Ludwig Thoma - "Moral"

Albert Einstein - "Relativity: The Special and General Theory"

Ludwig van Beethoven, edited by Friedrich Kerst - "Beethoven: the Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words"

Edith A. How - "People of Africa"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: Jailed for Freedom

D >> Doris Stevens >> Jailed for Freedom




"Sometimes I think it must be very hard to be a President, in
respect to his contacts with people as well as in the great
business he must perform. The exclusiveness necessary to a great
dignitary holds him away from that democracy of communion,
necessary to a full understanding of what the people .are really
thinking and desiring. I feel that this deputation to-day fails
in its mission if, because of the dignity of your office and the
formality of such an occasion, we fail to bring you the throb of
woman's desire for freedom and her eagerness to ally herself when
once the ballot is in her hand, with all those activities to
which you, yourself, have dedicated your life. Those tasks which
this nation has set itself to do are her tasks as well as man's.
We women who are here to-day are close to this desire of women.
We cannot believe that you are our enemy or 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."

The highest point in the interview had been reached. Before the
President began his reply, we were aware that the high moment had
gone. But we listened.

"Ladies, I had not been apprised that you were coming here to
make any representations that would issue an appeal to me.

{57}

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, therefore, 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 utterances of the last campaign that the
Democratic Party is more inclined than the opposition 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 were
heart and soul for this cause seemed so greatly to misunderstand
arid misinterpret the attitude 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 concerted
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."

Dead silence. The President stands for a brief instant at
the end of his words as if waiting for some faint stir of
approval which does not come. He has the baffled air of a dis-
appointed actor who has failed to "get across." Then he turns
abruptly on his heel and the great doors swallow him up. Silently
the women file through the corridor and into the fresh
air.

The women returned to the spacious headquarters across

{58}

the park all of one mind. How little the President knew about
women! How he underestimated their intelligence and penetration
of things political,! Was it possible that he really thought
these earnest champions of liberty would merely carry resolutions
of sorrow and regret to the President?

But this was not the real irony. How lightly he had shifted the
responsibility for getting results to his party. With what
coldness he had bade us "concert opinion," a thing which he alone
could do. That was pretty hard to bear, coming as it did when
countless forms of appeal had been 'exhausted by which women
without sufficient power could "concert" anything. The movement
was almost at the point of languishing so universal was the
belief in the nation that suffrage for women was inevitable. And
yet he and his party remained immovable.

The three hundred women of the memorial deputation became on
their return to headquarters a spirited protest meeting.

Plans of action in the event the President refused to help had
been under consideration by Miss Paul and her executive committee
for some time, but they were now presented for the first time for
approval. There was never a more dramatic moment at which to ask
the women if they were ready for drastic action.

Harriot Stanton Blatch, daughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and a
powerful leader of women, voiced the feeling of the entire body
when she said, in a ringing call for action:

"We have gone to Congress, we have gone to the President during
the last four years with great deputations, with small
deputations. We have shown the interest all over the country in
self-government for women-something that the President as a great
Democrat ought to understand and respond to instantly. Yet he
tells us to-day that we must win his party. He said it was
strange that we did not see before election that

{59}

his party was more favorable to us than the Republican party. How
did it show its favor? How did he show his favor today to us? He
says we have got to convert his party . . . Why? Never before did
the Democratic Party lie more in the hands of one man than it
lies to-day in the hands of President Wilson. Never did the
Democratic Party have a greater leader, and never was it more
susceptible to the wish of that leader, than is the Democratic
Party of to-day to President Wilson. He controls his party, and I
don't think he is too modest to know it. He can mould it as he
wishes and he has moulded it. He moulded it quickly before
election in the matter of the eight-hour law. Was that in his
party platform? He had to crush and force his party to pass that
measure. Yet he is not willing to lay a finger's weight on his
party to-day for half the people of the United States . . . . Yet
to-day he tells us that we must wait more-and more.

"We can't organize bigger and more influential deputations. We
can't organize bigger processions. We can't, women, do anything
more in that line. We have got to take a new departure. We have
got to keep the question before him all the time. We have got to
begin and begin immediately.

"Women, it rests with us. We have got to bring to the President,
individually, day by day, week in and week out, the idea that
great numbers of women want to be free, wall be free, and want to
know what he is going to do about it.

"Won't you come and join us in standing day after day at the
gates of the White House with banners asking, `What will you do,
Mr. President, for one-half the people of this nation?' Stand
there as sentinels-sentinels of liberty, sentinels of self-
government-silent sentinels. Let us stand beside the gateway
where he must pass in and out, so that he can never fail to
realize that there is a tremendous earnestness and insistence
back of this measure. Will you not show your allegiance today to
this ideal of liberty? Will you not be a silent sentinel of
liberty and self-government?"

