Jailed for Freedom Part 11

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, Was.h.i.+ngton, 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 ent.i.tle 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

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spectator who had seen all the various forms of the suffrage agitation in Was.h.i.+ngton. 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 Tannhauser; "The Coronation March" from Le Prophete, the Russian Hymn and "The Ma.r.s.ellaise"

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 Was.h.i.+ngton 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 pa.s.sed between the leaders and the guards. Miss Anne, Martin addressed the guard

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"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 Was.h.i.+ngton 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

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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 hards.h.i.+p compared to eternal subjection! Women marched and waited-waited and marched,

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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 pa.s.sionate 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.

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Chapter 2

The Suffrage War Policy

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