Jailed for Freedom Part 40

sary appropriation legislation. But he did not mention the suffrage amendment. Having been forced to release the prisoners, he again rested.

Immediately we called a conference in Was.h.i.+ngton of the Executive Committee and the National Advisory Council of the Woman's Party.

Past activities were briefly reviewed and the political situation discussed. It is interesting to note that the Treasurer's report made at this conference showed that receipts in some months during the picketing had been double what they were the same month the previous year when there was no picketing. In one month of picketing the receipts went as high as six times the normal amount. For example in July of 1917, when the arrests had just begun, receipts for the month totalled $21,628.65 as against $8,690.62 for July of 1916. In November, 1917, when the militant situation was at its highest point, there was received at National Headquarters $81,117.87 as against $15,008.18 received in November, 1916. Still there were those who said we had no friends!

A rumor that the President would act persisted. But we could not rely on rumor. We decided to accelerate him and his Administration by filing damage suits amounting to $800,000 against the District Commissioners, against Warden Zinkhan, against Superintendent Whittaker and Captain Reams, a workhouse guard.[1] They were brought in no spirit of revenge, but merely that the Administration should not be allowed to forget its record of brutality, unless it chose to amend its conduct by pa.s.sing the amendment. The suits were brought by the women woo suffered the greatest abuse during the "night of terror" at the workhouse.

If any one is still in doubt as to the close relation between the Court procedure in our case and the President's actions,

[1]We were obliged to bring the suits against individuals, as we could not in the law bring them against the government.

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this letter to one of our attorneys in January, 1918, must convince him.

My dear Mr. O'Brien:

I wish you would advise me as soon as you conveniently can, what will be done with the suffragist cases now pending against Whittaker and Reams in the United States District Court at Alexandria.

I have heard rumors, the truth of which you will understand better than I, that these cases will be dropped if the President comes out in favor of woman suffrage. This, I understand, he will do and certainly hope so, as I am personally in favor of it and have been for many years. But in case of his delay in taking any action, will you agree to continue these cases for the present?

Very truly yours,

(Signed) F. H. STEVENS, a.s.sistant Corporation Counsel, D. C.

In order to further fortify themselves, the District Commissioners, when the storm had subsided, quietly removed Warden Zinkhan from the jail and Superintendent Whittaker resigned his post at the workhouse, presumably under pressure from the Commissioners.

The Woman's Party conference came to a dramatic close during that first week in December with an enormous ma.s.s meeting in the Belasco Theatre in Was.h.i.+ngton. On that quiet Sunday afternoon, as the President came through his gates for his afternoon drive, a pa.s.sageway had to be opened for his motor car through the crowd of four thousand people who were blocking Madison Place in an effort to get inside the Belasco Theatre. Inside the building was packed to the rafters. The President saw squads of police reserves, who had been for the past six months arresting pickets for him, battling with a crowd that was literally storming the theatre in their eagerness to do honor to those who had been arrested. Inside there was a fever heat of enthusiasm, bursting cheers, and

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thundering applause which shook the building. America has never before nor since seen such a suffrage meeting.

Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont, chairman, opened the meeting by saying:

"We are here this afternoon to do honor to a hundred gallant women, who have endured the hards.h.i.+p and humiliation of imprisonment because they love liberty.

"The suffrage pickets stood at the White House gates for ten months and dramatized the women's agitation for political liberty. Self-respecting and patriotic American women will no longer tolerate a government which denies women the right to govern themselves. A flame of rebellion is abroad among women, and the stupidity and brutality of the government in this revolt have only served to increase its heat.

"As President Wilson wrote, 'Governments have been very successful in parrying agitation, diverting it, in seeming to yield to it and then cheating it, tiring it out or evading it.

But the end, whether it comes soon or late, is quite certain to be the same.' While the government has endeavored to parry, tire, divert, and cheat us of our goal, the country has risen in protest against this evasive policy of suppression until to-day the indomitable pickets with their historic legends stand triumphant before the nation."

Mrs. William Kent, who had led the last picket line of forty-one women, was chosen to decorate the prisoners.

"In honoring these women, who were willing to go to jail for liberty," said Mrs. Kent, "we are showing our love of country and devotion to democracy." The long line of prisoners filed past her and amidst constant cheers and applause, received a tiny silver replica of a cell door, the same that appears in miniature on the t.i.tle page of this book.

