souls to exert your power over Congress in behalf of the national enfranchisement of women in the same way you have so successfully used it on other occasions and for far less important measures.

“We are confident that if the President of the United States decides that this act of justice shall be done in the present session of Congress, it will be done. We know further that if the President does not urge it, it will not be done. . . “

A fraction of a moment of silence follows, but it is long enough to feel strongly the emotional state of mind of the President. It plainly irritates him to be so plainly spoken to. We are conscious that his distant poise on entering is dwindling to petty confusion. There is something inordinately cool about the fervor of the women. This too irritates him. His irritation only serves to awaken in every woman new strength. It is a wonderful experience to feel strength take possession of your being in a contest of ideas. No amount of trappings, no amount of authority, no number of plainclothes men, nor the glamour of the gold-braided attaches, nor the vastness of the great reception hall, nor the dazzle of the lighted crystal chandeliers, and above all not the mind of your opponent can cut in on your slim, hard strength. You are more than invincible. Your mind leaps ahead to the infinite liberty of which yours is only a small part. You feel his strength in authority, his weakness in vision. He does not follow. He feels sorrow for us. He patronizes us. He must temper his irritation at our undoubted fanaticism and unreason. We, on the other hand, feel so superior to him. Our strength to demand is so much greater than his power to withhold. But he does not perceive this.

In the midst of these currents the serene and appealing voice of Sara Bard Field came as a temporary relief to the President—but only temporary. Shy brought tears to the eyes of the women as she said in presenting the California memorial resolutions:

“Mr. President, a year ago I had the honor of calling upon you with a similar deputation. At that time we brought from my western country a great petition from the voting women urging your assistance in the passage of the federal amendment for suffrage. At that time you were most gracious to us. You showed yourself to be in line with all the progressive leaders by your statement to us that you could change your mind and would consider doing so in connection with this amendment. We went away that day with hope in our hearts, but neither the hope inspired by your friendly words nor the faith we had in you as an advocate of democracy kept us from working day and night in the interest of our cause.

“Since that day when we came to you, Mr. President, one of our most beautiful and beloved comrades, Inez Milholland, has paid the price of her life for this cause. The untimely death of a young woman like this—a woman for whom the world has such bitter need—has focussed the attention of the men and women of the nation on the fearful waste of women which this fight for the ballot is entailing. The same maternal instinct for the preservation of life—whether it be the physical life of a child or the spiritual life of a cause—is sending women into this battle for liberty with an urge which gives them no rest night or day. Every advance of liberty has demanded its quota of human sacrifice, but if I had time I could show you that we have paid in a measure that is running over. In the light of Inez Milholland’s death, as we look over the long backward trail through which we have sought our political liberty, we are asking how long must this struggle go on.

“Mr. President, to the nation more than to women alone is this waste of maternal force significant. In industry such a waste of money and strength would not be permitted. The modern trend is all toward efficiency. Why is such waste permitted in the making of a nation?

“Sometimes I think it must be very hard to be a President, in respect to his contacts with people as well as in the great business he must perform. The exclusiveness necessary to a great dignitary holds him away from that democracy of communion, necessary to a full understanding of what the people .are really thinking and desiring. I feel that this deputation to-day fails in its mission if, because of the dignity of your office and the formality of such an occasion, we fail to bring you the throb of woman’s desire for freedom and her eagerness to ally herself when once the ballot is in her hand, with all those activities to which you, yourself, have dedicated your life. Those tasks which this nation has set itself to do are her tasks as well as man’s. We women who are here to-day are close to this desire of women. We cannot believe that you are our enemy or indifferent to the fundamental righteousness of our demand.

“We have come here to you in your powerful office as our helper. We have come in the name of justice, in the name of democracy, in the name of all women who have fought and died for this cause, and in a peculiar way with our hearts bowed in sorrow, in the name of this gallant girl who died with the word ‘liberty’ on her lips. We have come asking you this day to speak some favorable word to us that we may know that you will use your good and great office to end this wasteful struggle of women.”

The highest point in the interview had been reached. Before the President began his reply, we were aware that the high moment had gone. But we listened.

“Ladies, I had not been apprised that you were coming here to make any representations that would issue an appeal to me. I had been told that you were coming to present memorial resolutions with regard to the very remarkable woman whom your cause has lost. I, therefore, am not prepared to say anything further than I have said on previous occasions of this sort.

“I do not need to tell you where my own convictions and my own personal purpose lie, and I need not tell you by what circumscriptions I am bound as leader of a party. As the leader of a party my commands come from that party and not from private personal convictions.

“My personal action as a citizen, of course, comes from no source but my own conviction. and, therefore, my position has been so frequently defined, and I hope so candidly defined, and it is so impossible for me until the orders of my party are changed, to do anything other than I am doing as a party leader, that I think nothing more is necessary to be said.

“I do want to say this: I do not see how anybody can fail to observe from the utterances of the last campaign that the Democratic Party is more inclined than the opposition to assist in this great cause, and it has been a matter of surprise to me, and a matter of very great regret that so many of those who were heart and soul for this cause seemed so greatly to misunderstand arid misinterpret the attitude of parties. In this country, as in every other self-governing country, it is really through the instrumentality of parties that things can be accomplished. They are not accomplished by the individual voice but by concerted action, and that action must come only so fast as you can concert it. I have done my best and shall continue to do my best to concert it in the interest of a cause in which I personally believe.”

Dead silence. The President stands for a brief instant at the end of his words as if waiting for some faint stir of approval which does not come. He has the baffled air of a dis- appointed actor who has failed to “get across.” Then he turns abruptly on his heel and the great doors swallow him up. Silently the women file through the corridor and into the fresh air.

The women returned to the spacious headquarters across the park all of one mind. How little the President knew about women! How he underestimated their intelligence and penetration of things political,! Was it possible that he really thought these earnest champions of liberty would merely carry resolutions of sorrow and regret to the President?

But this was not the real irony. How lightly he had shifted the responsibility for getting results to his party. With what coldness he had bade us “concert opinion,” a thing which he alone could do. That was pretty hard to bear, coming as it did when countless forms of appeal had been exhausted by which women without sufficient power could “concert” anything. The movement was almost at the point of languishing so universal was the belief in the nation that suffrage for women was inevitable. And yet he and his party remained immovable.

The three hundred women of the memorial deputation became on their return to headquarters a spirited protest meeting.

Plans of action in the event the President refused to help had been under consideration by Miss Paul and her executive committee for some time, but they were now presented for the first time for approval. There was never a more dramatic moment at which to ask the women if they were ready for drastic action.

Harriot Stanton Blatch, daughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and a powerful leader of women, voiced the feeling of the entire body when she said, in a ringing call for action:

“We have gone to Congress, we have gone to the President during the last four years with great deputations, with small deputations. We have shown the interest all over the country in self-government for women—something that the President as a great Democrat ought to understand and respond to instantly. Yet he tells us to-day that we must win his party. He said it was strange that we did not see before election that his party was more favorable to us than the Republican party. How did it show its favor? How did he show his favor today to us? He says we have got to convert his party . . . Why? Never before did the Democratic Party lie more in the hands of one man than it lies to-day in the hands of President Wilson. Never did the Democratic Party have a greater leader, and never was it more susceptible to the wish of that leader, than is the Democratic Party of to-day to President Wilson. He controls his party, and I don’t think he is too modest to know it. He can mould it as he wishes and he has moulded it. He moulded it quickly before election in the matter of the eight-hour law. Was that in his party platform? He had to crush and force his party to pass that measure. Yet he is not willing to lay a finger’s weight on his party to-day for half the people of the United States . . . . Yet to-day he tells us that we must wait more—and more.

“We can’t organize bigger and more influential deputations. We can’t organize bigger processions. We can’t, women, do anything more in that line. We have got to take a new departure. We have got to keep the question before him all the time. We have got to begin and begin immediately.

“Women, it rests with us. We have got to bring to the President, individually, day by day, week in and week out, the idea that great numbers of women want to be free, wall be free, and want to know what he is going to do about it.

“Won’t you come and join us in standing day after day at the gates of the White House with banners asking, ‘What will you do, Mr. President, for one-half the people of this nation?’ Stand there as sentinels—sentinels of liberty, sentinels of self-government—silent sentinels. Let us stand beside the gateway where he must pass in and out, so that he can never fail to realize that there is a tremendous earnestness and insistence back of this measure. Will you not show your allegiance today to this ideal of liberty? Will you not be a silent sentinel of liberty and self-government?”

Deliberations continued. Details were settled. Three thousand dollars was raised in a few minutes among these women, fresh from the President’s rebuff. No one suggested waiting until the next Presidential campaign. No one even mentioned the fact that time was precious, and we could wait no longer. Every one seemed to feel these things without troubling to put them into words. Volunteers signed up for sentinel duty and the fight was on.

Part III
Militancy

“I will write a song for the President, full of menacing signs,
And back of it all, millions of discontented eyes.”

WALT WHITMAN

Chapter 1
Picketing a President

When all suffrage controversy has died away it will be the little army of women with their purple, white and gold banners, going to prison for their political freedom, that will be remembered. They dramatized to victory the long suffrage fight in America. The challenge of the picket line roused the government out of its half-century sleep of indifference. It stirred the country to hot controversy. It made zealous friends and violent enemies. It produced the sharply-drawn contest which forced the surrender of the government in the second Administration of President Wilson.

The day following the memorial deputation to the President, January 10th, 1917, the first line of sentinels, a dozen in number, appeared for duty at the White House gates. In retrospect it must seem to the most inflexible person a reasonably mild and gentle thing to have done. But at the same time it caused a profound stir. Columns of front page space in all the newspapers of the country gave more or less dispassionate accounts of the main facts. Women carrying banners were standing quietly at the White House gates “picketing” the President; women wanted President Wilson to put his power behind the suffrage amendment in Congress. That did not seem so shocking and only a few editors broke out into hot condemnation.

When, however, the women went back on the picket line the next day and the next and the next, it began to dawn upon the excited press that such persistence was “undesirable” . . . “unwomanly” …“dangerous.” Gradually the people most hostile to the idea of suffrage in any form marshaled forth the fears which accompany every departure from the prescribed path. Partisan Democrats frowned. Partisan Republicans chuckled. The rest remained in cautious silence to see how “others” would take it. Following the refrain of the press, the protest-chorus grew louder.

“Silly women” . . . “unsexed” . . .” pathological” . . . “They must be crazy” . . . “Don’t they know anything about politics?” . . . “What can Wilson do? He does not have to sign the constitutional amendment.” . . . So ran the comment from the wise elderly gentlemen sitting buried in their cushioned chairs at the gentlemen’s club across the Park, watching eagerly the “shocking,” “shameless” women at the gates of the White House. No wonder these gentlemen found the pickets irritating! This absorbing topic of conversation, we are told, shattered many an otherwise quiet afternoon and broke up many a quiet game. Here were American women before their very eyes daring to shock them into having to think about liberty. And what was worse—liberty for women. Ah well, this could not go on,—this insult to the President. They could with impunity condemn him and gossip about his affairs. But that women should stand at his gates asking for liberty—that was a sin without mitigation.

Disapproval was not confined merely to the gentlemen in their Club. I merely mention them as an example, for they were our neighbors, and the strain on them day by day, as our beautiful banners floated gaily out from our headquarters was, I am told, a heavy one.

Yet, of course, we enjoyed irritating them. Standing on the icy pavement on a damp, wintry day in the penetrating cold of a Washington winter, knowing that within a stone’s throw of our agony there was a greater agony than ours—there was a joy in that!

There were faint rumblings also in Congress, but like so many of its feelings they were confined largely to the cloak rooms. Representative Emerson of Ohio did demand from the floor of the House that the “suffrage guard be withdrawn, as it is an insult to the President,” but his protest met with no response whatever from the other members. His oratory fell on indifferent ears. And of course there were always those in Congress who got a vicarious thrill watching women do in their fight what they themselves had not the courage to do in their own. Another representative, an anti-suffrage Democrat, inconsiderately called us “Iron-jawed angels,” and hoped we would retire. But if by these protests these congressmen hoped to arouse their colleagues, they failed.

We were standing at the gates of the White House because the American Congress had become so supine that it could not or would not act without being compelled to act by the President. They knew that if they howled at us it would only afford an opportunity to retort—“Very well then, if you do not like us at the gates of your leader; if you do not want us to ‘insult’ the President, end this agitation by taking the matter into your own hands and passing the amendment.” Such a sug- gestion would be almost as severe a shock as our picketing. The thought of actually initiating legislation left a loyal Demo- cratic follower transfixed.

The heavy dignity of the Senate forbade their meddling much in this controversy over tactics. Also they were more interested in the sporting prospect of our going into the world war. There was no appeal to blood-lust in the women’s fight. There were no shining rods of steel. There was no martial music. We were not pledging precious lives and vast billions in our crusade for liberty. The beginning of our fight did indeed seem tiny and frail by the side of the big game of war, and so the senators were at first scarcely aware of our presence.

But the intrepid women stood their long vigils, day by day, at the White House gates, through biting wind and driving rain, through sleet and snow as well as sunshine, waiting for the President to act. Above all the challenges of their banners rang this simple, but insistent one:

Mr. President
How Long Must Women Wait for Liberty?

The royal blaze of purple, white and gold-the Party’s tricolored banners—made a gorgeous spot of color against the bare, blacklimbed trees.

There were all kinds of pickets and so there were all kinds of reactions to the experience of picketing. The beautiful lady, who drove up in her limousine to do a twenty minute turn on the line, found it thrilling, no doubt. The winter tourist who had read about the pickets in her home paper thought it would be “so exciting” to hold a banner for a few minutes. But there were no illusions in the hearts of the women who stood at their posts day in and day out. None of them will tell you that they felt exalted, ennobled, exhilarated, possessed of any rare and exotic emotion. They were human beings before they were pickets. Their reactions were those of any human beings called upon to set their teeth doggedly and hang on to an unpleasant job.

“When will that woman come to relieve me? I have stood here an hour and a half and my feet are like blocks of ice,” was a more frequent comment from picket to picket than “Isn’t it glorious to stand here defiantly no matter what the stupid people say about us?”

“I remember the thousand and one engaging things that would come to my mind on the picket line. It seemed that anything but standing at a President’s gate would be more diverting. But there we stood.

And what were the reflections of a President as he saw the indomitable little army at his gates? We can only venture to say from events which happened. At first he seemed amused and interested. Perhaps he thought it a trifling incident staged by a minority of the extreme “left” among suffragists and anticipated no popular support for it. When he saw their persistence through a cruel winnter his sympathy was touched. He ordered the guards to invite them in for a cup of hot coffee, which they declined. He raised his hat to them as he drove through the line. Sometimes he smiled. As yet he was not irritated. He was fortified in his national power.

With the country’s entrance into the war and his immediate elevation to world leadership, the pickets began to be a serious thorn in his flesh. His own statements of faith in democracy and the necessity for establishing it .throughout the world left him open to attack. His refusal to pay the just bill owed the women and demanded by them brought irritation.

What would you do if you owed a just bill and every day some one stood outside your gates as a quiet reminder to the whole world that you had not paid it?

You would object. You would get terribly irritated. You would call the insistent one all kinds of harsh names. You might even arrest him. But the scandal would be out.

Rightly or wrongly, your sincerity would be touched; faith in you would be shaken a bit. Perhaps even against your will you would yield.

But you would yield. And that was the one important fact to the women.

This daily sight, inspiring, gallant and impressive, escaped no visitor to the national capital. Distinguished visitors from the far corners of the earth passed by the pickets on those days which made history. Thousands read the compelling messages on the banners, and literally hundreds of thousands learned the story, when the visitors got “back home.”

Real displeasure over the sentinels by those who passed was negligible. There was some mirth and joking, but the vast majority were filled with admiration, either silent or expressed.

“Keep it up.” . . . “You are on the right track.” . . . “Congratulations.” . . . “I certainly admire your pluck—stick to it and you will get it.” . . . This last from a military officer . . . . “It is an outrage that you women should have to stand here and beg for your rights. We gave it to our women in Australia long ago:” . . . This from a charming gentleman who bowed approvingly.

Often a lifted hat was held in sincere reverence over the heart as some courteous gentleman passed along the picket line. Of course there were some who came to try to argue with the pickets; who attempted to dissuade them from their persistent course. But the serene, good humor and even temper of the women would not allow heated arguments to break in on the military precision of their line. If a question was asked, a picket would answer quietly. An occasional sneer was easy to meet. That required no acknowledgment.

A sweet old veteran of the Civil War said to one of my comrades: “Yous all right; you gotta fight for your rights in this world, and now that we are about to plunge into another war, I want to tell you women there’ll be no end to it unless you women get power. We can’t save ourselves and we need you . . . . I am 84 years old, and I have watched this fight since I was a young man. Anything I can do to help, I want to do. I am living at the Old Soldiers’ Home and I ain’t got mach money, but here’s something for your campaign. It’s all I got, and God bless you, you’ve gotta win.” He spoke the last sentence almost with desperation as he shoved a crumpled $2.00 bill into her hand. His spirit made it a precious gift.

Cabinet members passed and repassed. Congressmen by the hundreds came and went. Administration leaders tried to conceal under an. artificial indifference their sensitiveness to our strategy.

And domestic battles were going on inside the homes throughout the country, for women were coming from every state in the Union, to take their place on the line. For the first time good “suffrage-husbands” were made uncomfortable. Had they not always believed in suffrage? Had they not always been uncomplaining when their wife’s time was given to suffrage campaigning? Had they not, in short, been good sports about the whole thing? There was only one answer. They had. But it had been proved that all the things that women had done and all the things in which their menfolk had cooperated, were not enough. Women were called upon for more intensive action. “You cannot go to Washington and risk your health standing in front of the White House. I cannot have it.”

“But the time has come when we have to take risks of health or anything else.”

“Well, then, if you must know, I don’t believe in it. Now I am a reasonable man and I have stood by you all the way up to now, but I object to this. It isn’t ladylike, and it will do the cause more harm than good. You women lay yourselves open to ridicule.”

“That’s just it—that’s a fine beginning. As soon as men get tired laughing at us, they will do something more about it. They won’t find our campaign so amusing before long.”

“But I protest. You’ve no right to go without considering me.”

“But if your country called you in a fight for democracy, as it is likely to do at any moment, you’d go, wouldn’t you?”

“Why, of course.”

“Of course you would. You would go to the front and leave me to struggle on as best I could without you. That is the way you would respond to your country’s call, whether it was a righteous cause or not. Well, I am going to the front too. I am going to answer the women’s call to fight for democracy. I would be ashamed of myself if I were not willing to join my comrades. I am sorry that you object, but if you will just put yourself in my place you will see that I cannot do otherwise.”

It must be recorded that there were exceptional men of sensitive imaginations who urged women against their own hesitancy. They are the handful who gave women a hope that they would not always have to struggle alone for their liberation. And women passed by the daily picket line as spectators, not as participants. Occasionally a woman came forward to remonstrate, but more often women were either too shy to advance or so enthusiastic that nothing could restrain them. The more kind-hearted of them, inspired by the dauntless pickets in the midst of a now freezing temperature, brought mittens, fur pieces, golashes, wool -lined raincoats: hot bricks to stand on, coffee in thermos bottles and what not.

Meanwhile the pickets became a household word in Washington, and very soon were the subject of animated conversation in practically every corner of the nation. The Press cartoonists, by their friendly and satirical comments, helped a great deal in popularizing the campaign. In spite of the bitter editorial comment of most of the press, the humor of the situation had an almost universal appeal.

At the Washington dinner of the Gridiron Club, probably the best known press club in the world,—a dinner at which President Wilson was a guest,—one of the songs sung for his benefit was as follows:

“We’re camping to-night on the White House grounds
Give us a rousing cheer;
Our golden flag we hold aloft, of cops we have no fear.
Many of the pickets are weary to-night,
Wishing for the war to cease; many are the chilblains and frost- bites too;
It is no life of ease.
Camping to-night, camping to-night,
Camping on the White House grounds.”

The White House police on duty at the gates came to treat the picketers as comrades.

“I was kinds worried,” confessed one burly officer when the pickets were five minutes late one day. “We thought perhaps you weren’t coming and we world have to hold down this place alone.”

The bitter-enders among the opponents of suffrage broke into such violent criticism that they won new friends to the amendment.

People who had never before thought of suffrage for women had to think of it, if only to the extent of objecting to the way in which we asked for it. People who had thought a little about suffrage were compelled to think more about it. People who had believed in suffrage all their lives, but had never done a, stroke of work for it, began to make speeches about it, if only for the purpose of condemning us.