Deliberations continued. Details were settled. Three thousand
dollars was raised in a few minutes among these women, fresh from
the President's rebuff. No one suggested

{60}

waiting until the next Presidential campaign. No one even
mentioned the fact that time was precious, and we could wait
no longer. Every one seemed to feel these things without
troubling to put them into words. Volunteers signed up for
sentinel duty and the fight was on.

{61}

Part III

Militancy

“I will write a song for the President, full of menacing signs,
And back of it all, millions of discontented eyes.”

Walt Whitman

{62}

Blank page

{63}

Chapter 1

Picketing a President

When all suffrage controversy has died away it will be the little
army of women with their purple, white and gold banners, going to
prison for their political freedom, that will be remembered. They
dramatized to victory the long suffrage fight in America. The
challenge of the picket line roused the government out of its
half-century sleep of indifference. It stirred the country to hot
controversy. It made zealous friends and violent enemies. It
produced the sharply-drawn contest which forced the surrender of
the government in the second Administration of President Wilson.

The day following the memorial deputation to the President,
January 10th, 1917, the first line of sentinels, a dozen in
number, appeared for duty at the White House gates. In retrospect
it must seem to the most inflexible person a reasonably mild and
gentle thing to have done. But at the same time it caused a
profound stir. Columns of front page space in all the newspapers
of the country gave more or less dispassionate accounts of the
main facts. Women carrying banners were standing quietly at the
White House gates "picketing" the President; women wanted
President Wilson to put his power behind the suffrage amendment
in Congress. That did not seem so shocking and only a few editors
broke out into hot condemnation.

When, however, the women went back on the picket line the next
day and the next and the next, it began to dawn upon the excited
press that such persistence was "undesirable" . . .

{64}

"unwomanly" ...dangerous." Gradually the people most hostile to
the idea of suffrage in any form marshaled forth the fears which
accompany every departure from the prescribed path. Partisan
Democrats frowned. Partisan Republicans chuckled. The rest
remained in cautious silence to see how "others" would take it.
Following the refrain of the press, the protest-chorus grew
louder.

"Silly women" . . : "unsexed" . . ." pathological" . . .
"They must be crazy" . . . "Don't they know anything about
politics?" . . . "What can Wilson do? He does not have to sign
the constitutional amendment." . . . So ran the comment from the
wise elderly gentlemen sitting buried in their cushioned chairs
at the gentlemen's club across the Park, watching eagerly the
"shocking," "shameless" women at the gates of the White House. No
wonder these gentlemen found the pickets irritating! This
absorbing topic of conversation, we are told, shattered many an
otherwise quiet afternoon and broke up many a quiet game. Here
were American women before their very eyes daring to shock them
into having to think about liberty. And what was worse-liberty
for women. Ah well, this could not go on,-this insult to the
President. They could with impunity condemn him and gossip about
his affairs. But that women should stand at his gates asking for
liberty that was a sin without mitigation.

Disapproval was not confined merely to the gentlemen in their
Club. I merely mention them as an example, for they were our
neighbors, and the strain on them day by day, as our beautiful
banners floated gaily out from our headquarters was, I am told, a
heavy one.

Yet, of course, we enjoyed irritating them. Standing on the icy
pavement on a damp, wintry day in the penetrating cold of a
Washington winter, knowing that within a stone's throw of our
agony there was a greater agony than ours there was a joy in
that!

{65}

There were faint rumblings also in Congress, but like so many of
its feelings they were confined largely to the cloak rooms.
Representative Emerson of Ohio did demand from the floor of the
House that the "suffrage guard be withdrawn, as it is an insult
to the President," but his protest met with no response whatever
from the other members. His oratory fell on indifferent ears. And
of course there were always those in Congress who got a vicarious
thrill watching women do in their fight what they themselves had
not the courage to do in their own. Another representative, an
anti-suffrage Democrat, inconsiderately called us "Iron-jawed
angels," and hoped we would retire. But if by these protests
these congressmen hoped to arouse their colleagues, they failed.

We were standing at the gates of the White House because
the American Congress had become so supine that it could not
or would not act without being compelled to act by the Presi-
dent. They knew that if they howled at us it would only afford
an opportunity to retort "Very well then, if you do not like
us at the gates of your leader; if you do not want us to `insult'
the President, end this agitation by taking the matter into
your own hands and passing the amendment." Such a sug-
gestion would be almost as severe a shock as our picketing.
The thought of actually initiating legislation left a loyal Demo-
cratic follower transfixed.

