1. The Peaceful Picketing

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.

It 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 in 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 men 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. One 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 crisscross 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.

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:

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?

On 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:

The second Susan B. Anthony banner said:

The third Susan B. Anthony banner said:

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:

We 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 of 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.

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 Port 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-meeting of the National Woman’s Party to be held that night. Girls also stood in theatre lobbies, handing out more of these slips. Girls made the rounds of the government departments, handing out still more. Everywhere great posters said:

Inauguration Day dawned a day of biting wind and slashing rain.

Outside Headquarters was turmoil; inside a boiling activity. Hundreds of women were preparing to picket the White House. To accommodate them, a rubber company, hastily summoned, had commandeered one room and was selling rain-coats; tarpaulin hats; rubbers.

An extraordinary, a magnificent demonstration followed. To the music of several bands, nearly a thousand pickets circled the White House four times—a distance of four miles. Vida Milholland, the younger sister of Inez Milholland, marched at the head, carrying on a golden banner her sister’s last words for Suffrage.

The Great Demand banner followed, carried by Mrs. Benton Mackaye:

Beulah Amidon carried the Suffrage banner which Inez Milholland bore in the first Suffrage procession in New York:

Behind there came hundreds of women bearing the purple, white, and gold. They were divided according to States; and before each division marched the State flag of the division. The drenching rain fell steadily. The pavements turned to shallow lakes, and the banners—their brilliancy accentuated by the wet—threw long, wavy reflections on the glassy, gray streets. They were of course expecting this demonstration at the White House, and, as though it were dangerous, unusual precautions had been taken against it. Every gate was locked. The Washington force of police officers, augmented by police from Baltimore and by squads of plain-clothes men, guarded the grounds without and within. Gilson Gardner said the President seemed to think the women were going to steal his grass roots.

There was no one at the locked gates to receive the women or the resolutions except the guards; these guards protested that they had not been ordered to receive either. The women visited every gate, but received the same answer. The cards of the leaders were finally handed over to a guard to present at the White House. He tried to deliver them, but was reprimanded for leaving his post, and sent back. Learning that the cards would be delivered at the end of the day, as is the custom with visiting-cards of casual visitors at the White House, the thousand pickets took up their march again.

Gilson Gardner wrote of this demonstration:

The weather gave this affair its character. Had there been fifteen hundred women carrying banners on a fair day, the sight would have been a pretty one. But to see a thousand women—young women, middle-aged and old women—and there were women in the line who had passed their three score and ten—marching in a rain that almost froze as it fell; to see them standing and marching and holding their heavy banners, momentarily growing heavier—holding them against a wind that was half gale—hour after hour, until their gloves were wet, their clothes soaked through; to see them later with hands sticky from the varnish from the banner poles—bare hands, for the gloves had by this time been pulled off, and the hands were blue with cold—to see these women keep their lines and go through their program fully, losing only those who fainted or fell from exhaustion, was a sight to impress even the dulled and jaded senses of one who has seen much.

One young woman from North Dakota I saw clinging to the iron pickets around the White House, her banner temporarily abandoned, fighting against what was to her a new feeling, faintness resulting from the pain in her hands. She was brought to the automobile in which I was riding before she actually fell to the ground; but after a short rest she was back in the line, and finished with the others.

There is no doubt that what Gilson Gardner said was true—the weather gave this affair its character.

People passing by, thrilled by the gallantry of the marchers, joined the procession. And as Gilson Gardner says, it was not because it was a pretty sight, or because these women were all young. Anna Norris Kendall of Wisconsin, seventy-two years old, and the Rev. Olympia Brown, eighty-two years old, one of the pioneer Suffragists of the country, both took part.

That day, a newly elected Congressman drove about Washington, showing the city to his wife. He had always been a Suffragist. She had always been an anti-Suffragist. The sudden sight of the thousand women marching in the rain not only converted her, but it produced such an effect on her she burst into tears.

Later, President Wilson sent a letter to the National Woman’s Party, acknowledging the resolutions presented to him by the deputations of March 4, and concluded: “May I not once more express my sincere interest in the cause of Woman Suffrage?”

Congress adjourned on March 3, 1917. The pickets adjourned with it. On April 2, a Special War Session of Congress convened. The Suffragist gives an interesting description of that interesting day.

Just half an hour before Congress formally opened, the Suffrage sentinels at the Capitol took their places.... There was tensity in the atmosphere. The Capitol grounds were overrun with pacifists from many cities wearing white-lettered badges; and with war advocates, as plainly labeled, with partisan demands. They swarmed over the Capitol grounds unmolested, though extra precautions were taken throughout the day and in the evening when troops of cavalry were called out. The silent sentinels stood unmoved the while for democracy while peace and war agitation eddied around them.