Some politicians who had voted for it when there were not enough votes to carry the measure loudly threatened to commit political suicide by withdrawing their support. But it was easy to see at a glance that they would not dare to run so great a political risk on an issue growing daily more important.

As soon as the regular picket line began to be accepted as a matter of course, we undertook to touch it up a bit to sustain public interest. State days were inaugurated, beginning with Maryland. The other states took up the idea with enthusiasm. There was a College Day, when women representing 15 American colleges stood on the line; a Teachers’ Day, which found the long line represented by almost every state in the Union, and a Patriotic Day, when American flags mingled with the party’s banners carried by representatives of the Women’s Reserve Corps, Daughters of the Revolution and other patriotic organizations. And there were professional days when women doctors, lawyers and nurses joined the picket appeal.

Lincoln’s birthday anniversary saw another new feature. A long line of women took out banners bearing the slogans:

LINCOLN STOOD FOR WOMAN SUFFRAGE 60 YEARS AGO.
MR. PRESIDENT, WHY DO YOU BLOCK THE NATIONAL SUFFRAGE AMENDMENT TO-DAY?
WHY ARE YOU BEHIND LINCOLN?

and another:

AFTER THE CIVIL WAR, WOMEN ASKED FOR POLITICAL FREEDOM. THEY WERE TOLD TO WAIT—THIS WAS THE NEGRO’S HOUR. IN 1917 AMERICAN WOMEN STILL ASK FOR FREEDOM.
WILL YOU, MR. PRESIDENT, TELL THEM TO WAIT-THAT THIS IS THE PORTO RICANS HOUR?[1]

[1] President Wilson had just advocated self-government for Porto Rican men.

A huge labor demonstration on the picket line late in February brought women wage earners from office and factory throughout the Eastern States.

A special Susan B. Anthony Day on the anniversary of the birth of that great pioneer, served to remind. the President who said, “You can afford to wait,” that the women had been waiting and fighting for this legislation to pass Congress since the year 1878.

More than one person came forward to speak with true religious fervor of the memory of the great Susan B. Anthony. Her name is never mentioned nor her words quoted without finding such a response.

In the face of heavy snow and rain, dozens of young women stood in line, holding special banners made for this occasion. Thousands of men and women streaming home from work in the early evening read words of hers spoken during the Civil War, so completely applicable to the policy of the young banner- bearers at the gates.

WE PRESS OUR DEMAND FOR THE BALLOT AT THIS TIME IN NO NARROW, CAPIOUS OR SELFISH SPIRIT, BUT FROM PUREST PATRIOTISM FOR THE HIGHEST GOOD OF EVERY CITIZEN, FOR THE SAFETY OF THE REPUBLIC AND A3 A GLORIOUS EXAMPLE TO THE NATIONS OF THE EARTH.

AT THIS TIME OUR GREATEST NEED IS NOT MEN O$ MONEY, VALIANT GENERALS OR BRILLIANT VICTORIES, BUT A CONSISTENT NATIONAL POLICY BASED UPON THE PRINCIPLE THAT ALL GOVERNMENTS DERIVE THEIR JUST POWERS FROM THE CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED.

THE RIGHT OF SELF-GOVERNMENT FOR ONE-HALF OF ITS PEOPLE IS OF FAR MORE VITAL CONSEQUENCE TO THE NATION THAN ANY OR ALL OTHER QUESTIONS.

During the reunion week of the Daughters and Veterans of the Confederacy, the picket line was the center of attraction for the sight-seeing veterans and their families. For the first time in history the troops of the Confederacy had crossed the Potomac and taken possession of the capital city. The streets were lined with often tottering but still gallant old men, whitehaired and stooped, wearing their faded badges on their gray uniforms, and carrying their tattered flags.

It seemed to the young women on picket duty during those days that not a single veteran had failed to pay his respects to the pickets. They came and came; and some brought back their wives to show them the guard at the gates.

One old soldier with tears in his dim eyes came to say, “I’ve done sentinel duty in my time. I know what it is . . . And now it’s your turn. You young folks have the strength and the courage to keep it up . . . . You are going to put it through!”

One sweet old Alabamian came shyly up to one of the pickets and said, “I say, Miss, this is the White House, isn’t it?”

Before she could answer, he added: “We went three times around the place and I told the boys, the big white house in the center was the White House, but they wasn’t believing me and I wasn’t sure, but as soon as I saw you girls coming with your flags, to stand here, I said, ‘This must be the White House. This is sure enough where the President lives; here are the pickets with their banners that we read about down home.’’ A note of triumph was in his frail voice.

The picket smiled, and thanked him warmly, as he finished with, “You are brave girls. You are bound to get him”—pointing his shaking finger toward the White House.

President Wilson’s second inauguration was rapidly approaching. Also war clouds were gathering with all the increased emotionalism that comes at such a crisis. Some additional demonstration of power and force must be made before the President’s inauguration and before the excitement of our entry into the war should plunge our agitation into obscurity. This was the strategic moment to assemble our forces in convention in Washington.

Accordingly, the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage and the Woman’s Party, that section of the Congressional Union in suffrage states made up of women voters, convened in Washington and decided unanimously to unite their strength, money and political power in one organization, and called it the National Woman’s Party.

The following officers were unanimously elected to direct the activities of the new organization: Chairman of the National Woman’s Party, Miss Alice Paul, New Jersey; Vice-chairman, Miss Anne Martin, Nevada; secretary, Miss Mabel Vernon, Nevada; treasurer, Miss Gertrude Crocker, Illinois; executive members, Miss Lucy Burns, Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont, Mrs. John Winters Brannan, New York; Mrs. Gilson Gardner, Illinois; Mrs. Robert Baker, Washington, D. C.; Mrs. William Kent and Miss Maud Younger, California; Mrs. Florence Bayard Hilles, Delaware; Mrs. Donald Hooker, Maryland; Mrs. J. A. H. Hopkins, New Jersey; Mrs. Lawrence Lewis, Pennsylvania, and Miss Doris Stevens, Nebraska.

The convention came to a close on the eve of inauguration, culminating in the dramatic picket line made up of one thousand delegates who sought an interview with the President. The purpose of the interview was to carry to him the resolutions of the convention, and further plead with him to open his second administration with a promise to back the amendment.

In our optimism we hoped that this glorified picket-pageant might form a climax to our three months of picketing. The President admired persistence. He said so. He also said he appreciated the rare tenacity shown by our women. Surely “now” he would be convinced! No more worrying persistence would be needed ! The combined political strength of the western women and the financial strength of the eastern women would surely command his respect and entitle us to a hearing.

What actually happened?

It was a day of high wind and stinging, icy rain, that March 4th, 1917, when a thousand women, each bearing a banner, struggled against the gale to keep their banners erect. It is always impressive to see a thousand people march, but the impression was imperishable when these thousand women marched in rain-soaked garments, hands bare, gloves roughly torn by the sticky varnish from the banner poles and the streams of water running down the poles into the palms of their hands. It was a sight to impress even the most hardened spectator who had seen all the various forms of the suffrage agitation in Washington. For more than two hours the women circled the White House—the rain never ceasing for an instant—hoping to the last moment that at least their leaders would be allowed to take in to the President the resolutions which they were carrying.

Long before the appointed hour for the march to start, thousands of spectators sheltered by umbrellas and raincoats lined the streets to watch the procession. Two bands whose men managed to continue their spirited music in spite of the driving rain led the march playing “Forward Be Our Watchword”; “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”; “Onward Christian Soldiers”; “The Pilgrim’s Chorus” from Tannhäuser; “The Coronation March” from Le Prophète, the Russian Hymn and “The Marsellaise”

Miss Vida Milholland led the procession carrying her sister’s last words, “Mr. President, how long must women wait for liberty?” She was followed by Miss Beulah Amidon of North Dakota, who carried the banner that the beloved Inez Milholland carried in her first suffrage procession in New York. The long line of women fell in behind.

Most extraordinary precautions had been taken about the White House. Everything had been done except the important thing. There were almost as many police officers as marchers. The Washington force had been augmented by a Baltimore contingent and squads of plainclothes men. On every fifty feet of curb around the entire White House grounds there was a policeman., About the same distance apart on the inside of the tall picket-fence which surrounds the grounds were as many more.

We proceeded to the main gate. Locked! I was marshalling at the head of the line and so heard first hand what passed between the leaders and the guards. Miss Anne, Martin addressed the guard—

“We have come to present some important resolutions to the President of the United States.”

“I have orders to keep the gates locked, Ma’am.”

“But there must be some mistake. Surely the President does not mean to refuse to see at least . . .”

“Those are my only orders, Ma’am.”

The procession continued on to the second gate on Pennsylvania Avenue. Again locked. Before we could address the somewhat nervous policeman who stood at the gates, he hastened to say, “You can’t come in here; the gates are locked.”

“But it is imperative; we are a thousand women from all States in the Union who have come all the way to Washington to see the President and lay before him . . .”

“No orders, Ma’am.”

The line made its way to the third and last gate—the gate leading to the Executive offices. As we came up to this gate a small army of grinning clerks and secretaries manned the windows of the Executive offices, evidently amused at the sight of the women struggling in the wind and rain to keep their banners intact. Miss Martin, Mrs. William Kent of California, Mrs. Florence Bayard Hilles of Delaware, Miss Mary Patterson of Ohio, niece of John C. Patterson of Dayton, Mrs. J. A. H. Hopkins of New Jersey, Miss Eleanor Barker of Indiana, and Mrs. Mary Darrow Weible of North Dakota,—the leaders—stayed at the gate, determined to get results from the guard, while the women continued to circle the White House.

“Will you not carry a message to the President’s Secretary asking him to tell the President that we are here waiting to see him?”

“Can’t do that, Ma’am.”

“Will you then take our cards to the Secretary to the president, merely announcing to him that we are here, so that he may send somebody to carry in our resolutions?”

Still the guard hesitated. Finally he left the gate and carried the message a distance of a few rods into the Executive offices. He had scarcely got inside when he rushed back to his post. When we sought to ascertain what had happened to the cards—had they been given and what the answer was—he quietly confided to us that he had been reprimanded for even attempting to bring them in and informed us that the cards were still in his pocket. “I have orders to answer no questions and to carry no messages. If you have anything to leave here you might take it to the entrance below the Executive offices, and-when I go off my beat at six o’clock I will leave it as I go by the White House.”

We examined this last entrance suggested. It, did not strike us as the proper place to leave an important message for the President.

“What is this entrance used for?” I asked the guard.

“It’s all right, lady. If you’ve got something you’d like to leave, leave it with me. It will be safe.”

I retorted that we were not seeking safety for our message, but speed in delivery.

The guard continued: “This is the gate where Mrs. Wilson’s clothes and other packages are left.”

It struck us as scarcely fitting that we should leave our resolutions amongst “Mrs. Wilson’s clothes and other packages,” so we returned to the last locked gate to ask the guard if he had any message in the meantime for us. He shook his head regretfully.

Meanwhile the women marched and marched, and the rain fell harder and as the afternoon wore on the cold seemed almost unendurable.

The white-haired grandmothers in the procession—there were some as old as 84—were as energetic as the young girls of 20. What was this immediate hardship compared to eternal subjection! Women marched and waited—waited and marched, under the sting of the biting elements and under the worse sting of the indignities heaped upon them. It was impossible to believe that in democratic America they could not see the President to lay before him their grievance.

It was only when they saw the Presidential limousine, in the late afternoon, roll luxuriously out of the grounds, and through the gates down Pennsylvania Avenue, that the weary marchers realized that President Wilson had deliberately turned them away unheard!

The car for an instant, as it came through the gates, divided the banner-bearers on march. President and Mrs. Wilson looked straight ahead as if the long line of purple, white and gold were invisible.

All the women who took part in that march will tell you what was burning in their hearts on that dreary day. Even if reasons had been offered—and they were not—genuine reasons why the President could not see them, it would not have cooled the women’s heat. Their passionate resentment went deeper than any reason could possibly have gone.

This one single incident probably did more than any other to make women sacrifice themselves. Even something as thin as diplomacy on the part of President Wilson might have saved him many restless hours to follow, but he did not take the trouble to exercise even that.

The women returned to headquarters and there wrote a letter which was dispatched with the resolutions to President Wilson. In a letter to the National Woman’s Party, acknowledging the receipt of them, he concluded by saying: “May I not once more express my sincere interest in the cause of woman suffrage?”

Three months of picketing had not been enough. We must not only continue on duty at his gates but also, at the gates of Congress.

Chapter 2
The Suffrage War Policy

President Wilson called the War Session of the Sixty-fifth Congress on April 2, 1917.

On the opening day of Congress not only were the pickets again on duty at the White House, but another picket line was inaugurated at the Capitol. Returning senators and congressmen were surprised when greeted with great golden banners reading:

RUSSIA AND ENGLAND ARE ENFRANCHISING THEIR WOMEN IN WAR-TIME. HOW LONG MUST AMERICAN WOMEN WAIT FOR THEIR LIBERTY

The last desperate flurries in the pro-war and anti-war camps were focused on the Capitol grounds that day. There swarmed about the grounds and through the buildings pacifists from all over the country wearing white badges, and advocates of war, wearing the national colors. Our sentinels at the Capitol stood strangely silent, and almost aloof, strong in their dedication to democracy, while the peace and war agitation circled about them.

With lightning speed the President declared that a state of war existed. Within a fortnight following, Congress declared war on Germany and President Wilson voiced his memorable, “We shall fight for the things 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.” Inspiring words indeed! The war message concluded with still another defense of the fight for political liberty: “To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are and everything that we have, with the pride of those who know that the day has come when America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness and the peace which she has treasured. God helping her, she can do no less.”

Now that the United States was actually involved in war, we were face to face with the question, which we had considered at the convention the previous month, when war was rumored, as to what position we, as an organization, should take in this situation.

The atmosphere of that convention had been dramatic in the extreme. Most of the delegates assembled had been approached either before going to Washington or upon arriving, and urged to use their influence to persuade the organization to abandon its work for the freedom of women and turn its activities into war channels. Although war was then only rumored, the hysterical attitude was already prevalent. Women were asked to furl their banners and give up their half century struggle for democracy, to forget the liberty that was most precious to their hearts.

“The President will turn this Imperialistic war into a crusade for democracy.” . . . “Lay aside your own fight and help us crush Germany, and you will find yourselves rewarded with a vote out of the nation’s gratitude,” were some of the appeals made to our women by government officials high and low and by the rank and file of men and women. Never in history did a band of women stand together with more sanity and greater solidarity than did these 1000 delegates representing thousands more throughout the States.

As our official organ, The Suffragist, pointed out editorially, in its issue of April 21st, 1917: Our membership was made up of women who had banded together to secure political freedom for women. We were united on no other subject. Some would offer passive resistance to the war; others would become devoted followers of a vigorous military policy. Between these, every shade of opinion was represented. Each was loyal to the ideas which she held for her country. With the character of these various ideals, the National Woman’s Party, we maintained, had nothing to do. It was concerned only with the effort to obtain for women the opportunity to give effective expression, through political power, to their ideals, whatever they might be.

The thousand delegates present at the convention, though differing widely on the duty of the individual in war, were unanimous in voting that in the event of war, the National Woman’s Party, as an organization, should continue to work for political liberty for women and for that alone, believing as the convention stated in its resolutions, that in so doing the organization “serves the highest interest of the country.” They were also unanimous in the opinion that all service which individuals wished to give to war or peace should be given through groups organized for such purposes, and not through the Woman’s Party, a body created, according to its constitution, for one purpose only—“to secure an amendment to the United States Constitution enfranchising women.”

We declared officially through our organ that this held “as the policy of the Woman’s Party, whatever turn public events may take.”

Very few days after we were put upon a national war basis it became clear that never was there greater need of work for internal freedom in the country. Europe, then approaching her third year of war, was increasing democracy in the midst of the terrible conflict. In America at that very moment women were being told that no attempt at electoral reform had any place in the country’s program “until the war is over.” The Democrats met in caucus and decided that only “war measures” should be included in the legislative program, and announced that no subjects would be considered by them, unless the President urged them as war measures.

Our task was, from that time on, to make national suffrage a war measure.

We at once urged upon the Administration the wisdom of accepting this proposed reform as a war measure, and pointed out the difficulty of waging a war for democracy abroad while democracy was denied at home. But the government was not willing to profit by the experience of its Allies in extending suffrage to women, without first offering a terrible and brutal resistance.

We must confess that the problem of dramatizing our fight for democracy in competition with the drama of a world-war, was most perplexing. Here were we, citizens without power and recognition, with the only weapons to which a powerless class which does not take up arms can resort. We could not and would not fight with men’s weapons. Compare the methods women adopted to those men use in the pursuit of democracy,—bayonets, machine guns, poison gas, deadly grenades, liquid fire, bombs, armored tanks, pistols, barbed wire entanglements, submarines, mines—every known scientific device with which to annihilate the enemy!

What did we do?

We continued to fight with our simple, peaceful, almost quaint device -a banner. A little more fiery, perhaps; pertinent to the latest political controversy, but still only a banner inscribed with militant truth!

Just as our political strategy had been to oppose, at elections, the party in power which had failed to use its power to free women, so now our military strategy was based on the military doctrine of concentrating all one’s forces on the enemy’s weakest point. To women the weakest point in the Administration’s political lines during the war was the inconsistency between a crusade for world democracy and the denial of democracy at home. This was the untenable position of President Wilson and the Democratic Administration, from which we must force them to retreat. We could force such a retreat when we had exposed to the world this weakest point.

Just as the bluff of a democratic crusade must be called, so must the knight-leader of the crusade be exposed to the critical eyes of the world. Here was the President, suddenly elevated to the position of a world leader with the almost pathetic trust of the peoples of the world. Here was the champion of their democratic aspirations. Here was a kind of universal Moses, expected to lead all peoples out of bondage—no matter what the bondage, no matter of how long standing.

The President’s elevation to this unique pinnacle of power was at once an advantage and a disadvantage to us. It was an advantage to us in that it made our attack more dramatic. One supposed to be impeccable was more vulnerable. It was a disadvantage to have to overcome this universal trust and world-wide popularity. But this conflict of wits and brains against power only enhanced our ingenuity.

On the day the English mission headed by Mr. Balfour, and the French mission headed by M. Viviani, visited the White House, we took these inscriptions to the picket line:

WE SHALL FIGHT FOR THE THINGS WE HAVE ALWAYS CARRIED NEAREST OUR HEARTS
DEMOCRACY SHOULD BEGIN AT HOME
WE DEMAND JUSTICE AND SELF-GOVERNMENT IN OUR OWN LAND

Embarrassing to say these things before foreign visitors? We hoped it would be. In our capacity to embarrass Mr. Wilson in his Administration, lay our only hope of success. We had to keep before the country the flagrant inconsistency of the President’s position. We intended to know why, if democracy were so precious as to demand the nation’s blood and treasure for its achievement abroad, its execution at home was so undesirable.

Meanwhile:—

“I tell you solemnly, ladies and gentlemen, we cannot any longer postpone justice in these United States”—President Wilson.

“I don’t wish to sit down and let any man take care of me without my at least having a voice in it, and if he doesn’t listen to my advice, I am going to make it as unpleasant as I can.”—President Wilson,—and other challenges were carried on banners to the picket line.

Some rumblings of political action began to be heard. The Democratic majority had appointed a Senate Committee on Woman Suffrage whose members were overwhelmingly for federal action. The chairman, Senator Andreas Jones of New Mexico, promised an early report to the Senate. There were scores of gains in Congress. Representatives and Senators were tumbling over each other to introduce similar suffrage resolutions. We actually had difficulty in choosing the man whose name should stamp our measure.

A minority party also was moved to act. Members of the Progressive Party met in convention in St. Louis on April 12, 13 and 14 and adopted a suffrage plank which demanded “the nation- wide enfranchisement of women . . . .”

In addition to this plank they adopted a resolution calling for the establishment of democracy at home “at a time when the United States is entering into an international war for democracy” and instructing the chairman of the convention “to request a committee consisting of representatives of all liberal groups to go to Washington to present to the President and the Congress of the United States a demand for immediate submission of an amendment to the United States constitution enfranchising women.”

They appointed a committee from the convention to carry these resolutions to the President. The committee included Mr. J. A. H. Hopkins of the Progressive Party, as chairman; Dr. E. A. Rumley of the Progressive-Republican Party and Vice President of the New York Evening Mail; Mr. John Spargo of the Socialist Party; Mr. Virgil Hinshaw, chairman of the Executive Committee of the Prohibition Party; and Miss Mabel Vernon, Secretary of the National Woman’s Party. It was the first suffrage conference with the President after the declaration of war, and was the last deputation on suffrage by minority party leaders. The conference was one of the utmost informality and friendliness.

