Jailed for Freedom by Doris Stevens

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Title: Jailed for Freedom

Author: Doris Stevens

Release Date: June 12, 2001 [eBook #3604]
[Most recently updated: July 1, 2021]

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

Produced by: Samuel R. Brown

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Jailed for Freedom

by Doris Stevens

Contents

Preface

Part I. Leadership
Chapter1. A Militant Pioneer—Susan B. Anthony
Chapter 2. A Militant General—Alice Paul

Part II. Political Action
Chapter 1. Women Invade the Capital
Chapter 2. Women Voters Organize
Chapter 3. The Last Deputation to President Wilson

Part III. Militancy
Chapter 1. Picketing a President
Chapter 2. The Suffrage War Policy
Chapter 3. The First Arrests
Chapter 4. Occoquan Workhouse
Chapter 5. August Riots
Chapter 6. Prison Episodes
Chapter 7. An Administration Protest—Dudley Field Malone Resigns
Chapter 8. The Administration Yields

Chapter 9. Political Prisoners
Chapter 10. The Hunger Strike—A Weapon
Chapter 11. Administration Terrorism
Chapter 12. Alice Paul in Prison
Chapter 13. Administration—Lawlessness Exposed
Chapter 14. The Administration Outwitted
Chapter 15. Political Results
Chapter 16. An Interlude (Seven Months)
Chapter 17. New Attacks on the President
Chapter 18. The President Appeals to the Senate Too Late
Chapter 19. More Pressure
Chapter 20. The President Sails Away
Chapter 21. Watchfires of Freedom
Chapter 22. Burned in Effigy
Chapter 23. Boston Militants Welcome the President
Chapter 24. Democratic Congress Ends
Chapter 25. A Farewell to President Wilson
Chapter 26. President Wilson Wins the 64th Vote in Paris
Chapter 27. Republican Congress Passes Amendment
Appendices

Illustrations

Alice Paul
Mrs. O.H.P. Belmont
Democrats Attempt to Counteract Woman’s Party Campaign
Inez Milholland Boissevain
Scene of Memorial Service-Statuary Hall, the Capitol
Scenes on the Picket Line
Monster Picket—March 4, 1917
Officer Arrests Pickets
Women Put into Police Patrol
Suffragists in Prison Costume
Fellow Prisoners
Sewing Room at Occoquan Workhouse
Riotous Scenes on Picket Line
Dudley Field Malone
Lucy Burns
Mrs. Mary Nolan, Oldest Picket
Miss Matilda Young, Youngest Picket
Forty-One Women Face Jail
Prisoners Released
“Lafayette We Are Here”
Wholesale Arrests
Suffragists March to LaFayette Monument
Torch-Bearer, and Escorts
Some Public Men Who Protested Against Imprisonment of Suffragists
Abandoned Jail
Prisoners on Straw Pallets on Jail Floor
Pickets at Capitol
Senate Pages and Capitol Police Attack Pickets
The Urn Guarded by Miss Berthe Arnold
The Bell Which Tolled the Change of Watch
Watchfire “Legal”
Watchfire Scattered by Police-Dr. Caroline Spencer Rebuilding it
One Hundred Women Hold Public Conflagration
Pickets in Front of Reviewing Stand, Boston
Mrs. Louise Sykes Burning President Wilson’s Speech on Boston Common
Suffrage Prisoners

To

Alice Paul

Through Whose Brilliant and Devoted Leadership the Women of
America Have Been Able to Consummate with Gladness and Gallant
Courage Their Long Struggle for Political Liberty, This Book is
Affectionately Dedicated

PREFACE

This book deals with the intensive campaign of the militant suffragists of America

[1913-1919] to win a solitary thing-the passage by Congress of the national suffrage
amendment enfranchising women. It is the story of the first organized militant ,political
action in America to this end. The militants differed from the pure propagandists in the
woman suffrage movement chiefly in that they had a clear comprehension of the forces
which prevail in politics. They appreciated the necessity of the propaganda stage and the
beautiful heroism of those who had led in the pioneer agitation, but they knew that this
stage belonged to the past; these methods were no longer necessary or effective.

For convenience sake I have called Part II “Political Action,” and Part III “Militancy,”

although it will be perceived that the entire campaign was one of militant political action.
The emphasis, however, in Part II is upon political action, although certainly with a militant
mood. In Part III dramatic acts of protest, such as are now commonly called militancy,
are given emphasis as they acquired a greater importance during the latter part of the
campaign. This does not mean that all militant deeds were not committed for a specific
political purpose. They were. But militancy is as much a state of mind, an approach to a
task, as it is the commission of deeds of protest. It is the state of mind of those who is
their fiery idealism do not lose sight of the real springs of human action.

