The Story of the Woman's Party

Part Four

VICTORY

I. THE NEW HEADQUARTERS AND THE LATER YEARS 311

II. LOBBYING 317

III. ORGANIZING 327

IV. THE PRESIDENT CAPITULATES AND THE HOUSE 336 SURRENDERS

V. FIGHTING FOR VOTES IN THE SENATE 340

VI. BURNING THE PRESIDENT’S WORDS 355

VII. THE PRESIDENT APPEALS TO THE SENATE TO 366 PASS THE SUFFRAGE AMENDMENT

VIII. PICKETING THE SENATE 372

IX. THE THIRD APPEAL TO THE WOMEN VOTERS 380

X. THE PRESIDENT INCLUDES SUFFRAGE IN HIS 384 CAMPAIGN FOR CONGRESS

XI. BURNING THE PRESIDENT’S WORDS AGAIN 386

XII. THE WATCH FIRES OF FREEDOM 391

XIII. THE APPEAL TO THE PRESIDENT ON HIS 408 RETURN

XIV. THE APPEAL TO THE PRESIDENT ON HIS 412 DEPARTURE

XV. THE PRESIDENT OBTAINS THE LAST VOTE AND 415 CONGRESS SURRENDERS

XVI. RATIFICATION 418

XVII. THE LAST DAYS 464

INDEX 477

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Alice Paul Frontispiece

Lucy Burns at the Head of the “Prison Specialists” 16

Why is the Girl from the West Getting all the 76 Attention? Cartoon by Nina Allender

The Suffragist’s Dream. Cartoon by Nina Allender 146

Inez Milholland in the Washington Parade, March 3, 184 1913

Joy Young at the Inez Milholland Memorial Service 188

Wage Earners Picketing the White House, February, 200 1917

The Thousand Pickets try vainly to Deliver Their 204a Resolutions to the President, March 4, 1917

A Thousand Pickets Marching Around the White 204b House, March 4, 1917

Obeying Orders, Washington Police Arresting White 256a House Pickets Before the Treasury Building

The Patrol Wagon Waiting the Arrival of the 256b Suffrage Pickets

Burning the President’s Words at the Lafayette 356a Monument, Washington

A Summer Picket Line 356b

Lucy Branham Burning the President’s Words at the 364b Lafayette Monument

The Russian Envoy Banner, August, 1917 364b

One of the Watchfires of Freedom 396a

A Policeman Scatters the Watchfire 396b

Suffragist Rebuilding the Fire Scattered by the 398a Police

The Last Suffragist Arrested. The Fire Burns On 398b

The Oldest and the Youngest Pickets 448

The Flag Complete 462

Every Good Suffragist the Morning after 470 Ratification. Cartoon by Nina Allender

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Part One

1913 and 1914

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INTRODUCTION

IN 1912 the situation in the United States in regard to the enfranchisement of women was as follows:

Agitation for an amendment to the National Constitution had virtually ceased. Before the death of Susan B. Anthony in 1906, Suffragists had turned their attention to the States. Suffrage agitation there was persistent, vigorous, and untiring; in Washington, it was merely perfunctory. The National American Woman Suffrage Association maintained a Congressional Committee in Washington, but no Headquarters. This Committee arranged for one formal hearing before the Senate and the House Committee of each Congress. The speeches were used as propaganda mailed on a Congressman’s frank. The Suffrage Amendment had never in the history of the country been brought to a vote in the National House of Representatives, and had only once, in 1887, been voted upon in the Senate. It had not received a favorable report from the Committee in either House since 1892 and had not received a report of any kind since 1896. Suffrage had not been debated on the floor of either House since 1887. In addition, the incoming President, Woodrow Wilson, if not actually opposed to the enfranchisement of women, gave no appearance of favoring it; the great political Parties were against it. Political leaders generally were unwilling to be connected with it. Congress lacked—it is scarcely exaggeration to say—several hundreds of the votes necessary to pass the Amendment. Last of all the majority of Suffragists did not think the Federal Amendment a practical possibility. They were entirely engrossed in State campaigns.

