Jailed for Freedom Part 48

DOES TENNESSEE BACK THE PRESIDENT'S WAR PROGRAM OE SENATOR s.h.i.+ELDS?

And still a third:

GERMANY HAS ESTABLISHED "EQUAL, UNIVERSAL, SECRET, DIRECT FRANCHISE."

THE SENATE HAS DENIED EQUAL, UNIVERSAL, SECRET SUFFRAGE TO AMERICA.

WHICH IS MORE OF A DEMOCRACY, GERMANY OR AMERICA?

As the women approached the Senate, Colonel Higgins, the Sergeant at Arms of the Senate, ordered a squad of Capitol policemen to rush upon them. They wrenched their banners from them, twisting their wrists and manhandling them as they took them up the steps, through the door, and down

{298}

into the guardroom,-their banners confiscated and they themselves detained for varying periods of time. When the women insisted on knowing upon what charges they were held, they were merely told that "peace and order must be maintained on the Capitol grounds,"

and further, "It don't make no difference about the law, Colonel Higgins is boss here, and he has taken the law in his own hands."

Day after day this performance went on. Small detachments of women attempted to hold banners outside the United States Senate, as the women of Holland had done outside the Parliament in the Hague. It was difficult to believe that American politicians could be so devoid of humor as they showed themselves. The panic that overwhelms our official mind in the face of the slightest irregularity is appalling! Instead of maintaining peace and order, the squads of police managed to keep the Capitol grounds in a state of confusion. They were a.s.sisted from time to time by Senate pages, small errand boys who would run out and attack mature women with impunity. The women would be held under the most rigid detention each day until the Senate had safely adjourned. Then on the morrow the whole spectacle would be repeated.

While the United States Senate was standing still under our protest world events rushed on. German autocracy had collapsed.

The Allies had won a military victory. The Kaiser had that very week fled for his life because of the uprising of his people.

"We are all free voters of a free republic now," was the message sent by the women of Germany to the women of the United States through Miss Jane Addams. We were at that moment heartily ashamed of our government. German women voting! American women going to jail and spending long hours in the Senate guardhouse without arrests or, charges. The war came to an end. Congress adjourned November 21st.

When the 65th Congress reconvened for its short and final

{299}

session, December 2nd, 1918 [less than a month after our election campaign], President Wilson, for the first time, included suffrage in his regular message to Congress, the thing that we had asked of him at the opening of every session of Congress since March, 1918.

There were now fewer than a hundred days in which to get action from the Senate and so avoid losing the benefit of our victory in the House.

In his opening address to Congress, the President again appealed to the Senate in these words:

"And what shall we say of the women-of their instant intelligence, quickening every task that they touched; their capacity for .organization and cooperation, which gave their action discipline and enhanced the effectiveness of everything they attempted; their apt.i.tude at tasks to which they had never before set their hands; their utter self-sacrifice alike in what they did and in what they gave? Their contribution to the great result is beyond appraisal. They have added a new l.u.s.ter to the annals of American womanhood.

"The least tribute we can pay them is to make them the equals of men in political rights, as they have proved themselves their equals in every field of practical work they have entered, whether for themselves or for their country. These great days of completed achievement would be sadly marred were we to omit that act of justice. Besides the immense practical services they have rendered, the women of the country have been the moving spirits in the systematic economies in which our people have voluntarily a.s.sisted to supply the suffering peoples of the world and the armies upon every front with food and everything else we had, that might serve the common cause. The details of such a story can never be fully written but we carry them at our hearts and thank G.o.d that we can say that we are the kinsmen of such."

Again we looked for action to follow this appeal. Again

{300}

we found that the President had uttered these words but had made no plan to translate them into action.

And so his second appeal to the Senate failed, coming as it did after the hostility of his party to the idea of conferring freedom on women nationally, had been approved and fostered by President Wilson for five solid years. He could not overcome with additional eloquence the opposition which he himself had so long formulated, defended, encouraged and solidified, especially when that eloquence was followed by either no action or only half- hearted efforts.

It would now require a determined a.s.sertion of his political power as the leader of his party. We made a final appeal to him as leader of his party and while still at the height of his world power, to make such an a.s.sertion and to demand the necessary two votes.

{301}

Chapter 20

The President Sails Away

No sooner had we set ourselves to a brief, hot campaign to compel President Wilson to win the final votes than he sailed away to France to attend the Peace Conference, sailed away to consecrate himself to the program of liberating the oppressed peoples of the whole world. He cannot be condemned for aiming to achieve so gigantic a task. But we reflected that again the President had refused his specific aid in an humble aspiration, for the rosy hope of a more boldly conceived ambition.

