Women’s Suffrage Primary Source Set
Standards:5.46, US.18
“The toilet open, with no pretense of covering. The cots were of iron, without any spring, and with only a thin straw pallet to lie upon. . . . So frightful were the nauseating odors which permeated the place, and so terrible was the drinking water from the disused pipes, that one prisoner after another became violently ill. . . . As a kind of relief from these revolting odors, they took their straw pallets from the cells to the floor outside. They were ordered back to their cells but refused in a body to go. They preferred the stone floors to the vile odors within. . . . Conditions were so shocking that Senators began to visit their constituents in this terrible hole. Many of them protested to the authorities. Protests came in from the country, too. At the end of the fifth day the Administration succumbed to the hunger strike and released the prisoners. . . .”
—DorisStevens, Jailed for Freedom (1920), pg. 275
Carrie Chapman Catt, Speech to Congress, 1917
Woman suffrage is inevitable. Suffragists knew it before November 4, 1917; opponents afterward. Three distinct causes made it inevitable.
First, the history of our country. Ours is a nation born of revolution, of rebellion nations had been ruled by kings and for kings, while the people served and paid the cost. The American Revolutionists boldly proclaimed the heresies: “Taxation without representation is tyranny.” “Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.” . . .
Eighty years after the Revolution, Abraham Lincoln welded those two maxims into a new one: “Ours is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.” Fifty years more passed and the president of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, in a mighty crisis of the nation, proclaimed to the world: “We are fighting for the things which we have always carried nearest to our hearts: for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own government.” . . .
With such a history behind it, how can our nation escape the logic it has never failed to follow, when its last unenfranchised class calls for the vote? Behold our Uncle Sam floating the banner with one hand, “Taxation without representation is tyranny,” and with the other seizing the billions of dollars paid in taxes by women to whom he refuses “representation.” Behold him again, welcoming the boys of twenty-one and the newly made immigrant citizen to "a voice in their own government” while he denies that fundamental right of democracy to thousands of women public school teachers from whom many of these men learn all they know of citizenship and patriotism, to women college presidents, to women who preach in our pulpits, interpret law in our courts, preside over our hospitals, write books and magazines, and serve in every uplifting moral and social enterprise. Is there a single man who can justify such inequality of treatment, such outrageous discrimination? Not one. . . .
Second, the suffrage for women already established in the United States makes women suffrage for the nation inevitable. . . . Our nation cannot long continue a condition under which government in half its territory rests upon the consent of half of the people and in the other half upon the consent of all the people; a condition which grants representation to the taxed in half of its territory and denies it in the other half a condition which permits women in some states to share in the election of the president, senators, and representatives and denies them that privilege in others. It is too obvious to require demonstration that woman suffrage, now covering half our territory, will eventually be ordained in all the nation. No one will deny it. The only question left is when and how will it be completely established.
Third, the leadership of the United States in world democracy compels the enfranchisement of its own women. The maxims of the Declaration were once called “fundamental principles of government.” They are now called “American principles” or even “Americanisms.” They have become the slogans of every movement toward political liberty the world around, of every effort to widen the suffrage for men or women in any land. Not a people, race, or class striving for freedom is there anywhere in the world that has not made our axioms the chief weapon of the struggle. . . .
Do you realize that when you ask women to take their cause to state referendum you compel them to do this: that you drive women of education, refinement, achievement, to beg men who cannot read for their political freedom?
Do you realize that such anomalies as a college president asking her janitor to give her a vote are overstraining the patience and driving women to desperation?
Do you realize that women in increasing numbers indignantly resent the long delay in their enfranchisement?
Your party platforms have pledged women suffrage. Then why not be honest, frank friends of our cause, adopt it in reality as your own . . . why not put the amendment through Congress and the legislatures? We shall all be better friends, we shall have a happier nation, we women will be free to support loyally the party of our choice, and we shall be far prouder of our history.
We know you will meet opposition. There are a few “women haters” left, a few “old males of the tribe” . . . whose duty they believe it to be to keep women in the places they have carefully picked out for them. . . . There are women, too, with “slave souls” and “clinging vines” for backbones. There are female dolls and male dandies. But the world does not wait for such as these, nor does liberty pause . . .
