Author: David Dismore

Founding Feminists is FMF’s daily herstory column.

January 13, 1917: Four days of picketing President Wilson at the White House have brought gratifying results, and though the “Silent Sentinels” will be taking tomorrow off because it’s Sunday, the protests will be even larger next week, and continue until President Wilson endorses and then lobbies Congress for the Susan B. Anthony (nationwide woman suffrage) Amendment.

Today there was a marked increase in visitors and volunteers at the headquarters of the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage, all as a direct result of people seeing their pickets, banners and tricolor standards next to the White House gates. Even President Wilson has been giving increased respect to the Sentinels, despite being the object of their protest. He went from being expressionless at first, to smiling, then tipping his hat, and today bowing slightly as he passed through the gate. In response, the pickets briefly dipped their banners as a way of returning the salute.

The Sentinels have also been getting a lot of friendly attention from the squirrels who populate the White House lawn. Though squirrels tend to be neutral on the issue of woman suffrage, they’re quite useful to the cause by drawing crowds who like to watch the picketers feed them by tossing peanuts through the fence.

One visitor to today’s protest passed along a note with especially encouraging news. He’s in a position to overhear members of Congress talking candidly among themselves, and according to this anonymous source, two prominent politicians were having a conversation in which both agreed that women were becoming angry at the way the Anthony Amendment was being stalled, and that the only way to avoid the wrath of women voters in the eleven “equal suffrage” States might be to simply pass the measure and send it to the State legislatures for ratification.

The Congressional Union called a meeting late this afternoon at Cameron House to share picketing experiences and plan strategy for next week. A number of today’s new recruits attended, and volunteered to do sentry duty. Extra personnel will be needed, because instead of just picketing alongside the gates, an attempt will be made to line the entire White House fence along Pennsylvania Avenue late one afternoon next week. That time of day has been chosen because many of the picketers have family duties to perform in the early morning and at lunchtime.

One example of how this protest is uniting women over the issue of suffrage was shown recently when a woman from Germany and another from England saw the banners as they were each passing by and spontaneously joined the picket line. Despite the fact that their nations have been at war with each other since August 4, 1914, they chatted amiably, and if given the opportunity, both probably would have asked Wilson the same question that appeared on the banners: “MR. PRESIDENT, WHAT WILL YOU DO FOR WOMAN SUFFRAGE?”

The past four days have certainly been amazing, and this campaign is just getting started, so there’s no telling how much may be accomplished in the upcoming weeks!

Founding Feminists is FMF’s daily herstory column.

January 12, 1917: Today was a very good – though quite frigid – one for the “Silent Sentinels” of the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage.

They are standing next to the White House gates with suffrage banners and their tricolor standards from 9 AM until 5:30 PM each day until President Wilson endorses the Susan B. Anthony (nationwide woman suffrage) Amendment, then uses his considerable influence to get it approved by a Congress controlled by his fellow Democrats.

Though the idea of picketing was only suggested three days ago and implemented day before yesterday, this colorful protest has now stirred interest not just citywide, or even nationwide, but around the world. Among the many donations that came in today was one from Dora Lewis, of Philadelphia, who is spending the winter in Shanghai, China. Even there she heard of the picketing, and immediately wired $300 to help with expenses. Though certainly the most distant donor, she was not the most generous of the day. That honor went to Mary Burnham, also of Philadelphia, who gave $1,100. Sophie G. Meredith of Richmond, Virginia, gave $350.

Not all donations are in the form of money, of course. Two gentlemen stopped by briefly to give boxes of candy to the picketers as a sign of their support, and an elderly woman donated many hours on the picket line, even though the “official” pickets were initially reluctant to accept her offer because she wasn’t dressed warmly enough. But she told the Congressional Union members:

For twenty years I have been in the civil service… They advance the men over the women there. You women of the Union exposed the civil service two years ago, and now I want to work with you.

She was then warmly accepted into the ranks and spent the rest of the day as a 13th Sentinel.

The day’s most appreciated non-monetary donation arrived in the form of a large shipment of oilcloth raincoats. They’re big, heavy, strictly practical and not at all in the typical style of women’s rainwear. But they certainly seem capable of fulfilling their intended purpose of protecting the pickets from even the worst storms that the city will inevitably throw at them. Of course, the hats with the wide brims at the back my make passersby wonder if the White House is under siege by suffragists or being protected by the Fire Department, but the Congressional Union’s purple, white and gold banners, surrounding others bearing the message: “MR. PRESIDENT, WHAT WILL YOU DO FOR WOMAN SUFFRAGE?” should clear up any doubts.

Though the temperature dropped from 22 to 17 degrees during picketing hours and strong winds increased the chill, President Wilson continues to warm to the picketers. When he encountered them for the first time day before yesterday, he remained expressionless and looked straight ahead. Yesterday, he gave them a slight smile as he passed through the gate. Today he gave a big smile, and tipped his hat. Whether this daily escalation means he’s slowly being converted into a supporter of the Anthony Amendment or just having progressively better mornings on the golf course is not known, but it seems a good sign. According to Mary Gertrude Fendall, “Officer of the Guard” for today’s detail:

We are glad that the President smiled on us. We appreciated also the invitation extended to us yesterday by the President to come into the East Room out of the shivering cold weather. Perhaps we have succeeded in making the President take notice of us in such a way that he may help get us the Federal suffrage amendment at this session of Congress.

(It should be noted that the pickets politely turned down the President’s invitation to come inside.)

Future plans of the picketers are ambitious. It was announced today that on March 4th, the date of President Wilson’s second inaugural, there will be not just the usual twelve pickets (three on either side of the East and West gates of the White House), but a thousand protesters surrounding the entire Executive Mansion. If so, this will not be the first time suffragists have tried to impress President Wilson with their numbers.

Four years ago, on March 3, 1913, Alice Paul coordinated the National American Woman Suffrage Association’s massive suffrage march and pageant here the day before Wilson’s first inauguration. She’s still in D.C., and as dedicated as ever to the cause of “Votes for Women.” She now heads the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage, and has been freed from the constraints of the more conservative National American Woman Suffrage Association. Wilson is still President, and though women have won full voting rights in eleven States, they are still denied equal suffrage in thirty-seven. So today, just as four years ago, the struggle goes on, only using new and more militant methods.

Founding Feminists is FMF’s daily herstory column.

January 9, 1918: President Wilson has just endorsed the Susan B. Anthony (nationwide woman suffrage) Amendment!

In a momentous and surprise announcement that is sure to help in tomorrow’s crucial House vote, the President has ended many years of evasion and neutrality on the issue by coming out strongly in favor of women having a Constitutionally guaranteed, nationwide right to vote.

The announcement came after a meeting with Democratic members of the House Committee on Suffrage, and in the form of a statement given out by its leader

The committee found that the President had not felt at liberty to volunteer his advice to members of Congress in this important matter, but when we sought his advice he very frankly and earnestly advised us to vote for the amendment as an act of right and justice to the women of the country and the world.

The President’s influence has long been considered by many to be the final factor needed to gain the last few Democratic votes necessary to get 2/3 approval in both Houses of Congress and send the amendment to the States for ratification by 36 out of 48 State legislatures.

Speculation over Wilson’s reasons for endorsement at this time runs high. Practical politics certainly played a major part. With Republicans pledged to give the amendment overwhelming support tomorrow, if Democrats block its passage, women in States where they have already won suffrage might vote strongly Republican in the upcoming midterm elections to help the amendment’s chances in the next Congress.

