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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Jailed for Freedom, by Doris Stevens
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: Jailed for Freedom
+
+Author: Doris Stevens
+
+Release Date: June 12, 2001 [eBook #3604]
+[Most recently updated: July 1, 2021]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: Samuel R. Brown
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JAILED FOR FREEDOM ***
+
+
+
+
+Jailed for Freedom
+
+by Doris Stevens
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+ Preface
+
+ Part I. Leadership
+ Chapter1. A Militant Pioneer—Susan B. Anthony
+ Chapter 2. A Militant General—Alice Paul
+
+ Part II. Political Action
+ Chapter 1. Women Invade the Capital
+ Chapter 2. Women Voters Organize
+ Chapter 3. The Last Deputation to President Wilson
+
+ Part III. Militancy
+ Chapter 1. Picketing a President
+ Chapter 2. The Suffrage War Policy
+ Chapter 3. The First Arrests
+ Chapter 4. Occoquan Workhouse
+ Chapter 5. August Riots
+ Chapter 6. Prison Episodes
+ Chapter 7. An Administration Protest—Dudley Field Malone Resigns
+ Chapter 8. The Administration Yields
+ Chapter 9. Political Prisoners
+ Chapter 10. The Hunger Strike—A Weapon
+ Chapter 11. Administration Terrorism
+ Chapter 12. Alice Paul in Prison
+ Chapter 13. Administration—Lawlessness Exposed
+ Chapter 14. The Administration Outwitted
+ Chapter 15. Political Results
+ Chapter 16. An Interlude (Seven Months)
+ Chapter 17. New Attacks on the President
+ Chapter 18. The President Appeals to the Senate Too Late
+ Chapter 19. More Pressure
+ Chapter 20. The President Sails Away
+ Chapter 21. Watchfires of Freedom
+ Chapter 22. Burned in Effigy
+ Chapter 23. Boston Militants Welcome the President
+ Chapter 24. Democratic Congress Ends
+ Chapter 25. A Farewell to President Wilson
+ Chapter 26. President Wilson Wins the 64th Vote in Paris
+ Chapter 27. Republican Congress Passes Amendment
+ Appendices
+
+
+
+
+Illustrations
+
+
+Alice Paul
+Mrs. O.H.P. Belmont
+Democrats Attempt to Counteract Woman’s Party Campaign
+Inez Milholland Boissevain
+Scene of Memorial Service-Statuary Hall, the Capitol
+Scenes on the Picket Line
+Monster Picket—March 4, 1917
+Officer Arrests Pickets
+Women Put into Police Patrol
+Suffragists in Prison Costume
+Fellow Prisoners
+Sewing Room at Occoquan Workhouse
+Riotous Scenes on Picket Line
+Dudley Field Malone
+Lucy Burns
+Mrs. Mary Nolan, Oldest Picket
+Miss Matilda Young, Youngest Picket
+Forty-One Women Face Jail
+Prisoners Released
+“Lafayette We Are Here”
+Wholesale Arrests
+Suffragists March to LaFayette Monument
+Torch-Bearer, and Escorts
+Some Public Men Who Protested Against Imprisonment of Suffragists
+Abandoned Jail
+Prisoners on Straw Pallets on Jail Floor
+Pickets at Capitol
+Senate Pages and Capitol Police Attack Pickets
+The Urn Guarded by Miss Berthe Arnold
+The Bell Which Tolled the Change of Watch
+Watchfire “Legal”
+Watchfire Scattered by Police-Dr. Caroline Spencer Rebuilding it
+One Hundred Women Hold Public Conflagration
+Pickets in Front of Reviewing Stand, Boston
+Mrs. Louise Sykes Burning President Wilson’s Speech on Boston Common
+Suffrage Prisoners
+
+
+
+
+To
+Alice Paul
+
+Through Whose Brilliant and Devoted Leadership the Women of America
+Have Been Able to Consummate with Gladness and Gallant Courage Their
+Long Struggle for Political Liberty, This Book is Affectionately
+Dedicated
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+This book deals with the intensive campaign of the militant suffragists
+of America [1913-1919] to win a solitary thing-the passage by Congress
+of the national suffrage amendment enfranchising women. It is the story
+of the first organized militant ,political action in America to this
+end. The militants differed from the pure propagandists in the woman
+suffrage movement chiefly in that they had a clear comprehension of the
+forces which prevail in politics. They appreciated the necessity of the
+propaganda stage and the beautiful heroism of those who had led in the
+pioneer agitation, but they knew that this stage belonged to the past;
+these methods were no longer necessary or effective.
+
+For convenience sake I have called Part II “Political Action,” and Part
+III “Militancy,” although it will be perceived that the entire campaign
+was one of militant political action. The emphasis, however, in Part II
+is upon political action, although certainly with a militant mood. In
+Part III dramatic acts of protest, such as are now commonly called
+militancy, are given emphasis as they acquired a greater importance
+during the latter part of the campaign. This does not mean that all
+militant deeds were not committed for a specific political purpose.
+They were. But militancy is as much a state of mind, an approach to a
+task, as it is the commission of deeds of protest. It is the state of
+mind of those who is their fiery idealism do not lose sight of the real
+springs of human action.
+
+There are two ways in which this story might be told. It might be told
+as a tragic and harrowing tale of martyrdom. Or it might be told as a
+ruthless enterprise of compelling a hostile administration to subject
+women to martyrdom in order to hasten its surrender. The truth is, it
+has elements of both ruthlessness and martyrdom. And I have tried to
+make them appear in a true proportion. It is my sincere hope that you
+will understand and appreciate the martyrdom involved, for it was the
+conscious voluntary gift of beautiful, strong and young hearts. But it
+was never martyrdom for its own sake. It was martyrdom used for a
+practical purpose.
+
+The narrative ends with the passage of the amendment by Congress. The
+campaign for ratification, which extended over fourteen months, is a
+story in itself. The ratification of the amendment by the 36th and last
+state legislature proved as difficult to secure from political leaders
+as the 64th and last vote in the United States Senate.
+
+This book contains my interpretations, which are of course arguable.
+But it is a true record of events.
+
+DORIS STEVENS.
+
+
+_New York, August_, 1920.
+
+
+
+
+“I do pray, and that most earnestly and constantly, for some terrific
+shock to startle the women o f the nation into a self-respect which
+mill compel them to, see the absolute degradation o f their present
+position; which will compel them to break their yoke of bondage and
+give them faith in themselves; which will make them proclaim their
+allegiance to women first . . . . The fact is, women are in chains, and
+their servitude is all the more debasing because they do not realize
+it. O to compel them to see and feel and to give them the courage and
+the conscience to speak and act for their own freedom, though they face
+the scorn and contempt of all the world for doing it!”
+
+Susan B. Anthony, 1872.
+
+
+
+
+Part I
+Leadership
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 1
+A Militant Pioneer—Susan B. Anthony
+
+
+Susan B. Anthony was the first militant suffragist. She has been so
+long proclaimed only as the magnificent pioneer that few realize that
+she was the first woman to defy the law for the political liberty of
+her sex.
+
+The militant spirit was in her many early protests. Sometimes these
+protests were supported by one or two followers; more often they were
+solitary protests. Perhaps it is because of their isolation that they
+stand out so strong and beautiful in a turbulent time in our history
+when all those about her were making compromises.
+
+It was this spirit which impelled her to keep alive the cause of the
+enfranchisement of women during the passionate years of the Civil War.
+She held to the last possible moment that no national exigency was
+great enough to warrant abandonment of woman’s fight for independence.
+But one by one her followers deserted her. She was unable to keep even
+a tiny handful steadfast to this position. She became finally the only
+figure in the nation appealing for the rights of women when the rights
+of black men were agitating the public mind. Ardent abolitionist as she
+was, she could not tolerate without indignant protest the exclusion of
+women in all discussions of emancipation. The suffrage war policy of
+Miss Anthony can be compared to that of the militants a half century
+later when confronted with the problem of this country’s entrance into
+the world war.
+
+The war of the rebellion over and the emancipation of the negro man
+written into the constitution, women contended they had a right to vote
+under the new fourteenth amendment. Miss Anthony led in this agitation,
+urging all women to claim the right to vote under this amendment. In
+the national election of 1872 she voted in Rochester, New York, her
+home city, was arrested, tried and convicted of the crime of “voting
+without having a lawful right to vote.”
+
+I cannot resist giving a brief excerpt from the court records of this
+extraordinary case, so reminiscent is it of the cases of the suffrage
+pickets tried nearly fifty years later in the courts of the national
+capital.
+
+After the prosecuting attorney had presented the government’s case,
+Judge Hunt read his opinion, said to have been written before the case
+had been heard, and directed the jury to bring in a verdict of guilty.
+The jury was dismissed without deliberation and a new trial was
+refused. On the following day this scene took place in that New York
+court room.
+
+JUDGE HUNT (Ordering the defendant to stand up)-Has the prisoner
+anything to say why sentence shall not be pronounced?
+
+Miss ANTHONY—Yes, your Honor, I have many things to say; for in your
+ordered verdict of guilty, you have trampled under foot every vital
+principle of our government. My natural rights, my civil rights, my
+political rights, my judicial rights, are all alike ignored. Robbed of
+the fundamental privilege of citizenship, I am degraded from the status
+of a citizen to that of a subject; and not only myself individually,
+but all my sex are, by your Honor’s verdict doomed to political
+subjection under this so-called republican form of government.
+
+JUDGE HUNT—The Court cannot. listen to a rehearsal of argument which
+the prisoner’s counsel has already consumed three hours in presenting.
+
+Miss ANTHONY—May it please your Honor, I am not arguing the question,
+but simply stating the reasons why sentence cannot in justice be
+pronounced against me. Your denial of my citizen’s right to vote, is
+the denial of my right of consent as one of the governed, the denial of
+my right of representation as one taxed, the denial of my right to a
+trial by jury of my peers as an offender against law; therefore, the
+denial of my sacred right to life, liberty, property, and——
+
+JUDGE HUNT—The Court cannot allow the prisoner to go on.
+
+Miss ANTHONY—But, your Honor will not deny me this one and only poor
+privilege of protest against this highhanded outrage upon my citizen’s
+rights. May it please the Court to remember that since the day of my
+arrest last November this is the first time that either myself or any
+person of my disfranchised class has been allowed a word of defense
+before judge or jury
+
+JUDGE HUNT—The prisoner must sit down, the Court cannot allow it.
+
+Miss ANTHONY—Of all my persecutors from the corner grocery politician
+who entered the complaint, to the United States marshal, commissioner,
+district attorney, district judge, your Honor on the bench, not one is
+my peer, but each and all are my political sovereigns . . . . Precisely
+as no disfranchised person is entitled to sit upon the jury and no
+woman is entitled to the franchise, so none but a regularly admitted
+lawyer is allowed to practice in the courts, and no woman can gain
+admission to the bar-hence, jury, judge, counsel, all must be of
+superior class.
+
+JUDGE HUNT—The Court must insist-the prisoner has been tried according
+to the established forms of law.
+
+Miss ANTHONY—Yes, your Honor, but by forms of law, all made by men,
+interpreted by men, administered by men, in favor of men and against
+women; and hence your Honor’s ordered verdict of guilty, against a
+United States citizen for the exercise of the “citizen’s right to
+vote,” simply because that citizen was a woman and not a man . . . . As
+then the slaves who got their freedom had to take it over or under or
+through the unjust forms of the law, precisely so now must women take
+it to get their right to a voice in this government; and I have taken
+mine, and mean to take it at every opportunity.
+
+JUDGE Hunt—The Court orders the prisoner to sit down. It will not allow
+another word.
+
+Miss ANTHONY—When I was brought before your Honor for trial I hoped for
+a broad interpretation of the constitution and its recent amendments,
+which should declare all United States citizens under its protecting
+aegis . . . . But failing to get this justice, failing even to get a
+trial by a jury-not of my peers-I ask not leniency at your-hands but
+rather the full rigor of the law.
+
+JUDGE HUNT—The Court must insist (here the prisoner sat down). The
+prisoner will stand up. (Here Miss Anthony rose again.) The sentence of
+the Court is that you pay a fine of $100.00 and the costs of the
+prosecution.
+
+Miss ANTHONY—May it please your Honor, I will never pay a dollar of
+your unjust penalty . . . . And I shall earnestly and persistently
+continue to urge all women to the practical recognition of the old
+Revolutionary maxim, “Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God.”
+
+JUDGE HUNT—Madam, the Court will not order you stand committed until
+the fine is paid.
+
+Miss Anthony did not pay her fine and was never imprisoned. I believe
+the fine stands against her to this day.
+
+On the heels of this sensation came another of those dramatic protests
+which until the very end she always combined with political agitation.
+The nation was celebrating its first centenary of the signing of the
+Declaration of Independence at Independence Square, Philadelphia. After
+women had been refused by all in authority a humble half moment in
+which to present to the Centennial the Women’s Declaration of Rights,
+Miss Anthony insisted on being heard. Immediately after the Declaration
+of Independence had been read by a patriot, she led a committee of
+women, who with platform tickets had slipped through the military,
+straight down the center aisle of the platform to address the chairman,
+who pale with fright and powerless to stop the demonstration had to
+accept her document. Instantly the platform, graced as it was by
+national dignitaries and crowned heads, was astir. The women retired,
+distributing to the gasping spectators copies of their Declaration.
+Miss Anthony had reminded the nation of the hollowness of its
+celebration of an independence that excluded women.
+
+Susan B. Anthony’s aim was the national enfranchisement of women. As
+soon as she became convinced that the constitution would have to be
+specifically amended to include woman suffrage, she set herself to this
+gigantic task. For a quarter of a century she appealed to Congress for
+action and to party. conventions for suffrage endorsement. When,
+however, she saw that Congress was obdurate, as an able and intensely
+practical leader she temporarily directed the main energy of the
+suffrage movement to trying to win individual states. With women
+holding the balance of political power, she argued, the national
+government will be compelled to act. She knew so well the value of
+power. She went to the West to get it.
+
+She was a shrewd tactician; with prophetic insight, without compromise.
+To those women who would yield to party expediency as advised by men,
+or be diverted into support of other measures, she made answer in a
+spirited letter to Lucy Stone:
+
+“So long as you and I and all women are political slaves, it ill
+becomes us to meddle with the weightier discussions of our’ sovereign
+masters. It will be quite time enough for us, with self-respect, to
+declare ourselves for or against any party upon the intrinsic merit of
+its policy, when men shall recognize us as their political equals . . .
+.
+
+“If all the suffragists of all the States could see eye to eye on this
+point, and stand shoulder to shoulder against every party and
+politician not fully and unequivocally committed to ‘Equal Rights for
+Women,’ we should become at once the moral balance of power which could
+not fail to compel the party of highest intelligence to proclaim woman
+suffrage the chief plank of its platform . . . . Until that good day
+comes, I shall continue to invoke the party in power, and each party
+struggling to get into power, to pledge itself to the emancipation of
+our enslaved half of the people . . . .”
+
+She did not live to see enough states grant suffrage in the West to
+form a balance of power with which to carry out this policy. She did
+not live to turn this power upon an unwilling Congress. But she stood
+to the last, despite this temporary change of program, the great
+dramatic protagonist of national freedom for women and its achievement
+through rebellion and practical strategy.
+
+With the passing of Miss Anthony and her leadership, the movement in
+America went conscientiously on endeavoring to pile up state after
+state in the “free column.” Gradually her followers lost sight of her
+aggressive attack and her objective-the enfranchisement of women by
+Congress. They did not sustain her tactical wisdom. This reform
+movement, like all others when stretched over a long period of time,
+found itself confined in a narrow circle of routine propaganda. It
+lacked the power and initiative to extricate itself. Though it had many
+eloquent agitators with devoted followings, it lacked generalship.
+
+The movement also lost Miss Anthony’s militant spirit, her keen
+appreciation of the fact that the attention of the nation must be
+focussed on minority issues by dramatic acts of protest.
+
+Susan B. Anthony’s fundamental objective, her political attitude toward
+attaining it, and her militant spirit were revived in suffrage history
+in 1913 when Alice Paul, also of Quaker background, entered the
+national field as leader of the new suffrage forces in America.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 2
+A Militant General—Alice Paul
+
+
+Most people conjure up a menacing picture when a person is called not
+only a general, but a militant one. In appearance Alice Paul is
+anything but menacing. Quiet, almost mouselike, this frail young
+Quakeress sits in silence and baffles you with her contradictions.
+Large, soft, gray eyes that strike you with a positive impact make you
+feel the indescribable force and power behind them. A mass of soft
+brown hair, caught easily at the neck, makes the contour of her head
+strong and graceful. Tiny, fragile hands that look more like an X-ray
+picture of hands, rest in her lap in Quakerish pose. Her whole
+atmosphere when she is not in action is one of strength and quiet
+determination. In action she is swift, alert, almost panther-like in
+her movements. Dressed always in simple frocks, preferably soft shades
+of purple, she conforms to an individual style and taste of her own
+rather than to the prevailing vogue.
+
+I am going recklessly on to try to tell what I think about Alice Paul.
+It is difficult, for when I begin to put it down on paper, I realize
+how little we know about this laconic person, and yet how abundantly we
+feel her power, her will and her compelling leadership. In an instant
+and vivid reaction, I am either congealed or inspired; exhilarated or
+depressed; sometimes even exasperated, but always _moved_. I have seen
+her very presence in headquarters change in the twinkling of an eye the
+mood of fifty people. It is not through their affections that she moves
+them, but through a naked force, a vital force which is indefinable but
+of which one simply cannot be unaware. Aiming primarily at the
+intellect of an audience or an individual, she almost never fails to
+win an emotional allegiance.
+
+I shall never forget my first contact with her. I tell it here as an
+illustration of what happened to countless women who came in touch with
+her to remain under her leadership to the end. I had come to Washington
+to take part in the demonstration on the Senate in July, 1913, en route
+to a muchneeded, as I thought, holiday in the Adirondacks.
+
+“Can’t you stay on and help us with a hearing next week?” said Miss
+Paul.
+
+“I’m sorry,” said I, “but I have promised to join a party of friends in
+the mountains for a summer holiday and . . .”
+
+“Holiday?” said she, looking straight at me. Instantly ashamed at
+having mentioned such a legitimate excuse, I murmured something about
+not having had one since before entering college.
+
+“But can’t you stay?” she said.
+
+I was lost. I knew I would stay. As a matter of fact, I stayed through
+the heat of a Washington summer, returned only long enough at the end
+of the summer to close up my work in state suffrage and came back to
+join the group at Washington. And it was years before I ever mentioned
+a holiday again.
+
+Frequently she achieved her end without even a single word Of retort.
+Soon after Miss Paul came to Washington in 1913, ;she went to call on a
+suffragist in that city to ask her to donate ;some funds toward the
+rent of headquarters in the Capital. The woman sighed. “I thought when
+Miss Anthony died,” she said, “that all my troubles were at an end. She
+used to come to me for money for a federal amendment and I always told
+her it was wrong to ask for one, and that besides we would never get
+it. But she kept right on coming. Then when she died we didn’t hear any
+more about an amendment. And now you come again saying the same things
+Miss Anthony said.”
+
+Miss Paul listened, said she was sorry and departed. Very shortly a
+check arrived at headquarters to cover a month’s rent.
+
+A model listener, Alice Paul has unlimited capacity for letting the
+other person relieve herself of all her objections without contest.
+Over and over again I have heard this scene enacted.
+
+“Miss Paul, I have come to tell you that you are all wrong about this
+federal amendment business. I don’t believe in it. Suffrage should come
+slowly but surely by the states. And although I have been a life-long
+suffragist, I just want to tell you not to count on me, for feeling as
+I do, I cannot give you any help.”
+
+A silence would follow. Then Miss Paul would say ingenuously, “Have you
+a half hour to spare?”
+
+“I guess so,” would come slowly from the protestant. “Why?”
+
+“Won’t you please sit down right here and put the stamps on these
+letters? We have to get them in the mail by noon.”
+
+“But I don’t believe …”
+
+“Oh, that’s all right. These letters are going to women probably a lot
+of whom feel as you do. But some of them will want to come to the
+meeting to hear our side.”
+
+By this time Miss Paul would have brought a chair, and that ended the
+argument. The woman would stay and humbly proceed to stick on endless
+stamps. Usually she would come back, too, and before many days would be
+an ardent worker for the cause against which she thought herself
+invincible.
+
+Once the state president of the conservative suffrage forces in Ohio
+with whom I had worked the previous year wrote me a letter pointing out
+what madness it was to talk of winning the amendment in Congress “this
+session,” and adding that “nobody but a fool would ever think of it,
+let alone speak of it publicly.” She was wise in politics; we were
+nice, eager, young girls, but pretty ignorant—that was the gist of her
+remonstrance. My vanity was aroused. Not wishing to be called “mad” or
+“foolish” I sat down and answered her in a friendly spirit, with the
+sole object of proving that we were wiser than she imagined. I had
+never discussed this point with anybody, as I had been in Washington
+only a few months and it had never occurred to me that we were not
+right to talk of getting the amendment in that particular session. But
+I answered my patronizing friend, in effect, that of course we were not
+fools, that we knew we would not get the amendment that session, but we
+saw no reason for not demanding it at once and taking it when we got
+it.
+
+When Miss Paul saw the carbon of that letter she said quietly, pointing
+to the part where I had so nobly defended our sagacity, “You must never
+say that again and never put it on paper.” Seeing my embarrassment, she
+hastened to explain. “You see, we can get it this session if enough
+women care sufficiently to demand it now.”
+
+Alice Paul brought back to the fight that note of immediacy which had
+gone with the passing of Miss Anthony’s leadership. She called a halt
+on further pleading, wheedling, proving, praying. It was as if she had
+bidden women stand erect, with confidence in themselves and in their
+own judgments, and compelled them to be self-respecting enough to dare
+to put their freedom first, and so determine for themselves the day
+when they should be free. Those who had a taste of begging under the
+old regime and who abandoned it for demanding, know how fine and strong
+a thing it is to realize that you must take what is yours and not waste
+your energy proving that you are or will some day be worthy of a gift
+of power from your masters. On that glad day of discovery you have
+first freed yourself to fight for freedom. Alice Paul gave to thousands
+of women the essence of freedom.
+
+And there was something so cleansing about the way in which she
+renovated ideas and processes, emotions and instincts. Her attack was
+so direct, so clear, so simple and unafraid. And her resistance had
+such a fine quality of strength.
+
+Sometimes it was a roaring politician who was baffled by this
+non-resistant force. I have heard many an irate one come into her
+office in the early days to tell her how to run the woman’s campaign,
+and struggle in vain to arouse her to combat. Having begun a tirade,
+honor would compel him to see it through even without help from a
+silent adversary. And so he would get more and more noisy until it
+would seem as if one lone shout from him might be enough to blow away
+the frail object of his attack. Ultimately he would be forced to
+retire, perhaps in the face of a serene smile, beaten and angered that
+he had been able to make so little impression. And many the delicious
+remark and delightful quip afterward at his expense!
+
+Her gentle humor is of the highest quality. If only her opponents could
+have seen her amusement at their hysteria. At the very moment they were
+denouncing some plan of action and calling her “fanatical” and
+“hysterical” she would fairly beam with delight to see how well her
+plan had worked. Her intention had been to arouse them to just that
+state of mind, and how admirably they were living up to the plan. The
+hysteria was all on their side. She coolly sat back in her chair and
+watched their antics under pressure.
+
+“But don’t you know,” would come another thundering one, “that this
+will make the Democratic leaders so hostile that . . .”
+
+The looked-for note of surprise never came. She had counted ahead on
+all this and knew almost to the last shade the reaction that would
+follow from both majority and minority leaders. All this had been
+thoroughly gone over, first with herself, then with her colleagues. All
+the “alarms” had been rung. The male politician could not understand
+why his wellmeaning and generously-offered advice caused not a ripple
+and not a change in plan. Such calm unconcern he could not endure. He
+was accustomed to emotional panics. He was not accustomed to a leader
+who had weighed every objection, every attack and counted the cost
+accurately.
+
+Her ability to marshal arguments for keeping her own followers in line
+was equally marked. A superficial observer would rush into headquarters
+with, “Miss Paul, don’t you think it was a great tactical mistake to
+force President Wilson at this time to state his position on the
+amendment? Will it not hurt our campaign to have it known that he is
+against us?”
+
+“It is the best thing that could possibly happen to us. If he is
+against us, women should know it. They will be aroused to greater
+action if he is not allowed to remain silent upon something in which he
+does not believe. It will make it easier for us to campaign against him
+when the time comes.”
+
+And another time a friend of the cause would suggest, “Would it not
+have been better not to have tried for planks in party platforms, since
+we got such weak ones?”
+
+“Not at all. We can draw the support of women with greater ease from a
+party which shows a weak hand on suffrage, than from one which hides
+its opposition behind silence.”
+
+She had always to combat the fear of the more timid ones who felt sure
+with each new wave of disapproval that we would be submerged. “Now, I
+have been a supporter of yours every step of the way,” a “fearful” one
+would say, “but this is really going a little too far. I was in the
+Senate gallery to-day when two suffrage. senators in speeches denounced
+the pickets and their suffrage banners. They said that we were setting
+suffrage back and that something ought to be done about it.”
+
+“Exactly so,” would come the ready answer from Miss Paul. “And they
+will do something about it only if we continue to make them
+uncomfortable enough. Of course even suffrage senators will object to
+our pickets and our banners because they do not want attention called
+to their failure to compel the Administration to act. They know that as
+friends of the measure their responsibility is greater.” And the
+“fearful” one was usually convinced and made stronger.
+
+I remember so well when the situation was approaching its final climax
+in Washington. Men and women, both, came to Miss Paul with, “This is
+terrible! Seven months’ sentence is impossible. You must stop! You
+cannot keep this up!”
+
+With an unmistakable note of triumph in her voice Miss Paul would
+answer, “Yes, it is terrible for us, but not nearly so terrible as for
+the government. The Administration has fired its heaviest gun. From now
+on we shall win and they will lose.”
+
+Most of the doubters had by this time banished their fears and had come
+to believe with something akin to superstition that she could never be
+wrong, so swiftly and surely, did they see her policies and her
+predictions on every point vindicated before their eyes.
+
+She has been a master at concentration, a master strategist-a great
+general. With passionate beliefs on all important social questions, she
+resolutely set herself against being seduced into other paths. Far from
+being naturally an ascetic, she has disciplined herself into denials
+and deprivations, cultural and recreational, to pursue her objective
+with the least possible waste of energy. Not that she did not want
+above all else to do this thing. She did. But doing it she had to
+abandon the easy life of a scholar and the aristocratic environment of
+a cultured, prosperous, Quaker family, of Moorestown, New Jersey, for
+the rigors of a ceaseless drudgery and frequent imprisonment. A flaming
+idealist, conducting the fight with the sternest kind of realism, a
+mind attracted by facts, not fancies, she has led fearlessly and with
+magnificent ruthlessness. Thinking, thinking day and night of her
+objective and never retarding her pace a moment until its
+accomplishment, I know no modern woman leader with whom to compare her.
+I think she must possess many of the same qualities that Lenin does,
+according to authentic portraits of him-cool, practical, rational,
+sitting quietly at a desk and counting the consequences, planning the
+next move before the first one is finished. And if she has demanded the
+ultimate of her followers, she has given it herself. Her ability to get
+women to work and never to let them stop is second only to her own
+unprecedented capacity for work.
+
+Alice Paul came to leadership still in her twenties, but with a broad
+cultural equipment. Degrees from Swarthmore, the University of
+Pennsylvania, and special study abroad in English universities had
+given her a scholarly background in history, politics, and sociology.
+In these studies she had specialized, writing her doctor’s thesis on
+the status of women. She also did factory work in English industries
+and there acquired first hand knowledge of the industrial position of
+women. In the midst of this work the English militant movement caught
+her imagination and she abandoned her studies temporarily to join that
+movement and go to prison with the English suffragists.
+
+Convinced that the English women were fighting the battle for the women
+of the world, she returned to America fresh from their struggle, to
+arouse American women to action. She came bringing her gifts and
+concentration to this one struggle. She came with that inestimable
+asset, youth, and, born of youth, indomitable courage to carry her
+point in spite of scorn and misrepresentation.
+
+Among the thousands of telegrams sent Miss Paul the day the amendment
+finally passed Congress was this interesting message from Walter Clark,
+Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of North Carolina, Southern
+Democrat, Confederate Veteran and distinguished jurist:
+
+“Will you permit me to congratulate you upon the great triumph in which
+you have been so important a factor? Your place in history is assured.
+Some years ago when I first met you I predicted that your name would be
+written ‘on the dusty roll the ages keep.’ There were politicians, and
+a large degree of public sentiment, which could only be won by the
+methods you adopted . . . . It is certain that, but for you, success
+would have been delayed for many years to come.”
+
+
+
+
+Part II
+Political Action
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 1
+Women Invade the Capital
+
+
+Where are the people?” This was Woodrow Wilson’s first question as he
+arrived at the Union Station in Washington the day before his first
+inauguration to the Presidency in March, 1913.
+
+“On the Avenue watching the suffragists parade,” came the answer.
+
+The suffrage issue was brought oftenest to his attention from then on
+until his final surrender. It lay entirely with him as to how long
+women would be obliged to remind him of this issue before he willed to
+take a hand.
+
+“The people” were on the Avenue watching the suffragists parade. The
+informant was quite right. It seemed to those of us who attempted to
+march for our idea that day that the whole world was there—packed
+closely on Pennsylvania Avenue.
+
+The purpose of the procession was to dramatize in numbers and beauty
+the fact that women wanted to vote—that women were asking the
+Administration in power in the national government to speed the day.
+What politicians had not been able to get through their minds we would
+give them through their eyes—often a powerful substitute. Our first
+task seemed simple—actually to show that thousands of women wanted
+immediate action on their long delayed enfranchisement. This we did.
+
+This was the first demonstration under the leadership of Alice Paul, at
+that time chairman of the Congressional Committee of the National
+American Woman. Suffrage Association. It was also the beginning of
+Woodrow Wilson’s liberal education.
+
+The Administration, without intending it, played into the hands of the
+women from this moment. The women had been given a permit to march.
+Inadequate police protection allowed roughs to attack them and all but
+break up the beautiful pageant. The fact of ten thousand women marching
+with banners and bands for this idea was startling enough to wake up
+the government and the country, but not so startling as ten thousand
+women man-handled by irresponsible crowds because of police
+indifference.
+
+An investigation was demanded and a perfunctory one held. The police
+administration was exonerated, but when the storm of protest had
+subsided the Chief of Police was quietly retired to private life.
+
+It was no longer a secret that women wanted to vote and that they
+wanted the President and Congress to act.
+
+A few days later the first deputation of suffragists ever to appear
+before a President to enlist his support for the passage of the
+national suffrage amendment waited upon President Wilson.[1] Miss Paul
+led the deputation. With her were Mrs. Genevieve Stone, wife of
+Congressman Stone of Illinois, Mrs. Harvey W. Wiley, Mrs. Ida Husted
+Harper, and Miss Mary Bartlett Dixon of Maryland. The President
+received the deputation in the White House Offices. When the women
+entered they found five chairs arranged in a row with one chair in
+front, like a class- room. All confessed to being frightened when the
+President came in and took his seat at the head of the class. The
+President said he had no opinion on the subject of woman suffrage; that
+he had never given it any thought;[2] and that above all it was his
+task to see that Congress concentrated on the currency revision and the
+tariff reform. It is recorded that the President was somewhat taken
+aback when Miss Paul addressed him during the course of the interview
+with this query, “But Mr. President, do you not understand that the
+Administration has no right to legislate for currency, tariff, and any
+other reform without first getting the consent of women to these
+reforms?”
+
+[1] There had been individual visits to previous presidents.
+
+
+[2] At Colorado Springs in 1911, when Mr. Wilson was Governor of New
+Jersey and campaigning for the Presidential nomination, a delegation of
+Colorado women asked him his position on woman suffrage. He said,
+“Ladies, this is a very arguable question and my mind is in the midst
+of the argument.”
+
+
+“Get the consent of women?” It was evident that this course had not
+heretofore occurred to him.
+
+“This subject will receive my most careful consideration,” was
+President Wilson’s first suffrage promise.
+
+He was given time to “consider” and a second deputation went to him,
+and still a third, asking him to include the suffrage amendment in his
+message to the new Congress assembling in extra session the following
+month. And still he was obsessed with the paramount considerations of
+“tariff” and “currency.” He flatly said there would be no time to
+consider suffrage for women. But the “unreasonable” women kept right on
+insisting that the liberty of half the American people was paramount to
+tariff and currency.
+
+President Wilson’s first session of Congress came together April 7th,
+1913. The opening day was marked by the suffragists’ second mass
+demonstration. This time women delegates representing every one of the
+435 Congressional Districts in the country bore petitions from the
+constituencies showing that the people “back home” wanted the amendment
+passed. The delegates marched on Congress and were received with a warm
+welcome and their petitions presented to Congress. The same day the
+amendment which bears the name of Susan B. Anthony, who drafted it in
+1875, was reintroduced into both houses of Congress.
+
+The month of May saw monster demonstrations in many cities and villages
+throughout the country, with the direct result that in June the Senate
+Committee on Suffrage made the first favorable report made by that
+committee in twenty-one years, thereby placing it on the Senate
+calendar for action.
+
+Not relaxing the pressure for a day we organized the third great
+demonstration on the last of July when a monster petition signed by
+hundreds of thousands of citizens was brought to the Senate asking that
+body to pass the national suffrage amendment. Women from all parts of
+the country mobilized in the countryside of Maryland where they were
+met with appropriate ceremonies-by the Senate Woman Suffrage Committee.
+The delegation motored in gaily decorated automobiles to Washington and
+went direct to the Senate, where the entire day was given over to
+suffrage discussion.
+
+Twenty-two senators spoke in favor of the amendment in presenting their
+petitions. Three spoke against it. For the first time in twenty-six
+years suffrage was actually debated in Congress. That day was historic.
+
+Speeches? Yes. Greetings? Yes. Present petitions from their
+constituencies? Gladly. Report it from the Senate Committee? They had
+to concede that. But passage of the amendment? That was beyond their
+contemplation.
+
+More pressure was necessary. We appealed to the women voters, of whom
+there were then four million, to come into action.
+
+“Four million women voters are watching you,” we said to Congress. We
+might as well have said, “There are in the South Sea Islands four
+million heathens.”
+
+It was clear that these distant women voters had no relation in the
+senatorial mind to the realism of politics. We decided to bring some of
+these women voters to Washington: Having failed to get the Senate to
+act by August, we invited the Council of Women Voters to hold its
+convention in Washington that Congress might learn this simple lesson:
+women did vote; there were four million of them; they had a voters’
+organization; they cared about the enfranchisement of all American
+women; they wanted the Senate to act; suffrage was no longer a moral
+problem; it could be made a practical political problem with which men
+and parties would have to reckon.
+
+Voting women made their first impression on Congress that summer.
+
+Meanwhile the President’s “paramount issues”—tariff and currency—had
+been disposed of. With the December Congress approaching, he was
+preparing another message. We went to him again. This time it was the
+women from his own home state, an influential deputation of
+seventy-three women, including the suffrage leaders from all suffrage
+organizations in New Jersey. The women urged him to include
+recommendation of the suffrage resolution in his message to the new
+Congress. He replied:
+
+“I am pleased, indeed, to greet you and your adherents here, and I will
+say to you that I was talking only yesterday with several members of
+Congress in regard to a Suffrage Committee in the House. The subject is
+one in which I am deeply interested, and you may rest assured that I
+will give it my earnest attention.”
+
+In interesting himself in the formation of a special committee to sit
+on suffrage in the House, the President was doing the smallest thing,
+to be sure, that could be done, but he was doing something. This was a
+distinct advance. It was our task to press on until all the maze of
+Congressional machinery had been used to exhaustion. Then there would
+be nothing left to do but to pass the amendment.
+
+A fourth time that year the determination of women to secure the
+passage of the amendment was demonstrated. In December, the opening
+week of the new Congress, the annual convention of the National
+American Woman Suffrage Association was held in Washington. Miss Lucy
+Burns, vice chairman of its Congressional Committee and also of the
+Congressional Union, was applauded to the echo by the whole convention
+when she said:
+
+“The National American Woman Suffrage Association is assembled in
+Washington to ask the Democratic Party to enfranchise the women of
+America.
+
+“Rarely in the history of the country has a party been more powerful
+than the Democratic Party is to-day. It controls the Executive Office,
+the Senate and more than two-thirds of the members of the House of
+Representatives. It is in a position to give us effective and immediate
+help.
+
+“We ask the Democrats to take action now. Those who hold power are
+responsible to the country for the use of it. They are responsible not
+only for what they do, but for what they do not do. Inaction
+establishes just as clear a record as does a policy of open hostility.
+
+“We have in our hands to-day not only the weapon of a just cause; we
+have the support of ten enfranchised states—states comprising one-fifth
+of the United States Senate, one-seventh of the House of
+Representatives, and one-sixth of the electoral vote. More than
+3,600,000 women have a vote in Presidential elections. It is
+unthinkable that a national government which represents women, and
+which appeals periodically for the suffrages of women, should ignore
+the issue of the right of all women to political freedom.
+
+“We cannot wait until after the passage of scheduled Administration
+reforms . . . . Congress is free to take action on our question in the
+present session. We ask the Administration to support the woman
+suffrage amendment in Congress with its whole strength.”
+
+This represented the attitude of the entire suffrage movement toward
+the situation in the winter of 1913. At no time did the militant group
+deviate from this position until the amendment was through Congress.
+
+It was difficult to make the Administration believe that the women
+meant what they said, and that they meant to use everything in their
+power and resourcefulness to see it carried out.
+
+Men were used to having women ask them for suffrage. But they were
+disconcerted at being asked for it now; at being threatened with
+political chastisement if they did not yield to the demand.
+
+In spite of the repeated requests to President Wilson that he include
+support of the measure in his message to Congress, he delivered his
+message December end while the convention was still in session, and
+failed to make any mention of the suffrage amendment. He recommended
+self-government for Filipino men instead.
+
+Immediately Miss Paul organized the entire convention into a fifth
+deputation to protest against this failure and to urge support in a
+subsequent message. Dr. Anna Howard Shaw led the interview. In reply to
+her eloquent appeal for his assistance, the President said in part: “I
+am merely the spokesman of my party . . . . I am not at liberty to urge
+upon Congress in messages, policies which have not had the organic
+consideration of those for whom I am spokesman. I am by my own
+principles shut out, in the language of the street, from ‘starting
+anything.’ I have to confine myself to those things which have been
+embodied as promises to the people at an election.”
+
+I shall never forget that day. Shafts of sunlight came in at the window
+and fell full and square upon the white-haired leader who was in the
+closing days of her power. Her clear, deep, resonant voice, ringing
+with the genuine love of liberty, was in sharp contrast to the halting,
+timid, little and technical answer of the President. He stooped to
+utter some light pleasantry which he thought would no doubt please the
+“ladies.” It did not provoke even a faint smile. Dr. Shaw had
+dramatically asked, “Mr. President, if you cannot speak for us and your
+party will not, who then, pray, is there to speak for us?”
+
+“You seem very well able to speak for yourselves, ladies,” with a broad
+smile, followed by a quick embarrassment when no one stirred.
+
+“We mean, Mr. President, who will speak for us with _authority?_” came
+back the hot retort from Dr. Shaw.
+
+The President made no reply. Instead he expressed a desire to shake the
+hands of the three hundred delegates. A few felt that manners compelled
+them to acquiesce; the others filed out without this little political
+ceremony.
+
+Alice Paul’s report to the national convention for her year’s work as
+Chairman of the Congressional Committee of the National American Woman
+Suffrage Association, and as Chairman also of the Congressional Union
+for Woman Suffrage, showed that a budget of twenty-seven thousand
+dollars had been raised and expended under her leadership as against
+ten dollars spent during the previous year on Congressional work. At
+the beginning of the year there was no interest in work with Congress.
+It was considered hopeless. At the close of the year 1918 it had become
+a practical political issue. Suffrage had entered the national field to
+stay.
+
+At this point the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage was obliged to
+become an independent body in order to continue this vigorous policy
+which the conservative suffrage leaders were unwilling to follow.
+
+Hearings, deputations to the President, petitions to Congress, more
+persistent lobbying, all these things continued during the following
+year under Miss Paul’s leadership with the result that a vote in the
+Senate was taken, though at ran inopportune moment,—the first vote in
+the Senate since 1887. The vote stood 86 to ’84-thereby failing by 11
+votes of the necessary two-thirds majority. This vote, nevertheless,
+indicated that a new strength in the suffrage battle had forced
+Congress to take some action.
+
+In the House, the Rules Committee on a vote of 4 to 4 refused to create
+a suffrage committee. We appealed to the Democratic caucus to see if
+tie party sustained this action. We wished to establish their party
+responsibility, one way or another, and by securing the necessary
+signatures to a petition, we compelled the caucus to meet. By a vote of
+128 to 57 the caucus declared “ . . . that the question of woman
+suffrage is a state and not a federal question,” as a substitute for
+the milder resolution offered, providing for the creation of a
+committee on woman suffrage. If this had left any doubt as to how the
+Democratic Party, as a party, stood, this doubt was conveniently
+removed by Representative Underwood, the Majority Leader of the House,
+when he said on the floor of the House the following day: “The
+Democratic Party last night took the distinctive position that it was
+not in favor of this legislation because it was in favor of the states
+controlling the question of suffrage . . . . I not only said I was
+opposed to it, but I said the Party on this side of the Chamber was
+opposed to it, and the Party that has control of the legislation in
+Congress certainly has the right to say that it will not support a
+measure if it is not in accordance with its principles.”
+
+Meanwhile the President had said to a deputation of workingwomen who
+waited upon him in February, “Until the Party, as such, has considered
+a matter of this very supreme importance, and taken its position, I am
+not at liberty to speak for it; and yet I am not at liberty to speak
+for it as an individual, for I am not an individual.”
+
+“But we ask you to speak to your party, not for it,” answered Mrs.
+Glendower Evans, Chairman of the deputation, amid evident presidential
+embarrassment.
+
+Those women who had been inclined perhaps to accept the President’s
+words as true to fact, entertained doubts when a .few days later he
+demanded of his party in Congress the repeal of the free tolls
+provision in the Panama Canal tolls act. In so doing, he not only
+recommended action not endorsed by his party, but he demanded action
+which his party had specifically declared against.
+
+It was necessary to appeal again to the nation. We called for
+demonstrations. of public approval of the amendment in every state on
+May 2. Thousands of resolutions were passed calling for action in
+Congress. These resolutions were made the center of another great
+demonstration in Washington, May 9, when thousands of women in,
+procession carried them to the Capitol where beautiful and impressive
+ceremonies were held on the Capitol steps. The resolutions were
+formally received by members of Congress and the demonstration ended
+dramatically with a great chorus of women massed on the steps singing
+“The March of the Women” to the thousands of spectators packed closely
+together on the Capitol grounds.
+
+And still the President withheld his support.
+
+Under our auspices five hundred representative club women of the
+country waited upon him in another appeal for help.[1] To them he
+explained his “passion for local self-government,” which led to his
+conviction “that this is a matter for settlement by the states[2] and
+not by the federal government . . . .”
+
+Women had to face the fact that the 63rd Congress had made a distinctly
+hostile record on suffrage. The President, as leader of his party, had
+seven times refused all aid; the Democratic Party had recorded its
+opposition through an adverse vote in the Senate and a caucus vote in
+the House forbidding even consideration of the measure.
+
+It became clear that some form of political action would have to be
+adopted which would act as an accelerator to the Administration. This
+feeling was growing momentarily among many women, but it was
+conspicuously strong in the mind of Mrs. Oliver H. P. Belmont,
+recognized as one of the ablest suffrage leaders in the country.
+Anticipating the unfriendly record made by the Democrats in the 63rd
+Congress, Mrs. Belmont had come to Miss Paul and to her vice-chairman,
+Miss Lucy Burns, to urge the formulation of a plan whereby we could
+strike at Administration opposition through the women voters of the
+West. Miss Paul had the same idea and welcomed the support of this plan
+by so able a leader.
+
+[1] 7th deputation to the President, June 30, 1914.
+
+
+[2] This amounted to virtual opposition because of the great
+difficulties, (some of them almost insuperable) involved in amending
+many state constitutions.
+
+
+Mrs. Belmont was impatient to do nationally what she had already
+inaugurated in New York State suffrage work—make suffrage an election
+issue. She was the first suffragist in America to be “militant” enough
+to wage a campaign against office-seekers on the issue of woman
+suffrage. She was roundly denounced by the opposition press, but she
+held her ground. It is interesting to record that she defeated the
+first candidate for the New York Assembly ever campaigned against on
+this issue.
+
+She had associated herself with the Pankhursts in England and was the
+first suffrage leader here publicly to commend the tactics of the
+English militants. Through her, Mrs. Pankhurst made her first visits to
+America, where she found a sympathetic audience. Even among the people
+who understood and believed in English tactics, the general idea here
+was that only in the backward country of England was “militancy”
+necessary. In America, men would give women what women wanted without a
+struggle.
+
+Mrs. Belmont was the one suffrage leader who foresaw a militant battle
+here whenever women should determine to ask for their freedom
+immediately. In a great measure she prepared the way for that battle.
+
+Since the movement had not even advanced to the stage of political
+action at that time, however, Mrs. Belmont realized that political
+action would have to be exhausted before attempting more aggressive
+tactics. Not knowing whether Miss Paul had contemplated inaugurating
+political action in the national field, she sought out the new leader
+and urged her to begin at, once to organize the women’s power for use
+in the approaching national elections.
+
+Those interested in the woman’s movement are fairly familiar with Mrs.
+Belmont’s early state suffrage work and her work with the militants in
+England, but they do not know as much about her national work. It is
+not easy for a woman of vast wealth to be credited with much else in
+America than the fact of generosity in giving money to the cause in
+which she believes. Wealth dazzles us and we look no further. Mrs.
+Belmont has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to suffrage, both
+state and national, but she has given greater gifts in her militant
+spirit, her political sagacity and a marked tactical sense. She was
+practically the only leader formerly associated with the conservative
+forces who had the courage to extricate herself from the old routine
+propaganda and adventure into new paths. She always approached the
+struggle for liberty in a wholesome revolutionary mood. She was
+essentially a leader, and one who believed in action-always action.
+
+Until the movement in America regained its militant spirit, her heart
+was primarily with the English women, because she thought their fight
+so magnificent that it would bring suffrage to women in England sooner
+than our slow-going methods would bring it to us. In 1910, when English
+militancy was at its height, Mrs. Belmont gave out an interview in
+London, in which she predicted that English women would have the
+suffrage before us. She even went so far as to say that we in America
+would have to create an acute situation here, probably a form of
+militancy, before we could win. At the same time the President of the
+International Suffrage Alliance said in London: “The suffrage movement
+in England- resembles a battle. It is cruel and tragic. Ours in America
+is an evolution-less dramatic, slow but more sure.” Facts sustained
+Mrs. Belmont’s prophecy. Facts did not sustain the other prediction.
+English women got the vote in 1918. American women were not
+enfranchised nationally until August, 1920.
+
+The following is the political theory and program approved by Mrs.
+Belmont and submitted to the Congressional Union, by its chairman,
+Alice Paul, at a conference of the organization at the home of Mrs.
+Belmont in Newport in August, 1914:
+
+The dominant party (at that time the Democratic Party) is responsible
+for all action and therefore for action on suffrage.
+
+This party’s action had been hostile to this measure.
+
+The dominant party in the approaching election must be convinced, and
+through it all other parties, that opposition to suffrage is
+inexpedient.
+
+All parties will be convinced when they see that their opposition costs
+them votes.
+
+Our fight is a political one.
+
+We must appeal for support to the constituency which is most friendly
+to suffrage, that constituency being the voting women.
+
+An attempt must be made, no matter how small, to organize the women’s
+vote.
+
+An appeal must be made to the women voters in the nine suffrage states
+to withhold their support from the Democrats nationally, until the
+national Democratic Party ceases to block the suffrage amendment.
+
+This is non-partisanship in the highest degree, as it calls upon women
+to forego previous allegiance to a party. If they are Democrats in this
+instance, they must vote against their party. If the Republican Party
+were in power and pursued a similar course, we would work against that
+party.
+
+The party which sees votes falling away will change its attitude.
+
+After we have once affected by this means the outcome of a national
+election, even though slightly, every party will hesitate to trifle
+with our measure any longer.
+
+All candidates from suffrage states are professing suffragists, and
+therefore we have nothing to lose by defeating a member of the dominant
+party in those states. Another suffragist will take his place.
+
+Men will object to being opposed because of their party responsibility
+in spite of their friendliness individually to suffrage. But women
+certainly have a right to further through the ballot their wishes on
+the suffrage question, as well as on other questions like currency,
+tariff, and what not.
+
+This can only be done by considering the Party record, for as the
+individual record and individual pledges go, all candidates are
+practically equal.
+
+We, as a disfranchised class, consider our right to vote, preeminently
+over any other issue in any party’s program.
+
+Political leaders will resent our injecting our issue into their
+campaign, but the rank and file will be won when they see the loyalty
+of women to women.
+
+This policy will be called militant and in a sense it is, being strong,
+positive and energetic.
+
+If it is militant to appeal to women to use their vote to bring
+suffrage to this country, then it is militant to appeal to men or women
+to use their vote to any good end.
+
+To the question of “How will we profit if another party comes in?” our
+answer will be that adequate political chastisement of one party for
+its bad suffrage record through a demonstration of power by women
+voters affecting the result of the national election, will make it
+easier to get action from any party in power
+
+Amidst tremendous enthusiasm this plan was accepted by the little
+conference of women at Newport, and $7,000 pledged in a few moments to
+start it. There was a small group of women, an infinitely small budget
+with which to wage a campaign in nine states, but here was also
+enthusiasm and resolute determination.
+
+A tiny handful of women-never more than two, more often only one to a
+state—journeyed forth from Washington into the nine suffrage states of
+the West to put before the voting women this political theory, and to
+ask them to support it.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 2
+Women Voters Organize
+
+
+It can’t be done.” “Women don’t care about suffrage.” I “Once they’ve
+got it, it is a dead issue.” “To talk of arousing the Western women to
+protest against the Congressional candidates of the National Democratic
+Party in the suffrage states, when every one of them is a professing
+suffragist, is utter folly.” So ran the comment of the political wise
+acres in the autumn of 1914.
+
+But the women had faith in their appeal.
+
+It is impossible to give in a few words any adequate picture of the
+anger of Democratic leaders at our entrance into the campaign. Six
+weeks before election they woke up to find the issue of national
+suffrage injected into a campaign which they had meant should be no
+more stirring than an orderly and perfunctory endorsement of the
+President’s legislative program.
+
+The campaign became a very hot one during which most of the militancy
+seemed to be on the side of the political leaders. Heavy fists came
+down on desks. Harsh words were spoken. Violent threats were made. In
+Colorado, where I was cam- paigning, I was invited politely but firmly
+by the Democratic leader to leave the state the morning after I had
+arrived. “You can do no good here. I would advise you to leave at once.
+Besides, your plan is impracticable and the women will not support it.”
+
+“Then why do you object to my being here?” I asked.
+
+“You have no right to ask women to do this . . . .”
+
+Some slight variation of this experience was met by every woman who
+took part in this campaign. Of course, the Democratic leaders did not
+welcome an issue raised unexpectedly, and one which forced them to
+spend an endless amount of time apologizing for and explaining the
+Democratic Party’s record. Nor did they relish spending more money
+publishing more literature, in short, adding greatly to the burdens of
+their campaign. The candidates, a little more suave than the party
+leaders, proved most eloquently that they had been suffragists “from
+birth.” One candidate even claimed a suffrage inheritance from his
+great-grandmother.
+
+This first entry of women into a national election on the suffrage
+amendment was little more than a quick, brilliant dash. With all its
+sketchiness, however, it had immediate political results, and when the
+election was over, there came tardily a general public recognition that
+the Congressional Union had made a real contribution to these results.
+In the nine suffrage states women vote3 for 45 members of Congress. For
+43 of these seats the Democratic Party ran candidates. We opposed in
+our campaign all of these candidates. Out of the 43 Democratic
+candidates running, only 9.0 were elected. While it was not our primary
+aim to defeat candidates it was generally conceded that we had
+contributed to these defeats.
+
+Our aim in this campaign was primarily to call to the attention of the
+public the bad suffrage record of the Democratic Party. The effect of
+our campaign was soon evident in Congress. The most backward member
+realized for the first time that women had voted. Even the President
+perceived that the movement had gained new strength, though he was not
+yet politically moved by it. He was still “tied to a conviction”[1]
+which he had had all his life that suffrage “ought to be brought about
+state by state.”
+
+[1] Statement to Deputation of Democratic women (eighth deputation) at
+the White House, Jan. 6, 1915.
+
+
+Enough strength and determination among women had been demonstrated to
+the Administration, however, to make them want to do something “just as
+good” as the thing we asked. The Shafroth-Palmer[1] Resolution was
+introduced, providing for a constitutional amendment permitting a
+national initiative and referendum on suffrage in the states, thereby
+forcing upon women the very course we had sought to circumvent. This
+red herring drawn across the path had been accepted by the conservative
+suff- ragists evidently in a moment of hopelessness, and their strength
+put behind it, but the politicians who persuade them to back it knew
+that it was merely an attempt to evade the issue.
+
+[1] This resolution was introduced in the Senate by Senator Shafroth of
+Colorado, Democrat; in the House by Representative A. Mitchell Palmer
+of Pennsylvania, Democrat, later Attorney General in President Wilson’s
+Cabinet. Both men, although avowed supporters of the original Susan B.
+Anthony amendment, backed this evil compromise.
+
+
+This made necessary a tremendous campaign throughout the country by the
+Congressional Union, with the result that the compromise measure was
+eventually abandoned. During its life, however, politicians were happy
+in the opportunity to divide their support between it and the original
+amendment, which was still pending. To offset this danger and to show
+again in dramatic fashion the strength and will of the women voters to
+act on this issue, we made political work among the western women the
+principal effort of the year 1915, the year preceding the presidential
+election. Taking advantage of the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San
+Francisco, we opened suffrage headquarters in the Palace of Education
+on the exposition grounds. From there we called the first Woman Voters’
+Convention ever held in the world for the single purpose of attaching
+political strength to the movement. Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont was chairman
+of the committee which signed the convention call.
+
+Women from all the voting states assembled in a mass convention
+September 14, 15 and 16. There is not time to describe the beauty of
+the pageantry which surrounded that gathering, nor of the emotional
+quality which was at high pitch throughout the sessions. These women
+from the deserts of Arizona, from the farms of Oregon, from the valleys
+of California, from the mountains of Nevada and Utah, were in deadly
+earnest. They had answered the call and they meant to stay in the fight
+until it was won. The convention went on record unanimously for further
+political action on behalf of national suffrage and for the original
+amendment without compromise, and pledged itself to use all power to
+this end without regard to the interests of any existing political
+party.
+
+Two emissaries, Sara Bard Field and Frances Joliffe, both of
+California, were commissioned by women voters at the final session,
+when more than ten thousand people were present, to go to the President
+and Congress bearing these resolutions and hundreds of thousands of
+signatures upon a petition gathered during the summer. They would speak
+directly to the President lest he should be inclined to take lightly
+the women voters’ resolutions.
+
+The envoys, symbolic of the new strength that was to come out of the
+West, made their journey across continent by automobile. They created a
+sensation all along the way, received as they were by governors, by
+mayors, by officials high and low, and by the populace. Thousands more
+added their names to the petition and it was rolled up to gigantic
+proportions until in December when unrolled it literally stretched over
+miles as it was borne to the Capitol with honor escorts.
+
+The action of the convention scarcely cold, and the envoys mid- way
+across the continent, the President hastened to New Jersey to cast his
+vote for suffrage in a state referendum. He was careful to state that
+he did so as a private citizen, “not as the leader of my party in the
+nation” He repeated his position, putting the emphasis upon his
+opposition to national suffrage, rather than on his belief in suffrage
+for his state. “I believe that it (suffrage) should be settled by the
+states and not by the national government, and that in no circumstances
+should it be made a party question; and my view has grown stronger at
+every turn of the agitation.” He knew women were asking the powerful
+aid of the President of the United States, not the aid of Mr. Wilson of
+Princeton, New Jersey. The state amendment in New Jersey was certain to
+fail, as President Wilson well knew. Casting a vote for it would help
+his case with women voters, and still not bring suffrage in the East a
+step nearer.
+
+The envoys’ reception at the Capitol was indeed dramatic. Thousands of
+women escorted them amid bands and banners to the halls of Congress,
+where they were received by senators and representatives and addressed
+with eloquent speeches. The envoys replied by asking that their message
+be carried by friends of the measure to the floor of the Senate and
+House, and this was done.
+
+The envoys waited upon the President at the White House. This visit of
+the representatives of women with power marked rather an advance in the
+President’s position. He listened with an eager attention to the story
+of the new-found power and what women meant to do with it. For the
+first time on record, he said he had “an open mind” on the question of
+national suffrage, and would confer with his party colleagues.
+
+The Republican and Democratic National Committees heard the case of the
+envoys. They were given a hearing before the Senate Suffrage Committee
+and before the House Judiciary in one of the most lively and
+entertaining inquisitions in which women ever participated.
+
+No more questions on mother and home! No swan song on the passing of
+charm and womanly loveliness! Only agile scrambling by each committee
+member to ask with eagerness and some heat, “Well, if this amendment
+has not passed Congress by then, what will you do in the elections of
+1916?” It was with difficulty that the women were allowed to tell their
+story, so eager was the Committee to jump ahead to political
+consequences. “Sirs, that depends upon what you gentlemen do. We are
+asking a simple thing——” But they never got any further from the main
+base of their interest.
+
+“If President Wilson comes out for it and his party does not” from a
+Republican member, “will you——”
+
+“I object to introducing partisan discussions here,” came shamelessly
+from a Democratic colleague. And so the hearing passed in something of
+a verbal riot, but with no doubt as to the fact that Congressmen were
+alarmed by the prospect of women voting as a protest group.
+
+The new year found the Senate promptly reporting the measure favorably
+again, but the Judiciary Committee footballed it to its sub-committee,
+back to the whole committee, postponed it, marked time, dodged defeated
+it.
+
+The problem of neutrality toward the European war was agitating the
+minds of political leaders. Nothing like suffrage for women must be
+allowed to rock the ship even slightly! Oh, no, indeed; it was men’s
+business to keep the nation out of war. Men never had shown marked
+skill at keeping nations out of war in the history of the world. But
+never mind! Logic must not be pressed too hard upon the “reasoning”
+sex. This time, men would do it.
+
+The exciting national election contest was approaching. Party
+conventions were scheduled to meet in June while the amendment
+languished at the Capitol. It was clear that more highly organized
+woman-power would have to be called into action before the national
+government would speed its pace. To the women voters the Eastern women
+went for decisive assistance. A car known as the “Suffrage Special,”
+carrying distinguished Eastern women and gifted speakers, made an
+extensive tour of the West and under the banner of the Congressional
+Union called again upon the women voters to come to Chicago on June 5th
+to form a new party,—The Woman’s Party[1]—to serve as long as should be
+necessary as the balance of power in national contests, and thus to
+force action from the old parties.
+
+[1] The Woman’s Party started with a membership of all Congressional
+Union members in suffrage states. Anne Martin of Nevada was elected
+chairman.
+
+
+The instant response which met this appeal surpassed the most
+optimistic hopes. Thousands of women assembled in Chicago for this
+convention, which became epoch-making not only in .the suffrage fight
+but in the whole woman movement. For the first time in history, women
+came together to organize their political power into a party to free
+their own sex. For the first time in history representatives of men’s
+political parties came to plead before these women voters for the
+support of their respective parties.
+
+The Republican Party sent as its representatives John Hays Hammond and
+C. S. Osborn, formerly Governor of Michigan. The Democrats sent their
+most persuasive orator, President Wilson’s friend, Dudley Field Malone,
+Collector of the Port of New York. Allan Benson, candidate for the
+Presidency on the Socialist ticket, represented the Socialist Party.
+Edward Polling, Prohibition leader, spoke for the Prohibition Party,
+arid Victor Murdock and Gifford Pinchot for The Progressive Party.
+
+All laid their claims for suffrage support before the women with the
+result that the convention resolved itself into another political
+party—The Woman’s Party. A new party with but one plank—the immediate
+passage of the federal suffrage amendment—a party determined to
+withhold its support from all existing parties until women were
+politically free, and to punish politically any party in power which
+did not use its power to free women; a party which became a potent
+factor of protest in the following national election.
+
+This first step towards the solidarity of women quickly brought
+results. The Republican National Convention, meeting immediately. after
+the Woman’s Party Convention, and the Democratic National Convention
+the week following, both included suffrage planks in their national
+platforms for the first time in history. To be sure, they were planks
+that failed to satisfy us. But the mere hint of organized political
+action on suffrage had moved the two dominant parties to advance a
+step. The new Woman’s Party had declared suffrage a national political
+issue. The two major parties acknowledged the issue by writing it into
+their party platforms.
+
+The Republican platform was vague and indefinite on national suffrage.
+The Democratic Party made its suffrage plank specific against action by
+Congress. It precisely said, “We recommend the extension of the
+franchise to the women of the country by the states upon the same terms
+as men.” It was openly stated at the Democratic Convention by leading
+Administration Democrats that the President himself had written this
+suffrage plank. If the Republicans could afford to write a vague and
+indefinite plank, the President and his party could not. They as the
+party in power had been under fire and were forced to take sides. They
+did so. The President chose the plank and his subordinates followed his
+lead. It may be remarked in passing that this declaration so solidified
+the opposition within the President’s party that when the President
+ultimately sought to repudiate it, he met stubborn resistance.
+
+Protected by the President’s plank, the Democratic Congress continued
+to block national suffrage. It would not permit it even to be reported
+from the Judiciary Committee. The party platform was written. The
+President, too, found it easy to hide behind the plank which he had
+himself written, counting on women to be satisfied. To Mrs. D. E.
+Hooker of Richmond, Virginia, who as a delegate from the Virginia
+Federation of Labor, representing 60,000 members, went to him soon
+after to ask his support of the amendment, the President said, “I am
+opposed by conviction and political traditions to federal action on
+this question. Moreover, after the plank which was adopted in the
+Democratic platform at St. Louis, I could not comply with the request
+contained in this resolution even if I wished to do so.”
+
+President Wilson could not act because the party plank which he had
+written prevented him from doing so!
+
+Meanwhile the women continued to protest.
+
+Miss Mabel Vernon of Delaware, beloved and gifted crusader, was the
+first member of the Woman’s Party to commit a “militant” act. President
+Wilson, speaking at the dedication services of the Labor Temple in
+Washington, was declaring his interest in all classes and all
+struggles. He was proclaiming his beliefs in the abstractions of
+liberty and justice, when Miss Vernon, who was seated on the platform
+from which he was speaking, said in her powerful voice, “Mr. President,
+if you sincerely desire to forward the interests of all the people, why
+do you oppose the national enfranchisement of, women?” Instant
+consternation arose, but the idea had penetrated to the farthest corner
+of the huge assembly that women were protesting to the President
+against the denial of their liberty.
+
+The President found time to answer, “That is one of the things which we
+will have to take counsel over later,” and resumed his speech. Miss
+Vernon repeated her question later and was ordered from the meeting by
+the police.
+
+As the summer wore on, women realized that they would have to enter the
+national contest in the autumn. Attention was focussed on the two rival
+presidential candidates, Woodrow Wilson and Charles Evans Hughes, the
+Republican nominee, upon whom the new Woman’s Party worked diligently
+for prompt statements of their position on the national amendment.
+
+The next political result of the new solidarity of women was Mr.
+Hughes’ declaration on August 1st, 1916: “My view is that the proposed
+amendment should be submitted and ratified and the subject removed from
+political discussion.”
+
+The Democratic Congress adjourned without even report ing the measure
+to that body for a vote, and went forthwith to the country to ask
+reelection.
+
+We also went to the country. We went to the women voters to lay before
+them again the Democratic Party’s record—now complete through one
+Administration. We asked women voters again to withhold their support
+nationally from President Wilson and his party.
+
+The President accepted at once the opportunity to speak before a
+convention of suffragists at Atlantic City in an effort to prove his
+great belief in suffrage. He said poetically, “The tide is rising to
+meet the moon . . . . You can afford to wait” Whatever we may have
+thought of his figure of speech, we disagreed with his conclusion.
+
+The campaign on, Democratic speakers throughout the West found an
+unexpected organized force among women, demanding an explanation of the
+past conduct of the Democratic Party and insisting on an immediate
+declaration by the President in favor of the amendment. Democratic
+orators did their utmost to meet this opposition. “Give the President
+time. He can’t do everything at once.” “Trust him once more; he will do
+it for you next term.” “He kept us out of war. He is the best friend
+the mothers of the nation ever had” “He stood by you. Now you women
+stand by him.” “What good will votes do you if the Germans come over
+here and take your country?” And so on. Enticing doctrine to women—the
+peace lovers of the human race.
+
+Although we entered this contest with more strength than we had had in
+1914, with a budget five times as large and with piled-up evidence of
+Democratic hostility, we could rot have entered a more difficult
+contest. The people were excited to an almost unprecedented pitch over
+the issue of peace versus war. In spite of the difficulty of competing
+with this emotional issue which meant the immediate disposal of
+millions of lives, it was soon evident that the two issues were running
+almost neck and neck in the Western territory.
+
+No less skilled a campaigner than William Jennings Bryan took the stump
+in the West against the Woman’s Party. At least a third of each speech
+was devoted to suffrage. He urged. He exhorted. He apologized. He
+explained. He pleaded. He condemned. Often he was heckled. Often he saw
+huge “VOTE AGAINST WILSON! HE KEPT US OUT OF SUFFRAGE!” banners at the
+doors of his meetings. One woman in Arizona, who, unable longer to
+listen in patience to the glory of “a democracy where only were
+governed those who consented,” interrupted him. He coldly answered,
+“Madam, you cannot pick cherries before they are ripe.” By the time he
+got to. California, however, the cherries had ripened considerably, for
+Mr. Bryan came out publicly for the national amendment.
+
+What was true of Mr. Bryan was true of practically every Democratic
+campaigner. Against their wills they were forced to talk about
+suffrage, although they had serenely announced at the opening of the
+campaign that it was “not an issue in this campaign.” Some merely
+apologized and explained. Others, like Dudley Field Malone, spoke for
+the federal amendment, and promised to work to put it through the next
+Congress, “if only you women will stand by Wilson and return him to
+power.”
+
+Space will not permit in this book to give more than a hint of the
+scope and strength of our campaign. If it were possible to give a
+glimpse of the speeches made by men in that campaign, you would agree
+that it was not peace alone that was the dominant issue, but peace and
+suffrage. It must be made perfectly clear that the Woman’s Party did
+not attempt to elect Mr. Hughes. It did not feel strong enough to back
+a candidate in its first battle, and did not conduct its fight
+affirmatively at all. No speeches were made for Mr. Hughes and the
+Republican Party. The appeal was to vote a vote of protest against Mr.
+Wilson and his Congressional candidates, because he and his party had
+had the power to pass the amendment through Congress and had refused to
+do so. That left the women free to choose from among the Republicans,
+Socialists and Prohibitionists. It was to be expected that the main
+strength of the vote taken from Mr. Wilson would go to Mr. Hughes, as
+few women perhaps threw their votes to the minority parties. But just
+as the Progressive Party’s protest had been effective in securing
+progressive legislation without winning the election, so the Woman’s
+Party hoped its protest would bring results in Congress without
+attempting to win the election.
+
+History will never know in round numbers how many women voted against
+the President and his party at this crisis, for there are no records
+kept for men and women separately, except in one state, in Illinois.
+The women there voted two to one against Mr. Wilson and for Mr. Hughes.
+
+Men outnumber women throughout the entire western territory; in some
+states, two and three to one; in Nevada, still higher. But, whereas, in
+the election of 191, President Wilson got 69 electoral votes from the
+suffrage states, in the 1916 election, when the whole West was aflame
+for him because of his peace policy, he got only 57. Enthusiasm for Mr.
+Hughes in the West was not sufficiently marked to account entirely for
+the loss of these 12 electoral votes. Our claim that Democratic
+opposition to suffrage had cost many of them was never seriously
+denied.
+
+The Democratic Judiciary Committee of the House which had refused to
+report suffrage to the House for a vote, had only one Democratic member
+from a suffrage state, Mr. Taggart of Kansas, standing for reelection.
+This was the only spot where women could strike out against the action
+of this committee—and Mr. Taggart. They struck with success. He was
+defeated almost wholly by the women’s votes.
+
+With a modest campaign fund of slightly over fifty thousand dollars,
+raised almost entirely in small sums, the women had forced the campaign
+committee of the Democratic Party to assume the defensive and to
+practically double expenditure and work on this issue. As much
+literature was used on suffrage as on peace in the suffrage states.
+
+Many Democrats although hostile to our campaign said without
+qualification that the Woman’s Party protest was the only factor in the
+campaign which stemmed the western tide toward Wilson, and which
+finally made California the pivotal state and left his election in
+doubt for a week.
+
+Again, with more force, national suffrage had been injected into a
+campaign where it was not wanted, where the leaders had hoped the
+single issue of “peace” would hold the center of the stage. Again many
+women had stood together on this issue and put woman suffrage first.
+And the actual reelection of President Wilson had its point of
+advantage, too, for it enabled us to continue the education of a man in
+power who had already had four years of lively training on the woman
+question.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 3
+The Last Deputation to President Wilson
+
+
+Of the hundreds of women who volunteered for the last Western campaign,
+perhaps the most effective in their appeal were the disfranchised
+Eastern women.
+
+The most dramatic figure of them all was Inez Milholland Boissevain,
+the gallant and beloved crusader who gave her life that the day of
+women’s freedom might be hastened. Her last words to the nation as she
+fell fainting on the platform in California were, “Mr. President, how
+long must women wait for liberty?” Her fiery challenge was never heard
+again. She never recovered from the terrific strain of the campaign
+which had undermined her young strength. Her death touched the heart of
+the nation; her sacrifice, made so generously for liberty, lighted anew
+the fire of rebellion in women, and aroused from inertia thousands
+never before interested in the liberation of their own sex.
+
+Memorial meetings were held throughout the country at which women not
+only paid radiant tribute to Inez Milholland, but reconsecrated
+themselves to the struggle and called again upon the reelected
+President and his Congress to act.
+
+The most impressive of these memorials was held on Christmas Day in
+Washington. In Statuary Hall under the dome of the Capitol—the scene of
+memorial services for Lincoln and Garfield—filled with statues of
+outstanding figures in the struggle for political and religious liberty
+in this country, the first memorial service ever held in the Capitol to
+honor a woman, was held for this gallant young leader.
+
+Boy choristers singing the magnificent hymn
+
+“Forward through the darkness
+Leave behind the night,
+Forward out of error,
+Forward into light”
+
+
+led into the hall the procession of young girl banner-bearers. Garbed
+in simple surplices, carrying their crusading banners high above their
+heads, these comrades of Inez Milholland Boissevain seemed more
+triumphant than sad. They seemed to typify the spirit in which she gave
+her life.
+
+Still other young girls in white held great golden banners flanking the
+laurel-covered dais, from which could be read the inscriptions:
+“Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his
+friend” . . . “Without extinction is liberty; Without retrograde is
+equality” . . . “As He died to make men holy let us die to make men
+free” . . .
+
+From behind the heavy velvet curtains came the music of voices and
+strings, and the great organ sounded its tragic and triumphant tones.
+
+Miss Maud Younger of California was chosen to make the memorial address
+on this occasion. She said in part:
+
+“We are here to pay tribute to Inez Milholland Boissevain, who was our
+comrade. We are here in the nation’s capital, the seat of our
+democracy, to pay tribute to one who gave up her life to realize that
+democracy . . . .
+
+“Inez Milholland walked down the path of life a radiant being. She went
+into work with a song in her heart. She went into battle with a laugh
+on her lips. Obstacles inspired her, discouragement urged her on. She
+loved work and she loved battle. She loved life and laughter and light,
+and above all else she loved liberty. With a loveliness beyond most, a
+kindliness, a beauty of mind and soul, she typified always the best and
+noblest in womanhood. She was the flaming torch that went ahead to
+light the way—the symbol of light and freedom . . .
+
+“Symbol of the woman’s struggle, it was she who carried to the West the
+appeal of the unenfranchised, and carrying it, made her last appeal on
+earth, her last journey in life.
+
+“As she set out upon her last journey, she seems to have had the
+clearer vision, the spiritual quality of one who has already set out
+for another world. With infinite understanding and intense faith in her
+mission, she was as one inspired. Her meetings were described as
+‘revival meetings,’ her audiences as ‘wild with enthusiasm.’ Thousands
+acclaimed her, thousands were turned away unable to enter . . .
+
+“And she made her message very plain.
+
+“She stood for no man, no party. She stood only for woman. And standing
+thus she urged:
+
+“‘It is women for women now and shall be until the fight is won!
+Together we shall stand shoulder to shoulder for the greatest principle
+the world has-ever known, the right of self-government.
+
+“‘Whatever the party that has ignored the claims of women we as women
+must refuse to uphold it. We must refuse to uphold any party until all
+women are free.
+
+“‘We have nothing but our spirits to rely on and the vitality of our
+faith, but spirit is invincible.
+
+“‘It is only for a little while. Soon the fight will be over. Victory
+is in sight.’
+
+“Though she did not live to see that victory, it is sweet to know that
+she lived to see her faith in women justified. In one of her last
+letters she wrote:
+
+“‘Not only did we reckon accurately on women’s loyalty to women, but we
+likewise realized that our appeal touched a certain spiritual,
+idealistic quality in the western woman voter, a quality which is
+yearning to find expression in political life. At the idealism of the
+Woman’s Party her whole nature flames into enthusiasm and her response
+is immediate. She gladly transforms a narrow partisan loyalty into
+loyalty to a principle, the establishment of which carries with it no
+personal advantage to its advocate, but merely the satisfaction of
+achieving one more step toward the emancipation of mankind . . . . We
+are bound to win. There never has been a fight yet where interest was
+pitted against principle that principle did not triumph!’
+
+“ . . The trip was fraught with hardship. Speaking day and night, she
+would take a train at two in the morning to arrive at eight; then a
+train at midnight to arrive at five in the morning. Yet she would not
+change the program; she would not leave anything out . . .
+
+“And so . . . her life went out in glory in the shining cause of
+freedom.
+
+“And as she had lived loving liberty, working for liberty, fighting for
+liberty, so it was that with this word on her lips she fell. ‘How long
+must women wait for liberty?’ she cried and fell-as surely as any
+soldier upon the field of honor—as truly as any who ever gave up his
+life for an ideal.
+
+“As in life she had been the symbol of the woman’s cause so in death
+she is the symbol of its sacrifice. The whole daily sacrifice, the
+pouring out of life and strength that is the toll of woman’s prolonged
+struggle.
+
+“Inez Milholland is one around whom legends will grow up. Generations
+to come will point out Mount Inez and tell of the beautiful woman who
+sleeps her last sleep on its slopes.
+
+“They will tell of her in the West, tell of the vision of loveliness as
+she flashed through on her last burning mission, flashed through to her
+death—a falling star in the western heavens.
+
+“But neither legend nor vision is liberty, which was her life. Liberty
+cannot die. No work for liberty can be lost. It lives on in the hearts
+of the people, in their hopes, their aspira- tions, their activities.
+It becomes part of the life of the nation. What Inez Milholland has
+given to the world lives on forever.
+
+“We are here to-day to pay tribute to Inez Milholland Boissevain, who
+was our comrade. Let our tribute be not words which pass, nor song
+which flies, nor flower which fades. Let it be this: that we finish the
+task she could not finish; that with new strength we take up the
+struggle in which fighting beside us she fell; that with new faith we
+here consecrate ourselves to the cause of woman’s freedom until that
+cause is won; that with new devotion we go forth, inspired by her
+sacrifice, to the end that her sacrifice be not in vain, for dying she
+shall bring to pass that which living she could not achieve—full
+freedom for women, full democracy for the nation.
+
+“Let this be our tribute, imperishable, to Inez Milholland Boissevain.”
+
+Miss Anne Martin of Nevada, chairman of the Woman’s Party, presided
+over the services. Other speakers were Honorable George Sutherland,
+United States Senator from Utah, representing the United States
+Congress; and Honorable Rowland S. Mahany, former member of Congress
+and lifelong friend of the Milholland family.
+
+Mrs. William Kent of California, wife of Representative Kent, presented
+two resolutions which the vast audience approved by silently rising.
+One resolution, a tribute of rare beauty, prepared by Zona Gale, a
+friend of Inez Milholland, was a compelling appeal to all women to
+understand and to reverence the ideals of this inspiring leader. The
+other was an appeal to the Administration for action.
+
+The pageantry of surpliced choristers and the long line of girl
+standard-bearers retired to the strains of the solemn recessional. The
+great audience sat still with bowed heads as the voices in the distance
+dropped in silence. Instantly the strains of the Marseillaise, filling
+the great dome with its stirring and martial song of hope, were taken
+up by the organ and the strings, and the audience was lifted to its
+feet singing as if in anticipation of the triumph of liberty.
+
+The women were in no mood merely to mourn the loss of a comrade-
+leader. The government must be shown again its share of responsibility.
+Another appeal must be made to the President who, growing steadily in
+control over the people and over his Congress, was the one leader
+powerful enough to direct his party to accept this reform. But he was
+busy gathering his power to lead them elsewhere. Again we would have to
+compete with pro-war anti-war sentiment. But it was no time to relax.
+
+Following the holiday season a deputation of over three hundred women
+carried to the White House the Christmas Day memorial for Inez
+Milholland and other memorials from similar services. The President was
+brought face to face with the new protest of women against the
+continued waste of physical and spiritual energy in their battle. There
+is no better way to picture the protest than to give you something
+verbatim from the speeches made that memorable day. This was the first
+meeting of suffragists with the President since the campaign against
+him in the previous autumn. It was only because of the peculiar
+character of the appeal that he consented to hear them.
+
+Miss Younger presented the national memorial to him and introduced Mrs.
+John Winters Brannan, who made no plea to the President but merely gave
+him the New York memorial which read as follows:
+
+“This gathering of men and women, assembled on New Year’s day in New
+York to hold a memorial service in honor of Inez Milholland Boissevain,
+appeals to you, the President of the United States, to end the
+outpouring of life and effort that has been made for the
+enfranchisement of women for more than seventy years in this country.
+The death of this lovely and brave women symbolizes the whole daily
+sacrifice that vast numbers of women have made and are making for the
+sake of political freedom. It has made vivid the ‘constant unnoticed
+tragedy of, this prolonged effort for a freedom that is acknowledged
+just, but still denied.’
+
+“It is not given to all to be put to the supreme test and to accept
+that test with such gallant gladness as she did. The struggle, however,
+has reached the point where it requires such intensity of
+effort—relentless and sustained—over the whole vast country, that the
+health of thousands of noble women is being insidiously undermined. If
+this continues, and it will continue until victory is won, we know only
+too surely that many women whom the nation can ill spare will follow in
+the footsteps of Inez Milholland.
+
+“We desire to make known to you, Mr. President, our deep sense of wrong
+being inflicted upon women in making them spend their health and
+strength and forcing them to abandon other work that means fuller
+self-expression, in order to win freedom under a government that
+professes to believe in democracy.
+
+“There is only one cause for which it is right to risk health and life.
+No price is too high to pay for liberty. So long as lives of women are
+required, these lives will be given.
+
+“But we beg of you, Mr. President, so to act that this ghastly price
+will not have to be paid. Certainly it is a grim irony that a Republic
+should exact it. Upon you at this moment rests a solemn responsibility;
+for with you it rests to decide whether the life of this brilliant,
+dearly-loved woman whose glorious death we commemorate to-day, shall be
+the last sacrifice of fife demanded of American women in their struggle
+for self-government.
+
+“We ask you with all the fervor and earnestness of our souls to exert
+your power over Congress in behalf of the national enfranchisement of
+women in the same way you have so successfully used it on other
+occasions and for far less important measures.
+
+“We are confident that if the President of the United States decides
+that this act of justice shall be done in the present session of
+Congress, it will be done. We know further that if the President does
+not urge it, it will not be done. . . “
+
+A fraction of a moment of silence follows, but it is long enough to
+feel strongly the emotional state of mind of the President. It plainly
+irritates him to be so plainly spoken to. We are conscious that his
+distant poise on entering is dwindling to petty confusion. There is
+something inordinately cool about the fervor of the women. This too
+irritates him. His irritation only serves to awaken in every woman new
+strength. It is a wonderful experience to feel strength take possession
+of your being in a contest of ideas. No amount of trappings, no amount
+of authority, no number of plainclothes men, nor the glamour of the
+gold-braided attaches, nor the vastness of the great reception hall,
+nor the dazzle of the lighted crystal chandeliers, and above all not
+the mind of your opponent can cut in on your slim, hard strength. You
+are more than invincible. Your mind leaps ahead to the infinite liberty
+of which yours is only a small part. You feel his strength in
+authority, his weakness in vision. He does not follow. He feels sorrow
+for us. He patronizes us. He must temper his irritation at our
+undoubted fanaticism and unreason. We, on the other hand, feel so
+superior to him. Our strength to demand is so much greater than his
+power to withhold. But he does not perceive this.
+
+In the midst of these currents the serene and appealing voice of Sara
+Bard Field came as a temporary relief to the President—but only
+temporary. Shy brought tears to the eyes of the women as she said in
+presenting the California memorial resolutions:
+
+“Mr. President, a year ago I had the honor of calling upon you with a
+similar deputation. At that time we brought from my western country a
+great petition from the voting women urging your assistance in the
+passage of the federal amendment for suffrage. At that time you were
+most gracious to us. You showed yourself to be in line with all the
+progressive leaders by your statement to us that you could change your
+mind and would consider doing so in connection with this amendment. We
+went away that day with hope in our hearts, but neither the hope
+inspired by your friendly words nor the faith we had in you as an
+advocate of democracy kept us from working day and night in the
+interest of our cause.
+
+“Since that day when we came to you, Mr. President, one of our most
+beautiful and beloved comrades, Inez Milholland, has paid the price of
+her life for this cause. The untimely death of a young woman like
+this—a woman for whom the world has such bitter need—has focussed the
+attention of the men and women of the nation on the fearful waste of
+women which this fight for the ballot is entailing. The same maternal
+instinct for the preservation of life—whether it be the physical life
+of a child or the spiritual life of a cause—is sending women into this
+battle for liberty with an urge which gives them no rest night or day.
+Every advance of liberty has demanded its quota of human sacrifice, but
+if I had time I could show you that we have paid in a measure that is
+running over. In the light of Inez Milholland’s death, as we look over
+the long backward trail through which we have sought our political
+liberty, we are asking how long must this struggle go on.
+
+“Mr. President, to the nation more than to women alone is this waste of
+maternal force significant. In industry such a waste of money and
+strength would not be permitted. The modern trend is all toward
+efficiency. Why is such waste permitted in the making of a nation?
+
+“Sometimes I think it must be very hard to be a President, in respect
+to his contacts with people as well as in the great business he must
+perform. The exclusiveness necessary to a great dignitary holds him
+away from that democracy of communion, necessary to a full
+understanding of what the people .are really thinking and desiring. I
+feel that this deputation to-day fails in its mission if, because of
+the dignity of your office and the formality of such an occasion, we
+fail to bring you the throb of woman’s desire for freedom and her
+eagerness to ally herself when once the ballot is in her hand, with all
+those activities to which you, yourself, have dedicated your life.
+Those tasks which this nation has set itself to do are her tasks as
+well as man’s. We women who are here to-day are close to this desire of
+women. We cannot believe that you are our enemy or indifferent to the
+fundamental righteousness of our demand.
+
+“We have come here to you in your powerful office as our helper. We
+have come in the name of justice, in the name of democracy, in the name
+of all women who have fought and died for this cause, and in a peculiar
+way with our hearts bowed in sorrow, in the name of this gallant girl
+who died with the word ‘liberty’ on her lips. We have come asking you
+this day to speak some favorable word to us that we may know that you
+will use your good and great office to end this wasteful struggle of
+women.”
+
+The highest point in the interview had been reached. Before the
+President began his reply, we were aware that the high moment had gone.
+But we listened.
+
+“Ladies, I had not been apprised that you were coming here to make any
+representations that would issue an appeal to me. I had been told that
+you were coming to present memorial resolutions with regard to the very
+remarkable woman whom your cause has lost. I, therefore, am not
+prepared to say anything further than I have said on previous occasions
+of this sort.
+
+“I do not need to tell you where my own convictions and my own personal
+purpose lie, and I need not tell you by what circumscriptions I am
+bound as leader of a party. As the leader of a party my commands come
+from that party and not from private personal convictions.
+
+“My personal action as a citizen, of course, comes from no source but
+my own conviction. and, therefore, my position has been so frequently
+defined, and I hope so candidly defined, and it is so impossible for me
+until the orders of my party are changed, to do anything other than I
+am doing as a party leader, that I think nothing more is necessary to
+be said.
+
+“I do want to say this: I do not see how anybody can fail to observe
+from the utterances of the last campaign that the Democratic Party is
+more inclined than the opposition to assist in this great cause, and it
+has been a matter of surprise to me, and a matter of very great regret
+that so many of those who were heart and soul for this cause seemed so
+greatly to misunderstand arid misinterpret the attitude of parties. In
+this country, as in every other self-governing country, it is really
+through the instrumentality of parties that things can be accomplished.
+They are not accomplished by the individual voice but by concerted
+action, and that action must come only so fast as you can concert it. I
+have done my best and shall continue to do my best to concert it in the
+interest of a cause in which I personally believe.”
+
+Dead silence. The President stands for a brief instant at the end of
+his words as if waiting for some faint stir of approval which does not
+come. He has the baffled air of a dis- appointed actor who has failed
+to “get across.” Then he turns abruptly on his heel and the great doors
+swallow him up. Silently the women file through the corridor and into
+the fresh air.
+
+The women returned to the spacious headquarters across the park all of
+one mind. How little the President knew about women! How he
+underestimated their intelligence and penetration of things political,!
+Was it possible that he really thought these earnest champions of
+liberty would merely carry resolutions of sorrow and regret to the
+President?
+
+But this was not the real irony. How lightly he had shifted the
+responsibility for getting results to his party. With what coldness he
+had bade us “concert opinion,” a thing which he alone could do. That
+was pretty hard to bear, coming as it did when countless forms of
+appeal had been exhausted by which women without sufficient power could
+“concert” anything. The movement was almost at the point of languishing
+so universal was the belief in the nation that suffrage for women was
+inevitable. And yet he and his party remained immovable.
+
+The three hundred women of the memorial deputation became on their
+return to headquarters a spirited protest meeting.
+
+Plans of action in the event the President refused to help had been
+under consideration by Miss Paul and her executive committee for some
+time, but they were now presented for the first time for approval.
+There was never a more dramatic moment at which to ask the women if
+they were ready for drastic action.
+
+Harriot Stanton Blatch, daughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and a
+powerful leader of women, voiced the feeling of the entire body when
+she said, in a ringing call for action:
+
+“We have gone to Congress, we have gone to the President during the
+last four years with great deputations, with small deputations. We have
+shown the interest all over the country in self-government for
+women—something that the President as a great Democrat ought to
+understand and respond to instantly. Yet he tells us to-day that we
+must win his party. He said it was strange that we did not see before
+election that his party was more favorable to us than the Republican
+party. How did it show its favor? How did he show his favor today to
+us? He says we have got to convert his party . . . Why? Never before
+did the Democratic Party lie more in the hands of one man than it lies
+to-day in the hands of President Wilson. Never did the Democratic Party
+have a greater leader, and never was it more susceptible to the wish of
+that leader, than is the Democratic Party of to-day to President
+Wilson. He controls his party, and I don’t think he is too modest to
+know it. He can mould it as he wishes and he has moulded it. He moulded
+it quickly before election in the matter of the eight-hour law. Was
+that in his party platform? He had to crush and force his party to pass
+that measure. Yet he is not willing to lay a finger’s weight on his
+party to-day for half the people of the United States . . . . Yet
+to-day he tells us that we must wait more—and more.
+
+“We can’t organize bigger and more influential deputations. We can’t
+organize bigger processions. We can’t, women, do anything more in that
+line. We have got to take a new departure. We have got to keep the
+question before him all the time. We have got to begin and begin
+immediately.
+
+“Women, it rests with us. We have got to bring to the President,
+individually, day by day, week in and week out, the idea that great
+numbers of women want to be free, wall be free, and want to know what
+he is going to do about it.
+
+“Won’t you come and join us in standing day after day at the gates of
+the White House with banners asking, ‘What will you do, Mr. President,
+for one-half the people of this nation?’ Stand there as
+sentinels—sentinels of liberty, sentinels of self-government—silent
+sentinels. Let us stand beside the gateway where he must pass in and
+out, so that he can never fail to realize that there is a tremendous
+earnestness and insistence back of this measure. Will you not show your
+allegiance today to this ideal of liberty? Will you not be a silent
+sentinel of liberty and self-government?”
+
+Deliberations continued. Details were settled. Three thousand dollars
+was raised in a few minutes among these women, fresh from the
+President’s rebuff. No one suggested waiting until the next
+Presidential campaign. No one even mentioned the fact that time was
+precious, and we could wait no longer. Every one seemed to feel these
+things without troubling to put them into words. Volunteers signed up
+for sentinel duty and the fight was on.
+
+
+
+
+Part III
+Militancy
+
+
+“I will write a song for the President, full of menacing signs,
+And back of it all, millions of discontented eyes.”
+
+
+WALT WHITMAN
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 1
+Picketing a President
+
+
+When all suffrage controversy has died away it will be the little army
+of women with their purple, white and gold banners, going to prison for
+their political freedom, that will be remembered. They dramatized to
+victory the long suffrage fight in America. The challenge of the picket
+line roused the government out of its half-century sleep of
+indifference. It stirred the country to hot controversy. It made
+zealous friends and violent enemies. It produced the sharply-drawn
+contest which forced the surrender of the government in the second
+Administration of President Wilson.
+
+The day following the memorial deputation to the President, January
+10th, 1917, the first line of sentinels, a dozen in number, appeared
+for duty at the White House gates. In retrospect it must seem to the
+most inflexible person a reasonably mild and gentle thing to have done.
+But at the same time it caused a profound stir. Columns of front page
+space in all the newspapers of the country gave more or less
+dispassionate accounts of the main facts. Women carrying banners were
+standing quietly at the White House gates “picketing” the President;
+women wanted President Wilson to put his power behind the suffrage
+amendment in Congress. That did not seem so shocking and only a few
+editors broke out into hot condemnation.
+
+When, however, the women went back on the picket line the next day and
+the next and the next, it began to dawn upon the excited press that
+such persistence was “undesirable” . . . “unwomanly” …“dangerous.”
+Gradually the people most hostile to the idea of suffrage in any form
+marshaled forth the fears which accompany every departure from the
+prescribed path. Partisan Democrats frowned. Partisan Republicans
+chuckled. The rest remained in cautious silence to see how “others”
+would take it. Following the refrain of the press, the protest-chorus
+grew louder.
+
+“Silly women” . . . “unsexed” . . .” pathological” . . . “They must be
+crazy” . . . “Don’t they know anything about politics?” . . . “What can
+Wilson do? He does not have to sign the constitutional amendment.” . .
+. So ran the comment from the wise elderly gentlemen sitting buried in
+their cushioned chairs at the gentlemen’s club across the Park,
+watching eagerly the “shocking,” “shameless” women at the gates of the
+White House. No wonder these gentlemen found the pickets irritating!
+This absorbing topic of conversation, we are told, shattered many an
+otherwise quiet afternoon and broke up many a quiet game. Here were
+American women before their very eyes daring to shock them into having
+to think about liberty. And what was worse—liberty for women. Ah well,
+this could not go on,—this insult to the President. They could with
+impunity condemn him and gossip about his affairs. But that women
+should stand at his gates asking for liberty—that was a sin without
+mitigation.
+
+Disapproval was not confined merely to the gentlemen in their Club. I
+merely mention them as an example, for they were our neighbors, and the
+strain on them day by day, as our beautiful banners floated gaily out
+from our headquarters was, I am told, a heavy one.
+
+Yet, of course, we enjoyed irritating them. Standing on the icy
+pavement on a damp, wintry day in the penetrating cold of a Washington
+winter, knowing that within a stone’s throw of our agony there was a
+greater agony than ours—there was a joy in that!
+
+There were faint rumblings also in Congress, but like so many of its
+feelings they were confined largely to the cloak rooms. Representative
+Emerson of Ohio did demand from the floor of the House that the
+“suffrage guard be withdrawn, as it is an insult to the President,” but
+his protest met with no response whatever from the other members. His
+oratory fell on indifferent ears. And of course there were always those
+in Congress who got a vicarious thrill watching women do in their fight
+what they themselves had not the courage to do in their own. Another
+representative, an anti-suffrage Democrat, inconsiderately called us
+“Iron-jawed angels,” and hoped we would retire. But if by these
+protests these congressmen hoped to arouse their colleagues, they
+failed.
+
+We were standing at the gates of the White House because the American
+Congress had become so supine that it could not or would not act
+without being compelled to act by the President. They knew that if they
+howled at us it would only afford an opportunity to retort—“Very well
+then, if you do not like us at the gates of your leader; if you do not
+want us to ‘insult’ the President, end this agitation by taking the
+matter into your own hands and passing the amendment.” Such a sug-
+gestion would be almost as severe a shock as our picketing. The thought
+of actually initiating legislation left a loyal Demo- cratic follower
+transfixed.
+
+The heavy dignity of the Senate forbade their meddling much in this
+controversy over tactics. Also they were more interested in the
+sporting prospect of our going into the world war. There was no appeal
+to blood-lust in the women’s fight. There were no shining rods of
+steel. There was no martial music. We were not pledging precious lives
+and vast billions in our crusade for liberty. The beginning of our
+fight did indeed seem tiny and frail by the side of the big game of
+war, and so the senators were at first scarcely aware of our presence.
+
+But the intrepid women stood their long vigils, day by day, at the
+White House gates, through biting wind and driving rain, through sleet
+and snow as well as sunshine, waiting for the President to act. Above
+all the challenges of their banners rang this simple, but insistent
+one:
+
+Mr. President
+How Long Must Women Wait for Liberty?
+
+
+The royal blaze of purple, white and gold-the Party’s tricolored
+banners—made a gorgeous spot of color against the bare, blacklimbed
+trees.
+
+There were all kinds of pickets and so there were all kinds of
+reactions to the experience of picketing. The beautiful lady, who drove
+up in her limousine to do a twenty minute turn on the line, found it
+thrilling, no doubt. The winter tourist who had read about the pickets
+in her home paper thought it would be “so exciting” to hold a banner
+for a few minutes. But there were no illusions in the hearts of the
+women who stood at their posts day in and day out. None of them will
+tell you that they felt exalted, ennobled, exhilarated, possessed of
+any rare and exotic emotion. They were human beings before they were
+pickets. Their reactions were those of any human beings called upon to
+set their teeth doggedly and hang on to an unpleasant job.
+
+“When will that woman come to relieve me? I have stood here an hour and
+a half and my feet are like blocks of ice,” was a more frequent comment
+from picket to picket than “Isn’t it glorious to stand here defiantly
+no matter what the stupid people say about us?”
+
+“I remember the thousand and one engaging things that would come to my
+mind on the picket line. It seemed that anything but standing at a
+President’s gate would be more diverting. But there we stood.
+
+And what were the reflections of a President as he saw the indomitable
+little army at his gates? We can only venture to say from events which
+happened. At first he seemed amused and interested. Perhaps he thought
+it a trifling incident staged by a minority of the extreme “left” among
+suffragists and anticipated no popular support for it. When he saw
+their persistence through a cruel winnter his sympathy was touched. He
+ordered the guards to invite them in for a cup of hot coffee, which
+they declined. He raised his hat to them as he drove through the line.
+Sometimes he smiled. As yet he was not irritated. He was fortified in
+his national power.
+
+With the country’s entrance into the war and his immediate elevation to
+world leadership, the pickets began to be a serious thorn in his flesh.
+His own statements of faith in democracy and the necessity for
+establishing it .throughout the world left him open to attack. His
+refusal to pay the just bill owed the women and demanded by them
+brought irritation.
+
+What would you do if you owed a just bill and every day some one stood
+outside your gates as a quiet reminder to the whole world that you had
+not paid it?
+
+You would object. You would get terribly irritated. You would call the
+insistent one all kinds of harsh names. You might even arrest him. But
+the scandal would be out.
+
+Rightly or wrongly, your sincerity would be touched; faith in you would
+be shaken a bit. Perhaps even against your will you would yield.
+
+But you would yield. And that was the one important fact to the women.
+
+This daily sight, inspiring, gallant and impressive, escaped no visitor
+to the national capital. Distinguished visitors from the far corners of
+the earth passed by the pickets on those days which made history.
+Thousands read the compelling messages on the banners, and literally
+hundreds of thousands learned the story, when the visitors got “back
+home.”
+
+Real displeasure over the sentinels by those who passed was negligible.
+There was some mirth and joking, but the vast majority were filled with
+admiration, either silent or expressed.
+
+“Keep it up.” . . . “You are on the right track.” . . .
+“Congratulations.” . . . “I certainly admire your pluck—stick to it and
+you will get it.” . . . This last from a military officer . . . . “It
+is an outrage that you women should have to stand here and beg for your
+rights. We gave it to our women in Australia long ago:” . . . This from
+a charming gentleman who bowed approvingly.
+
+Often a lifted hat was held in sincere reverence over the heart as some
+courteous gentleman passed along the picket line. Of course there were
+some who came to try to argue with the pickets; who attempted to
+dissuade them from their persistent course. But the serene, good humor
+and even temper of the women would not allow heated arguments to break
+in on the military precision of their line. If a question was asked, a
+picket would answer quietly. An occasional sneer was easy to meet. That
+required no acknowledgment.
+
+A sweet old veteran of the Civil War said to one of my comrades: “Yous
+all right; you gotta fight for your rights in this world, and now that
+we are about to plunge into another war, I want to tell you women
+there’ll be no end to it unless you women get power. We can’t save
+ourselves and we need you . . . . I am 84 years old, and I have watched
+this fight since I was a young man. Anything I can do to help, I want
+to do. I am living at the Old Soldiers’ Home and I ain’t got mach
+money, but here’s something for your campaign. It’s all I got, and God
+bless you, you’ve gotta win.” He spoke the last sentence almost with
+desperation as he shoved a crumpled $2.00 bill into her hand. His
+spirit made it a precious gift.
+
+Cabinet members passed and repassed. Congressmen by the hundreds came
+and went. Administration leaders tried to conceal under an. artificial
+indifference their sensitiveness to our strategy.
+
+And domestic battles were going on inside the homes throughout the
+country, for women were coming from every state in the Union, to take
+their place on the line. For the first time good “suffrage-husbands”
+were made uncomfortable. Had they not always believed in suffrage? Had
+they not always been uncomplaining when their wife’s time was given to
+suffrage campaigning? Had they not, in short, been good sports about
+the whole thing? There was only one answer. They had. But it had been
+proved that all the things that women had done and all the things in
+which their menfolk had cooperated, were not enough. Women were called
+upon for more intensive action. “You cannot go to Washington and risk
+your health standing in front of the White House. I cannot have it.”
+
+“But the time has come when we have to take risks of health or anything
+else.”
+
+“Well, then, if you must know, I don’t believe in it. Now I am a
+reasonable man and I have stood by you all the way up to now, but I
+object to this. It isn’t ladylike, and it will do the cause more harm
+than good. You women lay yourselves open to ridicule.”
+
+“That’s just it—that’s a fine beginning. As soon as men get tired
+laughing at us, they will do something more about it. They won’t find
+our campaign so amusing before long.”
+
+“But I protest. You’ve no right to go without considering me.”
+
+“But if your country called you in a fight for democracy, as it is
+likely to do at any moment, you’d go, wouldn’t you?”
+
+“Why, of course.”
+
+“Of course you would. You would go to the front and leave me to
+struggle on as best I could without you. That is the way you would
+respond to your country’s call, whether it was a righteous cause or
+not. Well, I am going to the front too. I am going to answer the
+women’s call to fight for democracy. I would be ashamed of myself if I
+were not willing to join my comrades. I am sorry that you object, but
+if you will just put yourself in my place you will see that I cannot do
+otherwise.”
+
+It must be recorded that there were exceptional men of sensitive
+imaginations who urged women against their own hesitancy. They are the
+handful who gave women a hope that they would not always have to
+struggle alone for their liberation. And women passed by the daily
+picket line as spectators, not as participants. Occasionally a woman
+came forward to remonstrate, but more often women were either too shy
+to advance or so enthusiastic that nothing could restrain them. The
+more kind-hearted of them, inspired by the dauntless pickets in the
+midst of a now freezing temperature, brought mittens, fur pieces,
+golashes, wool -lined raincoats: hot bricks to stand on, coffee in
+thermos bottles and what not.
+
+Meanwhile the pickets became a household word in Washington, and very
+soon were the subject of animated conversation in practically every
+corner of the nation. The Press cartoonists, by their friendly and
+satirical comments, helped a great deal in popularizing the campaign.
+In spite of the bitter editorial comment of most of the press, the
+humor of the situation had an almost universal appeal.
+
+At the Washington dinner of the Gridiron Club, probably the best known
+press club in the world,—a dinner at which President Wilson was a
+guest,—one of the songs sung for his benefit was as follows:
+
+“We’re camping to-night on the White House grounds
+Give us a rousing cheer;
+Our golden flag we hold aloft, of cops we have no fear.
+Many of the pickets are weary to-night,
+Wishing for the war to cease; many are the chilblains and frost- bites
+too;
+It is no life of ease.
+Camping to-night, camping to-night,
+Camping on the White House grounds.”
+
+
+The White House police on duty at the gates came to treat the picketers
+as comrades.
+
+“I was kinds worried,” confessed one burly officer when the pickets
+were five minutes late one day. “We thought perhaps you weren’t coming
+and we world have to hold down this place alone.”
+
+The bitter-enders among the opponents of suffrage broke into such
+violent criticism that they won new friends to the amendment.
+
+People who had never before thought of suffrage for women had to think
+of it, if only to the extent of objecting to the way in which we asked
+for it. People who had thought a little about suffrage were compelled
+to think more about it. People who had believed in suffrage all their
+lives, but had never done a, stroke of work for it, began to make
+speeches about it, if only for the purpose of condemning us.
+
+Some politicians who had voted for it when there were not enough votes
+to carry the measure loudly threatened to commit political suicide by
+withdrawing their support. But it was easy to see at a glance that they
+would not dare to run so great a political risk on an issue growing
+daily more important.
+
+As soon as the regular picket line began to be accepted as a matter of
+course, we undertook to touch it up a bit to sustain public interest.
+State days were inaugurated, beginning with Maryland. The other states
+took up the idea with enthusiasm. There was a College Day, when women
+representing 15 American colleges stood on the line; a Teachers’ Day,
+which found the long line represented by almost every state in the
+Union, and a Patriotic Day, when American flags mingled with the
+party’s banners carried by representatives of the Women’s Reserve
+Corps, Daughters of the Revolution and other patriotic organizations.
+And there were professional days when women doctors, lawyers and nurses
+joined the picket appeal.
+
+Lincoln’s birthday anniversary saw another new feature. A long line of
+women took out banners bearing the slogans:
+
+LINCOLN STOOD FOR WOMAN SUFFRAGE 60 YEARS AGO.
+MR. PRESIDENT, WHY DO YOU BLOCK THE NATIONAL SUFFRAGE AMENDMENT TO-DAY?
+
+WHY ARE YOU BEHIND LINCOLN?
+
+
+and another:
+
+AFTER THE CIVIL WAR, WOMEN ASKED FOR POLITICAL FREEDOM. THEY WERE TOLD
+TO WAIT—THIS WAS THE NEGRO’S HOUR. IN 1917 AMERICAN WOMEN STILL ASK FOR
+FREEDOM.
+WILL YOU, MR. PRESIDENT, TELL THEM TO WAIT-THAT THIS IS THE PORTO
+RICANS HOUR?[1]
+
+
+[1] President Wilson had just advocated self-government for Porto Rican
+men.
+
+
+A huge labor demonstration on the picket line late in February brought
+women wage earners from office and factory throughout the Eastern
+States.
+
+A special Susan B. Anthony Day on the anniversary of the birth of that
+great pioneer, served to remind. the President who said, “You can
+afford to wait,” that the women had been waiting and fighting for this
+legislation to pass Congress since the year 1878.
+
+More than one person came forward to speak with true religious fervor
+of the memory of the great Susan B. Anthony. Her name is never
+mentioned nor her words quoted without finding such a response.
+
+In the face of heavy snow and rain, dozens of young women stood in
+line, holding special banners made for this occasion. Thousands of men
+and women streaming home from work in the early evening read words of
+hers spoken during the Civil War, so completely applicable to the
+policy of the young banner- bearers at the gates.
+
+WE PRESS OUR DEMAND FOR THE BALLOT AT THIS TIME IN NO NARROW, CAPIOUS
+OR SELFISH SPIRIT, BUT FROM PUREST PATRIOTISM FOR THE HIGHEST GOOD OF
+EVERY CITIZEN, FOR THE SAFETY OF THE REPUBLIC AND A3 A GLORIOUS EXAMPLE
+TO THE NATIONS OF THE EARTH.
+
+
+AT THIS TIME OUR GREATEST NEED IS NOT MEN O$ MONEY, VALIANT GENERALS OR
+BRILLIANT VICTORIES, BUT A CONSISTENT NATIONAL POLICY BASED UPON THE
+PRINCIPLE THAT ALL GOVERNMENTS DERIVE THEIR JUST POWERS FROM THE
+CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED.
+
+
+THE RIGHT OF SELF-GOVERNMENT FOR ONE-HALF OF ITS PEOPLE IS OF FAR MORE
+VITAL CONSEQUENCE TO THE NATION THAN ANY OR ALL OTHER QUESTIONS.
+
+
+During the reunion week of the Daughters and Veterans of the
+Confederacy, the picket line was the center of attraction for the
+sight-seeing veterans and their families. For the first time in history
+the troops of the Confederacy had crossed the Potomac and taken
+possession of the capital city. The streets were lined with often
+tottering but still gallant old men, whitehaired and stooped, wearing
+their faded badges on their gray uniforms, and carrying their tattered
+flags.
+
+It seemed to the young women on picket duty during those days that not
+a single veteran had failed to pay his respects to the pickets. They
+came and came; and some brought back their wives to show them the guard
+at the gates.
+
+One old soldier with tears in his dim eyes came to say, “I’ve done
+sentinel duty in my time. I know what it is . . . And now it’s your
+turn. You young folks have the strength and the courage to keep it up .
+. . . You are going to put it through!”
+
+One sweet old Alabamian came shyly up to one of the pickets and said,
+“I say, Miss, this is the White House, isn’t it?”
+
+Before she could answer, he added: “We went three times around the
+place and I told the boys, the big white house in the center was the
+White House, but they wasn’t believing me and I wasn’t sure, but as
+soon as I saw you girls coming with your flags, to stand here, I said,
+‘This must be the White House. This is sure enough where the President
+lives; here are the pickets with their banners that we read about down
+home.’’ A note of triumph was in his frail voice.
+
+The picket smiled, and thanked him warmly, as he finished with, “You
+are brave girls. You are bound to get him”—pointing his shaking finger
+toward the White House.
+
+President Wilson’s second inauguration was rapidly approaching. Also
+war clouds were gathering with all the increased emotionalism that
+comes at such a crisis. Some additional demonstration of power and
+force must be made before the President’s inauguration and before the
+excitement of our entry into the war should plunge our agitation into
+obscurity. This was the strategic moment to assemble our forces in
+convention in Washington.
+
+Accordingly, the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage and the Woman’s
+Party, that section of the Congressional Union in suffrage states made
+up of women voters, convened in Washington and decided unanimously to
+unite their strength, money and political power in one organization,
+and called it the National Woman’s Party.
+
+The following officers were unanimously elected to direct the
+activities of the new organization: Chairman of the National Woman’s
+Party, Miss Alice Paul, New Jersey; Vice-chairman, Miss Anne Martin,
+Nevada; secretary, Miss Mabel Vernon, Nevada; treasurer, Miss Gertrude
+Crocker, Illinois; executive members, Miss Lucy Burns, Mrs. O. H. P.
+Belmont, Mrs. John Winters Brannan, New York; Mrs. Gilson Gardner,
+Illinois; Mrs. Robert Baker, Washington, D. C.; Mrs. William Kent and
+Miss Maud Younger, California; Mrs. Florence Bayard Hilles, Delaware;
+Mrs. Donald Hooker, Maryland; Mrs. J. A. H. Hopkins, New Jersey; Mrs.
+Lawrence Lewis, Pennsylvania, and Miss Doris Stevens, Nebraska.
+
+The convention came to a close on the eve of inauguration, culminating
+in the dramatic picket line made up of one thousand delegates who
+sought an interview with the President. The purpose of the interview
+was to carry to him the resolutions of the convention, and further
+plead with him to open his second administration with a promise to back
+the amendment.
+
+In our optimism we hoped that this glorified picket-pageant might form
+a climax to our three months of picketing. The President admired
+persistence. He said so. He also said he appreciated the rare tenacity
+shown by our women. Surely “now” he would be convinced! No more
+worrying persistence would be needed ! The combined political strength
+of the western women and the financial strength of the eastern women
+would surely command his respect and entitle us to a hearing.
+
+What actually happened?
+
+It was a day of high wind and stinging, icy rain, that March 4th, 1917,
+when a thousand women, each bearing a banner, struggled against the
+gale to keep their banners erect. It is always impressive to see a
+thousand people march, but the impression was imperishable when these
+thousand women marched in rain-soaked garments, hands bare, gloves
+roughly torn by the sticky varnish from the banner poles and the
+streams of water running down the poles into the palms of their hands.
+It was a sight to impress even the most hardened spectator who had seen
+all the various forms of the suffrage agitation in Washington. For more
+than two hours the women circled the White House—the rain never ceasing
+for an instant—hoping to the last moment that at least their leaders
+would be allowed to take in to the President the resolutions which they
+were carrying.
+
+Long before the appointed hour for the march to start, thousands of
+spectators sheltered by umbrellas and raincoats lined the streets to
+watch the procession. Two bands whose men managed to continue their
+spirited music in spite of the driving rain led the march playing
+“Forward Be Our Watchword”; “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”; “Onward
+Christian Soldiers”; “The Pilgrim’s Chorus” from Tannhäuser; “The
+Coronation March” from Le Prophète, the Russian Hymn and “The
+Marsellaise”
+
+Miss Vida Milholland led the procession carrying her sister’s last
+words, “Mr. President, how long must women wait for liberty?” She was
+followed by Miss Beulah Amidon of North Dakota, who carried the banner
+that the beloved Inez Milholland carried in her first suffrage
+procession in New York. The long line of women fell in behind.
+
+Most extraordinary precautions had been taken about the White House.
+Everything had been done except the important thing. There were almost
+as many police officers as marchers. The Washington force had been
+augmented by a Baltimore contingent and squads of plainclothes men. On
+every fifty feet of curb around the entire White House grounds there
+was a policeman., About the same distance apart on the inside of the
+tall picket-fence which surrounds the grounds were as many more.
+
+We proceeded to the main gate. Locked! I was marshalling at the head of
+the line and so heard first hand what passed between the leaders and
+the guards. Miss Anne, Martin addressed the guard—
+
+“We have come to present some important resolutions to the President of
+the United States.”
+
+“I have orders to keep the gates locked, Ma’am.”
+
+“But there must be some mistake. Surely the President does not mean to
+refuse to see at least . . .”
+
+“Those are my only orders, Ma’am.”
+
+The procession continued on to the second gate on Pennsylvania Avenue.
+Again locked. Before we could address the somewhat nervous policeman
+who stood at the gates, he hastened to say, “You can’t come in here;
+the gates are locked.”
+
+“But it is imperative; we are a thousand women from all States in the
+Union who have come all the way to Washington to see the President and
+lay before him . . .”
+
+“No orders, Ma’am.”
+
+The line made its way to the third and last gate—the gate leading to
+the Executive offices. As we came up to this gate a small army of
+grinning clerks and secretaries manned the windows of the Executive
+offices, evidently amused at the sight of the women struggling in the
+wind and rain to keep their banners intact. Miss Martin, Mrs. William
+Kent of California, Mrs. Florence Bayard Hilles of Delaware, Miss Mary
+Patterson of Ohio, niece of John C. Patterson of Dayton, Mrs. J. A. H.
+Hopkins of New Jersey, Miss Eleanor Barker of Indiana, and Mrs. Mary
+Darrow Weible of North Dakota,—the leaders—stayed at the gate,
+determined to get results from the guard, while the women continued to
+circle the White House.
+
+“Will you not carry a message to the President’s Secretary asking him
+to tell the President that we are here waiting to see him?”
+
+“Can’t do that, Ma’am.”
+
+“Will you then take our cards to the Secretary to the president, merely
+announcing to him that we are here, so that he may send somebody to
+carry in our resolutions?”
+
+Still the guard hesitated. Finally he left the gate and carried the
+message a distance of a few rods into the Executive offices. He had
+scarcely got inside when he rushed back to his post. When we sought to
+ascertain what had happened to the cards—had they been given and what
+the answer was—he quietly confided to us that he had been reprimanded
+for even attempting to bring them in and informed us that the cards
+were still in his pocket. “I have orders to answer no questions and to
+carry no messages. If you have anything to leave here you might take it
+to the entrance below the Executive offices, and-when I go off my beat
+at six o’clock I will leave it as I go by the White House.”
+
+We examined this last entrance suggested. It, did not strike us as the
+proper place to leave an important message for the President.
+
+“What is this entrance used for?” I asked the guard.
+
+“It’s all right, lady. If you’ve got something you’d like to leave,
+leave it with me. It will be safe.”
+
+I retorted that we were not seeking safety for our message, but speed
+in delivery.
+
+The guard continued: “This is the gate where Mrs. Wilson’s clothes and
+other packages are left.”
+
+It struck us as scarcely fitting that we should leave our resolutions
+amongst “Mrs. Wilson’s clothes and other packages,” so we returned to
+the last locked gate to ask the guard if he had any message in the
+meantime for us. He shook his head regretfully.
+
+Meanwhile the women marched and marched, and the rain fell harder and
+as the afternoon wore on the cold seemed almost unendurable.
+
+The white-haired grandmothers in the procession—there were some as old
+as 84—were as energetic as the young girls of 20. What was this
+immediate hardship compared to eternal subjection! Women marched and
+waited—waited and marched, under the sting of the biting elements and
+under the worse sting of the indignities heaped upon them. It was
+impossible to believe that in democratic America they could not see the
+President to lay before him their grievance.
+
+It was only when they saw the Presidential limousine, in the late
+afternoon, roll luxuriously out of the grounds, and through the gates
+down Pennsylvania Avenue, that the weary marchers realized that
+President Wilson had deliberately turned them away unheard!
+
+The car for an instant, as it came through the gates, divided the
+banner-bearers on march. President and Mrs. Wilson looked straight
+ahead as if the long line of purple, white and gold were invisible.
+
+All the women who took part in that march will tell you what was
+burning in their hearts on that dreary day. Even if reasons had been
+offered—and they were not—genuine reasons why the President could not
+see them, it would not have cooled the women’s heat. Their passionate
+resentment went deeper than any reason could possibly have gone.
+
+This one single incident probably did more than any other to make women
+sacrifice themselves. Even something as thin as diplomacy on the part
+of President Wilson might have saved him many restless hours to follow,
+but he did not take the trouble to exercise even that.
+
+The women returned to headquarters and there wrote a letter which was
+dispatched with the resolutions to President Wilson. In a letter to the
+National Woman’s Party, acknowledging the receipt of them, he concluded
+by saying: “May I not once more express my sincere interest in the
+cause of woman suffrage?”
+
+Three months of picketing had not been enough. We must not only
+continue on duty at his gates but also, at the gates of Congress.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 2
+The Suffrage War Policy
+
+
+President Wilson called the War Session of the Sixty-fifth Congress on
+April 2, 1917.
+
+On the opening day of Congress not only were the pickets again on duty
+at the White House, but another picket line was inaugurated at the
+Capitol. Returning senators and congressmen were surprised when greeted
+with great golden banners reading:
+
+RUSSIA AND ENGLAND ARE ENFRANCHISING THEIR WOMEN IN WAR-TIME. HOW LONG
+MUST AMERICAN WOMEN WAIT FOR THEIR LIBERTY
+
+
+The last desperate flurries in the pro-war and anti-war camps were
+focused on the Capitol grounds that day. There swarmed about the
+grounds and through the buildings pacifists from all over the country
+wearing white badges, and advocates of war, wearing the national
+colors. Our sentinels at the Capitol stood strangely silent, and almost
+aloof, strong in their dedication to democracy, while the peace and war
+agitation circled about them.
+
+With lightning speed the President declared that a state of war
+existed. Within a fortnight following, Congress declared war on Germany
+and President Wilson voiced his memorable, “We shall fight for the
+things we have always carried nearest our hearts—for democracy—for the
+right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own
+government.” Inspiring words indeed! The war message concluded with
+still another defense of the fight for political liberty: “To such a
+task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are
+and everything that we have, with the pride of those who know that the
+day has come when America is privileged to spend her blood and her
+might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness and the
+peace which she has treasured. God helping her, she can do no less.”
+
+Now that the United States was actually involved in war, we were face
+to face with the question, which we had considered at the convention
+the previous month, when war was rumored, as to what position we, as an
+organization, should take in this situation.
+
+The atmosphere of that convention had been dramatic in the extreme.
+Most of the delegates assembled had been approached either before going
+to Washington or upon arriving, and urged to use their influence to
+persuade the organization to abandon its work for the freedom of women
+and turn its activities into war channels. Although war was then only
+rumored, the hysterical attitude was already prevalent. Women were
+asked to furl their banners and give up their half century struggle for
+democracy, to forget the liberty that was most precious to their
+hearts.
+
+“The President will turn this Imperialistic war into a crusade for
+democracy.” . . . “Lay aside your own fight and help us crush Germany,
+and you will find yourselves rewarded with a vote out of the nation’s
+gratitude,” were some of the appeals made to our women by government
+officials high and low and by the rank and file of men and women. Never
+in history did a band of women stand together with more sanity and
+greater solidarity than did these 1000 delegates representing thousands
+more throughout the States.
+
+As our official organ, _The Suffragist_, pointed out editorially, in
+its issue of April 21st, 1917: Our membership was made up of women who
+had banded together to secure political freedom for women. We were
+united on no other subject. Some would offer passive resistance to the
+war; others would become devoted followers of a vigorous military
+policy. Between these, every shade of opinion was represented. Each was
+loyal to the ideas which she held for her country. With the character
+of these various ideals, the National Woman’s Party, we maintained, had
+nothing to do. It was concerned only with the effort to obtain for
+women the opportunity to give effective expression, through political
+power, to their ideals, whatever they might be.
+
+The thousand delegates present at the convention, though differing
+widely on the duty of the individual in war, were unanimous in voting
+that in the event of war, the National Woman’s Party, as an
+organization, should continue to work for political liberty for women
+and for that alone, believing as the convention stated in its
+resolutions, that in so doing the organization “serves the highest
+interest of the country.” They were also unanimous in the opinion that
+all service which individuals wished to give to war or peace should be
+given through groups organized for such purposes, and not through the
+Woman’s Party, a body created, according to its constitution, for one
+purpose only—“to secure an amendment to the United States Constitution
+enfranchising women.”
+
+We declared officially through our organ that this held “as the policy
+of the Woman’s Party, whatever turn public events may take.”
+
+Very few days after we were put upon a national war basis it became
+clear that never was there greater need of work for internal freedom in
+the country. Europe, then approaching her third year of war, was
+increasing democracy in the midst of the terrible conflict. In America
+at that very moment women were being told that no attempt at electoral
+reform had any place in the country’s program “until the war is over.”
+The Democrats met in caucus and decided that only “war measures” should
+be included in the legislative program, and announced that no subjects
+would be considered by them, unless the President urged them as war
+measures.
+
+Our task was, from that time on, to make national suffrage a war
+measure.
+
+We at once urged upon the Administration the wisdom of accepting this
+proposed reform as a war measure, and pointed out the difficulty of
+waging a war for democracy abroad while democracy was denied at home.
+But the government was not willing to profit by the experience of its
+Allies in extending suffrage to women, without first offering a
+terrible and brutal resistance.
+
+We must confess that the problem of dramatizing our fight for democracy
+in competition with the drama of a world-war, was most perplexing. Here
+were we, citizens without power and recognition, with the only weapons
+to which a powerless class which does not take up arms can resort. We
+could not and would not fight with men’s weapons. Compare the methods
+women adopted to those men use in the pursuit of democracy,—bayonets,
+machine guns, poison gas, deadly grenades, liquid fire, bombs, armored
+tanks, pistols, barbed wire entanglements, submarines, mines—every
+known scientific device with which to annihilate the enemy!
+
+What did we do?
+
+We continued to fight with our simple, peaceful, almost quaint device
+-a banner. A little more fiery, perhaps; pertinent to the latest
+political controversy, but still only a banner inscribed with militant
+truth!
+
+Just as our political strategy had been to oppose, at elections, the
+party in power which had failed to use its power to free women, so now
+our military strategy was based on the military doctrine of
+concentrating all one’s forces on the enemy’s weakest point. To women
+the weakest point in the Administration’s political lines during the
+war was the inconsistency between a crusade for world democracy and the
+denial of democracy at home. This was the untenable position of
+President Wilson and the Democratic Administration, from which we must
+force them to retreat. We could force such a retreat when we had
+exposed to the world this weakest point.
+
+Just as the bluff of a democratic crusade must be called, so must the
+knight-leader of the crusade be exposed to the critical eyes of the
+world. Here was the President, suddenly elevated to the position of a
+world leader with the almost pathetic trust of the peoples of the
+world. Here was the champion of their democratic aspirations. Here was
+a kind of universal Moses, expected to lead all peoples out of
+bondage—no matter what the bondage, no matter of how long standing.
+
+The President’s elevation to this unique pinnacle of power was at once
+an advantage and a disadvantage to us. It was an advantage to us in
+that it made our attack more dramatic. One supposed to be impeccable
+was more vulnerable. It was a disadvantage to have to overcome this
+universal trust and world-wide popularity. But this conflict of wits
+and brains against power only enhanced our ingenuity.
+
+On the day the English mission headed by Mr. Balfour, and the French
+mission headed by M. Viviani, visited the White House, we took these
+inscriptions to the picket line:
+
+WE SHALL FIGHT FOR THE THINGS WE HAVE ALWAYS CARRIED NEAREST OUR HEARTS
+DEMOCRACY SHOULD BEGIN AT HOME
+WE DEMAND JUSTICE AND SELF-GOVERNMENT IN OUR OWN LAND
+
+
+Embarrassing to say these things before foreign visitors? We hoped it
+would be. In our capacity to embarrass Mr. Wilson in his
+Administration, lay our only hope of success. We had to keep before the
+country the flagrant inconsistency of the President’s position. We
+intended to know why, if democracy were so precious as to demand the
+nation’s blood and treasure for its achievement abroad, its execution
+at home was so undesirable.
+
+Meanwhile:—
+
+“I tell you solemnly, ladies and gentlemen, we cannot any longer
+postpone justice in these United States”—President Wilson.
+
+“I don’t wish to sit down and let any man take care of me without my at
+least having a voice in it, and if he doesn’t listen to my advice, I am
+going to make it as unpleasant as I can.”—President Wilson,—and other
+challenges were carried on banners to the picket line.
+
+Some rumblings of political action began to be heard. The Democratic
+majority had appointed a Senate Committee on Woman Suffrage whose
+members were overwhelmingly for federal action. The chairman, Senator
+Andreas Jones of New Mexico, promised an early report to the Senate.
+There were scores of gains in Congress. Representatives and Senators
+were tumbling over each other to introduce similar suffrage
+resolutions. We actually had difficulty in choosing the man whose name
+should stamp our measure.
+
+A minority party also was moved to act. Members of the Progressive
+Party met in convention in St. Louis on April 12, 13 and 14 and adopted
+a suffrage plank which demanded “the nation- wide enfranchisement of
+women . . . .”
+
+In addition to this plank they adopted a resolution calling for the
+establishment of democracy at home “at a time when the United States is
+entering into an international war for democracy” and instructing the
+chairman of the convention “to request a committee consisting of
+representatives of all liberal groups to go to Washington to present to
+the President and the Congress of the United States a demand for
+immediate submission of an amendment to the United States constitution
+enfranchising women.”
+
+They appointed a committee from the convention to carry these
+resolutions to the President. The committee included Mr. J. A. H.
+Hopkins of the Progressive Party, as chairman; Dr. E. A. Rumley of the
+Progressive-Republican Party and Vice President of the New York Evening
+Mail; Mr. John Spargo of the Socialist Party; Mr. Virgil Hinshaw,
+chairman of the Executive Committee of the Prohibition Party; and Miss
+Mabel Vernon, Secretary of the National Woman’s Party. It was the first
+suffrage conference with the President after the declaration of war,
+and was the last deputation on suffrage by minority party leaders. The
+conference was one of the utmost informality and friendliness.
+
+The President was deeply moved, indeed, almost to the point of tears,
+when Miss Mabel Vernon said, “Mr. President, the feelings of many women
+in this country are best expressed by your own words in your war
+message to Congress . . . . To every woman who reads that message must
+come at once this question: If the right of those who submit to
+authority to have a voice in their own government is so sacred a cause
+to foreign people as to constitute the reason for our entering the
+international war in its defense, will you not, Mr. President, give
+immediate aid to the measure before Congress demanding self-government
+for the women of this country?”
+
+The President admitted that suffrage was constantly pressing upon his
+mind for reconsideration. He added, however, that the program for the
+session was practically complete and intimated that it did not include
+the enfranchisement of women.
+
+He informed the Committee that he had written a letter to Mr. Pou,
+Chairman of the Rules Committee of the House, expressing himself as
+favoring the creation of a Woman Suffrage Committee in that body. While
+we had no objection to having the House create a Suffrage Committee, we
+were not primarily interested in the amplification of Congressional
+machinery, unless this amplification was to be followed by the passage
+of the amendment. The President could as easily have written the Senate
+Committee on Suffrage or the Judiciary Committee of the House, advising
+an immediate report on the suffrage resolution, as have asked for the
+creation of another committee to report on the subject.
+
+He made no mention of his state-by-state conviction, however, as he had
+in previous interviews, and the Committee of Progressives understood
+him to have at least tacitly accepted federal action.
+
+The House Judiciary Committee continued to refuse to act and the House
+Rules Committee steadily refused to create a Suffrage Committee.
+
+Hoping to win back to the fold the wandering Progressives who had thus
+demonstrated their allegiance to suffrage and seeing an opportunity to
+embarrass the Administration, the, Republicans began to interest
+themselves in action on the amendment. In the midst of Democratic
+delays, Representative James R. Mann, Republican leader of the House,
+moved to discharge the Judiciary Committee from further consideration
+of the suffrage amendment. No matter if the discussion which followed
+did revolve about the authorization of an expenditure of $10,000 for
+the erection of a monument to a dead President as a legitimate war
+measure. It was clear from the partisan attitude of those who took part
+in the debate that we were advancing to that position where we were as
+good political material to be contested over by opposing political
+groups as was a monument to a dead President. And if the Democrats
+could defend such an issue as a war measure, the Republicans wanted to
+know why they should ignore suffrage for women as a war measure. And it
+was encouraging to find ourselves thus suddenly and spontaneously
+sponsored by the Republican leader.
+
+The Administration was aroused. It did not know how far the Republicans
+were prepared to go in their drive for action, so on the day of this
+flurry in the House the snail-like Rules Committee suddenly met in
+answer to the call of its chairman, Mr. Pou, and by a vote of 6 to 5
+decided to report favorably on the resolution providing for a Woman
+Suffrage Committee in the House “after all pending war measures have
+been disposed of.”
+
+Before the meeting, Mr. Pou made a last appeal to the Woman’s Party to
+remove the pickets . . . . “We can’t possibly win as long as pickets
+guard the White House and Capitol,” Mr. Pou had said. The pickets
+continued their vigil and the motion carried.
+
+Still uncertain as to the purposes of the Republicans, the Democrats
+were moved to further action.
+
+The Executive Committee of the Democratic National Committee, meeting
+in Washington a few days later, voted 4 to 9. to “officially urge upon
+the President that he call the two Houses of Congress together and
+recommend the immediate submission of the Susan B. Anthony amendment.”
+This action which in effect reversed the plank in the Democratic
+platform evidently aroused protests from powerful quarters. Also the
+Republicans quickly subsided when they saw the Democrats making an
+advance. And so the Democratic Executive Committee began to spread
+abroad the news that its act was not really official, but merely
+reflected the “personal conviction” of the members present. It
+extracted the official flavor, and so of course no action followed in
+Congress.
+
+And so it went—like a great game of chess. Doubtless the politicians
+believed they were moved from their own true and noble motives. The
+fact was that the pickets had moved the Democrats a step. The
+Republicans had then attempted to take two steps, whereupon the
+Democrats must continue to move more rapidly than their opponents.
+Behind this matching of political wits by the two parties stood the
+faithful pickets compelling them both to act.
+
+Simultaneously with these moves and counter-moves in political circles,
+the people in all sections of this vast country began to speak their
+minds. Meetings were springing up everywhere, at which resolutions were
+passed backing up the picket line and urging the President and Congress
+to act. Even the South, the Administration’s stronghold, sent fiery
+telegrams demanding action. Alabama, South Carolina, Texas, Maryland,
+Mississippi, as well as the West, Middle West, New England and the
+East—the stream was endless.
+
+Every time a new piece of legislation was passed,—the war tax bill,
+food conservation or what not,—women from unexpected quarters sent to
+the Government their protest against the passage of measures so vital
+to women without women’s consent, coupled with an appeal for the
+liberation of women. Club women, college women, federations of
+labor,—various kinds of organizations sent protests to the
+Administration leaders. The picket line, approaching its sixth month of
+duty, had aroused the country to an unprecedented interest in suffrage;
+it had rallied widespread public support to the amendment as a war
+measure, and had itself become almost univer- sally accepted if not
+universally approved. And in the midst of picketing ands in spite of
+all the prophecies and fears that “picketing” would “set back the
+cause,” within one month, Michigan, Nebraska and Rhode Island granted
+Presidential suffrage to women.
