Visit ebookmass.

com to download the full version and

explore more ebook or textbook

(eTextbook PDF) for Privilege, Power, and

Difference 3rd Edition

_____ Click the link below to download _____

https://ebookmass.com/product/etextbook-pdf-for-privilege-
power-and-difference-3rd-edition/

Explore and download more ebook or textbook at ebookmass.com

Here are some recommended products that we believe you will be
interested in. You can click the link to download.

Elite Schooling and Social Inequality: Privilege and Power

in Ireland's Top Private Schools 1st Edition Aline
Courtois (Auth.)
https://ebookmass.com/product/elite-schooling-and-social-inequality-
privilege-and-power-in-irelands-top-private-schools-1st-edition-aline-
courtois-auth/

Difference Matters: Communicating Social Identity 2nd

Edition, (Ebook PDF)

https://ebookmass.com/product/difference-matters-communicating-social-
identity-2nd-edition-ebook-pdf/

(eTextbook PDF) for Resorts: Management and Operation, 3rd

Edition

https://ebookmass.com/product/etextbook-pdf-for-resorts-management-
and-operation-3rd-edition/

(eBook PDF) Gender Through the Prism of Difference 6th

Edition

https://ebookmass.com/product/ebook-pdf-gender-through-the-prism-of-
difference-6th-edition/
The Rhetorical Power of Popular Culture: Considering
Mediated Texts 3rd Edition, (Ebook PDF)

https://ebookmass.com/product/the-rhetorical-power-of-popular-culture-
considering-mediated-texts-3rd-edition-ebook-pdf/

The Power of Art, Revised 3rd Edition

https://ebookmass.com/product/the-power-of-art-revised-3rd-edition/

Peace and Power: New Directions for Building Community 8th

Edition – Ebook PDF Version

https://ebookmass.com/product/peace-and-power-new-directions-for-
building-community-8th-edition-ebook-pdf-version/

Switching Power Supply Design, 3rd Ed.

https://ebookmass.com/product/switching-power-supply-design-3rd-ed/

Philosophies and Theories for Advanced Nursing Practice

3rd Edition, (Ebook PDF)

https://ebookmass.com/product/philosophies-and-theories-for-advanced-
nursing-practice-3rd-edition-ebook-pdf/
 Third Edition

Privilege, Power,
and Difference

Allan G. Johnson
 Privilege,
Power,
and Difference
Third Edition

Allan G. Johnson, Ph.D.

PRIVILEGE, POWER, AND DIFFERENCE, THIRD EDITION
Published by McGraw-Hill Education, 2 Penn Plaza, New York, NY 10121. Copyright
© 2018 by McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States
of America. Previous editions © 2006 and 2001. No part of this publication may be
reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or
retrieval system, without the prior written consent of McGraw-Hill Education,
including, but not limited to, in any network or other electronic storage or
transmission, or broadcast for distance learning.
Some ancillaries, including electronic and print components, may not be available
to customers outside the United States.
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 LCR 21 20 19 18 17
ISBN 978-0-07-340422-6
MHID 0-07-340422-5
Chief Product Officer, SVP Products & Content Project Managers:
Markets: G. Scott Virkler Jennifer Shekleton, Katie Klochan
Vice President, General Manager, Buyer: Susan K. Culbertson
Products & Markets: Michael Ryan Design: Studio Montage, Inc.
Managing Director: David Patterson Content Licensing Specialists:
Brand Manager: Jamie Laferrera Lori Hancock
Product Developer: Jamie Laferrera Cover Image: The Studio Dog/Getty Images
Marketing Manager: Meredith Leo Compositor: Aptara®, Inc.
Program Manager: Jennifer Shekleton Printer: LSC Communications
All credits appearing on page or at the end of the book are considered to be an
extension of the copyright page.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been requested from the Library of Congress

The Internet addresses listed in the text were accurate at the time of publication.
The inclusion of a website does not indicate an endorsement by the authors or
McGraw-Hill Education, and McGraw-Hill Education does not guarantee the
accuracy of the information presented at these sites.

mheducation.com/highered
 Contents

About the Author  vii

Introduction  ix

Chapter 1   We’re in Trouble   1

The Trouble We’re In   5

Chapter 2   Privilege, Oppression, and Difference   12

Difference Is Not the Problem   12
Mapping Difference: Who Are We?   13
The Social Construction of Difference   17
What Is Privilege?   20
Two Types of Privilege   21
Privilege as Paradox   23
Oppression: The Flip Side of Privilege   32

Chapter 3   Capitalism, Class, and the Matrix of

Domination  35
How Capitalism Works   36
Capitalism and Class   39
Capitalism, Difference, and Privilege: Race and Gender   40
The Matrix of Domination and the Paradox of Being Privileged and
Oppressed At the Same Time   44

Chapter 4   Making Privilege and Oppression Happen   47

Avoidance, Exclusion, Rejection, and Worse   49
A Problem for Whom?   53
iii
iv Contents

And That’s Not All   56

We Cannot Heal Until the Wounding Stops   59

Chapter 5   The Trouble with the Trouble   60

Chapter 6   What It Has to Do with Us   66

Individualism: Or, the Myth That Everything Bad Is
Somebody’s Fault  66
Individuals, Systems, and Paths of Least Resistance   68
What It Means to Be Involved in Privilege
and Oppression   72

Chapter 7   How Systems of Privilege Work   76

Dominance and Control   76
Identified with Privilege   80
The Center of Attention   84
The Isms   88
The Isms and Us   90

Chapter 8   Getting Off the Hook:

Denial and Resistance   92
Deny and Minimize   92
Blame the Victim   94
Call It Something Else   95
It’s Better This Way   95
It Doesn’t Count If You Don’t Mean It   96
I’m One of the Good Ones   99
Not My Job   102
Sick and Tired   103
Getting Off the Hook by Getting On   105
 Contents v

Chapter 9   What Can We Do?   107

The Myth That It’s Always Been This Way,
and Always Will   108
Gandhi’s Paradox and The Myth of No Effect   110
Stubborn Ounces: What Can We Do?   114

Epilogue: A Worldview Is Hard to Change   135

Acknowledgments  142
Glossary  144
Notes  151
Resources  169
Credits  182
Index  183
For Jane Tuohy
 About the Author

Allan G. Johnson is a nationally recognized sociologist, nonfiction author,

novelist, and public speaker best known for his work on issues of privilege
and oppression, especially in relation to gender and race. He is the
author of numerous books, including The Gender Knot: Unraveling Our
Patriarchal Legacy, 3e (2014), The Forest and the Trees: Sociology as
Life, Practice, and Promise, 3e (2014), and a memoir, Not From Here
(2015). His work has been translated into several languages and is excerpted
in numerous anthologies. Visit his website at www.agjohnson.com and
follow his blog at agjohnson.wordpress.com.
 Also by Allan G. Johnson

Nonfiction

Not from Here: A Memoir

The Gender Knot
The Forest and the Trees
The Blackwell Dictionary of Sociology

Fiction

The First Thing and the Last

Nothing Left to Lose
 Introduction

I didn’t make this world. It was given to me this way!

Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun1

I t isn’t news that a great deal of trouble surrounds issues of privilege,

power, and difference, trouble based on gender and race, sexual orienta-
tion and identity, disability, social class. Or that it causes a great deal of
injustice, anger, conflict, and suffering. We seem unable, however, to do
anything about it as it continues from one generation to the next. We are,
as individuals, as a society, stuck in a kind of paralysis that perpetuates the
trouble and what it does to people’s lives.
We are, each of us, part of the problem, because, in one way or another,
and for all our differences, we have in common the fact of our participation
in a society we did not create. We can also make ourselves a part of the
solution, but only if we know how. That there are choices to be made is true
for everyone, no matter how we are located in the world, and the effectiveness
of those choices can be no better than our understanding of how it works.
What we bring to that is shaped by our position and experience of the world—
as male or female, for example, of color or white, working or middle class.
But no matter who we are and what we know because of it, we still need tools
for making sense of reality in ways that connect us with the experience and
lives of others. Because it is only then that we can come together across lines
of difference to make something better than the legacy that was passed to us.
I wrote this book to help us get unstuck, by sharing a way of thinking
about privilege and oppression that provides a framework that is conceptual
and theoretical on the one hand and grounded in research and the experience
of everyday life on the other. In this way it allows us to see not only where
the trouble comes from but also how we are connected to it, which is the
only thing that gives us the potential to make a difference.
ix
Visit https://ebookmass.com today to explore
a vast collection of ebooks across various
genres, available in popular formats like
PDF, EPUB, and MOBI, fully compatible with
all devices. Enjoy a seamless reading
experience and effortlessly download high-
quality materials in just a few simple steps.
Plus, don’t miss out on exciting offers that
let you access a wealth of knowledge at the
best prices!
x Introduction

When people hear “how we are connected to it,” they often react as if
they’re about to be accused of doing something wrong. It’s especially com-
mon among men and whites, but it also happens with women and people of
color who anticipate being blamed for their own oppression. Either way, it
is a kind of defensive reaction that does more than perhaps anything else to
keep us stuck.
As a white, male, heterosexual, nondisabled, cisgender, upper-middle-
class professional, I know about such feelings from my own life. But as a
sociologist, I also know that it’s possible to understand the world and myself
in relation to it in ways that get past defensiveness and denial to put us on
a common ground from which we can work for change. My purpose here
is to articulate that understanding in ways that are clear and compelling and,
above all, useful.
Because my main goal is to change how people think about issues of
privilege, I have been less concerned with describing all the forms that
privilege can take and the problems associated with them. In choosing, I’ve
been drawn to what affects the greatest number of people and produces the
most harm, and, like any author, I tend to stick to what I know best. As a
result, I focus almost entirely on gender, race, social class, disability status,
and sexual orientation.
In the second edition, I added issues of disability, and I think it’s import-
ant to say something about how that came about. Why was it not included
before? The main reason is that I, as a person without disabilities, was
unable to see the reality of disability status as a form of privilege. After the
first edition was published, I heard from several readers—most notably
­Marshall Mitchell, a professor of disability studies at Washington State
­University—who urged me to reconsider. What followed was many months
during which I had to educate myself and listen to those who knew more
about this than I did. I had to come to terms with what I didn’t know about
privilege and what I thought I knew, which is to say, I had to do for myself
what I wrote this book to help others do.
Simple ignorance, however, is not the whole story, for the difficulties
that people without disabilities face in seeing their privilege and the oppres-
sion of people socially identified as disabled is rooted in the place of dis-
ability in human life. Unlike gender, race, and sexual orientation, disability
status can change during a person’s lifetime. In fact, almost everyone will
experience some form of disability during their lives, unless they die first.
 Introduction xi

People with disabilities, then, are a constant reminder of the reality of the
human experience—how vulnerable we are and how much there is in life
that we cannot control.
For many nondisabled people, this can be a frightening thing to contem-
plate. Treating people with disabilities as if they were invisible, designing
buildings as if everyone was nondisabled, seeing people with disabilities as
inferior or abnormal, even less than human—all these oppressive practices
enable nondisabled people to deny a basic feature of the human condition.
Accepting that condition is especially difficult for nondisabled people
in the United States, where the cultural ideal of being autonomous, indepen-
dent, young, strong, and needing no one’s help is deeply rooted. As any
student of social life knows, however, this is based on an illusion, because
from the time we are born to the moment we die, we all depend on other
human beings for our very existence. But being an illusion does not lessen
the power of such ideas, and I had to come to terms with how they affected
my writing of this book.
You might be wondering why I use the word “nondisabled” to refer to
people without disabilities. Wouldn’t “abled” be simpler and more direct? It
would, but it would also cover up the reason for including disability issues
in a book on privilege.
Consider this: if I have use of my eyes and you cannot see, it is reason-
able to say that I have an ability and you have an inability. Or, put differently,
when it comes to using eyes to see, I am abled and you are disabled. I might
point out that my condition gives me certain advantages, and I’d be right,
although you might counter that your condition gives you access to experi-
ences, insights, and sensitivities that I would be less likely to have. You
might even assert that your way of seeing is just different from mine and
that you don’t consider yourself disabled at all. Still, if we’re looking at the
specific ability to use the eyes to see, I think most people would agree that
“abled” and “disabled” are reasonable ways to describe this particular objec-
tive difference between us.
The problem—and this is where privilege comes in—is that not being
able to use your eyes to see brings with it disadvantages that go beyond
sight itself, whereas having the use of your eyes brings with it unearned
advantages that go beyond the fact of being able to see. This happens, for
example, when the inability to see leads to being labeled a “blind person”
or a “disabled person” who is perceived and judged to be nothing more than
xii Introduction

that—a helpless, damaged, inferior human being who deserves to be treated

accordingly. But not being able to see does not mean that you are unintel-
ligent or helpless or inferior or unable to hold a decent job or make your
own decisions. It just means you cannot see. Even so, you might be discrim-
inated against, giving others—people who can see and therefore are not
perceived as “disabled”—an advantage they did not earn.
So, “nondisability privilege” refers to the privilege of not being
burdened with the stigma and subordinate status that go along with being
identified as disabled in this culture. Admittedly, it is an awkward way to
put it, but as is so often the case, systems of privilege do not provide a
language that makes it easy to name the reality of what is going on.2
You may also have noticed that I don’t include social class as an example
of privilege, power, and difference. I made this choice not from a belief that
class is unimportant, but because the nature and dynamics of class are beyond
the scope of what I’m trying to do. My focus is on how differences that would
otherwise have little if any inherent connection to social inequality are
nonetheless seized on and turned into a basis for privilege and oppression.
Race is perhaps the most obvious example of this. Biologists have long
agreed that what are identified as racial differences—skin color being the
most prominent—do not define actual biological groups but instead are
socially defined categories.3 More important is that for most of human
history, such “differences” have been regarded as socially insignificant.
When Europeans began to exploit indigenous peoples for territorial conquest
and economic gain, however, they developed the idea of race as a way to
justify their behavior on the grounds of supposed racial superiority. In other
words, by itself, something like skin color has no importance in social life
but was turned into something significant in order to create, justify, and
enforce privilege.4
Social class, of course, has huge effects on people’s lives, but this is not
an example of this phenomenon. On the contrary, social class differences
are inherently about privilege. It is also true, however, that class plays an
important role in the forms of privilege that are the focus of this book, which
is why I devote an entire chapter to the capitalist system that produces social
class today. Although racism is a problem that involves all white people, for
example, how it plays out in their lives is affected by class. For upper-class
whites, white privilege may take the form of being able to hire women of
color to do domestic service work they would rather not do themselves (such
 Introduction xiii

as maids and nannies) or, on a larger scale, to benefit from investments in

industries that make use of people of color as a source of cheap labor. In
contrast, in the working class, white privilege is more likely to take the form
of preferential treatment in hiring and promotion in skilled trades and other
upper-level blue-collar occupations, or access to unions or mortgages and
loans, or being less vulnerable to the excessive use of force by police.
In similar ways, the effect of race on people of color is also shaped by
social class differences. Blacks and Latinos, for example, who have achieved
wealth or power—such as Barack Obama, Sonia Sotomayor, or Ben ­Carson—
are more protected from many overt and extreme forms of racism. In simi-
lar ways, the children of elite black families who attend Ivy League colleges
may be spared the most extreme expressions of racist violence and discrim-
ination, while experiencing more subtle microaggressions.5
Without taking such patterns into account, it is difficult to know just
what something like “white privilege” means across the complexity of
­people’s lives.
To some degree, this book cannot help having a point of view that is
shaped by my social location as a white, heterosexual, cisgender, nondis-
abled, upper-middle-class male. But that combination of social characteris-
tics does not simply limit what I bring to this, for each provides a bridge to
some portion of almost every reader’s life. I cannot know from my own
experience, for example, what it’s like to be female or of color or LGBT in
this society. But I can bring my experience as a white person to the struggle
of white people—including white women and working-class white men—to
deal with the subject of racism, just as I can bring my experience as a man
to men’s work—including gay men and men of color—around the subject
of sexism and male privilege. In the same way, I can bring my perspective
and experience to the challenges faced by people who are heterosexual or
nondisabled, regardless of their gender or race or class.
What I cannot know from my own experience I have tried to supplement
by studying the experience and research and writings of others. This has led
me, over the course of my career, to design and teach courses on class and
capitalism, the sociology of gender, feminist theory, and, with a female
African American colleague, race in the United States. I have written on
male privilege and gender inequality (The Gender Knot), I’ve been active in
the movement against men’s violence against women, and I’ve given hun-
dreds of presentations on gender and race across the United States.
xiv Introduction