The President was deeply moved, indeed, almost to the point of tears, when Miss Mabel Vernon said, “Mr. President, the feelings of many women in this country are best expressed by your own words in your war message to Congress . . . . To every woman who reads that message must come at once this question: If the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own government is so sacred a cause to foreign people as to constitute the reason for our entering the international war in its defense, will you not, Mr. President, give immediate aid to the measure before Congress demanding self-government for the women of this country?”

The President admitted that suffrage was constantly pressing upon his mind for reconsideration. He added, however, that the program for the session was practically complete and intimated that it did not include the enfranchisement of women.

He informed the Committee that he had written a letter to Mr. Pou, Chairman of the Rules Committee of the House, expressing himself as favoring the creation of a Woman Suffrage Committee in that body. While we had no objection to having the House create a Suffrage Committee, we were not primarily interested in the amplification of Congressional machinery, unless this amplification was to be followed by the passage of the amendment. The President could as easily have written the Senate Committee on Suffrage or the Judiciary Committee of the House, advising an immediate report on the suffrage resolution, as have asked for the creation of another committee to report on the subject.

He made no mention of his state-by-state conviction, however, as he had in previous interviews, and the Committee of Progressives understood him to have at least tacitly accepted federal action.

The House Judiciary Committee continued to refuse to act and the House Rules Committee steadily refused to create a Suffrage Committee.

Hoping to win back to the fold the wandering Progressives who had thus demonstrated their allegiance to suffrage and seeing an opportunity to embarrass the Administration, the, Republicans began to interest themselves in action on the amendment. In the midst of Democratic delays, Representative James R. Mann, Republican leader of the House, moved to discharge the Judiciary Committee from further consideration of the suffrage amendment. No matter if the discussion which followed did revolve about the authorization of an expenditure of $10,000 for the erection of a monument to a dead President as a legitimate war measure. It was clear from the partisan attitude of those who took part in the debate that we were advancing to that position where we were as good political material to be contested over by opposing political groups as was a monument to a dead President. And if the Democrats could defend such an issue as a war measure, the Republicans wanted to know why they should ignore suffrage for women as a war measure. And it was encouraging to find ourselves thus suddenly and spontaneously sponsored by the Republican leader.

The Administration was aroused. It did not know how far the Republicans were prepared to go in their drive for action, so on the day of this flurry in the House the snail-like Rules Committee suddenly met in answer to the call of its chairman, Mr. Pou, and by a vote of 6 to 5 decided to report favorably on the resolution providing for a Woman Suffrage Committee in the House “after all pending war measures have been disposed of.”

Before the meeting, Mr. Pou made a last appeal to the Woman’s Party to remove the pickets . . . . “We can’t possibly win as long as pickets guard the White House and Capitol,” Mr. Pou had said. The pickets continued their vigil and the motion carried.

Still uncertain as to the purposes of the Republicans, the Democrats were moved to further action.

The Executive Committee of the Democratic National Committee, meeting in Washington a few days later, voted 4 to 9. to “officially urge upon the President that he call the two Houses of Congress together and recommend the immediate submission of the Susan B. Anthony amendment.” This action which in effect reversed the plank in the Democratic platform evidently aroused protests from powerful quarters. Also the Republicans quickly subsided when they saw the Democrats making an advance. And so the Democratic Executive Committee began to spread abroad the news that its act was not really official, but merely reflected the “personal conviction” of the members present. It extracted the official flavor, and so of course no action followed in Congress.

And so it went—like a great game of chess. Doubtless the politicians believed they were moved from their own true and noble motives. The fact was that the pickets had moved the Democrats a step. The Republicans had then attempted to take two steps, whereupon the Democrats must continue to move more rapidly than their opponents. Behind this matching of political wits by the two parties stood the faithful pickets compelling them both to act.

Simultaneously with these moves and counter-moves in political circles, the people in all sections of this vast country began to speak their minds. Meetings were springing up everywhere, at which resolutions were passed backing up the picket line and urging the President and Congress to act. Even the South, the Administration’s stronghold, sent fiery telegrams demanding action. Alabama, South Carolina, Texas, Maryland, Mississippi, as well as the West, Middle West, New England and the East—the stream was endless.

Every time a new piece of legislation was passed,—the war tax bill, food conservation or what not,—women from unexpected quarters sent to the Government their protest against the passage of measures so vital to women without women’s consent, coupled with an appeal for the liberation of women. Club women, college women, federations of labor,—various kinds of organizations sent protests to the Administration leaders. The picket line, approaching its sixth month of duty, had aroused the country to an unprecedented interest in suffrage; it had rallied widespread public support to the amendment as a war measure, and had itself become almost univer- sally accepted if not universally approved. And in the midst of picketing ands in spite of all the prophecies and fears that “picketing” would “set back the cause,” within one month, Michigan, Nebraska and Rhode Island granted Presidential suffrage to women.

The leaders were busy marshaling their forces behind the President’s war program, which included the controversial Conscription and Espionage Bills, then pending, and did not relish having our question so vivid in the public mind. Even when the rank and file of Congress gave consideration to questions not in the war program, they had to face a possible charge of inconsistency, insincerity or bad faith. The freedom of Ireland, for example, was not in the program. And when 132 members of the House cabled Lloyd George that nothing would do more for American enthusiasm in the war than a settlement of the Irish question, we took pains to ascertain the extent of the belief in liberty at home of these easy champions of Irish liberty. When we found that of the 132 men only 5’7 believed in liberty for American women, we were not delicate in pointing out to the remaining “(5 that their belief in liberty for Ireland would appear more sincere if they believed in a democratic reform such as woman suffrage here.

The manifestations of popular approval of suffrage, the constant stream of protests to the Administration against its delay nationally, and the shame of having women begging at its gates, could result in only one of two things. The Administration had little choice. It must yield to this pressure from the people or it must suppress the agitation which was causing such interest. It must pass the amendment or remove the troublesome pickets.

It decided to remove the pickets.

Chapter 3
The First Arrests

The Administration chose suppression. They resorted to force in an attempt to end picketing. It was a policy doomed to failure as certainly as all resorts to force to kill agitation have failed ultimately. This marked the beginning of the adoption by the Administration of tactics from which they could never extricate themselves with honor. Unfortunately for them they were entering upon this policy toward women which savored of czarist practices, at the very moment they were congratulating the Russians upon their liberation from the oppression of a Czar. This fact supplied us with a fresh angle of attack.

President Wilson sent a Mission to Russia to add America’s appeal to that of the other Allies to keep that impoverished country in the war. Such was our-democratic zeal to persuade Russia to continue the war and to convince her people of its democratic purposes, and of the democratic quality of America, that Elihu Root, one of the President’s envoys, stated in Petrograd that he represented a republic where “universal, direct, equal and secret suffrage obtained.” We subjected the President to attack through this statement.

Russia also sent a war mission to our country for purposes of coöperation. This occasion offered us the opportunity again to expose the Administration’s weakness in claiming complete political democracy while women were still denied their political freedom.

It was a beautiful June day when all Washington was agog with the visit of the Russian diplomats to the President. As the car carrying the envoys passed swiftly through the gates of the White House there stood on the picket line two silent sentinels, Miss Lucy Burns of New York and Mrs. Lawrence Lewis of Philadelphia, both members of the National Executive Committee, with a great lettered banner which read:

TO THE RUSSIAN ENVOYS
PRESIDENT WILSON AND ENVOY ROOT ARE DECEIVING RUSSIA WHEN THEY SAY “WE ARE A DEMOCRACY, HELP US WIN THE WORLD WAR SO THAT DEMOCRACY MAY SURVIVE”
WE THE WOMEN OF AMERICA TELL YOU THAT AMER ICA IS NOT A DEMOCRACY. TWENTY-MILLION AMERI’ CAN WOMEN ARE DENIED THE RIGHT TO VOTE. PRESI DENT WILSON IS THE CHIEF OPPONENT OF THEIR NA TIONAL ENFRANCHISEMENT.
HELP US MAKE THIS NATION REALLY FREE. TELL OUR GOVERNMENT IT MUST LIBERATE ITS PEOPLE BEFORE IT CAN CLAIM FREE RUSSIA AS AN ALLY.

Rumors that the suffragists would make a special demonstration before the Russian Mission had brought a great crowd to the far gate of the White House; a crowd composed almost entirely of men.

Like all crowds, this crowd had its share of hoodlums and roughs who tried to interfere with the women’s order of the day. There was a flurry of excitement over this defiant message of truth, but nothing that could not with the utmost ease have been settled by one policeman.

There was the criticism in the press and on the lips of men that we were embarrassing our Government before the eyes of foreign visitors. In answering the criticism, Miss Paul publicly stated our position thus: “The intolerable conditions against which we protest can be changed in the twinkling of an eye. The responsibility for our protest is, therefore, with the Administration and not with the women of America, if the lack of democracy at home weakens the Administration in its fight for democracy three thousand miles away.”

This was too dreadful. A flurry at the gates of the Chief of the nation at such a time would never do. Our allies in the crusade for democracy must not know that we had a day-by-day unrest at home. Something must be done to stop this expose at once. Had these women no manners? Had they no shame? Was the fundamental weakness in our boast of pure and perfect democracy to be so wantonly displayed with impunity?

Of course it was embarrassing. We meant it to be. The truth must be told at all costs. This was no time for manners.

Hurried conferences behind closed doors! Summoning of the military to discuss declaring a military zone around the White House! Women could not advance on drawn bayonets. And if they did . . . What a picture! Common decency told the more humane leaders that this would never do. I daresay political wisdom crept into the reasoning of others.

Closing the Woman’s Party headquarters was discussed. Perhaps a raid! And all for what? Because women were holding banners asking for the precious principle at home that men were supposed to be dying for abroad.

Finally a decision was reached embodying the combined wisdom of all the various conferees. The Chief of Police, Major Pullman, was detailed to “request” us to stop “picketing” and to tell us that if we continued to picket, we would be arrested._

“We have picketed for six months without interference,” said Miss Paul. “Has the law been changed?”

“No,” was the reply, “but you must stop it.”

“But, Major Pullman, we have consulted our lawyers and know we have a legal right to picket.”

“I warn you, you will be arrested if you attempt to picket again.”

The following day Miss Lucy Burns and Miss Katherine Morey of Boston carried to the White House gates “We shall fight for the things we have always held nearest our hearts, for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own government,” and were arrested.

News had spread through the city that the pickets were to be arrested. A moderately large crowd had gathered to see the “fun.” One has only to come into conflict with prevailing authority, whether rightly or wrongly, to find friendly hosts vanishing with lightning speed. To know that we were no longer wanted at the gates of the White House and that the police were no longer our “friends” was enough for the mob mind.

Some members of the crowd made sport of the women. Others hurled cheap and childish epithets at them. Small boys were allowed to capture souvenirs, shreds of the banners torn from non-resistant women, as trophies of the sport.

Thinking they had been mistaken in believing the pickets were to be arrested, and having grown weary of their strenuous sport, the crowd moved on its way. Two solitary figures remained, standing on the sidewalk, flanked by the vast Pennsylvania Avenue, looking quite abandoned and alone, when suddenly without any warrant in law, they were arrested on a completely deserted avenue.

Miss Burns and Miss Morey upon arriving at the police station, insisted, to the great surprise of all the officials, upon knowing the charge against them. Major Pullman and his entire staff were utterly at a loss to know what to answer. The Administration had looked ahead only as far as threatening arrest. They doubtless thought this was all they would have to do. People could not be arrested for picketing. Picketing is a guaranteed right under the Clayton Act of Congress. Disorderly conduct? There had been no disorderly I conduct. Inciting to riot? Impossible! The women had stood as silent sentinels holding the President’s own eloquent words.

Doors opened and closed mysteriously. Officials and subofficials passed hurriedly to and fro. Whispered conversations were heard. The book on rules and regulations was hopefully thumbed. Hours passed. Finally the two prisoners were pompously told that they had “obstructed the traffic” on Pennsylvania Avenue, were dismissed on their own recognizance, and never brought to trial.

The following day, June 23rd, more arrests were made; two women at the White House, two at the Capitol. All carried banners with the same words of the President. There was no hesitation this time. They were promptly arrested for “obstructing the traffic.” They, too, were dismissed and their cases never tried. It seemed clear that the Administration hoped to suppress picketing merely by arrests. When. however. women continued to picket in the face of arrest, the Administration quickened its advance into the venture of suppression. It decided to bring the offenders to trial.

On June 26, six American women were tried, judged guilty on the technical charge of “obstructing the traffic,” warned by the court of their “unpatriotic, almost treasonable behavior,” and sentenced to pay a fine of twenty-five dollars or serve three days in jail.

“Not a dollar of your fine will we pay,” was the answer of the women. “To pay a fine would be an admission of guilt. We are innocent.”

The six women who were privileged to serve the first terms of imprisonment for suffrage in this country, were Miss Katherine Morey of Massachusetts, Mrs. Annie Arneil and Miss Mabel Vernon of Delaware, Miss Lavinia Dock of Pennsylvania, Miss Maud Jamison of Virginia, and Miss Virginia Arnold of North Carolina. “Privileged” in spite of the foul air, the rats, and the mutterings of their strange comrades in jail!

Independence Day, July 4, 1917, is the occasion for two demonstrations in the name of liberty. Champ Clark, late Democratic speaker of the House, is declaiming to a cheering crowd behind the White House, “Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.” In front of the White House thirteen silent sentinels with banners bearing the same words, are arrested. It would have been exceedingly droll if it had not been so tragic. Champ Clark and his throng were not molested. The women with practically a deserted street were arrested and served jail terms for “obstructing traffic.”

The trial of this group was delayed to give the jail authorities time to “vacate and tidy up,” as one prisoner confided to Miss Joy Young. It developed that “orders” had been received at the jail immediately after the arrests and before the trial, “to make ready for the suffragettes.” What did it matter that their case had not yet been heard? To jail they must go.

Was not the judge who tried and sentenced them a direct appointee of President Wilson? Were not the District Commissioners who gave orders to prepare the cells the direct appointees of President Wilson? And was not the Chief of Police of the District of Columbia a direct appointee of these same commissioners? And was not the jail warden who made life for the women so unbearable in prison also a direct appointee of the commissioners?

It was all a merry little ring and its cavalier attitude toward the law, toward justice, and above all toward women was of no importance. The world was on fire with a grand blaze. This tiny flame would scarcely be visible. No one would notice a few “mad” women thrown into jail. And if the world should find it out, doubtless public opinion would agree that the women ought to stay there. And even if it should not agree, this little matter could all be explained away before another election.

Meanwhile the President could proclaim through official channels his disinterestedness. Observe the document, of which I give the substance, which he caused or allowed to be published at this time, through his Committee on Public Information.

“OFFICIAL BULLETIN”

“Published Daily under order of the President of the United States, by the Committee on Public Information.

GEORGE CREEL, Chairman.

“Furnished without charge to all newspapers, post offices, government officials and agencies of a public character for the dissemination of official news of the United States Government.”

“Washington, July 3, 1917. No. 46-Vol. i.”

There follows a long editorial[1] which laments the public attention which has centered on the militant campaign, appeals to editors and reporters not to “encourage” us in our peculiar conduct by printing defies to the President of the United States even when “flaunted on a pretty little purple and gold banner” and exhorts the public to control its thrills. The official bulletin concludes with:

“It is a fact that there remains in America one man who has known exactly the right attitude to take and maintain toward the pickets. A whimsical smile, slightly puckered at the roots by a sense of the ridiculous, a polite bow—and for the rest a complete ignoring of their existence. He happens to be the man around whom the little whirlwind whirls—the President of the United States.” And finally with an admonition that “the rest’ of the country … take example from him in its emotional reaction to the picket question.”

[1] From the Woman Citizen.

The Administration pinned its faith on jail—that institution of convenience to the oppressor when he is strong in power and his weapons are effective. When the oppressor miscalculates the strength of the oppressed, jail loses its convenience.

Chapter 4
Occoquan Workhouse

It is Bastille Day, July fourteenth. Inspiring scenes and tragic sacrifices for liberty come to our minds. Sixteen women march in single file to take their own “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” to the White House gates. It is the middle of a hot afternoon. A thin line of curious spectators is seen in the park opposite the suffrage headquarters. The police assemble from obscure spots; some afoot, others on bicycles. They close in on the women and follow them to the gates.

The proud banner is scarcely at the gates when the leader is placed under arrest. Her place is taken by another. She is taken. Another, and still another steps into the breach and is arrested.

Meanwhile the crowd grows, attracted to the spot by the presence of the police and the patrol wagon. Applause is heard. There are cries of “shame” for the police, who, I must say, did not always act as if they relished carrying out what they termed “orders from higher up.” An occasional hoot from a small boy served to make the mood of the hostile ones a bit gayer. But for the most part an intense silence fell upon the watchers, as they saw not only younger women, but whitehaired grandmothers hoisted before the public gaze into the crowded patrol, their heads erect, their eyes a little moist and their frail hands holding tightly to the banner until wrested from them by superior brute force.

This is the first time most of the women have ever seen a police station, and they are interested in, their surroundings. They are not interested in helping the panting policeman count them over and identify them. Who arrested whom? That becomes the gigantic question.

“Will the ladies please tell which officer arrested them?”

They will not. They do not intend to be a party to this outrage. Finally the officers abandon their attempt at identification. They have the names of the arrestees and will accept bail for their appearance Monday.

“Well girls, I’ve never seen but one other court in my life and that was the Court of St. James. But I must say they are not very much alike,” was the cheery comment of Mrs. Florence Bayard Hilles,[1] as we entered the court room on Monday.

[1] Mrs. Hilles is the daughter of the late Thomas Bayard, formerly America’s ambassador to Great Britain, and Secretary of State in President Cleveland’s cabinet.

The stuffy court room is packed to overflowing. The fat, one-eyed bailiff is perspiring to no purpose. He cannot make the throng “sit down.” In fact every one who has anything to do with the pickets perspires to no purpose. Judge Mullowny takes his seat, looking at once grotesque and menacing on his red throne.

“Silence in the court room,” from the sinister-eyed bailiff. And a silence. follows so heavy that it can be heard.

Saturday night’s both black and white—are tried first. The suffrage prisoners strain their ears to hear the pitiful pleas of these unfortunates, most of whom come to the bar without counsel or friend. Scraps of evidence are heard.

JUDGE: “You say you were not quarreling, Lottie?”

LOTTIE: “I sho’ do yo’ hono’. We wuz jes singin’—we wuz sho’ nuf, sah.”

JUDGE: “Singing, Lottie? Why your neighbors here testify to the fact that you were making a great deal of noise—so much that they could not sleep.”

LOTTIE: “I tells yo’ honor’ we wuz jes singin’ lak we allays do.”

JUDGE : “What were you singing?”

LOTTIE: “Why, hymns, sah.”

The judge smiles cynically.

A neatly-attired white man with a wizened face again takes the stand against Lottie. Hymns or no hymns he could not sleep. The judge pronounces a sentence of “six months in the workhouse,” for Lottie.

And so it goes on.

The suffrage prisoners are the main business of the morning. Sixteen women come inside the railing which separates “tried” from “untried” and take their seats.

“Do the ladies wish the government to provide them with counsel?”

They do not.

“We shall speak in our own behalf. We feel that we can best represent ourselves,” we announce. Miss Anne Martin and I act as attorneys for the group.

The same panting policemen who could not identify the people they had arrested give their stereotyped, false and illiterate testimony. The judge helps them over the hard places and so does the government’s attorney. They stumble to an embarrassed finish and retire.

An aged government clerk, grown infirm in the service, takes the stand and the government attorney proves through him that there is a White House; that it has a side-walk in front of it, and a pavement, and a hundred other overwhelming facts. The pathetic clerk shakes his dusty frame and slinks off the stand. The prosecuting attorney now elaborately proves that we walked, that we carried banners, that we were arrested by the aforesaid officers while attempting to hold our banners at the White House gates.

Each woman speaks briefly in her own defense. She denounces the government’s policy with hot defiance. The blame is placed squarely at the door of the Administration, and in unmistakable terms. Miss Anne Martin opens for the defense:

“This is what we are doing with our banners before the White House, petitioning the most powerful representative of the government, the President of the United States, for a redress of grievances; we are asking him to use his great power to secure the passage of the national suffrage amendment.

“As long as the government and the representatives of the government prefer to send women to jail on petty and technical charges, we will go to jail. Persecution has always advanced the cause of justice. The right of American women to work for democracy must be maintained . . . . We would hinder, not help, the whole cause of freedom for women, if we weakly submitted to persecution now. Our work for the passage of the amendment must go on. It will go on.”