+
+The leaders were busy marshaling their forces behind the President’s
+war program, which included the controversial Conscription and
+Espionage Bills, then pending, and did not relish having our question
+so vivid in the public mind. Even when the rank and file of Congress
+gave consideration to questions not in the war program, they had to
+face a possible charge of inconsistency, insincerity or bad faith. The
+freedom of Ireland, for example, was not in the program. And when 132
+members of the House cabled Lloyd George that nothing would do more for
+American enthusiasm in the war than a settlement of the Irish question,
+we took pains to ascertain the extent of the belief in liberty at home
+of these easy champions of Irish liberty. When we found that of the 132
+men only 5’7 believed in liberty for American women, we were not
+delicate in pointing out to the remaining “(5 that their belief in
+liberty for Ireland would appear more sincere if they believed in a
+democratic reform such as woman suffrage here.
+
+The manifestations of popular approval of suffrage, the constant stream
+of protests to the Administration against its delay nationally, and the
+shame of having women begging at its gates, could result in only one of
+two things. The Administration had little choice. It must yield to this
+pressure from the people or it must suppress the agitation which was
+causing such interest. It must pass the amendment or remove the
+troublesome pickets.
+
+It decided to remove the pickets.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 3
+The First Arrests
+
+
+The Administration chose suppression. They resorted to force in an
+attempt to end picketing. It was a policy doomed to failure as
+certainly as all resorts to force to kill agitation have failed
+ultimately. This marked the beginning of the adoption by the
+Administration of tactics from which they could never extricate
+themselves with honor. Unfortunately for them they were entering upon
+this policy toward women which savored of czarist practices, at the
+very moment they were congratulating the Russians upon their liberation
+from the oppression of a Czar. This fact supplied us with a fresh angle
+of attack.
+
+President Wilson sent a Mission to Russia to add America’s appeal to
+that of the other Allies to keep that impoverished country in the war.
+Such was our-democratic zeal to persuade Russia to continue the war and
+to convince her people of its democratic purposes, and of the
+democratic quality of America, that Elihu Root, one of the President’s
+envoys, stated in Petrograd that he represented a republic where
+“universal, direct, equal and secret suffrage obtained.” We subjected
+the President to attack through this statement.
+
+Russia also sent a war mission to our country for purposes of
+coöperation. This occasion offered us the opportunity again to expose
+the Administration’s weakness in claiming complete political democracy
+while women were still denied their political freedom.
+
+It was a beautiful June day when all Washington was agog with the visit
+of the Russian diplomats to the President. As the car carrying the
+envoys passed swiftly through the gates of the White House there stood
+on the picket line two silent sentinels, Miss Lucy Burns of New York
+and Mrs. Lawrence Lewis of Philadelphia, both members of the National
+Executive Committee, with a great lettered banner which read:
+
+TO THE RUSSIAN ENVOYS
+PRESIDENT WILSON AND ENVOY ROOT ARE DECEIVING RUSSIA WHEN THEY SAY “WE
+ARE A DEMOCRACY, HELP US WIN THE WORLD WAR SO THAT DEMOCRACY MAY
+SURVIVE”
+WE THE WOMEN OF AMERICA TELL YOU THAT AMER ICA IS NOT A DEMOCRACY.
+TWENTY-MILLION AMERI’ CAN WOMEN ARE DENIED THE RIGHT TO VOTE. PRESI
+DENT WILSON IS THE CHIEF OPPONENT OF THEIR NA TIONAL ENFRANCHISEMENT.
+HELP US MAKE THIS NATION REALLY FREE. TELL OUR GOVERNMENT IT MUST
+LIBERATE ITS PEOPLE BEFORE IT CAN CLAIM FREE RUSSIA AS AN ALLY.
+
+
+Rumors that the suffragists would make a special demonstration before
+the Russian Mission had brought a great crowd to the far gate of the
+White House; a crowd composed almost entirely of men.
+
+Like all crowds, this crowd had its share of hoodlums and roughs who
+tried to interfere with the women’s order of the day. There was a
+flurry of excitement over this defiant message of truth, but nothing
+that could not with the utmost ease have been settled by one policeman.
+
+There was the criticism in the press and on the lips of men that we
+were embarrassing our Government before the eyes of foreign visitors.
+In answering the criticism, Miss Paul publicly stated our position
+thus: “The intolerable conditions against which we protest can be
+changed in the twinkling of an eye. The responsibility for our protest
+is, therefore, with the Administration and not with the women of
+America, if the lack of democracy at home weakens the Administration in
+its fight for democracy three thousand miles away.”
+
+This was too dreadful. A flurry at the gates of the Chief of the nation
+at such a time would never do. Our allies in the crusade for democracy
+must not know that we had a day-by-day unrest at home. Something must
+be done to stop this expose at once. Had these women no manners? Had
+they no shame? Was the fundamental weakness in our boast of pure and
+perfect democracy to be so wantonly displayed with impunity?
+
+Of course it was embarrassing. We meant it to be. The truth must be
+told at all costs. This was no time for manners.
+
+Hurried conferences behind closed doors! Summoning of the military to
+discuss declaring a military zone around the White House! Women could
+not advance on drawn bayonets. And if they did . . . What a picture!
+Common decency told the more humane leaders that this would never do. I
+daresay political wisdom crept into the reasoning of others.
+
+Closing the Woman’s Party headquarters was discussed. Perhaps a raid!
+And all for what? Because women were holding banners asking for the
+precious principle at home that men were supposed to be dying for
+abroad.
+
+Finally a decision was reached embodying the combined wisdom of all the
+various conferees. The Chief of Police, Major Pullman, was detailed to
+“request” us to stop “picketing” and to tell us that if we continued to
+picket, we would be arrested._
+
+“We have picketed for six months without interference,” said Miss Paul.
+“Has the law been changed?”
+
+“No,” was the reply, “but you must stop it.”
+
+“But, Major Pullman, we have consulted our lawyers and know we have a
+legal right to picket.”
+
+“I warn you, you will be arrested if you attempt to picket again.”
+
+The following day Miss Lucy Burns and Miss Katherine Morey of Boston
+carried to the White House gates “We shall fight for the things we have
+always held nearest our hearts, for democracy, for the right of those
+who submit to authority to have a voice in their own government,” and
+were arrested.
+
+News had spread through the city that the pickets were to be arrested.
+A moderately large crowd had gathered to see the “fun.” One has only to
+come into conflict with prevailing authority, whether rightly or
+wrongly, to find friendly hosts vanishing with lightning speed. To know
+that we were no longer wanted at the gates of the White House and that
+the police were no longer our “friends” was enough for the mob mind.
+
+Some members of the crowd made sport of the women. Others hurled cheap
+and childish epithets at them. Small boys were allowed to capture
+souvenirs, shreds of the banners torn from non-resistant women, as
+trophies of the sport.
+
+Thinking they had been mistaken in believing the pickets were to be
+arrested, and having grown weary of their strenuous sport, the crowd
+moved on its way. Two solitary figures remained, standing on the
+sidewalk, flanked by the vast Pennsylvania Avenue, looking quite
+abandoned and alone, when suddenly without any warrant in law, they
+were arrested on a completely deserted avenue.
+
+Miss Burns and Miss Morey upon arriving at the police station,
+insisted, to the great surprise of all the officials, upon knowing the
+charge against them. Major Pullman and his entire staff were utterly at
+a loss to know what to answer. The Administration had looked ahead only
+as far as threatening arrest. They doubtless thought this was all they
+would have to do. People could not be arrested for picketing. Picketing
+is a guaranteed right under the Clayton Act of Congress. Disorderly
+conduct? There had been no disorderly I conduct. Inciting to riot?
+Impossible! The women had stood as silent sentinels holding the
+President’s own eloquent words.
+
+Doors opened and closed mysteriously. Officials and subofficials passed
+hurriedly to and fro. Whispered conversations were heard. The book on
+rules and regulations was hopefully thumbed. Hours passed. Finally the
+two prisoners were pompously told that they had “obstructed the
+traffic” on Pennsylvania Avenue, were dismissed on their own
+recognizance, and never brought to trial.
+
+The following day, June 23rd, more arrests were made; two women at the
+White House, two at the Capitol. All carried banners with the same
+words of the President. There was no hesitation this time. They were
+promptly arrested for “obstructing the traffic.” They, too, were
+dismissed and their cases never tried. It seemed clear that the
+Administration hoped to suppress picketing merely by arrests. When.
+however. women continued to picket in the face of arrest, the
+Administration quickened its advance into the venture of suppression.
+It decided to bring the offenders to trial.
+
+On June 26, six American women were tried, judged guilty on the
+technical charge of “obstructing the traffic,” warned by the court of
+their “unpatriotic, almost treasonable behavior,” and sentenced to pay
+a fine of twenty-five dollars or serve three days in jail.
+
+“Not a dollar of your fine will we pay,” was the answer of the women.
+“To pay a fine would be an admission of guilt. We are innocent.”
+
+The six women who were privileged to serve the first terms of
+imprisonment for suffrage in this country, were Miss Katherine Morey of
+Massachusetts, Mrs. Annie Arneil and Miss Mabel Vernon of Delaware,
+Miss Lavinia Dock of Pennsylvania, Miss Maud Jamison of Virginia, and
+Miss Virginia Arnold of North Carolina. “Privileged” in spite of the
+foul air, the rats, and the mutterings of their strange comrades in
+jail!
+
+
+Independence Day, July 4, 1917, is the occasion for two demonstrations
+in the name of liberty. Champ Clark, late Democratic speaker of the
+House, is declaiming to a cheering crowd behind the White House,
+“Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the
+governed.” In front of the White House thirteen silent sentinels with
+banners bearing the same words, are arrested. It would have been
+exceedingly droll if it had not been so tragic. Champ Clark and his
+throng were not molested. The women with practically a deserted street
+were arrested and served jail terms for “obstructing traffic.”
+
+The trial of this group was delayed to give the jail authorities time
+to “vacate and tidy up,” as one prisoner confided to Miss Joy Young. It
+developed that “orders” had been received at the jail immediately after
+the arrests and before the trial, “to make ready for the suffragettes.”
+What did it matter that their case had not yet been heard? To jail they
+must go.
+
+Was not the judge who tried and sentenced them a direct appointee of
+President Wilson? Were not the District Commissioners who gave orders
+to prepare the cells the direct appointees of President Wilson? And was
+not the Chief of Police of the District of Columbia a direct appointee
+of these same commissioners? And was not the jail warden who made life
+for the women so unbearable in prison also a direct appointee of the
+commissioners?
+
+It was all a merry little ring and its cavalier attitude toward the
+law, toward justice, and above all toward women was of no importance.
+The world was on fire with a grand blaze. This tiny flame would
+scarcely be visible. No one would notice a few “mad” women thrown into
+jail. And if the world should find it out, doubtless public opinion
+would agree that the women ought to stay there. And even if it should
+not agree, this little matter could all be explained away before
+another election.
+
+Meanwhile the President could proclaim through official channels his
+disinterestedness. Observe the document, of which I give the substance,
+which he caused or allowed to be published at this time, through his
+Committee on Public Information.
+
+“OFFICIAL BULLETIN”
+
+
+“Published Daily under order of the President of the United States, by
+the Committee on Public Information.
+
+GEORGE CREEL, Chairman.
+
+
+“Furnished without charge to all newspapers, post offices, government
+officials and agencies of a public character for the dissemination of
+official news of the United States Government.”
+
+
+“Washington, July 3, 1917. No. 46-Vol. i.”
+
+
+There follows a long editorial[1] which laments the public attention
+which has centered on the militant campaign, appeals to editors and
+reporters not to “encourage” us in our peculiar conduct by printing
+defies to the President of the United States even when “flaunted on a
+pretty little purple and gold banner” and exhorts the public to control
+its thrills. The official bulletin concludes with:
+
+“It is a fact that there remains in America one man who has known
+exactly the right attitude to take and maintain toward the pickets. A
+whimsical smile, slightly puckered at the roots by a sense of the
+ridiculous, a polite bow—and for the rest a complete ignoring of their
+existence. He happens to be the man around whom the little whirlwind
+whirls—the President of the United States.” And finally with an
+admonition that “the rest’ of the country … take example from him in
+its emotional reaction to the picket question.”
+
+[1] From the Woman Citizen.
+
+
+The Administration pinned its faith on jail—that institution of
+convenience to the oppressor when he is strong in power and his weapons
+are effective. When the oppressor miscalculates the strength of the
+oppressed, jail loses its convenience.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 4
+Occoquan Workhouse
+
+
+It is Bastille Day, July fourteenth. Inspiring scenes and tragic
+sacrifices for liberty come to our minds. Sixteen women march in single
+file to take their own “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” to the White
+House gates. It is the middle of a hot afternoon. A thin line of
+curious spectators is seen in the park opposite the suffrage
+headquarters. The police assemble from obscure spots; some afoot,
+others on bicycles. They close in on the women and follow them to the
+gates.
+
+The proud banner is scarcely at the gates when the leader is placed
+under arrest. Her place is taken by another. She is taken. Another, and
+still another steps into the breach and is arrested.
+
+Meanwhile the crowd grows, attracted to the spot by the presence of the
+police and the patrol wagon. Applause is heard. There are cries of
+“shame” for the police, who, I must say, did not always act as if they
+relished carrying out what they termed “orders from higher up.” An
+occasional hoot from a small boy served to make the mood of the hostile
+ones a bit gayer. But for the most part an intense silence fell upon
+the watchers, as they saw not only younger women, but whitehaired
+grandmothers hoisted before the public gaze into the crowded patrol,
+their heads erect, their eyes a little moist and their frail hands
+holding tightly to the banner until wrested from them by superior brute
+force.
+
+This is the first time most of the women have ever seen a police
+station, and they are interested in, their surroundings. They are not
+interested in helping the panting policeman count them over and
+identify them. Who arrested whom? That becomes the gigantic question.
+
+“Will the ladies please tell which officer arrested them?”
+
+They will not. They do not intend to be a party to this outrage.
+Finally the officers abandon their attempt at identification. They have
+the names of the arrestees and will accept bail for their appearance
+Monday.
+
+“Well girls, I’ve never seen but one other court in my life and that
+was the Court of St. James. But I must say they are not very much
+alike,” was the cheery comment of Mrs. Florence Bayard Hilles,[1] as we
+entered the court room on Monday.
+
+[1] Mrs. Hilles is the daughter of the late Thomas Bayard, formerly
+America’s ambassador to Great Britain, and Secretary of State in
+President Cleveland’s cabinet.
+
+
+The stuffy court room is packed to overflowing. The fat, one-eyed
+bailiff is perspiring to no purpose. He cannot make the throng “sit
+down.” In fact every one who has anything to do with the pickets
+perspires to no purpose. Judge Mullowny takes his seat, looking at once
+grotesque and menacing on his red throne.
+
+“Silence in the court room,” from the sinister-eyed bailiff. And a
+silence. follows so heavy that it can be heard.
+
+Saturday night’s both black and white—are tried first. The suffrage
+prisoners strain their ears to hear the pitiful pleas of these
+unfortunates, most of whom come to the bar without counsel or friend.
+Scraps of evidence are heard.
+
+JUDGE: “You say you were not quarreling, Lottie?”
+
+LOTTIE: “I sho’ do yo’ hono’. We wuz jes singin’—we wuz sho’ nuf, sah.”
+
+JUDGE: “Singing, Lottie? Why your neighbors here testify to the fact
+that you were making a great deal of noise—so much that they could not
+sleep.”
+
+LOTTIE: “I tells yo’ honor’ we wuz jes singin’ lak we allays do.”
+
+JUDGE : “What were you singing?”
+
+LOTTIE: “Why, hymns, sah.”
+
+The judge smiles cynically.
+
+A neatly-attired white man with a wizened face again takes the stand
+against Lottie. Hymns or no hymns he could not sleep. The judge
+pronounces a sentence of “six months in the workhouse,” for Lottie.
+
+And so it goes on.
+
+The suffrage prisoners are the main business of the morning. Sixteen
+women come inside the railing which separates “tried” from “untried”
+and take their seats.
+
+“Do the ladies wish the government to provide them with counsel?”
+
+They do not.
+
+“We shall speak in our own behalf. We feel that we can best represent
+ourselves,” we announce. Miss Anne Martin and I act as attorneys for
+the group.
+
+The same panting policemen who could not identify the people they had
+arrested give their stereotyped, false and illiterate testimony. The
+judge helps them over the hard places and so does the government’s
+attorney. They stumble to an embarrassed finish and retire.
+
+An aged government clerk, grown infirm in the service, takes the stand
+and the government attorney proves through him that there is a White
+House; that it has a side-walk in front of it, and a pavement, and a
+hundred other overwhelming facts. The pathetic clerk shakes his dusty
+frame and slinks off the stand. The prosecuting attorney now
+elaborately proves that we walked, that we carried banners, that we
+were arrested by the aforesaid officers while attempting to hold our
+banners at the White House gates.
+
+Each woman speaks briefly in her own defense. She denounces the
+government’s policy with hot defiance. The blame is placed squarely at
+the door of the Administration, and in unmistakable terms. Miss Anne
+Martin opens for the defense:
+
+“This is what we are doing with our banners before the White House,
+petitioning the most powerful representative of the government, the
+President of the United States, for a redress of grievances; we are
+asking him to use his great power to secure the passage of the national
+suffrage amendment.
+
+“As long as the government and the representatives of the government
+prefer to send women to jail on petty and technical charges, we will go
+to jail. Persecution has always advanced the cause of justice. The
+right of American women to work for democracy must be maintained . . .
+. We would hinder, not help, the whole cause of freedom for women, if
+we weakly submitted to persecution now. Our work for the passage of the
+amendment must go on. It will go on.”
+
+Mrs. John Rogers, Jr., descendant of Roger Sherman, one of the signers
+of the Declaration of Independence, speaks: “We are not guilty of any
+offence, not even of infringing a police regulation. We know full well
+that we stand here because the President of the United States refuses
+to give liberty to American women. We believe, your Honor, that the
+wrong persons are before the bar in this Court . . . .”
+
+“I object, your Honor, to this woman making such a statement here in
+Court,” says the District Attorney.
+
+“We believe the President is the guilty one and that we are innocent.”
+
+“Your Honor, I object,” shouts the Government’s attorney.
+
+The prisoner continues calmly: “There are votes enough and there is
+time enough to pass the national suffrage amendment through Congress at
+this session. More than 200 votes in the House and more than 50 in the
+Senate are pledged to this amendment. The President puts his power
+behind all measures in which he takes a genuine interest. If he will
+say one frank word advocating this measure it will pass as a piece of
+war emergency legislation.”
+
+Mrs. Florence Bayard Hilles speaks in her own defense: “For generations
+the men of my family have given their services to their country. For
+myself, my training from childhood has been with a father who believed
+in democracy and who belonged to the Democratic Party. By inheritance
+and connection I am a Democrat, and to a Democratic President I went
+with my appeal . . . . What a spectacle it must be to the thinking
+people of this country to see us urged to go to war for democracy in a
+foreign land, and to see women thrown into prison who plead for that
+same cause at home.
+
+“I stand here to affirm my innocence of the charge against me. This
+court has not proven that I obstructed traffic. My presence at the
+White House gate was under the constitutional right of petitioning the
+government for freedom or for any other cause. During the months of
+January, February, March, April and May picketing was legal. In June it
+suddenly becomes illegal . . . .
+
+“My services as an American woman are being conscripted by order of the
+President of the United States to help win the world war for democracy
+. . . . ‘for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice
+in their own government.’ I shall continue to plead for the political
+liberty of American women-and especially do I plead to the President,
+since he is the one person who . . . can end the struggles of American
+women to take their proper places in a true democracy.”
+
+There is continuous objection from the prosecutor, eager advice from
+the judge, “you had better keep to the charge of obstructing traffic”
+But round on round of applause comes from the intent audience, whenever
+a defiant note is struck by the prisoners, and in spite of the sharp
+rapping of the gavel confusion reigns. And how utterly puny the
+“charge” is! If it were true that the prisoners actually obstructed the
+traffic, how grotesque that would be. The importance of their demand,
+the purity of their reasoning, the nobility and gentle quality of the
+prisoners at the bar; all conspire to make the charge against them, and
+the attorney who makes it, and the judge who hears it, petty and
+ridiculous.
+
+But justice must proceed.
+
+Mrs. Gilson Gardner of Washington, D. C., a member of the Executive
+Committee of the National Woman’s party, and the wife of Gilson
+Gardner, a well-known Liberal and journalist, speaks:
+
+“It is impossible for me to believe that we were arrested because we
+were obstructing traffic or blocking the public high- way.
+
+“We have been carrying on activities of a distinctly political nature,
+and these political activities have seemingly disturbed certain
+powerful influences. Arrests followed. I submit that these arrests are
+purely political and that the charge of an unlawful assemblage and of
+obstructing traffic is a political subterfuge. Even should I be sent to
+jail which, I could not, your Honor, anticipate, I would be in jail,
+not because I obstructed traffic, but because I have offended
+politically, because I have demanded of this government freedom for
+women.”
+
+It was my task to sum up for the defense. The judge sat bored through
+my statement. “We know and I believe the Court knows also,” I said,
+“that President Wilson and his Administration are responsible for our
+being here to-day. It is a fact that they gave the orders which caused
+our arrest and appearance before this bar.
+
+“We know and you know, that the District Commissioners are appointed by
+the President, that the present commissioners were appointed by
+President Wilson. We know that you, your Honor, were appointed to the
+bench by President Wilson, and that the district attorney who
+prosecutes us was appointed by the President. These various officers
+would not dare bring us here under these false charges without the
+policy having been decided upon by the responsible leaders.
+
+“What is our real crime? What have these distinguished and
+liberty-loving women done to bring them before this court of justice?
+Why, your Honor, their crime is that they peacefully petitioned the
+President of the United States for liberty. What must be the shame of
+our nation before the world when it becomes known that here we throw
+women into jail who love liberty and attempt to peacefully petition the
+President for it? These women are nearly all descended from
+revolutionary ancestors or from some of the greatest libertarian
+statesmen this country has produced. What would these men say now if
+they could see that passion for liberty which was in their own hearts
+rewarded in the twentieth century with foul and filthy imprisonment!
+
+“We say to you, this outrageous policy of stupid and brutal punishment
+will not dampen the ardor of the women. Where sixteen of us face your
+judgment to-day there will be sixty tomorrow, so great will be the
+indignation of our colleagues in this fight.”
+
+The trial came to an end after a tense two days. The packed court-room
+fat in a terrible silence awaiting the judge’s answer.
+
+There were distinguished men present at the trial—men who also fight
+for their ideals. There was Frederic C. Howe, then Commissioner of
+Immigration of the Port of New York, Frank P. Walsh, International
+labor leader, Dudley Field Malone, then Collector of the Port of New
+York, Amos Pinchot, liberal leader, John A. H. Hopkins, then
+liberal-progressive leader in New Jersey who had turned his
+organization to the support of the President and become a member of the
+President’s Campaign Committee, now chairman of the Committee of
+Fortyeight and whose beautiful wife was among the prisoners, Allen
+McCurdy, secretary of the Committee of Forty-eight and many others. One
+and all came forward to protest to us during the adjournment. “This is
+monstrous.” . . . “Never have I seen evidence so disregarded.” . . .
+“This is a tragic farce” . . .
+
+“He will never dare sentence you.”
+
+It was reported to us that the judge used the interim to telephone to
+the District building, where the District Commissioners sit. He
+returned to pronounce, “Sixty days in the workhouse in default of a
+twenty-five dollar fine.”
+
+The shock was swift and certain to all the spectators. We would not of
+course pay the unjust fine imposed, for we were not guilty of any
+offense.
+
+The judge attempted persuasion. “You had better decide to pay your
+fines,” he ventured. And “you will not find jail a pleasant place to
+be.” It was clear that neither he nor his confreres had imagined women
+would accept with equanimity so drastic a sentence. It was now their
+time to be shocked. Here were “ladies”—that was perfectly
+clear—“ladies” of unusual distinction. Surely they would not face the
+humiliation of a workhouse sentence which involved not only
+imprisonment but penal servitude! The Administration was wrong again.
+
+“We protest against this unjust sentence and conviction,” we said, “but
+we prefer the workhouse to the payment of a fine imposed for an offense
+of which we are not guilty.” We filed into the “pen,” to join the other
+prisoners, and wait for the “black maria” to carry us to prison.
+
+
+We are all taken to the District Jail, where we are put through the
+regular catechism: “Were you ever in prison
+before?—Age—birthplace—father—mother—religion and what not?” We are
+then locked up,—two to a cell. What will happen next?
+
+The sleek jailer, whose attempt to be cordial provokes a certain
+distrust, comes to our corridor to “turn us over” to our next
+keeper-the warden of Occoquan. We learn that the workhouse is not
+situated in the District of Columbia but in Virginia.
+
+Other locked wagons with tiny windows up near the driver now take us,
+side by side with drunks and disorderlies, prostitutes and thieves, to
+the Pennsylvania Station. Here we embark for the unknown terrors of the
+workhouse, filing through crowds at the station, driven on by our
+“keeper,” who resembles Simon Legree, with his long stick and his
+pushing and shoving to hurry us along. The crowd is quick to realize
+that we are prisoners, because of our associates. Friends try to bid us
+a last farewell and slip us a sweet or fruit, as we are rushed through
+the iron station gates to the train.
+
+Warden Whittaker is our keeper, thin and old, with a cruel mouth,
+brutal eyes and a sinister birthmark on his temple. He guards very
+anxiously his “dangerous criminals” lest they try to leap out of the
+train to freedom! We chat a little and attempt to relax from the strain
+that we have endured since Saturday. It is now late in the afternoon of
+Tuesday.
+
+The dusk is gathering. It is almost totally dark when we alight at a
+tiny station in what seems to us a wilderness. It is a deserted
+country. Even the gayest member of the party, I am sure, was struck
+with a little terror here.
+
+More locked wagons, blacker than the dusk, awaited us. The prison van
+jolted and bumped along the rocky and hilly road. A cluster of lights
+twinkled beyond the last hill, and we knew that we were coming to our
+temporary summer residence. I can still see the long thin line of black
+poplars against the smoldering afterglow. I did not know then what
+tragic things they concealed.
+
+
+We entered a well-lighted office. A few guards of ugly demeanor stood
+about. Warden Whittaker consulted with the hard-faced matron, Mrs.
+Herndon, who began the prison routine. Names were called, and each
+prisoner stepped to the desk to get her number, to give up all jewelry,
+money, handbags, letters, eye-glasses, traveling bags containing toilet
+necessities, in fact everything except the clothes on her body.
+
+From there we were herded into the long bare dining room where we sat
+dumbly down to a bowl of dirty sour soup. I say dumbly—for now began
+the rule of silence. Prisoners are punished for speaking to one another
+at table. They cannot even whisper, much less smile or laugh. They must
+be conscious always of their “guilt.” Every possible thing is done to
+make the inmates feel that they are and must continue to be antisocial
+creatures.
+
+We taste our soup and crust of bread. We try so hard to eat it for we
+are tired and hungry, but no one of us is able to get it down. We leave
+the table hungry and slightly nauseated.
+
+Another long march in silence through various channels into a large
+dormitory and through a double line of cots! Then we stand, weary to
+the point of fainting, waiting the next ordeal. This seemed to be the
+juncture at which we lost all that is left us of contact with the
+outside world,—our clothes.
+
+An assistant matron, attended by negress prisoners, relieves us of our
+clothes. Each prisoner is obliged to strip naked without even the
+protection of a sheet, and proceed across what seems endless space, to
+a shower bath. A large tin bucket stands on the floor and in this is a
+minute piece of dirty soap, which is offered to us and rejected. We
+dare not risk the soap used by so many prisoners. Naked, we return from
+the bath to receive our allotment of coarse, hideous prison clothes,
+the outer garments of which consist of a bulky mother-hubbard wrapper,
+of bluish gray ticking and a heavy apron of the same dismal stuff. It
+takes a dominant personality indeed to survive these clothes. The thick
+unbleached muslin undergarments are of designs never to be forgotten!
+And the thick stockings and forlorn shoes! What torture to put on shoes
+that are alike for each foot and made to fit just anybody who may
+happen along.
+
+Why are we being ordered to dress? It is long past the bed-time hour.
+
+Our suspense is brief. All dressed in cloth of “guilt” we are led into
+what we later learn is the “recreation” room. Lined up against its
+wall, we might any other time have bantered about the possibility of
+being shot, but we are in no mood to jest. The door finally opens and
+in strides Warden Whittaker with a stranger beside him.
+
+He reviews his latest criminal recruits, engaging the stranger
+meanwhile in whispered conversation. There are short, uncertain laughs.
+There are nods of the head and more whispers.
+
+“Well, ladies, I hope you are all comfortable. Now make yourselves at
+home here. I think you will find it healthy here. You’ll weigh more
+when you go out than when you came in. You will be allowed to write one
+letter a month-to your family. Of course we open and read all letters
+coming in and going out. To-morrow you will be assigned your work. I
+hope you will sleep well. Good night!”
+
+We did not answer. We looked at each other.
+
+News leaked through in the morning that the stranger had been a
+newspaper reporter. The papers next morning were full of the “comfort”
+and “luxury” of our surroundings. The “delicious” food sounded most
+reassuring to the nation. In fact no word of the truth was allowed to
+appear.
+
+The correspondent could not know that we went back to our cots to try
+to sleep side by side with negro prostitutes. Not that we shrank from
+these women on account of their color, but how terrible to know that,
+the institution had gone out of its way to bring these prisoners from
+their own wing to the white wing in an attempt to humiliate us. There
+was plenty of room in the negro wing. But prison must be made so
+unbearable that no more women would face it. That was the policy
+attempted here.
+
+We tried very hard to sleep and forget our hunger and weariness. But
+all the night through our dusky comrades padded by to the lavatory, and
+in the streak of bright light which shot across the center of the room,
+startled heads could be seen bobbing up in the direction of a demented
+woman in the end cot. Her weird mutterings made us fearful. There was
+no sleep in this strange place.
+
+Our thoughts turn to the outside world. Will the women care? Will
+enough women believe that through such humiliation all may win freedom?
+Will they believe that through our imprisonment their slavery will be
+lifted the sooner? Less philosophically, will the government be moved
+by public protest? Will such protest come?
+
+The next morning brought us a visitor from suffrage headquarters. The
+institution hoped that the visitor would use her persuasion to make us
+pay our fines and leave and so she was admitted. We learned the
+cheering news, that immediately after sentence had been pronounced by
+the Court, Dudley Field Malone had gone direct to the White House to
+protest to the President. His protest was delivered with heat. The
+President said that he was “shocked” at the sixty day sentence, that he
+did not know it had been done, and made other evasions. Mr. Malone’s
+report of his interview with the President is given in full in a
+subsequent chapter.
+
+Following Mr. Malone, Mr. J. A. H. Hopkins went to the White House.
+“How would you like to have your wife sleep in a dirty workhouse next
+to prostitutes?” was his direct talk to the President. Again the
+President was “shocked.” No wonder! Mr. and Mrs. Hopkins had been the
+President’s dinner guests not very long before, celebrating his return
+to power. They had supported him politically and financially in New
+Jersey. Now Mrs. Hopkins had been arrested at his gate and thrown into
+prison.
+
+In reporting the interview, Mr. Hopkins said:
+
+“The President asked me for suggestions as to what might be done, and I
+replied that in view of the seriousness of the present situation the
+only solution lay in immediate passage of the Susan B. Anthony
+amendment.”
+
+Gilson Gardner also went to the White House to leave his hot protest.
+And there were others.
+
+Telegrams poured in from all over the country. The press printed
+headlines which could not but arouse the sympathy of thousands. Even
+people who did not approve of picketing the White House said, “After
+all, what these women have done is certainly not ‘bad’ enough to merit
+such drastic punishment”
+
+And women protested. From coast to coast there poured in at our
+headquarters copies of telegrams sent to Administration leaders. Of
+course not all women by any means had approved this method of
+agitation. But the government’s action had done more than we had been
+able to do for them. It had made them feel sex-conscious. Women were
+being unjustly treated. Regardless of their feelings about this
+particular procedure, they stood up and objected.
+
+For the first time, I believe, our form of agitation began to seem a
+little more respectable than the Administration’s handling of it. But
+the Administration did not know this fact yet.
+
+
+“Everybody in line for the work-room!”
+
+We were thankful to leave our inedible breakfast. We were unable to
+drink the greasy black coffee. The pain in the tops of our heads was
+acute.
+
+“What you all down here for?” asked a young negress, barely out of her
+teens, as she casually fingered her sewing material.
+
+“Why, I held a purple, white and gold banner at the gates of the White
+House.”
+
+“You don’ say so! What de odders do?”
+
+“Same thing. We all held banners at the White House gates asking
+President Wilson to give us the vote.”
+
+“An’ yo’ all got sixty days fo’ dat?”
+
+“Yes. You see the President thought it would be a good idea to send us
+to the workhouse for asking for the vote. You know women want to vote
+and have wanted to for a long time in our country”
+
+“O-Yass’m, I know. I seen yo’ parades, an’ meetin’s, an’ everythin’. I
+know whah yo’ all live, right near the White House. You’s alright. I
+hopes yo’ git it, fo’ women certainly do need protextion against men
+like Judge Mullowny. He has us allatime picked up an’ sen’ down here.
+
+“They sen’ yo’ down here once, an’ then yo’ come out without a cent,
+and try to look fo’ a job, an’ befo’ yo’ can fin’ one a cop walks up
+an’ asks yo’ whah yo’ live, an’ ef yo’ haven’t got a place yet, becaus’
+yo’ ain’ got a cent to ren’ one with, he says, ‘Come with me, I’ll fin’
+yo’ a home,’ an’ hustles yo’ off to the p’lice station an’ down heah
+again, an’ you’re called a 4vag’ (vagrant). What chance has we niggahs
+got, I ask ya? I hopes yo’ all gits a vote an’ fixes up somethings for
+women!”
+
+“You see that young girl over there?” said another prisoner, who in
+spite of an unfortunate life had kept a remnant of her early beauty. I
+nodded.
+
+“Well, Judge Mullowny gave her thirty days for her first offense, and
+when he sentenced her, she cried out desperately, ‘Don’t send me down
+there, Judge! If you do, I’ll kill myself!’ What do you think he said
+to that?—‘I’ll give you six months in which to change your mind!’’
+
+I reflected. The judge that broke this pale-faced, silent girl was the
+appointee of the President. It was the task of such a man to sentence
+American women to the workhouse for demanding liberty.
+
+Conversing with the “regulars” was forbidden by the wardress, but we
+managed, from time to time, to talk to our fellow prisoners with
+stealthiness.
+
+“We knew somethin’ was goin’ to happen,” said one negro girl, “because
+Monday the close we had on wer’ took off us an’ we were giv’ these old
+patched ones. We wuz told they wanted to take ‘stock,’ but we heard
+they wuz bein’ washed fo’ you-all suff’agettes.”
+
+The unpleasantness at wearing the formless garments of these
+unfortunates made us all wince. But the government’s calculation
+aroused our hot indignation. We were not convicted until Tuesday and
+our prison garments were ready Monday!
+
+“You must not speak against the President,” said the servile wardress,
+when she discovered we were telling our story to the inmates. “You know
+you will be thrashed if you say anything more about the President; and
+don’t forget you’re on Government property and may be arrested for
+treason if it happens again.”
+
+We doubted the seriousness of this threat of thrashing until one of the
+girls confided to us that such outrages happened often. We afterward
+obtained proof of these brutalities.[1]
+
+[1] See affidavit of Mrs. Bovee, page 144.
+
+
+“Old Whittaker beat up that girl over there just last week and put her
+in the ‘booby’ house on bread and water for five days.”
+
+“What did she do?” I asked.
+
+“Oh, she an’ another girl got to scrapping in the blackberry patch and
+she didn’t pick enough berries. .”
+
+“All put up your work, girls, and get in line.” This from the wardress,
+who sped up the work in the sewing room. It was lunch time, and though
+we were all hungry we dreaded going to the silence and the food in that
+gray dining room with the vile odors. We were counted again as we filed
+out, carrying our heavy chairs with us as is the workhouse custom.
+
+“Do they do this all the time?” I asked. It seemed as though needless
+energy was being spent counting and recounting our little group.
+
+“Wouldn’t do anybody any good to try to get away from here,” said one
+of the white girls. “Too many bloodhounds!”
+
+“Bloodhounds!” I asked in amazement, for after all these women were not
+criminals but merely misdemeanants.
+
+“Oh, yes. Just a little while ago, three men tried to get away and they
+turned bloodhounds after them and shot them dead-and they weren’t bad
+men either.”
+
+
+When our untasted supper was over that night we were ordered into the
+square, bare-walled “recreation” room, where we and the other prisoners
+sat, and sat, and sat, our chairs against the walls, a dreary sight
+indeed, waiting for the fortyfive minutes before bedtime to pass. The
+sight of two negro girl prisoners combing out each other’s lice and
+dressing their kinky hair in such a way as to discourage permanently a
+return of the vermin did not produce in us exactly a feeling of
+“recreation.” But we tried to sing. The negroes joined in, too, and
+soon outsang us, with their plaintive melodies and hymns. Then back to
+our cells and another attempt to sleep.
+
+
+A new ordeal the next morning! Another of the numberless “pedigrees” is
+to be taken. One by one we were called to the warden’s office.
+
+“Were your father or mother ever insane?”
+
+“Are you a confirmed drunkard, chronic or moderate drinker?”
+
+“Do you smoke or chew or use tobacco in any form?”
+
+“Married or single?”
+
+“Single.”
+
+“How many children?”
+
+“None.”
+
+“What religion do you profess?”
+
+“Christian.”
+
+“What religion do you profess?” in a higher pitched voice.
+
+I did not clearly comprehend. “Do you mean ‘Am I a Catholic or a
+Protestant?’ I am a Christian.”
+
+But it was of no avail. She wrote down, “None.”
+
+I protested. “That is not accurate. I insist that I am a Christian, or
+at least I try to be one.”
+
+“You must learn to be polite,” she retorted almost fiercely, and I
+returned to the sewing room.
+
+For the hundredth time we asked to be given our toothbrushes, combs,
+handkerchiefs and our own soap. The third day of imprisonment without
+any of these essentials found us depressed and worried over our
+unsanitary condition. We plead also for toilet paper. It was senseless
+to deny these necessities. It is enough to imprison people. Why seek to
+degrade them utterly?
+
+
+The third afternoon we were mysteriously summoned into the presence of
+Superintendent Whittaker. He seemed warm and cordial. We were ordered
+drawn up in a semi-circle.
+
+“Ladies, there is a rumor that you may be pardoned,” he began.
+
+“By whom?” asked one.
+
+“For what?” asked another. “We are innocent women. There is nothing to
+pardon us for.”
+
+“I have come to ask you what you would do if the President pardoned
+you.”
+
+“We would refuse to accept it,” came the ready response from several.
+
+“I shall leave you for a while to consider this. Mind! I have not yet
+received information of a pardon, but I have been asked to ascertain
+your attitude.”
+
+Our consultation was brief. We were of one mind. We were unanimous in
+wishing to reject a pardon for a crime which we had never committed. We
+said so with some spirit when Mr. Whittaker returned for our decision.
+
+“You have no choice. You are obliged to accept a pardon.”
+
+That settled it, and we waited. That the protest on the outside had
+been strong enough to precipitate action from the government was the
+subject of our conversation. Evidently it had not been strong enough to
+force action on the suffrage amendment, but it was forcing action, and
+that was important.
+
+Mr. Whittaker returned triumphant.
+
+“Ladies, you are pardoned by the President. You are free to go as soon
+as you have taken off your prison clothes and put on your own.”
+
+It was sad to leave the other prisoners behind. Especially pathetic
+were the girls who helped us with our clothes. They whispered such
+eager appeals in our ears, telling us of their drastic sentences for
+trifling offenses and of the cruel punishments. It was hard to resist
+digressing into some effort at prison reform. That way lay our
+instincts. Our reason told us that we must first change the status of
+women.
+
+As we were leaving the workhouse to return to Washington we had an
+unexpected revelation of the attitude of officialdom toward our
+campaign. Addressing Miss Lucy Burns, who had arrived to assist us in
+getting on our way, Superintendent Whittaker, in an almost unbelievable
+rage, said, “Now that you women are going away, I have something to say
+and I want to say it to you. The next lot of women who come here won’t
+be treated with the same consideration that these women were.” I will
+show later on how he made good this terrible threat.
+
+
+Receiving a Presidential pardon through the Attorney General had its
+amusing aspect. My comrades shared this amusement when I told them the
+following incident.
+
+On the day after our arrest, I was having tea at the Chevy Chase
+Country Club in Washington. Quite casually a gentleman introduced me to
+Mr. Gregory, the Attorney General.
+
+“I see you were mixed up with the suffragettes yesterday,” was the
+Attorney General’s first remark to the gentleman. And before the latter
+could explain that he had settled accounts quietly but efficiently with
+a hoodlum who was attempting to trip the women up on their march, the
+chief law officer of the United States contributed this important
+suggestion: “You know what I’d do if I was those policemen. I’d just
+take a hose out with me and when the women came out with their banners,
+why I’d just squirt the hose on ’em . . . .”
+
+“But Mr. Gregory . . .”
+
+“Yes, sir! If you can just make what a woman does look ridiculous, you
+can sure kill it . . . .”
+
+“But, Mr. Attorney General, what right would the police have to assault
+these or any other women?” the gentleman managed finally to
+interpolate.
+
+“Hup—hup—” denoting great surprise, came from the Attorney General, as
+he looked to me for reassurance.
+
+His expectant look vanished when I said, “Mr. Gregory, did it ever
+occur to you that it might make the government look ridiculous instead
+of the women?”
+
+You can imagine bow the easy manner of one who is sure of his audience
+melted from his face.
+
+“This is one of the women arrested yesterday,” continued the gentleman,
+while the Attorney General smothered a “Well, I’ll be . . .”
+
+“I am out on bail,” I said. “ To-morrow we go to jail. It is all
+prearranged, you understand. The trial is merely a matter of form.”
+
+The highest law officer of the land fled gurgling. s
+
+
+The day following our release Mrs. J. A. H. Hopkins carried a picket
+banner to the gates of the White House to test the validity of the
+pardon. Her banner read, “We do not ask pardon for ourselves but
+justice for all American women.” A curious crowd, as large as had
+collected on those days when the police arrested women for “obstructing
+traffic,” stood watching the lone picket. The President passed through
+the gates and saluted. The police did not interfere.
+
+Daily picketing was resumed and no arrests followed for the moment.
+
+It was now August, three months since the Senate Suffrage Committee
+authorized its chairman, Mr. Jones, to report the measure to the Senate
+for action. Mr. Jones said, however, that he was too busy to make a
+report; .that he wanted to make a particularly brilliant one, one that
+would “be a contribution to the cause”; that he did not approve of
+picketing, but that he would report the measure “in a reasonable time.”
+So much for the situation in the Senate!
+
+From the House we gathered some interesting evidence. We reminded Mr.
+Webb, Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, that out of a total
+membership of twenty-one men on his committee, twelve were Democrats,
+two-thirds of whom were opposed to the measure; we reminded him that
+the Republicans on the committee were for action. Mr. Webb wrote in
+answer:
+
+“The Democratic caucus passed a resolution that only war emergency
+measures would be considered during this extra session, and that the
+President might designate from time to time special legislation which
+he regarded as war legislation, and such would be acted on by the
+House. The President, not having designated woman suffrage and national
+prohibition so far as war measures, the judiciary committee up to this
+time has not felt warranted under the caucus rule, in reporting either
+of these measures. If the President should request either or both of
+them as war measures, then I think the Committee would attempt to take
+some action on them promptly. _So you see after all it is important to
+your cause to make the President see that woman suffrage comes within
+the rules laid down._”[1]
+
+
+[1] Italics are mine.
+
+
+Here was a frank admission of the assumption upon which women had gone
+to jail—that the President was responsible for action on the amendment.
+
+Now that we were again allowed to picket the White House, the
+Republicans seized the opportunity legitimately to embarrass their
+opponents by precipitating a bitter debate.
+
+Senator Cummins of Iowa, Republican member of the Suffrage Committee,
+moved, as had Mr. Mann in the House at an earlier date, to discharge
+the Suffrage Committee for failing to make the report authorized by the
+entire Committee. Mr. Cummins said, among other things:
+
+“. . . I look upon the resolution as definitely and certainly a war
+measure. There is nothing that this country could do which would
+strengthen it more than to give the disfranchised women . . . the
+opportunity to vote . . . .
+
+“Last week . . . I went to the Chairman of the Committee and told him
+that . . . we had finished the hearings, reached a conclusion and that
+it was our bounden duty to make the report to the Senate . . . . I
+asked him if he would not call a meeting of the Committee. He said that
+it would be impossible, that he had some other engagements which would
+prevent a meeting of the Committee.”
+
+Senator Cummins explained that he finally got the promise of the
+Chairman that a meeting of the Committee would be called on a given
+date. When it was not called he made his motion.
+
+Chairman Jones made some feeble remarks and some evasive excuses which
+meant nothing, and which only further aroused Republican friends of the
+measure on the Committee.
+
+Senator Gronna of North Dakota, Republican, interrupted him with the
+direct question, “I ask the chairman of this committee why this joint
+resolution has not been reported? The Senator, who is chairman of the
+committee, I suppose, knows as well as I do that the people of the
+entire country are anxious to have this joint resolution submitted and
+to be given an opportunity to vote upon it.
+
+Senator Johnson of California, Republican, proposed that Chairman Jones
+consent to call the Committee together to consider reporting out the
+bill, which Senator Jones flatly refused to do.
+
+Senator Jones of Washington, another Republican member of the
+Committee, added:
+
+“I agree with the Senator from Iowa that this is a war measure and
+ought to be considered as such at this time. I do not see how we can
+very consistently talk democracy while disfranchising the better half
+of our citizenship—I may not approve of the action of the women
+picketing the White House, but neither do I approve of what I consider
+the lawless action toward these women in connection with the picketing
+. . . .”
+
+“I do not want to think the chairman does not desire to call the
+committee together because of some influence outside of Congress as
+some have suggested . . . .”
+
+At this point Senator Hollis of New Hampshire, Democrat, arose to say:
+
+“There is a small but very active group of women suffragists who have
+acted in such a way that some who are ardently in favor of woman
+suffrage believe that their action should not be encouraged by making a
+favorable report at this time.”
+
+Senator Johnson protested at this point, but Senator Hollis continued:
+
+“To discharge the committee would focus the attention of the country
+upon the action and would give undue weight to what has been done by
+the active group of woman suffragists.”
+
+I think that any student of psychology will acknowledge that our
+picketing had stimulated action in Congress, and that what was now
+needed was some still more provocative action from us.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 5
+August Riots
+
+
+Imprisoning women had met with considerable public disapproval, and
+attendant political embarrassment to the Administration. That the
+presidential pardon would end this embarrassment was doubtless the hope
+of the Administration. The pickets, however, returned to their posts in
+steadily increasing numbers. Their presence at the gates was desired by
+the Administration no more now than it had been before the arrests and
+imprisonments. But they had found no way to rid themselves of the
+pickets. And as another month of picketing drew to an end the
+Administration ventured to try other ways to stop it and with it the
+consequent embarrassment. Their methods became physically more brutal
+and politically more stupid. Their conduct became lawless in the
+extreme.
+
+Meanwhile the President had drafted the young men of America in their
+millions to die on foreign soil for foreign democracy. He had issued a
+special appeal to women to give their work, their treasure and their
+sons to this enterprise. At the same time his now gigantic figure stood
+obstinately across the path to our main objective. It was our daily
+task to keep vividly in his mind that objective. It was our
+responsibility to compel decisive action from him.
+
+Using the return of Envoy Root from his mission to Russia as another
+dramatic opportunity to speak to the President we took to the picket
+line these mottoes:
+
+TO ENVOY ROOT
+
+
+YOU SAY THAT AMERICA MUST THROW ITS MANHOOD TO THE SUPPORT OF LIBERTY.
+
+WHOSE LIBERTY?
+THIS NATION IS NOT FREE. TWENTY MILLION WOMEN ARE DENIED BY THE
+PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES THE RIGHT TO REPRESENTATION IN THEIR OWN
+GOVERNMENT.
+
+TELL THE PRESIDENT THAT HE CANNOT FIGHT AGAINST LIBERTY AT HOME WHILE
+HE TELLS US TO FIGHT FOR LIBERTY ABROAD.
+
+TELL HIM TO MAKE AMERICA SAFE FOR DEMOCRACY BEFORE HE ASKS THE MOTHERS
+OF AMERICA TO THROW THEIR SONS TO THE SUPPORT OF DEMOCRACY IN EUROPE.
+
+ASK HIM HOW HE CAN REFUSE LIBERTY TO AMERICAN CITIZENS WHEN HE IS
+FORCING MILLIONS OF AMERICAN BOYS OUT OF THEIR COUNTRY TO DIE FOR
+LIBERTY.
+
+
+At no time during the entire picketing was the traffic on Pennsylvania
+Avenue so completely obstructed as it was for the two hours during
+which this banner made its appearance on the line. Police captains who
+three weeks before were testifying that the police could not manage the
+crowds, placidly looked on while these new crowds increased.
+
+We did not regard Mr. Wilson as our President. We felt that he had
+neither political nor moral claim to our allegiance. War had been made
+without our consent. The war would be finished and very likely a bad
+peace would be written without our consent. Our fight was becoming
+increasingly difficult—I might almost say desperate. Here we were, a
+band of women fighting with banners, in the midst of a world armed to
+the teeth. And so it was not very difficult to understand how high
+spirited women grew more resentful, unwilling to be a party to the
+President’s hypocrisy, the hypocrisy so eager to sacrifice life without
+stint to the vague hope of liberty abroad, while refusing to assist in
+the peaceful legislative steps which would lead to self-government in
+our own country. As a matter of fact the President’s constant oratory
+on freedom and democracy moved them to scorn. They were stung into a
+protest so militant as to shock not only the President but the public.
+We inscribed on our banner what countless American women‘ had long
+thought in their hearts.
+
+The truth was not pleasant but it had to be told. We submitted to the
+world, through the picket line, this question:
+
+KAISER WILSON
+HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN HOW YOU SYMPATHIZED WITH THE POOR GERMANS BECAUSE
+THEY WERE NOT SELF GOVERNED?
+20,000,000 AMERICAN WOMEN ARE NOT SELF-GOVERNED. TAKE THE BEAM OUT OF
+YOUR OWN EYE.
+
+
+We did not expect public sympathy at this point. We knew that not even
+the members of Congress who had occasionally in debate, but more
+frequently in their cloak rooms, and often to us privately, called the
+President “autocrat”—“Kaiser”—“Ruler”—“King”—“Czar”—would approve our
+telling the truth publicly.
+
+Nor was it to be expected that eager young boys, all agog to fight
+Germans, would be averse to attacking women in the meantime. They were
+out to fight and such was the public hysteria that it did not exactly
+matter whom they fought.
+
+And so those excited boys of the Army and Navy attacked the women and
+the banner. The banner was destroyed. Another was brought up to take
+its place. This one met the same fate. Meanwhile a crowd was assembling
+in front of the White House either to watch or to assist in the
+attacks. At the very moment when one banner was being snatched away and
+destroyed, President and Mrs. Wilson passed through the gates on their
+way to a military review at Fort Myer. The President saw American women
+being attacked, while the police refused them protection.
+
+Not a move was made by the police to control the growing crowd. Such
+inaction is always a signal for more violence on the part of rowdies.
+As the throng moved to and fro between the White House and our
+Headquarters immediately opposite, so many banners were destroyed that
+finally Miss Lucy Burns, Miss Virginia Arnold and Miss Elizabeth
+Stuyvesant took those remaining to the second and third floor balconies
+of our building and hung them out. At this point there was not a picket
+left on the street. The crowd was clearly obstructing the traffic, but
+no attempt was made to move them back or to protect the women, some of
+whom were attacked by sailors on their own doorsteps. The two police
+officers present watched without interference while three sailors
+brought a ladder from the Belasco Theater in the same block, leaned it
+against the side of the Cameron House, the Headquarters, climbed up to
+the second floor balcony, mounted the iron railing and tore down all
+banners and the American flag. One sailor administered a severe blow in
+the face with his clenched fist upon Miss Georgina Sturgis of
+Washington.
+
+“Why did you do that?” she demanded.
+
+The man halted for a brief instant in obvious amazement and said, “I
+don’t know.” And with a violent wrench he tore the banner from her
+hands and ran down the ladder.
+
+The narrow balcony was the scene of intense excitement.
+
+But for Miss Burns’ superb strength she would have been dragged over
+the railing of the balcony to be plunged to the ground. The mob watched
+with fascination while she swayed to and fro in her wrestle with two
+young sailors. And still no attempt by the police to quell the riot!
+
+The climax came when in the late afternoon a bullet was fired through
+one of the heavy glass windows of the second floor, embedding itself in
+the ceiling. The bullet grazed past the head of Mrs. Ella Morton Dean
+of Montana. Captain Flather of the 1st Precinct, with two detectives,
+later examined the holes and declared they had been made by a 38
+caliber revolver, but no attempt was ever made to find the man who had
+drawn the revolver.
+
+Meanwhile eggs and tomatoes were hurled at our fresh banners flying
+from the flag poles on the building.
+
+Finally police reserves were summoned and in less than five minutes the
+crowd was pushed back and the street cleared. Thinking now that they
+could rely on the protection of the police, the women started with
+their banners for the White House. But the police looked on while all
+the banners were destroyed, a few paces from Headquarters. More banners
+,went out,—purple, white and gold ones. They, too, were destroyed
+before they reached the White House.
+
+This entire spectacle was enacted on August 14, within a stone’s throw
+of the White House.
+
+Miss Paul summed up the situation when she said:
+
+“The situation now existing in Washington exists because President
+Wilson permits it. Orders were first handed down to the police to
+arrest suffragists. The clamor over their imprisonments made this
+position untenable. The police were then ordered to protect
+suffragists. They were then ordered to attack suffragists. They have
+now been ordered to encourage irresponsible crowds to attack
+suffragists. No police head would dare so to besmirch his record
+without orders from his responsible chief. The responsible chief in the
+National Capital is the President of the United States.”
+
+Shortly after the incident of the “Kaiser banner” I was speaking in
+Louisville, Kentucky. The auditorium was packed and overflowing with
+men and women who had come to hear the story of the pickets.
+
+Up to this time we had very few members in Kentucky and had anticipated
+in this Southern State, part of President Wilson ,’s stronghold, that
+our Committee would meet with no enthusiasm and possibly with warm
+hostility.
+
+I had related briefly the incidents leading up to the picketing and the
+Government’s suppressions. I was rather cautiously approaching the
+subject of the “Kaiser banner,” feeling timid and hesitant, wondering
+how this vast audience of Southerners would take it. Slowly I read the
+inscription on the famous banner, “Kaiser Wilson, have you forgotten
+how you sympathized with the poor Germans because they were not
+self-governed? Twenty million American women are not self-governed.
+Take the beam out of your own eye.”
+
+I hardly reached the last word, still wondering what the, intensely
+silent audience would do, when a terrific outburst of applause mingled
+with shouts of “Good! Good! He is, he is!” came to my amazed ears. As
+the applause died down there was almost universal good-natured
+laughter. Instead of the painstaking and eloquent explanation which I
+was prepared to offer, I had only to join in their laughter.
+
+A few minutes later a telegram was brought to the platform announcing
+further arrests. I read:
+
+“Six more women sentenced to-day to 30 days in Occoquan workhouse.”
+
+
+Instant cries of “Shame! Shame! It’s an outrage!” Scores of men and two
+women were on their feet calling for the passage of a resolution
+denouncing the Administration’s policy of persecution. The motion of
+condemnation was put. It seemed as if the entire audience seconded it.
+It went through instantly, unanimously, and again with prolonged shouts
+and applause.
+
+The meeting continued and I shall never forget that audience. It
+lingered to a late hour, almost to midnight, asking questions, making
+brief “testimonials” from the floor with almost evangelical fervor.
+Improvised collection baskets were piled high with bills. Women
+volunteered for picket duty and certain imprisonment, and the following
+day a delegation left for Washington.
+
+I cite this experience of mine because it was typical. Every one who
+went through the country telling the story had similar experiences at
+this time. Indignation was swift and hot. Our mass meetings everywhere
+became meetings of protest during the entire campaign.
+
+And resolutions of protest which always went immediately by wire from
+such meetings to the President, his cabinet and to his leaders in
+Congress, of course created increasing uneasiness in Democratic
+circles.
+
+On August 15th the pickets again attempted to take their posts on the
+line.
+
+On this day one lettered banner and fifty purple, white and gold flags
+were destroyed by a mob led by sailors in uniform. Alice Paul was
+knocked down three times by a sailor in uniform and dragged the width
+of the White House sidewalk in his frenzied attempt to tear off leer
+suffrage sash.
+
+Miss Katharine Morey of Boston was also knocked to the pavement by a
+sailor, who took her flag and then darted off into the crowd. Miss
+Elizabeth Stuyvesant was struck by a soldier in uniform and her blouse
+torn from her body. Miss Maud Jamison of Virginia was knocked down and
+dragged along the sidewalk. Miss Beulah Amidon of North Dakota was
+knocked down by a sailor.
+
+In the midst of these riotous scenes, a well-known Washington
+correspondent was emerging from the White House, after an interview
+with the President. Dr. Cart’ Grayson, the President’s physician,
+accompanying him to the door, advised:
+
+“You had better go out the side entrance. Those damned women are in the
+front.”
+
+In spite of this advice the correspondent made his exit through the
+same gate by which he had entered, and just in time to ward off an
+attack by a sailor on one of the frailest girls in the group.
+
+The Administration, in its desperation, ordered the police to
+lawlessness. On August 16th, fifty policemen led the mob in attacking
+the women. Hands were bruised and arms twisted lit’ police officers and
+plainclothes men. Two civilians who tried to rescue the women from the
+attacks of the police were arrested. The police fell upon these young
+women with more brutality even than the mobs they had before
+encouraged. Twenty-five lettered banners and 123 Party flags were
+destroyed by mobs and police on this afternoon.
+
+As the crowd grew more dense, the police temporarily retired from the
+attack. When their activities had summoned a sufficiently large and
+infuriated mob, they would rest. And so the passions of the mob
+continued unchecked upon these irrepressible women, and from day to day
+the Administration gave its orders.
+
+Finding that riots and mob attacks had not terrorized the pickets, the
+Administration decided again to arrest the women in the hope of ending
+the agitation. Having lost public sympathy through workhouse sentences,
+having won it back by pardoning the women, the Administration felt it
+could afford to risk losing it again, or rather felt that it had
+supplied itself with an appropriate amount of stage-setting.
+
+And so on the third day of the riotous attacks, when it was clear that
+the pickets would persist, the Chief of Police called at headquarters
+to announce to Miss Paul that “orders have been changed and henceforth
+women carrying banners will be arrested”
+
+Meanwhile the pickets heard officers shout to civilian friends as they
+passed—“Come back at four o’clock.”
+
+Members of the daily mob announced at the noon hour in various nearby
+restaurants that “the suffs will be arrested to-day at 4 o’clock.”
+
+Four o’clock is the hour the Government clerks begin to swarm
+homewards. The choice of this hour by the police to arrest the women
+would enable them to have a large crowd passing the White House gates
+to lend color to the fiction that “pickets were blocking the traffic.”
+
+Throughout the earlier part of the afternoon the silent sentinels stood
+unmolested, carrying these mottoes:
+
+ENGLAND AND RUSSIA ARE ENFRANCHISING WOMEN IN WAR-TIME.
+
+
+HOW LONG MUST WOMEN WAIT FOB LIBERTY?
+
+
+THE GOVERNMENT ORDERS OUR BANNERS DESTROYED BECAUSE THEY TELL THE
+TRUTH.
+
+
+At four o’clock the threatened arrests took place. The women arrested
+were Miss Lavinia Dock of Pennsylvania, Miss Edna Dixon of Washington,
+D. C., a young public school teacher; Miss Natalie Gray of Colorado,
+Mrs. Win. Upton Watson and Miss Lucy Ewing of Chicago, and Miss
+Catherine Flanagan of Connecticut.
+
+Exactly forty minutes were allowed for the trial of these six women.
+One police officer testified that they were “obstructing traffic.”
+
+None of the facts of the hideous and cruel manhandling by the mobs and
+police officers was allowed to be brought out. Nothing the women could
+say mattered. The judge pronounced : “Thirty days in Occoquan workhouse
+in lieu of a $10.00 fine.”
+
+And so this little handful of women, practically all of them tiny and
+frail of physique, began the cruel sentence of 30 days in the
+workhouse, while their cowardly assailants were not even reprimanded,
+nor were those who destroyed over a thousand dollars’ worth of banners
+apprehended.
+
+The riots had attracted sufficient attention to cause some anxiety in
+Administration circles. Protests against us and others against the
+rioters pressed upon them. Congress was provoked into a little
+activity; activity which reflected some doubt as to the wisdom of
+arresting women without some warrant in law.
+
+Two attempts were made, neither of which was successful, to give the
+Administration more power and more law.
+
+Senator Culberson of Texas, Democrat, offered a bill authorizing
+President Wilson at any time to prohibit any person from approaching or
+entering any place—in short blanket authority granting the President or
+his officials limitless power over the actions of human beings.
+Realizing that this could be used to prohibit picketing the White House
+we appeared before a committee hearing on the bill and spoke against
+it. The committee did not have the boldness to report such a bill.
+
+Senator Myers of Montana, an influential member of the Democratic
+majority, introduced into the Senate a few days later a resolution
+making it illegal to picket the White House. The shamelessness of
+admitting to the world that acts for which women had been repeatedly
+sentenced to jail, and for which women were at that moment lying in
+prison, were so legal as to make necessary a special act of Congress
+against them, was appalling. The Administration policy seemed to be
+“Let us put women in jail first—let us enact a law to keep them there
+afterwards,”
+
+This tilt between Senator Brandegee, of Connecticut, antisuffrage
+Republican, and Senator Myers, suffrage Democrat, took place when Mr.
+Myer’s presented his bill:
+
+MR. BRANDEGEE: . . . Was there any defect in the legal proceedings by
+which these trouble makers were sentenced and put in jail a few weeks
+ago?
+
+MR. MYERS: None that I know of. I am not in a position to pass upon
+that. I do not believe any was claimed . . . .
+
+MR. BRANDEGEE: Inasmuch as the law was sufficient to land them in jail
+. . . I fail to see why additional legislation is necessary on the
+subject.
+
+MR. MYERS: There seems to be a doubt in the mind of some whether the
+present law is sufficient and I think it ought to be put beyond doubt.
+I think . . . the laws are not stringent or severe enough . . . .
+
+MR. BRANDEGEE : They were stringent enough to land the malefactors in
+jail . . . .
+
+In spite of Senator Myers’ impassioned appeal to his colleagues, be was
+unable to command any support for his bill. I quote this from his
+speech in the Senate August 18, 1917:
+
+MR. MYERS: Mr. President, I wish to say a few words about the bill I
+have just introduced. It is intended for the enactment of better and
+more adequate legislation to prevent the infamous, outrageous,
+scandalous, and, I think, almost treasonable actions that have been
+going on around the White House for months past, which President of the
+United States have been a gross insult to the and to the people of the
+United States; I mean the so-called picketing of the White House. . .
+These disgusting proceedings have been going on for months, and if
+there is no adequate law to stop them, I think there ought to be.
+
+“I believe the President, in the generosity of his heart, erred when he
+pardoned some of the women who have been conducting these proceedings,
+after they had been sentenced to 60 days in the workhouse. I believe
+they deserved the sentence, and they ought to have been compelled to
+serve it . . . .
+
+“I for one am not satisfied longer to sit here idly day by day and
+submit to having the President of the United States insulted with
+impunity before the people of the country and before all the world. It
+is a shame and reproach.
+
+“I hope this bill . . . will receive careful consideration and that it
+may be enacted into law and may be found an adequate preventive and
+punishment for such conduct.”
+
+This bill, which died a well-deserved death, is so amusing as to
+warrant reproduction. Although lamenting our comparison between the
+President and the Kaiser, it will be seen that Senator Myers brought
+forth a thoroughly Prussian document:
+
+A BILL
+
+
+For the better protection and enforcement of peace and order and the
+public welfare in the District of Columbia.
+
+Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives o f the United
+States o f America in Congress assembled, That when the United States
+shall be engaged in war it shall be unlawful for any person or persons
+to carry, hold, wave, exhibit, display, or have in his or her
+possession in any public road, highway, alley, street, thoroughfare,
+park, or other public place in the District of Columbia, any banner,
+flag, streamer, sash, or other device having thereon any words or
+language with reference to the President or the Vice President of the
+United States, or any words or language with reference to the
+Constitution of the United States, or the right of suffrage, or right
+of citizenship, or any words or language with reference to the duties
+of any executive official or department of the United States, or with
+reference to any proposed amendment to the Constitution of the United
+States, or with reference to any law or proposed law of the United
+States, calculated to bring the President of the United States or the
+Government of the United States into contempt, or which may tend to
+cause confusion, or excitement, or obstruction of the streets or
+sidewalks thereof, or any passage in any public place.
+
+Sec. 2. That any person committing any foregoing described offense
+shall, upon conviction thereof, for each offense be fined not less than
+$100 nor more than $1,000 or imprisoned not less than thirty days nor
+more than one year, or by both such fine and imprisonment.
+
+Voices were raised in our behalf, also, and among them I note the
+following letter written to Major Pullman by Gilson Gardner:[1]
+
+[1] The distinguished journalist who went to Africa to meet Theodore
+Roosevelt and accompanied him on his return journey to America.
+
+
+Mr. Raymond Pullman,
+Chief of Police,
+Washington, D. C.
+
+
+My dear Pullman,—
+
+
+I am writing as an old friend to urge you to get right in this matter
+of arresting the suffrage pickets. Of course the only way for you to
+get right is to resign. It has apparently become impossible for you to
+stay in office and do your duty. The alternative is obvious.
+
+You must see, Pullman, that you cannot be right in what you have done
+in this matter. You have given the pickets adequate protection; but you
+have arrested them and had them sent to jail and the workhouse; you
+have permitted the crowd to mob them, and then you have had your
+officers do much the same thing by forcibly taking their banners from
+them. In some of the actions you must have been wrong. If it was right
+to give them protection and let them stand at the White House for five
+months, both before and after the war, it was not right to do what you
+did later.
+
+You say that it was not right when you were “lenient” and gave them
+protection. You cannot mean that. The rightness or wrongness must be a
+matter of law, not of personal discretion, and for you to attempt to
+substitute your discretion is to set up a little autocracy m place of
+the settled laws of the land. This would justify a charge of
+“Kaiserism” right here in our capital city.
+
+The truth is, Pullman, you were right when you gave these women
+protection. That is what the police are for. When there are riots they
+are supposed to quell them, not by quelling the “proximate cause,” but
+by quelling the rioters.
+
+I know your police officers now quite well and know that they are most
+happy when they are permitted to do their duty. They did not like the
+dirty business of permitting a lot of sailors and street rifraff to
+rough the girls. All that went against the grain, but when you let them
+protect the pickets, as you did March third, when a thousand women
+marched around and around the White House, the officers were as
+contented as they were efficient.
+
+Washington has a good police force and there has never been a minute
+when they could not have scattered any group gathered at the White
+House gates and given perfect protection to the women standing there.
+
+You know why they did not do their duty.
+
+In excusing what you have done, you say that the women carried banners
+with “offensive” inscriptions on them. You refer to the fact that they
+have addressed the President as “Kaiser Wilson.” As a matter of fact
+not an arrest you have made—and the arrests now number more than
+sixty—has been for carrying one of those “offensive” banners. The women
+were carrying merely the suffrage colors or quotations from President
+Wilson’s writings.
+
+But, suppose the banners were offensive. Who made you censor of
+banners? The law gives you no such power. Even when you go through the
+farce of a police court trial the charge is “obstructing traffic”;
+which shows conclusively that you are not willing to go into court on
+the real issue.
+
+No. As Chief of Police you have no more right to complain of the
+sentiments of a banner than you have of the sentiments in an editorial
+in the Washington Post, and you have no more right to arrest the
+banner-bearer than you have to arrest the owner of the Washington Post
+. . . . Congress refused to pass a press censorship law. There are
+certain lingering traditions to the effect that a people’s liberties
+are closely bound up with the right to talk things out and those who
+are enlightened know that the only proper answer to words is words.
+When force is opposed to words there is ground for the charge of
+“Kaiserism.” . .
+
+There was just one thing for you to have done, Pullman, and that was to
+give full and adequate protection to these women, no matter what
+banners they carried or what ideas their banners expressed. If there is
+any law that can be invoked against the wording of the banners it was
+the business of others in the government to start the legal machinery
+which would abate them. It was not lawful to abate them by mob
+violence, or by arrests. And if those in authority over you were not
+willing that you thus do your duty, it was up to you to resign.
+
+After all it would not be such a terrible thing, Pullman, for you to
+give up being Chief of Police, particularly when you are not permitted
+to be chief of police, but must yield your judgment to the district
+commissioners who have yielded their judgment to the White House. Being
+Chief of Police under such circumstances can hardly be worth while. You
+are a young man and the world is full of places for young men with
+courage enough to save their self- respect at the expense of their
+jobs. You did that once,-back in the Ballinger-Pinchot days. Why not
+now?
+
+Come out and help make the fight which must be made to recover and
+protect the liberties which are being filched from us here at home.
+There is a real fight looming up for real democracy. You will not be
+alone. There are a lot of fine young men, vigorous and patriotic, in
+and out of the Administration who are preparing for this fight. Yours
+will not be the only resignation. But why not be among the first? Don’t
+wait. Let them have your resignation. now and let me be the first to
+welcome and congratulate you.
+
+Sincerely,
+(Signed) GILSON GARDNER.
+
+
+Representative John Baer of North Dakota, having witnessed for himself
+the riotous scenes, immediately introduced into the House a
+resolution[1] demanding an investigation of conditions in the Capital
+which permitted mobs to attack women. This, too, went to certain death.
+Between the members who did not dare denounce the Administration and
+the others who did dare denounce the women, we had to stand quite
+solidly on our own program, and do our best to keep them nervous over
+the next step in the agitation.
+
+[1] See Appendix 3 for full text of resolution.
+
+
+The press throughout the entire country at this time protested against
+mob violence and the severe sentences pronounced upon the women who had
+attempted to hold their banners steadfast.
+
+The Washington (D. C.) Herald, August 19, printed the following
+editorial:
+
+There is an echo of the President’s phrase about the “firm hand of
+stern repression” in the arrest, conviction and jailing of the six
+suffragists; a touch of ruthlessness in their incarceration at Occoquan
+along with women of the street, pickpockets and other flotsam and
+jetsam. Still, the suffragists are not looking for sympathy, and it
+need not be wasted upon them.
+
+The police have arrived at a policy, although no one knows whether it
+will be sufficiently stable and consistent to last out the week . . . .
+Washington is grateful that the disgraceful period of rioting and mob
+violence in front of the White House is at an end, and another crisis
+in the militant crusade to bring the Susan B. Anthony amendment before
+Congress has been reached.
+
+What is the next step? No one knows. Picketing doubtless will continue,
+or an effort will be made to continue it; and militancy, if the police
+continue to arrest, instead of giving the women protection, will pass
+into a new phase. The suffragists as well as the public at large are
+thankful that the police department has finally determined to arrest
+the pickets, instead of allowing them to be mobbed by hoodlums .
+
+. . . The public eye will be on Occoquan for the next few weeks, to
+find out how these women bear up under the Spartan treatment that is in
+store for them. If they have deliberately sought martyrdom, as some
+critics have been unkind enough to suggest, they have it now. And if
+their campaign, in the opinion of perhaps the great majority of the
+public, has been misguided, admiration for their pluck will not be
+withheld.
+
+The Boston Journal of August 20, 1917, said in an editorial written by
+Herbert N. Pinkham, Jr.:
+
+That higher authorities than the Washington police were responsible for
+the amazing policy of rough house employed against the suffrage pickets
+has been suspected from the very beginning. Police power in Washington
+is sufficient to protect a handful of women against a whole phalanx of
+excited or inspired government clerks and uniformed hoodlums, if that
+power were used.
+
+. . . In our nation’s capital, women have been knocked down and dragged
+through the streets by government employees—including sailors in
+uniform. The police are strangely absent at such moments, as a rule,
+and arrive only in time to arrest a few women . . . .
+
+Perhaps the inscriptions on the suffrage banners were not tactful. It
+is sometimes awkward indeed to quote the President’s speeches after the
+speeches have “grown cold.” Also a too vigorous use of the word
+“democracy” is distasteful to some government dignitaries, it seems.
+But right or wrong, the suffragists at Washington are entitled to
+police protection, even though in the minds of the Administration they
+are not entitled to the ballot.
+
+Perhaps, even in America, we must have a law forbidding people to carry
+banners demanding what they consider their political rights. Such a law
+would, of course, prohibit political parades of all kinds, public mass
+meetings and other demonstrations of one set of opinions against
+another set. Such a law has been proposed by Senator Myers of Montana,
+the author of the latest censorship and anti-free speech bill. It may
+be necessary to pass the law, if it is also necessary that the public
+voice be stilled and the nation become dumb and subservient.
+
+But until there is such a law . . . people must be protected while
+their actions remain within the law. If their opinions differ from
+ours, we must refrain from smashing their faces, if a certain number of
+people believe that they have the right to vote we may either grant
+their claim or turn them sadly away, but we may not roll them into the
+gutter; if they see fit to tell us our professions of democracy are
+empty, we may smile sorrowfully and murmur a prayer for their ignorance
+but we may not pelt them with rotten eggs and fire a shot through the
+window of their dwelling; if, denied a properly dignified hearing, they
+insist upon walking through the streets with printed words on a saucy
+banner, we may be amazed at their zeal and pitiful of their bad taste,
+but even for the sake of keeping their accusations out of sight of our
+foreign visitors (whom we have trained to believe us perfect) we may
+not send them to jail . . . .
+
+All this suffrage shouting in Washington has as its single object the
+attainment of President Wilson’s material support for equal suffrage .
+. . .
+
+President Wilson’s word would carry the question into Congress . . .
+
+Would there be any harm in letting Congress vote on a suffrage
+resolution? That would end the disturbance and it would make our shield
+of national justice somewhat brighter.
+
+It looks like President Wilson’s move.
+
+Between these opposing currents of protest and support, the
+Administration drifted helplessly. Unwilling to pass the amendment, it
+continued to send women to prison.
+
+On the afternoon of September 4th, President Wilson led his first
+contingent of drafted “soldiers of freedom” down Pennsylvania Avenue in
+gala parade, on the first lap of their journey to the battlefields of
+France. On the same afternoon a slender line of women—also “soldiers of
+freedom”—attempted to march in Washington.
+
+As they attempted to take up their posts, two by two, in front of the
+Reviewing Stand, opposite the White House, they were gathered in and
+swept away by the police like common street criminals—their golden
+banners scarcely flung to the breeze.
+
+MR. PRESIDENT, HOW LONG MUST WOMEN BE DENIED A VOICE IN A GOVERNMENT
+WHICH IS CONSCRIPTING THEIR SONS?
+
+
+was the offensive question on the first banner carried by Miss Eleanor
+Calnan of Massachusetts and Miss Edith Ainge of New York.
+
+The Avenue was roped off on account of the parade. There was hardly any
+one passing at the time; all traffic had been temporarily suspended, so
+there was none to obstruct. But the Administration’s policy must go on.
+A few moments and Miss Lucy Branham of Maryland and Mrs. Pauline Adams
+of Virginia marched down the Avenue, their gay banners waving joyously
+in the autumn sun, to fill up the gap of the two comrades who had been
+arrested. They, too, were shoved into the police automobile, their
+banners still high and appealing, silhouetted against the sky as they
+were hurried to the police station.
+
+The third pair of pickets managed to cross the Avenue, but were
+arrested immediately they reached the curb. Still others advanced. The
+crowd began to line the ropes and to watch eagerly the line of women
+indomitably coming, two by two, into the face of certain arrest. A
+fourth detachment was arrested in the middle of the Avenue on the
+trolley tracks. But still they came.
+
+A few days later more women were sent to the workhouse for carrying to
+the picket line this question:
+
+“President Wilson, what did you mean when you said: ‘We have seen a
+good many singular things happen recently. We have been told there is a
+deep disgrace resting upon the origin of this nation. The nation
+originated in the sharpest sort of criticism of public policy. We
+originated, to put it in the vernacular, in a kick, and if it be
+unpatriotic to kick, why then the grown man is unlike the child. We
+have forgotten the very principle of our origin if we have forgotten
+how to object, how to resist, how to agitate, how to pull down and
+build up, even to the extent of revolutionary practices, if it be
+necessary to readjust matters. I have forgotten my history, if that be
+not true history.’”
+
+The Administration had not yet abandoned hope of removing the pickets.
+They persisted in their policy of arrests and longer imprisonments.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 6
+Prison Episodes
+
+
+During all this time the suffrage prisoners were enduring the miserable
+and petty tyranny of the government workhouse at Occoquan. They were
+kept absolutely incommunicado. They were not allowed to see even their
+nearest relatives, should any be within reach, until they had been in
+the institution two weeks.
+
+Each prisoner was allowed to write one outgoing letter a month, which,
+after being read by the warden, could be sent or withheld at his whim.
+
+All incoming mail and telegrams were also censored by the
+Superintendent and practically all of them denied the prisoners.
+Superintendent Whittaker openly boasted of holding up the suffragists’
+mail: “I am boss down here,” he said to visitors who asked to see the
+prisoners, or to send in a note. “I consider the letters and telegrams
+these prisoners get are treasonable. They cannot have them.” He
+referred to messages commending the women for choosing prison to
+silence, and bidding them stand steadfast to their program.
+
+Of course all this was done in the hope of intimidating not only the
+prisoners, but also those who came wanting to see them.
+
+It was the intention of the women to abide as far as possible by the
+routine of the institution, disagreeable and unreasonable as it was.
+They performed the tasks assigned to them. They ate the prison food
+without protest. They wore the coarse prison clothes. But at the end of
+the first week of detention they became so weak from the shockingly bad
+food that they began to wonder if they could endure such a system. The
+petty tyrannies they could endure. But the inevitable result of a diet
+of sour bread, half-cooked vegetables, rancid soup with worms in it,
+was serious.
+
+Finally the true condition of affairs trickled to the outside world
+through the devious routes of prison messengers.
+
+Senator J. Hamilton Lewis, of Illinois, Democratic whip in the Senate,
+heard alarming reports of two of his constituents, Miss Lucy Ewing,
+daughter of Judge Ewing, niece of Adlai Stevenson, Vice-President in
+Cleveland’s Administration, niece of James Ewing, minister to Belgium
+in the same Administration, and Mrs. William Upton Watson of Chicago.
+He made a hurried trip to the workhouse to see them. The fastidious
+Senator was shocked—shocked at the appearance of the prisoners, shocked
+at the tale they told, shocked that “ladies” should be subjected to
+such indignities. “In all my years of criminal practice,” said the
+Senator to Gilson Gardner, who had accompanied him to the workhouse, “I
+have never seen prisoners so badly treated, either before or after
+conviction.” He is a gallant gentleman who would be expected to be
+uncomfortable when he actually saw ladies suffer. It was more than
+gallantry in this instance, however, for he spoke in frank condemnation
+of the whole “shame and outrage” of the thing.
+
+It is possible that he reported to other Administration officials what
+he had learned during his visit to the workhouse for very soon
+afterwards it was announced that an investigation of conditions in the
+workhouse would be held. That was, of course, an admirable maneuver
+which the Administration could make. “Is the President not a kind man?
+He pardoned some women. Now he investigates the conditions under which
+others are imprisoned. Even though they are lawless women, he wishes
+them well treated.”
+
+It would sound “noble” to thousands.
+
+Immediately the District Commissioners announced this investigation,
+Miss Lucy Burns, acting on behalf of the National Woman’s Party, sent a
+letter to Commissioner Brownlow. After summing up the food situation
+Miss Burns wrote:
+
+When our friends were sent to prison, they expected the food would be
+extremely plain, but they also expected that . . enough eatable food
+would be given them to maintain them in their ordinary state of health.
+This has not been the case.
+
+The testimony of one of the prisoners, Miss Lavinia Dock, a trained
+nurse, is extremely valuable on the question of food supplied at
+Occoquan. Miss Dock is Secretary of the American Federation of Nurses.
+She has had a distinguished career in her profession. She assisted in
+the work after the Johnstown flood and during the yellow fever epidemic
+in Florida. During the Spanish war she organized the Red Cross work
+with Clara Barton. ‘I really thought,’ said Miss Dock, when I last saw
+her, ‘that I could eat everything, but here I have hard work choking
+down enough food to keep the life in me.’
+
+I am sure you will agree with me that these conditions should be
+instantly remedied. When these and other prisoners were sentenced to
+prison they were sentenced to detention and not to starvation or
+semi-starvation.
+
+The hygienic conditions have been improved at Occoquan since a group of
+suffragists were imprisoned there. But they are still bad. The water
+they drink is kept in an open pail, from which it is ladled into a
+drinking cup. The prisoners frequently dip the drinking cup directly
+into the pail.
+
+The same piece of soap is used for every prisoner. As the prisoners in
+Occoquan are sometimes seriously afflicted with disease, this practice
+is appallingly negligent.
+
+Concerning the general conditions of the person, I am enclosing with
+this letter, affidavit of Mrs. Virginia Bovee, an ex-officer of the
+workhouse . . . . The prisoners for whom I am counsel are aware that
+cruel practices go on at Occoquan. On one occasion they heard
+Superintendent Whittaker kicking a woman in the next room. They heard
+Whittaker’s voice, the sound of blows, and the woman’s cries.
+
+I lay these facts before you with the knowledge that you will be glad
+to have the fullest possible information given you concerning the
+institution for whose administration you as Commissioner of the
+District of Columbia are responsible.’
+
+Very respectfully yours,
+(Signed) LUCY BURNS.
+
+
+Mrs. Bovee, a matron, was discharged from the workhouse because she
+tried to be kind to the suffrage prisoners. She also gave them warnings
+to guide them past the possible contamination of hideous diseases. As
+soon as she was discharged from the workhouse she went to the
+headquarters of the Woman’s Party and volunteered to make an affidavit.
+The affidavit of Mrs. Bovee follows:
+
+I was discharged yesterday as an officer of Occoquan workhouse. For
+eight months I acted as night officer, with no complaint as to my
+performance of my duties. Yesterday Superintendent Whittaker told me I
+was discharged and gave me two hours in which to get out. I demanded
+the charges from the matron, Mrs. Herndon, and I was told that it was
+owing to something that Senator Lewis has said.
+
+I am well acquainted with the conditions at Occoquan. I have had charge
+of all the suffragist prisoners who have been there. I know that their
+mail has been withheld from them. Mrs. Herndon, the matron, reads the
+mail, and often discussed it with us at the officers’ table. She said
+of a letter sent to one of the suffragist pickets now in the workhouse,
+“They told her to keep her eyes open and notice everything. She will
+never get that letter,” said Mrs. Herndon. ,Then she corrected herself,
+and added, “Not until she goes away.” Ordinarily the mail not given the
+prisoners is destroyed. The mail for the suffragists is saved for them
+until they are ready to go away. I have Seen three of the women have
+one letter each, but that is all. The three were Mrs. Watson, Miss
+Ewing, and I think Miss Flanagan.
+
+The blankets now being used in the prison have been in use since
+December without being washed or cleaned. Blankets are washed once a
+year. Officers are warned not to touch any of the bedding. The one
+officer who handles it is compelled by the regulations to wear rubber
+gloves while she does so. The sheets for the ordinary prisoners are not
+changed completely, even when one is gone and another takes her bed.
+Instead the top sheet is put on the bottom, and one fresh sheet is
+given them. I was not there when these suffragists arrived, and I do
+not know how their bedding was arranged. I doubt whether the
+authorities would have dared to give them one soiled sheet.
+
+The prisoners with disease are not always isolated, by any means. In
+the colored dormitory there are two women in the advanced stages of
+consumption. Women suffering from, syphilis, who have open sores, are
+put in the hospital. But those whose sores are temporarily healed are
+put in the same dormitory with the others. There have been several such
+in my dormitory.
+
+When the prisoners come they must undress and take a shower bath. For
+this they take a piece of soap from a bucket in the store room. When
+they are finished they throw the soap back in the bucket. The
+suffragists are permitted three showers a week and have only these
+pieces of soap which are common to all inmates. There is no soap at all
+in wash rooms.
+
+The beans, hominy, rice, cornmeal (which is exceedingly coarse, like
+chicken feed) and cereal have all had worms in them. Sometimes the
+worms float on top of the soup. Often they are found in the cornbread.
+The first suffragists sent the worms to Whittaker on a spoon. On the
+farm is a fine herd of Holsteins. The cream is made into butter and
+sold to the tuberculosis hospital in Washington. At the officers’ table
+we have very good milk. The prisoners do not have any butter or sugar,
+and no milk except by order of the doctor.
+
+Prisoners are punished by being put on bread or water, or by being
+beaten. I know of one girl who has been kept seventeen days on only
+water this month in the “booby house.” The ,same was kept nineteen days
+on water last year because she .beat Superintendent Whittaker when he
+tried to beat her.
+
+Superintendent Whittaker or his son are the only ones who beat the
+girls. Officers are not allowed to lay a hand on them in punishment. I
+know of one girl beaten until the blood had to be scrubbed from her
+clothing and from the floor of the “booby house.” I have never actually
+seen a girl beaten, but I have seen her afterwards and I have heard the
+cries and blows. Dorothy Warfield was beaten and the suffragists heard
+the beating.
+
+(Signed) MRS. VIRGINIA BOVEE.
+
+
+Subscribed and sworn to before me this day of disgust, 1917.
+JOSEPH H. BATT, Notary Public.
+
+
+While the Administration was planning an investigation of the
+conditions in the workhouse, which made it difficult for women to
+sustain health through a thirty day sentence, it was, through its
+police court, sentencing more women to sixty day sentences, under the
+same conditions. The Administration was giving some thought to its plan
+of procedure, but not enough to master the simple fact that women would
+not stop going to prison until something had been done which promised
+passage of the amendment through Congress.
+
+New forms of intimidation and hardship were offered by Superintendent
+Whittaker.
+
+Mrs. Frederick Kendall of Buffalo, New York, a frail and highly
+sensitive woman, was put in a “punishment cell” on bread and water,
+under a charge of “impudence.” Mrs. Kendall says that her impudence
+consisted of “protesting to the matron that scrubbing floors on my
+hands and knees was too severe work for me as I had been unable for
+days to eat the prison food. My impudence further consisted in asking
+for lighter work.”
+
+Mrs. Kendall was refused the clean clothing she should have had the day
+she was put in solitary confinement and was thus forced to wear the
+same clothing eleven days. She was refused a nightdress or clean linen
+for the cot. Her only toilet accommodations was an open pail. For four
+days she was allowed no water for toilet purposes., Her diet consisted
+of three thin slices of bread and three cups of water, carried to her
+in a paper cup which frequently leaked out half the meager supply
+before it got to Mrs. Kendall’s cell.
+
+Representative and Mrs. Charles Bennet Smith, of Buffalo, friends of
+Mrs. Kendall, created a considerable disturbance when they learned of
+this cruel treatment, with the result that Mrs. Kendall was finally
+given clean clothing and taken from her confinement. When she walked
+from her cell to greet Mrs. Genevieve Clark Thompson, daughter of Champ
+Clark, Speaker of the House, and Miss Roberta Bradshaw, other friends,
+who, through the Speaker’s influence, had obtained special permission
+to see Mrs. Kendall, she fell in a dead faint. It was such shocking
+facts as these that the Commissioners and their investigating board
+were vainly trying to keep from the country for the sake of the
+reputation of the Administration.
+
+For attempting to spear to Mrs. Kendall through her cell door, to
+inquire as to her health, while in solitary, Miss Lucy Burns was placed
+on a bread and water diet.
+
+Miss Jeannette Rankin of Montana, the only woman member of Congress,
+was moved by these and similar revelations to introduce a resolution[1]
+calling for a Congressional investigation of the workhouse.
+
+[1] For text of Miss Rankin’s resolution see Appendix 3.
+
+
+There were among the suffrage prisoners women of all shades of social
+opinion.
+
+The following letter by Miss Gvinter, the young Russian worker, was
+smuggled out of the workhouse. This appeal to Meyer London was rather
+pathetic, since not even he, the only Socialist member in Congress,
+stood up to denounce the treatment of the pickets.
+
+Comrade Meyer London:
+
+I am eight years in this movement, three and a half years a member of
+the Socialist Party, Branches 2 and 4 of the Bronx, and I have been an
+active member of the Waist Makers’ Union since 1910. I am from New
+York, but am now in Baltimore, where I got acquainted with the comrades
+who asked me to picket the White House, and of course I expressed my
+willingness to help the movement. I am now in the workhouse. I want to
+get out and help in the work as I am more revolutionary than the
+Woman’s Party, yet conditions here are so bad that I feel I must stay
+here and help women get their rights. We are enslaved here. I am
+suffering very much from hunger and nearly blind from bad nourishment.
+The food is chiefly soup, cereal with worms, bread just baked and very
+heavy. Even this poor food, we do not get enough. I do not eat meat.
+When I told the doctor that he said, “You must eat, and if you don’t
+like it here, you go and tell the judge you won’t picket any more, and
+then you can get out of here.” But I told him that I could not go
+against my principles and my belief. He asked, “Do you believe you
+should break the law?” I replied, “I have picketed whenever I had a
+chance for eight years and have never broken the law. Picketing is
+legal.”
+
+Please come here as quickly as possible, as we need your help.
+
+Will you give the information in this letter to the newspapers?
+
+Please pardon this scrap of paper as I have nothing else to write on. I
+would write to other comrades, to Hillquit or Paulsen, but you are in
+the Congress and can do more.
+
+Yours for the Cause,
+
+(Signed) ANNA GVINTER.
+OCCOQUAN WORKHOUSE, Friday, Sept. 21.
+
+
+Miss Gvinter swore to an affidavit when she came out in which she said
+in part:
+
+. . . The days that we had to stand on scaffolds and ladders to paint
+the dormitories, I was so weak from lack of food I was dizzy and in
+constant danger of falling.
+
+. . . When they told me to scrub the floors of the lavatories I
+refused, because I have to work for my living and I could not afford to
+get any of the awful diseases that women down there have.
+
+I obeyed all the rules of the institution. The only times I stopped
+working was because I was too sick to work.
+
+(Signed) ANNA GVINTER.
+
+
+Sworn to before me and subscribed in my presence this 13th day of
+October, 1917.
+
+(Signed) C. LARIMORE KEELEY,
+Notary Public, D. C.
+
+
+Half a hundred women was the government’s toll for one month:-
+.Continuous arrests kept the issue hot and kept people who cared in
+constant protest. It is impossible to give space to the countless
+beautiful messages which were sent to the women, or the fervent
+protests which went to government officials. Among the hundreds of
+thousands of protests was a valuable one by Dr. Harvey Wiley, the
+celebrated food expert, in a letter to Dr. George M. Kober, member of
+the Board in control of the jail and workhouse, and a well-known
+sanitarium. Dr. Wiley wrote:
+
+November 3, 1917.
+
+
+Dear Dr. Kober:
+
+I am personally acquainted with many of the women who have been
+confined at Occoquan, and at the District jail, and have heard from
+their own lips an account of the nutrition and sanitary conditions
+prevailing at both places.
+
+I, therefore, feel constrained to make known to you the conditions, as
+they have been told to me, and as I believe them actually to exist.
+
+As I understand it, there is no purpose in penal servitude of lowering
+the vitality of the prisoner, or in inviting disease. Yet both of these
+conditions prevail both at Occoquan and at the District jail. First of
+all, the food question. The diet furnished the prisoners at Occoquan
+especially is of a character to invit6 all kinds of infections that may
+prevail, and to lower the vitality so that the resistance to disease is
+diminished. I have fortunately come into possession of samples of the
+food actually given to these women. I have kept samples of the milk
+religiously for over two weeks to see if I could detect the least
+particle of fat, and have been unable to perceive any. The fat of milk
+is universally recognized by dieticians as its most important nutritive
+character. I understand that a dairy is kept on the farm at Occoquan,
+and yet it is perfectly certain that no whole milk is served or ever
+has been served to one of the so-called “picketers” in that jail. I
+have not had enough of the sample to make a chemical analysis, but
+being somewhat experienced in milk, I can truthfully say that it seems
+to me to be watered skimmed milk. I also have a sample of the pea soup
+served. The pea grains are coarsely broken, often more than half of a
+pea, being served in one piece. They never have been cooked, but are in
+a perfectly raw state, and found to be inedible by the prisoners.
+
+I have also samples of the corn bread which is most unattractive and
+repellant to the eye and to the taste. All of these witnesses say that
+the white bread apparently is of good quality, but the diet in every
+case is the cause of constipation, except in the case of pea soup,
+which brings on diarrhea and vomiting. As nutrition is the very
+foundation of sanitation, I wish to call to your special attention, as
+a sanitation, the totally inadequate sustenance given to these
+prisoners.
+
+The food at the county jail at Washington is much better than the food
+at Occoquan, but still bad enough. This increased excellence of food is
+set off by the miserable ventilation of the cells, in which these noble
+women are kept in solitary confinement. Not only have they had a
+struggle to get the windows open slightly, but also at the time of
+their morning meal, the sweeping is done. The air of the cells is
+filled with dust and they try to cover their coffee and other food with
+such articles as they can find to keep the dust out of their food.
+Better conditions for promoting tuberculosis could not be found.
+
+I appeal to you as a well-known sanitarian to get the Board of
+Charities to make such rules and regulations as would secure to
+prisoners of all kinds, and especially to political prisoners, as
+humane an environment as possible.
+
+I also desire to ask that the Board of Charities would authorize me to
+make inspections of food furnished to prisoners at Occoquan and at the
+District Jail, and to have physical and chemical analysis made without
+expense to the Board, in order to determine more fully the nutritive
+environment in which the prisoners live.
+
+Sincerely,
+(Signed) HARVEY WILEY.
+
+
+This striking telegram from Richard Bennett, the distinguished actor,
+must have arrested the attention of the Administration.
+
+September 22, 1917.
+
+
+Hon. Newton Baker,
+Secretary of War,
+War Department,
+Washington, D. C.
+
+I have been asked to go to France personally, with the film of “Damaged
+Goods,” as head of a lecture corps to the American army. On reliable
+authority I am told that American women, because they have dared demand
+their political freedom, are held in vile conditions in the Government
+workhouse in Washington; are compelled to paint the negro toilets for
+eight hours a day; are denied decent food and denied communication with
+counsel. Why should I work for democracy in Europe when our American
+women are denied democracy at home? If I am to fight for social hygiene
+in France, why not begin at Occoquan workhouse?
+
+RICHARD BENNETT.
+
+
+Mr. Bennett never received a reply to this message.
+
+Charming companionships grew up in prison. Ingenuity at lifting the
+dull monotony of imprisonment brought to light many talents for
+camaraderie which amused not only the suffrage prisoners but the
+“regulars.” Locked in separate cells, as in the District Jail, the
+suffragists could still communicate by song. The following lively
+doggerel to the tune of “Captain Kidd” was sung in chorus to the
+accompaniment of a hair comb. It became a saga. Each day a new verse
+was added, relating the day’s particular controversy with the prison
+authorities.
+
+We worried Woody-wood,
+As we stood, as we stood,
+We worried Woody-wood,
+As we stood.
+We worried Woody-wood,
+And we worried him right good;
+We worried him right good as we stood.
+
+We asked him for the vote,
+As we stood, as we stood,
+We asked him for the vote
+As we stood,
+We asked him for the vote,
+But he’d rather write a note,
+He’d rather write a note—so we stood.
+
+We’ll not get out on bail,
+Go to jail, go to jail—
+We’ll not get out on bail,
+We prefer to go to jail,
+We prefer to go to jail—we’re not frail.
+
+We asked them for a brush,
+For our teeth, for our teeth,
+We asked them for a brush
+For our teeth.
+We asked them for a brush,
+They said, “There ain’t no rush,”
+They said, “There ain’t no rush—darn your teeth.”
+
+We asked them for some air,
+As we choked, as we choked,
+We asked them for some air
+As we choked.
+We asked them for some air
+And they threw us in a lair,
+They threw us in a lair, so we choked.
+
+We asked them for our nightie,
+As we froze, as we froze,
+We asked them for our nightie
+As we froze.
+We asked them for our nightie,
+And they looked—hightie-tightie—
+They looked hightie-tightie—so we froze.
+
+Now, ladies, take the hint,
+As ye stand, as ye stand,
+Now, ladies, take the hint,
+As ye stand.
+Now, ladies, take the hint,
+Don’t quote the Presidint,
+Don’t quote the Presidint, as ye stand.
+
+
+Humor predominated in the poems that came out of prison. There was
+never any word of tragedy.
+
+Not even an intolerable diet of raw salt pork, which by actual count of
+Miss Margaret Potheringham, a teacher of Domestic Science and
+Dietetics, was served the suffragists sixteen times in eighteen days,
+could break their spirit of gayety. And when a piece of fish of unknown
+origin was slipped through the tiny opening in the cell door, and a
+specimen carefully preserved for Dr. Wiley—who, by the way, was unable
+to classify it—they were more diverted than outraged.
+
+Sometimes it was a “prayer” which enlivened the evening hour before
+bedtime. Mary Winsor of Haverford, Pennsylvania, was the master
+prayer-maker. One night it was a Baptist prayer, another a Methodist,
+and still another a stern Presbyterian prayer. The prayers were most
+disconcerting to the matron for the “regulars” became almost hysterical
+with laughter, when they should be slipping into sleep. It was trying
+also to sit in the corridor and hear your daily cruelties narrated to
+God and punishment asked. This is what happened to the embarrassed
+warden and jail attendants if they came to protest.
+
+Sometimes it was the beautiful voice of Vida Milholland which rang
+through the corridors of the dreary prison, with a stirring Irish
+ballad, a French love song, or the Woman’s Marseillaise.
+
+Again the prisoners would build a song, each calling out from cell to
+cell, and contributing a line. The following song to the tune of
+“Charlie Is My Darling” was so written and sung with Miss Lucy Branham
+leading:
+
+SHOUT THE REVOLUTION OF WOMEN
+
+
+Shout the revolution
+Of women, of women,
+Shout the revolution
+For liberty.
+Rise, glorious women of the earth,
+The voiceless and the free
+United strength assures the birth
+Of true democracy.
+
+
+REFRAIN
+
+
+Invincible our army,
+Forward, forward,
+Triumphant daughters pressing
+To victory.
+
+Shout the revolution
+of women, of women,
+Shout the revolution
+For liberty.
+Men’s revolution born in blood,
+But ours conceived in peace,
+We hold a banner for a sword,
+Till all oppression cease.
+
+
+REFRAIN
+
+
+Prison, death, defying,
+Onward, onward,
+Triumphant daughters pressing
+To victory.
+
+
+The gayety was interspersed with sadness when the suffragists learned
+of new cruelties heaped upon the helpless ones, those who were without
+influence or friends. .. They learned of that barbarous punishment
+known as “the greasy pole” used upon girl prisoners. This method of
+punishment consisted of strapping girls with their hands tied behind
+them to a greasy pole from which they were partly suspended. Unable to
+keep themselves in an upright position, because of the grease on the
+pole, they slipped almost to the floor, with their arms all but severed
+from the arm sockets, suffering intense pain for long periods of time.
+This cruel punishment was meted out to prisoners for slight infractions
+of the prison rules.
+
+The suffrage prisoners learned also of the race hatred which the
+authorities encouraged. It was not infrequent that the jail officers
+summoned black girls to attack white women, if the latter disobeyed.
+This happened in one instance to the suffrage prisoners who were
+protesting against the warden’s forcibly taking a suffragist from the
+workhouse without telling her or her comrades whither she was being
+taken. Black girls were called and commanded to physically attack the
+suffragists. The negresses, reluctant to do so, were goaded to deliver
+blows upon the women by the warden’s threats of punishment.
+
+And as a result of our having been in prison, our headquarters has
+never ceased being the mecca of many discouraged “inmates,” when
+released. They come for money. They come for work. They come for
+spiritual encouragement to face life after the wrecking experience of
+imprisonment. Some regard us as “fellow prisoners.” Others regard us as
+“friends at court.”
+
+Occasionally we meet a prison associate in the workaday world. Long
+after Mrs. Lawrence Lewis’ imprisonment, when she was working on
+ratification of the amendment in Delaware, she was greeted warmly by a
+charming young woman who came forward at a meeting. “Don’t you remember
+me?” she asked, as Mrs. Lewis struggled to recollect. “Don’t you
+remember me? I met you in Washington.”
+
+“I’m sorry but I seem to have forgotten where I met you,” said Mrs.
+Lewis apologetically.
+
+“In jail,” came the answer hesitantly, whereupon Mrs. Lewis listened
+sympathetically while her fellow prisoner told her that she had been in
+jail at the tipie Mrs. Lewis was, that her crime was bigamy and that
+she was one of the traveling circus troupe then in Dover.
+
+“She brought up her husband, also a member of the circus,” said Mrs.
+Lewis in telling of the incident, “and they both joined
+enthusiastically in a warm invitation to come and see them in the
+circus.”
+
+As each group of suffragists was released an enthusiastic welcome was
+given to them at headquarters and at these times, in the midst of the
+warmth of approving and appreciative comrades, some of the most
+beautiful speeches were delivered. I quote a part of Katharine Fisher’s
+speech at a dinner in honor of released prisoners:
+
+Five of us who are with you to-night have recently come out from the
+workhouse into the world. A great change? Not so much of a change for
+women, disfranchised women. In prison or out, American women are not
+free. Our lot of physical freedom simply gives us and the public a new
+and vivid sense of what our lack of political freedom really means.
+
+Disfranchisement is the prison of women’s power and spirit. Women have
+long been classed with criminals so far as their voting rights are
+concerned. And how quick the Government is to live up to its
+classification the minute women determinedly insist upon these rights.
+Prison life epitomizes all life under undemocratic rule. At Occoquan,
+as at the Capitol and the White House, we faced hypocrisy, trickery and
+treachery on the part of those in power. And the constant appeal to us
+to “cooperate” with the workhouse authorities sounded wonderfully like
+the exhortation addressed to all women to “support the Government.”
+
+“Is that the law of the District of Columbia?” I asked Superintendent
+Whittaker concerning a statement he had made to me. “It is the law,” he
+answered, “because it is the rule I make.” The answer of Whittaker is
+the answer Wilson makes to women every time the Government, of which he
+is the head, enacts a law and at the same time continues to refuse to
+pass the Susan B. Anthony amendment . . . .
+
+We seem to-day to stand before you free, but I have no sense of freedom
+because I have left comrades at Occoquan and because other comrades may
+at any moment join them there . . . .
+
+While comrades are there what is our freedom? It is as empty as the
+so-called political freedom of women who have won suffrage by a state
+referendum. Like them we are free only within limits . . . .
+
+We must not let our voice be drowned by war trumpets or cannon. If we
+do, we shall find ourselves, when the war is over, with a peace that
+will only prolong our struggle, a democracy that will belie its name by
+leaving out half the people.
+
+The Administration continued to send women to the workhouse and the
+District Jail for thirty and sixty day sentences.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 7
+An Administration Protest—Dudley Field Malone Resigns
+
+
+Dudley Field Malone was known to the country as sharing the intimate
+confidence and friendship of President Wilson. He had known and
+supported the President from the beginning of the President’s political
+career. He had campaigned twice through New Jersey with Mr. Wilson as
+Governor; he had managed Mr. Wilson’s campaigns in many states for the
+nomination before the Baltimore Convention; he had toured the country
+with Mr. Wilson in 1912 ; and it was he who led to victory President
+Wilson’s fight for California in 1916.
+
+So when Mr. Malone went to the White House in July, 1917, to protest
+against the Administration’s handling of the suffrage question, he went
+not only as a confirmed suffragist, but also a5 a confirmed supporter
+and member of the Wilson Administration—the one who had been chosen to
+go to the West in 1916 to win women voters to the Democratic Party.
+
+Mr. Malone has consented to tell for the first time, in this record of
+the militant campaign, what happened at his memorable interview with
+President Wilson in July, 1917, an interview which he followed up two
+months later with his resignation as Collector of the Port of New York.
+I quote the story in his own words:
+
+Frank P. Walsh, Amos Pinchot, Frederic C. Howe, J. A. H. Hopkins, Allen
+McCurdy and I were present throughout the trial of the sixteen women in
+July. Immediately after the police court judge had pronounced his
+sentence of sixty days in the Occoquan workhouse upon these “first
+offenders,” on the alleged charge of a traffic violation, I went over
+to Anne Martin, one of the women’s counsel, and offered to act as
+attorney on the appeal of the case. I then went to the court clerk’s
+office and telephoned to President Wilson at the Whit House, asking him
+to see me at once. It was three o’clock. I called a taxicab, drove
+direct to the executive offices and met him.
+
+I began by reminding the President that in the seven years and a half
+of our personal and political association we had never had a serious
+difference. He was good enough to say that my loyalty to him bad been
+one of the happiest circumstances of his public career. But I told him
+I had come to place my resignation in his hands as I could not remain a
+member of any administration which dared to send American women to
+prison for demanding national suffrage. I also informed him that I had
+offered to act as counsel for the suffragists on the appeal of their
+case. He asked me for full details of my complaint and attitude. I told
+Mr. Wilson everything I had witnessed from the time we saw the
+suffragists arrested in front of the White House to their sentence in
+the police court. I observed that although we might not agree with the
+“manners” of picketing, citizens had a right to petition the President
+or any other official of the government for a redress of grievances. He
+seemed to acquiesce in this view, and reminded me that the women had
+been unmolested at the White House gates for over five months, adding
+that he had even ordered the head usher to invite the women on cold
+days to come into the White House and warm themselves and have coffee.
+
+“If the situation is as you describe it, it is shocking,” said the
+President’. “The manhandling of the women by the police was outrageous
+and the entire trial (before a judge of your own appointment) was a
+perversion of justice,” I said. This seemed to annoy the President and
+he replied with asperity, “Why do you come to me in this indignant
+fashion for things which have been done by the police officials of the
+city of Washington?”
+
+“Mr. President,” I said, “the treatment of these women is the result of
+carefully laid plans made by the District Commissioners of the city of
+Washington, who were appointed to office by you. Newspaper men of
+unquestioned information and integrity have told me that the District
+Commissioners have been in consultation with your private secretary,
+Mr. Tumulty, and that the Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. McAdoo, sat in
+at a conference when the policy of these arrests was being determined.”
+
+The President asserted his ignorance of all this.
+
+“Do you mean to tell me,” he said, “that you intend to resign, to
+repudiate me and my Administration and sacrifice me for your views on
+this suffrage question?”
+
+His attitude then angered me and I said, “Mr. President, if there is
+any sacrifice in this unhappy circumstance, it is I who am making the
+sacrifice. I was sent twice as your spokesman in the last campaign to
+the Woman Suffrage States of the West. You have since been good enough
+to say publicly and privately that I did as much as any man to carry
+California for you. After my first tour I had a long conference with
+you here at the White House on the political situation in those states.
+I told you that I found your strength with women voters lay in the fact
+that you had with great patience and statesmanship kept this country
+out of the European war. But that your great weakness with women voters
+was that you had not taken any step throughout your entire
+Administration to urge the passage of the Federal Suffrage Amendment,
+which Mr. Hughes was advocating and which alone can enfranchise all the
+women of the nation. You asked me then how I met this situation, and I
+told you that I promised the women voters of the West that if they
+showed the political sagacity to choose you as against Mr. Hughes, I
+would do everything in my power to get your Administration to take up
+and pass the suffrage amendment. You were pleased and approved of what
+I had done. I returned to California and repeated this promise, and so
+far as I am concerned, I must keep my part of that obligation.”
+
+I reiterated to the President my earlier appeal that he assist suffrage
+as an urgent war measure and a necessary part of America’s program for
+world democracy, to which the President replied: “The enfranchisement
+of women is not at all necessary to a program of democracy and I see
+nothing in the argument that it is a war measure unless you mean that
+American women will not loyally support the war unless they are given
+the vote.” I firmly denied this conclusion of the President and told
+him that while American women with or without the vote would support
+the United States Government against German militarism, yet it seemed
+to me a great opportunity of his leadership to remove this grievance
+which women generally felt against him and his administration. “Mr.
+President,” I urged, “if you, as the leader, will persuade the
+administration to pass the Federal Amendment you will release from the
+suffrage fight the energies of thousands of women which will be given
+with redoubled zeal to the support of your program for international
+justice.” But the President absolutely refused to admit the validity of
+my appeal, though it was as a “war measure” that the President some
+months later demanded that the Senate pass the suffrage amendment.
+
+The President was visibly moved as I added, “You are the President now,
+reelected to office. You ask if I am going to sacrifice you. You
+sacrifice nothing by my resignation. But I lose much. I quit a
+political career. I give up a powerful office in my own state. I, who
+have no money, sacrifice a lucrative salary, and go back to revive my
+law practice. But most of all I sever a personal association with you
+of the deepest affection which you know has meant much to me these past
+seven years. But I cannot and will not remain in office and see women
+thrown into jail because they demand their political freedom.”
+
+The President earnestly urged me not to resign, saying, “What will the
+people of the country think when they hear that the Collector of the
+Port of New York has resigned because of an injustice done to a group
+of suffragists by the police officials of the city of Washington?”
+
+My reply to this was, “With all respect for you, Mr. President, my
+explanation to the public will not be as difficult as yours, if I am
+compelled to remind the public that you have appointed to office and
+can remove all the important officials of the city of Washington.”
+
+The President ignored this and insisted that I should not resign,
+saying, “I do not question your intense conviction about this matter as
+I know you have always been an ardent suffragist; and since you feel as
+you do I see no reason why you should not become their counsel and take
+this case up on appeal without resigning from the Administration.”
+
+“But,” I said, “Mr. President, that arrangement would be impossible for
+two reasons; first, these women would not want me as their counsel if I
+were a member of your Administration, for it would appear to the public
+then as if your Administration was not responsible for the indignities
+to which they have been subjected, and your Administration is
+responsible; and, secondly, I cannot accept your suggestion because it
+may be necessary in the course of the appeal vigorously to criticize
+and condemn members of your cabinet and others close to you, and I
+could not adopt this policy while remaining in office under you.” The
+President seemed greatly upset and finally urged me as a personal
+service to him to go at once and perfect the case on appeal for the
+suffragists, but not to resign until I had thought it over for a day,
+and until he had had an opportunity to investigate the facts I had
+presented to him. I agreed to this, and we closed the interview with
+the President saying, “If you consider my personal request and do not
+resign, please do not leave Washington without coming to see me.” I
+left the executive offices and never saw him again.
+
+There was just a day and a half left to perfect the exceptions for the
+appeal under the rules of procedure. No stenographic record of the
+trial had been taken, which put me under the greatest legal
+difficulties. I was in the midst of these preparations for appeal the
+next day when I learned to my surprise that the President had pardoned
+the women. He had not even consulted me as their attorney. Moreover, I
+was amazed that since the President had said he considered the
+treatment of the women “shocking,” he had pardoned them without stating
+that he did so to correct a grave injustice. I felt certain that the
+high-spirited women in the workhouse would refuse to accept the pardon
+as a mere “benevolent” act on the part of the President.
+
+I at once went down to the workhouse in Virginia. My opinion was
+confirmed. The group refused to accept the President’s pardon. I
+advised them that as a matter of law no one could compel them to accept
+the pardon, but that as a matter of fact they would have to accept it,
+for the Attorney General would have them all put out of the institution
+bag and baggage. So as a solution of the difficulty and in view of the
+fact that the President had said to me that their treatment was
+“shocking” I made public the following statement:
+
+“The President’s pardon is an acknowledgment by him of the grave
+injustice that has been done:” This he never denied.
+
+Under this published interpretation of his pardon the women at Occoquan
+accepted the pardon and returned to Washington. The incident was
+closed. I returned to New York. During the next two months I carefully
+watched the situation. Six or eight more groups of women in that time
+were arrested on the same false charges, tried and imprisoned in the
+same illegal way. Finally a group of women was arrested in September
+under the identical circumstances as those in July, was tried in the
+same lawless fashion and given the same sentence of “sixty days in the
+workhouse.” The President may have been innocent of responsibility for
+the first arrests, but he was personally and politically responsible
+for all the arrests that occurred after his pardon of the first, group.
+Under this development it seemed to me that self-respect demanded
+action, so I sent my resignation to the President, publicly stated my
+attitude and regretfully left his Administration.”
+
+Mr. Malone’s resignation in September, 1917, came with a sudden shock,
+because the entire country and surely the Administration thought him
+quieted and subdued by the President’s personal appeal to him in July.
+
+Mr. Malone was shocked that the policy of arrests should be continued.
+Mr. Wilson and his Administration were shocked that any one should care
+enough about the liberty of women to resign a lucrative post in the
+Government. The nation was shocked into the realization that this was
+not a street brawl between women and policemen, but a controversy
+between suffragists and a powerful Administration. We had said so but
+it would have taken months to convince the public that the President
+was in any way responsible. Mr. Malone did what we could only have done
+with the greatest difficulty and after more prolonged sacrifices. He
+laid the responsibility squarely and dramatically where it belonged. It
+is impossible to overemphasize what a tremendous acceleration Mr.
+Malone’s fine, solitary and generous act gave to the speedy break-down
+of the Administration’s resistance. His sacrifice lightened ours.
+
+Women ought to be willing to make sacrifices for their own liberation,
+but for a man to have the courage and imagination to make such a
+sacrifice for the liberation of women is unparalleled. Mr. Malone
+called to the attention of the nation the true cause of the obstruction
+and suppression. He reproached the President and his colleagues after
+mature consideration, in the most honorable and vital way,—by refusing
+longer to associate himself with an Administration which backed such
+policies.
+
+And Mr. Malone’s resignation was not only welcomed by the militant
+group. The conservative suffrage leaders, although they heartily
+disapproved of , picketing, were as outspoken in their gratitude.
+
+Alice Stone Blackwell, the daughter of Lucy Stone, herself a pioneer
+suffrage leader and editor, wrote to Mr. Malone:
+
+“May I express my appreciation and gratitude for the excellent and
+manly letter that you have written to President Wilson on woman
+suffrage? I am sure that I am only one of many women who feel thankful
+to you for it.
+
+“The picketing seems to me a very silly business, and I am sure it is
+doing the cause harm instead of good; but the picketers are being
+shamefully and illegally treated, and it is a thousand pities, for
+President Wilson’s own sake, that he ever allowed the Washington
+authorities to enter on this course of persecution. It was high time
+for some one to make a protest, and you have made one that has been
+heard far and wide . . . .”
+
+Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, the President of the National American Woman
+Suffrage Association, wrote:
+
+“I was in Maine when your wonderful letter announcing your resignation
+came out. It was the noblest act that any man ever did on behalf of our
+cause. The letter itself was a high minded appeal . . . . “
+
+Mrs. Norman de R. Whitehouse, the President of the New York State Woman
+Suffrage Party, with which Mr. Malone had worked for years, wired:
+
+“Although we disagree with you on the question of picketing every
+suffragist must be grateful to you for the gallant support you are
+giving our cause and the great sacrifice you are making.”
+
+Mrs. James Lees Laidlaw, Vice Chairman of the New York Suffrage Party,
+said:
+
+“No words of mine can tell you how our hearts have been lifted and our
+purposes strengthened in this tremendous struggle in New York State by
+the reading of your powerful and noble utterances in your letter to
+President Wilson. There flashed through my mind all the memories of
+Knights of chivalry and of romance that I have ever read, and they all
+paled before your championship, and the sacrifice and the high-spirited
+leadership that it signifies. Where you lead, I believe, thousands of
+other men will follow, even though at a distance, and most inadequately
+. . . .”
+
+And from the women voters of California with whom Mr. Malone had kept
+faith came the message:
+
+“The liberty-loving women of California greet you as one of the few men
+in history who have been willing to sacrifice material interests for
+the liberty of a class to which they themselves do not belong. We are
+thrilled by your inspiring words. We appreciate your sympathetic
+understanding of the viewpoint of disfranchised women. We are deeply
+grateful for the incalculable benefit of your active assistance in the
+struggle of American women for political liberty and for a real
+Democracy.”
+
+I reprint Mr. Malone’s letter of resignation which sets forth in detail
+his position.
+
+September 7, 1917.
+
+
+The President,
+The White House,
+Washington, D. C.
+
+Dear Mr. President:
+
+Last autumn, as the representative of your Administration, I went into
+the woman suffrage states to urge your reelection. The most difficult
+argument to meet among the seven million voters was the failure of the
+Democratic party, throughout four years of power, to pass the federal
+suffrage amendment looking toward the enfranchisement of all the women
+of the country. Throughout those states, and particularly in
+California, which ultimately decided the election by the votes of
+women, the women voters were urged to support you, even though Judge
+Hughes had already declared for the federal suffrage amendment, because
+you and your party, through liberal leadership, were more likely
+nationally to enfranchise the rest of the women of the country than
+were your opponents.
+
+And if the women of the West voted to reelect you, I promised them that
+I would spend all my energy, at any sacrifice to myself, to get the
+present Democratic Administration to pass the federal suffrage
+amendment.
+
+But the present policy of the Administration, in permitting splendid
+American women to be sent to jail in Washington, not for carrying
+offensive banners, not for picketing, but on the technical charge of
+obstructing traffic, is a denial even of their constitutional right to
+petition for, and demand the passage of, the federal suffrage
+amendment. It, therefore, now becomes my profound obligation actively
+to keep my promise to the women of the West.
+
+In more than twenty states it is a practical impossibility to amend the
+state constitutions; so the women of those States can only be
+enfranchised by the passage of the federal suffrage amendment. Since
+England and Russia, in the midst of the great war, have assured the
+national enfranchisement of their women, should we not be jealous to
+maintain our democratic leadership in the world by the speedy national
+enfranchisement of American women?
+
+To me, Mr. President, as I urged upon you in Washington two months ago,
+this is not only a measure of justice and democracy, it is also an
+urgent war measure. The women of the nation are, and always will be,
+loyal to the country, and the passage of the suffrage amendment is only
+the first step toward their national emancipation. But unless the
+government takes at least this first step toward their enfranchisement,
+how can the government ask millions of American women, educated in our
+schools and colleges, and millions of American women, in our homes, or
+toiling for economic independence in every line of industry, to give up
+by conscription their men and happiness to a war for democracy in
+Europe, while these women citizens are denied the right to vote on the
+policies of the Government which demands of them such sacrifice?
+
+For this reason many of your most ardent friends and supporters feel
+that the passage of the federal suffrage amendment is a war measure
+which could appropriately be urged by you at this session of Congress.
+It is true that this amendment would have to come from Congress, but
+the present Congress shows no earnest desire to enact this legislation
+for the simple reason that you, as the leader of the party in power,
+have not yet suggested it.
+
+For the whole country gladly acknowledges, Mr. President, that no vital
+piece of legislation has come through Congress these five years except
+by your extraordinary and brilliant leadership. And what millions of
+men and women to-day hope is that you will give the federal suffrage
+amendment to the women of the country by the valor of your leadership
+now. It will hearten the mothers of the nation, eliminate a just
+grievance, and turn the devoted energies of brilliant women to a more
+hearty support of the Government in this crisis.
+
+As you well know, in dozens of speeches in many states I have advocated
+your policies and the war. I was the first man of your Administration,
+nearly five years ago, to publicly advocate preparedness, and helped to
+found the first Plattsburg training camp. And if, with our troops
+mobilizing in France, you will give American women this measure for
+their political freedom, they will support with greater enthusiasm your
+hope and the hope of America for world freedom.
+
+I have not approved all the methods recently adopted by women in
+pursuit of their political liberty; yet, Mr. President, the Committee
+on Suffrage of the United States Senate was formed in 1883, when I was
+one year old; this same federal suffrage amendment was first introduced
+in Congress in 1878, brave women like Susan B. Anthony were petitioning
+Congress for the suffrage before the Civil War, and at the time of the
+Civil War men like William Lloyd Garrison, Horace Greeley, and Wendell
+Phillips assured the suffrage leaders that if they abandoned their
+fight for suffrage, when the war was ended the men of the nation “out
+of gratitude” would enfranchise the women of the- country.
+
+And if the men of this country had been peacefully demanding for over
+half a century the political right or privilege to vote, and had been
+continuously ignored or met with evasion by successive Congresses, as
+have the women, you, Mr. President, as a lover of liberty, would be the
+first to comprehend and forgive their inevitable impatience and
+righteous indignation. Will not this Administration, reelected to power
+by the hope and faith of the women of the West, handsomely reward that
+faith by taking action now for the passage of the federal suffrage
+amendment?
+
+In the Port of New York, during the last four years, billions of
+dollars in the export and import trade of the country have been handled
+by the men of the customs service; their treatment of the traveling
+public has radically changed, their vigilance supplied the evidence of
+the Lusitania note; the neutrality was rigidly maintained; the great
+German fleet guarded, captured, and repaired—substantial economies and
+reforms have been concluded and my ardent industry has been given to
+this great office of your appointment.
+
+But now I wish to leave these finished tasks, to return to my
+profession of the law, and to give all my leisure time to fight as hard
+for the political freedom of women as I have always fought for your
+liberal leadership.
+
+It seems a long seven years, Mr. President, since I first campaigned
+with you when you were running for Governor of New Jersey. In every
+circumstance throughout those years I have served you with the most
+respectful affection and unshadowed devotion. It is no small sacrifice
+now for me, as a member of your Administration, to sever our political
+relationship. But I think it is high time that men in this generation,
+at some cost to themselves, stood up to battle for the national
+enfranchisement of American women. So in order effectively to keep my
+promise made in the West and more freely to go into this larger field
+of democratic effort, I hereby resign my office as Collector of the
+Port of New York, to take effect at once, or at your earliest
+convenience.
+
+Yours respectfully,
+(Signed) DUDLEY FIELD MALONE.
+
+
+The President’s answer has never before been published:
+
+U. S. S. MAYFLOWER, 12 September, 1917.
+
+THE WHITE HOUSE WASHINGTON
+
+
+My dear Mr. Collector:
+
+Your letter of September 7th reached me just before I left home and I
+have, I am sorry to say, been unable to reply to it sooner.
+
+I must frankly say that I cannot regard your reasons for resigning your
+position as Collector of Customs as convincing, but it is so evidently
+your wish to be relieved from the duties of the office that I do not
+feel at liberty to withhold my acceptance of your resignation. Indeed,
+I judge from your letter that any discussion of the reasons would not
+be acceptable to you and that it is your desire to be free of the
+restraints of public office. I, therefore, accept your resignation, to
+take effect as you have wished.
+
+I need not say that our long association in public affairs makes me
+regret the action you have taken most sincerely.
+
+Very truly yours,
+(Signed) WOODROW WILSON.
+
+
+Hon. Dudley Field Malone,
+Collector of Customs,
+New York City.
+
+To this Mr. Malone replied:
+
+New York, N.Y.,
+September 15th, 1917.
+
+The President,
+The White House,
+Washington, D. C.
+
+Dear Mr. President:
+
+Thank you sincerely for your courtesy, for I knew you were on a
+well-earned holiday and I did not expect an earlier reply to my letter
+of September 7th, 1917.
+
+After a most careful re-reading of my letter, I am unable to understand
+how you could judge that any discussion by you of my reasons for
+resigning would not be acceptable to me since my letter was an appeal
+to you on specific grounds for action now by the Administration on the
+Federal Suffrage amendment.
+
+However, I am profoundly grateful to you for your prompt acceptance of
+my resignation.
+
+Yours respectfully,
+(Signed) DUDLEY FIELD MALONE.
+
+
+It may have been accidental but it is interesting to note that the
+first public statement of Mr. Byron Newton, appointed by the
+Administration to succeed Mr. Malone as Collector of the Port of New
+York, was a bitter denunciation of all woman suffrage whether by state
+or national action.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 8
+The Administration Yields
+
+
+Immediately after Mr. Malone’s sensational resignation the
+Administration sought another way to remove the persistent pickets
+without passing the amendment. It yielded on a point of machinery. It
+gave us a report in the Senate and a committee in the House and
+expected us to be grateful.
+
+The press had turned again to more sympathetic accounts of our campaign
+and exposed the prison regime we were undergoing. We were now for a
+moment the object of sympathy; the Administration was the butt of
+considerable hostility. Sensing their predicament and fearing any loss
+of prestige, they risked a slight advance.
+
+Senator Jones, Chairman of the Suffrage Committee, made a visit to the
+workhouse. Scarcely had the women recovered from the surprise of his
+visit when the Senator, on the following day, September 15th, filed the
+favorable report which had been lying with his Committee since May
+15th, exactly six months.
+
+The Report, which he had so long delayed because he wanted [he said] to
+make it a particularly brilliant and elaborate one, read:
+
+“The Committee on Woman Suffrage, to which was referred the joint
+resolution proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United
+States, conferring upon women the right of suffrage, having the same
+under consideration, beg leave to report it back to the Senate with the
+recommendation that the joint resolution do pass.”
+
+This report to the Senate was immediately followed by a vote of 181 to
+107 in the House of Representatives in favor of creating a Committee on
+Woman Suffrage in the House. This vote was indicative of the strength
+of the amendment in the House. The resolution was sponsored by
+Representative Pou, Chairman of the Rules Committee and Administration
+leader, himself an anti- suffragist.
+
+It is an interesting study in psychology to consider some of the
+statements made in the peculiarly heated debate the day this vote was
+taken.
+
+Scores of Congressmen, anxious to refute the idea that the indomitable
+picket had had anything to do with their action, revealed naively how
+surely it had.
+
+Of the 291 men present, not one man stood squarely up for the right of
+the hundreds of women who petitioned for justice. Some indirectly and
+many, inadvertently, however, paid eloquent tribute to the suffrage
+picket.
+
+From the moment Representative Pou in opening the debate spoke of the
+nation-wide request for the committee, and the President’s sanction of
+the committee, the accusations and counter- accusations concerning the
+wisdom of appointing it in the face of the pickets were many and
+animated.
+
+Mr. Meeker of Missouri, Democrat, protested against Congress “yielding
+to the nagging of a certain group.”
+
+Mr. Cantrill of Kentucky, Democrat, believed that “millions of
+Christian women in the nation should not be denied the right of having
+a Committee in the House to study the problem of suffrage because of
+the mistakes of some few of their sisters.”
+
+“One had as well say,” he went on, “that there should be no police in
+Washington because the police force of this city permitted daily
+thousands of people to obstruct the streets and impede traffic and
+permitted almost the mobbing of the women without arresting the
+offenders. There was a lawful and peaceful way in which the police of
+this city could have taken charge of the banners of the pickets without
+permitting the women carrying them to be the objects of mob violence.
+To see women roughly handled by rough men on the streets of the capital
+of the nation is not a pleasing sight to Kentuckians and to red-blooded
+Americans, and let us hope the like will never again be seen here.”
+
+Mr. Walsh, an anti-suffrage Democrat from Massachusetts, deplored
+taking any action which would seem to yield to the demand of the
+pickets who carried banners which “if used by a poor workingman in an
+attempt to get his rights would speedily have put him behind the bars
+for treason or sedition, and these poor, bewildered, deluded creatures,
+after their disgusting exhibition can thank their stars that because
+they wear skirts they are now incarcerated for misdemeanors of a minor
+character . . . . To supinely yield to a certain class of women
+picketing the gates of the official residence,—yes, even posing with
+their short skirts and their short hair within the view of this ‘very
+capitol and our office buildings,’ with banners which would seek to
+lead the people to believe that because we did not take action during
+this war session upon suffrage, if you please, and grant them the right
+of the ballot that we were traitors to the American Republic, would be
+monstrous.”
+
+The subject of the creation of a committee on suffrage was almost
+entirely forgotten. The Congressmen were utterly unable to shake off
+the ghosts of the pickets. The pickets had not influenced their
+actions! The very idea was appalling to Representative Stafford of
+Wisconsin, anti-suffrage Republican, who joined in the Democratic
+protests. He said:
+
+“If a Suffrage Committee is created the militant class will exclaim,
+‘Ah, see how we have driven the great House of Representatives to
+recognize our rights. If we keep up this sort of practices, we will
+compel the House, when they come to vote on the constitutional
+amendment, to surrender obediently likewise’.”
+
+He spoke the truth, and finished dramatically with:
+
+“Gentlemen, there is only one question before the House today and that
+is, if you look at it from a political aspect, whether you wish to
+approve of the practices of these women who have been disgracing their
+cause here in Washington for the past several months.”
+
+Representative Volstead, of Minnesota, Republican, came the closest of
+all to real courage in his protest:—
+
+“In this discussion some very unfair comments have been made upon the
+women who picketed the White House. While I do not approve of
+picketing, I disapprove more strongly of the hoodlum methods pursued in
+suppressing the practice. I gather from the press that this is what
+took place. Some women did in a peaceable, and perfectly lawful manner,
+display suffrage banners on the public street near the White House. To
+stop this the police allowed the women to be mobbed, and then because
+the mob obstructed the street, the women were arrested and fined, while
+the mob went scot-free . . . .”
+
+The Suffrage Committee in the House was appointed. The creation of this
+committee, which had been pending since 1913, was now finally granted
+in September, 1917. To be sure this was accomplished only after an
+inordinate amount of time, money and effort had been spent on a
+sustained and relentless campaign of pressure. But the Administration
+had yielded.
+
+As a means to remove the pickets, however, this yielding had failed.
+“We ask no more machinery; we demand the passage of the amendment,”
+said the pickets as they lengthened their line.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 9
+Political Prisoners
+
+
+Finding that a Suffrage Committee in the House and a report in the
+Senate had not silenced our banners, the Administration cast about for
+another plan by which to stop the picketing. This time they turned
+desperately to longer terms of imprisonment. They were indeed hard
+pressed when they could choose such a cruel and stupid course.
+
+Our answer to this policy was more women on the picket line, on the
+outside, and a protest on the inside of prison.
+
+We decided, in the face of extended imprisonment, to demand to be
+treated as political prisoners. We felt that, as a matter of principle,
+this was the dignified and self-respecting thing to do, since we had
+offended politically, not criminally. We believed further that a
+determined, organized effort to make clear to a wider public the
+political nature of the offense would intensify the Administration’s
+embarrassment and so accelerate their final surrender.
+
+It fell to Lucy Burns, vice chairman of the organization, to be the
+leader of the new protest. Miss Burns is in appearance the very symbol
+of woman in revolt. Her abundant and glorious red hair burns and is not
+consumed—a flaming torch. Her body is strong and vital. It is said that
+Lucy Stone had the “voice” of the pioneers. Lucy Burns without doubt
+possessed the “voice” of the modern suffrage movement. Musical,
+appealing, persuading—she could move the most resistant person. Her
+talent as an orator is of the kind that makes for instant intimacy with
+her audience. Her emotional quality is so powerful that her
+intellectual capacity, which is quite as great, is not always at once
+perceived.