The pickets convened with Congress. They continued to stand at the gates of the White House, but they extended their line to the Capitol. Three pickets, led by Elsie Hill, took up their station by the House entrance and three by the Senate entrance. At night—this evoked from the newspapers sly allusions to the Trojan horse—they used to store their banners in the House Office Building.

On April 7, the United States declared itself to be at war with Germany.

After war was declared, the Woman’s Party continued—and continued with an increasing force and eloquence—to demand the enfranchisement of the women of the United States by Constitutional Amendment. This brought down upon their heads a storm of criticism; antagonism; hostility. But Alice Paul was not deflected by it from her purpose. She recalled that, at the outbreak of the Civil War, Suffragists of that day, were entreated to relinquish their Suffrage work in favor of war work. They were promised that, at the end of the war, they would be enfranchised. Susan B. Anthony complied with great reluctance, carried on, against her will, by the majority of those who surrounded her.

At the end of the war, the black man was enfranchised. The white women had been asking for the vote ever since.

Every effort was made to shake this young leader in her fearless stand. All kinds of people came to her and begged her to give up the picketing. One strong friend, a newspaper man, said, “It’s as though you opened the windows and said, ‘There’s a nice big cyclone coming. Come out of your cyclone-cellars, girls, and let’s go in it!’” Denunciations, violence, mobs, murders were predicted.

There was no officer of the National Woman’s Party who did not realize what it meant to go on with such a fight at such a time.

They determined, whatever befell, not to lower their banners; to hold them high.

Alice Paul announced in the editorial columns of the Suffragist, that members of the Woman’s Party would, if they so desired, work for war through various organizations, especially organized for war work, but that the Woman’s Party itself would continue to work only for the enfranchisement of women.

The eyes of the world were now turned on the White House. Distinguished men from all over the country visited the President. Foreign missions came one after another.

Picturesque events continued to happen on the picket line. Arthur Balfour, the leader of the British Mission, called at the White House to pay his respects. He was confronted with forty pickets. Their banners were inscribed with the President’s own words:

WE SHALL FIGHT FOR THE THINGS WHICH WE HAVE ALWAYS HELD NEAREST OUR HEARTS—FOR DEMOCRACY, FOR THE RIGHT OF THOSE WHO SUBMIT TO AUTHORITY TO HAVE A VOICE IN THEIR OWN GOVERNMENTS.—President Wilson’s War Message, April 2, 1917.

This quotation from the President’s words became a slogan among the Suffragists.

The pickets recalled that when Arthur Balfour used to emerge into Downing Street, where the English militants were producing a demonstration, he always wore a bunch of violets in his buttonhole, to show his sympathy with them.

The spring brought its usual beautiful metamorphosis to Washington. If the pickets had seemed beautiful in the winter, they were quadruply so when the fresh green came. Everywhere that luxuriance of foliage, exquisitely tender and soft, which marks Washington, made an intensive background for their great golden banners and their tri-color. The pickets found it a delightfully humorous coincidence that, when they came to take up their station at the White House, the White House lawns were ablaze with their tri-color—the white of hyacinths, the purple of azalea, and the gold of forsythia. The Little White House itself was not exempt from this burst of bloom. The huge wistaria vine on its façade turned to a purple cascade; and out of it spirted the purple, white, and gold of their tri-color and the red, white, and blue of the national banner. When the French Commission, including Joffre and Viviani, passed all this massed color, they leaped to their feet, waving their hats and shouting their approval.

On June 20, the Mission headed by Bakmetief, sent by the new Russian Republic which had just enfranchised its women, was officially received by President Wilson. When they reached the White House gates, they were confronted by a big banner—since known as the “Russian” banner—borne by Lucy Burns and Mrs. Lawrence Lewis.

The appearance of this banner produced strange results. A man standing at the White House gates leaped at it—the instant the Russian Mission had vanished—and tore the sign from its supports.

The crowd closed in around them. The two women continued to stand facing them. Nina Allender, who saw this from across the street, said that the surging back and forth of straw hats as the crowd closed in upon the women gave her a sense of faintness. “One instant the banners were there, the next there were only bare sticks.”

Later, a prominent member of the Mission said to a no less prominent American, “You know, it was very embarrassing for us, because we were in sympathy with those women at the gates.”