In fact, it was a growing feeling of panic among Democratic leaders about a possible backlash from pro-suffrage voters in November which was the reason for tonight’s meeting with the nation’s highest ranking Democrat in the first place. Reports are that President Wilson went into great detail about why all U.S. women should have the vote, and why changed circumstances (such as U.S. entry into the World War and women’s praiseworthy contributions to the war effort) have now made it appropriate for him to end his neutral stance. Suffrage leaders are, of course, elated. Carrie Chapman Catt, President of the National American Woman Suffrage Association said:

We are thrilled by the President’s statement to the delegation of Representatives who waited on him seeking his advice about the Federal suffrage amendment. Most of all we do appreciate his setting forth that the passage of the amendment is an act of right and justice at this time to the women of this country and the world.

Alice Paul, leader of the National Woman’s Party, said:

It is difficult to express our gratification at the President’s stand. For four years we have striven to secure his support for the national amendment, for we knew that it and perhaps it alone would insure our success. It means to us only one thing – victory. Sex-sevenths of the Republicans have already pledged their votes. The Democrats will undoubtedly follow their great leader.

The role of the National Woman’s Party (formerly the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage) in pressuring President Wilson into supporting nationwide woman suffrage should not be underestimated. Its picketing of the White House to point out the hypocrisy of President Wilson’s strong support of democracy worldwide while doing nothing to enfranchise the female half of the U.S. population must certainly have caused great concern to the Administration. The arrests, imprisonment, hunger strikes and force-feedings of the suffrage pickets over the past year clearly focused attention on the issue like nothing else could have, and generated great sympathy for the “Silent Sentinel” picketers and their cause. So it is perhaps more than coincidence that the announcement was made exactly a year to the day after the meeting between suffragists and the President in which his unsatisfactory statements on the subject caused such indignation that picketing along the White House fence began the next day.

Founding Feminists is FMF’s daily herstory column.

January 8, 1917: Ethel Byrne was found guilty today of violating New York State’s anti-birth-control law while working at her sister Margaret Sanger’s birth control clinic when it was raided on October 25th.

She did not contest the accusation that she broke the law, since all three of those arrested that day want to challenge the law itself, Section 1142 of the New York State Penal Code. The law was passed in late 1873, deals with “indecent articles,” and makes it a crime for anyone to furnish or have in their possession any article for the prevention of conception, to advise anyone to use such items, or even to tell someone where such prohibited items may be obtained. The State law followed passage of the Comstock Act by Congress in March, 1873, which similarly classes contraceptive information and devices with banned and indecent items and bars them from the mails.

As a kind of “afterthought,” the State Legislature enacted another section of the law, Section 1145, in 1881, which appears to exempt licensed physicians from the ban, but only if they are prescribing for “the prevention or cure of disease.” Clearly, the burden of proof would be on the physician to show that there was some special and compelling reason, involving the patient’s health, why an exception should be made in a particular case. Because Section 1142 is so explicit in banning contraceptives and birth control information – and violations can bring jail sentences – physicians are not willing to openly discuss birth control or prescribe contraceptives to their married patients until Section 1145 becomes equally explicit about their right to discuss and prescribe birth control on the same basis as other medications or devices.

There were around 100 women in the courtroom today in support of Byrne and they made their feelings known by bursting into applause as Jonah Goldstein, Byrne’s attorney, made his argument against Section 1142. Also present and testifying was Rose Halpern of Brooklyn, representing the patients who are being denied contraceptive information and devices by the law. She has six children between the ages of 16 months and 10 years, and must support them – and any more that may be born – on her husband’s $17 a week salary.

Justice Garvin ruled solely on whether the law had been broken and not on its merits, leaving the issue of constitutionality to higher courts who will rule as the conviction is appealed. The judge postponed sentencing until the 22nd. Margaret Sanger and Fania Mindell’s trials are scheduled to begin on the 29th, and they will be charged with the same “offense” as Byrne.

There have been numerous arrests of those who have attempted to distribute information about birth control, including William Sanger, Margaret Sanger’s husband. In December, 1914, he was tricked into giving a “Family Limitation” pamphlet to someone who posed as a friend of his wife’s and a supporter of birth control, but who was in reality an agent of the self-styled anti-vice crusader Anthony Comstock. Upon conviction on September 10, 1915, Sanger chose to serve time in prison rather than pay the fine imposed.

The opening of the country’s first birth control clinic on October 16th was a much more overt defiance of the law than the occasional and secret distribution of birth control information, so the sentences for the three who were arrested may be severe, but all are determined to keep fighting against the unjust laws that ban birth control devices and information.

INFLATIONARY NOTE : $17 in 1917 = $313.64 today.

Founding Feminists is FMF’s daily herstory column.

January 6, 1920: Suffrage forces are now two-thirds of the way to victory in the final stage of the “Votes for Women” battle!

Today Rhode Island and Kentucky ratified the Susan B. Anthony (nationwide woman suffrage) Amendment, becoming the 23rd and 24th States to do so. That means just 12 more are needed to put it in the Constitution. At the offices of the National American Woman Suffrage Association there was unrestrained optimism, as they said the goal now was to obtain the approval of those last States by April, so that women in every State can vote in the Presidential Primaries as well as the General Election in November.

The celebration at National Woman’s Party headquarters was delayed a bit, due to a fire, but was equally enthusiastic when it finally occurred. The fire began in the furnace room just about the time word was received of the double ratification. The Party has somewhat of a reputation for using fire as part of its demonstrations, so the crowd gathered in Lafayette Park when the smoke first appeared thought it was some sort of celebration. But the blaze wasn’t intentional or celebratory, and spread from the furnace room to the ballroom to the living quarters, doing about $1,000 damage. Fortunately, the Fire Department arrived quickly, as did the police, who helped carry out the most valuable items to be saved in case the fire couldn’t be extinguished. The 22-star “ratification flag” was among the crucial items quickly brought outside. It was unharmed, so Alice Paul can sew on two more stars.

The margins of victory for ratifications achieved today show just how powerful the momentum for suffrage has become. In Rhode Island the vote was 89 to 3 in the House and unanimous in the Senate. Mary B. Anthony said on behalf of the Rhode Island Equal Suffrage Association: “It is with a feeling of profound satisfaction that I realize that Rhode Island has ratified. ‘Little Rhody’ is a fine State and here’s the proof.”

In Kentucky, the vote was 72 to 25 in the House and 30 to 8 in the Senate and of sufficient priority that the issue was dealt with on the first day of the legislative session. Before ratifying, the Senate rejected by 23 to 15 a proposal to submit the amendment to a Statewide referendum.

The Anthony Amendment was passed by Congress and sent to the States seven months and two days ago. It is nine months and twenty-seven days until the General Election, so two-thirds of the job has been done in less than half the time between the two events. But the States that remain are going to be much harder to ratify, so the pace may now slow considerably.

Complicating things further is the fact that the “antis” managed to postpone the Anthony Amendment’s passage by Congress so long that some State Legislatures had already adjourned their regular sessions and are not scheduled to reconvene until next year. So, getting governors to call special sessions to vote on ratification will be a high priority for all suffrage groups. There are also States in which the legislature is of a different political party than the governor, so they may not want to give the governor a political victory if a special session is called. And, of course, in all States there are local, personal and partisan rivalries that complicate any vote.

There is no time limit on ratification of the Anthony Amendment, so failure to ratify this year would not doom it. But if it is not ratified in time for women in non-suffrage States to register to vote for the November 6th election, it would deprive millions of women of their right to choose the next President, their House members, as well as any Senators who will be elected this year, inaugurated in 1921 and remain in office until March 4, 1927. The country deserves a President and Congress elected by both male and female voters, and suffragists will be doing everything possible to assure it.