+
+I find myself wanting to talk about her as a human being rather than as
+a leader of women. Perhaps it is because she has such winning, lovable
+qualities. It was always difficult for her to give all of her energy
+and power to a movement. She yearned to play, to read, to study, to be
+luxuriously indolent, to revel in the companionship of her family, to
+which she is ardently devoted; to do any one of a hundred things more
+pleasant than trying to reason with a politician or an unawakened
+member of her own sex. But for these latter labors she had a most
+gentle and persuasive genius, and she would not shrink from hours of
+close argument to convince a person intellectually and emotionally.
+
+Unlike Miss Paul, however, her force is not nonresistant. Once in the
+combat she takes delight in it; she is by nature a rebel. She is an
+ideal leader for the stormy and courageous attack—reckless and yet
+never to the point of unwisdom.
+
+From the time Miss Burns and Miss Paul met for the first time in Cannon
+Row Police Station, London, they have been constant co- workers in
+suffrage. Both were students abroad at the time they met. They were
+among the hundred women arrested for attempting to present petitions
+for suffrage to Parliament. This was the first time either of them had
+participated in a demonstration. But from then on they worked together
+in England and Scotland organizing, speaking, heckling members of the
+government, campaigning at bye- elections; going to Holloway Prison
+together, where they joined the Englishwomen on hunger strike. Miss
+Burns remained organizing in Scotland while Miss Paul was obliged to
+return to America after serious illness following a thirty day period
+of imprisonment, during all of which time she was forcibly fed.
+
+Miss Burns and she did not meet again until 1913—three years having
+intervened—when they undertook the national work on Congress.
+Throughout the entire campaign Miss Burns and Miss Paul counseled with
+one another on every point of any importance. This combination of the
+cool strategist and passionate rebel—each sharing some of the
+attributes of the other-has been a complete and unsurpassed leadership.
+
+You have now been introduced, most inadequately, to Lucy Burns, who was
+to start the fight inside the prison.
+
+She had no sooner begun to organize her comrades for protest than the
+officials sensed a “plot,” and removed her at once to solitary
+confinement. But they were too late. Taking the leader only hastened
+the rebellion. A forlorn piece of paper was discovered, on which was
+written their initial demand, It was then passed from prisoner to
+prisoner through holes in the wall surrounding leaden pipes, until a
+finished document had been perfected and signed by all the prisoners.
+
+This historic document-historic because it represents the first
+organized group action ever made in America to establish the status of
+political prisoners—said:
+
+To the Commissioners of the Distinct of Columbia:
+
+As political prisoners, we, the undersigned, refuse to work while in
+prison. We have taken this stand as a matter of principle after careful
+consideration, and from it we shall not recede.
+
+This action is a necessary protest against an unjust sentence. In
+reminding President Wilson of his pre-election promises toward woman
+suffrage we were exercising the right of peaceful petition, guaranteed
+by the Constitution of the United States, which declares peaceful
+picketing is legal in the District of Columbia. That we are unjustly
+sentenced has been well recognized—when President Wilson pardoned the
+first group of suffragists who had been given sixty days in the
+workhouse, and again when Judge Mullowny suspended sentence for the
+last group of picketers. We wish to point out the inconsistency and
+injustice of our sentences—some of us have been given sixty days, a
+later group thirty days, and another group given a suspended sentence
+for exactly the same action.
+
+Conscious, therefore, of having acted in accordance with the highest
+standards of citizenship, we ask the Commissioners of the District to
+grant us the rights due political prisoners. We ask that we no longer
+be segregated and confined under locks and bars in small groups, but
+permitted to see each other, and that Miss Lucy Burns, who is in full
+sympathy with this letter, be released from solitary confinement in
+another building and given back to us.
+
+We ask exemption from prison work, that our legal right to consult
+counsel be recognized, to have food sent to us from outside, to supply
+ourselves with writing material for as much correspondence as we may
+need, to receive books, letters, newspapers, our relatives and friends.
+
+Our united demand for political treatment has been delayed, because on
+entering the workhouse we found conditions so very bad that before we
+could ask that the suffragists be treated as political prisoners, it
+was necessary to make a stand for the ordinary rights of human beings
+for all the inmates. Although this has not been accomplished we now
+wish to bring the important question of the status of political
+prisoners to the attention of the commissioners, who, we are informed,
+have full authority to make what regulations they please for the
+:District prison and workhouse.
+
+The Commissioners are requested to send us a written reply so that we
+may be sure this protest has reached them.
+
+Signed by,
+
+MARY WINSOR, LUCY BRANHAM, ERNESTINE HARA, HILDA BLUMBERG, MAUD MALONE,
+PAULINE F. ADAMS, ELEANOR. A. CALNAN, EDITH AINGE, ANNIE ARNEIL,
+DOROTHY J. BARTLETT, MARGARET FOTHERINGHAM.
+
+The Commissioners’ only answer to this was a hasty transfer of the
+signers and the leader, Miss Burns, to the District Jail, where they
+were put in solitary confinement. The women were not only refused the
+privileges asked but were denied some of the usual privileges allowed
+to ordinary criminals.
+
+Generous publicity was given to these reasonable demands, and a
+surprisingly wide-spread protest followed the official denial of them.
+Scores of committees went to the District Commissioners. Telegrams
+backing up the women’s demand again poured in upon all responsible
+administrators, from President Wilson down. Not even foreign diplomats
+escaped protest or appeal.
+
+Miss Vera Samarodin sent to the Russian Ambassador the following
+touching letter, concerning her sister, which is translated from the
+Russian:—
+
+The Russian Ambassador,
+Washington, D.C.
+
+Excellency:
+
+I am appealing to you to help a young Russian girl imprisoned in the
+workhouse near Washington. Her name is Nina Samarodin. I have just come
+from one of the two monthly visits I am allowed to make her, as a
+member of her family.
+
+The severity and cruelty of the treatment she is receiving at Occoquan
+are so much greater than she would have to suffer in Russia for the
+simple political offense she is accused of having committed that I hope
+you will be able to intercede with the officials of this country for
+her.
+
+Her offense, aside from the fact that she infringed no law nor
+disturbed the peace, had only a political aim, and was proved to be
+political by the words of the judge who sentenced her, for he declared
+that because of the innocent inscription on her banner he would make
+her sentence light.
+
+Since her imprisonment she has been forced to wear the dress of a
+criminal, which she would not in Russia; she has had to eat only the
+coarse and unpalatable food served the criminal inmates, and has not
+been allowed, as she would in Russia, to have other food brought to
+her; nor has she, as she would be there been under the daily care of a
+physician. She is not permitted to write letters, nor to have free
+access to books and other implements of study. Nina Samarodin has
+visibly lost in weight and strength since her imprisonment, and she has
+a constant headache from hunger.
+
+Her motive in holding the banner by the White House, I feel, cannot but
+appeal to you, Excellency, for she says it was the knowledge that her
+family were fighting in Russia in this great war for democracy, and
+that she was cut off from serving with them that made her desire to do
+what she could to help the women of this nation achieve the freedom her
+own people have.
+
+Will you, if it is within your power, attempt to have her recognized as
+a political prisoner, and relieve the severity of the treatment she is
+receiving for obeying this impulse born of her love of liberty and the
+dictates of her conscience?
+
+I have, Excellency, the honor to be,
+
+Respectfully, your countrywoman,
+(Signed) VERA SAMARODIN,
+Baltimore, Maryland.
+
+
+Another Russian, Maria Moravsky, author and poet, who had herself been
+imprisoned in Czarist Russia and who was touring America at the time of
+this controversy, expressed her surprise that our suffrage prisoners
+should be treated as common criminals. She wrote:[1] “I have been twice
+in the Russian prison; life in the solitary cell was not sweet; but I
+can assure you it was better than that which American women suffragists
+must bear.
+
+[1] Reprinted from The Suffragist, Feb. 8, 1919.
+
+
+“We were permitted to read and write; we wore our own clothes; we were
+not forced to mix with the criminals; we did no work. (Only a few women
+exiled to Siberia for extremely serious political crimes were compelled
+to work.) And our guardians and even judges respected us; they felt we
+were victims, because we struggled for liberty.”
+
+The Commissioners, who bad to bear the responsibility of an answer to
+these protests and to the demand of the prisoners, contended to all
+alike that political prisoners did not exist.
+
+“We shall be happy to establish a precedent,” said the women.
+
+“But in America,” stammered the Commissioners, “there is no need for
+such a thing as political prisoners.”
+
+“The very fact that we can be sentenced to such long terms for a
+political offense shows that there does exist, in fact, a group of
+people who have come into conflict with state power for dissenting from
+the prevailing political system,” our representatives answered.
+
+We cited definitions of political offenses by eminent criminologists,
+penologists, sociologists, statesmen and historians. We declared that
+all authorities on political crime sustained our contention and that we
+clearly came under the category of political, if any crime. We pointed
+as proof to James Bryce, George Sigerson, Maurice Parmelee and even to
+Clemenceau, who defined the distinction between political offenses and
+common law crimes thus: “ . . . theoretically a crime committed in the
+interest of the criminal is a common law crime, while an offense
+committed in the public interest is a political crime.”[1]
+
+[1] Speech before the French Chamber of Deputies May 16, 1876,
+advocating amnesty for those who participated in the Commune of 1871.
+From the Annales de la Chambre des Députés, 1876, v. 2, pp. 44-48.
+
+
+We called to their attention the established custom of special
+treatment of political prisoners in Russia, France, Italy and even
+Turkey.[2]
+
+[2] Those interested in the question of political prisoners and their
+treatment abroad may want to read Concerning Political Prisoners,
+Appendix 6.
+
+
+We told them that as early as 1872 the International Prison Congress
+meeting in London recommended a distinction in the treatment of
+political and common law criminals and the resolution of recommendation
+was “agreed upon by the representatives of all the Powers of Europe and
+America—with the tacit concurrence of British and Irish officials.”[3]
+
+[3] Siegerson, Political Prisoners at Home and Abroad, p. 10.
+
+
+Mr. John Koren, International Prison Commissioner[4] for the United
+States, was throughout this agitation making a study of this very
+problem. As chairman of a Special Committee of the American Prison
+Association, empowered to investi- gate the problem of political
+prisoners for America, he made a report at the annual meeting of the
+American Prison Associ- ation in New York, October, 1919, entitled “The
+Political Of fenders and their Status in Prison”[5] in which he says:
+
+[4] Appointed and sponsored by the Department of State as delegate to
+the International Prison Congress.
+
+
+[5] Mr. Koren discusses the political offender from the penological,
+not the social, point of view.
+
+
+“The political offender . . . must be measured by a different rule, and
+. . . is a creature of extraordinary and temporary conditions . . . .
+
+“There are times in which the tactics used in the pursuit of political
+recognition may result in a technical violation of the law for which
+imprisonment ensues, as witness the suffragist cases in Washington . .
+. . These militants were completely out of place in a workhouse, . . .
+they could not be made to submit to discipline fashioned to meet the
+needs of the derelicts of society, and . . . they therefore destroyed
+it for the entire institution.”
+
+There was no doubt in the official mind but that our claim was just.
+But the Administration would not grant this demand, as such, of
+political prisoners. It must continue to persuade public opinion that
+our offense was not of a political nature; that it was nothing more
+than unpleasant and unfortunate riotous conduct in the capital. The
+legend of “a few slightly mad women seeking notoriety” must be
+sustained. Our demand was never granted, but it was kept up until the
+last imprisonment and was soon reinforced by additional protest
+tactics. Our suffrage prisoners, however, made an important
+contribution toward establishing this reform which others will
+consummate. They were the first in America to organize and sustain this
+demand over a long period of time. In America we maintain a most
+backward policy in dealing with political prisoners. We have neither
+regulation nor precedent for special treatment of them. Nor have we
+official flexibility.
+
+This controversy was at its height in the press and in the public mind
+when President Wilson sent the following message, through a New York
+State suffrage leader, on behalf of the approaching New York referendum
+on state woman suffrage:
+
+“May I not express to you my very deep interest in the campaign in New
+York for the adoption of woman suffrage, and may I not say that I hope
+no voter will be influenced in his decision with regard to the great
+matter by anything the so-called pickets may have done here in
+Washington. However justly they may have laid themselves open to
+serious criticism, their action represents, I am sure, so small a
+fraction of the women of the country who are urging the adoption of
+woman suffrage that it would be most unfair and argue a narrow view to
+allow their actions to prejudice the cause itself. I am very anxious to
+see the great state of New York set a great example in this matter.”
+
+This statement showed a political appreciation of the growing power of
+the movement. Also it would be difficult to prove that the “small
+fraction” had not shown political wisdom in injecting into the campaign
+the embarrassment of a controversy which was followed by the above
+statement of *the President. In the meantime he continued to imprison
+in Washington the “so-called pickets” whom he hoped would not influence
+the decision of the men voters of New York. It will be remembered, in
+passing, that the New York voters adopted suffrage at this time,
+although they had rejected it two years earlier. If the voters of New
+York were influenced at all by the “so-called pickets,” could even
+President Wilson himself satisfactorily prove that it had been an
+adverse influence?
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 10
+The Hunger Strike—A Weapon
+
+
+When the Administration refused to grant the demand of the prisoners
+and of that portion of the public which supported them, for the rights
+of political prisoners, it was decided to resort to the ultimate
+protest-weapon inside prison. A hunger strike was undertaken, not only
+to reinforce the verbal demand for the rights of political prisoners,
+but also as a final protest against unjust imprisonment and
+increasingly long sentences. This brought the Administration face to
+face with a more acute embarrassment. They had to choose between more
+stubborn resistance and capitulation: They continued for a while longer
+on the former path.
+
+Little is known in this country about the weapon of the hunger strike.
+And so at first it aroused tremendous indignation. “Let them starve to
+death,” said the thoughtless one, who did not perceive that that was
+the very thing a political administration could least afford to do.
+“Mad fanatics,” said a kindlier critic. The general opinion was that
+the hunger strike was “foolish.”
+
+Few people realize that this resort to the refusal of food is almost as
+old as civilization. It has always represented a passionate desire to
+achieve an end. There is not time to go into the religious use of it,
+which would also be pertinent, but I will cite a few instances which
+have tragic and amusing likenesses to the suffrage hunger strike.
+
+According to the Brehon Law,[1] which was the code of ancient Ireland
+by which justice was administered under ancient Irish monarchs (from
+the earliest record to the 17th century), it became the duty of an
+injured person, when all else failed, to inflict punishment directly,
+for wrong done. “The plaintiff ‘fasted on’ the defendant.” He went to
+the house of the defendant and sat upon his doorstep, remaining there
+without food to force the payment of a debt, for example. The debtor
+was compelled by the weight of custom and public opinion not to let the
+plaintiff die at his door, and yielded. Or if he did not yield, he was
+practically outlawed by the community, to the point of being driven
+away. A man who refused to abide by the custom not only incurred
+personal danger but lost all character.
+
+[1] Joyce, A Social History of Ancient Ireland, Vol. I, Chapter VIII.
+
+
+If resistance to this form of protest was resorted to it had to take
+the form of a counter-fast. If the victim of such a protest thought
+himself being unjustly coerced, he might fast in opposition, “to
+mitigate or avert the evil.”
+
+“Fasting on a man” was also a mode of compelling action of another
+sort. St. Patrick fasted against King Trian to compel him to have
+compassion on his [Trian’s] slaves.[1] He also fasted against a
+heretical city to compel it to become orthodox.[2] He fasted against
+the pagan King Loeguire to “constrain him to his will.”[3]
+
+[1] Tripartite Life of St. Patrick, CLXXVII, p. 218.
+[2] Ibid. CLXXVII, p. 418.
+[3] Ibid. CLXXVII, p. 556.
+
+
+This form of hunger strike was further used under the Brehon Law as
+compulsion to obtain a request. For example, the Leinstermen on one
+occasion fasted on St. Columkille till they obtained from him the
+promise that an extern King should never prevail against them.
+
+It is interesting to note that this form of direct action was adopted
+because there was no legislative machinery to enforce justice. These
+laws were merely a collection of customs attaining the force of law by
+long usage, by hereditary habit, and by public opinion. Our resort to
+this weapon grew out of the same situation. The legislative machinery,
+while empowered to give us redress, failed to function, and so we
+adopted the fast.
+
+The institution of fasting on a debtor still exists in the East. It is
+called by the Hindoos “sitting dharna.”
+
+The hunger strike was continuously used in Russia by prisoners to
+obtain more humane practices toward them. Kropotkin[1] cites an
+instance in which women prisoners hunger struck to get their babies
+back. If a child was born to a woman during her imprisonment the babe
+was immediately taken from her and not returned. Mothers struck and got
+their babies returned to them.
+
+[1] See In Russian and French Prisons, P. Kropotkin.
+
+
+He cites another successful example in Rharkoff prison in 1878 when six
+prisoners resolved to hunger strike to death if necessary to win two
+things—to be allowed exercise and to have the sick prisoners taken out
+of chains.
+
+There are innumerable instances of hunger strikes, even to death, in
+Russian prison history. But more often the demands of the strikers were
+won.. Breshkovsky[2] tells of a strike by 17 women against outrage,
+which elicited the desired promises from the warden.
+
+[2] For Russia’s Freedom, by Ernest Poole,—An Interview with
+Breshkovsky.
+
+
+As early as 1877 members of the Land and Liberty Society[3] imprisoned
+for peaceful and educational propaganda, in the Schlusselburg Fortress
+for political prisoners, hunger struck against inhuman prison
+conditions and frightful brutalities and won their points.
+
+[3]See The Russian Bastille, Simon O. Pollock.
+
+During the suffrage campaign in England this weapon was used for the
+double purpose of forcing the release of imprisoned militant
+suffragettes, and of compelling the British government to act.
+
+Among the demonstrations was a revival of the ancient Irish custom by
+Sylvia Pankhurst, who in addition to her hunger strikes within prison,
+“fasted on” the doorstep of Premier Asquith to compel him to see a
+deputation of women on the granting of suffrage to English women. She
+won.
+
+Irish prisoners have revived the hunger strike to compel either release
+or trial of untried prisoners and have Lyon. As I write, almost a
+hundred Irish prisoners detained by England for alleged nationalist
+activities, but not brought to trial, hunger struck to freedom. As a
+direct result of this specific hunger strike England has promised a
+renovation of her practices in dealing with Irish rebels.
+
+And so it was that when we came to the adoption of this accelerating
+tactic, we had behind us more precedents for winning our point than for
+losing. We were strong in the knowledge that we could “fast on”
+President Wilson and his powerful Administration, and compel him to act
+or “fast back.”
+
+Among the prisoners who with Alice Paul led the hunger strike was a
+very picturesque figure, Rose Winslow (Ruza Wenclawska) of New York,
+whose parents had brought her in infancy from Poland to become a
+citizen of “free” America. At eleven she was put at a loom in a
+Pennsylvania mill, where she wove hosiery for fourteen hours a day
+until tuberculosis claimed her at nineteen. A poet by nature she
+developed her mind to the full in spite of these disadvantages, and
+when she was forced to abandon her loom she became an organizer for the
+Consumers’ League, and later a vivid and eloquent power in the suffrage
+movement.
+
+Her group preceded Miss Paul’s by about a week in prison.
+
+These vivid sketches of Rose Winslow’s impressions while in the prison
+hospital were written on tiny scraps of paper and smuggled out to us,
+and to her husband during her imprisonment. I reprint them in their
+original form with cuts but no editing.
+
+“If this thing is necessary we will naturally go through with it. Force
+is so stupid a weapon. I feel so happy doing my bit for decency-for our
+war, which is after all, real and fundamental.”
+
+
+“The women are all so magnificent, so beautiful. Alice Paul is as thin
+as ever, pale and large-eyed. We have been in solitary for five weeks.
+There is nothing to tell but that the days go by somehow. I have felt
+quite feeble the last few days—faint, so that I could hardly get my
+hair brushed, my arms ached so. But to-day I am well again. Alice Paul
+and I talk back and forth though we are at opposite ends of the
+building and, a hall door also shuts us apart. But
+occasionally—thrills—we escape from behind our iron-barred doors and
+visit. Great laughter and rejoicing!”
+
+
+To her husband:—
+
+“My fainting probably means nothing except that I am not strong after
+these weeks. I know you won’t be alarmed.
+
+“I told about a syphilitic colored woman with one leg. The other one
+cut off, having rotted so that it was alive with maggots when she came
+in. The remaining one is now getting as bad. They are so short of
+nurses that a little colored girl of twelve, who is here waiting to
+have her tonsils removed, waits on her. This child and two others share
+a ward with a syphilitic child of three or four years, whose mother
+refused to have it at home. It makes you absolutely ill to see it. I am
+going to break all three windows as a protest against their confining
+Alice Paul with these!
+
+“Dr. Gannon is chief of a hospital. Yet Alice Paul and I found we had
+been taking baths in one of the tubs here, in which this syphilitic
+child, an incurable, who has his eyes bandaged all the time, is also
+bathed. He has been here a year. Into the room where he lives came
+yesterday two children to be operated on for tonsillitis. They also
+bathed in the same tub. The syphilitic woman has been in that room
+seven months. Cheerful mixing, isn’t it? The place is alive with
+roaches, crawling all over the walls, everywhere. I found one in my bed
+the other day . . . .”
+
+
+“There is great excitement about my two syphilitics. Each nurse is
+being asked whether she told me. So, as in all institutions where an
+unsanitary fact is made public, no effort is made to make the wrong
+itself right. All hands fall to, to find the culprit, who made it
+known, and he is punished.”
+
+
+“Alice Paul is in the psychopathic ward. She dreaded forcible feeding
+frightfully, and I hate to think how she must be feeling. I had a
+nervous time of it, gasping a long time afterward, and my stomach
+rejecting during the process. I spent a bad, restless night, but
+otherwise I am all right. The poor soul who fed me got liberally
+besprinkled during the process. I heard myself making the most hideous
+sounds . . . . One feels so forsaken when one lies prone and people
+shove a pipe down one’s stomach.”
+
+
+“This morning but for an astounding tiredness, I am all right. I am
+waiting to see what happens when the President realizes that brutal
+bullying isn’t quite a statesmanlike method for settling a demand for
+justice at home. At least, if men are supine enough to endure, women—to
+their eternal glory—are not.
+
+“They took down the boarding from Alice Paul’s window yesterday, I
+heard. It is so delicious about Alice and me. Over in the jail a rumor
+began that I was considered insane and would be examined. Then came
+Doctor White, and said he had come to see ‘the thyroid case.’ When they
+left we argued about the matter, neither of us knowing which was
+considered ‘suspicious.’ She insisted it was she, and, as it happened,
+she was right. Imagine any one thinking Alice Paul needed to be ‘under
+observation!’ The thick-headed idiots!”
+
+
+“Yesterday was a bad day for me in feeding. I was vomiting continually
+during the process. The tube has developed an irritation somewhere that
+is painful.
+
+“Never was there a sentence[1] like ours for such an offense as ours,
+even in England. No woman ever got it over there even for tearing down
+buildings. And during all that agitation we were busy saying that never
+would such things happen in the United States. The men told us they
+would not endure such frightfulness.”
+
+[1] Sentence of seven months for “obstructing traffic.”
+
+“Mary Beard and Helen Todd were allowed to stay only a minute, and I
+cried like a fool. I am getting over that habit, I think.
+
+“I fainted again last night. I just fell flop over in the bathroom
+where I was washing my hands and was led to bed when I recovered, by a
+nurse. I lost. consciousness just as I got there again. I felt horribly
+faint until 12 o’clock, then fell asleep for awhile.”
+
+
+“I was getting frantic because you seemed to think Alice was with me in
+the hospital. She was in the psychopathic ward. The same doctor feeds
+us both, and told me. Don’t let them tell you we take this well. Miss
+Paul vomits much. I do, too, except when I’m not nervous, as I have
+been every time against my will. I try to be less feeble-minded. It’s
+the nervous reaction, and I can’t control it much. I don’t imagine
+bathing one’s food in tears very good for one.
+
+“We think of the coming feeding all day. It is horrible. The doctor
+thinks I take it well. I hate the thought of Alice Paul and the others
+if I take it well.”
+
+
+“We still get no mail; we are ‘insubordinate.’ It’s strange, isn’t it;
+if you ask for food fit to eat, as we did, you are ‘insubordinate’; and
+if you refuse food you are ‘insubordinate.’ Amusing. I am really all
+right. If this continues very long I perhaps won’t be. I am interested
+to see how long our so-called ‘splendid American men’ will stand for
+this form of discipline.
+
+“All news cheers one marvelously because it is hard to feel anything
+but a bit desolate and forgotten here in this place.
+
+“All the officers here know we are making this hunger strike that women
+fighting for liberty may be considered political prisoners; we have
+told them. God knows we don’t want other women ever to have to do this
+over again.”
+
+
+There have been sporadic and isolated cases of hunger strikes in this
+country but to my knowledge ours was the first to be organized and
+sustained over a long period of time. We shall see in subsequent
+chapters how effective this weapon was.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 11
+Administration Terrorism
+
+
+The Administration tried in another way to stop picketing. It sentenced
+the leader, Alice Paul, to the absurd and desperate sentence of seven
+months in the Washington jail for “obstructing traffic.”
+
+With the “leader” safely behind the bars for so long a time, the
+agitation would certainly weaken! So thought the Administration! To
+their great surprise, however, in the face of that reckless and extreme
+sentence, the longest picket line of the entire campaign formed at the
+White House in the late afternoon of November 10th. Forty-one women
+picketed in protest against this wanton persecution of their leader, as
+well as against the delay in passing the amendment. Face to face with
+an embarrassing number of prisoners the Administration used its wits
+and decided to reduce the number to a manageable size before
+imprisoning this group. Failing of that they tried still another way
+out. They resorted to imprisonment with terrorism.
+
+In order to show how widely representative of the nation this group of
+pickets was, I give its personnel complete:
+
+First Group
+
+New York—Mrs. John Winters Brannan, Miss Belle Sheinberg, Mrs. L. H.
+Hornsby, Mrs. Paula Jakobi, Mrs. Cynthia Cohen, Miss M. Tilden Burritt,
+Miss Dorothy Day, Mrs. Henry Butterworth, Miss Cora Week, Mrs. P. B.
+Johns, Miss Elizabeth Hamilton, Mrs. Ella O. Guilford, New York City;
+Miss Amy Juengling, Miss Hattie Kruger, Buffalo.
+
+Second Group
+
+Massachusetts—Mrs. Agnes H. Morey, Brookline; Mrs. William Bergen and
+Miss Camilla Whitcomb, Worcester; Miss Ella Findeisen, Lawrence; Miss
+L. J. C. Daniels, Boston.
+New Jersey—Mrs. George Scott, Montclair.
+Pennsylvania—Mrs. Lawrence Lewis, Miss Elizabeth McShane, Miss
+Katherine Lincoln, Philadelphia.
+
+Third Group
+
+California—Mrs. William Kent, Kentfield.
+Oregon—Miss Alice Gram, Miss Betty Gram, Portland.
+Utah—Mrs. R. B. Quay, Mrs. T. C. Robertson, Salt Lake City.
+Colorado—Mrs. Eva Decker, Colorado Springs, Mrs. Genevieve Williams,
+Manitou.
+
+Fourth Group
+
+Indiana—Mrs. Charles W. Barnes, Indianapolis.
+Oklahoma—Mrs. Kate Stafford, Oklahoma City.
+Minnesota—Mrs. J. H. Short, Minneapolis.
+Iowa—Mrs. A. N. Beim, Des Moines; Mrs. Catherine Martinette, Eagle
+Grove.
+
+Fifth Group
+
+New York—Miss Lucy Burns, New York City.
+District of Columbia—Mrs. Harvey Wiley.
+Louisiana—Mrs. Alice M. Cosu, New Orleans.
+Maryland—Miss Mary Bartlett Dixon, Easton; Miss Julia Emory, Baltimore.
+Florida—Mrs. Mary I. Nolan, Jacksonville.
+
+There were exceptionally dramatic figures in this group. Mrs. Mary
+Nolan of Florida, seventy-three years old, frail in health but militant
+in spirit, said she had come to take her place with the women
+struggling for liberty in the same spirit that her revolutionary
+ancestor, Eliza Zane, had carried bullets to the fighters in the war
+for independence.
+
+Mrs. Harvey Wiley looked appealing and beautiful as she said in court,
+“We took this action with great consecration of spirit, with
+willingness to sacrifice personal liberty for al] the women of the
+country.”
+
+Judge Mullowny addressed the prisoners with many high-sounding words
+about the seriousness of obstructing the traffic in the national
+capital, and inadvertently slipped into a discourse on Russia, and the
+dangers of revolution. We always wondered why the government was not
+clever enough to eliminate political discourses, at least during
+trials, where the offenders were charged with breaking a slight
+regulation. But their minds were too full of the political aspect of
+our offense to conceal it. “The truth of the situation is that the
+court has not been given power to meet it,” the judge lamented. “It is
+very, very puzzling—I find you guilty of the offense charged, but will
+take the matter of sentence under advisement.”
+
+And so the “guilty” pickets were summarily released.
+
+The Administration did not relish the incarceration of forty-one women
+for another reason than limited housing accommodations. Forty-one women
+representing sixteen states in the union might create a considerable
+political dislocation. But these same forty-one women were determined
+to force the Administration to take its choice. It could allow them to
+continue their peaceful agitation or it could stand the reaction which
+was bound to come from imprisoning them. And so the forty-one women
+returned to the White House gates to resume’ their picketing. They
+stood guard several minutes before the police, taken unawares, could
+summon sufficient force to arrest them, and commandeer enough cars to
+carry them to police headquarters. As the Philadelphia North American
+pointed out: “There was no disorder. The crowd waited with interest and
+in a noticeably friendly spirit to see what would happen. There were
+frequent references to the pluck of the silent sentinels.”
+
+The following morning the women were ordered by Judge Mullowny to “come
+back on Friday. I am not yet prepared to try the case.”
+
+Logic dictated that either we had a right to stand at the gates with
+our banners or we did not have that right; but the Administration was
+not interested in logic. It had to stop picketing. Whether this was
+done legally or illegally, logically or illogically, clumsily or
+dexterously, was of secondary importance. Picketing must be stopped!
+
+Using their welcome release to continue their protest, the women again
+marched with their banners to the White House in an attempt to picket.
+Again they were arrested. No one who saw that line will ever forget the
+impression it made, not only on friends of the suffragists, but on the
+general populace of Washington, to see these women force with such
+magnificent defiance the hand of a wavering Administration. On the
+following morning they were sentenced to from six days to six months in
+prison. Miss Burns received six months.
+
+In pronouncing the lightest sentence upon Mrs. Nolan, the judge said
+that he did so on account of her age. He urged her, however, to pay her
+fine, hinting that jail might be too severe on her and might bring on
+death. At this suggestion, tiny Mrs. Nolan pulled herself up on her
+toes and said with great dignity: “Your Honor, I have a nephew fighting
+for democracy in France. He is offering his life for his country. I
+should be ashamed if I did not join these brave women in their fight
+for democracy in America. I should be proud of the honor to die in
+prison for the liberty of American women.” Even the judge seemed moved
+by her beautiful and simple spirit.
+
+In spite of the fact that the women were sentenced to serve their
+sentences in the District Jail, where they would join Miss Paul and her
+companions, all save one were immediately sent to Occoquan workhouse.
+
+It had been agreed that the demand to be treated as political
+prisoners, inaugurated by previous pickets, should be continued, and
+that failing to secure such rights they would unanimously refuse to eat
+food or do prison labor.
+
+Any words of mine would be inadequate to tell the story of the
+prisoners’ reception at the Occoquan workhouse. The following is the
+statement of Mrs. Nolan, dictated upon her release, in the presence of
+Mr. Dudley Field Malone:
+
+It was about half past seven at night when we got to Occoquan
+workhouse. A woman [Mrs. Herndon] was standing behind a desk when we
+were brought into this office, and there were five or six men also in
+the room. Mrs. Lewis, who spoke for all of us, . . . said she must
+speak to Whittaker, the superintendent of the place.
+
+“You’ll sit here all night, then,” said Mrs. Herndon.
+
+I saw men begin to come upon the porch, but I didn’t think anything
+about it. Mrs. Herndon called my name, but I did not answer. . . ’
+
+Suddenly the door literally burst open and Whittaker burst in like a
+tornado; some men followed him. We could see a crowd of them on the
+porch. They were not in uniform. They looked as much like tramps as
+anything. They seemed to come in—and in—and in. One had a face that
+made me think of an ourang-outang. Mrs. Lewis stood up. Some of us had
+been sitting and lying on the floor, we were so tired. She had hardly
+begun to speak, saying we demanded to be treated as political
+prisoners, when Whittaker said:
+
+“You shut up. I have men here to handle you.” Then he shouted, “Seize
+her!” I turned and saw men spring toward her, and then some one
+screamed, “They have taken Mrs. Lewis.”
+
+A man sprang at me and caught me by the shoulder. I am used to
+remembering a bad foot, which I have had for years, and I remember
+saying, “I’ll come with you; don’t drag me; I have a lame foot.” But I
+was jerked down the steps and away into the dark. I didn’t have my feet
+on the ground. I guess that saved me. I heard Mrs. Cosu, who was being
+dragged along with me, call, “Be careful of your foot.”
+
+Out of doors it was very dark. The building to which they took us was
+lighted up as we came to it. I only remember the American flag flying
+above it because it caught the light from a window in the wing. We were
+rushed into a large room that we found opened on a large hall with
+stone cells on each side. They were perfectly dark. Punishment cells is
+what they call them. Mine was filthy. It had no window save a slip at
+the top and no furniture but an iron bed covered with a thin straw pad,
+and an open toilet flushed from outside the cell . . . .
+
+In the hall outside was a man called Captain Reems. He had on a uniform
+and was brandishing a thick stick and shouting as we were shoved into
+the corridor, “Damn you, get in here.”
+
+I saw Dorothy Day brought in. She is a frail girl. The two men handling
+her were twisting her arms above her head. Then suddenly they lifted
+her up and banged her down over the arm of an iron bench—twice. As they
+ran me past, she was lying there with her arms out, and we heard one of
+the men yell, “The —— suffrager! My mother ain’t no suffrager. I’ll put
+you through ——.”
+
+At the end of the corridor they pushed me through a door. Then I lost
+my balance and fell against the iron bed. Mrs. Cosu struck the wall.
+Then they threw in two mats and two dirty blankets. There was no light
+but from the corridor. The door was barred from top to bottom. The
+walls and floors were brick or stone cemented over. Mrs. Cosu would not
+let me lie on the floor. She put me on the couch and stretched out on
+the floor on one of the two pads they threw in. We had only lain there
+a few minutes, trying to get our breath, when Mrs. Lewis, doubled over
+and handled like a sack of something, was literally thrown in. Her head
+struck the iron bed. We thought she was dead. She didn’t move. We were
+crying over her as we lifted her to the pad on my bed, when we heard
+Miss Burns call:
+
+“Where is Mrs. Nolan?”
+
+I replied, “I am here.”
+
+Mrs. Cosu called out, “They have just thrown Mrs. Lewis in here, too.”
+
+At this Mr. Whittaker came to the door and told us not to dare to
+speak, or he would put the brace and bit in our mouths and the
+straitjacket on our bodies. We were so terrified we kept very still.
+Mrs. Lewis was not unconscious; she was only stunned. But Mrs. Cosu was
+desperately ill as the night wore on. She had a bad heart attack and
+was then vomiting. We called and called. We asked them1to send our own
+doctor, because we thought she was dying . . . . They [the guards paid
+no attention. A cold wind blew in on us from the outside, and we three
+lay there shivering and only half conscious until morning.
+
+“One at a time, come out,” we heard some one call at the barred door
+early in the morning. I went first. I bade them both good- by. I didn’t
+know where I was going or whether I would ever see them again. They
+took me to Mr. Whittaker’s office, where he called my name.
+
+“You’re Mrs. Mary Nolan,” said Whittaker.
+
+“You’re posted,” said I.
+
+“Are you willing to put on prison dress and go to the workroom?” said
+he.
+
+I said, “No.”
+
+“Don’t you know now that I am Mr. Whittaker, the superintendent?” he
+asked.
+
+“Is there any age limit to your workhouse?” I said. “Would a woman of
+seventy-three or a child of two be sent here?”
+
+I think I made him think. He motioned to the guard.
+
+“Get a doctor to examine her,” he said.
+
+In the hospital cottage I was met by Mrs. Herndon and taken to a little
+room with two white beds and a hospital table.
+
+“You can lie down if you want to,” she said.
+
+I took off my coat and hat. I just lay down on the bed and fell into a
+kind of stupor. It was nearly noon and I had had no food offered me
+since the sandwiches our friends brought us in the courtroom at noon
+the day before.
+
+The doctor came and examined my heart. Then he examined my lame foot.
+It had a long blue bruise above the ankle, where they had knocked me as
+they took me across the night before. He asked me what caused’ the
+bruise. I said, “Those fiends when they dragged me to the cell last
+night.” It was paining me. He asked if I wanted liniment and I said
+only hot water. They brought that, and I noticed they did not lock the
+door. A negro trusty was there. I fell back again into the same stupor.
+
+The next day they brought me some toast and a plate of food, the first
+I had been offered in over 36 hours. I just looked at the food and
+motioned it away. It made me sick . . . . I was released on the sixth
+day and passed the dispensary as I came out. There were a group of my
+friends, Mrs. Brannan and Mrs. Morey and many others. They had on
+coarse striped dresses and big, grotesque, heavy shoes. I burst into
+tears as they led me away.
+
+(Signed) MARY I. NOLAN.
+November 21, 1917,
+
+
+The day following their commitment to Occoquan Mr. O’Brien, of counsel,
+was directed to see the women, to ascertain their condition. Friends
+and relatives were alarmed, as not a line of news had been allowed to
+penetrate to the world. Mr. O’Brien was denied admission and forced to
+come back to Washington without any report whatsoever.
+
+The next day Mr. O’Brien again attempted to see his clients, as did
+also the mother of Miss Matilda Young, the youngest prisoner in Mr.
+Whittaker’s care, and Miss Katherine Morey, who went asking to see her
+mother. Miss Morey was held under armed guard half a mile from the
+prison. Admission was denied to all of them.
+
+The terrible anxiety at Headquarters was not relieved the third day by
+a report brought from the workhouse by one of the marines stationed at
+Quantico Station, Virginia, who had been summoned to the workhouse on
+the night the women arrived. He brought news that unknown tortures were
+going on. Mr. O’Brien immediately forced his way through by a court
+order, and brought back to Headquarters the astounding news of the
+campaign of terrorism which had started the moment the prisoners had
+arrived, and which was being continued at that moment. Miss Lucy Burns,
+who had assumed responsibility for the welfare of the women, had
+managed to secrete small scraps of paper and a tiny pencil, and jot
+down briefly the day by day events at the workhouse.
+
+This week of brutality, which rivaled old Russia, if it did not
+outstrip it, was almost the blackest page in the Administration’s cruel
+fight against women.
+
+Here are some of the scraps of Miss Burn’s day-by-day log, smuggled out
+of the workhouse. Miss Burns is so gifted a writer that I feel
+apologetic for using these scraps in their raw form, but I know she
+will forgive me.
+
+WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 14. Demanded to see Superintendent Whittaker.
+Request refused. Mrs. Herndon, the matron, said we would have to wait
+up all night. One of the men guards said he would “put us in sardine
+box and put mustard on us.” Superintendent Whittaker came at 9 p. m. He
+refused to hear our demand for political rights. Seized by guards from
+behind, flung off my feet, and shot out of the room. All of us were
+seized by men guards and dragged to cells in men’s part. Dorothy Day
+was roughly used-back twisted. Mrs. Mary A. Nolan (73-year-old picket
+from Jacksonville, Florida) flung into cell. Mrs. Lawrence Lewis shot
+past my cell. I slept with Dorothy Day in a single bed. I was
+handcuffed all night and manacled to the bars part of the time for
+asking the others how they were, and was threatened with a straitjacket
+and a buckle gag.
+
+THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 16 . . . . Asked for Whittaker, who came. He seized
+Julia Emory by the back of her neck and threw her into the room very
+brutally. She is a little girl. I asked for counsel to learn the status
+of the case. I was told to “shut up,” and was again threatened with a
+straitjacket and a buckle gag. Later I was taken to put on prison
+clothes, refused and resisted strenuously. I was then put in a room
+where delirium tremens patients are kept.
+
+On the seventh day, when Miss Lucy Burns and Mrs. Lawrence Lewis were
+so weak that Mr. Whittaker feared their death, they were forcibly fed
+and taken immediately to the jail in Washington. Of the experience Mrs.
+Lewis wrote:—
+
+I was seized and laid on my back, where five people held me, a young
+colored woman leaping upon my knees, which seemed to break under the
+weight. Dr. Gannon then forced the tube through my lips and down my
+throat, I gasping and suffocating with the agony of it. I didn’t know
+where to breathe from and everything turned black when the fluid began
+pouring in. I was moaning and making the most awful sounds quite
+against my will, for I did not wish to disturb my friends in the next
+room. Finally the tube was withdrawn. I lay motionless. After a while I
+was dressed and carried in a chair to a waiting automobile, laid on the
+back seat and driven into Washington to the jail hospital. Previous to
+the feeding I had been forcibly examined by Dr. Gannon, I protesting
+that I wished a woman physician.
+
+Of this experience, Miss Burns wrote on tiny scraps of paper:
+
+WEDNESDAY, 12 m. Yesterday afternoon at about four or five, Mrs. Lewis
+and I were asked to go to the operating room. Went there and found our
+clothes. Told we were to go to Washington. No reason as usual. When we
+were dressed, Dr. Gannon appeared, and said he wished to examine us.
+Both refused. Were dragged through halls by force, our clothing partly
+removed by force, and we were examined, heart tested, blood pressure
+and pulse taken. Of course such data was of no value after such a
+struggle. Dr. Gannon told me then I must be fed. Was stretched on bed,
+two doctors, matron, four colored prisoners present, Whittaker in hall.
+I was held down by five people at legs, arms, and head. I refused to
+open mouth. Gannon pushed tube up left nostril. I turned and twisted my
+head all I could, but he managed to push it up. It hurts nose and
+throat very much and makes nose bleed freely. Tube drawn out covered
+with blood. Operation leaves one very sick. Food dumped directly into
+stomach feels like a ball of lead. Left nostril, throat and muscles of
+neck very sore all night. After this I was brought into the hospital in
+an ambulance. Mrs. Lewis and I placed in same room. Slept hardly at
+all. This morning Dr. Ladd appeared with his tube. Mrs. Lewis and I
+said we would not be forcibly fed. Said he would call in men guards and
+force us to submit. Went away and we were not fed at all this morning.
+We hear them outside now cracking eggs.
+
+With Miss Burns and Mrs. Lewis, who were regarded as leaders in the
+hunger strike protest, removed to the district jail, Mr. Whittaker and
+his staff at Occoquan began a systematic attempt to break down the
+morale of the hunger strikers. Each one was called to the mat and
+interrogated.
+
+“Will you work?”—“Will you put on prison clothes?”—“Will you
+eat?”—“Will you stop picketing?”—“Will you go without paying your fine
+and promise never to picket again?”
+
+How baffled he must have been! The answer was definite and final. Their
+resistance was superb.
+
+“One of the few warning incidents during the gray days of our
+imprisonment was the unexpected sympathy and understanding of one of
+the government doctors,” wrote Miss Betty Gram of Portland, Oregon.
+
+“’This is the most magnificent sacrifice I have ever seen made for a
+principle [he said I never believed that American women would care so
+much about freedom. I have seen women in Russia undergo extreme
+suffering for their ideals, but unless I had seen this with my own eyes
+I never would have believed it. My sister hunger struck in Russia,
+where she was imprisoned for refusing to reveal the whereabouts of two
+of her friends indicted for a government offense. She was fed after
+three days. You girls are on your ninth day of hunger strike and your
+condition is critical. It is a great pity that such women should be
+subjected to this treatment. I hope that you will carry your point and
+force the hand of the government soon’.”
+
+The mother of Matilda Young, the youngest picket, anxiously appealed to
+Mr. Tumulty, Secretary to President Wilson, and a family friend, to be
+allowed to see the President and ask for a special order to visit her
+daughter. Failing to secure this, she went daily to Mr. Tumulty’s
+office asking if he himself would not intercede for her. Mr. Tumulty
+assured her that her daughter was in safe hands, that she need give
+herself no alarm, the stories of the inhuman treatment at Occoquan were
+false, and that she must not believe them. Finally Mrs. Young pleaded
+to be allowed to send additional warm clothing to her daughter, whom
+she knew to be too lightly clad for the vigorous temperature of
+November. Mr. Tumulty assured her that the women were properly clothed,
+and refused to permit the clothing to be sent. The subsequent stories
+of the women showed what agonies they had endured, because they were
+inadequately clad, from the dampness of the cells into which they were
+thrown.
+
+Mrs. John Winters Brannan was among the women who endured the “night of
+terror.” Mrs. Brannan is the daughter of Charles A. Dana, founder of
+the New York Sun and that great American patriot of liberty who was a
+trusted associate -and counselor of Abraham Lincoln. Mrs. Brannan,
+life-long suffragist, is an aristocrat of intellect and feeling, who
+has always allied herself with libertarian movements. This was her
+second term of imprisonment. She wrote a comprehensive affidavit of her
+experience. After narrating the events which led up to the attack, she
+continues:
+
+Superintendent Whittaker . . . then shouted out in a loud tone of
+voice, “Seize these women, take them off, that one, that one; take her
+off.” The guards rushed forward and an almost indescribable scene of
+violent confusion ensued. I . . . saw one of the guards seize her [Lucy
+Burns] by the arms, twist or force them back of her, and one or two
+other guards seize her by the shoulders, shaking her violently . . . .
+
+I then . . took up my heavy sealskin coat, which was lying by, and put
+it on, in order to prepare myself if attacked . . . . I was trembling
+at the time and was stunned with terror at the situation as it had
+developed, and said to the superintendent, “I will give my name under
+protest,” and started to walk towards the desk whereon lay the books.
+The superintendent shouted to me, “Oh, no, you won’t; don’t talk about
+protest; I won’t have any of that nonsense.”
+
+I . . . saw the guards seizing the different women of the party with
+the utmost violence, the furniture being overturned and the room a
+scene of the utmost disturbance. I saw Miss Lincoln lying on the floor,
+with every appearance of having just been thrown down by the two guards
+who were standing over her in a menacing attitude. Seeing the general
+disturbance, I gave up all idea of giving my name at the desk, and
+instinctively joined my companions, to go with them and share whatever
+was in store for them. The whole group of women were thrown, dragged or
+herded out of the office on to the porch, down the steps to the ground,
+and forced to cross the road . . . to the Administration Building.
+
+During all of this time, . . . Superintendent Whittaker was . . .
+directing the whole attack. . . .
+
+. . .All of us were thrown into different cells in the men’s prison, I
+being put in one with four other women, the cell containing a narrow
+bed and one chair, which was immediately removed . . . .
+
+During the time that we were being forced into the cells the guards
+kept up an uproar, shouting, banging the iron doors, clanging bars,
+making a terrifying noise.
+
+I and one of my companions were lying down on the narrow bed, on which
+were a blanket and one pillow. The door of the cell was opened and a
+mattress and a blanket being thrown in, the door was violently banged
+to . . . . My other . . . companions arranged the mattress on the floor
+and lay down, covering themselves with the blanket.
+
+. . . I looked across the corridor and saw Miss Lincoln, . and asked
+her whether she was all right, being anxious to know whether she had
+been hurt by the treatment in the office building. . . Instantly
+Superintendent Whittaker rushed forward, shouting at me, “Stop that;
+not another word from your mouth, or I will handcuff you, gag you and
+put you in a straitjacket. . .
+
+I wish to state again that the cells into which we were put were
+situated in the men’s prison. There was no privacy for the women, and
+if any of us wished to undress we would be subject to the view or
+observation of the guards who remained in the corridor and who could at
+any moment look at us . . . . Furthermore, the water closets were in
+full view of the corridor where Superintendent Whittaker and the guards
+were moving about. The flushing of these closets could only be done
+from the corridor, and we were forced to ask the guards to do this for
+us,-the men who had shortly before attacked us . . . .
+
+None of the matrons or women attendants appeared at any time that
+night. No water was brought to us for washing, no food was offered to
+us . . . .
+
+I was exhausted by what I had seen and been through, and spent the
+night in absolute terror of further attack and of what might still be
+in store for us. I thought of the young girls who were with us and
+feared for their safety. The guards acted brutal in the extreme,
+incited to their brutal conduct towards us, . . , by the
+superintendent. I thought of the offense with which we had been
+charged,—merely that of obstructing traffic,—and felt that the
+treatment that we had received was out of all proportion to the offense
+with which we were charged, and that the superintendent, the matron and
+guards would not have dared to act towards us as they had acted unless
+they relied upon the support of higher authorities. It seemed to me
+that everything had been done from the time we reached the workhouse to
+terrorize us, and my fear lest the extreme of outrage would be worked
+upon the young girls of our party became intense.
+
+It is impossible for me to describe the terror of that night. . .
+
+The affidavit then continues with the story of how Mrs. Brannan was
+compelled the following morning to put on prison clothes, was given a
+cup of skimmed milk and a slice of toast, and then taken to the sewing
+room, where she was put to work sewing on the underdrawers of the male
+prisoners.
+
+I was half fainting all of that day and . . . requested permission to
+lie down, feeling so ill . . . . I could not sleep, having a sense of
+constant danger . . . . I was almost paralyzed and in wretched physical
+condition.
+
+On Friday afternoon Mrs. Herndon [matron]. . . led us through some
+woods nearby, for about three-quarters of a mile, seven of us being in
+the party. We were so exhausted and weary that we were obliged to stop
+constantly to rest. On our way back from the walk we heard the baying
+of hounds very near us in the woods. The matron said, “You must hurry,
+the bloodhounds are loose.” One of the party, Miss Findeisen, asked
+whether they would attack us, to which the matron replied, “That is
+just what they would do,” and hurried us along. The baying grew louder
+and nearer at times and then more distant, as the dogs rushed back and
+forth, and this went on until we reached the sewing room. The effect of
+this upon our nerves can better be imagined than described . . . .
+
+Every conceivable lie was tried in an effort to force the women to
+abandon their various form of resistance. They were told that no
+efforts were being made from the outside to reach them, and that their
+attorney had been called off the case. Each one was told that she was
+the only one hunger striking. Each one was told that all the others had
+put on prison clothes and were working. Although they were separated
+from one another they suspected the lies and remained strong in their
+resistance. After Mr. O’Brien’s one visit and the subsequent reports in
+the press he was thereafter refused admission to the workhouse.
+
+The judge had sentenced these women to the jail, but the District
+Commissioners had ordered them committed to the workhouse. It was
+evident that the Administration was anxious to keep this group away
+from Alice Paul and her companions, as they counted on handling the
+rebellion more easily in two groups than one.
+
+Meanwhile the condition of the prisoners in the workhouse grew steadily
+worse. It was imperative that we force the Administration to take them
+out of the custody of Superintendent Whittaker immediately. We decided
+to take the only course open—to obtain a writ of habeas corpus. A
+hurried journey by counsel to United States District Judge Waddill of
+Norfolk, Virginia, brought the writ. It compelled the government to
+bring the prisoners into court and show cause why they should not be
+returned to the district jail. This conservative, Southern judge said
+of the petition for the writ, “It is shocking and blood- curdling.”
+
+There followed a week more melodramatic than the most stirring moving
+picture film. Although the writ had been applied for in the greatest
+secrecy, a detective suddenly appeared to accompany Mr. O’Brien from
+Washington to Norfolk, during his stay in Norfolk, and back to
+Washington. Telephone wires at our headquarters were tapped.
+
+It was evident that the Administration was cognizant of every move in
+this procedure before it was executed. No sooner was our plan decided
+upon than friends of the Administration besought us to abandon the
+habeas corpus proceedings. One member of the Administration sent an
+emissary to our headquarters with the following appeal:
+
+“If you will only drop these proceedings, I can absolutely guarantee
+you that the prisoners will be removed from the workhouse to the jail
+in a week:”
+
+“In a week? They may be dead by that time,” we answered. “We cannot
+wait.”
+
+“But I tell you, you must not proceed.”
+
+“Why this mysterious week?” we asked. “Why not tomorrow? Why not
+instantly?”
+
+“I can only tell you that I have a positive guarantee of the District
+Commissioners that the women will be removed,” he said in conclusion.
+We refused to grant his request.
+
+There were three reasons why the authorities wished for a week’s time.
+They were afraid to move the women in their weakened condition and
+before the end of the week they hoped to increase their facilities for
+forcible feeding at the workhouse. They also wished to conceal the
+treatment of the women, the exposure of which would be inevitable in
+any court proceedings. And lastly, the Administration was anxious to
+avoid opening up the whole question of the legality of the very
+existence of the workhouse in Virginia.
+
+Persons convicted in the District for acts committed in violation of
+District law were transported to Virginia—alien territory—to serve
+their terms. It was a moot point whether prisoners were so treated with
+sufficient warrant in law. Eminent jurists held that the District had
+no right to convict a person under its laws and commit that person to
+confinement in another state. They contended that sentence imposed upon
+a person for unlawful acts in the District should be executed in the
+District.
+
+Hundreds of persons who had been convicted in the District of Columbia
+and who had served their sentences in Virginia had been without money
+or influence enough to contest this doubtful procedure in the courts.
+The Administration was alarmed.
+
+We quickened our pace. A member of the Administration rushed his
+attorney as courier to the women in the workhouse to implore them not
+to consent to the habeas corpus proceedings. He was easily admitted and
+tried to extort from one prisoner at a time a promise to reject the
+plan. The women suspected his solicitude and refused to make any
+promise whatsoever without first being allowed to see their own
+attorney.
+
+We began at once to serve the writ. Ordinarily this would be an easy
+thing to do. But for us it developed into a very difficult task. A
+deputy marshal must serve the writ. Counsel sought a deputy. For miles
+around Washington, not one was to be found at his home or lodgings.
+None could be reached by telephone.
+
+Meanwhile Mr. Whittaker, had sped from the premises of the workhouse to
+the District, where he kept himself discreetly hidden for several days.
+When a deputy was found, six attempts were made to serve the writ. All
+failed. Finally by a ruse, Mr. Whittaker was caught at his home late at
+night. He was aroused to a state of violent temper and made futile
+threats of reprisal when he learned that he must produce the suffrage
+prisoners at the Court in Alexandria, Virginia, on the day of November
+twenty- third.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 12
+Alice Paul in Prison
+
+
+Great passions when they run through a whole population, inevitably
+find a great spokesman. A people cannot remain dumb which is moved by
+profound impulses of conviction; and when spokesmen and leaders are
+found, effective concert of action seems to follow as naturally. Men
+spring together for common action under a common impulse which has
+taken hold upon their very natures, and governments presently find that
+they have those to reckon with who know not only what they want, but
+also the most effective means of making governments uncomfortable until
+they get it. Governments find themselves, in short, in the presence of
+Agitation, of systematic movements of opinion, which do not merely
+flare up in spasmodic flames and then die down again, but burn with an
+accumulating ardor which can be checked and extinguished only by
+removing the grievances, and abolishing the unacceptable institutions
+which are its fuel. Casual discontent can be allayed, but agitation
+fixed upon conviction cannot be. To fight it is merely to augment its
+force. It burns irrepressibly in every public assembly; quiet it there,
+and it gathers head at street corners; drive it thence, and it smolders
+in private dwellings, in social gatherings, in every covert of talk,
+only to break forth more violently than ever because denied vent and
+air. It must be reckoned with . . . .
+
+Governments have been very resourceful in parrying agitation, in
+diverting it, in seeming to yield to it, and then cheating it of its
+objects, in tiring it out or evading it . . . . But the end, whether it
+comes soon or late, is quite certain to be always the same.
+
+—“Constitutional Government in the United States.”
+Woodrow Wilson, Ph.D., LL.D.,
+President of Princeton University.
+
+
+The special session of the 65th Congress, known as the “War Congress,”
+adjourned in October, 1917, having passed every measure recommended as
+a war measure by the President.
+
+In addition, it found time to protect by law migratory birds, to
+appropriate forty-seven million dollars for deepening rivers and
+harbors, and to establish more federal judgeships. No honest person
+would say that lack of time and pressure of war legislation had
+prevented its consideration of the suffrage measure. If one-hundredth
+part of the time consumed by its members in spreading the wings of the
+overworked eagle, and in uttering to bored ears “home-made” patriotic
+verse, had been spent in considering the liberty of women, this
+important legislation could have been dealt with. Week after week
+Congress met only for three days, and then often merely for prayer and
+a few hours of purposeless talking.
+
+We had asked for liberty, and had got a suffrage committee appointed in
+the House to consider the pros and cons of suffrage, and a favorable
+report in the Senate from the Committee on Woman Suffrage, nothing
+more.
+
+On the very day and hour of the adjournment of the special session of
+the War Congress, Alice Paul led eleven women to the White House gates
+to protest against the Administration’s allowing its lawmakers to go
+home without action on the suffrage amendment.
+
+Two days later Alice Paul and her colleagues were put on trial.
+
+Many times during previous trials I had heard the District Attorney for
+the government shake his finger at Miss Paul and say, “We’ll get you
+yet . . . . Just wait; and when we do, we’ll give you a year!”
+
+It was reported from very authentic sources that Attorney General
+Gregory had, earlier in the agitation, seriously considered arresting
+Miss Paul for the Administration, on the charge of conspiracy to break
+the law. We were told this plan was abandoned because, as one of the
+Attorney General’s staff put it, “No jury would convict her.”
+
+However, here she was in their hands, in the courtroom.
+
+Proceedings opened with the customary formality. The eleven prisoners
+sat silently at the bar, reading their morning papers, or a book, or
+enjoying a moment of luxurious idleness, oblivious of the comical
+movements of a perturbed court. Nothing in the world so baffles the
+pompous dignity of a court as non-resistant defendants. The judge
+cleared his throat and the attendants made meaningless gestures.
+
+“Will the prisoners stand up and be sworn?”
+
+They will not.
+
+“Will they question witnesses?”
+
+They will not.
+
+“Will they speak in their own behalf ?”
+
+The slender, quiet-voiced Quaker girl arose from her seat. The crowded
+courtroom pressed forward breathlessly. She said calmly and with
+unconcern: “We do not wish to make any plea before this court. We do
+not consider ourselves subject to this court, since as an
+unenfranchised class we have nothing to do with the making of the laws
+which have put us in this position.”
+
+What a disconcerting attitude to take! Miss Paul sat down as quietly
+and unexpectedly as she had arisen. The judge moved uneasily in his
+chair. The gentle way in which it was said was disarming. Would the
+judge hold them in contempt? He had not time to think. His part of the
+comedy he had expected to run smoothly, and here was this defiant
+little woman calmly stating that we were not subject to the court, and
+that we would therefore have nothing to do with the proceedings. The
+murmurs had grown to a babel of conversation. A sharp rap of the gavel
+restored order and permitted Judge Mullowny to say: “Unfortunately, I
+am here to support the laws that are made by Congress, and, of course,
+I am bound by those laws; and you are bound by them as long as you live
+in this country, notwithstanding the fact that you do not recognize the
+law.”
+
+Everybody strained his ears for the sentence. The Administration had
+threatened to “get” the leader. Would they dare?
+
+Another pause!
+
+“I shall suspend sentence for the time being,” came solemnly from the
+judge.
+
+Was it that they did not dare confine Miss Paul? Were they beginning
+actually to perceive the real strength of the movement and the protest
+that would be aroused if she were imprisoned? Again we thought perhaps
+this marked the end of the jailing of women.
+
+But though the pickets were released on suspended sentences, there was
+no indication of any purpose on the part of the Administration of
+acting on the amendment. Two groups, some of those on suspended
+sentence, others first offenders, again marched to the White House
+gates. The following motto:
+
+THE TIME HAS COME TO CONQUER OR SUBMIT; FOR US THERE CAN BE BUT ONE
+CHOICE-WE HAVE MADE IT.
+
+
+a quotation from the President’s second Liberty Loan appeal, was
+carried by Miss Paul.
+
+Dr. Caroline E. Spencer of Colorado carried:
+
+RESISTANCE TO TYRANNY IS OBEDIENCE TO GOD.
+
+
+All were brought to trial again.
+
+The trial of Miss Paul’s group ran as follows:
+
+MR. HART (Prosecuting Attorney for the Government): Sergeant Lee, were
+you on Pennsylvania Avenue near the White House Saturday afternoon?
+
+SERGEANT LEE: I was.
+
+MR. HART: At what time?
+
+LEE: About 4:35 in the afternoon.
+
+HART: Tell the court what you saw.
+
+LEE: A little after half-past four, when the department clerks were all
+going home out Pennsylvania Avenue, I saw four suffragettes coming down
+Madison Place, cross the Avenue and continue on Pennsylvania Avenue to
+the gate of the White House, where they divided two on the right and
+two on the left side of the gate.
+
+HART: What did you do?
+
+LEE: I made my way through the crowd that was surrounding them and told
+the ladies they were violating the law by standing at the gates, and
+wouldn’t they please move on?
+
+HART: Did they move on?
+
+LEE: They did not; and they didn’t answer either.
+
+HART: What did you do then?
+
+LEE: I placed them under arrest.
+
+HART: What did you do then?
+
+LEE: I asked the crowd to move on.
+
+Mr. Hart then arose and summing up said: “Your Honor, these women have
+said that they will picket again. I ask you to impose the maximum
+sentence.”
+
+Such confused legal logic was indeed drole!
+
+“You ladies seem to feel that we discriminate in making arrests and in
+sentencing you,” said the judge heavily. “The result is that you force
+me to take the most drastic means in my power to compel you to obey the
+law.”
+
+More legal confusion!
+
+“Six months,” said the judge to the first offenders, “and then you will
+serve one month more,” to the others.
+
+Miss Paul’s parting remark to the reporters who intercepted her on her
+way from the courtroom to begin her seven months’ sentence was:
+
+“We are being imprisoned, not because we obstructed traffic, but
+because we pointed out to the President the fact that he was
+obstructing the cause of democracy at home, while Americans were
+fighting for it abroad.”
+
+I am going to let Alice Paul tell her own story, as she related it to
+me one day after her release:
+
+It was late afternoon when we arrived at the jail. There we found the
+suffragists who had preceded us, locked in cells.
+
+The first thing I remember was the distress of the prisoners about the
+lack of fresh air. Evening was approaching, every window was closed
+tight. The air in which we would be obliged to sleep was foul. There
+were about eighty negro and white prisoners crowded together, tier upon
+tier, frequently two in a cell. I went to a window and tried to open
+it. Instantly a group of men, prison guards, appeared; picked me up
+bodily, threw me into a cell and locked the door. Rose Winslow and the
+others were treated in the same way.
+
+Determined to preserve out health and that of the other prisoners, we
+began a concerted fight for fresh air. The windows were about twenty
+feet distant from the cells, and two sets of iron bars intervened
+between us and the windows, but we instituted an attack upon them as
+best we could. Our tin drinking cups, the electric light bulbs, every
+available article of the meagre supply in each cell, including my
+treasured copy of Browning’s poems which I had secretly taken in with
+me, was thrown through the windows. By this simultaneous attack from
+every cell, we succeeded in breaking one window before our supply of
+tiny weapons was exhausted. The fresh October air came in like an
+exhilarating gale. The broken window remained untouched throughout the
+entire stay of this group and all later groups of suffragists. Thus was
+won what the “regulars” in jail called the first breath of air in their
+time.
+
+The next day we organized ourselves into a little group for the purpose
+of rebellion. We determined to make it impossible to keep us in jail.
+We determined, moreover, that as long as we were there we would keep up
+an unremitting fight for the rights of political prisoners.
+
+One by one little points were conceded to quiet resistance. There was
+the practice of sweeping the corridors in such a way that the dust
+filled the cells. The prisoners would be choking to the gasping point,
+as they sat, helpless, locked in the cells, while a great cloud of dust
+enveloped them from tiers above and below. As soon as our tin drinking
+cups, which were sacrificed in our attack upon the windows, were
+restored to us, we instituted a campaign against the dust. Tin cup
+after tin cup was filled and its contents thrown out into the corridor
+from every cell, so that the water began to trickle down from tier to
+tier. The District Commissioners, the Board of Charities, and other
+officials were summoned by the prison authorities. Hurried
+consultations were held. Nameless officials passed by in review and
+looked upon the dampened floor. Thereafter the corridors were dampened
+and the sweeping into the cells ceased. And so another reform was won.
+
+There is absolutely no privacy allowed a prisoner in a cell. You are
+suddenly peered at by curious strangers, who look in at you all hours
+of the day and night, by officials, by attendants, by interested
+philanthropic visitors, and by prison reformers, until one’s sense of
+privacy is so outraged that one rises in rebellion. We set out to
+secure privacy, but we did not succeed, for, to allow privacy in
+prison, is against all institutional thought and habit. Our only
+available weapon was our blanket, which was no sooner put in front of
+our bars than it was forcibly taken down by Warden Zinkhan.
+
+Our meals had consisted of a little almost raw salt pork, some sort of
+liquid—I am not sure whether it was coffee or soup—bread and
+occasionally molasses. How we cherished the bread and molasses! We
+saved it from meal to meal so as to try to distribute the nourishment
+over a longer period, as almost every one was unable to eat the raw
+pork. Lucy Branham, who was more valiant than the rest of us, called
+out from her cell, one day, “Shut your eyes tight, close your mouth
+over the pork and swallow it without chewing it. Then you can do it.”
+This heroic practice kept Miss Branham in fairly good health, but to
+the rest it seemed impossible, even with our eyes closed, to crunch our
+teeth into the raw pork.
+
+However gaily you start out in prison to keep up a rebellious protest,
+it is nevertheless a terribly difficult thing to do in the face of the
+constant cold and hunger of undernourishment. Bread and water, and
+occasional molasses, is not a diet destined to sustain rebellion long.
+And soon weakness overtook us.
+
+At the end of two weeks of solitary confinement, without any exercise,
+without going outside of our cells, some of the prisoners were
+released, having finished their terms, but five of us were left serving
+seven months’ sentences, and two, one month sentences. With our number
+thus diminished to seven, the authorities felt able to cope with us.
+The doors were unlocked and we were permitted to take exercise. Rose
+Winslow fainted as soon as she got into the yard, and was carried back
+to her cell. I was too weak to move from my bed. Rose and I were taken
+on stretchers that night to the hospital.
+
+For one brief night we occupied beds in the same ward in the hospital.
+Here we decided upon the hunger strike, as the ultimate form of protest
+left us—the strongest weapon left with which to continue within the
+prison our battle against the Administration.
+
+Miss Paul was held absolutely incommunicado in the prison hospital. No
+attorney, no member of her family, no friend could see her. With Miss
+Burns in prison also it became imperative that I consult Miss Paul as
+to a matter of policy. I was peremptorily refused admission by Warden
+Zinkhan, so I decided to attempt to communicate with her from below her
+window. This was before we had established what in prison parlance is
+known as the “grape- vine route.” The grape-vine route consists of
+smuggling messages oral or written via a friendly guard or prisoner who
+has access to the outside world.
+
+Just before twilight, I hurried in a taxi to the far-away spot,
+temporarily abandoned the cab and walked past the dismal cemetery which
+skirts the prison grounds. I had fortified myself with a diagram of the
+grounds, and knew which entrance to attempt, in order to get to the
+hospital wing where Miss Paul lay. We had also ascertained her floor
+and room. I must first pick the right building, proceed to the proper
+corner, and finally select the proper window.
+
+The sympathetic chauffeur loaned me a very seedy looking overcoat which
+I wrapped about me. Having deposited my hat inside the cab, I turned up
+the collar, drew in my chin and began surreptitiously to circle the
+devious paths leading to a side entrance of the grounds. My heart was
+palpitating, for the authorities had threatened arrest if any
+suffragists were found on the prison grounds, and aside from my
+personal feelings, I could not at that moment abandon headquarters.
+
+Making a desperate effort to act like an experienced and trusted
+attendant of the prison, I roamed about and tried not to appear
+roaming. I successfully passed two guards, and reached the desired
+spot, which was by good luck temporarily deserted. I succeeded in
+calling up loudly enough to be heard by Miss Paul, but softly enough
+not to be heard by the guards.
+
+I shall never forget the shock of her appearance at that window in the
+gathering dusk. Everything in the world seemed black-gray except her
+ghost-like face, so startling, so inaccessible. It drove everything
+else from my mind for an instant. But as usual she was in complete
+control of herself. She began to hurl questions at me faster than I
+could answer. “How were the convention plans progressing?” . . . “Had
+the speakers been secured for the mass meeting?” . . . “How many women
+had signed up to go out on the next picket line?” And so on.
+
+“Conditions at Occoquan are frightful,” said I. “We are planning to . .
+.”
+
+“Get out of there, and move quickly,” shouted the guard, who came
+abruptly around the corner of the building. I tried to finish my
+message. “We are planning to habeas corpus the women out of Occoquan
+and have them transferred up here.”
+
+“Get out of there, I tell you. Damn you!” By this time he was upon me.
+He grabbed me by the arm and began shaking me. “You will be arrested if
+you do not get off these grounds.” He continued to shake me while I
+shouted back, “Do you approve of this plan?”
+
+I was being forced along so rapidly that I was out of range of her
+faint voice and could not hear the answer. I plead with the guard to be
+allowed to go back quietly and speak a few more words with Miss Paul,
+but he was inflexible. Once out of the grounds I went unnoticed to the
+cemetery and sat on a tombstone to wait a little while before making
+another attempt, hoping the guard would not expect me to come back. The
+lights were beginning to twinkle in the distance and it was now almost
+total darkness. I consulted any watch and realized that in forty
+minutes Miss Paul and her comrades would again be going through the
+torture of forcible feeding. I waited five minutes—ten minutes—fifteen
+minutes. Then I went back to the grounds again. I started through
+another entrance, but had proceeded only a few paces when I was
+forcibly evicted. Again I returned to the cold tombstone. I believe
+that I never in my life felt more utterly miserable and impotent. There
+were times, as I have said, when we felt inordinately strong. This was
+one of the times when I felt that we were frail reeds in the hands of
+cruel and powerful oppressors. My thoughts were at first with Alice
+Paul, at that moment being forcibly fed by men jailers and men doctors.
+I remembered then the man warden who had refused the highly reasonable
+request to visit her, and my thoughts kept right on up the scale till I
+got to the man-President—the pinnacle of power against us. I was indeed
+desolate. I walked back to the hidden taxi, hurried to headquarters,
+and plunged into my work, trying all night to convince myself that the
+sting of my wretchedness was being mitigated by activity toward a
+release from this state of affairs.
+
+Later we established daily communication with Miss Paul through one of
+the charwomen who scrubbed the hospital floors. She carried paper and
+pencil carefully concealed upon her. On entering Miss Paul’s room she
+would, with very comical stealth, first elaborately push Miss Paul’s
+bed against the door, then crawl practically under it, and pass from
+this point of concealment the coveted paper and pencil. Then she would
+linger over the floor to the last second, imploring Miss Paul to hasten
+her writing. Faithfully every evening this silent, dusky messenger made
+her long journey after her day’s work, and patiently waited while I
+wrote an answering note to be delivered to Miss Paul the following
+morning. Thus it was that while in the hospital Miss Paul directed our
+campaign, in spite of the Administration’s most painstaking plans to
+the contrary.
+
+Miss Paul’s story continues here from the point where I interrupted it.
+
+From the moment we undertook the hunger strike, a policy of unremitting
+intimidation began. One authority after another, high and low, in and
+out of prison, came to attempt to force me to break the hunger strike.
+
+“You will be taken to a very unpleasant place if you don’t stop this,”
+was a favorite threat of the prison officials, as they would hint
+vaguely of the psychopathic ward, and St. Elizabeth’s, the Government
+insane asylum. They alternately bullied and hinted. Another threat was
+“You will be forcibly fed immediately if you don’t stop”—this from Dr.
+Gannon. There was nothing to do in the midst of these continuous
+threats, with always the “very unpleasant place” hanging over me, and
+so I lay perfectly silent on my bed.
+
+After about three days of the hunger strike a man entered my room in
+the hospital and announced himself as Dr. White, the head of St.
+Elizabeth’s. He said that he had been asked by District Commissioner
+Gardner to make an investigation. I later learned that he was Dr.
+William A. White, the eminent alienist.
+
+Coming close to my bedside and addressing the attendant, who stood at a
+few respectful paces from him, Dr. White said: “Does this case talk?”
+
+“Why wouldn’t I talk?” I answered quickly.
+
+“Oh, these cases frequently will not talk, you know,” he continued in
+explanation.
+
+“Indeed I’ll talk,” I said gaily, not having the faintest idea that
+this was an investigation of my sanity.
+
+“Talking is our business,” I continued, “we talk to any one on earth
+who is willing to listen to our suffrage speeches.”
+
+“Please talk,” said Dr. White. “Tell me about suffrage; why you have
+opposed the President; the whole history of your campaign, why you
+picket, what you hope to accomplish by it. Just talk freely.”
+
+I drew myself together, sat upright in bed, propped myself up for a
+discourse of some length, and began to talk. The stenographer whom Dr.
+White brought with him took down in shorthand everything that was said.
+
+I may say it was one of the best speeches I ever made. I recited the
+long history and struggle of the suffrage movement from its early
+beginning and narrated the political theory’ of our activities up to
+the present moment, outlining the status of the suffrage amendment in
+Congress at that time. In short, I told him everything. He listened
+attentively, interrupting only occasionally to say, “But, has not
+President Wilson treated you women very badly?” Whereupon, I, still
+unaware that I was being examined, launched forth into an explanation
+of Mr. Wilson’s political situation and the difficulties he had
+confronting him. I continued to explain why we felt our relief lay with
+him; I cited his extraordinary power, his influence over his party, his
+undisputed leadership in the country, always painstakingly explaining
+that we opposed President Wilson merely because he happened to be
+President, not because he was President Wilson. Again came an
+interruption from Dr. White, “But isn’t President Wilson directly
+responsible for the abuses anal indignities which have been heaped upon
+you? You are suffering now as a result of his brutality, are you not?”
+Again I explained that it was impossible for us to know whether
+President Wilson was personally acquainted in any detail with the facts
+of our present condition, even though we knew that he had concurred in
+the early decision to arrest our women.
+
+Presently Dr. White took out a small light and held it up to my eyes.
+Suddenly it dawned upon me that he was examining me personally; that
+his interest in the suffrage agitation and the jail conditions did not
+exist, and that he was merely interested in my reactions to the
+agitation and to jail. Even then I was reluctant to believe that I was
+the subject of mental investigation and I continued to talk.
+
+But he continued in what I realized with a sudden shock, was an attempt
+to discover in me symptoms of the persecution mania. How simple he had
+apparently thought it would be, to prove that I had an obsession on the
+subject of President Wilson!
+
+The day following he came again, this time bringing with him the
+District Commissioner, Mr. Gardner, to whom he asked me to repeat
+everything that had been said the day before. For the second time we
+went through the history of the suffrage movement, and again his
+inquiry suggested his persecution mania clue? When the narrative
+touched upon the President and his responsibility for the obstruction
+of the suffrage amendment, Dr. White would turn to his associate with
+the remark: “Note the reaction.”
+
+Then came another alienist , Dr. Hickling, attached to the psychopathic
+ward in the District Jail, with more threats and suggestions, if the
+hunger strike continued. Finally they departed, and I was left to
+wonder what would happen next. Doubtless my sense of humor helped me,
+but I confess A was not without fear of this mysterious place which
+they continued to threaten.
+
+It appeared clear that it was their intention either to discredit me,
+as the leader of the agitation, by casting doubt upon my sanity, or
+else to intimidate us into retreating from the hunger strike.
+
+After the examination by the alienists, Commissioner Gardner, with whom
+I had previously discussed our demand for treatment as political
+prisoners, made another visit. “All these things you say about the
+prison conditions may be true,” said Mr. Gardner, “I am a new
+Commissioner, and I do not know. You give an account of a very serious
+situation in the jail. The jail authorities give exactly the opposite.
+Now I promise you we will start an investigation at once to see who is
+right, you or they. If it is found you are right, we shall correct the
+conditions at once. If you will give up the hunger strike, we will
+start the investigation at once.”
+
+“Will you consent to treat the suffragists as political prisoners, in
+accordance with the demands laid before you?” I replied.
+
+Commissioner Gardner refused, and I told him that the hunger strike
+would not be abandoned. But they had by no means exhausted every
+possible facility for breaking down our resistance. I overheard the
+Commissioner say to Dr. Gannon on leaving, “Go ahead, take her and feed
+her.”
+
+I was thereupon put upon a stretcher and carried into the psychopathic
+ward.
+
+
+There were two windows in the room. Dr. Gannon immediately ordered one
+window nailed from top to bottom. He then ordered the door leading into
+the hallway taken down and an iron-barred cell door put in its place.
+He departed with the command to a nurse to “observe her.”
+
+Following this direction, all through the day once every hour, the
+nurse came to “observe” me. All through the night, once every hour she
+came in, turned on an electric light sharp in my face, and “observed”
+me. This ordeal was the most terrible torture, as it prevented my
+sleeping for more than a few minutes at a time. And if I did finally
+get to sleep it was only to be shocked immediately into wide-awakeness
+with the pitiless light.
+
+Dr. Hickling, the jail alienist, also came often to “observe” me.
+Commissioner Gardner and others—doubtless officials—came to peer
+through my barred door.
+
+One day a young interne came to take a blood test. I protested mildly,
+saying that it was unnecessary and that I objected. “Oh, well,” said
+the young doctor with a sneer and a supercilious shrug, “you know
+you’re not mentally competent to decide such things.” And the test was
+taken over my protest.
+
+It is scarcely possible to convey to you one’s reaction to such an
+atmosphere. Here I was surrounded by people on their way to the insane
+asylum. Some were waiting for their commitment papers. Others had just
+gotten them. And all the while everything possible was done to attempt
+to make me feel that I too was a “mental patient.”
+
+At this time forcible feeding began in the District Jail. Miss Paul and
+Miss Winslow, the first two suffragists to undertake the hunger strike,
+went through the operation of forcible feeding this day and three times
+a day on each succeeding day until their release from prison three
+weeks later. The hunger strike spread immediately to other suffrage
+prisoners in the jail and to the workhouse as recorded in the preceding
+chapter.
+
+One morning [Miss Paul’s story continues the friendly face of a kindly
+old man standing on top of a ladder suddenly appeared at my window. He
+began to nail heavy boards across the window from the outside. He
+smiled and spoke a few kind words and told me to be of good cheer. He
+confided to me in a sweet and gentle way that he was in prison for
+drinking, that he had been in many times, but that he believed he had
+never seen anything so inhuman as boarding up this window and depriving
+a prisoner of light and air. There was only time for a few hurried
+moments of conversation, as I lay upon my bed watching the boards go up
+until his figure was completely hidden and I heard him descending the
+ladder.
+
+After this window had been boarded up no light came into the room
+except through the top half of the other window, and almost no air. The
+authorities seemed determined. to deprive me of air and light.
+
+Meanwhile in those gray, long days, the mental patients in the
+psychopathic ward came and peered through my barred door. At night, in
+the early morning, all through the day there were cries and shrieks and
+moans from the patients. It was terrifying. One particularly melancholy
+moan used to keep up hour after hour, with the regularity of a heart
+beat. I said to myself, “Now I have to endure this. I have got to live
+through this somehow. I’ll pretend these moans are the noise of an
+elevated train, beginning faintly in the distance and getting louder as
+it comes nearer.” Such childish devices were helpful to me.
+
+The nurses could not have been more beautiful in their spirit and
+offered every kindness. But imagine being greeted in the morning by a
+kindly nurse, a new one who had just come on duty, with, “I know you
+are not insane.” The nurses explained the procedure of sending a person
+to the insane asylum. Two alienists examine a patient in the
+psychopathic ward, sign an order committing the patient to St.
+Elizabeth’s Asylum, and there. the patient is sent at the end of one
+week. No trial, no counsel, no protest from the outside world! This was
+the customary procedure.
+
+I began to think as the week wore on that this was probably their plan
+for me. I could not see my family or friends; counsel was denied me; I
+saw no other prisoners and heard nothing of them; I could see no
+papers; I was entirely in the hands of alienists, prison officials and
+hospital staff.
+
+I believe I have never in my life before feared anything or any human
+being. But I confess I was afraid of Dr. Gannon, the jail physician. I
+dreaded the hour of his visit.
+
+“I will show you who rules this place. You think you do. But I will
+show you that you are wrong.” Some such friendly greeting as this was
+frequent from Dr. Gannon on his daily round. “Anything you desire, you
+shall not have. I will show you who is on top in this institution,” was
+his attitude.
+
+After nearly a week had passed, Dudley Field Malone finally succeeded
+in forcing an entrance by an appeal to court officials and made a
+vigorous protest against confining me in the psychopathic ward. He
+demanded also that the boards covering the window be taken down. This
+was promptly done and again the friendly face of the old man became
+visible, as the first board disappeared.
+
+“I thought when I put this up America would not stand for this long,”
+he said, and began to assure me that nothing dreadful would happen. I
+cherish the memory of that sweet old man.
+
+The day after Mr. Malone’s threat of court proceedings, the seventh day
+of my stay in the psychopathic ward, the attendants suddenly appeared
+with a stretcher. I did not know whither I was being taken, to the
+insane asylum, as threatened, or back to the hospital—one never knows
+in prison where one is being taken, no reason is ever given for
+anything. It turned out to be the hospital.
+
+
+After another week spent by Miss Paul on hunger strike in the hospital,
+the Administration was forced to capitulate. The doors of the jail were
+suddenly opened, and all suffrage prisoners were released.
+
+With extraordinary swiftness the Administration’s almost incredible
+policy of intimidation had collapsed. Miss Paul had been given the
+maximum sentence of seven months, and at the end of five weeks the
+Administration was forced to acknowledge defeat. They were in a most
+unenviable position. If she and her comrades had offended in such
+degree as to warrant so cruel a sentence, (with such base stupidity on
+their part in administering it) she most certainly deserved to be
+detained for the full sentence. The truth is, every idea of theirs had
+been subordinated to the one desire of stopping the picketing
+agitation. To this end they had exhausted all their weapons of force.
+
+From my conversation and correspondence with Dr. White, it is clear
+that as an alienist he did not make the slightest allegation to warrant
+removing Miss Paul to the psychopathic ward. On the contrary he wrote,
+“I felt myself in the presence of an unusually gifted personality” and
+. . . “she was wonderfully alert and keen . . . possessed of an
+absolute conviction of her cause . . . with industry and courage
+sufficient to avail herself of them [all diplomatic possibilities. He
+praised the “most admirable, coherent, logical and forceful way” in
+which she discussed with him the purpose of our campaign.
+
+And yet the Administration put her in the psychopathic ward and
+threatened her with the insane asylum.
+
+An interesting incident occurred during the latter part of Miss Paul’s
+imprisonment. Having been cut off entirely from outside communication,
+she was greatly surprised one night at a late hour to find a newspaper
+man admitted for an interview with her. Mr. David Lawrence, then
+generally accepted as the Administration journalist, and one who wrote
+for the various newspapers throughout the country defending the
+policies of the Wilson Administration, was announced. It was equally
+well known that this correspondent’s habit was to ascertain the
+position of the leaders on important questions, keeping intimately in
+touch with opinion in White House circles at the same time.
+
+Mr. Lawrence came, as he said, of his own volition, and not as an
+emissary from the White House. But in view of his close relation to
+affairs, his interview is significant as possibly reflecting an
+Administration attitude at that ,point in the campaign.
+
+The conversation with Miss Paul revolved first about our fight for the
+right of political prisoners, Miss Paul outlining the wisdom and
+justice of this demand.
+
+“The Administration could very easily hire a comfortable house in
+Washington and detain you all there,” said Mr. Lawrence, “but don’t you
+see that your demand to be treated as’ political prisoners is
+infinitely more difficult to grant than to give you the federal
+suffrage amendment? If we give you these privileges we shall have to
+extend them to conscientious objectors and to all prisoners now
+confined for political opinions. This the Administration cannot do.”
+
+The political prisoners protest, then, had actually encouraged the
+Administration to choose the lesser of two evils some action on behalf
+of the amendment.
+
+“Suppose,” continued Mr. Lawrence, “the Administration should pass the
+amendment through one house of Congress next session and go to the
+country in the 1918 elections on that record and if sustained in it,
+pass it through the other house a year from now. Would you then agree
+to abandon picketing?”
+
+“Nothing short of the passage of the amendment through Congress will
+end our agitation,” Miss Paul quietly answered for the thousandth time.
+
+Since Mr. Lawrence disavows any connection with the 4dministration in
+this interview, I can only remark that events followed exactly in the
+order he outlined; that is, the Administration attempted to satisfy the
+women by putting the amendment through the House and not through the
+Senate.
+
+It was during Miss Paul’s imprisonment that the forty-one women went in
+protest to the picket line and were sent to the workhouse, as narrated
+in the previous chapter. The terrorism they endured at Occoquan ran
+simultaneously with the attempted intimidation of Miss Paul and her
+group in the jail.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 13
+Administration—Lawlessness Exposed
+
+
+In August, 1917, when it was clear that the policy of imprisoning
+suffragists would be continued indefinitely, and under longer
+sentences, the next three groups of pickets to be arrested asked for a
+decision from the highest court, the District Court of Appeals. Unlike
+other police courts in the country, there is no absolute right of
+appeal-from the Police Court of the District of Columbia. Justice Robb,
+of the District Court of Appeals, after granting two appeals, refused
+to grant any more, upon the ground that he had discretionary power to
+grant or withhold an appeal. When further right of appeal was denied
+us, and when the Administration persisted in arresting us, we were
+compelled either to stop picketing or go to prison.
+
+The first appealed case was heard by the Court of Appeals on January 8,
+1918, and the decision[1] handed down in favor of the defendants on
+March 4, 1918. This decision was concurred in by all three judges, one
+of whom was appointed by President Wilson, a second by President
+Roosevelt and the third by President Taft.
+
+[1] See Hunter vs. District of Columbia, 47 App. Cas. (D. C.) p. 406.
+
+
+In effect the decision declared that every one of the 218 suffragists
+arrested up to that time was illegally arrested, illegally convicted,
+and illegally imprisoned. The whole policy of the Administration in
+arresting women was by this decision held up to the world as lawless.
+The women could, if they had chosen, have filed suits for damages for
+false arrest and imprisonment at once.
+
+The appeal cases of the other pickets were ordered dismissed and
+stricken from the records. Dudley Field Malone was chief counsel in the
+appeal.
+
+Another example of ethical, if not legal lawlessness, was shown by the
+Administration in the following incident. Throughout the summer and
+early autumn we had continued to press for an investigation of
+conditions at Occoquan, promised almost four months earlier.
+
+October 2nd was the date finally set for an investigation to be held in
+the District Building before the District Board of Charities. Armed
+with 18 affidavits and a score of witnesses as to the actual conditions
+at Occoquan, Attorney Samuel C. Brent and Judge J. K. N. Norton, both
+of Alexandria, Virginia, acting as counsel with Mr. Malone, appeared
+before the Board on the opening day and asked to be allowed to present
+their evidence. They were told by the Board conducting the
+investigation that this was merely “an inquiry into the workhouse
+conditions and therefore would be held in secret without reporters or
+outsiders present.” The attorneys demanded a public hearing, and
+insisted that the question was of such momentous importance that the
+public was entitled to hear both sides of it. They were told they might
+submit in writing any evidence they wished to bring before the Board.
+They refused to produce testimony for a “star chamber proceeding,” and
+refused to allow their witnesses to be heard unless they could be heard
+in public.
+
+Unable to get a public hearing, counsel left the following letter with
+the President of the Board:
+
+Hon. John Joy Edson,
+President Board of Charities,
+Washington, D. C.
+
+Dear Sir:—We are counsel for a large group of citizens, men and women,
+who have in the past been associated with Occoquan work house as
+officials or inmates and who are ready to testify to unspeakable
+conditions of mismanagement, graft, sanitary depravity, indignity and
+brutality at the institution.
+
+We are glad you are to conduct this long-needed inquiry and shall
+cooperate in every way to get at the truth of conditions in Occoquan
+through your investigation, provided you make the hearings public,
+subpoena all available witnesses, including men and women now prisoners
+at Occoquan, first granting them immunity, and provided you give
+counsel an opportunity to examine and cross examine all witnesses so
+called.
+
+We are confident your honorable board will see the justice and wisdom
+of a public inquiry. If charges so publicly made are untrue the
+management of Occoquan work house is entitled to public vindication,
+and if these charges are true, the people of Washington and Virginia
+should publicly know what kind of a prison they have in their midst,
+and the people of the country should publicly know the frightful
+conditions in this institution which is supported by Congress and the
+government of the United States.
+
+We are ready with our witnesses and affidavits to aid your honorable
+board in every way, provided you meet the conditions above named. But
+if you insist on a hearing behind closed doors we cannot submit our
+witnesses to a star chamber proceeding and shall readily find another
+forum in which to tell the American public the vivid story of the
+Occoquan work house.
+
+Respectfully yours,
+(Signed) DUDLEY FIELD MALONE,
+J. K. N. NORTON,
+SAMUEL G. BRENT.
+
+
+Subsequently the District Board of Charities reported findings on their
+secret investigation. After a lengthy preamble, in which they attempted
+to put the entire blame upon the suffrage prisoners, they advised:
+
+That the investigation directed by the Commissioners of the District of
+Columbia be postponed until the conditions of unrest, excitement, and
+disquiet at Occoquan have been overcome:
+
+That the order relieving W. H. Whittaker as superintendent, temporarily
+and without prejudice, be revoked, and Mr. Whittaker be restored to his
+position as superintendent:[1]
+
+[1] Pending the investigation Mr. Whittaker was suspended, and his
+first assistant, Alonzo Tweedale, served in the capacity of
+superintendent.
+
+
+That the members of the National Woman’s Party now at Occoquan be
+informed that unless they obey the rules of the institution and
+discontinue their acts of insubordination and riot, they will be
+removed from Occoquan to the city jail and placed in solitary
+confinement.
+
+In announcing the report to the press the District Commissioners stated
+that they approved the recommendations of the Board of Charities “after
+most careful consideration,” and that “as a matter of fact, the
+District workhouse at Occoquan is an institution of which the
+commissioners are proud, and is a source of pride to every citizen of
+the nation’s Capital.”
+
+That the Administration was in possession of the true facts concerning
+Mr. Whittaker and his conduct in office there can be no doubt. But they
+supported him until the end of their campaign of suppression.
+
+Another example of the Administration’s lawlessness appeared in the
+habeas corpus proceedings by which we rescued the prisoners at the
+workhouse from Mr. Whittakers custody. The trial occurred on November
+23rd.
+
+No one present can ever forget the tragi-comic scene enacted in the
+little Virginia court room that cold, dark November morning. There was
+Judge Waddill[2]—who had adjourned his sittings in Norfolk to hasten
+the relief of the prisoners—a mild mannered, sweet-voiced Southern
+gentleman. There was Superintendent Whittaker in his best Sunday
+clothes, which mitigated very little the cruel and nervous demeanor
+which no one who has come under his control will ever forget. His thugs
+were there, also dressed in their best clothes, which only exaggerated
+their coarse features and their shifty eyes. Mrs. Herndon, the
+thin-lipped matron, was there, looking nervous and trying to seem
+concerned about the prisoners in her charge. Warden Zinkhan was there
+seeming worried at the prospect of the prisoners being taken from the
+care of Superintendent Whittaker and committed to him—he evidently
+unwilling to accept the responsibility.
+
+[2] Appointed to the bench by President Roosevelt.
+
+
+Dudley Field Malone and Mr. O’Brien of counsel, belligerent in every
+nerve, were ready to try the case. The two dapper government attorneys,
+with immobile faces, twisted nervously in their chairs. There was the
+bevy of newspaper reporters struggling for places in the little
+courtroom, plainly sympathetic, for whatever they may have had to write
+for the papers they knew that this was a battle for justice against
+uneven odds. There were as many eager spectators as could be crowded
+into so small an area. Upon the whole an air of friendliness prevailed
+in this little court at Alexandria which we had never felt in the
+Washington courts. And the people there experienced a shock when the
+slender file of women, haggard, red- eyed, sick, came to the bar. Some
+were able to walk to their seats; others were so weak that they had to
+be stretched out 6n the wooden benches with coats propped under their
+heads for pillows. Still others bore the marks of the attack of the
+“night of terror.” Many of the prisoners lay back in their chairs
+hardly conscious of the proceedings which were to. free them. Mrs.
+Brannan collapsed utterly and had to be carried to a couch in an
+ante-room.
+
+It was discovered just as the trial was to open that Miss Lucy Burns
+and Mrs. Lawrence Lewis, who it will be remembered had been removed to
+the jail before the writ had been issued, were absent from among the
+prisoners.
+
+“They are too ill to be brought into court,” Mr. Whittaker replied to
+the attorneys for the defense.
+
+“We demand that they be brought into court at our risk,” answered
+counsel for the defense.
+
+The government’s attorneys sustained Mr. Whittaker in not producing
+them. It was clear that the government did not her wish to have Miss
+Burns with the marks still fresh on wrists from her manacling and
+handcuffing, and Mrs. Lewes with a fever from the shock of the first
+night, brought before the judge who was to decide the case.
+
+“If it was necessary to handcuff Miss Burns to the bars of her cell, we
+consider her well enough to appear,” declared Mr. O’Brien. . “We
+consider we ought to know what has happened to all of these petitioners
+since these events. While I was at Occoquan Sunday endeavoring to see
+my clients, Mr. Whittaker was trying to induce the ladies, who, he
+says, are too sick to be brought here, to dismiss this proceeding.
+Failing in that, he refused to let me see them, though I had an order
+from Judge Mullowny, and they were taken back to the District of
+Columbia. From that time to this, though I had your Honor’s order which
+you signed in Norfolk, the superintendent of the Washington jail also
+refused to allow me to see my clients, saying that your order had no
+effect in the District of Columbia.”
+
+“If there are any petitioners that you claim have not been brought here
+because they have been carried beyond the jurisdiction of the courts, I
+think we should know it,” ruled the court. “Counsel for these ladies
+want them here; and they say that they ought to be here and are well
+enough to b here; that the respondent here has spirited them away and
+put them beyond the jurisdiction of the court. On that showing, unless
+there is some reason why they ought not to come, they should be here.”
+
+Miss Burns and Mrs. Lewes were accordingly ordered brought to court.
+
+This preliminary skirmish over, the opening discussion revolved about a
+point of law as to whether the Virginia District Court had authority to
+act in this case.
+
+After hearing both sides on this point, Judge Waddill said: “These are
+not state prisoners; they are prisoners of the District of Columbia.
+They are held by an order of the court claiming to have jurisdiction in
+the District of Columbia. But they are imprisoned in the Eastern
+District of Virginia, in Occoquan workhouse which, very much to our
+regret, is down here, and is an institution that we alone have
+jurisdiction over. No court would fail to act when such a state of
+affairs as is set forth in this petition is brought to its attention.
+
+“Here was a case concerning twenty-five or thirty ladies. The statement
+as to their treatment was bloodcurdling; it was shocking to man’s ideas
+of humanity if it is true. They are here in court, and yet your answer
+denies all these facts which they submit, It is a question whether you
+can do that anal yet deny these petitioners the right of testimony.”
+
+Proceeding with this argument, the defense contended that the act
+itself of the District Commissioners in sending prisoners to the
+Occoquan workhouse was illegal; that no formal transfer from one
+institution to another had ever been made, the sentencing papers
+distinctly stating that all prisoners were committed to “the Washington
+Asylum and Jail.”
+
+“We deny that the records of the Commissioners of the District of
+Columbia can show that there was any order made by the Board for the
+removal of these women. The liberty of a citizen cannot be so
+disregarded and trifled with that any police official or jailer may at
+his own volition, commit and hold him in custody and compel him to
+work. The liberty of the people depends upon a broader foundation.”
+
+Repeated questions brought out from Mr. Zinkhan, Warden of the Jail,
+the fact that the directions given by the Commissioners to transfer
+prisoners from the jail to Occoquan rested entirely upon a verbal order
+given “five or six years ago.”
+
+“Do you really mean,” interrupted the court, “that the only authority
+you have on the part of the Commissioners of the District of Columbia
+to transfer parties down to Occoquan is a verbal order made five or six
+years ago?”
+
+Questions by the defense brought out the fact also that Mr. Zinkhan
+could remember in detail the first oral orders he had received for such
+a transfer, dating back to 1911, although he could not remember
+important details as to how he had received the orders concerning the
+suffragists committed to his care! He only knew that “orders were oral
+and explicit.”
+
+Q. [By defense in court You say the three commissioners were present?
+
+A. Sure.
+
+Q. Who else was present?
+
+A. I am not sure just now who else was present. I remember somebody
+else was there, but I don’t remember just who . . . .
+
+Q. Were the three commissioners present at the time Mr. [Commissioner]
+Brownlow gave you this order?
+
+A. Yes.
+
+Q. You say it was a verbal order of the Commissioners?
+
+A. Yes.
+
+Q. Was the clerk of the Board present?
+
+A. I think not.
+
+Q. And you cannot remember who was present aside from the three
+Commissioners?
+
+A. No, I cannot remember just now.
+
+Q. Try to recollect who was present at that meeting when this order was
+given, aside from the Commissioners. There was somebody else present?
+
+A. It is my impression that there was some one other person present,
+but I am not sure just now who it was.
+
+Q. It was some official, some one well known, was it not . . . .?
+
+A. I am not sure. . . .
+
+[This conference was one in which Mr. McAdoo was reported to have
+participated.]
+
+The gentle judge was distressed when in answer to a question by the
+government’s attorney as to what Mr. Zinkhan did when the prisoners
+were given into his charge, the warden replied:
+
+A. I heard early in the afternoon of the sentence, and I did not get
+away from the Commissioners’ meeting until nearly 4 o’clock and I
+jumped in my machine and went down to the jail, and I think at that
+time six of them had been delivered there and were in the rotunda of
+the jail, and a few minutes after that a van load came. The remaining
+number of ten or twelve had not arrived, but inasmuch as the train had
+to leave at 5 o’clock and there would not be time enough to receive
+them in the jail and get them there in time for the train, I took the
+van that was there right over to the east end of the Union Station, and
+I think I took some of the others in my machine and another machine we
+had there carried some of the others over, and we telephoned the other
+van at Police Court to go direct to the east end of the Union Station
+and to deliver them to me. I had of course the commitments of those
+that were brought up to the jail—about 20 of them—and received from the
+officer of the court the other commitments of the last van load, and
+there I turned all of them except one that I kept back . . over to the
+receiving and discharging officer representing the District Workhouse,
+and they were taken down there that evening.
+
+There followed some questioning of the uneasy warden as to how he used
+this power to decide which prisoners should remain in jail and which
+should be sent to Occoquan. Warden Zinkhan stuttered something about
+sending “all the able bodied prisoners to Occoquan—women able to
+perform useful work”—and that “humanitarian motives” usually guided him
+in his selection. It was a difficult task for the warden for he had to
+conceal just why the suffrage prisoners were sent to Occoquan, and in
+so doing had to invent “motives” of his own.
+
+Q. [By defense.] Mr. Zinkhan, were you or were you not actuated by
+humanitarian motives when you sent this group of women to the Occoquan
+Workhouse?
+
+A. Yes.
+
+Q. Were you actuated by humanitarian motives when you sent Mrs. Nolan,
+a woman of 73 years, to the workhouse? Did you think that she could
+perform some service at Occoquan that it was necessary to get her out
+of district jail and go down there?
+
+Warden Zinkhan gazed at the ceiling, shifted in his chair and hesitated
+to answer. The question was repeated, and finally the warden admitted
+uncomfortably that he believed he was inspired by “humanitarian
+motives.”
+
+“Mrs. Nolan, will you please stand up?” called out Mr. Malone.
+
+All eyes turned toward the front row, where Mrs. Nolan slowly got to
+her feet. The tiny figure of a woman with pale face and snowy hair,
+standing out dramatically against her black bonnet and plain black
+dress, was answer enough.
+
+Warden Zinkhan’s answers after that came even more haltingly. He seemed
+inordinately fearful of trapping himself by his own words.
+
+“The testimony has brought out the fact,” the judge remarked at this
+point, “that two of these ladies were old and one of them is a delicate
+lady. Her appearance would indicate that she is not strong. Under this
+rule, if one of these ladies had been eighty years old and unable to
+walk she would have gone along with the herd and nobody would have
+dared to say ‘ought this to be done?’ Would the Commissioners in a case
+of that sort, if they gave consideration to it, think of sending such
+an individual there? Was not that what the law expected them to do, and
+not take them off in droves and inspect them at the Union Station and
+shoot them on down? Yet that is about what was done in this case.”
+
+In summing up this phase of the case in an eloquent appeal, Mr. Malone
+said:
+
+“Can the Commissioners, with caprice and no order and no record except
+that orally given five or six years ago, and one which this warden now
+says was given ‘oral and explicit,’ transfer defendants placed in a
+particular institution, and under a particular kind of punishment
+arbitrarily to another institution, and add to their punishment?
+
+“Even if we admit that the Commissioners had power, did Congress ever
+contemplate that any District Commissioners would dare to exercise
+power affecting the life and health of defendants in this fashion? Did
+Congress ever contemplate that, by mere whim, these things could be
+done? I am sure it did not, and even on the admission of the government
+that they had the power, they have exercised this power in such a
+scandalous fashion that it is worthy of the notice of the court and
+worthy of the remedy which we seek—the removal of the suffrage
+prisoners from the Occoquan workhouse.”
+
+After a brief recess, Judge Waddill rendered this decision: “The
+locking up of thirty human beings is an unusual sort of thing and
+judicial officers ought to be required to stop long enough to see
+whether some prisoners ought to go and some not; whether some might not
+be killed by going; or whether they should go dead or alive. This class
+o f prisoners and this number of prisoners should haze been given
+special consideration. There cannot be any controversy about this
+question . . . . You ought to lawfully lock them up instead of
+unlawfully locking them up—if they are to be locked up . . . . The
+petitioners are, therefore, one and all, in the Workhouse without
+semblance of authority or legal process of any kind . . . . and they
+will accordingly be remanded to the custody of the Superintendent of
+the Washington Asylum and Jail.” . . .
+
+It having been decided that the prisoners were illegally detained in
+the workhouse, it was not necessary to go into a discussion of the
+cruelties committed upon the prisoners while there.
+
+The government’s attorneys immediately announced that they would appeal
+from the decision of Judge Waddill. Pending such an appeal the women
+were at liberty to be paroled in the custody of counsel. But since they
+had come from the far corners of the continent and since some of them
+had served out almost half of their sentence, and did not wish in case
+of an adverse decision on the appeal, to have to return later to
+undergo the rest of their sentence, they preferred to finish their
+sentences.
+
+These were the workhouse prisoners thus remanded to the jail who
+continued the hunger strike undertaken at the workhouse, and made a
+redoubtable reinforcement to Alice Paul and Rose Winslow and their
+comrades on strike in the jail when the former arrived.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 14
+The Administration Outwitted
+
+
+With thirty determined women on hunger strike, of whom eight were in a
+state of almost total collapse, the Administration capitulated. It
+could not afford to feed thirty women forcibly and risk the social and
+political consequences; nor could it let thirty women starve themselves
+to death, and likewise take the consequences. For by this time one
+thing was clear, and that was that the discipline and endurance of the
+women could not be broken. And so all the prisoners were
+unconditionally released on November 27th and November 28th.
+
+On leaving prison Miss Paul said: “The commutation of sentences
+acknowledges them to be unjust and arbitrary. The attempt to suppress
+legitimate propaganda has failed.
+
+“We hope that no more demonstrations will be necessary, that the
+amendment will move steadily on to passage and ratification without
+further suffering or sacrifice. But what we do depends entirely upon
+what the Administration does. We have one aim: the immediate passage of
+the federal amendment”
+
+Running parallel to the protest made inside the prison, a public
+protest of nation-wide proportions had been made against continuing to
+imprison women. Deputations of in- fluential women had waited upon all
+party leaders, cabinet officials, heads of the war boards, in fact
+every friend of the Administration, pointing out that we had broken no
+law, that we were unjustly held, and that .the Administration would
+suffer politically for their handling of the suffrage agitation.
+
+A committee of women, after some lively fencing with the Secretary of
+War, finally drove Mr. Baker to admit that women had been sent to
+prison for a political principle; that they were not petty disturbers
+but part of a great fundamental struggle. Secretary Baker said, “This
+[the suffrage struggle] is a revolution. There have been revolutions
+all through his- tory. Some have been justified and some have not. The
+burden of responsibility to decide whether your revolution is justified
+or not is on you. The whole philosophy of your movement seems to be to
+obey no laws until you have a voice in those laws.”
+
+At least one member of the Cabinet thus showed that he had caught
+something of the purpose and depth of our movement. He never publicly
+protested, however, against the Administration’s policy of suppression.
+
+Mr. McAdoo, then Secretary of the Treasury, gave no such evidence of
+enlightenment as Mr. Baker. A committee of women endeavored to see him.
+He was reported “out. But we expect him here soon.”
+
+We waited an hour. The nervous private secretary returned to say that
+he had been mistaken. “The Secretary will not be in until after
+luncheon.”
+
+“We shall wait,” said Mrs. William Kent, chairman of the deputation.
+“We have nothing more important to do to-day than to see Secretary
+McAdoo. We are willing to wait the whole day, if necessary, only it is
+imperative that we see him.”
+
+The private secretary’s spirits sank. He looked as if he would give
+anything to undo his inadvertence in telling us that the Secretary was
+expected after luncheon! Poor man! We settled down comfortably to wait,
+a formidable looking committee of twenty women.
+
+There was the customary gentle embarrassment of attendants whose chief
+is in a predicament from which they seem powerless to extricate him,
+but all were extremely courteous. The attendant at the door brought us
+the morning papers to read. Gradually groups of men began to arrive and
+cards were sent in the direction of the spot where we inferred the
+Secretary of the Treasury was safely hidden, hoping and praying for our
+early retirement.
+
+Whispered conversations were held. Men disappeared in and out of
+strange doors. Still we waited.
+
+Finally as the fourth hour of our vigil was dragging on, a lieutenant
+appeared to announce that the Secretary was very sorry but that he
+would not be able to see us “at all.” We consulted, and finally sent in
+a written appeal, asking for “five minutes of his precious time on a
+matter of grave importance.” More waiting! Finally a letter was brought
+to us directed to Mrs. William Kent, with the ink of the Secretary of
+the Treasury’s signature still wet. With no concealment of contempt, he
+declared that under no circumstances could he speak with women who had
+conducted such an outrageous campaign in such an “illegal” way. We
+smiled as we learned from his pronouncement that “picketing” was
+“illegal,” for we were not supposed to have been arrested for
+picketing. The tone of his letter, its extreme bitterness, tended to
+confirm what we had always been told, that Mr. McAdoo assisted in
+directing the policy of arrests and imprisonment.
+
+I have tried to secure this letter for reproduction but unfortunately
+Mrs. Kent did not save it. We all remember its bitter passion, however,
+and the point it made about our “illegal picketing.”
+
+Congress convened on December 4th. President Wilson delivered a
+message, restating our aims in the war. He also recommended a
+declaration of a state of war against Austria; the control of certain
+water power sites; export trade-combination; railway legislation; and
+the speeding up of all necessary appropriation legislation. But he did
+not mention the suffrage amendment. Having been forced to release the
+prisoners, he again rested.
+
+Immediately we called a conference in Washington of the Executive
+Committee and the National Advisory Council of the Woman’s Party. Past
+activities were briefly reviewed and the political situation discussed.
+It is interesting to note that the Treasurer’s report made at this
+conference showed that receipts in some months during the picketing had
+been double what they were the same month the previous year when there
+was no picketing. In one month of picketing the receipts went as high
+as six times the normal amount. For example in July of 1917, when the
+arrests had just begun, receipts for the month totalled $21,628.65 as
+against $8,690.62 for July of 1916. In November, 1917, when the
+militant situation was at its highest point, there was received at
+National Headquarters $81,117.87 as against $15,008.18 received in
+November, 1916. Still there were those who said we had no friends!
+
+A rumor that the President would act persisted. But we could not rely
+on rumor. We decided to accelerate him and his Administration by filing
+damage suits amounting to $800,000 against the District Commissioners,
+against Warden Zinkhan, against Superintendent Whittaker and Captain
+Reams, a workhouse guard.[1] They were brought in no spirit of revenge,
+but merely that the Administration should not be allowed to forget its
+record of brutality, unless it chose to amend its conduct by passing
+the amendment. The suits were brought by the women woo suffered the
+greatest abuse during the “night of terror” at the workhouse.
+
+[1] We were obliged to bring the suits against individuals, as we could
+not in the law bring them against the government.
+
+
+If any one is still in doubt as to the close relation between the Court
+procedure in our case and the President’s actions, this letter to one
+of our attorneys in January, 1918, must convince him.
+
+My dear Mr. O’Brien:—
+
+I wish you would advise me as soon as you conveniently can, what will
+be done with the suffragist cases now pending against Whittaker and
+Reams in the United States District Court at Alexandria.
+
+I have heard rumors, the truth of which you will understand better than
+I, that these cases will be dropped if the President comes out in favor
+of woman suffrage. This, I understand, he will do and certainly hope
+so, as I am personally in favor of it and have been for many years. But
+in case of his delay in taking any action, will you agree to continue
+these cases for the present?
+
+Very truly yours,
+(Signed) F. H. STEVENS,
+Assistant Corporation Counsel, D. C.
+
+
+In order to further fortify themselves, the District Commissioners,
+when the storm had subsided, quietly removed Warden Zinkhan from the
+jail and Superintendent Whittaker resigned his post at the workhouse,
+presumably under pressure from the Commissioners.
+
+The Woman’s Party conference came to a dramatic close during that first
+week in December with an enormous mass meeting in the Belasco Theatre
+in Washington. On that quiet Sunday afternoon, as the President came
+through his gates for his afternoon drive, a passageway had to be
+opened for his motor car through the crowd of four thousand people who
+were blocking Madison Place in an effort to get inside the Belasco
+Theatre. Inside the building was packed to the rafters. The President
+saw squads of police reserves, who had been for the past six months
+arresting pickets for him, battling with a crowd that was literally
+storming the theatre in their eagerness to do honor to those who had
+been arrested. Inside there was a fever heat of enthusiasm, bursting
+cheers, and thundering applause which shook the building. America has
+never before nor since seen such a suffrage meeting.
+
+Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont, chairman, opened the meeting by saying:
+
+“We are here this afternoon to do honor to a hundred gallant women, who
+have endured the hardship and humiliation of imprisonment because they
+love liberty.
+
+“The suffrage pickets stood at the White House gates for ten months and
+dramatized the women’s agitation for political liberty. Self-respecting
+and patriotic American women will no longer tolerate a government which
+denies women the right to govern themselves. A flame of rebellion is
+abroad among women, and the stupidity and brutality of the government
+in this revolt have only served to increase its heat.
+
+“As President Wilson wrote, ‘Governments have been very successful in
+parrying agitation, diverting it, in seeming to yield to it and then
+cheating it, tiring it out or evading it. But the end, whether it comes
+soon or late, is quite certain to be the same.’ While the government
+has endeavored to parry, tire, divert, and cheat us of our goal, the
+country has risen in protest against this evasive policy of suppression
+until to-day the indomitable pickets with their historic legends stand
+triumphant before the nation.”
+
+Mrs. William Kent, who had led the last picket line of forty-one women,
+was chosen to decorate the prisoners.
+
+“In honoring these women, who were willing to go to jail for liberty,”
+said Mrs. Kent, “we are showing our love of country and devotion to
+democracy.” The long line of prisoners filed past her and amidst
+constant cheers and applause, received a tiny silver replica of a cell
+door, the same that appears in miniature on the title page of this
+book.
+
+As proof of this admiration for what the women had done, the great
+audience in a very few moments pledged $86,826 to continue the
+campaign. Many pledges were made in honor of Alice Paul, Inez
+Milholland, Mrs. Belmont, Dudley Field Malone, and all the prisoners.
+Imperative resolutions calling upon President Wilson and his
+Administration to act, were unanimously passed amid an uproar.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 15
+Political Results
+
+
+Immediately following the release of the prisoners and the magnificent
+demonstration of public support of them, culminating at the mass
+meeting recorded in the preceding chapter, political events happened
+thick and fast. Committees in Congress acted on the amendment.
+President Wilson surrendered and a date for the vote was set.
+
+The Judiciary Committee of the House voted 18 to 2 to report the
+amendment to that body. The measure, it will be remembered, was
+reported to the Senate in the closing days of the previous session, and
+was therefore already before the Senate awaiting action.[1]
+
+[1] See Chapter 8.
+
+
+To be sure, the Judiciary Committee voted to report the amendment
+without recommendation. But soon after, the members of the - Suffrage
+Committee, provision for which had also been made during the war
+session, were appointed. All but four members of this committee were in
+favor of national suffrage, and immediately after its formation it met
+to organize and decided to take the suffrage measure out of the hands
+of the Judiciary Committee and to press for a vote.
+
+A test of strength came on December 18th.
+
+On a trivial motion to refer all suffrage bills to the new suffrage
+committee, the vote stood 204 to 107. This vote, although unimportant
+in itself, clearly promised victory for the amendment in the House. In
+a few days, Representative Mondell of Wyoming, Republican, declared
+that the Republican side of the House would give more than a two-thirds
+majority of its members to the amendment.
+
+“It is up to our friends on the Democratic side to see that the
+amendment is not defeated through hostility or indifference on their
+side,” said Mr. Mondell.
+
+Our daily poll of the House showed constant gains. Pledges from both
+Democratic and Republican members came thick and fast; cabinet members
+for the first time publicly declared their belief in the amendment. A
+final poll, however, showed that we lacked a few votes of the necessary
+two-thirds majority to pass the measure in the House.
+
+No stone was left unturned in a final effort to get the President to
+secure additional Democratic votes to insure the passage of the
+amendment. Finally, on the eve of the vote President Wilson made his
+first declaration of support of the amendment through a committee of
+Democratic Congressmen. During the vote the following day
+Representative Cantrill of Kentucky, Democrat, reported the event to
+the House. He said in part:
+
+It was my privilege yesterday afternoon to be one of a committee of
+twelve to ask the President for advice and counsel on this important
+measure (prolonged laughter and jeers). Mr. Speaker, in answer to the
+sentiment expressed by part of the House, I desire to say that at no
+time and upon no occasion am I ever ashamed to confer with Woodrow
+Wilson upon any important question (laughter, applause, and, jeers) and
+that part of the House that has jeered that statement before it
+adjourns to-day will follow absolutely the advice which he gave this
+committee yesterday afternoon. (Laughter and applause.) After
+conference with the President yesterday afternoon he wrote with his own
+hands the words which I now read to you, and each member of the
+committee was authorized by the President to give full publicity to the
+following:
+
+“The committee found that the President had not felt at liberty to
+volunteer his advice to Members of Congress in this important matter,
+but when we sought his advice (laughter) he very frankly and earnestly
+advised us to vote for the amendment as an act of right and justice to
+the women of the country and o f the world.”
+
+. . . To my Democratic brethren who have made these halls ring with
+their eloquence in their pleas to stand by the President, I will say
+that now is your chance to stand by the President and vote for this
+amendment, “as’ an act of right and justice to the women of the country
+and of the world” . . .
+
+Do you wish to do that which is right and just toward the women of your
+own country? If so, follow the President’s advice and vote for this
+amendment. It will not do to follow the President in this great crisis
+in the world’s history on those matters only which are popular in your
+own districts. The true test is to stand by him, even though your own
+vote is unpopular at home. The acid test for a Member of Congress is
+for him to stand for right and justice even if misunderstood at home at
+first. In the end, right and justice will prevail everywhere.
+
+. . . No one thing connected with the war is of more importance at this
+time than meeting the reasonable demand of millions of patriotic and
+Christian women of the Nation that the amendment for woman suffrage be
+submitted to the States . . . .
+
+The amendment passed the House January 10, 1918, by a vote of 274 to
+136—a two-thirds majority with one vote to spare—exactly forty years to
+a day from the time the suffrage amendment was first introduced into
+Congress, and exactly one year to a day from the time the first picket
+banner appeared at the gates o f the White House.
+
+Eighty-three per cent of the Republicans voting on the measure, voted
+in favor of it, while only fifty per cent of the Democrats voting,
+voted for it. Even after the Republicans had pledged their utmost
+strength, more than two-thirds of their membership, votes were still
+lacking to make up the Democratic deficiency, and the President’s
+declaration that the measure ought to pass the House, produced them
+from his own party. Those who contend that picketing had “set back the
+clock,”—that it did “no good,”—that President Wilson would “not be
+moved by it”—have, we believe, the burden of proof on their side of the
+argument. It is our firm belief that the solid year of picketing, with
+all its political ramifications, did compel the President to abandon
+his opposition and declare himself for the measure. I do not mean to
+say that many things do not cooperate in a movement toward a great
+event. I do mean to say that picketing was the most vital force amongst
+the elements which moved President Wilson. That picketing had compelled
+Congress to see the question in terms of political capital is also
+true. From the first word uttered in the House debate, until the final
+roll-call, political expediency was the chief motif.
+
+Mr. Lenroot of Wisconsin, Republican, rose to say:
+
+“May I suggest that there is a distinction between the Democratic
+members of the Committee on Rules and the Republican members, in this,
+that all of the Republican members are for this proposition?” This was
+met with instant applause from the Republican side.
+
+Representative Cantrill prefaced his speech embodying the President’s
+statement, which caused roars and jeers from the opposition, with the
+announcement that he was not willing to risk another election, with the
+voting women of the West, and the amendment still unpassed.
+
+Mr. Lenroot further pointed out that: “From a Republican
+standpoint—from a partisan standpoint, it would be an advantage to
+Republicans to go before the people in the next election and say that
+this resolution was defeated by southern Democrats.”
+
+An anti-suffragist tried above the din and noise to remind Mr. Lenroot
+that three years before Mr. Lenroot had voted “No,” but a Republican
+colleague came suddenly to the rescue with “What about Mr. Wilson?”
+which was followed by, “He kept us out of war,” and the jeers on the
+Republican side became more pronounced.
+
+This interesting political tilt took place when Representatives
+Dennison and Williams of Illinois, and Representative Kearns of Ohio,
+Republicans, fenced with Representative Raker of California, Democrat,
+as he attempted, with an evident note of self-consciousness, to make
+the President’s reversal seem less sudden.
+
+MR. DENNISON : It was known by the committee that went to see the
+President that the Republicans were going to take this matter up and
+pass it in caucus, was it not?’
+
+MR. RAKER: I want to say to my Republican friends upon this question
+that I have been in conference with the President for over three years
+upon this question . . . .
+
+MR. KEARNS: How did the women of California find out and learn where
+the President stood on this thing just before election last fall?
+Nobody else seemed to know it.
+
+MR. RAKER: They knew it.
+
+MR. KEARNS: How did they find it out?
+
+MR. RAKER: I will take a minute or two—
+
+MR. KEARNS: I wish the gentleman would.
+
+MR. RAKER: The President went home and registered. The President went
+home and voted for woman suffrage.
+
+MR. KEARNS: He said he believed in it for the several states . . . .
+
+MR. RAKER: One moment——
+
+MR. KEARNS : That is the only information they had upon the subject, is
+it?
+
+MR. WILLIAMS: . . . Will the gentleman yield?
+
+MR. RAKER: I cannot yield.
+
+MR. WILLIAMS: Just for a question.
+
+MR. RAKER: I cannot yield . . . .
+
+That the President’s political speed left some overcome was clear from
+a remark of Mr. Clark of Florida when he said:
+
+“I was amused at my friend from Oklahoma, Mr. Ferris, who wants us to
+stand with the President. God knows I want to stand with him. I am a
+Democrat, and I want to follow the leader of my party, and I am a
+pretty good lightning change artist myself sometimes (laughter); but
+God knows I cannot keep up with his performance. (Laughter.) Why, the
+President wrote a book away back yonder” . . . and he quoted generously
+from President Wilson’s many statements in defense of state rights as
+recorded in his early writings.
+
+Mr. Hersey of Maine, Republican, drew applause when he made a retort to
+the Democratic slogan, “Stand by the President.” He said:
+
+“Mr. Speaker, I am still ‘standing with the President,’ or, in other
+words, the President this morning is standing with me.”
+
+The resentment at having been forced by the pickets to the point of
+passing the amendment was in evidence throughout the debate.
+
+Representative Gordon of Ohio, Democrat, said with bitter ness : “We
+are threatened by these militant suffragettes with a direct and lawless
+invasion by the Congress of the United States of the rights of those
+States which have refused to confer upon their women the privilege of
+voting. This attitude on the part of some of the suffrage Members of
+this House is on an exact equality with the acts of these women
+militants who have spent the last summer and fall, while they were not
+in the district jail or workhouse, in coaxing, teasing, and nagging the
+Presi dent of the United States for the purpose of inducing him, by
+coercion, to club Congress into adopting this joint resolution.”
+
+Shouts of “Well, they got him!” and “They got it!” from all sides,
+followed by prolonged laughter and jeers, interrupted the flow of his
+oratory.
+
+Mr. Ferris of Oklahoma, Democrat, hoped to minimize the effectiveness
+of the picket.
+
+“Mr. Speaker,” he said, “I do not approve or believe in picketing the
+White House, the National Capitol, or any other station to bring about
+votes for women. I do not approve of wild militancy, hunger strikes,
+and efforts of that sort. I do not approve of the course of those women
+that . . ., become agitators, lay off their womanly qualities in their
+efforts to secure votes. I do not approve of anything unwomanly
+anywhere, any time, and my course to-day in supporting this suffrage
+amendment is not guided by such conduct on the part of a very few women
+here or elsewhere.” (Applause.)
+
+Representative Langley of Kentucky, Republican, was able to see
+picketing in a fairer light:
+
+“Much has been said pro and con about ‘picketing’,-that rather dramatic
+chapter in the history of this great movement. It is not my purpose to
+speak either in criticism or condemnation of that; but if it be true—I
+do not say that it is, because I do not know—but if it be true, as has
+been alleged, that certain promises were made, as a result of which a
+great campaign was won, and those promises were not kept, I wonder
+whether in that silent, peaceful protest that was against this broken
+faith, there can be found sufficient warrant for the indignities which
+the so-called ‘pickets’ suffered; and when in passing up and down the
+Avenue I frequently witnessed cultured, intellectual women arrested and
+dragged off to prison because of their method, of giving publicity to
+what they believed to be the truth, I will confess that the question
+sometimes arose in my mind whether when the impartial history of this
+great struggle has been written their names may not be placed upon the
+roll of martyrs to the cause to which they were consecrating their
+lives in the manner that they deemed most effective.”
+
+Mr. Mays of Utah was one Democrat who placed the responsibility for
+militancy where it rightly belonged when he said:
+
+“Some say to-day that they are ashamed of the action of the militants
+in picketing the Capitol: . . . But we should be more ashamed of the
+unreasonable stubbornness on the part of the men who refused them the
+justice they have so long and patiently asked.”
+
+And so the debate ran on. Occasionally one caught a glimmer of real
+comprehension, amongst these men about to vote upon our political
+liberty; but more often the discussion stayed on a very inferior level.
+
+And there were gems imperishable!
+
+Even friends of the measure had difficulty not to romanticize about
+“Woman—God’s noblest creature” . . . “man’s better counterpart” . . .
+“humanity’s perennial hope” . . . “the world’s object most to be
+admired and loved” . . . and so forth.
+
+Representative Elliott of Indiana, Republican, favored the resolution
+because—“A little more than four hundred years ago Columbus discovered
+America. Before that page of American history was written he was
+compelled to seek the advice and assistance of a woman. From that day
+until the present day the noble women of America have done their part
+in times of peace and of war . . .”
+
+If Queen Isabella was an argument in favor for Mr. Elliott of Indiana,
+Lady Macbeth played the opposite part for Mr. Parker of New Jersey,
+Republican . . . . “I will not debate the question as to whether in a
+time of war women are the best judges of policy. That great student of
+human nature, William Shakespeare, in the play of Macbeth, makes Lady
+Macbeth eager for deeds of blood until they are committed and war is
+begun and then just as eager that it may be stopped.” . . .
+
+Said Mr. Gray of New Jersey, Republican: “A nation will endure just so
+long as its men are virile. History, physiology, and psychology all
+show that giving woman equal political rights with man makes ultimately
+for the deterioration of manhood. It is, therefore, not only because I
+want our country to win this war but because I want our nation to
+possess the male virility necessary to guarantee its future existence
+that I am opposed to the pending amendment.”
+
+The hope was expressed that President Wilson’s conversion would be like
+that of St. Paul, “and that he will become a master- worker in the
+vineyards of the Lord for this proposition.” (Applause.)
+
+Mr. Gallivan, Democrat, although a representative of Massachusetts,
+“the cradle of American liberty,” called upon a great Persian
+philosopher to sustain him in his support. “ ‘Dogs bark, but the
+caravan moves on.’ . . . Democracy cannot live half free and half
+female.”
+
+Mr. Dill of Washington, Democrat, colored his support with the
+following tribute: “ . . . It was woman who first learned to prepare
+skins of animals for protection from the elements, and tamed and
+domesticated the dog and horse and cow. She was a servant and a slave .
+. . . To-day she is the peer of man.”
+
+Mr. Little of Kansas, Republican, tried to bring his colleagues back to
+a moderate course by interpolating:
+
+“It seems to me, gentlemen, that it is time for us to learn that woman
+is neither a slave nor an angel, but a human being, entitled to be
+treated with ordinary common sense in the adjustment of human affairs .
+. . .”
+
+But this calm statement could not allay the terror of Representative
+Clark of Florida, Democrat, who cried: “In the hearings before the
+committee it will be found that one of the leaders among the
+suffragettes declared that they wanted the ballot for ‘protection’, and
+when asked against whom she desired ‘protection’ she promptly and
+frankly replied, ‘men.’ My God, has it come to pass in America that the
+women of the land need to be protected from the men?” The galleries
+quietly nodded their heads, and Mr. Clark continued to predict either
+the complete breakdown of family life . . . . or “they [man and wife]
+must think alike, act alike, have the same ideals of life, and look
+forward with like vision to the happy consummation ‘beyond the vale.’ .
+. .
+
+“God knows that . . . when you get factional politics limited to
+husband and wife, oh, what a spectacle will be presented, my countrymen
+. . . . Love will vanish, while hate ascends the throne . . . .
+
+“To-day woman stands the uncrowned queen in the hearts of all
+right-thinking American men; to her as rightful sovereign we render the
+homage of protection, respect, love, and may the guiding hand of an
+all-wise Providence stretch forth in this hour of peril to save her
+from a change of relation which must bring in its train, discontent,
+sorrow, and pain,” he concluded desperately, with the trend obviously
+toward “crowning” the queens.
+
+There was the disturbing consideration that women know too much to be
+trusted. “I happen to have a mother,” said Mr. Gray of New Jersey,
+Republican, “as most of us have, and incidentally I think we all have
+fathers, although a father does not count for much any more. My mother
+has forgotten more political history than he ever knew, and she knows
+more about the American government and American political economy than
+he has ever shown symptoms of knowing, and for the good of mankind as
+well as the country she is opposed to women getting into politics.”
+
+The perennial lament for the passing of the good old days was raised by
+Representative Welty of Ohio, Democrat, who said:
+
+“The old ship of state has left her moorings and seems to be sailing on
+an unknown and uncharted sea. The government founded in the blood of
+our fathers is fading away. Last fall, a year ago, both parties
+recognized those principles in their platforms, and each candidate
+solemnly declared that he would abide by them if elected. But lo, all
+old things are passing away, and the lady from Montana has filed a bill
+asking that separate citizenship be granted to American women marrying
+foreigners.”
+
+Representative Greene of Massachusetts, Republican, all but shed tears
+over the inevitable amending of the Constitution:
+
+“I have read it [the Constitution] many times, and there have been just
+17 amendments adopted since the original Constitution was framed by the
+master minds whom God had inspired in the cabin of the Mayflower to
+formulate the Constitution of the Plymouth Colony which was made the
+basis of the Constitution of Massachusetts and subsequently resulted in
+the establishment of the Constitution of the United States under which
+we now live . . . .”
+
+Fancy his shock at finding the pickets triumphant.
+
+“Since the second session of the Sixty-fifth Congress opened,” he said,
+“I have met several women suffragists from the State of Massachusetts.
+I have immediately propounded to them this one question: ‘Do you
+approve or disapprove of the suffrage banners in front of the White
+House . . . ?’ The answer in nearly every case to my question was: ‘I
+glory in that demonstration’ . . . the response to my question was very
+offensive, and I immediately ordered these suffrage advocates from my
+office.”
+
+And again the pickets featured in the final remarks of Mr. Small of
+North Carolina, Democrat, who deplored the fact that advocates of the
+amendment had made it an issue inducing party rivalry. “This is no
+party question, and such efforts will be futile. It almost equals in
+intelligence the scheme of that delectable and inane group of women who
+picketed the White House on the theory that the President could grant
+them the right to vote.”
+
+Amid such gems of intellectual delight the House of the great American
+Congress passed the national suffrage amendment.
+
+We turned our entire attention then to the Senate.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 16
+An Interlude (Seven Months)
+
+
+The President had finally thrown his power to putting the amendment
+through the House. We hoped he would follow this up by insisting upon
+the passage of the amendment in the Senate. We ceased our acts of
+dramatic protest for the moment and gave our energies to getting public
+pressure upon him, to persuade him to see that the Senate acted. We
+also continued to press directly upon recalcitrant senators of the
+minority party who could be won only through appeals other than from
+the President.
+
+There are in the Senate 96 members—2 elected from each of the 48
+states. To pass a constitutional amendment through the Senate, 64 votes
+are necessary, a two-thirds majority. At this point in the campaign, 58
+senators were pledged to support the measure and 48 were opposed. We
+therefore had to win 11 more votes. A measure passed through one branch
+of Congress must be passed through the other branch during the life of
+that Congress, otherwise it dies automatically and must be born again
+in a new Congress. We therefore had only the remainder of the first
+regular session of the 65th Congress and, failing of that, the short
+second session from December, 1918, to March, 1919, in which to win
+those votes.
+
+Backfires were started in the states of the senators not yet committed
+to the amendment. Organized demand for action in the Senate grew to
+huge proportions.
