Jailed for Freedom Part 3

[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"

{23}

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?"

"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 a.s.sembling 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 ma.s.s demonstration. This time women delegates representing every one of the 435 Congressional Districts in the country bore pet.i.tions from the const.i.tuencies showing that the people "back home" wanted the amendment pa.s.sed. The delegates marched on Congress and were received with a warm welcome and their pet.i.tions 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.

{24}

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 pet.i.tion signed by hundreds of thousands of citizens was brought to the Senate asking that body to pa.s.s 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 Was.h.i.+ngton 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 pet.i.tions. 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 pet.i.tions from their const.i.tuencies? Gladly. Report it from the Senate Committee? They had to concede that. But pa.s.sage 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 Was.h.i.+ngton: Having failed to get the Senate to act by August, we invited the Council of Women Voters to hold its convention in Wash-

{25}

ington 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 enfranchis.e.m.e.nt 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 a.s.sured 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 pa.s.s the amendment.

A fourth time that year the determination of women to secure the pa.s.sage of the amendment was demonstrated. In December, the opening week of the new Congress, the annual convention of the National American Woman Suffrage a.s.so-

{26}

ciation was held in Was.h.i.+ngton. 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 a.s.sociation is a.s.sembled in Was.h.i.+ngton 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 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 pa.s.sage 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 att.i.tude 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

{27}

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 chastis.e.m.e.nt 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 a.s.sistance, 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?"

{28}

"You seem very well able to speak for yourselves, ladies," with a broad smile, followed by a quick embarra.s.sment 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 a.s.sociation, 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 leaders.h.i.+p 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, pet.i.tions to Congress, more persistent lobbying, all these things continued during the following year under Miss Paul's leaders.h.i.+p with the result that a vote in the Senate was taken, though at ran inopportune moment,-the first vote in the Senate since 188'7. 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

{29}

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 pet.i.tion, 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 subst.i.tute 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."