The Story of the Woman's PartyGillmore, Inez Haynes
History
The Story of the Woman's Party
Gillmore, Inez Haynes
National Woman's Party; Paul, Alice, 1885-1977; Women -- Suffrage -- United States
Mr. Whaley’s face is red; his head is prematurely gray outside and
his thoughts prematurely gray inside. “We don’t need women voting in
South Carolina,” he said with a large masculine manner. “We know how
to take care of our women in our State. We don’t allow divorce for
any reason whatever.”
He was continuing with expressed contempt for Suffrage and implied
contempt for Suffragists, when the door opened and a negro,
evidently a clergyman, entered.
“Get out of here!” said Mr. Whaley. “You stand in the hall till
you’re called.” As the negro hastily retreated, Mr. Whaley turned to
me and said with pride, “That’s the way to treat ’em.”...
A few minutes later, I opened Mr. Sisson’s door and saw him, very
large and rugged, standing with some letters in his hand and
dictating to a stenographer.
“I can’t discuss that subject,” he interrupted at my first words,
and then he discussed it at length. He had meant that I was not to
discuss it. He spoke of women in the kitchen, in the nursery, in the
parlor. He spoke of her tenderness, her charm, her need for shelter
and kindness. Wearily shifting from one foot to the other, I
listened. At last I opened my mouth to speak, but he silenced me
with a brusque gesture.
“The reason I’m so lenient with you,” he explained—for he had
allowed me to stand and listen to him—“is because you’re a woman. If
you were a man——” He left the end of the sentence in dark doubt.
What would he have done to a man standing dumbly in my place,
holding tight to a muff? I shall never know. Discretion did not
allow me to ask him.
Mr. Reed sat at his mahogany desk—a large, rather good-looking
Senator, with gray hair. His record in our card-index read: “He is
most reactionary, not to say antediluvian.” So I was not surprised
to hear him say slowly and solemnly:
“Women don’t know anything about politics. Did you ever hear them
talking together? Well, first they talk about fashions, and
children, and housework; and then, perhaps about churches; and then
perhaps—about theatres; and then perhaps——” At each “perhaps,” he
gazed down at his finger-tips where his ideas appeared to originate,
looking up at me at each new point. “And then, perhaps—about
literatoor!” he ended triumphantly. “Yes, and that is the way it
ought to be,” he added, satisfied.
“But don’t you believe that voting might make women think?”
At this suggestion he recoiled, then recovered and grew jocose.
“Do you think I want my wife working against my interests? That’s
just what she’d be doing—voting against me. Women can’t understand
politics.”
I began to tell him about California women voters, but he
interrupted. “Women wouldn’t change things if they did vote. They’d
all vote just like their husbands.”
Sometimes they said to Miss Younger, “If you were a voter——”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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