Founding Feminists is FMF’s daily herstory column.

January 5, 1944: This looks like a great year for the Equal Rights Amendment.

There were already a number of reasons for optimism, but an announcement today greatly increased the chances of a vote by both Houses of Congress. Representative Pat Cannon, Democrat of Florida, said that he intends to get enough signatures on a discharge petition (218 out of 435 House members) to get the amendment out of the House Judiciary Committee and force a vote in the full House. It has already been approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee, and there are no remaining obstacles to a vote by the entire Senate.

Today’s announcement comes at a particularly opportune time, because momentum for passage of the E.R.A. is increasing, and this should give it a further boost. In the beginning of the struggle, the sole supporter of the E.R.A. was the National Woman’s Party. It called for “absolute equality” at its first national convention after winning the vote, and in July, 1923, used the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the first women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls to announce the text of the E.R.A., and that it would be introduced in Congress later that same year.

The original wording of the E.R.A. was: “Men and women shall have equal rights throughout the United States and every place subject to its jurisdiction.” The wording was changed last year and Section One now reads: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” Section Two says: “Congress and the several States shall have power, within their respective jurisdictions, to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.” Section Three reads: “This amendment shall take effect five years after the date of ratification.”

Over the past 21 years, many organizations have endorsed the E.R.A. In its 1940 Platform, the Republican Party called for “An amendment to the Constitution providing for equal rights for men and women,” and a drive will be made again this summer to get Democrats to follow suit in their 1944 Platform. Twenty-four national organizations now officially favor the Equal Rights Amendment, the most prestigious of which is the National Federation of Business and Professional Women’s Clubs. All two dozen groups have banded together into the Women’s Joint Legislative Committee for Equal Rights in order to coordinate their efforts.

Opposition remains, of course. The reason Democrats didn’t endorse four years ago was because of Eleanor Roosevelt’s concerns that the E.R.A. would invalidate so-called “protective” laws that apply only to women workers, and that women hadn’t joined unions in large enough numbers to protect themselves. The strongest opposition is still from unions, even some which are predominantly female, such as the National Women’s Trade Union League and the Congress of Women Auxiliaries of the C.I.O. But according to Alice Paul, author of the E.R.A., opposition is lessening because of the Fair Labor Standards Act and the fact that women are now joining unions in unprecedented numbers.

One attempt to get unions to switch sides is being made by Vivien Kellems, representing the Connecticut Committee for the Equal Rights Amendment. Today she wrote to labor leaders William Green, Philip Murray and John L. Lewis, asking for their views. She said that not a single union or labor leader has as yet declared support for the E.R.A., and felt that this was probably “due to the fact that much misunderstanding and prejudice surround the subject and many well-meaning but misguided people have feared it was directed at so-called protective legislation for women.”

Little by little, the National Woman’s Party is showing that “protective” laws are really “restrictive” laws that make it harder for women to compete with men for jobs. Once this is proven to a sufficient number of people, the way should be clear for E.R.A.’s adoption. If the Equal Rights Amendment is successfully extracted from committee and put to a vote in the full House as well as the Senate, proponents should be able to make the case during the floor debate that laws which truly “protect” should apply to both sexes, and that those which “restrict” should apply to neither, and a favorable vote could be obtained. If it is approved by 2/3 of both House and Senate, and sent to the States for ratification, 36 out of 48 being required, there’s a good chance the E.R.A. could be in the Constitution by July 19, 1948, which would be the perfect way to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the women’s rights movement.

Founding Feminists is FMF’s daily herstory column.

December 18, 1915: Though New York State’s suffrage referendum went down to defeat on November 2nd along with three others, Harriot Stanton Blatch said today that she and a number of other suffragists are still determined to cast their votes in next November’s Presidential election, and have figured out a way to legally do it.

How? Well, since a ballot box that accepts women’s votes won’t be available at their local precinct, they’ll go to the nearest one that – under the right circumstances – will accept their ballots. It’s in Kansas.

According to Blatch’s lawyer, residence is determined by where one pays their personal taxes, so all that she and the others need to do to be eligible to vote is to reside for just six months in Idaho, Nevada, Oregon or Kansas and become a citizen of any of those equal suffrage States. The other seven suffrage States have longer residency requirements, so they won’t do. Since Kansas is the closest to New York, that’s the logical choice. Of course, as she explained, “you do not have to live all the time in a place where you make your residence, though if that was necessary you would find me sitting six months on the prairies of Kansas getting ready for my chance to vote.”

There will be a meeting in January to make definite plans, with Blatch leaving in March, and the others in April, which will make them all Kansas citizens in time to register for the election. Already there are a number of well-known suffrage pilgrims pledged to make the journey. Dora Lewis, active in Alice Paul’s militant Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage; Mina Van Winkle, head of the Women’s Political Union of New Jersey, and Blatch’s sister Margaret have signed on. With the bleak outlook for suffrage referenda after the defeat of the drives in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York in just the past two months, the idea is appealing because enfranchisement could be gained quickly, and with certainty, at least for some.

As to what the suffragists will do there other than vote, Blatch is open to almost anything:

There is no knowing how this will develop and there are all sorts of possibilities. A few of us might build a house. If many women should wish to take up the idea we might build a town and then we would vote immediately in the municipal elections. We will pay our personal taxes wherever we locate, and that will take some money from New York. If many women should go – who could tell? – we might give Kansas another Presidential Elector and a greater representation in Congress.

Though this might seem like going to a great deal of trouble to do something that takes only a few minutes, and many men don’t even bother with at all, Blatch explains:

Men who were born with the silver spoon of liberty in their mouths do not appreciate it. I have patriotic blood in my veins, and I have always burned with indignation at being denied the rights of citizenship. My great-grandfathers on both sides were in the War of the Revolution. One of them, Colonel Livingston, was on Washington’s staff. I always urged my mother, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony to take steps of this kind.

Whether this is the start of a women’s migration to the West, or whether the recently-disappointed suffragists will decide to stay after all, and have another try at making New York the first full-suffrage State East of the Mississippi River, it’s proof that even after a quadruple defeat, those who believe in political equality for women are just as determined as ever, and will eventually vote one way or another.

Founding Feminists is FMF’s daily herstory column.

December 17, 1970: A long overdue, but powerful statement by a rare assemblage of the nation’s feminist leaders was made here today at the Washington Square Methodist Church in Manhattan.

We take this occasion to express our solidarity with the struggle of homosexuals to attain their liberation in a sexist society …. Women’s liberation and homosexual liberation are both struggling towards a common goal: A society free from defining and categorizing people by virtue of gender and/or sexual preference. ‘Lesbian’ is a label used as a psychic weapon to keep women locked into their male-defined ‘feminine role.’ The essence of that role is that a woman is defined in terms of her relationship to men. A woman is called a lesbian when she functions autonomously. Women’s autonomy is what women’s liberation is all about.

The relationship between feminism and lesbianism has been a frequent subject of speculation in the press ever since this second wave of the struggle for women’s equality began, and the discussion has intensified this year as both the gay and women’s liberation movements have taken on increasingly high profiles. But it was a statement in the December 14th edition of Time magazine that proved to be the final catalyst for today’s press conference, and the decision by feminist leaders to finally confront the issue of using prejudice against lesbians as a weapon to fight the liberation of all women.

