coast of America, going inland to places such as Cleveland and Dayton, Ohio,
then down to Nashville, Tennessee, then up to Chicago, Minneapolis and St.
Paul before travelling back to Washington, DC, Boston and Hartford. At
Cleveland, she received a five-minute ovation while elsewhere her speeches
were frequently interrupted with applause, especially in Chicago where she
spent a busy day addressing a number of different meetings. However, her
address to 2,000 black men and women gathered at the Institutional Church on
South Dearborn Street, Chicago, aroused ‘volatile emotions’ amongst the black
women when she described the ‘good they could accomplish for their race by
working for the reforms their white sisters advocated’.^15 Emmeline’s world-view
was that of a common bond of sisterhood between all women; furthermore, she
assumed that she could speak on behalf of all women, black and white, poor and
rich. To what extent this encounter with black women modified her views we
do not know. The WSPU did include racial oppression in its rhetoric, the dedi-
cation on the first and subsequent issues of Votes for Womenstating, ‘to all
women all over the world, of whatever race, or creed, or calling, whether they
are with us or against us, we dedicate this paper’. But the racial analysis was
always subsidiary to that of gender and, like many feminist analyses of that time,
much less well developed.^16 It was during this tour that one finds in Emmeline’s
speeches a more resolute determination not to pander to public opinion about
the unpopularity of the arson and bombing campaign. In her address at
Hartford, on 13 November, she unashamedly stated, ‘I want to say that I am not
here to apologize. I do not care very much even whether you really understand.’
As Jorgensen-Earp points out, such bluntness and contentiousness was unex-
pected in women reformers. Emmeline also expressed on this occasion less
patience with men than she had in the past. There was no talk of male chivalry
but a damming reference to how the average man in the street could not be
moved by ethical considerations but by damage to his property. There is a
homely English proverb that is ‘literally true’, commented Emmeline, ‘ “You
cannot rouse the Britisher unless you touch his pocket.” ’^17
On 8 November, while on the train between Chicago and Toledo, Emmeline
snatched a few minutes to write to Mrs. Belmont enclosing a letter from a Dr.
Frederic H. Robinson, President of the Sociological Fund of the Medical Review
of Reviews; the latter had published Christabel’s book Plain facts about a great
evil, a collection of her articles in The Suffragetteabout the double sexual stan-
dard, soon to be published in England under the title The great scourge and how
to end it.^18 Robinson wanted Emmeline to speak at a performance of a new play
and had changed the date to suit her. Emmeline sought Mrs. Belmont’s help:
I have told Mr. Robinson that I am asking you to settle the question of
the fee with him. Miss Wickham suggests a percentage re the takings.
Will you see what can be done. I have told Mr. Robinson that I am
raising money to carry on the fight for the vote & our public health in
England & so want as large a fee as he can give. ... Some of theOUSTING OF SYLVIA AND A FRESH START FOR ADELA