There are two ways in which this story might be told. It might be told as a tragic and

harrowing tale of martyrdom. Or it might be told as a ruthless enterprise of compelling a
hostile administration to subject women to martyrdom in order to hasten its surrender.
The truth is, it has elements of both ruthlessness and martyrdom. And I have tried to
make them appear in a true proportion. It is my sincere hope that you will understand and
appreciate the martyrdom involved, for it was the conscious voluntary gift of beautiful,
strong and young hearts. But it was never martyrdom for its own sake. It was martyrdom
used for a practical purpose.

The narrative ends with the passage of the amendment by Congress. The campaign for

ratification, which extended over fourteen months, is a story in itself. The ratification of the
amendment by the 36th and last state legislature proved as difficult to secure from political
leaders as the 64th and last vote in the United States Senate.

This book contains my interpretations, which are of course arguable. But it is a true

record of events.

DORIS STEVENS.

New York, August, 1920.

“I do pray, and that most earnestly and constantly, for some terrific shock to startle the

women o f the nation into a self-respect which mill compel them to, see the absolute
degradation o f their present position; which will compel them to break their yoke of
bondage and give them faith in themselves; which will make them proclaim their allegiance
to women first . . . . The fact is, women are in chains, and their servitude is all the more
debasing because they do not realize it. O to compel them to see and feel and to give
them the courage and the conscience to speak and act for their own freedom, though they
face the scorn and contempt of all the world for doing it!”

Susan B. Anthony, 1872.

Part I

Leadership

Chapter 1

A Militant Pioneer—Susan B. Anthony

Susan B. Anthony was the first militant suffragist. She has been so long proclaimed

only as the magnificent pioneer that few realize that she was the first woman to defy the
law for the political liberty of her sex.

The militant spirit was in her many early protests. Sometimes these protests were

supported by one or two followers; more often they were solitary protests. Perhaps it is
because of their isolation that they stand out so strong and beautiful in a turbulent time in
our history when all those about her were making compromises.

It was this spirit which impelled her to keep alive the cause of the enfranchisement of

women during the passionate years of the Civil War. She held to the last possible moment
that no national exigency was great enough to warrant abandonment of woman’s fight for
independence. But one by one her followers deserted her. She was unable to keep even
a tiny handful steadfast to this position. She became finally the only figure in the nation
appealing for the rights of women when the rights of black men were agitating the public
mind. Ardent abolitionist as she was, she could not tolerate without indignant protest the
exclusion of women in all discussions of emancipation. The suffrage war policy of Miss
Anthony can be compared to that of the militants a half century later when confronted
with the problem of this country’s entrance into the world war.

The war of the rebellion over and the emancipation of the negro man written into the

constitution, women contended they had a right to vote under the new fourteenth
amendment. Miss Anthony led in this agitation, urging all women to claim the right to vote
under this amendment. In the national election of 1872 she voted in Rochester, New
York, her home city, was arrested, tried and convicted of the crime of “voting without
having a lawful right to vote.”

I cannot resist giving a brief excerpt from the court records of this extraordinary case,

so reminiscent is it of the cases of the suffrage pickets tried nearly fifty years later in the
courts of the national capital.

After the prosecuting attorney had presented the government’s case, Judge Hunt read

his opinion, said to have been written before the case had been heard, and directed the
jury to bring in a verdict of guilty. The jury was dismissed without deliberation and a new
trial was refused. On the following day this scene took place in that New York court
room.

JUDGE HUNT (Ordering the defendant to stand up)-Has the prisoner anything to say

why sentence shall not be pronounced?

Miss ANTHONY—Yes, your Honor, I have many things to say; for in your ordered

verdict of guilty, you have trampled under foot every vital principle of our government.
My natural rights, my civil rights, my political rights, my judicial rights, are all alike
ignored. Robbed of the fundamental privilege of citizenship, I am degraded from the
status of a citizen to that of a subject; and not only myself individually, but all my sex are,
by your Honor’s verdict doomed to political subjection under this so-called republican
form of government.

JUDGE HUNT—The Court cannot. listen to a rehearsal of argument which the

prisoner’s counsel has already consumed three hours in presenting.