In the Time magazine article entitled “Women’s Lib: A Second Look,” it was said that: “Kate Millett herself contributed to the growing skepticism about the movement by acknowledging at a recent meeting that she is bisexual. This disclosure is bound to discredit her as a spokeswoman for her cause, cast further doubts on her theories, and reinforce the views of those skeptics who routinely dismiss all liberationists as lesbians.”

Today Kate Millett was chosen to read the statement of feminist solidarity with lesbians, and was repeatedly applauded by the approximately 50 women who surrounded her. Many then chose to make their own personal statements as well. Gloria Steinem was there, as were Ruth Simpson, president of the New York chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis, lawyer Florynce Kennedy, Sally Kempton and Susan Brownmiller of New York Radical Feminists, as well as Ivy Bottini, Dolores Alexander and Ti-Grace Atkinson of the National Organization for Women.

Barbara Love, of the Gay Liberation Front, epitomized the fighting spirit of the gathering: “People must speak up as lesbians. I am a lesbian. We’ve got to come out and fight, because we’re not going to get anywhere if we don’t.” Dolores Alexander noted that even today: “It’s such an explosive issue. It can intimidate women. Many women would be reduced to tears if you called them lesbians.” She then added that the feminist movement was quite diverse and made up of those who are “heterosexuals, homosexuals, tall, short, fat, skinny, Black, yellow and white.” Florynce Kennedy called for a “girlcott” of all products and major advertisers in Time magazine. Kate Millett called the article “a malicious attack on the movement” and said: “The time when you could call a woman a lesbian and expect her to drop dead is over.”

Many of those who couldn’t make the press conference sent statements of support, such as Representative Bella Abzug (D-NY), and Caroline Bird, author of “Born Female.” Aileen Hernandez, president of the National Organization for Women sent this statement:

The National Organization for Women, Inc., has no formal statement on lesbianism. We do not prescribe a sexual preference test for applicants. We ask only that those who join NOW commit themselves to work for full equality for women and that they do so in the context that the struggle in which we are engaged is part of the total struggle to free all persons to develop their full humanity.

The effort by frightened, unethical individuals in the media to discredit the movement for the liberation of women by linking all its leaders to lesbianism (and all that word connotes in the minds of the public) is despicable and diversionary. It attempts to turn us away from the real business of the movement and towards endless and fruitless discussions on matters which are not at issue.

Let us – involved in a movement which has the greatest potential for humanizing our total society – spend no more time with this sexual McCarthyism. We need to free all our sisters from the shackles of a society which insists on viewing us in terms of sex.

Toady was a proud day for the revitalized feminist movement. Many of those at the forefront of the battle for women’s liberation personally and publicly confronted a controversial issue, and did so in a way that was consistent with their philosophy and goal of liberation for all. But despite the solidarity expressed today, decades of hard work are certain to be ahead in the battle to eliminate prejudices and stereotypes based on sexual orientation. However, the recognition that the two struggles are related, and that those who oppose one of these forms of bigotry should unite with those who oppose the other, will make the day of total liberation arrive much sooner.

Founding Feminists is FMF’s daily herstory column.

December 16, 1918: A spectacular procession, followed by a stunning protest in favor of woman suffrage, took place this afternoon at the Lafayette Monument in Washington, D.C.

The reason for the demonstration – held on the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party – was to call attention to the fact that President Wilson arrived in France today to help promote democracy overseas, while the job of winning it for the women of his own country remains undone.

It’s Wilson’s own Democratic Party that is failing to provide its share of the votes needed in the Senate to pass the Susan B. Anthony (nationwide woman suffrage) Amendment. It passed the House in January by a margin of 274-136, just enough for the required 2/3 majority, with 83.3% of Republicans voting in favor, and just 50.5% of Democrats in support. It now needs only the same 2/3 majority in the Senate to be sent to the States for ratification.

Today’s pageant began when three hundred members of the National Woman’s Party, some carrying purple, white and gold party banners, and other carrying torches, formed up in front of National Woman’s Party headquarters. Led by Anna Kelton Wiley, carrying an American flag, suffragists representing 31 States marched past the White House and on to the Lafayette Monument.

Once there, the ceremonies opened with Vida Milholland singing “The Women’s Marseillaise.” Then, one by one, thirty speakers explained the rally’s purpose to the large crowd that had gathered. With the Great War now over, the spectators were more receptive to protest against the President than before, and a few even cheered. As Elizabeth Selden Rogers, who presided over the event, explained to the spectators and press:

We hold this meeting to protest against the denial of liberty to American women. All over the world today we see surging and sweeping irresistibly on, the great tide of democracy, and women should be derelict to their duty if they did not see to it that it brings freedom to the women of this land.

England has enfranchised her women, Canada has enfranchised her women. Russia has enfranchised her women, the liberated nations of Central Europe are enfranchising their women. America must live up to her pretensions of democracy!

Our ceremony today is planned to call attention to the fact that President Wilson has gone abroad to establish democracy in foreign lands while he has failed to establish democracy at home. We burn his words on liberty today, not in malice or in anger, but in a spirit of reverence for truth.

This meeting is a message to President Wilson. We expect an answer. If it is more words, we will burn them again. The only answer the National Woman’s Party will accept is the instant passage of the amendment in the Senate.

After giving their brief speeches, each orator deposited a copy of some of President Wilson’s words into an urn, consigning them to the flames. Josephine Bennett said:

It is because we are moved by a passion for democracy that we are here to protest against the President’s forsaking the cause of freedom in America and appearing as a champion of freedom in the Old World. We burn with shame and indignation that President Wilson should appear before the representatives of nations who have enfranchised their women, as chief spokesman for the right of self-government while American women are denied that right. We are held up to ridicule to the whole world.

We consign to the flames the words of the President which have inspired women of other nations to strive for their freedom while the author refuses to do what lies in his power to do to liberate the women of his own country. Meekly to submit to this dishonor to the nation would be treason to mankind.

Mr. President, the paper currency of liberty which you hand to women is worthless fuel until it is backed by the gold of action.

The speakers continued to explain why today’s protest was necessary and appropriate, and why a particular speech was set alight. Among the empty phrases spoken by President Wilson and chosen for burning were:

This is a war for self-government among all the peoples of the world as against arbitrary choices of self-constituted masters.

Liberty is a fierce and intractable thing to which no bounds can be set and no bounds ought to be set.

I believe that democracy is the only thing that vitalizes the whole people.

President Wilson has come a long way from the days when he said that woman suffrage was a matter for each State to decide, and that he could not endorse the Susan B. Anthony Amendment until the Democratic Party officially did so. After a year of picketing by the National Woman’s Party, he endorsed nationwide woman suffrage, has spoken in favor of the Anthony Amendment, and deserves credit for that. But as he himself has noted in one of the speeches burned today: “Liberty does not consist in mere general declarations of the rights of man. It consists in the translation of these declarations into action.”

Presidential speeches and statements do not by themselves enfranchise any women. Using the full power of the Presidency to lobby reluctant Senators of his own party to get the two more votes needed to pass the Anthony Amendment and send it to the States would be a concrete and major step toward enfranchising millions of women.

While the National American Woman Suffrage Association continues to work and lobby in traditional ways, the National Woman’s Party will continue to engage in these militant actions until Wilson’s words are turned into deeds. If both organizations keep up maximum pressure, their mutual goal of nationwide woman suffrage can be achieved. The only question is whether the Anthony Amendment will be passed by this Congress or the next, and whether 36 of the 48 States can ratify before nationwide elections on November 2, 1920.

Founding Feminists is FMF’s daily herstory column.

December 12, 1932: If it seems as if women are losing jobs even faster than men since the current Depression began and that women who are still employed are being exploited far more than before, there is now solid evidence to back up that impression.

