VII PRESSURE ON THE PRESIDENT

Although five different deputations—Congressional union members; college women; women voters; New Jersey women; women from all the States—had called on the President, it was apparent that he had undergone no change in his attitude toward the Suffrage question. On February 2, 1914, therefore, another deputation, the sixth—and an exceedingly interesting one—marched to the White House. This deputation included women from the industrial world and they represented more than fifty trades in which women are engaged. They carried banners which bore quotations from the President’s New Freedom: “We Have Got to Humanize Industry,” and “I Absolutely Protest Against Being Put into the Hands of Trustees.”

At the mass-meeting, preliminary to waiting upon the President, Melinda Scott, an organizer of the Women’s Trade union League, said:

No one could be serious when they maintained that the ballot will not help the working woman. It has helped the working-man to better his conditions and his wages. Men of every class regard the ballot as their greatest protection against the injustice of other men. Women even more than men need the ballot to protect their especial interests and their right to earn a living.... We want a law that will prohibit home-work.... We hear about the sacredness of the home. What sacredness is there about a home when it is turned into a factory, where we find a mother, very often with a child at her breast, running a sewing machine? Running up thirty-seven seams for a cent. Ironing and pressing shirts seventy cents a dozen, and children making artificial flowers for one cent a gross. Think of it—one hundred and forty flowers for one cent. Taking stitches out of coats, helping their mothers where they have finished them for six cents a coat. These women have had no chance 58to make laws that would protect themselves or their children....

The organized working woman has learnt through her trade union the power of industrial organization, and she realizes what her power would be if she had the ballot.... Men legislating as a class for women and children as a class have done exactly what every other ruling class has done since the history of the world. They discriminate against the class that has no voice. Some of the men say, “You women do not need a ballot; we will take care of you.” We have no faith in man’s protection.... Give us the ballot, and we will protect ourselves.

This army of four hundred arrived safely, with perfect police escort, at the doors of the White House. They were amazed to learn that the President would see only twenty-five of the women. He had said he would “receive the delegation.” The selected number then went in, the remaining three hundred and seventy-five waited in line outside.

Margaret Hinchey, a laundry worker of New York, said:

Mr. President: It is shaking and trembling, I, as a laundry worker, come here to speak in behalf of the working women of the United States. I have read about you, and think you are fair, square, on the level, and so much a real democrat, that I believe when it is made clear to you how much we working women, who organize in the factories, the mills, the laundries, and the stores, can help every true democrat, you will use your power to wipe out this great injustice to women by giving us a vote.

Rose Winslow said:

Mr. President: I am one of the thousands of women who work in the sweated trades, and have been since a child, who give their lives to build up these tremendous industries in this country, and at the end of the years of work, our reward is the tuberculosis sanatorium or the street. I do not think to plead with you, Mr. President, nor make a regular speech. I do not speak to Presidents every day; it hasn’t been my job, so I don’t do it very gracefully.

Here the President interrupted Miss Winslow by stating that he did not see why she should be so nervous, as Presidents are perfectly human. Miss Winslow then continued:

59Yes, I know, and that is why I can speak to you, because you are human and have a heart and mind and can realize our great need. I do not need to remind you how we women need the ballot, etc.

The President said:

I need not tell you that a group of women like this appeals to me very deeply indeed. I do not have to tell you what my feelings are, but I have already explained—because I feel obliged to explain—the limitations that are laid upon me as the leader of a Party. Until the Party, as such, has considered the matter of this very supreme importance and taken its position, I am not at liberty to speak of it; and yet, I am not at liberty to speak as an individual, for I am not an individual. As you see, I either speak to it in a message, as you suggest, or I do not speak at all. That is the limitation I am under, and all I can say to you ladies, is that the strength of your agitation in this matter undoubtedly will make a profound impression.

In view of later opinions of the President in regard to his leadership—and in view of the fact that later even Democratic Congressmen referred to his “dictatorship”—his attitude to the women this day was most interesting.

Mrs. Glendower Evans, who was in charge of the deputation, said:

We understand your position and its difficulties quite well, Mr. President, but nevertheless we ask, where can we look for political action? We recognize that the verdict must come not from you alone, but from the whole Party. I do not ask you to break with your Party. What I ask is, will you use your influence within your Party? I do not ask the impossible, though I might from you, for you have done the impossible.

It is apparent that the President’s education was progressing. He was beginning to be struck with the strength of the Woman Suffrage agitation; although he still believed himself powerless to help in the work with Congress.

