33. The Vote

Mary and I go from not caring to marching with the rest

It was very cold that February of 1908. The temperatures was barely above zero. My sister Mary and I heard that a women named Maude Malone was going to march to demand the vote for women. Until then we’d had stayed away from the suffrage cause because it seemed that it was for the higher class ladies uptown. But she was Irish and a librarian so we decided to brave the cold and go hear her out. We both did love to read and admired the librarians in our libraries. But this gal we saw and heard at Union Park was not like any librarian I’d ever seen.

In the park we milled about for some minutes awaiting her arrival, and we saw there was men waiting too, and we guessed they was there to shout her down and make it hard for her to speak. When she arrived she right away did climb up on a bench to speak. She said it were high time for ordinary women to get involved, that on her walk to work every day she saw women going to jobs with lower pay for the same work, and them paying their taxes like the men without any say in how that money was spent. She said leaders of the suffragettes did not approve this march. They had gotten tame I think. The thing about Maude was, she was smiling and and it were clear she was having a good time, and the crowd we were soon put in the same state of mind.

The police had banned the march, and they said to those ladies “move on, move on”, and so they did so and without a permit they marched off down the street. They were laughing and joking along the way, different from any suffragettes I’d seen before. Me and Mary just had to join in. The men came along too, and sure enough more of them joined along along the way. The papers next day reported there was 2,000 blokes along with us! Can you imagine? They could see the injustice in the voting situation. There was passers-by along the way calling support to us, and some that looked away like we were some kind of misbehaving children.

When we got home Mary and I were giggling and laughing between ourselves. Right away my daughter Nellie noticed and asked, “Ok Maam. And whats going on with you two? Where have you been?”

Mary said, “you should have seen it Nellie, there was a kate¹ there named Maude Malone at Union Park speaking up for the women’s vote. We heard her out and went marching along with her”. She was saying we’re all paying the same taxes and why should half of us not be able to vote!” And these ladies weren’t all glum like the other suffragettes we’ve seen.

Nellie looked awhile at us, curious. “I never thought I’d see the two of you in a march, I didn’t. I thought that the suffrage thing had died out. But the two of you marching with the rich ladies from uptown? The same ones who look down on Irish like we are nothing but trouble?”

Mary answered, “It weren’t that way. Maude Malone is different. She says it’s every woman’s business to get the vote. How are we going to get safety at work, or the orphans off the streets, or the the people who hear voices some kind of care, if we don’t have the vote? Men don’t notice those things. They can’t see things from a mother’s viewpoint! Women out west have been voting for years in state elections, why shouldn’t we too?”

Nellie responded, “You know we’ve been talking about this at the shop lately when the foremen are away, and some of the girls say we need to get a union there to protect us from the traps and get better pay and real bathroom breaks and the like. But there’s others that think we first need the vote first to get any kind of justice”. Well, in the end it’s the men that will decide, so what say you John?

My eldest, John, had stopped by for dinner, and I think he was only half listening at first, but he looked up from his plate all serious and he began to give out about how we should not be distracted by the middle class ladies, and some of those same suffragettes said nasty things about the Irish and the Catholic Church.

My son William joined in: “Once ladies have the vote you’ll be wanting to join the army and the police. The thugs will be thanking us for the chance to rob us all blind.”

Well I knew those words was going to fire things up. Sure enough my Catherine Agnes did stand up from her dinner and looked straight at William and John. She says, '“I know where you got that idea. They said the same in the New York Times, though I doubt you took the trouble to read it. No one is talking about soldiers and police, William, it’s about the vote. And why are you worried about us voting, you who can go and vote for whomever you please? Me and Nellie we pay our taxes but on Election Day we sit home hoping you don’t vote in the another Boss Tweed or the like to steal us blind and put his cronies in every office. Half the schoolteachers in this city are Irish girls, and we have writers and newspaper journalists and and a lot of smart ladies graduating the high schools! But we’re supposed to stand to the side while you vote in whoever you please?”

Then to my surprise Catherine’s twin brother Patrick then did chime in, him speaking in his slow way like he was talking to himself. “I think they are right. Nellie and Catherine work the machines right alongside the men. They pay their taxes. Why should they not vote? It’s Catherine who reads the newspaper in this house, and sometimes Maam as well. When you two are in the pub it’s them that’s reading about what’s going on in the world.”

John looked around like the sky were falling, and he pushed his chair back to take a breath. He had been looking after Patrick since they were boys. Patrick were different, he talked to himself out loud. Sometimes he lived in his own world. He’d worked for John at the taylor shop for years. We all looked out for him. Patrick was always loyal and never had contradicted his older brother. After a minute John seemed to calm down, and we all fell quiet for a moment.

Catherine sat back down again. We knew it was over for now, and we went about our meal in peace for the duration. I must say I was proud of my girls for speaking up, and of Patrick for his little speech as well. I was even grateful to the older boys for letting it drop before Catherine Agness went off the deep end. Catherine was different in her own way, and her temper was like a force of nature that was best left alone.

Later I would hear plenty more about this Molly Malone. No older than my older boys, she did get herself a reputation for heckling the politicians during the 1912 election. When Roosevelt and Wilson were running for President they both hated to see her show up at their speeches, knowing full well that she’d she’d shout out "What about woman’s suffrage?" She was often ejected and fined and charged. There was no escaping our Maude Malone.

Two years later in 1910 was a big march for suffrage being planned, and the posters was glued up about town advertising it. I was wondering whether would I go. The night before I tossed and turned in my bed, unsure. When finally I fell asleep, a dream did come to me, and in it I was hearing my grandmother and her sisters singing a beautiful old work song in the old language, one they sang while beating the scutching² the flax to make linen thread, the women swinging their knives right along with the rhythm of the song, gone into their private world that we could not see. Then in my dream I looked at my hands, so soft compared to their leathery fingers. I looked back up and then my grandmother she turned and looked straight at me with her clear gaze, eyes gray like a winter sky, and she said to me “carry on, Ellen, carry on, do what you must for yourself and and your daughters. It’s about time”. And so I did.

The papers said there was 10,000 people standing there in Union Square. Katie and I and Nellie and Patrick were there! John and William of course they stayed away. We stood among people of all kinds, the uptown ladies, the Jews and Italians from the factories, and another goodly share of menfolk. The organizers had told the black ladies to go and make a separate march so as not to “compromise” the cause. Can you believe it? The Negroes they never caught a break from dealing with this shite. But they was brave and ignored the nonsense, and they marched right along with the rest of us, and we was all the stronger for it.

I never thought I’d live to see us get the vote, but now I’m thinking I might.

1. A spirited woman

2. Scraping the flax stems with a blade to remove the sheathing from the fibers of the stems.