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
ALTHOUGH five different deputations—Congressional Union members; college
women; women voters; New Jersey women; women from all the States—had
called on the President, it was apparent that he had undergone no change
in his attitude toward the Suffrage question. On February 2, 1914,
therefore, another deputation, the sixth—and an exceedingly interesting
one—marched to the White House. This deputation included women from the
industrial world and they represented more than fifty trades in which
women are engaged. They carried banners which bore quotations from the
President’s _New Freedom_: “We Have Got to Humanize Industry,” and “I
Absolutely Protest Against Being Put into the Hands of Trustees.”
At the mass-meeting, preliminary to waiting upon the President, Melinda
Scott, an organizer of the Women’s Trade Union League, said:
No one could be serious when they maintained that the ballot will
not help the working woman. It has helped the working-man to better
his conditions and his wages. Men of every class regard the ballot
as their greatest protection against the injustice of other men.
Women even more than men need the ballot to protect their especial
interests and their right to earn a living.... We want a law that
will prohibit home-work.... We hear about the sacredness of the
home. What sacredness is there about a home when it is turned into a
factory, where we find a mother, very often with a child at her
breast, running a sewing machine? Running up thirty-seven seams for
a cent. Ironing and pressing shirts seventy cents a dozen, and
children making artificial flowers for one cent a gross. Think of
it—one hundred and forty flowers for one cent. Taking stitches out
of coats, helping their mothers where they have finished them for
six cents a coat. These women have had no chance to make laws that
would protect themselves or their children....
The organized working woman has learnt through her trade union the
power of industrial organization, and she realizes what her power
would be if she had the ballot.... Men legislating as a class for
women and children as a class have done exactly what every other
ruling class has done since the history of the world. They
discriminate against the class that has no voice. Some of the men
say, “You women do not need a ballot; we will take care of you.” We
have no faith in man’s protection.... Give us the ballot, and we
will protect ourselves.
This army of four hundred arrived safely, with perfect police escort, at
the doors of the White House. They were amazed to learn that the
President would see only twenty-five of the women. He had said he would
“receive the delegation.” The selected number then went in, the
remaining three hundred and seventy-five waited in line outside.
Margaret Hinchey, a laundry worker of New York, said:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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