Jailed for Freedom Part 8

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yours is only a small part. You feel his strength in authority, his weakness in vision. He does not follow. He feels sorrow for us. He patronizes us. He must temper his irritation at our undoubted fanaticism and unreason. We, on the other hand, feel so superior to him. Our strength to demand is so much greater than his power to withhold. But he does not perceive this.

In the midst of these currents the serene and appealing voice of Sara Bard Field came as a temporary relief to the President-but only temporary. Shy brought tears to the eyes of the women as she said in presenting the California memorial resolutions:

"Mr. President, a year ago I had the honor of calling upon you with a similar deputation. At that time we brought from my western country a great pet.i.tion from the voting women urging your a.s.sistance in the pa.s.sage of the federal amendment for suffrage. At that time you were most gracious to us. You showed yourself to be in line with all the progressive leaders by your statement to us that you could change your mind and would consider doing so in connection with this amendment. We went away that day with hope in our hearts, but neither the hope inspired by your friendly words nor the faith we had in you as an advocate of democracy kept us from working day and night in the interest of our cause.

"Since that day when we came to you, Mr. President, one of our most beautiful and beloved comrades, Inez Milholland, has paid the price of her life for this cause. The untimely death of a young woman like this-a woman for whom the world has such bitter need-has focussed the attention of the men and women of the nation on the fearful waste of women which this fight for the ballot is entailing. The same maternal instinct for the preservation of life-whether it be the physical life of a child or the spiritual life of a cause is sending women into this battle for liberty with an urge which gives them no rest night or day. Every advance of liberty has demanded its quota of human sacrifice, but if I had time I could show you that we have paid in a measure that is running over. In the

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light of Inez Milholland's death, as we look over the long backward trail through which we have sought our political liberty, we are asking how long must this struggle go on.

"Mr. President, to the nation more than to women alone is this waste of maternal force significant. In industry such a waste of money and strength would not be permitted. The modern trend is all toward efficiency. Why is such waste permitted in the making of a nation?

"Sometimes I think it must be very hard to be a President, in respect to his contacts with people as well as in the great business he must perform. The exclusiveness necessary to a great dignitary holds him away from that democracy of communion, necessary to a full understanding of what the people .are really thinking and desiring. I feel that this deputation to-day fails in its mission if, because of the dignity of your office and the formality of such an occasion, we fail to bring you the throb of woman's desire for freedom and her eagerness to ally herself when once the ballot is in her hand, with all those activities to which you, yourself, have dedicated your life. Those tasks which this nation has set itself to do are her tasks as well as man's.

We women who are here to-day are close to this desire of women.

We cannot believe that you are our enemy or indifferent to the fundamental righteousness of our demand.

"We have come here to you in your powerful office as our helper.

We have come in the name of justice, in the name of democracy, in the name of all women who have fought and died for this cause, and in a peculiar way with our hearts bowed in sorrow, in the name of this gallant girl who died with the word 'liberty' on her lips. We have come asking you this day to speak some favorable word to us that we may know that you will use your good and great office to end this wasteful struggle of women."

The highest point in the interview had been reached. Before the President began his reply, we were aware that the high moment had gone. But we listened.

"Ladies, I had not been apprised that you were coming here to make any representations that would issue an appeal to me.

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I had been told that you were coming to present memorial resolutions with regard to the very remarkable woman whom your cause has lost. I, therefore, am not prepared to say anything further than I have said on previous occasions of this sort.

"I do not need to tell you where my own convictions and my own personal purpose lie, and I need not tell you by what circ.u.mscriptions I am bound as leader of a party. As the leader of a party my commands come from that party and not from private personal convictions.

"My personal action as a citizen, of course, comes from no source but my own conviction. and, therefore, my position has been so frequently defined, and I hope so candidly defined, and it is so impossible for me until the orders of my party are changed, to do anything other than I am doing as a party leader, that I think nothing more is necessary to be said.

"I do want to say this: I do not see how anybody can fail to observe from the utterances of the last campaign that the Democratic Party is more inclined than the opposition to a.s.sist in this great cause, and it has been a matter of surprise to me, and a matter of very great regret that so many of those who were heart and soul for this cause seemed so greatly to misunderstand arid misinterpret the att.i.tude of parties. In this country, as in every other self-governing country, it is really through the instrumentality of parties that things can be accomplished. They are not accomplished by the individual voice but by concerted action, and that action must come only so fast as you can concert it. I have done my best and shall continue to do my best to concert it in the interest of a cause in which I personally believe."

Dead silence. The President stands for a brief instant at the end of his words as if waiting for some faint stir of approval which does not come. He has the baffled air of a dis- appointed actor who has failed to "get across." Then he turns abruptly on his heel and the great doors swallow him up. Silently the women file through the corridor and into the fresh air.