In these and other ways, I’ve spent most of my life as a sociologist and
a writer and a human being trying to understand the world we live in, how
it’s organized and how it works, shaping our lives in so many different ways.
None of this means that what I’ve written is the last word on anything. If,
however, I have succeeded in what I set out to do here—and only you will
know if I have done that for you—then I believe this book has something
to offer anyone who wants to deal with these difficult issues and help change
the world for the better.
If, however, you come to this with the expectation of not liking what
you’re about to read, I suggest you go next to the Epilogue before turning
to Chapter 1.
 CHAPTER 1

We’re in Trouble

I n 1991, a black motorist named Rodney King suffered a brutal beating

by police officers in Los Angeles. When his assailants were acquitted and
riots broke out in the city, King uttered a simple yet exasperated plea that
echoed across the long history and deep divide of racism in the United
States. “Can we all get along?”
Fast forward more than twenty-five years to mass protests against police
shootings of unarmed black people,1 and King’s question still resonates with
our racial dilemma—what W. E. B. Du Bois called, more than a century ago,
“the problem of the color line.”2 It is a question that has haunted us ever
since the Civil War ended slavery, and, like any serious question, it deserves
a serious response.
In the 21st century, in spite of Barack Obama’s two terms as president,
the evidence is clear that however much we might wish it otherwise, the
answer to Rodney King’s question is still no.3 Whether it is a matter of can’t or
won’t, the truth is that we simply do not get along. In addition to police violence,
people of color are disproportionately singled out for arrest, prosecution,
and punishment for types of crimes that they are no more likely than whites
to commit. Among illegal drug users, for example, whites outnumber blacks
by more than five to one, and yet blacks make up sixty percent of those
imprisoned for that offense.4 Segregation in housing and schools is still

1
2 Chapter 1

p­ ervasive and, in many parts of the country, increasing.5 The average net
wealth of white families is twenty times that of blacks, with the 2008 financial
collapse being far more devastating for people of color than it was for whites.6
At every level of education, whites are half as likely as blacks and Latinos to
be unemployed or to have incomes below the poverty line. The average annual
income for whites who work year round and full time is forty-four percent
greater than it is for comparable African Americans. It is sixty percent greater
than for Latinos. The white income advantage exists at all levels of educational
attainment and only increases at higher levels.7
The damage caused by everyday racism is everywhere, and is especially
galling to middle-class blacks who have believed what whites have told
them that if they go to school and work hard and make something of
themselves, race will no longer be an issue. But they soon discover, and
learn anew every day, that nothing protects them from their vulnerability
to white racism.8
As I write this, I’m aware that some readers—whites in particular, and
especially those who do not have the luxury of class privilege—may
already feel put off by words like “privilege,” “racism,” “white,” and (even
worse) “white privilege” or “white racism.” One way to avoid such a
reaction is to not use such words. As the rest of this book will make clear,
however, if we can’t use the words, we also can’t talk about what’s really
going on and what it has to do with us. And that makes it impossible to
see what the problems are or how we might make ourselves part of the
solution to them, which is, after all, the point of writing or reading a book
such as this.
With that in mind, the most important thing I can say to reassure those
readers who are wondering whether to continue reading is that things are
not what they seem. The defensive, irritable, and even angry feelings that
people in dominant groups often experience when they come across such
language are usually based on misperceptions that this book will try to
clarify and set straight, including, in Chapter 2, the widely misunderstood
concept of privilege.
It is also important to keep in mind that the reality of privilege and
oppression is complicated, and it will take much of this book to outline an
approach that many have found useful—especially men and whites trying to
understand not only how it all works, but what it has to do with them. It is
an approach that isn’t widely known in our society and, so, as with any
 We’re in Trouble 3

unfamiliar way of thinking, it helps to be patient and to give the benefit of

the doubt until you’ve followed it to the end.
Problems of perception and defensiveness apply not only to race but to
a broad and interconnected set of social differences that have become the
basis for a great deal of trouble in the world. Although Du Bois was correct
that race would be a defining issue in the 20th century, the problem of
“getting along” does not stop there. It is also an issue across differences of
gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability status,* and numerous
other divides.
Since 1990, for example, and Hillary Clinton’s nearly successful candidacy
for the presidency notwithstanding, there has been little progress in the struggle
for gender equity. The average man working full time earns almost thirty
percent more than the average woman. In spite of being a majority among
college graduates, most employed women are still confined to a narrow range
of lower status, lower paid occupations, and those women who have made
inroads into previously male-dominated professions, such as medicine and
law, are more likely than men to be in lower ranked, lower paid positions.
At the same time, men entering occupations such as nursing and elementary
school teaching are more highly paid than comparable women and are more
likely to advance to supervisory positions. In universities, science professors,
both male and female, widely regard female students as less competent than
comparable males and are less likely to offer women jobs, or to pay those
they do hire salaries equal to those of men. In politics, women make up less
than nineteen percent of the U.S. Congress and hold less than a quarter of
all seats in state legislature and statewide office, in spite of being a majority
of the population. In families, women do twice as much housework and child
care as men, even when also employed outside the home.9
There is also a global epidemic of men’s violence, including war, ter-
rorism, and mass murder, as well as sex trafficking, rape, and battery directed
primarily at girls and women.10 Official responses and public conversations
show little understanding of the underlying causes or what to do, including
the fact that the overwhelming majority of violence is perpetrated by men.
Worldwide, thirty percent of women report having been sexually or physically
assaulted by a partner, and women are more at risk of being a victim of

*
Throughout this book, I use the word “status” to indicate a position or characteristic that connects people to one
another through social relationships, such as student, female, parent, or white.
4 Chapter 1

rape and domestic violence than of cancer, car accidents, war, and malaria
combined.11 In the United States, one out of every five female college
students is sexually assaulted during their college careers, and sexual assault
is so pervasive in the military that the greatest threat to women comes not
from the hazards of military service but from sexual assault by male service
members.12 In addition, harassment, discrimination, and violence directed
at LGBT* people are still commonplace, in spite of signs of growing social
acceptance, as with the legalization of same-sex marriage. It is still legal in
most states, for example, to discriminate against LGBT people in employment,
housing, and public accommodations.
In addition to issues of gender, race, and sexual orientation, the estimated
fifty-four million people with disabilities in the United States are vulnerable
to abuse both within and outside their homes. They are routinely stereotyped
as damaged, helpless, and inferior human beings who lack intelligence and
are therefore denied the opportunity to develop their abilities fully. The
physical environment—from appropriate signage to entrances to buildings,
buses, and airplanes—is typically designed in ways that make it difficult
if not impossible for them to have what they need and to get from one place
to another. Because of such conditions, they are far less likely than others
to finish high school or college and are far more likely to be unemployed;
and, when they do find work, to be paid less than the minimum wage.
The result is a pervasive pattern of exploitation, deprivation, poverty,
mistreatment, and isolation that denies access to the employment, housing,
transportation, information, and basic services needed to fully participate in
social life.13
Clearly, across many dimensions of difference, we are not getting along
with one another, and we need to ask why.
For many, the answer is some variation on “human nature.” People cannot
help fearing the unfamiliar, for example, or women and men are so different
that it’s as though they come from different planets, and it’s a miracle that we
get along at all. Or there is only one natural sexual orientation (heterosexual)

*
LGBT is an acronym for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. Some activists expand it to include “queer”
(LGBTQ), a general term that refers to those who, in various ways, reject, test, or otherwise transgress the bound-
aries of what is culturally regarded as normal in relation to gender, gender identity, or sexual orientation and
expression. Some regard it as an umbrella term for the other four components of LGBT. “Queer” is also routinely
used as an insult directed at LGBT people. A cisgender person is one who was assigned a sex at birth that culturally
matches their self-identified gender, such as someone identified as female at birth who self identifies as a woman.
 We’re in Trouble 5

and gender identity (woman or man) that must culturally match the sex we
are assigned at birth (making us cisgender), and all the rest are unacceptable
and bound to cause conflict wherever they show up. Or those who are more
capable will get more than everyone else—they always have and always will.
Someone, after all, has to be on top.
As popular as such arguments are, they depend on ignoring most of
what history, psychology, anthropology, sociology, biology, and, if we look
closely, our own experiences reveal about human beings and how we live.
We are not prisoners to some natural order that pits us hopelessly and
endlessly against one another. We are prisoners to something, but it is more
of our own making than we realize.