+
+We turned also to the leading influential members of the respective
+parties for active help.
+
+Colonel Roosevelt did his most effective suffrage work at this period
+in a determined attack upon the few unconvinced Republican Senators.
+The Colonel was one of the few leaders in our national life who was
+never too busy to confer or to offer and accept suggestions as to
+procedure. He seemed to have imagination about women. He never took a
+patronizing attitude nor did he with moral unction dogmatically tell
+you how the fight should be waged and won. He presupposed ability among
+women leaders. He was not offended, morally or politically, by our
+preferring to go to jail rather than to submit in silence. In fact, he
+was at this time under Administration fire, because of his bold attacks
+upon some of their policies, and remarked during an interview at Oyster
+Bay:
+
+“I may soon join you women in jail. One can never tell these days.”
+
+His sagacious attitude toward conservative and radical suffrage forces
+was always delightful and indicative of his appreciation of the
+political and social value of a movement’s having vitality enough to
+disagree on methods. None of the banal philosophy that “you can never
+win until all your forces get together” from the Colonel. One day, as I
+came into his office for an interview, I met a member of the
+conservative suffragists just leaving, and we spoke. In his office the
+Colonel remarked, “You know, I contemplated having both you and Mrs.
+Whitney come to see me at the same time, since it was on a similar
+mission, but I didn’t quite know whether the lion and the lamb would
+lie down together, and I thought I’d better take no chances . . . . But
+I see you’re on speaking terms,” he added. I answered that our
+relations were extremely amiable, but remarked that the other side
+might not like to be called “lambs.”
+
+“You delight in being the lions-on that point I am safe, am I not?” And
+he smiled his widest smile as he plunged into a vivid expository attack
+upon the Senatorial opponents of suffrage in his own party. He wrote
+letters to them. If this failed, he invited them to Oyster Bay for the
+week-end. Never did he abandon them until there was literally not a
+shadow of hope to bank on.
+
+When the Colonel got into action something always happened on the
+Democratic side. He made a public statement to Senator Gallinger of New
+Hampshire, Republican leader in the Senate, in which lie pointed to the
+superior support of the Republicans and urged even more liberal party
+support to ensure the passage of the amendment in the Senate. Action by
+the Democrats followed fast on the heels of this public statement.
+
+The National Executive Committee of the Democratic party, after a
+referendum vote of the members of the National Committeemen, passed a
+resolution calling for favorable action in the Senate. Mr. A. Mitchell
+Palmer wrote to the Woman’s Party saying that this resolution must be
+regarded as “an official expression of the Democratic Party through the
+only organization which can speak for it between national conventions.”
+
+The Republican National Committee meeting at the same time commended
+the course taken by Republican Representatives who had voted for the
+amendment in the House, and declared their position to be “a true
+interpretation of the thought of the Republican Party.”
+
+Republican and Democratic state, county and city committees followed
+the lead and called for Senate action.
+
+State legislatures in rapid succession called upon the Senate to pass
+the measure, that they in turn might immediately ratify. North Dakota,
+New York, Rhode Island, Arizona, Texas and other states acted in this
+matter.
+
+Intermittent attempts on the Republican side to force action, followed
+by eloquent speeches from time to time, piquing their opponents, left
+the Democrats bison-like across the path. The majority of them were
+content to rest upon the action taken in the House.
+
+I was at this time Chairman of the Political Department of the Woman’s
+Party, and in that capacity interviewed practically every national
+leader in both majority parties. I can not resist recording a few
+impressions.
+
+Colonel William Boyce Thompson of New York, now Chairman of Ways and
+Means of the Republican National Committee, who with Raymond Robins had
+served in Russia as member of the United States Red Cross. Mission, had
+just returned. The deadlock was brought to his attention. He
+immediately responded in a most effective way. In a brief but dramatic
+speech at a great mass meeting of the Woman’s Party, at Palm Beach,
+Florida, he said:
+
+“The story of the brutal imprisonment in Washington of women advocating
+suffrage is shocking and almost incredible. I became accustomed in
+Russia to the stories of men and women who served terms of imprisonment
+under the Czar, because of their love of liberty, but did not know that
+women in my own country had been subjected to brutal treatment long
+since abandoned in Russia.
+
+“I wish now to contribute ten thousand dollars to the campaign for the
+passage of the suffrage amendment through the Senate,, one hundred
+dollars for each of the pickets who went to prison because she stood at
+the gates of the White House, asking for the passage of the suffrage
+measure.”
+
+This was the largest single contribution received during the national
+agitation. Colonel Thompson had been a suffragist all his life, but he
+now became actively identified with the work for the national
+amendment. Since then he has continued to give generously of his money
+and to lend his political prestige as often as necessary.
+
+Colonel House was importuned to use his influence to win additional
+Democratic votes in the Senate, or better still to urge the President
+to win them. Colonel House is an interesting but not unfamiliar type in
+politics. Extremely courteous, mild mannered, able, quickly
+sympathetic, he listens with undistracted attention to your request.
+His round bright eyes snap as he comes at you with a counter-proposal.
+It seems so reasonable. And while you know he is putting back upon you
+the very task you are trying to persuade him to undertake, he does it
+so graciously that you can scarcely resist liking it. He has the manner
+of having done what you ask without actually doing more than to make
+you feel warm at having met him. It is a kind of elegant statecraft
+which has its point of grace, but which is exasperating when
+effectiveness is needed. Not that Colonel House was not a supporter of
+the federal amendment. He was. But his gentle, soft and traditional
+kind of diplomacy would not employ high-powered pressure. “I shall be
+going to Washington soon on other matters, and I shall doubtless see
+the President. Perhaps he may bring up the subject in conversation, and
+if he does, and the opportunity offers itself, I may be able to do
+something.” Some such gentle threat would come from the Colonel. He was
+not quite so tender, however, in dealing with Democratic senators,
+after the President declared for the amendment. He did try to win them.
+
+Ex-President Taft, then joint Chairman of the National War Labor Board,
+was interviewed at his desk just after rendering an important
+democratic labor award.
+
+“No, indeed! I’ll do nothing for a proposition which adds more voters
+to our electorate. I thought my position on this question was well
+known,” said Mr. Taft.
+
+“But we thought you doubtless had changed your mind since the beginning
+of our war for democracy——” I started to answer.
+
+“This is not a war for democracy,” he said emphatically, looking
+quizzically at me for my assertion; “if it were, I wouldn’t be doing
+anything for it …. The trouble in this country is we’ve got too many mm
+voting as it is. Why, I’d take the vote away from most of the men,” he
+added. I wanted to ask him what men he would leave voting. I wanted
+also to tell him they were taking the vote away from one class of men
+in Russia at that moment.
+
+Instead, I said, “Well, I’m not quite sure whom we could trust to sit
+in judgment”—while he looked smiling and serene, as much as to say,
+“Oh, that would be a simple matter.”
+
+“However,” I said, “we have no quarrel with you. You are an avowed
+aristocrat, and we respect your candor. Our quarrel is with democrats
+who will not trust their own doctrines.” Again he smiled with as much
+sophistication as such a placid face could achieve, and that was all. I
+believe Mr. Taft has lately modified his attitude toward women voting.
+I do not know how he squares that with his distaste of democracy.
+
+There was Samuel Gompers, President of the American Federation of
+Labor, high in Administration confidence. It was a long wait before
+Abby Scott Baker and I were allowed into his sanctum.
+
+“Well, ladies, what can I do for you?” was the opening question, and
+we’ thought happily here is a man who will not bore us with his life
+record on behalf of women. He comes to the point with direction.
+
+“Will you speak to the President on behalf of your organization, which
+has repeatedly endorsed national suffrage, to induce him to put more
+pressure behind the Senate which is delaying suffrage?” we asked with
+equal direction. We concealed a heavy sigh as a reminiscent look came
+into his shrewd, wan eyes, and he began:
+
+“Doubtless you ladies do not know that as long ago as 1888”-I believe
+that was the date-“my organization sent a petition to the United States
+Congress praying for the adoption of this very amendment and we have
+stood for it ever since . . . .”
+
+“Don’t you think it is about time that prayer was answered?” we
+ventured to interrupt. But his reverie could not be disturbed. He
+looked at us coldly, for he was living in the past, and continued to
+recount the patient, enduring qualities of his organization.
+
+“I will speak to my secretary and see what the organization can do,” he
+said finally. We murmured again that it was the President we wished him
+to speak to, but we left feeling reasonably certain that there would be
+no dynamic pressure from this cautious leader.
+
+Herbert Hoover was the next man we sought. Here we encountered the
+well-groomed secretary who would not carry our cards into his chief.
+
+“Mr. Hoover has appointments a week ahead,” he said. “For example, his
+chart for to-day includes a very important conference with some grain
+men from the Northwest,” . . . and he continued to recite the items of
+the chart, ending with “a dinner at the White House to-night.”
+
+“If we could see him for just five minutes,” we persisted, “he could do
+what we ask this very night at the White House.” But the
+trained-to-protect secretary was obdurate.
+
+“We shall leave a written request for five minutes at Mr. Hoover’s
+convenience,” we said, and prepared the letter.
+
+Time passed without answer. Mrs. Baker and I were compelled to go again
+to Mr. Hoover’s office.
+
+Again we were greeted by the affable secretary, who on this occasion
+recounted not only his chief’s many pressing engagements, but his
+devoted family life—his Saturday and Sunday habits which were “so
+dreadfully cut into by his heavy work:” We were sympathetic but firm.
+Would Mr. Hoover not be willing to answer our letter? Would he not be
+willing to state publicly that he thought the amendment ought to be
+passed in the Senate? Would the secretary, in short, please go to him
+to ascertain if he’ would be willing to say a single word in behalf of
+the political liberty of women? The secretary disappeared and returned
+to say, “Mr. Hoover wishes me to tell you ladies he can give no time
+whatever to the consideration of your question until after the war is
+over. This is final.”
+
+The Chief Food Administrator would continue to demand sacrifices of
+women throughout the war, but he would not give so much as a thought to
+their rights in return. Mr. Hoover was the only. important man in
+public life who steadfastly refused to see our representatives. After
+announcing his candidacy for nomination to the Presidency he authorized
+his secretary to write us a letter saying he had always been for woman
+suffrage.
+
+Mr. Bainbridge Colby, then member of the Emergency Fleet Corporation of
+the Shipping Board and member of the Inter-Allied Council which sat on
+shipping problems, now Secretary of State in President Wilson’s
+Cabinet, was approached as a suffragist, known to have access to the
+President. Mr. Colby had just returned from abroad when I saw him. He
+is a cultivated gentleman, but he knows how to have superlative
+enthusiasm.
+
+“In the light of the world events,” he said, “this reform is
+insignificant. No time or energy ought to be diverted from the great
+program of crushing the Germans.”
+
+“But can we not do that,” I asked, “without neglecting internal
+liberties?”
+
+Mr. Colby is a strong conformist. He became grave. When I was
+indiscreet enough to reveal that I was inclined to pin my faith to the
+concrete liberty of women, rather than to a vague and abstract “human
+freedom,” which was supposed to descend upon the world, once the
+Germans were beaten, I know he wanted to call me “seditious.” But he is
+a gallant gentleman and he only frowned with distress. He continued
+with enthusiasm to plan to build ships.
+
+Bernard Baruch, then member of the Advisory Committee of the Council of
+National Defense, later economic expert at the Peace Conference, was
+able to see the war and the women’s problem at the same time. He is an
+able politician and was therefore sensitive to our appeal; he saw the
+passage of the amendment as a political asset. I do not know how much
+he believed in the principle. That was of minor importance. What was
+important was that he agreed to tell the President that he believed it
+wise to put more pressure on the measure in the Senate. Also I believe
+Mr. Baruch was one member of the Administration who realized in the
+midst of the episode that arresting women was bad politics, to say
+nothing of the doubtful chivalry of it.
+
+George Creel, chairman of the Committee on Public Information, was also
+asked for help. We went to him many times, because his contact with the
+President was constant. A suffragist of long standing, he nevertheless
+hated our militant tactics, for he knew we were winning and the
+Administration was losing. He is a strange composite. Working at
+terrific tension and mostly under fire, he was rarely in calm enough
+mood to sit down and devise ways and means.
+
+“But I talk to the President every day on this matter”—and—“I am doing
+all I can”—and—“The President is doing all he can”—he would drive at
+you—without stopping for breath.
+
+“But if you will just ask him to get Senator ——”
+
+“He is working on the Senator now. You people must give him time. He
+has other things to do,” he would say, sweeping aside every suggestion.
+Familiar advice!
+
+Charles D. Hilles, former Chairman of the Republican National
+Committee, was a leader who had come slowly to believe in national
+suffrage. But, once convinced, he was a faithful and dependable
+colleague who gave practical political assistance.
+
+William Randolph Hearst in powerful editorials called upon the Senators
+to act. Mr. R. J. Caldwell of New York, life-long suffragist, financier
+and man of affairs, faithfully and persistently stood by the amendment
+and by the militants. A more generous contributor and more diligent
+ally could not be found. A host of public men were interviewed and the
+great majority of them did help at this critical juncture. It is
+impossible to give a list that even approaches adequacy, so I shall not
+attempt it.
+
+Our pressure from below and that of the leaders from above began to
+have its effect. An attempt was made by Administration leaders to force
+a vote on May 19, 1918. Friends interceded when it was shown that not
+enough votes were pledged to secure passage. Again the vote was
+tentatively set for June 27th and again postponed.
+
+The Republicans, led by Senator Gallinger, provided skirmishes from
+time to time. The Administration was accused on the floor of blocking
+action, to which accusation its leaders did not even reply.
+
+Still unwilling to believe that we would be forced to resume our
+militancy we attempted to talk to the President again A special
+deputation of women munition workers was sent to him under our
+auspices. The women waited for a week, hoping he would consent to see
+them among his receptions—to the Blue Devils of France, to a Committee
+of Indians, to a Committee of Irish Patriots, and so forth.
+
+“No time,” was the answer. And the munition workers were forced to
+submit their appeal in writing.
+
+“We are only a few of the thousands of American women,” they wrote the
+President, “who are forming a growing part of the army at home. The
+work we are doing is hard and dangerous to life and health, making
+detonators, handling TNT, the highest of all explosives. We want to be
+recognized by our country, as much her citizens as our soldiers are.”
+
+Mr. Tumulty replied for the President:
+
+“The President asks me to say that nothing you or your associates could
+say could possibly increase his very deep interest in this matter and
+that he is doing everything that he could with honor and propriety do
+in behalf of the [suffrage] amendment.”
+
+An opportunity was given the President to show again his sympathy for a
+world-wide endeavor just after having ignored this specific opportunity
+at home. He hastened to accept the larger field. In response to a
+memorial transmitted through Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, President of the
+International Woman Suffrage Alliance, the French Union for Woman
+Suffrage urged the President to use his aid on their behalf “which will
+be a powerful influence for woman suffrage in the entire world.” The
+memorial was endorsed by the suffrage committee of Great Britain,
+Italy, Belgium, and Portugal. The President took the occasion to say:
+“The democratic reconstruction of the world will not have been
+completely or adequately obtained until women are admitted to the
+suffrage. As for America it is my earnest hope that the Senate of the
+United States will give an unmistakable answer by passing the federal
+amendment before the end of this session.”
+
+Meanwhile four more Democratic Senators pledged their support to the
+amendment. Influenced by the President’s declaration of support, and by
+widespread demands from their constituents, Senators Phelan of
+California, King of Utah, Gerry of Rhode Island, and Culberson of Texas
+abandoned the ranks of the opposition.
+
+During this same period the Republican side of the Senate gave five
+more Republican Senators to the amendment. They were Senators McCumber
+of North Dakota, Kellogg of Minnesota, Harding of Ohio, Page of
+Vermont, and Sutherland of West Virginia. All of these men except
+Senator McCumber[1] were won through the pressure from Republican Party
+leaders.
+
+[1] Senator McCumber, though opposed, was compelled to support the
+measure, by the action of the N. D. legislature commanding him to do
+so.
+
+
+This gain of nine recruits reduced to two the number of votes to be
+won.
+
+When at the end of seven months from the time the amendment had passed
+the House, we still lacked these two votes, and the President gave no
+assurance that he would put forth sufficient effort to secure them, we
+were compelled to renew our attacks upon the President.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 17
+New Attacks on the President
+
+
+The Senate was about to recess. No assurance was given by the majority
+that suffrage would be considered either before or after the recess.
+Alarmed and aroused, we decided upon a national protest in Washington
+August 6th, the anniversary of the birth of Inez Milholland.
+
+The protest took the form of a meeting at the base of the Lafayette
+monument in the park, directly opposite the White House. Women from
+many states in the Union, dressed in white, hatless and coatless in the
+midsummer heat of Washington, marched t0 the monument carrying banners
+of purple, white and gold, led by a standard-bearer carrying the
+American flag. They made a beautiful mass of color as they grouped
+themselves around the statue, against the abundant green foliage of the
+park.
+
+The Administration met this simple reasonable form of protest by
+further arrests.
+
+Mrs. Lawrence Lewis of Philadelphia, the first speaker, began: “We are
+here because when our country is at war for liberty and democracy . .
+.” At that point she was roughly seized by a policeman and placed under
+arrest. The great audience stood in absolute and amazed silence.
+
+Miss Hazel Hunkins of Montana took her place. “Here at the statue of
+Lafayette, who fought for the liberty of this country,” she began, “and
+under the American flag, I am asking for . . .” She was immediately
+arrested.
+
+Miss Vivian Pierce of California began: “President Wilson has said . .
+.’ She was dragged from the plinth to the waiting patrol.
+
+One after another came forward in an attempt to speak, but no one was
+allowed to continue. Wholesale arrests followed. Just as the women were
+being taken into custody, according to the New York Evening World of
+August 13th, “the President walked out of the northeast gate of the
+White House and up Pennsylvania Avenue for a conference with Director
+General of Railroads McAdoo. The President glanced across the street
+and smiled.”
+
+Before the crowd could really appreciate what had happened, forty-eight
+women had been hustled to the police station by the wagon load, their
+gay banners floating from the backs of the somber patrols. They were
+told that the police had arrested them under the orders of Col. C. S.
+Ridley, the President’s military aide, and assistant to the Chief
+Engineer attached to the War Department. All were released on bail and
+ordered to appear in court the following day.
+
+When they appeared they were informed by the Government’s attorney that
+he would have to postpone the trial until the following Tuesday so that
+he might examine witnesses to see “what offense, if any, the women
+would be charged with.”
+
+“I cannot go on with this case,” he said, “I have had no orders. There
+are no precedents for cases like these . . . .”
+
+The women demanded that their cases be dismissed, or else a charge made
+against them. They were merely told to return on the appointed day.
+Such was the indignation aroused against the Administration for taking
+this action that Senator Curtis of Kansas, Republican whip, could say
+publicly:
+
+“The truth of this statement is made evident by the admission of the
+court that the forty-eight suffragists are arrested upon absolutely no
+charges, and that these women, among them munition workers and Red
+Cross workers, are held in Washington until next Tuesday, under arrest,
+while the United States attorney for the District of Columbia decides
+for what offense, ‘if any,’ they were arrested.
+
+“The meeting was called to make a justified protest against continued
+blocking of the suffrage amendment by the Democratic majority in the
+Senate. It is well known that three-fourths of the Republican
+membership in the Senate are ready to vote for the amendment, but under
+the control of the Democratic majority the Senate has recessed for six
+weeks without making any provision for action on this important
+amendment.
+
+“In justice to the women who have been working so hard for the
+amendment it should be passed at the earliest date, and if action is
+not taken on it soon after the resumption of business in the Senate
+there is every possibility that it will not be taken during this
+Congress, and the hard-won victory in the House of Representatives will
+have been won for nothing.”
+
+When they finally came to trial ten days after their arrest, to face
+the charge of “holding a meeting in public grounds,” and for eighteen
+of the defendants an additional charge of “climbing on a statue,” the
+women answered the roll call but remained silent thereafter. The
+familiar farce ensued. Some were released for lack of identification.
+The others were sentenced to the District Jail—for ten days if they had
+merely assembled to hold a public meeting, for fifteen days if they had
+also “climbed on a statue”
+
+The Administration evidently hoped by lighter sentences to avoid a
+hunger strike by the prisoners.
+
+The women were taken immediately to a building, formerly used as a
+man’s workhouse, situated in the swamps of the District prison grounds.
+This building, which had been declared unfit for human habitation by a
+committee appointed under President Roosevelt in 1909, and which had
+been uninhabited ever since, was now reopened, nine years later, to
+receive twenty-six women who had attempted to hold a meeting in a
+public park in Washington. The women protested in a body and demanded
+to be treated as political prisoners. This being refused, all save two
+very elderly women, too frail to do so, went on hunger strike at once.
+
+This last lodgment was the worst. Hideous aspects which had not been
+encountered in the workhouse and jail proper were encountered here. The
+cells, damp and cold, were below the level of the upper door and
+entirely below the high windows. The doors of the cell were partly of
+solid steel with only a small section of grating, so that a very tiny
+amount of light penetrated the cells. The wash basins were small and
+unsightly; the toilet open, with no pretense of covering. The cots were
+of iron, without any spring, and with only a thin straw pallet to lie
+upon. The heating facilities were antiquated and the place was always
+cold. So frightful were the nauseating odors which permeated the place,
+and so terrible was the drinking water from the disused pipes, that one
+prisoner after another became violently ill.
+
+“I can hardly describe that atmosphere,” said Mrs. W. D. Ascough, of
+Connecticut. “It was a deadly sort of smell, insidious and revolting.
+It oppressed and stifled us. There was no escape.”
+
+As a kind of relief from these revolting odors, they took their straw
+pallets from the cells to the floor outside. They were ordered back to
+their cells but refused in a body to go. They preferred the stone
+floors to the vile odors within, which kept them nauseated.
+
+Conditions were so shocking that Senators began to visit their
+constituents in this terrible hole. Many of them protested to the
+authorities. Protests came in from the country, too.
+
+At the end of the fifth day the Administration succumbed to the hunger
+strike and released the prisoners, trembling with weakness, some of
+them with chills and some of them in a high fever, scarcely able even
+to walk to the ambulance or motor car.
+
+We had won from the Administration, however, a concession to our
+protest. Prior to the release of the prisoners we had announced that in
+spite of the previous arrests a second protest meeting would be held on
+the same spot. A permit to hold this second protest meeting was granted
+us.
+
+“I have been advised [Col. Ridley wrote to Miss Paul that you desire to
+hold a demonstration in Lafayette Square on Thursday, August 9.2d. By
+direction of the chief of engineers, U. S. Army, you are hereby granted
+permission to hold this demonstration. You are advised good order must
+prevail.”
+
+“We received yesterday [Miss Paul replied] your permit for a suffrage
+demonstration in Lafayette Park this afternoon, and are very glad that
+our meetings are no longer to be interfered with. Because of the
+illness of so many of our members, due to their treatment in prison
+this last week, and with the necessity of caring for them at
+headquarters, we are planning to hold our neat meeting a little later.
+We have not determined on the exact date but we will inform you of the
+time as soon as it is decided upon.”
+
+It was reported on credible authority that this concession -was the
+result of a conference at which the President, Secretary of War Baker
+and Colonel Ridley were present. It was said that Secretary Baker and
+Colonel Ridley persuaded the President to withdraw the orders to arrest
+us and allow our meetings to go on, even though they took the form of
+attacks upon the President.
+
+Two days after the release of the women, the Republican Party, for the
+first time in the history of woman suffrage, caucused in the Senate in
+favor of forcing suffrage to a vote.
+
+The resolution which was passed unanimously by the caucus determined to
+“insist upon consideration immediately” and ‘also to insist upon a
+final vote . . . at the earliest possible moment …. Provided, That this
+resolution shall not be construed as in any way binding the action or
+vote of any Member of the Senate upon the merits of the said woman
+suffrage amendment.”
+
+While not a direct attempt, therefore, to win more Republican Senators,
+this proved a very great tactical contribution to the cause. The
+Republicans were proud of their suffrage strength. They knew the
+Democrats were not. With the Congressional elections approaching the
+Republicans meant to do their part toward acquainting the country with
+the Administration’s policy of vacillation and delay. This was not only
+helpful to the Republicans politically; it was also advantageous to the
+amendment in that it goaded the majority into action.
+
+Nine months had passed since the vote in the House and we were
+perilously near the end of the session, when on the 16th of September,
+Senator Overman, Democrat, Chairman of the Rules Committee, stated to
+our Legislative Chairman that suffrage was “not on the program for this
+session” and that the Senate would recess in a few days for the
+election campaigns without considering any more legislation. On the
+same day Senator Jones, Chairman of the Suffrage Committee, announced
+to us that he would not even call his Committee together to consider
+taking a vote.
+
+We had announced a fortnight earlier that another protest meeting would
+be held at the base of the Lafayette Monument that day, September 16th,
+at four o’clock. No sooner had this protest been announced than the
+President publicly stated that he would receive a delegation of
+Southern and Western women partisans on the question of the amendment
+at two o’clock the same day.
+
+To this delegation he said, “I am, as I think you know, heartily in
+sympathy with you. I have endeavored to assist you in every way in my
+power, and I shall continue to do so. I will do all I can to urge the
+passage of the amendment by an early vote.”
+
+Presumably this was expected to disarm us and perhaps silence our
+demonstration. However, it merely moved us to make another hasty visit
+to Senator Overman, Chairman of the Rules Committee, and to Senator
+Jones, Chairman of the Suffrage Committee, between the hours of two and
+four to see if the President’s statement that he would do all he could
+to secure an early vote had altered their statements made earlier in
+the day.
+
+These Administration leaders assured us that their statements stood;
+that no provision had been made for action on the amendment; that the
+President’s statement did not mean that a vote would be taken this
+session; and that they did not contemplate being so advised by him.
+
+Such a situation was intolerable. The President was uttering more fine
+words, while his Administration leaders interpreted them to mean
+nothing, because they were not followed up by action on his part.
+
+We thereupon changed our demonstration at four o’clock to a more
+drastic form of protest. We took these words of the President to the
+base of Lafayette Monument and burned them in a flaming torch.
+
+A throng gathered to hear the speakers. Ceremonies were opened with the
+reading of the following appeal by Mrs. Richard Wainwright, wife of
+Rear-Admiral Wainwright:
+
+“Lafayette, we are here!
+
+“We, the women of the United States, denied the liberty which you
+helped to gain, and for which we have asked in vain for sixty years,
+turn to you to plead for us.
+
+“Speak, Lafayette, dead these hundred years but still living in the
+hearts of the American people. Speak again to plead for us like the
+bronze woman at your feet, condemned like us to a silent appeal. She
+offers you a sword. Will you not use for us the sword of the spirit,
+mightier far than the sword she holds out to you?
+
+“Will you not ask the great leader of democracy to look upon the
+failure of our beloved country to be in truth the place where every one
+is free and equal and entitled to a share in the government? Let that
+outstretched hand of yours pointing to the White House recall to him
+his words and promises, his trumpet call for all of us, to see that the
+world is made safe for democracy.
+
+“As our army now in France spoke to you there, saying here we are to
+help your country fight for liberty, will you not speak here and now
+for us, a little band with no army, no power but justice and right, no
+strength but in our Constitution and in the Declaration of
+Independence; and win a great victory again in this country by giving
+us the opportunity we ask,—to be heard through the Susan B. Anthony
+amendment.
+
+“Lafayette, we are here!”
+
+Before the enthusiastic applause for Mrs. Wainwright’s appeal had died
+away, Miss Lucy Branham of Baltimore stepped forward with a flaming
+torch, which she applied to the President’s latest words on suffrage.
+The police looked on and smiled, and the crowd cheered as she said:
+
+“The torch which I hold symbolizes the burning indignation of the women
+who for years have been given words without action . . . .
+
+“For five years women have appealed to this President and his party for
+political freedom. The President has given words, and words, and words.
+To-day women receive more words. We announce to the President and the
+whole world to-day, by this act of ours, our determination that words
+shall not longer be the only reply given to American women—our
+determination that this same democracy for whose establishment abroad
+we are making the utmost sacrifice, shall also prevail at home.
+
+“We have protested to this Administration by banners; we have protested
+by speeches; we now protest by this symbolic act.
+
+“As in the ancient fights for liberty, the crusaders for freedom
+symbolized their protest against those responsible for injustice by
+consigning their hollow phrases to the flames, so we, on behalf of
+thousands of suffragists, in this same way to-day protest against the
+action of the President and his party in delaying the liberation of
+American women.”
+
+Mrs. Jessie Hardy Mackaye of Washington, D. C., then came forward to
+the end of the plinth to speak, and as she appeared, a man in the crowd
+handed her a twenty-dollar bill for the campaign in the Senate. This
+was the signal for others. Bills and coins were passed up. Instantly
+marshals ran hither and thither collecting the money in improvised
+baskets while the cheers grew louder and louder. Many of the policemen
+present were among the donors.
+
+Burning President Wilson’s words had met with popular approval from a
+large crowd!
+
+The procession of women was starting back to headquarters, the police
+were eagerly clearing the way for the line; the crowd was dispersing in
+order; the great golden banner, “Mr. President, what will you do for
+woman suffrage?” was just swinging past the White House gate, when
+President Wilson stepped into his car for the afternoon drive.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 18
+President Wilson Appeals to the Senate Too Late
+
+
+The next day the Administration completely reversed its policy. Almost
+the first Senate business was an announcement on the floor by Senator
+Jones, Chairman of the Suffrage Committee, that the suffrage amendment
+would be considered in the Senate September 26th. And Senator Overman,
+Chairman of the Rules Committee, rather shyly remarked to our
+legislative chairman that he had been “mistaken yesterday.” It was “now
+in the legislative program.” The Senate still stood 6Q votes for and 34
+against the amendment—2 votes lacking. The President made an effort
+among individual Democrats to secure them. But it was too feeble an
+effort and he failed.
+
+Chairman Jones took charge of the measure on the floor. The debate
+opened with a long and eloquent. speech by Senator Vardaman of
+Mississippi, Democrat, in support of the amendment. “My estimate of
+woman,” said he, in conclusion, “is well expressed in the words
+employed by a distinguished author who dedicated his book to a ‘Little
+mountain, a great meadow, and a woman,’ ‘To the mountain for the sense
+of time, to the meadow for the sense of space, and of everything.’”
+
+Senator McCumber of North Dakota, Republican, followed with a curious
+speech. His problem was to explain why, although opposed to suffrage,
+he would vote for the amendment. Beginning with the overworked “cave
+man” and “beasts of the forests,” and down to the present day, “the
+male had always protected the female” He always would! Forgetting
+recent events in the Capital, he went so far as to say, “ . . . In our
+courts she ever finds in masculine nature an asylum of protection, even
+though she may have committed great wrong. While the mind may be
+convinced beyond any doubt, the masculine heart finds it almost
+impossible to pronounce the word ‘guilty’ against a woman.” Scarcely
+had the galleries ceased smiling at this idea when he treated them to a
+novel application of the biological theory of inheritance. “The
+political field,” he declared, “always has been and probably always
+will be an arena of more or less bitter contest. The political battles
+leave scars as ugly and lacerating as the physical battles, and the
+more sensitive the nature the deeper and more lasting the wound. And as
+no man can enter this contest or be a party to it and assume its
+responsibilities without feeling its blows and suffering its wounds,
+much less can woman with her more emotional and more sensitive nature.
+
+“But . . . you may ask why should she be relieved from the scars and
+wounds of political contest? Because they do not affect her alone but
+are transmitted through her to generations yet to come . . . . “
+
+The faithful story of the sinking ship was invoked by the Senator from
+North Dakota. One might almost imagine after listening to Congressional
+debates for some years that traveling on sinking ships formed a large
+part of human experience. “Fathers, sons, and brothers,” said the
+Senator in tearful voice, “guarding the lifeboats until every woman
+from the highest to the lowest has been made safe, waving adieu with a
+smile of cheer on their lips, while the wounded vessel slowly bears
+them to a strangling death and a watery tomb, belie the charge . . “
+that woman needs her citizenship as a form of protection.
+
+In spite of these opinions, however, the Senator was obliged to vote
+for the amendment because his state had so ordered.
+
+Senator Hardwick of Georgia, Democrat, felt somewhat betrayed that the
+suffrage plank in the platform of his party in 1916, recommending state
+action, should be so carelessly set aside. “There is not a Democratic
+Senator present,” said Mr. Hardwick, “who does not know the history
+that lies back of the adoption of that plank. There is not a Democratic
+Senator who does not know that the plank was written here in Washington
+and sent to the convention and represented the deliberate voice of the
+administration and of the party on this question, which was to remit
+this question to the several States for action . . . .
+
+“The President of the United States . . . was reported to have sent
+this particular plank . . .from Washington, supposedly by the hands of
+one of his Cabinet officers.” The fact that his own party and the
+Republican party were both advancing on suffrage irritated him into
+denouncing the alacrity with which “politicians and senators are trying
+to get on the band wagon first.”
+
+Senator McKellar of Tennessee, Democrat, reduced the male superiority
+argument to simple terms when he said: “ . . . Taking them by and
+large, there are brainy men and brainy women, and that is about all
+there is to the proposition.”
+
+Our armies were sweeping victorious toward Germany. There was round on
+round of eloquence about the glories of war. Rivers of blood flowed.
+And always the role of woman was depicted as a contented binding of
+wounds. There were those who thought woman should be rewarded for such
+service. Others thought she ought to do it without asking anything in
+return. But all agreed that this was her role. There was no woman’s
+voice in that body to protest against the perpetuity of such a rôle.
+
+The remarks of Senator Reed of Missouri, anti-suffrage Democrat, typify
+this attitude. “. . . Women in my state believe in the old-fashioned
+doctrine that men should fight the battles on the red line; that men
+should stand and bare their bosoms to the iron hail; and that back of
+them, if need be, there shall be women who may bind up the wounds and
+whose tender hands may rest upon the brow of the valiant soldier who
+has gone down in the fight.
+
+“But, sir, that is woman’s work, and it has been woman’s work always .
+. . . The woman who gave her first born a final kiss and blessed him on
+his way to battle,” had, according to the Senator from Missouri, earned
+a “crown of glory . . . gemmed with the love of the world.”
+
+And with Senator Walsh of Montana, Democrat, “The women of America have
+already written a glorious page in the history of the greatest of wars
+that have vexed the world. They, like Cornelia, have given, and freely
+given, their jewels to their country.”
+
+Some of us wondered.
+
+Senator McLean of Connecticut, anti-suffrage Republican, flatly stated
+“that all questions involving declarations of war and terms of peace
+should be left to that sex which must do the fighting and the dying on
+the battlefield.” And he further said that until boys between 18 and 21
+who had just been called to the colors should ask for the vote, “their
+mothers should be and remain both proud and content” without it. He
+concluded with an amusing account of the history of the ballot box.
+“This joint resolution,” he said, “goes beyond the seas and above the
+clouds. It attempts to tamper with the ballot box, over which mother
+nature always has had and always will have supreme control; and such
+attempts always have ended and always will end in failure and
+misfortune.”
+
+Senator Phelan of California, Democrat, made a straightforward,
+intelligent speech.
+
+Senator Beckham of Kentucky, Democrat, deplored the idea that man was
+superior to woman. He pleaded “guilty to the charge of Romanticism.” He
+said, “But I look upon woman as superior to man.” Therefore he could
+not trust her with a vote. He had the hardihood to say further, with
+the men of the world at each other’s throats, . . . “Woman is the
+civilizing, refining, elevating influence that holds man from
+barbarism.” We charged him with ignorance as well as romanticism when
+he said in closing, “It is the duty of man to work and labor for woman;
+to cut the wood, to carry the coal, to go into the fields in the
+necessary labor to sustain the home where the woman presides and by her
+superior nature elevates him to higher and better conceptions of life.”
+
+Meanwhile Senator Shafroth of Colorado, Democrat, lifelong advocate of
+suffrage, was painstakingly asking one senator after another, as he had
+been for years, “Does not the Senator believe that the just powers of
+government are derived from the consent of the governed?” and then—“But
+if you have the general principle acknowledged that the just powers of
+government are derived from the consent of the governed.” . . . and so
+forth. But the idea of applying the Declaration of Independence to
+modern politics fairly put them to sleep.
+
+These samples of senatorial profundity may divert, outrage, or bore us,
+but they do not represent the real battle. It is not that the men who
+utter these sentiments do not believe them. More is the pity, they do.
+But they are smoke screens—mere skirmishes of eloquence or foolishness.
+They do not represent the motives of their political acts.
+
+The real excitement began when Senator Pittman of Nevada, Democrat,
+attempted to reveal to the senators of his party the actual seriousness
+of the political crisis in which the Democrats were now involved. He
+also attempted to shift the blame for threatened defeat of the
+amendment to the Republican side of the chamber. There was a note of
+desperation in his voice, too, since he knew that President Wilson had
+not up to that moment won the two votes lacking. The gist of Senator
+Pittman’s remarks was this: The Woman’s Party has charged the Senate
+Woman Suffrage Committee, which is in control of the Democrats, and the
+President himself, with the responsibility fob obstructing a vote on
+the measure. “I confess,” said he, that this is “having its effect as a
+campaign argument” in the woman suffrage states.
+
+Senator Wolcott of Delaware, Democrat, interrupted him to ask if this
+was “the party that has been picketing here in Washington?” Senator
+Pittman, having just paid this tribute to our campaign in the West,
+hastened to say that it was, but that there was another association,
+the National American Woman Suffrage Association, which had always
+conducted its campaign in a “lady-like—modest—and intelligent way” and
+which had “never mixed in politics.”
+
+Waving a copy of the Suffragist in the air, Senator Pittman began his
+attempt to shift responsibility to the Republican side, for the
+critical condition of the amendment. He denounced the Republicans for
+caucusing on the amendment and deciding unanimously to press for a
+vote, when they the Republicans] knew there were two votes lacking. He
+scored us for having given so much publicity to the action of the
+caucus and declared with vehemence that a “trick” had been executed
+through Senator Smoot which he would not allow to go unrevealed.
+Senator Pittman charged that the Republicans had promised enough votes
+to pass the amendment and that upon that promise the Democrats had
+brought the measure on the floor; that the Republicans thereupon
+withdrew enough votes to cause the defeat of the amendment. Whether or
+not this was true, at any rate, as Senator Smoot pointed out, the
+Democratic Chairman in charge of the measure could at any moment send
+the measure back to Committee, safe from immediate defeat. This was
+true, but not exactly a suggestion to be welcomed by the Democrats.
+
+“Yes,” replied Senator Pittman, “and then if we move to refer it back
+to the committee, the Senator from Utah would say again, ‘The Democrats
+are obstructing the passage of this amendment . . . . We told you all
+the time they wanted to kill it.’ . . . If we refer it back to the
+committee, then we will be charged, as we have been all the time in the
+suffrage states, with trying to prevent a vote on it, and still the
+Woman’s Party campaign will go on as it is going on now; and if we vote
+on it they will say: ‘We told you the Democrats would kill it, because
+the President would not make 332 on his side vote for it’.”
+
+That was the crux of the whole situation. The Democrats had been
+manaeuvered into a position where they could neither afford to move to
+refer the amendment back to the committee, nor could they afford to
+press it to a losing vote. They were indeed in an exceedingly
+embarrassing predicament.
+
+Throughout hours of debate, Senator Pittman could not get away from the
+militants. Again and again, he recited our deeds of protest, our
+threats of reprisal, our relentless strategy of holding his party
+responsible for defeat or victory.
+
+“I should like the Senator,” interpolated Senator Poindexter of
+Washington, Republican, “so long as he is discussing the action of the
+pickets, to explain to the Senate whether or not it is the action of
+the pickets . . . the militant . . . woman’s party, that caused the
+President to change his attitude on the subject. Was he coerced into
+supporting this measure—after he had for years opposed it—because he
+was picketed? When did the President change his attitude? If it was not
+because he was picketed, will the Senator explain what was the cause of
+the change in the President’s attitude?”
+
+Mr. Pittman did not reply directly to these questions.
+
+Senator Reed of Missouri, anti-Administration Democrat, consumed hours
+reading into the Congressional Record various press reports of militant
+activities. He dwelt particularly upon the news headlines, such as,
+
+“Great Washington Crowd Cheers Demonstration at White House by National
+Woman’s Party.” . . .
+
+“Suffragists Burn Wilson ‘Idle Words’ . . .”
+
+“Money Instead of Jeers Greet Marchers and Unique Protest Against
+Withholding Vote” . . .
+
+“Apply Torch to President’s Words . . . Promise to Urge Passage of
+Amendment Not Definite Enough for Militants.”
+
+“Suff’s Burn Speech . . .,Apply Torch to Wilson’s Words During
+Demonstration-Symbol of ‘Indignation’—Throngs Witnessing Doings in
+Lafayette Square Orderly and Contribute to Fund—President Receives
+Delegation of American Suffrage Association Women.”
+
+Senator McKellar of Tennessee, Democrat, asked Mr. Reed if he did not
+believe that we had a right peaceably to assemble under the “first
+amendment to our Constitution which I shall read: Congress shall make
+no law . . . abridging . . . the right of the people peaceably to
+assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
+Mr. Reed made no direct answer.
+
+Lest the idea get abroad from the amount of time they spent in
+discussing the actions of the “wicked militants,” that we had had
+something to do with the situation which had resulted in Democratic
+despair, Senator Thomas of Colorado, the one Democrat who had never
+been able to conceal his hostility to us for having reduced his
+majority in 1914, arose to pay a tribute to the conservative suffrage
+association of America. Their “escutcheon,” he said, “is unstained by
+mob methods or appeals to violence. It has neither picketed Presidents
+nor populated prisons . . . . It has carried no banners flaunting
+insults to the Executive,” while the militants on the other hand have
+indulged in “much tumult and vociferous braying, all for notoriety’s
+sake.” . . . The galleries smiled as he counseled the elder suffrage
+leaders “not to lose courage nor yet be: fainthearted,” for this
+“handicap” would soon be overcome. It would have taken an abler man
+than Senator Thomas, in the face of the nature of this debate, to make
+any one believe that we had been a “handicap” in forcing them to their
+position. He was the only one hardy enough to try. After this debate
+the Senate adjourned, leaving things from the point of view of party
+politics, tangled in a hopeless knot. It was to untie this knot that
+the President returned hastily from New York in answer to urgent
+summons by long distance telephone, and went to the Capitol to deliver
+his memorable address.
+
+Mr. Vice President and Gentlemen of the Senate: The unusual
+circumstances of a world war in which we stand and are judged in the
+view not only of our own people and our own consciences but also in
+view of all nations and all peoples will, I hope, justify in your
+thought, as it does in mine, the message I have come to bring you. I
+regard the concurrence of the Senate in the constitutional amendment
+proposing the extension of the suffrage to women as vitally essential
+to the successful prosecution of the great war of humanity in which we
+are engaged. I have come to urge upon you the considerations which have
+led me to that conclusion. It is not only my privilege, it is also my
+duty to appraise you of every circumstance and element involved in this
+momentous struggle which seems to me to affect its very processes and
+its outcome. It is my duty to win the war and to ask you to remove
+every obstacle that stands in the way of winning it.
+
+I had assumed that the Senate would concur in the amendment because ho
+disputable principle is involved but only a question of the method by
+which the suffrage is to be extended to women. There is and can be no
+party issue involved in it. Both of our great national parties are
+pledged, explicitly pledged, to equality of suffrage for the women of
+the country. Neither party, therefore, it seems to me, can justify
+hesitation as to the method of obtaining it, can rightfully hesitate to
+substitute federal initiative for state initiative, if the early
+adoption, of the measure is necessary to the successful prosecution of
+the war and if the method of state action proposed in party platforms
+of 1916 is impracticable within any reasonable length of time, if
+practicable at all. And its adoption is, in my judgment, clearly
+necessary to the successful prosecution of the war and the successful
+realization of the objects for which the war is being fought.
+
+That judgment, I take the liberty of urging upon you with solemn
+earnestness for reasons which I shall state very frankly and which I
+shall hope will seem as conclusive to you as they have seemed to me.
+
+This is a peoples’ war, and the peoples’ thinking constitutes its
+atmosphere and morale, not the predilections of the drawing room or the
+political considerations of the caucus. If we be indeed democrats and
+wish to lead the world to democracy, we can ask other peoples to accept
+in proof of our sincerity and our ability to lead them whither they
+wish to be led nothing less persuasive and convincing than our actions.
+Ours professions will not suffice. Verification must be forthcoming
+when verification is asked for. And in this case verification is asked
+for, asked for in this particular matter. You ask by whom? Not through
+diplomatic channels; not by Foreign Ministers, not by the intimations
+of parliaments. It is asked for by the anxious, expectant, suffering
+peoples with whom we are dealing and who are willing to put their
+destinies in some measure in our hands, if they are sure that we wish
+the same things that they wish. I do not speak by conjecture. It is not
+alone the voices of statesmen and of newspapers that reach me, and the
+voices of foolish and intemperate agitators do not reach me at all!
+Through many, many channels I have been made aware what the plain,
+struggling, workaday folk are thinking upon whom the chief terror and
+suffering of this tragic war falls. They are looking to the great,
+powerful, famous democracy of the West to lead them to the new day for
+which they have so long waited; and they think, in their logical
+simplicity, that democracy means that women shall play their part in
+affairs alongside men and upon an equal footing with them. If we reject
+measures like this, in ignorance or defiance of what a new age has
+brought forth, of what they have seen but we have not, they will cease
+to follow or to trust us. They have seen their own governments accept
+this interpretation of democracy,—seen old governments like Great
+Britain, which did not profess to be democratic, promise readily and as
+of course this justice to women, though they had before refused it, the
+strange revelations of this war having made many things new and plain
+to governments as well as to peoples.
+
+Are we alone to refuse to learn the lesson? Are we alone to ask and
+take the utmost that women can give,—service and sacrifice of every
+kind,—and still say that we do not see what title that gives them to
+stand by our sides in the guidance of the affairs of their nation and
+ours? We have made partners of the women in this war; shall we admit
+them only to a partnership of sacrifice and suffering and toil and not
+to a partnership of privilege and of right? This war could not have
+been fought, either by the other nations engaged or by America, if it
+had not been for the services of the women,—services rendered in every
+sphere,—not only in the fields of effort in which we have been
+accustomed to see them work, but wherever men have worked and upon the
+very skirts and edges of the battle itself. We shall not only be
+distrusted but shall deserve to be distrusted if we do not enfranchise
+them with the fullest possible enfranchisement, as it is now certain
+that the other great free nations will enfranchise them. We cannot
+isolate our thought or our action in such a matter from the thought of
+the rest of the world. We must either conform or deliberately reject
+what they propose and resign the leadership of liberal minds to others.
+
+The women of America arc too noble and too intelligent and too devoted
+to be slackers whether you give or withhold this thing that is mere
+justice; but I know the magic it will work in their thoughts and
+spirits if you give it them. I propose it as I would propose to admit
+soldiers to the suffrage, the men fighting in the field for our
+liberties and the liberties of the world, were they excluded. The tasks
+of the women lie at the very heart of the war, and I know how much
+stronger that heart will beat if you do this just thing and show our
+women that you trust them as much as you in fact and of necessity
+depend upon them.
+
+Have I said that the passage of this amendment is a vitally necessary
+war measure, and do you need further proof? Do you stand in need of the
+trust of other peoples and of the trust of our women? Is that trust an
+asset or is it not? I tell you plainly, as commander-in-chief of our
+armies and of the gallant men in our fleets, as the present spokesman
+of this people in our dealings with the men and women throughout the
+world who are now our partners, as the responsible head of a great
+government which stands and is questioned day by day as to its
+purposes, its principles, its hopes, whether they be serviceable to men
+everywhere or only to itself, and who must himself answer these
+questionings or be shamed, as the guide and director of forces caught
+in the grip of war and by the same token in need of every material and
+spiritual resource this great nation possesses,—I tell you plainly that
+this measure which I urge upon you is vital to the winning of the war
+and to the energies alike of preparation and of battle.
+
+And not to the winning of the war only. It is vital to the right
+solution of the great problems which we must settle, and settle
+immediately, when the war is over. We shall need then a vision of
+affairs which is theirs, and, as we have never needed them before, the
+sympathy and insight and clear moral instinct of the women of the
+world. The problems of that time will strike to the roots of many
+things that we have not hitherto questioned, and I for one believe that
+our safety in those questioning days, as well as our comprehension of
+matters that touch society to the quick, will depend upon the direct
+and authoritative participation of women in our counsels. We shall need
+their moral sense to preserve what is right and fine and worthy in our
+system of life as well as to discover just what it is that ought to be
+purified and reformed. Without their counselings we shall be only half
+wise.
+
+That is my case. This is my appeal. Many may deny its validity, if they
+choose, but no one can brush aside or answer the arguments upon which
+it is based. The executive tasks of this war rest upon me. I ask that
+you lighten them and place in my hands instruments, spiritual
+instruments, which I do not now possess, which I sorely need, and which
+I have daily to apologize for not being able to employ. (Applause).
+
+It was a truly beautiful appeal.
+
+When the applause and the excitement attendant upon the occasion of a
+message from the President had subsided, and the floor of the chamber
+had emptied itself of its distinguished visitors, the debate was
+resumed.
+
+“If this resolution fails now,” said Senator Jones of Washington,
+ranking Republican member of the Suffrage Committee, “it fails for lack
+of Democratic votes.”
+
+Senator Cummins of Iowa, Republican, also a member of the Suffrage
+Committee, reminded opponents of the measure of the retaliatory tactics
+used by President Wilson when repudiated by senators on other issues.
+“I sincerely hope,” he said tauntingly, “that the President may deal
+kindly and leniently with those who are refusing to remove this
+obstacle which stands in his way. It has not been very long since the
+President retired the junior Senator from Mississippi [Mr. Vardaman]
+from public life. Why? Because he refused at all times to obey the
+commands which were issued for his direction. The junior Senator from
+Georgia [Mr. Hardwick] suffered the same fate. How do you hope to
+escape? . . . My Democratic friends are either proceeding upon the
+hypothesis that the President is insincere or that they may be able to
+secure an immunity from him that these other unfortunate aspirants for
+office failed to secure.”
+
+Senator Cummins chided Senator Reed for denouncing “the so-called
+militants who sought to bring their influence to bear upon the
+situation in rather a more forcible and decisive method than was
+employed by the national association. . . I did not believe in the
+campaign they were pursuing (not one senator was brave enough to say
+outright that he did). . . .
+
+“But that was simply a question for them to determine; and if they
+thought that in accordance with the established custom the President
+should bring his influence to bear more effectively than he had, they
+had a perfect right to burn his message; they had a perfect right to
+carry banners in Lafayette Park, in front of the White House, or
+anywhere else; they had a perfect right to bring their banners into the
+Capitol and display them with all the force and vigor which they could
+command. I did not agree with them; but they also were making a
+campaign for an inestimable and a fundamental right.
+
+“What would you have done, men, if you had been deprived of the right
+to vote? What would you have done if you had been deprived of the right
+of representation? Have the militants done anything worse than the
+revolutionary forces who gathered about the tea chests and threw them
+into the sea? . . .
+
+“I do not believe they [the militants] committed any crime; and while I
+had no particle of sympathy with the manner in which they were
+conducting their campaign, I think their arrest and imprisonment and
+the treatment which they received while in confinement are a disgrace
+to the civilized world, and much the more a disgrace to the United
+States, which assumes to lead the civilized world in humane endeavor.
+They disturbed nobody save that disturbance which is common to the
+carrying forward of all propaganda by those who are intensely and
+vitally interested in it. I wish they had not done it, but I am not to
+be the judge of their methods so long as they confine themselves to
+those acts and to those words which are fairly directed to the
+accomplishment of their purposes. I cannot accept the conclusion that
+because these women burned a message in Lafayette Park or because they
+carried banners upon the streets in Washington therefore they are
+criminals.”
+
+The time had come to take the vote, but we knew we had not won. The
+roll was called and the vote stood 62 to 34 [Oct. 1, 1918], counting
+all pairs. We had lost by 2 votes.
+
+Instantly Chairman Jones, according to his promise to the women,
+changing his vote from “yea” to “nay,” moved for a reconsideration of
+the measure, and thus automatically kept it on the calendar of the
+Senate. That was all that could be done.
+
+The President’s belief in the power of words had lost the amendment.
+Nor could he by a speech, eloquent as it was, break down the opposition
+in the Senate which he had so long protected and condoned.
+
+Our next task was to secure a reversal of the Senate vote. We modified
+our tactics slightly.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 19
+More Pressure
+
+
+Our immediate task was to compel the President to secure a reversal of
+two votes in the Senate. It became necessary to enter again the
+Congressional elections which were a month away.
+
+By a stroke of good luck there were two senatorial contests—in New
+Jersey and New Hampshire—for vacancies in the short term. That is, we
+had an opportunity to elect two friends who would take their seats in
+time to vote on the amendment before the end of this session. It so
+happened that the Democratic candidates were pledged to vote for the
+amendment if elected, and that the Republican candidates were opposed
+to the amendment. We launched our campaign in this instance for the
+election of the Democratic candidates. We went immediately to the
+President to ask his assistance in our endeavor. We urged him
+personally to appeal to the voters of New Jersey and New Hampshire on
+behalf of his two candidates. As Party leader he was at the moment
+paying no attention whatever to the success of these two suffragists.
+Both of the Democratic candidates themselves appealed to President
+Wilson for help in their contests, on the basis of their suffrage
+advocacy. His speech to the Senate scarcely cold, the President refused
+to lend any assistance in these contests, which with sufficient effort
+might have produced the last two votes.
+
+At the end of two weeks of such pressure upon the President we were
+unable to interest him in this practical endeavor. It was clear that he
+would move again only under attack. We went again, therefore, to the
+women voters of the west and asked them to withhold their support from
+the Democratic Senatorial candidates in the suffrage states in order to
+compel the President to assist in the two Eastern contests. This
+campaign made it clear to the President that we were still holding him
+and his party to their responsibility.
+
+And as has been pointed out, our policy was to oppose the Democratic
+candidates at elections so long as their party was responsible for the
+passage of the amendment and did not pass it. Since there is no
+question between individuals in suffrage states—they are all
+suffragists—this could not increase our numerical strength. It could,
+however, and did demonstrate the growing and comprehensive power of the
+women voters.
+
+Shortly before election, when our campaign was in full swing in the
+West, the President sent a letter appealing to the voters of New Jersey
+to support Mr. Hennessey, the Democratic candidate for the Senate. He
+subsequently appealed to the voters of New Hampshire to elect Mr.
+Jameson, candidate for Democratic Senator in New Hampshire.
+
+We continued our campaign in the West as a safeguard against relaxation
+by the President after his appeal. There were seven senatorial contests
+in the western suffrage states. In all but two of these
+contests—Montana and Nevada—the Democratic Senatorial candidates were
+defeated. In these two states the Democratic majority was greatly
+reduced.
+
+Republicans won in New Jersey and New Hampshire and a Republican
+Congress was elected to power throughout the country.
+
+The election campaign had had a wholesome effect, however, on both
+parties and was undoubtedly one of the factors in persuading the
+President to again appeal to the Senate.
+
+Immediately after the defeat in the Senate, and throughout the election
+campaign, we attempted to hold banners at the Capitol to assist our
+campaign and in order to weaken the resistance of the senators of the
+opposition. The mottoes on the banners attacked with impartial
+mercilessness both Democrats and Republicans. One read:
+
+SENATOR WADSWORTH’s REGIMENT IS FIGHTING FOR DEMOCRACY ABROAD.
+
+
+SENATOR WADSWORTH LEFT HIS REGIMENT AND IS FIGHTING AGAINST DEMOCRACY
+IN THE SENATE.
+
+
+SENATOR WADSWORTH COULD SERVE HIS COUNTRY BETTER BY FIGHTING WITH HIS
+REGIMENT ABROAD THAN BY FIGHTING WOMEN AT HOME.
+
+
+Another read:
+
+SENATOR SHIELDS TOLD THE PEOPLE OF TENNESSEE HE WOULD SUPPORT THE
+PRESIDENT’S POLICIES.
+
+
+THE ONLY TIME THE PRESIDENT WENT TO THE SENATE TO ASK ITS SUPPORT
+SENATOR SHIELDS VOTED AGAINST HIM.
+
+
+DOES TENNESSEE BACK THE PRESIDENT’S WAR PROGRAM OE SENATOR SHIELDS?
+
+
+And still a third:
+
+GERMANY HAS ESTABLISHED “EQUAL, UNIVERSAL, SECRET, DIRECT FRANCHISE.”
+
+
+THE SENATE HAS DENIED EQUAL, UNIVERSAL, SECRET SUFFRAGE TO AMERICA.
+
+
+WHICH IS MORE OF A DEMOCRACY, GERMANY OR AMERICA?
+
+
+As the women approached the Senate, Colonel Higgins, the Sergeant at
+Arms of the Senate, ordered a squad of Capitol policemen to rush upon
+them. They wrenched their banners from them, twisting their wrists and
+manhandling them as they took them up the steps, through the door, and
+down into the guardroom,—their banners confiscated and they themselves
+detained for varying periods of time. When the women insisted on
+knowing upon what charges they were held, they were merely told that
+“peace and order must be maintained on the Capitol grounds,” and
+further, “It don’t make no difference about the law, Colonel Higgins is
+boss here, and he has taken the law in his own hands.”
+
+Day after day this performance went on. Small detachments of women
+attempted to hold banners outside the United States Senate, as the
+women of Holland had done outside the Parliament in the Hague. It was
+difficult to believe that American politicians could be so devoid of
+humor as they showed themselves. The panic that overwhelms our official
+mind in the face of the slightest irregularity is appalling! Instead of
+maintaining peace and order, the squads of police managed to keep the
+Capitol grounds in a state of confusion. They were assisted from time
+to time by Senate pages, small errand boys who would run out and attack
+mature women with impunity. The women would be held under the most
+rigid detention each day until the Senate had safely adjourned. Then on
+the morrow the whole spectacle would be repeated.
+
+While the United States Senate was standing still under our protest
+world events rushed on. German autocracy had collapsed. The Allies had
+won a military victory. The Kaiser had that very week fled for his life
+because of the uprising of his people.
+
+“We are all free voters of a free republic now,” was the message sent
+by the women of Germany to the women of the United States through Miss
+Jane Addams. We were at that moment heartily ashamed of our government.
+German women voting! American women going to jail and spending long
+hours in the Senate guardhouse without arrests or, charges. The war
+came to an end. Congress adjourned November 21st.
+
+When the 65th Congress reconvened for its short and final session,
+December 2nd, 1918 [less than a month after our election campaign],
+President Wilson, for the first time, included suffrage in his regular
+message to Congress, the thing that we had asked of him at the opening
+of every session of Congress since March, 1918.
+
+There were now fewer than a hundred days in which to get action from
+the Senate and so avoid losing the benefit of our victory in the House.
+
+In his opening address to Congress, the President again appealed to the
+Senate in these words:
+
+“And what shall we say of the women—of their instant intelligence,
+quickening every task that they touched; their capacity for
+organization and coöperation, which gave their action discipline and
+enhanced the effectiveness of everything they attempted; their aptitude
+at tasks to which they had never before set their hands; their utter
+self-sacrifice alike in what they did and in what they gave? Their
+contribution to the great result is beyond appraisal. They have added a
+new luster to the annals of American womanhood.
+
+“The least tribute we can pay them is to make them the equals of men in
+political rights, as they have proved themselves their equals in every
+field of practical work they have entered, whether for themselves or
+for their country. These great days of completed achievement would be
+sadly marred were we to omit that act of justice. Besides the immense
+practical services they have rendered, the women of the country have
+been the moving spirits in the systematic economies in which our people
+have voluntarily assisted to supply the suffering peoples of the world
+and the armies upon every front with food and everything else we had,
+that might serve the common cause. The details of such a story can
+never be fully written but we carry them at our hearts and thank God
+that we can say that we are the kinsmen of such.”
+
+Again we looked for action to follow this appeal. Again we found that
+the President had uttered these words but had made no plan to translate
+them into action.
+
+And so his second appeal to the Senate failed, coming as it did after
+the hostility of his party to the idea of conferring freedom on women
+nationally, had been approved and fostered by President Wilson for five
+solid years. He could not overcome with additional eloquence the
+opposition which he himself had so long formulated, defended,
+encouraged and solidified, especially when that eloquence was followed
+by either no action or only half- hearted efforts.
+
+It would now require a determined assertion of his political power as
+the leader of his party. We made a final appeal to him as leader of his
+party and while still at the height of his world power, to make such an
+assertion and to demand the necessary two votes.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 20
+The President Sails Away
+
+
+No sooner had we set ourselves to a brief, hot campaign to compel
+President Wilson to win the final votes than he sailed away to France
+to attend the Peace Conference, sailed away to consecrate himself to
+the program of liberating the oppressed peoples of the whole world. He
+cannot be condemned for aiming to achieve so gigantic a task. But we
+reflected that again the President had refused his specific aid in an
+humble aspiration, for the rosy hope of a more boldly conceived
+ambition.
+
+It was positively impossible for us, by our own efforts, to win the
+last 2 votes. We could only win them through the President. That he had
+left behind him his message urging the Senate to act, is true. That
+Administration leaders did not consider these words a command, is also
+true. It must be realized that even after the President had been
+compelled to publicly declare his support of the measure, it was almost
+impossible to get his own leaders to take seriously his words on
+suffrage. And so again the Democratic Chairman of the Rules Committee,
+in whose keeping the program lay, had no thought of bringing it to a
+vote. The Democratic Chairman of the Woman Suffrage Committee assumed
+not the slightest responsibility for its success, nor could he produce
+any plan whereby the last votes could be won. They knew, as well as did
+we, that the President only could win those last 2 votes. They made it
+perfectly clear that until he had done so, they could do nothing.
+
+Less than fifty legislative days remained to us. Something had to be
+done quickly, something bold and offensive enough to threaten the
+prestige of the President, as he was riding in sublimity to unknown
+heights as a champion of world liberty; something which might penetrate
+his reverie and shock him into concrete action. We had successfully
+defied the full power of his Administration, the odds heavily against
+us. We must now defy the popular belief of the world in this apostle of
+liberty. This was the feeling of the four hundred officers of the
+National Woman’s Party, summoned to a three days’ conference in
+Washington in December, 1918. It was unanimously decided to light a
+fire in an urn, and, on the day that the President was officially
+received by France, to burn with fitting public ceremonies all the
+President’s past and present speeches or books concerning “liberty”,
+“freedom” and “democracy.”
+
+It was late afternoon when the four hundred women proceeded solemnly in
+single file from headquarters, past the White House, along the edge of
+the quiet and beautiful Lafayette Park, to the foot of Lafayette’s
+statue. A slight mist added beauty to the pageant. The purple, white
+and gold banners, so brilliant in the sunshine, became soft pastel
+sails. Half the procession carried lighted torches; the other half
+banners. The crowd gathered silently, somewhat awe-struck by the scene.
+Massed about that statue, we felt a strange strength and solidarity, we
+felt again that we were a part of the universal struggle for liberty.
+
+The torch was applied to the pine-wood logs in the Grecian Urn at the
+edge of the broad base of the statue. As the flames began to mount,
+Vida Milholland stepped forward and without accompaniment sang again
+from that spot of beauty, in her own challenging way, the Woman’s
+Marseillaise. Even the small boys in the crowd, always the most
+difficult to please, cheered and clapped and cried for more.
+
+Mrs. John Rogers, Jr., chairman of the National Advisory Council, said,
+as president of the ceremony:
+
+“We hold this meeting to protest against the denial of liberty to
+American women. All over the world to-day we see surging and sweeping
+irresistibly on, the great tide of democracy, and women would be
+derelict in their duty if they did not see to it that it brings freedom
+to the women of this land . . . .
+
+“Our ceremony to-day is planned to call attention to the fact that
+President Wilson has gone abroad to establish democracy in foreign
+lands when he has failed to establish democracy at home. We burn his
+words on liberty to-day, not in malice or anger, but in a spirit of
+reverence for truth.
+
+“This meeting is a message to President Wilson. We expect an answer. If
+the answer is more words we will burn them again. The only answer the
+National Woman’s Party will accept is the instant passage of the
+amendment in the Senate.”
+
+The few hoots and jeers which followed all ceased, when a tiny and aged
+woman stepped from her place to the urn in the brilliant torch light.
+The crowd recognized a veteran. It was the most dramatic moment in the
+ceremony. Reverend Olympia Brown of Wisconsin, one of the first
+ordained women ministers in the country, then in her eighty-fourth
+year, gallant pioneer, friend and colleague of Susan B. Anthony, said,
+as she threw into the flames the speech made by the President on his
+arrival in France:
+
+“ . . . I have fought for liberty for seventy years, and I protest
+against the President’s leaving our country with this old fight here
+unwon.”
+
+The crowd burst into applause and continued to cheer as she was
+assisted from the plinth of the statue, too frail to dismount by
+herself. Then came the other representative women, from Massachusetts
+to California, from Georgia to Michigan, each one consigning to the
+flames a special declaration of the President’s on freedom. The flames
+burned brighter and brighter and leapt higher as the night grew black.
+
+The casual observer said, “They must be crazy. Don’t they know the
+President isn’t at home? Why are they appealing to him in the park
+opposite the White House when he is in France?”
+
+The long line of bright torches shone menacingly as the women marched
+slowly back to headquarters, and the crowd dispersed in silence. The
+White House _was_ empty. But we knew our message would be heard in
+France.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 21
+Watchfires of Freedom
+
+
+December came to an end with no plan for action on the amendment
+assured. This left us January and February only before the session
+would end. The President had not yet won the necessary 2 votes. We
+decided therefore to keep a perpetual fire to consume the President’s
+speeches on democracy as fast as he made them in Europe.
+
+And so on New Year’s Day, 1919, we light our first watchfire of freedom
+in the Urn dedicated to that purpose. We place it on the sidewalk in a
+direct line with the President’s front door. The wood comes from a tree
+in
+
+Independence Square, Philadelphia. It burns gaily. Women with banners
+stand guard over the watchfire. A bell hung in the balcony at
+headquarters tolls rhythmically the beginning of the watch. It tolls
+again as the President’s words are tossed to the flames. His speech to
+the workingmen of Manchester; his toast to the King at Buckingham
+Palace: “We have used great words, all of us. We have used the words
+‘right’ and ‘justice’ and now we are to prove whether or not we
+understand these words;” his speech at Brest; all turn into ignominious
+brown ashes.
+
+The bell tolls again when the watch is changed. All Washington is
+reminded hourly that we are at the President’s gate, burning his words.
+From Washington the news goes to all the world.
+
+People gather to see the ceremony. The omnipresent small boys and
+soldiers jeer, and some tear the banners. A soldier rushes to the scene
+with a bucket of water which does not extinguish the flames. The fire
+burns as if by magic. A policeman arrives and uses a fire extinguisher.
+But the fire burns on! The flames are as indomitable as the women who
+guard them! Rain comes, but all through the night the watchfire burns.
+All through the night the women stand guard.
+
+Day and night the fire burns. Boys are permitted by the police to
+scatter it in the street, to break the. urn, and to demolish the
+banners. But each time the women rekindle the fire. A squad of
+policemen tries to demolish the fire. While the police are engaged at
+the White House gates, other women go quietly in the dusk to the huge
+bronze urn in Lafayette Park and light another watchfire. A beautiful
+blaze leaps into the air from the great urn. The police hasten hither.
+The burning contents are overturned. Alice Paul refills the urn and
+kindles a new fire. She is placed under arrest. Suddenly a third blaze
+is seen in a remote corner of the park. The policemen scramble to that
+corner. When the watchfires have been continued for four days and four
+nights,, in spite of the attempts by the police to extinguish them,
+general orders to arrest are sent to the squad of policemen.
+
+Five women are taken to the police station. The police captain is
+outraged that the ornamental urn valued at $10,000 should have been
+used to hold a fire which burned the President’s words! His indignation
+leaves the defendants unimpressed, however, and he becomes
+conciliatory. Will the “ladies promise to be good and light no more
+fires in the park?”
+
+Instead, the “ladies” inquire on what charge they are held. Not even
+the police captain knows. They wait at the police station to find out,
+refusing to give bail unless they are told. Meanwhile other women
+address the crowd lingering about the watchfire. The crowd asks
+thoughtful questions. Little knots of men can be seen discussing “what
+the whole thing is about anyway.”
+
+Miss Mildred Morris, one of the participants, overheard the following
+discussion in one group composed of an old man, a young sailor and a
+young soldier.
+
+“But whatever you think of them,” the sailor was telling the soldier,
+“you have to admire their sincerity and courage. They’ve got to do this
+thing. They want only what’s their right and real men want to give it
+to them.”
+
+“But they’ve got no business using a sidewalk in front of the White
+House for a bonfire,” declared the soldier. “It’s disloyal to the
+President, I tell you, and if they weren’t women I’d slap their faces.”
+
+“Listen, sonny,” said the old man, patting the soldier’s arm, “I’m as
+loyal to the President as any man alive, but I’ve got to admit that he
+ain’t doing the right thing towards these women. He’s forced everything
+else he’s wanted through Congress, and if he wanted to give these women
+the vote badly enough he could force the suffrage amendment through. If
+you and I were in these women’s places, sonny, we’d act real vicious.
+We’d want to come here and clean out the ,whole White House.”
+
+“But if the President doesn’t want to push their amendment through,
+it’s his right not to,” argued the soldier. “It’s nobody’s business how
+he uses his power.”
+
+“Good God!” the sailor burst out. “Why don’t you go over and get a job
+shining the Kaiser’s boots?”
+
+The women were released without bail, since no one was able to supply a
+charge. But a thorough research was instituted and out of the dusty
+archives some one produced an ancient statute that would serve the
+purpose. It prohibits the building of fires in a public place in the
+District of Columbia between sunset and sunrise. And so the beautiful
+Elizabethan custom of lighting watchfires as a form of demonstration
+was forbidden!
+
+In a few days eleven women were brought to trial. There was a titter in
+the court room as the prosecuting attorney read with heavy pomposity
+the charge against the prisoners “to wit: That on Pennsylvania Avenue,
+Northwest, in the District of Columbia they did aid and abet in setting
+fire to certain combustibles consisting of logs, paper, oil, etc.,
+between the setting of the sun in the said District of Columbia on the
+sixth day of January and the rising of the sun in the said District of
+Columbia o f the sixth day o f January, 1919, A. D.”
+
+The court is shocked to hear of this serious deed. The prisoners are
+unconcerned.
+
+“Call the names of the prisoners,” the judge orders. The clerk calls,
+“Julia Emory.”
+
+No answer!
+
+“Julia Emory,” he calls a second time.
+
+Dead silence!
+
+The clerk tries another name, a second, a third, a fourth. Always there
+is silence!
+
+In a benevolent tone, the judge asks the policeman to identify the
+prisoners. They identify as many as they can. An attempt is made to
+have the prisoners rise and be sworn. They sit.
+
+“We will go on with the testimony,” says the judge.
+
+The police testify as to the important details of the crime. They were
+on Pennsylvania Avenue—they looked at their watch—they learned it was
+about 5:30—they saw the ladies in the park putting wood on fires in
+urns. “I threw the wood on the pavement; they kept putting it back,”
+says one policeman. “Each time I tried to put out the fire they threw
+on more wood,” says another. “They kept on lighting new fires, and I’d
+keep putting them out,” says a third with an injured air.
+
+The prosecuting attorney asks an important question, “Did you command
+them to stop?”
+
+Policeman—“I did sir, and I said, ‘You ladies don’t want to be arrested
+do you?’ They made no answer but went on attending to their fires.”
+
+The statute is read for the second time. Another witness is called.
+This time the district attorney asks the policeman,—“Do you know what
+time the sun in the District of Columbia set on January 5th and rose on
+January 6th?”
+
+At this profound question, the policeman hesitates, looks abashed, then
+says impressively, “The sun in the District of Columbia set at 5
+o’clock January 5th, and rose at 7:28 o’clock January 6th.”
+
+The prosecutor is triumphant. He looks expectantly at the judge.
+
+“How do you know what time the sun rose and set on those days?” asks
+the judge.
+
+“From the weather bureau,” answers the policeman.
+
+The judge is perplexed.
+
+“I think we should have something more official,” he says.
+
+The prosecutor suggests that perhaps an almanac would settle the
+question. The judge believes it would. The government attorney
+disappears to find an almanac.
+
+Breathless, the prisoners and spectators wait to hear the important
+verdict of the almanac. The delay is interminable. The court room is in
+a state of confusion. The prisoners, especially, are amused at the
+proceedings. It is clear their fate may hang upon a minute or two of
+time. An hour goes by, and still the district attorney has not
+returned. Another half hour! Presently he returns to read in heavy
+tones from the almanac. The policeman looks embarrassed. His
+information from the weather bureau differs from that of the almanac.
+His sun rose two minutes too early and continued to shine twelve
+minutes too long! However, it doesn’t matter. The sun shone long enough
+to make the defendants guilty.
+
+The judge looks at the prisoners and announces that they are “guilty”
+and “shall pay a fine of $5.00 or serve five days in jail.” The
+Administration has learned its lesson about hunger strikes and
+evidently fears having to yield to another strike. And so it seeks
+safety in lighter sentences. The judge pleads almost piteously with
+them not to go to jail at all, and says that he will put them on
+probation if they will promise to be good and not light any more fires
+in the District of Columbia. The prisoners make no promise. They have
+been found guilty according to the almanac and they file through the
+little gate into the prisoners’ pen.
+
+Somehow they did not believe that whether the sun rose at 7:26 or 7:28
+was the issue which had decided whether they should be convicted or
+not, and it was not in protest against the almanac that they
+straightway entered upon a hunger strike.
+
+Meanwhile the watchfires continued in the capital. January thirteenth,
+the day the great world Peace Conference under the President’s
+leadership, began to deliberate on the task of administering “right”
+and “justice” to all the oppressed of the earth, twenty-three women
+were arrested in front of the White House.
+
+Another trial! More silent prisoners! They were to be tried this time
+in groups. A roar of applause from friends in the courtroom greeted the
+first four as they came in. The judge said that he could not possibly
+understand the motive for this outburst, and added, “If it is repeated,
+I shall consider it contempt of court.” He then ordered the bailiff to
+escort the four prisoners out and bring them in again.—Shades of school
+days!
+
+“And if there is any applause this time . . .”
+
+With this threat still in the air, the prisoners reentered and the
+applause was louder than before. Great Confusion! The judge roared at
+the bailiff. The bailiff roared at the prisoners and their friends.
+
+Finally they rushed to the corners of the courtroom and evicted three
+young women.
+
+“Lock the doors, and see that they do not return,” shouted the angry
+judge. Thus the dignity of the court was restored. But the group idea
+had to be abandoned. The prisoners were now brought in one at a time,
+and one policeman after another testified that, “she kep’ alightin’ and
+alightin’ fires.”
+
+Five days’ imprisonment for each woman who “kep’ alightin’” watchfires!
+
+On January 25th, in Paris, President Wilson received a delegation of
+French working women who urged woman suffrage as one of the points to
+be settled at the Peace Conf6rence. The President expressed admiration
+for the women of France, and told them of his deep personal interest in
+the enfranchisement of women. He was ‘honored’ and ‘touched’ by their
+tribute. It was a great moment for the President. He had won the
+position in the eyes of the world of a devout champion of the liberty
+of women, but at the very moment he was speaking to these French women
+American women were lying in the District of Columbia jail for
+demanding liberty at his gates.
+
+Mrs. Mary Nolan, the eldest suffrage prisoner, took to the watchfire
+those vain words of the President to the French women. The flames were
+just consuming—“All sons of freedom are under oath to see that freedom
+never suffers,” when a whole squadron of police dashed up to arrest
+her. There was a pause when they saw her age. They drew back for an
+instant. Then one amongst them, more “dutiful” than the rest, quietly
+placed her under arrest. As she marched along by his side, cheers for
+her went up from all parts of the crowd.
+
+“Say what you think about them, but that little old lady has certainly
+got pluck,” they murmured.
+
+At the bar Mrs. Nolan’s beautiful speech provoked irrepressible
+applause. The judge ordered as many offenders as could be recognized
+brought before him. Thirteen women were hastily produced. The trial was
+suspended while the judge sentenced these thirteen to “forty-eight
+hours in jail for contempt of court.”
+
+And so, throughout January and the beginning of February, 1919, the
+story of protest continued relentlessly.
+Watchfires—arrests—convictions—hunger strikes—release—until again the
+nation rose in protest against imprisoning the women and against the
+Senate’s delay. Peremptory cables went to the President at the Peace
+Conference, commanding him to act. News of our demonstrations were well
+reported in the Paris press. The situation must have again seemed
+serious to him, for although reluctantly and perhaps unwillingly, he
+did begin to cable to Senate leaders, who in turn began to act. On
+February 2d, the Democratic Suffrage Senators called a meeting at the
+Capitol to “consider ways and means.” On February 3d, Senator Jones
+announced in the Senate that the amendment would be-brought up for
+discussion February 10th. The following evening, February 4th, a caucus
+of all Democratic Senators was called together at the Capitol by
+Senator Martin of Virginia, Democratic floor leader in the Senate. This
+was the first Democratic caucus held in the Senate since war was
+declared, which would seem to point to the anxiety of the Democrats to
+marshal two votes.
+
+Several hours of very passionate debate occurred, during which Senator
+Pollock of South Carolina announced for the first time his support of
+the measure.
+
+Senator Pollock had yielded to pressure by cable from the President as
+well as to the caucus. This gain of one vote had reduced the number of
+votes lacking to one.
+
+Many Democratic leaders now began to show alarm lest the last vote be
+not secured. William Jennings Bryan was one leader who, rightly alarmed
+over such a situation, personally consulted with the Democratic
+opponents. The argument which he presented to them he subsequently gave
+to the press.
+
+“Woman suffrage is coming to the country and to the world. It will be
+submitted to the states by the next Congress, if it is not submitted by
+the present Congress.
+
+“I hope the Democrats of the South will not handicap the Democrats of
+the North by compelling them to spend the next twenty-five years
+explaining to the women of the country why their party prevented the
+submission of the suffrage amendment to the states.
+
+“This is our last chance to play an important part in bringing about
+this important reform, and it is of vital political concern that the
+Democrats of the Northern Mississippi Valley should not be burdened by
+the charge that our party prevented the passage of the suffrage
+amendment, especially when it is known that it is coming in spite of,
+if not with the aid of, the Democratic Party.”
+
+As we grew nearer the last vote the President was meeting what was
+perhaps his most bitter resistance from within. It was a situation
+which he could have prevented. His own early hostility, his later
+indifference and negligence, his actual protection given to Democratic
+opponents of the measure, his own reversal of policy practically at the
+point of a pistol, the half-hearted efforts made by him on its behalf,
+were all coming to fruition at the moment when his continued prestige
+was at stake. His power to get results on this because of belated
+efforts was greatly weakened. This also undermined his power in other
+undertakings essential to his continued prestige. Whereas more effort,
+at an earlier time, would have brought fairer results, now the
+opponents were solidified in their opposition, were through their votes
+publicly committed to the nation as opponents, and were unwilling to
+sacrifice their heavy dignity to a public reversal of their votes. This
+presented a formidable resistance, indeed.
+
+Therefore the Democratic blockade continued.
+
+And so did the watchfires !
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 22
+Burned in Effigy
+
+
+The suffrage score now stood as follows: One vote lacking in the
+Senate, 15 days in which to win it, and President Wilson across the
+sea! The Democrats set February 10 as the date on which the Senate
+would again vote on the amendment, without any plan as to how the last
+vote would be won.
+
+We were powerless to secure the last vote. That was still the
+President’s problem. Knowing that he always put forth more effort under
+fire of protest from us than when not pressed, we decided to make as a
+climax to our watchfire demonstrations a more drastic form of protest.
+We wanted to show our contempt for the President’s inadequate support
+which promised so much in words and which did so little in deeds to
+match the words.
+
+And so on the day preceding the vote we burned in effigy a portrait of
+President Wilson even as the Revolutionary fathers had burned a
+portrait of King George.[1]
+
+[1] This is the inscription on a tablet at the State House, Dover
+Green, Dover, in commemoration of Delaware’s revolutionary leaders.
+    Signers of the Declaration of Independence.
+    Caeser Rodney—Thomas McKain—George Read
+    At the urgent request of Thomas McKain, Caesar Rodney being then in
+    Delaware, rode post haste on horseback to Philadelphia and reached
+    Independence Hall July 4, 1776.
+    The following day news of the adoption of the Declaration of
+    Independence reaching Dover a portrait of King George was burned on
+    Dover Green at the order of the Committee of Safety. The following
+    historic words being uttered by the chairman:
+    “Compelled by strong necessity thus we destroy even the shadow of
+    that king who refused to reign over a free people.”
+
+
+A hundred women marched with banners to the center of the sidewalk
+opposite the White House. Mingling with the party’s tri- colored
+banners were two lettered ones which read:
+
+ONLY FIFTEEN LEGISLATIVE DAYS ARE LEFT IN THIS CONGRESS.
+
+
+FOR MORE THAN A YEAR THE PRESIDENT’S PARTY HAS BLOCKED SUFFRAGE IN THE
+SENATE.
+
+
+IT IS BLOCKING IT TODAY.
+
+
+THE PRESIDENT IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE BETRAYAL OF AMERICAN WOMANHOOD.
+
+
+And—
+
+WHY DOES NOT THE PRESIDENT INSURE THE PASSAGE OF SUFFRAGE IN THE SENATE
+TO-MORROW?
+
+
+WHY DOES HE NOT WIN FROM HIS PARTY THE ONE VOTE NEEDED?
+
+
+HAS HE AGREED TO PERMIT SUFFRAGE AGAIN TO BE PUSHED ASIDE?
+
+
+PRESIDENT WILSON IS DECEIVING THE WORLD.
+
+
+HE PREACHES DEMOCRACY ABROAD AND THWARTS DEMOCRACY HERE.
+
+
+As the marchers massed their banners, and grouped themselves about the
+urn, a dense crowd of many thousand people closed in about them, a
+crowd so interested that it stood almost motionless for two hours while
+the ceremonies continued. The fire being kindled, and the flames
+leaping into the air, Miss Sue White of Tennessee and Mrs. Gabrielle
+Harris of South Carolina dropped into the fire in the urn a figure of
+President Wilson sketched on paper in black and white—a sort of effigy
+de luxe, we called it, but a symbol of our contempt none the less.
+
+Mrs. Henry O. Havemeyer of New York, life-long suffragist and woman of
+affairs, said as master of the ceremonies, “Every Anglo-Saxon
+government in the world has enfranchised its women. In Russia, in
+Hungary, in Austria, in Germany itself, the women are completely
+enfranchised, and thirty-four women are now sitting in the new
+Reichstag. We women of America are assembled here to-day to voice our
+deep indignation that . . . American women are still deprived of a
+voice in their government at home. We mean to show that the President .
+. . .” She was caught by the arm, placed under arrest, and forced into
+the waiting patrol wagon.
+
+Thereupon the police fell upon the ceremonies, and indiscriminate
+arrests followed. Women with banners were taken; women without banners
+were taken. Women attempting to guard the fire; women standing by doing
+nothing at all; all were seized upon and rushed to the patrol. While
+this uproar was going on, others attempted to continue the speaking
+where Mrs. Havemeyer had left it, but each was apprehended as she made
+her attempt. Some that had been scheduled to speak, but were too shy to
+utter a word in the excitement, were also taken. When the “Black
+Marias” were all filled to capacity, nearby automobiles were
+commandeered, and more patrols summoned. And still not even half the
+women were captured.
+
+The police ceased their raids suddenly. Orders to arrest no more had
+evidently been given. Some one must have suggested that a hundred
+additions to the already overcrowded jail and workhouse would be too
+embarrassing. Perhaps the ruse of arresting some, and hoping the others
+would scamper away at the sight of authority, was still in their minds.
+
+After a brief respite they turned their attention to the fascinated
+crowd. They succeeded in forcing back these masses of people half way
+across Pennsylvania Avenue, and stationed an officer every two feet in
+front of them. But still women came to keep the fire burning. Was there
+no end of this battalion of women? The police finally declared a
+“military zone” between the encircling crowd and the remaining women,
+and no person was allowed to enter the proscribed area. For, another
+hour, then, the women stood on guard at the urn, and as night fell, the
+ceremonies ended. Sixty of them marched back to headquarters.
+Thirty-nine had been arrested.
+
+The following morning, February 10th, saw two not unrelated scenes in
+the capital. Senators were gathering in their seats in the senate
+chamber to answer. to the roll call on the suffrage amendment. A few
+blocks away in the courthouse, thirty-nine women were being tried for
+their protest of the previous day.
+
+There was no uncertainty either in the minds of the galleries or of the
+senators. Every one knew that we still lacked one vote. The debate was
+confined to two speeches, one for and one against.
+
+When the roll was called, there were voting and paired in favor of the
+amendment, 63 senators; there were voting and paired against the
+amendment 83 senators. The amendment lost therefore, by one vote. Of
+the 63 favorable votes 62 were Republicans and 31 Democrats. Of the 33
+adverse votes 12 were Republicans and 21 Democrats. This means that of
+the 44 Republicans in the Senate, 32 or 73 per cent voted for the
+amendment. Of the 52 Democrats in the Senate 31 or 60 per cent voted
+for it. And so it was again defeated by the opposition of the
+Democratic Administration, and by the failure of the President to put
+behind it enough power to win.
+
+Meanwhile another burlesque of justice dragged wearily on in the dim
+courtroom. The judge was sentencing thirty-nine women to prison. When
+the twenty-sixth had been reached, he said wearily, “How many more are
+out there?”
+
+When told that he had tried only two-thirds of the defendants, he
+dismissed the remaining thirteen without trial!
+
+They were as guilty as their colleagues. But the judge was tired.
+Twenty-six women sent to jail is a full judicial day’s work, I suppose.
+
+There was some rather obvious shame and unhappiness in the Senate
+because of the petty thing they had done. The prisoners in the
+courtroom were proud because they had done their utmost for the
+principle in which they believed.
+
+Senator Jones of New Mexico, Chairman of the Committee, and his
+Democratic colleagues refused to reintroduce the Susan B. Anthony
+amendment in the Senate immediately after this defeat. But on Monday,
+February 17, Senator Jones of Washington, ranking Republican on the
+Suffrage Committee, obtained unanimous consent and reintroduced it,
+thereby placing it once more on its way to early reconsideration.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 23
+Boston Militants Welcome the President
+
+
+It was announced that the President would return to America on February
+24th. That would leave seven days in which he could act before the
+session ended on March 3d. We determined to make another dramatic
+effort to move him further.
+
+Boston was to be the President’s landing place. Boston, where ancient
+liberties are so venerated, and modern ones so abridged. No more
+admirable place could have been found to welcome the President home in
+true militant fashion.
+
+Wishing the whole world to know that women were greeting President
+Wilson, why they were greeting him, and what form of demonstration the
+greetings would assume, we announced our plans in advance. Upon his
+arrival a line of pickets would hold banners silently calling to the
+President’s attention the demand for his effective aid. In the
+afternoon they would hold a meeting in Boston Common and there burn the
+parts of the President’s Boston speech which should pertain to
+democracy and liberty. These announcements were met with official alarm
+of almost unbelievable extent. Whereas front pages had been given over
+heretofore to publishing the elaborate plans for the welcome to be
+extended to the President, eulogies of the President, and recitals of
+his great triumph abroad, now the large proportion of this space was
+devoted to clever plans of the police to outwit the suffragists. The
+sustained publicity of this demonstration was unprecedented. It
+actually filled the Boston papers for all of two weeks.
+
+A “deadline,” a diagram of which appeared in the press, was to be
+established beyond which no suffragist, no matter how enterprising,
+could penetrate to harass the over-worked President with foolish ideas
+about the importance of liberty for women. Had not this great man the
+cares of the world on his shoulders? This was no time to talk about
+liberty for women! The world was rocking and a great peace conference
+was sitting, and the President was just returning to report on the work
+done so far. The Boston descendants of the early revolutionists would
+do their utmost to see that no untoward event should mar the perfection
+of their plans. They would see to it that the sacred soil of the old
+Boston Common should not be disgraced.
+
+It was a perfect day. Lines of marines whose trappings shone
+brilliantly in the clear sunshine were in formation to hold back the
+crowds from the Reviewing stand where the President should appear after
+heading the procession in his honor. It seemed as if all Boston were on
+hand for the welcome. A slender file of twenty-two women marched
+silently into the sunshine, slipped through the “deadline,” and made
+its way to the base‘ of the Reviewing stand. There it unfurled its
+beautiful banners and took up its post directly facing the line of
+marines which was supposed to keep all suffragists at bay. Quite calmly
+and yet triumphantly, they stood there, a pageant of beauty and defiant
+appeal, which not even the most hurried passerby could fail to see and
+comprehend.
+
+There were consultations by the officials in charge of the ceremonies.
+The women looked harmless enough, but had they not been told that they
+must not come there? They were causing no riot, in fact they were
+clearly adding much beauty—people seemed to take them as part of the
+elaborate ceremony—but officials seldom have sense of humor enough or
+adaptability enough to change quickly, especially when they have made
+threats. It would be a taint on their honor, if they did not “pick up”
+the women for the deed.
+
+One could hear the people reading slowly the large lettered banner:
+
+MR. PRESIDENT, YOU SAID IN THE SENATE ON SEPTEMBER 20 “WE SHALL NOT
+ONLY BE DISTRUSTED BUT WE SHALL DESERVE TO BE DISTRUSTED IF WE DO NOT
+ENFRANCHISE WOMEN.” YOU ALONE CAN REMOVE THIS DISTRUST NOW BY SECURING
+THE ONE VOTE NEEDED TO PASS THE SUFFRAGE AMENDMENT BEFORE MARCH 4.
+
+
+The American flag carried by Miss Katherine Morey of Brookline held the
+place of honor at the head of the line and there were the familiar,
+“Mr. President, how long must women wait for liberty?” and “Mr.
+President, what will you do for woman suffrage?” The other banners were
+simply purple, white and gold.
+
+“When we had stood there about three quarters of an hour,” said
+Katherine Morey, “Superintendent Crowley came to me and said, ‘We want
+to be as nice as we can to you suffragette ladies, but you cannot stand
+here while the President goes by, so you might as well go back now.’ I
+said I was sorry, but as we had come simply to be there at that very
+time, we would not be able to go back until the President had gone by.
+He thereupon made a final appeal to Miss Paul, who was at headquarters,
+but she only repeated our statement. The patrol wagons were hurried to
+the scene and the arrests were executed in an exceedingly gentlemanly
+manner. But the effect on the crowd was electric. The sight of ‘ladies’
+being put into patrols, seemed to thrill the Boston masses as nothing
+the President subsequently said was able to.
+
+“We were taken to the House of Detention and there charged with
+‘loitering more than seven minutes’.”
+
+
+As Mrs. Agnes H. Morey, Massachusetts Chairman of the Woman’s Party,
+later remarked:
+
+“It is a most extraordinary thing. Thousands loitered from curiosity on
+the day the President arrived. Twenty-two loitered for liberty, and
+only those who loitered for liberty were arrested.”
+
+Realizing that the event of the morning had diverted public attention
+to our issue, and undismayed by the arrests, other women entered the
+lists to sustain public attention upon our demand to the President.
+
+The ceremony on the Common began at three o’clock. Throngs of people
+packed in closely in an effort to hear the speakers, and to catch a
+glimpse of the ceremony, presided over by Mrs. Louise Sykes of
+Cambridge, whose late husband was President of the Connecticut College
+for Women. From three o’clock until six, women explained the purpose of
+the protest, the status of the amendment, and urged those present to
+help. At six o’clock came the order to arrest. Mrs. C. C. Jack, wife of
+Professor Jack of Harvard University, Mrs. Mortimer Warren of Boston,
+whose husband was head of a base hospital in France, and Miss Elsie
+Hill, daughter of the late Congressman Hill, were arrested and were
+taken to the House of Detention, where they joined their comrades.
+
+“Dirty, filthy hole under the Court House,” was the general
+characterization of the House of Detention. “Jail was a Paradise
+compared to this depraved place,” said Miss Morey. “We slept in our
+clothes, four women to a cell, on iron shelves two feet wide. In the
+cell was an open toilet. The place slowly filled up during the night
+with drunks and disorderlies until pandemonium reigned. In the evening,
+Superintendent Crowley and Commissioner Curtis came to call on us. I
+don’t believe they had ever been there before, and they were painfully
+embarrassed. Superintendent Crowley said to me, “If you were drunk we
+could release you in the morning, but unfortunately since you are not
+we have got to take you into court.”
+
+When the prisoners were told next morning the decision of Chief Justice
+Bolster to try each prisoner separately and in closed court, they all
+protested against such proceedings. But guards took the women by force
+to a private room. “The Matron, who was terrified,” said Miss Morey,
+“shouted to the guards, ‘You don’t handle the drunks that way. You know
+you don’t.’ But they continued to push, shove and shake the women while
+forcing them to the ante room.”
+
+“As an American citizen under arrest, I demand a public trial,” was the
+statement of each on entering the judge’s private trial room.
+
+While the trial was proceeding without the women’s cooperation,—some
+were tried under wrong names, some were tried more than once under
+different names, but most of them under the name of Jane Doe—vigorous
+protests were being made to all the city officials by individuals among
+the throngs who had come to the court house to attend the trial. This
+protest was so strong that the last three women were tried in open
+court. The judge sentenced everybody impartially to eight days in j ail
+in lieu of fines, with the exception of Miss Wilma Henderson, who was
+released when it was learned that she was a minor.
+
+The women were taken to the Charles Street Jail to serve their
+sentences. “The cells were immaculately clean,” said Miss Morey, “but
+there was one feature of this experience which obliterated all its
+advantages. The cells were without modern toilet facilities. The toilet
+equipment consisted of a heavy wooden bucket, about two and a half feet
+high and a foot and a half in diameter, half filled with water. No one
+of us will ever forget that foul bucket. It had to be carried to the
+lower floor—we were on the third and fourth floors—every morning. I
+could hardly lift mine off the floor, to say nothing of getting it down
+stairs (Miss Morey weighs 98 pounds), so there it stayed. Berry Pottier
+managed to get hers down, but was so exhausted she was utterly unable
+to get it back to her cell.
+
+“The other toilet facility provided was a smaller bucket of water to
+wash in, but it was of such a strangely unpleasant odor that we did not
+dare use it.”
+
+The Boston reporters were admitted freely—and they wrote columns of
+copy. There was the customary ridicule, but there were friendly light
+touches such as, “Militant Highlights—To be roommates at Vassar College
+and then to meet again as cellmates was the experience of Miss Elsie
+Hill and Mrs. Lois Warren Shaw.” . . . “Superintendent Kelleher didn’t
+know when he was in Congress with Elsie Hill’s father he would some day
+have Congressman Hill’s daughter in his jail.”
+
+And there were friendly serious touches in these pages of sensational
+news—such as this excerpt from the front page of the Boston Traveler of
+February 25, 1919. “The reporter admired the spirit of the women.
+Though weary from loss of sleep, the fire of a great purpose burned in
+their eyes . . . .
+
+“It was a sublime forgetting of self for the goal ahead, and whether
+the reader is in sympathy with the principle for which these women are
+ready to suffer or not, he will be forced to admire the spirit which
+leads them on.”
+
+Photographs of the women were printed day by day—giving their
+occupations, if any, noting their revolutionary ancestors, ascertaining
+the attitude of husbands and fathers. Mrs. Shaw’s husband’s telegram
+was typical of the support the women got. “Don’t be quitters,” he
+wired, “I have competent nurses to look after the children.” Mr. Shaw
+is a Harvard graduate and a successful manufacturer in Manchester, New
+Hampshire.
+
+Telegrams of protest from all over the country poured in upon all the
+Boston officials who had had any point of contact with the militants.
+All other work was for the moment suspended. Such is the quality of
+Mrs. Morey’s organizing genius that she did not let a solitary official
+escape. Telegrams also went from Boston, and especially from the jail,
+to President Wilson.
+
+Official Boston was in the grip of this militant invasion when suddenly
+a man of mystery, one E. J. Howe, appeared and paid the women’s fines.
+It was later discovered that the mysterious E. J. Howe alleged to have
+acted for a “client.” Whether the “client” was a part of Official
+Boston, no one ever knew. There were rumors that the city wished to end
+its embarrassment.
+
+Sedate Boston had been profoundly shaken. Sedate Boston gave more
+generously than ever before to militant finances. And when the “Prison
+Special” arrived a few days later a Boston theatre was filled to
+overflowing with a crowd eager to hear more about their local heroines,
+and to cheer them while they were decorated with the already famous
+prison pin.
+
+Something happened in Washington, too, after the President’s safe
+journey thither from Boston.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 24
+Democratic Congress Ends
+
+
+It would be folly to say that President Wilson was not at this time
+aware of a very damning situation.
+
+The unanswerable “Prison Special”—a special car of women prisoners—was
+touring the country from coast to coast to keep the public attention,
+during the closing days of the session, fixed upon the suffrage
+situation in the Senate. The prisoners were addressing enormous
+meetings and arousing thousands, especially in the South, to articulate
+condemnation of Administration tactics. It is impossible to calculate
+the number of cables which, as a result of this sensational tour,
+reached the President during his deliberations at the Peace Table. The
+messages of protest which did not reach the President at the Peace
+Conference were waiting for him on his desk at the White House.
+
+Even if some conservative Boston suffragists did present him with a
+beautiful bouquet of jonquils tied with a yellow ribbon, as their
+welcome home, will any one venture to say that that token of trust was
+potent enough to wipe from his consciousness the other welcome which
+led his welcomers to jail? Will any one contend that President Wilson
+upon his arrival in Washington, and after changing his clothes, piously
+remarked:
+
+“By the way, Tumulty, I want to show you some jonquils tied with a
+yellow ribbon that were presented to me in Boston. I am moved, I think
+I may say deeply moved by this sincere tribute, to do something this
+morning for woman suffrage. Just what is the state of affairs? And does
+there seem to be any great demand for it?” We do not know what, if
+anything, he did say to Secretary Tumulty, but we know what he did. He
+hurried over to the Capitol, and there made his first official business
+a conference with Senator Jones of New Mexico, Chairman of the Senate
+Suffrage Committee. After expressing chagrin over the failure of the
+measure in the Senate, the President discussed ways and means of
+getting it through.
+
+An immediate result of the conference was the introduction in the
+Senate, February 28th, by Senator Jones, of another resolution on
+suffrage. Senator Jones had refused to reintroduce the original
+suffrage resolution immediately after the Senate defeat, February 10th.
+Now he came forward with this one, a little differently worded, but to
+the same purpose as the original amendment.[1]
+
+[1] This amendment, although to the same purpose as the original
+amendment, was not as satisfactory because of possible controversial
+points in the enforcement article. The original amendment is of course
+crystal clear in this regard.
+
+
+This resolution was a concession to Senator Gay of Louisiana, Democrat,
+who had voted against the measure on February 10th, but who immediately
+pledged his vote in favor of the new resolution. Thus the sixty-fourth
+and last vote was won. The majority instantly directed its efforts
+toward getting a vote on the new resolution.
+
+On March 1st Senator Jones attempted to get unanimous consent to
+consider it. Senator Wadsworth, of New York, Republican anti-
+suffragist, objected. When consent was again asked, the following day,
+Senator Weeks of Massachusetts, Republican anti-suffragist, objected.
+On the last day of the session, Senator Sherman of Illinois, Republican
+suffragist, objected. And so the Democratic Congress ended without
+passing the amendment.
+
+On the face of it, these parliamentary objections from Republicans
+prevented action, when the Democrats had finally secured the necessary
+votes. As a matter of fact, however, the President and his party were
+responsible for subjecting the amendment to the tactical obstruction of
+individual anti-suffrage Senators. They waited until the last three
+days to make the supreme effort. That the President did finally get the
+last vote even at a moment when parliamentary difficulties prevented it
+from being voted upon, proved our contention that he could pass the
+amendment at any time he set himself resolutely to it. This last
+ineffective effort also proved how hard the President had been pushed
+by our tactics.
+
+But it seems to me that President Wilson has a pathetic aptitude for
+acting a little too late. The fact that the majority of the Southern
+contingent in his party stood stubbornly against him on woman suffrage,
+was of course a real obstacle. But we contended that the business of a
+statesman who declared himself to be a friend of a measure was to
+remove even real obstacles to the success of that measure. Perhaps our
+standard was too high. It must be confessed that people in general are
+distressingly patient, easily content with pronouncements, and
+shockingly inert about seeing to it that political leaders act as they
+speak.
+
+We had seen the President overcome far greater obstacles than stood in
+his way on this issue. We had seen him lead a country which had voted
+to stay out of the European war into battle almost immediately after
+they had so voted. We had seen him conscript the men of the same
+stubborn South, which had been conspicuously opposed to conscription.
+We had seen him win mothers to his war point of view after they had
+fought passionately for him and his peace program at election time. He
+had taken pains to lead men and women influential and obscure—to his
+way of thinking. I do not condemn him—I respect him for being able to
+do this. The point is that he dirt overcome obstacles when his heart
+and head were set to the task.
+
+Since our problem was neither in his head nor his heart, it was our
+task to put it there. Having got it there, it was our - responsibility
+to see that it churned and churned there, until he had to act. We did
+our utmost.
+
+For six full years, through three Congresses under President Wilson’s
+power, the continual Democratic resistance, meandering, delays, deceits
+had left us still disfranchised. A world war had come and gone during
+this span of effort. Vast millions had died in pursuit of liberty. A
+Czar and a Kaiser had been deposed. The Russian people had
+revolutionized their whole social and economic system. And here in the
+United States of America we couldn’t even wrest from the leader of
+democracy and his poor miserable associates the first step toward our
+political liberty—the passage of an amendment through Congress,
+submitting the question of democracy to the states!
+
+What a magnificent thing it was for those women to rebel! Their
+solitary steadfastness to their objective stands out in this world of
+confused ideals and half hearted actions, clear and lonely and superb!
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 25
+A Farewell to President Wilson
+
+
+The Republican Congress elected in November, 1918, would not sit until
+December, 1919—such is our unfortunate system—unless called together by
+the President in a special session. We had polled the new Congress by
+personal interviews and by post, and found a safe two-thirds majority
+for the amendment in the House. In the new Senate we still lacked a
+fateful one vote.
+
+Our task was, therefore, to induce the President to call a special
+session of Congress at the earliest possible moment, and to see that he
+did not relax his efforts toward the last vote.
+
+“He won’t do it!” . . .”President Wilson will never let the Republican
+Congress come together until the regular time.” . . . “Especially with
+himself in Europe!” The usual points of objection were raised. But we
+persisted. We felt that the President could win this last vote. And the
+fear that a Republican Congress might, if he did not, was an
+accelerating factor.
+
+One feature of the campaign to force a special session was a
+demonstration in New York, on the eve of President Wilson’s return to
+Europe, at the time he addressed a mass meeting in the Metropolitan
+Opera House on behalf of his proposed League of Nations. The plan of
+demonstration was to hold outside of the Opera House banners addressed
+to President Wilson, and to consign his speech to the flames of a torch
+at a public meeting nearby.
+
+It was a clear starry night in March when the picket line of 26 women
+proceeded with tri-colored banners from New York headquarters in
+Forty-first street to the Opera House. As we neared the corner of the
+street opposite the Opera House and before we could cross the street a
+veritable battalion of policemen in close formation rushed us with
+unbelievable ferocity. Not a word was spoken by a single officer of the
+two hundred policemen in the attack to indicate the nature of our
+offense. Clubs were raised and lowered and the women beaten back with
+such cruelty as none of us had ever witnessed before.
+
+The women clung to their heavy banner poles, trying to keep the banners
+above the maelstrom. But the police seized them, tore the pennants,
+broke the poles, some of them over our backs, trampled them underfoot,
+pounded us, dragged us, and in every way behaved like frantic beasts.
+It would have been so simple quietly to detain our little handful until
+after the President’s speech, if that seemed necessary. But to launch
+this violent attack under the circumstances was madness. Not a
+pedestrian had paid any except friendly attention to the slender file
+of women. But the moment this happened an enormous crowd gathered, made
+up mostly of soldiers and sailors, many of whom had just returned from
+abroad and were temporarily thronging the streets of New York. They
+joined forces with the police in the attack.
+
+Miss Margaretta Schuyler, a beautiful, fragile young girl, was holding
+fast a silken American flag which she had carried at the head of the
+procession when a uniformed soldier jumped upon her, twisted her arms
+until she cried in pain, cursed, struggled until he had torn her flag
+from its pole, and then broke the pole across her head, exulting in his
+triumph over his frailer victim.
+
+When I appealed to the policeman, who was at the moment occupied solely
+with pounding me on the back, to intercept the soldier in his cruel
+attack, his only reply was: “Oh, he’s helping me.” He thereupon resumed
+his beating of me and I cried, “Shame, shame! Aren’t you ashamed to
+beat American women in this brutal way?” I offered no other resistance.
+“If we are breaking any law, arrest us! Don’t beat us in this cowardly
+fashion!”
+
+“We’ll rush you like bulls,” was his vulgar answer, “we’ve only just
+begun.”
+
+Another young woman, an aviatrice, was seized by the coat collar and
+thrown to the pavement for trying to keep hold of her banner. Her fur
+cap was the only thing that saved her skull from serious injury. As it
+was, she was trampled under foot and her face severely cut before we
+could rescue her with the assistance of a sympathetic member of the
+crowd. The sympathetic person was promptly attacked by the policeman
+for helping his victim to her feet. There were many shouts of
+disapproval of the police conduct and many cheers for the women from
+the dense crowd.
+
+By this time the crowd had massed itself so thickly that we could
+hardly move an inch. It was perfectly apparent that we could neither
+make our way to the Opera House nor could we extricate ourselves. But
+the terrors continued. Women were knocked down and trampled under foot,
+some of them almost unconscious, others bleeding from the hands and
+face; arms were bruised and twisted; pocketbooks were snatched and
+wrist-watches stolen.
+
+When it looked as if the suffocating melee would result in the death or
+permanent injury to some of us, I was at last dragged by a policeman to
+the edge of the crowd. Although I offered not the slightest resistance,
+I was crushed continuously in the arm by the officer who walked me to
+the police station, and kept muttering: “You’re a bunch of
+cannibals,—cannibals,—Bolsheviks.”
+
+Upon arriving at the police station I was happily relieved to find eve
+of my comrades already there. We were all impartially cursed at; told
+to stand up; told to sit down; forbidden to speak to one another;
+forbidden even to smile at one another. One by one we were called to
+the desk to give our name, age, and various other pieces of
+information. We stood perfectly silent before the station lieutenant as
+he coaxingly said, “You’d better tell.”—“You’d better give us your
+name.”—“You’d better tell us where you live—it will make things easier
+for you.” But we continued our silence.
+
+Disorderly conduct, interfering with the police, assaulting the police
+(Shades of Heaven! assaulting the police!), were the charges entered
+against us.
+
+We were all locked in separate cells and told that we would be taken to
+the Woman’s Night Court for immediate trial.
+
+While pondering on what was happening to our comrades and wondering if
+they, too, would be arrested, or if they would just be beaten up by the
+police and mob, a large, fat jail matron came up and began to deliver a
+speech, which, ran something like this:
+
+“Now, shure and you ladies must know that this is goin’ a bit too far.
+Now, I’m for suffrage alright, and I believe women ought to vote, but
+why do you keep botherin’ the President? Don’t you know he has got
+enough to think about with the League of Nations, the Peace Conference
+and fixin’ up the whole world on his mind?”
+
+In about half an hour we were taken from our cells and brought before
+the Lieutenant, who now announced, “Well, you ladies may go now,—I have
+just received a telephone order to release you.”
+
+We accepted the news and jubilantly left the station house, returning
+at once to our comrades. There the battle was still going on, and as we
+joined them we were again dragged and cuffed about the streets by the
+police and their aids, but there were no more arrests. Elsie Hill
+succeeded in speaking from a balcony above the heads of the crowd:
+
+“Did you men turn back when you saw the Germans coming? What would you
+have thought of any one who did? Did you expect us to turn back? We
+never turn back, either—and we won’t until democracy is won! Who rolled
+bandages for you when you were suffering abroad? Who bound your wounds
+in your fight for democracy? Who spent long hours of the night and the
+day knitting you warm garments? There are women here to-night
+attempting to hold banners to remind the President that democracy is
+not won at home; who have given their sons and husbands for your fight
+abroad. What would they say if they could see you, their comrades in
+the fight over there, attacking their mothers, their sisters, their
+wives over here? Aren’t you ashamed that you have not enough sporting
+blood to allow us to make our fight in our own way? Aren’t you ashamed
+that you accepted the help of women in your fight, and now to-night
+brutally attack them?”
+
+And they did listen until the police, in formation—looking now like
+wooden toys—advanced from both sides of the street and succeeded in
+entirely cutting off the crowd from Miss Hill.
+
+The meeting thus broken up, we abandoned a further attempt that night.
+As our little, bannerless procession filed slowly back to headquarters,
+hoodlums followed us. The police of course gave us no protection and
+just as we were entering the door of our own building a rowdy struck me
+on the side of the head with a heavy banner pole. The blow knocked me
+senseless against the stone building; my hat was snatched from my head,
+and burned in the street. We entered the building to find that soldiers
+and sailors had been periodically rushing it in our absence, dragging
+out bundles of our banners, amounting to many hundreds of dollars, and
+burning them in the street, without any protest from the police.
+
+One does not undergo such an experience without arriving at some
+inescapable truths, a discussion of which would interest me deeply but
+which would be irrelevant in this narrative.
+
+“Two hundred maddened women try to see the President” . . . “Two
+hundred women attack the police,” and similar false headlines, appeared
+the next morning in the New York papers. It hurt to have the world
+think that we had attacked the police. That was a slight matter,
+however, for that morning at breakfast, aboard the George Washington,
+the President also read the New York papers. He saw that we were not
+submitting in silence to his inaction. It seems reasonable to assume
+that on sailing down the harbor that morning past the Statue of Liberty
+the President had some trouble to banish from his mind the report that
+“two hundred maddened women” had tried to “make the Opera House last
+night.”
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 26
+President Wilson Wins the 64th Vote in Paris
+
+
+The “Prison Special,” which was nearing the end of its dramatic tour,
+was arousing the people to call for a special session of Congress, as
+the President sailed away.
+
+Although a Republican Congress had been elected, President Wilson, as
+the head of the Administration, was still responsible for initiating
+and guiding legislation. We had to see to it that, with his Congress
+out of ,power, he did not relax his efforts on behalf of the amendment.
+
+There was this situation which we were able to use to our advantage.
+Two new Democratic Senators, Senator Harrison of Mississippi and
+Senator Harris of Georgia, had been elected to sit in the incoming
+Congress through the President’s influence. He, therefore, had very
+specific power over these two men, who were neither committed against
+suffrage by previous votes nor were they yet won to the amendment.
+
+We immediately set ourselves to the task of getting the President to
+win one of these men. From the election of these two men in the autumn
+to early spring, constant pressure was put upon the President to this
+end. When we could see no activity on the part of the President to
+secure the support of one of them, we again threatened publicly to
+resume dramatic protests against him. We kept the idea abroad that he
+was still responsible, and that we would continue to hold him so, until
+the amendment was passed.
+
+Such a situation gave friends of the Administration considerable alarm.
+They realized that the slightest attack on the President at that moment
+would jeopardize his many other endeavors. And so these friends of the
+President undertook to acquaint him with the facts.
+
+Senator Harris was happily in Europe at the time. A most anxious cable,
+signed by politicians in his own party, was sent to the President in
+Paris explaining the serious situation and urging him to do his utmost
+to secure the vote of the Senator at once.
+
+Senator Harris was in Italy when he received an unexpected telegram
+asking him to come to Paris. He journeyed with all speed to the
+President, perhaps even thinking that he was about to be dispatched to
+some foreign post, to learn that the conference was for the purpose of
+securing his vote on the national suffrage amendment.
+
+Senator Harris there and then gave his vote, the 64th vote.
+
+On that day the passage by Congress of the original Susan B. Anthony
+amendment was assured.
+
+Instantly a cable was received at the White House carrying news to the
+suffragists of the final capture of the elusive last vote. Following
+immediately on the heels of this cable came another cable calling the
+new Congress into special session May 19th.
+
+In the light of the President’s gradual yielding and final surrender to
+our demand, it will not be out of place to summarize briefly just what
+happened.
+
+President Wilson began his career as President of the United States an
+anti-suffragist. He was opposed to suffrage for women both by principle
+and political expediency. Sometimes I think he regarded suffragists as
+a kind of sect-good women, no doubt, but tiresome and troublesome.
+Whether he has yet come to see the suffrage battle as part of a great
+movement embracing the world is still a question. It is not an
+important question, for in any case it was not inward conviction but
+political necessity that made him act.
+
+Believing then that suffragists were a sect, he said many things to
+them at first with no particular care as to the bearing of these things
+upon political theory or events. He offered, successively,
+“consideration,” an “open mind,” a “closed mind,” and “age-long
+conviction deeply matured,” party limitations, party concert of action,
+and what not. He saw in suffrage the “tide rising to meet the moon,”
+but waited and advised us to wait with him. But we did not want to
+wait, and we proceeded to try to make it impossible for him to wait,
+either. We determined to make action upon this issue politically
+expedient for him.
+
+When the President began to perceive the potential political power of
+women voters, he first declared, as a “private citizen,” that suffrage
+was all right for the women of his home state, New Jersey, but that it
+was altogether wrong to ask him as President to assist in bringing it
+about for all the women of the nation. He also interested himself in
+writing the suffrage plank in the Democratic Party’s national platform,
+specifically relegating action on suffrage to the states. Then he
+calmly announced that he could not act nationally, “even if I wanted
+to,” because the platform had spoken otherwise.
+
+The controversy was lengthened. The President’s conspicuous ability for
+sitting still and doing nothing on a controversial issue until both
+sides have exhausted their ammunition was never better illustrated than
+in this matter. He allowed the controversy to continue to the point of
+intellectual sterility. He buttressed his delays with more evasions,
+until finally the women intensified their demand for action. They
+picketed his official gates. But the President still recoiled from
+action. So mightily did he recoil from it that he was willing to
+imprison women for demanding it.
+
+It is not extraordinary to resent being called upon to act, for it is
+only the exceptional person who springs to action, even when action is
+admitted to be desirable and necessary. And the President is not
+exceptional. He is surprisingly ordinary.
+
+While the women languished in prison, he fell back upon words—beautiful
+words, too—expressions of friendliness, good wishes, hopes, and
+may-I-nots. In this, too, he was acting like an ordinary human being,
+not like the statesman he was reputed to be. He had habituated himself
+to a belief in the power of words, and every time he uttered them to us
+he seemed to refortify himself in his belief in their power.
+
+It was the women, not the President, who were exceptional. They refused
+to accept words. They persisted in demanding acts. Step by step under
+terrific gunfire the President’s resistance crumbled, and he yielded,
+one by one, every minor facility to the measure, always withholding
+from us, however, the main objective. Not until he had exhausted all
+minor facilities, and all possible evasions, did he publicly declare
+that the amendment should pass the House, and put it through. When he
+had done that we rested from the attack momentarily, in order to let
+him consummate with grace, and not under fire, the passage of the
+amendment in the Senate. He rested altogether. We were therefore
+compelled to renew the attack. He countered at first with more words.
+But his reliance upon them was perceptibly shaken when we burned them
+in public bonfires. He then moved feebly but with a growing concern
+toward getting additional votes in the Senate. And when, as an
+inevitable result of his policy—and ours—the political embarrassment
+became too acute, calling into question his honor and prestige, he
+covertly began to consult his colleagues. We pushed him the harder. He
+moved the faster toward concrete endeavor. He actually undertook to win
+the final votes in the Senate.
+
+There he found, however, that quite an alarming situation had
+developed—a situation which he Should have anticipated, but for which
+he was totally unprepared. Opposition in his own party had been growing
+more and more rigid and cynical. His own opposition to the amendment,
+his grant of immunity to those leaders in his party who had fought the
+measure, his isolating himself from those who might have helped—all
+this was coming to fruition among his subordinates at a time when he
+could least afford to be beaten on anything. What would have been a
+fairly easy race to win, if he had begun running at the pistol shot,
+had now become most difficult.
+
+Perceiving that he had now not only to move himself, but also to
+overcome the obstacle which he had allowed to develop, we increased the
+energy of our attack. And finally the President made a supreme
+assertion of his power, and secured the last and 64th vote in the
+Senate. He did this too late to get the advantage—if any advantage is
+to be gained from granting a just thing at the point of a gun—for this
+last vote arrived only in time for a Republican Congress to use it.
+
+It seems to me that Woodrow Wilson was neither devil nor God in his
+manner of meeting the demand of the suffragists. There has persisted an
+astounding myth that he is an extraordinary man. Our experience proved
+the contrary. He behaved toward us like a very ordinary politician.
+Unnecessarily cruel or weakly tolerant, according as you view the
+justice of our fight, but a politician, not a statesman. He did not go
+out to meet the tide which he himself perceived was “rising to meet the
+moon” That would have been statesmanship. He let it all but engulf him
+before he acted. And even as a politician he failed, for his tactics
+resulted in the passage of the amendment by a Republican Congress.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter 27
+Republican Congress Passes Amendment
+
+
+The Republican Congress convened in Special Session May 19.
+
+Instantly Republican leaders in control of the 66th Congress caucused
+and organized for a prompt passage of the amendment. May 21st the
+Republican House of Representatives passed the measure by a vote of 304
+to 89—the first thing of any importance done by the new House. This was
+42 votes above the required two-thirds majority, whereas the vote in
+the House in January, 1918, under Democratic control had given the
+measure only one vote more than was required.
+
+Immediately the Democratic National Committee passed a resolution
+calling on the legislatures of the various states to hold special
+legislative sessions where necessary, to ratify the amendment as soon
+as it was through Congress, in order to “enable women to vote in the
+national elections of 1920.”
+
+When the 64th vote was assured two more Republican Senators announced
+their support, Senator Keyes of New Hampshire and Senator Hale of
+Maine, and on June 4th the measure passed the Senate by a vote of 66 to
+30,—2 votes more than needed.[1] Of the 49 Republicans in the Senate,
+40 voted for the amendment, 9 against. Of the 47 Democrats in the
+Senate, 26 voted for it and 21 against.
+
+[1] These figures include all voting and paired.
+
+
+And so the assertion that “the right of citizens of the United States
+to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any
+state on account of sex,” introduced into Congress by the efforts of
+Susan B. Anthony in 1878, was finally submitted to the states for
+ratification[1] on June 4th, 1919.
+
+[1] When a constitutional amendment has passed Congress it must be
+ratified by a majority vote of 36 state legislatures and thereupon
+proclaimed operative by the Secretary of State of the United States
+before it becomes the law of the land. For ratification data see
+Appendix 1.
+
+
+I do not need to explain that the amendment was not won from the
+Republican Congress between May 19th and June 4th, 1919. The Republican
+Party had been gradually coming to appreciate this opportunity
+throughout our entire national agitation from 1913 to date. And our
+attack upon the party in power, which happened to be President Wilson’s
+party, had been the most decisive factor in stimulating the opposition
+party to espouse our side. It is perhaps fortunate for the Republican
+Party that it was their political opponents who inherited this lively
+question in 1913. However, the political advantage is theirs for having
+promptly and ungrudgingly passed the amendment the moment they came
+into power. But it will not be surprising to any one who has read this
+book that I conclude by pointing out that the real triumph belongs to
+the women.
+
+Our objective was the national enfranchisement of women. A tiny step,
+you may say. True! But so long as we know that this is but the first
+step in the long struggle of women for political, economic and social
+emancipation, we need not be disturbed. If political institutions as we
+know them to-day in their discredited condition break down, and another
+kind of organization—perhaps industrial—supplants them, women will
+battle for their place in the new system with as much determination as
+they have shown in the struggle just ended.
+
+That women have been aroused never again to be content with their
+subjection there can be no doubt. That they will ultimately secure for
+themselves equal power and responsibility in whatever system of
+government is evolved is positive. How revolutionary will be the
+changes when women get this power and responsibility no one can
+adequately foretell. One thing is certain. They will not go back. They
+will never again be good and willing slaves.
+
+It has been a long, wearying struggle. Although drudgery has persisted
+throughout, there have been compensatory moments of great joy and
+beauty. The relief that comes after a great achievement is sweet. There
+is no residue of bitterness. To be sure, women have often resented it
+deeply that so much human energy had to be expended for so simple a
+right. But whatever disillusionments they have experienced, they have
+kept their faith in women. And the winning of political power by women
+will have enormously elevated their status.
+
+
+
+
+Appendices
+
+
+APPENDIX 1
+
+TEXT OF THE NATIONAL SUFFRAGE AMENDMENT
+
+
+Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States
+extending the right of suffrage to women.
+
+Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United
+States o f America in Congress assembled (twothirds of each House
+concurring therein), That the following articles be proposed to the
+legislatures of the several States as an amendment to the Constitution
+of the United States, which when ratified by three- fourths of the said
+legislatures, shall be valid as part of said Constitution, namely:
+
+“ARTICLE—SEC. 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote
+shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on
+account of sex.
+
+“SEC. 2. Congress shall have power, by appropriate legislation, to
+enforce the provisions of this article.”
+
+RECORD OF ACTION ON NATIONAL SUFFRAGE AMENDMENT
+
+
+In Congress
+
+Drafted
+
+By Susan B. Anthony in 1875
+
+First Introduced
+
+January 10, 1878, by Hon. A. A. Sargent, in the Senate
+
+Reported from Committee
+
+In the Senate 1878, Adverse majority. 1879, Favorable minority. 1882,
+Favorable majority, adverse minority. 1884, Favorable majority, adverse
+minority. 1886, Favorable majority. 1890, Favorable majority. 1892,
+Favorable majority, adverse minority. 1896, Adverse majority. 1913,
+Favorable majority. 1914, Favorable majority. 1917, Favorable majority.
+1919, Unanimously favorably.
+
+In the House 1883, Favorable majority. 1884, Adverse majority,
+favorable minority. 1886, Favorable minority. 1890, Favorable majority.
+1894, Adverse majority. 1914, Without recommendation. 1916, Without
+recommendation. 1917, Without recommendation. 1918, Favorable majority.
+1919, Favorable majority.
+
+Voted Upon
+
+In the Senate January 25, 1887. Yeas 16, nays 94. Absent 25 (of whom 4
+were announced as for and 2 against). March 19, 1914. Yeas 35, nays 34,
+failing by 11 of the necessary two thirds vote. October 1, 1918. Yeas
+54, nays 30, failing by 2 of the two-thirds vote. February 10, 1919.
+Yeas 55, nays 29, failing by 1 of the necessary two-thirds vote. June
+4, 1919. Yeas 56, nays 25, passing by 2 votes over necessary two-thirds
+majority.
+
+In the House January 12, 1915. Yeas 174, nays 204, failing by 78 of the
+necessary two-thirds vote. January 10, 1918. Yeas 274, nays 136,
+passing by 1 vote over necessary two-thirds majority. May 21, 1919.
+Yeas 304, nays 89, passing by 42 votes over necessary two-thirds
+majority
+
+State; Date of Ratification; Vote: Senate, House; Party of Governor;
+Party Controlling Legislature
+
+1 Wisconsin June 10, 1919 24—1 54—2 Rep. Rep.
+2 *Michigan June 10, 1919 Unan. Unan. Rep. Rep.
+3 *Kansas June 16, 1919 Unan. Unan. Rep. Rep.
+4 *Ohio June 16, 1919 27—3 73—6 Dem. Rep.
+5 *New York June 16, 1919 Unan. Unan. Dem. Rep.
+6 Illinois June 17, 1919 Unan. 133—4 Rep. Rep.
+7 Pennsylvania June 24, 1919 32—6 153—44 Rep. Rep.
+8 Massachusetts June 25, 1919 34—5 184—77 Rep. Rep.
+9 *Texas June 29, 1919 Unan. 96—21 Dem. Dem.
+10 *Iowa July 2, 1919 Unan. 95—5 Rep. Rep.
+11 *Missouri July 3, 1919 28—3 125—4 Dem. Div’d.
+12 *Arkansas July 20, 1919 20—2 76—17 Dem. Dem.
+13 *Montana July 30, 1919 38—1 Unan. Dem. Rep.
+14 *Nebraska Aug. 2, 1919 Unan. Unan. Rep. Rep.
+15 *Minnesota Sept. 8, 1919 60—5 120—6 Rep. Rep.
+16 *New Hampshire Sept. 10, 1919 14—10 212—143 Rep. Rep.
+17 *Utah Sept. 30, 1919 Unan. Unan. Dem. Dem.
+18 *California Nov. 1, 1919 Unan. 73—2 Rep. Rep.
+19 *Maine Nov. 5, 1919. 24—5 72—68 Rep. Rep.
+20 *North Dakota Dec. 1, 1919 38—4 103—6 Rep. Rep.
+21 *South Dakota Dec. 4, 1919 Unan. Unan. Rep. Rep.
+22 *Colorado Dec. 12, 1919 Unan. Unan. Rep. Rep.
+23 Rhode Island Jan. 6, 1920 37—1 89—3 Rep. Rep.
+24 Kentucky Jan. 6, 1920 30—8 72—25 Rep. Div’d.
+25 *Oregon Jan. 12, 1920 Unan. Unan. Rep. Rep.
+26 *Indiana Jan. 16, 1920 43—3 Unan. Rep. Rep.
+27 *Wyoming Jan. 27, 1920 Unan. Unan. Rep. Rep.
+28 *Nevada Feb. 7, 1920 Unan. Unan. Dem. Div’d.
+29 New Jersey Feb. 10, 1920 18—2 34—24 Dem, Rep.
+30 *Idaho Feb. 11, 1920 29—6 Unan. Rep. Rep.
+31 *Arizona Feb. 12, 1920 Unan. Unan. Rep. Dem.
+32 *New Mexico Feb. 19, 1920 17—5 36—10 Rep. Rep.
+33 *Oklahoma Feb. 27, 1920 24—15 84—12 Dem. Dem.
+34 *West Virginia Mar. 10, 1920 15—14 47—40 Dem. Rep.
+35 *Washington Mar. 22, 1920 Unan. Unan. Rep. Rep.
+36 *Tennessee Aug. 18, 1920 25—4 49—47 Dem. Dem.
+
+* States ratifying at Special Session.
+
+APPENDIX 2
+
+COUNTRIES IN WHICH WOMEN VOTE
+
+
+Azerbaijain (Moslem) Republic 1919
+Australia 1902
+Austria 1918
+[1]Belgium 1919
+British East Africa 1919
+Canada 1918
+Czecho Slovakia 1918
+Denmark 1915
+[2]England 1918
+Finland 1906
+Germany 1918
+Holland 1919
+Hungary 1918
+Iceland 1919
+Ireland 1918
+Isle of Man 1881
+Luxembourg 1919
+[3]Mexico 1917
+New Zealand 1893
+Norway 1907
+Poland 1918
+Rhodesia 1919
+Russia 1917
+Scotland 1918
+[4]Sweden 1919
+United States 1920
+Wales 1918
+
+[1] Electoral Reform Bill as passed granted suffrage to widows who have
+not remarried and mothers of soldiers killed in battle or civilians
+shot by Germans.
+
+
+[2] Women over age of 30—Bill to reduce age to 21 has passed its second
+reading.
+
+
+[3] No sex qualification for voting in constitution. Women haze so far
+not availed themselves of their right to note, but are expected to do
+so in the coming elections.
+
+
+[4] To be confirmed, in 1920.
+
+APPENDIX 3
+
+Resolutions Demanding Investigations
+
+Resolution (171) to authorize an Investigation of the District of
+Columbia Workhouse.
+Introduced in the House by Miss Jeannette Rankin, Representative from
+Montana.
+October 5, 1917.
+
+Text of Resolution:
+
+Resolved, That a select committee of seven Members of the House of
+Representatives be appointed by the Speaker to investigate the
+administration of the District of Columbia Workhouse at Occoquan,
+Virginia, and to report thereon as early as possible during the second
+session of the Sixty-fifth Congress. Said committee is authorized to
+sit during the recess in Washington, District of Columbia and
+elsewhere, to subpoena witnesses, and to call for records relating to
+the said workhouse. To defray the necessary expenses of such
+investigation, including the employment of clerical assistance, the
+committee is authorized to expend not to exceed 1,000 from the
+contingent fund of the House.
+
+
+Resolution (130) to authorize an Investigation of Mob Attacks on
+Suffragists.
+
+Introduced in the House by John Baer, Representative from North Dakota.
+
+August 17, 1917.
+
+Text of Resolution:
+
+WHEREAS, in the city of Washington, D. C., about 350 feet from the
+White House premises is a building known as the Cameron House, in which
+is located headquarters and main offices of a woman’s organization at
+which is continually congregated women of character, courage and
+intelligence, who come from various sections of the United States, and
+
+WHEREAS, on three successive days, to wit: the 14th, 15th and 16th days
+of August, 1917, on said days immediately following the closing of the
+day’s work by the clerks and employees of the Executive Departments,
+hundreds of these clerks and employees, acting with sailors, then and
+now in the service of the United States Navy and in uniform at the
+time, and soldiers, then and now in the service of the United States
+Army, also in their uniforms at the time,—and these clerks, employees,
+sailors and soldiers, and others, formed themselves into mobs and
+deliberately, unlawfully and violently damaged the said headquarters
+and offices of the said woman’s organization by pelting rotten eggs
+through the doors and windows, shooting a bullet from a revolver
+through a window, and otherwise damaging said Cameron House, and also
+violently and unlawfully did strike, choke, drag and generally mistreat
+and injure and abuse the said women when they came defenseless upon the
+streets adjoining as well as when they were in the said building; and
+
+WHEREAS, the organized police of the City of Washington, District of
+Columbia, made no attempt to properly safeguard the property and
+persons of the said defenseless women, but, on the contrary, said
+police even seemed to encourage the lawless acts of the mob; and
+
+WHEREAS, such lawlessness is in the Capital of the United States and
+within a few hundred feet of -the Executive Mansion and offices of the
+President of the United States; and
+
+WHEREAS, these attacks upon defenseless women are not only an outrage
+and crime in themselves, that prove the perpetrators and those lending
+aid to the same to be cowards, but in addition, create throughout the
+world contempt for the United States and set a vicious example to the
+people throughout the United States and the world at large, of
+lawlessness and violence; and encourage designing cowards and
+manipulators everywhere to form mobs to molest the innocent and
+defenseless under any pretext whatever; and
+
+WHEREAS, there seems to be no activity or attempt on the part of any
+one in authority in the City of Washington, District of Columbia, nor
+by the government officials to apprehend, arrest or punish those
+perpetrating the violence, on account of which the same may occur
+indefinitely unless Congress acts in the premises; and
+
+WHEREAS, the legal status upon the premises stated would excuse the
+occupants of the Cameron House if they were so disposed in firing upon
+the mobs aforesaid, and thus create a state of greater violence and
+unlawless, to further injure the prestige and good name of the United
+States for maintaining law and order and institutions of democracy;
+therefore be it
+
+Resolved, that the Speaker appoint a Committee of seven members to
+investigate into all the facts relating to the violence and unlawful
+acts aforesaid, and make the earliest possible report upon the
+conditions, with the purpose in view of purging the army and navy of
+the United States and other official departments, of all lawless men
+who bring disgrace upon the American flag by participating in mob
+violence, and also to inquire regarding the conduct of all government
+employees and the police of the city of Washington, District of
+Columbia, with a view to maintaining law and order.
