Suffragists -- United States; Women -- Suffrage -- United States
So when Mr. Malone went to the White House in July, 1917, to protest
against the Administration’s handling of the suffrage question, he went
not only as a confirmed suffragist, but also a5 a confirmed supporter
and member of the Wilson Administration—the one who had been chosen to
go to the West in 1916 to win women voters to the Democratic Party.
Mr. Malone has consented to tell for the first time, in this record of
the militant campaign, what happened at his memorable interview with
President Wilson in July, 1917, an interview which he followed up two
months later with his resignation as Collector of the Port of New York.
I quote the story in his own words:
Frank P. Walsh, Amos Pinchot, Frederic C. Howe, J. A. H. Hopkins, Allen
McCurdy and I were present throughout the trial of the sixteen women in
July. Immediately after the police court judge had pronounced his
sentence of sixty days in the Occoquan workhouse upon these “first
offenders,” on the alleged charge of a traffic violation, I went over
to Anne Martin, one of the women’s counsel, and offered to act as
attorney on the appeal of the case. I then went to the court clerk’s
office and telephoned to President Wilson at the Whit House, asking him
to see me at once. It was three o’clock. I called a taxicab, drove
direct to the executive offices and met him.
I began by reminding the President that in the seven years and a half
of our personal and political association we had never had a serious
difference. He was good enough to say that my loyalty to him bad been
one of the happiest circumstances of his public career. But I told him
I had come to place my resignation in his hands as I could not remain a
member of any administration which dared to send American women to
prison for demanding national suffrage. I also informed him that I had
offered to act as counsel for the suffragists on the appeal of their
case. He asked me for full details of my complaint and attitude. I told
Mr. Wilson everything I had witnessed from the time we saw the
suffragists arrested in front of the White House to their sentence in
the police court. I observed that although we might not agree with the
“manners” of picketing, citizens had a right to petition the President
or any other official of the government for a redress of grievances. He
seemed to acquiesce in this view, and reminded me that the women had
been unmolested at the White House gates for over five months, adding
that he had even ordered the head usher to invite the women on cold
days to come into the White House and warm themselves and have coffee.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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