Woman suffrage is coming—you know it. Will you, Honorable Senators and Members of the House of Representatives, help or hinder it?
Front Door Lobby, 1960
By Maud Wood Park
“A few members of the Congressional Union (soon to change its name to the Woman's Party), the so-called militant group of suffragists, hung a votes-for-women banner over the railing of a gallery in the House while the President was speaking . . .
We, who had nothing to do with the demonstration, were so constantly blamed for it that our chairman directed us to make clear in the first words of every interview that we represented the great mass of suffragists, organized in the NAWSA, who did not approve of the methods used by the small group of militants.”
Editorial, The Woman's Journal, January 13, 1917
“It is a very mild sort of militancy that the Congressional Union has adopted, in picketing all the approaches to the White House with ‘silent sentinels’ bearing suffrage placards. . . . This action of the Congressional Union gets wide publicity in the press but unfortunately it is the kind of publicity which will make the average reader think that some women are doing a rather silly thing.”
Letter from Doris Stevens to her husband from jail, July 1917
“My fainting probably means nothing except that I am not strong after these weeks. I know you won’t be alarmed. Alice Paul is in the psychopathic ward. She dreaded forcible feeding frightfully, and I hate to think how she must be feeling. I have a nervous time of it, gasping a long time afterward, and my stomach rejecting during the process. . . . The poor soul who fed me got liberally besprinkled. . . . I heard myself making the most hideous sounds. . . .”
New York Times, January 11, 1917
PRESIDENT IGNORES SUFFRAGE PICKETS
Six Silent Sentinels Posted at Each of the Main Gates of the White House.
BUT HE GOES BY OBLIVIOUS
While Police on Duty Only Smile- Women to Post Guards with Military Regularity.
Special to The New York Times.
WASHINGTON, Jan. 10—TheWhite House has been picketed before, but never until today by hostile suffragists. It was placed in the beleaguered state this morning under the new “silent sentinel” campaign, begun by the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage as an outgrowth of the failure of President Wilson to declare in favor of the proposed Federal suffrage amendment when he received a delegation of 300 suffragist leaders at the White House yesterday.
The first guard mount of the suffrage sentinels marched across historic Lafayette Square a few minutes before 9 o’clock this morning, under command of Miss Mabel Vernon. The detail consisted of six young women. The Sergeant of the guard for its first day of picketing was Miss Mary Gertrude Fendall of Baltimore.
Twenty-four suffragists, besides the officer of the day and the Sergeant of the guard, were utilized today. Twelve were on picket duty this morning and the others this afternoon. Six were stationed at each of the two main gateways- east and west-from which the semi-circular roadway leads to the main entrance to the White House. Each of the sentinels carried a banner. Two banners of yellow bunting at each gate were inscribed with the words, “Mr. President, What Will You Do for Woman Suffrage?” Flanking each of these banners were two others, displaying the suffrage colors-purple, white, and yellow-but bearing no inscriptions.
President Wilson was one of the first to enter the western gate after the sentinels went to their posts. He was returning in a sedan motor car at 10 o’clock from a game of golf, and seemingly ignored the presence of the pickets when he passed them. One of the sentinels, when asked whether the President smiled as he passed through the gate replied: “Not so that you could notice it. He was utterly oblivious, apparently, of our presence here.”
Ignored by White House.
If the Congressional Union members expected that the stationing of these pickets would result in a flare-up of resentment from the White House today they were disappointed. No disagreeable incident occurred. At the White House it was said that it was the purpose to ignore the presence of the pickets. The White House police, supposedly acting under orders, merely smiled when they approached the sentinels.
The object of the campaign is to flash before the Presidential eye the phrase “Mr. President. What will You Do For Woman Suffrage?” every time he passes through either of the main gates to his official residence. It was acknowledged that the move was part of a new policy of mild militancy, which began when the suffragists unfurled a “Votes for Women” banner from the gallery of the House of Representatives on Dec. 5 last when the President was delivering his address to Congress. It was said that the picketing would be continued in the most systematic fashion for an indefinite period, at least until March 4, when Mr. Wilson is to be inaugurated for a second time.
