Notes from the Woman Suffrage Procession of 1913

Eight-five years ago yesterday, suffragists seized upon the inauguration of Woodrow Wilson to stage a major march in Washington. While they had hardly planned for it to be disruptive, the bad behavior of the mostly-male crowds, plus the lack of adequate response by the Washington police force, touched off a scandal that brought many Americans off the fence and onto the side of the suffragists.

Here's a sample of editorial cartoons, and a bit of news coverage.

Cartoonists treated the upcoming procession mostly with variations of comic lightness, as in this Magnus Kettner preview cartoon, which includes the traditional beaten down little man.

However, Billy DeBeck took a more hostile view, with this dismissive piece ...

... and this, which was hardly an original objection to activist women in the era (or any other).

Prior to the event, most attention was focused on the inauguration, and this cartoonist -- "Stimson" about whom I found nothing -- (Update -- Homer Stinson. Hat tip to Paul Berge!) used the occasion for a final William Howard Taft fat joke, but note, in the background, the presence of suffragist banners.

Taft was already familiar with the suffragists, including Inez Milholland, who had, a few years earlier, disrupted one of his campaign parades in New York by leaning out an upper story window shouting "Votes for Women!" through a megaphone, then siphoning off a portion of his crowd to make a speech on suffrage.

Inez was ready to make her presence felt again.

To set the scene a little more, this was, as W.A. Rogers depicts, the election in which Roosevelt's Bull Moose party attempted to wrestle back the cause of Progressivism from Taft and the Republicans, who had begun to undo his work. By splitting the vote on that side, they allowed Wilson to take the White House.

 

Though it wasn't going to be an easy ride. Besides the suffrage issue -- and Wilson would take the brunt of the emergence of Alice Paul and a more militant, disruptive movement -- he was also facing a near-war with Mexico and would soon have to deal with the First World War. It's worth pointing out that the Zimmerman Telegram, which would not emerge for four years and help push us into the World War, did not come out of the blue but was based on already troubled relations with our neighbor to the South, as seen in this John McCutcheon piece.

There was plenty of conversation about women's suffrage, but it was largely conversation. The old-line suffragists were still trying to make their way through proper channels, and there was a divide in the movement between them and the newer generation of Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, both of whom had been taught in the hard-core English suffragette movement, and who found ready allies in young college women like Inez Milholland.

But even these young lionesses were not prepared for the chaos that ensued.

 

 

When the parade turned into shouting, jeering, assaults, thrown objects and other indignities, some opposition papers downplayed the entire thing, but others picked up the story quickly and the response of the Washington police was the subject of a Senate inquiry within 24 hours.

Response from cartoonists was sympathetic, though I didn't find any who lept to the barricades on women's behalf. This Gaar Williams piece has something of a "welcome to the club" atmosphere, using the gold/silver issue of recent elections as the touch point.

However much his off-hand "welcome to the club" counts as sympathy, her expression and carriage are eloquent.

It's hard, at this distance, to get a solid read on Bob Satterfield's commentary, which seems to have a "Ladies Who Lunch" take on suffrage, which his little bear's comment only adds to. But he's certainly right that the women who came back to places like Cleveland had stories to tell, and people who wanted to hear them in an era before TV and radio put people on the scene.

But Senate hearings were called for the next day, and testimony there revealed that the headlines had it right: The Washington police had done little to restrain the crowd and that it was the soldiers in town for the inauguration who were called in to restore order, which brings us to our

Juxtaposition of the Day

(Billy DeBeck)

(H.R. Manz)

Looks like Billy DeBeck hasn't changed his tune a whole lot, and Manz seems more frank in judging the reaction to the police handling of things.

But for Major Richard Sylvester, the outcome was the same: Though he testified that he was "shocked" at how his officers had behaved that day, charges were filed against him and he resigned.

By the way, there was a happy ending, but it took another seven years. Here's a pair from 1920, when the Amendment was finally ratified:

At which point Bob Satterfield noted it.

As did A.B. Chapin

 

 

Comments

[Sean Martin]

Your country's history seems almost replete with a bewilderingly hypocritical sense of what "equality" is supposed to mean. Granted, it took Canada as long to accept the idea of full citizenship for women, but you guys were supposed to be the world leaders in such things. And yet all along the way, you seem almost hellbent to find *some* group to put under the thumb of larger society.

[Robert H Cunningham]

In 1927, the Supreme Court Of Canada, after five weeks of debate, unanimously declared that women were not persons......It took another two years to be be granted that favor.

[Paul Berge]

Could Stimson be Homer Stimson of the Cincinnati Post?
https://books.google.com/books?id=pS5HAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA453&lpg=PA453&dq=stinson+cartoon&source=bl&ots=eLGnW8qswJ&sig=LQVDwwIR9w8BqSUrI9DGhiOr3h0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjYiIiNl9PZAhVLs1kKHfaJCn0Q6AEIPjAH#v=onepage&q=stinson%20cartoon&f=false

[Paul Berge]

I think so (his name is Stinson; find another cartoon by him on page 369)

[Kip W]

It occurs to me that you've looked at a lot of bygone political cartoons and might be able to tell me if you've seen a particular one. This was about Teddy Roosevelt 'relaxing' on a vacation, and it was told in perhaps a half dozen individual panels, showing TR leaping from one quiet occupation to another, clearly hurrying through each, and with a look of fierce determination on his mug. One of the panels shows him on a porch swing, seemingly going back and forth in fast motion, his entire body as tense as if he was about to spring upon something.

It might have been Outcalt or Opper… but then it might have been any of dozens of artists who rendered their work similarly. I saw it in a 1958 edition of Compton's Pictured Encyclopedia, and it was Teddy's facial expression and body attitudes that put it over, more than the nicely understated caption.

I'm not asking you to beat the bushes for it, but if you've happened upon it, I would appreciate a pointer.

[Mike Peterson]

Kip, that doesn't ring a bell, but there's a whole lot of stuff archived here:
http://www.theodorerooseveltcenter.org/

[Mike Peterson]

The very one, Paul -- thanks! (And isn't that a great magazine?)

[Kip W]

Thanks, Mike. Not finding it, but lots of places to look now.