It was positively impossible for us, by our own efforts, to win the last 2 votes. We could only win them through the President.

That he had left behind him his message urging the Senate to act, is true. That Administration leaders did not consider these words a command, is also true. It must be realized that even after the President had been compelled to publicly declare his support of the measure, it was almost impossible to get his own leaders to take seriously his words on suffrage. And so again the Democratic Chairman of the Rules Committee, in whose keeping the program lay, had no thought of bringing it to a vote. The Democratic Chairman of the Woman Suffrage Committee a.s.sumed not the slightest responsibility for its success, nor could he produce any plan whereby the last votes could be won. They knew, as well as did we, that the President only could win those last 2 votes.

They made it perfectly clear that until he had done so, they could do nothing.

{302}

Less than fifty legislative days remained to us. Something had to be done quickly, something bold and offensive enough to threaten the prestige of the President, as he was riding in sublimity to unknown heights as a champion of world liberty; something which might penetrate his reverie and shock him into concrete action.

We had successfully defied the full power of his Administration, the odds heavily against us. We must now defy the popular belief of the world in this apostle of liberty. This was the feeling of the four hundred officers of the National Woman's Party, summoned to a three days' conference in Was.h.i.+ngton in December, 1918. It was unanimously decided to light a fire in an urn, and, on the day that the President was officially received by France, to burn with fitting public ceremonies all the President's past and present speeches or books concerning "liberty", "freedom" and "democracy."

It was late afternoon when the four hundred women proceeded solemnly in single file from headquarters, past the White House, along the edge of the quiet and beautiful Lafayette Park, to the foot of Lafayette's statue. A slight mist added beauty to the pageant. The purple, white and gold banners, so brilliant in the suns.h.i.+ne, became soft pastel sails. Half the procession carried lighted torches; the other half banners. The crowd gathered silently, somewhat awe-struck by the scene. Ma.s.sed about that statue, we felt a strange strength and solidarity, we felt again that we were a part of the universal struggle for liberty.

The torch was applied to the pine-wood logs in the Grecian Urn at the edge of the broad base of the statue. As the flames began to mount, Vida Milholland stepped forward and without accompaniment sang again from that spot of beauty, in her own challenging way, the Woman's Ma.r.s.eillaise. Even the small boys in the crowd, always the most difficult to please, cheered and clapped and cried for more.

{303}

Mrs. John Rogers, Jr., chairman of the National Advisory Council, said, as president of the ceremony:

"We hold this meeting to protest against the denial of liberty to American women. All over the world to-day we see surging and sweeping irresistibly on, the great tide of democracy, and women would be derelict in their duty if they did not see to it that it brings freedom to the women of this land . . . .

"Our ceremony to-day is planned to call attention to the fact that President Wilson has gone abroad to establish democracy in foreign lands when he has failed to establish democracy at home.

We burn his words on liberty to-day, not in malice or anger, but in a spirit of reverence for truth.

"This meeting is a message to President Wilson. We expect an answer. If the answer is more words we will burn them again. The only answer the National Woman's Party will accept is the instant pa.s.sage of the amendment in the Senate."

The few hoots and jeers which followed all ceased, when a tiny and aged woman stepped from her place to the urn in the brilliant torch light. The crowd recognized a veteran. It was the most dramatic moment in the ceremony. Reverend Olympia Brown of Wisconsin, one of the first ordained women ministers in the country, then in her eighty-fourth year, gallant pioneer, friend and colleague of Susan B. Anthony, said, as she threw into the flames the speech made by the President on his arrival in France:

" . . . I have fought for liberty for seventy years, and I protest against the President's leaving our country with this old fight here unwon."

The crowd burst into applause and continued to cheer as she was a.s.sisted from the plinth of the statue, too frail to dismount by herself. Then came the other representative women, from Ma.s.sachusetts to California, from Georgia to Michigan, each one consigning to the flames a special declaration of the

{304}

President's on freedom. The flames burned brighter and brighter and leapt higher as the night grew black.

The casual observer said, "They must be crazy. Don't they know the President isn't at home? Why are they appealing to him in the park opposite the White House when he is in France?"

The long line of bright torches shone menacingly as the women marched slowly back to headquarters, and the crowd dispersed in silence. The White House was empty. But we knew our message would be heard in France.

{305}

Chapter 21

Watchfires of Freedom