Miss ANTHONY—May it please your Honor, I am not arguing the question, but

simply stating the reasons why sentence cannot in justice be pronounced against me. Your
denial of my citizen’s right to vote, is the denial of my right of consent as one of the
governed, the denial of my right of representation as one taxed, the denial of my right to a
trial by jury of my peers as an offender against law; therefore, the denial of my sacred
right to life, liberty, property, and——

JUDGE HUNT—The Court cannot allow the prisoner to go on.
Miss ANTHONY—But, your Honor will not deny me this one and only poor privilege

of protest against this highhanded outrage upon my citizen’s rights. May it please the
Court to remember that since the day of my arrest last November this is the first time that
either myself or any person of my disfranchised class has been allowed a word of defense
before judge or jury

JUDGE HUNT—The prisoner must sit down, the Court cannot allow it.
Miss ANTHONY—Of all my persecutors from the corner grocery politician who

entered the complaint, to the United States marshal, commissioner, district attorney,
district judge, your Honor on the bench, not one is my peer, but each and all are my

political sovereigns . . . . Precisely as no disfranchised person is entitled to sit upon the
jury and no woman is entitled to the franchise, so none but a regularly admitted lawyer is
allowed to practice in the courts, and no woman can gain admission to the bar-hence,
jury, judge, counsel, all must be of superior class.

JUDGE HUNT—The Court must insist-the prisoner has been tried according to the

established forms of law.

Miss ANTHONY—Yes, your Honor, but by forms of law, all made by men,

interpreted by men, administered by men, in favor of men and against women; and hence
your Honor’s ordered verdict of guilty, against a United States citizen for the exercise of
the “citizen’s right to vote,” simply because that citizen was a woman and not a man . . . .
As then the slaves who got their freedom had to take it over or under or through the
unjust forms of the law, precisely so now must women take it to get their right to a voice
in this government; and I have taken mine, and mean to take it at every opportunity.

JUDGE Hunt—The Court orders the prisoner to sit down. It will not allow another

word.

Miss ANTHONY—When I was brought before your Honor for trial I hoped for a

broad interpretation of the constitution and its recent amendments, which should declare
all United States citizens under its protecting aegis . . . . But failing to get this justice,
failing even to get a trial by a jury-not of my peers-I ask not leniency at your-hands but
rather the full rigor of the law.

JUDGE HUNT—The Court must insist (here the prisoner sat down). The prisoner will

stand up. (Here Miss Anthony rose again.) The sentence of the Court is that you pay a
fine of $100.00 and the costs of the prosecution.

Miss ANTHONY—May it please your Honor, I will never pay a dollar of your unjust

penalty . . . . And I shall earnestly and persistently continue to urge all women to the
practical recognition of the old Revolutionary maxim, “Resistance to tyranny is obedience
to God.”

JUDGE HUNT—Madam, the Court will not order you stand committed until the fine

is paid.

Miss Anthony did not pay her fine and was never imprisoned. I believe the fine stands

against her to this day.

On the heels of this sensation came another of those dramatic protests which until the

very end she always combined with political agitation. The nation was celebrating its first
centenary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence at Independence Square,
Philadelphia. After women had been refused by all in authority a humble half moment in
which to present to the Centennial the Women’s Declaration of Rights, Miss Anthony
insisted on being heard. Immediately after the Declaration of Independence had been
read by a patriot, she led a committee of women, who with platform tickets had slipped
through the military, straight down the center aisle of the platform to address the
chairman, who pale with fright and powerless to stop the demonstration had to accept her
document. Instantly the platform, graced as it was by national dignitaries and crowned
heads, was astir. The women retired, distributing to the gasping spectators copies of their
Declaration. Miss Anthony had reminded the nation of the hollowness of its celebration of
an independence that excluded women.

Susan B. Anthony’s aim was the national enfranchisement of women. As soon as she

became convinced that the constitution would have to be specifically amended to include
woman suffrage, she set herself to this gigantic task. For a quarter of a century she
appealed to Congress for action and to party. conventions for suffrage endorsement.
When, however, she saw that Congress was obdurate, as an able and intensely practical
leader she temporarily directed the main energy of the suffrage movement to trying to win
individual states. With women holding the balance of political power, she argued, the
national government will be compelled to act. She knew so well the value of power. She
went to the West to get it.

She was a shrewd tactician; with prophetic insight, without compromise. To those

women who would yield to party expediency as advised by men, or be diverted into
support of other measures, she made answer in a spirited letter to Lucy Stone:

“So long as you and I and all women are political slaves, it ill becomes us to meddle

with the weightier discussions of our’ sovereign masters. It will be quite time enough for
us, with self-respect, to declare ourselves for or against any party upon the intrinsic merit
of its policy, when men shall recognize us as their political equals . . . .