Mrs. John Rogers, Jr., descendant of Roger Sherman, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, speaks: “We are not guilty of any offence, not even of infringing a police regulation. We know full well that we stand here because the President of the United States refuses to give liberty to American women. We believe, your Honor, that the wrong persons are before the bar in this Court . . . .”

“I object, your Honor, to this woman making such a statement here in Court,” says the District Attorney.

“We believe the President is the guilty one and that we are innocent.”

“Your Honor, I object,” shouts the Government’s attorney.

The prisoner continues calmly: “There are votes enough and there is time enough to pass the national suffrage amendment through Congress at this session. More than 200 votes in the House and more than 50 in the Senate are pledged to this amendment. The President puts his power behind all measures in which he takes a genuine interest. If he will say one frank word advocating this measure it will pass as a piece of war emergency legislation.”

Mrs. Florence Bayard Hilles speaks in her own defense: “For generations the men of my family have given their services to their country. For myself, my training from childhood has been with a father who believed in democracy and who belonged to the Democratic Party. By inheritance and connection I am a Democrat, and to a Democratic President I went with my appeal . . . . What a spectacle it must be to the thinking people of this country to see us urged to go to war for democracy in a foreign land, and to see women thrown into prison who plead for that same cause at home.

“I stand here to affirm my innocence of the charge against me. This court has not proven that I obstructed traffic. My presence at the White House gate was under the constitutional right of petitioning the government for freedom or for any other cause. During the months of January, February, March, April and May picketing was legal. In June it suddenly becomes illegal . . . .

“My services as an American woman are being conscripted by order of the President of the United States to help win the world war for democracy . . . . ‘for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own government.’ I shall continue to plead for the political liberty of American women-and especially do I plead to the President, since he is the one person who . . . can end the struggles of American women to take their proper places in a true democracy.”

There is continuous objection from the prosecutor, eager advice from the judge, “you had better keep to the charge of obstructing traffic” But round on round of applause comes from the intent audience, whenever a defiant note is struck by the prisoners, and in spite of the sharp rapping of the gavel confusion reigns. And how utterly puny the “charge” is! If it were true that the prisoners actually obstructed the traffic, how grotesque that would be. The importance of their demand, the purity of their reasoning, the nobility and gentle quality of the prisoners at the bar; all conspire to make the charge against them, and the attorney who makes it, and the judge who hears it, petty and ridiculous.

But justice must proceed.

Mrs. Gilson Gardner of Washington, D. C., a member of the Executive Committee of the National Woman’s party, and the wife of Gilson Gardner, a well-known Liberal and journalist, speaks:

“It is impossible for me to believe that we were arrested because we were obstructing traffic or blocking the public high- way.

“We have been carrying on activities of a distinctly political nature, and these political activities have seemingly disturbed certain powerful influences. Arrests followed. I submit that these arrests are purely political and that the charge of an unlawful assemblage and of obstructing traffic is a political subterfuge. Even should I be sent to jail which, I could not, your Honor, anticipate, I would be in jail, not because I obstructed traffic, but because I have offended politically, because I have demanded of this government freedom for women.”

It was my task to sum up for the defense. The judge sat bored through my statement. “We know and I believe the Court knows also,” I said, “that President Wilson and his Administration are responsible for our being here to-day. It is a fact that they gave the orders which caused our arrest and appearance before this bar.

“We know and you know, that the District Commissioners are appointed by the President, that the present commissioners were appointed by President Wilson. We know that you, your Honor, were appointed to the bench by President Wilson, and that the district attorney who prosecutes us was appointed by the President. These various officers would not dare bring us here under these false charges without the policy having been decided upon by the responsible leaders.

“What is our real crime? What have these distinguished and liberty-loving women done to bring them before this court of justice? Why, your Honor, their crime is that they peacefully petitioned the President of the United States for liberty. What must be the shame of our nation before the world when it becomes known that here we throw women into jail who love liberty and attempt to peacefully petition the President for it? These women are nearly all descended from revolutionary ancestors or from some of the greatest libertarian statesmen this country has produced. What would these men say now if they could see that passion for liberty which was in their own hearts rewarded in the twentieth century with foul and filthy imprisonment!

“We say to you, this outrageous policy of stupid and brutal punishment will not dampen the ardor of the women. Where sixteen of us face your judgment to-day there will be sixty tomorrow, so great will be the indignation of our colleagues in this fight.”

The trial came to an end after a tense two days. The packed court-room fat in a terrible silence awaiting the judge’s answer.

There were distinguished men present at the trial—men who also fight for their ideals. There was Frederic C. Howe, then Commissioner of Immigration of the Port of New York, Frank P. Walsh, International labor leader, Dudley Field Malone, then Collector of the Port of New York, Amos Pinchot, liberal leader, John A. H. Hopkins, then liberal-progressive leader in New Jersey who had turned his organization to the support of the President and become a member of the President’s Campaign Committee, now chairman of the Committee of Fortyeight and whose beautiful wife was among the prisoners, Allen McCurdy, secretary of the Committee of Forty-eight and many others. One and all came forward to protest to us during the adjournment. “This is monstrous.” . . . “Never have I seen evidence so disregarded.” . . . “This is a tragic farce” . . .

“He will never dare sentence you.”

It was reported to us that the judge used the interim to telephone to the District building, where the District Commissioners sit. He returned to pronounce, “Sixty days in the workhouse in default of a twenty-five dollar fine.”

The shock was swift and certain to all the spectators. We would not of course pay the unjust fine imposed, for we were not guilty of any offense.

The judge attempted persuasion. “You had better decide to pay your fines,” he ventured. And “you will not find jail a pleasant place to be.” It was clear that neither he nor his confreres had imagined women would accept with equanimity so drastic a sentence. It was now their time to be shocked. Here were “ladies”—that was perfectly clear—“ladies” of unusual distinction. Surely they would not face the humiliation of a workhouse sentence which involved not only imprisonment but penal servitude! The Administration was wrong again.

“We protest against this unjust sentence and conviction,” we said, “but we prefer the workhouse to the payment of a fine imposed for an offense of which we are not guilty.” We filed into the “pen,” to join the other prisoners, and wait for the “black maria” to carry us to prison.

We are all taken to the District Jail, where we are put through the regular catechism: “Were you ever in prison before?—Age—birthplace—father—mother—religion and what not?” We are then locked up,—two to a cell. What will happen next?

The sleek jailer, whose attempt to be cordial provokes a certain distrust, comes to our corridor to “turn us over” to our next keeper-the warden of Occoquan. We learn that the workhouse is not situated in the District of Columbia but in Virginia.

Other locked wagons with tiny windows up near the driver now take us, side by side with drunks and disorderlies, prostitutes and thieves, to the Pennsylvania Station. Here we embark for the unknown terrors of the workhouse, filing through crowds at the station, driven on by our “keeper,” who resembles Simon Legree, with his long stick and his pushing and shoving to hurry us along. The crowd is quick to realize that we are prisoners, because of our associates. Friends try to bid us a last farewell and slip us a sweet or fruit, as we are rushed through the iron station gates to the train.

Warden Whittaker is our keeper, thin and old, with a cruel mouth, brutal eyes and a sinister birthmark on his temple. He guards very anxiously his “dangerous criminals” lest they try to leap out of the train to freedom! We chat a little and attempt to relax from the strain that we have endured since Saturday. It is now late in the afternoon of Tuesday.

The dusk is gathering. It is almost totally dark when we alight at a tiny station in what seems to us a wilderness. It is a deserted country. Even the gayest member of the party, I am sure, was struck with a little terror here.

More locked wagons, blacker than the dusk, awaited us. The prison van jolted and bumped along the rocky and hilly road. A cluster of lights twinkled beyond the last hill, and we knew that we were coming to our temporary summer residence. I can still see the long thin line of black poplars against the smoldering afterglow. I did not know then what tragic things they concealed.

We entered a well-lighted office. A few guards of ugly demeanor stood about. Warden Whittaker consulted with the hard-faced matron, Mrs. Herndon, who began the prison routine. Names were called, and each prisoner stepped to the desk to get her number, to give up all jewelry, money, handbags, letters, eye-glasses, traveling bags containing toilet necessities, in fact everything except the clothes on her body.

From there we were herded into the long bare dining room where we sat dumbly down to a bowl of dirty sour soup. I say dumbly—for now began the rule of silence. Prisoners are punished for speaking to one another at table. They cannot even whisper, much less smile or laugh. They must be conscious always of their “guilt.” Every possible thing is done to make the inmates feel that they are and must continue to be antisocial creatures.

We taste our soup and crust of bread. We try so hard to eat it for we are tired and hungry, but no one of us is able to get it down. We leave the table hungry and slightly nauseated.

Another long march in silence through various channels into a large dormitory and through a double line of cots! Then we stand, weary to the point of fainting, waiting the next ordeal. This seemed to be the juncture at which we lost all that is left us of contact with the outside world,—our clothes.

An assistant matron, attended by negress prisoners, relieves us of our clothes. Each prisoner is obliged to strip naked without even the protection of a sheet, and proceed across what seems endless space, to a shower bath. A large tin bucket stands on the floor and in this is a minute piece of dirty soap, which is offered to us and rejected. We dare not risk the soap used by so many prisoners. Naked, we return from the bath to receive our allotment of coarse, hideous prison clothes, the outer garments of which consist of a bulky mother-hubbard wrapper, of bluish gray ticking and a heavy apron of the same dismal stuff. It takes a dominant personality indeed to survive these clothes. The thick unbleached muslin undergarments are of designs never to be forgotten! And the thick stockings and forlorn shoes! What torture to put on shoes that are alike for each foot and made to fit just anybody who may happen along.

Why are we being ordered to dress? It is long past the bed-time hour.

Our suspense is brief. All dressed in cloth of “guilt” we are led into what we later learn is the “recreation” room. Lined up against its wall, we might any other time have bantered about the possibility of being shot, but we are in no mood to jest. The door finally opens and in strides Warden Whittaker with a stranger beside him.

He reviews his latest criminal recruits, engaging the stranger meanwhile in whispered conversation. There are short, uncertain laughs. There are nods of the head and more whispers.

“Well, ladies, I hope you are all comfortable. Now make yourselves at home here. I think you will find it healthy here. You’ll weigh more when you go out than when you came in. You will be allowed to write one letter a month-to your family. Of course we open and read all letters coming in and going out. To-morrow you will be assigned your work. I hope you will sleep well. Good night!”

We did not answer. We looked at each other.

News leaked through in the morning that the stranger had been a newspaper reporter. The papers next morning were full of the “comfort” and “luxury” of our surroundings. The “delicious” food sounded most reassuring to the nation. In fact no word of the truth was allowed to appear.

The correspondent could not know that we went back to our cots to try to sleep side by side with negro prostitutes. Not that we shrank from these women on account of their color, but how terrible to know that, the institution had gone out of its way to bring these prisoners from their own wing to the white wing in an attempt to humiliate us. There was plenty of room in the negro wing. But prison must be made so unbearable that no more women would face it. That was the policy attempted here.

We tried very hard to sleep and forget our hunger and weariness. But all the night through our dusky comrades padded by to the lavatory, and in the streak of bright light which shot across the center of the room, startled heads could be seen bobbing up in the direction of a demented woman in the end cot. Her weird mutterings made us fearful. There was no sleep in this strange place.

Our thoughts turn to the outside world. Will the women care? Will enough women believe that through such humiliation all may win freedom? Will they believe that through our imprisonment their slavery will be lifted the sooner? Less philosophically, will the government be moved by public protest? Will such protest come?

The next morning brought us a visitor from suffrage headquarters. The institution hoped that the visitor would use her persuasion to make us pay our fines and leave and so she was admitted. We learned the cheering news, that immediately after sentence had been pronounced by the Court, Dudley Field Malone had gone direct to the White House to protest to the President. His protest was delivered with heat. The President said that he was “shocked” at the sixty day sentence, that he did not know it had been done, and made other evasions. Mr. Malone’s report of his interview with the President is given in full in a subsequent chapter.

Following Mr. Malone, Mr. J. A. H. Hopkins went to the White House. “How would you like to have your wife sleep in a dirty workhouse next to prostitutes?” was his direct talk to the President. Again the President was “shocked.” No wonder! Mr. and Mrs. Hopkins had been the President’s dinner guests not very long before, celebrating his return to power. They had supported him politically and financially in New Jersey. Now Mrs. Hopkins had been arrested at his gate and thrown into prison.

In reporting the interview, Mr. Hopkins said:

“The President asked me for suggestions as to what might be done, and I replied that in view of the seriousness of the present situation the only solution lay in immediate passage of the Susan B. Anthony amendment.”

Gilson Gardner also went to the White House to leave his hot protest. And there were others.

Telegrams poured in from all over the country. The press printed headlines which could not but arouse the sympathy of thousands. Even people who did not approve of picketing the White House said, “After all, what these women have done is certainly not ‘bad’ enough to merit such drastic punishment”

And women protested. From coast to coast there poured in at our headquarters copies of telegrams sent to Administration leaders. Of course not all women by any means had approved this method of agitation. But the government’s action had done more than we had been able to do for them. It had made them feel sex-conscious. Women were being unjustly treated. Regardless of their feelings about this particular procedure, they stood up and objected.

For the first time, I believe, our form of agitation began to seem a little more respectable than the Administration’s handling of it. But the Administration did not know this fact yet.

“Everybody in line for the work-room!”

We were thankful to leave our inedible breakfast. We were unable to drink the greasy black coffee. The pain in the tops of our heads was acute.

“What you all down here for?” asked a young negress, barely out of her teens, as she casually fingered her sewing material.

“Why, I held a purple, white and gold banner at the gates of the White House.”

“You don’ say so! What de odders do?”

“Same thing. We all held banners at the White House gates asking President Wilson to give us the vote.”

“An’ yo’ all got sixty days fo’ dat?”

“Yes. You see the President thought it would be a good idea to send us to the workhouse for asking for the vote. You know women want to vote and have wanted to for a long time in our country”

“O-Yass’m, I know. I seen yo’ parades, an’ meetin’s, an’ everythin’. I know whah yo’ all live, right near the White House. You’s alright. I hopes yo’ git it, fo’ women certainly do need protextion against men like Judge Mullowny. He has us allatime picked up an’ sen’ down here.

“They sen’ yo’ down here once, an’ then yo’ come out without a cent, and try to look fo’ a job, an’ befo’ yo’ can fin’ one a cop walks up an’ asks yo’ whah yo’ live, an’ ef yo’ haven’t got a place yet, becaus’ yo’ ain’ got a cent to ren’ one with, he says, ‘Come with me, I’ll fin’ yo’ a home,’ an’ hustles yo’ off to the p’lice station an’ down heah again, an’ you’re called a 4vag’ (vagrant). What chance has we niggahs got, I ask ya? I hopes yo’ all gits a vote an’ fixes up somethings for women!”

“You see that young girl over there?” said another prisoner, who in spite of an unfortunate life had kept a remnant of her early beauty. I nodded.

“Well, Judge Mullowny gave her thirty days for her first offense, and when he sentenced her, she cried out desperately, ‘Don’t send me down there, Judge! If you do, I’ll kill myself!’ What do you think he said to that?—‘I’ll give you six months in which to change your mind!’’

I reflected. The judge that broke this pale-faced, silent girl was the appointee of the President. It was the task of such a man to sentence American women to the workhouse for demanding liberty.

Conversing with the “regulars” was forbidden by the wardress, but we managed, from time to time, to talk to our fellow prisoners with stealthiness.

“We knew somethin’ was goin’ to happen,” said one negro girl, “because Monday the close we had on wer’ took off us an’ we were giv’ these old patched ones. We wuz told they wanted to take ‘stock,’ but we heard they wuz bein’ washed fo’ you-all suff’agettes.”

The unpleasantness at wearing the formless garments of these unfortunates made us all wince. But the government’s calculation aroused our hot indignation. We were not convicted until Tuesday and our prison garments were ready Monday!

“You must not speak against the President,” said the servile wardress, when she discovered we were telling our story to the inmates. “You know you will be thrashed if you say anything more about the President; and don’t forget you’re on Government property and may be arrested for treason if it happens again.”

We doubted the seriousness of this threat of thrashing until one of the girls confided to us that such outrages happened often. We afterward obtained proof of these brutalities.[1]

[1] See affidavit of Mrs. Bovee, page 144.

“Old Whittaker beat up that girl over there just last week and put her in the ‘booby’ house on bread and water for five days.”

“What did she do?” I asked.

“Oh, she an’ another girl got to scrapping in the blackberry patch and she didn’t pick enough berries. .”

“All put up your work, girls, and get in line.” This from the wardress, who sped up the work in the sewing room. It was lunch time, and though we were all hungry we dreaded going to the silence and the food in that gray dining room with the vile odors. We were counted again as we filed out, carrying our heavy chairs with us as is the workhouse custom.

“Do they do this all the time?” I asked. It seemed as though needless energy was being spent counting and recounting our little group.

“Wouldn’t do anybody any good to try to get away from here,” said one of the white girls. “Too many bloodhounds!”

“Bloodhounds!” I asked in amazement, for after all these women were not criminals but merely misdemeanants.

“Oh, yes. Just a little while ago, three men tried to get away and they turned bloodhounds after them and shot them dead-and they weren’t bad men either.”

When our untasted supper was over that night we were ordered into the square, bare-walled “recreation” room, where we and the other prisoners sat, and sat, and sat, our chairs against the walls, a dreary sight indeed, waiting for the fortyfive minutes before bedtime to pass. The sight of two negro girl prisoners combing out each other’s lice and dressing their kinky hair in such a way as to discourage permanently a return of the vermin did not produce in us exactly a feeling of “recreation.” But we tried to sing. The negroes joined in, too, and soon outsang us, with their plaintive melodies and hymns. Then back to our cells and another attempt to sleep.

A new ordeal the next morning! Another of the numberless “pedigrees” is to be taken. One by one we were called to the warden’s office.

“Were your father or mother ever insane?”

“Are you a confirmed drunkard, chronic or moderate drinker?”

“Do you smoke or chew or use tobacco in any form?”

“Married or single?”

“Single.”

“How many children?”

“None.”

“What religion do you profess?”

“Christian.”

“What religion do you profess?” in a higher pitched voice.

I did not clearly comprehend. “Do you mean ‘Am I a Catholic or a Protestant?’ I am a Christian.”

But it was of no avail. She wrote down, “None.”

I protested. “That is not accurate. I insist that I am a Christian, or at least I try to be one.”

“You must learn to be polite,” she retorted almost fiercely, and I returned to the sewing room.

For the hundredth time we asked to be given our toothbrushes, combs, handkerchiefs and our own soap. The third day of imprisonment without any of these essentials found us depressed and worried over our unsanitary condition. We plead also for toilet paper. It was senseless to deny these necessities. It is enough to imprison people. Why seek to degrade them utterly?

The third afternoon we were mysteriously summoned into the presence of Superintendent Whittaker. He seemed warm and cordial. We were ordered drawn up in a semi-circle.

“Ladies, there is a rumor that you may be pardoned,” he began.

“By whom?” asked one.

“For what?” asked another. “We are innocent women. There is nothing to pardon us for.”

“I have come to ask you what you would do if the President pardoned you.”

“We would refuse to accept it,” came the ready response from several.

“I shall leave you for a while to consider this. Mind! I have not yet received information of a pardon, but I have been asked to ascertain your attitude.”

Our consultation was brief. We were of one mind. We were unanimous in wishing to reject a pardon for a crime which we had never committed. We said so with some spirit when Mr. Whittaker returned for our decision.

“You have no choice. You are obliged to accept a pardon.”

That settled it, and we waited. That the protest on the outside had been strong enough to precipitate action from the government was the subject of our conversation. Evidently it had not been strong enough to force action on the suffrage amendment, but it was forcing action, and that was important.

Mr. Whittaker returned triumphant.

“Ladies, you are pardoned by the President. You are free to go as soon as you have taken off your prison clothes and put on your own.”

It was sad to leave the other prisoners behind. Especially pathetic were the girls who helped us with our clothes. They whispered such eager appeals in our ears, telling us of their drastic sentences for trifling offenses and of the cruel punishments. It was hard to resist digressing into some effort at prison reform. That way lay our instincts. Our reason told us that we must first change the status of women.

As we were leaving the workhouse to return to Washington we had an unexpected revelation of the attitude of officialdom toward our campaign. Addressing Miss Lucy Burns, who had arrived to assist us in getting on our way, Superintendent Whittaker, in an almost unbelievable rage, said, “Now that you women are going away, I have something to say and I want to say it to you. The next lot of women who come here won’t be treated with the same consideration that these women were.” I will show later on how he made good this terrible threat.