The Trouble We’re In

E very morning I walk with our dogs in acres of woods behind our house,
a quiet and peaceful place where I can feel the seasons come and go.
I like the solitude, a chance to reflect on my life and the world, and to see
things in perspective and more clearly. And I like to watch the dogs chase each
other in games of tag, sniff out the trail of an animal that passed by the night
before. They go out far and then come back to make sure I’m still there.
It’s hard not to notice that everything seems pretty simple to them—or
at least from what I can see. They never stray far from what I imagine to
be the essential nature of what it means to be a dog in relation to everything
around them. And that is all they seem to need or care about.
It’s also hard not to wonder about my own species, which, by
comparison, seems deeply troubled most of the time. I believe we do not
have to be, because even though I’m trained as a sociologist to see the
complexity of things, I think we are fairly simple.
Deep in our bones, for example, we are social beings. There is no escaping
it. We cannot survive on our own when we’re young, and it doesn’t get that
much easier later on. We need to feel that we belong to something bigger
than ourselves, whether it’s a community or a whole society. We look
to other people to tell us that we measure up, that we matter, that we’re okay.
We have a huge capacity to be creative and generous and loving. We spin
stories, make music and art, help children turn into adults, save one another
in countless ways, and ease our loved ones into death. We have large brains
and opposable thumbs and are clever in how we use them. I’m not sure if
Visit https://ebookmass.com today to explore
a vast collection of ebooks across various
genres, available in popular formats like
PDF, EPUB, and MOBI, fully compatible with
all devices. Enjoy a seamless reading
experience and effortlessly download high-
quality materials in just a few simple steps.
Plus, don’t miss out on exciting offers that
let you access a wealth of knowledge at the
best prices!
Other documents randomly have
different content
 VII

THE SECOND APPEAL TO WOMEN VOTERS

On August 10, 11, and 12, of 1916, the newly-formed National

Woman’s Party held a conference at the Hotel Antlers in Colorado
Springs, to formulate a policy for the coming presidential campaign.
In Washington, Senators and Representatives read avidly the
newspaper accounts of this convention.
Politically, it was a tremendously impressive gathering. Prominent
women came from all the Western States to decide how they should
endeavor to mobilize the women’s votes. Greatly alarmed at this
drifting away of members, the Democratic Party sent prominent
Democratic women to plead with them not to leave the Party and to
represent to them that Peace was more important than Suffrage.
The Republicans sent important Republican women to plead with
them to give their support to Hughes since he had come out for the
Federal Suffrage Amendment.
Finally the Democratic leaders appealed to the President to
counteract the attacks being made on the Party, on the score of its
Suffrage record. The President, thereupon, despatched to the
Thomas Jefferson Club of Denver the following letter which was read
at a banquet the last day of the Conference.

The White House,

Washington, D. C., August 7, 1916.
My dear Friends:
 I wish I could meet you face to face and tell you in person how deeply I
appreciate the work your organization has done and proposes to do for the
cause of democracy and popular government.
I am told that yours was the first woman’s Democratic voters’ organization
in America, and I am sure that as such it must have been the instrument of
impressing your convictions very deeply upon the politics of your State.
One of the strongest forces behind the Equal Suffrage sentiment of the
country is the now demonstrated fact that in the Suffrage States women
interest themselves in public questions, study them thoroughly, form their
opinions and divide as men do concerning them. It must in frankness be
admitted that there are two sides to almost every important public question,
and even the best informed persons are bound to differ in judgment
concerning it. With each difference in judgment, it is not only natural, but
right and patriotic, that the success of opposing convictions should be sought
through political alignment and the measuring of their strength at the polls
through political agencies. Men do this naturally, and so do women; though it
has required your practical demonstration of it to convince those who doubted
this. In proportion as the political development of women continues along this
line, the cause of Equal Suffrage will be promoted.
Those who believe in Equal Suffrage are divided into those who believe that
each State should determine for itself when and in what direction the Suffrage
should be extended, and those who believe that it should be immediately
extended by the action of the national government, by means of an
amendment to the Federal Constitution. Both the great political Parties of the
nation have in their recent platforms favored the extension of Suffrage to
women through State action, and I do not see how their candidates can
consistently disregard these official declarations. I shall endeavor to make the
declaration of my own Party in this matter effectual by every influence that I
can properly and legitimately exercise.
Woman’s part in the progress of the race, it goes without saying, is quite as
important as man’s. The old notion, too, that Suffrage and service go hand in
hand, is a sound one, and women may well appeal to it, though it has long
been invoked against them. The war in Europe has forever set at rest the
notion that nations depend in time of stress wholly upon their men. The
women of Europe are bearing their full share of war’s awful burden in the
daily activities of the struggle, and more than their share as sufferers. Their
fathers and husbands and sons are fighting and dying in the trenches; but
they have taken up the work on the farms, at the mill, and in the workshop
and counting houses. They bury the dead, care for the sick and wounded,
console the fatherless, and sustain the constant shock of war’s appalling
sacrifices.
 From these hideous calamities we in this favored land of ours have thus far
been shielded. I shall be profoundly thankful, if, consistently with the honor
and integrity of the nation, we may maintain to the end our peaceful relations
with the world.
Cordially and sincerely yours,
Woodrow Wilson.
To the officers and members of the Jane Jefferson Club of Colorado.

The Woman’s Party did not care for whom the women cast their
protest vote—Republicans, Socialists, Prohibitionists—they cared only
that women should not vote for the Democrats. They knew if this
protest vote was large enough, whoever was elected would realize
that opposition to Suffrage was inexpedient.
At Colorado Springs the National Woman’s Party passed the
following resolutions:

Resolved that the National Woman’s Party, so long as the opposition of the
Democratic Party continues, pledges itself to use its best efforts in the twelve
States where women vote for President to defeat the Democratic candidate
for President; and in the eleven States where women vote for members of
Congress to defeat the candidates of the Democratic Party for Congress.

