In the Suffragist Lucy Burns said editorially:
The President has told a deputation of club women that they must win political freedom from State Legislatures; but not from him, not from Congress.
This position is obvious pretense. The national government has the power, granted it by the constitution, to enfranchise women. It has, therefore, the duty of doing so, if women’s claim to enfranchisement is just.
The President knows as well as we do the enormous difficulty of winning the vote by amending the Constitution of thirty-nine different States. It is amazing that a man can be found who will calmly direct women to take up this great burden when men are responsible for their need. Men alone, in all but ten States, have the power to change our laws. The good or evil of these laws is their praise or blame. It is a public injustice today that men deny to women in the ballot a means of self-protection which they are glad to possess themselves. Men are ethically on the defensive—particularly the men, or group of men, who from time to time monopolize political power. For the President of the United States, who incorporates in himself the power of the whole nation, and who is, therefore, more responsible than any other person today for the subjugation of women, to declare that he washes his hands of their whole case, is to presume upon greater ignorance among women than he will find they possess.
Nevertheless, we are specifically informed by the President that it is “not proper” for us to “cross-examine” him on the grounds of his refusal to help us.
Only fitfully do women realize the astounding arrogance of their rulers.
And later:
Some few curious commentaries cropped up editorially. Under the caption, “Heckling the President,” the New York Times says: “It certainly was not proper. The President of the United States is not to be heckled or hectored or made a defendant.... To catechise him when he had finished his speech to them is a thing never done by similar delegations of men.”
The Times has not grasped the fact that no similar delegation of men is possible. Men approach their own representative. If he disagrees with them, they have a legitimate remedy in their own hands, and can choose another representative at a duly appointed time. Women approach the President as members of a disfranchised class. The President does not represent them. He bears no constitutional relation to them whatever. If the President rejects their appeal, they have no legal means of redress. If they may not question the President on the justice of his refusal to help them, cannot question him gently and reasonably as they did—their position is indeed a subservient one.
And who told the Times that men never question the President “after he had finished his speech to them?” While the Tariff Bill was before Congress, representatives of men’s interests argued with him for hours. But they were men, and voters.