“If all the suffragists of all the States could see eye to eye on this point, and stand

shoulder to shoulder against every party and politician not fully and unequivocally

committed to ‘Equal Rights for Women,’ we should become at once the moral balance of
power which could not fail to compel the party of highest intelligence to proclaim woman
suffrage the chief plank of its platform . . . . Until that good day comes, I shall continue to
invoke the party in power, and each party struggling to get into power, to pledge itself to
the emancipation of our enslaved half of the people . . . .”

She did not live to see enough states grant suffrage in the West to form a balance of

power with which to carry out this policy. She did not live to turn this power upon an
unwilling Congress. But she stood to the last, despite this temporary change of program,
the great dramatic protagonist of national freedom for women and its achievement through
rebellion and practical strategy.

With the passing of Miss Anthony and her leadership, the movement in America went

conscientiously on endeavoring to pile up state after state in the “free column.” Gradually
her followers lost sight of her aggressive attack and her objective-the enfranchisement of
women by Congress. They did not sustain her tactical wisdom. This reform movement,
like all others when stretched over a long period of time, found itself confined in a narrow
circle of routine propaganda. It lacked the power and initiative to extricate itself. Though
it had many eloquent agitators with devoted followings, it lacked generalship.

The movement also lost Miss Anthony’s militant spirit, her keen appreciation of the fact

that the attention of the nation must be focussed on minority issues by dramatic acts of
protest.

Susan B. Anthony’s fundamental objective, her political attitude toward attaining it, and

her militant spirit were revived in suffrage history in 1913 when Alice Paul, also of Quaker
background, entered the national field as leader of the new suffrage forces in America.

Chapter 2

A Militant General—Alice Paul

Most people conjure up a menacing picture when a person is called not only a general,

but a militant one. In appearance Alice Paul is anything but menacing. Quiet, almost
mouselike, this frail young Quakeress sits in silence and baffles you with her
contradictions. Large, soft, gray eyes that strike you with a positive impact make you feel
the indescribable force and power behind them. A mass of soft brown hair, caught easily
at the neck, makes the contour of her head strong and graceful. Tiny, fragile hands that
look more like an X-ray picture of hands, rest in her lap in Quakerish pose. Her whole
atmosphere when she is not in action is one of strength and quiet determination. In action
she is swift, alert, almost panther-like in her movements. Dressed always in simple frocks,
preferably soft shades of purple, she conforms to an individual style and taste of her own
rather than to the prevailing vogue.

I am going recklessly on to try to tell what I think about Alice Paul. It is difficult, for

when I begin to put it down on paper, I realize how little we know about this laconic
person, and yet how abundantly we feel her power, her will and her compelling
leadership. In an instant and vivid reaction, I am either congealed or inspired; exhilarated
or depressed; sometimes even exasperated, but always moved. I have seen her very
presence in headquarters change in the twinkling of an eye the mood of fifty people. It is
not through their affections that she moves them, but through a naked force, a vital force
which is indefinable but of which one simply cannot be unaware. Aiming primarily at the
intellect of an audience or an individual, she almost never fails to win an emotional
allegiance.

I shall never forget my first contact with her. I tell it here as an illustration of what

happened to countless women who came in touch with her to remain under her leadership
to the end. I had come to Washington to take part in the demonstration on the Senate in
July, 1913, en route to a muchneeded, as I thought, holiday in the Adirondacks.

“Can’t you stay on and help us with a hearing next week?” said Miss Paul.
“I’m sorry,” said I, “but I have promised to join a party of friends in the mountains for

a summer holiday and . . .”

“Holiday?” said she, looking straight at me. Instantly ashamed at having mentioned

such a legitimate excuse, I murmured something about not having had one since before
entering college.

“But can’t you stay?” she said.
I was lost. I knew I would stay. As a matter of fact, I stayed through the heat of a

Washington summer, returned only long enough at the end of the summer to close up my
work in state suffrage and came back to join the group at Washington. And it was years
before I ever mentioned a holiday again.

Frequently she achieved her end without even a single word Of retort. Soon after Miss

Paul came to Washington in 1913, ;she went to call on a suffragist in that city to ask her
to donate ;some funds toward the rent of headquarters in the Capital. The woman sighed.
“I thought when Miss Anthony died,” she said, “that all my troubles were at an end. She
used to come to me for money for a federal amendment and I always told her it was
wrong to ask for one, and that besides we would never get it. But she kept right on
coming. Then when she died we didn’t hear any more about an amendment. And now
you come again saying the same things Miss Anthony said.”