Early in June, 1914, the National Federation of Women’s Clubs meeting in Chicago, had given its indorsement, as an organization, to Woman Suffrage. Following this action by 60the Federation, another delegation—the seventh—of five hundred club women under the leadership of Mrs. Harvey W. Wiley, waited upon the President on June 30. I quote from the Suffragist:

The deputation had assembled for a preliminary mass-meeting at the Public Library.... Leaving the Library, the deputation, which extended over several blocks, marched in single files to the White House.... It passed through the Arcade and into the East Room.... Women were massed about the State Apartment, filling it from end to end, and leaving a hollow square in which Mrs. Ellis Logan and Mrs. Wiley and Rheta Childe Dorr awaited the President’s arrival. Preceded by his aide, the President entered....

“Mr. President,” said Mrs. Dorr, “we are well aware that you are the busiest of men. I shall therefore go directly to the point and tell you that our reason for calling on you today is to ask you if you will not use your powerful influence with Congress to have the Bristow-Mondell Amendment passed in this session.”

The President replied:

Mrs. Wiley and Ladies: No one can fail to be impressed by this great company of useful women, and I want to assure you that it is to me most impressive. I have stated once before the position which, as leader of a Party, I feel obliged to take, and I am sure you will not wish me to state it again. Perhaps it would be more serviceable if I ventured upon the confident conjecture that the Baltimore Convention did not embody this very important question in the platform which it adopted because of its conviction that the principles of the Constitution which allotted these questions to the State were well-considered principles from which they did not wish to depart.

You have asked me to state my personal position in regard to the pending measure. It is my conviction that this is a matter for settlement by the States, and not by the Federal Government, and, therefore, that being my personal conviction, and it being obvious that there is no ground on your part for discouragement in the progress you are making, and my passion being local self-government and the determination by the great communities into which this nation is organized of their own policy and life, I can only say that since you turned away from me as a leader of a Party and asked me my position as a man, I 61am obliged to state it very frankly, and I believe that in stating it I am probably in agreement with those who framed the platform to which allusion has been made.

I think that very few persons, perhaps, realize the difficulty and the dual duty that must be exercised, whether he will or not, by a President of the United States. He is President of the United States as an executive charged with the administration of the law, but he is the choice of a Party as a leader in policy. The policy is determined by the Party, or else upon unusual and new circumstances by the determination of those who lead the Party. This is my situation as an individual. I have told you that I believed that the best way of settling this thing and the best considered principles of the Constitution with regard to it, is that it should be settled by the States. I am very much obliged to you.

The President paused. He looked relieved. There was a moment’s silence, and then Mrs. Dorr said:

“May I ask you this question? Is it not a fact that we have very good precedents existing for altering the electorate by Constitutional Amendment?”

The President’s face changed. “I do not think,” he said, “that that has anything to do with my conviction as to the best way that it could be done.”

“It has not,” agreed Mrs. Dorr, “but it leaves room for the women of the country to say what they want through the Constitution of the United States.”

“Certainly it does,” the President said hastily, “there is good room. But I have stated my conviction. I have no right to criticize the opinions of those who have different convictions and I certainly would not wish to do so.”

Mrs. Wiley stepped forward. “Granted that it is a State matter,” she said, “would it not give this great movement an impetus if the Resolution now pending before Congress were passed?”

“But the Resolution is for an Amendment to the Constitution,” the President objected.

“The States would have to pass upon it before it became an Amendment,” said Mrs. Wiley. “Would it not be a State matter then?”

“Yes,” the President interrupted, “but by a very different process, for by that process it would be forced upon the minority; they would have to accept it.”

“They could reject it if they wished to,” said Mrs. Dorr. “Three-fourths of the States would have to pass it.”

62“Yes,” the President said, with distinct annoyance, “but the other fourth could not reject it.”

“Mr. President,” said Mrs. Dorr, “don’t you think that when the Constitution was framed it was agreed that when three-fourths of the States wanted a reform, the other fourth should accept it also?”

The President was plainly disconcerted. He stepped back.

“I cannot say,” he replied frigidly, “what was agreed upon. I can only say that I have tried to answer your question, and I do not think it is quite proper that I submit myself to cross-examination.”

“Very well,” Mrs. Dorr said quietly. “We will not cross-examine you further.”

“Thank you, Mr. President,” said Mrs. Wiley, “for your courtesy in receiving us.”

The President bowed. “I am very much obliged to you,” he said. “It has been a very pleasant occasion.”

In the Suffragist Lucy Burns said editorially:

The President has told a deputation of club women that they must win political freedom from State Legislatures; but not from him, not from Congress.