Mary Anderson, head of the Women’s Bureau of the Department of Labor, today brought out figures from several surveys around the country confirming these suspicions.

In New York and Illinois, employment records show that the number of women who lost jobs was greater than that of men in a large number of industries employing both men and women, and was also the case in virtually all occupations in which a majority of workers are female. Women in executive or supervisory positions faced the worst cutbacks.

A survey last year showed that about 20% of women in the country’s 19 largest cities were out of work, and in eight of these cities the percentage was even greater. The overall unemployment rate for the U.S. that year was 16.3%, up from 3.2% in 1929. This year the jobless rate hit 24.1%. An unemployment census taken in April, 1930, just six months after the current economic downturn began, already showed 668,661 women out of work, 10% of whom were heads of families.

Wage cuts have been a widespread phenomenon during the past three years, and though a New York State survey showed the salary declines for women have actually been slightly less than those for men (21.5% vs. 22.5%), the impact has been much greater, because women were earning substantially less than men to begin with. Interestingly, figures published by the Minimum Wage Board of Ontario show women’s wages in that Canadian Province have declined by only 1.7%.

Just how low some women’s salaries have slipped in the U.S. is shown by a recent survey of 7,800 women in the garment-making industry, made at the request of Connecticut’s Democratic Governor, Wilbur Cross. Many women were paid from $4 to $6 for a 48 to 50 hour week. The wages paid to those who do piecework couldn’t be determined precisely because no records were kept.

The practice of discriminating against women in general – and married women in particular – in the workforce clearly predates the current economic crisis, but has become more widespread and overt since 1929. The National Woman’s Party has been fighting for the rights of women in the workforce for many years, and is presently trying to repeal Section 213 of the Economy Act of 1932. It states that when reductions in personnel are needed in Federal Government departments, those who have spouses working for the Government should be terminated first.

Though apparently sex-neutral, Section 213 is really a “force the wives to resign” law. Since men tend to be promoted faster and higher, and therefore earn bigger salaries, if only one Government job is allowed per couple, it’s the wife who will quit. The alleged justification for this policy is to “spread the jobs around” among families, but if that was the Act’s true purpose, the one-job-per-family rule would also apply to fathers and sons, brothers and sisters, and any family members living in the same home, not just to spouses.

In addition to working on specific legislation, the National Woman’s Party recently urged President-elect Roosevelt to be the first to appoint a woman to his future Cabinet:

The women of America earnestly urge you to include women among those whom you appoint, and urge that these women be truly representative of women – women who believe in equality for men and women, women who are aware that equal and effective co-operation between men and women is a vitally essential principle of representative government.

Regardless of whether Mr. Roosevelt breaks the precedent of naming only men to Cabinet posts or not, women workers are about to get a strong voice in the White House. Just two weeks ago, soon-to-be First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt made an appeal for assistance to women hurt by the Depression when she spoke at a benefit in Carnegie Hall sponsored by the Educational Department of the Women’s Trade Union League. Then, after attacking the “blindness of a few people who perhaps do not understand that, after all, the prosperity of the few is on a firmer foundation when it spreads to the many,” she optimistically noted:

I feel in the last few weeks a lifting of the spirit of the country, a new sense of hope,” and predicted that “we are going through a time when I believe that we may have, if we will, a new social and economic order.

Hopefully, women will be an integral part of the “new social and economic order,” and the Roosevelt Administration will make great progress in ending both the Depression and discrimination against women.

INFLATIONARY NOTE: $4 in 1932 = $69.32 in 2014; $6 = $103.00. The hourly rate for a $4 to $6 weekly salary would be between 8 and 12.5 cents an hour for a 48 to 50 hour week (equal to $1.39 to $2.17 an hour today.)

Founding Feminists is FMF’s daily herstory column.

December 11, 1921: The campaign for a 20th Amendment, to assure equal rights for women, is quickly taking shape!

Though ratification of the Susan B. Anthony (nationwide woman suffrage) Amendment 16 months ago marked a major advance for women’s rights, winning the vote can only be a stepping stone on the path to total equality. Today the National Woman’s Party announced a preliminary draft of a measure to transform the ideal of equal rights for men and women into a Constitutional amendment permanently mandating in nationwide.

At the N.W.P.’s national convention in February – the first since ratification of the 19th Amendment was officially certified by the Secretary of State on August 26, 1920 – the delegates demanded “absolute equality” as the party’s new goal. A committee of legal experts was appointed to draw up a preliminary proposal for accomplishing that goal. A Constitutional amendment was the means chosen, and the tentative text, announced today, reads:

No political, civil or legal disabilities or inequalities on account of sex, or on account of marriage unless applying alike to both sexes, shall exist in the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Among the many prestigious members of the committee who came up with the suggested wording are Gail Laughlin, who was a full-time activist with the National American Woman Suffrage Association for many years, and was the first president of the National Federation of Business and Professional Women, serving from 1919 to 1920; Shippen Lewis, Secretary of the Legal Education Committee of the American Bar Association; Matthew Hale, former National Chairman of the Progressive (“Bull Moose”) Party, and George Gordon Battle, former Assistant District Attorney for New York.

According to Laughlin: “The amendment to the United States Constitution proposed by the National Woman’s Party asks nothing more for women than equal political, civil and legal rights with men, and certainly women should be satisfied with nothing less.”

George Gordon Battle thinks the time is right for this next, and final, step on the road to equality: “Undoubtedly such an amendment is required by the preponderant force of moral sentiment and by the progressive tendency of the times.”

Though the National Women’s Trade Union League expressed a concern that a “blanket equal rights amendment” might endanger so-called “protective” legislation for women, Frank Walsh, former Joint Chairman of the War Labor Board and legal counsel for many labor organizations believes:

The political, civil and legal disabilities and inequalities leveled against woman, on the sole ground of sex, are so great in number, and so deeply engrafted in our legal structure by national and State statutes, as well as by court decisions, that I can see no way of approximating justice as affecting the sexes, except by passage of such an amendment as your organization has proposed. Indeed, without such an amendment, in my opinion, the late amendment guaranteeing women the right of suffrage would become a mere abstraction.

J.D. Wilkinson summed up the reason why this new amendment is the logical companion to the 19th:

The Fifteenth Amendment followed the Fourteenth Amendment, and it was generally conceded that one was the complement of the other. An amendment to the Constitution should follow the Nineteenth Amendment, giving to woman her civil rights as the Nineteenth Amendment gives to her political rights. Indeed, the latter appears the more important of the two.

The struggle for nationwide woman suffrage, culminating with passage of the 19th Amendment, took 72 years, so the campaign for the 20th Amendment is expected to be a long one as well. The founder of the National Woman’s Party, Alice Paul, may also wish to rewrite the amendment’s somewhat cumbersome language before having it formally introduced in Congress. But the last phase of the battle for equality between men and women has finally begun, and if supporters of this “equal rights amendment” have the same dedication and persistence as those who fought for the 19th, the result should be equally successful.

Founding Feminists is FMF’s daily herstory column.

December 10, 1869: Woman suffrage has returned to America!

For the first time since 1807, when the New Jersey Legislature revoked the right of that State’s unmarried and property-owning women to vote, there is now a part of the United States where any woman – regardless of her marital or economic status – can now legally cast a ballot: The Territory of Wyoming!

Established by Congress on July 25th of last year from land that was formerly part of Dakota, Utah and Idaho Territories, Wyoming has now become the first of what will certainly be many more victories in the battle for woman suffrage.