Miss Paul listened, said she was sorry and departed. Very shortly a check arrived at

headquarters to cover a month’s rent.

A model listener, Alice Paul has unlimited capacity for letting the other person relieve

herself of all her objections without contest. Over and over again I have heard this scene
enacted.

“Miss Paul, I have come to tell you that you are all wrong about this federal

amendment business. I don’t believe in it. Suffrage should come slowly but surely by the
states. And although I have been a life-long suffragist, I just want to tell you not to count
on me, for feeling as I do, I cannot give you any help.”

A silence would follow. Then Miss Paul would say ingenuously, “Have you a half hour

to spare?”

“I guess so,” would come slowly from the protestant. “Why?”
“Won’t you please sit down right here and put the stamps on these letters? We have to

get them in the mail by noon.”

“But I don’t believe …”
“Oh, that’s all right. These letters are going to women probably a lot of whom feel as

you do. But some of them will want to come to the meeting to hear our side.”

By this time Miss Paul would have brought a chair, and that ended the argument. The

woman would stay and humbly proceed to stick on endless stamps. Usually she would
come back, too, and before many days would be an ardent worker for the cause against
which she thought herself invincible.

Once the state president of the conservative suffrage forces in Ohio with whom I had

worked the previous year wrote me a letter pointing out what madness it was to talk of
winning the amendment in Congress “this session,” and adding that “nobody but a fool
would ever think of it, let alone speak of it publicly.” She was wise in politics; we were
nice, eager, young girls, but pretty ignorant—that was the gist of her remonstrance. My
vanity was aroused. Not wishing to be called “mad” or “foolish” I sat down and
answered her in a friendly spirit, with the sole object of proving that we were wiser than
she imagined. I had never discussed this point with anybody, as I had been in Washington
only a few months and it had never occurred to me that we were not right to talk of
getting the amendment in that particular session. But I answered my patronizing friend, in
effect, that of course we were not fools, that we knew we would not get the amendment
that session, but we saw no reason for not demanding it at once and taking it when we
got it.

When Miss Paul saw the carbon of that letter she said quietly, pointing to the part

where I had so nobly defended our sagacity, “You must never say that again and never
put it on paper.” Seeing my embarrassment, she hastened to explain. “You see, we can
get it this session if enough women care sufficiently to demand it now.”

Alice Paul brought back to the fight that note of immediacy which had gone with the

passing of Miss Anthony’s leadership. She called a halt on further pleading, wheedling,
proving, praying. It was as if she had bidden women stand erect, with confidence in
themselves and in their own judgments, and compelled them to be self-respecting enough
to dare to put their freedom first, and so determine for themselves the day when they
should be free. Those who had a taste of begging under the old regime and who
abandoned it for demanding, know how fine and strong a thing it is to realize that you
must take what is yours and not waste your energy proving that you are or will some day
be worthy of a gift of power from your masters. On that glad day of discovery you have
first freed yourself to fight for freedom. Alice Paul gave to thousands of women the
essence of freedom.

And there was something so cleansing about the way in which she renovated ideas and

processes, emotions and instincts. Her attack was so direct, so clear, so simple and
unafraid. And her resistance had such a fine quality of strength.

Sometimes it was a roaring politician who was baffled by this non-resistant force. I

have heard many an irate one come into her office in the early days to tell her how to run
the woman’s campaign, and struggle in vain to arouse her to combat. Having begun a
tirade, honor would compel him to see it through even without help from a silent
adversary. And so he would get more and more noisy until it would seem as if one lone
shout from him might be enough to blow away the frail object of his attack. Ultimately he
would be forced to retire, perhaps in the face of a serene smile, beaten and angered that
he had been able to make so little impression. And many the delicious remark and
delightful quip afterward at his expense!

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

amusement 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 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 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 Washington.

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 superstition 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

passionate 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. Thinking, thinking day
and night of her objective and never retarding 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 leadership 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 asset, 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

passed Congress was this interesting message from Walter Clark, Chief Justice of the
Supreme 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 assured. 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.”

Part II

Political Action

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 Washington 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 substitute. Our first
task seemed simple—actually to show that thousands of women wanted immediate action
on their long delayed enfranchisement. This we did.

This was the first demonstration under the leadership of Alice Paul, at that time

chairman of the Congressional Committee of the National American Woman. Suffrage
Association. 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 passage 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 class- room. All confessed to being frightened when the
President came in and took his seat at the head of the class. The President said he had no
opinion on the subject of woman suffrage; that he had never given it any thought;[2] 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?”

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

[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.”

“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