On 13 September 1919, Emmeline arrived in New York on the White Star liner
Adriatic. ‘The great work confronting the women now is the suppression of
Bolshevism’, she told the press, ‘and this is one of the principal reasons for my
tour of Canada and the United States.’ For the preservation of the peace of the
world, she urged an immediate alliance be formed openly by the three democra-
cies of England, France and the United States.^1 ‘Parlour Bolshevism’, she
suggested, ‘seems to be quite prevalent here. Men and women during the war
were awakened as never before to an interest in labor conditions and received
many false ideas. They fell victims to the Bolshevist propaganda ... [and] were
reached through their best side – their sympathy with the workers.’ But the
Bolsheviks were undemocratic and did not represent the working class as a
whole but only those members who agreed with their doctrines. Through a form
of class domination, they sought to impose their views on society. ‘[I]t is incum-
bent on us all’, insisted Emmeline, ‘to defend Christian civilization.’^2 As
Mitchell notes, Emmeline was ploughing no lone furrow since America was at
the height of an hysterical red scare, whipped up by industrialists and financiers
who were determined to undermine militant unionism. But Emmeline’s message
of social service to the community, of the importance of reconstruction after the
war, of the critical role of democracy, was intended just as much for the wealthy
as for the poorer and unionised sections of society.^3 With such words, reminis-
cent of the defunct Women’s Party, Emmeline began her tour in earnest.
As she travelled south, she met many old suffrage friends rejoicing in the fact
that, just two weeks before her arrival, all American women had finally been
given voting rights on equal terms with men. Mary Kilbreth, the disgruntled
President of the American National Association to Oppose Woman Suffrage,
used the occasion to question whether Emmeline Pankhurst, who had lead a
‘reign of terror’ that involved ‘bombs, kerosene and vitriol throwing’ was an
appropriate person to preach to American women about their patriotic duty.
Emmeline’s friend, the journalist Rheta Childe Dorr, immediately leapt to the
defence. In a much discussed letter in the New York Timesheaded ‘The Militant
Suffragist in the Role of World Reconstructor’, she pointed that if the anti-
suffragists were counting ‘on that long past fight between the suffragettes and
nancy kaufman
(Nancy Kaufman)
#1