In the meantime the work with the President was going on. Mr. Wilson was about to make a speaking trip which included Kansas. This would be the first time since his inauguration that he would visit a Suffrage State.

On January 26, 1916, Mrs. William Kent and Maud Younger waited on the President to ask him to receive a delegation of women in a forthcoming visit to New York. In presenting this request, Mrs. Kent sounded a note which was beginning to become the dominant strain in the Suffrage demands of the western women.

“Women are anxious to express to you, Mr. President,” she said, “the depth of earnestness of the demand for Woman Suffrage. We as western women and as citizens are accustomed to having a request for political consideration received with seriousness; and we feel keenly the injustice of the popular rumor that such delegations are planned to annoy a public official. We hope that you will appreciate the dignity and propriety of such a representative appeal as the women of New York are now making.”

President Wilson said that such an assumption was entirely absent from his mind. He added that he had decided to make it a rule during his trip to New York and throughout the Middle West not to receive any delegations whatever, since he would “get in wrong,” as he said, if he received one and not another; it was very possible, however, that he might be approached by deputations which he would be able to receive.

As Mrs. Kent and Miss Younger came out from this call on the President, the evening papers were on the stands. 145They announced that the next day in New York the President would receive fifteen hundred ministers.

On the morning of January 27, 1916, over a hundred women, organized by Doris Stevens and led by Mrs. E. Tiffany Dyer, assembled in the East Room of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. Fifteen minutes later they sent up a note asking for a ten-minute audience with the President, that New York women might lay their case for federal action upon Suffrage before him. Secretary Tumulty sent back the following note:

For the President, I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your note requesting a Conference with him to discuss the Suffrage Amendment. I very much regret that the President’s engagements make it impossible to arrange this matter as you have so generously suggested. When a representative from your committee called at the White House the President informed her of the crowded condition of his calendar today.

Joseph Tumulty.

As this note merely said that no time had been set aside for a deputation of women, and did not say that it would be impossible to see him at all, a second note was sent, asking for just five minutes and offering to wait as long as necessary. In the meantime, an interview between Mr. Tumulty and Mrs. Amos Pinchot took place. Mrs. Pinchot reported to the deputation that the President and his Secretary were “conferring.” For two hours the women waited, holding a meeting. Some of the women thought it was undignified to wait since the President had stated in his note that an appointment had not been secured.

“But,” said Mrs. Carol Beckwith, “why quibble about our undignified position here in the Waldorf? Our political position is undignified, and that is what we should remedy.”

At a quarter past eleven, the President appeared.

In answer to the speeches of Mrs. Dyer, Mrs. Henry Bruere, Mary Ritter Beard, President Wilson said:

I ought to say, in the first place, that the apologies, I think, ought to come from me, because I had not understood that an 146appointment had been made. On the contrary, I supposed none had been made, and, therefore, had filled my morning with work, from which it did not seem possible to escape.

I can easily understand the embarrassment of any one of your representatives in trying to make a speech in this situation. I feel that embarrassment very strongly myself, and I wish very much that I had the eloquence of some of your speakers, so that I could set my views forth as adequately as they set forth theirs.

It may be, ladies, that my mind works slowly. I have always felt that those things were most solidly built that were built piece by piece, and I felt that the genius of our political development in this country lay in the number of our States, and in the very clear definition of the difference of sphere between the State and Federal Government. It may be that I am a little ............