As proof of this admiration for what the women had done, the great audience in a very few moments pledged $86,826 to continue the campaign. Many pledges were made in honor of

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Alice Paul, Inez Milholland, Mrs. Belmont, Dudley Field Malone, and all the prisoners. Imperative resolutions calling upon President Wilson and his Administration to act, were unanimously pa.s.sed amid an uproar.

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Chapter 15

Political Results

Immediately following the release of the prisoners and the magnificent demonstration of public support of them, culminating at the ma.s.s meeting recorded in the preceding chapter, political events happened thick and fast. Committees in Congress acted on the amendment. President Wilson surrendered and a date for the vote was set.

The Judiciary Committee of the House voted 18 to 2 to report the amendment to that body. The measure, it will be remembered, was reported to the Senate in the closing days of the previous session, and was therefore already before the Senate awaiting action.[1]

To be sure, the Judiciary Committee voted to report the amendment without recommendation. But soon after, the members of the - Suffrage Committee, provision for which had also been made during the war session, were appointed. All but four members of this committee were in favor of national suffrage, and immediately after its formation it met to organize and decided to take the suffrage measure out of the hands of the Judiciary Committee and to press for a vote.

A test of strength came on December 18th.

On a trivial motion to refer all suffrage bills to the new suffrage committee, the vote stood 204 to 10'7. This vote, although unimportant in itself, clearly promised victory for the amendment in the House. In a few days, Representative Mon-

[1]See Chapter 8.

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dell of Wyoming, Republican, declared that the Republican side of the House would give more than a two-thirds majority of its members to the amendment.

"It is up to our friends on the Democratic side to see that the amendment is not defeated through hostility or indifference on their side," said Mr. Mondell.

Our daily poll of the House showed constant gains. Pledges from both Democratic and Republican members came thick and fast; cabinet members for the first time publicly declared their belief in the amendment. A final poll, however, showed that we lacked a few votes of the necessary two-thirds majority to pa.s.s the measure in the House.

No stone was left unturned in a final effort to get the President to secure additional Democratic votes to insure the pa.s.sage of the amendment. Finally, on the eve of the vote President Wilson made his first declaration of support of the amendment through a committee of Democratic Congressmen. During the vote the following day Representative Cantrill of Kentucky, Democrat, reported the event to the House. He said in part:

It was my privilege yesterday afternoon to be one of a committee of twelve to ask the President for advice and counsel on this important measure (prolonged laughter and jeers). Mr. Speaker, in answer to the sentiment expressed by part of the House, I desire to say that at no time and upon no occasion am I ever ashamed to confer with Woodrow Wilson upon any important question (laughter, applause, and, jeers) and that part of the House that has jeered that statement before it adjourns to-day will follow absolutely the advice which he gave this committee yesterday afternoon.

(Laughter and applause.) After conference with the President yesterday afternoon he wrote with his own hands the words which I now read to you, and each member of the committee was authorized by the President to give full publicity to the following:

"The committee found that the President had not felt at liberty to volunteer his advice to Members of Congress in this

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important matter, but when we sought his advice (laughter) he very frankly and earnestly advised us to vote for the amendment as an act of right and justice to the women of the country and o f the world."

. . . To my Democratic brethren who have made these halls ring with their eloquence in their pleas to stand by the President, I will say that now is your chance to stand by the President and vote for this amendment, "as' an act of right and justice to the women of the country and of the world" . . .

Do you wish to do that which is right and just toward the women of your own country? If so, follow the President's advice and vote for this amendment. It will not do to follow the President in this great crisis in the world's history on those matters only which are popular in your own districts. The true test is to stand by him, even though your own vote is unpopular at home. The acid test for a Member of Congress is for him to stand for right and justice even if misunderstood at home at first. In the end, right and justice will prevail everywhere.

. . . No one thing connected with the war is of more importance at this time than meeting the reasonable demand of millions of patriotic and Christian women of the Nation that the amendment for woman suffrage be submitted to the States . . . .

The amendment pa.s.sed the House January 10, 1918, by a vote of 274 to l36-a two-thirds majority with one vote to spare-exactly forty years to a day from the time the suffrage amendment was first introduced into Congress, and exactly one year to a day from the time the first picket banner appeared at the gates o f the White House.

Eighty-three per cent of the Republicans voting on the measure, voted in favor of it, while only fifty per cent of the Democrats voting, voted for it. Even after the Republicans had pledged their utmost strength, more than two-thirds of their members.h.i.+p, votes were still lacking to make up the Democratic deficiency, and the President's declaration that the measure ought to pa.s.s the House, produced them from his own

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