The heavy dignity of the Senate forbade their meddling much in
this controversy over tactics. Also they were more interested in
the sporting prospect of our going into the world war. There was
no appeal to blood-lust in the women's fight. There were no
shining rods of steel. There was no martial music. We were not
pledging precious lives and vast billions in our crusade for
liberty. The beginning of our fight did indeed seem tiny and
frail by the side of the big game of war, and so the senators
were at first scarcely aware of our presence.

But the intrepid women stood their long vigils, day

{66}

by day, at the White House gates, through biting wind and driving
rain, through sleet and snow as well as sunshine, waiting for the
President to act. Above all the challenges of their banners rang
this simple, but insistent one:

Mr. President

How Long Must Women Wait for Liberty?

The royal blaze of purple, white and gold-the Party's tricolored
banners-made a gorgeous spot of color against the bare,
blacklimbed trees.

There were all kinds of pickets and so there were all kinds of
reactions to the experience of picketing. The beautiful lady, who
drove up in her limousine to do a twenty minute turn on the line,
found it thrilling, no doubt. The winter tourist who had read
about the pickets in her home paper thought it would be "so
exciting" to hold a banner for a few minutes. But there were no
illusions in the hearts of the women who stood at their posts day
in and day out. None of them will tell you that they felt
exalted, ennobled, exhilarated, possessed of any rare and exotic
emotion. They were human beings before they were pickets. Their
reactions were those of any human beings called upon to set their
teeth doggedly and hang on to an unpleasant job.

"When will that woman come to relieve me? I have stood here an
hour and a half and my feet are like blocks of ice," was a more
frequent comment from picket to picket than "Isn't it glorious to
stand here defiantly no matter what the stupid people say about
us?"

"I remember the thousand and one engaging things that would come
to my mind on the picket line. It seemed that anything but
standing at a President's gate would be more diverting. But there
we stood.

And what were the reflections of a President as he saw the
indomitable little army at his gates? We can only venture to

{67}

say from events which happened. At first he seemed amused and
interested. Perhaps he thought it a trifling incident staged by a
minority of the extreme "left" among suffragists and anticipated
no popular support for it. When he saw their persistence through
a cruel winnter his sympathy was touched. He ordered the guards
to invite them in for a cup of hot coffee, which they declined.
He raised his hat to them as he drove through the line. Sometimes
he smiled. As yet he was not irritated. He was fortified in his
national power.

With the country's entrance into the war and his immediate
elevation to world leadership, the pickets began to be a serious
thorn in his flesh. His own statements of faith in democracy and
the necessity for establishing it .throughout the world left him
open to attack. His refusal to pay the just bill owed the women
and demanded by them brought irritation.

What would you do if you owed a just bill and every day
some one stood outside your gates as a quiet reminder to the
whole world that you had not paid it?

You would object. You would get terribly irritated. You would
call the insistent one all kinds of harsh names. You
might even arrest him. But the scandal would be out.

Rightly or wrongly, your sincerity would be touched; faith
in you would be shaken a bit. Perhaps even against your will you
would yield.

But you would yield. And that was the one important fact
to the women.

This daily sight, inspiring, gallant and impressive, escaped no
visitor to the national capital. Distinguished visitors from the
far corners of the earth passed by the pickets on those days
which made history. Thousands read the compelling messages
on the banners, and literally hundreds of thousands learned the
story, when the visitors got "back home."

Real displeasure over the sentinels by those who passed was
negligible. There was some mirth and joking, but the vast

{68}

majority were filled with admiration, either silent or expressed.

"Keep it up." . . . "You are on the right track." . . .
"Congratulations." . . . "I certainly admire your pluck-stick to
it and you will get it." . . . This last from a military officer
. . . . "It is an outrage that you women should have to stand
here and beg for your rights. We gave it to our women in
Australia long ago:" . . . This from a charming gentleman who
bowed approvingly.

Often a lifted hat was held in sincere reverence over the heart
as some courteous gentleman passed along the picket line. Of
course there were some who came to try to argue with the pickets;
who attempted to dissuade them from their persistent course. But
the serene, good humor and even temper of the women would not
allow heated arguments to break in on the military precision of
their line. If a question was asked, a picket would answer
quietly. An occasional sneer was easy to meet. That required no
acknowledgment.

A sweet old veteran of the Civil War said to one of my comrades:
"Yous all right; you gotta fight for your rights in this world,
and now that we are about to plunge into another war, I want to
tell you women there'll be no end to it unless you women get
power. We can't save ourselves and we need you . . . . I am 84
years old, and I have watched this fight since I was a young man.
Anything I can do to help, I want to do. I am living at the Old
Soldiers' Home and I ain't got mach money, but here's something
for your campaign. It's all I got, and God bless you, you've
gotta win." He spoke the last sentence almost with desperation as
he shoved a crumpled $2.00 bill into her hand. His spirit made it
a precious gift.

