On March 3 there arrived in Washington a man who was that day a simple citizen of the United States. The next day he was to become the President of the United States. As Woodrow Wilson drove from the station through the empty streets to his hotel, he asked, “Where are the people?”
The answer was, “Over on the Avenue watching the Suffrage Parade.”
V
MAKING THE FEDERAL AMENDMENT AN ISSUE
The first great demonstration of the Congressional Committee—the procession of March 3—had been designed to attract the eye of the country to the Suffragists. It succeeded beyond their wildest hopes. Thereafter it became a part of the policy of the Congressional Committee—later, the Congressional Union, and later still, the National Woman’s Party—to keep the people watching the Suffragists. The main work of the Congressional Committee, however, focussed directly on Congress, as of course Congress alone could pass a Constitutional Amendment. They appealed to Congress constantly, by different methods, and through different avenues. They appealed to Congress through the President of the United States, through political leaders, through constituents. It is one way of describing their system to say that they worked on Congress by a series of electric shocks delivered to it downwards from the President, and by a constant succession of waves delivered upwards through the people. This pressure never ceased for a moment. It accumulated in power as the six years of this work went on.
When President Wilson arrived in Washington for his inauguration, the first thing brought to his notice was Suffrage agitation. The Congressional Committee thereafter kept Suffrage constantly before him. If not actually opposed to Suffrage in 1913, Woodrow Wilson had every appearance of opposition; certainly he was utterly indifferent to it. But Alice Paul believed that he was amenable to education on the subject, and she proceeded to educate him. Her theory proved to be true, but the process took longer than she had anticipated. Her methods of course aroused storms of criticism; but in the end they triumphed. The President’s action during the six years’ siege was the attitude of all politicians. That is to say, for a long time he made general statements of a vaguely encouraging nature to the Suffragists, but for a long time he actually did nothing. Every accepted method of convincing him of the justice of the cause was tried. Deputation after deputation waited on him and stated their case. Then he began to move. He came out for Woman Suffrage as a principle; he voted for it in New Jersey but he still believed that the enfranchisement of woman must come by States. In 1917, his position, except for these minor admissions, was exactly that of 1913. As far as the Suffrage Amendment was concerned, he had not budged an inch. The Woman’s Party then tried desperate remedies and afterward more and more desperate remedies. These always produced results—towards the end, immediate results. But at the beginning of this period, the Suffragists found that the instant they relaxed, the President relaxed; his attention departed from Suffrage. This always happened. Then the Congressional Committee began to exert a little more pressure, and the President’s attention came back to Suffrage. In the long attacking process to which Alice Paul subjected him, she put him in untenable position after untenable position. He moved from each one of them by some new concession. In the end, he himself procured the last vote necessary to pass the Amendment in the Senate.
Alice Paul admires Woodrow Wilson profoundly. She admires his powers of leadership; his ideals; his persistence; his steadfastness; his resolution. “He is a man,” she says, “who considers one thing at a time. Suffrage was not in his thought at all until we, ourselves, injected it there. And it was not in the center of his thought until the picketing was well along.” She believed always that, when the President was made to think that he must act in regard to Suffrage, he would put it through.
Immediately after his inauguration, President Wilson announced that a special session of Congress would be called on April 7. At once the Congressional Committee decided to bring to his attention the fact that there was no subject which more urgently demanded treatment in this session than Woman Suffrage. Three deputations were therefore organized to ask him to recommend the Federal Amendment in the message by which he should convene this special session. These deputations—and all subsequent ones—were organized by Alice Paul.
The first deputation waited on President Wilson on March 17. This deputation consisting of four women was led by Alice Paul herself. Although individual Suffragists had interviewed previous presidents, this was the first deputation which had ever appeared with a request for action before a President of the United States. President Wilson’s reply to their remarks was that the subject would receive his most careful attention.