Immediately the campaign began. It was the biggest campaign—

the most important ever waged by the Woman’s Party. A stream of
organizers started for the Western States to prepare the way for the
speakers. How hard, and how long, and how intensively these girl
organizers worked will never be known because, in the very nature
of things, there could be no adequate record of their efforts. Then
came a stream of speakers, relay after relay—convinced, informed,
experienced—and inspired. Among them were Harriot Stanton
Blatch, Sara Bard Field, Ida Finney Mackrille, Mrs. William Kent, Mrs.
H. O. Havemeyer, Helen Todd, Maud Younger, Rose Winslow, and
Gail Laughlin. The brilliant, beautiful Inez Milholland Boissevain,
doomed soon to die so untimely but so glorious a death, was
appointed special flying envoy to make a twelve mile swing through
the twelve western Equal Suffrage States; to bring to the
enfranchised women of the West an appeal for help from the
disfranchised women of the East.
The campaign of 1916 was characterized by the swiftness of
attack and efficiency of method which characterized the campaign of
1914, but it was carried out on a much larger scale. In Washington,
Headquarters boiled ... bubbled ... seethed....
From Washington there sifted into the West tons of campaign
literature: miles of purple, white, and gold banners; acres of great
across-the-street streamers. In the West itself, Woman’s Party
speakers addressed every kind of meeting known to our civilization:
indoor meetings; outdoor meetings; luncheons; banquets; labor
unions; business men’s organizations; in churches, factories,
theatres; at mining camps, county fairs. They took advantage of
impromptu meetings in the streets; small ready-made meetings at
clubs; large advertised mass-meetings. And Inez Milholland’s
activities as a flying envoy—and in that, her last flight she did fly—
were the climax of it all.
The slogan of the Wilson party was, “He kept us out of war.” The
slogan of the Woman’s Party developed, “He kept us out of
Suffrage.”
The Democrats, remembering the results of the campaign of 1914,
were far from indulgent of this small army, the members of which
were all generals.
In Denver, Elsie Hill the Woman’s Party organizer was arrested and
hurried to the police station in a patrol wagon. The only charge
against her was that she had distributed literature telling the
Democratic record on Suffrage.
In Colorado Springs, the Federal Amendment banner was
“arrested” and locked up for the night in jail.
In Chicago, described by the Chicago Tribune as the “pivotal point
of the 1916 election,” this hostility was much more violent. The day
that Wilson spoke there a hundred women, some of them carrying
inscribed banners, stationed themselves at the entrance to the
auditorium where he was to appear. They were attacked by groups
of men, who tore their banners out of their hands, and demolished
them. Several women were thrown to the ground, and one, still
clinging to the banner, was dragged across the street.
This was followed by an attack upon Minnie E. Brooke, one of the
Woman’s Party speakers. She was alone, walking quietly down
Michigan Boulevard. She had a small purple, white, and gold flag in
her hand, and was wearing the regalia of the Woman’s Party.
Suddenly two men darted up to her, and tried to tear her colors
away. In the struggle she was thrown down and would have fallen in
front of an automobile had not a hotel employee run to her
assistance.
However, in the out-of-way country places in the Western States,
the Woman’s Party speakers were received with that hearty
hospitality, that instant and instinctive chivalry, which marks the
West. In this campaign, they made a point of appearing in the State
and County Fairs which characterized the late summer and early fall
months.
On Frontier Day, at the Douglas County Grange at Castle Rock,
Colorado, Elsie Hill spoke—to a grandstand crowded with people—
between the end of the relay race (in which the riders changed
horses and saddles) and the beginning of the steer-roping contest.
On the stand were massed men, women, and children. Just over the
fence crowded hundreds of cowboys and farmers.
Street processions also characterized this campaign. At night in
Salt Lake City occurred an extraordinary parade—a river of yellow.
The squad of mounted policemen who headed the procession wore
the purple, white, and gold regalia of the Woman’s Party. Marching
women carried lighted yellow Japanese lanterns. The people who
filled the automobiles carried yellow lanterns. The huge Amendment
banner was yellow. Yellow banners were strung across the streets.
 Billboards and posters appeared everywhere which adjured voters
not to support Wilson or any Democratic candidates for Congress. In
Tucson and Prescott, Arizona, these great banners were
surreptitiously cut down. In California, the Democrats placed counter
placards beside these disturbing posters. In San Francisco, armed
patrols guarded the two conflicting posters in one hotel lobby.
The Woman’s Party speakers took advantage of all kinds of
situations. In one town, Maud Younger found that a circus had
arrived just ahead of her. There was no adequate hall for a meeting;
and so the circus men offered her their tent; they even megaphoned
her meeting for her. In another town, a County Fair was being held.
Maud Younger appealed to the clowns to give her a chance to speak,
and they let her have their platform and the spot-light while they
were changing costumes. In San Francisco, Hazel Hunkins scattered
thousands of leaflets from an aeroplane flying over the city. Red
Lodge, Montana, sent to the train, which brought Abby Scott Baker
to them, a delegation of members of the Grand Army of the
Republic, the leader bearing a large American flag. They conducted
her in state through the town to the hall where she was to speak.
Perhaps no campaign was more interesting than that of Rose
Winslow in Arizona. Vivian Pierce, whose experienced newspaper
hand on the Suffragist helped to make that paper the success it so
swiftly became, thus describes her work:

Rose Winslow represented the workers. She spoke for the exploited women
in Eastern industry. In her own person to her audiences she typified her story
of those imprisoned in factories and slums, unable to fight their own battles.
Her words had the authenticity of an inspired young evangelist. She herself
had come up out of that darkness; and the men of the mines and lumber
camps, the women of the remote Arizona towns, listened to her with tears
pouring down their faces. One does not see Eastern audiences so moved. At
Winslow ... this girl, pleading for working women, the most exploited class in
industry, appealed to the men of the great Santa Fé railroad shops that
animate the life of that remote region on the edge of the “Painted Desert.”
Rose Winslow had been warned that if she spoke at this town, she would be
“mobbed” by the Wilson Democrats. After her impassioned story, told one
 noon hour, the men of the shops crowded around this young woman from the
East, “one of our own people,” as one man said, and asked her what they
could do for the women of the East....
In the remote copper camps around Jerome and Bisbee, the story of the
industrial workers who have merely asked for a chance to help themselves,
made a deep impression on the foreign-born voters of this section. There
were Poles, Finns, and Lithuanians in the great audience held in that copper
town that is the working-man’s annex to Bisbee. That audience both laughed
and cried with Rose Winslow, and then crowded around to greet her in her
own language.
From the vividly colored fastness of the miners’ villages in this wild
mountain region, to border towns like Nogales, though but a short step
geographically, the temper and character of the cities change.... In places like
Nogales, the soldiers who could not go home to vote turned the Woman’s
Party meetings into near-riots, so anxious were these victims of a peace
administration to hear what the ladies had to say about Wilson. The soldiers
registered their approval by helping take up collections, though even the
provost guard could not remove them to give space to citizens able to register
their protests.

An event equally picturesque marked the closing of the campaign

on the night of Sunday, November 5, on the platform of the
Blackstone Theatre, Chicago. There, Harriot Stanton Blatch, acting
as the spokesman of the disfranchised women of the East, called up
by long-distance telephone a series of mass-meetings, one in each
of the twelve Suffrage States and repeated their message—a final
appeal to the women voters of the West to cast their ballots on the
following Tuesday against President Wilson.

The result of the election is summed up in the Suffragist of

November 11:

In Illinois, the only State where the vote of women is counted separately,
over seventy thousand more women voted against Mr. Wilson than for him....
The reports indicate that the Woman’s Party campaign was as successful in
holding the woman’s vote in line in the other eleven States as in Illinois. While
ten of these States went for Wilson, they did not do so, as has been claimed,
 by the woman’s vote. Mr. Wilson received in these States almost the solid
Labor vote, the Progressive, and the farmer’s vote. The popular majority
which Mr. Wilson received in the twelve Suffrage States amounted only to
twenty-two thousand one hundred seventy-one out of a popular vote,
according to the latest returns, of more than four million, eight hundred and
ten thousand in the same States. This does not include the Socialist and
Prohibition vote, which was very heavy in some of the Western States....
We were not concerned with the result of the election. Ours was a
campaign in which it made no difference who was elected. We did not
endorse any candidate. We did not care who won. We were not pro-
Republican, pro-Socialist, pro-Prohibition—we were simply pro-woman. We did
not endeavor to affect the result in the non-Suffrage States. What we did try
to do was to organize a protest vote by women against Mr. Wilson’s attitude
towards Suffrage. This we did. Every Democrat who campaigned in the West
knows this. The Democratic campaign in the West soon consisted almost
entirely of an attempt to combat the Woman’s Party attack.

Tribute to the strength of the Woman’s Party campaign is

contained in the remark of a woman who had in charge the
campaign of the Democratic women voters. Out of six leaflets which
her organization got out, five were on the subject of Suffrage. A
reporter remonstrated with her in regard to Suffrage not being an
issue in the West. She agreed with him, but, she added, “We have to
combat the Woman’s Party.”
The whole Western campaign of the Republicans was conducted
as if they were assured of victory. In many cases the organizers of
the Woman’s Party told the Republicans in the East that they were
going to lose in certain districts. “Nonsense,” laughed the
Republicans, “we are sure to win there, absolutely sure.” Alice Paul
in Chicago received reports from campaigners through the West and
all predicted Democratic victory. She went to Republican
Headquarters with these reports, but she could not convince the
Republicans of the truth of them.
Senator Curtis, Secretary of the Republican Senatorial Committee,
said he got more information as to the situation in the West from the
Woman’s Party than he got from any other source.
 It became apparent soon that Wilson was going to win. It was
then that advisors came to Alice Paul and said, “Withdraw your
speakers from the campaign, so that you will not have the
humiliation of defeat before the country.”
And it was then that Alice Paul answered, “No. If we withdraw our
speakers from the campaign, we withdraw the issue from the
campaign. We must make this such an important thing in national
elections that the Democrats will not want to meet it again.”
Commenting on this campaign, Alice Paul said the Democrats
made a strong appeal to the women voters but for the Republicans
the women did not exist, and in fact the chief recognition that the
Republicans made of the women in the West was to send there the
Hughes so-called “Golden Special,” which, on leaving Chicago,
announced that it was not a “Suffrage Special.”
After the campaign was over, Vance McCormick, Chairman of the
Democratic Party, was talking with a member of his committee. He
said, in effect: “Before the election of 1918, we must patch up our
weak places. Our weakest spot is the Suffrage situation. We must
get rid of the Suffrage Amendment before 1918 if we want to control
the next Congress.”