The suffrage bill was introduced into the Territorial Legislature by William H. Bright, a South Pass saloon owner, whose wife, Julia, is an enthusiastic suffragist.

The measure was approved by the Council (equivalent to the Senate) 6-2. The House passed it 7-4 with one abstention. Following passage by the all-Democratic legislature, Republican Governor John A. Campbell signed the bill today, while women kept vigil outside his office until he did so. This unique and landmark legislation reads:

A BILL TO GRANT THE WOMEN OF WYOMING TERRITORY THE RIGHT OF SUFFRAGE, AND TO HOLD OFFICE.

Be it enacted by the Council and House of Representatives of the Territory of Wyoming:

SECTION 1. That every women of the age of twenty-one years, residing in this territory, may, at every election to be holden under the laws thereof, cast her vote. And her rights to the elective franchise and to hold office shall be the same under the election laws of this territory, as those of electors.

SECTION 2: This act shall take effect and be in force from and after its passage.

Approved, December 10, 1869.

This is truly an exciting time for the suffrage movement, which on July 19th of this year reached full, vigorous maturity at age 21. It has now been completely revived following its temporary suspension during the War. National women’s rights conventions have resumed and been held annually since May 10, 1866. “The Revolution,” launched on January 8, 1868, by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and Parker Pillsbury, provides a lively nationwide forum for women’s rights supporters. On May 15th of this year, the National Woman Suffrage Association was formed in New York City, then on November 24th and 25th, men and women gathered in Cleveland, Ohio, to form the American Woman Suffrage Association. There is also the possibility of using the recently ratified (July 9, 1868) 14th Amendment as a way of winning nationwide woman suffrage through the courts.

Though the first attempt to win woman suffrage was defeated when the men of Kansas voted against it by a two-to-one margin in a referendum two years ago, today appears to be a turning point in the battle. The women of Wyoming Territory will soon begin going to the polls to cast votes, and it will become obvious that woman suffrage is no “threat to the family” as opponents claim, but rather a clear gain for society, as well as simple justice for those who have suffered “taxation without representation” and obeyed laws enacted by politicians who have had nothing to fear from voteless women.

Once women standing in line at polling places in Wyoming becomes a commonplace sight, and the Territory’s 9,000 residents begin to reap the benefits that women will bring to politics, “equal suffrage” should spread rapidly to the rest of the Western Territories, then to all 37 States.

Founding Feminists is FMF’s daily herstory column.

9 December 1909: American suffragist Alice Paul has been freed from London’s Holloway Prison!

Denied “political prisoner” status, she began a hunger strike immediately after her arrival, and was force-fed twice a day after 11 November. Though quite weak from her ordeal, she said today that she had no regrets, and would engage in such tactics again if necessary.

She was arrested on 9 November for taking part in a suffrage protest at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet in the Guild Hall. Disguising themselves as scrubwomen, she and another protester, Amelia Brown, snuck in many hours before the event began. They spent the morning hiding, one time coming so close to being caught that a constable’s cloak brushed up against Paul in a darkened area where she was crouching to avoid detection. As the time for the banquet approached, she began to make her way toward the gallery. Whenever she ran into someone, she would ask them for directions to the kitchen. Eventually she made her way to the gallery, and when Prime Minister Asquith paused briefly during his speech, she and Brown shouted: “How about votes for women?”

Paul and Brown were quickly arrested, tried and sentenced to 30 days at hard labour. Both immediately went on hunger strikes. Alice Paul did no work, and resisted everything the authorities tried to do, even refusing to wear prison clothes. Though not yet recovered sufficiently for a long interview, she did send out this statement today through a friend:

I practiced a hunger strike until November 11th. After that date they fed me twice a day by force, except on one day when I was too ill to be touched. I have no complaints against the Holloway officials. I spent the whole time in bed, because I refused to wear prison clothes. Each day I was wrapped in blankets and taken to another cell to be fed, the food being injected through my nostrils.

During this operation the largest wardress in Holloway sat astride my knees, holding my shoulders down to keep me from bending forward. Two other wardresses sat on either side and held my arms. Then a towel was placed around my throat and one doctor from behind forced my head back, while another doctor put a tube in my nostril. When it reached my throat my head was pushed forward.

Twice the tube came through my mouth and I got it between my teeth. My mouth was then pried open with an instrument. Sometimes they tied me to a chair with sheets. Once I managed to get my hands loose and snatched the tube, tearing it with my teeth. I also broke a jug, but I didn’t give in.

Alice Paul originally came here to do further study, and to gain more experience in social work, but she became attracted to the militant wing of the suffrage movement through her acquaintance with Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst. She joined the Women’s Social and Political Union, and has clearly been willing to share the risks and penalties of its militant activities.

Paul hasn’t said when she will return to the United States, but when she does, she could have quite an impact on the suffrage movement there. It is presently dominated by the National American Woman Suffrage Association, which endorses only traditional, non-militant methods of achieving the worthy goal of “Votes for Women.”

Founding Feminists is the FMF’s daily herstory column.

December 5, 1913: “We are going to see President Wilson if it takes all Winter.”

That was the statement given out today by the National American Woman Suffrage Association on the final day of its convention in Washington, D.C. After Ruth Hanna McCormick and Madeline McDowell Breckenridge were unable to arrange a meeting with the President yesterday, due to his alleged “illness,” fifty-five suffragists agreed to stay behind after the convention for the purpose of meeting with Wilson and trying to get him to help push the Susan B. Anthony (nationwide woman suffrage) Amendment through a Congress controlled by his own Democratic Party.

Meanwhile, a split in N.A.W.S.A. seems to have been avoided, or at least temporarily postponed. After a meeting in which the discussion became rather heated at times, N.A.W.S.A. President Reverend Anna Howard Shaw announced that Alice Paul, who now heads the group’s Congressional Committee, and Lucy Burns would “remain members” of the committee.

A number of N.A.W.S.A. officers have expressed growing discomfort over Alice Paul’s simultaneous leadership of both N.A.W.S.A.’s Congressional Committee and Paul’s own more militant Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage. One major issue is the fact that though the two groups are totally separate, the names are similar, so this invites confusion in the public mind. But, “while no committee has been appointed, it is certain that Miss Alice Paul and Miss Lucy Burns will remain on the Congressional Committee,” said Shaw today. Skepticism about whether this will actually happen when the new committee is appointed runs high, however, due to irreconcilable differences between the moderate and the more militant factions of N.A.W.S.A. over authority, strategy, tactics and funds. Conditions for their continued work on the committee may also be attached that Paul and Burns may find unacceptable.

But for today, at least, there were some cheers for Alice Paul when she gave her report about the Congressional Committee’s activities. It began work on January 2nd, with the opening of its headquarters in Washington, D.C., at 1420 “F” Street, N.W. Paul’s first task was to organize a huge suffrage parade and pageant for March 3rd, the day before President Wilson’s inauguration. She succeeded beyond anyone’s expectations, and the bravery of the thousands who marched is now legendary. Despite encountering a rowdy, disruptive mob and having virtually no protection by the D.C. police, the marchers still managed to push on to the end of the route. The committee then went on to do even more public events, the largest of which involved twelve separate automobile “pilgrimages” by suffragists around the nation, all converging on Washington, D.C., then embarking on a procession through the city ending with the presentation of suffrage petitions containing about 200,000 signatures to the Senate on July 31st.

The Congressional Committee had a salaried organizer who traveled to several key States, and a full-time press person kept the issue of suffrage before the public with a steady barrage of press releases. Over 120,000 pieces of literature were printed up and distributed during the year, and a “Men’s League” to help the suffrage cause has also been organized.

