Explore "Dorothy Day: Dissenting Voice of the American Century" by John Loughery on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
AT JUST THE MOMENT THAT the final issue of The Masses reached its few remaining readers, Peggy Baird had a request. She asked Dorothy to join her on what was supposed to be a short excursion to Washington, DC, that turned out to be anything but. The cause of woman's suffrage was the one political commitment that, after her fashion, meant something to Peggy, who otherwise seemed much more interested in art and sex, drinking and gossip. A demonstration was scheduled to be held in front of the White House, and, having participated in one earlier in the year, she was eager to take part again. Dorothy, though, had no particular feeling for the issue. (In fact, once suffrage was achieved, she never voted in her life, sharing Jack London's view that the triumph of Democrats or Republicans made little or no difference. Both parties were, as London put it, "creatures of the Plutocracy. ") She also had recently started a novel that she wanted to continue working on, but Mike Gold urged her to go, and Peggy was insistent that the event would at least be interesting. That it was.
Earlier in the year, the Silent Sentinels, as they called themselves, had taken up positions in front of the White House. Women with banners proclaimed to the world, and to a supposedly progressive president, that the time for suffrage had come. The government's patience with demonstrations, especially once war was declared, was limited, and arrests were frequent. On the Friday evening Peggy and Dorothy boarded a train for Washington with a number of other women of all ages and classes, Alice Paul, one of the leaders of the movement, was already serving a seven-month jail sentence under very trying conditions. Peggy had not been, perhaps, completely forthcoming about the risks involved in this trip, but it is likely that Dorothy would not have been dissuaded, anyway, once committed to joining the protest.