The Sixty-fourth Congress met for its second and last session on
December 4, 1916. President Wilson delivered a message which
made no reference to the subject of Woman Suffrage. The
Congressional Union, always having advance information, knew this
beforehand. And so on that occasion, by a bit of direct action, they
brought Suffrage vividly to the attention of President Wilson,
Congress, and the whole country. This was the only action of the
Woman’s Party which Alice Paul did not give out beforehand to the
press.
Early that morning, before the outer doors were opened, five
women of the Congressional Union appeared before the Capitol.
After a long wait the doors were opened, and—the first of a big
crowd—they placed themselves in the front row of the gallery just to
the left of the big clock. They faced the Speaker’s desk, from which
the President would read his message. These five women were: Mrs.
John Rogers, Jr.; Mrs. Harry Lowenburg; Dr. Caroline Spencer;
Florence Bayard Hilles; Mabel Vernon. In a casual manner, other
members of the Union seated themselves behind them and on the
gallery steps beside them: Lucy Burns; Elizabeth Papandre; Mildred
Gilbert; Mrs. William L. Colt; Mrs. Townsend Scott.
Mabel Vernon sat in the middle of the five women in the front row.
Pinned to her skirt, under the enveloping cape which she wore, was
a big banner of yellow sateen. After the five women had settled
themselves, Mabel Vernon unpinned the banner and dropped it, all
ready for unrolling, on the floor. At the top of the banner were five
long tapes—too long—Mabel Vernon now regretfully declares. At the
psychological moment, which had been picked beforehand, in
President Wilson’s speech—he was recommending a greater freedom
for the Porto Rican men—Mabel Vernon whispered the series of
signals which had previously been decided on. Immediately—
working like a beautifully co-ordinated machine—the five women
stooped, lifted the banner, and, holding it tightly by the tapes,
dropped it over the balcony edge. It unrolled with a smart snap and
displayed these words:

MR. PRESIDENT, WHAT WILL YOU DO FOR WOMAN SUFFRAGE?

Then the women sat perfectly still, in the words of the Washington
Post “five demure and unruffled women ... with the cords supporting
the fluttering thing clenched in their hands.”
The effect was instantaneous. The President looked up, hesitated
a moment, then went on reading. All the Congressmen turned. The
Speaker sat motionless. A buzz ran wildly across the floor. Policemen
and guards headed upstairs to the gallery where the women were
seated; but their progress was inevitably slow as the steps were
tightly packed with members of the Congressional Union. In the
meantime, one of the pages, leaping upward, caught the banner and
tore it away from the cords in the women’s hands. “If it hadn’t been
for those long tapes,” Mabel Vernon says, “they never could have got
it until the President finished his speech.”
The episode took up less than five minutes’ time. Until the
President finished his message, it seemed to be completely
forgotten. But the instant the President with his escort disappeared
through the door, every Congressman was on his feet staring up at
the gallery.
The Woman’s Party publicity accounts of this episode—
multigraphed the night before—were in the hands of the men in the
Press Gallery the instant after it happened. This is a sample of the
perfect organization and execution of the Woman’s Party plans.
Of course, this incident was a front page story in every newspaper
in the United States that night despoiling the President of his
headlines. It is now one of the legends in Washington that in the
midst of the dinner given to the President by the Gridiron Club
shortly after, the identical banner was unfurled before his eyes.
The following week, at the first meeting of the Judiciary
Committee since the Presidential Campaign, the report of the
Federal Suffrage Amendment was made without recommendation to
the House of Representatives.
 VIII

HAIL AND FAREWELL

TO INEZ MILHOLLAND BOISSEVAIN

“For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime;
Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer.”
—Milton.
Inez, vibrant, courageous, symbolic,
How can death claim you?
Many he leads down the long halls of silence
Burdened with years,
Those who have known sorrow
And are weary with forgetting,
The young who have tasted only gladness
And who go with wistful eyes,
Never to see the sharp breaking of illusion.
For these—
We who remain and are lonely
Find consolation, saying
“They have won the white vistas of quietness.”

But for you—

The words of my grief will not form
In a pattern of resignation.
The syllables of rebellion
Are quivering upon my lips!
You belonged to life—
To the struggling actuality of earth;
You were our Hortensia and flung
Her challenge to the world—
Our world still strangely Roman—
“Does justice scorn a woman?”

Oh! Between her words and yours the centuries seem

Like little pauses in an ancient song,
For in the hour of war’s discordant triumph
You both demanded “Peace”!
And I, remembering how the faces of many women
Turned toward you with passionate expectation,
How can I find consolation?

Inez, vibrant, courageous, symbolic,

Can death still claim you?
When in the whitening winter of our grief
Your smile with all the radiance of spring,
When from the long halls of silence
The memory of your voice comes joyously back
To the ears of our desolation—
Your voice that held a challenge and a caress.
You have gone—
Yet you are ours eternally!
 Yet you are ours eternally!
Your gallant youth,
Your glorious self-sacrifice—all ours!
Inez, vibrant, courageous, symbolic,
Death cannot claim you!
Ruth Fitch.
The Suffragist, December 30, 1916.

The most poignant event—and perhaps the most beautiful in all the
history of the Congressional Union—took place on Christmas Day of
this year, the memorial service in memory of Inez Milholland.
Inez Milholland was one of the human sacrifices offered on the
altar of woman’s liberty. She died that other women might be free.
In the recent campaign, she had spoken in Wyoming, Idaho,
Oregon, Washington, Montana, Utah, Nevada, and California. In her
memorial address, Maud Younger said:

The trip was fraught with hardship. Speaking day and night, she would take
a train at two in the morning, to arrive at eight; and then a train at midnight,
to arrive at five in the morning. She would come away from audiences and
droop as a flower. The hours between were hours of exhaustion and suffering.
She would ride in the trains gazing from the windows, listless, almost lifeless,
until one spoke; then again the sweet smile, the sudden interest, the quick
sympathy. The courage of her was marvelous.
 Inez Milholland.
In the Washington Parade, March 3, 1913.

Photo Copr. Harris and Ewing.

At a great mass-meeting at Los Angeles, in October, she was

saying—in answer to the President’s words, “The tide is rising to
meet the moon; you will not have long to wait,”—“How long must
women wait for liberty?” On the word liberty, she fell fainting to the
floor. Within a month, she was dead.
That Christmas Day, Statuary Hall in the Capitol of the United
States was transformed. The air was full of the smells of the forest.
Greens made a background—partially concealing the semi-circle of
statues—at the rear; laurel and cedar banked the dais in front;
somber velvet curtains fell about its sides. Every one of the chairs
which filled the big central space supported a flag of purple, white,
and gold. Between the pillars of the balcony hung a continuous
frieze; pennants of purple, white, and gold—the tri-color of these
feminist crusaders.
The audience assembled in the solemn quiet proper to such an
occasion, noiselessly took their seats in the semi-circle below and
the gallery above. The organ played Ave Maria. Then again, a
solemn silence fell.
Suddenly the stillness was invaded by a sound—music, very faint
and far-away. It grew louder and louder. It was the sound of singing.
It came nearer and nearer. It was the voices of boys. Presently the
beginning of a long line of boy choristers, who had wound through
the marble hallway, appeared in the doorway. They marched into the
hall chanting:
“Forward, out of error,
Leave behind the night,
Forward through the darkness,
Forward into light.”