Receiving a Presidential pardon through the Attorney General had its amusing aspect. My comrades shared this amusement when I told them the following incident.

On the day after our arrest, I was having tea at the Chevy Chase Country Club in Washington. Quite casually a gentleman introduced me to Mr. Gregory, the Attorney General.

“I see you were mixed up with the suffragettes yesterday,” was the Attorney General’s first remark to the gentleman. And before the latter could explain that he had settled accounts quietly but efficiently with a hoodlum who was attempting to trip the women up on their march, the chief law officer of the United States contributed this important suggestion: “You know what I’d do if I was those policemen. I’d just take a hose out with me and when the women came out with their banners, why I’d just squirt the hose on ’em . . . .”

“But Mr. Gregory . . .”

“Yes, sir! If you can just make what a woman does look ridiculous, you can sure kill it . . . .”

“But, Mr. Attorney General, what right would the police have to assault these or any other women?” the gentleman managed finally to interpolate.

“Hup—hup—” denoting great surprise, came from the Attorney General, as he looked to me for reassurance.

His expectant look vanished when I said, “Mr. Gregory, did it ever occur to you that it might make the government look ridiculous instead of the women?”

You can imagine bow the easy manner of one who is sure of his audience melted from his face.

“This is one of the women arrested yesterday,” continued the gentleman, while the Attorney General smothered a “Well, I’ll be . . .”

“I am out on bail,” I said. “ To-morrow we go to jail. It is all prearranged, you understand. The trial is merely a matter of form.”

The highest law officer of the land fled gurgling. s

The day following our release Mrs. J. A. H. Hopkins carried a picket banner to the gates of the White House to test the validity of the pardon. Her banner read, “We do not ask pardon for ourselves but justice for all American women.” A curious crowd, as large as had collected on those days when the police arrested women for “obstructing traffic,” stood watching the lone picket. The President passed through the gates and saluted. The police did not interfere.

Daily picketing was resumed and no arrests followed for the moment.

It was now August, three months since the Senate Suffrage Committee authorized its chairman, Mr. Jones, to report the measure to the Senate for action. Mr. Jones said, however, that he was too busy to make a report; .that he wanted to make a particularly brilliant one, one that would “be a contribution to the cause”; that he did not approve of picketing, but that he would report the measure “in a reasonable time.” So much for the situation in the Senate!

From the House we gathered some interesting evidence. We reminded Mr. Webb, Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, that out of a total membership of twenty-one men on his committee, twelve were Democrats, two-thirds of whom were opposed to the measure; we reminded him that the Republicans on the committee were for action. Mr. Webb wrote in answer:

“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 on 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.”[1]

[1] Italics are mine.

Here was a frank admission of the assumption upon which women had gone to jail—that the President was responsible for action on the amendment.

Now that we were again allowed to picket the White House, the Republicans seized the opportunity legitimately to embarrass their opponents by precipitating a bitter debate.

Senator Cummins of Iowa, Republican member of the Suffrage Committee, moved, as had Mr. Mann in the House at an earlier date, to discharge the Suffrage Committee for failing to make the report authorized by the entire Committee. Mr. Cummins said, among other things:

“. . . I look upon the resolution as definitely and certainly a war measure. There is nothing that this country could do which would strengthen it more than to give the disfranchised women . . . the opportunity to vote . . . .

“Last week . . . I went to the Chairman of the Committee and told him that . . . we had finished the hearings, reached a conclusion and that it was our bounden duty to make the report to the Senate . . . . I asked him if he would not call a meeting of the Committee. He said that it would be impossible, that he had some other engagements which would prevent a meeting of the Committee.”

Senator Cummins explained that he finally got the promise of the Chairman that a meeting of the Committee would be called on a given date. When it was not called he made his motion.

Chairman Jones made some feeble remarks and some evasive excuses which meant nothing, and which only further aroused Republican friends of the measure on the Committee.

Senator Gronna of North Dakota, Republican, interrupted him with the direct question, “I ask the chairman of this committee why this joint resolution has not been reported? The Senator, who is chairman of the committee, I suppose, knows as well as I do that the people of the entire country are anxious to have this joint resolution submitted and to be given an opportunity to vote upon it.

Senator Johnson of California, Republican, proposed that Chairman Jones consent to call the Committee together to consider reporting out the bill, which Senator Jones flatly refused to do.

Senator Jones of Washington, another Republican member of the Committee, added:

“I agree with the Senator from Iowa that this is a war measure and ought to be considered as such at this time. I do not see how we can very consistently talk democracy while disfranchising the better half of our citizenship—I may not approve of the action of the women picketing the White House, but neither do I approve of what I consider the lawless action toward these women in connection with the picketing . . . .”

“I do not want to think the chairman does not desire to call the committee together because of some influence outside of Congress as some have suggested . . . .”

At this point Senator Hollis of New Hampshire, Democrat, arose to say:

“There is a small but very active group of women suffragists who have acted in such a way that some who are ardently in favor of woman suffrage believe that their action should not be encouraged by making a favorable report at this time.”

Senator Johnson protested at this point, but Senator Hollis continued:

“To discharge the committee would focus the attention of the country upon the action and would give undue weight to what has been done by the active group of woman suffragists.”

I think that any student of psychology will acknowledge that our picketing had stimulated action in Congress, and that what was now needed was some still more provocative action from us.

Chapter 5
August Riots

Imprisoning women had met with considerable public disapproval, and attendant political embarrassment to the Administration. That the presidential pardon would end this embarrassment was doubtless the hope of the Administration. The pickets, however, returned to their posts in steadily increasing numbers. Their presence at the gates was desired by the Administration no more now than it had been before the arrests and imprisonments. But they had found no way to rid themselves of the pickets. And as another month of picketing drew to an end the Administration ventured to try other ways to stop it and with it the consequent embarrassment. Their methods became physically more brutal and politically more stupid. Their conduct became lawless in the extreme.

Meanwhile the President had drafted the young men of America in their millions to die on foreign soil for foreign democracy. He had issued a special appeal to women to give their work, their treasure and their sons to this enterprise. At the same time his now gigantic figure stood obstinately across the path to our main objective. It was our daily task to keep vividly in his mind that objective. It was our responsibility to compel decisive action from him.

Using the return of Envoy Root from his mission to Russia as another dramatic opportunity to speak to the President we took to the picket line these mottoes:

TO ENVOY ROOT

YOU SAY THAT AMERICA MUST THROW ITS MANHOOD TO THE SUPPORT OF LIBERTY.
WHOSE LIBERTY?
THIS NATION IS NOT FREE. TWENTY MILLION WOMEN ARE DENIED BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES THE RIGHT TO REPRESENTATION IN THEIR OWN GOVERNMENT.
TELL THE PRESIDENT THAT HE CANNOT FIGHT AGAINST LIBERTY AT HOME WHILE HE TELLS US TO FIGHT FOR LIBERTY ABROAD.
TELL HIM TO MAKE AMERICA SAFE FOR DEMOCRACY BEFORE HE ASKS THE MOTHERS OF AMERICA TO THROW THEIR SONS TO THE SUPPORT OF DEMOCRACY IN EUROPE.
ASK HIM HOW HE CAN REFUSE LIBERTY TO AMERICAN CITIZENS WHEN HE IS FORCING MILLIONS OF AMERICAN BOYS OUT OF THEIR COUNTRY TO DIE FOR LIBERTY.

At no time during the entire picketing was the traffic on Pennsylvania Avenue so completely obstructed as it was for the two hours during which this banner made its appearance on the line. Police captains who three weeks before were testifying that the police could not manage the crowds, placidly looked on while these new crowds increased.

We did not regard Mr. Wilson as our President. We felt that he had neither political nor moral claim to our allegiance. War had been made without our consent. The war would be finished and very likely a bad peace would be written without our consent. Our fight was becoming increasingly difficult—I might almost say desperate. Here we were, a band of women fighting with banners, in the midst of a world armed to the teeth. And so it was not very difficult to understand how high spirited women grew more resentful, unwilling to be a party to the President’s hypocrisy, the hypocrisy so eager to sacrifice life without stint to the vague hope of liberty abroad, while refusing to assist in the peaceful legislative steps which would lead to self-government in our own country. As a matter of fact the President’s constant oratory on freedom and democracy moved them to scorn. They were stung into a protest so militant as to shock not only the President but the public. We inscribed on our banner what countless American women‘ had long thought in their hearts.

The truth was not pleasant but it had to be told. We submitted to the world, through the picket line, this question:

KAISER WILSON
HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN HOW YOU SYMPATHIZED WITH THE POOR GERMANS BECAUSE THEY WERE NOT SELF GOVERNED?
20,000,000 AMERICAN WOMEN ARE NOT SELF-GOVERNED. TAKE THE BEAM OUT OF YOUR OWN EYE.

We did not expect public sympathy at this point. We knew that not even the members of Congress who had occasionally in debate, but more frequently in their cloak rooms, and often to us privately, called the President “autocrat”—“Kaiser”—“Ruler”—“King”—“Czar”—would approve our telling the truth publicly.

Nor was it to be expected that eager young boys, all agog to fight Germans, would be averse to attacking women in the meantime. They were out to fight and such was the public hysteria that it did not exactly matter whom they fought.

And so those excited boys of the Army and Navy attacked the women and the banner. The banner was destroyed. Another was brought up to take its place. This one met the same fate. Meanwhile a crowd was assembling in front of the White House either to watch or to assist in the attacks. At the very moment when one banner was being snatched away and destroyed, President and Mrs. Wilson passed through the gates on their way to a military review at Fort Myer. The President saw American women being attacked, while the police refused them protection.

Not a move was made by the police to control the growing crowd. Such inaction is always a signal for more violence on the part of rowdies. As the throng moved to and fro between the White House and our Headquarters immediately opposite, so many banners were destroyed that finally Miss Lucy Burns, Miss Virginia Arnold and Miss Elizabeth Stuyvesant took those remaining to the second and third floor balconies of our building and hung them out. At this point there was not a picket left on the street. The crowd was clearly obstructing the traffic, but no attempt was made to move them back or to protect the women, some of whom were attacked by sailors on their own doorsteps. The two police officers present watched without interference while three sailors brought a ladder from the Belasco Theater in the same block, leaned it against the side of the Cameron House, the Headquarters, climbed up to the second floor balcony, mounted the iron railing and tore down all banners and the American flag. One sailor administered a severe blow in the face with his clenched fist upon Miss Georgina Sturgis of Washington.

“Why did you do that?” she demanded.

The man halted for a brief instant in obvious amazement and said, “I don’t know.” And with a violent wrench he tore the banner from her hands and ran down the ladder.

The narrow balcony was the scene of intense excitement.

But for Miss Burns’ superb strength she would have been dragged over the railing of the balcony to be plunged to the ground. The mob watched with fascination while she swayed to and fro in her wrestle with two young sailors. And still no attempt by the police to quell the riot!

The climax came when in the late afternoon a bullet was fired through one of the heavy glass windows of the second floor, embedding itself in the ceiling. The bullet grazed past the head of Mrs. Ella Morton Dean of Montana. Captain Flather of the 1st Precinct, with two detectives, later examined the holes and declared they had been made by a 38 caliber revolver, but no attempt was ever made to find the man who had drawn the revolver.

Meanwhile eggs and tomatoes were hurled at our fresh banners flying from the flag poles on the building.

Finally police reserves were summoned and in less than five minutes the crowd was pushed back and the street cleared. Thinking now that they could rely on the protection of the police, the women started with their banners for the White House. But the police looked on while all the banners were destroyed, a few paces from Headquarters. More banners ,went out,—purple, white and gold ones. They, too, were destroyed before they reached the White House.

This entire spectacle was enacted on August 14, within a stone’s throw of the White House.

Miss Paul summed up the situation when she said:

“The situation now existing in Washington exists because President Wilson permits it. Orders were first handed down to the police to arrest suffragists. The clamor over their imprisonments made this position untenable. The police were then ordered to protect suffragists. They were then ordered to attack suffragists. They have now been ordered to encourage irresponsible crowds to attack suffragists. No police head would dare so to besmirch his record without orders from his responsible chief. The responsible chief in the National Capital is the President of the United States.”

Shortly after the incident of the “Kaiser banner” I was speaking in Louisville, Kentucky. The auditorium was packed and overflowing with men and women who had come to hear the story of the pickets.

Up to this time we had very few members in Kentucky and had anticipated in this Southern State, part of President Wilson ,’s stronghold, that our Committee would meet with no enthusiasm and possibly with warm hostility.

I had related briefly the incidents leading up to the picketing and the Government’s suppressions. I was rather cautiously approaching the subject of the “Kaiser banner,” feeling timid and hesitant, wondering how this vast audience of Southerners would take it. Slowly I read the inscription on the famous banner, “Kaiser Wilson, have you forgotten how you sympathized with the poor Germans because they were not self-governed? Twenty million American women are not self-governed. Take the beam out of your own eye.”

I hardly reached the last word, still wondering what the, intensely silent audience would do, when a terrific outburst of applause mingled with shouts of “Good! Good! He is, he is!” came to my amazed ears. As the applause died down there was almost universal good-natured laughter. Instead of the painstaking and eloquent explanation which I was prepared to offer, I had only to join in their laughter.

A few minutes later a telegram was brought to the platform announcing further arrests. I read:

“Six more women sentenced to-day to 30 days in Occoquan workhouse.”

Instant cries of “Shame! Shame! It’s an outrage!” Scores of men and two women were on their feet calling for the passage of a resolution denouncing the Administration’s policy of persecution. The motion of condemnation was put. It seemed as if the entire audience seconded it. It went through instantly, unanimously, and again with prolonged shouts and applause.

The meeting continued and I shall never forget that audience. It lingered to a late hour, almost to midnight, asking questions, making brief “testimonials” from the floor with almost evangelical fervor. Improvised collection baskets were piled high with bills. Women volunteered for picket duty and certain imprisonment, and the following day a delegation left for Washington.

I cite this experience of mine because it was typical. Every one who went through the country telling the story had similar experiences at this time. Indignation was swift and hot. Our mass meetings everywhere became meetings of protest during the entire campaign.

And resolutions of protest which always went immediately by wire from such meetings to the President, his cabinet and to his leaders in Congress, of course created increasing uneasiness in Democratic circles.

On August 15th the pickets again attempted to take their posts on the line.

On this day one lettered banner and fifty purple, white and gold flags were destroyed by a mob led by sailors in uniform. Alice Paul was knocked down three times by a sailor in uniform and dragged the width of the White House sidewalk in his frenzied attempt to tear off leer suffrage sash.

Miss Katharine Morey of Boston was also knocked to the pavement by a sailor, who took her flag and then darted off into the crowd. Miss Elizabeth Stuyvesant was struck by a soldier in uniform and her blouse torn from her body. Miss Maud Jamison of Virginia was knocked down and dragged along the sidewalk. Miss Beulah Amidon of North Dakota was knocked down by a sailor.

In the midst of these riotous scenes, a well-known Washington correspondent was emerging from the White House, after an interview with the President. Dr. Cart’ Grayson, the President’s physician, accompanying him to the door, advised:

“You had better go out the side entrance. Those damned women are in the front.”

In spite of this advice the correspondent made his exit through the same gate by which he had entered, and just in time to ward off an attack by a sailor on one of the frailest girls in the group.

The Administration, in its desperation, ordered the police to lawlessness. On August 16th, fifty policemen led the mob in attacking the women. Hands were bruised and arms twisted lit’ police officers and plainclothes men. Two civilians who tried to rescue the women from the attacks of the police were arrested. The police fell upon these young women with more brutality even than the mobs they had before encouraged. Twenty-five lettered banners and 123 Party flags were destroyed by mobs and police on this afternoon.

As the crowd grew more dense, the police temporarily retired from the attack. When their activities had summoned a sufficiently large and infuriated mob, they would rest. And so the passions of the mob continued unchecked upon these irrepressible women, and from day to day the Administration gave its orders.

Finding that riots and mob attacks had not terrorized the pickets, the Administration decided again to arrest the women in the hope of ending the agitation. Having lost public sympathy through workhouse sentences, having won it back by pardoning the women, the Administration felt it could afford to risk losing it again, or rather felt that it had supplied itself with an appropriate amount of stage-setting.

And so on the third day of the riotous attacks, when it was clear that the pickets would persist, the Chief of Police called at headquarters to announce to Miss Paul that “orders have been changed and henceforth women carrying banners will be arrested”

Meanwhile the pickets heard officers shout to civilian friends as they passed—“Come back at four o’clock.”

Members of the daily mob announced at the noon hour in various nearby restaurants that “the suffs will be arrested to-day at 4 o’clock.”

Four o’clock is the hour the Government clerks begin to swarm homewards. The choice of this hour by the police to arrest the women would enable them to have a large crowd passing the White House gates to lend color to the fiction that “pickets were blocking the traffic.”

Throughout the earlier part of the afternoon the silent sentinels stood unmolested, carrying these mottoes:

ENGLAND AND RUSSIA ARE ENFRANCHISING WOMEN IN WAR-TIME.

HOW LONG MUST WOMEN WAIT FOB LIBERTY?

THE GOVERNMENT ORDERS OUR BANNERS DESTROYED BECAUSE THEY TELL THE TRUTH.

At four o’clock the threatened arrests took place. The women arrested were Miss Lavinia Dock of Pennsylvania, Miss Edna Dixon of Washington, D. C., a young public school teacher; Miss Natalie Gray of Colorado, Mrs. Win. Upton Watson and Miss Lucy Ewing of Chicago, and Miss Catherine Flanagan of Connecticut.

Exactly forty minutes were allowed for the trial of these six women. One police officer testified that they were “obstructing traffic.”

None of the facts of the hideous and cruel manhandling by the mobs and police officers was allowed to be brought out. Nothing the women could say mattered. The judge pronounced : “Thirty days in Occoquan workhouse in lieu of a $10.00 fine.”

And so this little handful of women, practically all of them tiny and frail of physique, began the cruel sentence of 30 days in the workhouse, while their cowardly assailants were not even reprimanded, nor were those who destroyed over a thousand dollars’ worth of banners apprehended.

The riots had attracted sufficient attention to cause some anxiety in Administration circles. Protests against us and others against the rioters pressed upon them. Congress was provoked into a little activity; activity which reflected some doubt as to the wisdom of arresting women without some warrant in law.

Two attempts were made, neither of which was successful, to give the Administration more power and more law.

Senator Culberson of Texas, Democrat, offered a bill authorizing President Wilson at any time to prohibit any person from approaching or entering any place—in short blanket authority granting the President or his officials limitless power over the actions of human beings. Realizing that this could be used to prohibit picketing the White House we appeared before a committee hearing on the bill and spoke against it. The committee did not have the boldness to report such a bill.

Senator Myers of Montana, an influential member of the Democratic majority, introduced into the Senate a few days later a resolution making it illegal to picket the White House. The shamelessness of admitting to the world that acts for which women had been repeatedly sentenced to jail, and for which women were at that moment lying in prison, were so legal as to make necessary a special act of Congress against them, was appalling. The Administration policy seemed to be “Let us put women in jail first—let us enact a law to keep them there afterwards,”

This tilt between Senator Brandegee, of Connecticut, antisuffrage Republican, and Senator Myers, suffrage Democrat, took place when Mr. Myer’s presented his bill:

MR. BRANDEGEE: . . . Was there any defect in the legal proceedings by which these trouble makers were sentenced and put in jail a few weeks ago?

MR. MYERS: None that I know of. I am not in a position to pass upon that. I do not believe any was claimed . . . .

MR. BRANDEGEE: Inasmuch as the law was sufficient to land them in jail . . . I fail to see why additional legislation is necessary on the subject.

MR. MYERS: There seems to be a doubt in the mind of some whether the present law is sufficient and I think it ought to be put beyond doubt. I think . . . the laws are not stringent or severe enough . . . .

MR. BRANDEGEE : They were stringent enough to land the malefactors in jail . . . .

In spite of Senator Myers’ impassioned appeal to his colleagues, be was unable to command any support for his bill. I quote this from his speech in the Senate August 18, 1917:

MR. MYERS: Mr. President, I wish to say a few words about the bill I have just introduced. It is intended for the enactment of better and more adequate legislation to prevent the infamous, outrageous, scandalous, and, I think, almost treasonable actions that have been going on around the White House for months past, which President of the United States have been a gross insult to the and to the people of the United States; I mean the so-called picketing of the White House. . . These disgusting proceedings have been going on for months, and if there is no adequate law to stop them, I think there ought to be.

“I believe the President, in the generosity of his heart, erred when he pardoned some of the women who have been conducting these proceedings, after they had been sentenced to 60 days in the workhouse. I believe they deserved the sentence, and they ought to have been compelled to serve it . . . .

