Jailed for Freedom | Page 8

are the people?" This was Woodrow Wilson's first question as he arrived at the Union Station in Washington the day before his first inauguration to the Presidency in March, 1913.
"On the Avenue watching the suffragists parade," came the answer.
The suffrage issue was brought oftenest to his attention from then on until his final surrender. It lay entirely with him as to how long women would be obliged to remind him of this issue before he willed to take a hand.
"The people" were on the Avenue watching the suffragists parade. The informant was quite right. It seemed to those of us who attempted to march for our idea that day that the whole world was there-packed closely on Pennsylvania Avenue.
The purpose of the procession was to dramatize in numbers and beauty the fact that women wanted to vote that women were asking the Administration in power in the national government to speed the day. What politicians had not been able to get through their minds we would give them through their eyes-often a powerful substitute. Our first task seemed simple actually to show that thousands of women wanted immediate action on their long delayed enfranchisement. This we did.
This was the first demonstration under the leadership of Alice Paul, at that time chairman of the Congressional Com-
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mittee of the National American Woman. Suffrage Association. It was also the beginning of Woodrow Wilson's liberal education.
The Administration, without intending it, played into the hands of the women from this moment. The women had been given a permit to march. Inadequate police protection allowed roughs to attack them and all but break up the beautiful pageant. The fact of ten thousand women marching with banners and bands for this idea was startling enough to wake up the government and the country, but not so startling as ten thousand women man-handled by irresponsible crowds because of police indifference.
An investigation was demanded and a perfunctory one held. The police administration was exonerated, but when the storm of protest had subsided the Chief of Police was quietly retired to private life.
It was no longer a secret that women wanted to vote and that they wanted the President and Congress to act.
A few days later the first deputation of suffragists ever to appear before a President to enlist his support for the passage of the national suffrage amendment waited upon President Wilson.[1] Miss Paul led the deputation. With her were Mrs. Genevieve Stone, wife of Congressman Stone of Illinois, Mrs. Harvey W. Wiley, Mrs. Ida Husted Harper, and Miss Mary Bartlett Dixon of Maryland. The President received the deputation in the White House Offices. When the women entered they found five chairs arranged in a row with one chair in front, like a class- room. All confessed to being frightened when the President came in and took his seat at the head of the class. The President said he had no opinion on the subject of woman suffrage; that he had never given it any thought;[2]
[1]There had been individual visits to previous presidents.
[2]At Colorado Springs in 1911, when Mr. Wilson was Governor of New Jersey and campaigning for the Presidential nomination, a delegation of Colorado women asked him his position on woman suffrage. He said, "Ladies, this is a very arguable question and my mind is in the midst of the argument"
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and that above all it was his task to see that Congress concentrated on the currency revision and the tariff reform. It is recorded that the President was somewhat taken aback when Miss Paul addressed him during the course of the interview with this query, "But Mr. President, do you not understand that the Administration has no right to legislate for currency, tariff, and any other reform without first getting the consent of women to these reforms?"
"Get the consent of women?" It was evident that this course had not heretofore occurred to him.
"This subject will receive my most careful consideration," was President Wilson's first suffrage promise.
He was given time to "consider" and a second deputation went to him, and still a third, asking him to include the suffrage amendment in his message to the new Congress assembling in extra session the following month. And still he was obsessed with the paramount considerations of "tariff" and "currency." He flatly said there would be no time to consider suffrage for women. But the "unreasonable" women kept right on insisting that the liberty of half the American people was paramount to tariff and currency.
President Wilson's first session of Congress came together April 7th, 1913. The opening day was marked by the suffragists' second mass demonstration. This time women delegates representing every one of the 435 Congressional Districts in the country bore petitions from the constituencies showing that the people "back home" wanted the amendment passed. The delegates marched on Congress and