On the other hand, the Suffrage movement, itself, was virile and vital. The fourth generation of women to espouse this cause were throwing themselves into the work with all the power and force of their able, aroused, and emancipate generation. The franchise had been granted in six States: Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Washington, California. With the winning of Oregon, Kansas, and Arizona in 1912, the movement assumed a new importance in the national field. These victories meant that there were approximately two million women voters in the United States, that one-fifth of the Senate, one-seventh of the House and one-sixth of the electoral vote came from Suffrage States.

It was in December, 1912, as Chairman of the Congressional Committee of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, that Alice Paul came to Washington.

* * * * *

In the next eight years, this young woman was to bring into existence a new political Party of fifty thousand members. She was to raise over three-quarters of a million dollars. She was to establish a Headquarters in Washington that became the focus of the liberal forces of the country. She was to gather into her organization hundreds of devoted workers; some without pay and others with less pay than they could command at other work or with other organizations. She was to introduce into Suffrage agitation in the United States a policy which, though not new in the political arena, was new to Suffrage—the policy of holding the Party in power responsible. She was to institute a Suffrage campaign so swift, so intensive, so compelling—and at the same time so varied, interesting, and picturesque—that again and again it pushed the war news out of the preferred position on the front pages of the newspapers of the United States. She was to see her Party blaze a purple, white, and gold trail from the east to the west of the United States; and from the north to the south. She was to see the Susan B. Anthony Amendment pass first the House and then the Senate. She was to see thirty-seven States ratify the Amendment in less than a year and a half thereafter. She was to see the President of the United States move from a position of what seemed definite opposition to the Suffrage cause to an open espousal of it; move slowly at first but with a progress which gradually accelerated until he, himself, obtained the last Senatorial vote necessary to pass the Amendment.

What was the training which had developed in Alice Paul this power and what were the qualities back of that training, which made it possible for her to invent so masterly a plan, to pursue it so resistlessly?

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ALICE PAUL

I watched a river of women, Rippling purple, white and golden, Stream toward the National Capitol.

Along its border, Like a purple flower floating, Moved a young woman, worn, wraithlike, With eyes alight, keenly observing the marchers. Out there on the curb, she looked so little, so lonely; Few appeared even to see her; No one saluted her.

Yet commander was she of the column, its leader; She was the spring whence arose that irresistible river of women Streaming steadily towards the National Capitol. KATHERINE ROLSTON FISHER, The Suffragist, January 19, 1918.

IT is an interesting coincidence that the woman who bore the greatest single part in the Suffrage fight at the beginning—Susan Anthony—and the woman who bore the greatest single part at the end—Alice Paul—were both Quakers.

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It is very difficult to get Alice Paul to talk about herself. She is not much interested in herself and she is interested, with every atom of her, in the work she is doing. She will tell you, if you ask her, that she was born in Moorestown, New Jersey, and then her interest seems to die. She apparently does not remember herself very clearly either as a child or a young girl. That is not strange. So intently has she worked in the last eight years and so intensely has she lived in that work that each year seems to have erased its predecessor. She is absolutely concentrated on now. I asked Alice Paul once what converted her to Woman Suffrage. She said that she could not remember when she did not believe in it. She added, “You know the Quakers have always believed in Woman Suffrage.”

Anne Herendeen, in a vivacious article on Alice Paul in Everybody’s Magazine for October, 1919, says, describing a visit to Moorestown:

“What do you think of all these goings-on?” I asked her mother. She sighed.

“Well, Mr. Paul always used to say, when there was anything hard and disagreeable to be done, ‘I bank on Alice.’”

The degree of education in Alice Paul’s life and the amount of social service which she had performed are a little staggering in view of her youth. Just the list of the degrees she achieved and the positions she held before she started the National Woman’s Party covers a typewritten page. They have even an unexpected international quality. One notes first—and without undue astonishment—that she acquired a B.A. at Swarthmore in 1905; an M.A. at the University of Pennsylvania in 1907; a Ph.D. at the same university in 1912. This would seem enough to fill the educational leisure of most young women, but it does not by any means complete Alice Paul’s student career. She was a graduate of the New York School of Philanthropy in 1906. She was a student at the Woodbrooke Settlement for Social Work at Woodbrooke, Birmingham, and in the University of Birmingham, England, in 1907-08; a graduate student in sociology and economics in the School of Economics of the University of London in 1908-09.

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