“I for one am not satisfied longer to sit here idly day by day and submit to having the President of the United States insulted with impunity before the people of the country and before all the world. It is a shame and reproach.

“I hope this bill . . . will receive careful consideration and that it may be enacted into law and may be found an adequate preventive and punishment for such conduct.”

This bill, which died a well-deserved death, is so amusing as to warrant reproduction. Although lamenting our comparison between the President and the Kaiser, it will be seen that Senator Myers brought forth a thoroughly Prussian document:

A BILL

For the better protection and enforcement of peace and order and the public welfare in the District of Columbia.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives o f the United States o f America in Congress assembled, That when the United States shall be engaged in war it shall be unlawful for any person or persons to carry, hold, wave, exhibit, display, or have in his or her possession in any public road, highway, alley, street, thoroughfare, park, or other public place in the District of Columbia, any banner, flag, streamer, sash, or other device having thereon any words or language with reference to the President or the Vice President of the United States, or any words or language with reference to the Constitution of the United States, or the right of suffrage, or right of citizenship, or any words or language with reference to the duties of any executive official or department of the United States, or with reference to any proposed amendment to the Constitution of the United States, or with reference to any law or proposed law of the United States, calculated to bring the President of the United States or the Government of the United States into contempt, or which may tend to cause confusion, or excitement, or obstruction of the streets or sidewalks thereof, or any passage in any public place.

Sec. 2. That any person committing any foregoing described offense shall, upon conviction thereof, for each offense be fined not less than $100 nor more than $1,000 or imprisoned not less than thirty days nor more than one year, or by both such fine and imprisonment.

Voices were raised in our behalf, also, and among them I note the following letter written to Major Pullman by Gilson Gardner:[1]

[1] The distinguished journalist who went to Africa to meet Theodore Roosevelt and accompanied him on his return journey to America.

Mr. Raymond Pullman,
Chief of Police,
Washington, D. C.

My dear Pullman,—

I am writing as an old friend to urge you to get right in this matter of arresting the suffrage pickets. Of course the only way for you to get right is to resign. It has apparently become impossible for you to stay in office and do your duty. The alternative is obvious.

You must see, Pullman, that you cannot be right in what you have done in this matter. You have given the pickets adequate protection; but you have arrested them and had them sent to jail and the workhouse; you have permitted the crowd to mob them, and then you have had your officers do much the same thing by forcibly taking their banners from them. In some of the actions you must have been wrong. If it was right to give them protection and let them stand at the White House for five months, both before and after the war, it was not right to do what you did later.

You say that it was not right when you were “lenient” and gave them protection. You cannot mean that. The rightness or wrongness must be a matter of law, not of personal discretion, and for you to attempt to substitute your discretion is to set up a little autocracy m place of the settled laws of the land. This would justify a charge of “Kaiserism” right here in our capital city.

The truth is, Pullman, you were right when you gave these women protection. That is what the police are for. When there are riots they are supposed to quell them, not by quelling the “proximate cause,” but by quelling the rioters.

I know your police officers now quite well and know that they are most happy when they are permitted to do their duty. They did not like the dirty business of permitting a lot of sailors and street rifraff to rough the girls. All that went against the grain, but when you let them protect the pickets, as you did March third, when a thousand women marched around and around the White House, the officers were as contented as they were efficient.

Washington has a good police force and there has never been a minute when they could not have scattered any group gathered at the White House gates and given perfect protection to the women standing there.

You know why they did not do their duty.

In excusing what you have done, you say that the women carried banners with “offensive” inscriptions on them. You refer to the fact that they have addressed the President as “Kaiser Wilson.” As a matter of fact not an arrest you have made—and the arrests now number more than sixty—has been for carrying one of those “offensive” banners. The women were carrying merely the suffrage colors or quotations from President Wilson’s writings.

But, suppose the banners were offensive. Who made you censor of banners? The law gives you no such power. Even when you go through the farce of a police court trial the charge is “obstructing traffic”; which shows conclusively that you are not willing to go into court on the real issue.

No. As Chief of Police you have no more right to complain of the sentiments of a banner than you have of the sentiments in an editorial in the Washington Post, and you have no more right to arrest the banner-bearer than you have to arrest the owner of the Washington Post . . . . Congress refused to pass a press censorship law. There are certain lingering traditions to the effect that a people’s liberties are closely bound up with the right to talk things out and those who are enlightened know that the only proper answer to words is words. When force is opposed to words there is ground for the charge of “Kaiserism.” . .

There was just one thing for you to have done, Pullman, and that was to give full and adequate protection to these women, no matter what banners they carried or what ideas their banners expressed. If there is any law that can be invoked against the wording of the banners it was the business of others in the government to start the legal machinery which would abate them. It was not lawful to abate them by mob violence, or by arrests. And if those in authority over you were not willing that you thus do your duty, it was up to you to resign.

After all it would not be such a terrible thing, Pullman, for you to give up being Chief of Police, particularly when you are not permitted to be chief of police, but must yield your judgment to the district commissioners who have yielded their judgment to the White House. Being Chief of Police under such circumstances can hardly be worth while. You are a young man and the world is full of places for young men with courage enough to save their self- respect at the expense of their jobs. You did that once,-back in the Ballinger-Pinchot days. Why not now?

Come out and help make the fight which must be made to recover and protect the liberties which are being filched from us here at home. There is a real fight looming up for real democracy. You will not be alone. There are a lot of fine young men, vigorous and patriotic, in and out of the Administration who are preparing for this fight. Yours will not be the only resignation. But why not be among the first? Don’t wait. Let them have your resignation. now and let me be the first to welcome and congratulate you.

Sincerely,
(Signed) GILSON GARDNER.

Representative John Baer of North Dakota, having witnessed for himself the riotous scenes, immediately introduced into the House a resolution[1] demanding an investigation of conditions in the Capital which permitted mobs to attack women. This, too, went to certain death. Between the members who did not dare denounce the Administration and the others who did dare denounce the women, we had to stand quite solidly on our own program, and do our best to keep them nervous over the next step in the agitation.

[1] See Appendix 3 for full text of resolution.

The press throughout the entire country at this time protested against mob violence and the severe sentences pronounced upon the women who had attempted to hold their banners steadfast.

The Washington (D. C.) Herald, August 19, printed the following editorial:

There is an echo of the President’s phrase about the “firm hand of stern repression” in the arrest, conviction and jailing of the six suffragists; a touch of ruthlessness in their incarceration at Occoquan along with women of the street, pickpockets and other flotsam and jetsam. Still, the suffragists are not looking for sympathy, and it need not be wasted upon them.

The police have arrived at a policy, although no one knows whether it will be sufficiently stable and consistent to last out the week . . . . Washington is grateful that the disgraceful period of rioting and mob violence in front of the White House is at an end, and another crisis in the militant crusade to bring the Susan B. Anthony amendment before Congress has been reached.

What is the next step? No one knows. Picketing doubtless will continue, or an effort will be made to continue it; and militancy, if the police continue to arrest, instead of giving the women protection, will pass into a new phase. The suffragists as well as the public at large are thankful that the police department has finally determined to arrest the pickets, instead of allowing them to be mobbed by hoodlums .

. . . The public eye will be on Occoquan for the next few weeks, to find out how these women bear up under the Spartan treatment that is in store for them. If they have deliberately sought martyrdom, as some critics have been unkind enough to suggest, they have it now. And if their campaign, in the opinion of perhaps the great majority of the public, has been misguided, admiration for their pluck will not be withheld.

The Boston Journal of August 20, 1917, said in an editorial written by Herbert N. Pinkham, Jr.:

That higher authorities than the Washington police were responsible for the amazing policy of rough house employed against the suffrage pickets has been suspected from the very beginning. Police power in Washington is sufficient to protect a handful of women against a whole phalanx of excited or inspired government clerks and uniformed hoodlums, if that power were used.

. . . In our nation’s capital, women have been knocked down and dragged through the streets by government employees—including sailors in uniform. The police are strangely absent at such moments, as a rule, and arrive only in time to arrest a few women . . . .

Perhaps the inscriptions on the suffrage banners were not tactful. It is sometimes awkward indeed to quote the President’s speeches after the speeches have “grown cold.” Also a too vigorous use of the word “democracy” is distasteful to some government dignitaries, it seems. But right or wrong, the suffragists at Washington are entitled to police protection, even though in the minds of the Administration they are not entitled to the ballot.

Perhaps, even in America, we must have a law forbidding people to carry banners demanding what they consider their political rights. Such a law would, of course, prohibit political parades of all kinds, public mass meetings and other demonstrations of one set of opinions against another set. Such a law has been proposed by Senator Myers of Montana, the author of the latest censorship and anti-free speech bill. It may be necessary to pass the law, if it is also necessary that the public voice be stilled and the nation become dumb and subservient.

But until there is such a law . . . people must be protected while their actions remain within the law. If their opinions differ from ours, we must refrain from smashing their faces, if a certain number of people believe that they have the right to vote we may either grant their claim or turn them sadly away, but we may not roll them into the gutter; if they see fit to tell us our professions of democracy are empty, we may smile sorrowfully and murmur a prayer for their ignorance but we may not pelt them with rotten eggs and fire a shot through the window of their dwelling; if, denied a properly dignified hearing, they insist upon walking through the streets with printed words on a saucy banner, we may be amazed at their zeal and pitiful of their bad taste, but even for the sake of keeping their accusations out of sight of our foreign visitors (whom we have trained to believe us perfect) we may not send them to jail . . . .

All this suffrage shouting in Washington has as its single object the attainment of President Wilson’s material support for equal suffrage . . . .

President Wilson’s word would carry the question into Congress . . .

Would there be any harm in letting Congress vote on a suffrage resolution? That would end the disturbance and it would make our shield of national justice somewhat brighter.

It looks like President Wilson’s move.

Between these opposing currents of protest and support, the Administration drifted helplessly. Unwilling to pass the amendment, it continued to send women to prison.

On the afternoon of September 4th, President Wilson led his first contingent of drafted “soldiers of freedom” down Pennsylvania Avenue in gala parade, on the first lap of their journey to the battlefields of France. On the same afternoon a slender line of women—also “soldiers of freedom”—attempted to march in Washington.

As they attempted to take up their posts, two by two, in front of the Reviewing Stand, opposite the White House, they were gathered in and swept away by the police like common street criminals—their golden banners scarcely flung to the breeze.

MR. PRESIDENT, HOW LONG MUST WOMEN BE DENIED A VOICE IN A GOVERNMENT WHICH IS CONSCRIPTING THEIR SONS?

was the offensive question on the first banner carried by Miss Eleanor Calnan of Massachusetts and Miss Edith Ainge of New York.

The Avenue was roped off on account of the parade. There was hardly any one passing at the time; all traffic had been temporarily suspended, so there was none to obstruct. But the Administration’s policy must go on. A few moments and Miss Lucy Branham of Maryland and Mrs. Pauline Adams of Virginia marched down the Avenue, their gay banners waving joyously in the autumn sun, to fill up the gap of the two comrades who had been arrested. They, too, were shoved into the police automobile, their banners still high and appealing, silhouetted against the sky as they were hurried to the police station.

The third pair of pickets managed to cross the Avenue, but were arrested immediately they reached the curb. Still others advanced. The crowd began to line the ropes and to watch eagerly the line of women indomitably coming, two by two, into the face of certain arrest. A fourth detachment was arrested in the middle of the Avenue on the trolley tracks. But still they came.

A few days later more women were sent to the workhouse for carrying to the picket line this question:

“President Wilson, what did you mean when you said: ‘We have seen a good many singular things happen recently. We have been told there is a deep disgrace resting upon the origin of this nation. The nation originated in the sharpest sort of criticism of public policy. We originated, to put it in the vernacular, in a kick, and if it be unpatriotic to kick, why then the grown man is unlike the child. We have forgotten the very principle of our origin if we have forgotten how to object, how to resist, how to agitate, how to pull down and build up, even to the extent of revolutionary practices, if it be necessary to readjust matters. I have forgotten my history, if that be not true history.’”

The Administration had not yet abandoned hope of removing the pickets. They persisted in their policy of arrests and longer imprisonments.

Chapter 6
Prison Episodes

During all this time the suffrage prisoners were enduring the miserable and petty tyranny of the government workhouse at Occoquan. They were kept absolutely incommunicado. They were not allowed to see even their nearest relatives, should any be within reach, until they had been in the institution two weeks.

Each prisoner was allowed to write one outgoing letter a month, which, after being read by the warden, could be sent or withheld at his whim.

All incoming mail and telegrams were also censored by the Superintendent and practically all of them denied the prisoners. Superintendent Whittaker openly boasted of holding up the suffragists’ mail: “I am boss down here,” he said to visitors who asked to see the prisoners, or to send in a note. “I consider the letters and telegrams these prisoners get are treasonable. They cannot have them.” He referred to messages commending the women for choosing prison to silence, and bidding them stand steadfast to their program.

Of course all this was done in the hope of intimidating not only the prisoners, but also those who came wanting to see them.

It was the intention of the women to abide as far as possible by the routine of the institution, disagreeable and unreasonable as it was. They performed the tasks assigned to them. They ate the prison food without protest. They wore the coarse prison clothes. But at the end of the first week of detention they became so weak from the shockingly bad food that they began to wonder if they could endure such a system. The petty tyrannies they could endure. But the inevitable result of a diet of sour bread, half-cooked vegetables, rancid soup with worms in it, was serious.

Finally the true condition of affairs trickled to the outside world through the devious routes of prison messengers.

Senator J. Hamilton Lewis, of Illinois, Democratic whip in the Senate, heard alarming reports of two of his constituents, Miss Lucy Ewing, daughter of Judge Ewing, niece of Adlai Stevenson, Vice-President in Cleveland’s Administration, niece of James Ewing, minister to Belgium in the same Administration, and Mrs. William Upton Watson of Chicago. He made a hurried trip to the workhouse to see them. The fastidious Senator was shocked—shocked at the appearance of the prisoners, shocked at the tale they told, shocked that “ladies” should be subjected to such indignities. “In all my years of criminal practice,” said the Senator to Gilson Gardner, who had accompanied him to the workhouse, “I have never seen prisoners so badly treated, either before or after conviction.” He is a gallant gentleman who would be expected to be uncomfortable when he actually saw ladies suffer. It was more than gallantry in this instance, however, for he spoke in frank condemnation of the whole “shame and outrage” of the thing.

It is possible that he reported to other Administration officials what he had learned during his visit to the workhouse for very soon afterwards it was announced that an investigation of conditions in the workhouse would be held. That was, of course, an admirable maneuver which the Administration could make. “Is the President not a kind man? He pardoned some women. Now he investigates the conditions under which others are imprisoned. Even though they are lawless women, he wishes them well treated.”

It would sound “noble” to thousands.

Immediately the District Commissioners announced this investigation, Miss Lucy Burns, acting on behalf of the National Woman’s Party, sent a letter to Commissioner Brownlow. After summing up the food situation Miss Burns wrote:

When our friends were sent to prison, they expected the food would be extremely plain, but they also expected that . . enough eatable food would be given them to maintain them in their ordinary state of health. This has not been the case.

The testimony of one of the prisoners, Miss Lavinia Dock, a trained nurse, is extremely valuable on the question of food supplied at Occoquan. Miss Dock is Secretary of the American Federation of Nurses. She has had a distinguished career in her profession. She assisted in the work after the Johnstown flood and during the yellow fever epidemic in Florida. During the Spanish war she organized the Red Cross work with Clara Barton. ‘I really thought,’ said Miss Dock, when I last saw her, ‘that I could eat everything, but here I have hard work choking down enough food to keep the life in me.’

I am sure you will agree with me that these conditions should be instantly remedied. When these and other prisoners were sentenced to prison they were sentenced to detention and not to starvation or semi-starvation.

The hygienic conditions have been improved at Occoquan since a group of suffragists were imprisoned there. But they are still bad. The water they drink is kept in an open pail, from which it is ladled into a drinking cup. The prisoners frequently dip the drinking cup directly into the pail.

The same piece of soap is used for every prisoner. As the prisoners in Occoquan are sometimes seriously afflicted with disease, this practice is appallingly negligent.

Concerning the general conditions of the person, I am enclosing with this letter, affidavit of Mrs. Virginia Bovee, an ex-officer of the workhouse . . . . The prisoners for whom I am counsel are aware that cruel practices go on at Occoquan. On one occasion they heard Superintendent Whittaker kicking a woman in the next room. They heard Whittaker’s voice, the sound of blows, and the woman’s cries.

I lay these facts before you with the knowledge that you will be glad to have the fullest possible information given you concerning the institution for whose administration you as Commissioner of the District of Columbia are responsible.’

Very respectfully yours,
(Signed) LUCY BURNS.

Mrs. Bovee, a matron, was discharged from the workhouse because she tried to be kind to the suffrage prisoners. She also gave them warnings to guide them past the possible contamination of hideous diseases. As soon as she was discharged from the workhouse she went to the headquarters of the Woman’s Party and volunteered to make an affidavit. The affidavit of Mrs. Bovee follows:

I was discharged yesterday as an officer of Occoquan workhouse. For eight months I acted as night officer, with no complaint as to my performance of my duties. Yesterday Superintendent Whittaker told me I was discharged and gave me two hours in which to get out. I demanded the charges from the matron, Mrs. Herndon, and I was told that it was owing to something that Senator Lewis has said.

I am well acquainted with the conditions at Occoquan. I have had charge of all the suffragist prisoners who have been there. I know that their mail has been withheld from them. Mrs. Herndon, the matron, reads the mail, and often discussed it with us at the officers’ table. She said of a letter sent to one of the suffragist pickets now in the workhouse, “They told her to keep her eyes open and notice everything. She will never get that letter,” said Mrs. Herndon. ,Then she corrected herself, and added, “Not until she goes away.” Ordinarily the mail not given the prisoners is destroyed. The mail for the suffragists is saved for them until they are ready to go away. I have Seen three of the women have one letter each, but that is all. The three were Mrs. Watson, Miss Ewing, and I think Miss Flanagan.

The blankets now being used in the prison have been in use since December without being washed or cleaned. Blankets are washed once a year. Officers are warned not to touch any of the bedding. The one officer who handles it is compelled by the regulations to wear rubber gloves while she does so. The sheets for the ordinary prisoners are not changed completely, even when one is gone and another takes her bed. Instead the top sheet is put on the bottom, and one fresh sheet is given them. I was not there when these suffragists arrived, and I do not know how their bedding was arranged. I doubt whether the authorities would have dared to give them one soiled sheet.

The prisoners with disease are not always isolated, by any means. In the colored dormitory there are two women in the advanced stages of consumption. Women suffering from, syphilis, who have open sores, are put in the hospital. But those whose sores are temporarily healed are put in the same dormitory with the others. There have been several such in my dormitory.

When the prisoners come they must undress and take a shower bath. For this they take a piece of soap from a bucket in the store room. When they are finished they throw the soap back in the bucket. The suffragists are permitted three showers a week and have only these pieces of soap which are common to all inmates. There is no soap at all in wash rooms.

The beans, hominy, rice, cornmeal (which is exceedingly coarse, like chicken feed) and cereal have all had worms in them. Sometimes the worms float on top of the soup. Often they are found in the cornbread. The first suffragists sent the worms to Whittaker on a spoon. On the farm is a fine herd of Holsteins. The cream is made into butter and sold to the tuberculosis hospital in Washington. At the officers’ table we have very good milk. The prisoners do not have any butter or sugar, and no milk except by order of the doctor.

Prisoners are punished by being put on bread or water, or by being beaten. I know of one girl who has been kept seventeen days on only water this month in the “booby house.” The ,same was kept nineteen days on water last year because she .beat Superintendent Whittaker when he tried to beat her.

Superintendent Whittaker or his son are the only ones who beat the girls. Officers are not allowed to lay a hand on them in punishment. I know of one girl beaten until the blood had to be scrubbed from her clothing and from the floor of the “booby house.” I have never actually seen a girl beaten, but I have seen her afterwards and I have heard the cries and blows. Dorothy Warfield was beaten and the suffragists heard the beating.

(Signed) MRS. VIRGINIA BOVEE.

Subscribed and sworn to before me this day of disgust, 1917.
JOSEPH H. BATT, Notary Public.

While the Administration was planning an investigation of the conditions in the workhouse, which made it difficult for women to sustain health through a thirty day sentence, it was, through its police court, sentencing more women to sixty day sentences, under the same conditions. The Administration was giving some thought to its plan of procedure, but not enough to master the simple fact that women would not stop going to prison until something had been done which promised passage of the amendment through Congress.