Behind came Mary Morgan in white, carrying a golden banner with

the above words inscribed on it. This was a duplicate of the banner
that Inez Milholland bore in the first Suffrage parade in New York.
Behind the golden banner came a great procession of young women
wearing straight surplices; the first division in purple, the next in
white, the last in gold, carrying high standards which bore the tri-
color. Before each division came another young girl in white, carrying
a golden banner—lettered.
 One banner said:

GREATER LOVE HATH NO MAN THAN THIS THAT HELAY DOWN HIS LIFE FOR A FRIEND

Another banner said:

WITHOUT EXTINCTION IS LIBERTY, WITHOUT RETROGRADE IS EQUALITY

The last banner said:

AS HE DIED TO MAKE MEN HOLY LET US DIE TO MAKE MEN FREE

These white-clad girls stood in groups on both sides of the laurel-

covered dais against the shadowy background of the curtains. The
standard-bearers in the purple, the white, the gold, formed a semi-
circle of brilliant color which lined the hall and merged with the
purple, white, and gold frieze above them. They stood during the
service, their tri-colored banners at rest.
There followed music. The choristers sang: Forward Be Our
Watchword. The Mendelssohn Quartet sang: Love Divine and Thou
Whose Almighty Word. Elizabeth Howry sang first All Through the
Night and, immediately after, Henchel’s ringing triumphant Morning
Song. It is an acoustic effect of Statuary Hall that the music seems
to come from above. That effect added immeasurably to the
solemnity of this occasion.
Tribute speeches followed, Anne Martin introducing the speakers.
Mrs. William Kent read two resolutions: one prepared under the
direction of Zona Gale, the other by Florence Brewer Boeckel. Maud
Younger delivered a beautiful memorial address.

“And so ever through the West, she went,” Miss Younger said in part,
“through the West that drew her, the West that loved her, until she came to
the end of the West. There where the sun goes down in glory in the vast
Pacific, her life went out in glory in the shining cause of freedom.... They will
tell of her in the West, tell of the vision of loveliness as she flashed through
her last burning mission, flashed through to her death, a falling star in the
 western heavens.... With new devotion we go forth, inspired by her sacrifice
to the end that this sacrifice be not in vain, but that dying she shall bring to
pass that which living she could not achieve, full freedom for women, full
democracy for the nation....”

At the end the quartet sang, Before the Heavens Were Spread
Abroad. Then the procession re-formed, and marched out again as it
had come, a slow-moving band of color which gradually
disappeared; a river of music which gradually died to a thread, to a
sigh ... to nothing.... As before the white-surpliced choristers headed
the procession, chanting the recessional, For All the Saints. Their
banners lowered, the girl standard-bearers—first those in floating
gold, then those in drifting white, then those in heavy purple—
followed. From the far-away reaches of the winding marble halls
sounded the boyish voices. Faintly came:

O, may Thy Soldiers, faithful, true and bold, Fight as the Saints who nobly
fought of old, And win with them the victor’s crown of gold. Alleluia!

And fainter still:

But, lo, there breaks a yet more glorious day, The Saints triumphant rise in
bright array.

The voices lost themselves in the distance, merged with silence. The
audience still sat moveless, spellbound by all this beauty and grief.
Suddenly the Marseillaise burst from the organ like a call to the new
battle. Instantly, it was echoed by the strings.
On January 9, the President received a deputation of three
hundred women. This deputation brought to him the resolutions
passed at memorials held in commemoration of Inez Milholland from
California to New York.
Sara Bard Field said in part:
 Since that day (a year ago) when we came to you, Mr. President, one of our
most beautiful and beloved comrades, Inez Milholland, has paid the price of
her life for a cause. The untimely death of a young woman like this—a woman
for whom the world has such bitter need—has focussed the attention of men
and women of this nation on the fearful waste of women which this fight for
the ballot is entailing. The same maternal instinct for the preservation of life—
whether it be the physical life of a child, or the spiritual life of a cause—is
sending women into this battle for liberty with an urge that gives them no rest
night or day. Every advance of liberty has demanded its quota of human
sacrifice, and, if I had time, I could show you that we have paid in a measure
that is running over. In the light of Inez Milholland’s death, as we look over
the long backward trail through which we have sought our political liberty, we
are asking, how long, how long, must this struggle go on?
Mr. President, to the nation more than to women themselves is this waste
of maternal force significant. In industry, such a waste of money and strength
would not be permitted. The modern trend is all towards efficiency. Why is
such waste permitted in the making of a nation?
Sometimes I think it must be very hard to be a President, in respect to his
contacts with people, as well as in the grave business he must perform. The
exclusiveness necessary to a great dignitary holds him away from the
democracy of communion necessary to full understanding of what the people
are really thinking and desiring. I feel that this deputation today fails in its
mission if, because of the dignity of your office and the formality of such an
occasion, we fail to bring to you the throb of woman’s desire for freedom and
her eagerness to ally herself with all those activities to which you yourself
have dedicated your life. When once the ballot is in her hand, those tasks
which this nation has set itself to do are her tasks as well as man’s. We
women who are here today are close to this desire of woman. We cannot
believe that you are our enemy, or are indifferent to the fundamental
righteousness of our demand.
We have come here to you in your powerful office as our helper. We have
come in the name of justice, in the name of democracy, in the name of all
women who have fought and died for this cause, and in a peculiar way, with
our hearts bowed in sorrow, in the name of this gallant girl who died with the
word “Liberty” on her lips. We have come asking you this day to speak some
favorable word to us, that we may know that you will use your good and
great office to end this wasteful struggle of women.
 Joy Young at the Inez Milholland
Memorial Service.

The President replied:

 Ladies, I had not been apprised that you were coming here to make any
representation that would issue an appeal to me. I had been told that you
were coming to present memorial resolutions with regard to the very
remarkable woman whom your cause has lost. I therefore am not prepared to
say anything further than I have said on previous occasions of this sort.
I do not need to tell you where my own convictions and my own personal
purpose lie, and I need not tell you by what circumscriptions I am bound as
leader of a Party. As the leader of a Party, my commands come from that
Party, and not from private personal convictions.
My personal action as a citizen, of course, comes from no source, but my
own conviction, and there my position has been so frequently defined, and I
hope so candidly defined, and it is so impossible for me until the orders of my
Party are changed, to do anything other than I am doing as a Party leader
that I think nothing more is necessary to be said.
I do want to say this: I do not see how anybody can fail to observe from
the utterance of the last campaign that the Democratic Party is more inclined
than the opposition Party to assist in this great cause, and it has been a
matter of surprise to me, and a matter of very great regret, that so many of
those who are heart and soul for this cause seem so greatly to misunderstand
and misinterpret the attitudes of Parties. In this country, as in every other
self-governing country, it is really through the instrumentality of Parties that
things can be accomplished. They are not accomplished by the individual
voice, but by concentrated action, and that action must come only so fast as
you can concert it. I have done my best, and shall continue to do my best to
concert it in the interest of a cause in which I personally believe.

In Maud Younger’s delightful Revelations of a Woman Lobbyist, in

McCall’s Magazine, she thus describes that scene:

The doors opened, and, surrounded by Secret Service men, President

Wilson entered. He came quickly forward, smiling as he shook my hand.
Contrary to the general impression, President Wilson has a very human,
sympathetic personality. He is not the aloof, academic type one expects of a
man who, avoiding people, gets much of his knowledge from books and
reports. Though he appears to the general public as in a mist on a mountain
top, like the gods of old, he is really a man of decided emotional reactions.
I answered his greeting briefly, giving him the resolutions I held, and
presented Mrs. John Winters Brannan, who handed him the New York
memorial without speaking at all. We were saving time for his declaration.
Then came Sara—small, delicate Sara Bard Field, a woman of rare spirituality
and humor—whom we had chosen to speak for us.
She began to talk very nobly and beautifully, while the President listened
cordially. But suddenly a cold wave passed over him. Sara had quoted Mr.
Hughes. At that name, the President’s manner chilled. The look in his eyes
became so cold that, as Sara says, the words almost froze on her lips. She
finished in an icy stillness, and after a moment the President spoke.
Instead of the assurances we had expected, we heard words to the effect
that he could not dictate to his Party. We must first concert public opinion. It
was his last gleam, for, looking about him and seeing amazement,
disappointment, indignation, he grew still colder. With a last defiant glance at
us all he abruptly left the room. Secret Service men, newspaper men, and
secretaries followed him. Where the President of the United States had been
was now a closed door.
Stunned, talking in low, indignant tones, we moved slowly out of the East
Room and returned to our Headquarters. There we discussed the situation.
We saw that the President would do nothing for some time, perhaps not until
the eve of the Presidential election in 1920. He said we must concert public
opinion. But how? For half a century women had been walking the hard way
of the lobbyist. We had had speeches, meetings, parades, campaigns,
organization. What new method could we devise?
PART THREE
1917
 I

THE PERPETUAL DELEGATION

ON THE PICKET LINE

The avenue is misty gray,
And here beside the guarded gate
We hold our golden blowing flags
And wait.