+
+APPENDIX 4
+
+Suffrage Prisoners
+
+Note:—Scores of women were arrested but never brought to trial; many
+others were convicted and their sentences suspended or appealed. It has
+been possible to list below only those women who actually served prison
+sentences although more than five hundred women were arrested during
+the agitation.
+
+MINNIE D. ABBOTT, Atlantic City, N. J., officer of the N.W.P. [National
+Woman’s Party]. Arrested picketing July 14, 1917, sentenced to 60 days
+in Occoquan workhouse.
+
+MRS. PAULINE ADAMS, Norfolk, Va., wife of leading physician, prominent
+clubwoman and Congressional District Chairman of the N.W.P. Arrested
+picketing Sept. 4, 1917. Sentenced to 60 days in Occoquan workhouse.
+Arrested watchfire demonstration Feb. 9, 1919, but released on account
+of lack of evidence.
+
+EDITH AINGE, Jamestown, N. Y., native of England, came to America when
+a child, and has brought up family of nine brothers and sisters. Worked
+for state suffrage in N. Y. 1915. Served five jail sentences. Sentenced
+to 60 days in Occoquan for picketing Sept., 1917, 15 days in Aug.,
+1918, Lafayette Sq. meeting, and three short terms in District Jail in
+Jan., 1919, watchfire demonstrations.
+
+HARRIET U. ANDREWS, Kansas City, Mo., came to Washington as war worker.
+Arrested watchfire demonstration and sentenced to 5 days in District
+Jail Jan., 1919.
+
+MRS. ANNIE ARNEIL, Wilmington, Del., did picket duty from beginning in
+1917. One of first six suffrage prisoners. Served eight jail sentences,
+3 days, June, 1917; 60 days in Occoquan, Aug.—Sept., 1917, picketing;
+15 days, Aug., 1918, Lafayette Sq. meeting and five sentences of 5 days
+each in Jan. and Feb., 1919, watchfire demonstrations.
+
+BERTHE ARNOLD, Colorado Springs, Colo., daughter of prominent
+physician. Educated at Colo. State Univ. Student of music Phila.;
+member of D.A.R.; kindergarten teacher. Arrested Jan., 1919, watchfire
+demonstration, sentenced to 5 days in District Jail.
+
+VIRGINIA ARNOLD, North Carolina, student George Washington and Columbia
+Univs., school teacher, later organizer and executive secretary N.W.P,
+in Washington. Served 3 days June, 1917, with first pickets sentenced.
+
+MRS. W. D. ASCOUGH, Detroit, Mich. Former Conn. State Chairman, N.W.P.
+Studied for concert stage London and Paris. Abandoned concert stage to
+devote time to suffrage. Sentenced to 15 days Aug., 1918, Lafayette Sq.
+meeting, and 5 days Feb., 1919, in watchfire demonstration. Member
+“Prison Special” which toured country in Feb., 1919.
+
+MRS. ARMY Scorr BAKER, Washington, D. C., wife of Dr. Robert Baker, and
+descendant long line of army officers. Three sons in service during
+World War. Known as the diplomat of the N.W.P., and as such has
+interviewed practically every man prominent in political life. Member
+executive committee of N.W.P. and has been political chairman since
+1918. Arrested picketing and sentenced to 60 days in Occoquan, Sept.,
+1917.
+
+MRS. CHARLES W. BARNES, Indianapolis, Ind., officer of Ind. Branch,
+N.W.P. Arrested picketing Nov., 1917, sentenced to 15 days in jail.
+
+MRS. NAOMI BARRETT, Wilmington, Del., arrested watchfire demonstration
+Jan. 13, 1919. Sentenced to 5 days in District Jail.
+
+MRS. W. J. BARTLETT, Putnam, Conn., leader Conn. State Grange. Arrested
+Aug., 1917, picketing, sentenced to 60 days.
+
+MRS. M. TOSCAN BENNETT, Hartford, Conn., wife of lawyer and writer,
+member D.A.R. and Colonial Dames, has been active in state suffrage
+work for many years. Member National Advisory Council, N.W.P. and Conn.
+state treasurer. Arrested Jan., 1919, watchfire demonstration.
+Sentenced to 5 days in District Jail.
+
+HILDA BLUMBERG, New York City, native of Russia, one of youngest
+prisoners. Educated and taught school in this country. Arrested
+picketing, Sept., 1917; sentenced to 30 days in Occoquan; arrested
+again Nov. 10, sentenced to 15 days.
+
+MRS. KATE BOECKH, Washington, D. C., native of Canada, one of first
+women aeroplane pilots. Arrested picketing Aug., 1917, case appealed.
+Arrested applauding in court Jan., 1919, served 3 days.
+
+MRS. CATHERINE BOYLE, Newcastle, Del., munitions worker during World
+War. Arrested Jan., 1919, watchfire demonstration, sentenced to 5 days
+in jail.
+
+LUCY G. BRANHAM, Baltimore, Md., organizer N.W.P., graduate Washington
+College, Md.; M. A., Johns Hopkins; graduate student Univ. of Chicago
+and Ph.D. Columbia. Won Carnegie hero medal for rescuing man and woman
+from drowning at St. Petersburg, Fla. Arrested picketing Sept., 1917,
+sentenced to 60 days in Occoquan and District Jail.
+
+MRS. LUCY G. BRANHAM, Baltimore, Md., mother of Miss Lucy Branham,
+widow of Dr. John W. Branham who lost his life fighting a yellow fever
+epidemic in Ga. Arrested watchfire demonstration Jan., 1919; sentenced
+to 3 days in District Jail.
+
+MRS. JOHN WINTERS BRANNAN, New York City, daughter of the late Charles
+A. Dana, founder and editor N. Y. Sun., trusted counselor of President
+Lincoln; wife of Dr. Brannan. Pres. Board of Trustees Bellevue
+Hospital; member executive committee N.W.P., state chairman New York
+Branch. Did brilliant state suffrage work as officer of Woman’s
+Political Union in N. Y. Arrested picketing July 14, 1917, sentenced to
+60 days in Occoquan; pardoned by President after serving 3 days. Again
+arrested picketing Nov. 10, 1917, sentenced to 45 days.
+
+JENNIE BRONENBERG, Philadelphia, Pa. Student Wharton School, Univ. of
+Pa. Arrested Feb., 1919, sentenced to 5 days in District Jail.
+
+MRS. MARY E. BROWN, Wilmington, Del., state press chairman, N.W.P.
+Father member First Del. regiment; mother field nurse, Civil War.
+Descendant Captain David Porter, of Battleship Essex, War of 1812.
+Arrested watchfire demonstration Jan. 13, 1919, sentenced to 5 days in
+District Jail.
+
+LOUISE BRYANT, New York City, formerly of Portland Ore., author, poet
+and journalist, wife of John Reed. Correspondent for Phila. Public
+Ledger in Petrograd for six months during Russian revolution. Arrested
+Watchfire demonstration Feb., 1919, sentenced to 5 days in District
+Jail.
+
+Lucy BURNS, New York City, graduate Vassar College, student of Yale
+Univ. and Univ. of Bonn, Germany. High School teacher. Joined English
+militant suffrage movement 1909, where she met Alice Paul, with whom
+she joined in establishing first permanent suffrage headquarters in
+Washington in Jan., 1913; helped organize parade of March 3, 1913; vice
+chairman and member of executive committee Congressional Union for
+Woman Suffrage [later the N.W.P.], for a time editor of The Suffragist.
+Leader of most of the picket demonstrations and served more time in
+jail than any other suffragist in America. Arrested picketing June,
+1917, sentenced to 3 days; arrested Sept., 1917, sentenced to 60 days;
+arrested Nov. 10, 1917, sentenced to six months; in January, 1919,
+arrested watchfire demonstrations for which she served one 3 day and
+two 5 day sentences. She also served 4 prison terms in England.
+
+MRS. HENRY BUTTERWORTH, New York City, comes of an old Huguenot family.
+Active in civic and suffrage work in N. Y. for past 20 years. Charter
+member National Society of Craftsmen. Arrested picketing Nov., 1917,
+sentenced to 30 days in Occoquan.
+
+MRS. LUCILLE A. CALME9, Princeton, Ia. Great-granddaughter of George
+Fowler, founder of New Harmony, Ind. Government worker during World
+War. Arrested watchfire demonstration Jan. 13, 1919, sentenced to 5
+days in District Jail.
+
+ELEANOR CALNAN, Methuen, Mass. Congressional district chairman of Mass.
+Branch N.W.P. Arrested picketing July 14, 1917, sentenced to 60 days in
+Occoquan, pardoned by President after 3 days; arrested Sept., 1917,
+sentenced to 60 days in Occoquan. Arrested in Boston, Feb., 1919, for
+participation in Boston demonstration at home coming of President;
+sentenced to 8 days in Charles St. Jail.
+
+MRS. AGNES CHASE, Washington, D. C., formerly of Ill.; engaged in
+scientific research work for U. S. Dept. of Agriculture. Arrested
+Lafayette Sq. meeting August, 1918, sentenced to 10 days. Arrested
+watchfire demonstration Jan., 1919, sentenced to 5 days.
+
+MRS. PALYS L. CHEVRIER, New York City, arrested watchfire demonstration
+Jan., 1919, sentenced to 5 days. Member “Prison Special” which toured
+country in Feb., 1919.
+
+MRS. HELEN CHISASKI, Bridgeport, Conn., munition worker and member of
+Machinists’ Union. Arrested watchfire demonstration Jan. 13, 1919;
+sentenced to 5 days in jail.
+
+MRS. WILLIAM CHISHOLM, Huntington, Pa., now deceased; arrested
+picketing Sept. 4, 1917, sentenced to 60 days in Occoquan.
+
+JOSEPHINE COLLINS, Framingham, Mass., owns and manages the village
+store at Framingham Center. She encountered serious opposition from
+some of her customers on account of her militant activities; one of
+first members N.W.P.; arrested in Boston Feb., 1919, for taking part in
+welcome to the President; sentenced to 8 days in Charles St. Jail.
+
+MRS. SARAH TARLETON COLVIN, St. Paul, Minn., member famous Tarleton
+family of Alabama, wife of Dr. A. R. Colvin, Major in the Army, and
+Acting Surgical Chief at Fort McHenry during World War; graduate nurse
+Johns Hopkins training school, Red Cross nurse in this country during
+war; Minnesota state chairman N.W.P. Member “Prison Special.” Arrested
+watchfire demonstrations Jan., 190; sentenced to 2 terms of 5 days
+each.
+
+BETTY CONNOLLY, West Newton, Mass., household assistant, arrested in
+Boston, Feb., 1919, demonstration of welcome to President Wilson;
+sentenced to 8 days in Charles St. Jail.
+
+MRS. ALICE M. COSU, New Orleans, La., vice chairman La. state branch
+N.W.P. Arrested picketing Nov., 1917, and sentenced to 30 days in
+Occoquan workhouse.
+
+CORA CRAWFORD, Philadelphia, Pa., business woman. Marched in 1913
+suffrage parade in Washington. Arrested watchfire demonstration Jan.,
+1919; sentenced to 5 days in District Jail.
+
+GERTRUDE CROCKER, Washington, D. C., formerly of Ill., educated at
+Vassar College and Univ. of Chicago. National Treasurer N.W.P. 1916;
+government worker, 1917. Served 3 jail sentences: 30 days for picketing
+in 1917, 10 days for assisting Lafayette Sq. meeting 1918, and 5 days
+for participating watchfire 1919.
+
+RUTH CROCKER, Washington, D. C., formerly of Ill., sister of Gertrude
+Crocker. Came to Washington for suffrage, later government worker.
+Served 30 days at Occoquan for picketing in 1917 and 3 days in District
+Jail for watchfire demonstration Jan., 1919.
+
+Miss L. J. C. DANIELS, Grafton, Vt., and Boston. Arrested picketing
+Nov. 10, 1917, sentenced to 15 days. Took part in Capitol picketing
+Nov., 1918; arrested watchfire demonstration Jan. 9, 1919, sentenced to
+5 days in District Jail. Arrested in Boston for participation in
+welcome demonstration to President, sentenced to 8 days in Charles St.
+Jail.
+
+DOROTHY DAY, New York City, member of the “Masses” [now the
+“Liberator”] staff. Arrested picketing Nov. 10, 1917, sentenced to 30
+days in Occoquan workhouse.
+
+EDNA DIXON, Washington, D. C., daughter of physician; teacher in public
+schools. Arrested picketing Aug., 1917, sentenced to SO days in
+Occoquan workhouse.
+
+LAVINIA L. DOCK, Fayetteville, Pa., associated with the founders of
+American Red Cross nursing service; secretary of American Federation of
+Nurses and member of International Council of Nurses. Assisted in
+relief work during Johnstown flood and during Fla. yellow fever
+epidemic; army nurse during Spanish-American War, author of “The
+History of Nursing,” “The Tuberculosis Nurse,” and a number of other
+text books on nursing. One of early workers of Henry St. Settlement in
+N. Y., and founder of visiting nurse movement in N. Y. On staff of
+American Journal of Nursing. One of first six pickets to serve prison
+sentence of 3 days in June, 1917. Later that summer she served 25 days
+in Occoquan; and in Nov. 15 days.
+
+MRS. MARY CARROLL DOWELL, Philadelphia, Pa., wife of William F. Dowell,
+magazine editor and writer with whom she has been associated in
+business. Active club and suffrage worker in Pa. and N. J., state
+officer Pa. branch N.W.P. Arrested watchfire demonstration Jan. 20,
+1919, and served 5 days in District Jail.
+
+MARY DUBROW, Passaic, N. J.; student Univ. of N. Y.; teacher in N. J.
+until she joined suffrage ranks as organizer and speaker. Arrested
+watchfire demonstration Jan. 6, 1919, sentenced to 10 days.
+
+JULIA EMORY, Baltimore, Md.; daughter of late state senator, D. H.
+Emory. Gave up work for Trade Union League to work for suffrage in
+1917. Sentenced to 30 days in Occoquan for picketing Nov., 1917. After
+her release became organizer N.W.P. Aug., 1918, arrested and sentenced
+td 10 days Lafayette Sq. meeting. Jan. 7, 1919, sentenced to 10 days,
+and later in that month to 5 days for watchfire demonstrations. Led
+Capitol picket Oct. and Nov., 1919, and suffered many injuries at hands
+of police.
+
+MRS. EDMUND C. EVANs, Ardmore, Pa., one of three Winsor sisters who
+served prison terms for suffrage. Member of prominent Quaker family.
+Arrested watchfire demonstration Jan., 1919, and sentenced to 5 days in
+District Jail.
+
+Lucy EWING, Chicago, Ill., daughter of Judge Adlai Ewing, niece of
+James Ewing, minister to Belgium under Cleveland; niece also of Adlai
+Stevenson, Vice-President under Cleveland. Officer Ill. Branch N.W.P.
+Arrested picketing Aug. 17, 1917, sentenced to 30 days in Occoquan
+workhouse.
+
+MRS. ESTELLA EYLWARD, New Orleans, La. Business woman. Came to
+Washington to take part in final watchfire demonstration Feb., 1919;
+arrested and sentenced to 5 days in District Jail.
+
+MARY GERTRUDE FENDALL, Baltimore, Md., graduate of Bryn Mawr College;
+campaigned for N.W.P. in West 1916; national treasurer of organization
+June, 1917, to December, 1919. Arrested and sentenced to 3 days, Jan.,
+1819, for applauding in court.
+
+ELLA FINDEISEN, Lawrence, Mass. Arrested picketing Nov. 10, 1917,
+sentenced to 30 days at Occoquan.
+
+KATHARINE FISHER, Washington, D. C., native of Mass. Great-
+greatgranddaughter of Artemas Ward, ranking Major General in
+Revolutionary War. Teacher, social worker and later employee of U. S.
+War Risk Bureau. Written prose and verse on suffrage and feminist
+topics. Arrested picketing Sept. 13, 1917, sentenced to 30 days at
+Occoquan workhouse.
+
+MRS. ROSE GRATZ FISHSTEIN, Philadelphia, Pa., native of Russia. Came to
+America at 15. Had been imprisoned for revolutionary activities in
+Russia and fled to this country following release on bail. Operator in
+shirt factory; later union organizer; factory inspector for N. Y. State
+Factory Commission. Feb. 9, 1919 arrested watchfire demonstration and
+sentenced to 5 days in District Jail.
+
+ROSE FISHSTEIN, Philadelphia, Pa., sister-in-law of Mrs. Rose G.
+Fishstein, born in Russia, educated in N. Y. and Phila. Student of
+Temple Univ., business woman. Arrested watchfire demonstration, Feb.,
+1919, sentenced to 5 days in District Jail.
+
+CATHERINE M. FLANAGAN, Hartford, Conn., state and national organizer
+for N.W.P.; formerly secretary for Conn. Woman Suffrage Association.
+Father came to this country as Irish exile because of his efforts in
+movement for Irish freedom. Arrested picketing August, 1917, sentenced
+to 30 days in Occoquan workhouse.
+
+MARTHA FOLEY, Dorchester, Mass., active worker in Mass. labor movement.
+Arrested in demonstration at homecoming of President in Boston, Feb.,
+1919; sentenced to 8 days in Charles St. Jail.
+
+MRS. T. W. FORBES, Baltimore, Md., officer of Just Government League of
+Md.; arrested watchfire demonstration Feb. 9, 1919, sentenced to 5 days
+in District Jail.
+
+JANET FOTHERINGHAM, Buffalo, N. Y., teacher of physical culture.
+Arrested picketing July 14, 1917, sentenced to 60 days in workhouse,
+but pardoned by President after 3 days.
+
+MARGARET FOTHERINGHAM, Buffalo, N. Y., Red Cross dietician, stationed
+at military hospital at Waynesville, N. C., during war. Later dietician
+at Walter Reid Military Hospital, Washington, D. C. Arrested picketing
+Aug., 1917, sentenced to 60 days.
+
+FRANCIS FOWLER, Brookline, Mass., sentenced to 8 days in Charles St.
+Jail for participation in demonstration of welcome to President,
+Boston, Feb., 1919.
+
+MRS. MATILDA HALL GARDNER, Washington, D. C., formerly of Chicago,
+daughter of late Frederick Hall, for many years editor of Chicago
+Tribune, and wife of Gilson Gardner, Washington representative of
+Scripps papers. Educated Chicago, Paris and Brussels. Associated with
+Alice Paul and Lucy Burns when they came to Washington to begin
+agitation for federal suffrage and member of national executive
+committee of N.W.P. since 1914. Arrested July 14, 1917, sentenced to 60
+days in Occoquan; Jan. 13, 1919, sentenced to 5 days in District Jail.
+
+ANNA GINSBERG, New York City; served 5 days in District jail for
+watchfire demonstration Feb., 1919.
+
+REBA GOMROROV, Philadelphia, Pa.; born in Kiev, Russia. Educated in U.
+S. public schools; social worker; assistant secretary and visitor for
+Juvenile Aid Society of Phila. President Office Workers’ Association;
+secretary of Penn. Industrial Section for Suffrage; member N.W.P.,
+Trade Union League. Sentenced to 5 days in District Jail Jan., 1919,
+for watchfire demonstration.
+
+ALICE GRAM, Portland, Ore., graduate Univ. of Ore., came to Washington
+to take part in picket Nov. 10, 1917. Arrested and sentenced to 30 days
+in Occoquan workhouse. Following release assistant in press dept.
+N.W.P.
+
+BETTY GRAM, Portland, Ore., graduate Univ. of Ore. Abandoned stage
+career to take part in picket demonstration of Nov. 10, 1917. Worker in
+Juvenile courts of Portland. Sentenced to 30 days in Occoquan
+workhouse; later arrested in Boston demonstration of Feb., 1919, and
+sentenced to 8 days in Charles St. Jail. Business manager of The
+Suffragist and national organizer for N.W.P.
+
+NATALIE GRAT, Col. Springs, Col., daughter of treasurer Col. Branch N.
+W. P. Arrested picketing Aug. 17, 1917, sentenced to 30 days in
+Occoquan workhouse.
+
+MRS. FRANCIS GREEN, New York City, one of second group of women to
+serve prison sentences for suffrage in this country. Served 3 days in
+District Jail following picket demonstration of July 4, 1917.
+
+GLADYS GREINER, Baltimore, Md., daughter of John E. Greiner ,
+engineering expert, member of Stevens Railway Commission to Russia in
+1917. Graduate of Forest Glen Seminary, Md.; did settlement work in
+mountain districts of Ky.; has held tennis and golf championships of
+Md., and for 3 years devoted all time to suffrage. Arrested picketing
+July 4, 1917, sentenced to 3 days in District Jail; arrested Oct. 20,
+1917, sentenced to 30 days in District Jail; arrested Lafayette Sq.
+meeting Aug., 1918, sentenced to 15 days in District Jail. Recently
+taken up work in labor movement.
+
+MRS. J. IRVING GROSS. Boston, Mass., charter member of Mass. Branch
+N.W.P. Father and husband both fought in Civil War. Arrested 5 times
+Lafayette Sq. meetings Aug., 1918, and sentenced to 15 days in District
+Jail. Arrested in Boston demonstration on Common following landing of
+President and sentenced to 8 days in Charles St. Jail.
+
+ANNA GWINTER, New York City, arrested for picketing Nov. 10, 1917, and
+sentenced to 30 days in Occoquan workhouse.
+
+ELIZABETH HAMILTON, New York City, arrested for picketing Nov. 10,
+1917, and sentenced to 30 days in Occoquan workhouse.
+
+ERNESTINE HARA, New York City, young Roumanian, arrested for picketing
+Sept., 1917, and sentenced to 30 days in Occoquan workhouse.
+
+REBECCA HARRISON Joplin, Mo., arrested final watchfire demonstration
+Feb. 10, 1919; sentenced to 5 days in District Jail.
+
+MRS. H. O. HAVEMEYER, New York City; widow of late H. O. Havemeyer;
+leader of suffrage movement for many years; one of its most eloquent
+speakers, and generous contributor to its funds; active in Liberty Loan
+campaigns, in the Land Army movement of N. Y. State, and in working for
+military rank for nurses. As member of “Prison Special” spoke for
+suffrage in the large cities. Arrested Feb. 10, 1919, for taking part
+in final watchfire demonstration; sentenced to 5 days in District Jail.
+
+KATE HEFFELFINGER, Shamokin, Pa.; art student; sentenced to 6 months in
+District Jail for picketing Oct. 15, 1917; another month later added
+for previous offense. Aug., 1918, sentenced to 15 days for
+participating in Lafayette Sq. meeting; Jan., 1919, sentenced to 5 days
+for participation in watchfire demonstration.
+
+MRS. JESSICA HENDERSON, Boston, Mass., wife of prominent Bostonian, one
+of liberal leaders of Boston; identified with many reform movements.
+Mother of 6 children, one of whom, Wilma, aged 18, was arrested with
+her mother, spent night in house of detention, and was released as
+minor. Sentenced to 8 days in Charles St. Jail Feb., 1919, for
+participation in Boston demonstration of welcome to President.
+
+MINNIE HENNESY, Hartford, Conn.; business woman, having supported
+herself all her life; arrested for picketing Oct. 6, 1917, and sentence
+suspended. Rearrested Oct. 8, 1917, and sentenced to 6 months.
+
+ANNE HERKIMER, Baltimore, Md., Child Labor inspector for U. S.
+Children’s Bureau. Arrested Feb., 1919, and sentenced to 5 days in
+District Jail for participating watchfire demonstration.
+
+ELSIE HILL, Norwalk, Conn.; daughter of late Ebenezer J. Hill, 21 years
+Congressman from Conn.; graduate Vassar College and student abroad.
+Taught French in District of Columbia High School. Lately devoted all
+her time to suffrage. Member of executive committee of Congressional
+Union 1914-1915; President D.C. Branch College Equal Suffrage League,
+and later national organizer for N.W.P. Aug., 1918, sentenced to 15
+days in District Jail for speaking at Lafayette Sq. meeting. Feb.,
+1919, sentenced to 8 days in Boston for participation in welcome
+demonstration to President.
+
+MRS. GEORGE HILL, Boston, Mass.; sentenced to 8 days in Boston, Feb.,
+1919, for participation in welcome to President.
+
+MRS. FLORENCE BAYARD HILLES, Newcastle, Del.; daughter of late Thomas
+Bayard, first American ambassador to Great Britain and secretary of
+state under Cleveland. Munitions worker during World War. After the war
+engaged in reconstruction work in France. Chairman Del. Branch N.W.P.
+and member of national executive committee. Arrested picketing July 14,
+1917, sentenced to 60 days in Occoquan workhouse; pardoned by President
+after 3 days.
+
+MRS. J. A. H. HOPKINS (ALLISON TURNBULL), Morristown, N. J., state
+chairman N.W.P., member executive committee N.W.P. 1917, and president
+and officer of various women’s clubs. Her husband was leader
+Progressive Party and later supported President Wilson, serving on
+Democratic National Campaign Committee in 1916. At present Chairman
+Committee of 48. Mrs. Hopkins arrested July 14, 1917, for picketing,
+sentenced to 60 days in workhouse; pardoned by President after 3 days.
+
+MRS. L. H. HORNBBY, New York City, formerly of Ill., one of first women
+aviators in this country. Arrested for picketing Nov. 10, 1917;
+sentenced to 30 days in District Jail.
+
+ELIZABETH HOFF, Des Moines, Ia.; came to Washington to work for war
+department during war; later with Red Cross. Sentenced to 5 days in
+jail, Jan., 1919, for watchfire demonstration.
+
+EUNICE HUFF, Des Moines, Ia.; sister of Elizabeth; also engaged in war
+work in Washington. Sentenced to 3 days in jail Jan., 1919, for
+applauding suffrage prisoners in court.
+
+HAZEL HUNSINs, Billings, Mont.; graduate Vassar College; later
+instructor in Chemistry, Univ. of Mo. Joined suffrage movement as
+organizer for N.W.P. Later investigator for War Labor Board. Active in
+all picketing campaigns. Aug. 1918, sentenced to 15 days for
+participation in Lafayette Sq. meeting.
+
+JULIA HURLBUT, Morristown, N. J., vice chairman N. J. Branch N.W.P. In
+1916 assisted in Washington state campaign. Arrested picketing July 14,
+1917, sentenced to 60 days in Occoquan workhouse; pardoned by President
+after 3 days. Engaged in war work in France during war.
+
+MARY INGRAM, Philadelphia, Pa.; graduate Bryn Mawr College; Pa.
+chairman of N.W.P.; secretary of National Progressive League 1912. Has
+held offices of vice president of Pa. Women’s Trade Union League,
+director of Bureau of Municipal Research of Phila-, member of board of
+corporators of Woman’s Medical College of Pa., where she was former
+student. For several years manager woman’s department of Bonbright and
+Co., investment brokers. Arrested for picketing July 14, 1917;
+sentenced to 60 days in Occoquan, pardoned by President after 3 days.
+
+MRS. MARK JACKSON, Baltimore, Md., arrested picketing Aug., 1917,
+sentenced to 30 days.
+
+PAULA JAKOBI, New York City; playwright, author of “Chinese Lily.” Once
+matron of Framingham reformatory for purpose of studying prison
+conditions. Arrested picketing Nov. 10, 1917, and sentenced to 30 days
+in Occoquan workhouse.
+
+MAUD JAMISON, Norfolk, Va.; came to Washington in 1916 as volunteer
+worker of N.W.P. Later became assistant in treasurer’s department. Had
+been school teacher and business woman before joining N.W.P. Took
+active part in picketing from the beginning; one of first group
+arrested, June, 1917; served 3 days in District Jail; later served 30
+days in District Jail; Oct., 1917, sentenced to 7 months. Released by
+Government after 44 days. Jan., 1919, served 5 days in jail for
+participation in watchfire demonstration.
+
+MRS. PEGGY BAIRD JOHNS; New York City, formerly of St. Louis, newspaper
+woman and magazine writer. Sentenced to 30 days in Occoquan workhouse
+Aug., 1917; and 30 days in Nov., 1917, for picketing.
+
+WILLIE GRACE JOHNSON, Shreveport, La., state officer, N.W.P. and
+prominent in civic work. Successful business woman. Arrested in final
+watchfire demonstration Feb., 1919. Sentenced to 5 days in District
+Jail.
+
+AMY JUENGLING, Buffalo, N. Y.; of Swiss and German ancestry. Graduated
+with honors from Univ. of N. Y. Has lived in Porto Rico and North
+Carolina, in latter state doing educational work among mountaineers. At
+present engaged in Americanization work. Nov., 1917, sentenced to 30
+days in Occoquan workhouse for picketing.
+
+ELIZABETH GREEN KALB, Houston, Texas; graduate Rice Institute, 1916;
+student Univ. Chicago, 1916. Won Carnegie Peace Prize in Texas state
+intercollegiate oratory contest in 1915. In 1918 became active worker
+for N.W.P., taking part in Capitol picket. Arrested watchfire
+demonstration Jan., 1919, sentenced to 5 days in District Jail. In
+charge of literature and library dept. of N.W.P. at national
+headquarters.
+
+RHODA KELLOGG, Minneapolis, Minn.; graduate Univ. of Minn. and Pres. of
+Univ. Equal Suffrage Club. Sentenced to ~?4 hours for applauding
+suffrage prisoners in Court Jan., 1919, sentenced to 5 days in District
+Jail for participation in watchfire demonstration same month.
+
+MRS. FREDERICK W. KENDALL, Hamburg, N. Y.; wife of one of editors of
+Buffalo Express; writer, public speaker and club leader. Arrested for
+picketing, Aug., 1917, and sentenced to 30 days in Occoquan workhouse.
+
+MARIE ERNST KENNEDY, Philadelphia, Pa.; formerly state chairman N.W.P.
+Arrested Feb., 1919, in watchfire demonstration, sentenced to 5 days in
+jail.
+
+MRS. MARGARET WOOD KESSLER, Denver, Col.; vice president Woman’s
+Progressive Club of Col. Sept., 1917, sentenced to 30 days in Occoquan
+for picketing.
+
+ALICE KIMBALL, New York City. Has been engaged in Y.W.C.A. work, and as
+librarian in N. Y. Public Library, and later as labor investigator.
+Sentenced to 15 days in District Jail for taking part in Lafayette Sq.
+meeting Aug. 10, 1918.
+
+MRS. BEATRICE KINKEAD, Montclair, N. J., active member of N.W.P. in N.
+J. Joined picket of July 14, 1917. Sentenced to 60 days in Occoquan,
+but pardoned by President after 3 days.
+
+MRS. RQBY E. KOENIG, Hartford, Conn. Took part in Lafayette Sq. meeting
+of Aug., 1918, and suffered sprained arm from rough treatment by
+police. Arrested and sentenced to 15 days in District Jail.
+
+HATTIE KRUGER, Buffalo, N. Y. Trained nurse; ran for Congress on
+Socialist ticket in 1918. Worker in Lighthouse Settlement,
+Philadelphia, and for time probation officer of Juvenile Court of
+Buffalo. Nov. 10, 1917, sentenced to 30 days in Occoquan workhouse for
+picketing.
+
+DR. ANNA KUHN, Baltimore, Md., physician. Arrested picketing Nov. 10,
+1917, sentenced to 30 days.
+
+MRS. LAWRENCE LEWIS, Philadelphia, Pa., maternal ancestor of family
+which took possession 1660 land grant in Conn. from King, paternal
+ancestor Michael Hillegas who came Phila. 1727, a founder of Phila.
+Academy Fine Arts, Assembly, etc. Son of Hillegas was first U. S.
+treasurer; sister of Dr. Howard A. Kelly, well-known surgeon, formerly
+professor Johns Hopkins Hospital, author of many medical books; sister
+of Mrs. R. R. P. Bradford, founder and Pres. of Lighthouse Settlement,
+Phila.; member executive committee of N.W.P. since 1913; chairman of
+finance 1918; national treasurer, 1919; chairman ratification committee
+1920; active in state suffrage work many years; served 3 days in jail
+for picketing July, 1917; arrested Nov. 10, 1917, sentenced to 60 days;
+arrested Lafayette Sq. meeting, Aug., 1918, sentenced to 15 days;
+arrested watchfire demonstration Jan., 1919, sentenced to 5 days in
+jail.
+
+KATHARINE LINCOLN, New York City, formerly of Philadelphia. Was working
+for Traveler’s Aid when she came to picket Nov. 10, 1917. Sentenced to
+30 days in Occoquan workhouse. Worked for N.W.P. for several months;
+later campaigned for Anne Martin, candidate for U. S. Senate from Nev.’
+
+DR. SARAH H. LOCKREY, Philadelphia, Pa.; graduate Woman’s Medical
+College of Pa. Served as interne Woman’s Hospital in Phila., and later
+head of gynecological clinic of same hospital. Surgeon on West Phila.
+Hospital for Women and Children. Received degree of Fellow of American
+College of Surgery 1914. Chairman of her Congressional District for the
+N.W.P. Aug., 1918, sentenced to 15 days in District Jail for taking
+part in Lafayette Sq. meeting.
+
+ELIZABETH MCSHANE, Philadelphia, Pa., graduate Vassar College;
+principal of school near Indianapolis, later business woman. Assisted
+in Pa. health survey, working with the American Medical Association.
+Aug., 1918, sentenced to 15 days in jail for participation in Lafayette
+Sq. meeting. Jan., 1919, served 5 days for participating in watchfire
+demonstration. Member of “Prison Special” 1919.
+
+MRS. ANNIE J. MAGEE, Wilmington, Del., one of first Del. supporters of
+N.W.P. Took part in many pickets. Arrested watchfire demonstration
+Jan., 1919, and sentenced to 5 days in District Jail.
+
+MRS. EFFIE B. MAIN, Topeka, Kan., arrested for taking part in Lafayette
+Sq. meeting Aug. 10, 1918; sentenced to 10 days in District Jail.
+
+MAUD MALONE, New York City, librarian in N. Y. Lifelong suffragist;
+arrested for picketing, Sept. 4, 1917, and served sentence of 60 days
+at Occoquan workhouse.
+
+ANNE MARTIN, Reno, Nev.; graduate Leland Stanford Univ.; studied in
+English Univs. Professor of history in Univ. of Nev. As Pres. of Nev.
+Woman’s Civic League led successful fight for state suffrage in 1914.
+Served as legislative chairman for Congressional Union, and N.W.P. and
+member of executive committee. When N.W.P. was formed, in 1916, elected
+its chairman. When it combined with Congressional Union, she became
+vice chairman. In 1918 ran on independent ticket for U. S. Senate. July
+14, 1917, sentenced to 60 days at Occoquan workhouse for picketing.
+Pardoned by President after 3 days.
+
+MRS. LOUISE PARKER MAYO, Framingham, Mass., of Quaker descent. Taught
+school for five years before marriage to William 1. Mayo, grandson of
+Chief Justice Isaac Parker of Mass. Mother of 7 children. Arrested for
+picketing July 14, 1917; sentenced to 60 days in Occoquan workhouse;
+pardoned by President after 3 days.
+
+NELL MERCER, Norfolk, Va.; member of Norfolk Branch, N.W.P. Business
+woman. Feb., 1919, sentenced to 5 days in District Jail for
+participation in final watchfire demonstration.
+
+VIDA MILHOLLAND, New York City; daughter of Mr. and Mrs. John E.
+Milholland and sister of Inez Milholland Boissevain. Student at Vassar
+where won athletic championships and dramatic honors. Studied singing
+here and abroad, but on death of sister gave up career of promise to
+devote herself to suffrage work. July 4, 1917 arrested and served 3
+days in District Jail for picketing. In 1919 toured the country with
+“Prison Special,” singing at all meetings.
+
+MRS. BERTHA MOLLER, Minneapolis, Minn., campaigned for state suffrage
+before joining N.W.P. Interested in industrial problems. Of Swedish
+descent, one of ancestors served on staff of Gustavus- Adolphus, and 2
+uncles are now members of Swedish parliament. She served 2 ,jail
+sentences, one of 24 hours for applauding suffragists in court, and
+another of 5 days for participation in watchfire demonstration, Jan.,
+1919.
+
+MARTHA W. MOORE, Philadelphia, Pa., of Quaker ancestry, student at
+Swarthmore College; charter member of Congressional Union; has devoted
+herself to social service work, Children’s Aid, Traveler’s Aid, etc.
+Arrested and sentenced to 5 days in District Jail Jan., 1919, for
+participation in watchfire demonstration.
+
+MRS. AGNES H. MOREY, Brookline, Mass., comes of line of Colonial
+ancestors who lived in Concord. Following picket of Nov. 10, 1917,
+sentenced to 30 days at District Jail and Occoquan. Chairman of Mass.
+Branch N.W.P., of which she was one of founders, and member of National
+Advisory Council N.W.P. Member of “Suffrage Special” of 1916, and a
+gifted speaker and organizer.
+
+KATHARINE A. MOREY, Brookline, Mass., daughter of Mrs. A. H. Morey;
+also officer State Branch N.W.P. Organizer election campaign 1916 in
+Kansas and has many times assisted at national headquarters. One of
+first group pickets sentenced, served 3 days, June, 1917; Feb., 1919,
+arrested in Boston demonstration of welcome to President and sentenced
+to 8 days in Charles St. Jail.
+
+MILDRED MORRIS, Denver, Col., well-known newspaper woman of Denver.
+Came to Washington for Bureau of Public Information during war. Later
+investigator for War Labor Board. Now Washington correspondent
+International News Service. In Jan., 1919, served 5 day sentence in
+District Jail for lighting watchfire.
+
+MRS. PHOEBE C. MUNNECKE, Detroit, Mich.; assisted with meetings and
+demonstrations in Washington winter of 1918-19. Jan., 1919, arrested
+for lighting watchfire, sentenced to 10 days in jail. Later sentenced
+to 3 days in jail for applauding suffrage prisoners in court.
+
+GERTRUDE MURPHY, Minneapolis, Minn., superintendent of music in Minn.
+public schools. Jan.; 1919, served 24-hour sentence for applauding
+suffragists in court. Later served 5 days in District Jail for
+participation in watchfire demonstration.
+
+MRS. MARY A. NOLAN, Jacksonville, Fla., born in Va.; descended from
+family of Duffy, Cavan, Ireland. Educated at convent of Mont CIO
+Chantal in W. Va. As young woman was teacher and leader in Southern
+library movement. Suffrage pioneer; prominent in Confederate
+organizations of South. In 1917 joined N.W.P., came to Washington to
+picket. Arrested Nov. 10, 1917, sentenced to 6 days in District Jail,
+but sent to Occoquan workhouse. January, 1919, arrested many times in
+watchfire demonstrations; sentenced to 24 hours in jail. Oldest
+suffrage prisoner.
+
+MRS. MARGARET OAKES, Idaho; arrested Lafayette Sq. meeting Aug., 1918,
+and sentenced to 10 days in District Jail.
+
+ALICE PAUL, Moorestown, N. J. English Quaker ancestor imprisoned for
+Quaker beliefs died in English prison; born of Quaker parentage and
+brought up in this small Quaker town. Received her A.B. degree from
+Swarthmore College, and her M.A. and Ph.D. from Univ. of Pa. Graduate
+of N. Y. School of Philanthropy, and studied at Universities of London
+and Birmingham, specializing in economics and sociology. While in
+England took part in militant campaign under Mrs. Pankhurst. On return
+to America, she was appointed chairman in 1913 of the Congressional
+Committee of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Founded
+Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage; made chairman. When this became
+an independent organization reappointed chairman. When it merged with
+the N.W.P. in 1917, she was chosen chairman of the combined
+organizations, and has continued in this office to the present date.
+Has served 6 prison terms for suffrage, 3 in England and 3 in United
+States. In Oct., 1919, she was sentenced to 7 months for picketing and
+served 5 weeks before released on account of hunger strike. While in
+jail suffered the severest treatment inflicted upon any suffrage
+prisoner. In Aug., 1918, sentenced to 10 days for participation in
+Lafayette Sq. meeting. In Jan., 1919, sentenced to 5 days for lighting
+a watchfire.
+
+BERRY POTTIER, Boston, Mass., of French descent; art student;
+participated in Boston demonstration at home-coming of President, and
+sentenced to 8 days in Charles St. Jail.
+
+EDNA M. PURTELLE, Hartford, Conn., sentenced to 5 days in District Jail
+for participation in Lafayette Sq. meeting Aug., 1918.
+
+MRS. R. B. QUAY, Salt Lake City, Utah; arrested in Nov. 10, 1917,
+picket; sentenced to 30 days in District Jail, but sent to Occoquan
+workhouse.
+
+MRS. BETSY REYNEAU, Detroit, Mich., wife of Paul Reyneau; portrait
+painter. Arrested picketing July 14, 1917. Sentenced to 60 days in
+Occoquan, but pardoned by the President after 3 days.
+
+MRS. C. T. ROBERTSON, Salt Lake City, Utah; active worker for reforms
+affecting women. Arrested in Nov. 10, 1917, picket; sentenced to 30
+days in District Jail, but sent to Occoquan workhouse.
+
+MRS. GEORGE E. ROEWER, Belmont, Mass., graduate of Radcliffe, active
+suffragist since college days; wife of well known attorney of Boston
+and granddaughter of prominent figures in German Revolution of 1848 who
+were exiled to the United States. Sentenced to 8 days in Boston Charles
+St. Jail following participation in welcome demonstration to the
+President, Feb. 1919.
+
+MRS. JOHN ROGERS, JR., New York City, wife of Dr. John Rogers, Jr.,
+celebrated thyroid expert, is a descendant of Roger Sherman, signer of
+the Declaration of Independence. A pioneer worker for state suffrage
+before taking up national work. Before entering suffrage movement
+active in improving conditions in New York public schools. Chairman
+Advisory Council of the N.W.P., and one of the most forceful speakers
+in the suffrage ranks. In 1916 and 1919 as member of “Suffrage Special”
+and “Prison Special” toured the country speaking for suffrage. July 14,
+1917, sentenced to 60 days in Occoquan workhouse for picketing, but was
+pardoned by the President after 3 days.
+
+MARGUERITE ROSSETTE, Baltimore, Md., young artist, and niece of Dr.
+Joshua Rossette, well known social worker. Took part in N.W.P.
+demonstrations, served 5 days in District Jail for participation in
+final watchfire demonstration, Feb., 1919.
+
+MRS. ELISE T. RUSSIAN, Detroit, Mich., born in Constantinople of
+Armenian parentage. Educated in this country. Taught school in Mass.
+until marriage. State officer N.W.P. Sentenced to 5 days in District
+Jail for participation in Jan., 1919, watchfire demonstration; and 8
+days in Boston in the Charles St. Jail for participation in welcome
+demonstration to President in Feb., 1919.
+
+NINA SAMARODIN, born in Kiev, Russia, graduate of Kiev University. In
+1914 came to America on visit, but entered industrial fight, becoming,
+first, worker and then union organizer. Teacher Rand School of Social
+Science, New York. Sentenced to 30 days in Occoquan for picketing
+September, 1917.
+
+MRS. PHOEBE PERSONS SCOTT, Morristown, New Jersey, graduate of Smith
+College where she specialized in biology and botany. Did settlement
+work at New York Henry St. Settlement. Worked for state suffrage before
+joining N.W.P. and becoming one of its officers. Sentenced to 30 days
+in District Jail for picketing Nov. 10, 1917, but sent to Occoquan
+workhouse.
+
+RUTH SCOTT, Bridgeport, Conn., munitions worker. Sentenced to 5 days in
+District Jail for participation in watchfire demonstration Jan., 1919.
+
+BELLE SHEINBERG, New York City; of Russian descent; student of New York
+Univ., who left her studies to picket in Washington Nov. 10, 1917.
+Sentenced to 30 days in Occoquan workhouse.
+
+MRS. LUCILLE SHIELDS, Amarillo, Texas. Picketed regularly during 1917.
+July 4, 1917, served 3 days in District Jail for picketing; served 5
+days Jan. 13, 1919, for participation in watchfire demonstration. Soon
+after release sentenced to 3 days for applauding suffrage prisoners in
+Court.
+
+MRS. MARTHA REED SHOEMAKER, Philadelphia, Pa., graduate of Vassar
+College. Served 5 days in District Jail for participation in final
+watchfire demonstration of Feb. 9, 1919.
+
+MRS. MARY SHORT, Minneapolis, Minn., state officer N.W.P. Sentenced to
+30 days in Occoquan workhouse for picketing November 10, 1917.
+
+MRS. LOIS WARREN SHAW, Manchester, N. H., student of Vassar and
+Radcliffe, mother of six children. Wife of V. P. and General Manager
+McElwain Shoe Co., N. H., chairman N.W.P. Sentenced to 8 days in
+Charles St. Jail after participation in Boston demonstration to welcome
+President Feb., 1919.
+
+RUTH SMALL, Boston, Mass., participant in several state suffrage
+campaigns before taking up national work. In charge of Boston
+headquarters of N.W.P. for a time. For taking part in Boston
+demonstration on the return of the President in Feb., 1919, sentenced
+to 8 days in Charles St. Jail.
+
+DR. CAROLINE E. SPENCER, Colorado Springs, Col., formerly of
+Philadelphia. Secretary Col. Branch, N.W.P. Graduate Woman’s Medical
+College of Pa. October 20, 1917, arrested for picketing and sentenced
+to 7 months’ impl1sonment. For participating in watchfire demonstration
+Jan. 13, 1919, sentenced to 5 days in District Jail.
+
+MRS. KATE STAFFORD, Oklahoma City, Okla., active worker for reforms
+affecting women and children in her own state. Mother of six children.
+Picketed Nov. 10, 1917, and was sentenced to 30 days in District Jail.
+
+DORIS STEVENS, Omaha, Neb., now resident New York City. Graduate of
+Oberlin College; social worker and teacher; organized and spoke for
+state suffrage campaigns in Ohio and Michigan; ,joined Congressional
+Union in 1913. Organized first Convention of women voters at Panama
+Pacific Exposition in 1915; managed 1916 election campaign in Cal. for
+N.W.P. Has acted successively as executive secretary, organizer,
+legislative chairman, political chairman, and executive committee
+member of N.W.P. Arrested for picketing July 14, 1917; sentenced to 60
+days in Occoquan workhouse; pardoned by President after 3 days.
+Arrested N. Y. Mar., 1919, picket demonstration Metropolitan Opera
+House, but not sentenced.
+
+ELIZABETH STUYVESANT, New York City, formerly of Cincinnati; dancer by
+profession; active in settlement work and in campaign for
+birth-control. July 4, 1917, arrested for picketing and sentenced to 3
+days in District Jail.
+
+ELSIE UNTERMAN, Chicago, Ill., social worker who took week’s vacation
+in January, 1919, to come to Washington to picket. She served 3 days in
+District Jail for applauding suffragists in court.
+
+MABEL VERNON, Wilmington, Del., Secretary N.W.P., graduate Swarthmore
+College. Fellow student with Alice Paul. Gave up position as high
+school teacher when Congressional Union was founded to become organizer
+and speaker. With remarkable gifts as a speaker, has addressed large
+meetings in every part of the country. As brilliant organizer has had
+charge of many important organization tasks of N.W.P. Organized the
+transcontinental trip of voting envoys to the President. Campaigned in
+Nev. 1914 and 1916. Became national organization chairman N.W.P.
+Organized the Washington picket line for several months. One of the
+first six women to serve prison sentence for suffrage in District Jail.
+For picketing June, 1917, served 3 days.
+
+MRS. ELSIE VERVANE, Bridgeport, Conn., munitions worker and President
+of Woman’s Machinist Union of Bridgeport. In Jan., 1919, came to
+Washington with group of union women and took part in watchfire
+demonstration; arrested and served 5 days in District Jail.
+
+IRIS CALDERHEAD [now wife of John Brisben Walker], Marysville, Kansas,
+now resident of Denver, Colo., daughter of former- Representative
+Calderhead of Kansas. Graduate of Univ. of Kansas and student at Bryn
+Mawr. Abandoned school teaching to work for suffrage; became organizer
+and speaker for N.W.P. July 4, 1917, arrested for picketing and served
+3 days in District Jail.
+
+MRS. ROBERT WALKER, Baltimore, Md., officer Md. Branch N.W.P. A Quaker
+and graduate of Swarthmore College; wife of a captain in the late war
+and mother of 3 children. Arrested July 14, 1917, for picketing and
+sentenced to 60 days in Occoquan workhouse. Pardoned by President after
+3 days.
+
+BERTHA WALLERSTEIN, New York City, student of Barnard College; served 5
+days in District Jail Jan., 1919, for watchfire demonstration.
+
+MRS. BERTHA WALMSLEY, Kansas City, Mo., holding government position at
+time arrested for applauding suffragists in court; served 3 days in
+District Jail.
+
+MRS. WILLIAM UPTON WATSON, Chicago, Ill., treasurer state branch,
+N.W.P. Sentenced to 30 days Occoquan workhouse for picketing Aug. 17,
+1917. Aug., 1918, sentenced to 5 days for participation in Lafayette
+Sq. meeting.
+
+MRS. C. WEAVER, Bridgeport, Conn., worked during war in munitions
+factory. Came to Washington for watchfire demonstration of Jan. 13,
+1919; arrested and sentenced to 5 days in District Jail.
+
+EVA WEAVER, Bridgeport, Conn., daughter of Mrs. C. Weaver, also worked
+in munitions factory; arrested with mother Jan. 13, 1919, and served 5
+days in District Jail.
+
+MRS. HELENA HILL WEED, Norwalk, Conn., graduate of Vassar and Montana
+School of Mines. One of few qualified women geologists of country.
+Daughter of late Congressman Ebenezer Hill. At one time vice-president
+general of D.A.R. Prominent member of Congressional Union and N.W.P.
+from early days. One of first pickets arrested, July 4, 1917; served 3
+days in District Jail. Aug., 1918, arrested for participation in
+Lafayette Sq. meeting; sentenced to 15 days. Jan., 1918, sentenced to
+24 hours for applauding in court.
+
+CORA A. WEEK, New York City, of Norse descent; parents Wisconsin
+pioneers; studied art in Boston; became member Art Student’s League of
+New York; helped organize Oliver Merson Atelier in Paris; exhibited
+Paris Salon. Arrested for picketing Nov. 10, 1917; sentenced to 30 days
+in District Jail. Member of “Prison Special” 1919.
+
+CAMILLA WHITCOMB, Worcester, Mass., chairman 4th Congressional District
+Mass. N.W.P. Nov. 10, 1917, sentenced to 30 days in jail for picketing.
+
+SUE WHITE, Jackson, Tenn., state chairman N.W.P.; recently edited The
+Suffragist; organizer and research chairman. Belongs to prominent
+pioneer families of Tenn. and Ky. and is descendant of Marshall and
+Jefferson families of Va. Court and convention reporter for ten years;
+1918 appointed by Governor Secretary of Tenn. State Commission for the
+Blind. Identified with U.D.C. and D.A.R., the Federation of Women’s
+Clubs and Parent Teachers’ Association. Has done much to organize
+suffrage sentiment in her state. Feb. 9, 1919, arrested and served 5
+days in District Jail for participating in final watchfire
+demonstration.
+
+MARGARET FAY WHITTEMORE, Detroit, Mich. Her grandmother, a Quaker,
+started suffrage work in Michigan. Daughter of one of leading patent
+attorneys of country. N.W.P. organizer since 1914. Imprisoned 3 days
+for picketing July 4, 1917. Jan., 1919, served 24 hours in jail for
+applauding in court.
+
+MRS. HARVEY W. WILEY, Washington, D. C., daughter of General Kelton,
+and wife of Dr. Harvey Wiley, food expert and ex-director of the pure
+food department of U. S. Government. Member of national advisory
+council of N.W.P. Has done lobbying, political work and picketing for
+N.W.P. Nov. 10, 1917, sentenced to 15 days in District Jail; appealed
+her case; later sustained by higher court.
+
+Ross WINSLOW, New York City, born in Poland and brought to this country
+when child. Began work at age of 11 in Philadelphia; for many years
+worked in hosiery factory in Pittsburg; later employed in shop in
+Philadelphia. Recently has won success as an actress. Has brilliant
+gifts; 1916 spoke throughout West in suffrage campaign of N.W.P. Oct.
+15, 1917, sentenced to 7 months in District Jail for picketing.
+
+MARY WINSOR, Haverford, Pa.; comes of family of pioneer Quaker descent.
+Educated at Drexel Institute of Philadelphia, at Bryn Mawr and abroad.
+At request of American Academy of Political and Social Science made
+survey of English suffrage movement. Founder and Pres. of Pa. Limited
+Suffrage Society. Sept., 1917, sentenced to 60 days at Occoquan
+workhouse for picketing. Later sentenced to 10 days for participation
+in Lafayette Sq. meeting. Has worked and spoken for suffrage in many
+parts of the country. Member “Prison Special” Feb., 1919.
+
+ELLEN WINSOR, Haverford, Pa., sister of Mary Winsor and of Mrs. Edmund
+C. Evans, both of whom served prison sentences. Jan., 1919, sentenced
+to 5 days in District Jail for participation in watchfire
+demonstration.
+
+MRS. KATE WINSTON, Chevy Chase, Md., wife of Prof. A. P. Winston,
+formerly Professor of economics at Univ. of Col. and at Univ. of Tokio.
+Jan., 1919, arrested and sentenced to 5 days in District Jail for
+participation in watchfire demonstration.
+
+CLARA WOLD, Portland, Ore., newspaper writer. Of Norwegian parentage;
+her family closely related to Henrik Ibsen. Graduate of Univ. of Ore.
+Took part in Lafayette Sq. meeting of Aug., 1918; sentenced to 15 days.
+Jan., 1919, arrested for participation in watchfire demonstration and
+sentenced to 5 days. For several months acted as editor of The
+Suffragist.
+
+JOY YOUNG, New York City, formerly of Washington, D. C., wife of
+Merrill Rogers. Former assistant on The Suffragist and later organizer
+for N.W.P. in various parts of the country. Served 3 days in District
+Jail for picketing July 4, 1917.
+
+MATILDA YOUNG, Washington, D. C., sister of Joy Young; has devoted all
+her time to suffrage for several years. Youngest picket arrested, being
+19 years old when she first served a prison term. For picketing Nov.
+10, 1917, sentenced to 15 days in District Jail; served two terms in
+jail in Jan., 1919; 5 days for watchfire demonstration; 3 days for
+applauding suffrage prisoners in court.
+
+APPENDIX 5
+
+Directors of National Campaign
+
+Executive Committees Listed by Years
+
+CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEE
+
+EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE 1913
+
+
+Miss Alice Paul, N. J., Chairman
+Miss Lucy Burns, N. Y., Vice-chairman
+Mrs. Mary R. Beard, N. Y.
+Miss Crystal Eastman, N. Y.
+Mrs. Lawrence Lewis, Pa.
+
+CONGRESSIONAL UNION FOR WOMAN SUFFRAGE
+
+EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE 1914
+
+
+Miss Alice Paul, N. J., Chairman
+Miss Lucy Burns, N. Y., Vice-chairman
+Mrs. Mary R. Beard, N. Y.
+Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont, N. Y.
+Miss Crystal Eastman, N. Y.
+Mrs. Gilson Gardner, D. C.
+Miss Elsie Hill, Conn.
+Mrs. William Kent, Cal.
+Mrs. Lawrence Lewis, Pa.
+
+EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE 1916
+
+
+Miss Alice Paul, N. J., Chairman
+Miss Lucy Burns, N. Y., Vice-chairman
+Mrs. Mary R. Beard, N. Y.
+Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont, N. Y.
+Miss Crystal Eastman, N. Y.
+Mrs. Gilson Gardner, D. C.
+Miss Elsie Hill, Conn.
+Mrs. Donald R. Hooker, Md.
+Mrs. William Kent, Cal.
+Mrs. Lawrence Lewis, Pa.
+
+EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE 1916
+
+
+Miss Alice Paul, N. J., Chairman
+Miss Lucy Burns, N. Y., Vice-chairman
+Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont, N. Y.
+Mrs. John Winters Brannan, N. Y.
+Mrs. Gilson Gardner, D. C.
+Mrs. Donald R. Hooker, Md.
+Mrs. William Kent, Cal.
+Mrs. Lawrence Lewis, Pa.
+Miss Anne Martin, Nevada
+Mrs. Harriot Stanton Blatch, N. Y.
+
+WOMAN’S PARTY (Formed June, 1916)
+
+EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
+
+
+Miss Anne Martin, Nev., Chairman
+Mrs. Phoebe Hearst, Cal., 1st Vice-chairman
+Judge Mary M. Bartelme, Ill., 2nd Vice-chairman
+Miss Mabel Vernon, Nev., Secretary
+Miss Alice Paul, N. J., ex-officio
+
+NATIONAL WOMAN’S PARTY
+
+
+(After Amalgamation of Congressional Union and Woman’s Party)
+
+EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE 1917
+
+
+Miss Alice Paul, N. J., Chairman
+Miss Anne Martin, Nev., Vice-chairman
+Miss Mabel Vernon, Del., Secretary
+Miss Gertrude L. Crocker, Ill., Treasurer
+Mrs. Abby Scott Baker, D. C.
+Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont, N. Y.
+Mrs. John Winters Brannan, N. Y.
+Miss Lucy Burns, N. Y.
+Mrs. Gilson Gardner, D. C.
+Mrs. Florence Bayard Hilles, Del.
+Mrs. Donald R. Hooker, Md.
+Mrs. J. A. H. Hopkins, N. J.
+Mrs. William Kent, Cal.
+Mrs. Lawrence Lewis, Pa.
+Miss Doris Stevens, N. Y.
+Miss Maud Younger, Cal.
+
+EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE 1915
+
+
+Miss Alice Paul, N. J., Chairman
+Miss Anne Martin, Nev., Vice-chairman
+Miss Mabel Vernon, Del., Secretary
+Miss Mary Gertrude Fendall, Md., Treasurer
+Mrs. Abby Scott Baker, D. C.
+Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont, N. Y.
+Mrs. John Winters Brannan, N. Y.
+Miss Lucy Burns, N. Y.
+Mrs. Gilson Gardner, D.C.
+Mrs. Thomas N. Hepburn, Conn.
+Mrs. Florence Bayard Hilles, Del.
+Mrs. Donald R. Hooker, Md.
+Mrs. Lawrence Lewis, Pa.
+Miss Doris Stevens, N. Y.
+Miss Maud Younger, Cal.
+
+EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE 1919-1990
+
+
+Miss Alice Paul, N. J., Chairman
+Miss Mabel Vernon, Del., Secretary
+Miss Mary Gertrude Fendall, Md., Treasurer
+Mrs. Abby Scott Baker, D.C.
+Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont, N.Y.
+Mrs. John Winters Brannan, N.Y.
+Miss Lucy Burns, N. Y.
+Mrs. Gilson Gardner, D. C.
+Mrs. Thomas N. Hepburn, Conn.
+Mrs. Florence Bayard Hilles, Del.
+Mrs. Donald R. Hooker, Md.
+Mrs. Henry G. Leach, N. Y.
+Mrs. Lawrence Lewis, Pa.
+Miss Doris Stevens. N. Y.
+Mrs. Richard Wainwright, D. C.
+Miss Maud Younger, Cal.
+
+APPENDIX 6
+
+Concerning Political Prisoners
+
+Definitions
+
+James Bryce:[1]
+
+[1] James Bryce made this distinction in 1889 between the two kinds of
+offenders. Letter Introductory to “Political Prisoners at Home and
+Abroad,” Sigerson.
+
+
+“Perhaps we may say that whenever the moral judgment of the community
+at large does not brand an offence as sordid and degrading, and does
+not feel the offence to be one which destroys its respect for the
+personal character of the prisoner, it may there be held that prison
+treatment ought to be different from that awarded to ordinary
+criminals.”
+
+George Sigerson:[2]
+
+[2] “Political Prisoners at Home and Abroad.”
+
+
+“Men may differ, in thought and deed, on many questions without moral
+guilt. Forms of government and measures relating to the welfare and
+organization of society have been, in all ages and countries, questions
+on which men have entertained divergent convictions, and asserted their
+sincerity by conflicting action, often at grave personal sacrifice and
+the loss of life. On the other hand, all people are agreed in
+condemning certain acts, stigmatized as crimes, which offend against
+the well-being of the individual or the community.
+
+“Hence, civilized states distinguish between actions concerning which
+good men may reasonably differ, and actions which all good men condemn.
+The latter, if permitted to prevail, would disintegrate and destroy the
+social life of mankind; the former, if successful, would simply
+reorganize it, on a different basis . . . . The objects may, in one
+generation, be branded as crimes, whilst in the next those who fail to
+make them triumph and suffered as malefactors are exalted as patriot
+martyrs, and their principles incorporated amongst the foundation
+principles of the country’s constitution.
+
+“Attempts to effect changes by methods beyond the conventions which
+have the sanction of the majority of a community, may be rash and
+blameworthy sometimes, but they are not necessarily dishonorable, and
+may even occasionally be obligatory on conscience.”
+
+As to the incumbency upon a government to differentiate in punishments
+inflicted upon these two classes of offenders, he further says: “When a
+Government exercises its punitive power, it should, in awarding
+sentence, distinguish between the two classes of offenders. To confound
+in a common degradation those who violate the moral law by acts which
+all men condemn, and those who offend against the established order of
+society by acts of which many men approve, and for objects which may
+sometime be accepted as integral parts of established order, is
+manifestly wrong in principle. It places a Government morally in the
+wrong in the eyes of masses of the population, a thing to be sedulously
+guarded against.”
+
+George Clemenceau:[1]
+
+[1] Clemenceau in a speech before the French Chamber of Deputies, May
+16th, 1876, advocating amnesty for those who participated in the
+Commune of 1871. From the Annals de la Chambre des Deputies, 1876, v.
+2, pp. 44-48.
+
+
+“Theoretically a crime committed in the interest of the criminal is a
+common law crime, while an offense committed in the public interest is
+a political crime.” He says further, “That an act isolated from the
+circumstances under which it was committed . . . may have the
+appearance of a common law crime . . : while viewed in connection with
+the circumstances under which it is committed (in connection with a
+movement) . . . it may take on a political character.”
+
+Maurice Parmelee:[1]
+
+[1] “Criminology” by Maurice Parmelee, Chap. XXVIII. Author also of
+“Poverty and Social Progress,” “The Science of Human Behavior,” “The
+Principles of Anthropology and Sociology in their relation to Criminal
+Procedure.” During the late war Dr. Parmelee was a Representative of
+the U. S. War Trade Board stationed at the American Embassy, London;
+economic advisor to the State Department, and Chairman of the Allied
+Rationing Committee which administered the German Blockade.
+
+
+“Common crimes are acts contrary to the law committed in the interest
+of the individual criminal or of those personally related to the
+criminal. Political crimes are acts contrary to the law committed
+against an existing government or form of government in the interest of
+another government or form of government . . . . .
+
+“Furthermore, there are other offenses against the law which are not
+common crimes, and yet are not political crimes in the usual
+criminological sense . . . .
+
+“Among these crimes, which are broader than the ordinary political
+crimes, are offenses in defense of the right to freedom of thought and
+belief, in defense of the right to express one’s self in words in free
+speech, . . . and many illegal acts committed by conscientious
+objectors to the payment of taxes or to military service, the offenses
+of laborers in strikes and other labor disturbances, the violations of
+law committed by those who are trying to bring about changes in the
+relations between the sexes, etc.
+
+“Common crimes are almost invariably anti-social in their nature, while
+offenses which are directly or indirectly political are usually social
+in their intent, and are frequently beneficial to society in their
+ultimate effect. We are, therefore, justified in calling them social
+crimes, as contrasted with the anti-social common crimes . . . . .”
+
+TREATMENT ACCORDED POLITICAL PRISONFRS ABROAD
+
+
+It is interesting to note what other countries have done toward
+handling intelligently the problem of political offenders.
+
+Russia was probably the first country in modern history to recognize
+political prisoners as a class,[1] although the treatment of different
+groups and individuals varied widely.
+
+[1] Siberia received its first exiles [non-conformists] in the 17th
+Century.
+
+
+First of all, the political offender was recognized as a “political”
+not by law, but by custom. When sure of a verdict of guilty, either
+through damaging evidence or a packed jury, the offender was tried.
+When it was impossible to commit him to trial because there were no
+proofs against him, “Administrative Exile” was resorted to. These
+judgments or Administrative orders to exile were pronounced in secret
+on political offenders; one member of the family of the defendant was
+admitted to the trial under the law of 1881. Those exiled by
+Administrative order were transported in cars, but stopped en route at
+the etapes, political prisoners along with common law convicts. Since
+1866 politicals condemned by the courts to hard labor or to exile,
+journeyed on foot with common law convicts.[1]
+
+There were no hospitals for political exiles; doctors and ‘ surgeons
+among the exiled helped their sick comrades.
+
+Families were permitted to follow the loved ones into exile, if they
+chose. For example, wives were allowed to stay at Lower Kara, and visit
+their husbands in the prison in Middle Kara twice a week and to bring
+them books.
+
+When criminal convicts were freed in Siberia after serving a given
+sentence at hard labor, they received an allotment of land and
+agricultural implements for purposes of sustenance, and after two years
+the government troubled no more about them. They became settlers in
+some province of Southern Siberia. With political exiles it was quite
+different. When they had finished a seven, ten, or twelve year
+sentence, they were not liberated but transferred to the tundras within
+the Arctic Circle.
+
+Fancy a young girl student exiled to a village numbering a hundred
+houses, with the government allowance of 8 to 10 shillings a month to
+live on. Occupations were closed to her, and there was no opportunity
+to learn a trade. She was forbidden to leave the town even for a few
+hours. The villagers were for the most part in fear of being suspected
+if seen to greet politicals in the street.
+
+“Without dress, without shoes, living in the nastiest huts, without any
+occupation, they [the exiles were mostly dying from consumption,” said
+the Golos of February 2, 1881. They lived in constant fear of
+starvation. And the Government allowance was withdrawn if it became
+known that an exile received any monetary assistance from family or
+friends.
+
+Those politicals condemned to hard labor in Siberia worked mostly in
+gold mines for three months out of twelve, during which period meat was
+added to their diet. Otherwise black bread was the main food of the
+diet.
+
+When held in prisons awaiting trial or convicted and awaiting transfer
+into exile, politicals did no work whatever. Their only occupation was
+reading. Common criminals had to work in prison as well as in Siberia.
+
+In the fortress of Sts. Peter and Paul,[1] Kropotkin was lodged in a
+cell big enough to shelter a big fortress gun (25 feet on the
+diagonal). The walls and floor were lined with felt to prevent
+communication with others. “The silence in these felt- covered cells is
+that of a grave,” wrote Kropotkin . . . . “Here I wrote my two volumes
+on The Glacial Period.” Here he also prepared maps and drawings. This
+privilege was only granted, to him, however, after a strong movement
+amongst influential circles compelled it from the Czar.[1a] The Geo-
+graphical Society for whom he was writing his thesis also made many
+pleas on his behalf. He was allowed to buy tobacco, writing paper and
+to have books—but no extra food.
+
+[1] In the Trubeskoi bastion, one building in the fortress.
+
+
+[1a] Set Memoirs of a Revolutionist, Kropotkin.
+
+
+Kropotkin says that political prisoners were not subjected to corporal
+punishment, through official fear of bloodshed. But he must mean by
+corporal punishment actual beatings, for he says also, “The black
+holes, the chains, the riveting to bar rows are usual punishments.” And
+some politicals were al- leged to have been put in oubliettes in the
+Alexis Ravelin[2] which must have been the worst feature of all the
+tortures. This meant immurement alive in cells, in a remote spot where
+no contact with others was possible, and where the prisoner would often
+be chained or riveted for years.
+
+[2] Another section of Sts. Peter and Paul Fortress.
+
+
+More recently there was some mitigation of the worst fea- tures of the
+prison régime and some additional privileges were extended to
+politicals.
+
+All this applied to old Russia. There is no documentary proof available
+yet, as to how Soviet Russia treats its offenders against the present
+government. The Constitution of the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet
+Republic does not provide a status for political prisoners, but it does
+provide for their re lease. It specifically deals with amnesty which is
+proof of the importance with which it regards the question of political
+offenders. It says: “The All-Russian Central Executive Com mittee deal
+with questions of state such as . . . the right to declare individual
+and general amnesty.[4]
+
+[3] Adopted by the 5th All-Russian Congress of Soviets, July 10, 1918.
+Reprinted from The Nation, January 4, 1919.
+
+
+[4] Article 3, Chapter 9 . . . 49 q.
+
+France has had perhaps the most enlightened attitude of all the nations
+toward political offenders. She absolutely guarantees special
+treatment, by special regulations, and does not leave it to the
+discretion of changing governments.
+
+On August 7, 1834; Thiers, in a ministerial circular, laid down the
+fundamental principles upon which France has acted. The only obligation
+upon the defendant, according to this circular, was to prove the
+political nature of the offense,—“that it should be demonstrated and
+incontestable that they have acted under the influence of their
+opinions.”[1] Theirs advocated superior diet for political prisoners
+and no work.
+
+[1] Sigerson, Political prisoners at Home and Abroad, p. 89.
+
+
+His edict was followed by special regulations issued for politicals
+under the Empire, February 9th, 1867, through M. Pietri, Prefect of the
+Seine. These regulations, illustrative of the care France exercised at
+an early date over her politicals, defined the housing conditions,
+diet, intercourse with comrades inside the prison and with family and
+friends from the outside. Their privacy was carefully guarded. No
+curious visitor was allowed to see a political unless the latter so
+desired.
+
+Kropotkin wrote[2] of his incarceration in Clairvaux prison in 1888, to
+which he and twenty-two others were transferred from Lyons after being
+prosecuted for belonging to the International Workingmen’s Association:
+“In France, it is generally understood that for political prisoners the
+loss of liberty and the forced inactivity are in themselves so hard
+that there is no need to inflict additional hardships.”
+
+[2] Memoirs of a Revolutionist, Kropotkin.
+
+
+In Clairvaux he and his comrades were given quarters in spacious rooms,
+not in cells. Kropotkin and Emile Gautier, the French anarchist, were
+given a separate room for literary work and the Academy of Sciences
+offered them the use of its library.
+
+There was no intercourse with common law prisoners. The politicals were
+allowed to wear their own clothes, to smoke, to buy food and wine from
+the prison canteen or have it brought in; they were free of compulsory
+work, but might, if they chose, do light work for which they were paid.
+Kropotkin mentions the extreme cleanliness of the prison and the
+“excellent quality” of the prison food.
+
+Their windows looked down upon a little garden and also commanded a
+beautiful view of the surrounding country. They played nine- pins in
+the yard and made a vegetable and flower garden on the surface of the
+building’s wall. For other forms of recreation, they were allowed to
+organize themselves into classes. This particular group received from
+Kropotkin lessons in cosmography, geometry, physics, languages and
+bookbinding. Kropotkin’s wife was allowed to visit him daily and to
+walk with him in the prison gardens.
+
+Sebastian Faure, the great French teacher and orator, was sentenced to
+prison after the anarchist terrorism in 1894 and while there was
+allowed to write his “La Douleur Universelle”
+
+Paul La Fargue, son-in-law of Karl Marx, wrote his famous “The Right to
+be Lazy” in Sainte Pelagie prison.
+
+France has continued this policy to date. Jean Grave, once a shoemaker
+and now a celebrated anarchist, was condemned to six months in La Sante
+prison for an offensive article in his paper, Les Temps Nouveaux. Such
+is the liberty allowed a political that while serving this sentence he
+was given paper and materials with which to write another objectionable
+article, called “La Société Mourante et l’Anarchie,” for the
+publication of which he received another six months.
+
+It is interesting to note the comparatively light sentences political
+offenders get in France. And then there is an established practice of
+amnesty. They rarely finish out their terms. Agitation for their
+release extends from the extreme revolutionary left to the members of
+the Chamber of Deputies, frequently backed by the liberal press.
+
+Italy also distinguishes between political and common law offenders.
+The former are entitled to all the privileges of custodia honesta[1]
+which means they are allowed to wear their own clothes, work or not, as
+they choose; if they do work, one half their earnings is given to them.
+Their only penal obligation is silence during work, meals, school and
+prayers. A friend of Sr. Serrati, the ex-editor of the Italian journal
+Il Proletario, tells me that Serrati was a political prisoner during
+the late war; that he was sentenced to three and a half years, but was
+released at the end of six months, through pressure from the outside.
+But while there, he was allowed to write an article a day for Avanti,
+of which paper he was then an editor.
+
+[1] Sigerson, pp. 154-5.
+
+
+Even before the Franco-Prussian War German principalities recognized
+political offenders as such. The practice continued after the
+federation of German states through the Empire and up to the overthrow
+of Kaiser Wilhelm. Politicals were held in “honorable custody” in
+fortresses where they were deprived only of their liberty.
+
+For revolutionary activities in Saxony in 1849, Bakunin[2] was
+arrested, taken to a Cavalry Barracks and later to Koeriigstein
+Fortress, where politicals were held. Here he was allowed to walk twice
+daily under guard. He was allowed to receive books, he could converse
+with his fellow prisoners and could write and receive numerous letters.
+In a letter to a friend[3] he wrote that he was occupied in the study
+of mathematics and English, and that he was “enjoying Shakespeare.” And
+.. : . “they treat me with extraordinary humanness.”
+
+[2] The Life of Michael Bakunin—Eine Biographie von Dr. Max Nettlau.
+(Privately printed by the author. Fifty copies reproduced by the
+autocopyist, Longhaus.)
+
+
+[3] To Adolph R—— (the last name illegible) October 15, 1849.
+
+
+Another letter to the same friend a month later said he was writing a
+defense of his political views in “a comfortable room,” with “cigars
+and food brought in from a nearby inn.” The death sentence was
+pronounced against him in 1850 but commuted to imprisonment for life.
+The same year he was extradited to Austria where the offense was
+committed, then to Russia and on to Siberia in 1855, whence he escaped
+in 1860 in an American ship.
+
+In 1869 Bebell[1] received a sentence of three weeks in Leipzig
+(contrast with Alice Paul’s seven months’ sentence) “for the
+propagation of ideas dangerous to the state.” Later for high treason
+based upon Social-Democratic agitation he was sentenced to two years in
+a fortress. For lèse majesté he served nine months in Hubertusburg—a
+fortress prison (in 1871). Here politicals were allowed to pay for the
+cleaning of their cells, to receive food from a nearby inn, and were
+allowed to eat together in the corridors. They were only locked in for
+part of the time, and the rest of the time were allowed to walk in the
+garden. They were permitted lights until ten at night; books; and could
+receive and answer mail every day. Bebel received permission to share
+cell quarters with the elder Lielr knecht (Wilhelm), then serving time
+for his internationalism. He says that political prisoners were often
+allowed a six weeks’ leave of absence between sentences; when finishing
+one and beginning a second.
+
+[1] My Life, August Bebel.
+
+
+According to Sigerson, politicals in Austria also were absolved from
+wearing prison clothes, might buy their own food and choose their work.
+I am told the same régime prevailed in Hungary under Franz Joseph.
+
+The new constitution of the German Republic adopted at Weimar July 31,
+1919, provides that[2] “The President of the Republic shall exercise
+for the. government the right of pardon .. . . . Government amnesties
+require a national law.”
+
+[2] Article 49.
+
+
+In the Scandinavian countries there is no provision for special
+consideration of political prisoners, although a proposed change in
+Sweden’s penal laws now pending includes special treatment for them,
+and in Denmark, although politicals are not recognized apart from other
+prisoners, the people have just won an amnesty for all prisoners
+convicted of political offense as I write. Neither Switzerland nor
+Spain makes separate provision for politicals, although there are many
+prisoners confined in their prisons for political offenses, especially
+in Spain, where there are nearly always actually thousands in Monjuich.
+Portugal also subjects political offenders to the same regime as
+criminals.
+
+Concerning Turkey and Bulgaria, I appealed to George Andreytchine, a
+Bulgarian revolutionist who as protégé of King Ferdinand was educated
+at Sofia and Constantinople, knowing his knowledge on this point would
+be authentic. He writes: “Turkey, which is the most backward of all
+modern states, recognized the status of political prisoners before
+1895, or shortly after the Armenian massacres. Thousands of Bulgarian,
+Greek, Armenian and Arabian insurgents, caught with Arms in their
+hands, conspiring and actually in open rebellion against the Ottoman
+Empire, were sentenced to exile or hard labor, but were never confined
+in the same prisons with ordinary criminals and felons. They were put
+in more hygienical prisons where they were allowed to read and write
+and to breathe fresh air. Among some of my friends who were exiled to
+Turkish Africa for rebellion was a young scholar, Paul Shateff, by
+name, who while there wrote a remarkable monograph on the ethnology and
+ethnography of the Arabian Tribes in which he incidentally tells of the
+special treatment given him and his fellow exiles as political
+prisoners.
+
+“There is something to be said for the political wisdom of the Sultans.
+Amnesty is an established practice, usually at the birthday of the
+Sultan or the coming to power of a new Sultan, or on Ramadan[1], a
+national holiday.
+
+[1] The month (the ninth in the Mohammedan year) in which the first
+part of the Koran is said to have been received.
+
+
+“In 1908 when the young Turks assumed control of the government, all
+political prisoners were released and cared for by the state. My friend
+Paul Shateff was sent at state expense to Bruxelles to finish his
+studies.
+
+“Bulgaria, another one of those ‘backward countries,’ established the
+political regime even earlier than Turkey. Politicals are allowed to
+read, to write books or articles for publication, to receive food from
+outside, and are periodically released on amnesty.”
+
+And now we come to England. In general England, too, give’s political
+offenders much lighter sentences than does America, but, except in
+isolated cases, she treats them no better. She does not recognize them
+as political prisoners. If they are distinguished prisoners like Dr.
+Jamison, who was permitted to serve the sentence imposed upon him for
+leading an armed raid into the Transvaal in 1895, in a luxuriously
+furnished suite, to provide himself with books, a piano, and such food
+as he chose, and to receive his friends, special dispensation is
+allowed; or like William Cobbett, who was imprisoned for writing an
+alleged treasonable article in his journal, The Register, in 1809; or
+Leigh Hunt for maligning the Prince Regent who, he believed, broke his
+promise to the Irish cause; Daniel O’Connell and six associates in 1844
+for “seditious activity”; John Mitchell, who in 1848 was sent to
+Bermuda and then to Van Dieman’s Land.[2] These British prisoners,
+while not proclaimed as politicals, did receive special privileges.[3]
+
+[2]English penal colony in Tasmania.
+
+
+[3]For details of their handsome treatment see Sigerson, pp. 19–20,
+
+
+More recently Bertrand Russell, the distinguished man of letters who
+served sixty-one days in lieu of payment of fine for writing a pamphlet
+intended to arouse public indignation against the treatment of a
+certain conscientious objector, received special privileges. In England
+the matter of treatment rests largely with the will of the Prime
+Minister, who dictates the policy to the Home Secretary, who in turn
+directs the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Prisons. The Home
+Secretary may, however, of his own accord issue an order for special
+privileges if he so desires, or if there is a strong demand for such an
+order. Many government commissions and many distinguished British
+statesmen have recommended complete recognition and guarantee of the
+status of political prisoners, but the matter has been left to common
+law custom and precedent, and the character of the prime minister. In
+the case of Ireland the policy agreed upon is carried out by the Lord
+Lieutenant of Ireland.
+
+It is difficult to generalize about England’s treatment of Irish
+political offenders. From the earliest nationalist activities she has
+treated them practically all as common criminals, or worse, if such a
+thing is possible. She has either filled English prisons, or, as in the
+sixties, put them in convict ships and sent them to Bermuda and
+Australia for life sentences along with common convicts where they
+performed the hardest labor.. Irish prisoners have fought with signal
+and persistent courage for the rights due political offenders. Lately,
+after militant demonstrations within the prisons and after deaths
+resulting from concerted hunger striking protests, some additional
+privileges have been extended. But these can be and are withheld at
+will. There is no guarantee of them.
+
+As early as 1885 Canadian nationalists who had taken part in an
+insurrection in Upper Canada on behalf of self-government and who were
+sent to Van Dieman’s Land in convict ships, entered a vigorous protest
+to Lord Russell, the Home Secretary, against not receiving the
+treatment due political prisoners.
+
+England has to her credit, then, some flexibility about extending
+privileges to politicals. We have none. England has to her credit
+lighter sentences—Irish cases excepted. No country, not excluding
+imperial Germany, has ever given such cruelly long sentences to
+political offenders as did America during the late war.
+
+I have incorporated this discussion in such a book for two reasons:
+first, because it seemed to me important that you should know what a
+tremendous contribution the suffrage prisoners made toward this
+enlightened reform. They were the first in America to make a sustained
+demand to establish this precedent which others will consummate. They
+kept up the demand to the end of the prison episode, reinforcing it by
+the hunger strike protest. The other reason for including this
+discussion here is that it seems to me imperative that America
+recognize without further delay the status of political offenders. As
+early as 1872 the International Prison Congress meeting in London
+recommended a distinction in the treatment of common law criminals and
+politicals, and the resolution was agreed upon by the representatives
+of all the Powers of Europe and America with the tacit concurrence of
+British and Irish officials. And still we are behind Turkey in adopting
+an enlightened policy. We have neither regulation, statute nor
+precedent. Nor have we the custom of official flexibility.
+
+Note—The most conspicuous political prisoner from the point of view of
+actual power the United States has ever held in custody was Jefferson
+Davis, the President of the Confederate States, during the rebellion of
+the South against the Union. He was imprisoned in Fortress Monroe and
+subjected to the most cruel and humiliating treatment conceivable. For
+details of his imprisonment see the graphic account given in “Jefferson
+Davis—A Memoir” by his wife, Vol. II, pp. 653-95.
+
+
+
+
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diff --git a/3604-0.zip b/3604-0.zip
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+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" />
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+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Jailed for Freedom, by Doris Stevens</title>
+
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+<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Jailed for Freedom, by Doris Stevens</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
+at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you
+are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the
+country where you are located before using this eBook.
+</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Jailed for Freedom</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Doris Stevens</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: June 12, 2001 [eBook #3604]<br />
+[Most recently updated: July 1, 2021]</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Samuel R. Brown</div>
+<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JAILED FOR FREEDOM ***</div>
+
+<h1>Jailed for Freedom</h1>
+
+<h2 class="no-break">by Doris Stevens</h2>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2>Contents</h2>
+
+<table summary="" style="">
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#pref01">Preface</a><br /><br /></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#part01"><b>Part I. Leadership</b></a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap01">Chapter1. A Militant Pioneer&mdash;Susan B. Anthony</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap02">Chapter 2. A Militant General&mdash;Alice Paul</a><br /><br /></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#part02"><b>Part II. Political Action</b></a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap03">Chapter 1. Women Invade the Capital</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap04">Chapter 2. Women Voters Organize</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap05">Chapter 3. The Last Deputation to President Wilson</a><br /><br /></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#part03"><b>Part III. Militancy</b></a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap06">Chapter 1. Picketing a President</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap07">Chapter 2. The Suffrage War Policy</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap08">Chapter 3. The First Arrests</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap09">Chapter 4. Occoquan Workhouse</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap10">Chapter 5. August Riots</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap11">Chapter 6. Prison Episodes</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap12">Chapter 7. An Administration Protest&mdash;Dudley Field Malone Resigns</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap13">Chapter 8. The Administration Yields</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap14">Chapter 9. Political Prisoners</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap15">Chapter 10. The Hunger Strike&mdash;A Weapon</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap16">Chapter 11. Administration Terrorism</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap17">Chapter 12. Alice Paul in Prison</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap18">Chapter 13. Administration&mdash;Lawlessness Exposed</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap19">Chapter 14. The Administration Outwitted</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap20">Chapter 15. Political Results</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap21">Chapter 16. An Interlude (Seven Months)</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap22">Chapter 17. New Attacks on the President</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap23">Chapter 18. The President Appeals to the Senate Too Late</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap24">Chapter 19. More Pressure</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap25">Chapter 20. The President Sails Away</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap26">Chapter 21. Watchfires of Freedom</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap27">Chapter 22. Burned in Effigy</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap28">Chapter 23. Boston Militants Welcome the President</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap29">Chapter 24. Democratic Congress Ends</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap30">Chapter 25. A Farewell to President Wilson</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap31">Chapter 26. President Wilson Wins the 64th Vote in Paris</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap32">Chapter 27. Republican Congress Passes Amendment</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap33">Appendices</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<h2>Illustrations</h2>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+Alice Paul<br/>
+Mrs. O.H.P. Belmont<br/>
+Democrats Attempt to Counteract Woman’s Party Campaign<br/>
+Inez Milholland Boissevain<br/>
+Scene of Memorial Service-Statuary Hall, the Capitol<br/>
+Scenes on the Picket Line<br/>
+Monster Picket&mdash;March 4, 1917<br/>
+Officer Arrests Pickets<br/>
+Women Put into Police Patrol<br/>
+Suffragists in Prison Costume<br/>
+Fellow Prisoners<br/>
+Sewing Room at Occoquan Workhouse<br/>
+Riotous Scenes on Picket Line<br/>
+Dudley Field Malone<br/>
+Lucy Burns<br/>
+Mrs. Mary Nolan, Oldest Picket<br/>
+Miss Matilda Young, Youngest Picket<br/>
+Forty-One Women Face Jail<br/>
+Prisoners Released<br/>
+&ldquo;Lafayette We Are Here&rdquo;<br/>
+Wholesale Arrests<br/>
+Suffragists March to LaFayette Monument<br/>
+Torch-Bearer, and Escorts<br/>
+Some Public Men Who Protested Against Imprisonment of Suffragists<br/>
+Abandoned Jail<br/>
+Prisoners on Straw Pallets on Jail Floor<br/>
+Pickets at Capitol<br/>
+Senate Pages and Capitol Police Attack Pickets<br/>
+The Urn Guarded by Miss Berthe Arnold<br/>
+The Bell Which Tolled the Change of Watch<br/>
+Watchfire &ldquo;Legal&rdquo;<br/>
+Watchfire Scattered by Police-Dr. Caroline Spencer Rebuilding it<br/>
+One Hundred Women Hold Public Conflagration<br/>
+Pickets in Front of Reviewing Stand, Boston<br/>
+Mrs. Louise Sykes Burning President Wilson’s Speech on Boston Common<br/>
+Suffrage Prisoners
+</p>
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p class="center">
+To<br/>
+Alice Paul
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+Through Whose Brilliant and Devoted Leadership the Women of America Have Been
+Able to Consummate with Gladness and Gallant Courage Their Long Struggle for
+Political Liberty, This Book is Affectionately Dedicated
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="pref01"></a>PREFACE</h2>
+
+<p>
+This book deals with the intensive campaign of the militant suffragists of
+America [1913-1919] to win a solitary thing-the passage by Congress of the
+national suffrage amendment enfranchising women. It is the story of the first
+organized militant ,political action in America to this end. The militants
+differed from the pure propagandists in the woman suffrage movement chiefly in
+that they had a clear comprehension of the forces which prevail in politics.
+They appreciated the necessity of the propaganda stage and the beautiful
+heroism of those who had led in the pioneer agitation, but they knew that this
+stage belonged to the past; these methods were no longer necessary or
+effective.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For convenience sake I have called Part II &ldquo;Political Action,&rdquo; and
+Part III &ldquo;Militancy,&rdquo; although it will be perceived that the entire
+campaign was one of militant political action. The emphasis, however, in Part
+II is upon political action, although certainly with a militant mood. In Part
+III dramatic acts of protest, such as are now commonly called militancy, are
+given emphasis as they acquired a greater importance during the latter part of
+the campaign. This does not mean that all militant deeds were not committed for
+a specific political purpose. They were. But militancy is as much a state of
+mind, an approach to a task, as it is the commission of deeds of protest. It is
+the state of mind of those who is their fiery idealism do not lose sight of the
+real springs of human action.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There are two ways in which this story might be told. It might be told as a
+tragic and harrowing tale of martyrdom. Or it might be told as a ruthless
+enterprise of compelling a hostile administration to subject women to martyrdom
+in order to hasten its surrender. The truth is, it has elements of both
+ruthlessness and martyrdom. And I have tried to make them appear in a true
+proportion. It is my sincere hope that you will understand and appreciate the
+martyrdom involved, for it was the conscious voluntary gift of beautiful,
+strong and young hearts. But it was never martyrdom for its own sake. It was
+martyrdom used for a practical purpose.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The narrative ends with the passage of the amendment by Congress. The campaign
+for ratification, which extended over fourteen months, is a story in itself.
+The ratification of the amendment by the 36th and last state legislature proved
+as difficult to secure from political leaders as the 64th and last vote in the
+United States Senate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This book contains my interpretations, which are of course arguable. But it is
+a true record of events.
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+D<small>ORIS</small> S<small>TEVENS</small>.
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+<i>New York, August</i>, 1920.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I do pray, and that most earnestly and constantly, for some terrific
+shock to startle the women o f the nation into a self-respect which mill compel
+them to, see the absolute degradation o f their present position; which will
+compel them to break their yoke of bondage and give them faith in themselves;
+which will make them proclaim their allegiance to women first . . . . The fact
+is, women are in chains, and their servitude is all the more debasing because
+they do not realize it. O to compel them to see and feel and to give them the
+courage and the conscience to speak and act for their own freedom, though they
+face the scorn and contempt of all the world for doing it!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+Susan B. Anthony, 1872.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="part01"></a>Part I<br/>
+Leadership</h2>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap01"></a>Chapter 1<br/>
+A Militant Pioneer&mdash;Susan B. Anthony</h2>
+
+<p>
+Susan B. Anthony was the first militant suffragist. She has been so long
+proclaimed only as the magnificent pioneer that few realize that she was the
+first woman to defy the law for the political liberty of her sex.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The militant spirit was in her many early protests. Sometimes these protests
+were supported by one or two followers; more often they were solitary protests.
+Perhaps it is because of their isolation that they stand out so strong and
+beautiful in a turbulent time in our history when all those about her were
+making compromises.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was this spirit which impelled her to keep alive the cause of the
+enfranchisement of women during the passionate years of the Civil War. She held
+to the last possible moment that no national exigency was great enough to
+warrant abandonment of woman&rsquo;s fight for independence. But one by one her
+followers deserted her. She was unable to keep even a tiny handful steadfast to
+this position. She became finally the only figure in the nation appealing for
+the rights of women when the rights of black men were agitating the public
+mind. Ardent abolitionist as she was, she could not tolerate without indignant
+protest the exclusion of women in all discussions of emancipation. The suffrage
+war policy of Miss Anthony can be compared to that of the militants a half
+century later when confronted with the problem of this country&rsquo;s entrance
+into the world war.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The war of the rebellion over and the emancipation of the negro man written
+into the constitution, women contended they had a right to vote under the new
+fourteenth amendment. Miss Anthony led in this agitation, urging all women to
+claim the right to vote under this amendment. In the national election of 1872
+she voted in Rochester, New York, her home city, was arrested, tried and
+convicted of the crime of &ldquo;voting without having a lawful right to
+vote.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I cannot resist giving a brief excerpt from the court records of this
+extraordinary case, so reminiscent is it of the cases of the suffrage pickets
+tried nearly fifty years later in the courts of the national capital.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After the prosecuting attorney had presented the government&rsquo;s case, Judge
+Hunt read his opinion, said to have been written before the case had been
+heard, and directed the jury to bring in a verdict of guilty. The jury was
+dismissed without deliberation and a new trial was refused. On the following
+day this scene took place in that New York court room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+JUDGE HUNT (Ordering the defendant to stand up)-Has the prisoner anything to
+say why sentence shall not be pronounced?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss ANTHONY&mdash;Yes, your Honor, I have many things to say; for in your
+ordered verdict of guilty, you have trampled under foot every vital principle
+of our government. My natural rights, my civil rights, my political rights, my
+judicial rights, are all alike ignored. Robbed of the fundamental privilege of
+citizenship, I am degraded from the status of a citizen to that of a subject;
+and not only myself individually, but all my sex are, by your Honor&rsquo;s
+verdict doomed to political subjection under this so-called republican form of
+government.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+JUDGE HUNT&mdash;The Court cannot. listen to a rehearsal of argument which the
+prisoner&rsquo;s counsel has already consumed three hours in presenting.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss ANTHONY&mdash;May it please your Honor, I am not arguing the question, but
+simply stating the reasons why sentence cannot in justice be pronounced against
+me. Your denial of my citizen&rsquo;s right to vote, is the denial of my right
+of consent as one of the governed, the denial of my right of representation as
+one taxed, the denial of my right to a trial by jury of my peers as an offender
+against law; therefore, the denial of my sacred right to life, liberty,
+property, and&mdash;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+JUDGE HUNT&mdash;The Court cannot allow the prisoner to go on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss ANTHONY&mdash;But, your Honor will not deny me this one and only poor
+privilege of protest against this highhanded outrage upon my citizen&rsquo;s
+rights. May it please the Court to remember that since the day of my arrest
+last November this is the first time that either myself or any person of my
+disfranchised class has been allowed a word of defense before judge or jury
+</p>
+
+<p>
+JUDGE HUNT&mdash;The prisoner must sit down, the Court cannot allow it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss ANTHONY&mdash;Of all my persecutors from the corner grocery politician who
+entered the complaint, to the United States marshal, commissioner, district
+attorney, district judge, your Honor on the bench, not one is my peer, but each
+and all are my political sovereigns . . . . Precisely as no disfranchised
+person is entitled to sit upon the jury and no woman is entitled to the
+franchise, so none but a regularly admitted lawyer is allowed to practice in
+the courts, and no woman can gain admission to the bar-hence, jury, judge,
+counsel, all must be of superior class.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+JUDGE HUNT&mdash;The Court must insist-the prisoner has been tried according to
+the established forms of law.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss ANTHONY&mdash;Yes, your Honor, but by forms of law, all made by men,
+interpreted by men, administered by men, in favor of men and against women; and
+hence your Honor&rsquo;s ordered verdict of guilty, against a United States
+citizen for the exercise of the &ldquo;citizen&rsquo;s right to vote,&rdquo;
+simply because that citizen was a woman and not a man . . . . As then the
+slaves who got their freedom had to take it over or under or through the unjust
+forms of the law, precisely so now must women take it to get their right to a
+voice in this government; and I have taken mine, and mean to take it at every
+opportunity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+JUDGE Hunt&mdash;The Court orders the prisoner to sit down. It will not allow
+another word.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss ANTHONY&mdash;When I was brought before your Honor for trial I hoped for a
+broad interpretation of the constitution and its recent amendments, which
+should declare all United States citizens under its protecting aegis . . . .
+But failing to get this justice, failing even to get a trial by a jury-not of
+my peers-I ask not leniency at your-hands but rather the full rigor of the law.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+JUDGE HUNT&mdash;The Court must insist (here the prisoner sat down). The
+prisoner will stand up. (Here Miss Anthony rose again.) The sentence of the
+Court is that you pay a fine of $100.00 and the costs of the prosecution.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss ANTHONY&mdash;May it please your Honor, I will never pay a dollar of your
+unjust penalty . . . . And I shall earnestly and persistently continue to urge
+all women to the practical recognition of the old Revolutionary maxim,
+&ldquo;Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+JUDGE HUNT&mdash;Madam, the Court will not order you stand committed until the
+fine is paid.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Anthony did not pay her fine and was never imprisoned. I believe the fine
+stands against her to this day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the heels of this sensation came another of those dramatic protests which
+until the very end she always combined with political agitation. The nation was
+celebrating its first centenary of the signing of the Declaration of
+Independence at Independence Square, Philadelphia. After women had been refused
+by all in authority a humble half moment in which to present to the Centennial
+the Women&rsquo;s Declaration of Rights, Miss Anthony insisted on being heard.
+Immediately after the Declaration of Independence had been read by a patriot,
+she led a committee of women, who with platform tickets had slipped through the
+military, straight down the center aisle of the platform to address the
+chairman, who pale with fright and powerless to stop the demonstration had to
+accept her document. Instantly the platform, graced as it was by national
+dignitaries and crowned heads, was astir. The women retired, distributing to
+the gasping spectators copies of their Declaration. Miss Anthony had reminded
+the nation of the hollowness of its celebration of an independence that
+excluded women.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Susan B. Anthony&rsquo;s aim was the national enfranchisement of women. As soon
+as she became convinced that the constitution would have to be specifically
+amended to include woman suffrage, she set herself to this gigantic task. For a
+quarter of a century she appealed to Congress for action and to party.
+conventions for suffrage endorsement. When, however, she saw that Congress was
+obdurate, as an able and intensely practical leader she temporarily directed
+the main energy of the suffrage movement to trying to win individual states.
+With women holding the balance of political power, she argued, the national
+government will be compelled to act. She knew so well the value of power. She
+went to the West to get it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was a shrewd tactician; with prophetic insight, without compromise. To
+those women who would yield to party expediency as advised by men, or be
+diverted into support of other measures, she made answer in a spirited letter
+to Lucy Stone:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So long as you and I and all women are political slaves, it ill becomes
+us to meddle with the weightier discussions of our&rsquo; sovereign masters. It
+will be quite time enough for us, with self-respect, to declare ourselves for
+or against any party upon the intrinsic merit of its policy, when men shall
+recognize us as their political equals . . . .
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If all the suffragists of all the States could see eye to eye on this
+point, and stand shoulder to shoulder against every party and politician not
+fully and unequivocally committed to &lsquo;Equal Rights for Women,&rsquo; we
+should become at once the moral balance of power which could not fail to compel
+the party of highest intelligence to proclaim woman suffrage the chief plank of
+its platform . . . . Until that good day comes, I shall continue to invoke the
+party in power, and each party struggling to get into power, to pledge itself
+to the emancipation of our enslaved half of the people . . . .&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She did not live to see enough states grant suffrage in the West to form a
+balance of power with which to carry out this policy. She did not live to turn
+this power upon an unwilling Congress. But she stood to the last, despite this
+temporary change of program, the great dramatic protagonist of national freedom
+for women and its achievement through rebellion and practical strategy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With the passing of Miss Anthony and her leadership, the movement in America
+went conscientiously on endeavoring to pile up state after state in the
+&ldquo;free column.&rdquo; Gradually her followers lost sight of her aggressive
+attack and her objective-the enfranchisement of women by Congress. They did not
+sustain her tactical wisdom. This reform movement, like all others when
+stretched over a long period of time, found itself confined in a narrow circle
+of routine propaganda. It lacked the power and initiative to extricate itself.
+Though it had many eloquent agitators with devoted followings, it lacked
+generalship.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The movement also lost Miss Anthony&rsquo;s militant spirit, her keen
+appreciation of the fact that the attention of the nation must be focussed on
+minority issues by dramatic acts of protest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Susan B. Anthony&rsquo;s fundamental objective, her political attitude toward
+attaining it, and her militant spirit were revived in suffrage history in 1913
+when Alice Paul, also of Quaker background, entered the national field as
+leader of the new suffrage forces in America.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap02"></a>Chapter 2<br/>
+A Militant General&mdash;Alice Paul</h2>
+
+<p>
+Most people conjure up a menacing picture when a person is called not only a
+general, but a militant one. In appearance Alice Paul is anything but menacing.
+Quiet, almost mouselike, this frail young Quakeress sits in silence and baffles
+you with her contradictions. Large, soft, gray eyes that strike you with a
+positive impact make you feel the indescribable force and power behind them. A
+mass of soft brown hair, caught easily at the neck, makes the contour of her
+head strong and graceful. Tiny, fragile hands that look more like an X-ray
+picture of hands, rest in her lap in Quakerish pose. Her whole atmosphere when
+she is not in action is one of strength and quiet determination. In action she
+is swift, alert, almost panther-like in her movements. Dressed always in simple
+frocks, preferably soft shades of purple, she conforms to an individual style
+and taste of her own rather than to the prevailing vogue.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I am going recklessly on to try to tell what I think about Alice Paul. It is
+difficult, for when I begin to put it down on paper, I realize how little we
+know about this laconic person, and yet how abundantly we feel her power, her
+will and her compelling leadership. In an instant and vivid reaction, I am
+either congealed or inspired; exhilarated or depressed; sometimes even
+exasperated, but always <i>moved</i>. I have seen her very presence in
+headquarters change in the twinkling of an eye the mood of fifty people. It is
+not through their affections that she moves them, but through a naked force, a
+vital force which is indefinable but of which one simply cannot be unaware.
+Aiming primarily at the intellect of an audience or an individual, she almost
+never fails to win an emotional allegiance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I shall never forget my first contact with her. I tell it here as an
+illustration of what happened to countless women who came in touch with her to
+remain under her leadership to the end. I had come to Washington to take part
+in the demonstration on the Senate in July, 1913, en route to a muchneeded, as
+I thought, holiday in the Adirondacks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Can&rsquo;t you stay on and help us with a hearing next week?&rdquo;
+said Miss Paul.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;but I have promised to join a
+party of friends in the mountains for a summer holiday and . . .&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Holiday?&rdquo; said she, looking straight at me. Instantly ashamed at
+having mentioned such a legitimate excuse, I murmured something about not
+having had one since before entering college.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But can&rsquo;t you stay?&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was lost. I knew I would stay. As a matter of fact, I stayed through the heat
+of a Washington summer, returned only long enough at the end of the summer to
+close up my work in state suffrage and came back to join the group at
+Washington. And it was years before I ever mentioned a holiday again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Frequently she achieved her end without even a single word Of retort. Soon
+after Miss Paul came to Washington in 1913, ;she went to call on a suffragist
+in that city to ask her to donate ;some funds toward the rent of headquarters
+in the Capital. The woman sighed. &ldquo;I thought when Miss Anthony
+died,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;that all my troubles were at an end. She used to
+come to me for money for a federal amendment and I always told her it was wrong
+to ask for one, and that besides we would never get it. But she kept right on
+coming. Then when she died we didn&rsquo;t hear any more about an amendment.
+And now you come again saying the same things Miss Anthony said.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Paul listened, said she was sorry and departed. Very shortly a check
+arrived at headquarters to cover a month&rsquo;s rent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A model listener, Alice Paul has unlimited capacity for letting the other
+person relieve herself of all her objections without contest. Over and over
+again I have heard this scene enacted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Miss Paul, I have come to tell you that you are all wrong about this
+federal amendment business. I don&rsquo;t believe in it. Suffrage should come
+slowly but surely by the states. And although I have been a life-long
+suffragist, I just want to tell you not to count on me, for feeling as I do, I
+cannot give you any help.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A silence would follow. Then Miss Paul would say ingenuously, &ldquo;Have you a
+half hour to spare?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I guess so,&rdquo; would come slowly from the protestant.
+&ldquo;Why?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Won&rsquo;t you please sit down right here and put the stamps on these
+letters? We have to get them in the mail by noon.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But I don&rsquo;t believe …&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, that&rsquo;s all right. These letters are going to women probably a
+lot of whom feel as you do. But some of them will want to come to the meeting
+to hear our side.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By this time Miss Paul would have brought a chair, and that ended the argument.
+The woman would stay and humbly proceed to stick on endless stamps. Usually she
+would come back, too, and before many days would be an ardent worker for the
+cause against which she thought herself invincible.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Once the state president of the conservative suffrage forces in Ohio with whom
+I had worked the previous year wrote me a letter pointing out what madness it
+was to talk of winning the amendment in Congress &ldquo;this session,&rdquo;
+and adding that &ldquo;nobody but a fool would ever think of it, let alone
+speak of it publicly.&rdquo; She was wise in politics; we were nice, eager,
+young girls, but pretty ignorant&mdash;that was the gist of her remonstrance.
+My vanity was aroused. Not wishing to be called &ldquo;mad&rdquo; or
+&ldquo;foolish&rdquo; I sat down and answered her in a friendly spirit, with
+the sole object of proving that we were wiser than she imagined. I had never
+discussed this point with anybody, as I had been in Washington only a few
+months and it had never occurred to me that we were not right to talk of
+getting the amendment in that particular session. But I answered my patronizing
+friend, in effect, that of course we were not fools, that we knew we would not
+get the amendment that session, but we saw no reason for not demanding it at
+once and taking it when we got it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When Miss Paul saw the carbon of that letter she said quietly, pointing to the
+part where I had so nobly defended our sagacity, &ldquo;You must never say that
+again and never put it on paper.&rdquo; Seeing my embarrassment, she hastened
+to explain. &ldquo;You see, we can get it this session if enough women care
+sufficiently to demand it now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alice Paul brought back to the fight that note of immediacy which had gone with
+the passing of Miss Anthony&rsquo;s leadership. She called a halt on further
+pleading, wheedling, proving, praying. It was as if she had bidden women stand
+erect, with confidence in themselves and in their own judgments, and compelled
+them to be self-respecting enough to dare to put their freedom first, and so
+determine for themselves the day when they should be free. Those who had a
+taste of begging under the old regime and who abandoned it for demanding, know
+how fine and strong a thing it is to realize that you must take what is yours
+and not waste your energy proving that you are or will some day be worthy of a
+gift of power from your masters. On that glad day of discovery you have first
+freed yourself to fight for freedom. Alice Paul gave to thousands of women the
+essence of freedom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And there was something so cleansing about the way in which she renovated ideas
+and processes, emotions and instincts. Her attack was so direct, so clear, so
+simple and unafraid. And her resistance had such a fine quality of strength.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sometimes it was a roaring politician who was baffled by this non-resistant
+force. I have heard many an irate one come into her office in the early days to
+tell her how to run the woman&rsquo;s campaign, and struggle in vain to arouse
+her to combat. Having begun a tirade, honor would compel him to see it through
+even without help from a silent adversary. And so he would get more and more
+noisy until it would seem as if one lone shout from him might be enough to blow
+away the frail object of his attack. Ultimately he would be forced to retire,
+perhaps in the face of a serene smile, beaten and angered that he had been able
+to make so little impression. And many the delicious remark and delightful quip
+afterward at his expense!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her gentle humor is of the highest quality. If only her opponents could have
+seen her amusement at their hysteria. At the very moment they were denouncing
+some plan of action and calling her &ldquo;fanatical&rdquo; and
+&ldquo;hysterical&rdquo; she would fairly beam with delight to see how well her
+plan had worked. Her intention had been to arouse them to just that state of
+mind, and how admirably they were living up to the plan. The hysteria was all
+on their side. She coolly sat back in her chair and watched their antics under
+pressure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But don&rsquo;t you know,&rdquo; would come another thundering one,
+&ldquo;that this will make the Democratic leaders so hostile that . . .&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The looked-for note of surprise never came. She had counted ahead on all this
+and knew almost to the last shade the reaction that would follow from both
+majority and minority leaders. All this had been thoroughly gone over, first
+with herself, then with her colleagues. All the &ldquo;alarms&rdquo; had been
+rung. The male politician could not understand why his wellmeaning and
+generously-offered advice caused not a ripple and not a change in plan. Such
+calm unconcern he could not endure. He was accustomed to emotional panics. He
+was not accustomed to a leader who had weighed every objection, every attack
+and counted the cost accurately.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her ability to marshal arguments for keeping her own followers in line was
+equally marked. A superficial observer would rush into headquarters with,
+&ldquo;Miss Paul, don&rsquo;t you think it was a great tactical mistake to
+force President Wilson at this time to state his position on the amendment?
+Will it not hurt our campaign to have it known that he is against us?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is the best thing that could possibly happen to us. If he is against
+us, women should know it. They will be aroused to greater action if he is not
+allowed to remain silent upon something in which he does not believe. It will
+make it easier for us to campaign against him when the time comes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And another time a friend of the cause would suggest, &ldquo;Would it not have
+been better not to have tried for planks in party platforms, since we got such
+weak ones?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not at all. We can draw the support of women with greater ease from a
+party which shows a weak hand on suffrage, than from one which hides its
+opposition behind silence.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had always to combat the fear of the more timid ones who felt sure with
+each new wave of disapproval that we would be submerged. &ldquo;Now, I have
+been a supporter of yours every step of the way,&rdquo; a &ldquo;fearful&rdquo;
+one would say, &ldquo;but this is really going a little too far. I was in the
+Senate gallery to-day when two suffrage. senators in speeches denounced the
+pickets and their suffrage banners. They said that we were setting suffrage
+back and that something ought to be done about it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Exactly so,&rdquo; would come the ready answer from Miss Paul.
+&ldquo;And they will do something about it only if we continue to make them
+uncomfortable enough. Of course even suffrage senators will object to our
+pickets and our banners because they do not want attention called to their
+failure to compel the Administration to act. They know that as friends of the
+measure their responsibility is greater.&rdquo; And the &ldquo;fearful&rdquo;
+one was usually convinced and made stronger.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I remember so well when the situation was approaching its final climax in
+Washington. Men and women, both, came to Miss Paul with, &ldquo;This is
+terrible! Seven months&rsquo; sentence is impossible. You must stop! You cannot
+keep this up!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With an unmistakable note of triumph in her voice Miss Paul would answer,
+&ldquo;Yes, it is terrible for us, but not nearly so terrible as for the
+government. The Administration has fired its heaviest gun. From now on we shall
+win and they will lose.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Most of the doubters had by this time banished their fears and had come to
+believe with something akin to superstition that she could never be wrong, so
+swiftly and surely, did they see her policies and her predictions on every
+point vindicated before their eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She has been a master at concentration, a master strategist-a great general.
+With passionate beliefs on all important social questions, she resolutely set
+herself against being seduced into other paths. Far from being naturally an
+ascetic, she has disciplined herself into denials and deprivations, cultural
+and recreational, to pursue her objective with the least possible waste of
+energy. Not that she did not want above all else to do this thing. She did. But
+doing it she had to abandon the easy life of a scholar and the aristocratic
+environment of a cultured, prosperous, Quaker family, of Moorestown, New
+Jersey, for the rigors of a ceaseless drudgery and frequent imprisonment. A
+flaming idealist, conducting the fight with the sternest kind of realism, a
+mind attracted by facts, not fancies, she has led fearlessly and with
+magnificent ruthlessness. Thinking, thinking day and night of her objective and
+never retarding her pace a moment until its accomplishment, I know no modern
+woman leader with whom to compare her. I think she must possess many of the
+same qualities that Lenin does, according to authentic portraits of him-cool,
+practical, rational, sitting quietly at a desk and counting the consequences,
+planning the next move before the first one is finished. And if she has
+demanded the ultimate of her followers, she has given it herself. Her ability
+to get women to work and never to let them stop is second only to her own
+unprecedented capacity for work.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alice Paul came to leadership still in her twenties, but with a broad cultural
+equipment. Degrees from Swarthmore, the University of Pennsylvania, and special
+study abroad in English universities had given her a scholarly background in
+history, politics, and sociology. In these studies she had specialized, writing
+her doctor&rsquo;s thesis on the status of women. She also did factory work in
+English industries and there acquired first hand knowledge of the industrial
+position of women. In the midst of this work the English militant movement
+caught her imagination and she abandoned her studies temporarily to join that
+movement and go to prison with the English suffragists.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Convinced that the English women were fighting the battle for the women of the
+world, she returned to America fresh from their struggle, to arouse American
+women to action. She came bringing her gifts and concentration to this one
+struggle. She came with that inestimable asset, youth, and, born of youth,
+indomitable courage to carry her point in spite of scorn and misrepresentation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Among the thousands of telegrams sent Miss Paul the day the amendment finally
+passed Congress was this interesting message from Walter Clark, Chief Justice
+of the Supreme Court of North Carolina, Southern Democrat, Confederate Veteran
+and distinguished jurist:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Will you permit me to congratulate you upon the great triumph in which
+you have been so important a factor? Your place in history is assured. Some
+years ago when I first met you I predicted that your name would be written
+&lsquo;on the dusty roll the ages keep.&rsquo; There were politicians, and a
+large degree of public sentiment, which could only be won by the methods you
+adopted . . . . It is certain that, but for you, success would have been
+delayed for many years to come.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="part02"></a>Part II<br/>
+Political Action</h2>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap03"></a>Chapter 1<br/>
+Women Invade the Capital</h2>
+
+<p>
+Where are the people?&rdquo; This was Woodrow Wilson&rsquo;s first question as
+he arrived at the Union Station in Washington the day before his first
+inauguration to the Presidency in March, 1913.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;On the Avenue watching the suffragists parade,&rdquo; came the answer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The suffrage issue was brought oftenest to his attention from then on until his
+final surrender. It lay entirely with him as to how long women would be obliged
+to remind him of this issue before he willed to take a hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The people&rdquo; were on the Avenue watching the suffragists parade.
+The informant was quite right. It seemed to those of us who attempted to march
+for our idea that day that the whole world was there&mdash;packed closely on
+Pennsylvania Avenue.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The purpose of the procession was to dramatize in numbers and beauty the fact
+that women wanted to vote&mdash;that women were asking the Administration in
+power in the national government to speed the day. What politicians had not
+been able to get through their minds we would give them through their
+eyes&mdash;often a powerful substitute. Our first task seemed
+simple&mdash;actually to show that thousands of women wanted immediate action
+on their long delayed enfranchisement. This we did.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was the first demonstration under the leadership of Alice Paul, at that
+time chairman of the Congressional Committee of the National American Woman.
+Suffrage Association. It was also the beginning of Woodrow Wilson&rsquo;s
+liberal education.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Administration, without intending it, played into the hands of the women
+from this moment. The women had been given a permit to march. Inadequate police
+protection allowed roughs to attack them and all but break up the beautiful
+pageant. The fact of ten thousand women marching with banners and bands for
+this idea was startling enough to wake up the government and the country, but
+not so startling as ten thousand women man-handled by irresponsible crowds
+because of police indifference.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+An investigation was demanded and a perfunctory one held. The police
+administration was exonerated, but when the storm of protest had subsided the
+Chief of Police was quietly retired to private life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was no longer a secret that women wanted to vote and that they wanted the
+President and Congress to act.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A few days later the first deputation of suffragists ever to appear before a
+President to enlist his support for the passage of the national suffrage
+amendment waited upon President Wilson.[1] Miss Paul led the deputation. With
+her were Mrs. Genevieve Stone, wife of Congressman Stone of Illinois, Mrs.
+Harvey W. Wiley, Mrs. Ida Husted Harper, and Miss Mary Bartlett Dixon of
+Maryland. The President received the deputation in the White House Offices.
+When the women entered they found five chairs arranged in a row with one chair
+in front, like a class- room. All confessed to being frightened when the
+President came in and took his seat at the head of the class. The President
+said he had no opinion on the subject of woman suffrage; that he had never
+given it any thought;[2] and that above all it was his task to see that
+Congress concentrated on the currency revision and the tariff reform. It is
+recorded that the President was somewhat taken aback when Miss Paul addressed
+him during the course of the interview with this query, &ldquo;But Mr.
+President, do you not understand that the Administration has no right to
+legislate for currency, tariff, and any other reform without first getting the
+consent of women to these reforms?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[1] There had been individual visits to previous presidents.
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[2] At Colorado Springs in 1911, when Mr. Wilson was Governor of New Jersey and
+campaigning for the Presidential nomination, a delegation of Colorado women
+asked him his position on woman suffrage. He said, &ldquo;Ladies, this is a
+very arguable question and my mind is in the midst of the argument.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Get the consent of women?&rdquo; It was evident that this course had not
+heretofore occurred to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This subject will receive my most careful consideration,&rdquo; was
+President Wilson&rsquo;s first suffrage promise.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was given time to &ldquo;consider&rdquo; and a second deputation went to
+him, and still a third, asking him to include the suffrage amendment in his
+message to the new Congress assembling in extra session the following month.
+And still he was obsessed with the paramount considerations of
+&ldquo;tariff&rdquo; and &ldquo;currency.&rdquo; He flatly said there would be
+no time to consider suffrage for women. But the &ldquo;unreasonable&rdquo;
+women kept right on insisting that the liberty of half the American people was
+paramount to tariff and currency.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+President Wilson&rsquo;s first session of Congress came together April 7th,
+1913. The opening day was marked by the suffragists&rsquo; second mass
+demonstration. This time women delegates representing every one of the 435
+Congressional Districts in the country bore petitions from the constituencies
+showing that the people &ldquo;back home&rdquo; wanted the amendment passed.
+The delegates marched on Congress and were received with a warm welcome and
+their petitions presented to Congress. The same day the amendment which bears
+the name of Susan B. Anthony, who drafted it in 1875, was reintroduced into
+both houses of Congress.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The month of May saw monster demonstrations in many cities and villages
+throughout the country, with the direct result that in June the Senate
+Committee on Suffrage made the first favorable report made by that committee in
+twenty-one years, thereby placing it on the Senate calendar for action.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Not relaxing the pressure for a day we organized the third great demonstration
+on the last of July when a monster petition signed by hundreds of thousands of
+citizens was brought to the Senate asking that body to pass the national
+suffrage amendment. Women from all parts of the country mobilized in the
+countryside of Maryland where they were met with appropriate ceremonies-by the
+Senate Woman Suffrage Committee. The delegation motored in gaily decorated
+automobiles to Washington and went direct to the Senate, where the entire day
+was given over to suffrage discussion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Twenty-two senators spoke in favor of the amendment in presenting their
+petitions. Three spoke against it. For the first time in twenty-six years
+suffrage was actually debated in Congress. That day was historic.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Speeches? Yes. Greetings? Yes. Present petitions from their constituencies?
+Gladly. Report it from the Senate Committee? They had to concede that. But
+passage of the amendment? That was beyond their contemplation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+More pressure was necessary. We appealed to the women voters, of whom there
+were then four million, to come into action.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Four million women voters are watching you,&rdquo; we said to Congress.
+We might as well have said, &ldquo;There are in the South Sea Islands four
+million heathens.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was clear that these distant women voters had no relation in the senatorial
+mind to the realism of politics. We decided to bring some of these women voters
+to Washington: Having failed to get the Senate to act by August, we invited the
+Council of Women Voters to hold its convention in Washington that Congress
+might learn this simple lesson: women did vote; there were four million of
+them; they had a voters&rsquo; organization; they cared about the
+enfranchisement of all American women; they wanted the Senate to act; suffrage
+was no longer a moral problem; it could be made a practical political problem
+with which men and parties would have to reckon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Voting women made their first impression on Congress that summer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meanwhile the President&rsquo;s &ldquo;paramount issues&rdquo;&mdash;tariff and
+currency&mdash;had been disposed of. With the December Congress approaching, he
+was preparing another message. We went to him again. This time it was the women
+from his own home state, an influential deputation of seventy-three women,
+including the suffrage leaders from all suffrage organizations in New Jersey.
+The women urged him to include recommendation of the suffrage resolution in his
+message to the new Congress. He replied:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am pleased, indeed, to greet you and your adherents here, and I will
+say to you that I was talking only yesterday with several members of Congress
+in regard to a Suffrage Committee in the House. The subject is one in which I
+am deeply interested, and you may rest assured that I will give it my earnest
+attention.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In interesting himself in the formation of a special committee to sit on
+suffrage in the House, the President was doing the smallest thing, to be sure,
+that could be done, but he was doing something. This was a distinct advance. It
+was our task to press on until all the maze of Congressional machinery had been
+used to exhaustion. Then there would be nothing left to do but to pass the
+amendment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A fourth time that year the determination of women to secure the passage of the
+amendment was demonstrated. In December, the opening week of the new Congress,
+the annual convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association was
+held in Washington. Miss Lucy Burns, vice chairman of its Congressional
+Committee and also of the Congressional Union, was applauded to the echo by the
+whole convention when she said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The National American Woman Suffrage Association is assembled in
+Washington to ask the Democratic Party to enfranchise the women of America.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Rarely in the history of the country has a party been more powerful than
+the Democratic Party is to-day. It controls the Executive Office, the Senate
+and more than two-thirds of the members of the House of Representatives. It is
+in a position to give us effective and immediate help.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We ask the Democrats to take action now. Those who hold power are
+responsible to the country for the use of it. They are responsible not only for
+what they do, but for what they do not do. Inaction establishes just as clear a
+record as does a policy of open hostility.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We have in our hands to-day not only the weapon of a just cause; we have
+the support of ten enfranchised states&mdash;states comprising one-fifth of the
+United States Senate, one-seventh of the House of Representatives, and
+one-sixth of the electoral vote. More than 3,600,000 women have a vote in
+Presidential elections. It is unthinkable that a national government which
+represents women, and which appeals periodically for the suffrages of women,
+should ignore the issue of the right of all women to political freedom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We cannot wait until after the passage of scheduled Administration
+reforms . . . . Congress is free to take action on our question in the present
+session. We ask the Administration to support the woman suffrage amendment in
+Congress with its whole strength.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This represented the attitude of the entire suffrage movement toward the
+situation in the winter of 1913. At no time did the militant group deviate from
+this position until the amendment was through Congress.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was difficult to make the Administration believe that the women meant what
+they said, and that they meant to use everything in their power and
+resourcefulness to see it carried out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Men were used to having women ask them for suffrage. But they were disconcerted
+at being asked for it now; at being threatened with political chastisement if
+they did not yield to the demand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In spite of the repeated requests to President Wilson that he include support
+of the measure in his message to Congress, he delivered his message December
+end while the convention was still in session, and failed to make any mention
+of the suffrage amendment. He recommended self-government for Filipino men
+instead.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Immediately Miss Paul organized the entire convention into a fifth deputation
+to protest against this failure and to urge support in a subsequent message.
+Dr. Anna Howard Shaw led the interview. In reply to her eloquent appeal for his
+assistance, the President said in part: &ldquo;I am merely the spokesman of my
+party . . . . I am not at liberty to urge upon Congress in messages, policies
+which have not had the organic consideration of those for whom I am spokesman.
+I am by my own principles shut out, in the language of the street, from
+&lsquo;starting anything.&rsquo; I have to confine myself to those things which
+have been embodied as promises to the people at an election.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I shall never forget that day. Shafts of sunlight came in at the window and
+fell full and square upon the white-haired leader who was in the closing days
+of her power. Her clear, deep, resonant voice, ringing with the genuine love of
+liberty, was in sharp contrast to the halting, timid, little and technical
+answer of the President. He stooped to utter some light pleasantry which he
+thought would no doubt please the &ldquo;ladies.&rdquo; It did not provoke even
+a faint smile. Dr. Shaw had dramatically asked, &ldquo;Mr. President, if you
+cannot speak for us and your party will not, who then, pray, is there to speak
+for us?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You seem very well able to speak for yourselves, ladies,&rdquo; with a
+broad smile, followed by a quick embarrassment when no one stirred.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We mean, Mr. President, who will speak for us with
+<i>authority?</i>&rdquo; came back the hot retort from Dr. Shaw.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The President made no reply. Instead he expressed a desire to shake the hands
+of the three hundred delegates. A few felt that manners compelled them to
+acquiesce; the others filed out without this little political ceremony.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alice Paul&rsquo;s report to the national convention for her year&rsquo;s work
+as Chairman of the Congressional Committee of the National American Woman
+Suffrage Association, and as Chairman also of the Congressional Union for Woman
+Suffrage, showed that a budget of twenty-seven thousand dollars had been raised
+and expended under her leadership as against ten dollars spent during the
+previous year on Congressional work. At the beginning of the year there was no
+interest in work with Congress. It was considered hopeless. At the close of the
+year 1918 it had become a practical political issue. Suffrage had entered the
+national field to stay.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At this point the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage was obliged to become
+an independent body in order to continue this vigorous policy which the
+conservative suffrage leaders were unwilling to follow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hearings, deputations to the President, petitions to Congress, more persistent
+lobbying, all these things continued during the following year under Miss
+Paul&rsquo;s leadership with the result that a vote in the Senate was taken,
+though at ran inopportune moment,&mdash;the first vote in the Senate since
+1887. The vote stood 86 to &rsquo;84-thereby failing by 11 votes of the
+necessary two-thirds majority. This vote, nevertheless, indicated that a new
+strength in the suffrage battle had forced Congress to take some action.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the House, the Rules Committee on a vote of 4 to 4 refused to create a
+suffrage committee. We appealed to the Democratic caucus to see if tie party
+sustained this action. We wished to establish their party responsibility, one
+way or another, and by securing the necessary signatures to a petition, we
+compelled the caucus to meet. By a vote of 128 to 57 the caucus declared
+&ldquo; . . . that the question of woman suffrage is a state and not a federal
+question,&rdquo; as a substitute for the milder resolution offered, providing
+for the creation of a committee on woman suffrage. If this had left any doubt
+as to how the Democratic Party, as a party, stood, this doubt was conveniently
+removed by Representative Underwood, the Majority Leader of the House, when he
+said on the floor of the House the following day: &ldquo;The Democratic Party
+last night took the distinctive position that it was not in favor of this
+legislation because it was in favor of the states controlling the question of
+suffrage . . . . I not only said I was opposed to it, but I said the Party on
+this side of the Chamber was opposed to it, and the Party that has control of
+the legislation in Congress certainly has the right to say that it will not
+support a measure if it is not in accordance with its principles.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meanwhile the President had said to a deputation of workingwomen who waited
+upon him in February, &ldquo;Until the Party, as such, has considered a matter
+of this very supreme importance, and taken its position, I am not at liberty to
+speak for it; and yet I am not at liberty to speak for it as an individual, for
+I am not an individual.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But we ask you to speak to your party, not for it,&rdquo; answered Mrs.
+Glendower Evans, Chairman of the deputation, amid evident presidential
+embarrassment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Those women who had been inclined perhaps to accept the President&rsquo;s words
+as true to fact, entertained doubts when a .few days later he demanded of his
+party in Congress the repeal of the free tolls provision in the Panama Canal
+tolls act. In so doing, he not only recommended action not endorsed by his
+party, but he demanded action which his party had specifically declared
+against.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was necessary to appeal again to the nation. We called for demonstrations.
+of public approval of the amendment in every state on May 2. Thousands of
+resolutions were passed calling for action in Congress. These resolutions were
+made the center of another great demonstration in Washington, May 9, when
+thousands of women in, procession carried them to the Capitol where beautiful
+and impressive ceremonies were held on the Capitol steps. The resolutions were
+formally received by members of Congress and the demonstration ended
+dramatically with a great chorus of women massed on the steps singing
+&ldquo;The March of the Women&rdquo; to the thousands of spectators packed
+closely together on the Capitol grounds.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And still the President withheld his support.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Under our auspices five hundred representative club women of the country waited
+upon him in another appeal for help.[1] To them he explained his &ldquo;passion
+for local self-government,&rdquo; which led to his conviction &ldquo;that this
+is a matter for settlement by the states[2] and not by the federal government .
+. . .&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Women had to face the fact that the 63rd Congress had made a distinctly hostile
+record on suffrage. The President, as leader of his party, had seven times
+refused all aid; the Democratic Party had recorded its opposition through an
+adverse vote in the Senate and a caucus vote in the House forbidding even
+consideration of the measure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It became clear that some form of political action would have to be adopted
+which would act as an accelerator to the Administration. This feeling was
+growing momentarily among many women, but it was conspicuously strong in the
+mind of Mrs. Oliver H. P. Belmont, recognized as one of the ablest suffrage
+leaders in the country. Anticipating the unfriendly record made by the
+Democrats in the 63rd Congress, Mrs. Belmont had come to Miss Paul and to her
+vice-chairman, Miss Lucy Burns, to urge the formulation of a plan whereby we
+could strike at Administration opposition through the women voters of the West.
+Miss Paul had the same idea and welcomed the support of this plan by so able a
+leader.
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[1] 7th deputation to the President, June 30, 1914.
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[2] This amounted to virtual opposition because of the great difficulties,
+(some of them almost insuperable) involved in amending many state
+constitutions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Belmont was impatient to do nationally what she had already inaugurated in
+New York State suffrage work&mdash;make suffrage an election issue. She was the
+first suffragist in America to be &ldquo;militant&rdquo; enough to wage a
+campaign against office-seekers on the issue of woman suffrage. She was roundly
+denounced by the opposition press, but she held her ground. It is interesting
+to record that she defeated the first candidate for the New York Assembly ever
+campaigned against on this issue.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had associated herself with the Pankhursts in England and was the first
+suffrage leader here publicly to commend the tactics of the English militants.
+Through her, Mrs. Pankhurst made her first visits to America, where she found a
+sympathetic audience. Even among the people who understood and believed in
+English tactics, the general idea here was that only in the backward country of
+England was &ldquo;militancy&rdquo; necessary. In America, men would give women
+what women wanted without a struggle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Belmont was the one suffrage leader who foresaw a militant battle here
+whenever women should determine to ask for their freedom immediately. In a
+great measure she prepared the way for that battle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Since the movement had not even advanced to the stage of political action at
+that time, however, Mrs. Belmont realized that political action would have to
+be exhausted before attempting more aggressive tactics. Not knowing whether
+Miss Paul had contemplated inaugurating political action in the national field,
+she sought out the new leader and urged her to begin at, once to organize the
+women&rsquo;s power for use in the approaching national elections.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Those interested in the woman&rsquo;s movement are fairly familiar with Mrs.
