Before we examine the consideration which actuated the National Woman’s Party in waging the picket campaign of 1917, let us see where President Wilson stood at the beginning of the war; let us briefly recapitulate the steps which brought him there.

194It will be remembered that, shortly after the President took his seat in March, 1913, he told a deputation from the Congressional Committee that Suffrage was a question to which he had given no thought and on which he had no opinion. During the year, no longer stating that he knew nothing about Suffrage, he gave as a reason for inaction that the Congressional program was too crowded to consider it. By the end of the year, he had reached the point where he stated that he could take no action on the Suffrage Amendment until commanded by his Party.

In 1914, he continued to state that he was prohibited from acting because of being bound by his Party until June, when he seized on the excuse of States Rights further to explain his inaction. In the autumn of 1915 he first came out personally for Suffrage by voting for it in New Jersey but still refused to support it in Congress. His next step forward came in June, 1916, when he caused the principle of Suffrage to be recognized in the Party platform, though as yet neither he nor the Party had endorsed the Federal Amendment. In September of that same year—after the Woman’s Party had begun its active campaign in the Suffrage States—the President took another step and addressed a Suffrage Convention of the National American Woman’s Suffrage Association. But as yet he was not committed to the Federal Amendment, had not begun to exert pressure on Congress.

The situation of the President and the Woman’s Party at this juncture may be summed up in this way. Wilson, himself, was beginning to realize that the Suffrage Amendment must ultimately pass. But he had just been re-elected. He was safe for four years; he could take his time about it. The Woman’s Party on the other hand, realized that the President being safe for four years, no political pressure could be exerted upon him. They realized that they must devise other methods to keep Suffrage, as a measure demanding immediate enactment, before him.

In the meantime, a feeling of acute discontent was growing 195in the women of the United States. The older women—and they were the third generation to demand the vote—were beginning to ask how long this period of entreaty must be protracted. The younger women—the fourth generation to demand the vote—were becoming impatient with the out-worn methods of their predecessors. Moreover, when the disfranchised women of the East visited the enfranchised States of the West, their eyes were opened in a practical way to the extraordinary injustice of their own disfranchisement. Equally, the enfranchised women of the West, moving to Eastern States, resented their loss of this political weapon. On many women in America the militant movement of England had produced a profound impression.

A new note had crept into the speeches made by the members of the Woman’s Party—the note of this impatience and resentment. It will be remembered that Mrs. Kent told the President that the women voters of the West were accustomed to being listened to with attention by politicians, and that they resented the effort to make it seem that they were merely trying to bother a very busy official. Mrs. Blatch had told him that the time had gone by when she would stand on street corners and ask the vote from every Tom, Dick, and Harry; that she was determined to appeal instead to the men who spoke her own language and who had in charge the affairs of the government.

Doris Stevens, in an interview in the Omaha Daily News for June 29, 1919, voices perfectly what her generation was feeling.

A successful young Harvard engineer said to me the other day, “I don’t believe you realize how much men objected to your picketing the White House. Now I know what I’m talking about. I’ve talked with men in all walks of life, and I tell you they didn’t approve of what you women did.”

This last with warmer emphasis and a scowl of the brow. “I don’t suppose you were in a position to know how violently men felt about it.”

I listened patiently and courteously. Should I disillusion him? I thought it was the honest thing to do. “Why, of course 196men didn’t like it. Do you think we imagined they would? We knew they would disapprove. When did men ever applaud women fighting for their own liberty? We are approved only when we fight for yours!”

“You don’t mean to say you planned to do something knowing men would not approve?”

I simply had to tell him, “Why, certainly! We’re just beginning to get confidence in ourselves. At last we’ve learned to make and stand by our own judgments.”

“But going to jail. That was pretty shocking.”

“Yes, indeed it was. It not only shocked us that a government would be alarmed enough to do such a thing, but what was more to the point, it shocked the entire country into doing something quickly about Woman Suffrage.”

It will be seen by the foregoing pages of this book that Suffragists had exhausted every form of Suffrage agitation known to the United States. In particular, they had sent to the President every kind of deputation that could possibly move him.

They decided to send him a perpetual deputation.

Alice Paul, in explanation of her strategy in this matter, uses one of the vivid figures that are so typical of her: “If a creditor stands before a man’s house all day long, demanding payment of his bill, the man must either remove the creditor or pay the bill.”

At first, the President tried to remove the creditor. Later he paid the bill.

At ten o’clock on January 10, 1917, the day after the deputation to the President, twelve women emerged from Headquarters and marched across Lafayette Square to the White House. Four of them bore lettered banners, and eight of them carried purple, white, and gold banners of the Woman’s Party. They marched slowly—a banner’s length apart. Six of them took up their stand at the East gate, and six of them at the West gate. At each gate—standing between pairs of women holding on high purple, white, and gold colors—two women held lettered banners. 197One read:

MR. PRESIDENT WHAT WILL YOU DO FOR WOMAN SUFFRAGE?

