Mary Chapman - "Are Women People?: Alice Duer Miller’s Poetry and Politics - American Literary History 18:1 American Literary History 18.1 (2006) 59-85 "Are Women People?": Alice Duer Miller's Poetry and Politics Mary Chapman FATHER, what is a Legislature? A representative body elected by the people of the state. Are women people? No, my son, criminals, lunatics and women are not people. Do legislators legislate for nothing? Oh, no; they are paid a salary. By whom? By the people. Are women people? Of course, my son, just as much as men are. Miller, Are Women People? On 1 February 1914, a witty new column, featuring news, quotations, poems, fictionalized conversations, statistics, and cartoons about gender inequalities appeared in the Sunday New York Tribune. Authored by suffragist writer Alice Duer Miller, the column was inspired by contradictions between America's foundational rhetoric of democracy and the federal government's official policy of disenfranchising women; more specifically, it responded to President Woodrow Wilson's hollow rhetoric of "bring[ing] the government back to the people" (Wilson 57). Throughout his successful 1912 presidential campaign to oust Republican incumbent William Taft, Democratic leader Wilson, building on a long-standing Progressive concern, had railed against big government run by corporate interests or, as he himself described it, "a smug lot of experts [sitting] behind closed doors in Washington" (49) instead of...