+Belmont&rsquo;s early state suffrage work and her work with the militants in
+England, but they do not know as much about her national work. It is not easy
+for a woman of vast wealth to be credited with much else in America than the
+fact of generosity in giving money to the cause in which she believes. Wealth
+dazzles us and we look no further. Mrs. Belmont has given hundreds of thousands
+of dollars to suffrage, both state and national, but she has given greater
+gifts in her militant spirit, her political sagacity and a marked tactical
+sense. She was practically the only leader formerly associated with the
+conservative forces who had the courage to extricate herself from the old
+routine propaganda and adventure into new paths. She always approached the
+struggle for liberty in a wholesome revolutionary mood. She was essentially a
+leader, and one who believed in action-always action.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Until the movement in America regained its militant spirit, her heart was
+primarily with the English women, because she thought their fight so
+magnificent that it would bring suffrage to women in England sooner than our
+slow-going methods would bring it to us. In 1910, when English militancy was at
+its height, Mrs. Belmont gave out an interview in London, in which she
+predicted that English women would have the suffrage before us. She even went
+so far as to say that we in America would have to create an acute situation
+here, probably a form of militancy, before we could win. At the same time the
+President of the International Suffrage Alliance said in London: &ldquo;The
+suffrage movement in England- resembles a battle. It is cruel and tragic. Ours
+in America is an evolution-less dramatic, slow but more sure.&rdquo; Facts
+sustained Mrs. Belmont&rsquo;s prophecy. Facts did not sustain the other
+prediction. English women got the vote in 1918. American women were not
+enfranchised nationally until August, 1920.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The following is the political theory and program approved by Mrs. Belmont and
+submitted to the Congressional Union, by its chairman, Alice Paul, at a
+conference of the organization at the home of Mrs. Belmont in Newport in
+August, 1914:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The dominant party (at that time the Democratic Party) is responsible for all
+action and therefore for action on suffrage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This party&rsquo;s action had been hostile to this measure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The dominant party in the approaching election must be convinced, and through
+it all other parties, that opposition to suffrage is inexpedient.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All parties will be convinced when they see that their opposition costs them
+votes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Our fight is a political one.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We must appeal for support to the constituency which is most friendly to
+suffrage, that constituency being the voting women.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+An attempt must be made, no matter how small, to organize the women&rsquo;s
+vote.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+An appeal must be made to the women voters in the nine suffrage states to
+withhold their support from the Democrats nationally, until the national
+Democratic Party ceases to block the suffrage amendment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This is non-partisanship in the highest degree, as it calls upon women to
+forego previous allegiance to a party. If they are Democrats in this instance,
+they must vote against their party. If the Republican Party were in power and
+pursued a similar course, we would work against that party.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The party which sees votes falling away will change its attitude.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After we have once affected by this means the outcome of a national election,
+even though slightly, every party will hesitate to trifle with our measure any
+longer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All candidates from suffrage states are professing suffragists, and therefore
+we have nothing to lose by defeating a member of the dominant party in those
+states. Another suffragist will take his place.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Men will object to being opposed because of their party responsibility in spite
+of their friendliness individually to suffrage. But women certainly have a
+right to further through the ballot their wishes on the suffrage question, as
+well as on other questions like currency, tariff, and what not.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This can only be done by considering the Party record, for as the individual
+record and individual pledges go, all candidates are practically equal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We, as a disfranchised class, consider our right to vote, preeminently over any
+other issue in any party&rsquo;s program.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Political leaders will resent our injecting our issue into their campaign, but
+the rank and file will be won when they see the loyalty of women to women.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This policy will be called militant and in a sense it is, being strong,
+positive and energetic.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If it is militant to appeal to women to use their vote to bring suffrage to
+this country, then it is militant to appeal to men or women to use their vote
+to any good end.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To the question of &ldquo;How will we profit if another party comes in?&rdquo;
+our answer will be that adequate political chastisement of one party for its
+bad suffrage record through a demonstration of power by women voters affecting
+the result of the national election, will make it easier to get action from any
+party in power
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Amidst tremendous enthusiasm this plan was accepted by the little conference of
+women at Newport, and $7,000 pledged in a few moments to start it. There was a
+small group of women, an infinitely small budget with which to wage a campaign
+in nine states, but here was also enthusiasm and resolute determination.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A tiny handful of women-never more than two, more often only one to a
+state&mdash;journeyed forth from Washington into the nine suffrage states of
+the West to put before the voting women this political theory, and to ask them
+to support it.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap04"></a>Chapter 2<br/>
+Women Voters Organize</h2>
+
+<p>
+It can&rsquo;t be done.&rdquo; &ldquo;Women don&rsquo;t care about
+suffrage.&rdquo; I &ldquo;Once they&rsquo;ve got it, it is a dead issue.&rdquo;
+&ldquo;To talk of arousing the Western women to protest against the
+Congressional candidates of the National Democratic Party in the suffrage
+states, when every one of them is a professing suffragist, is utter
+folly.&rdquo; So ran the comment of the political wise acres in the autumn of
+1914.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the women had faith in their appeal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is impossible to give in a few words any adequate picture of the anger of
+Democratic leaders at our entrance into the campaign. Six weeks before election
+they woke up to find the issue of national suffrage injected into a campaign
+which they had meant should be no more stirring than an orderly and perfunctory
+endorsement of the President&rsquo;s legislative program.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The campaign became a very hot one during which most of the militancy seemed to
+be on the side of the political leaders. Heavy fists came down on desks. Harsh
+words were spoken. Violent threats were made. In Colorado, where I was cam-
+paigning, I was invited politely but firmly by the Democratic leader to leave
+the state the morning after I had arrived. &ldquo;You can do no good here. I
+would advise you to leave at once. Besides, your plan is impracticable and the
+women will not support it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then why do you object to my being here?&rdquo; I asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You have no right to ask women to do this . . . .&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Some slight variation of this experience was met by every woman who took part
+in this campaign. Of course, the Democratic leaders did not welcome an issue
+raised unexpectedly, and one which forced them to spend an endless amount of
+time apologizing for and explaining the Democratic Party&rsquo;s record. Nor
+did they relish spending more money publishing more literature, in short,
+adding greatly to the burdens of their campaign. The candidates, a little more
+suave than the party leaders, proved most eloquently that they had been
+suffragists &ldquo;from birth.&rdquo; One candidate even claimed a suffrage
+inheritance from his great-grandmother.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This first entry of women into a national election on the suffrage amendment
+was little more than a quick, brilliant dash. With all its sketchiness,
+however, it had immediate political results, and when the election was over,
+there came tardily a general public recognition that the Congressional Union
+had made a real contribution to these results. In the nine suffrage states
+women vote3 for 45 members of Congress. For 43 of these seats the Democratic
+Party ran candidates. We opposed in our campaign all of these candidates. Out
+of the 43 Democratic candidates running, only 9.0 were elected. While it was
+not our primary aim to defeat candidates it was generally conceded that we had
+contributed to these defeats.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Our aim in this campaign was primarily to call to the attention of the public
+the bad suffrage record of the Democratic Party. The effect of our campaign was
+soon evident in Congress. The most backward member realized for the first time
+that women had voted. Even the President perceived that the movement had gained
+new strength, though he was not yet politically moved by it. He was still
+&ldquo;tied to a conviction&rdquo;[1] which he had had all his life that
+suffrage &ldquo;ought to be brought about state by state.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[1] Statement to Deputation of Democratic women (eighth deputation) at the
+White House, Jan. 6, 1915.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Enough strength and determination among women had been demonstrated to the
+Administration, however, to make them want to do something &ldquo;just as
+good&rdquo; as the thing we asked. The Shafroth-Palmer[1] Resolution was
+introduced, providing for a constitutional amendment permitting a national
+initiative and referendum on suffrage in the states, thereby forcing upon women
+the very course we had sought to circumvent. This red herring drawn across the
+path had been accepted by the conservative suff- ragists evidently in a moment
+of hopelessness, and their strength put behind it, but the politicians who
+persuade them to back it knew that it was merely an attempt to evade the issue.
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[1] This resolution was introduced in the Senate by Senator Shafroth of
+Colorado, Democrat; in the House by Representative A. Mitchell Palmer of
+Pennsylvania, Democrat, later Attorney General in President Wilson&rsquo;s
+Cabinet. Both men, although avowed supporters of the original Susan B. Anthony
+amendment, backed this evil compromise.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This made necessary a tremendous campaign throughout the country by the
+Congressional Union, with the result that the compromise measure was eventually
+abandoned. During its life, however, politicians were happy in the opportunity
+to divide their support between it and the original amendment, which was still
+pending. To offset this danger and to show again in dramatic fashion the
+strength and will of the women voters to act on this issue, we made political
+work among the western women the principal effort of the year 1915, the year
+preceding the presidential election. Taking advantage of the Panama-Pacific
+Exposition in San Francisco, we opened suffrage headquarters in the Palace of
+Education on the exposition grounds. From there we called the first Woman
+Voters&rsquo; Convention ever held in the world for the single purpose of
+attaching political strength to the movement. Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont was
+chairman of the committee which signed the convention call.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Women from all the voting states assembled in a mass convention September 14,
+15 and 16. There is not time to describe the beauty of the pageantry which
+surrounded that gathering, nor of the emotional quality which was at high pitch
+throughout the sessions. These women from the deserts of Arizona, from the
+farms of Oregon, from the valleys of California, from the mountains of Nevada
+and Utah, were in deadly earnest. They had answered the call and they meant to
+stay in the fight until it was won. The convention went on record unanimously
+for further political action on behalf of national suffrage and for the
+original amendment without compromise, and pledged itself to use all power to
+this end without regard to the interests of any existing political party.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Two emissaries, Sara Bard Field and Frances Joliffe, both of California, were
+commissioned by women voters at the final session, when more than ten thousand
+people were present, to go to the President and Congress bearing these
+resolutions and hundreds of thousands of signatures upon a petition gathered
+during the summer. They would speak directly to the President lest he should be
+inclined to take lightly the women voters&rsquo; resolutions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The envoys, symbolic of the new strength that was to come out of the West, made
+their journey across continent by automobile. They created a sensation all
+along the way, received as they were by governors, by mayors, by officials high
+and low, and by the populace. Thousands more added their names to the petition
+and it was rolled up to gigantic proportions until in December when unrolled it
+literally stretched over miles as it was borne to the Capitol with honor
+escorts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The action of the convention scarcely cold, and the envoys mid- way across the
+continent, the President hastened to New Jersey to cast his vote for suffrage
+in a state referendum. He was careful to state that he did so as a private
+citizen, &ldquo;not as the leader of my party in the nation&rdquo; He repeated
+his position, putting the emphasis upon his opposition to national suffrage,
+rather than on his belief in suffrage for his state. &ldquo;I believe that it
+(suffrage) should be settled by the states and not by the national government,
+and that in no circumstances should it be made a party question; and my view
+has grown stronger at every turn of the agitation.&rdquo; He knew women were
+asking the powerful aid of the President of the United States, not the aid of
+Mr. Wilson of Princeton, New Jersey. The state amendment in New Jersey was
+certain to fail, as President Wilson well knew. Casting a vote for it would
+help his case with women voters, and still not bring suffrage in the East a
+step nearer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The envoys&rsquo; reception at the Capitol was indeed dramatic. Thousands of
+women escorted them amid bands and banners to the halls of Congress, where they
+were received by senators and representatives and addressed with eloquent
+speeches. The envoys replied by asking that their message be carried by friends
+of the measure to the floor of the Senate and House, and this was done.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The envoys waited upon the President at the White House. This visit of the
+representatives of women with power marked rather an advance in the
+President&rsquo;s position. He listened with an eager attention to the story of
+the new-found power and what women meant to do with it. For the first time on
+record, he said he had &ldquo;an open mind&rdquo; on the question of national
+suffrage, and would confer with his party colleagues.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Republican and Democratic National Committees heard the case of the envoys.
+They were given a hearing before the Senate Suffrage Committee and before the
+House Judiciary in one of the most lively and entertaining inquisitions in
+which women ever participated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No more questions on mother and home! No swan song on the passing of charm and
+womanly loveliness! Only agile scrambling by each committee member to ask with
+eagerness and some heat, &ldquo;Well, if this amendment has not passed Congress
+by then, what will you do in the elections of 1916?&rdquo; It was with
+difficulty that the women were allowed to tell their story, so eager was the
+Committee to jump ahead to political consequences. &ldquo;Sirs, that depends
+upon what you gentlemen do. We are asking a simple thing&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+But they never got any further from the main base of their interest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If President Wilson comes out for it and his party does not&rdquo; from
+a Republican member, &ldquo;will you&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I object to introducing partisan discussions here,&rdquo; came
+shamelessly from a Democratic colleague. And so the hearing passed in something
+of a verbal riot, but with no doubt as to the fact that Congressmen were
+alarmed by the prospect of women voting as a protest group.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The new year found the Senate promptly reporting the measure favorably again,
+but the Judiciary Committee footballed it to its sub-committee, back to the
+whole committee, postponed it, marked time, dodged defeated it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The problem of neutrality toward the European war was agitating the minds of
+political leaders. Nothing like suffrage for women must be allowed to rock the
+ship even slightly! Oh, no, indeed; it was men&rsquo;s business to keep the
+nation out of war. Men never had shown marked skill at keeping nations out of
+war in the history of the world. But never mind! Logic must not be pressed too
+hard upon the &ldquo;reasoning&rdquo; sex. This time, men would do it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The exciting national election contest was approaching. Party conventions were
+scheduled to meet in June while the amendment languished at the Capitol. It was
+clear that more highly organized woman-power would have to be called into
+action before the national government would speed its pace. To the women voters
+the Eastern women went for decisive assistance. A car known as the
+&ldquo;Suffrage Special,&rdquo; carrying distinguished Eastern women and gifted
+speakers, made an extensive tour of the West and under the banner of the
+Congressional Union called again upon the women voters to come to Chicago on
+June 5th to form a new party,&mdash;The Woman&rsquo;s Party[1]&mdash;to serve
+as long as should be necessary as the balance of power in national contests,
+and thus to force action from the old parties.
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[1] The Woman&rsquo;s Party started with a membership of all Congressional
+Union members in suffrage states. Anne Martin of Nevada was elected chairman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The instant response which met this appeal surpassed the most optimistic hopes.
+Thousands of women assembled in Chicago for this convention, which became
+epoch-making not only in .the suffrage fight but in the whole woman movement.
+For the first time in history, women came together to organize their political
+power into a party to free their own sex. For the first time in history
+representatives of men&rsquo;s political parties came to plead before these
+women voters for the support of their respective parties.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Republican Party sent as its representatives John Hays Hammond and C. S.
+Osborn, formerly Governor of Michigan. The Democrats sent their most persuasive
+orator, President Wilson&rsquo;s friend, Dudley Field Malone, Collector of the
+Port of New York. Allan Benson, candidate for the Presidency on the Socialist
+ticket, represented the Socialist Party. Edward Polling, Prohibition leader,
+spoke for the Prohibition Party, arid Victor Murdock and Gifford Pinchot for
+The Progressive Party.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All laid their claims for suffrage support before the women with the result
+that the convention resolved itself into another political party&mdash;The
+Woman&rsquo;s Party. A new party with but one plank&mdash;the immediate passage
+of the federal suffrage amendment&mdash;a party determined to withhold its
+support from all existing parties until women were politically free, and to
+punish politically any party in power which did not use its power to free
+women; a party which became a potent factor of protest in the following
+national election.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This first step towards the solidarity of women quickly brought results. The
+Republican National Convention, meeting immediately. after the Woman&rsquo;s
+Party Convention, and the Democratic National Convention the week following,
+both included suffrage planks in their national platforms for the first time in
+history. To be sure, they were planks that failed to satisfy us. But the mere
+hint of organized political action on suffrage had moved the two dominant
+parties to advance a step. The new Woman&rsquo;s Party had declared suffrage a
+national political issue. The two major parties acknowledged the issue by
+writing it into their party platforms.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Republican platform was vague and indefinite on national suffrage. The
+Democratic Party made its suffrage plank specific against action by Congress.
+It precisely said, &ldquo;We recommend the extension of the franchise to the
+women of the country by the states upon the same terms as men.&rdquo; It was
+openly stated at the Democratic Convention by leading Administration Democrats
+that the President himself had written this suffrage plank. If the Republicans
+could afford to write a vague and indefinite plank, the President and his party
+could not. They as the party in power had been under fire and were forced to
+take sides. They did so. The President chose the plank and his subordinates
+followed his lead. It may be remarked in passing that this declaration so
+solidified the opposition within the President&rsquo;s party that when the
+President ultimately sought to repudiate it, he met stubborn resistance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Protected by the President&rsquo;s plank, the Democratic Congress continued to
+block national suffrage. It would not permit it even to be reported from the
+Judiciary Committee. The party platform was written. The President, too, found
+it easy to hide behind the plank which he had himself written, counting on
+women to be satisfied. To Mrs. D. E. Hooker of Richmond, Virginia, who as a
+delegate from the Virginia Federation of Labor, representing 60,000 members,
+went to him soon after to ask his support of the amendment, the President said,
+&ldquo;I am opposed by conviction and political traditions to federal action on
+this question. Moreover, after the plank which was adopted in the Democratic
+platform at St. Louis, I could not comply with the request contained in this
+resolution even if I wished to do so.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+President Wilson could not act because the party plank which he had written
+prevented him from doing so!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meanwhile the women continued to protest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Mabel Vernon of Delaware, beloved and gifted crusader, was the first
+member of the Woman&rsquo;s Party to commit a &ldquo;militant&rdquo; act.
+President Wilson, speaking at the dedication services of the Labor Temple in
+Washington, was declaring his interest in all classes and all struggles. He was
+proclaiming his beliefs in the abstractions of liberty and justice, when Miss
+Vernon, who was seated on the platform from which he was speaking, said in her
+powerful voice, &ldquo;Mr. President, if you sincerely desire to forward the
+interests of all the people, why do you oppose the national enfranchisement of,
+women?&rdquo; Instant consternation arose, but the idea had penetrated to the
+farthest corner of the huge assembly that women were protesting to the
+President against the denial of their liberty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The President found time to answer, &ldquo;That is one of the things which we
+will have to take counsel over later,&rdquo; and resumed his speech. Miss
+Vernon repeated her question later and was ordered from the meeting by the
+police.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As the summer wore on, women realized that they would have to enter the
+national contest in the autumn. Attention was focussed on the two rival
+presidential candidates, Woodrow Wilson and Charles Evans Hughes, the
+Republican nominee, upon whom the new Woman&rsquo;s Party worked diligently for
+prompt statements of their position on the national amendment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The next political result of the new solidarity of women was Mr. Hughes&rsquo;
+declaration on August 1st, 1916: &ldquo;My view is that the proposed amendment
+should be submitted and ratified and the subject removed from political
+discussion.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Democratic Congress adjourned without even report ing the measure to that
+body for a vote, and went forthwith to the country to ask reelection.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We also went to the country. We went to the women voters to lay before them
+again the Democratic Party&rsquo;s record&mdash;now complete through one
+Administration. We asked women voters again to withhold their support
+nationally from President Wilson and his party.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The President accepted at once the opportunity to speak before a convention of
+suffragists at Atlantic City in an effort to prove his great belief in
+suffrage. He said poetically, &ldquo;The tide is rising to meet the moon . . .
+. You can afford to wait&rdquo; Whatever we may have thought of his figure of
+speech, we disagreed with his conclusion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The campaign on, Democratic speakers throughout the West found an unexpected
+organized force among women, demanding an explanation of the past conduct of
+the Democratic Party and insisting on an immediate declaration by the President
+in favor of the amendment. Democratic orators did their utmost to meet this
+opposition. &ldquo;Give the President time. He can&rsquo;t do everything at
+once.&rdquo; &ldquo;Trust him once more; he will do it for you next
+term.&rdquo; &ldquo;He kept us out of war. He is the best friend the mothers of
+the nation ever had&rdquo; &ldquo;He stood by you. Now you women stand by
+him.&rdquo; &ldquo;What good will votes do you if the Germans come over here
+and take your country?&rdquo; And so on. Enticing doctrine to women&mdash;the
+peace lovers of the human race.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Although we entered this contest with more strength than we had had in 1914,
+with a budget five times as large and with piled-up evidence of Democratic
+hostility, we could rot have entered a more difficult contest. The people were
+excited to an almost unprecedented pitch over the issue of peace versus war. In
+spite of the difficulty of competing with this emotional issue which meant the
+immediate disposal of millions of lives, it was soon evident that the two
+issues were running almost neck and neck in the Western territory.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No less skilled a campaigner than William Jennings Bryan took the stump in the
+West against the Woman&rsquo;s Party. At least a third of each speech was
+devoted to suffrage. He urged. He exhorted. He apologized. He explained. He
+pleaded. He condemned. Often he was heckled. Often he saw huge &ldquo;VOTE
+AGAINST WILSON! HE KEPT US OUT OF SUFFRAGE!&rdquo; banners at the doors of his
+meetings. One woman in Arizona, who, unable longer to listen in patience to the
+glory of &ldquo;a democracy where only were governed those who
+consented,&rdquo; interrupted him. He coldly answered, &ldquo;Madam, you cannot
+pick cherries before they are ripe.&rdquo; By the time he got to. California,
+however, the cherries had ripened considerably, for Mr. Bryan came out publicly
+for the national amendment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What was true of Mr. Bryan was true of practically every Democratic campaigner.
+Against their wills they were forced to talk about suffrage, although they had
+serenely announced at the opening of the campaign that it was &ldquo;not an
+issue in this campaign.&rdquo; Some merely apologized and explained. Others,
+like Dudley Field Malone, spoke for the federal amendment, and promised to work
+to put it through the next Congress, &ldquo;if only you women will stand by
+Wilson and return him to power.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Space will not permit in this book to give more than a hint of the scope and
+strength of our campaign. If it were possible to give a glimpse of the speeches
+made by men in that campaign, you would agree that it was not peace alone that
+was the dominant issue, but peace and suffrage. It must be made perfectly clear
+that the Woman&rsquo;s Party did not attempt to elect Mr. Hughes. It did not
+feel strong enough to back a candidate in its first battle, and did not conduct
+its fight affirmatively at all. No speeches were made for Mr. Hughes and the
+Republican Party. The appeal was to vote a vote of protest against Mr. Wilson
+and his Congressional candidates, because he and his party had had the power to
+pass the amendment through Congress and had refused to do so. That left the
+women free to choose from among the Republicans, Socialists and
+Prohibitionists. It was to be expected that the main strength of the vote taken
+from Mr. Wilson would go to Mr. Hughes, as few women perhaps threw their votes
+to the minority parties. But just as the Progressive Party&rsquo;s protest had
+been effective in securing progressive legislation without winning the
+election, so the Woman&rsquo;s Party hoped its protest would bring results in
+Congress without attempting to win the election.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+History will never know in round numbers how many women voted against the
+President and his party at this crisis, for there are no records kept for men
+and women separately, except in one state, in Illinois. The women there voted
+two to one against Mr. Wilson and for Mr. Hughes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Men outnumber women throughout the entire western territory; in some states,
+two and three to one; in Nevada, still higher. But, whereas, in the election of
+191, President Wilson got 69 electoral votes from the suffrage states, in the
+1916 election, when the whole West was aflame for him because of his peace
+policy, he got only 57. Enthusiasm for Mr. Hughes in the West was not
+sufficiently marked to account entirely for the loss of these 12 electoral
+votes. Our claim that Democratic opposition to suffrage had cost many of them
+was never seriously denied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Democratic Judiciary Committee of the House which had refused to report
+suffrage to the House for a vote, had only one Democratic member from a
+suffrage state, Mr. Taggart of Kansas, standing for reelection. This was the
+only spot where women could strike out against the action of this
+committee&mdash;and Mr. Taggart. They struck with success. He was defeated
+almost wholly by the women&rsquo;s votes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With a modest campaign fund of slightly over fifty thousand dollars, raised
+almost entirely in small sums, the women had forced the campaign committee of
+the Democratic Party to assume the defensive and to practically double
+expenditure and work on this issue. As much literature was used on suffrage as
+on peace in the suffrage states.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Many Democrats although hostile to our campaign said without qualification that
+the Woman&rsquo;s Party protest was the only factor in the campaign which
+stemmed the western tide toward Wilson, and which finally made California the
+pivotal state and left his election in doubt for a week.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Again, with more force, national suffrage had been injected into a campaign
+where it was not wanted, where the leaders had hoped the single issue of
+&ldquo;peace&rdquo; would hold the center of the stage. Again many women had
+stood together on this issue and put woman suffrage first. And the actual
+reelection of President Wilson had its point of advantage, too, for it enabled
+us to continue the education of a man in power who had already had four years
+of lively training on the woman question.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap05"></a>Chapter 3<br/>
+The Last Deputation to President Wilson</h2>
+
+<p>
+Of the hundreds of women who volunteered for the last Western campaign, perhaps
+the most effective in their appeal were the disfranchised Eastern women.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The most dramatic figure of them all was Inez Milholland Boissevain, the
+gallant and beloved crusader who gave her life that the day of women&rsquo;s
+freedom might be hastened. Her last words to the nation as she fell fainting on
+the platform in California were, &ldquo;Mr. President, how long must women wait
+for liberty?&rdquo; Her fiery challenge was never heard again. She never
+recovered from the terrific strain of the campaign which had undermined her
+young strength. Her death touched the heart of the nation; her sacrifice, made
+so generously for liberty, lighted anew the fire of rebellion in women, and
+aroused from inertia thousands never before interested in the liberation of
+their own sex.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Memorial meetings were held throughout the country at which women not only paid
+radiant tribute to Inez Milholland, but reconsecrated themselves to the
+struggle and called again upon the reelected President and his Congress to act.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The most impressive of these memorials was held on Christmas Day in Washington.
+In Statuary Hall under the dome of the Capitol&mdash;the scene of memorial
+services for Lincoln and Garfield&mdash;filled with statues of outstanding
+figures in the struggle for political and religious liberty in this country,
+the first memorial service ever held in the Capitol to honor a woman, was held
+for this gallant young leader.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Boy choristers singing the magnificent hymn
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&ldquo;Forward through the darkness<br/>
+Leave behind the night,<br/>
+Forward out of error,<br/>
+Forward into light&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+led into the hall the procession of young girl banner-bearers. Garbed in simple
+surplices, carrying their crusading banners high above their heads, these
+comrades of Inez Milholland Boissevain seemed more triumphant than sad. They
+seemed to typify the spirit in which she gave her life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Still other young girls in white held great golden banners flanking the
+laurel-covered dais, from which could be read the inscriptions: &ldquo;Greater
+love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friend&rdquo; . .
+. &ldquo;Without extinction is liberty; Without retrograde is equality&rdquo; .
+. . &ldquo;As He died to make men holy let us die to make men free&rdquo; . . .
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From behind the heavy velvet curtains came the music of voices and strings, and
+the great organ sounded its tragic and triumphant tones.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Maud Younger of California was chosen to make the memorial address on this
+occasion. She said in part:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We are here to pay tribute to Inez Milholland Boissevain, who was our
+comrade. We are here in the nation&rsquo;s capital, the seat of our democracy,
+to pay tribute to one who gave up her life to realize that democracy . . . .
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Inez Milholland walked down the path of life a radiant being. She went
+into work with a song in her heart. She went into battle with a laugh on her
+lips. Obstacles inspired her, discouragement urged her on. She loved work and
+she loved battle. She loved life and laughter and light, and above all else she
+loved liberty. With a loveliness beyond most, a kindliness, a beauty of mind
+and soul, she typified always the best and noblest in womanhood. She was the
+flaming torch that went ahead to light the way&mdash;the symbol of light and
+freedom . . .
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Symbol of the woman&rsquo;s struggle, it was she who carried to the West
+the appeal of the unenfranchised, and carrying it, made her last appeal on
+earth, her last journey in life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;As she set out upon her last journey, she seems to have had the clearer
+vision, the spiritual quality of one who has already set out for another world.
+With infinite understanding and intense faith in her mission, she was as one
+inspired. Her meetings were described as &lsquo;revival meetings,&rsquo; her
+audiences as &lsquo;wild with enthusiasm.&rsquo; Thousands acclaimed her,
+thousands were turned away unable to enter . . .
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And she made her message very plain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She stood for no man, no party. She stood only for woman. And standing
+thus she urged:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;It is women for women now and shall be until the fight is won!
+Together we shall stand shoulder to shoulder for the greatest principle the
+world has-ever known, the right of self-government.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Whatever the party that has ignored the claims of women we as
+women must refuse to uphold it. We must refuse to uphold any party until all
+women are free.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;We have nothing but our spirits to rely on and the vitality of
+our faith, but spirit is invincible.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;It is only for a little while. Soon the fight will be over.
+Victory is in sight.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Though she did not live to see that victory, it is sweet to know that
+she lived to see her faith in women justified. In one of her last letters she
+wrote:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Not only did we reckon accurately on women&rsquo;s loyalty to
+women, but we likewise realized that our appeal touched a certain spiritual,
+idealistic quality in the western woman voter, a quality which is yearning to
+find expression in political life. At the idealism of the Woman&rsquo;s Party
+her whole nature flames into enthusiasm and her response is immediate. She
+gladly transforms a narrow partisan loyalty into loyalty to a principle, the
+establishment of which carries with it no personal advantage to its advocate,
+but merely the satisfaction of achieving one more step toward the emancipation
+of mankind . . . . We are bound to win. There never has been a fight yet where
+interest was pitted against principle that principle did not triumph!&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo; . . The trip was fraught with hardship. Speaking day and night, she
+would take a train at two in the morning to arrive at eight; then a train at
+midnight to arrive at five in the morning. Yet she would not change the
+program; she would not leave anything out . . .
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And so . . . her life went out in glory in the shining cause of freedom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And as she had lived loving liberty, working for liberty, fighting for
+liberty, so it was that with this word on her lips she fell. &lsquo;How long
+must women wait for liberty?&rsquo; she cried and fell-as surely as any soldier
+upon the field of honor&mdash;as truly as any who ever gave up his life for an
+ideal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;As in life she had been the symbol of the woman&rsquo;s cause so in
+death she is the symbol of its sacrifice. The whole daily sacrifice, the
+pouring out of life and strength that is the toll of woman&rsquo;s prolonged
+struggle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Inez Milholland is one around whom legends will grow up. Generations to
+come will point out Mount Inez and tell of the beautiful woman who sleeps her
+last sleep on its slopes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They will tell of her in the West, tell of the vision of loveliness as
+she flashed through on her last burning mission, flashed through to her
+death&mdash;a falling star in the western heavens.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But neither legend nor vision is liberty, which was her life. Liberty
+cannot die. No work for liberty can be lost. It lives on in the hearts of the
+people, in their hopes, their aspira- tions, their activities. It becomes part
+of the life of the nation. What Inez Milholland has given to the world lives on
+forever.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We are here to-day to pay tribute to Inez Milholland Boissevain, who was
+our comrade. Let our tribute be not words which pass, nor song which flies, nor
+flower which fades. Let it be this: that we finish the task she could not
+finish; that with new strength we take up the struggle in which fighting beside
+us she fell; that with new faith we here consecrate ourselves to the cause of
+woman&rsquo;s freedom until that cause is won; that with new devotion we go
+forth, inspired by her sacrifice, to the end that her sacrifice be not in vain,
+for dying she shall bring to pass that which living she could not
+achieve&mdash;full freedom for women, full democracy for the nation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let this be our tribute, imperishable, to Inez Milholland
+Boissevain.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Anne Martin of Nevada, chairman of the Woman&rsquo;s Party, presided over
+the services. Other speakers were Honorable George Sutherland, United States
+Senator from Utah, representing the United States Congress; and Honorable
+Rowland S. Mahany, former member of Congress and lifelong friend of the
+Milholland family.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. William Kent of California, wife of Representative Kent, presented two
+resolutions which the vast audience approved by silently rising. One
+resolution, a tribute of rare beauty, prepared by Zona Gale, a friend of Inez
+Milholland, was a compelling appeal to all women to understand and to reverence
+the ideals of this inspiring leader. The other was an appeal to the
+Administration for action.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The pageantry of surpliced choristers and the long line of girl
+standard-bearers retired to the strains of the solemn recessional. The great
+audience sat still with bowed heads as the voices in the distance dropped in
+silence. Instantly the strains of the Marseillaise, filling the great dome with
+its stirring and martial song of hope, were taken up by the organ and the
+strings, and the audience was lifted to its feet singing as if in anticipation
+of the triumph of liberty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The women were in no mood merely to mourn the loss of a comrade- leader. The
+government must be shown again its share of responsibility. Another appeal must
+be made to the President who, growing steadily in control over the people and
+over his Congress, was the one leader powerful enough to direct his party to
+accept this reform. But he was busy gathering his power to lead them elsewhere.
+Again we would have to compete with pro-war anti-war sentiment. But it was no
+time to relax.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Following the holiday season a deputation of over three hundred women carried
+to the White House the Christmas Day memorial for Inez Milholland and other
+memorials from similar services. The President was brought face to face with
+the new protest of women against the continued waste of physical and spiritual
+energy in their battle. There is no better way to picture the protest than to
+give you something verbatim from the speeches made that memorable day. This was
+the first meeting of suffragists with the President since the campaign against
+him in the previous autumn. It was only because of the peculiar character of
+the appeal that he consented to hear them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Younger presented the national memorial to him and introduced Mrs. John
+Winters Brannan, who made no plea to the President but merely gave him the New
+York memorial which read as follows:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This gathering of men and women, assembled on New Year&rsquo;s day in
+New York to hold a memorial service in honor of Inez Milholland Boissevain,
+appeals to you, the President of the United States, to end the outpouring of
+life and effort that has been made for the enfranchisement of women for more
+than seventy years in this country. The death of this lovely and brave women
+symbolizes the whole daily sacrifice that vast numbers of women have made and
+are making for the sake of political freedom. It has made vivid the
+&lsquo;constant unnoticed tragedy of, this prolonged effort for a freedom that
+is acknowledged just, but still denied.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is not given to all to be put to the supreme test and to accept that
+test with such gallant gladness as she did. The struggle, however, has reached
+the point where it requires such intensity of effort&mdash;relentless and
+sustained&mdash;over the whole vast country, that the health of thousands of
+noble women is being insidiously undermined. If this continues, and it will
+continue until victory is won, we know only too surely that many women whom the
+nation can ill spare will follow in the footsteps of Inez Milholland.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We desire to make known to you, Mr. President, our deep sense of wrong
+being inflicted upon women in making them spend their health and strength and
+forcing them to abandon other work that means fuller self-expression, in order
+to win freedom under a government that professes to believe in democracy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There is only one cause for which it is right to risk health and life.
+No price is too high to pay for liberty. So long as lives of women are
+required, these lives will be given.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But we beg of you, Mr. President, so to act that this ghastly price will
+not have to be paid. Certainly it is a grim irony that a Republic should exact
+it. Upon you at this moment rests a solemn responsibility; for with you it
+rests to decide whether the life of this brilliant, dearly-loved woman whose
+glorious death we commemorate to-day, shall be the last sacrifice of fife
+demanded of American women in their struggle for self-government.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We ask you with all the fervor and earnestness of our souls to exert
+your power over Congress in behalf of the national enfranchisement of women in
+the same way you have so successfully used it on other occasions and for far
+less important measures.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We are confident that if the President of the United States decides that
+this act of justice shall be done in the present session of Congress, it will
+be done. We know further that if the President does not urge it, it will not be
+done. . . &ldquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A fraction of a moment of silence follows, but it is long enough to feel
+strongly the emotional state of mind of the President. It plainly irritates him
+to be so plainly spoken to. We are conscious that his distant poise on entering
+is dwindling to petty confusion. There is something inordinately cool about the
+fervor of the women. This too irritates him. His irritation only serves to
+awaken in every woman new strength. It is a wonderful experience to feel
+strength take possession of your being in a contest of ideas. No amount of
+trappings, no amount of authority, no number of plainclothes men, nor the
+glamour of the gold-braided attaches, nor the vastness of the great reception
+hall, nor the dazzle of the lighted crystal chandeliers, and above all not the
+mind of your opponent can cut in on your slim, hard strength. You are more than
+invincible. Your mind leaps ahead to the infinite liberty of which yours is
+only a small part. You feel his strength in authority, his weakness in vision.
+He does not follow. He feels sorrow for us. He patronizes us. He must temper
+his irritation at our undoubted fanaticism and unreason. We, on the other hand,
+feel so superior to him. Our strength to demand is so much greater than his
+power to withhold. But he does not perceive this.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the midst of these currents the serene and appealing voice of Sara Bard
+Field came as a temporary relief to the President&mdash;but only temporary. Shy
+brought tears to the eyes of the women as she said in presenting the California
+memorial resolutions:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mr. President, a year ago I had the honor of calling upon you with a
+similar deputation. At that time we brought from my western country a great
+petition from the voting women urging your assistance in the passage of the
+federal amendment for suffrage. At that time you were most gracious to us. You
+showed yourself to be in line with all the progressive leaders by your
+statement to us that you could change your mind and would consider doing so in
+connection with this amendment. We went away that day with hope in our hearts,
+but neither the hope inspired by your friendly words nor the faith we had in
+you as an advocate of democracy kept us from working day and night in the
+interest of our cause.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Since that day when we came to you, Mr. President, one of our most
+beautiful and beloved comrades, Inez Milholland, has paid the price of her life
+for this cause. The untimely death of a young woman like this&mdash;a woman for
+whom the world has such bitter need&mdash;has focussed the attention of the men
+and women of the nation on the fearful waste of women which this fight for the
+ballot is entailing. The same maternal instinct for the preservation of
+life&mdash;whether it be the physical life of a child or the spiritual life of
+a cause&mdash;is sending women into this battle for liberty with an urge which
+gives them no rest night or day. Every advance of liberty has demanded its
+quota of human sacrifice, but if I had time I could show you that we have paid
+in a measure that is running over. In the light of Inez Milholland&rsquo;s
+death, as we look over the long backward trail through which we have sought our
+political liberty, we are asking how long must this struggle go on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mr. President, to the nation more than to women alone is this waste of
+maternal force significant. In industry such a waste of money and strength
+would not be permitted. The modern trend is all toward efficiency. Why is such
+waste permitted in the making of a nation?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sometimes I think it must be very hard to be a President, in respect to
+his contacts with people as well as in the great business he must perform. The
+exclusiveness necessary to a great dignitary holds him away from that democracy
+of communion, necessary to a full understanding of what the people .are really
+thinking and desiring. I feel that this deputation to-day fails in its mission
+if, because of the dignity of your office and the formality of such an
+occasion, we fail to bring you the throb of woman&rsquo;s desire for freedom
+and her eagerness to ally herself when once the ballot is in her hand, with all
+those activities to which you, yourself, have dedicated your life. Those tasks
+which this nation has set itself to do are her tasks as well as man&rsquo;s. We
+women who are here to-day are close to this desire of women. We cannot believe
+that you are our enemy or indifferent to the fundamental righteousness of our
+demand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We have come here to you in your powerful office as our helper. We have
+come in the name of justice, in the name of democracy, in the name of all women
+who have fought and died for this cause, and in a peculiar way with our hearts
+bowed in sorrow, in the name of this gallant girl who died with the word
+&lsquo;liberty&rsquo; on her lips. We have come asking you this day to speak
+some favorable word to us that we may know that you will use your good and
+great office to end this wasteful struggle of women.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The highest point in the interview had been reached. Before the President began
+his reply, we were aware that the high moment had gone. But we listened.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ladies, I had not been apprised that you were coming here to make any
+representations that would issue an appeal to me. I had been told that you were
+coming to present memorial resolutions with regard to the very remarkable woman
+whom your cause has lost. I, therefore, am not prepared to say anything further
+than I have said on previous occasions of this sort.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I do not need to tell you where my own convictions and my own personal
+purpose lie, and I need not tell you by what circumscriptions I am bound as
+leader of a party. As the leader of a party my commands come from that party
+and not from private personal convictions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My personal action as a citizen, of course, comes from no source but my
+own conviction. and, therefore, my position has been so frequently defined, and
+I hope so candidly defined, and it is so impossible for me until the orders of
+my party are changed, to do anything other than I am doing as a party leader,
+that I think nothing more is necessary to be said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I do want to say this: I do not see how anybody can fail to observe from
+the utterances of the last campaign that the Democratic Party is more inclined
+than the opposition to assist in this great cause, and it has been a matter of
+surprise to me, and a matter of very great regret that so many of those who
+were heart and soul for this cause seemed so greatly to misunderstand arid
+misinterpret the attitude of parties. In this country, as in every other
+self-governing country, it is really through the instrumentality of parties
+that things can be accomplished. They are not accomplished by the individual
+voice but by concerted action, and that action must come only so fast as you
+can concert it. I have done my best and shall continue to do my best to concert
+it in the interest of a cause in which I personally believe.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dead silence. The President stands for a brief instant at the end of his words
+as if waiting for some faint stir of approval which does not come. He has the
+baffled air of a dis- appointed actor who has failed to &ldquo;get
+across.&rdquo; Then he turns abruptly on his heel and the great doors swallow
+him up. Silently the women file through the corridor and into the fresh air.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The women returned to the spacious headquarters across the park all of one
+mind. How little the President knew about women! How he underestimated their
+intelligence and penetration of things political,! Was it possible that he
+really thought these earnest champions of liberty would merely carry
+resolutions of sorrow and regret to the President?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But this was not the real irony. How lightly he had shifted the responsibility
+for getting results to his party. With what coldness he had bade us
+&ldquo;concert opinion,&rdquo; a thing which he alone could do. That was pretty
+hard to bear, coming as it did when countless forms of appeal had been
+exhausted by which women without sufficient power could &ldquo;concert&rdquo;
+anything. The movement was almost at the point of languishing so universal was
+the belief in the nation that suffrage for women was inevitable. And yet he and
+his party remained immovable.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The three hundred women of the memorial deputation became on their return to
+headquarters a spirited protest meeting.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Plans of action in the event the President refused to help had been under
+consideration by Miss Paul and her executive committee for some time, but they
+were now presented for the first time for approval. There was never a more
+dramatic moment at which to ask the women if they were ready for drastic
+action.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Harriot Stanton Blatch, daughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and a powerful
+leader of women, voiced the feeling of the entire body when she said, in a
+ringing call for action:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We have gone to Congress, we have gone to the President during the last
+four years with great deputations, with small deputations. We have shown the
+interest all over the country in self-government for women&mdash;something that
+the President as a great Democrat ought to understand and respond to instantly.
+Yet he tells us to-day that we must win his party. He said it was strange that
+we did not see before election that his party was more favorable to us than the
+Republican party. How did it show its favor? How did he show his favor today to
+us? He says we have got to convert his party . . . Why? Never before did the
+Democratic Party lie more in the hands of one man than it lies to-day in the
+hands of President Wilson. Never did the Democratic Party have a greater
+leader, and never was it more susceptible to the wish of that leader, than is
+the Democratic Party of to-day to President Wilson. He controls his party, and
+I don&rsquo;t think he is too modest to know it. He can mould it as he wishes
+and he has moulded it. He moulded it quickly before election in the matter of
+the eight-hour law. Was that in his party platform? He had to crush and force
+his party to pass that measure. Yet he is not willing to lay a finger&rsquo;s
+weight on his party to-day for half the people of the United States . . . . Yet
+to-day he tells us that we must wait more&mdash;and more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We can&rsquo;t organize bigger and more influential deputations. We
+can&rsquo;t organize bigger processions. We can&rsquo;t, women, do anything
+more in that line. We have got to take a new departure. We have got to keep the
+question before him all the time. We have got to begin and begin immediately.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Women, it rests with us. We have got to bring to the President,
+individually, day by day, week in and week out, the idea that great numbers of
+women want to be free, wall be free, and want to know what he is going to do
+about it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Won&rsquo;t you come and join us in standing day after day at the gates
+of the White House with banners asking, &lsquo;What will you do, Mr. President,
+for one-half the people of this nation?&rsquo; Stand there as
+sentinels&mdash;sentinels of liberty, sentinels of self-government&mdash;silent
+sentinels. Let us stand beside the gateway where he must pass in and out, so
+that he can never fail to realize that there is a tremendous earnestness and
+insistence back of this measure. Will you not show your allegiance today to
+this ideal of liberty? Will you not be a silent sentinel of liberty and
+self-government?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Deliberations continued. Details were settled. Three thousand dollars was
+raised in a few minutes among these women, fresh from the President&rsquo;s
+rebuff. No one suggested waiting until the next Presidential campaign. No one
+even mentioned the fact that time was precious, and we could wait no longer.
+Every one seemed to feel these things without troubling to put them into words.
+Volunteers signed up for sentinel duty and the fight was on.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="part03"></a>Part III<br/>
+Militancy</h2>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&ldquo;I will write a song for the President, full of menacing signs,<br/>
+And back of it all, millions of discontented eyes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+W<small>ALT</small> W<small>HITMAN</small>
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap06"></a>Chapter 1<br/>
+Picketing a President</h2>
+
+<p>
+When all suffrage controversy has died away it will be the little army of women
+with their purple, white and gold banners, going to prison for their political
+freedom, that will be remembered. They dramatized to victory the long suffrage
+fight in America. The challenge of the picket line roused the government out of
+its half-century sleep of indifference. It stirred the country to hot
+controversy. It made zealous friends and violent enemies. It produced the
+sharply-drawn contest which forced the surrender of the government in the
+second Administration of President Wilson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The day following the memorial deputation to the President, January 10th, 1917,
+the first line of sentinels, a dozen in number, appeared for duty at the White
+House gates. In retrospect it must seem to the most inflexible person a
+reasonably mild and gentle thing to have done. But at the same time it caused a
+profound stir. Columns of front page space in all the newspapers of the country
+gave more or less dispassionate accounts of the main facts. Women carrying
+banners were standing quietly at the White House gates &ldquo;picketing&rdquo;
+the President; women wanted President Wilson to put his power behind the
+suffrage amendment in Congress. That did not seem so shocking and only a few
+editors broke out into hot condemnation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When, however, the women went back on the picket line the next day and the next
+and the next, it began to dawn upon the excited press that such persistence was
+&ldquo;undesirable&rdquo; . . . &ldquo;unwomanly&rdquo;
+…&ldquo;dangerous.&rdquo; Gradually the people most hostile to the idea of
+suffrage in any form marshaled forth the fears which accompany every departure
+from the prescribed path. Partisan Democrats frowned. Partisan Republicans
+chuckled. The rest remained in cautious silence to see how &ldquo;others&rdquo;
+would take it. Following the refrain of the press, the protest-chorus grew
+louder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Silly women&rdquo; . . . &ldquo;unsexed&rdquo; . . .&rdquo;
+pathological&rdquo; . . . &ldquo;They must be crazy&rdquo; . . .
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t they know anything about politics?&rdquo; . . . &ldquo;What
+can Wilson do? He does not have to sign the constitutional amendment.&rdquo; .
+. . So ran the comment from the wise elderly gentlemen sitting buried in their
+cushioned chairs at the gentlemen&rsquo;s club across the Park, watching
+eagerly the &ldquo;shocking,&rdquo; &ldquo;shameless&rdquo; women at the gates
+of the White House. No wonder these gentlemen found the pickets irritating!
+This absorbing topic of conversation, we are told, shattered many an otherwise
+quiet afternoon and broke up many a quiet game. Here were American women before
+their very eyes daring to shock them into having to think about liberty. And
+what was worse&mdash;liberty for women. Ah well, this could not go
+on,&mdash;this insult to the President. They could with impunity condemn him
+and gossip about his affairs. But that women should stand at his gates asking
+for liberty&mdash;that was a sin without mitigation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Disapproval was not confined merely to the gentlemen in their Club. I merely
+mention them as an example, for they were our neighbors, and the strain on them
+day by day, as our beautiful banners floated gaily out from our headquarters
+was, I am told, a heavy one.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yet, of course, we enjoyed irritating them. Standing on the icy pavement on a
+damp, wintry day in the penetrating cold of a Washington winter, knowing that
+within a stone&rsquo;s throw of our agony there was a greater agony than
+ours&mdash;there was a joy in that!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There were faint rumblings also in Congress, but like so many of its feelings
+they were confined largely to the cloak rooms. Representative Emerson of Ohio
+did demand from the floor of the House that the &ldquo;suffrage guard be
+withdrawn, as it is an insult to the President,&rdquo; but his protest met with
+no response whatever from the other members. His oratory fell on indifferent
+ears. And of course there were always those in Congress who got a vicarious
+thrill watching women do in their fight what they themselves had not the
+courage to do in their own. Another representative, an anti-suffrage Democrat,
+inconsiderately called us &ldquo;Iron-jawed angels,&rdquo; and hoped we would
+retire. But if by these protests these congressmen hoped to arouse their
+colleagues, they failed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We were standing at the gates of the White House because the American Congress
+had become so supine that it could not or would not act without being compelled
+to act by the President. They knew that if they howled at us it would only
+afford an opportunity to retort&mdash;&ldquo;Very well then, if you do not like
+us at the gates of your leader; if you do not want us to &lsquo;insult&rsquo;
+the President, end this agitation by taking the matter into your own hands and
+passing the amendment.&rdquo; Such a sug- gestion would be almost as severe a
+shock as our picketing. The thought of actually initiating legislation left a
+loyal Demo- cratic follower transfixed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The heavy dignity of the Senate forbade their meddling much in this controversy
+over tactics. Also they were more interested in the sporting prospect of our
+going into the world war. There was no appeal to blood-lust in the
+women&rsquo;s fight. There were no shining rods of steel. There was no martial
+music. We were not pledging precious lives and vast billions in our crusade for
+liberty. The beginning of our fight did indeed seem tiny and frail by the side
+of the big game of war, and so the senators were at first scarcely aware of our
+presence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the intrepid women stood their long vigils, day by day, at the White House
+gates, through biting wind and driving rain, through sleet and snow as well as
+sunshine, waiting for the President to act. Above all the challenges of their
+banners rang this simple, but insistent one:
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+Mr. President<br/>
+How Long Must Women Wait for Liberty?
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+The royal blaze of purple, white and gold-the Party&rsquo;s tricolored
+banners&mdash;made a gorgeous spot of color against the bare, blacklimbed
+trees.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There were all kinds of pickets and so there were all kinds of reactions to the
+experience of picketing. The beautiful lady, who drove up in her limousine to
+do a twenty minute turn on the line, found it thrilling, no doubt. The winter
+tourist who had read about the pickets in her home paper thought it would be
+&ldquo;so exciting&rdquo; to hold a banner for a few minutes. But there were no
+illusions in the hearts of the women who stood at their posts day in and day
+out. None of them will tell you that they felt exalted, ennobled, exhilarated,
+possessed of any rare and exotic emotion. They were human beings before they
+were pickets. Their reactions were those of any human beings called upon to set
+their teeth doggedly and hang on to an unpleasant job.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;When will that woman come to relieve me? I have stood here an hour and a
+half and my feet are like blocks of ice,&rdquo; was a more frequent comment
+from picket to picket than &ldquo;Isn&rsquo;t it glorious to stand here
+defiantly no matter what the stupid people say about us?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I remember the thousand and one engaging things that would come to my
+mind on the picket line. It seemed that anything but standing at a
+President&rsquo;s gate would be more diverting. But there we stood.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And what were the reflections of a President as he saw the indomitable little
+army at his gates? We can only venture to say from events which happened. At
+first he seemed amused and interested. Perhaps he thought it a trifling
+incident staged by a minority of the extreme &ldquo;left&rdquo; among
+suffragists and anticipated no popular support for it. When he saw their
+persistence through a cruel winnter his sympathy was touched. He ordered the
+guards to invite them in for a cup of hot coffee, which they declined. He
+raised his hat to them as he drove through the line. Sometimes he smiled. As
+yet he was not irritated. He was fortified in his national power.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With the country&rsquo;s entrance into the war and his immediate elevation to
+world leadership, the pickets began to be a serious thorn in his flesh. His own
+statements of faith in democracy and the necessity for establishing it
+.throughout the world left him open to attack. His refusal to pay the just bill
+owed the women and demanded by them brought irritation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What would you do if you owed a just bill and every day some one stood outside
+your gates as a quiet reminder to the whole world that you had not paid it?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+You would object. You would get terribly irritated. You would call the
+insistent one all kinds of harsh names. You might even arrest him. But the
+scandal would be out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Rightly or wrongly, your sincerity would be touched; faith in you would be
+shaken a bit. Perhaps even against your will you would yield.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But you would yield. And that was the one important fact to the women.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This daily sight, inspiring, gallant and impressive, escaped no visitor to the
+national capital. Distinguished visitors from the far corners of the earth
+passed by the pickets on those days which made history. Thousands read the
+compelling messages on the banners, and literally hundreds of thousands learned
+the story, when the visitors got &ldquo;back home.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Real displeasure over the sentinels by those who passed was negligible. There
+was some mirth and joking, but the vast majority were filled with admiration,
+either silent or expressed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Keep it up.&rdquo; . . . &ldquo;You are on the right track.&rdquo; . . .
+&ldquo;Congratulations.&rdquo; . . . &ldquo;I certainly admire your
+pluck&mdash;stick to it and you will get it.&rdquo; . . . This last from a
+military officer . . . . &ldquo;It is an outrage that you women should have to
+stand here and beg for your rights. We gave it to our women in Australia long
+ago:&rdquo; . . . This from a charming gentleman who bowed approvingly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Often a lifted hat was held in sincere reverence over the heart as some
+courteous gentleman passed along the picket line. Of course there were some who
+came to try to argue with the pickets; who attempted to dissuade them from
+their persistent course. But the serene, good humor and even temper of the
+women would not allow heated arguments to break in on the military precision of
+their line. If a question was asked, a picket would answer quietly. An
+occasional sneer was easy to meet. That required no acknowledgment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A sweet old veteran of the Civil War said to one of my comrades: &ldquo;Yous
+all right; you gotta fight for your rights in this world, and now that we are
+about to plunge into another war, I want to tell you women there&rsquo;ll be no
+end to it unless you women get power. We can&rsquo;t save ourselves and we need
+you . . . . I am 84 years old, and I have watched this fight since I was a
+young man. Anything I can do to help, I want to do. I am living at the Old
+Soldiers&rsquo; Home and I ain&rsquo;t got mach money, but here&rsquo;s
+something for your campaign. It&rsquo;s all I got, and God bless you,
+you&rsquo;ve gotta win.&rdquo; He spoke the last sentence almost with
+desperation as he shoved a crumpled $2.00 bill into her hand. His spirit made
+it a precious gift.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Cabinet members passed and repassed. Congressmen by the hundreds came and went.
+Administration leaders tried to conceal under an. artificial indifference their
+sensitiveness to our strategy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And domestic battles were going on inside the homes throughout the country, for
+women were coming from every state in the Union, to take their place on the
+line. For the first time good &ldquo;suffrage-husbands&rdquo; were made
+uncomfortable. Had they not always believed in suffrage? Had they not always
+been uncomplaining when their wife&rsquo;s time was given to suffrage
+campaigning? Had they not, in short, been good sports about the whole thing?
+There was only one answer. They had. But it had been proved that all the things
+that women had done and all the things in which their menfolk had cooperated,
+were not enough. Women were called upon for more intensive action. &ldquo;You
+cannot go to Washington and risk your health standing in front of the White
+House. I cannot have it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But the time has come when we have to take risks of health or anything
+else.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, then, if you must know, I don&rsquo;t believe in it. Now I am a
+reasonable man and I have stood by you all the way up to now, but I object to
+this. It isn&rsquo;t ladylike, and it will do the cause more harm than good.
+You women lay yourselves open to ridicule.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s just it&mdash;that&rsquo;s a fine beginning. As soon as men
+get tired laughing at us, they will do something more about it. They
+won&rsquo;t find our campaign so amusing before long.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But I protest. You&rsquo;ve no right to go without considering
+me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But if your country called you in a fight for democracy, as it is likely
+to do at any moment, you&rsquo;d go, wouldn&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, of course.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course you would. You would go to the front and leave me to struggle
+on as best I could without you. That is the way you would respond to your
+country&rsquo;s call, whether it was a righteous cause or not. Well, I am going
+to the front too. I am going to answer the women&rsquo;s call to fight for
+democracy. I would be ashamed of myself if I were not willing to join my
+comrades. I am sorry that you object, but if you will just put yourself in my
+place you will see that I cannot do otherwise.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It must be recorded that there were exceptional men of sensitive imaginations
+who urged women against their own hesitancy. They are the handful who gave
+women a hope that they would not always have to struggle alone for their
+liberation. And women passed by the daily picket line as spectators, not as
+participants. Occasionally a woman came forward to remonstrate, but more often
+women were either too shy to advance or so enthusiastic that nothing could
+restrain them. The more kind-hearted of them, inspired by the dauntless pickets
+in the midst of a now freezing temperature, brought mittens, fur pieces,
+golashes, wool -lined raincoats: hot bricks to stand on, coffee in thermos
+bottles and what not.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meanwhile the pickets became a household word in Washington, and very soon were
+the subject of animated conversation in practically every corner of the nation.
+The Press cartoonists, by their friendly and satirical comments, helped a great
+deal in popularizing the campaign. In spite of the bitter editorial comment of
+most of the press, the humor of the situation had an almost universal appeal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the Washington dinner of the Gridiron Club, probably the best known press
+club in the world,&mdash;a dinner at which President Wilson was a
+guest,&mdash;one of the songs sung for his benefit was as follows:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&ldquo;We&rsquo;re camping to-night on the White House grounds<br/>
+Give us a rousing cheer;<br/>
+Our golden flag we hold aloft, of cops we have no fear.<br/>
+Many of the pickets are weary to-night,<br/>
+Wishing for the war to cease; many are the chilblains and frost- bites
+too;<br/>
+It is no life of ease.<br/>
+Camping to-night, camping to-night,<br/>
+Camping on the White House grounds.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The White House police on duty at the gates came to treat the picketers as
+comrades.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I was kinds worried,&rdquo; confessed one burly officer when the pickets
+were five minutes late one day. &ldquo;We thought perhaps you weren&rsquo;t
+coming and we world have to hold down this place alone.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The bitter-enders among the opponents of suffrage broke into such violent
+criticism that they won new friends to the amendment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+People who had never before thought of suffrage for women had to think of it,
+if only to the extent of objecting to the way in which we asked for it. People
+who had thought a little about suffrage were compelled to think more about it.
+People who had believed in suffrage all their lives, but had never done a,
+stroke of work for it, began to make speeches about it, if only for the purpose
+of condemning us.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Some politicians who had voted for it when there were not enough votes to carry
+the measure loudly threatened to commit political suicide by withdrawing their
+support. But it was easy to see at a glance that they would not dare to run so
+great a political risk on an issue growing daily more important.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As soon as the regular picket line began to be accepted as a matter of course,
+we undertook to touch it up a bit to sustain public interest. State days were
+inaugurated, beginning with Maryland. The other states took up the idea with
+enthusiasm. There was a College Day, when women representing 15 American
+colleges stood on the line; a Teachers&rsquo; Day, which found the long line
+represented by almost every state in the Union, and a Patriotic Day, when
+American flags mingled with the party&rsquo;s banners carried by
+representatives of the Women&rsquo;s Reserve Corps, Daughters of the Revolution
+and other patriotic organizations. And there were professional days when women
+doctors, lawyers and nurses joined the picket appeal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lincoln&rsquo;s birthday anniversary saw another new feature. A long line of
+women took out banners bearing the slogans:
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+LINCOLN STOOD FOR WOMAN SUFFRAGE 60 YEARS AGO.<br/>
+MR. PRESIDENT, WHY DO YOU BLOCK THE NATIONAL SUFFRAGE AMENDMENT TO-DAY?<br/>
+<br/>
+WHY ARE YOU BEHIND LINCOLN?
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+and another:
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+AFTER THE CIVIL WAR, WOMEN ASKED FOR POLITICAL FREEDOM. THEY WERE TOLD TO
+WAIT&mdash;THIS WAS THE NEGRO&rsquo;S HOUR. IN 1917 AMERICAN WOMEN STILL ASK
+FOR FREEDOM.<br/>
+WILL YOU, MR. PRESIDENT, TELL THEM TO WAIT-THAT THIS IS THE PORTO RICANS
+HOUR?[1]
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[1] President Wilson had just advocated self-government for Porto Rican men.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A huge labor demonstration on the picket line late in February brought women
+wage earners from office and factory throughout the Eastern States.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A special Susan B. Anthony Day on the anniversary of the birth of that great
+pioneer, served to remind. the President who said, &ldquo;You can afford to
+wait,&rdquo; that the women had been waiting and fighting for this legislation
+to pass Congress since the year 1878.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+More than one person came forward to speak with true religious fervor of the
+memory of the great Susan B. Anthony. Her name is never mentioned nor her words
+quoted without finding such a response.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the face of heavy snow and rain, dozens of young women stood in line,
+holding special banners made for this occasion. Thousands of men and women
+streaming home from work in the early evening read words of hers spoken during
+the Civil War, so completely applicable to the policy of the young banner-
+bearers at the gates.
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+WE PRESS OUR DEMAND FOR THE BALLOT AT THIS TIME IN NO NARROW, CAPIOUS OR
+SELFISH SPIRIT, BUT FROM PUREST PATRIOTISM FOR THE HIGHEST GOOD OF EVERY
+CITIZEN, FOR THE SAFETY OF THE REPUBLIC AND A3 A GLORIOUS EXAMPLE TO THE
+NATIONS OF THE EARTH.
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+AT THIS TIME OUR GREATEST NEED IS NOT MEN O$ MONEY, VALIANT GENERALS OR
+BRILLIANT VICTORIES, BUT A CONSISTENT NATIONAL POLICY BASED UPON THE PRINCIPLE
+THAT ALL GOVERNMENTS DERIVE THEIR JUST POWERS FROM THE CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED.
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+THE RIGHT OF SELF-GOVERNMENT FOR ONE-HALF OF ITS PEOPLE IS OF FAR MORE VITAL
+CONSEQUENCE TO THE NATION THAN ANY OR ALL OTHER QUESTIONS.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+During the reunion week of the Daughters and Veterans of the Confederacy, the
+picket line was the center of attraction for the sight-seeing veterans and
+their families. For the first time in history the troops of the Confederacy had
+crossed the Potomac and taken possession of the capital city. The streets were
+lined with often tottering but still gallant old men, whitehaired and stooped,
+wearing their faded badges on their gray uniforms, and carrying their tattered
+flags.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It seemed to the young women on picket duty during those days that not a single
+veteran had failed to pay his respects to the pickets. They came and came; and
+some brought back their wives to show them the guard at the gates.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One old soldier with tears in his dim eyes came to say, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve done
+sentinel duty in my time. I know what it is . . . And now it&rsquo;s your turn.
+You young folks have the strength and the courage to keep it up . . . . You are
+going to put it through!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One sweet old Alabamian came shyly up to one of the pickets and said, &ldquo;I
+say, Miss, this is the White House, isn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Before she could answer, he added: &ldquo;We went three times around the place
+and I told the boys, the big white house in the center was the White House, but
+they wasn&rsquo;t believing me and I wasn&rsquo;t sure, but as soon as I saw
+you girls coming with your flags, to stand here, I said, &lsquo;This must be
+the White House. This is sure enough where the President lives; here are the
+pickets with their banners that we read about down home.&rsquo;&rsquo; A note
+of triumph was in his frail voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The picket smiled, and thanked him warmly, as he finished with, &ldquo;You are
+brave girls. You are bound to get him&rdquo;&mdash;pointing his shaking finger
+toward the White House.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+President Wilson&rsquo;s second inauguration was rapidly approaching. Also war
+clouds were gathering with all the increased emotionalism that comes at such a
+crisis. Some additional demonstration of power and force must be made before
+the President&rsquo;s inauguration and before the excitement of our entry into
+the war should plunge our agitation into obscurity. This was the strategic
+moment to assemble our forces in convention in Washington.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Accordingly, the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage and the Woman&rsquo;s
+Party, that section of the Congressional Union in suffrage states made up of
+women voters, convened in Washington and decided unanimously to unite their
+strength, money and political power in one organization, and called it the
+National Woman&rsquo;s Party.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The following officers were unanimously elected to direct the activities of the
+new organization: Chairman of the National Woman&rsquo;s Party, Miss Alice
+Paul, New Jersey; Vice-chairman, Miss Anne Martin, Nevada; secretary, Miss
+Mabel Vernon, Nevada; treasurer, Miss Gertrude Crocker, Illinois; executive
+members, Miss Lucy Burns, Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont, Mrs. John Winters Brannan, New
+York; Mrs. Gilson Gardner, Illinois; Mrs. Robert Baker, Washington, D. C.; Mrs.
+William Kent and Miss Maud Younger, California; Mrs. Florence Bayard Hilles,
+Delaware; Mrs. Donald Hooker, Maryland; Mrs. J. A. H. Hopkins, New Jersey; Mrs.
+Lawrence Lewis, Pennsylvania, and Miss Doris Stevens, Nebraska.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The convention came to a close on the eve of inauguration, culminating in the
+dramatic picket line made up of one thousand delegates who sought an interview
+with the President. The purpose of the interview was to carry to him the
+resolutions of the convention, and further plead with him to open his second
+administration with a promise to back the amendment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In our optimism we hoped that this glorified picket-pageant might form a climax
+to our three months of picketing. The President admired persistence. He said
+so. He also said he appreciated the rare tenacity shown by our women. Surely
+&ldquo;now&rdquo; he would be convinced! No more worrying persistence would be
+needed ! The combined political strength of the western women and the financial
+strength of the eastern women would surely command his respect and entitle us
+to a hearing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What actually happened?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a day of high wind and stinging, icy rain, that March 4th, 1917, when a
+thousand women, each bearing a banner, struggled against the gale to keep their
+banners erect. It is always impressive to see a thousand people march, but the
+impression was imperishable when these thousand women marched in rain-soaked
+garments, hands bare, gloves roughly torn by the sticky varnish from the banner
+poles and the streams of water running down the poles into the palms of their
+hands. It was a sight to impress even the most hardened spectator who had seen
+all the various forms of the suffrage agitation in Washington. For more than
+two hours the women circled the White House&mdash;the rain never ceasing for an
+instant&mdash;hoping to the last moment that at least their leaders would be
+allowed to take in to the President the resolutions which they were carrying.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Long before the appointed hour for the march to start, thousands of spectators
+sheltered by umbrellas and raincoats lined the streets to watch the procession.
+Two bands whose men managed to continue their spirited music in spite of the
+driving rain led the march playing &ldquo;Forward Be Our Watchword&rdquo;;
+&ldquo;The Battle Hymn of the Republic&rdquo;; &ldquo;Onward Christian
+Soldiers&rdquo;; &ldquo;The Pilgrim&rsquo;s Chorus&rdquo; from Tannhäuser;
+&ldquo;The Coronation March&rdquo; from Le Prophète, the Russian Hymn and
+&ldquo;The Marsellaise&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Vida Milholland led the procession carrying her sister&rsquo;s last words,
+&ldquo;Mr. President, how long must women wait for liberty?&rdquo; She was
+followed by Miss Beulah Amidon of North Dakota, who carried the banner that the
+beloved Inez Milholland carried in her first suffrage procession in New York.
+The long line of women fell in behind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Most extraordinary precautions had been taken about the White House. Everything
+had been done except the important thing. There were almost as many police
+officers as marchers. The Washington force had been augmented by a Baltimore
+contingent and squads of plainclothes men. On every fifty feet of curb around
+the entire White House grounds there was a policeman., About the same distance
+apart on the inside of the tall picket-fence which surrounds the grounds were
+as many more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We proceeded to the main gate. Locked! I was marshalling at the head of the
+line and so heard first hand what passed between the leaders and the guards.
+Miss Anne, Martin addressed the guard&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We have come to present some important resolutions to the President of
+the United States.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have orders to keep the gates locked, Ma&rsquo;am.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But there must be some mistake. Surely the President does not mean to
+refuse to see at least . . .&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Those are my only orders, Ma&rsquo;am.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The procession continued on to the second gate on Pennsylvania Avenue. Again
+locked. Before we could address the somewhat nervous policeman who stood at the
+gates, he hastened to say, &ldquo;You can&rsquo;t come in here; the gates are
+locked.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But it is imperative; we are a thousand women from all States in the
+Union who have come all the way to Washington to see the President and lay
+before him . . .&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No orders, Ma&rsquo;am.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The line made its way to the third and last gate&mdash;the gate leading to the
+Executive offices. As we came up to this gate a small army of grinning clerks
+and secretaries manned the windows of the Executive offices, evidently amused
+at the sight of the women struggling in the wind and rain to keep their banners
+intact. Miss Martin, Mrs. William Kent of California, Mrs. Florence Bayard
+Hilles of Delaware, Miss Mary Patterson of Ohio, niece of John C. Patterson of
+Dayton, Mrs. J. A. H. Hopkins of New Jersey, Miss Eleanor Barker of Indiana,
+and Mrs. Mary Darrow Weible of North Dakota,&mdash;the leaders&mdash;stayed at
+the gate, determined to get results from the guard, while the women continued
+to circle the White House.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Will you not carry a message to the President&rsquo;s Secretary asking
+him to tell the President that we are here waiting to see him?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Can&rsquo;t do that, Ma&rsquo;am.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Will you then take our cards to the Secretary to the president, merely
+announcing to him that we are here, so that he may send somebody to carry in
+our resolutions?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Still the guard hesitated. Finally he left the gate and carried the message a
+distance of a few rods into the Executive offices. He had scarcely got inside
+when he rushed back to his post. When we sought to ascertain what had happened
+to the cards&mdash;had they been given and what the answer was&mdash;he quietly
+confided to us that he had been reprimanded for even attempting to bring them
+in and informed us that the cards were still in his pocket. &ldquo;I have
+orders to answer no questions and to carry no messages. If you have anything to
+leave here you might take it to the entrance below the Executive offices,
+and-when I go off my beat at six o&rsquo;clock I will leave it as I go by the
+White House.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We examined this last entrance suggested. It, did not strike us as the proper
+place to leave an important message for the President.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What is this entrance used for?&rdquo; I asked the guard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s all right, lady. If you&rsquo;ve got something you&rsquo;d
+like to leave, leave it with me. It will be safe.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I retorted that we were not seeking safety for our message, but speed in
+delivery.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The guard continued: &ldquo;This is the gate where Mrs. Wilson&rsquo;s clothes
+and other packages are left.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It struck us as scarcely fitting that we should leave our resolutions amongst
+&ldquo;Mrs. Wilson&rsquo;s clothes and other packages,&rdquo; so we returned to
+the last locked gate to ask the guard if he had any message in the meantime for
+us. He shook his head regretfully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meanwhile the women marched and marched, and the rain fell harder and as the
+afternoon wore on the cold seemed almost unendurable.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The white-haired grandmothers in the procession&mdash;there were some as old as
+84&mdash;were as energetic as the young girls of 20. What was this immediate
+hardship compared to eternal subjection! Women marched and waited&mdash;waited
+and marched, under the sting of the biting elements and under the worse sting
+of the indignities heaped upon them. It was impossible to believe that in
+democratic America they could not see the President to lay before him their
+grievance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was only when they saw the Presidential limousine, in the late afternoon,
+roll luxuriously out of the grounds, and through the gates down Pennsylvania
+Avenue, that the weary marchers realized that President Wilson had deliberately
+turned them away unheard!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The car for an instant, as it came through the gates, divided the
+banner-bearers on march. President and Mrs. Wilson looked straight ahead as if
+the long line of purple, white and gold were invisible.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All the women who took part in that march will tell you what was burning in
+their hearts on that dreary day. Even if reasons had been offered&mdash;and
+they were not&mdash;genuine reasons why the President could not see them, it
+would not have cooled the women&rsquo;s heat. Their passionate resentment went
+deeper than any reason could possibly have gone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This one single incident probably did more than any other to make women
+sacrifice themselves. Even something as thin as diplomacy on the part of
+President Wilson might have saved him many restless hours to follow, but he did
+not take the trouble to exercise even that.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The women returned to headquarters and there wrote a letter which was
+dispatched with the resolutions to President Wilson. In a letter to the
+National Woman&rsquo;s Party, acknowledging the receipt of them, he concluded
+by saying: &ldquo;May I not once more express my sincere interest in the cause
+of woman suffrage?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Three months of picketing had not been enough. We must not only continue on
+duty at his gates but also, at the gates of Congress.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap07"></a>Chapter 2<br/>
+The Suffrage War Policy</h2>
+
+<p>
+President Wilson called the War Session of the Sixty-fifth Congress on April 2,
+1917.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the opening day of Congress not only were the pickets again on duty at the
+White House, but another picket line was inaugurated at the Capitol. Returning
+senators and congressmen were surprised when greeted with great golden banners
+reading:
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+RUSSIA AND ENGLAND ARE ENFRANCHISING THEIR WOMEN IN WAR-TIME. HOW LONG MUST
+AMERICAN WOMEN WAIT FOR THEIR LIBERTY
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The last desperate flurries in the pro-war and anti-war camps were focused on
+the Capitol grounds that day. There swarmed about the grounds and through the
+buildings pacifists from all over the country wearing white badges, and
+advocates of war, wearing the national colors. Our sentinels at the Capitol
+stood strangely silent, and almost aloof, strong in their dedication to
+democracy, while the peace and war agitation circled about them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With lightning speed the President declared that a state of war existed. Within
+a fortnight following, Congress declared war on Germany and President Wilson
+voiced his memorable, &ldquo;We shall fight for the things we have always
+carried nearest our hearts&mdash;for democracy&mdash;for the right of those who
+submit to authority to have a voice in their own government.&rdquo; Inspiring
+words indeed! The war message concluded with still another defense of the fight
+for political liberty: &ldquo;To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our
+fortunes, everything that we are and everything that we have, with the pride of
+those who know that the day has come when America is privileged to spend her
+blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness and
+the peace which she has treasured. God helping her, she can do no less.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now that the United States was actually involved in war, we were face to face
+with the question, which we had considered at the convention the previous
+month, when war was rumored, as to what position we, as an organization, should
+take in this situation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The atmosphere of that convention had been dramatic in the extreme. Most of the
+delegates assembled had been approached either before going to Washington or
+upon arriving, and urged to use their influence to persuade the organization to
+abandon its work for the freedom of women and turn its activities into war
+channels. Although war was then only rumored, the hysterical attitude was
+already prevalent. Women were asked to furl their banners and give up their
+half century struggle for democracy, to forget the liberty that was most
+precious to their hearts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The President will turn this Imperialistic war into a crusade for
+democracy.&rdquo; . . . &ldquo;Lay aside your own fight and help us crush
+Germany, and you will find yourselves rewarded with a vote out of the
+nation&rsquo;s gratitude,&rdquo; were some of the appeals made to our women by
+government officials high and low and by the rank and file of men and women.
+Never in history did a band of women stand together with more sanity and
+greater solidarity than did these 1000 delegates representing thousands more
+throughout the States.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As our official organ, <i>The Suffragist</i>, pointed out editorially, in its
+issue of April 21st, 1917: Our membership was made up of women who had banded
+together to secure political freedom for women. We were united on no other
+subject. Some would offer passive resistance to the war; others would become
+devoted followers of a vigorous military policy. Between these, every shade of
+opinion was represented. Each was loyal to the ideas which she held for her
+country. With the character of these various ideals, the National Woman&rsquo;s
+Party, we maintained, had nothing to do. It was concerned only with the effort
+to obtain for women the opportunity to give effective expression, through
+political power, to their ideals, whatever they might be.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The thousand delegates present at the convention, though differing widely on
+the duty of the individual in war, were unanimous in voting that in the event
+of war, the National Woman&rsquo;s Party, as an organization, should continue
+to work for political liberty for women and for that alone, believing as the
+convention stated in its resolutions, that in so doing the organization
+&ldquo;serves the highest interest of the country.&rdquo; They were also
+unanimous in the opinion that all service which individuals wished to give to
+war or peace should be given through groups organized for such purposes, and
+not through the Woman&rsquo;s Party, a body created, according to its
+constitution, for one purpose only&mdash;&ldquo;to secure an amendment to the
+United States Constitution enfranchising women.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We declared officially through our organ that this held &ldquo;as the policy of
+the Woman&rsquo;s Party, whatever turn public events may take.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Very few days after we were put upon a national war basis it became clear that
+never was there greater need of work for internal freedom in the country.
+Europe, then approaching her third year of war, was increasing democracy in the
+midst of the terrible conflict. In America at that very moment women were being
+told that no attempt at electoral reform had any place in the country&rsquo;s
+program &ldquo;until the war is over.&rdquo; The Democrats met in caucus and
+decided that only &ldquo;war measures&rdquo; should be included in the
+legislative program, and announced that no subjects would be considered by
+them, unless the President urged them as war measures.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Our task was, from that time on, to make national suffrage a war measure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We at once urged upon the Administration the wisdom of accepting this proposed
+reform as a war measure, and pointed out the difficulty of waging a war for
+democracy abroad while democracy was denied at home. But the government was not
+willing to profit by the experience of its Allies in extending suffrage to
+women, without first offering a terrible and brutal resistance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We must confess that the problem of dramatizing our fight for democracy in
+competition with the drama of a world-war, was most perplexing. Here were we,
+citizens without power and recognition, with the only weapons to which a
+powerless class which does not take up arms can resort. We could not and would
+not fight with men&rsquo;s weapons. Compare the methods women adopted to those
+men use in the pursuit of democracy,&mdash;bayonets, machine guns, poison gas,
+deadly grenades, liquid fire, bombs, armored tanks, pistols, barbed wire
+entanglements, submarines, mines&mdash;every known scientific device with which
+to annihilate the enemy!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What did we do?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We continued to fight with our simple, peaceful, almost quaint device -a
+banner. A little more fiery, perhaps; pertinent to the latest political
+controversy, but still only a banner inscribed with militant truth!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Just as our political strategy had been to oppose, at elections, the party in
+power which had failed to use its power to free women, so now our military
+strategy was based on the military doctrine of concentrating all one&rsquo;s
+forces on the enemy&rsquo;s weakest point. To women the weakest point in the
+Administration&rsquo;s political lines during the war was the inconsistency
+between a crusade for world democracy and the denial of democracy at home. This
+was the untenable position of President Wilson and the Democratic
+Administration, from which we must force them to retreat. We could force such a
+retreat when we had exposed to the world this weakest point.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Just as the bluff of a democratic crusade must be called, so must the
+knight-leader of the crusade be exposed to the critical eyes of the world. Here
+was the President, suddenly elevated to the position of a world leader with the
+almost pathetic trust of the peoples of the world. Here was the champion of
+their democratic aspirations. Here was a kind of universal Moses, expected to
+lead all peoples out of bondage&mdash;no matter what the bondage, no matter of
+how long standing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The President&rsquo;s elevation to this unique pinnacle of power was at once an
+advantage and a disadvantage to us. It was an advantage to us in that it made
+our attack more dramatic. One supposed to be impeccable was more vulnerable. It
+was a disadvantage to have to overcome this universal trust and world-wide
+popularity. But this conflict of wits and brains against power only enhanced
+our ingenuity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the day the English mission headed by Mr. Balfour, and the French mission
+headed by M. Viviani, visited the White House, we took these inscriptions to
+the picket line:
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+WE SHALL FIGHT FOR THE THINGS WE HAVE ALWAYS CARRIED NEAREST OUR HEARTS<br/>
+DEMOCRACY SHOULD BEGIN AT HOME<br/>
+WE DEMAND JUSTICE AND SELF-GOVERNMENT IN OUR OWN LAND
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Embarrassing to say these things before foreign visitors? We hoped it would be.
+In our capacity to embarrass Mr. Wilson in his Administration, lay our only
+hope of success. We had to keep before the country the flagrant inconsistency
+of the President&rsquo;s position. We intended to know why, if democracy were
+so precious as to demand the nation&rsquo;s blood and treasure for its
+achievement abroad, its execution at home was so undesirable.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meanwhile:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I tell you solemnly, ladies and gentlemen, we cannot any longer postpone
+justice in these United States&rdquo;&mdash;President Wilson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t wish to sit down and let any man take care of me without
+my at least having a voice in it, and if he doesn&rsquo;t listen to my advice,
+I am going to make it as unpleasant as I can.&rdquo;&mdash;President
+Wilson,&mdash;and other challenges were carried on banners to the picket line.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Some rumblings of political action began to be heard. The Democratic majority
+had appointed a Senate Committee on Woman Suffrage whose members were
+overwhelmingly for federal action. The chairman, Senator Andreas Jones of New
+Mexico, promised an early report to the Senate. There were scores of gains in
+Congress. Representatives and Senators were tumbling over each other to
+introduce similar suffrage resolutions. We actually had difficulty in choosing
+the man whose name should stamp our measure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A minority party also was moved to act. Members of the Progressive Party met in
+convention in St. Louis on April 12, 13 and 14 and adopted a suffrage plank
+which demanded &ldquo;the nation- wide enfranchisement of women . . . .&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In addition to this plank they adopted a resolution calling for the
+establishment of democracy at home &ldquo;at a time when the United States is
+entering into an international war for democracy&rdquo; and instructing the
+chairman of the convention &ldquo;to request a committee consisting of
+representatives of all liberal groups to go to Washington to present to the
+President and the Congress of the United States a demand for immediate
+submission of an amendment to the United States constitution enfranchising
+women.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They appointed a committee from the convention to carry these resolutions to
+the President. The committee included Mr. J. A. H. Hopkins of the Progressive
+Party, as chairman; Dr. E. A. Rumley of the Progressive-Republican Party and
+Vice President of the New York Evening Mail; Mr. John Spargo of the Socialist
+Party; Mr. Virgil Hinshaw, chairman of the Executive Committee of the
+Prohibition Party; and Miss Mabel Vernon, Secretary of the National
+Woman&rsquo;s Party. It was the first suffrage conference with the President
+after the declaration of war, and was the last deputation on suffrage by
+minority party leaders. The conference was one of the utmost informality and
+friendliness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The President was deeply moved, indeed, almost to the point of tears, when Miss
+Mabel Vernon said, &ldquo;Mr. President, the feelings of many women in this
+country are best expressed by your own words in your war message to Congress .
+. . . To every woman who reads that message must come at once this question: If
+the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own
+government is so sacred a cause to foreign people as to constitute the reason
+for our entering the international war in its defense, will you not, Mr.
+President, give immediate aid to the measure before Congress demanding
+self-government for the women of this country?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The President admitted that suffrage was constantly pressing upon his mind for
+reconsideration. He added, however, that the program for the session was
+practically complete and intimated that it did not include the enfranchisement
+of women.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He informed the Committee that he had written a letter to Mr. Pou, Chairman of
+the Rules Committee of the House, expressing himself as favoring the creation
+of a Woman Suffrage Committee in that body. While we had no objection to having
+the House create a Suffrage Committee, we were not primarily interested in the
+amplification of Congressional machinery, unless this amplification was to be
+followed by the passage of the amendment. The President could as easily have
+written the Senate Committee on Suffrage or the Judiciary Committee of the
+House, advising an immediate report on the suffrage resolution, as have asked
+for the creation of another committee to report on the subject.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He made no mention of his state-by-state conviction, however, as he had in
+previous interviews, and the Committee of Progressives understood him to have
+at least tacitly accepted federal action.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The House Judiciary Committee continued to refuse to act and the House Rules
+Committee steadily refused to create a Suffrage Committee.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hoping to win back to the fold the wandering Progressives who had thus
+demonstrated their allegiance to suffrage and seeing an opportunity to
+embarrass the Administration, the, Republicans began to interest themselves in
+action on the amendment. In the midst of Democratic delays, Representative
+James R. Mann, Republican leader of the House, moved to discharge the Judiciary
+Committee from further consideration of the suffrage amendment. No matter if
+the discussion which followed did revolve about the authorization of an
+expenditure of $10,000 for the erection of a monument to a dead President as a
+legitimate war measure. It was clear from the partisan attitude of those who
+took part in the debate that we were advancing to that position where we were
+as good political material to be contested over by opposing political groups as
+was a monument to a dead President. And if the Democrats could defend such an
+issue as a war measure, the Republicans wanted to know why they should ignore
+suffrage for women as a war measure. And it was encouraging to find ourselves
+thus suddenly and spontaneously sponsored by the Republican leader.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Administration was aroused. It did not know how far the Republicans were
+prepared to go in their drive for action, so on the day of this flurry in the
+House the snail-like Rules Committee suddenly met in answer to the call of its
+chairman, Mr. Pou, and by a vote of 6 to 5 decided to report favorably on the
+resolution providing for a Woman Suffrage Committee in the House &ldquo;after
+all pending war measures have been disposed of.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Before the meeting, Mr. Pou made a last appeal to the Woman&rsquo;s Party to
+remove the pickets . . . . &ldquo;We can&rsquo;t possibly win as long as
+pickets guard the White House and Capitol,&rdquo; Mr. Pou had said. The pickets
+continued their vigil and the motion carried.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Still uncertain as to the purposes of the Republicans, the Democrats were moved
+to further action.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Executive Committee of the Democratic National Committee, meeting in
+Washington a few days later, voted 4 to 9. to &ldquo;officially urge upon the
+President that he call the two Houses of Congress together and recommend the
+immediate submission of the Susan B. Anthony amendment.&rdquo; This action
+which in effect reversed the plank in the Democratic platform evidently aroused
+protests from powerful quarters. Also the Republicans quickly subsided when
+they saw the Democrats making an advance. And so the Democratic Executive
+Committee began to spread abroad the news that its act was not really official,
+but merely reflected the &ldquo;personal conviction&rdquo; of the members
+present. It extracted the official flavor, and so of course no action followed
+in Congress.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And so it went&mdash;like a great game of chess. Doubtless the politicians
+believed they were moved from their own true and noble motives. The fact was
+that the pickets had moved the Democrats a step. The Republicans had then
+attempted to take two steps, whereupon the Democrats must continue to move more
+rapidly than their opponents. Behind this matching of political wits by the two
+parties stood the faithful pickets compelling them both to act.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Simultaneously with these moves and counter-moves in political circles, the
+people in all sections of this vast country began to speak their minds.
+Meetings were springing up everywhere, at which resolutions were passed backing
+up the picket line and urging the President and Congress to act. Even the
+South, the Administration&rsquo;s stronghold, sent fiery telegrams demanding
+action. Alabama, South Carolina, Texas, Maryland, Mississippi, as well as the
+West, Middle West, New England and the East&mdash;the stream was endless.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Every time a new piece of legislation was passed,&mdash;the war tax bill, food
+conservation or what not,&mdash;women from unexpected quarters sent to the
+Government their protest against the passage of measures so vital to women
+without women&rsquo;s consent, coupled with an appeal for the liberation of
+women. Club women, college women, federations of labor,&mdash;various kinds of
+organizations sent protests to the Administration leaders. The picket line,
+approaching its sixth month of duty, had aroused the country to an
+unprecedented interest in suffrage; it had rallied widespread public support to
+the amendment as a war measure, and had itself become almost univer- sally
+accepted if not universally approved. And in the midst of picketing ands in
+spite of all the prophecies and fears that &ldquo;picketing&rdquo; would
+&ldquo;set back the cause,&rdquo; within one month, Michigan, Nebraska and
+Rhode Island granted Presidential suffrage to women.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The leaders were busy marshaling their forces behind the President&rsquo;s war
+program, which included the controversial Conscription and Espionage Bills,
+then pending, and did not relish having our question so vivid in the public
+mind. Even when the rank and file of Congress gave consideration to questions
+not in the war program, they had to face a possible charge of inconsistency,
+insincerity or bad faith. The freedom of Ireland, for example, was not in the
+program. And when 132 members of the House cabled Lloyd George that nothing
+would do more for American enthusiasm in the war than a settlement of the Irish
+question, we took pains to ascertain the extent of the belief in liberty at
+home of these easy champions of Irish liberty. When we found that of the 132
+men only 5&rsquo;7 believed in liberty for American women, we were not delicate
+in pointing out to the remaining &ldquo;(5 that their belief in liberty for
+Ireland would appear more sincere if they believed in a democratic reform such
+as woman suffrage here.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The manifestations of popular approval of suffrage, the constant stream of
+protests to the Administration against its delay nationally, and the shame of
+having women begging at its gates, could result in only one of two things. The
+Administration had little choice. It must yield to this pressure from the
+people or it must suppress the agitation which was causing such interest. It
+must pass the amendment or remove the troublesome pickets.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It decided to remove the pickets.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap08"></a>Chapter 3<br/>
+The First Arrests</h2>
+
+<p>
+The Administration chose suppression. They resorted to force in an attempt to
+end picketing. It was a policy doomed to failure as certainly as all resorts to
+force to kill agitation have failed ultimately. This marked the beginning of
+the adoption by the Administration of tactics from which they could never
+extricate themselves with honor. Unfortunately for them they were entering upon
+this policy toward women which savored of czarist practices, at the very moment
+they were congratulating the Russians upon their liberation from the oppression
+of a Czar. This fact supplied us with a fresh angle of attack.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+President Wilson sent a Mission to Russia to add America&rsquo;s appeal to that
+of the other Allies to keep that impoverished country in the war. Such was
+our-democratic zeal to persuade Russia to continue the war and to convince her
+people of its democratic purposes, and of the democratic quality of America,
+that Elihu Root, one of the President&rsquo;s envoys, stated in Petrograd that
+he represented a republic where &ldquo;universal, direct, equal and secret
+suffrage obtained.&rdquo; We subjected the President to attack through this
+statement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Russia also sent a war mission to our country for purposes of coöperation. This
+occasion offered us the opportunity again to expose the Administration&rsquo;s
+weakness in claiming complete political democracy while women were still denied
+their political freedom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a beautiful June day when all Washington was agog with the visit of the
+Russian diplomats to the President. As the car carrying the envoys passed
+swiftly through the gates of the White House there stood on the picket line two
+silent sentinels, Miss Lucy Burns of New York and Mrs. Lawrence Lewis of
+Philadelphia, both members of the National Executive Committee, with a great
+lettered banner which read:
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+TO THE RUSSIAN ENVOYS<br/>
+PRESIDENT WILSON AND ENVOY ROOT ARE DECEIVING RUSSIA WHEN THEY SAY &ldquo;WE
+ARE A DEMOCRACY, HELP US WIN THE WORLD WAR SO THAT DEMOCRACY MAY
+SURVIVE&rdquo;<br/>
+WE THE WOMEN OF AMERICA TELL YOU THAT AMER ICA IS NOT A DEMOCRACY.
+TWENTY-MILLION AMERI&rsquo; CAN WOMEN ARE DENIED THE RIGHT TO VOTE. PRESI DENT
+WILSON IS THE CHIEF OPPONENT OF THEIR NA TIONAL ENFRANCHISEMENT.<br/>
+HELP US MAKE THIS NATION REALLY FREE. TELL OUR GOVERNMENT IT MUST LIBERATE ITS
+PEOPLE BEFORE IT CAN CLAIM FREE RUSSIA AS AN ALLY.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Rumors that the suffragists would make a special demonstration before the
+Russian Mission had brought a great crowd to the far gate of the White House; a
+crowd composed almost entirely of men.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Like all crowds, this crowd had its share of hoodlums and roughs who tried to
+interfere with the women&rsquo;s order of the day. There was a flurry of
+excitement over this defiant message of truth, but nothing that could not with
+the utmost ease have been settled by one policeman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was the criticism in the press and on the lips of men that we were
+embarrassing our Government before the eyes of foreign visitors. In answering
+the criticism, Miss Paul publicly stated our position thus: &ldquo;The
+intolerable conditions against which we protest can be changed in the twinkling
+of an eye. The responsibility for our protest is, therefore, with the
+Administration and not with the women of America, if the lack of democracy at
+home weakens the Administration in its fight for democracy three thousand miles
+away.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was too dreadful. A flurry at the gates of the Chief of the nation at such
+a time would never do. Our allies in the crusade for democracy must not know
+that we had a day-by-day unrest at home. Something must be done to stop this
+expose at once. Had these women no manners? Had they no shame? Was the
+fundamental weakness in our boast of pure and perfect democracy to be so
+wantonly displayed with impunity?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Of course it was embarrassing. We meant it to be. The truth must be told at all
+costs. This was no time for manners.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hurried conferences behind closed doors! Summoning of the military to discuss
+declaring a military zone around the White House! Women could not advance on
+drawn bayonets. And if they did . . . What a picture! Common decency told the
+more humane leaders that this would never do. I daresay political wisdom crept
+into the reasoning of others.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Closing the Woman&rsquo;s Party headquarters was discussed. Perhaps a raid! And
+all for what? Because women were holding banners asking for the precious
+principle at home that men were supposed to be dying for abroad.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Finally a decision was reached embodying the combined wisdom of all the various
+conferees. The Chief of Police, Major Pullman, was detailed to
+&ldquo;request&rdquo; us to stop &ldquo;picketing&rdquo; and to tell us that if
+we continued to picket, we would be arrested._
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We have picketed for six months without interference,&rdquo; said Miss
+Paul. &ldquo;Has the law been changed?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; was the reply, &ldquo;but you must stop it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But, Major Pullman, we have consulted our lawyers and know we have a
+legal right to picket.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I warn you, you will be arrested if you attempt to picket again.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The following day Miss Lucy Burns and Miss Katherine Morey of Boston carried to
+the White House gates &ldquo;We shall fight for the things we have always held
+nearest our hearts, for democracy, for the right of those who submit to
+authority to have a voice in their own government,&rdquo; and were arrested.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+News had spread through the city that the pickets were to be arrested. A
+moderately large crowd had gathered to see the &ldquo;fun.&rdquo; One has only
+to come into conflict with prevailing authority, whether rightly or wrongly, to
+find friendly hosts vanishing with lightning speed. To know that we were no
+longer wanted at the gates of the White House and that the police were no
+longer our &ldquo;friends&rdquo; was enough for the mob mind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Some members of the crowd made sport of the women. Others hurled cheap and
+childish epithets at them. Small boys were allowed to capture souvenirs, shreds
+of the banners torn from non-resistant women, as trophies of the sport.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thinking they had been mistaken in believing the pickets were to be arrested,
+and having grown weary of their strenuous sport, the crowd moved on its way.
+Two solitary figures remained, standing on the sidewalk, flanked by the vast
+Pennsylvania Avenue, looking quite abandoned and alone, when suddenly without
+any warrant in law, they were arrested on a completely deserted avenue.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Burns and Miss Morey upon arriving at the police station, insisted, to the
+great surprise of all the officials, upon knowing the charge against them.
+Major Pullman and his entire staff were utterly at a loss to know what to
+answer. The Administration had looked ahead only as far as threatening arrest.
+They doubtless thought this was all they would have to do. People could not be
+arrested for picketing. Picketing is a guaranteed right under the Clayton Act
+of Congress. Disorderly conduct? There had been no disorderly I conduct.
+Inciting to riot? Impossible! The women had stood as silent sentinels holding
+the President&rsquo;s own eloquent words.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Doors opened and closed mysteriously. Officials and subofficials passed
+hurriedly to and fro. Whispered conversations were heard. The book on rules and
+regulations was hopefully thumbed. Hours passed. Finally the two prisoners were
+pompously told that they had &ldquo;obstructed the traffic&rdquo; on
+Pennsylvania Avenue, were dismissed on their own recognizance, and never
+brought to trial.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The following day, June 23rd, more arrests were made; two women at the White
+House, two at the Capitol. All carried banners with the same words of the
+President. There was no hesitation this time. They were promptly arrested for
+&ldquo;obstructing the traffic.&rdquo; They, too, were dismissed and their
+cases never tried. It seemed clear that the Administration hoped to suppress
+picketing merely by arrests. When. however. women continued to picket in the
+face of arrest, the Administration quickened its advance into the venture of
+suppression. It decided to bring the offenders to trial.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On June 26, six American women were tried, judged guilty on the technical
+charge of &ldquo;obstructing the traffic,&rdquo; warned by the court of their
+&ldquo;unpatriotic, almost treasonable behavior,&rdquo; and sentenced to pay a
+fine of twenty-five dollars or serve three days in jail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not a dollar of your fine will we pay,&rdquo; was the answer of the
+women. &ldquo;To pay a fine would be an admission of guilt. We are
+innocent.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The six women who were privileged to serve the first terms of imprisonment for
+suffrage in this country, were Miss Katherine Morey of Massachusetts, Mrs.
+Annie Arneil and Miss Mabel Vernon of Delaware, Miss Lavinia Dock of
+Pennsylvania, Miss Maud Jamison of Virginia, and Miss Virginia Arnold of North
+Carolina. &ldquo;Privileged&rdquo; in spite of the foul air, the rats, and the
+mutterings of their strange comrades in jail!
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>
+Independence Day, July 4, 1917, is the occasion for two demonstrations in the
+name of liberty. Champ Clark, late Democratic speaker of the House, is
+declaiming to a cheering crowd behind the White House, &ldquo;Governments
+derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.&rdquo; In front of
+the White House thirteen silent sentinels with banners bearing the same words,
+are arrested. It would have been exceedingly droll if it had not been so
+tragic. Champ Clark and his throng were not molested. The women with
+practically a deserted street were arrested and served jail terms for
+&ldquo;obstructing traffic.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The trial of this group was delayed to give the jail authorities time to
+&ldquo;vacate and tidy up,&rdquo; as one prisoner confided to Miss Joy Young.
+It developed that &ldquo;orders&rdquo; had been received at the jail
+immediately after the arrests and before the trial, &ldquo;to make ready for
+the suffragettes.&rdquo; What did it matter that their case had not yet been
+heard? To jail they must go.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Was not the judge who tried and sentenced them a direct appointee of President
+Wilson? Were not the District Commissioners who gave orders to prepare the
+cells the direct appointees of President Wilson? And was not the Chief of
+Police of the District of Columbia a direct appointee of these same
+commissioners? And was not the jail warden who made life for the women so
+unbearable in prison also a direct appointee of the commissioners?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was all a merry little ring and its cavalier attitude toward the law, toward
+justice, and above all toward women was of no importance. The world was on fire
+with a grand blaze. This tiny flame would scarcely be visible. No one would
+notice a few &ldquo;mad&rdquo; women thrown into jail. And if the world should
+find it out, doubtless public opinion would agree that the women ought to stay
+there. And even if it should not agree, this little matter could all be
+explained away before another election.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meanwhile the President could proclaim through official channels his
+disinterestedness. Observe the document, of which I give the substance, which
+he caused or allowed to be published at this time, through his Committee on
+Public Information.
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+&ldquo;OFFICIAL BULLETIN&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Published Daily under order of the President of the United States, by
+the Committee on Public Information.
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+G<small>EORGE</small> C<small>REEL</small>, Chairman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Furnished without charge to all newspapers, post offices, government
+officials and agencies of a public character for the dissemination of official
+news of the United States Government.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="center">
+&ldquo;Washington, July 3, 1917. No. 46-Vol. i.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There follows a long editorial[1] which laments the public attention which has
+centered on the militant campaign, appeals to editors and reporters not to
+&ldquo;encourage&rdquo; us in our peculiar conduct by printing defies to the
+President of the United States even when &ldquo;flaunted on a pretty little
+purple and gold banner&rdquo; and exhorts the public to control its thrills.
+The official bulletin concludes with:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is a fact that there remains in America one man who has known exactly
+the right attitude to take and maintain toward the pickets. A whimsical smile,
+slightly puckered at the roots by a sense of the ridiculous, a polite
+bow&mdash;and for the rest a complete ignoring of their existence. He happens
+to be the man around whom the little whirlwind whirls&mdash;the President of
+the United States.&rdquo; And finally with an admonition that &ldquo;the
+rest&rsquo; of the country … take example from him in its emotional reaction to
+the picket question.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[1] From the Woman Citizen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Administration pinned its faith on jail&mdash;that institution of
+convenience to the oppressor when he is strong in power and his weapons are
+effective. When the oppressor miscalculates the strength of the oppressed, jail
+loses its convenience.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap09"></a>Chapter 4<br/>
+Occoquan Workhouse</h2>
+
+<p>
+It is Bastille Day, July fourteenth. Inspiring scenes and tragic sacrifices for
+liberty come to our minds. Sixteen women march in single file to take their own
+&ldquo;Liberty, Equality, Fraternity&rdquo; to the White House gates. It is the
+middle of a hot afternoon. A thin line of curious spectators is seen in the
+park opposite the suffrage headquarters. The police assemble from obscure
+spots; some afoot, others on bicycles. They close in on the women and follow
+them to the gates.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The proud banner is scarcely at the gates when the leader is placed under
+arrest. Her place is taken by another. She is taken. Another, and still another
+steps into the breach and is arrested.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meanwhile the crowd grows, attracted to the spot by the presence of the police
+and the patrol wagon. Applause is heard. There are cries of &ldquo;shame&rdquo;
+for the police, who, I must say, did not always act as if they relished
+carrying out what they termed &ldquo;orders from higher up.&rdquo; An
+occasional hoot from a small boy served to make the mood of the hostile ones a
+bit gayer. But for the most part an intense silence fell upon the watchers, as
+they saw not only younger women, but whitehaired grandmothers hoisted before
+the public gaze into the crowded patrol, their heads erect, their eyes a little
+moist and their frail hands holding tightly to the banner until wrested from
+them by superior brute force.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This is the first time most of the women have ever seen a police station, and
+they are interested in, their surroundings. They are not interested in helping
+the panting policeman count them over and identify them. Who arrested whom?
+That becomes the gigantic question.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Will the ladies please tell which officer arrested them?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They will not. They do not intend to be a party to this outrage. Finally the
+officers abandon their attempt at identification. They have the names of the
+arrestees and will accept bail for their appearance Monday.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well girls, I&rsquo;ve never seen but one other court in my life and
+that was the Court of St. James. But I must say they are not very much
+alike,&rdquo; was the cheery comment of Mrs. Florence Bayard Hilles,[1] as we
+entered the court room on Monday.
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[1] Mrs. Hilles is the daughter of the late Thomas Bayard, formerly
+America&rsquo;s ambassador to Great Britain, and Secretary of State in
+President Cleveland&rsquo;s cabinet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The stuffy court room is packed to overflowing. The fat, one-eyed bailiff is
+perspiring to no purpose. He cannot make the throng &ldquo;sit down.&rdquo; In
+fact every one who has anything to do with the pickets perspires to no purpose.
+Judge Mullowny takes his seat, looking at once grotesque and menacing on his
+red throne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Silence in the court room,&rdquo; from the sinister-eyed bailiff. And a
+silence. follows so heavy that it can be heard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Saturday night&rsquo;s both black and white&mdash;are tried first. The suffrage
+prisoners strain their ears to hear the pitiful pleas of these unfortunates,
+most of whom come to the bar without counsel or friend. Scraps of evidence are
+heard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+JUDGE: &ldquo;You say you were not quarreling, Lottie?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+LOTTIE: &ldquo;I sho&rsquo; do yo&rsquo; hono&rsquo;. We wuz jes
+singin&rsquo;&mdash;we wuz sho&rsquo; nuf, sah.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+JUDGE: &ldquo;Singing, Lottie? Why your neighbors here testify to the fact that
+you were making a great deal of noise&mdash;so much that they could not
+sleep.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+LOTTIE: &ldquo;I tells yo&rsquo; honor&rsquo; we wuz jes singin&rsquo; lak we
+allays do.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+JUDGE : &ldquo;What were you singing?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+LOTTIE: &ldquo;Why, hymns, sah.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The judge smiles cynically.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A neatly-attired white man with a wizened face again takes the stand against
+Lottie. Hymns or no hymns he could not sleep. The judge pronounces a sentence
+of &ldquo;six months in the workhouse,&rdquo; for Lottie.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And so it goes on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The suffrage prisoners are the main business of the morning. Sixteen women come
+inside the railing which separates &ldquo;tried&rdquo; from
+&ldquo;untried&rdquo; and take their seats.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do the ladies wish the government to provide them with counsel?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They do not.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We shall speak in our own behalf. We feel that we can best represent
+ourselves,&rdquo; we announce. Miss Anne Martin and I act as attorneys for the
+group.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The same panting policemen who could not identify the people they had arrested
+give their stereotyped, false and illiterate testimony. The judge helps them
+over the hard places and so does the government&rsquo;s attorney. They stumble
+to an embarrassed finish and retire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+An aged government clerk, grown infirm in the service, takes the stand and the
+government attorney proves through him that there is a White House; that it has
+a side-walk in front of it, and a pavement, and a hundred other overwhelming
+facts. The pathetic clerk shakes his dusty frame and slinks off the stand. The
+prosecuting attorney now elaborately proves that we walked, that we carried
+banners, that we were arrested by the aforesaid officers while attempting to
+hold our banners at the White House gates.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Each woman speaks briefly in her own defense. She denounces the
+government&rsquo;s policy with hot defiance. The blame is placed squarely at
+the door of the Administration, and in unmistakable terms. Miss Anne Martin
+opens for the defense:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This is what we are doing with our banners before the White House,
+petitioning the most powerful representative of the government, the President
+of the United States, for a redress of grievances; we are asking him to use his
+great power to secure the passage of the national suffrage amendment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;As long as the government and the representatives of the government
+prefer to send women to jail on petty and technical charges, we will go to
+jail. Persecution has always advanced the cause of justice. The right of
+American women to work for democracy must be maintained . . . . We would
+hinder, not help, the whole cause of freedom for women, if we weakly submitted
+to persecution now. Our work for the passage of the amendment must go on. It
+will go on.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. John Rogers, Jr., descendant of Roger Sherman, one of the signers of the
+Declaration of Independence, speaks: &ldquo;We are not guilty of any offence,
+not even of infringing a police regulation. We know full well that we stand
+here because the President of the United States refuses to give liberty to
+American women. We believe, your Honor, that the wrong persons are before the
+bar in this Court . . . .&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I object, your Honor, to this woman making such a statement here in
+Court,&rdquo; says the District Attorney.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We believe the President is the guilty one and that we are
+innocent.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Your Honor, I object,&rdquo; shouts the Government&rsquo;s attorney.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The prisoner continues calmly: &ldquo;There are votes enough and there is time
+enough to pass the national suffrage amendment through Congress at this
+session. More than 200 votes in the House and more than 50 in the Senate are
+pledged to this amendment. The President puts his power behind all measures in
+which he takes a genuine interest. If he will say one frank word advocating
+this measure it will pass as a piece of war emergency legislation.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Florence Bayard Hilles speaks in her own defense: &ldquo;For generations
+the men of my family have given their services to their country. For myself, my
+training from childhood has been with a father who believed in democracy and
+who belonged to the Democratic Party. By inheritance and connection I am a
+Democrat, and to a Democratic President I went with my appeal . . . . What a
+spectacle it must be to the thinking people of this country to see us urged to
+go to war for democracy in a foreign land, and to see women thrown into prison
+who plead for that same cause at home.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I stand here to affirm my innocence of the charge against me. This court
+has not proven that I obstructed traffic. My presence at the White House gate
+was under the constitutional right of petitioning the government for freedom or
+for any other cause. During the months of January, February, March, April and
+May picketing was legal. In June it suddenly becomes illegal . . . .
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My services as an American woman are being conscripted by order of the
+President of the United States to help win the world war for democracy . . . .
+&lsquo;for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their
+own government.&rsquo; I shall continue to plead for the political liberty of
+American women-and especially do I plead to the President, since he is the one
+person who . . . can end the struggles of American women to take their proper
+places in a true democracy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There is continuous objection from the prosecutor, eager advice from the judge,
+&ldquo;you had better keep to the charge of obstructing traffic&rdquo; But
+round on round of applause comes from the intent audience, whenever a defiant
+note is struck by the prisoners, and in spite of the sharp rapping of the gavel
+confusion reigns. And how utterly puny the &ldquo;charge&rdquo; is! If it were
+true that the prisoners actually obstructed the traffic, how grotesque that
+would be. The importance of their demand, the purity of their reasoning, the
+nobility and gentle quality of the prisoners at the bar; all conspire to make
+the charge against them, and the attorney who makes it, and the judge who hears
+it, petty and ridiculous.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But justice must proceed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Gilson Gardner of Washington, D. C., a member of the Executive Committee
+of the National Woman&rsquo;s party, and the wife of Gilson Gardner, a
+well-known Liberal and journalist, speaks:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is impossible for me to believe that we were arrested because we were
+obstructing traffic or blocking the public high- way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We have been carrying on activities of a distinctly political nature,
+and these political activities have seemingly disturbed certain powerful
+influences. Arrests followed. I submit that these arrests are purely political
+and that the charge of an unlawful assemblage and of obstructing traffic is a
+political subterfuge. Even should I be sent to jail which, I could not, your
+Honor, anticipate, I would be in jail, not because I obstructed traffic, but
+because I have offended politically, because I have demanded of this government
+freedom for women.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was my task to sum up for the defense. The judge sat bored through my
+statement. &ldquo;We know and I believe the Court knows also,&rdquo; I said,
+&ldquo;that President Wilson and his Administration are responsible for our
+being here to-day. It is a fact that they gave the orders which caused our
+arrest and appearance before this bar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We know and you know, that the District Commissioners are appointed by
+the President, that the present commissioners were appointed by President
+Wilson. We know that you, your Honor, were appointed to the bench by President
+Wilson, and that the district attorney who prosecutes us was appointed by the
+President. These various officers would not dare bring us here under these
+false charges without the policy having been decided upon by the responsible
+leaders.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What is our real crime? What have these distinguished and liberty-loving
+women done to bring them before this court of justice? Why, your Honor, their
+crime is that they peacefully petitioned the President of the United States for
+liberty. What must be the shame of our nation before the world when it becomes
+known that here we throw women into jail who love liberty and attempt to
+peacefully petition the President for it? These women are nearly all descended
+from revolutionary ancestors or from some of the greatest libertarian statesmen
+this country has produced. What would these men say now if they could see that
+passion for liberty which was in their own hearts rewarded in the twentieth
+century with foul and filthy imprisonment!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We say to you, this outrageous policy of stupid and brutal punishment
+will not dampen the ardor of the women. Where sixteen of us face your judgment
+to-day there will be sixty tomorrow, so great will be the indignation of our
+colleagues in this fight.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The trial came to an end after a tense two days. The packed court-room fat in a
+terrible silence awaiting the judge&rsquo;s answer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There were distinguished men present at the trial&mdash;men who also fight for
+their ideals. There was Frederic C. Howe, then Commissioner of Immigration of
+the Port of New York, Frank P. Walsh, International labor leader, Dudley Field
+Malone, then Collector of the Port of New York, Amos Pinchot, liberal leader,
+John A. H. Hopkins, then liberal-progressive leader in New Jersey who had
+turned his organization to the support of the President and become a member of
+the President&rsquo;s Campaign Committee, now chairman of the Committee of
+Fortyeight and whose beautiful wife was among the prisoners, Allen McCurdy,
+secretary of the Committee of Forty-eight and many others. One and all came
+forward to protest to us during the adjournment. &ldquo;This is
+monstrous.&rdquo; . . . &ldquo;Never have I seen evidence so
+disregarded.&rdquo; . . . &ldquo;This is a tragic farce&rdquo; . . .
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He will never dare sentence you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was reported to us that the judge used the interim to telephone to the
+District building, where the District Commissioners sit. He returned to
+pronounce, &ldquo;Sixty days in the workhouse in default of a twenty-five
+dollar fine.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The shock was swift and certain to all the spectators. We would not of course
+pay the unjust fine imposed, for we were not guilty of any offense.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The judge attempted persuasion. &ldquo;You had better decide to pay your
+fines,&rdquo; he ventured. And &ldquo;you will not find jail a pleasant place
+to be.&rdquo; It was clear that neither he nor his confreres had imagined women
+would accept with equanimity so drastic a sentence. It was now their time to be
+shocked. Here were &ldquo;ladies&rdquo;&mdash;that was perfectly
+clear&mdash;&ldquo;ladies&rdquo; of unusual distinction. Surely they would not
+face the humiliation of a workhouse sentence which involved not only
+imprisonment but penal servitude! The Administration was wrong again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We protest against this unjust sentence and conviction,&rdquo; we said,
+&ldquo;but we prefer the workhouse to the payment of a fine imposed for an
+offense of which we are not guilty.&rdquo; We filed into the &ldquo;pen,&rdquo;
+to join the other prisoners, and wait for the &ldquo;black maria&rdquo; to
+carry us to prison.
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>
+We are all taken to the District Jail, where we are put through the regular
+catechism: &ldquo;Were you ever in prison
+before?&mdash;Age&mdash;birthplace&mdash;father&mdash;mother&mdash;religion and
+what not?&rdquo; We are then locked up,&mdash;two to a cell. What will happen
+next?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sleek jailer, whose attempt to be cordial provokes a certain distrust,
+comes to our corridor to &ldquo;turn us over&rdquo; to our next keeper-the
+warden of Occoquan. We learn that the workhouse is not situated in the District
+of Columbia but in Virginia.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Other locked wagons with tiny windows up near the driver now take us, side by
+side with drunks and disorderlies, prostitutes and thieves, to the Pennsylvania
+Station. Here we embark for the unknown terrors of the workhouse, filing
+through crowds at the station, driven on by our &ldquo;keeper,&rdquo; who
+resembles Simon Legree, with his long stick and his pushing and shoving to
+hurry us along. The crowd is quick to realize that we are prisoners, because of
+our associates. Friends try to bid us a last farewell and slip us a sweet or
+fruit, as we are rushed through the iron station gates to the train.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Warden Whittaker is our keeper, thin and old, with a cruel mouth, brutal eyes
+and a sinister birthmark on his temple. He guards very anxiously his
+&ldquo;dangerous criminals&rdquo; lest they try to leap out of the train to
+freedom! We chat a little and attempt to relax from the strain that we have
+endured since Saturday. It is now late in the afternoon of Tuesday.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The dusk is gathering. It is almost totally dark when we alight at a tiny
+station in what seems to us a wilderness. It is a deserted country. Even the
+gayest member of the party, I am sure, was struck with a little terror here.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+More locked wagons, blacker than the dusk, awaited us. The prison van jolted
+and bumped along the rocky and hilly road. A cluster of lights twinkled beyond
+the last hill, and we knew that we were coming to our temporary summer
+residence. I can still see the long thin line of black poplars against the
+smoldering afterglow. I did not know then what tragic things they concealed.
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>
+We entered a well-lighted office. A few guards of ugly demeanor stood about.
+Warden Whittaker consulted with the hard-faced matron, Mrs. Herndon, who began
+the prison routine. Names were called, and each prisoner stepped to the desk to
+get her number, to give up all jewelry, money, handbags, letters, eye-glasses,
+traveling bags containing toilet necessities, in fact everything except the
+clothes on her body.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From there we were herded into the long bare dining room where we sat dumbly
+down to a bowl of dirty sour soup. I say dumbly&mdash;for now began the rule of
+silence. Prisoners are punished for speaking to one another at table. They
+cannot even whisper, much less smile or laugh. They must be conscious always of
+their &ldquo;guilt.&rdquo; Every possible thing is done to make the inmates
+feel that they are and must continue to be antisocial creatures.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We taste our soup and crust of bread. We try so hard to eat it for we are tired
+and hungry, but no one of us is able to get it down. We leave the table hungry
+and slightly nauseated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Another long march in silence through various channels into a large dormitory
+and through a double line of cots! Then we stand, weary to the point of
+fainting, waiting the next ordeal. This seemed to be the juncture at which we
+lost all that is left us of contact with the outside world,&mdash;our clothes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+An assistant matron, attended by negress prisoners, relieves us of our clothes.
+Each prisoner is obliged to strip naked without even the protection of a sheet,
+and proceed across what seems endless space, to a shower bath. A large tin
+bucket stands on the floor and in this is a minute piece of dirty soap, which
+is offered to us and rejected. We dare not risk the soap used by so many
+prisoners. Naked, we return from the bath to receive our allotment of coarse,
+hideous prison clothes, the outer garments of which consist of a bulky
+mother-hubbard wrapper, of bluish gray ticking and a heavy apron of the same
+dismal stuff. It takes a dominant personality indeed to survive these clothes.
+The thick unbleached muslin undergarments are of designs never to be forgotten!
+And the thick stockings and forlorn shoes! What torture to put on shoes that
+are alike for each foot and made to fit just anybody who may happen along.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Why are we being ordered to dress? It is long past the bed-time hour.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Our suspense is brief. All dressed in cloth of &ldquo;guilt&rdquo; we are led
+into what we later learn is the &ldquo;recreation&rdquo; room. Lined up against
+its wall, we might any other time have bantered about the possibility of being
+shot, but we are in no mood to jest. The door finally opens and in strides
+Warden Whittaker with a stranger beside him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He reviews his latest criminal recruits, engaging the stranger meanwhile in
+whispered conversation. There are short, uncertain laughs. There are nods of
+the head and more whispers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, ladies, I hope you are all comfortable. Now make yourselves at
+home here. I think you will find it healthy here. You&rsquo;ll weigh more when
+you go out than when you came in. You will be allowed to write one letter a
+month-to your family. Of course we open and read all letters coming in and
+going out. To-morrow you will be assigned your work. I hope you will sleep
+well. Good night!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We did not answer. We looked at each other.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+News leaked through in the morning that the stranger had been a newspaper
+reporter. The papers next morning were full of the &ldquo;comfort&rdquo; and
+&ldquo;luxury&rdquo; of our surroundings. The &ldquo;delicious&rdquo; food
+sounded most reassuring to the nation. In fact no word of the truth was allowed
+to appear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The correspondent could not know that we went back to our cots to try to sleep
+side by side with negro prostitutes. Not that we shrank from these women on
+account of their color, but how terrible to know that, the institution had gone
+out of its way to bring these prisoners from their own wing to the white wing
+in an attempt to humiliate us. There was plenty of room in the negro wing. But
+prison must be made so unbearable that no more women would face it. That was
+the policy attempted here.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We tried very hard to sleep and forget our hunger and weariness. But all the
+night through our dusky comrades padded by to the lavatory, and in the streak
+of bright light which shot across the center of the room, startled heads could
+be seen bobbing up in the direction of a demented woman in the end cot. Her
+weird mutterings made us fearful. There was no sleep in this strange place.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Our thoughts turn to the outside world. Will the women care? Will enough women
+believe that through such humiliation all may win freedom? Will they believe
+that through our imprisonment their slavery will be lifted the sooner? Less
+philosophically, will the government be moved by public protest? Will such
+protest come?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The next morning brought us a visitor from suffrage headquarters. The
+institution hoped that the visitor would use her persuasion to make us pay our
+fines and leave and so she was admitted. We learned the cheering news, that
+immediately after sentence had been pronounced by the Court, Dudley Field
+Malone had gone direct to the White House to protest to the President. His
+protest was delivered with heat. The President said that he was
+&ldquo;shocked&rdquo; at the sixty day sentence, that he did not know it had
+been done, and made other evasions. Mr. Malone&rsquo;s report of his interview
+with the President is given in full in a subsequent chapter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Following Mr. Malone, Mr. J. A. H. Hopkins went to the White House. &ldquo;How
+would you like to have your wife sleep in a dirty workhouse next to
+prostitutes?&rdquo; was his direct talk to the President. Again the President
+was &ldquo;shocked.&rdquo; No wonder! Mr. and Mrs. Hopkins had been the
+President&rsquo;s dinner guests not very long before, celebrating his return to
+power. They had supported him politically and financially in New Jersey. Now
+Mrs. Hopkins had been arrested at his gate and thrown into prison.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In reporting the interview, Mr. Hopkins said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The President asked me for suggestions as to what might be done, and I
+replied that in view of the seriousness of the present situation the only
+solution lay in immediate passage of the Susan B. Anthony amendment.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Gilson Gardner also went to the White House to leave his hot protest. And there
+were others.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Telegrams poured in from all over the country. The press printed headlines
+which could not but arouse the sympathy of thousands. Even people who did not
+approve of picketing the White House said, &ldquo;After all, what these women
+have done is certainly not &lsquo;bad&rsquo; enough to merit such drastic
+punishment&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And women protested. From coast to coast there poured in at our headquarters
+copies of telegrams sent to Administration leaders. Of course not all women by
+any means had approved this method of agitation. But the government&rsquo;s
+action had done more than we had been able to do for them. It had made them
+feel sex-conscious. Women were being unjustly treated. Regardless of their
+feelings about this particular procedure, they stood up and objected.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For the first time, I believe, our form of agitation began to seem a little
+more respectable than the Administration&rsquo;s handling of it. But the
+Administration did not know this fact yet.
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Everybody in line for the work-room!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We were thankful to leave our inedible breakfast. We were unable to drink the
+greasy black coffee. The pain in the tops of our heads was acute.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What you all down here for?&rdquo; asked a young negress, barely out of
+her teens, as she casually fingered her sewing material.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, I held a purple, white and gold banner at the gates of the White
+House.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You don&rsquo; say so! What de odders do?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Same thing. We all held banners at the White House gates asking
+President Wilson to give us the vote.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;An&rsquo; yo&rsquo; all got sixty days fo&rsquo; dat?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes. You see the President thought it would be a good idea to send us to
+the workhouse for asking for the vote. You know women want to vote and have
+wanted to for a long time in our country&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;O-Yass&rsquo;m, I know. I seen yo&rsquo; parades, an&rsquo;
+meetin&rsquo;s, an&rsquo; everythin&rsquo;. I know whah yo&rsquo; all live,
+right near the White House. You&rsquo;s alright. I hopes yo&rsquo; git it,
+fo&rsquo; women certainly do need protextion against men like Judge Mullowny.
+He has us allatime picked up an&rsquo; sen&rsquo; down here.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They sen&rsquo; yo&rsquo; down here once, an&rsquo; then yo&rsquo; come
+out without a cent, and try to look fo&rsquo; a job, an&rsquo; befo&rsquo;
+yo&rsquo; can fin&rsquo; one a cop walks up an&rsquo; asks yo&rsquo; whah
+yo&rsquo; live, an&rsquo; ef yo&rsquo; haven&rsquo;t got a place yet,
+becaus&rsquo; yo&rsquo; ain&rsquo; got a cent to ren&rsquo; one with, he says,
+&lsquo;Come with me, I&rsquo;ll fin&rsquo; yo&rsquo; a home,&rsquo; an&rsquo;
+hustles yo&rsquo; off to the p&rsquo;lice station an&rsquo; down heah again,
+an&rsquo; you&rsquo;re called a 4vag&rsquo; (vagrant). What chance has we
+niggahs got, I ask ya? I hopes yo&rsquo; all gits a vote an&rsquo; fixes up
+somethings for women!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You see that young girl over there?&rdquo; said another prisoner, who in
+spite of an unfortunate life had kept a remnant of her early beauty. I nodded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, Judge Mullowny gave her thirty days for her first offense, and
+when he sentenced her, she cried out desperately, &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t send me
+down there, Judge! If you do, I&rsquo;ll kill myself!&rsquo; What do you think
+he said to that?&mdash;&lsquo;I&rsquo;ll give you six months in which to change
+your mind!&rsquo;&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I reflected. The judge that broke this pale-faced, silent girl was the
+appointee of the President. It was the task of such a man to sentence American
+women to the workhouse for demanding liberty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Conversing with the &ldquo;regulars&rdquo; was forbidden by the wardress, but
+we managed, from time to time, to talk to our fellow prisoners with
+stealthiness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We knew somethin&rsquo; was goin&rsquo; to happen,&rdquo; said one negro
+girl, &ldquo;because Monday the close we had on wer&rsquo; took off us
+an&rsquo; we were giv&rsquo; these old patched ones. We wuz told they wanted to
+take &lsquo;stock,’ but we heard they wuz bein&rsquo; washed fo&rsquo; you-all
+suff&rsquo;agettes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The unpleasantness at wearing the formless garments of these unfortunates made
+us all wince. But the government&rsquo;s calculation aroused our hot
+indignation. We were not convicted until Tuesday and our prison garments were
+ready Monday!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You must not speak against the President,&rdquo; said the servile
+wardress, when she discovered we were telling our story to the inmates.
+&ldquo;You know you will be thrashed if you say anything more about the
+President; and don&rsquo;t forget you&rsquo;re on Government property and may
+be arrested for treason if it happens again.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We doubted the seriousness of this threat of thrashing until one of the girls
+confided to us that such outrages happened often. We afterward obtained proof
+of these brutalities.[1]
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[1] See affidavit of Mrs. Bovee, page 144.
+</p>
+
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Old Whittaker beat up that girl over there just last week and put her in
+the &lsquo;booby&rsquo; house on bread and water for five days.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What did she do?&rdquo; I asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, she an&rsquo; another girl got to scrapping in the blackberry patch
+and she didn&rsquo;t pick enough berries. .&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;All put up your work, girls, and get in line.&rdquo; This from the
+wardress, who sped up the work in the sewing room. It was lunch time, and
+though we were all hungry we dreaded going to the silence and the food in that
+gray dining room with the vile odors. We were counted again as we filed out,
+carrying our heavy chairs with us as is the workhouse custom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do they do this all the time?&rdquo; I asked. It seemed as though
+needless energy was being spent counting and recounting our little group.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wouldn&rsquo;t do anybody any good to try to get away from here,&rdquo;
+said one of the white girls. &ldquo;Too many bloodhounds!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Bloodhounds!&rdquo; I asked in amazement, for after all these women were
+not criminals but merely misdemeanants.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, yes. Just a little while ago, three men tried to get away and they
+turned bloodhounds after them and shot them dead-and they weren&rsquo;t bad men
+either.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>
+When our untasted supper was over that night we were ordered into the square,
+bare-walled &ldquo;recreation&rdquo; room, where we and the other prisoners
+sat, and sat, and sat, our chairs against the walls, a dreary sight indeed,
+waiting for the fortyfive minutes before bedtime to pass. The sight of two
+negro girl prisoners combing out each other&rsquo;s lice and dressing their
+kinky hair in such a way as to discourage permanently a return of the vermin
+did not produce in us exactly a feeling of &ldquo;recreation.&rdquo; But we
+tried to sing. The negroes joined in, too, and soon outsang us, with their
+plaintive melodies and hymns. Then back to our cells and another attempt to
+sleep.
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>
+A new ordeal the next morning! Another of the numberless
+&ldquo;pedigrees&rdquo; is to be taken. One by one we were called to the
+warden&rsquo;s office.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Were your father or mother ever insane?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Are you a confirmed drunkard, chronic or moderate drinker?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you smoke or chew or use tobacco in any form?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Married or single?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Single.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How many children?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;None.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What religion do you profess?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Christian.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What religion do you profess?&rdquo; in a higher pitched voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I did not clearly comprehend. &ldquo;Do you mean &lsquo;Am I a Catholic or a
+Protestant?&rsquo; I am a Christian.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But it was of no avail. She wrote down, &ldquo;None.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I protested. &ldquo;That is not accurate. I insist that I am a Christian, or at
+least I try to be one.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You must learn to be polite,&rdquo; she retorted almost fiercely, and I
+returned to the sewing room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For the hundredth time we asked to be given our toothbrushes, combs,
+handkerchiefs and our own soap. The third day of imprisonment without any of
+these essentials found us depressed and worried over our unsanitary condition.
+We plead also for toilet paper. It was senseless to deny these necessities. It
+is enough to imprison people. Why seek to degrade them utterly?
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>
+The third afternoon we were mysteriously summoned into the presence of
+Superintendent Whittaker. He seemed warm and cordial. We were ordered drawn up
+in a semi-circle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ladies, there is a rumor that you may be pardoned,&rdquo; he began.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;By whom?&rdquo; asked one.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;For what?&rdquo; asked another. &ldquo;We are innocent women. There is
+nothing to pardon us for.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have come to ask you what you would do if the President pardoned
+you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We would refuse to accept it,&rdquo; came the ready response from
+several.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I shall leave you for a while to consider this. Mind! I have not yet
+received information of a pardon, but I have been asked to ascertain your
+attitude.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Our consultation was brief. We were of one mind. We were unanimous in wishing
+to reject a pardon for a crime which we had never committed. We said so with
+some spirit when Mr. Whittaker returned for our decision.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You have no choice. You are obliged to accept a pardon.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That settled it, and we waited. That the protest on the outside had been strong
+enough to precipitate action from the government was the subject of our
+conversation. Evidently it had not been strong enough to force action on the
+suffrage amendment, but it was forcing action, and that was important.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Whittaker returned triumphant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ladies, you are pardoned by the President. You are free to go as soon as
+you have taken off your prison clothes and put on your own.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was sad to leave the other prisoners behind. Especially pathetic were the
+girls who helped us with our clothes. They whispered such eager appeals in our
+ears, telling us of their drastic sentences for trifling offenses and of the
+cruel punishments. It was hard to resist digressing into some effort at prison
+reform. That way lay our instincts. Our reason told us that we must first
+change the status of women.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As we were leaving the workhouse to return to Washington we had an unexpected
+revelation of the attitude of officialdom toward our campaign. Addressing Miss
+Lucy Burns, who had arrived to assist us in getting on our way, Superintendent
+Whittaker, in an almost unbelievable rage, said, &ldquo;Now that you women are
+going away, I have something to say and I want to say it to you. The next lot
+of women who come here won&rsquo;t be treated with the same consideration that
+these women were.&rdquo; I will show later on how he made good this terrible
+threat.
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>
+Receiving a Presidential pardon through the Attorney General had its amusing
+aspect. My comrades shared this amusement when I told them the following
+incident.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the day after our arrest, I was having tea at the Chevy Chase Country Club
+in Washington. Quite casually a gentleman introduced me to Mr. Gregory, the
+Attorney General.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I see you were mixed up with the suffragettes yesterday,&rdquo; was the
+Attorney General&rsquo;s first remark to the gentleman. And before the latter
+could explain that he had settled accounts quietly but efficiently with a
+hoodlum who was attempting to trip the women up on their march, the chief law
+officer of the United States contributed this important suggestion: &ldquo;You
+know what I&rsquo;d do if I was those policemen. I&rsquo;d just take a hose out
+with me and when the women came out with their banners, why I&rsquo;d just
+squirt the hose on &rsquo;em . . . .&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But Mr. Gregory . . .&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, sir! If you can just make what a woman does look ridiculous, you
+can sure kill it . . . .&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But, Mr. Attorney General, what right would the police have to assault
+these or any other women?&rdquo; the gentleman managed finally to interpolate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hup&mdash;hup&mdash;&rdquo; denoting great surprise, came from the
+Attorney General, as he looked to me for reassurance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His expectant look vanished when I said, &ldquo;Mr. Gregory, did it ever occur
+to you that it might make the government look ridiculous instead of the
+women?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+You can imagine bow the easy manner of one who is sure of his audience melted
+from his face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This is one of the women arrested yesterday,&rdquo; continued the
+gentleman, while the Attorney General smothered a &ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;ll be .
+. .&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am out on bail,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo; To-morrow we go to jail. It is
+all prearranged, you understand. The trial is merely a matter of form.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The highest law officer of the land fled gurgling. s
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>
+The day following our release Mrs. J. A. H. Hopkins carried a picket banner to
+the gates of the White House to test the validity of the pardon. Her banner
+read, &ldquo;We do not ask pardon for ourselves but justice for all American
+women.&rdquo; A curious crowd, as large as had collected on those days when the
+police arrested women for &ldquo;obstructing traffic,&rdquo; stood watching the
+lone picket. The President passed through the gates and saluted. The police did
+not interfere.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Daily picketing was resumed and no arrests followed for the moment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was now August, three months since the Senate Suffrage Committee authorized
+its chairman, Mr. Jones, to report the measure to the Senate for action. Mr.