Cabinet members passed and repassed. Congressmen by the hundreds
came and went. Administration leaders tried to conceal under an.
artificial indifference their sensitiveness to our strategy.

And domestic battles were going on inside the homes

{69}

throughout the country, for women were coming from every state in
the Union, to take their place on the line. For the first time
good "suffrage-husbands" were made uncomfortable. Had they not
always believed in suffrage? Had they not always been
uncomplaining when their wife's time was given to suffrage
campaigning? Had they not, in short, been good sports about the
whole thing? There was only one answer. They had. But it had been
proved that all the things that women had done and all the things
in which their menfolk had cooperated, were not enough. Women
were called upon for more intensive action. "You cannot go to
Washington and risk your health standing in front of the White
House. I cannot have it."

"But the time has come when we have to take risks of health or
anything else."

"Well, then, if you must know, I don't believe in it. Now I am a
reasonable man and I have stood by you all the way up to now, but
I object to this. It isn't ladylike, and it will do the cause
more harm than good. You women lay yourselves open to ridicule."

"That's just it-that's a fine beginning. As soon as men get tired
laughing at us, they will do something more about it. They won't
find our campaign so amusing before long."

"But I protest. You've no right to go without considering me."

"But if your country called you in a fight for democracy, as it
is likely to do at any moment, you'd go, wouldn't you?"

"Why, of course."

"Of course you would. You would go to the front and leave me to
struggle on as best I could without you. That is the way you
would respond to your country's call, whether it was a righteous
cause or not. Well, I am going to the front too. I am going to
answer the women's call to fight for democracy. I would be
ashamed of myself if I were not willing to

{70}

join my comrades. I am sorry that you object, but if you will
just put yourself in my place you will see that I cannot do
otherwise."

It must be recorded that there were exceptional men of sensitive
imaginations who urged women against their own hesitancy. They
are the handful who gave women a hope that they would not always
have to struggle alone for their liberation. And women passed by
the daily picket line as spectators, not as participants.
Occasionally a woman came forward to remonstrate, but more often
women were either too shy to advance or so enthusiastic that
nothing could restrain them. The more kind-hearted of them,
inspired by the dauntless pickets in the midst of a now freezing
temperature, brought mittens, fur pieces, golashes, wool
-lined raincoats: hot bricks to stand on, coffee in thermos
bottles and what not.

Meanwhile the pickets became a household word in Washington, and
very soon were the subject of animated conversation in
practically every corner of the nation. The Press cartoonists, by
their friendly and satirical comments, helped a great deal in
popularizing the campaign. In spite of the bitter editorial
comment of most of the press, the humor of the situation had an
almost universal appeal.

At the Washington dinner of the Gridiron Club, probably the best
known press club in the world,--a dinner at which President
Wilson was a guest,-one of the songs sung for his benefit was as
follows:

"We're camping to-night on the White House grounds

Give us a rousing cheer;

Our golden flag we hold aloft, of cops we have no fear.

Many of the pickets are weary to-night,

Wishing for the war to cease; many are the chilblains and frost-
bites too; It is no life of ease.

Camping to-night, camping to-night,

Camping on the White House grounds."

{71}

The White House police on duty at the gates came to treat the
picketers as comrades.

"I was kinds worried," confessed one burly officer when the
pickets were five minutes late one day. "We thought perhaps you
weren't coming and we world have to hold down this place alone."

The bitter-enders among the opponents of suffrage broke into such
violent criticism that they won new friends to the amendment.

People who had never before thought of suffrage for women had to
think of it, if only to the extent of objecting to the way in
which we asked for it. People who had thought a little about
suffrage were compelled to think more about it. People who had
believed in suffrage all their lives, but had never done a,
stroke of work for it, began to make speeches about it, if only
for the purpose of condemning us.

Some politicians who had voted for it when there were not enough
votes to carry the measure loudly threatened to commit political
suicide by withdrawing their support. But it was easy to see at a
glance that they would not dare to run so great a political risk
on an issue growing daily more important.

As soon as the regular picket line began to be accepted as a
matter of course, we undertook to touch it up a bit to sustain
public interest. State days were inaugurated, beginning with
Maryland. The other states took up the idea with enthusiasm.
There was a College Day, when women representing 15 American
colleges stood on the line; a Teachers' Day, which found the long
line represented by almost every state in the Union, and a
Patriotic Day, when American flags mingled with the party's
banners carried by representatives of the Women's Reserve Corps,
Daughters of the Revolution and other patriotic organizations.
And there were professional days when women doctors, lawyers and
nurses joined the picket appeal.

Lincoln's birthday anniversary saw another new feature.

{72}

A long line of women took out banners bearing the slogans:

LINCOLN STOOD FOR WOMAN SUFFRAGE 60 YEARS AGO.