The committee put on eight well-attended theater meetings in D.C. during the year, and some form of suffrage rally took place nearly every day, with between five and ten some days. This heavy pace of activity obviously costs money, and all applauded Alice Paul’s ability to raise $25,000 for these efforts, $21,000 from the D.C. area and the rest from Philadelphia.

Though President Wilson is apparently avoiding suffragists, three of his Cabinet members were seen at a reception given today by Belle Case LaFollette, in honor of the officers of N.A.W.S.A. Three hundred of the convention’s delegates also attended.

Back in the convention hall, Rev. Shaw made the organization’s opposition to “militancy” in any form clear. She especially wanted to address an out-of-context quote from her annual address that has been widely reported, and caused much controversy in the press.

In her address, Shaw quoted a statement made by Susan B. Anthony:

There are two methods of warfare, the civilized and the barbarian. The hatchet is the weapon of barbarism, the ballot the weapon of civilization. If they continue to deny women the weapon of civilization, they need not wonder if she resorts to that of barbarism.

Shaw then reminded everyone that she had followed that quote with: “This organization, however, is going to win with the weapon of civilization” and therefore would continue its traditional, moderate approach.

The convention, like so many other N.A.W.S.A. events this year, has been a huge success. Being surrounded by committed suffrage advocates from all around the country for a week has certainly reinvigorated all the delegates, and though there are battles within the organization over tactics and strategy, as well as the fight against outside foes in the anti-suffrage movement, everyone is looking forward to 1914 being yet another year of spectacular progress for equal suffrage.

INFLATIONARY NOTE: $25,000 in 1913 = $599,578 in 2014; $21,000 = $503,646.

Founding Feminists is FMF’s daily herstory column.

December 4, 1913: Unusually strong words at the National American Woman Suffrage Association’s convention today. In a speech to the delegates, Carrie Chapman Catt, president of N.A.W.S.A. from 1900 to 1904, declared that women demanded the vote nationwide without delay, and: “If the Constitution stands in our way, let’s tear it up and make a new one!”

Irritation with President Wilson for neglecting to even mention woman suffrage in his message to Congress day before yesterday has increased. Today he failed to meet with convention representatives Ruth Hanna McCormick and Madeleine McDowell Breckenridge, supposedly due to “illness.” As Connecticut suffragist Katharine Houghton Hepburn noted, if Wilson “had been brought up by an enfranchised mother, he would know more of the needs of democracy.” Hepburn later vigorously attacked the still-widespread practice of trafficking women for prostitution:

Here in Washington at this very moment, girls are being bought and sold. The President knows it. The District Commissioners know it. The police know it. It is only the secret caucus of the House of Representatives which has prevented the Kenyon “Red Light Bill” from becoming law. I hope that the convention will adopt a resolution which will result in bringing this bill upon the floor of the House, having it debated and passed. It will in great measure prevent the traffic in vice which is being carried on openly and with official sanction in the National Capital.” Hepburn’s resolution was immediately passed.

Reverend Anna Howard Shaw, N.A.W.S.A.’s president since 1904, was re-elected, with Jane Addams as First Vice President, an office she has held since 1911. The group’s leaders have a tough job ahead of them, but have now succeeded in revising the organization’s constitution to help fund their more expansive – and expensive – efforts. After lengthy and vigorous discussions, the delegates mandated that each year all affiliated chapters must now send to N.A.W.S.A.’s national headquarters the equivalent of 5% of their annual expenditures, and that representation in the national organization will be proportional to the amount of money each chapter contributes to the national office, and not to the number of members it has.

Tensions between the “militants” and the more conservative members of the nation’s largest suffrage organization are clearly growing. As one example of the conflict, Alva Belmont tried to introduce a resolution to move the national headquarters from New York City to Washington, D.C., where “militant” Alice Paul’s N.A.W.S.A. Congressional Committee as well as Paul’s independent Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage are concentrating solely on getting a Constitutional amendment enfranchising women passed by Congress. The “militants” also favor the use of more aggressive tactics to accomplish this goal. But Belmont’s attempt to move N.A.W.S.A. to D.C. failed, as most of the officers and delegates still appear to favor putting the primary focus on a more conservative “State-by-State” approach and using traditional methods of lobbying.

The growing split in N.A.W.S.A. could either hinder the cause through infighting, or enhance the movement if the “militants” leave N.A.W.S.A., and become free to pursue additional and new methods of achieving the common goal of all suffragists. So next year is shaping up as a critical one for the “Votes for Women” movement.

Founding Feminists is FMF’s daily herstory column.

December 3, 1913: An active, 12-hour workday for those attending the fifth day of the National American Woman Suffrage Association’s convention here in Washington, D.C.

Today’s first business was conducted outside the convention hall, as many prominent and articulate suffragists went to Capitol Hill at 10:30 to testify before the House Rules Committee in favor of establishing a Standing Committee on Woman Suffrage in the House.

Among today’s speakers were Reverend Anna Howard Shaw, Carrie Chapman Catt, Jane Addams and Ida Husted Harper, with Alva Belmont, Inez Milholland, Mary Ware Dennett and Alice Paul in the audience. Each speaker gave an excellent presentation showing why woman suffrage was now a movement of such national importance that it deserved its own permanent committee.

According to Helen H. Gardner:

For many years we have been sent before the Judiciary Committee once a year, if we so desired, to present our arguments for woman suffrage. We appear before it, year after year, one day for two hours, and that is the end of it. That committee is a very busy one. The President has notified it that it is to be still busier this session …. But the woman suffrage question is pressing for immediate solution.

Jane Addams was peppered with questions by a House member from Georgia who believed that “altering the electorate” was not a proper subject for discussion in Congress. Addams then proceeded to give him ten examples of when Congress had done exactly that.

A suggestion that “Woman Suffrage” be tacked on to the end of the name of the Committee on the Election of the President, Vice President and Representatives, was rejected by Rev. Shaw and the National American Woman Suffrage Association’s National Board. It’s believed that the proposal for a new committee now has majority support, and speculation that it might be established, then stacked with anti-suffragists is being discounted.

Still angry with President Wilson over his failure to mention woman suffrage in his message to Congress yesterday, Ruth Hanna McCormick made a motion that the convention demand an audience with the President to impress upon him the importance of equal suffrage. The motion was enthusiastically carried, then she and Madeline McDowell Breckenridge were appointed to arrange with the President to receive a delegation from the convention.

Founding Feminists is FMF’s daily herstory column.

December 2, 1913: The treatment of women by the criminal justice system was denounced today by Louise DeKoven Bowen on the fourth day of the National American Women Suffrage Association’s convention.

A close friend of Jane Addams, and Treasurer of Hull House, in Chicago, Bowen pointed out a lack of women police officers and women jurors, then called for reform of the courts and prisons to help women and children caught up in the system:

From the time of the arrest of a woman to the final disposition of her case she is handicapped by being in the charge of and surrounded by men, who naturally cannot be expected to be as sympathetic and understanding as one of her own sex.

In the police station she is at a disadvantage, for such places of detention in most of our large cities are not fit for human habitation. When she appears for her preliminary hearing she is tousled and untidy as a result of being without proper toilet accommodations, and is therefore apt to create an unfavorable impression. In all police stations separate rooms or cells should be provided with plenty of light and air and sleeping and toilet accommodations for the women.

(It should be noted that though Illinois women recently won the right to vote for President and local offices, they still cannot serve on juries, and although Chicago has had a female police officer – Marie Owens – since 1891, and 10 more were sworn in earlier this year, this is hardly a sufficient presence in a force of 4,000 officers. The rest of the criminal “justice” system is similarly male-dominated.)

