Jailed for Freedom Part 2

Her gentle humor is of the highest quality. If only her opponents could have seen her amus.e.m.e.nt 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

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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

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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 Was.h.i.+ngton. 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 superst.i.tion 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 pa.s.sionate 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. Think-

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ing, thinking day and night of her objective and never r.e.t.a.r.ding 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 leaders.h.i.+p 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 a.s.set, 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 pa.s.sed Congress was this interesting message from Walter Clark, Chief Justice of the Supreme

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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 a.s.sured. 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."

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Part II

Political Action

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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 Was.h.i.+ngton 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 subst.i.tute. Our first task seemed simple actually to show that thousands of women wanted immediate action on their long delayed enfranchis.e.m.e.nt. This we did.

This was the first demonstration under the leaders.h.i.+p of Alice Paul, at that time chairman of the Congressional Com-

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mittee of the National American Woman. Suffrage a.s.sociation. 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 pa.s.sage 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 cla.s.s- room. All confessed to being frightened when the President came in and took his seat at the head of the cla.s.s. The President said he had no opinion on the subject of woman suffrage; that he had never given it any thought;[2]

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