The other read:

HOW LONG MUST WOMEN WAIT FOR LIBERTY?

These were the first women to picket the White House.

The first picket line appeared on January 10, 1917; the last, over a year and a half later. Between those dates, except when Congress was not in session, more than a thousand women held lettered banners, accompanied by the purple, white, and gold tri-colors, at the White House gates, or in front of the Capitol. They picketed every day of the week, except Sunday; in all kinds of weather, in rain and in sleet, in hail, and in snow. All varieties of women picketed: all races and religions; all cliques and classes; all professions and parties. Washington became accustomed to the dignified picture—the pickets moving with a solemn silence, always in a line that followed a crack in the pavement; always a banner’s length apart; taking their stand with a precision almost military; maintaining it with a movelessness almost statuesque. Washington became accustomed also to the rainbow splash at the White House gates—“like trumpet calls,” somebody described the banners. Artists often spoke of the beauty of their massed color. In the daytime, those banners gilded by the sunlight were doubly brilliant, but at twilight the effect was transcendent. Everywhere the big, white lights—set in the parks on such low standards that they seemed strange, luminous blossoms, springing from the masses of emerald green shrubbery—filled the dusk with bluish-white splendor, and, made doubly colorful by this light, the long purple, white, and gold ribbon stood out against a background beautiful and appropriate; a mosaic on the gray of the White House pavement; the pen-and-ink blackness of the White House iron work; the bare, brown 198crisscross of the White House trees, and the chaste colonial simplicity of the White House itself.

With her abiding instinct for pageantry and for telling picturesqueness of demonstration, Alice Paul soon punctuated the monotony of the picketing by special events. Various States celebrated State days on the picket line. Maryland was the first of these, and the long line of Maryland women bearing great banners, extended along Pennsylvania Avenue the entire distance from the East gate to the West gate. Pennsylvania Day, New York Day, Virginia Day, New Jersey Day, followed. The Monday of every week was set aside finally for District of Columbia Day.

The New York delegation carried on their banners phrases from President Wilson’s book, The New Freedom.
LIBERTY IS A FUNDAMENTAL DEMAND OF THE HUMAN SPIRIT.
WE ARE INTERESTED IN THE UNITED STATES, POLITICALLY
SPEAKING, IN NOTHING BUT HUMAN LIBERTY.

On College Day, thirteen colleges were represented, the biggest group from Goucher College, Baltimore. Then came Teachers’ Day; Patriotic Day, and Lincoln Day. On Patriotic Day, one of the banners read:
DENMARK ON THE VERGE OF WAR GAVE WOMEN THE VOTE.
WHY NOT GIVE IT TO AMERICAN WOMEN NOW?

On Lincoln Day, they said:

WHY ARE YOU BEHIND LINCOLN?

AFTER THE CIVIL WAR WOMEN ASKED FOR POLITICAL FREEDOM.

THEY WERE TOLD TO WAIT—THIS WAS THE NEGRO’S HOUR.

IN 1917, AMERICAN WOMEN STILL ASK FOR FREEDOM.

WILL YOU, MR. PRESIDENT, TELL THEM TO WAIT—THAT THIS IS THE PORTO RICAN’S HOUR?

199On Sunday, February 18, came Labor Day on the picket line. It was, of course, impossible for wage-earning women to picket the White House on any other day. They represented not only office workers, but factory workers from the great industrial centers. Many of them had come from other cities.

Susan B. Anthony’s birthday, February 15, was celebrated impressively, although it rained and snowed heavily. Three new banners appeared that day. The first—big enough and golden enough even to suit that big, golden woman—bore quotations from Susan B. Anthony:
WE PRESS OUR DEMAND FOR THE BALLOT AT THIS TIME IN
NO NARROW, CAPTIOUS, OR SELF-SEEKING SPIRIT, BUT FROM
PUREST PATRIOTISM FOR THE HIGHEST GOOD OF EVERY CITIZEN,
FOR THE SAFETY OF THE REPUBLIC, AND AS A GLORIOUS
EXAMPLE TO THE NATIONS OF THE EARTH.

The second Susan B. Anthony banner said:
AT THIS TIME OUR GREATEST NEED IS NOT MEN OR MONEY,
VALIANT GENERALS OR BRILLIANT VICTORIES, BUT A CONSISTENT
NATIONAL POLICY BASED UPON THE PRINCIPLES THAT
ALL GOVERNMENTS DERIVE THEIR JUST POWERS FROM THE
CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED.