+Jones said, however, that he was too busy to make a report; .that he wanted to
+make a particularly brilliant one, one that would &ldquo;be a contribution to
+the cause&rdquo;; that he did not approve of picketing, but that he would
+report the measure &ldquo;in a reasonable time.&rdquo; So much for the
+situation in the Senate!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From the House we gathered some interesting evidence. We reminded Mr. Webb,
+Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, that out of a total membership of
+twenty-one men on his committee, twelve were Democrats, two-thirds of whom were
+opposed to the measure; we reminded him that the Republicans on the committee
+were for action. Mr. Webb wrote in answer:
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+&ldquo;The Democratic caucus passed a resolution that only war emergency
+measures would be considered during this extra session, and that the President
+might designate from time to time special legislation which he regarded as war
+legislation, and such would be acted on by the House. The President, not having
+designated woman suffrage and national prohibition so far as war measures, the
+judiciary committee up to this time has not felt warranted under the caucus
+rule, in reporting either of these measures. If the President should request
+either or both of them as war measures, then I think the Committee would
+attempt to take some action on them promptly. <i>So you see after all it is
+important to your cause to make the President see that woman suffrage comes
+within the rules laid down.</i>&rdquo;[1]
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[1] Italics are mine.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here was a frank admission of the assumption upon which women had gone to
+jail&mdash;that the President was responsible for action on the amendment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now that we were again allowed to picket the White House, the Republicans
+seized the opportunity legitimately to embarrass their opponents by
+precipitating a bitter debate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Senator Cummins of Iowa, Republican member of the Suffrage Committee, moved, as
+had Mr. Mann in the House at an earlier date, to discharge the Suffrage
+Committee for failing to make the report authorized by the entire Committee.
+Mr. Cummins said, among other things:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;. . . I look upon the resolution as definitely and certainly a war
+measure. There is nothing that this country could do which would strengthen it
+more than to give the disfranchised women . . . the opportunity to vote . . . .
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Last week . . . I went to the Chairman of the Committee and told him
+that . . . we had finished the hearings, reached a conclusion and that it was
+our bounden duty to make the report to the Senate . . . . I asked him if he
+would not call a meeting of the Committee. He said that it would be impossible,
+that he had some other engagements which would prevent a meeting of the
+Committee.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Senator Cummins explained that he finally got the promise of the Chairman that
+a meeting of the Committee would be called on a given date. When it was not
+called he made his motion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Chairman Jones made some feeble remarks and some evasive excuses which meant
+nothing, and which only further aroused Republican friends of the measure on
+the Committee.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Senator Gronna of North Dakota, Republican, interrupted him with the direct
+question, &ldquo;I ask the chairman of this committee why this joint resolution
+has not been reported? The Senator, who is chairman of the committee, I
+suppose, knows as well as I do that the people of the entire country are
+anxious to have this joint resolution submitted and to be given an opportunity
+to vote upon it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Senator Johnson of California, Republican, proposed that Chairman Jones consent
+to call the Committee together to consider reporting out the bill, which
+Senator Jones flatly refused to do.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Senator Jones of Washington, another Republican member of the Committee, added:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I agree with the Senator from Iowa that this is a war measure and ought
+to be considered as such at this time. I do not see how we can very
+consistently talk democracy while disfranchising the better half of our
+citizenship&mdash;I may not approve of the action of the women picketing the
+White House, but neither do I approve of what I consider the lawless action
+toward these women in connection with the picketing . . . .&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I do not want to think the chairman does not desire to call the
+committee together because of some influence outside of Congress as some have
+suggested . . . .&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At this point Senator Hollis of New Hampshire, Democrat, arose to say:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There is a small but very active group of women suffragists who have
+acted in such a way that some who are ardently in favor of woman suffrage
+believe that their action should not be encouraged by making a favorable report
+at this time.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Senator Johnson protested at this point, but Senator Hollis continued:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To discharge the committee would focus the attention of the country upon
+the action and would give undue weight to what has been done by the active
+group of woman suffragists.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I think that any student of psychology will acknowledge that our picketing had
+stimulated action in Congress, and that what was now needed was some still more
+provocative action from us.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap10"></a>Chapter 5<br/>
+August Riots</h2>
+
+<p>
+Imprisoning women had met with considerable public disapproval, and attendant
+political embarrassment to the Administration. That the presidential pardon
+would end this embarrassment was doubtless the hope of the Administration. The
+pickets, however, returned to their posts in steadily increasing numbers. Their
+presence at the gates was desired by the Administration no more now than it had
+been before the arrests and imprisonments. But they had found no way to rid
+themselves of the pickets. And as another month of picketing drew to an end the
+Administration ventured to try other ways to stop it and with it the consequent
+embarrassment. Their methods became physically more brutal and politically more
+stupid. Their conduct became lawless in the extreme.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meanwhile the President had drafted the young men of America in their millions
+to die on foreign soil for foreign democracy. He had issued a special appeal to
+women to give their work, their treasure and their sons to this enterprise. At
+the same time his now gigantic figure stood obstinately across the path to our
+main objective. It was our daily task to keep vividly in his mind that
+objective. It was our responsibility to compel decisive action from him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Using the return of Envoy Root from his mission to Russia as another dramatic
+opportunity to speak to the President we took to the picket line these mottoes:
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+TO ENVOY ROOT
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+YOU SAY THAT AMERICA MUST THROW ITS MANHOOD TO THE SUPPORT OF LIBERTY.<br/>
+<br/>
+WHOSE LIBERTY?<br/>
+THIS NATION IS NOT FREE. TWENTY MILLION WOMEN ARE DENIED BY THE PRESIDENT OF
+THE UNITED STATES THE RIGHT TO REPRESENTATION IN THEIR OWN GOVERNMENT.<br/>
+<br/>
+TELL THE PRESIDENT THAT HE CANNOT FIGHT AGAINST LIBERTY AT HOME WHILE HE TELLS
+US TO FIGHT FOR LIBERTY ABROAD.<br/>
+<br/>
+TELL HIM TO MAKE AMERICA SAFE FOR DEMOCRACY BEFORE HE ASKS THE MOTHERS OF
+AMERICA TO THROW THEIR SONS TO THE SUPPORT OF DEMOCRACY IN EUROPE.<br/>
+<br/>
+ASK HIM HOW HE CAN REFUSE LIBERTY TO AMERICAN CITIZENS WHEN HE IS FORCING
+MILLIONS OF AMERICAN BOYS OUT OF THEIR COUNTRY TO DIE FOR LIBERTY.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At no time during the entire picketing was the traffic on Pennsylvania Avenue
+so completely obstructed as it was for the two hours during which this banner
+made its appearance on the line. Police captains who three weeks before were
+testifying that the police could not manage the crowds, placidly looked on
+while these new crowds increased.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We did not regard Mr. Wilson as our President. We felt that he had neither
+political nor moral claim to our allegiance. War had been made without our
+consent. The war would be finished and very likely a bad peace would be written
+without our consent. Our fight was becoming increasingly difficult&mdash;I
+might almost say desperate. Here we were, a band of women fighting with
+banners, in the midst of a world armed to the teeth. And so it was not very
+difficult to understand how high spirited women grew more resentful, unwilling
+to be a party to the President&rsquo;s hypocrisy, the hypocrisy so eager to
+sacrifice life without stint to the vague hope of liberty abroad, while
+refusing to assist in the peaceful legislative steps which would lead to
+self-government in our own country. As a matter of fact the President&rsquo;s
+constant oratory on freedom and democracy moved them to scorn. They were stung
+into a protest so militant as to shock not only the President but the public.
+We inscribed on our banner what countless American women&lsquo; had long
+thought in their hearts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The truth was not pleasant but it had to be told. We submitted to the world,
+through the picket line, this question:
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+KAISER WILSON<br/>
+HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN HOW YOU SYMPATHIZED WITH THE POOR GERMANS BECAUSE THEY WERE
+NOT SELF GOVERNED?<br/>
+20,000,000 AMERICAN WOMEN ARE NOT SELF-GOVERNED. TAKE THE BEAM OUT OF YOUR OWN
+EYE.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We did not expect public sympathy at this point. We knew that not even the
+members of Congress who had occasionally in debate, but more frequently in
+their cloak rooms, and often to us privately, called the President
+&ldquo;autocrat&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Kaiser&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Ruler&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;King&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Czar&rdquo;&mdash;would
+approve our telling the truth publicly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nor was it to be expected that eager young boys, all agog to fight Germans,
+would be averse to attacking women in the meantime. They were out to fight and
+such was the public hysteria that it did not exactly matter whom they fought.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And so those excited boys of the Army and Navy attacked the women and the
+banner. The banner was destroyed. Another was brought up to take its place.
+This one met the same fate. Meanwhile a crowd was assembling in front of the
+White House either to watch or to assist in the attacks. At the very moment
+when one banner was being snatched away and destroyed, President and Mrs.
+Wilson passed through the gates on their way to a military review at Fort Myer.
+The President saw American women being attacked, while the police refused them
+protection.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Not a move was made by the police to control the growing crowd. Such inaction
+is always a signal for more violence on the part of rowdies. As the throng
+moved to and fro between the White House and our Headquarters immediately
+opposite, so many banners were destroyed that finally Miss Lucy Burns, Miss
+Virginia Arnold and Miss Elizabeth Stuyvesant took those remaining to the
+second and third floor balconies of our building and hung them out. At this
+point there was not a picket left on the street. The crowd was clearly
+obstructing the traffic, but no attempt was made to move them back or to
+protect the women, some of whom were attacked by sailors on their own
+doorsteps. The two police officers present watched without interference while
+three sailors brought a ladder from the Belasco Theater in the same block,
+leaned it against the side of the Cameron House, the Headquarters, climbed up
+to the second floor balcony, mounted the iron railing and tore down all banners
+and the American flag. One sailor administered a severe blow in the face with
+his clenched fist upon Miss Georgina Sturgis of Washington.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why did you do that?&rdquo; she demanded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The man halted for a brief instant in obvious amazement and said, &ldquo;I
+don&rsquo;t know.&rdquo; And with a violent wrench he tore the banner from her
+hands and ran down the ladder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The narrow balcony was the scene of intense excitement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But for Miss Burns&rsquo; superb strength she would have been dragged over the
+railing of the balcony to be plunged to the ground. The mob watched with
+fascination while she swayed to and fro in her wrestle with two young sailors.
+And still no attempt by the police to quell the riot!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The climax came when in the late afternoon a bullet was fired through one of
+the heavy glass windows of the second floor, embedding itself in the ceiling.
+The bullet grazed past the head of Mrs. Ella Morton Dean of Montana. Captain
+Flather of the 1st Precinct, with two detectives, later examined the holes and
+declared they had been made by a 38 caliber revolver, but no attempt was ever
+made to find the man who had drawn the revolver.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meanwhile eggs and tomatoes were hurled at our fresh banners flying from the
+flag poles on the building.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Finally police reserves were summoned and in less than five minutes the crowd
+was pushed back and the street cleared. Thinking now that they could rely on
+the protection of the police, the women started with their banners for the
+White House. But the police looked on while all the banners were destroyed, a
+few paces from Headquarters. More banners ,went out,&mdash;purple, white and
+gold ones. They, too, were destroyed before they reached the White House.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This entire spectacle was enacted on August 14, within a stone&rsquo;s throw of
+the White House.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Paul summed up the situation when she said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The situation now existing in Washington exists because President Wilson
+permits it. Orders were first handed down to the police to arrest suffragists.
+The clamor over their imprisonments made this position untenable. The police
+were then ordered to protect suffragists. They were then ordered to attack
+suffragists. They have now been ordered to encourage irresponsible crowds to
+attack suffragists. No police head would dare so to besmirch his record without
+orders from his responsible chief. The responsible chief in the National
+Capital is the President of the United States.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Shortly after the incident of the &ldquo;Kaiser banner&rdquo; I was speaking in
+Louisville, Kentucky. The auditorium was packed and overflowing with men and
+women who had come to hear the story of the pickets.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Up to this time we had very few members in Kentucky and had anticipated in this
+Southern State, part of President Wilson ,&rsquo;s stronghold, that our
+Committee would meet with no enthusiasm and possibly with warm hostility.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had related briefly the incidents leading up to the picketing and the
+Government&rsquo;s suppressions. I was rather cautiously approaching the
+subject of the &ldquo;Kaiser banner,&rdquo; feeling timid and hesitant,
+wondering how this vast audience of Southerners would take it. Slowly I read
+the inscription on the famous banner, &ldquo;Kaiser Wilson, have you forgotten
+how you sympathized with the poor Germans because they were not self-governed?
+Twenty million American women are not self-governed. Take the beam out of your
+own eye.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I hardly reached the last word, still wondering what the, intensely silent
+audience would do, when a terrific outburst of applause mingled with shouts of
+&ldquo;Good! Good! He is, he is!&rdquo; came to my amazed ears. As the applause
+died down there was almost universal good-natured laughter. Instead of the
+painstaking and eloquent explanation which I was prepared to offer, I had only
+to join in their laughter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A few minutes later a telegram was brought to the platform announcing further
+arrests. I read:
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+&ldquo;Six more women sentenced to-day to 30 days in Occoquan workhouse.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Instant cries of &ldquo;Shame! Shame! It&rsquo;s an outrage!&rdquo; Scores of
+men and two women were on their feet calling for the passage of a resolution
+denouncing the Administration&rsquo;s policy of persecution. The motion of
+condemnation was put. It seemed as if the entire audience seconded it. It went
+through instantly, unanimously, and again with prolonged shouts and applause.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The meeting continued and I shall never forget that audience. It lingered to a
+late hour, almost to midnight, asking questions, making brief
+&ldquo;testimonials&rdquo; from the floor with almost evangelical fervor.
+Improvised collection baskets were piled high with bills. Women volunteered for
+picket duty and certain imprisonment, and the following day a delegation left
+for Washington.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I cite this experience of mine because it was typical. Every one who went
+through the country telling the story had similar experiences at this time.
+Indignation was swift and hot. Our mass meetings everywhere became meetings of
+protest during the entire campaign.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And resolutions of protest which always went immediately by wire from such
+meetings to the President, his cabinet and to his leaders in Congress, of
+course created increasing uneasiness in Democratic circles.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On August 15th the pickets again attempted to take their posts on the line.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On this day one lettered banner and fifty purple, white and gold flags were
+destroyed by a mob led by sailors in uniform. Alice Paul was knocked down three
+times by a sailor in uniform and dragged the width of the White House sidewalk
+in his frenzied attempt to tear off leer suffrage sash.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Katharine Morey of Boston was also knocked to the pavement by a sailor,
+who took her flag and then darted off into the crowd. Miss Elizabeth Stuyvesant
+was struck by a soldier in uniform and her blouse torn from her body. Miss Maud
+Jamison of Virginia was knocked down and dragged along the sidewalk. Miss
+Beulah Amidon of North Dakota was knocked down by a sailor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the midst of these riotous scenes, a well-known Washington correspondent was
+emerging from the White House, after an interview with the President. Dr.
+Cart&rsquo; Grayson, the President&rsquo;s physician, accompanying him to the
+door, advised:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You had better go out the side entrance. Those damned women are in the
+front.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In spite of this advice the correspondent made his exit through the same gate
+by which he had entered, and just in time to ward off an attack by a sailor on
+one of the frailest girls in the group.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Administration, in its desperation, ordered the police to lawlessness. On
+August 16th, fifty policemen led the mob in attacking the women. Hands were
+bruised and arms twisted lit&rsquo; police officers and plainclothes men. Two
+civilians who tried to rescue the women from the attacks of the police were
+arrested. The police fell upon these young women with more brutality even than
+the mobs they had before encouraged. Twenty-five lettered banners and 123 Party
+flags were destroyed by mobs and police on this afternoon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As the crowd grew more dense, the police temporarily retired from the attack.
+When their activities had summoned a sufficiently large and infuriated mob,
+they would rest. And so the passions of the mob continued unchecked upon these
+irrepressible women, and from day to day the Administration gave its orders.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Finding that riots and mob attacks had not terrorized the pickets, the
+Administration decided again to arrest the women in the hope of ending the
+agitation. Having lost public sympathy through workhouse sentences, having won
+it back by pardoning the women, the Administration felt it could afford to risk
+losing it again, or rather felt that it had supplied itself with an appropriate
+amount of stage-setting.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And so on the third day of the riotous attacks, when it was clear that the
+pickets would persist, the Chief of Police called at headquarters to announce
+to Miss Paul that &ldquo;orders have been changed and henceforth women carrying
+banners will be arrested&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meanwhile the pickets heard officers shout to civilian friends as they
+passed&mdash;&ldquo;Come back at four o&rsquo;clock.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Members of the daily mob announced at the noon hour in various nearby
+restaurants that &ldquo;the suffs will be arrested to-day at 4
+o&rsquo;clock.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Four o&rsquo;clock is the hour the Government clerks begin to swarm homewards.
+The choice of this hour by the police to arrest the women would enable them to
+have a large crowd passing the White House gates to lend color to the fiction
+that &ldquo;pickets were blocking the traffic.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Throughout the earlier part of the afternoon the silent sentinels stood
+unmolested, carrying these mottoes:
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+ENGLAND AND RUSSIA ARE ENFRANCHISING WOMEN IN WAR-TIME.
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+HOW LONG MUST WOMEN WAIT FOB LIBERTY?
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+THE GOVERNMENT ORDERS OUR BANNERS DESTROYED BECAUSE THEY TELL THE TRUTH.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At four o&rsquo;clock the threatened arrests took place. The women arrested
+were Miss Lavinia Dock of Pennsylvania, Miss Edna Dixon of Washington, D. C., a
+young public school teacher; Miss Natalie Gray of Colorado, Mrs. Win. Upton
+Watson and Miss Lucy Ewing of Chicago, and Miss Catherine Flanagan of
+Connecticut.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Exactly forty minutes were allowed for the trial of these six women. One police
+officer testified that they were &ldquo;obstructing traffic.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+None of the facts of the hideous and cruel manhandling by the mobs and police
+officers was allowed to be brought out. Nothing the women could say mattered.
+The judge pronounced : &ldquo;Thirty days in Occoquan workhouse in lieu of a
+$10.00 fine.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And so this little handful of women, practically all of them tiny and frail of
+physique, began the cruel sentence of 30 days in the workhouse, while their
+cowardly assailants were not even reprimanded, nor were those who destroyed
+over a thousand dollars&rsquo; worth of banners apprehended.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The riots had attracted sufficient attention to cause some anxiety in
+Administration circles. Protests against us and others against the rioters
+pressed upon them. Congress was provoked into a little activity; activity which
+reflected some doubt as to the wisdom of arresting women without some warrant
+in law.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Two attempts were made, neither of which was successful, to give the
+Administration more power and more law.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Senator Culberson of Texas, Democrat, offered a bill authorizing President
+Wilson at any time to prohibit any person from approaching or entering any
+place&mdash;in short blanket authority granting the President or his officials
+limitless power over the actions of human beings. Realizing that this could be
+used to prohibit picketing the White House we appeared before a committee
+hearing on the bill and spoke against it. The committee did not have the
+boldness to report such a bill.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Senator Myers of Montana, an influential member of the Democratic majority,
+introduced into the Senate a few days later a resolution making it illegal to
+picket the White House. The shamelessness of admitting to the world that acts
+for which women had been repeatedly sentenced to jail, and for which women were
+at that moment lying in prison, were so legal as to make necessary a special
+act of Congress against them, was appalling. The Administration policy seemed
+to be &ldquo;Let us put women in jail first&mdash;let us enact a law to keep
+them there afterwards,&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This tilt between Senator Brandegee, of Connecticut, antisuffrage Republican,
+and Senator Myers, suffrage Democrat, took place when Mr. Myer&rsquo;s
+presented his bill:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MR. BRANDEGEE: . . . Was there any defect in the legal proceedings by which
+these trouble makers were sentenced and put in jail a few weeks ago?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MR. MYERS: None that I know of. I am not in a position to pass upon that. I do
+not believe any was claimed . . . .
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MR. BRANDEGEE: Inasmuch as the law was sufficient to land them in jail . . . I
+fail to see why additional legislation is necessary on the subject.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MR. MYERS: There seems to be a doubt in the mind of some whether the present
+law is sufficient and I think it ought to be put beyond doubt. I think . . .
+the laws are not stringent or severe enough . . . .
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MR. BRANDEGEE : They were stringent enough to land the malefactors in jail . .
+. .
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In spite of Senator Myers&rsquo; impassioned appeal to his colleagues, be was
+unable to command any support for his bill. I quote this from his speech in the
+Senate August 18, 1917:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MR. MYERS: Mr. President, I wish to say a few words about the bill I have just
+introduced. It is intended for the enactment of better and more adequate
+legislation to prevent the infamous, outrageous, scandalous, and, I think,
+almost treasonable actions that have been going on around the White House for
+months past, which President of the United States have been a gross insult to
+the and to the people of the United States; I mean the so-called picketing of
+the White House. . . These disgusting proceedings have been going on for
+months, and if there is no adequate law to stop them, I think there ought to
+be.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I believe the President, in the generosity of his heart, erred when he
+pardoned some of the women who have been conducting these proceedings, after
+they had been sentenced to 60 days in the workhouse. I believe they deserved
+the sentence, and they ought to have been compelled to serve it . . . .
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I for one am not satisfied longer to sit here idly day by day and submit
+to having the President of the United States insulted with impunity before the
+people of the country and before all the world. It is a shame and reproach.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I hope this bill . . . will receive careful consideration and that it
+may be enacted into law and may be found an adequate preventive and punishment
+for such conduct.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This bill, which died a well-deserved death, is so amusing as to warrant
+reproduction. Although lamenting our comparison between the President and the
+Kaiser, it will be seen that Senator Myers brought forth a thoroughly Prussian
+document:
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+A BILL
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+For the better protection and enforcement of peace and order and the public
+welfare in the District of Columbia.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives o f the United States
+o f America in Congress assembled, That when the United States shall be engaged
+in war it shall be unlawful for any person or persons to carry, hold, wave,
+exhibit, display, or have in his or her possession in any public road, highway,
+alley, street, thoroughfare, park, or other public place in the District of
+Columbia, any banner, flag, streamer, sash, or other device having thereon any
+words or language with reference to the President or the Vice President of the
+United States, or any words or language with reference to the Constitution of
+the United States, or the right of suffrage, or right of citizenship, or any
+words or language with reference to the duties of any executive official or
+department of the United States, or with reference to any proposed amendment to
+the Constitution of the United States, or with reference to any law or proposed
+law of the United States, calculated to bring the President of the United
+States or the Government of the United States into contempt, or which may tend
+to cause confusion, or excitement, or obstruction of the streets or sidewalks
+thereof, or any passage in any public place.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sec. 2. That any person committing any foregoing described offense shall, upon
+conviction thereof, for each offense be fined not less than $100 nor more than
+$1,000 or imprisoned not less than thirty days nor more than one year, or by
+both such fine and imprisonment.
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+Voices were raised in our behalf, also, and among them I note the following
+letter written to Major Pullman by Gilson Gardner:[1]
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[1] The distinguished journalist who went to Africa to meet Theodore Roosevelt
+and accompanied him on his return journey to America.
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+Mr. Raymond Pullman,<br/>
+Chief of Police,<br/>
+Washington, D. C.
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+My dear Pullman,&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I am writing as an old friend to urge you to get right in this matter of
+arresting the suffrage pickets. Of course the only way for you to get right is
+to resign. It has apparently become impossible for you to stay in office and do
+your duty. The alternative is obvious.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+You must see, Pullman, that you cannot be right in what you have done in this
+matter. You have given the pickets adequate protection; but you have arrested
+them and had them sent to jail and the workhouse; you have permitted the crowd
+to mob them, and then you have had your officers do much the same thing by
+forcibly taking their banners from them. In some of the actions you must have
+been wrong. If it was right to give them protection and let them stand at the
+White House for five months, both before and after the war, it was not right to
+do what you did later.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+You say that it was not right when you were &ldquo;lenient&rdquo; and gave them
+protection. You cannot mean that. The rightness or wrongness must be a matter
+of law, not of personal discretion, and for you to attempt to substitute your
+discretion is to set up a little autocracy m place of the settled laws of the
+land. This would justify a charge of &ldquo;Kaiserism&rdquo; right here in our
+capital city.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The truth is, Pullman, you were right when you gave these women protection.
+That is what the police are for. When there are riots they are supposed to
+quell them, not by quelling the &ldquo;proximate cause,&rdquo; but by quelling
+the rioters.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I know your police officers now quite well and know that they are most happy
+when they are permitted to do their duty. They did not like the dirty business
+of permitting a lot of sailors and street rifraff to rough the girls. All that
+went against the grain, but when you let them protect the pickets, as you did
+March third, when a thousand women marched around and around the White House,
+the officers were as contented as they were efficient.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Washington has a good police force and there has never been a minute when they
+could not have scattered any group gathered at the White House gates and given
+perfect protection to the women standing there.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+You know why they did not do their duty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In excusing what you have done, you say that the women carried banners with
+&ldquo;offensive&rdquo; inscriptions on them. You refer to the fact that they
+have addressed the President as &ldquo;Kaiser Wilson.&rdquo; As a matter of
+fact not an arrest you have made&mdash;and the arrests now number more than
+sixty&mdash;has been for carrying one of those &ldquo;offensive&rdquo; banners.
+The women were carrying merely the suffrage colors or quotations from President
+Wilson&rsquo;s writings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But, suppose the banners were offensive. Who made you censor of banners? The
+law gives you no such power. Even when you go through the farce of a police
+court trial the charge is &ldquo;obstructing traffic&rdquo;; which shows
+conclusively that you are not willing to go into court on the real issue.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No. As Chief of Police you have no more right to complain of the sentiments of
+a banner than you have of the sentiments in an editorial in the Washington
+Post, and you have no more right to arrest the banner-bearer than you have to
+arrest the owner of the Washington Post . . . . Congress refused to pass a
+press censorship law. There are certain lingering traditions to the effect that
+a people&rsquo;s liberties are closely bound up with the right to talk things
+out and those who are enlightened know that the only proper answer to words is
+words. When force is opposed to words there is ground for the charge of
+&ldquo;Kaiserism.&rdquo; . .
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was just one thing for you to have done, Pullman, and that was to give
+full and adequate protection to these women, no matter what banners they
+carried or what ideas their banners expressed. If there is any law that can be
+invoked against the wording of the banners it was the business of others in the
+government to start the legal machinery which would abate them. It was not
+lawful to abate them by mob violence, or by arrests. And if those in authority
+over you were not willing that you thus do your duty, it was up to you to
+resign.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After all it would not be such a terrible thing, Pullman, for you to give up
+being Chief of Police, particularly when you are not permitted to be chief of
+police, but must yield your judgment to the district commissioners who have
+yielded their judgment to the White House. Being Chief of Police under such
+circumstances can hardly be worth while. You are a young man and the world is
+full of places for young men with courage enough to save their self- respect at
+the expense of their jobs. You did that once,-back in the Ballinger-Pinchot
+days. Why not now?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Come out and help make the fight which must be made to recover and protect the
+liberties which are being filched from us here at home. There is a real fight
+looming up for real democracy. You will not be alone. There are a lot of fine
+young men, vigorous and patriotic, in and out of the Administration who are
+preparing for this fight. Yours will not be the only resignation. But why not
+be among the first? Don&rsquo;t wait. Let them have your resignation. now and
+let me be the first to welcome and congratulate you.
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+Sincerely,<br/>
+(Signed) GILSON GARDNER.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Representative John Baer of North Dakota, having witnessed for himself the
+riotous scenes, immediately introduced into the House a resolution[1] demanding
+an investigation of conditions in the Capital which permitted mobs to attack
+women. This, too, went to certain death. Between the members who did not dare
+denounce the Administration and the others who did dare denounce the women, we
+had to stand quite solidly on our own program, and do our best to keep them
+nervous over the next step in the agitation.
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[1] See Appendix 3 for full text of resolution.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The press throughout the entire country at this time protested against mob
+violence and the severe sentences pronounced upon the women who had attempted
+to hold their banners steadfast.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Washington (D. C.) Herald, August 19, printed the following editorial:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There is an echo of the President&rsquo;s phrase about the &ldquo;firm hand of
+stern repression&rdquo; in the arrest, conviction and jailing of the six
+suffragists; a touch of ruthlessness in their incarceration at Occoquan along
+with women of the street, pickpockets and other flotsam and jetsam. Still, the
+suffragists are not looking for sympathy, and it need not be wasted upon them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The police have arrived at a policy, although no one knows whether it will be
+sufficiently stable and consistent to last out the week . . . . Washington is
+grateful that the disgraceful period of rioting and mob violence in front of
+the White House is at an end, and another crisis in the militant crusade to
+bring the Susan B. Anthony amendment before Congress has been reached.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What is the next step? No one knows. Picketing doubtless will continue, or an
+effort will be made to continue it; and militancy, if the police continue to
+arrest, instead of giving the women protection, will pass into a new phase. The
+suffragists as well as the public at large are thankful that the police
+department has finally determined to arrest the pickets, instead of allowing
+them to be mobbed by hoodlums .
+</p>
+
+<p>
+. . . The public eye will be on Occoquan for the next few weeks, to find out
+how these women bear up under the Spartan treatment that is in store for them.
+If they have deliberately sought martyrdom, as some critics have been unkind
+enough to suggest, they have it now. And if their campaign, in the opinion of
+perhaps the great majority of the public, has been misguided, admiration for
+their pluck will not be withheld.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Boston Journal of August 20, 1917, said in an editorial written by Herbert
+N. Pinkham, Jr.:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That higher authorities than the Washington police were responsible for the
+amazing policy of rough house employed against the suffrage pickets has been
+suspected from the very beginning. Police power in Washington is sufficient to
+protect a handful of women against a whole phalanx of excited or inspired
+government clerks and uniformed hoodlums, if that power were used.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+. . . In our nation&rsquo;s capital, women have been knocked down and dragged
+through the streets by government employees&mdash;including sailors in uniform.
+The police are strangely absent at such moments, as a rule, and arrive only in
+time to arrest a few women . . . .
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Perhaps the inscriptions on the suffrage banners were not tactful. It is
+sometimes awkward indeed to quote the President&rsquo;s speeches after the
+speeches have &ldquo;grown cold.&rdquo; Also a too vigorous use of the word
+&ldquo;democracy&rdquo; is distasteful to some government dignitaries, it
+seems. But right or wrong, the suffragists at Washington are entitled to police
+protection, even though in the minds of the Administration they are not
+entitled to the ballot.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Perhaps, even in America, we must have a law forbidding people to carry banners
+demanding what they consider their political rights. Such a law would, of
+course, prohibit political parades of all kinds, public mass meetings and other
+demonstrations of one set of opinions against another set. Such a law has been
+proposed by Senator Myers of Montana, the author of the latest censorship and
+anti-free speech bill. It may be necessary to pass the law, if it is also
+necessary that the public voice be stilled and the nation become dumb and
+subservient.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But until there is such a law . . . people must be protected while their
+actions remain within the law. If their opinions differ from ours, we must
+refrain from smashing their faces, if a certain number of people believe that
+they have the right to vote we may either grant their claim or turn them sadly
+away, but we may not roll them into the gutter; if they see fit to tell us our
+professions of democracy are empty, we may smile sorrowfully and murmur a
+prayer for their ignorance but we may not pelt them with rotten eggs and fire a
+shot through the window of their dwelling; if, denied a properly dignified
+hearing, they insist upon walking through the streets with printed words on a
+saucy banner, we may be amazed at their zeal and pitiful of their bad taste,
+but even for the sake of keeping their accusations out of sight of our foreign
+visitors (whom we have trained to believe us perfect) we may not send them to
+jail . . . .
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All this suffrage shouting in Washington has as its single object the
+attainment of President Wilson&rsquo;s material support for equal suffrage . .
+. .
+</p>
+
+<p>
+President Wilson&rsquo;s word would carry the question into Congress . . .
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Would there be any harm in letting Congress vote on a suffrage resolution? That
+would end the disturbance and it would make our shield of national justice
+somewhat brighter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It looks like President Wilson&rsquo;s move.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Between these opposing currents of protest and support, the Administration
+drifted helplessly. Unwilling to pass the amendment, it continued to send women
+to prison.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the afternoon of September 4th, President Wilson led his first contingent of
+drafted &ldquo;soldiers of freedom&rdquo; down Pennsylvania Avenue in gala
+parade, on the first lap of their journey to the battlefields of France. On the
+same afternoon a slender line of women&mdash;also &ldquo;soldiers of
+freedom&rdquo;&mdash;attempted to march in Washington.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As they attempted to take up their posts, two by two, in front of the Reviewing
+Stand, opposite the White House, they were gathered in and swept away by the
+police like common street criminals&mdash;their golden banners scarcely flung
+to the breeze.
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+MR. PRESIDENT, HOW LONG MUST WOMEN BE DENIED A VOICE IN A GOVERNMENT WHICH IS
+CONSCRIPTING THEIR SONS?
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+was the offensive question on the first banner carried by Miss Eleanor Calnan
+of Massachusetts and Miss Edith Ainge of New York.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Avenue was roped off on account of the parade. There was hardly any one
+passing at the time; all traffic had been temporarily suspended, so there was
+none to obstruct. But the Administration&rsquo;s policy must go on. A few
+moments and Miss Lucy Branham of Maryland and Mrs. Pauline Adams of Virginia
+marched down the Avenue, their gay banners waving joyously in the autumn sun,
+to fill up the gap of the two comrades who had been arrested. They, too, were
+shoved into the police automobile, their banners still high and appealing,
+silhouetted against the sky as they were hurried to the police station.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The third pair of pickets managed to cross the Avenue, but were arrested
+immediately they reached the curb. Still others advanced. The crowd began to
+line the ropes and to watch eagerly the line of women indomitably coming, two
+by two, into the face of certain arrest. A fourth detachment was arrested in
+the middle of the Avenue on the trolley tracks. But still they came.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A few days later more women were sent to the workhouse for carrying to the
+picket line this question:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;President Wilson, what did you mean when you said: &lsquo;We have seen a
+good many singular things happen recently. We have been told there is a deep
+disgrace resting upon the origin of this nation. The nation originated in the
+sharpest sort of criticism of public policy. We originated, to put it in the
+vernacular, in a kick, and if it be unpatriotic to kick, why then the grown man
+is unlike the child. We have forgotten the very principle of our origin if we
+have forgotten how to object, how to resist, how to agitate, how to pull down
+and build up, even to the extent of revolutionary practices, if it be necessary
+to readjust matters. I have forgotten my history, if that be not true
+history.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Administration had not yet abandoned hope of removing the pickets. They
+persisted in their policy of arrests and longer imprisonments.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap11"></a>Chapter 6<br/>
+Prison Episodes</h2>
+
+<p>
+During all this time the suffrage prisoners were enduring the miserable and
+petty tyranny of the government workhouse at Occoquan. They were kept
+absolutely incommunicado. They were not allowed to see even their nearest
+relatives, should any be within reach, until they had been in the institution
+two weeks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Each prisoner was allowed to write one outgoing letter a month, which, after
+being read by the warden, could be sent or withheld at his whim.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All incoming mail and telegrams were also censored by the Superintendent and
+practically all of them denied the prisoners. Superintendent Whittaker openly
+boasted of holding up the suffragists&rsquo; mail: &ldquo;I am boss down
+here,&rdquo; he said to visitors who asked to see the prisoners, or to send in
+a note. &ldquo;I consider the letters and telegrams these prisoners get are
+treasonable. They cannot have them.&rdquo; He referred to messages commending
+the women for choosing prison to silence, and bidding them stand steadfast to
+their program.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Of course all this was done in the hope of intimidating not only the prisoners,
+but also those who came wanting to see them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was the intention of the women to abide as far as possible by the routine of
+the institution, disagreeable and unreasonable as it was. They performed the
+tasks assigned to them. They ate the prison food without protest. They wore the
+coarse prison clothes. But at the end of the first week of detention they
+became so weak from the shockingly bad food that they began to wonder if they
+could endure such a system. The petty tyrannies they could endure. But the
+inevitable result of a diet of sour bread, half-cooked vegetables, rancid soup
+with worms in it, was serious.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Finally the true condition of affairs trickled to the outside world through the
+devious routes of prison messengers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Senator J. Hamilton Lewis, of Illinois, Democratic whip in the Senate, heard
+alarming reports of two of his constituents, Miss Lucy Ewing, daughter of Judge
+Ewing, niece of Adlai Stevenson, Vice-President in Cleveland&rsquo;s
+Administration, niece of James Ewing, minister to Belgium in the same
+Administration, and Mrs. William Upton Watson of Chicago. He made a hurried
+trip to the workhouse to see them. The fastidious Senator was
+shocked&mdash;shocked at the appearance of the prisoners, shocked at the tale
+they told, shocked that &ldquo;ladies&rdquo; should be subjected to such
+indignities. &ldquo;In all my years of criminal practice,&rdquo; said the
+Senator to Gilson Gardner, who had accompanied him to the workhouse, &ldquo;I
+have never seen prisoners so badly treated, either before or after
+conviction.&rdquo; He is a gallant gentleman who would be expected to be
+uncomfortable when he actually saw ladies suffer. It was more than gallantry in
+this instance, however, for he spoke in frank condemnation of the whole
+&ldquo;shame and outrage&rdquo; of the thing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is possible that he reported to other Administration officials what he had
+learned during his visit to the workhouse for very soon afterwards it was
+announced that an investigation of conditions in the workhouse would be held.
+That was, of course, an admirable maneuver which the Administration could make.
+&ldquo;Is the President not a kind man? He pardoned some women. Now he
+investigates the conditions under which others are imprisoned. Even though they
+are lawless women, he wishes them well treated.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It would sound &ldquo;noble&rdquo; to thousands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Immediately the District Commissioners announced this investigation, Miss Lucy
+Burns, acting on behalf of the National Woman&rsquo;s Party, sent a letter to
+Commissioner Brownlow. After summing up the food situation Miss Burns wrote:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When our friends were sent to prison, they expected the food would be extremely
+plain, but they also expected that . . enough eatable food would be given them
+to maintain them in their ordinary state of health. This has not been the case.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The testimony of one of the prisoners, Miss Lavinia Dock, a trained nurse, is
+extremely valuable on the question of food supplied at Occoquan. Miss Dock is
+Secretary of the American Federation of Nurses. She has had a distinguished
+career in her profession. She assisted in the work after the Johnstown flood
+and during the yellow fever epidemic in Florida. During the Spanish war she
+organized the Red Cross work with Clara Barton. &lsquo;I really thought,&rsquo;
+said Miss Dock, when I last saw her, &lsquo;that I could eat everything, but
+here I have hard work choking down enough food to keep the life in me.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I am sure you will agree with me that these conditions should be instantly
+remedied. When these and other prisoners were sentenced to prison they were
+sentenced to detention and not to starvation or semi-starvation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The hygienic conditions have been improved at Occoquan since a group of
+suffragists were imprisoned there. But they are still bad. The water they drink
+is kept in an open pail, from which it is ladled into a drinking cup. The
+prisoners frequently dip the drinking cup directly into the pail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The same piece of soap is used for every prisoner. As the prisoners in Occoquan
+are sometimes seriously afflicted with disease, this practice is appallingly
+negligent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Concerning the general conditions of the person, I am enclosing with this
+letter, affidavit of Mrs. Virginia Bovee, an ex-officer of the workhouse . . .
+. The prisoners for whom I am counsel are aware that cruel practices go on at
+Occoquan. On one occasion they heard Superintendent Whittaker kicking a woman
+in the next room. They heard Whittaker&rsquo;s voice, the sound of blows, and
+the woman’s cries.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I lay these facts before you with the knowledge that you will be glad to have
+the fullest possible information given you concerning the institution for whose
+administration you as Commissioner of the District of Columbia are
+responsible.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+Very respectfully yours,<br/>
+(Signed) LUCY BURNS.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Bovee, a matron, was discharged from the workhouse because she tried to be
+kind to the suffrage prisoners. She also gave them warnings to guide them past
+the possible contamination of hideous diseases. As soon as she was discharged
+from the workhouse she went to the headquarters of the Woman&rsquo;s Party and
+volunteered to make an affidavit. The affidavit of Mrs. Bovee follows:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was discharged yesterday as an officer of Occoquan workhouse. For eight
+months I acted as night officer, with no complaint as to my performance of my
+duties. Yesterday Superintendent Whittaker told me I was discharged and gave me
+two hours in which to get out. I demanded the charges from the matron, Mrs.
+Herndon, and I was told that it was owing to something that Senator Lewis has
+said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I am well acquainted with the conditions at Occoquan. I have had charge of all
+the suffragist prisoners who have been there. I know that their mail has been
+withheld from them. Mrs. Herndon, the matron, reads the mail, and often
+discussed it with us at the officers&rsquo; table. She said of a letter sent to
+one of the suffragist pickets now in the workhouse, &ldquo;They told her to
+keep her eyes open and notice everything. She will never get that
+letter,&rdquo; said Mrs. Herndon. ,Then she corrected herself, and added,
+&ldquo;Not until she goes away.&rdquo; Ordinarily the mail not given the
+prisoners is destroyed. The mail for the suffragists is saved for them until
+they are ready to go away. I have Seen three of the women have one letter each,
+but that is all. The three were Mrs. Watson, Miss Ewing, and I think Miss
+Flanagan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The blankets now being used in the prison have been in use since December
+without being washed or cleaned. Blankets are washed once a year. Officers are
+warned not to touch any of the bedding. The one officer who handles it is
+compelled by the regulations to wear rubber gloves while she does so. The
+sheets for the ordinary prisoners are not changed completely, even when one is
+gone and another takes her bed. Instead the top sheet is put on the bottom, and
+one fresh sheet is given them. I was not there when these suffragists arrived,
+and I do not know how their bedding was arranged. I doubt whether the
+authorities would have dared to give them one soiled sheet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The prisoners with disease are not always isolated, by any means. In the
+colored dormitory there are two women in the advanced stages of consumption.
+Women suffering from, syphilis, who have open sores, are put in the hospital.
+But those whose sores are temporarily healed are put in the same dormitory with
+the others. There have been several such in my dormitory.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the prisoners come they must undress and take a shower bath. For this they
+take a piece of soap from a bucket in the store room. When they are finished
+they throw the soap back in the bucket. The suffragists are permitted three
+showers a week and have only these pieces of soap which are common to all
+inmates. There is no soap at all in wash rooms.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The beans, hominy, rice, cornmeal (which is exceedingly coarse, like chicken
+feed) and cereal have all had worms in them. Sometimes the worms float on top
+of the soup. Often they are found in the cornbread. The first suffragists sent
+the worms to Whittaker on a spoon. On the farm is a fine herd of Holsteins. The
+cream is made into butter and sold to the tuberculosis hospital in Washington.
+At the officers&rsquo; table we have very good milk. The prisoners do not have
+any butter or sugar, and no milk except by order of the doctor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Prisoners are punished by being put on bread or water, or by being beaten. I
+know of one girl who has been kept seventeen days on only water this month in
+the &ldquo;booby house.&rdquo; The ,same was kept nineteen days on water last
+year because she .beat Superintendent Whittaker when he tried to beat her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Superintendent Whittaker or his son are the only ones who beat the girls.
+Officers are not allowed to lay a hand on them in punishment. I know of one
+girl beaten until the blood had to be scrubbed from her clothing and from the
+floor of the &ldquo;booby house.&rdquo; I have never actually seen a girl
+beaten, but I have seen her afterwards and I have heard the cries and blows.
+Dorothy Warfield was beaten and the suffragists heard the beating.
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+(Signed) MRS. VIRGINIA BOVEE.
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+Subscribed and sworn to before me this day of disgust, 1917.<br/>
+JOSEPH H. BATT, Notary Public.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While the Administration was planning an investigation of the conditions in the
+workhouse, which made it difficult for women to sustain health through a thirty
+day sentence, it was, through its police court, sentencing more women to sixty
+day sentences, under the same conditions. The Administration was giving some
+thought to its plan of procedure, but not enough to master the simple fact that
+women would not stop going to prison until something had been done which
+promised passage of the amendment through Congress.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+New forms of intimidation and hardship were offered by Superintendent
+Whittaker.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Frederick Kendall of Buffalo, New York, a frail and highly sensitive
+woman, was put in a &ldquo;punishment cell&rdquo; on bread and water, under a
+charge of &ldquo;impudence.&rdquo; Mrs. Kendall says that her impudence
+consisted of &ldquo;protesting to the matron that scrubbing floors on my hands
+and knees was too severe work for me as I had been unable for days to eat the
+prison food. My impudence further consisted in asking for lighter work.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Kendall was refused the clean clothing she should have had the day she was
+put in solitary confinement and was thus forced to wear the same clothing
+eleven days. She was refused a nightdress or clean linen for the cot. Her only
+toilet accommodations was an open pail. For four days she was allowed no water
+for toilet purposes., Her diet consisted of three thin slices of bread and
+three cups of water, carried to her in a paper cup which frequently leaked out
+half the meager supply before it got to Mrs. Kendall&rsquo;s cell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Representative and Mrs. Charles Bennet Smith, of Buffalo, friends of Mrs.
+Kendall, created a considerable disturbance when they learned of this cruel
+treatment, with the result that Mrs. Kendall was finally given clean clothing
+and taken from her confinement. When she walked from her cell to greet Mrs.
+Genevieve Clark Thompson, daughter of Champ Clark, Speaker of the House, and
+Miss Roberta Bradshaw, other friends, who, through the Speaker&rsquo;s
+influence, had obtained special permission to see Mrs. Kendall, she fell in a
+dead faint. It was such shocking facts as these that the Commissioners and
+their investigating board were vainly trying to keep from the country for the
+sake of the reputation of the Administration.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For attempting to spear to Mrs. Kendall through her cell door, to inquire as to
+her health, while in solitary, Miss Lucy Burns was placed on a bread and water
+diet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Jeannette Rankin of Montana, the only woman member of Congress, was moved
+by these and similar revelations to introduce a resolution[1] calling for a
+Congressional investigation of the workhouse.
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[1] For text of Miss Rankin&rsquo;s resolution see Appendix 3.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There were among the suffrage prisoners women of all shades of social opinion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The following letter by Miss Gvinter, the young Russian worker, was smuggled
+out of the workhouse. This appeal to Meyer London was rather pathetic, since
+not even he, the only Socialist member in Congress, stood up to denounce the
+treatment of the pickets.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Comrade Meyer London:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I am eight years in this movement, three and a half years a member of the
+Socialist Party, Branches 2 and 4 of the Bronx, and I have been an active
+member of the Waist Makers&rsquo; Union since 1910. I am from New York, but am
+now in Baltimore, where I got acquainted with the comrades who asked me to
+picket the White House, and of course I expressed my willingness to help the
+movement. I am now in the workhouse. I want to get out and help in the work as
+I am more revolutionary than the Woman&rsquo;s Party, yet conditions here are
+so bad that I feel I must stay here and help women get their rights. We are
+enslaved here. I am suffering very much from hunger and nearly blind from bad
+nourishment. The food is chiefly soup, cereal with worms, bread just baked and
+very heavy. Even this poor food, we do not get enough. I do not eat meat. When
+I told the doctor that he said, &ldquo;You must eat, and if you don&rsquo;t
+like it here, you go and tell the judge you won&rsquo;t picket any more, and
+then you can get out of here.&rdquo; But I told him that I could not go against
+my principles and my belief. He asked, &ldquo;Do you believe you should break
+the law?&rdquo; I replied, &ldquo;I have picketed whenever I had a chance for
+eight years and have never broken the law. Picketing is legal.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Please come here as quickly as possible, as we need your help.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Will you give the information in this letter to the newspapers?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Please pardon this scrap of paper as I have nothing else to write on. I would
+write to other comrades, to Hillquit or Paulsen, but you are in the Congress
+and can do more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yours for the Cause,
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+(Signed) ANNA GVINTER.<br/>
+OCCOQUAN WORKHOUSE, Friday, Sept. 21.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Gvinter swore to an affidavit when she came out in which she said in part:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+. . . The days that we had to stand on scaffolds and ladders to paint the
+dormitories, I was so weak from lack of food I was dizzy and in constant danger
+of falling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+. . . When they told me to scrub the floors of the lavatories I refused,
+because I have to work for my living and I could not afford to get any of the
+awful diseases that women down there have.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I obeyed all the rules of the institution. The only times I stopped working was
+because I was too sick to work.
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+(Signed) ANNA GVINTER.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sworn to before me and subscribed in my presence this 13th day of October,
+1917.
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+(Signed) C. LARIMORE KEELEY,<br/>
+Notary Public, D. C.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Half a hundred women was the government&rsquo;s toll for one month:-
+.Continuous arrests kept the issue hot and kept people who cared in constant
+protest. It is impossible to give space to the countless beautiful messages
+which were sent to the women, or the fervent protests which went to government
+officials. Among the hundreds of thousands of protests was a valuable one by
+Dr. Harvey Wiley, the celebrated food expert, in a letter to Dr. George M.
+Kober, member of the Board in control of the jail and workhouse, and a
+well-known sanitarium. Dr. Wiley wrote:
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+November 3, 1917.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dear Dr. Kober:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I am personally acquainted with many of the women who have been confined at
+Occoquan, and at the District jail, and have heard from their own lips an
+account of the nutrition and sanitary conditions prevailing at both places.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I, therefore, feel constrained to make known to you the conditions, as they
+have been told to me, and as I believe them actually to exist.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As I understand it, there is no purpose in penal servitude of lowering the
+vitality of the prisoner, or in inviting disease. Yet both of these conditions
+prevail both at Occoquan and at the District jail. First of all, the food
+question. The diet furnished the prisoners at Occoquan especially is of a
+character to invit6 all kinds of infections that may prevail, and to lower the
+vitality so that the resistance to disease is diminished. I have fortunately
+come into possession of samples of the food actually given to these women. I
+have kept samples of the milk religiously for over two weeks to see if I could
+detect the least particle of fat, and have been unable to perceive any. The fat
+of milk is universally recognized by dieticians as its most important nutritive
+character. I understand that a dairy is kept on the farm at Occoquan, and yet
+it is perfectly certain that no whole milk is served or ever has been served to
+one of the so-called &ldquo;picketers&rdquo; in that jail. I have not had
+enough of the sample to make a chemical analysis, but being somewhat
+experienced in milk, I can truthfully say that it seems to me to be watered
+skimmed milk. I also have a sample of the pea soup served. The pea grains are
+coarsely broken, often more than half of a pea, being served in one piece. They
+never have been cooked, but are in a perfectly raw state, and found to be
+inedible by the prisoners.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I have also samples of the corn bread which is most unattractive and repellant
+to the eye and to the taste. All of these witnesses say that the white bread
+apparently is of good quality, but the diet in every case is the cause of
+constipation, except in the case of pea soup, which brings on diarrhea and
+vomiting. As nutrition is the very foundation of sanitation, I wish to call to
+your special attention, as a sanitation, the totally inadequate sustenance
+given to these prisoners.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The food at the county jail at Washington is much better than the food at
+Occoquan, but still bad enough. This increased excellence of food is set off by
+the miserable ventilation of the cells, in which these noble women are kept in
+solitary confinement. Not only have they had a struggle to get the windows open
+slightly, but also at the time of their morning meal, the sweeping is done. The
+air of the cells is filled with dust and they try to cover their coffee and
+other food with such articles as they can find to keep the dust out of their
+food. Better conditions for promoting tuberculosis could not be found.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I appeal to you as a well-known sanitarian to get the Board of Charities to
+make such rules and regulations as would secure to prisoners of all kinds, and
+especially to political prisoners, as humane an environment as possible.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I also desire to ask that the Board of Charities would authorize me to make
+inspections of food furnished to prisoners at Occoquan and at the District
+Jail, and to have physical and chemical analysis made without expense to the
+Board, in order to determine more fully the nutritive environment in which the
+prisoners live.
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+Sincerely,<br/>
+(Signed) HARVEY WILEY.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This striking telegram from Richard Bennett, the distinguished actor, must have
+arrested the attention of the Administration.
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+September 22, 1917.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hon. Newton Baker,<br/>
+Secretary of War,<br/>
+War Department,<br/>
+Washington, D. C.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I have been asked to go to France personally, with the film of &ldquo;Damaged
+Goods,&rdquo; as head of a lecture corps to the American army. On reliable
+authority I am told that American women, because they have dared demand their
+political freedom, are held in vile conditions in the Government workhouse in
+Washington; are compelled to paint the negro toilets for eight hours a day; are
+denied decent food and denied communication with counsel. Why should I work for
+democracy in Europe when our American women are denied democracy at home? If I
+am to fight for social hygiene in France, why not begin at Occoquan workhouse?
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+RICHARD BENNETT.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Bennett never received a reply to this message.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Charming companionships grew up in prison. Ingenuity at lifting the dull
+monotony of imprisonment brought to light many talents for camaraderie which
+amused not only the suffrage prisoners but the &ldquo;regulars.&rdquo; Locked
+in separate cells, as in the District Jail, the suffragists could still
+communicate by song. The following lively doggerel to the tune of
+&ldquo;Captain Kidd&rdquo; was sung in chorus to the accompaniment of a hair
+comb. It became a saga. Each day a new verse was added, relating the
+day&rsquo;s particular controversy with the prison authorities.
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+We worried Woody-wood,<br/>
+As we stood, as we stood,<br/>
+We worried Woody-wood,<br/>
+As we stood.<br/>
+We worried Woody-wood,<br/>
+And we worried him right good;<br/>
+We worried him right good as we stood.<br/>
+<br/>
+We asked him for the vote,<br/>
+As we stood, as we stood,<br/>
+We asked him for the vote<br/>
+As we stood,<br/>
+We asked him for the vote,<br/>
+But he&rsquo;d rather write a note,<br/>
+He&rsquo;d rather write a note&mdash;so we stood.<br/>
+<br/>
+We&rsquo;ll not get out on bail,<br/>
+Go to jail, go to jail&mdash;<br/>
+We&rsquo;ll not get out on bail,<br/>
+We prefer to go to jail,<br/>
+We prefer to go to jail&mdash;we&rsquo;re not frail.<br/>
+<br/>
+We asked them for a brush,<br/>
+For our teeth, for our teeth,<br/>
+We asked them for a brush<br/>
+For our teeth.<br/>
+We asked them for a brush,<br/>
+They said, &ldquo;There ain&rsquo;t no rush,&rdquo;<br/>
+They said, &ldquo;There ain&rsquo;t no rush&mdash;darn your teeth.&rdquo;<br/>
+<br/>
+We asked them for some air,<br/>
+As we choked, as we choked,<br/>
+We asked them for some air<br/>
+As we choked.<br/>
+We asked them for some air<br/>
+And they threw us in a lair,<br/>
+They threw us in a lair, so we choked.<br/>
+<br/>
+We asked them for our nightie,<br/>
+As we froze, as we froze,<br/>
+We asked them for our nightie<br/>
+As we froze.<br/>
+We asked them for our nightie,<br/>
+And they looked&mdash;hightie-tightie&mdash;<br/>
+They looked hightie-tightie&mdash;so we froze.<br/>
+<br/>
+Now, ladies, take the hint,<br/>
+As ye stand, as ye stand,<br/>
+Now, ladies, take the hint,<br/>
+As ye stand.<br/>
+Now, ladies, take the hint,<br/>
+Don&rsquo;t quote the Presidint,<br/>
+Don&rsquo;t quote the Presidint, as ye stand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Humor predominated in the poems that came out of prison. There was never any
+word of tragedy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Not even an intolerable diet of raw salt pork, which by actual count of Miss
+Margaret Potheringham, a teacher of Domestic Science and Dietetics, was served
+the suffragists sixteen times in eighteen days, could break their spirit of
+gayety. And when a piece of fish of unknown origin was slipped through the tiny
+opening in the cell door, and a specimen carefully preserved for Dr.
+Wiley&mdash;who, by the way, was unable to classify it&mdash;they were more
+diverted than outraged.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sometimes it was a &ldquo;prayer&rdquo; which enlivened the evening hour before
+bedtime. Mary Winsor of Haverford, Pennsylvania, was the master prayer-maker.
+One night it was a Baptist prayer, another a Methodist, and still another a
+stern Presbyterian prayer. The prayers were most disconcerting to the matron
+for the &ldquo;regulars&rdquo; became almost hysterical with laughter, when
+they should be slipping into sleep. It was trying also to sit in the corridor
+and hear your daily cruelties narrated to God and punishment asked. This is
+what happened to the embarrassed warden and jail attendants if they came to
+protest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sometimes it was the beautiful voice of Vida Milholland which rang through the
+corridors of the dreary prison, with a stirring Irish ballad, a French love
+song, or the Woman&rsquo;s Marseillaise.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Again the prisoners would build a song, each calling out from cell to cell, and
+contributing a line. The following song to the tune of &ldquo;Charlie Is My
+Darling&rdquo; was so written and sung with Miss Lucy Branham leading:
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+SHOUT THE REVOLUTION OF WOMEN
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+Shout the revolution<br/>
+Of women, of women,<br/>
+Shout the revolution<br/>
+For liberty.<br/>
+Rise, glorious women of the earth,<br/>
+The voiceless and the free<br/>
+United strength assures the birth<br/>
+Of true democracy.
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+REFRAIN
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+Invincible our army,<br/>
+Forward, forward,<br/>
+Triumphant daughters pressing<br/>
+To victory.<br/>
+<br/>
+Shout the revolution<br/>
+of women, of women,<br/>
+Shout the revolution<br/>
+For liberty.<br/>
+Men&rsquo;s revolution born in blood,<br/>
+But ours conceived in peace,<br/>
+We hold a banner for a sword,<br/>
+Till all oppression cease.
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+REFRAIN
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+Prison, death, defying,<br/>
+Onward, onward,<br/>
+Triumphant daughters pressing<br/>
+To victory.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The gayety was interspersed with sadness when the suffragists learned of new
+cruelties heaped upon the helpless ones, those who were without influence or
+friends. .. They learned of that barbarous punishment known as &ldquo;the
+greasy pole&rdquo; used upon girl prisoners. This method of punishment
+consisted of strapping girls with their hands tied behind them to a greasy pole
+from which they were partly suspended. Unable to keep themselves in an upright
+position, because of the grease on the pole, they slipped almost to the floor,
+with their arms all but severed from the arm sockets, suffering intense pain
+for long periods of time. This cruel punishment was meted out to prisoners for
+slight infractions of the prison rules.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The suffrage prisoners learned also of the race hatred which the authorities
+encouraged. It was not infrequent that the jail officers summoned black girls
+to attack white women, if the latter disobeyed. This happened in one instance
+to the suffrage prisoners who were protesting against the warden&rsquo;s
+forcibly taking a suffragist from the workhouse without telling her or her
+comrades whither she was being taken. Black girls were called and commanded to
+physically attack the suffragists. The negresses, reluctant to do so, were
+goaded to deliver blows upon the women by the warden&rsquo;s threats of
+punishment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And as a result of our having been in prison, our headquarters has never ceased
+being the mecca of many discouraged &ldquo;inmates,&rdquo; when released. They
+come for money. They come for work. They come for spiritual encouragement to
+face life after the wrecking experience of imprisonment. Some regard us as
+&ldquo;fellow prisoners.&rdquo; Others regard us as &ldquo;friends at
+court.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Occasionally we meet a prison associate in the workaday world. Long after Mrs.
+Lawrence Lewis&rsquo; imprisonment, when she was working on ratification of the
+amendment in Delaware, she was greeted warmly by a charming young woman who
+came forward at a meeting. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you remember me?&rdquo; she
+asked, as Mrs. Lewis struggled to recollect. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you remember
+me? I met you in Washington.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry but I seem to have forgotten where I met you,&rdquo;
+said Mrs. Lewis apologetically.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In jail,&rdquo; came the answer hesitantly, whereupon Mrs. Lewis
+listened sympathetically while her fellow prisoner told her that she had been
+in jail at the tipie Mrs. Lewis was, that her crime was bigamy and that she was
+one of the traveling circus troupe then in Dover.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She brought up her husband, also a member of the circus,&rdquo; said
+Mrs. Lewis in telling of the incident, &ldquo;and they both joined
+enthusiastically in a warm invitation to come and see them in the
+circus.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As each group of suffragists was released an enthusiastic welcome was given to
+them at headquarters and at these times, in the midst of the warmth of
+approving and appreciative comrades, some of the most beautiful speeches were
+delivered. I quote a part of Katharine Fisher&rsquo;s speech at a dinner in
+honor of released prisoners:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Five of us who are with you to-night have recently come out from the workhouse
+into the world. A great change? Not so much of a change for women,
+disfranchised women. In prison or out, American women are not free. Our lot of
+physical freedom simply gives us and the public a new and vivid sense of what
+our lack of political freedom really means.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Disfranchisement is the prison of women&rsquo;s power and spirit. Women have
+long been classed with criminals so far as their voting rights are concerned.
+And how quick the Government is to live up to its classification the minute
+women determinedly insist upon these rights. Prison life epitomizes all life
+under undemocratic rule. At Occoquan, as at the Capitol and the White House, we
+faced hypocrisy, trickery and treachery on the part of those in power. And the
+constant appeal to us to &ldquo;cooperate&rdquo; with the workhouse authorities
+sounded wonderfully like the exhortation addressed to all women to
+&ldquo;support the Government.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is that the law of the District of Columbia?&rdquo; I asked
+Superintendent Whittaker concerning a statement he had made to me. &ldquo;It is
+the law,&rdquo; he answered, &ldquo;because it is the rule I make.&rdquo; The
+answer of Whittaker is the answer Wilson makes to women every time the
+Government, of which he is the head, enacts a law and at the same time
+continues to refuse to pass the Susan B. Anthony amendment . . . .
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We seem to-day to stand before you free, but I have no sense of freedom because
+I have left comrades at Occoquan and because other comrades may at any moment
+join them there . . . .
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While comrades are there what is our freedom? It is as empty as the so-called
+political freedom of women who have won suffrage by a state referendum. Like
+them we are free only within limits . . . .
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We must not let our voice be drowned by war trumpets or cannon. If we do, we
+shall find ourselves, when the war is over, with a peace that will only prolong
+our struggle, a democracy that will belie its name by leaving out half the
+people.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Administration continued to send women to the workhouse and the District
+Jail for thirty and sixty day sentences.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap12"></a>Chapter 7<br/>
+An Administration Protest&mdash;Dudley Field Malone Resigns</h2>
+
+<p>
+Dudley Field Malone was known to the country as sharing the intimate confidence
+and friendship of President Wilson. He had known and supported the President
+from the beginning of the President&rsquo;s political career. He had campaigned
+twice through New Jersey with Mr. Wilson as Governor; he had managed Mr.
+Wilson&rsquo;s campaigns in many states for the nomination before the Baltimore
+Convention; he had toured the country with Mr. Wilson in 1912 ; and it was he
+who led to victory President Wilson&rsquo;s fight for California in 1916.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So when Mr. Malone went to the White House in July, 1917, to protest against
+the Administration&rsquo;s handling of the suffrage question, he went not only
+as a confirmed suffragist, but also a5 a confirmed supporter and member of the
+Wilson Administration&mdash;the one who had been chosen to go to the West in
+1916 to win women voters to the Democratic Party.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Malone has consented to tell for the first time, in this record of the
+militant campaign, what happened at his memorable interview with President
+Wilson in July, 1917, an interview which he followed up two months later with
+his resignation as Collector of the Port of New York. I quote the story in his
+own words:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Frank P. Walsh, Amos Pinchot, Frederic C. Howe, J. A. H. Hopkins, Allen McCurdy
+and I were present throughout the trial of the sixteen women in July.
+Immediately after the police court judge had pronounced his sentence of sixty
+days in the Occoquan workhouse upon these &ldquo;first offenders,&rdquo; on the
+alleged charge of a traffic violation, I went over to Anne Martin, one of the
+women&rsquo;s counsel, and offered to act as attorney on the appeal of the
+case. I then went to the court clerk&rsquo;s office and telephoned to President
+Wilson at the Whit House, asking him to see me at once. It was three
+o&rsquo;clock. I called a taxicab, drove direct to the executive offices and
+met him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I began by reminding the President that in the seven years and a half of our
+personal and political association we had never had a serious difference. He
+was good enough to say that my loyalty to him bad been one of the happiest
+circumstances of his public career. But I told him I had come to place my
+resignation in his hands as I could not remain a member of any administration
+which dared to send American women to prison for demanding national suffrage. I
+also informed him that I had offered to act as counsel for the suffragists on
+the appeal of their case. He asked me for full details of my complaint and
+attitude. I told Mr. Wilson everything I had witnessed from the time we saw the
+suffragists arrested in front of the White House to their sentence in the
+police court. I observed that although we might not agree with the
+&ldquo;manners&rdquo; of picketing, citizens had a right to petition the
+President or any other official of the government for a redress of grievances.
+He seemed to acquiesce in this view, and reminded me that the women had been
+unmolested at the White House gates for over five months, adding that he had
+even ordered the head usher to invite the women on cold days to come into the
+White House and warm themselves and have coffee.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If the situation is as you describe it, it is shocking,&rdquo; said the
+President&rsquo;. &ldquo;The manhandling of the women by the police was
+outrageous and the entire trial (before a judge of your own appointment) was a
+perversion of justice,&rdquo; I said. This seemed to annoy the President and he
+replied with asperity, &ldquo;Why do you come to me in this indignant fashion
+for things which have been done by the police officials of the city of
+Washington?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mr. President,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;the treatment of these women is the
+result of carefully laid plans made by the District Commissioners of the city
+of Washington, who were appointed to office by you. Newspaper men of
+unquestioned information and integrity have told me that the District
+Commissioners have been in consultation with your private secretary, Mr.
+Tumulty, and that the Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. McAdoo, sat in at a
+conference when the policy of these arrests was being determined.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The President asserted his ignorance of all this.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you mean to tell me,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that you intend to
+resign, to repudiate me and my Administration and sacrifice me for your views
+on this suffrage question?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His attitude then angered me and I said, &ldquo;Mr. President, if there is any
+sacrifice in this unhappy circumstance, it is I who am making the sacrifice. I
+was sent twice as your spokesman in the last campaign to the Woman Suffrage
+States of the West. You have since been good enough to say publicly and
+privately that I did as much as any man to carry California for you. After my
+first tour I had a long conference with you here at the White House on the
+political situation in those states. I told you that I found your strength with
+women voters lay in the fact that you had with great patience and statesmanship
+kept this country out of the European war. But that your great weakness with
+women voters was that you had not taken any step throughout your entire
+Administration to urge the passage of the Federal Suffrage Amendment, which Mr.
+Hughes was advocating and which alone can enfranchise all the women of the
+nation. You asked me then how I met this situation, and I told you that I
+promised the women voters of the West that if they showed the political
+sagacity to choose you as against Mr. Hughes, I would do everything in my power
+to get your Administration to take up and pass the suffrage amendment. You were
+pleased and approved of what I had done. I returned to California and repeated
+this promise, and so far as I am concerned, I must keep my part of that
+obligation.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I reiterated to the President my earlier appeal that he assist suffrage as an
+urgent war measure and a necessary part of America&rsquo;s program for world
+democracy, to which the President replied: &ldquo;The enfranchisement of women
+is not at all necessary to a program of democracy and I see nothing in the
+argument that it is a war measure unless you mean that American women will not
+loyally support the war unless they are given the vote.&rdquo; I firmly denied
+this conclusion of the President and told him that while American women with or
+without the vote would support the United States Government against German
+militarism, yet it seemed to me a great opportunity of his leadership to remove
+this grievance which women generally felt against him and his administration.
+&ldquo;Mr. President,&rdquo; I urged, &ldquo;if you, as the leader, will
+persuade the administration to pass the Federal Amendment you will release from
+the suffrage fight the energies of thousands of women which will be given with
+redoubled zeal to the support of your program for international justice.&rdquo;
+But the President absolutely refused to admit the validity of my appeal, though
+it was as a &ldquo;war measure&rdquo; that the President some months later
+demanded that the Senate pass the suffrage amendment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The President was visibly moved as I added, &ldquo;You are the President now,
+reelected to office. You ask if I am going to sacrifice you. You sacrifice
+nothing by my resignation. But I lose much. I quit a political career. I give
+up a powerful office in my own state. I, who have no money, sacrifice a
+lucrative salary, and go back to revive my law practice. But most of all I
+sever a personal association with you of the deepest affection which you know
+has meant much to me these past seven years. But I cannot and will not remain
+in office and see women thrown into jail because they demand their political
+freedom.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The President earnestly urged me not to resign, saying, &ldquo;What will the
+people of the country think when they hear that the Collector of the Port of
+New York has resigned because of an injustice done to a group of suffragists by
+the police officials of the city of Washington?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My reply to this was, &ldquo;With all respect for you, Mr. President, my
+explanation to the public will not be as difficult as yours, if I am compelled
+to remind the public that you have appointed to office and can remove all the
+important officials of the city of Washington.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The President ignored this and insisted that I should not resign, saying,
+&ldquo;I do not question your intense conviction about this matter as I know
+you have always been an ardent suffragist; and since you feel as you do I see
+no reason why you should not become their counsel and take this case up on
+appeal without resigning from the Administration.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;Mr. President, that arrangement would be
+impossible for two reasons; first, these women would not want me as their
+counsel if I were a member of your Administration, for it would appear to the
+public then as if your Administration was not responsible for the indignities
+to which they have been subjected, and your Administration is responsible; and,
+secondly, I cannot accept your suggestion because it may be necessary in the
+course of the appeal vigorously to criticize and condemn members of your
+cabinet and others close to you, and I could not adopt this policy while
+remaining in office under you.&rdquo; The President seemed greatly upset and
+finally urged me as a personal service to him to go at once and perfect the
+case on appeal for the suffragists, but not to resign until I had thought it
+over for a day, and until he had had an opportunity to investigate the facts I
+had presented to him. I agreed to this, and we closed the interview with the
+President saying, &ldquo;If you consider my personal request and do not resign,
+please do not leave Washington without coming to see me.&rdquo; I left the
+executive offices and never saw him again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was just a day and a half left to perfect the exceptions for the appeal
+under the rules of procedure. No stenographic record of the trial had been
+taken, which put me under the greatest legal difficulties. I was in the midst
+of these preparations for appeal the next day when I learned to my surprise
+that the President had pardoned the women. He had not even consulted me as
+their attorney. Moreover, I was amazed that since the President had said he
+considered the treatment of the women &ldquo;shocking,&rdquo; he had pardoned
+them without stating that he did so to correct a grave injustice. I felt
+certain that the high-spirited women in the workhouse would refuse to accept
+the pardon as a mere &ldquo;benevolent&rdquo; act on the part of the President.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I at once went down to the workhouse in Virginia. My opinion was confirmed. The
+group refused to accept the President&rsquo;s pardon. I advised them that as a
+matter of law no one could compel them to accept the pardon, but that as a
+matter of fact they would have to accept it, for the Attorney General would
+have them all put out of the institution bag and baggage. So as a solution of
+the difficulty and in view of the fact that the President had said to me that
+their treatment was &ldquo;shocking&rdquo; I made public the following
+statement:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The President&rsquo;s pardon is an acknowledgment by him of the grave
+injustice that has been done:&rdquo; This he never denied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Under this published interpretation of his pardon the women at Occoquan
+accepted the pardon and returned to Washington. The incident was closed. I
+returned to New York. During the next two months I carefully watched the
+situation. Six or eight more groups of women in that time were arrested on the
+same false charges, tried and imprisoned in the same illegal way. Finally a
+group of women was arrested in September under the identical circumstances as
+those in July, was tried in the same lawless fashion and given the same
+sentence of &ldquo;sixty days in the workhouse.&rdquo; The President may have
+been innocent of responsibility for the first arrests, but he was personally
+and politically responsible for all the arrests that occurred after his pardon
+of the first, group. Under this development it seemed to me that self-respect
+demanded action, so I sent my resignation to the President, publicly stated my
+attitude and regretfully left his Administration.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Malone&rsquo;s resignation in September, 1917, came with a sudden shock,
+because the entire country and surely the Administration thought him quieted
+and subdued by the President&rsquo;s personal appeal to him in July.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Malone was shocked that the policy of arrests should be continued. Mr.
+Wilson and his Administration were shocked that any one should care enough
+about the liberty of women to resign a lucrative post in the Government. The
+nation was shocked into the realization that this was not a street brawl
+between women and policemen, but a controversy between suffragists and a
+powerful Administration. We had said so but it would have taken months to
+convince the public that the President was in any way responsible. Mr. Malone
+did what we could only have done with the greatest difficulty and after more
+prolonged sacrifices. He laid the responsibility squarely and dramatically
+where it belonged. It is impossible to overemphasize what a tremendous
+acceleration Mr. Malone&rsquo;s fine, solitary and generous act gave to the
+speedy break-down of the Administration&rsquo;s resistance. His sacrifice
+lightened ours.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Women ought to be willing to make sacrifices for their own liberation, but for
+a man to have the courage and imagination to make such a sacrifice for the
+liberation of women is unparalleled. Mr. Malone called to the attention of the
+nation the true cause of the obstruction and suppression. He reproached the
+President and his colleagues after mature consideration, in the most honorable
+and vital way,&mdash;by refusing longer to associate himself with an
+Administration which backed such policies.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And Mr. Malone&rsquo;s resignation was not only welcomed by the militant group.
+The conservative suffrage leaders, although they heartily disapproved of ,
+picketing, were as outspoken in their gratitude.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alice Stone Blackwell, the daughter of Lucy Stone, herself a pioneer suffrage
+leader and editor, wrote to Mr. Malone:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;May I express my appreciation and gratitude for the excellent and manly
+letter that you have written to President Wilson on woman suffrage? I am sure
+that I am only one of many women who feel thankful to you for it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The picketing seems to me a very silly business, and I am sure it is
+doing the cause harm instead of good; but the picketers are being shamefully
+and illegally treated, and it is a thousand pities, for President
+Wilson&rsquo;s own sake, that he ever allowed the Washington authorities to
+enter on this course of persecution. It was high time for some one to make a
+protest, and you have made one that has been heard far and wide . . . .&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, the President of the National American Woman Suffrage
+Association, wrote:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I was in Maine when your wonderful letter announcing your resignation
+came out. It was the noblest act that any man ever did on behalf of our cause.
+The letter itself was a high minded appeal . . . . &ldquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Norman de R. Whitehouse, the President of the New York State Woman
+Suffrage Party, with which Mr. Malone had worked for years, wired:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Although we disagree with you on the question of picketing every
+suffragist must be grateful to you for the gallant support you are giving our
+cause and the great sacrifice you are making.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. James Lees Laidlaw, Vice Chairman of the New York Suffrage Party, said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No words of mine can tell you how our hearts have been lifted and our
+purposes strengthened in this tremendous struggle in New York State by the
+reading of your powerful and noble utterances in your letter to President
+Wilson. There flashed through my mind all the memories of Knights of chivalry
+and of romance that I have ever read, and they all paled before your
+championship, and the sacrifice and the high-spirited leadership that it
+signifies. Where you lead, I believe, thousands of other men will follow, even
+though at a distance, and most inadequately . . . .&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And from the women voters of California with whom Mr. Malone had kept faith
+came the message:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The liberty-loving women of California greet you as one of the few men
+in history who have been willing to sacrifice material interests for the
+liberty of a class to which they themselves do not belong. We are thrilled by
+your inspiring words. We appreciate your sympathetic understanding of the
+viewpoint of disfranchised women. We are deeply grateful for the incalculable
+benefit of your active assistance in the struggle of American women for
+political liberty and for a real Democracy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I reprint Mr. Malone&rsquo;s letter of resignation which sets forth in detail
+his position.
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+September 7, 1917.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The President,<br/>
+The White House,<br/>
+Washington, D. C.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dear Mr. President:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Last autumn, as the representative of your Administration, I went into the
+woman suffrage states to urge your reelection. The most difficult argument to
+meet among the seven million voters was the failure of the Democratic party,
+throughout four years of power, to pass the federal suffrage amendment looking
+toward the enfranchisement of all the women of the country. Throughout those
+states, and particularly in California, which ultimately decided the election
+by the votes of women, the women voters were urged to support you, even though
+Judge Hughes had already declared for the federal suffrage amendment, because
+you and your party, through liberal leadership, were more likely nationally to
+enfranchise the rest of the women of the country than were your opponents.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And if the women of the West voted to reelect you, I promised them that I would
+spend all my energy, at any sacrifice to myself, to get the present Democratic
+Administration to pass the federal suffrage amendment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the present policy of the Administration, in permitting splendid American
+women to be sent to jail in Washington, not for carrying offensive banners, not
+for picketing, but on the technical charge of obstructing traffic, is a denial
+even of their constitutional right to petition for, and demand the passage of,
+the federal suffrage amendment. It, therefore, now becomes my profound
+obligation actively to keep my promise to the women of the West.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In more than twenty states it is a practical impossibility to amend the state
+constitutions; so the women of those States can only be enfranchised by the
+passage of the federal suffrage amendment. Since England and Russia, in the
+midst of the great war, have assured the national enfranchisement of their
+women, should we not be jealous to maintain our democratic leadership in the
+world by the speedy national enfranchisement of American women?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To me, Mr. President, as I urged upon you in Washington two months ago, this is
+not only a measure of justice and democracy, it is also an urgent war measure.
+The women of the nation are, and always will be, loyal to the country, and the
+passage of the suffrage amendment is only the first step toward their national
+emancipation. But unless the government takes at least this first step toward
+their enfranchisement, how can the government ask millions of American women,
+educated in our schools and colleges, and millions of American women, in our
+homes, or toiling for economic independence in every line of industry, to give
+up by conscription their men and happiness to a war for democracy in Europe,
+while these women citizens are denied the right to vote on the policies of the
+Government which demands of them such sacrifice?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For this reason many of your most ardent friends and supporters feel that the
+passage of the federal suffrage amendment is a war measure which could
+appropriately be urged by you at this session of Congress. It is true that this
+amendment would have to come from Congress, but the present Congress shows no
+earnest desire to enact this legislation for the simple reason that you, as the
+leader of the party in power, have not yet suggested it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For the whole country gladly acknowledges, Mr. President, that no vital piece
+of legislation has come through Congress these five years except by your
+extraordinary and brilliant leadership. And what millions of men and women
+to-day hope is that you will give the federal suffrage amendment to the women
+of the country by the valor of your leadership now. It will hearten the mothers
+of the nation, eliminate a just grievance, and turn the devoted energies of
+brilliant women to a more hearty support of the Government in this crisis.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As you well know, in dozens of speeches in many states I have advocated your
+policies and the war. I was the first man of your Administration, nearly five
+years ago, to publicly advocate preparedness, and helped to found the first
+Plattsburg training camp. And if, with our troops mobilizing in France, you
+will give American women this measure for their political freedom, they will
+support with greater enthusiasm your hope and the hope of America for world
+freedom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I have not approved all the methods recently adopted by women in pursuit of
+their political liberty; yet, Mr. President, the Committee on Suffrage of the
+United States Senate was formed in 1883, when I was one year old; this same
+federal suffrage amendment was first introduced in Congress in 1878, brave
+women like Susan B. Anthony were petitioning Congress for the suffrage before
+the Civil War, and at the time of the Civil War men like William Lloyd
+Garrison, Horace Greeley, and Wendell Phillips assured the suffrage leaders
+that if they abandoned their fight for suffrage, when the war was ended the men
+of the nation &ldquo;out of gratitude&rdquo; would enfranchise the women of
+the- country.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And if the men of this country had been peacefully demanding for over half a
+century the political right or privilege to vote, and had been continuously
+ignored or met with evasion by successive Congresses, as have the women, you,
+Mr. President, as a lover of liberty, would be the first to comprehend and
+forgive their inevitable impatience and righteous indignation. Will not this
+Administration, reelected to power by the hope and faith of the women of the
+West, handsomely reward that faith by taking action now for the passage of the
+federal suffrage amendment?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the Port of New York, during the last four years, billions of dollars in the
+export and import trade of the country have been handled by the men of the
+customs service; their treatment of the traveling public has radically changed,
+their vigilance supplied the evidence of the Lusitania note; the neutrality was
+rigidly maintained; the great German fleet guarded, captured, and
+repaired&mdash;substantial economies and reforms have been concluded and my
+ardent industry has been given to this great office of your appointment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But now I wish to leave these finished tasks, to return to my profession of the
+law, and to give all my leisure time to fight as hard for the political freedom
+of women as I have always fought for your liberal leadership.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It seems a long seven years, Mr. President, since I first campaigned with you
+when you were running for Governor of New Jersey. In every circumstance
+throughout those years I have served you with the most respectful affection and
+unshadowed devotion. It is no small sacrifice now for me, as a member of your
+Administration, to sever our political relationship. But I think it is high
+time that men in this generation, at some cost to themselves, stood up to
+battle for the national enfranchisement of American women. So in order
+effectively to keep my promise made in the West and more freely to go into this
+larger field of democratic effort, I hereby resign my office as Collector of
+the Port of New York, to take effect at once, or at your earliest convenience.
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+Yours respectfully,<br/>
+(Signed) DUDLEY FIELD MALONE.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The President&rsquo;s answer has never before been published:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+U. S. S. MAYFLOWER, 12 September, 1917.
+</p>
+
+<h5>THE WHITE HOUSE WASHINGTON</h5>
+
+<p>
+My dear Mr. Collector:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Your letter of September 7th reached me just before I left home and I have, I
+am sorry to say, been unable to reply to it sooner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I must frankly say that I cannot regard your reasons for resigning your
+position as Collector of Customs as convincing, but it is so evidently your
+wish to be relieved from the duties of the office that I do not feel at liberty
+to withhold my acceptance of your resignation. Indeed, I judge from your letter
+that any discussion of the reasons would not be acceptable to you and that it
+is your desire to be free of the restraints of public office. I, therefore,
+accept your resignation, to take effect as you have wished.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I need not say that our long association in public affairs makes me regret the
+action you have taken most sincerely.
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+Very truly yours,<br/>
+(Signed) WOODROW WILSON.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hon. Dudley Field Malone,<br/>
+Collector of Customs,<br/>
+New York City.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To this Mr. Malone replied:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+New York, N.Y.,<br/>
+September 15th, 1917.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The President,<br/>
+The White House,<br/>
+Washington, D. C.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dear Mr. President:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thank you sincerely for your courtesy, for I knew you were on a well-earned
+holiday and I did not expect an earlier reply to my letter of September 7th,
+1917.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After a most careful re-reading of my letter, I am unable to understand how you
+could judge that any discussion by you of my reasons for resigning would not be
+acceptable to me since my letter was an appeal to you on specific grounds for
+action now by the Administration on the Federal Suffrage amendment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+However, I am profoundly grateful to you for your prompt acceptance of my
+resignation.
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+Yours respectfully,<br/>
+(Signed) DUDLEY FIELD MALONE.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It may have been accidental but it is interesting to note that the first public
+statement of Mr. Byron Newton, appointed by the Administration to succeed Mr.
+Malone as Collector of the Port of New York, was a bitter denunciation of all
+woman suffrage whether by state or national action.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap13"></a>Chapter 8<br/>
+The Administration Yields</h2>
+
+<p>
+Immediately after Mr. Malone&rsquo;s sensational resignation the Administration
+sought another way to remove the persistent pickets without passing the
+amendment. It yielded on a point of machinery. It gave us a report in the
+Senate and a committee in the House and expected us to be grateful.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The press had turned again to more sympathetic accounts of our campaign and
+exposed the prison regime we were undergoing. We were now for a moment the
+object of sympathy; the Administration was the butt of considerable hostility.
+Sensing their predicament and fearing any loss of prestige, they risked a
+slight advance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Senator Jones, Chairman of the Suffrage Committee, made a visit to the
+workhouse. Scarcely had the women recovered from the surprise of his visit when
+the Senator, on the following day, September 15th, filed the favorable report
+which had been lying with his Committee since May 15th, exactly six months.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Report, which he had so long delayed because he wanted [he said] to make it
+a particularly brilliant and elaborate one, read:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The Committee on Woman Suffrage, to which was referred the joint
+resolution proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States,
+conferring upon women the right of suffrage, having the same under
+consideration, beg leave to report it back to the Senate with the
+recommendation that the joint resolution do pass.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This report to the Senate was immediately followed by a vote of 181 to 107 in
+the House of Representatives in favor of creating a Committee on Woman Suffrage
+in the House. This vote was indicative of the strength of the amendment in the
+House. The resolution was sponsored by Representative Pou, Chairman of the
+Rules Committee and Administration leader, himself an anti- suffragist.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is an interesting study in psychology to consider some of the statements
+made in the peculiarly heated debate the day this vote was taken.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Scores of Congressmen, anxious to refute the idea that the indomitable picket
+had had anything to do with their action, revealed naively how surely it had.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Of the 291 men present, not one man stood squarely up for the right of the
+hundreds of women who petitioned for justice. Some indirectly and many,
+inadvertently, however, paid eloquent tribute to the suffrage picket.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From the moment Representative Pou in opening the debate spoke of the
+nation-wide request for the committee, and the President&rsquo;s sanction of
+the committee, the accusations and counter- accusations concerning the wisdom
+of appointing it in the face of the pickets were many and animated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Meeker of Missouri, Democrat, protested against Congress &ldquo;yielding to
+the nagging of a certain group.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Cantrill of Kentucky, Democrat, believed that &ldquo;millions of Christian
+women in the nation should not be denied the right of having a Committee in the
+House to study the problem of suffrage because of the mistakes of some few of
+their sisters.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;One had as well say,&rdquo; he went on, &ldquo;that there should be no
+police in Washington because the police force of this city permitted daily
+thousands of people to obstruct the streets and impede traffic and permitted
+almost the mobbing of the women without arresting the offenders. There was a
+lawful and peaceful way in which the police of this city could have taken
+charge of the banners of the pickets without permitting the women carrying them
+to be the objects of mob violence. To see women roughly handled by rough men on
+the streets of the capital of the nation is not a pleasing sight to Kentuckians
+and to red-blooded Americans, and let us hope the like will never again be seen
+here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Walsh, an anti-suffrage Democrat from Massachusetts, deplored taking any
+action which would seem to yield to the demand of the pickets who carried
+banners which &ldquo;if used by a poor workingman in an attempt to get his
+rights would speedily have put him behind the bars for treason or sedition, and
+these poor, bewildered, deluded creatures, after their disgusting exhibition
+can thank their stars that because they wear skirts they are now incarcerated
+for misdemeanors of a minor character . . . . To supinely yield to a certain
+class of women picketing the gates of the official residence,&mdash;yes, even
+posing with their short skirts and their short hair within the view of this
+&lsquo;very capitol and our office buildings,&rsquo; with banners which would
+seek to lead the people to believe that because we did not take action during
+this war session upon suffrage, if you please, and grant them the right of the
+ballot that we were traitors to the American Republic, would be
+monstrous.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The subject of the creation of a committee on suffrage was almost entirely
+forgotten. The Congressmen were utterly unable to shake off the ghosts of the
+pickets. The pickets had not influenced their actions! The very idea was
+appalling to Representative Stafford of Wisconsin, anti-suffrage Republican,
+who joined in the Democratic protests. He said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If a Suffrage Committee is created the militant class will exclaim,
+&lsquo;Ah, see how we have driven the great House of Representatives to
+recognize our rights. If we keep up this sort of practices, we will compel the
+House, when they come to vote on the constitutional amendment, to surrender
+obediently likewise&rsquo;.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He spoke the truth, and finished dramatically with:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Gentlemen, there is only one question before the House today and that
+is, if you look at it from a political aspect, whether you wish to approve of
+the practices of these women who have been disgracing their cause here in
+Washington for the past several months.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Representative Volstead, of Minnesota, Republican, came the closest of all to
+real courage in his protest:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In this discussion some very unfair comments have been made upon the
+women who picketed the White House. While I do not approve of picketing, I
+disapprove more strongly of the hoodlum methods pursued in suppressing the
+practice. I gather from the press that this is what took place. Some women did
+in a peaceable, and perfectly lawful manner, display suffrage banners on the
+public street near the White House. To stop this the police allowed the women
+to be mobbed, and then because the mob obstructed the street, the women were
+arrested and fined, while the mob went scot-free . . . .&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Suffrage Committee in the House was appointed. The creation of this
+committee, which had been pending since 1913, was now finally granted in
+September, 1917. To be sure this was accomplished only after an inordinate
+amount of time, money and effort had been spent on a sustained and relentless
+campaign of pressure. But the Administration had yielded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As a means to remove the pickets, however, this yielding had failed. &ldquo;We
+ask no more machinery; we demand the passage of the amendment,&rdquo; said the
+pickets as they lengthened their line.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap14"></a>Chapter 9<br/>
+Political Prisoners</h2>
+
+<p>
+Finding that a Suffrage Committee in the House and a report in the Senate had
+not silenced our banners, the Administration cast about for another plan by
+which to stop the picketing. This time they turned desperately to longer terms
+of imprisonment. They were indeed hard pressed when they could choose such a
+cruel and stupid course.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Our answer to this policy was more women on the picket line, on the outside,
+and a protest on the inside of prison.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We decided, in the face of extended imprisonment, to demand to be treated as
+political prisoners. We felt that, as a matter of principle, this was the
+dignified and self-respecting thing to do, since we had offended politically,
+not criminally. We believed further that a determined, organized effort to make
+clear to a wider public the political nature of the offense would intensify the
+Administration&rsquo;s embarrassment and so accelerate their final surrender.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It fell to Lucy Burns, vice chairman of the organization, to be the leader of
+the new protest. Miss Burns is in appearance the very symbol of woman in
+revolt. Her abundant and glorious red hair burns and is not consumed&mdash;a
+flaming torch. Her body is strong and vital. It is said that Lucy Stone had the
+&ldquo;voice&rdquo; of the pioneers. Lucy Burns without doubt possessed the
+&ldquo;voice&rdquo; of the modern suffrage movement. Musical, appealing,
+persuading&mdash;she could move the most resistant person. Her talent as an
+orator is of the kind that makes for instant intimacy with her audience. Her
+emotional quality is so powerful that her intellectual capacity, which is quite
+as great, is not always at once perceived.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I find myself wanting to talk about her as a human being rather than as a
+leader of women. Perhaps it is because she has such winning, lovable qualities.
+It was always difficult for her to give all of her energy and power to a
+movement. She yearned to play, to read, to study, to be luxuriously indolent,
+to revel in the companionship of her family, to which she is ardently devoted;
+to do any one of a hundred things more pleasant than trying to reason with a
+politician or an unawakened member of her own sex. But for these latter labors
+she had a most gentle and persuasive genius, and she would not shrink from
+hours of close argument to convince a person intellectually and emotionally.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Unlike Miss Paul, however, her force is not nonresistant. Once in the combat
+she takes delight in it; she is by nature a rebel. She is an ideal leader for
+the stormy and courageous attack&mdash;reckless and yet never to the point of
+unwisdom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From the time Miss Burns and Miss Paul met for the first time in Cannon Row
+Police Station, London, they have been constant co- workers in suffrage. Both
+were students abroad at the time they met. They were among the hundred women
+arrested for attempting to present petitions for suffrage to Parliament. This
+was the first time either of them had participated in a demonstration. But from
+then on they worked together in England and Scotland organizing, speaking,
+heckling members of the government, campaigning at bye- elections; going to
+Holloway Prison together, where they joined the Englishwomen on hunger strike.
+Miss Burns remained organizing in Scotland while Miss Paul was obliged to
+return to America after serious illness following a thirty day period of
+imprisonment, during all of which time she was forcibly fed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Burns and she did not meet again until 1913&mdash;three years having
+intervened&mdash;when they undertook the national work on Congress. Throughout
+the entire campaign Miss Burns and Miss Paul counseled with one another on
+every point of any importance. This combination of the cool strategist and
+passionate rebel&mdash;each sharing some of the attributes of the other-has
+been a complete and unsurpassed leadership.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+You have now been introduced, most inadequately, to Lucy Burns, who was to
+start the fight inside the prison.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had no sooner begun to organize her comrades for protest than the officials
+sensed a &ldquo;plot,&rdquo; and removed her at once to solitary confinement.
+But they were too late. Taking the leader only hastened the rebellion. A
+forlorn piece of paper was discovered, on which was written their initial
+demand, It was then passed from prisoner to prisoner through holes in the wall
+surrounding leaden pipes, until a finished document had been perfected and
+signed by all the prisoners.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This historic document-historic because it represents the first organized group
+action ever made in America to establish the status of political
+prisoners&mdash;said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To the Commissioners of the Distinct of Columbia:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As political prisoners, we, the undersigned, refuse to work while in prison. We
+have taken this stand as a matter of principle after careful consideration, and
+from it we shall not recede.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This action is a necessary protest against an unjust sentence. In reminding
+President Wilson of his pre-election promises toward woman suffrage we were
+exercising the right of peaceful petition, guaranteed by the Constitution of
+the United States, which declares peaceful picketing is legal in the District
+of Columbia. That we are unjustly sentenced has been well recognized&mdash;when
+President Wilson pardoned the first group of suffragists who had been given
+sixty days in the workhouse, and again when Judge Mullowny suspended sentence
+for the last group of picketers. We wish to point out the inconsistency and
+injustice of our sentences&mdash;some of us have been given sixty days, a later
+group thirty days, and another group given a suspended sentence for exactly the
+same action.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Conscious, therefore, of having acted in accordance with the highest standards
+of citizenship, we ask the Commissioners of the District to grant us the rights
+due political prisoners. We ask that we no longer be segregated and confined
+under locks and bars in small groups, but permitted to see each other, and that
+Miss Lucy Burns, who is in full sympathy with this letter, be released from
+solitary confinement in another building and given back to us.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We ask exemption from prison work, that our legal right to consult counsel be
+recognized, to have food sent to us from outside, to supply ourselves with
+writing material for as much correspondence as we may need, to receive books,
+letters, newspapers, our relatives and friends.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Our united demand for political treatment has been delayed, because on entering
+the workhouse we found conditions so very bad that before we could ask that the
+suffragists be treated as political prisoners, it was necessary to make a stand
+for the ordinary rights of human beings for all the inmates. Although this has
+not been accomplished we now wish to bring the important question of the status
+of political prisoners to the attention of the commissioners, who, we are
+informed, have full authority to make what regulations they please for the
+:District prison and workhouse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Commissioners are requested to send us a written reply so that we may be
+sure this protest has reached them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Signed by,
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MARY WINSOR, LUCY BRANHAM, ERNESTINE HARA, HILDA BLUMBERG, MAUD MALONE, PAULINE
+F. ADAMS, ELEANOR. A. CALNAN, EDITH AINGE, ANNIE ARNEIL, DOROTHY J. BARTLETT,
+MARGARET FOTHERINGHAM.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Commissioners&rsquo; only answer to this was a hasty transfer of the
+signers and the leader, Miss Burns, to the District Jail, where they were put
+in solitary confinement. The women were not only refused the privileges asked
+but were denied some of the usual privileges allowed to ordinary criminals.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Generous publicity was given to these reasonable demands, and a surprisingly
+wide-spread protest followed the official denial of them. Scores of committees
+went to the District Commissioners. Telegrams backing up the women&rsquo;s
+demand again poured in upon all responsible administrators, from President
+Wilson down. Not even foreign diplomats escaped protest or appeal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Vera Samarodin sent to the Russian Ambassador the following touching
+letter, concerning her sister, which is translated from the Russian:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Russian Ambassador,<br/>
+Washington, D.C.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Excellency:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I am appealing to you to help a young Russian girl imprisoned in the workhouse
+near Washington. Her name is Nina Samarodin. I have just come from one of the
+two monthly visits I am allowed to make her, as a member of her family.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The severity and cruelty of the treatment she is receiving at Occoquan are so
+much greater than she would have to suffer in Russia for the simple political
+offense she is accused of having committed that I hope you will be able to
+intercede with the officials of this country for her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her offense, aside from the fact that she infringed no law nor disturbed the
+peace, had only a political aim, and was proved to be political by the words of
+the judge who sentenced her, for he declared that because of the innocent
+inscription on her banner he would make her sentence light.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Since her imprisonment she has been forced to wear the dress of a criminal,
+which she would not in Russia; she has had to eat only the coarse and
+unpalatable food served the criminal inmates, and has not been allowed, as she
+would in Russia, to have other food brought to her; nor has she, as she would
+be there been under the daily care of a physician. She is not permitted to
+write letters, nor to have free access to books and other implements of study.
+Nina Samarodin has visibly lost in weight and strength since her imprisonment,
+and she has a constant headache from hunger.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her motive in holding the banner by the White House, I feel, cannot but appeal
+to you, Excellency, for she says it was the knowledge that her family were
+fighting in Russia in this great war for democracy, and that she was cut off
+from serving with them that made her desire to do what she could to help the
+women of this nation achieve the freedom her own people have.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Will you, if it is within your power, attempt to have her recognized as a
+political prisoner, and relieve the severity of the treatment she is receiving
+for obeying this impulse born of her love of liberty and the dictates of her
+conscience?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I have, Excellency, the honor to be,
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+Respectfully, your countrywoman,<br/>
+(Signed) VERA SAMARODIN,<br/>
+Baltimore, Maryland.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Another Russian, Maria Moravsky, author and poet, who had herself been
+imprisoned in Czarist Russia and who was touring America at the time of this
+controversy, expressed her surprise that our suffrage prisoners should be
+treated as common criminals. She wrote:[1] &ldquo;I have been twice in the
+Russian prison; life in the solitary cell was not sweet; but I can assure you
+it was better than that which American women suffragists must bear.
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[1] Reprinted from The Suffragist, Feb. 8, 1919.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We were permitted to read and write; we wore our own clothes; we were
+not forced to mix with the criminals; we did no work. (Only a few women exiled
+to Siberia for extremely serious political crimes were compelled to work.) And
+our guardians and even judges respected us; they felt we were victims, because
+we struggled for liberty.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Commissioners, who bad to bear the responsibility of an answer to these
+protests and to the demand of the prisoners, contended to all alike that
+political prisoners did not exist.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We shall be happy to establish a precedent,&rdquo; said the women.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But in America,&rdquo; stammered the Commissioners, &ldquo;there is no
+need for such a thing as political prisoners.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The very fact that we can be sentenced to such long terms for a
+political offense shows that there does exist, in fact, a group of people who
+have come into conflict with state power for dissenting from the prevailing
+political system,&rdquo; our representatives answered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We cited definitions of political offenses by eminent criminologists,
+penologists, sociologists, statesmen and historians. We declared that all
+authorities on political crime sustained our contention and that we clearly
+came under the category of political, if any crime. We pointed as proof to
+James Bryce, George Sigerson, Maurice Parmelee and even to Clemenceau, who
+defined the distinction between political offenses and common law crimes thus:
+&ldquo; . . . theoretically a crime committed in the interest of the criminal
+is a common law crime, while an offense committed in the public interest is a
+political crime.&rdquo;[1]
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[1] Speech before the French Chamber of Deputies May 16, 1876, advocating
+amnesty for those who participated in the Commune of 1871. From the Annales de
+la Chambre des Députés, 1876, v. 2, pp. 44-48.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We called to their attention the established custom of special treatment of
+political prisoners in Russia, France, Italy and even Turkey.[2]
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[2] Those interested in the question of political prisoners and their treatment
+abroad may want to read Concerning Political Prisoners, Appendix 6.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We told them that as early as 1872 the International Prison Congress meeting in
+London recommended a distinction in the treatment of political and common law
+criminals and the resolution of recommendation was &ldquo;agreed upon by the
+representatives of all the Powers of Europe and America&mdash;with the tacit
+concurrence of British and Irish officials.&rdquo;[3]
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[3] Siegerson, Political Prisoners at Home and Abroad, p. 10.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. John Koren, International Prison Commissioner[4] for the United States, was
+throughout this agitation making a study of this very problem. As chairman of a
+Special Committee of the American Prison Association, empowered to investi-
+gate the problem of political prisoners for America, he made a report at the
+annual meeting of the American Prison Associ- ation in New York, October, 1919,
+entitled &ldquo;The Political Of fenders and their Status in Prison&rdquo;[5]
+in which he says:
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[4] Appointed and sponsored by the Department of State as delegate to the
+International Prison Congress.
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[5] Mr. Koren discusses the political offender from the penological, not the
+social, point of view.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The political offender . . . must be measured by a different rule, and .
+. . is a creature of extraordinary and temporary conditions . . . .
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There are times in which the tactics used in the pursuit of political
+recognition may result in a technical violation of the law for which
+imprisonment ensues, as witness the suffragist cases in Washington . . . .
+These militants were completely out of place in a workhouse, . . . they could
+not be made to submit to discipline fashioned to meet the needs of the
+derelicts of society, and . . . they therefore destroyed it for the entire
+institution.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was no doubt in the official mind but that our claim was just. But the
+Administration would not grant this demand, as such, of political prisoners. It
+must continue to persuade public opinion that our offense was not of a
+political nature; that it was nothing more than unpleasant and unfortunate
+riotous conduct in the capital. The legend of &ldquo;a few slightly mad women
+seeking notoriety&rdquo; must be sustained. Our demand was never granted, but
+it was kept up until the last imprisonment and was soon reinforced by
+additional protest tactics. Our suffrage prisoners, however, made an important
+contribution toward establishing this reform which others will consummate. They
+were the first in America to organize and sustain this demand over a long
+period of time. In America we maintain a most backward policy in dealing with
+political prisoners. We have neither regulation nor precedent for special
+treatment of them. Nor have we official flexibility.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This controversy was at its height in the press and in the public mind when
+President Wilson sent the following message, through a New York State suffrage
+leader, on behalf of the approaching New York referendum on state woman
+suffrage:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;May I not express to you my very deep interest in the campaign in New
+York for the adoption of woman suffrage, and may I not say that I hope no voter
+will be influenced in his decision with regard to the great matter by anything
+the so-called pickets may have done here in Washington. However justly they may
+have laid themselves open to serious criticism, their action represents, I am
+sure, so small a fraction of the women of the country who are urging the
+adoption of woman suffrage that it would be most unfair and argue a narrow view
+to allow their actions to prejudice the cause itself. I am very anxious to see
+the great state of New York set a great example in this matter.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This statement showed a political appreciation of the growing power of the
+movement. Also it would be difficult to prove that the &ldquo;small
+fraction&rdquo; had not shown political wisdom in injecting into the campaign
+the embarrassment of a controversy which was followed by the above statement of
+*the President. In the meantime he continued to imprison in Washington the
+&ldquo;so-called pickets&rdquo; whom he hoped would not influence the decision
+of the men voters of New York. It will be remembered, in passing, that the New
+York voters adopted suffrage at this time, although they had rejected it two
+years earlier. If the voters of New York were influenced at all by the
+&ldquo;so-called pickets,&rdquo; could even President Wilson himself
+satisfactorily prove that it had been an adverse influence?
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap15"></a>Chapter 10<br/>
+The Hunger Strike&mdash;A Weapon</h2>
+
+<p>
+When the Administration refused to grant the demand of the prisoners and of
+that portion of the public which supported them, for the rights of political
+prisoners, it was decided to resort to the ultimate protest-weapon inside
+prison. A hunger strike was undertaken, not only to reinforce the verbal demand
+for the rights of political prisoners, but also as a final protest against
+unjust imprisonment and increasingly long sentences. This brought the
+Administration face to face with a more acute embarrassment. They had to choose
+between more stubborn resistance and capitulation: They continued for a while
+longer on the former path.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Little is known in this country about the weapon of the hunger strike. And so
+at first it aroused tremendous indignation. &ldquo;Let them starve to
+death,&rdquo; said the thoughtless one, who did not perceive that that was the
+very thing a political administration could least afford to do. &ldquo;Mad
+fanatics,&rdquo; said a kindlier critic. The general opinion was that the
+hunger strike was &ldquo;foolish.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Few people realize that this resort to the refusal of food is almost as old as
+civilization. It has always represented a passionate desire to achieve an end.
+There is not time to go into the religious use of it, which would also be
+pertinent, but I will cite a few instances which have tragic and amusing
+likenesses to the suffrage hunger strike.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+According to the Brehon Law,[1] which was the code of ancient Ireland by which
+justice was administered under ancient Irish monarchs (from the earliest record
+to the 17th century), it became the duty of an injured person, when all else
+failed, to inflict punishment directly, for wrong done. &ldquo;The plaintiff
+&lsquo;fasted on&rsquo; the defendant.&rdquo; He went to the house of the
+defendant and sat upon his doorstep, remaining there without food to force the
+payment of a debt, for example. The debtor was compelled by the weight of
+custom and public opinion not to let the plaintiff die at his door, and
+yielded. Or if he did not yield, he was practically outlawed by the community,
+to the point of being driven away. A man who refused to abide by the custom not
+only incurred personal danger but lost all character.
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[1] Joyce, A Social History of Ancient Ireland, Vol. I, Chapter VIII.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If resistance to this form of protest was resorted to it had to take the form
+of a counter-fast. If the victim of such a protest thought himself being
+unjustly coerced, he might fast in opposition, &ldquo;to mitigate or avert the
+evil.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Fasting on a man&rdquo; was also a mode of compelling action of another
+sort. St. Patrick fasted against King Trian to compel him to have compassion on
+his [Trian&rsquo;s] slaves.[1] He also fasted against a heretical city to
+compel it to become orthodox.[2] He fasted against the pagan King Loeguire to
+&ldquo;constrain him to his will.&rdquo;[3]
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[1] Tripartite Life of St. Patrick, CLXXVII, p. 218.<br/>
+[2] Ibid. CLXXVII, p. 418.<br/>
+[3] Ibid. CLXXVII, p. 556.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This form of hunger strike was further used under the Brehon Law as compulsion
+to obtain a request. For example, the Leinstermen on one occasion fasted on St.
+Columkille till they obtained from him the promise that an extern King should
+never prevail against them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is interesting to note that this form of direct action was adopted because
+there was no legislative machinery to enforce justice. These laws were merely a
+collection of customs attaining the force of law by long usage, by hereditary
+habit, and by public opinion. Our resort to this weapon grew out of the same
+situation. The legislative machinery, while empowered to give us redress,
+failed to function, and so we adopted the fast.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The institution of fasting on a debtor still exists in the East. It is called
+by the Hindoos &ldquo;sitting dharna.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The hunger strike was continuously used in Russia by prisoners to obtain more
+humane practices toward them. Kropotkin[1] cites an instance in which women
+prisoners hunger struck to get their babies back. If a child was born to a
+woman during her imprisonment the babe was immediately taken from her and not
+returned. Mothers struck and got their babies returned to them.
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[1] See In Russian and French Prisons, P. Kropotkin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He cites another successful example in Rharkoff prison in 1878 when six
+prisoners resolved to hunger strike to death if necessary to win two
+things&mdash;to be allowed exercise and to have the sick prisoners taken out of
+chains.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There are innumerable instances of hunger strikes, even to death, in Russian
+prison history. But more often the demands of the strikers were won..
+Breshkovsky[2] tells of a strike by 17 women against outrage, which elicited
+the desired promises from the warden.
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[2] For Russia&rsquo;s Freedom, by Ernest Poole,&mdash;An Interview with
+Breshkovsky.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As early as 1877 members of the Land and Liberty Society[3] imprisoned for
+peaceful and educational propaganda, in the Schlusselburg Fortress for
+political prisoners, hunger struck against inhuman prison conditions and
+frightful brutalities and won their points.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[3]See The Russian Bastille, Simon O. Pollock.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+During the suffrage campaign in England this weapon was used for the double
+purpose of forcing the release of imprisoned militant suffragettes, and of
+compelling the British government to act.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Among the demonstrations was a revival of the ancient Irish custom by Sylvia
+Pankhurst, who in addition to her hunger strikes within prison, &ldquo;fasted
+on&rdquo; the doorstep of Premier Asquith to compel him to see a deputation of
+women on the granting of suffrage to English women. She won.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Irish prisoners have revived the hunger strike to compel either release or
+trial of untried prisoners and have Lyon. As I write, almost a hundred Irish
+prisoners detained by England for alleged nationalist activities, but not
+brought to trial, hunger struck to freedom. As a direct result of this specific
+hunger strike England has promised a renovation of her practices in dealing
+with Irish rebels.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And so it was that when we came to the adoption of this accelerating tactic, we
+had behind us more precedents for winning our point than for losing. We were
+strong in the knowledge that we could &ldquo;fast on&rdquo; President Wilson
+and his powerful Administration, and compel him to act or &ldquo;fast
+back.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Among the prisoners who with Alice Paul led the hunger strike was a very
+picturesque figure, Rose Winslow (Ruza Wenclawska) of New York, whose parents
+had brought her in infancy from Poland to become a citizen of
+&ldquo;free&rdquo; America. At eleven she was put at a loom in a Pennsylvania
+mill, where she wove hosiery for fourteen hours a day until tuberculosis
+claimed her at nineteen. A poet by nature she developed her mind to the full in
+spite of these disadvantages, and when she was forced to abandon her loom she
+became an organizer for the Consumers&rsquo; League, and later a vivid and
+eloquent power in the suffrage movement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her group preceded Miss Paul&rsquo;s by about a week in prison.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These vivid sketches of Rose Winslow&rsquo;s impressions while in the prison
+hospital were written on tiny scraps of paper and smuggled out to us, and to
+her husband during her imprisonment. I reprint them in their original form with
+cuts but no editing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If this thing is necessary we will naturally go through with it. Force
+is so stupid a weapon. I feel so happy doing my bit for decency-for our war,
+which is after all, real and fundamental.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The women are all so magnificent, so beautiful. Alice Paul is as thin as
+ever, pale and large-eyed. We have been in solitary for five weeks. There is
+nothing to tell but that the days go by somehow. I have felt quite feeble the
+last few days&mdash;faint, so that I could hardly get my hair brushed, my arms
+ached so. But to-day I am well again. Alice Paul and I talk back and forth
+though we are at opposite ends of the building and, a hall door also shuts us
+apart. But occasionally&mdash;thrills&mdash;we escape from behind our
+iron-barred doors and visit. Great laughter and rejoicing!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>
+To her husband:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My fainting probably means nothing except that I am not strong after
+these weeks. I know you won&rsquo;t be alarmed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I told about a syphilitic colored woman with one leg. The other one cut
+off, having rotted so that it was alive with maggots when she came in. The
+remaining one is now getting as bad. They are so short of nurses that a little
+colored girl of twelve, who is here waiting to have her tonsils removed, waits
+on her. This child and two others share a ward with a syphilitic child of three
+or four years, whose mother refused to have it at home. It makes you absolutely
+ill to see it. I am going to break all three windows as a protest against their
+confining Alice Paul with these!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Dr. Gannon is chief of a hospital. Yet Alice Paul and I found we had
+been taking baths in one of the tubs here, in which this syphilitic child, an
+incurable, who has his eyes bandaged all the time, is also bathed. He has been
+here a year. Into the room where he lives came yesterday two children to be
+operated on for tonsillitis. They also bathed in the same tub. The syphilitic
+woman has been in that room seven months. Cheerful mixing, isn&rsquo;t it? The
+place is alive with roaches, crawling all over the walls, everywhere. I found
+one in my bed the other day . . . .&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There is great excitement about my two syphilitics. Each nurse is being
+asked whether she told me. So, as in all institutions where an unsanitary fact
+is made public, no effort is made to make the wrong itself right. All hands
+fall to, to find the culprit, who made it known, and he is punished.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Alice Paul is in the psychopathic ward. She dreaded forcible feeding
+frightfully, and I hate to think how she must be feeling. I had a nervous time
+of it, gasping a long time afterward, and my stomach rejecting during the
+process. I spent a bad, restless night, but otherwise I am all right. The poor
+soul who fed me got liberally besprinkled during the process. I heard myself
+making the most hideous sounds . . . . One feels so forsaken when one lies
+prone and people shove a pipe down one&rsquo;s stomach.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This morning but for an astounding tiredness, I am all right. I am
+waiting to see what happens when the President realizes that brutal bullying
+isn&rsquo;t quite a statesmanlike method for settling a demand for justice at
+home. At least, if men are supine enough to endure, women&mdash;to their
+eternal glory&mdash;are not.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They took down the boarding from Alice Paul&rsquo;s window yesterday, I
+heard. It is so delicious about Alice and me. Over in the jail a rumor began
+that I was considered insane and would be examined. Then came Doctor White, and
+said he had come to see &lsquo;the thyroid case.&rsquo; When they left we
+argued about the matter, neither of us knowing which was considered
+&lsquo;suspicious.&rsquo; She insisted it was she, and, as it happened, she was
+right. Imagine any one thinking Alice Paul needed to be &lsquo;under
+observation!&rsquo; The thick-headed idiots!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yesterday was a bad day for me in feeding. I was vomiting continually
+during the process. The tube has developed an irritation somewhere that is
+painful.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Never was there a sentence[1] like ours for such an offense as ours,
+even in England. No woman ever got it over there even for tearing down
+buildings. And during all that agitation we were busy saying that never would
+such things happen in the United States. The men told us they would not endure
+such frightfulness.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[1] Sentence of seven months for &ldquo;obstructing traffic.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mary Beard and Helen Todd were allowed to stay only a minute, and I
+cried like a fool. I am getting over that habit, I think.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I fainted again last night. I just fell flop over in the bathroom where
+I was washing my hands and was led to bed when I recovered, by a nurse. I lost.
+consciousness just as I got there again. I felt horribly faint until 12
+o&rsquo;clock, then fell asleep for awhile.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I was getting frantic because you seemed to think Alice was with me in
+the hospital. She was in the psychopathic ward. The same doctor feeds us both,
+and told me. Don&rsquo;t let them tell you we take this well. Miss Paul vomits
+much. I do, too, except when I&rsquo;m not nervous, as I have been every time
+against my will. I try to be less feeble-minded. It&rsquo;s the nervous
+reaction, and I can&rsquo;t control it much. I don&rsquo;t imagine bathing
+one&rsquo;s food in tears very good for one.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We think of the coming feeding all day. It is horrible. The doctor
+thinks I take it well. I hate the thought of Alice Paul and the others if I
+take it well.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We still get no mail; we are &lsquo;insubordinate.&rsquo; It&rsquo;s
+strange, isn&rsquo;t it; if you ask for food fit to eat, as we did, you are
+&lsquo;insubordinate&rsquo;; and if you refuse food you are
+&lsquo;insubordinate.&rsquo; Amusing. I am really all right. If this continues
+very long I perhaps won&rsquo;t be. I am interested to see how long our
+so-called &lsquo;splendid American men&rsquo; will stand for this form of
+discipline.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;All news cheers one marvelously because it is hard to feel anything but
+a bit desolate and forgotten here in this place.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;All the officers here know we are making this hunger strike that women
+fighting for liberty may be considered political prisoners; we have told them.
+God knows we don&rsquo;t want other women ever to have to do this over
+again.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>
+There have been sporadic and isolated cases of hunger strikes in this country
+but to my knowledge ours was the first to be organized and sustained over a
+long period of time. We shall see in subsequent chapters how effective this
+weapon was.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap16"></a>Chapter 11<br/>
+Administration Terrorism </h2>
+
+<p>
+The Administration tried in another way to stop picketing. It sentenced the
+leader, Alice Paul, to the absurd and desperate sentence of seven months in the
+Washington jail for &ldquo;obstructing traffic.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With the &ldquo;leader&rdquo; safely behind the bars for so long a time, the
+agitation would certainly weaken! So thought the Administration! To their great
+surprise, however, in the face of that reckless and extreme sentence, the
+longest picket line of the entire campaign formed at the White House in the
+late afternoon of November 10th. Forty-one women picketed in protest against
+this wanton persecution of their leader, as well as against the delay in
+passing the amendment. Face to face with an embarrassing number of prisoners
+the Administration used its wits and decided to reduce the number to a
+manageable size before imprisoning this group. Failing of that they tried still
+another way out. They resorted to imprisonment with terrorism.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In order to show how widely representative of the nation this group of pickets
+was, I give its personnel complete:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+First Group
+</p>
+
+<p>
+New York&mdash;Mrs. John Winters Brannan, Miss Belle Sheinberg, Mrs. L. H.
+Hornsby, Mrs. Paula Jakobi, Mrs. Cynthia Cohen, Miss M. Tilden Burritt, Miss
+Dorothy Day, Mrs. Henry Butterworth, Miss Cora Week, Mrs. P. B. Johns, Miss
+Elizabeth Hamilton, Mrs. Ella O. Guilford, New York City; Miss Amy Juengling,
+Miss Hattie Kruger, Buffalo.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Second Group
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Massachusetts&mdash;Mrs. Agnes H. Morey, Brookline; Mrs. William Bergen and
+Miss Camilla Whitcomb, Worcester; Miss Ella Findeisen, Lawrence; Miss L. J. C.
+Daniels, Boston.<br/>
+New Jersey&mdash;Mrs. George Scott, Montclair.<br/>
+Pennsylvania&mdash;Mrs. Lawrence Lewis, Miss Elizabeth McShane, Miss Katherine
+Lincoln, Philadelphia.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Third Group
+</p>
+
+<p>
+California&mdash;Mrs. William Kent, Kentfield.<br/>
+Oregon&mdash;Miss Alice Gram, Miss Betty Gram, Portland.<br/>
+Utah&mdash;Mrs. R. B. Quay, Mrs. T. C. Robertson, Salt Lake City.<br/>
+Colorado&mdash;Mrs. Eva Decker, Colorado Springs, Mrs. Genevieve Williams,
+Manitou.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fourth Group
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Indiana&mdash;Mrs. Charles W. Barnes, Indianapolis.<br/>
+Oklahoma&mdash;Mrs. Kate Stafford, Oklahoma City.<br/>
+Minnesota&mdash;Mrs. J. H. Short, Minneapolis.<br/>
+Iowa&mdash;Mrs. A. N. Beim, Des Moines; Mrs. Catherine Martinette, Eagle Grove.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fifth Group
+</p>
+
+<p>
+New York&mdash;Miss Lucy Burns, New York City.<br/>
+District of Columbia&mdash;Mrs. Harvey Wiley.<br/>
+Louisiana&mdash;Mrs. Alice M. Cosu, New Orleans.<br/>
+Maryland&mdash;Miss Mary Bartlett Dixon, Easton; Miss Julia Emory,
+Baltimore.<br/>
+Florida&mdash;Mrs. Mary I. Nolan, Jacksonville.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There were exceptionally dramatic figures in this group. Mrs. Mary Nolan of
+Florida, seventy-three years old, frail in health but militant in spirit, said
+she had come to take her place with the women struggling for liberty in the
+same spirit that her revolutionary ancestor, Eliza Zane, had carried bullets to
+the fighters in the war for independence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Harvey Wiley looked appealing and beautiful as she said in court,
+&ldquo;We took this action with great consecration of spirit, with willingness
+to sacrifice personal liberty for al] the women of the country.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Judge Mullowny addressed the prisoners with many high-sounding words about the
+seriousness of obstructing the traffic in the national capital, and
+inadvertently slipped into a discourse on Russia, and the dangers of
+revolution. We always wondered why the government was not clever enough to
+eliminate political discourses, at least during trials, where the offenders
+were charged with breaking a slight regulation. But their minds were too full
+of the political aspect of our offense to conceal it. &ldquo;The truth of the
+situation is that the court has not been given power to meet it,&rdquo; the
+judge lamented. &ldquo;It is very, very puzzling&mdash;I find you guilty of the
+offense charged, but will take the matter of sentence under advisement.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And so the &ldquo;guilty&rdquo; pickets were summarily released.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Administration did not relish the incarceration of forty-one women for
+another reason than limited housing accommodations. Forty-one women
+representing sixteen states in the union might create a considerable political
+dislocation. But these same forty-one women were determined to force the
+Administration to take its choice. It could allow them to continue their
+peaceful agitation or it could stand the reaction which was bound to come from
+imprisoning them. And so the forty-one women returned to the White House gates
+to resume&rsquo; their picketing. They stood guard several minutes before the
+police, taken unawares, could summon sufficient force to arrest them, and
+commandeer enough cars to carry them to police headquarters. As the
+Philadelphia North American pointed out: &ldquo;There was no disorder. The
+crowd waited with interest and in a noticeably friendly spirit to see what
+would happen. There were frequent references to the pluck of the silent
+sentinels.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The following morning the women were ordered by Judge Mullowny to &ldquo;come
+back on Friday. I am not yet prepared to try the case.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Logic dictated that either we had a right to stand at the gates with our
+banners or we did not have that right; but the Administration was not
+interested in logic. It had to stop picketing. Whether this was done legally or
+illegally, logically or illogically, clumsily or dexterously, was of secondary
+importance. Picketing must be stopped!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Using their welcome release to continue their protest, the women again marched
+with their banners to the White House in an attempt to picket. Again they were
+arrested. No one who saw that line will ever forget the impression it made, not
+only on friends of the suffragists, but on the general populace of Washington,
+to see these women force with such magnificent defiance the hand of a wavering
+Administration. On the following morning they were sentenced to from six days
+to six months in prison. Miss Burns received six months.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In pronouncing the lightest sentence upon Mrs. Nolan, the judge said that he
+did so on account of her age. He urged her, however, to pay her fine, hinting
+that jail might be too severe on her and might bring on death. At this
+suggestion, tiny Mrs. Nolan pulled herself up on her toes and said with great
+dignity: &ldquo;Your Honor, I have a nephew fighting for democracy in France.
+He is offering his life for his country. I should be ashamed if I did not join
+these brave women in their fight for democracy in America. I should be proud of
+the honor to die in prison for the liberty of American women.&rdquo; Even the
+judge seemed moved by her beautiful and simple spirit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In spite of the fact that the women were sentenced to serve their sentences in
+the District Jail, where they would join Miss Paul and her companions, all save
+one were immediately sent to Occoquan workhouse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It had been agreed that the demand to be treated as political prisoners,
+inaugurated by previous pickets, should be continued, and that failing to
+secure such rights they would unanimously refuse to eat food or do prison
+labor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Any words of mine would be inadequate to tell the story of the prisoners&rsquo;
+reception at the Occoquan workhouse. The following is the statement of Mrs.
+Nolan, dictated upon her release, in the presence of Mr. Dudley Field Malone:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was about half past seven at night when we got to Occoquan workhouse. A
+woman [Mrs. Herndon] was standing behind a desk when we were brought into this
+office, and there were five or six men also in the room. Mrs. Lewis, who spoke
+for all of us, . . . said she must speak to Whittaker, the superintendent of
+the place.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll sit here all night, then,&rdquo; said Mrs. Herndon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I saw men begin to come upon the porch, but I didn&rsquo;t think anything about
+it. Mrs. Herndon called my name, but I did not answer. . . &rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Suddenly the door literally burst open and Whittaker burst in like a tornado;
+some men followed him. We could see a crowd of them on the porch. They were not
+in uniform. They looked as much like tramps as anything. They seemed to come
+in&mdash;and in&mdash;and in. One had a face that made me think of an
+ourang-outang. Mrs. Lewis stood up. Some of us had been sitting and lying on
+the floor, we were so tired. She had hardly begun to speak, saying we demanded
+to be treated as political prisoners, when Whittaker said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You shut up. I have men here to handle you.&rdquo; Then he shouted,
+&ldquo;Seize her!&rdquo; I turned and saw men spring toward her, and then some
+one screamed, &ldquo;They have taken Mrs. Lewis.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A man sprang at me and caught me by the shoulder. I am used to remembering a
+bad foot, which I have had for years, and I remember saying, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll
+come with you; don&rsquo;t drag me; I have a lame foot.&rdquo; But I was jerked
+down the steps and away into the dark. I didn&rsquo;t have my feet on the
+ground. I guess that saved me. I heard Mrs. Cosu, who was being dragged along
+with me, call, &ldquo;Be careful of your foot.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Out of doors it was very dark. The building to which they took us was lighted
+up as we came to it. I only remember the American flag flying above it because
+it caught the light from a window in the wing. We were rushed into a large room
+that we found opened on a large hall with stone cells on each side. They were
+perfectly dark. Punishment cells is what they call them. Mine was filthy. It
+had no window save a slip at the top and no furniture but an iron bed covered
+with a thin straw pad, and an open toilet flushed from outside the cell . . . .
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the hall outside was a man called Captain Reems. He had on a uniform and was
+brandishing a thick stick and shouting as we were shoved into the corridor,
+&ldquo;Damn you, get in here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I saw Dorothy Day brought in. She is a frail girl. The two men handling her
+were twisting her arms above her head. Then suddenly they lifted her up and
+banged her down over the arm of an iron bench&mdash;twice. As they ran me past,
+she was lying there with her arms out, and we heard one of the men yell,
+&ldquo;The &mdash;&mdash; suffrager! My mother ain&rsquo;t no suffrager.
+I&rsquo;ll put you through &mdash;&mdash;.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the end of the corridor they pushed me through a door. Then I lost my
+balance and fell against the iron bed. Mrs. Cosu struck the wall. Then they
+threw in two mats and two dirty blankets. There was no light but from the
+corridor. The door was barred from top to bottom. The walls and floors were
+brick or stone cemented over. Mrs. Cosu would not let me lie on the floor. She
+put me on the couch and stretched out on the floor on one of the two pads they
+threw in. We had only lain there a few minutes, trying to get our breath, when
+Mrs. Lewis, doubled over and handled like a sack of something, was literally
+thrown in. Her head struck the iron bed. We thought she was dead. She
+didn&rsquo;t move. We were crying over her as we lifted her to the pad on my
+bed, when we heard Miss Burns call:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where is Mrs. Nolan?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I replied, &ldquo;I am here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Cosu called out, &ldquo;They have just thrown Mrs. Lewis in here,
+too.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At this Mr. Whittaker came to the door and told us not to dare to speak, or he
+would put the brace and bit in our mouths and the straitjacket on our bodies.
+We were so terrified we kept very still. Mrs. Lewis was not unconscious; she
+was only stunned. But Mrs. Cosu was desperately ill as the night wore on. She
+had a bad heart attack and was then vomiting. We called and called. We asked
+them1to send our own doctor, because we thought she was dying . . . . They [the
+guards paid no attention. A cold wind blew in on us from the outside, and we
+three lay there shivering and only half conscious until morning.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;One at a time, come out,&rdquo; we heard some one call at the barred
+door early in the morning. I went first. I bade them both good- by. I
+didn&rsquo;t know where I was going or whether I would ever see them again.
+They took me to Mr. Whittaker&rsquo;s office, where he called my name.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;re Mrs. Mary Nolan,&rdquo; said Whittaker.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;re posted,&rdquo; said I.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Are you willing to put on prison dress and go to the workroom?&rdquo;
+said he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I said, &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you know now that I am Mr. Whittaker, the
+superintendent?&rdquo; he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is there any age limit to your workhouse?&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;Would a
+woman of seventy-three or a child of two be sent here?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I think I made him think. He motioned to the guard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Get a doctor to examine her,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the hospital cottage I was met by Mrs. Herndon and taken to a little room
+with two white beds and a hospital table.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You can lie down if you want to,&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I took off my coat and hat. I just lay down on the bed and fell into a kind of
+stupor. It was nearly noon and I had had no food offered me since the
+sandwiches our friends brought us in the courtroom at noon the day before.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The doctor came and examined my heart. Then he examined my lame foot. It had a
+long blue bruise above the ankle, where they had knocked me as they took me
+across the night before. He asked me what caused&rsquo; the bruise. I said,
+&ldquo;Those fiends when they dragged me to the cell last night.&rdquo; It was
+paining me. He asked if I wanted liniment and I said only hot water. They
+brought that, and I noticed they did not lock the door. A negro trusty was
+there. I fell back again into the same stupor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The next day they brought me some toast and a plate of food, the first I had
+been offered in over 36 hours. I just looked at the food and motioned it away.
+It made me sick . . . . I was released on the sixth day and passed the
+dispensary as I came out. There were a group of my friends, Mrs. Brannan and
+Mrs. Morey and many others. They had on coarse striped dresses and big,
+grotesque, heavy shoes. I burst into tears as they led me away.
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+(Signed) MARY I. NOLAN.<br/>
+November 21, 1917,
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The day following their commitment to Occoquan Mr. O&rsquo;Brien, of counsel,
+was directed to see the women, to ascertain their condition. Friends and
+relatives were alarmed, as not a line of news had been allowed to penetrate to
+the world. Mr. O&rsquo;Brien was denied admission and forced to come back to
+Washington without any report whatsoever.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The next day Mr. O&rsquo;Brien again attempted to see his clients, as did also
+the mother of Miss Matilda Young, the youngest prisoner in Mr.
+Whittaker&rsquo;s care, and Miss Katherine Morey, who went asking to see her
+mother. Miss Morey was held under armed guard half a mile from the prison.
+Admission was denied to all of them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The terrible anxiety at Headquarters was not relieved the third day by a report
+brought from the workhouse by one of the marines stationed at Quantico Station,
+Virginia, who had been summoned to the workhouse on the night the women
+arrived. He brought news that unknown tortures were going on. Mr. O&rsquo;Brien
+immediately forced his way through by a court order, and brought back to
+Headquarters the astounding news of the campaign of terrorism which had started
+the moment the prisoners had arrived, and which was being continued at that
+moment. Miss Lucy Burns, who had assumed responsibility for the welfare of the
+women, had managed to secrete small scraps of paper and a tiny pencil, and jot
+down briefly the day by day events at the workhouse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This week of brutality, which rivaled old Russia, if it did not outstrip it,
+was almost the blackest page in the Administration&rsquo;s cruel fight against
+women.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here are some of the scraps of Miss Burn&rsquo;s day-by-day log, smuggled out
+of the workhouse. Miss Burns is so gifted a writer that I feel apologetic for
+using these scraps in their raw form, but I know she will forgive me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 14. Demanded to see Superintendent Whittaker. Request
+refused. Mrs. Herndon, the matron, said we would have to wait up all night. One
+of the men guards said he would &ldquo;put us in sardine box and put mustard on
+us.&rdquo; Superintendent Whittaker came at 9 p. m. He refused to hear our
+demand for political rights. Seized by guards from behind, flung off my feet,
+and shot out of the room. All of us were seized by men guards and dragged to
+cells in men&rsquo;s part. Dorothy Day was roughly used-back twisted. Mrs. Mary
+A. Nolan (73-year-old picket from Jacksonville, Florida) flung into cell. Mrs.
+Lawrence Lewis shot past my cell. I slept with Dorothy Day in a single bed. I
+was handcuffed all night and manacled to the bars part of the time for asking
+the others how they were, and was threatened with a straitjacket and a buckle
+gag.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 16 . . . . Asked for Whittaker, who came. He seized Julia
+Emory by the back of her neck and threw her into the room very brutally. She is
+a little girl. I asked for counsel to learn the status of the case. I was told
+to &ldquo;shut up,&rdquo; and was again threatened with a straitjacket and a
+buckle gag. Later I was taken to put on prison clothes, refused and resisted
+strenuously. I was then put in a room where delirium tremens patients are kept.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the seventh day, when Miss Lucy Burns and Mrs. Lawrence Lewis were so weak
+that Mr. Whittaker feared their death, they were forcibly fed and taken
+immediately to the jail in Washington. Of the experience Mrs. Lewis
+wrote:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was seized and laid on my back, where five people held me, a young colored
+woman leaping upon my knees, which seemed to break under the weight. Dr. Gannon
+then forced the tube through my lips and down my throat, I gasping and
+suffocating with the agony of it. I didn&rsquo;t know where to breathe from and
+everything turned black when the fluid began pouring in. I was moaning and
+making the most awful sounds quite against my will, for I did not wish to
+disturb my friends in the next room. Finally the tube was withdrawn. I lay
+motionless. After a while I was dressed and carried in a chair to a waiting
+automobile, laid on the back seat and driven into Washington to the jail
+hospital. Previous to the feeding I had been forcibly examined by Dr. Gannon, I
+protesting that I wished a woman physician.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Of this experience, Miss Burns wrote on tiny scraps of paper:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+WEDNESDAY, 12 m. Yesterday afternoon at about four or five, Mrs. Lewis and I
+were asked to go to the operating room. Went there and found our clothes. Told
+we were to go to Washington. No reason as usual. When we were dressed, Dr.
