The Story of the Woman's Party

by Inez Haynes Gillmore

Two other government clerks, who appeared on the picket line, were arrested and jailed. They appealed to the government authorities for a month’s leave of absence on the score of their imprisonment. All these three women, of course, ran the risk of losing their positions. But in their case the instinct to serve their generation was stronger than the instinct to conserve any material safety. It is pleasant to record that they were not compelled to make this sacrifice. Others, however, suffered. A school teacher in the Woman’s Party, for instance, lost her position because of her picketing.

If the foregoing is not denial enough of the charge, common when the picketing began, that these women were notoriety-seeking fanatics, perhaps nothing will bring conviction. It scarcely seems however that the most obstinate antagonist of the Woman’s Party would like to believe that delicately reared women could enjoy, even for the sake of notoriety—aside from the psychological effect of spiders and cockroaches everywhere, worms in their food, vermin in their beds, rats in their cells—the brutalities to which they were submitted. Yet many women who had endured this once, came back to endure it again and again.

One of the strong points of the Woman’s Party was its fairness. In reference to the President, for instance, Maud Younger used to say that the attitude of the Woman’s Party to him was like that of a girl who wants a college education. She teases her father for it without cessation, but she goes on loving him just the same. Another strong point of the Woman’s Party was its sense of humor on itself. They tell with great delight the amusing events of this period—of the grinning street gamin who stood and read aloud one of the banners, How long must women wait for liberty? and then yelled: “T’ree months yous’ll be waitin’—in Occoquan.”—of a reporter who, coming into Headquarters in search of an interview, found a child sliding down the bannisters. Before he could speak, the child announced in a tone of proud triumph: “My mother’s going to prison.”

A story they particularly like is of that young couple who, having had no bridal trip at the time of their marriage, came to Washington for a belated honeymoon. They visited Headquarters together. The bride became so interested in the picketing that she went out with one of the picket lines and was arrested. She spent her belated honeymoon in jail, and the groom spent his belated honeymoon indignantly lobbying the Congressmen of his own district.

Later, when they were lighting the Watchfires of Freedom on the White House pavement, the activity at Headquarters was increased one hundred-fold.

The pickets themselves refer to that period as the most “messy and mussy” in their history. Everything and everybody smelled of kerosene. All the time, there was one room in which logs were kept soaking in this pervasive fluid. When they first started the Watchfires they carried the urn and the oil-soaked logs openly, to the appointed spot on the pavement in front of the White House. Later, when the arrests began and the fires had to be built so swiftly that they had to abandon the urn, they carried these logs under coats or capes. The White House pavement was always littered with charred wood even when the Watchfires were not going. Once the fires were started it was almost impossible to put them out. Kerosene-soaked wood is a very obstinate substance. Water had no effect on it. Chemicals alone extinguished it. Amazed crowds used to stand watching these magic flames. Often when the policemen tried to stamp the fires out, they succeeded only in scattering them.

It was an extraordinary effect, too, when the policemen were busy putting out one fire, to see others start up, in this corner of the Park, in that corner, in the great bronze urn, near the center.

Building a fire in that bronze urn was as difficult a matter as it seems. A Woman’s Party member, glancing out from a stairway window at the top of the house at Headquarters, had noted how boldly the urn stood out from the rest of the Park decoration....

Every Good Suffragist the Morning After Ratification.
Nina Allender in The Suffragist.