The third Susan B. Anthony banner said:
THE RIGHT OF SELF-GOVERNMENT FOR ONE-HALF OF ITS
PEOPLE IS OF FAR MORE VITAL CONSEQUENCE TO THE NATION
THAN ANY OR ALL OTHER QUESTIONS.

On March 2, 1917, the Congressional union and its Western organization, the Woman’s Party, met in joint convention and organized themselves into the National Woman’s Party.

On that occasion, Alice Paul said:

200We feel that by combining the Congressional union and the Woman’s Party we shall bring about a unity in organization which will make impossible duplication, difference of opinion, and divergence of method. By uniting we make, moreover, for unity of spirit in the whole Suffrage movement, bringing the voters and non-voters together in a movement in which they should both be integral parts.

The original purpose for which the Woman’s Party, as an organization confined to women voters alone, was formed, has, we believe, been served. In the first three years of our work we endeavored to call the attention of political leaders and Congress to the fact that women were voting and that these voting women were interested in Suffrage. But words alone did not have much effect. We found we had to visualize the existence of voting women out in the West and their support of the Suffrage Amendment. The Woman’s Party was formed as one means of doing this.

The Woman’s Party did, I believe, have an effect on the political leaders. It was very clear, I think, at the convention in Chicago and in St. Louis that the idea that women were voting and that those women were interested in the Federal Amendment was at last appreciated. This November’s election completed our work in getting that fact into the minds of Congressmen and political leaders. There is no longer any need to draw a line around women voters and set them off by themselves in order to call attention to them. They now enter into the calculations of every political observer.

If we amalgamate and make ourselves one great group of voters and non-voters all working for the Federal Amendment, the question arises: What name shall we be called by, the Congressional union or the Woman’s Party? Our Executive Committee felt that we ought to keep the name of the Woman’s Party, because it stands for political power.

The objections brought against this are, I think, two. First, that non-voters should not, according to custom, be part of a political Party; second, that if they are included, that Party will not command as much respect as would a Party composed solely of voters. There are non-voters in the Socialist, the Progressive, and the Prohibition Parties; there is no reason why, if we are interested in precedent and custom, they should not be in our Party also. As to the second point: The Congressional union has the reputation of being an active, determined, and well-financed organization. When the political world realizes that this young Woman’s Party has been strengthened by the influx 201of twenty-five thousand workers of the Congressional union ready to give their service and money it will consider that the Woman’s Party stands for more power than if formed of the women of the Western States only.

Wage Earners Picketing the White House, February, 1917.

Photo Copr. Harris and Ewing, Washington, D. C.

All of us in the Congressional union feel an affection for it. But that is no reason for continuing the organization. The Congressional union has served a useful purpose, we believe. But now that we have created the Woman’s Party we ought, it seems to me, to develop and make that the dominant Suffrage factor in this country because that, through its name and associations, throws the emphasis more than does the Congressional union on the political power of women.

The following officers were elected unanimously at the morning session: Chairman of the National Woman’s Party, Alice Paul; Vice-Chairman, Anne Martin; Secretary, Mabel Vernon; Treasurer, Gertrude Crocker. The executive board elected were: Lucy Burns, Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont, Mrs. J. W. Brannan, Mrs. Gilson Gardner, Abby Scott Baker, Mrs. William Kent, Maud Younger, Doris Stevens, Florence Bayard Hilles, Mrs. Donald Hooker, Mrs. J. A. H. Hopkins, and Mrs. Lawrence Lewis.

At that Convention, various resolutions were passed; the most notable in regard to the attitude of the National Woman’s Party towards the rapidly developing war situation. That resolution runs as follows:

Whereas the problems involved in the present international situation, affecting the lives of millions of women in this country, make imperative the enfranchisement of women,

Be it resolved that the National Woman’s Party, organized for the sole purpose of securing political liberty for women, shall continue to work for this purpose until it is accomplished, being unalterably convinced that in so doing the organization serves the highest interests of the country.

And be it further resolved that to this end we urge upon the President and the Congress of the United States the immediate passage of the National Suffrage Amendment.

It was decided to present these resolutions to the President. Shortly after, Dudley Field Malone, Collector of the 202Port of New York, on behalf of the Woman’s Party, informed the President that a deputation would visit him for that purpose.

This demonstration was not so much a protest at the failure of the first administration to pass the Anthony Amendment, or at the adjournment of Congress without passing it, as a presentation of the demands of the National Woman’s Party immediately upon the opening of President Wilson’s second term.

During the first three days in March, Washington filled steadily with inauguration crowds. When they got off the train, the Great Demand banner of the National Woman’s Party confronted them, and girls handed them slips inviting them to the demonstration of the National Woman’s Party at the White House on Inauguration Day and to the mass-mee............