New forms of intimidation and hardship were offered by Superintendent Whittaker.

Mrs. Frederick Kendall of Buffalo, New York, a frail and highly sensitive woman, was put in a “punishment cell” on bread and water, under a charge of “impudence.” Mrs. Kendall says that her impudence consisted of “protesting to the matron that scrubbing floors on my hands and knees was too severe work for me as I had been unable for days to eat the prison food. My impudence further consisted in asking for lighter work.”

Mrs. Kendall was refused the clean clothing she should have had the day she was put in solitary confinement and was thus forced to wear the same clothing eleven days. She was refused a nightdress or clean linen for the cot. Her only toilet accommodations was an open pail. For four days she was allowed no water for toilet purposes., Her diet consisted of three thin slices of bread and three cups of water, carried to her in a paper cup which frequently leaked out half the meager supply before it got to Mrs. Kendall’s cell.

Representative and Mrs. Charles Bennet Smith, of Buffalo, friends of Mrs. Kendall, created a considerable disturbance when they learned of this cruel treatment, with the result that Mrs. Kendall was finally given clean clothing and taken from her confinement. When she walked from her cell to greet Mrs. Genevieve Clark Thompson, daughter of Champ Clark, Speaker of the House, and Miss Roberta Bradshaw, other friends, who, through the Speaker’s influence, had obtained special permission to see Mrs. Kendall, she fell in a dead faint. It was such shocking facts as these that the Commissioners and their investigating board were vainly trying to keep from the country for the sake of the reputation of the Administration.

For attempting to spear to Mrs. Kendall through her cell door, to inquire as to her health, while in solitary, Miss Lucy Burns was placed on a bread and water diet.

Miss Jeannette Rankin of Montana, the only woman member of Congress, was moved by these and similar revelations to introduce a resolution[1] calling for a Congressional investigation of the workhouse.

[1] For text of Miss Rankin’s resolution see Appendix 3.

There were among the suffrage prisoners women of all shades of social opinion.

The following letter by Miss Gvinter, the young Russian worker, was smuggled out of the workhouse. This appeal to Meyer London was rather pathetic, since not even he, the only Socialist member in Congress, stood up to denounce the treatment of the pickets.

Comrade Meyer London:

I am eight years in this movement, three and a half years a member of the Socialist Party, Branches 2 and 4 of the Bronx, and I have been an active member of the Waist Makers’ Union since 1910. I am from New York, but am now in Baltimore, where I got acquainted with the comrades who asked me to picket the White House, and of course I expressed my willingness to help the movement. I am now in the workhouse. I want to get out and help in the work as I am more revolutionary than the Woman’s Party, yet conditions here are so bad that I feel I must stay here and help women get their rights. We are enslaved here. I am suffering very much from hunger and nearly blind from bad nourishment. The food is chiefly soup, cereal with worms, bread just baked and very heavy. Even this poor food, we do not get enough. I do not eat meat. When I told the doctor that he said, “You must eat, and if you don’t like it here, you go and tell the judge you won’t picket any more, and then you can get out of here.” But I told him that I could not go against my principles and my belief. He asked, “Do you believe you should break the law?” I replied, “I have picketed whenever I had a chance for eight years and have never broken the law. Picketing is legal.”

Please come here as quickly as possible, as we need your help.

Will you give the information in this letter to the newspapers?

Please pardon this scrap of paper as I have nothing else to write on. I would write to other comrades, to Hillquit or Paulsen, but you are in the Congress and can do more.

Yours for the Cause,

(Signed) ANNA GVINTER.
OCCOQUAN WORKHOUSE, Friday, Sept. 21.

Miss Gvinter swore to an affidavit when she came out in which she said in part:

. . . The days that we had to stand on scaffolds and ladders to paint the dormitories, I was so weak from lack of food I was dizzy and in constant danger of falling.

. . . When they told me to scrub the floors of the lavatories I refused, because I have to work for my living and I could not afford to get any of the awful diseases that women down there have.

I obeyed all the rules of the institution. The only times I stopped working was because I was too sick to work.

(Signed) ANNA GVINTER.

Sworn to before me and subscribed in my presence this 13th day of October, 1917.

(Signed) C. LARIMORE KEELEY,
Notary Public, D. C.

Half a hundred women was the government’s toll for one month:- .Continuous arrests kept the issue hot and kept people who cared in constant protest. It is impossible to give space to the countless beautiful messages which were sent to the women, or the fervent protests which went to government officials. Among the hundreds of thousands of protests was a valuable one by Dr. Harvey Wiley, the celebrated food expert, in a letter to Dr. George M. Kober, member of the Board in control of the jail and workhouse, and a well-known sanitarium. Dr. Wiley wrote:

November 3, 1917.

Dear Dr. Kober:

I am personally acquainted with many of the women who have been confined at Occoquan, and at the District jail, and have heard from their own lips an account of the nutrition and sanitary conditions prevailing at both places.

I, therefore, feel constrained to make known to you the conditions, as they have been told to me, and as I believe them actually to exist.

As I understand it, there is no purpose in penal servitude of lowering the vitality of the prisoner, or in inviting disease. Yet both of these conditions prevail both at Occoquan and at the District jail. First of all, the food question. The diet furnished the prisoners at Occoquan especially is of a character to invit6 all kinds of infections that may prevail, and to lower the vitality so that the resistance to disease is diminished. I have fortunately come into possession of samples of the food actually given to these women. I have kept samples of the milk religiously for over two weeks to see if I could detect the least particle of fat, and have been unable to perceive any. The fat of milk is universally recognized by dieticians as its most important nutritive character. I understand that a dairy is kept on the farm at Occoquan, and yet it is perfectly certain that no whole milk is served or ever has been served to one of the so-called “picketers” in that jail. I have not had enough of the sample to make a chemical analysis, but being somewhat experienced in milk, I can truthfully say that it seems to me to be watered skimmed milk. I also have a sample of the pea soup served. The pea grains are coarsely broken, often more than half of a pea, being served in one piece. They never have been cooked, but are in a perfectly raw state, and found to be inedible by the prisoners.

I have also samples of the corn bread which is most unattractive and repellant to the eye and to the taste. All of these witnesses say that the white bread apparently is of good quality, but the diet in every case is the cause of constipation, except in the case of pea soup, which brings on diarrhea and vomiting. As nutrition is the very foundation of sanitation, I wish to call to your special attention, as a sanitation, the totally inadequate sustenance given to these prisoners.

The food at the county jail at Washington is much better than the food at Occoquan, but still bad enough. This increased excellence of food is set off by the miserable ventilation of the cells, in which these noble women are kept in solitary confinement. Not only have they had a struggle to get the windows open slightly, but also at the time of their morning meal, the sweeping is done. The air of the cells is filled with dust and they try to cover their coffee and other food with such articles as they can find to keep the dust out of their food. Better conditions for promoting tuberculosis could not be found.

I appeal to you as a well-known sanitarian to get the Board of Charities to make such rules and regulations as would secure to prisoners of all kinds, and especially to political prisoners, as humane an environment as possible.

I also desire to ask that the Board of Charities would authorize me to make inspections of food furnished to prisoners at Occoquan and at the District Jail, and to have physical and chemical analysis made without expense to the Board, in order to determine more fully the nutritive environment in which the prisoners live.

Sincerely,
(Signed) HARVEY WILEY.

This striking telegram from Richard Bennett, the distinguished actor, must have arrested the attention of the Administration.

September 22, 1917.

Hon. Newton Baker,
Secretary of War,
War Department,
Washington, D. C.

I have been asked to go to France personally, with the film of “Damaged Goods,” as head of a lecture corps to the American army. On reliable authority I am told that American women, because they have dared demand their political freedom, are held in vile conditions in the Government workhouse in Washington; are compelled to paint the negro toilets for eight hours a day; are denied decent food and denied communication with counsel. Why should I work for democracy in Europe when our American women are denied democracy at home? If I am to fight for social hygiene in France, why not begin at Occoquan workhouse?

RICHARD BENNETT.

Mr. Bennett never received a reply to this message.

Charming companionships grew up in prison. Ingenuity at lifting the dull monotony of imprisonment brought to light many talents for camaraderie which amused not only the suffrage prisoners but the “regulars.” Locked in separate cells, as in the District Jail, the suffragists could still communicate by song. The following lively doggerel to the tune of “Captain Kidd” was sung in chorus to the accompaniment of a hair comb. It became a saga. Each day a new verse was added, relating the day’s particular controversy with the prison authorities.

We worried Woody-wood,
As we stood, as we stood,
We worried Woody-wood,
As we stood.
We worried Woody-wood,
And we worried him right good;
We worried him right good as we stood.
We asked him for the vote,
As we stood, as we stood,
We asked him for the vote
As we stood,
We asked him for the vote,
But he’d rather write a note,
He’d rather write a note—so we stood.
We’ll not get out on bail,
Go to jail, go to jail—
We’ll not get out on bail,
We prefer to go to jail,
We prefer to go to jail—we’re not frail.
We asked them for a brush,
For our teeth, for our teeth,
We asked them for a brush
For our teeth.
We asked them for a brush,
They said, “There ain’t no rush,”
They said, “There ain’t no rush—darn your teeth.”
We asked them for some air,
As we choked, as we choked,
We asked them for some air
As we choked.
We asked them for some air
And they threw us in a lair,
They threw us in a lair, so we choked.
We asked them for our nightie,
As we froze, as we froze,
We asked them for our nightie
As we froze.
We asked them for our nightie,
And they looked—hightie-tightie—
They looked hightie-tightie—so we froze.
Now, ladies, take the hint,
As ye stand, as ye stand,
Now, ladies, take the hint,
As ye stand.
Now, ladies, take the hint,
Don’t quote the Presidint,
Don’t quote the Presidint, as ye stand.

Humor predominated in the poems that came out of prison. There was never any word of tragedy.

Not even an intolerable diet of raw salt pork, which by actual count of Miss Margaret Potheringham, a teacher of Domestic Science and Dietetics, was served the suffragists sixteen times in eighteen days, could break their spirit of gayety. And when a piece of fish of unknown origin was slipped through the tiny opening in the cell door, and a specimen carefully preserved for Dr. Wiley—who, by the way, was unable to classify it—they were more diverted than outraged.

Sometimes it was a “prayer” which enlivened the evening hour before bedtime. Mary Winsor of Haverford, Pennsylvania, was the master prayer-maker. One night it was a Baptist prayer, another a Methodist, and still another a stern Presbyterian prayer. The prayers were most disconcerting to the matron for the “regulars” became almost hysterical with laughter, when they should be slipping into sleep. It was trying also to sit in the corridor and hear your daily cruelties narrated to God and punishment asked. This is what happened to the embarrassed warden and jail attendants if they came to protest.

Sometimes it was the beautiful voice of Vida Milholland which rang through the corridors of the dreary prison, with a stirring Irish ballad, a French love song, or the Woman’s Marseillaise.

Again the prisoners would build a song, each calling out from cell to cell, and contributing a line. The following song to the tune of “Charlie Is My Darling” was so written and sung with Miss Lucy Branham leading:

SHOUT THE REVOLUTION OF WOMEN

Shout the revolution
Of women, of women,
Shout the revolution
For liberty.
Rise, glorious women of the earth,
The voiceless and the free
United strength assures the birth
Of true democracy.

REFRAIN

Invincible our army,
Forward, forward,
Triumphant daughters pressing
To victory.
Shout the revolution
of women, of women,
Shout the revolution
For liberty.
Men’s revolution born in blood,
But ours conceived in peace,
We hold a banner for a sword,
Till all oppression cease.

REFRAIN

Prison, death, defying,
Onward, onward,
Triumphant daughters pressing
To victory.

The gayety was interspersed with sadness when the suffragists learned of new cruelties heaped upon the helpless ones, those who were without influence or friends. .. They learned of that barbarous punishment known as “the greasy pole” used upon girl prisoners. This method of punishment consisted of strapping girls with their hands tied behind them to a greasy pole from which they were partly suspended. Unable to keep themselves in an upright position, because of the grease on the pole, they slipped almost to the floor, with their arms all but severed from the arm sockets, suffering intense pain for long periods of time. This cruel punishment was meted out to prisoners for slight infractions of the prison rules.

The suffrage prisoners learned also of the race hatred which the authorities encouraged. It was not infrequent that the jail officers summoned black girls to attack white women, if the latter disobeyed. This happened in one instance to the suffrage prisoners who were protesting against the warden’s forcibly taking a suffragist from the workhouse without telling her or her comrades whither she was being taken. Black girls were called and commanded to physically attack the suffragists. The negresses, reluctant to do so, were goaded to deliver blows upon the women by the warden’s threats of punishment.

And as a result of our having been in prison, our headquarters has never ceased being the mecca of many discouraged “inmates,” when released. They come for money. They come for work. They come for spiritual encouragement to face life after the wrecking experience of imprisonment. Some regard us as “fellow prisoners.” Others regard us as “friends at court.”

Occasionally we meet a prison associate in the workaday world. Long after Mrs. Lawrence Lewis’ imprisonment, when she was working on ratification of the amendment in Delaware, she was greeted warmly by a charming young woman who came forward at a meeting. “Don’t you remember me?” she asked, as Mrs. Lewis struggled to recollect. “Don’t you remember me? I met you in Washington.”

“I’m sorry but I seem to have forgotten where I met you,” said Mrs. Lewis apologetically.

“In jail,” came the answer hesitantly, whereupon Mrs. Lewis listened sympathetically while her fellow prisoner told her that she had been in jail at the tipie Mrs. Lewis was, that her crime was bigamy and that she was one of the traveling circus troupe then in Dover.

“She brought up her husband, also a member of the circus,” said Mrs. Lewis in telling of the incident, “and they both joined enthusiastically in a warm invitation to come and see them in the circus.”

As each group of suffragists was released an enthusiastic welcome was given to them at headquarters and at these times, in the midst of the warmth of approving and appreciative comrades, some of the most beautiful speeches were delivered. I quote a part of Katharine Fisher’s speech at a dinner in honor of released prisoners:

Five of us who are with you to-night have recently come out from the workhouse into the world. A great change? Not so much of a change for women, disfranchised women. In prison or out, American women are not free. Our lot of physical freedom simply gives us and the public a new and vivid sense of what our lack of political freedom really means.

Disfranchisement is the prison of women’s power and spirit. Women have long been classed with criminals so far as their voting rights are concerned. And how quick the Government is to live up to its classification the minute women determinedly insist upon these rights. Prison life epitomizes all life under undemocratic rule. At Occoquan, as at the Capitol and the White House, we faced hypocrisy, trickery and treachery on the part of those in power. And the constant appeal to us to “cooperate” with the workhouse authorities sounded wonderfully like the exhortation addressed to all women to “support the Government.”

“Is that the law of the District of Columbia?” I asked Superintendent Whittaker concerning a statement he had made to me. “It is the law,” he answered, “because it is the rule I make.” The answer of Whittaker is the answer Wilson makes to women every time the Government, of which he is the head, enacts a law and at the same time continues to refuse to pass the Susan B. Anthony amendment . . . .

We seem to-day to stand before you free, but I have no sense of freedom because I have left comrades at Occoquan and because other comrades may at any moment join them there . . . .

While comrades are there what is our freedom? It is as empty as the so-called political freedom of women who have won suffrage by a state referendum. Like them we are free only within limits . . . .

We must not let our voice be drowned by war trumpets or cannon. If we do, we shall find ourselves, when the war is over, with a peace that will only prolong our struggle, a democracy that will belie its name by leaving out half the people.

The Administration continued to send women to the workhouse and the District Jail for thirty and sixty day sentences.

Chapter 7
An Administration Protest—Dudley Field Malone Resigns

Dudley Field Malone was known to the country as sharing the intimate confidence and friendship of President Wilson. He had known and supported the President from the beginning of the President’s political career. He had campaigned twice through New Jersey with Mr. Wilson as Governor; he had managed Mr. Wilson’s campaigns in many states for the nomination before the Baltimore Convention; he had toured the country with Mr. Wilson in 1912 ; and it was he who led to victory President Wilson’s fight for California in 1916.

So when Mr. Malone went to the White House in July, 1917, to protest against the Administration’s handling of the suffrage question, he went not only as a confirmed suffragist, but also a5 a confirmed supporter and member of the Wilson Administration—the one who had been chosen to go to the West in 1916 to win women voters to the Democratic Party.

Mr. Malone has consented to tell for the first time, in this record of the militant campaign, what happened at his memorable interview with President Wilson in July, 1917, an interview which he followed up two months later with his resignation as Collector of the Port of New York. I quote the story in his own words:

Frank P. Walsh, Amos Pinchot, Frederic C. Howe, J. A. H. Hopkins, Allen McCurdy and I were present throughout the trial of the sixteen women in July. Immediately after the police court judge had pronounced his sentence of sixty days in the Occoquan workhouse upon these “first offenders,” on the alleged charge of a traffic violation, I went over to Anne Martin, one of the women’s counsel, and offered to act as attorney on the appeal of the case. I then went to the court clerk’s office and telephoned to President Wilson at the Whit House, asking him to see me at once. It was three o’clock. I called a taxicab, drove direct to the executive offices and met him.

I began by reminding the President that in the seven years and a half of our personal and political association we had never had a serious difference. He was good enough to say that my loyalty to him bad been one of the happiest circumstances of his public career. But I told him I had come to place my resignation in his hands as I could not remain a member of any administration which dared to send American women to prison for demanding national suffrage. I also informed him that I had offered to act as counsel for the suffragists on the appeal of their case. He asked me for full details of my complaint and attitude. I told Mr. Wilson everything I had witnessed from the time we saw the suffragists arrested in front of the White House to their sentence in the police court. I observed that although we might not agree with the “manners” of picketing, citizens had a right to petition the President or any other official of the government for a redress of grievances. He seemed to acquiesce in this view, and reminded me that the women had been unmolested at the White House gates for over five months, adding that he had even ordered the head usher to invite the women on cold days to come into the White House and warm themselves and have coffee.

“If the situation is as you describe it, it is shocking,” said the President’. “The manhandling of the women by the police was outrageous and the entire trial (before a judge of your own appointment) was a perversion of justice,” I said. This seemed to annoy the President and he replied with asperity, “Why do you come to me in this indignant fashion for things which have been done by the police officials of the city of Washington?”

“Mr. President,” I said, “the treatment of these women is the result of carefully laid plans made by the District Commissioners of the city of Washington, who were appointed to office by you. Newspaper men of unquestioned information and integrity have told me that the District Commissioners have been in consultation with your private secretary, Mr. Tumulty, and that the Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. McAdoo, sat in at a conference when the policy of these arrests was being determined.”

The President asserted his ignorance of all this.

“Do you mean to tell me,” he said, “that you intend to resign, to repudiate me and my Administration and sacrifice me for your views on this suffrage question?”

His attitude then angered me and I said, “Mr. President, if there is any sacrifice in this unhappy circumstance, it is I who am making the sacrifice. I was sent twice as your spokesman in the last campaign to the Woman Suffrage States of the West. You have since been good enough to say publicly and privately that I did as much as any man to carry California for you. After my first tour I had a long conference with you here at the White House on the political situation in those states. I told you that I found your strength with women voters lay in the fact that you had with great patience and statesmanship kept this country out of the European war. But that your great weakness with women voters was that you had not taken any step throughout your entire Administration to urge the passage of the Federal Suffrage Amendment, which Mr. Hughes was advocating and which alone can enfranchise all the women of the nation. You asked me then how I met this situation, and I told you that I promised the women voters of the West that if they showed the political sagacity to choose you as against Mr. Hughes, I would do everything in my power to get your Administration to take up and pass the suffrage amendment. You were pleased and approved of what I had done. I returned to California and repeated this promise, and so far as I am concerned, I must keep my part of that obligation.”

I reiterated to the President my earlier appeal that he assist suffrage as an urgent war measure and a necessary part of America’s program for world democracy, to which the President replied: “The enfranchisement of women is not at all necessary to a program of democracy and I see nothing in the argument that it is a war measure unless you mean that American women will not loyally support the war unless they are given the vote.” I firmly denied this conclusion of the President and told him that while American women with or without the vote would support the United States Government against German militarism, yet it seemed to me a great opportunity of his leadership to remove this grievance which women generally felt against him and his administration. “Mr. President,” I urged, “if you, as the leader, will persuade the administration to pass the Federal Amendment you will release from the suffrage fight the energies of thousands of women which will be given with redoubled zeal to the support of your program for international justice.” But the President absolutely refused to admit the validity of my appeal, though it was as a “war measure” that the President some months later demanded that the Senate pass the suffrage amendment.