The people pass in friendly wise;

They smile their greetings where we stand
And turn aside to recognize
The just demand.

Often the gates are swung aside:

The man whose power could free us now
Looks from his car to read our plea—
And bow.

Sometimes the little children laugh;

The careless folk toss careless words,
And scoff and turn away, and yet
The people pass the whole long day
Those golden flags against the gray
And can’t forget.
Beulah Amidon.
The Suffragist, March 3, 1917.
 1. The Peaceful Picketing

Before we examine the consideration which actuated the National

Woman’s Party in waging the picket campaign of 1917, let us see
where President Wilson stood at the beginning of the war; let us
briefly recapitulate the steps which brought him there.
It will be remembered that, shortly after the President took his
seat in March, 1913, he told a deputation from the Congressional
Committee that Suffrage was a question to which he had given no
thought and on which he had no opinion. During the year, no longer
stating that he knew nothing about Suffrage, he gave as a reason
for inaction that the Congressional program was too crowded to
consider it. By the end of the year, he had reached the point where
he stated that he could take no action on the Suffrage Amendment
until commanded by his Party.
In 1914, he continued to state that he was prohibited from acting
because of being bound by his Party until June, when he seized on
the excuse of States Rights further to explain his inaction. In the
autumn of 1915 he first came out personally for Suffrage by voting
for it in New Jersey but still refused to support it in Congress. His
next step forward came in June, 1916, when he caused the principle
of Suffrage to be recognized in the Party platform, though as yet
neither he nor the Party had endorsed the Federal Amendment. In
September of that same year—after the Woman’s Party had begun
its active campaign in the Suffrage States—the President took
another step and addressed a Suffrage Convention of the National
American Woman’s Suffrage Association. But as yet he was not
committed to the Federal Amendment, had not begun to exert
pressure on Congress.
The situation of the President and the Woman’s Party at this
juncture may be summed up in this way. Wilson, himself, was
beginning to realize that the Suffrage Amendment must ultimately
pass. But he had just been re-elected. He was safe for four years; he
could take his time about it. The Woman’s Party on the other hand,
realized that the President being safe for four years, no political
pressure could be exerted upon him. They realized that they must
devise other methods to keep Suffrage, as a measure demanding
immediate enactment, before him.
In the meantime, a feeling of acute discontent was growing in the
women of the United States. The older women—and they were the
third generation to demand the vote—were beginning to ask how
long this period of entreaty must be protracted. The younger women
—the fourth generation to demand the vote—were becoming
impatient with the out-worn methods of their predecessors.
Moreover, when the disfranchised women of the East visited the
enfranchised States of the West, their eyes were opened in a
practical way to the extraordinary injustice of their own
disfranchisement. Equally, the enfranchised women of the West,
moving to Eastern States, resented their loss of this political
weapon. On many women in America the militant movement of
England had produced a profound impression.
A new note had crept into the speeches made by the members of
the Woman’s Party—the note of this impatience and resentment. It
will be remembered that Mrs. Kent told the President that the
women voters of the West were accustomed to being listened to
with attention by politicians, and that they resented the effort to
make it seem that they were merely trying to bother a very busy
official. Mrs. Blatch had told him that the time had gone by when
she would stand on street corners and ask the vote from every Tom,
Dick, and Harry; that she was determined to appeal instead to the
men who spoke her own language and who had in charge the affairs
of the government.
Doris Stevens, in an interview in the Omaha Daily News for June
29, 1919, voices perfectly what her generation was feeling.
 A successful young Harvard engineer said to me the other day, “I don’t
believe you realize how much men objected to your picketing the White
House. Now I know what I’m talking about. I’ve talked with men in all walks
of life, and I tell you they didn’t approve of what you women did.”
This last with warmer emphasis and a scowl of the brow. “I don’t suppose
you were in a position to know how violently men felt about it.”
I listened patiently and courteously. Should I disillusion him? I thought it
was the honest thing to do. “Why, of course men didn’t like it. Do you think
we imagined they would? We knew they would disapprove. When did men
ever applaud women fighting for their own liberty? We are approved only
when we fight for yours!”
“You don’t mean to say you planned to do something knowing men would
not approve?”
I simply had to tell him, “Why, certainly! We’re just beginning to get
confidence in ourselves. At last we’ve learned to make and stand by our own
judgments.”
“But going to jail. That was pretty shocking.”
“Yes, indeed it was. It not only shocked us that a government would be
alarmed enough to do such a thing, but what was more to the point, it
shocked the entire country into doing something quickly about Woman
Suffrage.”

It will be seen by the foregoing pages of this book that Suffragists

had exhausted every form of Suffrage agitation known to the United
States. In particular, they had sent to the President every kind of
deputation that could possibly move him.
They decided to send him a perpetual deputation.

Alice Paul, in explanation of her strategy in this matter, uses one

of the vivid figures that are so typical of her: “If a creditor stands
before a man’s house all day long, demanding payment of his bill,
the man must either remove the creditor or pay the bill.”
At first, the President tried to remove the creditor. Later he paid
the bill.
 At ten o’clock on January 10, 1917, the day after the deputation to
the President, twelve women emerged from Headquarters and
marched across Lafayette Square to the White House. Four of them
bore lettered banners, and eight of them carried purple, white, and
gold banners of the Woman’s Party. They marched slowly—a
banner’s length apart. Six of them took up their stand at the East
gate, and six of them at the West gate. At each gate—standing
between pairs of women holding on high purple, white, and gold
colors—two women held lettered banners. One read:

MR. PRESIDENT WHAT WILL YOU DO FOR WOMAN SUFFRAGE?

The other read:

HOW LONG MUST WOMEN WAIT FOR LIBERTY?

These were the first women to picket the White House.

The first picket line appeared on January 10, 1917; the last, over a
year and a half later. Between those dates, except when Congress
was not in session, more than a thousand women held lettered
banners, accompanied by the purple, white, and gold tri-colors, at
the White House gates, or in front of the Capitol. They picketed
every day of the week, except Sunday; in all kinds of weather, in rain
and in sleet, in hail, and in snow. All varieties of women picketed: all
races and religions; all cliques and classes; all professions and
parties. Washington became accustomed to the dignified picture—
the pickets moving with a solemn silence, always in a line that
followed a crack in the pavement; always a banner’s length apart;
taking their stand with a precision almost military; maintaining it
with a movelessness almost statuesque. Washington became
accustomed also to the rainbow splash at the White House gates
—“like trumpet calls,” somebody described the banners. Artists often
Welcome to our website – the ideal destination for book lovers and
knowledge seekers. With a mission to inspire endlessly, we offer a
vast collection of books, ranging from classic literary works to
specialized publications, self-development books, and children's
literature. Each book is a new journey of discovery, expanding
knowledge and enriching the soul of the reade

Our website is not just a platform for buying books, but a bridge
connecting readers to the timeless values of culture and wisdom. With
an elegant, user-friendly interface and an intelligent search system,
we are committed to providing a quick and convenient shopping
experience. Additionally, our special promotions and home delivery
services ensure that you save time and fully enjoy the joy of reading.

Let us accompany you on the journey of exploring knowledge and

personal growth!

ebookmass.com