The next day, June 21, Lucy Burns and Katherine Morey carried a banner which was the duplicate of the one borne the day before to the lower White House gate. Before they could set it up some boys destroyed it. The police did not interfere; they looked placidly on. Immediately other banners were sent off from Headquarters. Hazel Hunkins carried one which said harmlessly:

The crowds gathered and surged up and down the street but the two pickets stood motionless. Nothing happened for a while. Then a man, who stopped to congratulate Miss Hunkins, was applauded by the crowd. It is an interesting example of mob psychology that after this applause such an incident as happened five minutes later could happen. A woman of the War Department, who had been boasting that morning in her office that she was going to do this, attacked Hazel Hunkins. She tore the banners and spat on them. The avenue was crowded with government clerks and they immediately fell on the banners and destroyed them after a struggle. Katherine Morey, who was lunching at Headquarters, says in almost Bunyanesque language: “And I heard a great roar.” She ran towards the White House gates and saw that the mobs had charged the pickets, had torn the banners into shreds. The mob then rushed to the other gate, picketed by Catherine Lowry and Lillian Crans. After a struggle, their banners also were destroyed. Lillian Crans ran to Headquarters for another banner, carrying the news of what had happened.

Immediately, there emerged from the Little White House four women led by Mabel Vernon, carrying purple, white, and gold banners. It was a moment of tension, and the pickets were white-faced with that tension. This silent, persistent courage had, however, its inevitable effect on the crowd. It fell back. Before it could recover from its interval of indecision, the police met the groups of girls, and conducted them to their places. Police reserves ultimately appeared, and cleared the crowd from Pennsylvania Avenue. The pickets kept guard the rest of the day in peace. One of them even did her war-time knitting.

About this time a prominent newspaper man was sent to Alice Paul by the powers that be, on a mission of intervention. He told her it was feared the President might be assassinated by some one in the crowds that the pickets collected.

“Is the Administration willing to have us make this public?” Alice Paul asked.

“Oh, no!” was the answer.

Alice Paul replied, “The picketing will go on as usual.”

So now Major Pullman, Chief of Police for the District of Columbia, called at Headquarters. He told Alice Paul that if the pickets went out again they would be arrested. Alice Paul answered in effect:

“Why has picketing suddenly become illegal? Our lawyers have assured us all along that picketing was legal. Certainly it is as legal in June as in January.” She concluded, “The picketing will go on as usual.”

Major Pullman then told her again that the pickets would be arrested if they went out.

Alice Paul replied, “The picketing will go on as usual.”

The next morning, June 22, Miss Paul telephoned Major Pullman that the pickets were going out with the banners. Rows of policemen stood outside Headquarters. However, that did not daunt the pickets. Suffragists began to come out; return; emerge again. All this made so much coming and going that, when Mabel Vernon appeared, carrying a box under her arm, nobody paid any attention. That box, however, contained a banner. Miss Vernon crossed to the park and sat down. Presently Lucy Burns came out of Headquarters and walked leisurely in one direction; a little later Katherine Morey came out, and strolled in another direction. At a given moment these two women met at the East gate of the White House. Mabel Vernon joined them with the banner. They set it up and stood undisturbed in front of the White House for several minutes. Suddenly one of the policemen caught sight of them: “The little devils!” he exclaimed: “Can you beat that!”

The banner carried the President’s own words: “We shall fight for the things, etc.”

The day before the police had been in a bad quandary. Now they were in a worse one: it did not seem reasonable to arrest such a banner. One policeman did, however, start to do so. “My God, man, you can’t arrest that,” another policeman remonstrated. “Them’s the President’s own words.” They did make the arrest, though—after seven minutes of indecision. When the prisoners arrived at the police station Lucy Burns asked what the charge was: “Charge! Charge!” the policeman said, obviously much puzzled: “We don’t know what the charge is yet. We’ll telephone you that later.”

These two, Lucy Burns and Katherine Morey, were the first of the long list of women to be arrested for picketing the White House. They were, however, never brought to trial.

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.

This 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 line. 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.”

Another 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 mediæval 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. “We went three times around this place, and I thought the big house in the center was the White House. But we weren’t sure—not until you girls came out with your flags and stood here. ‘This is sure enough where the President lives,’ I said, ‘here are the Suffrage pickets and there are the purple and gold flags we read about down home.’ You are brave girls.”

One old soldier, hat off, said, “I have picketed in my time. And now it is your turn, you young folks. You have the courage. You are going to put it through.”

That was the note many of them sounded. “Girls, you are right,” a third encouraged them. “I have been through wars, and I know. You-all got to have some rights.”

Even the anti-Suffragists were moved sometimes. One of them said: “I have never been impressed by Suffragists before, but the sincerity you express in being willing to stand here in all weathers for the thing you believe in makes me think that there is something in the Suffrage fight after all.”

And yet, Suffragists themselves were occasionally antagonistic. “You have put the Suffrage cause back fifty years!” said one. She little suspected that, within a year, the House of Representatives would have passed the Amendment; within less than two years thereafter the Senate.

People went further than words. Many paused to shake hands. Many asked to be allowed to hold the banners for a moment.