The women returned to the s.p.a.cious headquarters across

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the park all of one mind. How little the President knew about women! How he underestimated their intelligence and penetration of things political,! Was it possible that he really thought these earnest champions of liberty would merely carry resolutions of sorrow and regret to the President?

But this was not the real irony. How lightly he had s.h.i.+fted the responsibility for getting results to his party. With what coldness he had bade us "concert opinion," a thing which he alone could do. That was pretty hard to bear, coming as it did when countless forms of appeal had been 'exhausted by which women without sufficient power could "concert" anything. The movement was almost at the point of languis.h.i.+ng so universal was the belief in the nation that suffrage for women was inevitable. And yet he and his party remained immovable.

The three hundred women of the memorial deputation became on their return to headquarters a spirited protest meeting.

Plans of action in the event the President refused to help had been under consideration by Miss Paul and her executive committee for some time, but they were now presented for the first time for approval. There was never a more dramatic moment at which to ask the women if they were ready for drastic action.

Harriot Stanton Blatch, daughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and a powerful leader of women, voiced the feeling of the entire body when she said, in a ringing call for action:

"We have gone to Congress, we have gone to the President during the last four years with great deputations, with small deputations. We have shown the interest all over the country in self-government for women-something that the President as a great Democrat ought to understand and respond to instantly. Yet he tells us to-day that we must win his party. He said it was strange that we did not see before election that

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his party was more favorable to us than the Republican party. How did it show its favor? How did he show his favor today to us? He says we have got to convert his party . . . Why? Never before did the Democratic Party lie more in the hands of one man than it lies to-day in the hands of President Wilson. Never did the Democratic Party have a greater leader, and never was it more susceptible to the wish of that leader, than is the Democratic Party of to-day to President Wilson. He controls his party, and I don't think he is too modest to know it. He can mould it as he wishes and he has moulded it. He moulded it quickly before election in the matter of the eight-hour law. Was that in his party platform? He had to crush and force his party to pa.s.s that measure. Yet he is not willing to lay a finger's weight on his party to-day for half the people of the United States . . . . Yet to-day he tells us that we must wait more-and more.

"We can't organize bigger and more influential deputations. We can't organize bigger processions. We can't, women, do anything more in that line. We have got to take a new departure. We have got to keep the question before him all the time. We have got to begin and begin immediately.

"Women, it rests with us. We have got to bring to the President, individually, day by day, week in and week out, the idea that great numbers of women want to be free, wall be free, and want to know what he is going to do about it.

"Won't you come and join us in standing day after day at the gates of the White House with banners asking, 'What will you do, Mr. President, for one-half the people of this nation?' Stand there as sentinels-sentinels of liberty, sentinels of self- government-silent sentinels. Let us stand beside the gateway where he must pa.s.s in and out, so that he can never fail to realize that there is a tremendous earnestness and insistence back of this measure. Will you not show your allegiance today to this ideal of liberty? Will you not be a silent sentinel of liberty and self-government?"

Deliberations continued. Details were settled. Three thousand dollars was raised in a few minutes among these women, fresh from the President's rebuff. No one suggested

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waiting until the next Presidential campaign. No one even mentioned the fact that time was precious, and we could wait no longer. Every one seemed to feel these things without troubling to put them into words. Volunteers signed up for sentinel duty and the fight was on.

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Part III

Militancy

"I will write a song for the President, full of menacing signs, And back of it all, millions of discontented eyes."

Walt Whitman

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Chapter 1

Picketing a President

When all suffrage controversy has died away it will be the little army of women with their purple, white and gold banners, going to prison for their political freedom, that will be remembered. They dramatized to victory the long suffrage fight in America. The challenge of the picket line roused the government out of its half-century sleep of indifference. It stirred the country to hot controversy. It made zealous friends and violent enemies. It produced the sharply-drawn contest which forced the surrender of the government in the second Administration of President Wilson.

The day following the memorial deputation to the President, January 10th, 1917, the first line of sentinels, a dozen in number, appeared for duty at the White House gates. In retrospect it must seem to the most inflexible person a reasonably mild and gentle thing to have done. But at the same time it caused a profound stir. Columns of front page s.p.a.ce in all the newspapers of the country gave more or less dispa.s.sionate accounts of the main facts. Women carrying banners were standing quietly at the White House gates "picketing" the President; women wanted President Wilson to put his power behind the suffrage amendment in Congress. That did not seem so shocking and only a few editors broke out into hot condemnation.

When, however, the women went back on the picket line the next day and the next and the next, it began to dawn upon the excited press that such persistence was "undesirable" . . .

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