The President was visibly moved as I added, “You are the President now, reelected to office. You ask if I am going to sacrifice you. You sacrifice nothing by my resignation. But I lose much. I quit a political career. I give up a powerful office in my own state. I, who have no money, sacrifice a lucrative salary, and go back to revive my law practice. But most of all I sever a personal association with you of the deepest affection which you know has meant much to me these past seven years. But I cannot and will not remain in office and see women thrown into jail because they demand their political freedom.”

The President earnestly urged me not to resign, saying, “What will the people of the country think when they hear that the Collector of the Port of New York has resigned because of an injustice done to a group of suffragists by the police officials of the city of Washington?”

My reply to this was, “With all respect for you, Mr. President, my explanation to the public will not be as difficult as yours, if I am compelled to remind the public that you have appointed to office and can remove all the important officials of the city of Washington.”

The President ignored this and insisted that I should not resign, saying, “I do not question your intense conviction about this matter as I know you have always been an ardent suffragist; and since you feel as you do I see no reason why you should not become their counsel and take this case up on appeal without resigning from the Administration.”

“But,” I said, “Mr. President, that arrangement would be impossible for two reasons; first, these women would not want me as their counsel if I were a member of your Administration, for it would appear to the public then as if your Administration was not responsible for the indignities to which they have been subjected, and your Administration is responsible; and, secondly, I cannot accept your suggestion because it may be necessary in the course of the appeal vigorously to criticize and condemn members of your cabinet and others close to you, and I could not adopt this policy while remaining in office under you.” The President seemed greatly upset and finally urged me as a personal service to him to go at once and perfect the case on appeal for the suffragists, but not to resign until I had thought it over for a day, and until he had had an opportunity to investigate the facts I had presented to him. I agreed to this, and we closed the interview with the President saying, “If you consider my personal request and do not resign, please do not leave Washington without coming to see me.” I left the executive offices and never saw him again.

There was just a day and a half left to perfect the exceptions for the appeal under the rules of procedure. No stenographic record of the trial had been taken, which put me under the greatest legal difficulties. I was in the midst of these preparations for appeal the next day when I learned to my surprise that the President had pardoned the women. He had not even consulted me as their attorney. Moreover, I was amazed that since the President had said he considered the treatment of the women “shocking,” he had pardoned them without stating that he did so to correct a grave injustice. I felt certain that the high-spirited women in the workhouse would refuse to accept the pardon as a mere “benevolent” act on the part of the President.

I at once went down to the workhouse in Virginia. My opinion was confirmed. The group refused to accept the President’s pardon. I advised them that as a matter of law no one could compel them to accept the pardon, but that as a matter of fact they would have to accept it, for the Attorney General would have them all put out of the institution bag and baggage. So as a solution of the difficulty and in view of the fact that the President had said to me that their treatment was “shocking” I made public the following statement:

“The President’s pardon is an acknowledgment by him of the grave injustice that has been done:” This he never denied.

Under this published interpretation of his pardon the women at Occoquan accepted the pardon and returned to Washington. The incident was closed. I returned to New York. During the next two months I carefully watched the situation. Six or eight more groups of women in that time were arrested on the same false charges, tried and imprisoned in the same illegal way. Finally a group of women was arrested in September under the identical circumstances as those in July, was tried in the same lawless fashion and given the same sentence of “sixty days in the workhouse.” The President may have been innocent of responsibility for the first arrests, but he was personally and politically responsible for all the arrests that occurred after his pardon of the first, group. Under this development it seemed to me that self-respect demanded action, so I sent my resignation to the President, publicly stated my attitude and regretfully left his Administration.”

Mr. Malone’s resignation in September, 1917, came with a sudden shock, because the entire country and surely the Administration thought him quieted and subdued by the President’s personal appeal to him in July.

Mr. Malone was shocked that the policy of arrests should be continued. Mr. Wilson and his Administration were shocked that any one should care enough about the liberty of women to resign a lucrative post in the Government. The nation was shocked into the realization that this was not a street brawl between women and policemen, but a controversy between suffragists and a powerful Administration. We had said so but it would have taken months to convince the public that the President was in any way responsible. Mr. Malone did what we could only have done with the greatest difficulty and after more prolonged sacrifices. He laid the responsibility squarely and dramatically where it belonged. It is impossible to overemphasize what a tremendous acceleration Mr. Malone’s fine, solitary and generous act gave to the speedy break-down of the Administration’s resistance. His sacrifice lightened ours.

Women ought to be willing to make sacrifices for their own liberation, but for a man to have the courage and imagination to make such a sacrifice for the liberation of women is unparalleled. Mr. Malone called to the attention of the nation the true cause of the obstruction and suppression. He reproached the President and his colleagues after mature consideration, in the most honorable and vital way,—by refusing longer to associate himself with an Administration which backed such policies.

And Mr. Malone’s resignation was not only welcomed by the militant group. The conservative suffrage leaders, although they heartily disapproved of , picketing, were as outspoken in their gratitude.

Alice Stone Blackwell, the daughter of Lucy Stone, herself a pioneer suffrage leader and editor, wrote to Mr. Malone:

“May I express my appreciation and gratitude for the excellent and manly letter that you have written to President Wilson on woman suffrage? I am sure that I am only one of many women who feel thankful to you for it.

“The picketing seems to me a very silly business, and I am sure it is doing the cause harm instead of good; but the picketers are being shamefully and illegally treated, and it is a thousand pities, for President Wilson’s own sake, that he ever allowed the Washington authorities to enter on this course of persecution. It was high time for some one to make a protest, and you have made one that has been heard far and wide . . . .”

Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, the President of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, wrote:

“I was in Maine when your wonderful letter announcing your resignation came out. It was the noblest act that any man ever did on behalf of our cause. The letter itself was a high minded appeal . . . . “

Mrs. Norman de R. Whitehouse, the President of the New York State Woman Suffrage Party, with which Mr. Malone had worked for years, wired:

“Although we disagree with you on the question of picketing every suffragist must be grateful to you for the gallant support you are giving our cause and the great sacrifice you are making.”

Mrs. James Lees Laidlaw, Vice Chairman of the New York Suffrage Party, said:

“No words of mine can tell you how our hearts have been lifted and our purposes strengthened in this tremendous struggle in New York State by the reading of your powerful and noble utterances in your letter to President Wilson. There flashed through my mind all the memories of Knights of chivalry and of romance that I have ever read, and they all paled before your championship, and the sacrifice and the high-spirited leadership that it signifies. Where you lead, I believe, thousands of other men will follow, even though at a distance, and most inadequately . . . .”

And from the women voters of California with whom Mr. Malone had kept faith came the message:

“The liberty-loving women of California greet you as one of the few men in history who have been willing to sacrifice material interests for the liberty of a class to which they themselves do not belong. We are thrilled by your inspiring words. We appreciate your sympathetic understanding of the viewpoint of disfranchised women. We are deeply grateful for the incalculable benefit of your active assistance in the struggle of American women for political liberty and for a real Democracy.”

I reprint Mr. Malone’s letter of resignation which sets forth in detail his position.

September 7, 1917.

The President,
The White House,
Washington, D. C.

Dear Mr. President:

Last autumn, as the representative of your Administration, I went into the woman suffrage states to urge your reelection. The most difficult argument to meet among the seven million voters was the failure of the Democratic party, throughout four years of power, to pass the federal suffrage amendment looking toward the enfranchisement of all the women of the country. Throughout those states, and particularly in California, which ultimately decided the election by the votes of women, the women voters were urged to support you, even though Judge Hughes had already declared for the federal suffrage amendment, because you and your party, through liberal leadership, were more likely nationally to enfranchise the rest of the women of the country than were your opponents.

And if the women of the West voted to reelect you, I promised them that I would spend all my energy, at any sacrifice to myself, to get the present Democratic Administration to pass the federal suffrage amendment.

But the present policy of the Administration, in permitting splendid American women to be sent to jail in Washington, not for carrying offensive banners, not for picketing, but on the technical charge of obstructing traffic, is a denial even of their constitutional right to petition for, and demand the passage of, the federal suffrage amendment. It, therefore, now becomes my profound obligation actively to keep my promise to the women of the West.

In more than twenty states it is a practical impossibility to amend the state constitutions; so the women of those States can only be enfranchised by the passage of the federal suffrage amendment. Since England and Russia, in the midst of the great war, have assured the national enfranchisement of their women, should we not be jealous to maintain our democratic leadership in the world by the speedy national enfranchisement of American women?

To me, Mr. President, as I urged upon you in Washington two months ago, this is not only a measure of justice and democracy, it is also an urgent war measure. The women of the nation are, and always will be, loyal to the country, and the passage of the suffrage amendment is only the first step toward their national emancipation. But unless the government takes at least this first step toward their enfranchisement, how can the government ask millions of American women, educated in our schools and colleges, and millions of American women, in our homes, or toiling for economic independence in every line of industry, to give up by conscription their men and happiness to a war for democracy in Europe, while these women citizens are denied the right to vote on the policies of the Government which demands of them such sacrifice?

For this reason many of your most ardent friends and supporters feel that the passage of the federal suffrage amendment is a war measure which could appropriately be urged by you at this session of Congress. It is true that this amendment would have to come from Congress, but the present Congress shows no earnest desire to enact this legislation for the simple reason that you, as the leader of the party in power, have not yet suggested it.

For the whole country gladly acknowledges, Mr. President, that no vital piece of legislation has come through Congress these five years except by your extraordinary and brilliant leadership. And what millions of men and women to-day hope is that you will give the federal suffrage amendment to the women of the country by the valor of your leadership now. It will hearten the mothers of the nation, eliminate a just grievance, and turn the devoted energies of brilliant women to a more hearty support of the Government in this crisis.

As you well know, in dozens of speeches in many states I have advocated your policies and the war. I was the first man of your Administration, nearly five years ago, to publicly advocate preparedness, and helped to found the first Plattsburg training camp. And if, with our troops mobilizing in France, you will give American women this measure for their political freedom, they will support with greater enthusiasm your hope and the hope of America for world freedom.

I have not approved all the methods recently adopted by women in pursuit of their political liberty; yet, Mr. President, the Committee on Suffrage of the United States Senate was formed in 1883, when I was one year old; this same federal suffrage amendment was first introduced in Congress in 1878, brave women like Susan B. Anthony were petitioning Congress for the suffrage before the Civil War, and at the time of the Civil War men like William Lloyd Garrison, Horace Greeley, and Wendell Phillips assured the suffrage leaders that if they abandoned their fight for suffrage, when the war was ended the men of the nation “out of gratitude” would enfranchise the women of the- country.

And if the men of this country had been peacefully demanding for over half a century the political right or privilege to vote, and had been continuously ignored or met with evasion by successive Congresses, as have the women, you, Mr. President, as a lover of liberty, would be the first to comprehend and forgive their inevitable impatience and righteous indignation. Will not this Administration, reelected to power by the hope and faith of the women of the West, handsomely reward that faith by taking action now for the passage of the federal suffrage amendment?

In the Port of New York, during the last four years, billions of dollars in the export and import trade of the country have been handled by the men of the customs service; their treatment of the traveling public has radically changed, their vigilance supplied the evidence of the Lusitania note; the neutrality was rigidly maintained; the great German fleet guarded, captured, and repaired—substantial economies and reforms have been concluded and my ardent industry has been given to this great office of your appointment.

But now I wish to leave these finished tasks, to return to my profession of the law, and to give all my leisure time to fight as hard for the political freedom of women as I have always fought for your liberal leadership.

It seems a long seven years, Mr. President, since I first campaigned with you when you were running for Governor of New Jersey. In every circumstance throughout those years I have served you with the most respectful affection and unshadowed devotion. It is no small sacrifice now for me, as a member of your Administration, to sever our political relationship. But I think it is high time that men in this generation, at some cost to themselves, stood up to battle for the national enfranchisement of American women. So in order effectively to keep my promise made in the West and more freely to go into this larger field of democratic effort, I hereby resign my office as Collector of the Port of New York, to take effect at once, or at your earliest convenience.

Yours respectfully,
(Signed) DUDLEY FIELD MALONE.

The President’s answer has never before been published:

U. S. S. MAYFLOWER, 12 September, 1917.

THE WHITE HOUSE WASHINGTON

My dear Mr. Collector:

Your letter of September 7th reached me just before I left home and I have, I am sorry to say, been unable to reply to it sooner.

I must frankly say that I cannot regard your reasons for resigning your position as Collector of Customs as convincing, but it is so evidently your wish to be relieved from the duties of the office that I do not feel at liberty to withhold my acceptance of your resignation. Indeed, I judge from your letter that any discussion of the reasons would not be acceptable to you and that it is your desire to be free of the restraints of public office. I, therefore, accept your resignation, to take effect as you have wished.

I need not say that our long association in public affairs makes me regret the action you have taken most sincerely.

Very truly yours,
(Signed) WOODROW WILSON.

Hon. Dudley Field Malone,
Collector of Customs,
New York City.

To this Mr. Malone replied:

New York, N.Y.,
September 15th, 1917.

The President,
The White House,
Washington, D. C.

Dear Mr. President:

Thank you sincerely for your courtesy, for I knew you were on a well-earned holiday and I did not expect an earlier reply to my letter of September 7th, 1917.

After a most careful re-reading of my letter, I am unable to understand how you could judge that any discussion by you of my reasons for resigning would not be acceptable to me since my letter was an appeal to you on specific grounds for action now by the Administration on the Federal Suffrage amendment.

However, I am profoundly grateful to you for your prompt acceptance of my resignation.

Yours respectfully,
(Signed) DUDLEY FIELD MALONE.

It may have been accidental but it is interesting to note that the first public statement of Mr. Byron Newton, appointed by the Administration to succeed Mr. Malone as Collector of the Port of New York, was a bitter denunciation of all woman suffrage whether by state or national action.

Chapter 8
The Administration Yields

Immediately after Mr. Malone’s sensational resignation the Administration sought another way to remove the persistent pickets without passing the amendment. It yielded on a point of machinery. It gave us a report in the Senate and a committee in the House and expected us to be grateful.

The press had turned again to more sympathetic accounts of our campaign and exposed the prison regime we were undergoing. We were now for a moment the object of sympathy; the Administration was the butt of considerable hostility. Sensing their predicament and fearing any loss of prestige, they risked a slight advance.

Senator Jones, Chairman of the Suffrage Committee, made a visit to the workhouse. Scarcely had the women recovered from the surprise of his visit when the Senator, on the following day, September 15th, filed the favorable report which had been lying with his Committee since May 15th, exactly six months.

The Report, which he had so long delayed because he wanted [he said] to make it a particularly brilliant and elaborate one, read:

“The Committee on Woman Suffrage, to which was referred the joint resolution proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, conferring upon women the right of suffrage, having the same under consideration, beg leave to report it back to the Senate with the recommendation that the joint resolution do pass.”

This report to the Senate was immediately followed by a vote of 181 to 107 in the House of Representatives in favor of creating a Committee on Woman Suffrage in the House. This vote was indicative of the strength of the amendment in the House. The resolution was sponsored by Representative Pou, Chairman of the Rules Committee and Administration leader, himself an anti- suffragist.

It is an interesting study in psychology to consider some of the statements made in the peculiarly heated debate the day this vote was taken.

Scores of Congressmen, anxious to refute the idea that the indomitable picket had had anything to do with their action, revealed naively how surely it had.

Of the 291 men present, not one man stood squarely up for the right of the hundreds of women who petitioned for justice. Some indirectly and many, inadvertently, however, paid eloquent tribute to the suffrage picket.

From the moment Representative Pou in opening the debate spoke of the nation-wide request for the committee, and the President’s sanction of the committee, the accusations and counter- accusations concerning the wisdom of appointing it in the face of the pickets were many and animated.

Mr. Meeker of Missouri, Democrat, protested against Congress “yielding to the nagging of a certain group.”

Mr. Cantrill of Kentucky, Democrat, believed that “millions of Christian women in the nation should not be denied the right of having a Committee in the House to study the problem of suffrage because of the mistakes of some few of their sisters.”

“One had as well say,” he went on, “that there should be no police in Washington because the police force of this city permitted daily thousands of people to obstruct the streets and impede traffic and permitted almost the mobbing of the women without arresting the offenders. There was a lawful and peaceful way in which the police of this city could have taken charge of the banners of the pickets without permitting the women carrying them to be the objects of mob violence. To see women roughly handled by rough men on the streets of the capital of the nation is not a pleasing sight to Kentuckians and to red-blooded Americans, and let us hope the like will never again be seen here.”

Mr. Walsh, an anti-suffrage Democrat from Massachusetts, deplored taking any action which would seem to yield to the demand of the pickets who carried banners which “if used by a poor workingman in an attempt to get his rights would speedily have put him behind the bars for treason or sedition, and these poor, bewildered, deluded creatures, after their disgusting exhibition can thank their stars that because they wear skirts they are now incarcerated for misdemeanors of a minor character . . . . To supinely yield to a certain class of women picketing the gates of the official residence,—yes, even posing with their short skirts and their short hair within the view of this ‘very capitol and our office buildings,’ with banners which would seek to lead the people to believe that because we did not take action during this war session upon suffrage, if you please, and grant them the right of the ballot that we were traitors to the American Republic, would be monstrous.”

The subject of the creation of a committee on suffrage was almost entirely forgotten. The Congressmen were utterly unable to shake off the ghosts of the pickets. The pickets had not influenced their actions! The very idea was appalling to Representative Stafford of Wisconsin, anti-suffrage Republican, who joined in the Democratic protests. He said:

“If a Suffrage Committee is created the militant class will exclaim, ‘Ah, see how we have driven the great House of Representatives to recognize our rights. If we keep up this sort of practices, we will compel the House, when they come to vote on the constitutional amendment, to surrender obediently likewise’.”

He spoke the truth, and finished dramatically with:

“Gentlemen, there is only one question before the House today and that is, if you look at it from a political aspect, whether you wish to approve of the practices of these women who have been disgracing their cause here in Washington for the past several months.”

Representative Volstead, of Minnesota, Republican, came the closest of all to real courage in his protest:—

“In this discussion some very unfair comments have been made upon the women who picketed the White House. While I do not approve of picketing, I disapprove more strongly of the hoodlum methods pursued in suppressing the practice. I gather from the press that this is what took place. Some women did in a peaceable, and perfectly lawful manner, display suffrage banners on the public street near the White House. To stop this the police allowed the women to be mobbed, and then because the mob obstructed the street, the women were arrested and fined, while the mob went scot-free . . . .”

The Suffrage Committee in the House was appointed. The creation of this committee, which had been pending since 1913, was now finally granted in September, 1917. To be sure this was accomplished only after an inordinate amount of time, money and effort had been spent on a sustained and relentless campaign of pressure. But the Administration had yielded.

As a means to remove the pickets, however, this yielding had failed. “We ask no more machinery; we demand the passage of the amendment,” said the pickets as they lengthened their line.

Chapter 9
Political Prisoners

Finding that a Suffrage Committee in the House and a report in the Senate had not silenced our banners, the Administration cast about for another plan by which to stop the picketing. This time they turned desperately to longer terms of imprisonment. They were indeed hard pressed when they could choose such a cruel and stupid course.

Our answer to this policy was more women on the picket line, on the outside, and a protest on the inside of prison.

We decided, in the face of extended imprisonment, to demand to be treated as political prisoners. We felt that, as a matter of principle, this was the dignified and self-respecting thing to do, since we had offended politically, not criminally. We believed further that a determined, organized effort to make clear to a wider public the political nature of the offense would intensify the Administration’s embarrassment and so accelerate their final surrender.

It fell to Lucy Burns, vice chairman of the organization, to be the leader of the new protest. Miss Burns is in appearance the very symbol of woman in revolt. Her abundant and glorious red hair burns and is not consumed—a flaming torch. Her body is strong and vital. It is said that Lucy Stone had the “voice” of the pioneers. Lucy Burns without doubt possessed the “voice” of the modern suffrage movement. Musical, appealing, persuading—she could move the most resistant person. Her talent as an orator is of the kind that makes for instant intimacy with her audience. Her emotional quality is so powerful that her intellectual capacity, which is quite as great, is not always at once perceived.

I find myself wanting to talk about her as a human being rather than as a leader of women. Perhaps it is because she has such winning, lovable qualities. It was always difficult for her to give all of her energy and power to a movement. She yearned to play, to read, to study, to be luxuriously indolent, to revel in the companionship of her family, to which she is ardently devoted; to do any one of a hundred things more pleasant than trying to reason with a politician or an unawakened member of her own sex. But for these latter labors she had a most gentle and persuasive genius, and she would not shrink from hours of close argument to convince a person intellectually and emotionally.