Hopes for a spirit of friendly cooperation between the National American Woman Suffrage Association and President Wilson have suffered a major setback. N.A.W.S.A.’s President, Reverend Anna Howard Shaw, expressed the indignation felt by all convention delegates when she denounced the President for ignoring woman suffrage in his message to Congress today:

President Wilson referred in his message to the fact that the time has come for an extension of greater social justice, and we women eagerly listened to this. We had hoped that social justice would include some measure of political justice to the women of the country. I feel fully that measure of disappointment which under the circumstances is natural, for the time had come for the President to say a word in our behalf.

No other President has ever had such an opportunity. President Wilson had the opportunity of speaking a word which might ultimately lead to the enfranchisement of a large part of the human family.

I feel that I must make this statement as broad as it is for the reason that we at Budapest last year realized that womankind throughout the world looked to the United States to blaze the way for the extension of universal suffrage in every quarter of this great globe. President Wilson has missed the one thing that might have made it possible for him never to have been forgotten. I am saying this on behalf of myself and my fellow officers.

After enthusiastic applause, the convention adopted the following resolution by acclimation:

That it is the sense of this meeting that President Wilson failed to rise to the sublimest of heights of democracy when he failed in his message to Congress today to recommend the freedom of half the citizens of the civilized world.

It had been hoped the President would be sufficiently astute to jump on the suffrage bandwagon while it’s still very early in his Administration, since the campaign has become much more of a political force than it was just a few years ago. But with or without his support, the feeling at the convention is that the final phase of the campaign has already begun, and will end with the Susan B. Anthony (nationwide woman suffrage) Amendment in the Constitution before many more years pass.

Founding Feminists is FMF’s daily herstory column.

November 30, 1913: Today’s session of the National American Woman Suffrage Association’s convention got off to a rousing start with the unfurling of a giant banner reading, “WE DEMAND AN AMENDMENT TO THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION ENFRANCHISING WOMEN.”

This was immediately followed by thunderous applause, stirring speeches and a reminder that winning the vote will not be the end of the fight for full equality and justice.

Margaret Hinchey, a laundry worker turned labor activist, told why she became a suffragist who now works as an organizer for the Woman Suffrage Party:

People have often told me that the home is the place for women. But when that home is standing for 18 hours a day over a steam machine in a laundry, working one’s very soul out, and going home so tired that sleep was almost impossible, and getting every Saturday night the large salary of $3 a week it’s different. That’s what we had to do in New York before the laundry workers struck. It was then that I started to work for woman suffrage, and I shall never stop until I die.

Hinchey then detailed the exploitation of children, some as young as 4, paid 5 cents to produce a gross of paper flowers, an operation that requires handling 2,000 articles to produce each batch of 144.

Rose Winslow, a former stocking weaver, also emphasized the connection between suffrage and better working conditions: “… with the women given a chance in the making of laws, the laws will be made to give the girl workers the same chance that the men got.”

The first female State Senator in the U.S., Helen Ring Robinson of Colorado, echoed Winslow’s sentiment and looked past N.A.W.S.A.’s immediate goal by noting that the vote should be used for achieving other needed social reforms: “We want more than the ballot. If women were satisfied with just the ballot they would be unworthy of the ballot.”

The week-long gathering – the largest convention in the history of the suffrage movement – has attracted 600 credentialed delegates, plus about 400 more suffragists from around the country. Today’s mass meeting at the Columbia Theater also attracted a large number of police officers, several of whom came inside after the program began, and listened attentively.

INFLATIONARY NOTE : 5 cents in 1913 = $1.20 in 2014; $3 = $71.95.

Founding Feminists is FMF’s daily herstory column.

November 25, 1917: The struggle of the imprisoned suffragists continues today in D.C.’s Washington Asylum and Jail, commonly referred to as the “District Jail.”

But now, instead of just a relatively small number of suffrage prisoners in his custody, Warden Zinkham now must deal with several dozen suffrage prisoners, nineteen of whom are hunger strikers. This is because U.S. District Court Judge Edmund Waddill ruled yesterday that all of those sent to serve their sentences in Virginia’s Occoquan Workhouse had been transferred there illegally.

Three of those in Occoquan, who were in such poor condition that they would not likely survive further confinement in any institution, were released on parole while their cases are appealed. The rest were sent to the District Jail, where half of them continue to refuse all food. Five of those already there have been subject to force-feedings, with Alice Paul and Rose Winslow having undergone the procedure three times a day since November 8th.

Though no direct communication is allowed with any of the prisoners, details of their ordeals are becoming known to the public thanks to notes smuggled out of Occoquan and the District Jail, or passed while they were brought to court for a hearing yesterday and the day before.

The reasons for the transfer of Lucy Burns and Dora Lewis from Occoquan to the District Jail several days ago have always been clear. They were “ringleaders” of the rebellion and hunger strike at the Workhouse, and in danger of death from starvation, so Superintendent Whittaker had two good reasons for wanting them transferred out. What wasn’t known publicly until now were the graphic details of Lucy Burns’ force-feeding. According to notes she wrote on tiny scraps of paper and made public by the National Woman’s Party:

Wednesday, 12m. Yesterday afternoon at about four or five, Mrs. Lewis and I were asked to go to the operating room. Went there and found our clothes. Told we were to go to Washington. No reason as usual. When we were dressed, Dr. Gannon appeared, and said he wished to examine us. Both refused. Were dragged through the halls by force, our clothing partly removed by force, and we were examined, heart tested, blood pressure and pulse taken. Of course, such data was of no value after such a struggle.

Dr. Gannon told me then I must be fed. Was stretched on bed, two doctors, matron and four prisoners present, Whittaker in hall. I was held down by five people at legs, arms and head. I refused to open mouth. Gannon pushed tube up left nostril. I turned and twisted my head all I could, but he managed to push it up. It hurts nose and throat very much and makes nose bleed freely. Tube drawn out covered with blood. Operation leaves one very sick. Food dumped directly into stomach feels like ball of lead. Left nostril, throat and muscles of neck very sore all night. After this I was brought into the hospital in an ambulance. Mrs. Lewis and I placed in same room. Slept hardly at all.

A secret diary kept by Elizabeth McShane in Occoquan has also come into the hands of the National Woman’s Party, and says in part:

Now eight days on a hunger strike. Very weak and ill. Fainted yesterday afternoon in cell. Forcibly fed some hours later. Food poured into a vomiting stomach. Left in cell all night unattended. Fainted and was found at 5 o’clock on the stone floor.

Members of the National Woman’s Party are engaging in “militant” tactics such as holding up large banners near the White House gates to highlight the hypocrisy of President Wilson vigorously promoting democracy around the world while refusing to endorse or work for the Susan B. Anthony (nationwide woman suffrage) Amendment, which would bring democracy to the women of his own country. These “Silent Sentinels” are being arrested on false charges of “blocking traffic” on the wide Pennsylvania Avenue sidewalk, and given lengthy sentences more appropriate to violent crimes.

The campaign for political equality continues by conventional means as well. Carrie Chapman Catt and other high-ranking officers of the National American Woman Suffrage Association are now arriving in Washington, D.C., preparing to launch a new campaign to get Congress to pass the Anthony Amendment and send it to the States for ratification.

Having gone through what they have, the iron will of the imprisoned suffragists has been proven beyond any doubt, so now the only question is how long the prison authorities – and the Wilson Administration – will allow this battle to go on, and how much suffering they are determined to inflict on those who peacefully picket for something so basic to democracy as the right to vote.\