A separate day is to be designated for each State in the Union until forty-eight days have passed. On these State days the sentinels representing their respective States. After that it is the intention to have a woman lawyer day, a woman doctor day, a woman scientist day, a feminine author day, and so on.
The Congressional Union announces that it intends to keep the pickets posted as long as necessary, rain or shine, daily from 9 to 5:30. A fund of more than $3,000 has been raised to pay for umbrellas, raincoats, and other incidental expenses, including possible fines.
Order for the Day.
A general order for the guard mounting will be issued every day. The order issued today was as follows:
GENERAL ORDERS NO. 1
Officer of the Day, Miss Mabel Vernon.
Sergeant of the Guard, Miss Mary Gertrude Fendall.
Guard mount.
Morning detail, east gate.
Privates-Miss Vivian Pierce, San Francisco; Miss Bertha Cron, San Francisco; Miss Mildred Gilbert, San Francisco; Miss Bessle Papandre, San Francisco; Miss Elizabeth Gary, Illinois; Miss Gertrude Crocker, Illinois.
Morning detail, west gate.
Privates-Mrs. M.C. Dowell, Philadelphia; Miss Joy Young, District of Columbia; Miss Maud Jamison, Norfolk; Miss Elizabeth Smith, New York; Miss Pauline Floyd, Arkansas; Miss Frances Pepper, District of Columbia.
Bugler of the Day-Press Bureau of the Congressional Union.
Challenge-“Mr. President, What Will You Do For Woman Suffrage?”
Uniform-Shoulder sashes.
Miss ALICE PAUL, Commandant. Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, President of the National American Woman Suffrage Association said she thought the Congressional Association was making an error in picketing the White House.
New York Times, November 7, 1917
MISS ALICE PAUL ON HUNGER STRIKE
Suffragist Leader Adopts This Means of Protesting Against Washington Prison Fare.
NOW IN JAIL HOSPITAL
Threatens to Starve to Death Unless Better Food Is Provided for Six Companions.
WASHINGTON, Nov. 6—Alice Paul, National Chairman for the Woman’s Party, now doing a seven months’ sentence in jail here for picketing the White House, has gone on a hunger strike, and tonight she had been in the jail hospital without food for the preceding twenty-four hours, stolidly threatening to starve herself to death unless her six companions, serving time for the same offense, got better food.
So far the jail officials are taking the strike calmly and waiting for Miss Paul to get hungry enough to eat. Forcible feeding has not been discussed as yet. But inasmuch as Miss Paul made somewhat of a record for herself as a hunger striker in an English jail several years ago, while militating with Mrs. Pankhurst, headquarters of the Woman’s Party is quite confident that she will give the prison officials a surprise of they expect her to yield quickly.
Miss Paul, a slight, little woman, weighing about ninety pounds and a delicate constitution, was taken to the jail hospital last night because she was ill. Miss Paul said she was ill because of bad food, bad air, and no exercise. Woman’s Party officials say she and the other militants have been getting a coarse diet principally of salt pork and cabbage at the rate of eighteen times in thirteen days. When Miss Paul was taken to the hospital a diet, including milk and eggs and without the salt pork and cabbage, was offered her, but she announced she would have none of it unless her sisters got the same.
Tonight Dr. Cora Smith King, Miss Paul’s physician, who was permitted to attend her, issued a bulletin saying Miss Paul was much thinner than when she centered the jail, Oct 22, was refusing food, and would not touch a morsel until she and her companions received the same treatment as seventeen murderers, who have the privilege of special food, air exercise, and the newspapers.
“If we are to be starved, I prefer to be starved at once,” was the message Miss Paul sent out to the workers. “There is no use giving us special food today and not tomorrow simply to keep us alive as long as possible.”
Although the militants have announced they will not resume picketing the White House until Congress reconvenes in December, they consider that a hunger strike is a sufficient climax, for the present at least, to their efforts to force President Wilson to indorse woman suffrage by Constitutional amendment.
Carrie Chapman Catt Alice Paul in Jail
National Woman’s Party leader Alice Paul unfurls the tri-color suffrage flag bearing 36 (ratification) stars in Washington D.C.
1