Once a bride and groom—very young—stopped. The groom talked to one picket, the bride to another. The man said: “I think this is outrageous. I have no sympathy with you whatever. I wouldn’t any more let my wife——” At that moment the little bride came rushing up, radiant. “Oh, do you mind,” she said to her husband, “if I hold one of those banners for a while?”

“No, if you want to,” the bridegroom answered.

And she took her stand on the picket line.

Children stopped to spell out the inscriptions, and sometimes asked what they meant.

Once, a group of boys from a Massachusetts school inquired what the colors stood for, and asked to have the slogan translated. As by one impulse, they lifted their hats and said, “You ought to have it now.”

Occasionally, distinguished visitors leaving the White House would smile their appreciation and approval. On one occasion Theodore Roosevelt beamed vividly on the pickets, waving his hat as he passed. As the weather changed and the winter storms began, the gaiety in the attitude of their audience deepened to a real admiration. With the rains, the pickets appeared in slickers and rubber hats. This was not, of course, unendurable. But, when the freezing cold came, often with snow and swirling winds, picketing became a real hardship. There were days when it was almost impossible to stand on the picket line for more than half an hour at a time. At regular intervals, Smith, the janitor, assisted at times by a little colored boy, used to appear from Headquarters, trundling a wheelbarrow. That wheelbarrow was piled high with hot bricks covered with gunny-sacking. He would distribute the bricks among the pickets and they would stand on them. An observer said that, when the relay of pickets, leaving at the end of the day, stepped down from the bricks at the word of command, it was like a line of statues stepping from their pedestals.

But others—and sometimes strangers—sought to mitigate for the pickets the rigors of the freezing weather. One woman, coming regularly every day in her car, brought thermos bottles filled with hot coffee. On one occasion, a young girl—a passing volunteer—came on picket duty in a coat too light and shoes too low. While she stood there, a closed limousine drew up to the curb. A woman alighted and forced the girl to retire to her car and put on her fur coat and her gaiters. The stranger held the banner while the warming-up process was going on. She offered to organize a committee, made up of older women, who would collect warm clothing for the pickets. In point of fact, the Virginia and Philadelphia branches of the Congressional Union presented the pickets with thick gloves, spats, and slickers for rainy days. Thousands of men and women from all over the country sent suggestions for their comfort.

Official kindness, even, was not lacking. One superlatively cold day, an attaché of the President invited the whole company of pickets into the East Room of the White House. The superintendents of the Treasury Building and the War Department Annex extended to them similar invitations.

The police were, at the beginning, friendly, not only in words but in acts. An officer stopped one day, after telephoning at the near police box, to say: “You are making friends every minute. Stick to it! Do not give up. We are with you and admire your pluck.” The majority of them did not like to do what afterwards they had to do.

As for the White House guards—they were the champions of the pickets. At the outbreak of the war, the White House gates were closed for the first time in its history. The pickets without often informed the guards within as to the kind of vehicle that demanded entrance of them. The guards came to treat them as comrades patrolling the same beat. Once, when the pickets were five minutes late, one of these guards said: “We thought you weren’t coming, and we’d have to hold down this place alone.”

When the pickets reconvened with the Special War Session of the Sixty-fifth Congress on April 2, the White House police were most demonstrative in their welcome. They were glad to see them back: they said they had missed them. And indeed they had come to look on the women as a kind of auxiliary police force. Once, when somebody asked a policeman, “When is the President coming out?” Mary Gertrude Fendall said, “I guess you’d like a dollar for every time people ask you that.” The policeman answered, “I’d rather have a dollar for every time they ask when are the Suffragists coming out?” The country at large had accepted the pickets. The directors of the sight-seeing busses pointed them out as one of the city’s sights. Tourists said, oftener and oftener, “Well, we weren’t quite sure where the White House was until we saw you pickets.” And when these tourists used to crowd about the gates, waiting for the President’s limousine to come out, and the signal was flashed that the Presidential motor had started, the guards pressed the crowds away. “Back!” they would order. “Back! Back! All back but the pickets! No one allowed inside the line but the pickets!”

As can be imagined, Headquarters was a busy place during the picketing; and sometimes a hectic one. Later, of course, when the arrests began, and mobs besieged it, it seethed with excitement. It was not easy always to find women with the leisure and the inclination to serve on the picket line before the arrests. But, when arrests began and imprisonments followed, naturally it became increasingly difficult.

Many members of the Woman’s Party in Washington looked on their picketing as a part of the day’s work. Mrs. William Kent, who said that no public service she had ever done gave her such an exalted feeling, always excused herself early from teas on Monday. “I picket Mondays from two to six,” she explained simply.

Watchers said that those high groups of purple, white, and gold banners coming down the streets of Washington were like the sails, magically vivid and luminous, of some strange ship. They were indeed the sails of a ship—the mightiest that women ever launched—but only the women who manned those sails saw that ship.