This position is obvious pretense. The national government has the power, granted it by the constitution, to enfranchise women. It has, therefore, the duty of doing so, if women’s claim to enfranchisement is just.

The President knows as well as we do the enormous difficulty of winning the vote by amending the Constitution of thirty-nine different States. It is amazing that a man can be found who will calmly direct women to take up this great burden when men are responsible for their need. Men alone, in all but ten States, have the power to change our laws. The good or evil of these laws is their praise or blame. It is a public injustice today that men deny to women in the ballot a means of self-protection which they are glad to possess themselves. Men are ethically on the defensive—particularly the men, or group of men, who from time to time monopolize political power. For the President of the United States, who incorporates in himself the power of the whole nation, and who is, therefore, more responsible than any other person today for the subjugation of women, to declare that he washes his hands of their whole case, is to presume upon greater ignorance among women than he will find they possess.

Nevertheless, we are specifically informed by the President 63that it is “not proper” for us to “cross-examine” him on the grounds of his refusal to help us.

Only fitfully do women realize the astounding arrogance of their rulers.

And later:

Some few curious commentaries cropped up editorially. Under the caption, “Heckling the President,” the New York Times says: “It certainly was not proper. The President of the United States is not to be heckled or hectored or made a defendant.... To catechise him when he had finished his speech to them is a thing never done by similar delegations of men.”

The Times has not grasped the fact that no similar delegation of men is possible. Men approach their own representative. If he disagrees with them, they have a legitimate remedy in their own hands, and can choose another representative at a duly appointed time. Women approach the President as members of a disfranchised class. The President does not represent them. He bears no constitutional relation to them whatever. If the President rejects their appeal, they have no legal means of redress. If they may not question the President on the justice of his refusal to help them, cannot question him gently and reasonably as they did—their position is indeed a subservient one.

And who told the Times that men never question the President “after he had finished his speech to them?” While the Tariff Bill was before Congress, representatives of men’s interests argued with him for hours. But they were men, and voters.

On January 6, 1915, another deputation—the eighth—of one hundred and fifty Democratic women appeared before the President. Mrs. George A. Armes, President of the Association of the National Democratic Women of America, introduced the speakers, Alberta Hill and Dr. Frances G. Van Gasken. He greeted Miss Hill with marked cordiality and listened attentively as she briefly and with great earnestness pointed out that, while the Federal Government protected men in the exercise of citizenship throughout the United States, a woman lost her right to vote when she crossed the line from a Suffrage to a non-Suffrage State. Miss Hill read the following extracts from the speech delivered by Mr. Wilson on the occasion of the formation of 64the Wilson and Marshall League at Spring Lake, New Jersey, two months after his nomination.

When the last word is said about politics, it is merely the life of all of us from the point of view of what can be accomplished by legislation and the administration of public offices. I think it is artificial to divide life up into sections: it is all of one piece though you can’t attend to all pieces of it at once.

And so when the women, who are in so many respects at the heart of life, begin to take an interest in politics, then you know that all the lines of sympathy and intelligence and comprehension are going to be interlaced in a way which they have never been interlaced before; so that our politics will be of the same pattern with our life. This, it seems to me, is devoutly to be wished.

And so when the women come into politics, they come in to show us all those little contacts between life and politics, on account of which I, for myself, rejoice that they have come to our assistance; they will be as indispensable as they are delightful.

The President listened with close attention, a smile quivering at the corners of his mouth. As she concluded, a ripple of amusement ran around the circle of auditors, and the President laughed outright.

“I cannot argue as well as you can,” he told Miss Hill with evident enjoyment. He said further:

I am most unaffectedly complimented by this visit that you have paid me. I have been called on several times to say what my position is in the very important matter that you are so deeply interested in. I want to say that nobody can look on the fight you are making without great admiration, and I certainly am one of those who admire the tenacity and the skill and the address with which you try to promote the matter that you are interested in.

But I, ladies, am tied to a conviction which I have had all my life that changes of this sort ought to be brought about State by State. If it were not a matter of female Suffrage, if it were a matter of any other thing connected with Suffrage, I would hold the same opinion. It is a long standing and deeply matured conviction on my part and therefore I would be without excuse to my own constitutional principles if I lend my support to this 65very important movement for an amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

Frankly I do not think that this is the wise or the permanent way to build. I know that perhaps you unanimously disagree with me but you will not think the less of me for being perfectly frank in the avowal of my own convictions on that subject; and certainly that avowal writes no attitude of antagonism, but merely an attitude of principle.

I want to say again how much complimented I am by your call and also by the confidence that you have so generously expressed in me, Mrs. Armes. I hope that in some respect I may live to justify that confidence.