THE YOUNG ARE AT THE GATES

If any one says to me: “Why the picketing for Suffrage?” I should say in reply, “Why the fearless spirit of youth? Why does it exist and make itself manifest?”

Is it not really that our whole social world would be likely to harden and toughen into a dreary mass of conventional negations and forbiddances—into hopeless layers of conformity and caste, did not the irrepressible energy and animation of youth, when joined to the clear-eyed sham-hating intelligence of the young, break up the dull masses and set a new pace for laggards to follow?

What is the potent spirit of youth? Is it not the spirit of revolt, of rebellion against senseless and useless and deadening things? Most of all, against injustice, which is of all stupid things the stupidest?

Such thoughts come to one in looking over the field of the Suffrage campaign and watching the pickets at the White House and at the Capitol, where sit the men who complacently enjoy the rights they deny to the women at their gates. Surely, nothing but the creeping paralysis of mental old age can account for the phenomenon of American men, law-makers, officials, administrators, and guardians of the peace, who can see nothing in the intrepid young pickets with their banners, asking for bare justice but common obstructors of traffic, naggers—nuisances that are to be abolished by passing stupid laws forbidding and repressing to add to the old junk-heap of laws which forbid and repress? Can it be possible that any brain cells not totally crystallized could imagine that giving a stone instead of bread would answer conclusively the demand of the women who, because they are young, fearless, eager, and rebellious, are fighting and winning a cause for all women—even for those who are timid, conventional, and inert?

A fatal error—a losing fight. The old stiff minds must give way. The old selfish minds must go. Obstructive reactionaries must move on. The young are at the gates!

Lavinia Dock.

The Suffragist, June 30, 1917.

213This hostility in June had worked up suddenly after the five quiet months, during which the Woman’s Party had been peacefully picketing the White House. Perhaps their immunity was at first due to the fact that when the picketing in January began, the people in Washington did not expect it to last. “When the rain comes, they will go,” Washingtonians said, and then, as the line still continued to appear, “When the snow comes, they will go.” But, instead of going with the rain, the pickets waited for Smith, the janitor, to bring them slickers and sou’westers. And instead of leaving with the snow, they only put on heavier coats. The pickets became an institution.

It is true, too, that, though that picket line was a surprise to every one (and to many a shock) to some it was a joke.

There was one Congressman, for instance, who took it humorously. He said to Nina Allender, when the Suffragists began to picket the Special War Session of Congress:

“The other day, a man covered the gravestones in a cemetery with posters which read: ‘Rise up! Your country needs you!’ Now that was poor publicity. I consider yours equally poor.”

“But,” replied Mrs. Allender, “we are not picketing a graveyard. We are picketing Congress. We believe there are a few live ones left there.”

The Congressman admitted that he had laid himself wide open to this.

But, from the very beginning, there were those who did not consider it a joke. The first day the pickets appeared, a gentleman—old and white-haired—stopped to stare at the band of floating color. He read the words:

MR. PRESIDENT, HOW LONG MUST WOMEN WAIT FOR LIBERTY?

Then he took off his hat, and held it off, bowing his white head to each of the six silent sentinels. Having passed them, he covered his head again. But he repeated this reverential formality as he passed the six women at the other gate.

One Washingtonian took his children out to see the picket 214line. He told them he wanted them to witness history in the making.

That first day when the President came out for his daily afternoon drive, he seemed utterly unaware of the pickets; but the next day he laughed with frank good-nature as he passed, and thereafter he too bared his head as he drove between them.

It was the intention at first for these sentinels to keep complete silence. But, as the throngs hurrying past began to question them, continued to question them, conversation became inevitable.

The commonest question, of course, was, “Why are you doing this?”

The pickets always answered, “The President asked us to concert public opinion before we could expect anything of him. We are concerting it upon him.” The second most popular question was, “Why don’t you go to Congress?” The answer, “We have—again and again and again; and they tell us if the President wants it, it will go through.”

That hurrying crowd was made up of many types. In the early morning and the late afternoon, government clerks predominated. Almost as many were the sight-seers from every part of the country. Then there were diplomats, newspapermen, schoolboys, and schoolgirls, and the matinée crowds. In the streets came the endless file of motor-cars, filled mainly with women going to teas. Many people pretended not to see the sentinels. They would walk straight ahead with an impassive expression, casting furtive, side-long glances at the banners. Again and again, the pickets enjoyed the wicked satisfaction of seeing them walk straight into the wire wickets which enclosed the Pennsylvania Avenue trees. At first, Congressmen tried not to see what was going on. After a while, however, they too stopped to chat with the pickets. One Congressman told Mrs. Gilson Gardner that he felt there was “something religious about that bannered picket line; that it had already become to him a part of the modern religion of this country.”

215Another Congressman, who had been opposed at first to the picketing, called out one day, “That’s right. Keep it up! Don’t let us forget you for a moment!”

All kinds of pretty incidents occurred. Once, Ex-Senator Henry W. Blair visited the picket line. He had been a friend of Susan B. Anthony, and he made the first speech ever delivered in the Senate in favor of Suffrage. White-haired, keen-eyed, walking with a crutch and a stick, he came along the line of pickets, greeting each one of them in turn—ninety years old.

“And I, too, have been a picket,” said General Sherwood to them.

“I salute you as soldiers in a great revolution,” said one chance passer-by to the Women Workers’ Delegation on Labor Day. And—struck apparently by the high spiritual quality in the beautiful procession—a woman, a stranger to them, remarked to the pickets: “I wonder if you realize what a medi?val spectacle you young women present. You have made us realize that this cause is a crusade.”

Workmen digging trenches in the streets discussed the matter among themselves. Picketing is an institution very dear to the heart of Labor. These men showed their sympathy by devising and making supports for the banners. They offered to make benches for the pickets, but agreed with the women when they said that sentinels must stand, not sit, at their posts.

When the Confederate Reunion occurred in Washington, many of the feeble, white-haired men in their worn Confederate grey and their faded Confederate badges, stopped to talk with the pickets. I quote the Suffragist:

“We-all came out early to see the sights,” said one. &ldquo............