+Gannon appeared, and said he wished to examine us. Both refused. Were dragged
+through halls by force, our clothing partly removed by force, and we were
+examined, heart tested, blood pressure and pulse taken. Of course such data was
+of no value after such a struggle. Dr. Gannon told me then I must be fed. Was
+stretched on bed, two doctors, matron, four colored prisoners present,
+Whittaker in hall. I was held down by five people at legs, arms, and head. I
+refused to open mouth. Gannon pushed tube up left nostril. I turned and twisted
+my head all I could, but he managed to push it up. It hurts nose and throat
+very much and makes nose bleed freely. Tube drawn out covered with blood.
+Operation leaves one very sick. Food dumped directly into stomach feels like a
+ball of lead. Left nostril, throat and muscles of neck very sore all night.
+After this I was brought into the hospital in an ambulance. Mrs. Lewis and I
+placed in same room. Slept hardly at all. This morning Dr. Ladd appeared with
+his tube. Mrs. Lewis and I said we would not be forcibly fed. Said he would
+call in men guards and force us to submit. Went away and we were not fed at all
+this morning. We hear them outside now cracking eggs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With Miss Burns and Mrs. Lewis, who were regarded as leaders in the hunger
+strike protest, removed to the district jail, Mr. Whittaker and his staff at
+Occoquan began a systematic attempt to break down the morale of the hunger
+strikers. Each one was called to the mat and interrogated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Will you work?&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Will you put on prison
+clothes?&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Will you eat?&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Will you stop
+picketing?&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Will you go without paying your fine and promise
+never to picket again?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+How baffled he must have been! The answer was definite and final. Their
+resistance was superb.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;One of the few warning incidents during the gray days of our
+imprisonment was the unexpected sympathy and understanding of one of the
+government doctors,&rdquo; wrote Miss Betty Gram of Portland, Oregon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;’This is the most magnificent sacrifice I have ever seen made for a
+principle [he said I never believed that American women would care so much
+about freedom. I have seen women in Russia undergo extreme suffering for their
+ideals, but unless I had seen this with my own eyes I never would have believed
+it. My sister hunger struck in Russia, where she was imprisoned for refusing to
+reveal the whereabouts of two of her friends indicted for a government offense.
+She was fed after three days. You girls are on your ninth day of hunger strike
+and your condition is critical. It is a great pity that such women should be
+subjected to this treatment. I hope that you will carry your point and force
+the hand of the government soon&rsquo;.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The mother of Matilda Young, the youngest picket, anxiously appealed to Mr.
+Tumulty, Secretary to President Wilson, and a family friend, to be allowed to
+see the President and ask for a special order to visit her daughter. Failing to
+secure this, she went daily to Mr. Tumulty&rsquo;s office asking if he himself
+would not intercede for her. Mr. Tumulty assured her that her daughter was in
+safe hands, that she need give herself no alarm, the stories of the inhuman
+treatment at Occoquan were false, and that she must not believe them. Finally
+Mrs. Young pleaded to be allowed to send additional warm clothing to her
+daughter, whom she knew to be too lightly clad for the vigorous temperature of
+November. Mr. Tumulty assured her that the women were properly clothed, and
+refused to permit the clothing to be sent. The subsequent stories of the women
+showed what agonies they had endured, because they were inadequately clad, from
+the dampness of the cells into which they were thrown.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. John Winters Brannan was among the women who endured the &ldquo;night of
+terror.&rdquo; Mrs. Brannan is the daughter of Charles A. Dana, founder of the
+New York Sun and that great American patriot of liberty who was a trusted
+associate -and counselor of Abraham Lincoln. Mrs. Brannan, life-long
+suffragist, is an aristocrat of intellect and feeling, who has always allied
+herself with libertarian movements. This was her second term of imprisonment.
+She wrote a comprehensive affidavit of her experience. After narrating the
+events which led up to the attack, she continues:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Superintendent Whittaker . . . then shouted out in a loud tone of voice,
+&ldquo;Seize these women, take them off, that one, that one; take her
+off.&rdquo; The guards rushed forward and an almost indescribable scene of
+violent confusion ensued. I . . . saw one of the guards seize her [Lucy Burns]
+by the arms, twist or force them back of her, and one or two other guards seize
+her by the shoulders, shaking her violently . . . .
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I then . . took up my heavy sealskin coat, which was lying by, and put it on,
+in order to prepare myself if attacked . . . . I was trembling at the time and
+was stunned with terror at the situation as it had developed, and said to the
+superintendent, &ldquo;I will give my name under protest,&rdquo; and started to
+walk towards the desk whereon lay the books. The superintendent shouted to me,
+&ldquo;Oh, no, you won&rsquo;t; don&rsquo;t talk about protest; I won&rsquo;t
+have any of that nonsense.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I . . . saw the guards seizing the different women of the party with the utmost
+violence, the furniture being overturned and the room a scene of the utmost
+disturbance. I saw Miss Lincoln lying on the floor, with every appearance of
+having just been thrown down by the two guards who were standing over her in a
+menacing attitude. Seeing the general disturbance, I gave up all idea of giving
+my name at the desk, and instinctively joined my companions, to go with them
+and share whatever was in store for them. The whole group of women were thrown,
+dragged or herded out of the office on to the porch, down the steps to the
+ground, and forced to cross the road . . . to the Administration Building.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+During all of this time, . . . Superintendent Whittaker was . . . directing the
+whole attack. . . .
+</p>
+
+<p>
+. . .All of us were thrown into different cells in the men&rsquo;s prison, I
+being put in one with four other women, the cell containing a narrow bed and
+one chair, which was immediately removed . . . .
+</p>
+
+<p>
+During the time that we were being forced into the cells the guards kept up an
+uproar, shouting, banging the iron doors, clanging bars, making a terrifying
+noise.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I and one of my companions were lying down on the narrow bed, on which were a
+blanket and one pillow. The door of the cell was opened and a mattress and a
+blanket being thrown in, the door was violently banged to . . . . My other . .
+. companions arranged the mattress on the floor and lay down, covering
+themselves with the blanket.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+. . . I looked across the corridor and saw Miss Lincoln, . and asked her
+whether she was all right, being anxious to know whether she had been hurt by
+the treatment in the office building. . . Instantly Superintendent Whittaker
+rushed forward, shouting at me, &ldquo;Stop that; not another word from your
+mouth, or I will handcuff you, gag you and put you in a straitjacket. . .
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I wish to state again that the cells into which we were put were situated in
+the men&rsquo;s prison. There was no privacy for the women, and if any of us
+wished to undress we would be subject to the view or observation of the guards
+who remained in the corridor and who could at any moment look at us . . . .
+Furthermore, the water closets were in full view of the corridor where
+Superintendent Whittaker and the guards were moving about. The flushing of
+these closets could only be done from the corridor, and we were forced to ask
+the guards to do this for us,-the men who had shortly before attacked us . . .
+.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+None of the matrons or women attendants appeared at any time that night. No
+water was brought to us for washing, no food was offered to us . . . .
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was exhausted by what I had seen and been through, and spent the night in
+absolute terror of further attack and of what might still be in store for us. I
+thought of the young girls who were with us and feared for their safety. The
+guards acted brutal in the extreme, incited to their brutal conduct towards us,
+. . , by the superintendent. I thought of the offense with which we had been
+charged,&mdash;merely that of obstructing traffic,&mdash;and felt that the
+treatment that we had received was out of all proportion to the offense with
+which we were charged, and that the superintendent, the matron and guards would
+not have dared to act towards us as they had acted unless they relied upon the
+support of higher authorities. It seemed to me that everything had been done
+from the time we reached the workhouse to terrorize us, and my fear lest the
+extreme of outrage would be worked upon the young girls of our party became
+intense.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is impossible for me to describe the terror of that night. . .
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The affidavit then continues with the story of how Mrs. Brannan was compelled
+the following morning to put on prison clothes, was given a cup of skimmed milk
+and a slice of toast, and then taken to the sewing room, where she was put to
+work sewing on the underdrawers of the male prisoners.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was half fainting all of that day and . . . requested permission to lie down,
+feeling so ill . . . . I could not sleep, having a sense of constant danger . .
+. . I was almost paralyzed and in wretched physical condition.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On Friday afternoon Mrs. Herndon [matron]. . . led us through some woods
+nearby, for about three-quarters of a mile, seven of us being in the party. We
+were so exhausted and weary that we were obliged to stop constantly to rest. On
+our way back from the walk we heard the baying of hounds very near us in the
+woods. The matron said, &ldquo;You must hurry, the bloodhounds are
+loose.&rdquo; One of the party, Miss Findeisen, asked whether they would attack
+us, to which the matron replied, &ldquo;That is just what they would do,&rdquo;
+and hurried us along. The baying grew louder and nearer at times and then more
+distant, as the dogs rushed back and forth, and this went on until we reached
+the sewing room. The effect of this upon our nerves can better be imagined than
+described . . . .
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Every conceivable lie was tried in an effort to force the women to abandon
+their various form of resistance. They were told that no efforts were being
+made from the outside to reach them, and that their attorney had been called
+off the case. Each one was told that she was the only one hunger striking. Each
+one was told that all the others had put on prison clothes and were working.
+Although they were separated from one another they suspected the lies and
+remained strong in their resistance. After Mr. O&rsquo;Brien&rsquo;s one visit
+and the subsequent reports in the press he was thereafter refused admission to
+the workhouse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The judge had sentenced these women to the jail, but the District Commissioners
+had ordered them committed to the workhouse. It was evident that the
+Administration was anxious to keep this group away from Alice Paul and her
+companions, as they counted on handling the rebellion more easily in two groups
+than one.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meanwhile the condition of the prisoners in the workhouse grew steadily worse.
+It was imperative that we force the Administration to take them out of the
+custody of Superintendent Whittaker immediately. We decided to take the only
+course open&mdash;to obtain a writ of habeas corpus. A hurried journey by
+counsel to United States District Judge Waddill of Norfolk, Virginia, brought
+the writ. It compelled the government to bring the prisoners into court and
+show cause why they should not be returned to the district jail. This
+conservative, Southern judge said of the petition for the writ, &ldquo;It is
+shocking and blood- curdling.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There followed a week more melodramatic than the most stirring moving picture
+film. Although the writ had been applied for in the greatest secrecy, a
+detective suddenly appeared to accompany Mr. O&rsquo;Brien from Washington to
+Norfolk, during his stay in Norfolk, and back to Washington. Telephone wires at
+our headquarters were tapped.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was evident that the Administration was cognizant of every move in this
+procedure before it was executed. No sooner was our plan decided upon than
+friends of the Administration besought us to abandon the habeas corpus
+proceedings. One member of the Administration sent an emissary to our
+headquarters with the following appeal:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you will only drop these proceedings, I can absolutely guarantee you
+that the prisoners will be removed from the workhouse to the jail in a
+week:&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In a week? They may be dead by that time,&rdquo; we answered. &ldquo;We
+cannot wait.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But I tell you, you must not proceed.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why this mysterious week?&rdquo; we asked. &ldquo;Why not tomorrow? Why
+not instantly?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can only tell you that I have a positive guarantee of the District
+Commissioners that the women will be removed,&rdquo; he said in conclusion. We
+refused to grant his request.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There were three reasons why the authorities wished for a week&rsquo;s time.
+They were afraid to move the women in their weakened condition and before the
+end of the week they hoped to increase their facilities for forcible feeding at
+the workhouse. They also wished to conceal the treatment of the women, the
+exposure of which would be inevitable in any court proceedings. And lastly, the
+Administration was anxious to avoid opening up the whole question of the
+legality of the very existence of the workhouse in Virginia.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Persons convicted in the District for acts committed in violation of District
+law were transported to Virginia&mdash;alien territory&mdash;to serve their
+terms. It was a moot point whether prisoners were so treated with sufficient
+warrant in law. Eminent jurists held that the District had no right to convict
+a person under its laws and commit that person to confinement in another state.
+They contended that sentence imposed upon a person for unlawful acts in the
+District should be executed in the District.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hundreds of persons who had been convicted in the District of Columbia and who
+had served their sentences in Virginia had been without money or influence
+enough to contest this doubtful procedure in the courts. The Administration was
+alarmed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We quickened our pace. A member of the Administration rushed his attorney as
+courier to the women in the workhouse to implore them not to consent to the
+habeas corpus proceedings. He was easily admitted and tried to extort from one
+prisoner at a time a promise to reject the plan. The women suspected his
+solicitude and refused to make any promise whatsoever without first being
+allowed to see their own attorney.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We began at once to serve the writ. Ordinarily this would be an easy thing to
+do. But for us it developed into a very difficult task. A deputy marshal must
+serve the writ. Counsel sought a deputy. For miles around Washington, not one
+was to be found at his home or lodgings. None could be reached by telephone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meanwhile Mr. Whittaker, had sped from the premises of the workhouse to the
+District, where he kept himself discreetly hidden for several days. When a
+deputy was found, six attempts were made to serve the writ. All failed. Finally
+by a ruse, Mr. Whittaker was caught at his home late at night. He was aroused
+to a state of violent temper and made futile threats of reprisal when he
+learned that he must produce the suffrage prisoners at the Court in Alexandria,
+Virginia, on the day of November twenty- third.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap17"></a>Chapter 12<br/>
+Alice Paul in Prison</h2>
+
+<p>
+Great passions when they run through a whole population, inevitably find a
+great spokesman. A people cannot remain dumb which is moved by profound
+impulses of conviction; and when spokesmen and leaders are found, effective
+concert of action seems to follow as naturally. Men spring together for common
+action under a common impulse which has taken hold upon their very natures, and
+governments presently find that they have those to reckon with who know not
+only what they want, but also the most effective means of making governments
+uncomfortable until they get it. Governments find themselves, in short, in the
+presence of Agitation, of systematic movements of opinion, which do not merely
+flare up in spasmodic flames and then die down again, but burn with an
+accumulating ardor which can be checked and extinguished only by removing the
+grievances, and abolishing the unacceptable institutions which are its fuel.
+Casual discontent can be allayed, but agitation fixed upon conviction cannot
+be. To fight it is merely to augment its force. It burns irrepressibly in every
+public assembly; quiet it there, and it gathers head at street corners; drive
+it thence, and it smolders in private dwellings, in social gatherings, in every
+covert of talk, only to break forth more violently than ever because denied
+vent and air. It must be reckoned with . . . .
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Governments have been very resourceful in parrying agitation, in diverting it,
+in seeming to yield to it, and then cheating it of its objects, in tiring it
+out or evading it . . . . But the end, whether it comes soon or late, is quite
+certain to be always the same.
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+&mdash;&ldquo;Constitutional Government in the United States.&rdquo;<br/>
+Woodrow Wilson, Ph.D., LL.D.,<br/>
+President of Princeton University.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The special session of the 65th Congress, known as the &ldquo;War
+Congress,&rdquo; adjourned in October, 1917, having passed every measure
+recommended as a war measure by the President.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In addition, it found time to protect by law migratory birds, to appropriate
+forty-seven million dollars for deepening rivers and harbors, and to establish
+more federal judgeships. No honest person would say that lack of time and
+pressure of war legislation had prevented its consideration of the suffrage
+measure. If one-hundredth part of the time consumed by its members in spreading
+the wings of the overworked eagle, and in uttering to bored ears
+&ldquo;home-made&rdquo; patriotic verse, had been spent in considering the
+liberty of women, this important legislation could have been dealt with. Week
+after week Congress met only for three days, and then often merely for prayer
+and a few hours of purposeless talking.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We had asked for liberty, and had got a suffrage committee appointed in the
+House to consider the pros and cons of suffrage, and a favorable report in the
+Senate from the Committee on Woman Suffrage, nothing more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the very day and hour of the adjournment of the special session of the War
+Congress, Alice Paul led eleven women to the White House gates to protest
+against the Administration&rsquo;s allowing its lawmakers to go home without
+action on the suffrage amendment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Two days later Alice Paul and her colleagues were put on trial.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Many times during previous trials I had heard the District Attorney for the
+government shake his finger at Miss Paul and say, &ldquo;We&rsquo;ll get you
+yet . . . . Just wait; and when we do, we&rsquo;ll give you a year!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was reported from very authentic sources that Attorney General Gregory had,
+earlier in the agitation, seriously considered arresting Miss Paul for the
+Administration, on the charge of conspiracy to break the law. We were told this
+plan was abandoned because, as one of the Attorney General&rsquo;s staff put
+it, &ldquo;No jury would convict her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+However, here she was in their hands, in the courtroom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Proceedings opened with the customary formality. The eleven prisoners sat
+silently at the bar, reading their morning papers, or a book, or enjoying a
+moment of luxurious idleness, oblivious of the comical movements of a perturbed
+court. Nothing in the world so baffles the pompous dignity of a court as
+non-resistant defendants. The judge cleared his throat and the attendants made
+meaningless gestures.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Will the prisoners stand up and be sworn?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They will not.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Will they question witnesses?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They will not.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Will they speak in their own behalf ?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The slender, quiet-voiced Quaker girl arose from her seat. The crowded
+courtroom pressed forward breathlessly. She said calmly and with unconcern:
+&ldquo;We do not wish to make any plea before this court. We do not consider
+ourselves subject to this court, since as an unenfranchised class we have
+nothing to do with the making of the laws which have put us in this
+position.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What a disconcerting attitude to take! Miss Paul sat down as quietly and
+unexpectedly as she had arisen. The judge moved uneasily in his chair. The
+gentle way in which it was said was disarming. Would the judge hold them in
+contempt? He had not time to think. His part of the comedy he had expected to
+run smoothly, and here was this defiant little woman calmly stating that we
+were not subject to the court, and that we would therefore have nothing to do
+with the proceedings. The murmurs had grown to a babel of conversation. A sharp
+rap of the gavel restored order and permitted Judge Mullowny to say:
+&ldquo;Unfortunately, I am here to support the laws that are made by Congress,
+and, of course, I am bound by those laws; and you are bound by them as long as
+you live in this country, notwithstanding the fact that you do not recognize
+the law.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Everybody strained his ears for the sentence. The Administration had threatened
+to &ldquo;get&rdquo; the leader. Would they dare?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Another pause!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I shall suspend sentence for the time being,&rdquo; came solemnly from
+the judge.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Was it that they did not dare confine Miss Paul? Were they beginning actually
+to perceive the real strength of the movement and the protest that would be
+aroused if she were imprisoned? Again we thought perhaps this marked the end of
+the jailing of women.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But though the pickets were released on suspended sentences, there was no
+indication of any purpose on the part of the Administration of acting on the
+amendment. Two groups, some of those on suspended sentence, others first
+offenders, again marched to the White House gates. The following motto:
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+THE TIME HAS COME TO CONQUER OR SUBMIT; FOR US THERE CAN BE BUT ONE CHOICE-WE
+HAVE MADE IT.
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+a quotation from the President&rsquo;s second Liberty Loan appeal, was carried
+by Miss Paul.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dr. Caroline E. Spencer of Colorado carried:
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+RESISTANCE TO TYRANNY IS OBEDIENCE TO GOD.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All were brought to trial again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The trial of Miss Paul&rsquo;s group ran as follows:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MR. HART (Prosecuting Attorney for the Government): Sergeant Lee, were you on
+Pennsylvania Avenue near the White House Saturday afternoon?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+SERGEANT LEE: I was.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MR. HART: At what time?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+LEE: About 4:35 in the afternoon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+HART: Tell the court what you saw.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+LEE: A little after half-past four, when the department clerks were all going
+home out Pennsylvania Avenue, I saw four suffragettes coming down Madison
+Place, cross the Avenue and continue on Pennsylvania Avenue to the gate of the
+White House, where they divided two on the right and two on the left side of
+the gate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+HART: What did you do?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+LEE: I made my way through the crowd that was surrounding them and told the
+ladies they were violating the law by standing at the gates, and wouldn&rsquo;t
+they please move on?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+HART: Did they move on?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+LEE: They did not; and they didn&rsquo;t answer either.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+HART: What did you do then?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+LEE: I placed them under arrest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+HART: What did you do then?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+LEE: I asked the crowd to move on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Hart then arose and summing up said: &ldquo;Your Honor, these women have
+said that they will picket again. I ask you to impose the maximum
+sentence.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Such confused legal logic was indeed drole!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You ladies seem to feel that we discriminate in making arrests and in
+sentencing you,&rdquo; said the judge heavily. &ldquo;The result is that you
+force me to take the most drastic means in my power to compel you to obey the
+law.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+More legal confusion!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Six months,&rdquo; said the judge to the first offenders, &ldquo;and
+then you will serve one month more,&rdquo; to the others.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Paul&rsquo;s parting remark to the reporters who intercepted her on her
+way from the courtroom to begin her seven months&rsquo; sentence was:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We are being imprisoned, not because we obstructed traffic, but because
+we pointed out to the President the fact that he was obstructing the cause of
+democracy at home, while Americans were fighting for it abroad.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I am going to let Alice Paul tell her own story, as she related it to me one
+day after her release:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was late afternoon when we arrived at the jail. There we found the
+suffragists who had preceded us, locked in cells.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The first thing I remember was the distress of the prisoners about the lack of
+fresh air. Evening was approaching, every window was closed tight. The air in
+which we would be obliged to sleep was foul. There were about eighty negro and
+white prisoners crowded together, tier upon tier, frequently two in a cell. I
+went to a window and tried to open it. Instantly a group of men, prison guards,
+appeared; picked me up bodily, threw me into a cell and locked the door. Rose
+Winslow and the others were treated in the same way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Determined to preserve out health and that of the other prisoners, we began a
+concerted fight for fresh air. The windows were about twenty feet distant from
+the cells, and two sets of iron bars intervened between us and the windows, but
+we instituted an attack upon them as best we could. Our tin drinking cups, the
+electric light bulbs, every available article of the meagre supply in each
+cell, including my treasured copy of Browning&rsquo;s poems which I had
+secretly taken in with me, was thrown through the windows. By this simultaneous
+attack from every cell, we succeeded in breaking one window before our supply
+of tiny weapons was exhausted. The fresh October air came in like an
+exhilarating gale. The broken window remained untouched throughout the entire
+stay of this group and all later groups of suffragists. Thus was won what the
+&ldquo;regulars&rdquo; in jail called the first breath of air in their time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The next day we organized ourselves into a little group for the purpose of
+rebellion. We determined to make it impossible to keep us in jail. We
+determined, moreover, that as long as we were there we would keep up an
+unremitting fight for the rights of political prisoners.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One by one little points were conceded to quiet resistance. There was the
+practice of sweeping the corridors in such a way that the dust filled the
+cells. The prisoners would be choking to the gasping point, as they sat,
+helpless, locked in the cells, while a great cloud of dust enveloped them from
+tiers above and below. As soon as our tin drinking cups, which were sacrificed
+in our attack upon the windows, were restored to us, we instituted a campaign
+against the dust. Tin cup after tin cup was filled and its contents thrown out
+into the corridor from every cell, so that the water began to trickle down from
+tier to tier. The District Commissioners, the Board of Charities, and other
+officials were summoned by the prison authorities. Hurried consultations were
+held. Nameless officials passed by in review and looked upon the dampened
+floor. Thereafter the corridors were dampened and the sweeping into the cells
+ceased. And so another reform was won.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There is absolutely no privacy allowed a prisoner in a cell. You are suddenly
+peered at by curious strangers, who look in at you all hours of the day and
+night, by officials, by attendants, by interested philanthropic visitors, and
+by prison reformers, until one&rsquo;s sense of privacy is so outraged that one
+rises in rebellion. We set out to secure privacy, but we did not succeed, for,
+to allow privacy in prison, is against all institutional thought and habit. Our
+only available weapon was our blanket, which was no sooner put in front of our
+bars than it was forcibly taken down by Warden Zinkhan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Our meals had consisted of a little almost raw salt pork, some sort of
+liquid&mdash;I am not sure whether it was coffee or soup&mdash;bread and
+occasionally molasses. How we cherished the bread and molasses! We saved it
+from meal to meal so as to try to distribute the nourishment over a longer
+period, as almost every one was unable to eat the raw pork. Lucy Branham, who
+was more valiant than the rest of us, called out from her cell, one day,
+&ldquo;Shut your eyes tight, close your mouth over the pork and swallow it
+without chewing it. Then you can do it.&rdquo; This heroic practice kept Miss
+Branham in fairly good health, but to the rest it seemed impossible, even with
+our eyes closed, to crunch our teeth into the raw pork.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+However gaily you start out in prison to keep up a rebellious protest, it is
+nevertheless a terribly difficult thing to do in the face of the constant cold
+and hunger of undernourishment. Bread and water, and occasional molasses, is
+not a diet destined to sustain rebellion long. And soon weakness overtook us.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the end of two weeks of solitary confinement, without any exercise, without
+going outside of our cells, some of the prisoners were released, having
+finished their terms, but five of us were left serving seven months&rsquo;
+sentences, and two, one month sentences. With our number thus diminished to
+seven, the authorities felt able to cope with us. The doors were unlocked and
+we were permitted to take exercise. Rose Winslow fainted as soon as she got
+into the yard, and was carried back to her cell. I was too weak to move from my
+bed. Rose and I were taken on stretchers that night to the hospital.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For one brief night we occupied beds in the same ward in the hospital. Here we
+decided upon the hunger strike, as the ultimate form of protest left
+us&mdash;the strongest weapon left with which to continue within the prison our
+battle against the Administration.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Paul was held absolutely incommunicado in the prison hospital. No
+attorney, no member of her family, no friend could see her. With Miss Burns in
+prison also it became imperative that I consult Miss Paul as to a matter of
+policy. I was peremptorily refused admission by Warden Zinkhan, so I decided to
+attempt to communicate with her from below her window. This was before we had
+established what in prison parlance is known as the &ldquo;grape- vine
+route.&rdquo; The grape-vine route consists of smuggling messages oral or
+written via a friendly guard or prisoner who has access to the outside world.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Just before twilight, I hurried in a taxi to the far-away spot, temporarily
+abandoned the cab and walked past the dismal cemetery which skirts the prison
+grounds. I had fortified myself with a diagram of the grounds, and knew which
+entrance to attempt, in order to get to the hospital wing where Miss Paul lay.
+We had also ascertained her floor and room. I must first pick the right
+building, proceed to the proper corner, and finally select the proper window.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sympathetic chauffeur loaned me a very seedy looking overcoat which I
+wrapped about me. Having deposited my hat inside the cab, I turned up the
+collar, drew in my chin and began surreptitiously to circle the devious paths
+leading to a side entrance of the grounds. My heart was palpitating, for the
+authorities had threatened arrest if any suffragists were found on the prison
+grounds, and aside from my personal feelings, I could not at that moment
+abandon headquarters.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Making a desperate effort to act like an experienced and trusted attendant of
+the prison, I roamed about and tried not to appear roaming. I successfully
+passed two guards, and reached the desired spot, which was by good luck
+temporarily deserted. I succeeded in calling up loudly enough to be heard by
+Miss Paul, but softly enough not to be heard by the guards.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I shall never forget the shock of her appearance at that window in the
+gathering dusk. Everything in the world seemed black-gray except her ghost-like
+face, so startling, so inaccessible. It drove everything else from my mind for
+an instant. But as usual she was in complete control of herself. She began to
+hurl questions at me faster than I could answer. &ldquo;How were the convention
+plans progressing?&rdquo; . . . &ldquo;Had the speakers been secured for the
+mass meeting?&rdquo; . . . &ldquo;How many women had signed up to go out on the
+next picket line?&rdquo; And so on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Conditions at Occoquan are frightful,&rdquo; said I. &ldquo;We are
+planning to . . .&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Get out of there, and move quickly,&rdquo; shouted the guard, who came
+abruptly around the corner of the building. I tried to finish my message.
+&ldquo;We are planning to habeas corpus the women out of Occoquan and have them
+transferred up here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Get out of there, I tell you. Damn you!&rdquo; By this time he was upon
+me. He grabbed me by the arm and began shaking me. &ldquo;You will be arrested
+if you do not get off these grounds.&rdquo; He continued to shake me while I
+shouted back, &ldquo;Do you approve of this plan?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was being forced along so rapidly that I was out of range of her faint voice
+and could not hear the answer. I plead with the guard to be allowed to go back
+quietly and speak a few more words with Miss Paul, but he was inflexible. Once
+out of the grounds I went unnoticed to the cemetery and sat on a tombstone to
+wait a little while before making another attempt, hoping the guard would not
+expect me to come back. The lights were beginning to twinkle in the distance
+and it was now almost total darkness. I consulted any watch and realized that
+in forty minutes Miss Paul and her comrades would again be going through the
+torture of forcible feeding. I waited five minutes&mdash;ten
+minutes&mdash;fifteen minutes. Then I went back to the grounds again. I started
+through another entrance, but had proceeded only a few paces when I was
+forcibly evicted. Again I returned to the cold tombstone. I believe that I
+never in my life felt more utterly miserable and impotent. There were times, as
+I have said, when we felt inordinately strong. This was one of the times when I
+felt that we were frail reeds in the hands of cruel and powerful oppressors. My
+thoughts were at first with Alice Paul, at that moment being forcibly fed by
+men jailers and men doctors. I remembered then the man warden who had refused
+the highly reasonable request to visit her, and my thoughts kept right on up
+the scale till I got to the man-President&mdash;the pinnacle of power against
+us. I was indeed desolate. I walked back to the hidden taxi, hurried to
+headquarters, and plunged into my work, trying all night to convince myself
+that the sting of my wretchedness was being mitigated by activity toward a
+release from this state of affairs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Later we established daily communication with Miss Paul through one of the
+charwomen who scrubbed the hospital floors. She carried paper and pencil
+carefully concealed upon her. On entering Miss Paul&rsquo;s room she would,
+with very comical stealth, first elaborately push Miss Paul&rsquo;s bed against
+the door, then crawl practically under it, and pass from this point of
+concealment the coveted paper and pencil. Then she would linger over the floor
+to the last second, imploring Miss Paul to hasten her writing. Faithfully every
+evening this silent, dusky messenger made her long journey after her
+day&rsquo;s work, and patiently waited while I wrote an answering note to be
+delivered to Miss Paul the following morning. Thus it was that while in the
+hospital Miss Paul directed our campaign, in spite of the
+Administration&rsquo;s most painstaking plans to the contrary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Paul&rsquo;s story continues here from the point where I interrupted it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From the moment we undertook the hunger strike, a policy of unremitting
+intimidation began. One authority after another, high and low, in and out of
+prison, came to attempt to force me to break the hunger strike.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You will be taken to a very unpleasant place if you don&rsquo;t stop
+this,&rdquo; was a favorite threat of the prison officials, as they would hint
+vaguely of the psychopathic ward, and St. Elizabeth&rsquo;s, the Government
+insane asylum. They alternately bullied and hinted. Another threat was
+&ldquo;You will be forcibly fed immediately if you don&rsquo;t
+stop&rdquo;&mdash;this from Dr. Gannon. There was nothing to do in the midst of
+these continuous threats, with always the &ldquo;very unpleasant place&rdquo;
+hanging over me, and so I lay perfectly silent on my bed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After about three days of the hunger strike a man entered my room in the
+hospital and announced himself as Dr. White, the head of St. Elizabeth&rsquo;s.
+He said that he had been asked by District Commissioner Gardner to make an
+investigation. I later learned that he was Dr. William A. White, the eminent
+alienist.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Coming close to my bedside and addressing the attendant, who stood at a few
+respectful paces from him, Dr. White said: &ldquo;Does this case talk?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why wouldn&rsquo;t I talk?&rdquo; I answered quickly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, these cases frequently will not talk, you know,&rdquo; he continued
+in explanation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Indeed I&rsquo;ll talk,&rdquo; I said gaily, not having the faintest
+idea that this was an investigation of my sanity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Talking is our business,&rdquo; I continued, &ldquo;we talk to any one
+on earth who is willing to listen to our suffrage speeches.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Please talk,&rdquo; said Dr. White. &ldquo;Tell me about suffrage; why
+you have opposed the President; the whole history of your campaign, why you
+picket, what you hope to accomplish by it. Just talk freely.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I drew myself together, sat upright in bed, propped myself up for a discourse
+of some length, and began to talk. The stenographer whom Dr. White brought with
+him took down in shorthand everything that was said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I may say it was one of the best speeches I ever made. I recited the long
+history and struggle of the suffrage movement from its early beginning and
+narrated the political theory&rsquo; of our activities up to the present
+moment, outlining the status of the suffrage amendment in Congress at that
+time. In short, I told him everything. He listened attentively, interrupting
+only occasionally to say, &ldquo;But, has not President Wilson treated you
+women very badly?&rdquo; Whereupon, I, still unaware that I was being examined,
+launched forth into an explanation of Mr. Wilson&rsquo;s political situation
+and the difficulties he had confronting him. I continued to explain why we felt
+our relief lay with him; I cited his extraordinary power, his influence over
+his party, his undisputed leadership in the country, always painstakingly
+explaining that we opposed President Wilson merely because he happened to be
+President, not because he was President Wilson. Again came an interruption from
+Dr. White, &ldquo;But isn&rsquo;t President Wilson directly responsible for the
+abuses anal indignities which have been heaped upon you? You are suffering now
+as a result of his brutality, are you not?&rdquo; Again I explained that it was
+impossible for us to know whether President Wilson was personally acquainted in
+any detail with the facts of our present condition, even though we knew that he
+had concurred in the early decision to arrest our women.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Presently Dr. White took out a small light and held it up to my eyes. Suddenly
+it dawned upon me that he was examining me personally; that his interest in the
+suffrage agitation and the jail conditions did not exist, and that he was
+merely interested in my reactions to the agitation and to jail. Even then I was
+reluctant to believe that I was the subject of mental investigation and I
+continued to talk.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But he continued in what I realized with a sudden shock, was an attempt to
+discover in me symptoms of the persecution mania. How simple he had apparently
+thought it would be, to prove that I had an obsession on the subject of
+President Wilson!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The day following he came again, this time bringing with him the District
+Commissioner, Mr. Gardner, to whom he asked me to repeat everything that had
+been said the day before. For the second time we went through the history of
+the suffrage movement, and again his inquiry suggested his persecution mania
+clue? When the narrative touched upon the President and his responsibility for
+the obstruction of the suffrage amendment, Dr. White would turn to his
+associate with the remark: &ldquo;Note the reaction.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then came another alienist , Dr. Hickling, attached to the psychopathic ward in
+the District Jail, with more threats and suggestions, if the hunger strike
+continued. Finally they departed, and I was left to wonder what would happen
+next. Doubtless my sense of humor helped me, but I confess A was not without
+fear of this mysterious place which they continued to threaten.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It appeared clear that it was their intention either to discredit me, as the
+leader of the agitation, by casting doubt upon my sanity, or else to intimidate
+us into retreating from the hunger strike.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After the examination by the alienists, Commissioner Gardner, with whom I had
+previously discussed our demand for treatment as political prisoners, made
+another visit. &ldquo;All these things you say about the prison conditions may
+be true,&rdquo; said Mr. Gardner, &ldquo;I am a new Commissioner, and I do not
+know. You give an account of a very serious situation in the jail. The jail
+authorities give exactly the opposite. Now I promise you we will start an
+investigation at once to see who is right, you or they. If it is found you are
+right, we shall correct the conditions at once. If you will give up the hunger
+strike, we will start the investigation at once.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Will you consent to treat the suffragists as political prisoners, in
+accordance with the demands laid before you?&rdquo; I replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Commissioner Gardner refused, and I told him that the hunger strike would not
+be abandoned. But they had by no means exhausted every possible facility for
+breaking down our resistance. I overheard the Commissioner say to Dr. Gannon on
+leaving, &ldquo;Go ahead, take her and feed her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was thereupon put upon a stretcher and carried into the psychopathic ward.
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>
+There were two windows in the room. Dr. Gannon immediately ordered one window
+nailed from top to bottom. He then ordered the door leading into the hallway
+taken down and an iron-barred cell door put in its place. He departed with the
+command to a nurse to &ldquo;observe her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Following this direction, all through the day once every hour, the nurse came
+to &ldquo;observe&rdquo; me. All through the night, once every hour she came
+in, turned on an electric light sharp in my face, and &ldquo;observed&rdquo;
+me. This ordeal was the most terrible torture, as it prevented my sleeping for
+more than a few minutes at a time. And if I did finally get to sleep it was
+only to be shocked immediately into wide-awakeness with the pitiless light.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dr. Hickling, the jail alienist, also came often to &ldquo;observe&rdquo; me.
+Commissioner Gardner and others&mdash;doubtless officials&mdash;came to peer
+through my barred door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One day a young interne came to take a blood test. I protested mildly, saying
+that it was unnecessary and that I objected. &ldquo;Oh, well,&rdquo; said the
+young doctor with a sneer and a supercilious shrug, &ldquo;you know
+you&rsquo;re not mentally competent to decide such things.&rdquo; And the test
+was taken over my protest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is scarcely possible to convey to you one&rsquo;s reaction to such an
+atmosphere. Here I was surrounded by people on their way to the insane asylum.
+Some were waiting for their commitment papers. Others had just gotten them. And
+all the while everything possible was done to attempt to make me feel that I
+too was a &ldquo;mental patient.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At this time forcible feeding began in the District Jail. Miss Paul and Miss
+Winslow, the first two suffragists to undertake the hunger strike, went through
+the operation of forcible feeding this day and three times a day on each
+succeeding day until their release from prison three weeks later. The hunger
+strike spread immediately to other suffrage prisoners in the jail and to the
+workhouse as recorded in the preceding chapter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One morning [Miss Paul&rsquo;s story continues the friendly face of a kindly
+old man standing on top of a ladder suddenly appeared at my window. He began to
+nail heavy boards across the window from the outside. He smiled and spoke a few
+kind words and told me to be of good cheer. He confided to me in a sweet and
+gentle way that he was in prison for drinking, that he had been in many times,
+but that he believed he had never seen anything so inhuman as boarding up this
+window and depriving a prisoner of light and air. There was only time for a few
+hurried moments of conversation, as I lay upon my bed watching the boards go up
+until his figure was completely hidden and I heard him descending the ladder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After this window had been boarded up no light came into the room except
+through the top half of the other window, and almost no air. The authorities
+seemed determined. to deprive me of air and light.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meanwhile in those gray, long days, the mental patients in the psychopathic
+ward came and peered through my barred door. At night, in the early morning,
+all through the day there were cries and shrieks and moans from the patients.
+It was terrifying. One particularly melancholy moan used to keep up hour after
+hour, with the regularity of a heart beat. I said to myself, &ldquo;Now I have
+to endure this. I have got to live through this somehow. I&rsquo;ll pretend
+these moans are the noise of an elevated train, beginning faintly in the
+distance and getting louder as it comes nearer.&rdquo; Such childish devices
+were helpful to me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The nurses could not have been more beautiful in their spirit and offered every
+kindness. But imagine being greeted in the morning by a kindly nurse, a new one
+who had just come on duty, with, &ldquo;I know you are not insane.&rdquo; The
+nurses explained the procedure of sending a person to the insane asylum. Two
+alienists examine a patient in the psychopathic ward, sign an order committing
+the patient to St. Elizabeth&rsquo;s Asylum, and there. the patient is sent at
+the end of one week. No trial, no counsel, no protest from the outside world!
+This was the customary procedure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I began to think as the week wore on that this was probably their plan for me.
+I could not see my family or friends; counsel was denied me; I saw no other
+prisoners and heard nothing of them; I could see no papers; I was entirely in
+the hands of alienists, prison officials and hospital staff.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I believe I have never in my life before feared anything or any human being.
+But I confess I was afraid of Dr. Gannon, the jail physician. I dreaded the
+hour of his visit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I will show you who rules this place. You think you do. But I will show
+you that you are wrong.&rdquo; Some such friendly greeting as this was frequent
+from Dr. Gannon on his daily round. &ldquo;Anything you desire, you shall not
+have. I will show you who is on top in this institution,&rdquo; was his
+attitude.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After nearly a week had passed, Dudley Field Malone finally succeeded in
+forcing an entrance by an appeal to court officials and made a vigorous protest
+against confining me in the psychopathic ward. He demanded also that the boards
+covering the window be taken down. This was promptly done and again the
+friendly face of the old man became visible, as the first board disappeared.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I thought when I put this up America would not stand for this
+long,&rdquo; he said, and began to assure me that nothing dreadful would
+happen. I cherish the memory of that sweet old man.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The day after Mr. Malone&rsquo;s threat of court proceedings, the seventh day
+of my stay in the psychopathic ward, the attendants suddenly appeared with a
+stretcher. I did not know whither I was being taken, to the insane asylum, as
+threatened, or back to the hospital&mdash;one never knows in prison where one
+is being taken, no reason is ever given for anything. It turned out to be the
+hospital.
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>
+After another week spent by Miss Paul on hunger strike in the hospital, the
+Administration was forced to capitulate. The doors of the jail were suddenly
+opened, and all suffrage prisoners were released.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With extraordinary swiftness the Administration&rsquo;s almost incredible
+policy of intimidation had collapsed. Miss Paul had been given the maximum
+sentence of seven months, and at the end of five weeks the Administration was
+forced to acknowledge defeat. They were in a most unenviable position. If she
+and her comrades had offended in such degree as to warrant so cruel a sentence,
+(with such base stupidity on their part in administering it) she most certainly
+deserved to be detained for the full sentence. The truth is, every idea of
+theirs had been subordinated to the one desire of stopping the picketing
+agitation. To this end they had exhausted all their weapons of force.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From my conversation and correspondence with Dr. White, it is clear that as an
+alienist he did not make the slightest allegation to warrant removing Miss Paul
+to the psychopathic ward. On the contrary he wrote, &ldquo;I felt myself in the
+presence of an unusually gifted personality&rdquo; and . . . &ldquo;she was
+wonderfully alert and keen . . . possessed of an absolute conviction of her
+cause . . . with industry and courage sufficient to avail herself of them [all
+diplomatic possibilities. He praised the &ldquo;most admirable, coherent,
+logical and forceful way&rdquo; in which she discussed with him the purpose of
+our campaign.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And yet the Administration put her in the psychopathic ward and threatened her
+with the insane asylum.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+An interesting incident occurred during the latter part of Miss Paul&rsquo;s
+imprisonment. Having been cut off entirely from outside communication, she was
+greatly surprised one night at a late hour to find a newspaper man admitted for
+an interview with her. Mr. David Lawrence, then generally accepted as the
+Administration journalist, and one who wrote for the various newspapers
+throughout the country defending the policies of the Wilson Administration, was
+announced. It was equally well known that this correspondent&rsquo;s habit was
+to ascertain the position of the leaders on important questions, keeping
+intimately in touch with opinion in White House circles at the same time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Lawrence came, as he said, of his own volition, and not as an emissary from
+the White House. But in view of his close relation to affairs, his interview is
+significant as possibly reflecting an Administration attitude at that ,point in
+the campaign.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The conversation with Miss Paul revolved first about our fight for the right of
+political prisoners, Miss Paul outlining the wisdom and justice of this demand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The Administration could very easily hire a comfortable house in
+Washington and detain you all there,&rdquo; said Mr. Lawrence, &ldquo;but
+don&rsquo;t you see that your demand to be treated as&rsquo; political
+prisoners is infinitely more difficult to grant than to give you the federal
+suffrage amendment? If we give you these privileges we shall have to extend
+them to conscientious objectors and to all prisoners now confined for political
+opinions. This the Administration cannot do.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The political prisoners protest, then, had actually encouraged the
+Administration to choose the lesser of two evils some action on behalf of the
+amendment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Suppose,&rdquo; continued Mr. Lawrence, &ldquo;the Administration should
+pass the amendment through one house of Congress next session and go to the
+country in the 1918 elections on that record and if sustained in it, pass it
+through the other house a year from now. Would you then agree to abandon
+picketing?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nothing short of the passage of the amendment through Congress will end
+our agitation,&rdquo; Miss Paul quietly answered for the thousandth time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Since Mr. Lawrence disavows any connection with the 4dministration in this
+interview, I can only remark that events followed exactly in the order he
+outlined; that is, the Administration attempted to satisfy the women by putting
+the amendment through the House and not through the Senate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was during Miss Paul&rsquo;s imprisonment that the forty-one women went in
+protest to the picket line and were sent to the workhouse, as narrated in the
+previous chapter. The terrorism they endured at Occoquan ran simultaneously
+with the attempted intimidation of Miss Paul and her group in the jail.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap18"></a>Chapter 13<br/>
+Administration&mdash;Lawlessness Exposed</h2>
+
+<p>
+In August, 1917, when it was clear that the policy of imprisoning suffragists
+would be continued indefinitely, and under longer sentences, the next three
+groups of pickets to be arrested asked for a decision from the highest court,
+the District Court of Appeals. Unlike other police courts in the country, there
+is no absolute right of appeal-from the Police Court of the District of
+Columbia. Justice Robb, of the District Court of Appeals, after granting two
+appeals, refused to grant any more, upon the ground that he had discretionary
+power to grant or withhold an appeal. When further right of appeal was denied
+us, and when the Administration persisted in arresting us, we were compelled
+either to stop picketing or go to prison.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The first appealed case was heard by the Court of Appeals on January 8, 1918,
+and the decision[1] handed down in favor of the defendants on March 4, 1918.
+This decision was concurred in by all three judges, one of whom was appointed
+by President Wilson, a second by President Roosevelt and the third by President
+Taft.
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[1] See Hunter vs. District of Columbia, 47 App. Cas. (D. C.) p. 406.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In effect the decision declared that every one of the 218 suffragists arrested
+up to that time was illegally arrested, illegally convicted, and illegally
+imprisoned. The whole policy of the Administration in arresting women was by
+this decision held up to the world as lawless. The women could, if they had
+chosen, have filed suits for damages for false arrest and imprisonment at once.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The appeal cases of the other pickets were ordered dismissed and stricken from
+the records. Dudley Field Malone was chief counsel in the appeal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Another example of ethical, if not legal lawlessness, was shown by the
+Administration in the following incident. Throughout the summer and early
+autumn we had continued to press for an investigation of conditions at
+Occoquan, promised almost four months earlier.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+October 2nd was the date finally set for an investigation to be held in the
+District Building before the District Board of Charities. Armed with 18
+affidavits and a score of witnesses as to the actual conditions at Occoquan,
+Attorney Samuel C. Brent and Judge J. K. N. Norton, both of Alexandria,
+Virginia, acting as counsel with Mr. Malone, appeared before the Board on the
+opening day and asked to be allowed to present their evidence. They were told
+by the Board conducting the investigation that this was merely &ldquo;an
+inquiry into the workhouse conditions and therefore would be held in secret
+without reporters or outsiders present.&rdquo; The attorneys demanded a public
+hearing, and insisted that the question was of such momentous importance that
+the public was entitled to hear both sides of it. They were told they might
+submit in writing any evidence they wished to bring before the Board. They
+refused to produce testimony for a &ldquo;star chamber proceeding,&rdquo; and
+refused to allow their witnesses to be heard unless they could be heard in
+public.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Unable to get a public hearing, counsel left the following letter with the
+President of the Board:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hon. John Joy Edson,<br/>
+President Board of Charities,<br/>
+Washington, D. C.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dear Sir:&mdash;We are counsel for a large group of citizens, men and women,
+who have in the past been associated with Occoquan work house as officials or
+inmates and who are ready to testify to unspeakable conditions of
+mismanagement, graft, sanitary depravity, indignity and brutality at the
+institution.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We are glad you are to conduct this long-needed inquiry and shall cooperate in
+every way to get at the truth of conditions in Occoquan through your
+investigation, provided you make the hearings public, subpoena all available
+witnesses, including men and women now prisoners at Occoquan, first granting
+them immunity, and provided you give counsel an opportunity to examine and
+cross examine all witnesses so called.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We are confident your honorable board will see the justice and wisdom of a
+public inquiry. If charges so publicly made are untrue the management of
+Occoquan work house is entitled to public vindication, and if these charges are
+true, the people of Washington and Virginia should publicly know what kind of a
+prison they have in their midst, and the people of the country should publicly
+know the frightful conditions in this institution which is supported by
+Congress and the government of the United States.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We are ready with our witnesses and affidavits to aid your honorable board in
+every way, provided you meet the conditions above named. But if you insist on a
+hearing behind closed doors we cannot submit our witnesses to a star chamber
+proceeding and shall readily find another forum in which to tell the American
+public the vivid story of the Occoquan work house.
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+Respectfully yours,<br/>
+(Signed) DUDLEY FIELD MALONE,<br/>
+J. K. N. NORTON,<br/>
+SAMUEL G. BRENT.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Subsequently the District Board of Charities reported findings on their secret
+investigation. After a lengthy preamble, in which they attempted to put the
+entire blame upon the suffrage prisoners, they advised:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That the investigation directed by the Commissioners of the District of
+Columbia be postponed until the conditions of unrest, excitement, and disquiet
+at Occoquan have been overcome:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That the order relieving W. H. Whittaker as superintendent, temporarily and
+without prejudice, be revoked, and Mr. Whittaker be restored to his position as
+superintendent:[1]
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[1] Pending the investigation Mr. Whittaker was suspended, and his first
+assistant, Alonzo Tweedale, served in the capacity of superintendent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That the members of the National Woman&rsquo;s Party now at Occoquan be
+informed that unless they obey the rules of the institution and discontinue
+their acts of insubordination and riot, they will be removed from Occoquan to
+the city jail and placed in solitary confinement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In announcing the report to the press the District Commissioners stated that
+they approved the recommendations of the Board of Charities &ldquo;after most
+careful consideration,&rdquo; and that &ldquo;as a matter of fact, the District
+workhouse at Occoquan is an institution of which the commissioners are proud,
+and is a source of pride to every citizen of the nation&rsquo;s Capital.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That the Administration was in possession of the true facts concerning Mr.
+Whittaker and his conduct in office there can be no doubt. But they supported
+him until the end of their campaign of suppression.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Another example of the Administration&rsquo;s lawlessness appeared in the
+habeas corpus proceedings by which we rescued the prisoners at the workhouse
+from Mr. Whittakers custody. The trial occurred on November 23rd.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No one present can ever forget the tragi-comic scene enacted in the little
+Virginia court room that cold, dark November morning. There was Judge
+Waddill[2]&mdash;who had adjourned his sittings in Norfolk to hasten the relief
+of the prisoners&mdash;a mild mannered, sweet-voiced Southern gentleman. There
+was Superintendent Whittaker in his best Sunday clothes, which mitigated very
+little the cruel and nervous demeanor which no one who has come under his
+control will ever forget. His thugs were there, also dressed in their best
+clothes, which only exaggerated their coarse features and their shifty eyes.
+Mrs. Herndon, the thin-lipped matron, was there, looking nervous and trying to
+seem concerned about the prisoners in her charge. Warden Zinkhan was there
+seeming worried at the prospect of the prisoners being taken from the care of
+Superintendent Whittaker and committed to him&mdash;he evidently unwilling to
+accept the responsibility.
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[2] Appointed to the bench by President Roosevelt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dudley Field Malone and Mr. O&rsquo;Brien of counsel, belligerent in every
+nerve, were ready to try the case. The two dapper government attorneys, with
+immobile faces, twisted nervously in their chairs. There was the bevy of
+newspaper reporters struggling for places in the little courtroom, plainly
+sympathetic, for whatever they may have had to write for the papers they knew
+that this was a battle for justice against uneven odds. There were as many
+eager spectators as could be crowded into so small an area. Upon the whole an
+air of friendliness prevailed in this little court at Alexandria which we had
+never felt in the Washington courts. And the people there experienced a shock
+when the slender file of women, haggard, red- eyed, sick, came to the bar. Some
+were able to walk to their seats; others were so weak that they had to be
+stretched out 6n the wooden benches with coats propped under their heads for
+pillows. Still others bore the marks of the attack of the &ldquo;night of
+terror.&rdquo; Many of the prisoners lay back in their chairs hardly conscious
+of the proceedings which were to. free them. Mrs. Brannan collapsed utterly and
+had to be carried to a couch in an ante-room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was discovered just as the trial was to open that Miss Lucy Burns and Mrs.
+Lawrence Lewis, who it will be remembered had been removed to the jail before
+the writ had been issued, were absent from among the prisoners.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They are too ill to be brought into court,&rdquo; Mr. Whittaker replied
+to the attorneys for the defense.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We demand that they be brought into court at our risk,&rdquo; answered
+counsel for the defense.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The government&rsquo;s attorneys sustained Mr. Whittaker in not producing them.
+It was clear that the government did not her wish to have Miss Burns with the
+marks still fresh on wrists from her manacling and handcuffing, and Mrs. Lewes
+with a fever from the shock of the first night, brought before the judge who
+was to decide the case.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If it was necessary to handcuff Miss Burns to the bars of her cell, we
+consider her well enough to appear,&rdquo; declared Mr. O&rsquo;Brien. .
+&ldquo;We consider we ought to know what has happened to all of these
+petitioners since these events. While I was at Occoquan Sunday endeavoring to
+see my clients, Mr. Whittaker was trying to induce the ladies, who, he says,
+are too sick to be brought here, to dismiss this proceeding. Failing in that,
+he refused to let me see them, though I had an order from Judge Mullowny, and
+they were taken back to the District of Columbia. From that time to this,
+though I had your Honor&rsquo;s order which you signed in Norfolk, the
+superintendent of the Washington jail also refused to allow me to see my
+clients, saying that your order had no effect in the District of
+Columbia.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If there are any petitioners that you claim have not been brought here
+because they have been carried beyond the jurisdiction of the courts, I think
+we should know it,&rdquo; ruled the court. &ldquo;Counsel for these ladies want
+them here; and they say that they ought to be here and are well enough to b
+here; that the respondent here has spirited them away and put them beyond the
+jurisdiction of the court. On that showing, unless there is some reason why
+they ought not to come, they should be here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Burns and Mrs. Lewes were accordingly ordered brought to court.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This preliminary skirmish over, the opening discussion revolved about a point
+of law as to whether the Virginia District Court had authority to act in this
+case.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After hearing both sides on this point, Judge Waddill said: &ldquo;These are
+not state prisoners; they are prisoners of the District of Columbia. They are
+held by an order of the court claiming to have jurisdiction in the District of
+Columbia. But they are imprisoned in the Eastern District of Virginia, in
+Occoquan workhouse which, very much to our regret, is down here, and is an
+institution that we alone have jurisdiction over. No court would fail to act
+when such a state of affairs as is set forth in this petition is brought to its
+attention.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Here was a case concerning twenty-five or thirty ladies. The statement
+as to their treatment was bloodcurdling; it was shocking to man&rsquo;s ideas
+of humanity if it is true. They are here in court, and yet your answer denies
+all these facts which they submit, It is a question whether you can do that
+anal yet deny these petitioners the right of testimony.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Proceeding with this argument, the defense contended that the act itself of the
+District Commissioners in sending prisoners to the Occoquan workhouse was
+illegal; that no formal transfer from one institution to another had ever been
+made, the sentencing papers distinctly stating that all prisoners were
+committed to &ldquo;the Washington Asylum and Jail.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We deny that the records of the Commissioners of the District of
+Columbia can show that there was any order made by the Board for the removal of
+these women. The liberty of a citizen cannot be so disregarded and trifled with
+that any police official or jailer may at his own volition, commit and hold him
+in custody and compel him to work. The liberty of the people depends upon a
+broader foundation.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Repeated questions brought out from Mr. Zinkhan, Warden of the Jail, the fact
+that the directions given by the Commissioners to transfer prisoners from the
+jail to Occoquan rested entirely upon a verbal order given &ldquo;five or six
+years ago.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you really mean,&rdquo; interrupted the court, &ldquo;that the only
+authority you have on the part of the Commissioners of the District of Columbia
+to transfer parties down to Occoquan is a verbal order made five or six years
+ago?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Questions by the defense brought out the fact also that Mr. Zinkhan could
+remember in detail the first oral orders he had received for such a transfer,
+dating back to 1911, although he could not remember important details as to how
+he had received the orders concerning the suffragists committed to his care! He
+only knew that &ldquo;orders were oral and explicit.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Q. [By defense in court You say the three commissioners were present?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A. Sure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Q. Who else was present?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A. I am not sure just now who else was present. I remember somebody else was
+there, but I don&rsquo;t remember just who . . . .
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Q. Were the three commissioners present at the time Mr. [Commissioner] Brownlow
+gave you this order?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A. Yes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Q. You say it was a verbal order of the Commissioners?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A. Yes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Q. Was the clerk of the Board present?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A. I think not.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Q. And you cannot remember who was present aside from the three Commissioners?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A. No, I cannot remember just now.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Q. Try to recollect who was present at that meeting when this order was given,
+aside from the Commissioners. There was somebody else present?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A. It is my impression that there was some one other person present, but I am
+not sure just now who it was.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Q. It was some official, some one well known, was it not . . . .?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A. I am not sure. . . .
+</p>
+
+<p>
+[This conference was one in which Mr. McAdoo was reported to have
+participated.]
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The gentle judge was distressed when in answer to a question by the
+government&rsquo;s attorney as to what Mr. Zinkhan did when the prisoners were
+given into his charge, the warden replied:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A. I heard early in the afternoon of the sentence, and I did not get away from
+the Commissioners&rsquo; meeting until nearly 4 o&rsquo;clock and I jumped in
+my machine and went down to the jail, and I think at that time six of them had
+been delivered there and were in the rotunda of the jail, and a few minutes
+after that a van load came. The remaining number of ten or twelve had not
+arrived, but inasmuch as the train had to leave at 5 o&rsquo;clock and there
+would not be time enough to receive them in the jail and get them there in time
+for the train, I took the van that was there right over to the east end of the
+Union Station, and I think I took some of the others in my machine and another
+machine we had there carried some of the others over, and we telephoned the
+other van at Police Court to go direct to the east end of the Union Station and
+to deliver them to me. I had of course the commitments of those that were
+brought up to the jail&mdash;about 20 of them&mdash;and received from the
+officer of the court the other commitments of the last van load, and there I
+turned all of them except one that I kept back . . over to the receiving and
+discharging officer representing the District Workhouse, and they were taken
+down there that evening.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There followed some questioning of the uneasy warden as to how he used this
+power to decide which prisoners should remain in jail and which should be sent
+to Occoquan. Warden Zinkhan stuttered something about sending &ldquo;all the
+able bodied prisoners to Occoquan&mdash;women able to perform useful
+work&rdquo;&mdash;and that &ldquo;humanitarian motives&rdquo; usually guided
+him in his selection. It was a difficult task for the warden for he had to
+conceal just why the suffrage prisoners were sent to Occoquan, and in so doing
+had to invent &ldquo;motives&rdquo; of his own.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Q. [By defense.] Mr. Zinkhan, were you or were you not actuated by humanitarian
+motives when you sent this group of women to the Occoquan Workhouse?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A. Yes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Q. Were you actuated by humanitarian motives when you sent Mrs. Nolan, a woman
+of 73 years, to the workhouse? Did you think that she could perform some
+service at Occoquan that it was necessary to get her out of district jail and
+go down there?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Warden Zinkhan gazed at the ceiling, shifted in his chair and hesitated to
+answer. The question was repeated, and finally the warden admitted
+uncomfortably that he believed he was inspired by &ldquo;humanitarian
+motives.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mrs. Nolan, will you please stand up?&rdquo; called out Mr. Malone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All eyes turned toward the front row, where Mrs. Nolan slowly got to her feet.
+The tiny figure of a woman with pale face and snowy hair, standing out
+dramatically against her black bonnet and plain black dress, was answer enough.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Warden Zinkhan&rsquo;s answers after that came even more haltingly. He seemed
+inordinately fearful of trapping himself by his own words.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The testimony has brought out the fact,&rdquo; the judge remarked at
+this point, &ldquo;that two of these ladies were old and one of them is a
+delicate lady. Her appearance would indicate that she is not strong. Under this
+rule, if one of these ladies had been eighty years old and unable to walk she
+would have gone along with the herd and nobody would have dared to say
+&lsquo;ought this to be done?&rsquo; Would the Commissioners in a case of that
+sort, if they gave consideration to it, think of sending such an individual
+there? Was not that what the law expected them to do, and not take them off in
+droves and inspect them at the Union Station and shoot them on down? Yet that
+is about what was done in this case.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In summing up this phase of the case in an eloquent appeal, Mr. Malone said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Can the Commissioners, with caprice and no order and no record except
+that orally given five or six years ago, and one which this warden now says was
+given &lsquo;oral and explicit,&rsquo; transfer defendants placed in a
+particular institution, and under a particular kind of punishment arbitrarily
+to another institution, and add to their punishment?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Even if we admit that the Commissioners had power, did Congress ever
+contemplate that any District Commissioners would dare to exercise power
+affecting the life and health of defendants in this fashion? Did Congress ever
+contemplate that, by mere whim, these things could be done? I am sure it did
+not, and even on the admission of the government that they had the power, they
+have exercised this power in such a scandalous fashion that it is worthy of the
+notice of the court and worthy of the remedy which we seek&mdash;the removal of
+the suffrage prisoners from the Occoquan workhouse.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After a brief recess, Judge Waddill rendered this decision: &ldquo;The locking
+up of thirty human beings is an unusual sort of thing and judicial officers
+ought to be required to stop long enough to see whether some prisoners ought to
+go and some not; whether some might not be killed by going; or whether they
+should go dead or alive. This class o f prisoners and this number of prisoners
+should haze been given special consideration. There cannot be any controversy
+about this question . . . . You ought to lawfully lock them up instead of
+unlawfully locking them up&mdash;if they are to be locked up . . . . The
+petitioners are, therefore, one and all, in the Workhouse without semblance of
+authority or legal process of any kind . . . . and they will accordingly be
+remanded to the custody of the Superintendent of the Washington Asylum and
+Jail.&rdquo; . . .
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It having been decided that the prisoners were illegally detained in the
+workhouse, it was not necessary to go into a discussion of the cruelties
+committed upon the prisoners while there.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The government&rsquo;s attorneys immediately announced that they would appeal
+from the decision of Judge Waddill. Pending such an appeal the women were at
+liberty to be paroled in the custody of counsel. But since they had come from
+the far corners of the continent and since some of them had served out almost
+half of their sentence, and did not wish in case of an adverse decision on the
+appeal, to have to return later to undergo the rest of their sentence, they
+preferred to finish their sentences.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These were the workhouse prisoners thus remanded to the jail who continued the
+hunger strike undertaken at the workhouse, and made a redoubtable reinforcement
+to Alice Paul and Rose Winslow and their comrades on strike in the jail when
+the former arrived.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap19"></a>Chapter 14<br/>
+The Administration Outwitted</h2>
+
+<p>
+With thirty determined women on hunger strike, of whom eight were in a state of
+almost total collapse, the Administration capitulated. It could not afford to
+feed thirty women forcibly and risk the social and political consequences; nor
+could it let thirty women starve themselves to death, and likewise take the
+consequences. For by this time one thing was clear, and that was that the
+discipline and endurance of the women could not be broken. And so all the
+prisoners were unconditionally released on November 27th and November 28th.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On leaving prison Miss Paul said: &ldquo;The commutation of sentences
+acknowledges them to be unjust and arbitrary. The attempt to suppress
+legitimate propaganda has failed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We hope that no more demonstrations will be necessary, that the
+amendment will move steadily on to passage and ratification without further
+suffering or sacrifice. But what we do depends entirely upon what the
+Administration does. We have one aim: the immediate passage of the federal
+amendment&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Running parallel to the protest made inside the prison, a public protest of
+nation-wide proportions had been made against continuing to imprison women.
+Deputations of in- fluential women had waited upon all party leaders, cabinet
+officials, heads of the war boards, in fact every friend of the Administration,
+pointing out that we had broken no law, that we were unjustly held, and that
+.the Administration would suffer politically for their handling of the suffrage
+agitation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A committee of women, after some lively fencing with the Secretary of War,
+finally drove Mr. Baker to admit that women had been sent to prison for a
+political principle; that they were not petty disturbers but part of a great
+fundamental struggle. Secretary Baker said, &ldquo;This [the suffrage struggle]
+is a revolution. There have been revolutions all through his- tory. Some have
+been justified and some have not. The burden of responsibility to decide
+whether your revolution is justified or not is on you. The whole philosophy of
+your movement seems to be to obey no laws until you have a voice in those
+laws.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At least one member of the Cabinet thus showed that he had caught something of
+the purpose and depth of our movement. He never publicly protested, however,
+against the Administration&rsquo;s policy of suppression.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. McAdoo, then Secretary of the Treasury, gave no such evidence of
+enlightenment as Mr. Baker. A committee of women endeavored to see him. He was
+reported &ldquo;out. But we expect him here soon.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We waited an hour. The nervous private secretary returned to say that he had
+been mistaken. &ldquo;The Secretary will not be in until after luncheon.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We shall wait,&rdquo; said Mrs. William Kent, chairman of the
+deputation. &ldquo;We have nothing more important to do to-day than to see
+Secretary McAdoo. We are willing to wait the whole day, if necessary, only it
+is imperative that we see him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The private secretary&rsquo;s spirits sank. He looked as if he would give
+anything to undo his inadvertence in telling us that the Secretary was expected
+after luncheon! Poor man! We settled down comfortably to wait, a formidable
+looking committee of twenty women.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was the customary gentle embarrassment of attendants whose chief is in a
+predicament from which they seem powerless to extricate him, but all were
+extremely courteous. The attendant at the door brought us the morning papers to
+read. Gradually groups of men began to arrive and cards were sent in the
+direction of the spot where we inferred the Secretary of the Treasury was
+safely hidden, hoping and praying for our early retirement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Whispered conversations were held. Men disappeared in and out of strange doors.
+Still we waited.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Finally as the fourth hour of our vigil was dragging on, a lieutenant appeared
+to announce that the Secretary was very sorry but that he would not be able to
+see us &ldquo;at all.&rdquo; We consulted, and finally sent in a written
+appeal, asking for &ldquo;five minutes of his precious time on a matter of
+grave importance.&rdquo; More waiting! Finally a letter was brought to us
+directed to Mrs. William Kent, with the ink of the Secretary of the
+Treasury&rsquo;s signature still wet. With no concealment of contempt, he
+declared that under no circumstances could he speak with women who had
+conducted such an outrageous campaign in such an &ldquo;illegal&rdquo; way. We
+smiled as we learned from his pronouncement that &ldquo;picketing&rdquo; was
+&ldquo;illegal,&rdquo; for we were not supposed to have been arrested for
+picketing. The tone of his letter, its extreme bitterness, tended to confirm
+what we had always been told, that Mr. McAdoo assisted in directing the policy
+of arrests and imprisonment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I have tried to secure this letter for reproduction but unfortunately Mrs. Kent
+did not save it. We all remember its bitter passion, however, and the point it
+made about our &ldquo;illegal picketing.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Congress convened on December 4th. President Wilson delivered a message,
+restating our aims in the war. He also recommended a declaration of a state of
+war against Austria; the control of certain water power sites; export
+trade-combination; railway legislation; and the speeding up of all necessary
+appropriation legislation. But he did not mention the suffrage amendment.
+Having been forced to release the prisoners, he again rested.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Immediately we called a conference in Washington of the Executive Committee and
+the National Advisory Council of the Woman&rsquo;s Party. Past activities were
+briefly reviewed and the political situation discussed. It is interesting to
+note that the Treasurer&rsquo;s report made at this conference showed that
+receipts in some months during the picketing had been double what they were the
+same month the previous year when there was no picketing. In one month of
+picketing the receipts went as high as six times the normal amount. For example
+in July of 1917, when the arrests had just begun, receipts for the month
+totalled $21,628.65 as against $8,690.62 for July of 1916. In November, 1917,
+when the militant situation was at its highest point, there was received at
+National Headquarters $81,117.87 as against $15,008.18 received in November,
+1916. Still there were those who said we had no friends!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A rumor that the President would act persisted. But we could not rely on rumor.
+We decided to accelerate him and his Administration by filing damage suits
+amounting to $800,000 against the District Commissioners, against Warden
+Zinkhan, against Superintendent Whittaker and Captain Reams, a workhouse
+guard.[1] They were brought in no spirit of revenge, but merely that the
+Administration should not be allowed to forget its record of brutality, unless
+it chose to amend its conduct by passing the amendment. The suits were brought
+by the women woo suffered the greatest abuse during the &ldquo;night of
+terror&rdquo; at the workhouse.
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[1] We were obliged to bring the suits against individuals, as we could not in
+the law bring them against the government.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If any one is still in doubt as to the close relation between the Court
+procedure in our case and the President&rsquo;s actions, this letter to one of
+our attorneys in January, 1918, must convince him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My dear Mr. O&rsquo;Brien:&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I wish you would advise me as soon as you conveniently can, what will be done
+with the suffragist cases now pending against Whittaker and Reams in the United
+States District Court at Alexandria.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I have heard rumors, the truth of which you will understand better than I, that
+these cases will be dropped if the President comes out in favor of woman
+suffrage. This, I understand, he will do and certainly hope so, as I am
+personally in favor of it and have been for many years. But in case of his
+delay in taking any action, will you agree to continue these cases for the
+present?
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+Very truly yours,<br/>
+(Signed) F. H. STEVENS,<br/>
+Assistant Corporation Counsel, D. C.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In order to further fortify themselves, the District Commissioners, when the
+storm had subsided, quietly removed Warden Zinkhan from the jail and
+Superintendent Whittaker resigned his post at the workhouse, presumably under
+pressure from the Commissioners.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Woman&rsquo;s Party conference came to a dramatic close during that first
+week in December with an enormous mass meeting in the Belasco Theatre in
+Washington. On that quiet Sunday afternoon, as the President came through his
+gates for his afternoon drive, a passageway had to be opened for his motor car
+through the crowd of four thousand people who were blocking Madison Place in an
+effort to get inside the Belasco Theatre. Inside the building was packed to the
+rafters. The President saw squads of police reserves, who had been for the past
+six months arresting pickets for him, battling with a crowd that was literally
+storming the theatre in their eagerness to do honor to those who had been
+arrested. Inside there was a fever heat of enthusiasm, bursting cheers, and
+thundering applause which shook the building. America has never before nor
+since seen such a suffrage meeting.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont, chairman, opened the meeting by saying:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We are here this afternoon to do honor to a hundred gallant women, who
+have endured the hardship and humiliation of imprisonment because they love
+liberty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The suffrage pickets stood at the White House gates for ten months and
+dramatized the women&rsquo;s agitation for political liberty. Self-respecting
+and patriotic American women will no longer tolerate a government which denies
+women the right to govern themselves. A flame of rebellion is abroad among
+women, and the stupidity and brutality of the government in this revolt have
+only served to increase its heat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;As President Wilson wrote, &lsquo;Governments have been very successful
+in parrying agitation, diverting it, in seeming to yield to it and then
+cheating it, tiring it out or evading it. But the end, whether it comes soon or
+late, is quite certain to be the same.&rsquo; While the government has
+endeavored to parry, tire, divert, and cheat us of our goal, the country has
+risen in protest against this evasive policy of suppression until to-day the
+indomitable pickets with their historic legends stand triumphant before the
+nation.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. William Kent, who had led the last picket line of forty-one women, was
+chosen to decorate the prisoners.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In honoring these women, who were willing to go to jail for
+liberty,&rdquo; said Mrs. Kent, &ldquo;we are showing our love of country and
+devotion to democracy.&rdquo; The long line of prisoners filed past her and
+amidst constant cheers and applause, received a tiny silver replica of a cell
+door, the same that appears in miniature on the title page of this book.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As proof of this admiration for what the women had done, the great audience in
+a very few moments pledged $86,826 to continue the campaign. Many pledges were
+made in honor of Alice Paul, Inez Milholland, Mrs. Belmont, Dudley Field
+Malone, and all the prisoners. Imperative resolutions calling upon President
+Wilson and his Administration to act, were unanimously passed amid an uproar.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap20"></a>Chapter 15<br/>
+Political Results</h2>
+
+<p>
+Immediately following the release of the prisoners and the magnificent
+demonstration of public support of them, culminating at the mass meeting
+recorded in the preceding chapter, political events happened thick and fast.
+Committees in Congress acted on the amendment. President Wilson surrendered and
+a date for the vote was set.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Judiciary Committee of the House voted 18 to 2 to report the amendment to
+that body. The measure, it will be remembered, was reported to the Senate in
+the closing days of the previous session, and was therefore already before the
+Senate awaiting action.[1]
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[1] See Chapter 8.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To be sure, the Judiciary Committee voted to report the amendment without
+recommendation. But soon after, the members of the - Suffrage Committee,
+provision for which had also been made during the war session, were appointed.
+All but four members of this committee were in favor of national suffrage, and
+immediately after its formation it met to organize and decided to take the
+suffrage measure out of the hands of the Judiciary Committee and to press for a
+vote.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A test of strength came on December 18th.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On a trivial motion to refer all suffrage bills to the new suffrage committee,
+the vote stood 204 to 107. This vote, although unimportant in itself, clearly
+promised victory for the amendment in the House. In a few days, Representative
+Mondell of Wyoming, Republican, declared that the Republican side of the House
+would give more than a two-thirds majority of its members to the amendment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is up to our friends on the Democratic side to see that the amendment
+is not defeated through hostility or indifference on their side,&rdquo; said
+Mr. Mondell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Our daily poll of the House showed constant gains. Pledges from both Democratic
+and Republican members came thick and fast; cabinet members for the first time
+publicly declared their belief in the amendment. A final poll, however, showed
+that we lacked a few votes of the necessary two-thirds majority to pass the
+measure in the House.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No stone was left unturned in a final effort to get the President to secure
+additional Democratic votes to insure the passage of the amendment. Finally, on
+the eve of the vote President Wilson made his first declaration of support of
+the amendment through a committee of Democratic Congressmen. During the vote
+the following day Representative Cantrill of Kentucky, Democrat, reported the
+event to the House. He said in part:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was my privilege yesterday afternoon to be one of a committee of twelve to
+ask the President for advice and counsel on this important measure (prolonged
+laughter and jeers). Mr. Speaker, in answer to the sentiment expressed by part
+of the House, I desire to say that at no time and upon no occasion am I ever
+ashamed to confer with Woodrow Wilson upon any important question (laughter,
+applause, and, jeers) and that part of the House that has jeered that statement
+before it adjourns to-day will follow absolutely the advice which he gave this
+committee yesterday afternoon. (Laughter and applause.) After conference with
+the President yesterday afternoon he wrote with his own hands the words which I
+now read to you, and each member of the committee was authorized by the
+President to give full publicity to the following:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The committee found that the President had not felt at liberty to
+volunteer his advice to Members of Congress in this important matter, but when
+we sought his advice (laughter) he very frankly and earnestly advised us to
+vote for the amendment as an act of right and justice to the women of the
+country and o f the world.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+. . . To my Democratic brethren who have made these halls ring with their
+eloquence in their pleas to stand by the President, I will say that now is your
+chance to stand by the President and vote for this amendment, &ldquo;as&rsquo;
+an act of right and justice to the women of the country and of the world&rdquo;
+. . .
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Do you wish to do that which is right and just toward the women of your own
+country? If so, follow the President&rsquo;s advice and vote for this
+amendment. It will not do to follow the President in this great crisis in the
+world&rsquo;s history on those matters only which are popular in your own
+districts. The true test is to stand by him, even though your own vote is
+unpopular at home. The acid test for a Member of Congress is for him to stand
+for right and justice even if misunderstood at home at first. In the end, right
+and justice will prevail everywhere.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+. . . No one thing connected with the war is of more importance at this time
+than meeting the reasonable demand of millions of patriotic and Christian women
+of the Nation that the amendment for woman suffrage be submitted to the States
+. . . .
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The amendment passed the House January 10, 1918, by a vote of 274 to
+136&mdash;a two-thirds majority with one vote to spare&mdash;exactly forty
+years to a day from the time the suffrage amendment was first introduced into
+Congress, and exactly one year to a day from the time the first picket banner
+appeared at the gates o f the White House.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Eighty-three per cent of the Republicans voting on the measure, voted in favor
+of it, while only fifty per cent of the Democrats voting, voted for it. Even
+after the Republicans had pledged their utmost strength, more than two-thirds
+of their membership, votes were still lacking to make up the Democratic
+deficiency, and the President&rsquo;s declaration that the measure ought to
+pass the House, produced them from his own party. Those who contend that
+picketing had &ldquo;set back the clock,&rdquo;&mdash;that it did &ldquo;no
+good,&rdquo;&mdash;that President Wilson would &ldquo;not be moved by
+it&rdquo;&mdash;have, we believe, the burden of proof on their side of the
+argument. It is our firm belief that the solid year of picketing, with all its
+political ramifications, did compel the President to abandon his opposition and
+declare himself for the measure. I do not mean to say that many things do not
+cooperate in a movement toward a great event. I do mean to say that picketing
+was the most vital force amongst the elements which moved President Wilson.
+That picketing had compelled Congress to see the question in terms of political
+capital is also true. From the first word uttered in the House debate, until
+the final roll-call, political expediency was the chief motif.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Lenroot of Wisconsin, Republican, rose to say:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;May I suggest that there is a distinction between the Democratic members
+of the Committee on Rules and the Republican members, in this, that all of the
+Republican members are for this proposition?&rdquo; This was met with instant
+applause from the Republican side.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Representative Cantrill prefaced his speech embodying the President&rsquo;s
+statement, which caused roars and jeers from the opposition, with the
+announcement that he was not willing to risk another election, with the voting
+women of the West, and the amendment still unpassed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Lenroot further pointed out that: &ldquo;From a Republican
+standpoint&mdash;from a partisan standpoint, it would be an advantage to
+Republicans to go before the people in the next election and say that this
+resolution was defeated by southern Democrats.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+An anti-suffragist tried above the din and noise to remind Mr. Lenroot that
+three years before Mr. Lenroot had voted &ldquo;No,&rdquo; but a Republican
+colleague came suddenly to the rescue with &ldquo;What about Mr. Wilson?&rdquo;
+which was followed by, &ldquo;He kept us out of war,&rdquo; and the jeers on
+the Republican side became more pronounced.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This interesting political tilt took place when Representatives Dennison and
+Williams of Illinois, and Representative Kearns of Ohio, Republicans, fenced
+with Representative Raker of California, Democrat, as he attempted, with an
+evident note of self-consciousness, to make the President&rsquo;s reversal seem
+less sudden.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MR. DENNISON : It was known by the committee that went to see the President
+that the Republicans were going to take this matter up and pass it in caucus,
+was it not?&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MR. RAKER: I want to say to my Republican friends upon this question that I
+have been in conference with the President for over three years upon this
+question . . . .
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MR. KEARNS: How did the women of California find out and learn where the
+President stood on this thing just before election last fall? Nobody else
+seemed to know it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MR. RAKER: They knew it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MR. KEARNS: How did they find it out?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MR. RAKER: I will take a minute or two&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MR. KEARNS: I wish the gentleman would.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MR. RAKER: The President went home and registered. The President went home and
+voted for woman suffrage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MR. KEARNS: He said he believed in it for the several states . . . .
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MR. RAKER: One moment&mdash;&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MR. KEARNS : That is the only information they had upon the subject, is it?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MR. WILLIAMS: . . . Will the gentleman yield?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MR. RAKER: I cannot yield.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MR. WILLIAMS: Just for a question.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MR. RAKER: I cannot yield . . . .
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That the President&rsquo;s political speed left some overcome was clear from a
+remark of Mr. Clark of Florida when he said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I was amused at my friend from Oklahoma, Mr. Ferris, who wants us to
+stand with the President. God knows I want to stand with him. I am a Democrat,
+and I want to follow the leader of my party, and I am a pretty good lightning
+change artist myself sometimes (laughter); but God knows I cannot keep up with
+his performance. (Laughter.) Why, the President wrote a book away back
+yonder&rdquo; . . . and he quoted generously from President Wilson&rsquo;s many
+statements in defense of state rights as recorded in his early writings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Hersey of Maine, Republican, drew applause when he made a retort to the
+Democratic slogan, &ldquo;Stand by the President.&rdquo; He said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mr. Speaker, I am still &lsquo;standing with the President,&rsquo; or,
+in other words, the President this morning is standing with me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The resentment at having been forced by the pickets to the point of passing the
+amendment was in evidence throughout the debate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Representative Gordon of Ohio, Democrat, said with bitter ness : &ldquo;We are
+threatened by these militant suffragettes with a direct and lawless invasion by
+the Congress of the United States of the rights of those States which have
+refused to confer upon their women the privilege of voting. This attitude on
+the part of some of the suffrage Members of this House is on an exact equality
+with the acts of these women militants who have spent the last summer and fall,
+while they were not in the district jail or workhouse, in coaxing, teasing, and
+nagging the Presi dent of the United States for the purpose of inducing him, by
+coercion, to club Congress into adopting this joint resolution.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Shouts of &ldquo;Well, they got him!&rdquo; and &ldquo;They got it!&rdquo; from
+all sides, followed by prolonged laughter and jeers, interrupted the flow of
+his oratory.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Ferris of Oklahoma, Democrat, hoped to minimize the effectiveness of the
+picket.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mr. Speaker,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I do not approve or believe in
+picketing the White House, the National Capitol, or any other station to bring
+about votes for women. I do not approve of wild militancy, hunger strikes, and
+efforts of that sort. I do not approve of the course of those women that . . .,
+become agitators, lay off their womanly qualities in their efforts to secure
+votes. I do not approve of anything unwomanly anywhere, any time, and my course
+to-day in supporting this suffrage amendment is not guided by such conduct on
+the part of a very few women here or elsewhere.&rdquo; (Applause.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Representative Langley of Kentucky, Republican, was able to see picketing in a
+fairer light:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Much has been said pro and con about &lsquo;picketing&rsquo;,-that
+rather dramatic chapter in the history of this great movement. It is not my
+purpose to speak either in criticism or condemnation of that; but if it be
+true&mdash;I do not say that it is, because I do not know&mdash;but if it be
+true, as has been alleged, that certain promises were made, as a result of
+which a great campaign was won, and those promises were not kept, I wonder
+whether in that silent, peaceful protest that was against this broken faith,
+there can be found sufficient warrant for the indignities which the so-called
+&lsquo;pickets&rsquo; suffered; and when in passing up and down the Avenue I
+frequently witnessed cultured, intellectual women arrested and dragged off to
+prison because of their method, of giving publicity to what they believed to be
+the truth, I will confess that the question sometimes arose in my mind whether
+when the impartial history of this great struggle has been written their names
+may not be placed upon the roll of martyrs to the cause to which they were
+consecrating their lives in the manner that they deemed most effective.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Mays of Utah was one Democrat who placed the responsibility for militancy
+where it rightly belonged when he said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Some say to-day that they are ashamed of the action of the militants in
+picketing the Capitol: . . . But we should be more ashamed of the unreasonable
+stubbornness on the part of the men who refused them the justice they have so
+long and patiently asked.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And so the debate ran on. Occasionally one caught a glimmer of real
+comprehension, amongst these men about to vote upon our political liberty; but
+more often the discussion stayed on a very inferior level.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And there were gems imperishable!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Even friends of the measure had difficulty not to romanticize about
+&ldquo;Woman&mdash;God&rsquo;s noblest creature&rdquo; . . . &ldquo;man&rsquo;s
+better counterpart&rdquo; . . . &ldquo;humanity&rsquo;s perennial hope&rdquo; .
+. . &ldquo;the world&rsquo;s object most to be admired and loved&rdquo; . . .
+and so forth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Representative Elliott of Indiana, Republican, favored the resolution
+because&mdash;&ldquo;A little more than four hundred years ago Columbus
+discovered America. Before that page of American history was written he was
+compelled to seek the advice and assistance of a woman. From that day until the
+present day the noble women of America have done their part in times of peace
+and of war . . .&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If Queen Isabella was an argument in favor for Mr. Elliott of Indiana, Lady
+Macbeth played the opposite part for Mr. Parker of New Jersey, Republican . . .
+. &ldquo;I will not debate the question as to whether in a time of war women
+are the best judges of policy. That great student of human nature, William
+Shakespeare, in the play of Macbeth, makes Lady Macbeth eager for deeds of
+blood until they are committed and war is begun and then just as eager that it
+may be stopped.&rdquo; . . .
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Said Mr. Gray of New Jersey, Republican: &ldquo;A nation will endure just so
+long as its men are virile. History, physiology, and psychology all show that
+giving woman equal political rights with man makes ultimately for the
+deterioration of manhood. It is, therefore, not only because I want our country
+to win this war but because I want our nation to possess the male virility
+necessary to guarantee its future existence that I am opposed to the pending
+amendment.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The hope was expressed that President Wilson&rsquo;s conversion would be like
+that of St. Paul, &ldquo;and that he will become a master- worker in the
+vineyards of the Lord for this proposition.&rdquo; (Applause.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Gallivan, Democrat, although a representative of Massachusetts, &ldquo;the
+cradle of American liberty,&rdquo; called upon a great Persian philosopher to
+sustain him in his support. &ldquo; &lsquo;Dogs bark, but the caravan moves
+on.&rsquo; . . . Democracy cannot live half free and half female.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Dill of Washington, Democrat, colored his support with the following
+tribute: &ldquo; . . . It was woman who first learned to prepare skins of
+animals for protection from the elements, and tamed and domesticated the dog
+and horse and cow. She was a servant and a slave . . . . To-day she is the peer
+of man.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Little of Kansas, Republican, tried to bring his colleagues back to a
+moderate course by interpolating:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It seems to me, gentlemen, that it is time for us to learn that woman is
+neither a slave nor an angel, but a human being, entitled to be treated with
+ordinary common sense in the adjustment of human affairs . . . .&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But this calm statement could not allay the terror of Representative Clark of
+Florida, Democrat, who cried: &ldquo;In the hearings before the committee it
+will be found that one of the leaders among the suffragettes declared that they
+wanted the ballot for &lsquo;protection&rsquo;, and when asked against whom she
+desired &lsquo;protection&rsquo; she promptly and frankly replied,
+&lsquo;men.&rsquo; My God, has it come to pass in America that the women of the
+land need to be protected from the men?&rdquo; The galleries quietly nodded
+their heads, and Mr. Clark continued to predict either the complete breakdown
+of family life . . . . or &ldquo;they [man and wife] must think alike, act
+alike, have the same ideals of life, and look forward with like vision to the
+happy consummation &lsquo;beyond the vale.&rsquo; . . .
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;God knows that . . . when you get factional politics limited to husband
+and wife, oh, what a spectacle will be presented, my countrymen . . . . Love
+will vanish, while hate ascends the throne . . . .
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To-day woman stands the uncrowned queen in the hearts of all
+right-thinking American men; to her as rightful sovereign we render the homage
+of protection, respect, love, and may the guiding hand of an all-wise
+Providence stretch forth in this hour of peril to save her from a change of
+relation which must bring in its train, discontent, sorrow, and pain,&rdquo; he
+concluded desperately, with the trend obviously toward &ldquo;crowning&rdquo;
+the queens.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was the disturbing consideration that women know too much to be trusted.
+&ldquo;I happen to have a mother,&rdquo; said Mr. Gray of New Jersey,
+Republican, &ldquo;as most of us have, and incidentally I think we all have
+fathers, although a father does not count for much any more. My mother has
+forgotten more political history than he ever knew, and she knows more about
+the American government and American political economy than he has ever shown
+symptoms of knowing, and for the good of mankind as well as the country she is
+opposed to women getting into politics.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The perennial lament for the passing of the good old days was raised by
+Representative Welty of Ohio, Democrat, who said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The old ship of state has left her moorings and seems to be sailing on
+an unknown and uncharted sea. The government founded in the blood of our
+fathers is fading away. Last fall, a year ago, both parties recognized those
+principles in their platforms, and each candidate solemnly declared that he
+would abide by them if elected. But lo, all old things are passing away, and
+the lady from Montana has filed a bill asking that separate citizenship be
+granted to American women marrying foreigners.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Representative Greene of Massachusetts, Republican, all but shed tears over the
+inevitable amending of the Constitution:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have read it [the Constitution] many times, and there have been just
+17 amendments adopted since the original Constitution was framed by the master
+minds whom God had inspired in the cabin of the Mayflower to formulate the
+Constitution of the Plymouth Colony which was made the basis of the
+Constitution of Massachusetts and subsequently resulted in the establishment of
+the Constitution of the United States under which we now live . . . .&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fancy his shock at finding the pickets triumphant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Since the second session of the Sixty-fifth Congress opened,&rdquo; he
+said, &ldquo;I have met several women suffragists from the State of
+Massachusetts. I have immediately propounded to them this one question: ‘Do you
+approve or disapprove of the suffrage banners in front of the White House . . .
+?&rsquo; The answer in nearly every case to my question was: &lsquo;I glory in
+that demonstration&rsquo; . . . the response to my question was very offensive,
+and I immediately ordered these suffrage advocates from my office.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And again the pickets featured in the final remarks of Mr. Small of North
+Carolina, Democrat, who deplored the fact that advocates of the amendment had
+made it an issue inducing party rivalry. &ldquo;This is no party question, and
+such efforts will be futile. It almost equals in intelligence the scheme of
+that delectable and inane group of women who picketed the White House on the
+theory that the President could grant them the right to vote.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Amid such gems of intellectual delight the House of the great American Congress
+passed the national suffrage amendment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We turned our entire attention then to the Senate.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap21"></a>Chapter 16<br/>
+An Interlude (Seven Months)</h2>
+
+<p>
+The President had finally thrown his power to putting the amendment through the
+House. We hoped he would follow this up by insisting upon the passage of the
+amendment in the Senate. We ceased our acts of dramatic protest for the moment
+and gave our energies to getting public pressure upon him, to persuade him to
+see that the Senate acted. We also continued to press directly upon
+recalcitrant senators of the minority party who could be won only through
+appeals other than from the President.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There are in the Senate 96 members&mdash;2 elected from each of the 48 states.
+To pass a constitutional amendment through the Senate, 64 votes are necessary,
+a two-thirds majority. At this point in the campaign, 58 senators were pledged
+to support the measure and 48 were opposed. We therefore had to win 11 more
+votes. A measure passed through one branch of Congress must be passed through
+the other branch during the life of that Congress, otherwise it dies
+automatically and must be born again in a new Congress. We therefore had only
+the remainder of the first regular session of the 65th Congress and, failing of
+that, the short second session from December, 1918, to March, 1919, in which to
+win those votes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Backfires were started in the states of the senators not yet committed to the
+amendment. Organized demand for action in the Senate grew to huge proportions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We turned also to the leading influential members of the respective parties for
+active help.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Colonel Roosevelt did his most effective suffrage work at this period in a
+determined attack upon the few unconvinced Republican Senators. The Colonel was
+one of the few leaders in our national life who was never too busy to confer or
+to offer and accept suggestions as to procedure. He seemed to have imagination
+about women. He never took a patronizing attitude nor did he with moral unction
+dogmatically tell you how the fight should be waged and won. He presupposed
+ability among women leaders. He was not offended, morally or politically, by
+our preferring to go to jail rather than to submit in silence. In fact, he was
+at this time under Administration fire, because of his bold attacks upon some
+of their policies, and remarked during an interview at Oyster Bay:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I may soon join you women in jail. One can never tell these days.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His sagacious attitude toward conservative and radical suffrage forces was
+always delightful and indicative of his appreciation of the political and
+social value of a movement&rsquo;s having vitality enough to disagree on
+methods. None of the banal philosophy that &ldquo;you can never win until all
+your forces get together&rdquo; from the Colonel. One day, as I came into his
+office for an interview, I met a member of the conservative suffragists just
+leaving, and we spoke. In his office the Colonel remarked, &ldquo;You know, I
+contemplated having both you and Mrs. Whitney come to see me at the same time,
+since it was on a similar mission, but I didn&rsquo;t quite know whether the
+lion and the lamb would lie down together, and I thought I&rsquo;d better take
+no chances . . . . But I see you&rsquo;re on speaking terms,&rdquo; he added. I
+answered that our relations were extremely amiable, but remarked that the other
+side might not like to be called &ldquo;lambs.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You delight in being the lions-on that point I am safe, am I not?&rdquo;
+And he smiled his widest smile as he plunged into a vivid expository attack
+upon the Senatorial opponents of suffrage in his own party. He wrote letters to
+them. If this failed, he invited them to Oyster Bay for the week-end. Never did
+he abandon them until there was literally not a shadow of hope to bank on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the Colonel got into action something always happened on the Democratic
+side. He made a public statement to Senator Gallinger of New Hampshire,
+Republican leader in the Senate, in which lie pointed to the superior support
+of the Republicans and urged even more liberal party support to ensure the
+passage of the amendment in the Senate. Action by the Democrats followed fast
+on the heels of this public statement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The National Executive Committee of the Democratic party, after a referendum
+vote of the members of the National Committeemen, passed a resolution calling
+for favorable action in the Senate. Mr. A. Mitchell Palmer wrote to the
+Woman&rsquo;s Party saying that this resolution must be regarded as &ldquo;an
+official expression of the Democratic Party through the only organization which
+can speak for it between national conventions.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Republican National Committee meeting at the same time commended the course
+taken by Republican Representatives who had voted for the amendment in the
+House, and declared their position to be &ldquo;a true interpretation of the
+thought of the Republican Party.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Republican and Democratic state, county and city committees followed the lead
+and called for Senate action.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+State legislatures in rapid succession called upon the Senate to pass the
+measure, that they in turn might immediately ratify. North Dakota, New York,
+Rhode Island, Arizona, Texas and other states acted in this matter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Intermittent attempts on the Republican side to force action, followed by
+eloquent speeches from time to time, piquing their opponents, left the
+Democrats bison-like across the path. The majority of them were content to rest
+upon the action taken in the House.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was at this time Chairman of the Political Department of the Woman&rsquo;s
+Party, and in that capacity interviewed practically every national leader in
+both majority parties. I can not resist recording a few impressions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Colonel William Boyce Thompson of New York, now Chairman of Ways and Means of
+the Republican National Committee, who with Raymond Robins had served in Russia
+as member of the United States Red Cross. Mission, had just returned. The
+deadlock was brought to his attention. He immediately responded in a most
+effective way. In a brief but dramatic speech at a great mass meeting of the
+Woman&rsquo;s Party, at Palm Beach, Florida, he said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The story of the brutal imprisonment in Washington of women advocating
+suffrage is shocking and almost incredible. I became accustomed in Russia to
+the stories of men and women who served terms of imprisonment under the Czar,
+because of their love of liberty, but did not know that women in my own country
+had been subjected to brutal treatment long since abandoned in Russia.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I wish now to contribute ten thousand dollars to the campaign for the
+passage of the suffrage amendment through the Senate,, one hundred dollars for
+each of the pickets who went to prison because she stood at the gates of the
+White House, asking for the passage of the suffrage measure.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was the largest single contribution received during the national
+agitation. Colonel Thompson had been a suffragist all his life, but he now
+became actively identified with the work for the national amendment. Since then
+he has continued to give generously of his money and to lend his political
+prestige as often as necessary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Colonel House was importuned to use his influence to win additional Democratic
+votes in the Senate, or better still to urge the President to win them. Colonel
+House is an interesting but not unfamiliar type in politics. Extremely
+courteous, mild mannered, able, quickly sympathetic, he listens with
+undistracted attention to your request. His round bright eyes snap as he comes
+at you with a counter-proposal. It seems so reasonable. And while you know he
+is putting back upon you the very task you are trying to persuade him to
+undertake, he does it so graciously that you can scarcely resist liking it. He
+has the manner of having done what you ask without actually doing more than to
+make you feel warm at having met him. It is a kind of elegant statecraft which
+has its point of grace, but which is exasperating when effectiveness is needed.
+Not that Colonel House was not a supporter of the federal amendment. He was.
+But his gentle, soft and traditional kind of diplomacy would not employ
+high-powered pressure. &ldquo;I shall be going to Washington soon on other
+matters, and I shall doubtless see the President. Perhaps he may bring up the
+subject in conversation, and if he does, and the opportunity offers itself, I
+may be able to do something.&rdquo; Some such gentle threat would come from the
+Colonel. He was not quite so tender, however, in dealing with Democratic
+senators, after the President declared for the amendment. He did try to win
+them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ex-President Taft, then joint Chairman of the National War Labor Board, was
+interviewed at his desk just after rendering an important democratic labor
+award.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, indeed! I&rsquo;ll do nothing for a proposition which adds more
+voters to our electorate. I thought my position on this question was well
+known,&rdquo; said Mr. Taft.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But we thought you doubtless had changed your mind since the beginning
+of our war for democracy&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; I started to answer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This is not a war for democracy,&rdquo; he said emphatically, looking
+quizzically at me for my assertion; &ldquo;if it were, I wouldn&rsquo;t be
+doing anything for it …. The trouble in this country is we&rsquo;ve got too
+many mm voting as it is. Why, I&rsquo;d take the vote away from most of the
+men,&rdquo; he added. I wanted to ask him what men he would leave voting. I
+wanted also to tell him they were taking the vote away from one class of men in
+Russia at that moment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Instead, I said, &ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;m not quite sure whom we could trust to
+sit in judgment&rdquo;&mdash;while he looked smiling and serene, as much as to
+say, &ldquo;Oh, that would be a simple matter.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;However,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;we have no quarrel with you. You are an
+avowed aristocrat, and we respect your candor. Our quarrel is with democrats
+who will not trust their own doctrines.&rdquo; Again he smiled with as much
+sophistication as such a placid face could achieve, and that was all. I believe
+Mr. Taft has lately modified his attitude toward women voting. I do not know
+how he squares that with his distaste of democracy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was Samuel Gompers, President of the American Federation of Labor, high
+in Administration confidence. It was a long wait before Abby Scott Baker and I
+were allowed into his sanctum.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, ladies, what can I do for you?&rdquo; was the opening question,
+and we&rsquo; thought happily here is a man who will not bore us with his life
+record on behalf of women. He comes to the point with direction.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Will you speak to the President on behalf of your organization, which
+has repeatedly endorsed national suffrage, to induce him to put more pressure
+behind the Senate which is delaying suffrage?&rdquo; we asked with equal
+direction. We concealed a heavy sigh as a reminiscent look came into his
+shrewd, wan eyes, and he began:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Doubtless you ladies do not know that as long ago as 1888&rdquo;-I
+believe that was the date-&ldquo;my organization sent a petition to the United
+States Congress praying for the adoption of this very amendment and we have
+stood for it ever since . . . .&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you think it is about time that prayer was answered?&rdquo;
+we ventured to interrupt. But his reverie could not be disturbed. He looked at
+us coldly, for he was living in the past, and continued to recount the patient,
+enduring qualities of his organization.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I will speak to my secretary and see what the organization can
+do,&rdquo; he said finally. We murmured again that it was the President we
+wished him to speak to, but we left feeling reasonably certain that there would
+be no dynamic pressure from this cautious leader.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Herbert Hoover was the next man we sought. Here we encountered the well-groomed
+secretary who would not carry our cards into his chief.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mr. Hoover has appointments a week ahead,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;For
+example, his chart for to-day includes a very important conference with some
+grain men from the Northwest,&rdquo; . . . and he continued to recite the items
+of the chart, ending with &ldquo;a dinner at the White House to-night.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If we could see him for just five minutes,&rdquo; we persisted,
+&ldquo;he could do what we ask this very night at the White House.&rdquo; But
+the trained-to-protect secretary was obdurate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We shall leave a written request for five minutes at Mr. Hoover&rsquo;s
+convenience,&rdquo; we said, and prepared the letter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Time passed without answer. Mrs. Baker and I were compelled to go again to Mr.
+Hoover&rsquo;s office.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Again we were greeted by the affable secretary, who on this occasion recounted
+not only his chief&rsquo;s many pressing engagements, but his devoted family
+life&mdash;his Saturday and Sunday habits which were &ldquo;so dreadfully cut
+into by his heavy work:&rdquo; We were sympathetic but firm. Would Mr. Hoover
+not be willing to answer our letter? Would he not be willing to state publicly
+that he thought the amendment ought to be passed in the Senate? Would the
+secretary, in short, please go to him to ascertain if he&rsquo; would be
+willing to say a single word in behalf of the political liberty of women? The
+secretary disappeared and returned to say, &ldquo;Mr. Hoover wishes me to tell
+you ladies he can give no time whatever to the consideration of your question
+until after the war is over. This is final.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Chief Food Administrator would continue to demand sacrifices of women
+throughout the war, but he would not give so much as a thought to their rights
+in return. Mr. Hoover was the only. important man in public life who
+steadfastly refused to see our representatives. After announcing his candidacy
+for nomination to the Presidency he authorized his secretary to write us a
+letter saying he had always been for woman suffrage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Bainbridge Colby, then member of the Emergency Fleet Corporation of the
+Shipping Board and member of the Inter-Allied Council which sat on shipping
+problems, now Secretary of State in President Wilson&rsquo;s Cabinet, was
+approached as a suffragist, known to have access to the President. Mr. Colby
+had just returned from abroad when I saw him. He is a cultivated gentleman, but
+he knows how to have superlative enthusiasm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In the light of the world events,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;this reform is
+insignificant. No time or energy ought to be diverted from the great program of
+crushing the Germans.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But can we not do that,&rdquo; I asked, &ldquo;without neglecting
+internal liberties?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Colby is a strong conformist. He became grave. When I was indiscreet enough
+to reveal that I was inclined to pin my faith to the concrete liberty of women,
+rather than to a vague and abstract &ldquo;human freedom,&rdquo; which was
+supposed to descend upon the world, once the Germans were beaten, I know he
+wanted to call me &ldquo;seditious.&rdquo; But he is a gallant gentleman and he
+only frowned with distress. He continued with enthusiasm to plan to build
+ships.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bernard Baruch, then member of the Advisory Committee of the Council of
+National Defense, later economic expert at the Peace Conference, was able to
+see the war and the women&rsquo;s problem at the same time. He is an able
+politician and was therefore sensitive to our appeal; he saw the passage of the
+amendment as a political asset. I do not know how much he believed in the
+principle. That was of minor importance. What was important was that he agreed
+to tell the President that he believed it wise to put more pressure on the
+measure in the Senate. Also I believe Mr. Baruch was one member of the
+Administration who realized in the midst of the episode that arresting women
+was bad politics, to say nothing of the doubtful chivalry of it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+George Creel, chairman of the Committee on Public Information, was also asked
+for help. We went to him many times, because his contact with the President was
+constant. A suffragist of long standing, he nevertheless hated our militant
+tactics, for he knew we were winning and the Administration was losing. He is a
+strange composite. Working at terrific tension and mostly under fire, he was
+rarely in calm enough mood to sit down and devise ways and means.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But I talk to the President every day on this
+matter&rdquo;&mdash;and&mdash;&ldquo;I am doing all I
+can&rdquo;&mdash;and&mdash;&ldquo;The President is doing all he
+can&rdquo;&mdash;he would drive at you&mdash;without stopping for breath.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But if you will just ask him to get Senator &mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He is working on the Senator now. You people must give him time. He has
+other things to do,&rdquo; he would say, sweeping aside every suggestion.
+Familiar advice!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Charles D. Hilles, former Chairman of the Republican National Committee, was a
+leader who had come slowly to believe in national suffrage. But, once
+convinced, he was a faithful and dependable colleague who gave practical
+political assistance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+William Randolph Hearst in powerful editorials called upon the Senators to act.
+Mr. R. J. Caldwell of New York, life-long suffragist, financier and man of
+affairs, faithfully and persistently stood by the amendment and by the
+militants. A more generous contributor and more diligent ally could not be
+found. A host of public men were interviewed and the great majority of them did
+help at this critical juncture. It is impossible to give a list that even
+approaches adequacy, so I shall not attempt it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Our pressure from below and that of the leaders from above began to have its
+effect. An attempt was made by Administration leaders to force a vote on May
+19, 1918. Friends interceded when it was shown that not enough votes were
+pledged to secure passage. Again the vote was tentatively set for June 27th and
+again postponed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Republicans, led by Senator Gallinger, provided skirmishes from time to
+time. The Administration was accused on the floor of blocking action, to which
+accusation its leaders did not even reply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Still unwilling to believe that we would be forced to resume our militancy we
+attempted to talk to the President again A special deputation of women munition
+workers was sent to him under our auspices. The women waited for a week, hoping
+he would consent to see them among his receptions&mdash;to the Blue Devils of
+France, to a Committee of Indians, to a Committee of Irish Patriots, and so
+forth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No time,&rdquo; was the answer. And the munition workers were forced to
+submit their appeal in writing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We are only a few of the thousands of American women,&rdquo; they wrote
+the President, &ldquo;who are forming a growing part of the army at home. The
+work we are doing is hard and dangerous to life and health, making detonators,
+handling TNT, the highest of all explosives. We want to be recognized by our
+country, as much her citizens as our soldiers are.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Tumulty replied for the President:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The President asks me to say that nothing you or your associates could
+say could possibly increase his very deep interest in this matter and that he
+is doing everything that he could with honor and propriety do in behalf of the
+[suffrage] amendment.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+An opportunity was given the President to show again his sympathy for a
+world-wide endeavor just after having ignored this specific opportunity at
+home. He hastened to accept the larger field. In response to a memorial
+transmitted through Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, President of the International
+Woman Suffrage Alliance, the French Union for Woman Suffrage urged the
+President to use his aid on their behalf &ldquo;which will be a powerful
+influence for woman suffrage in the entire world.&rdquo; The memorial was
+endorsed by the suffrage committee of Great Britain, Italy, Belgium, and
+Portugal. The President took the occasion to say: &ldquo;The democratic
+reconstruction of the world will not have been completely or adequately
+obtained until women are admitted to the suffrage. As for America it is my
+earnest hope that the Senate of the United States will give an unmistakable
+answer by passing the federal amendment before the end of this session.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meanwhile four more Democratic Senators pledged their support to the amendment.
+Influenced by the President&rsquo;s declaration of support, and by widespread
+demands from their constituents, Senators Phelan of California, King of Utah,
+Gerry of Rhode Island, and Culberson of Texas abandoned the ranks of the
+opposition.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+During this same period the Republican side of the Senate gave five more
+Republican Senators to the amendment. They were Senators McCumber of North
+Dakota, Kellogg of Minnesota, Harding of Ohio, Page of Vermont, and Sutherland
+of West Virginia. All of these men except Senator McCumber[1] were won through
+the pressure from Republican Party leaders.
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[1] Senator McCumber, though opposed, was compelled to support the measure, by
+the action of the N. D. legislature commanding him to do so.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This gain of nine recruits reduced to two the number of votes to be won.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When at the end of seven months from the time the amendment had passed the
+House, we still lacked these two votes, and the President gave no assurance
+that he would put forth sufficient effort to secure them, we were compelled to
+renew our attacks upon the President.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap22"></a>Chapter 17<br/>
+New Attacks on the President</h2>
+
+<p>
+The Senate was about to recess. No assurance was given by the majority that
+suffrage would be considered either before or after the recess. Alarmed and
+aroused, we decided upon a national protest in Washington August 6th, the
+anniversary of the birth of Inez Milholland.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The protest took the form of a meeting at the base of the Lafayette monument in
+the park, directly opposite the White House. Women from many states in the
+Union, dressed in white, hatless and coatless in the midsummer heat of
+Washington, marched t0 the monument carrying banners of purple, white and gold,
+led by a standard-bearer carrying the American flag. They made a beautiful mass
+of color as they grouped themselves around the statue, against the abundant
+green foliage of the park.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Administration met this simple reasonable form of protest by further
+arrests.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Lawrence Lewis of Philadelphia, the first speaker, began: &ldquo;We are
+here because when our country is at war for liberty and democracy . . .&rdquo;
+At that point she was roughly seized by a policeman and placed under arrest.
+The great audience stood in absolute and amazed silence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Hazel Hunkins of Montana took her place. &ldquo;Here at the statue of
+Lafayette, who fought for the liberty of this country,&rdquo; she began,
+&ldquo;and under the American flag, I am asking for . . .&rdquo; She was
+immediately arrested.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Vivian Pierce of California began: &ldquo;President Wilson has said . .
+.&rsquo; She was dragged from the plinth to the waiting patrol.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One after another came forward in an attempt to speak, but no one was allowed
+to continue. Wholesale arrests followed. Just as the women were being taken
+into custody, according to the New York Evening World of August 13th,
+&ldquo;the President walked out of the northeast gate of the White House and up
+Pennsylvania Avenue for a conference with Director General of Railroads McAdoo.
+The President glanced across the street and smiled.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Before the crowd could really appreciate what had happened, forty-eight women
+had been hustled to the police station by the wagon load, their gay banners
+floating from the backs of the somber patrols. They were told that the police
+had arrested them under the orders of Col. C. S. Ridley, the President&rsquo;s
+military aide, and assistant to the Chief Engineer attached to the War
+Department. All were released on bail and ordered to appear in court the
+following day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When they appeared they were informed by the Government&rsquo;s attorney that
+he would have to postpone the trial until the following Tuesday so that he
+might examine witnesses to see &ldquo;what offense, if any, the women would be
+charged with.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I cannot go on with this case,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I have had no
+orders. There are no precedents for cases like these . . . .&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The women demanded that their cases be dismissed, or else a charge made against
+them. They were merely told to return on the appointed day. Such was the
+indignation aroused against the Administration for taking this action that
+Senator Curtis of Kansas, Republican whip, could say publicly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The truth of this statement is made evident by the admission of the
+court that the forty-eight suffragists are arrested upon absolutely no charges,
+and that these women, among them munition workers and Red Cross workers, are
+held in Washington until next Tuesday, under arrest, while the United States
+attorney for the District of Columbia decides for what offense, &lsquo;if
+any,&rsquo; they were arrested.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The meeting was called to make a justified protest against continued
+blocking of the suffrage amendment by the Democratic majority in the Senate. It
+is well known that three-fourths of the Republican membership in the Senate are
+ready to vote for the amendment, but under the control of the Democratic
+majority the Senate has recessed for six weeks without making any provision for
+action on this important amendment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In justice to the women who have been working so hard for the amendment
+it should be passed at the earliest date, and if action is not taken on it soon
+after the resumption of business in the Senate there is every possibility that
+it will not be taken during this Congress, and the hard-won victory in the
+House of Representatives will have been won for nothing.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When they finally came to trial ten days after their arrest, to face the charge
+of &ldquo;holding a meeting in public grounds,&rdquo; and for eighteen of the
+defendants an additional charge of &ldquo;climbing on a statue,&rdquo; the
+women answered the roll call but remained silent thereafter. The familiar farce
+ensued. Some were released for lack of identification. The others were
+sentenced to the District Jail&mdash;for ten days if they had merely assembled
+to hold a public meeting, for fifteen days if they had also &ldquo;climbed on a
+statue&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Administration evidently hoped by lighter sentences to avoid a hunger
+strike by the prisoners.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The women were taken immediately to a building, formerly used as a man&rsquo;s
+workhouse, situated in the swamps of the District prison grounds. This
+building, which had been declared unfit for human habitation by a committee
+appointed under President Roosevelt in 1909, and which had been uninhabited
+ever since, was now reopened, nine years later, to receive twenty-six women who
+had attempted to hold a meeting in a public park in Washington. The women
+protested in a body and demanded to be treated as political prisoners. This
+being refused, all save two very elderly women, too frail to do so, went on
+hunger strike at once.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This last lodgment was the worst. Hideous aspects which had not been
+encountered in the workhouse and jail proper were encountered here. The cells,
+damp and cold, were below the level of the upper door and entirely below the
+high windows. The doors of the cell were partly of solid steel with only a
+small section of grating, so that a very tiny amount of light penetrated the
+cells. The wash basins were small and unsightly; the toilet open, with no
+pretense of covering. The cots were of iron, without any spring, and with only
+a thin straw pallet to lie upon. The heating facilities were antiquated and the
+place was always cold. So frightful were the nauseating odors which permeated
+the place, and so terrible was the drinking water from the disused pipes, that
+one prisoner after another became violently ill.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can hardly describe that atmosphere,&rdquo; said Mrs. W. D. Ascough,
+of Connecticut. &ldquo;It was a deadly sort of smell, insidious and revolting.
+It oppressed and stifled us. There was no escape.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As a kind of relief from these revolting odors, they took their straw pallets
+from the cells to the floor outside. They were ordered back to their cells but
+refused in a body to go. They preferred the stone floors to the vile odors
+within, which kept them nauseated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Conditions were so shocking that Senators began to visit their constituents in
+this terrible hole. Many of them protested to the authorities. Protests came in
+from the country, too.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the end of the fifth day the Administration succumbed to the hunger strike
+and released the prisoners, trembling with weakness, some of them with chills
+and some of them in a high fever, scarcely able even to walk to the ambulance
+or motor car.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We had won from the Administration, however, a concession to our protest. Prior
+to the release of the prisoners we had announced that in spite of the previous
+arrests a second protest meeting would be held on the same spot. A permit to
+hold this second protest meeting was granted us.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have been advised [Col. Ridley wrote to Miss Paul that you desire to
+hold a demonstration in Lafayette Square on Thursday, August 9.2d. By direction
+of the chief of engineers, U. S. Army, you are hereby granted permission to
+hold this demonstration. You are advised good order must prevail.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We received yesterday [Miss Paul replied] your permit for a suffrage
+demonstration in Lafayette Park this afternoon, and are very glad that our
+meetings are no longer to be interfered with. Because of the illness of so many
+of our members, due to their treatment in prison this last week, and with the
+necessity of caring for them at headquarters, we are planning to hold our neat
+meeting a little later. We have not determined on the exact date but we will
+inform you of the time as soon as it is decided upon.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was reported on credible authority that this concession -was the result of a
+conference at which the President, Secretary of War Baker and Colonel Ridley
+were present. It was said that Secretary Baker and Colonel Ridley persuaded the
+President to withdraw the orders to arrest us and allow our meetings to go on,
+even though they took the form of attacks upon the President.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Two days after the release of the women, the Republican Party, for the first
+time in the history of woman suffrage, caucused in the Senate in favor of
+forcing suffrage to a vote.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The resolution which was passed unanimously by the caucus determined to
+&ldquo;insist upon consideration immediately&rdquo; and &lsquo;also to insist
+upon a final vote . . . at the earliest possible moment …. Provided, That this
+resolution shall not be construed as in any way binding the action or vote of
+any Member of the Senate upon the merits of the said woman suffrage
+amendment.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While not a direct attempt, therefore, to win more Republican Senators, this
+proved a very great tactical contribution to the cause. The Republicans were
+proud of their suffrage strength. They knew the Democrats were not. With the
+Congressional elections approaching the Republicans meant to do their part
+toward acquainting the country with the Administration&rsquo;s policy of
+vacillation and delay. This was not only helpful to the Republicans
+politically; it was also advantageous to the amendment in that it goaded the
+majority into action.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nine months had passed since the vote in the House and we were perilously near
+the end of the session, when on the 16th of September, Senator Overman,
+Democrat, Chairman of the Rules Committee, stated to our Legislative Chairman
+that suffrage was &ldquo;not on the program for this session&rdquo; and that
+the Senate would recess in a few days for the election campaigns without
+considering any more legislation. On the same day Senator Jones, Chairman of
+the Suffrage Committee, announced to us that he would not even call his
+Committee together to consider taking a vote.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We had announced a fortnight earlier that another protest meeting would be held
+at the base of the Lafayette Monument that day, September 16th, at four
+o&rsquo;clock. No sooner had this protest been announced than the President
+publicly stated that he would receive a delegation of Southern and Western
+women partisans on the question of the amendment at two o&rsquo;clock the same
+day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To this delegation he said, &ldquo;I am, as I think you know, heartily in
+sympathy with you. I have endeavored to assist you in every way in my power,
+and I shall continue to do so. I will do all I can to urge the passage of the
+amendment by an early vote.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Presumably this was expected to disarm us and perhaps silence our
+demonstration. However, it merely moved us to make another hasty visit to
+Senator Overman, Chairman of the Rules Committee, and to Senator Jones,
+Chairman of the Suffrage Committee, between the hours of two and four to see if
+the President&rsquo;s statement that he would do all he could to secure an
+early vote had altered their statements made earlier in the day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These Administration leaders assured us that their statements stood; that no
+provision had been made for action on the amendment; that the President&rsquo;s
+statement did not mean that a vote would be taken this session; and that they
+did not contemplate being so advised by him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Such a situation was intolerable. The President was uttering more fine words,
+while his Administration leaders interpreted them to mean nothing, because they
+were not followed up by action on his part.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We thereupon changed our demonstration at four o&rsquo;clock to a more drastic
+form of protest. We took these words of the President to the base of Lafayette
+Monument and burned them in a flaming torch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A throng gathered to hear the speakers. Ceremonies were opened with the reading
+of the following appeal by Mrs. Richard Wainwright, wife of Rear-Admiral
+Wainwright:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Lafayette, we are here!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We, the women of the United States, denied the liberty which you helped
+to gain, and for which we have asked in vain for sixty years, turn to you to
+plead for us.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Speak, Lafayette, dead these hundred years but still living in the
+hearts of the American people. Speak again to plead for us like the bronze
+woman at your feet, condemned like us to a silent appeal. She offers you a
+sword. Will you not use for us the sword of the spirit, mightier far than the
+sword she holds out to you?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Will you not ask the great leader of democracy to look upon the failure
+of our beloved country to be in truth the place where every one is free and
+equal and entitled to a share in the government? Let that outstretched hand of
+yours pointing to the White House recall to him his words and promises, his
+trumpet call for all of us, to see that the world is made safe for democracy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;As our army now in France spoke to you there, saying here we are to help
+your country fight for liberty, will you not speak here and now for us, a
+little band with no army, no power but justice and right, no strength but in
+our Constitution and in the Declaration of Independence; and win a great
+victory again in this country by giving us the opportunity we ask,&mdash;to be
+heard through the Susan B. Anthony amendment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Lafayette, we are here!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Before the enthusiastic applause for Mrs. Wainwright&rsquo;s appeal had died
+away, Miss Lucy Branham of Baltimore stepped forward with a flaming torch,
+which she applied to the President&rsquo;s latest words on suffrage. The police
+looked on and smiled, and the crowd cheered as she said:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The torch which I hold symbolizes the burning indignation of the women
+who for years have been given words without action . . . .
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;For five years women have appealed to this President and his party for
+political freedom. The President has given words, and words, and words. To-day
+women receive more words. We announce to the President and the whole world
+to-day, by this act of ours, our determination that words shall not longer be
+the only reply given to American women&mdash;our determination that this same
+democracy for whose establishment abroad we are making the utmost sacrifice,
+shall also prevail at home.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We have protested to this Administration by banners; we have protested
+by speeches; we now protest by this symbolic act.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;As in the ancient fights for liberty, the crusaders for freedom
+symbolized their protest against those responsible for injustice by consigning
+their hollow phrases to the flames, so we, on behalf of thousands of
+suffragists, in this same way to-day protest against the action of the
+President and his party in delaying the liberation of American women.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Jessie Hardy Mackaye of Washington, D. C., then came forward to the end of
+the plinth to speak, and as she appeared, a man in the crowd handed her a
+twenty-dollar bill for the campaign in the Senate. This was the signal for
+others. Bills and coins were passed up. Instantly marshals ran hither and
+thither collecting the money in improvised baskets while the cheers grew louder
+and louder. Many of the policemen present were among the donors.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Burning President Wilson&rsquo;s words had met with popular approval from a
+large crowd!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The procession of women was starting back to headquarters, the police were
+eagerly clearing the way for the line; the crowd was dispersing in order; the
+great golden banner, &ldquo;Mr. President, what will you do for woman
+suffrage?&rdquo; was just swinging past the White House gate, when President
+Wilson stepped into his car for the afternoon drive.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap23"></a>Chapter 18<br/>
+President Wilson Appeals to the Senate Too Late</h2>
+
+<p>
+The next day the Administration completely reversed its policy. Almost the
+first Senate business was an announcement on the floor by Senator Jones,
+Chairman of the Suffrage Committee, that the suffrage amendment would be
+considered in the Senate September 26th. And Senator Overman, Chairman of the
+Rules Committee, rather shyly remarked to our legislative chairman that he had
+been &ldquo;mistaken yesterday.&rdquo; It was &ldquo;now in the legislative
+program.&rdquo; The Senate still stood 6Q votes for and 34 against the
+amendment&mdash;2 votes lacking. The President made an effort among individual
+Democrats to secure them. But it was too feeble an effort and he failed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Chairman Jones took charge of the measure on the floor. The debate opened with
+a long and eloquent. speech by Senator Vardaman of Mississippi, Democrat, in
+support of the amendment. &ldquo;My estimate of woman,&rdquo; said he, in
+conclusion, &ldquo;is well expressed in the words employed by a distinguished
+author who dedicated his book to a &lsquo;Little mountain, a great meadow, and
+a woman,&rsquo; &lsquo;To the mountain for the sense of time, to the meadow for
+the sense of space, and of everything.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Senator McCumber of North Dakota, Republican, followed with a curious speech.
+His problem was to explain why, although opposed to suffrage, he would vote for
+the amendment. Beginning with the overworked &ldquo;cave man&rdquo; and
+&ldquo;beasts of the forests,&rdquo; and down to the present day, &ldquo;the
+male had always protected the female&rdquo; He always would! Forgetting recent
+events in the Capital, he went so far as to say, &ldquo; . . . In our courts
+she ever finds in masculine nature an asylum of protection, even though she may
+have committed great wrong. While the mind may be convinced beyond any doubt,
+the masculine heart finds it almost impossible to pronounce the word
+&lsquo;guilty&rsquo; against a woman.&rdquo; Scarcely had the galleries ceased
+smiling at this idea when he treated them to a novel application of the
+biological theory of inheritance. &ldquo;The political field,&rdquo; he
+declared, &ldquo;always has been and probably always will be an arena of more
+or less bitter contest. The political battles leave scars as ugly and
+lacerating as the physical battles, and the more sensitive the nature the
+deeper and more lasting the wound. And as no man can enter this contest or be a
+party to it and assume its responsibilities without feeling its blows and
+suffering its wounds, much less can woman with her more emotional and more
+sensitive nature.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But . . . you may ask why should she be relieved from the scars and
+wounds of political contest? Because they do not affect her alone but are
+transmitted through her to generations yet to come . . . . &ldquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The faithful story of the sinking ship was invoked by the Senator from North
+Dakota. One might almost imagine after listening to Congressional debates for
+some years that traveling on sinking ships formed a large part of human
+experience. &ldquo;Fathers, sons, and brothers,&rdquo; said the Senator in
+tearful voice, &ldquo;guarding the lifeboats until every woman from the highest
+to the lowest has been made safe, waving adieu with a smile of cheer on their
+lips, while the wounded vessel slowly bears them to a strangling death and a
+watery tomb, belie the charge . . &ldquo; that woman needs her citizenship as a
+form of protection.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In spite of these opinions, however, the Senator was obliged to vote for the
+amendment because his state had so ordered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Senator Hardwick of Georgia, Democrat, felt somewhat betrayed that the suffrage
+plank in the platform of his party in 1916, recommending state action, should
+be so carelessly set aside. &ldquo;There is not a Democratic Senator
+present,&rdquo; said Mr. Hardwick, &ldquo;who does not know the history that
+lies back of the adoption of that plank. There is not a Democratic Senator who
+does not know that the plank was written here in Washington and sent to the
+convention and represented the deliberate voice of the administration and of
+the party on this question, which was to remit this question to the several
+States for action . . . .
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The President of the United States . . . was reported to have sent this
+particular plank . . .from Washington, supposedly by the hands of one of his
+Cabinet officers.&rdquo; The fact that his own party and the Republican party
+were both advancing on suffrage irritated him into denouncing the alacrity with
+which &ldquo;politicians and senators are trying to get on the band wagon
+first.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Senator McKellar of Tennessee, Democrat, reduced the male superiority argument
+to simple terms when he said: &ldquo; . . . Taking them by and large, there are
+brainy men and brainy women, and that is about all there is to the
+proposition.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Our armies were sweeping victorious toward Germany. There was round on round of
+eloquence about the glories of war. Rivers of blood flowed. And always the role
+of woman was depicted as a contented binding of wounds. There were those who
+thought woman should be rewarded for such service. Others thought she ought to
+do it without asking anything in return. But all agreed that this was her role.
+There was no woman&rsquo;s voice in that body to protest against the perpetuity
+of such a rôle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The remarks of Senator Reed of Missouri, anti-suffrage Democrat, typify this
+attitude. &ldquo;. . . Women in my state believe in the old-fashioned doctrine
+that men should fight the battles on the red line; that men should stand and
+bare their bosoms to the iron hail; and that back of them, if need be, there
+shall be women who may bind up the wounds and whose tender hands may rest upon
+the brow of the valiant soldier who has gone down in the fight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But, sir, that is woman&rsquo;s work, and it has been woman&rsquo;s work
+always . . . . The woman who gave her first born a final kiss and blessed him
+on his way to battle,&rdquo; had, according to the Senator from Missouri,
+earned a &ldquo;crown of glory . . . gemmed with the love of the world.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And with Senator Walsh of Montana, Democrat, &ldquo;The women of America have
+already written a glorious page in the history of the greatest of wars that
+have vexed the world. They, like Cornelia, have given, and freely given, their
+jewels to their country.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Some of us wondered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Senator McLean of Connecticut, anti-suffrage Republican, flatly stated
+&ldquo;that all questions involving declarations of war and terms of peace
+should be left to that sex which must do the fighting and the dying on the
+battlefield.&rdquo; And he further said that until boys between 18 and 21 who
+had just been called to the colors should ask for the vote, &ldquo;their
+mothers should be and remain both proud and content&rdquo; without it. He
+concluded with an amusing account of the history of the ballot box. &ldquo;This
+joint resolution,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;goes beyond the seas and above the
+clouds. It attempts to tamper with the ballot box, over which mother nature
+always has had and always will have supreme control; and such attempts always
+have ended and always will end in failure and misfortune.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Senator Phelan of California, Democrat, made a straightforward, intelligent
+speech.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Senator Beckham of Kentucky, Democrat, deplored the idea that man was superior
+to woman. He pleaded &ldquo;guilty to the charge of Romanticism.&rdquo; He
+said, &ldquo;But I look upon woman as superior to man.&rdquo; Therefore he
+could not trust her with a vote. He had the hardihood to say further, with the
+men of the world at each other&rsquo;s throats, . . . &ldquo;Woman is the
+civilizing, refining, elevating influence that holds man from barbarism.&rdquo;
+We charged him with ignorance as well as romanticism when he said in closing,
+&ldquo;It is the duty of man to work and labor for woman; to cut the wood, to
+carry the coal, to go into the fields in the necessary labor to sustain the
+home where the woman presides and by her superior nature elevates him to higher
+and better conceptions of life.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meanwhile Senator Shafroth of Colorado, Democrat, lifelong advocate of
+suffrage, was painstakingly asking one senator after another, as he had been
+for years, &ldquo;Does not the Senator believe that the just powers of
+government are derived from the consent of the governed?&rdquo; and
+then&mdash;&ldquo;But if you have the general principle acknowledged that the
+just powers of government are derived from the consent of the governed.&rdquo;
+. . . and so forth. But the idea of applying the Declaration of Independence to
+modern politics fairly put them to sleep.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These samples of senatorial profundity may divert, outrage, or bore us, but
+they do not represent the real battle. It is not that the men who utter these
+sentiments do not believe them. More is the pity, they do. But they are smoke
+screens&mdash;mere skirmishes of eloquence or foolishness. They do not
+represent the motives of their political acts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The real excitement began when Senator Pittman of Nevada, Democrat, attempted
+to reveal to the senators of his party the actual seriousness of the political
+crisis in which the Democrats were now involved. He also attempted to shift the
+blame for threatened defeat of the amendment to the Republican side of the
+chamber. There was a note of desperation in his voice, too, since he knew that
+President Wilson had not up to that moment won the two votes lacking. The gist
+of Senator Pittman&rsquo;s remarks was this: The Woman&rsquo;s Party has
+charged the Senate Woman Suffrage Committee, which is in control of the
+Democrats, and the President himself, with the responsibility fob obstructing a
+vote on the measure. &ldquo;I confess,&rdquo; said he, that this is
+&ldquo;having its effect as a campaign argument&rdquo; in the woman suffrage
+states.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Senator Wolcott of Delaware, Democrat, interrupted him to ask if this was
+&ldquo;the party that has been picketing here in Washington?&rdquo; Senator
+Pittman, having just paid this tribute to our campaign in the West, hastened to
+say that it was, but that there was another association, the National American
+Woman Suffrage Association, which had always conducted its campaign in a
+&ldquo;lady-like&mdash;modest&mdash;and intelligent way&rdquo; and which had
+&ldquo;never mixed in politics.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Waving a copy of the Suffragist in the air, Senator Pittman began his attempt
+to shift responsibility to the Republican side, for the critical condition of
+the amendment. He denounced the Republicans for caucusing on the amendment and
+deciding unanimously to press for a vote, when they the Republicans] knew there
+were two votes lacking. He scored us for having given so much publicity to the
+action of the caucus and declared with vehemence that a &ldquo;trick&rdquo; had
+been executed through Senator Smoot which he would not allow to go unrevealed.
+Senator Pittman charged that the Republicans had promised enough votes to pass
+the amendment and that upon that promise the Democrats had brought the measure
+on the floor; that the Republicans thereupon withdrew enough votes to cause the
+defeat of the amendment. Whether or not this was true, at any rate, as Senator
+Smoot pointed out, the Democratic Chairman in charge of the measure could at
+any moment send the measure back to Committee, safe from immediate defeat. This
+was true, but not exactly a suggestion to be welcomed by the Democrats.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; replied Senator Pittman, &ldquo;and then if we move to refer
+it back to the committee, the Senator from Utah would say again, &lsquo;The
+Democrats are obstructing the passage of this amendment . . . . We told you all
+the time they wanted to kill it.&rsquo; . . . If we refer it back to the
+committee, then we will be charged, as we have been all the time in the
+suffrage states, with trying to prevent a vote on it, and still the
+Woman&rsquo;s Party campaign will go on as it is going on now; and if we vote
+on it they will say: &lsquo;We told you the Democrats would kill it, because
+the President would not make 332 on his side vote for it&rsquo;.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That was the crux of the whole situation. The Democrats had been manaeuvered
+into a position where they could neither afford to move to refer the amendment
+back to the committee, nor could they afford to press it to a losing vote. They
+were indeed in an exceedingly embarrassing predicament.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Throughout hours of debate, Senator Pittman could not get away from the
+militants. Again and again, he recited our deeds of protest, our threats of
+reprisal, our relentless strategy of holding his party responsible for defeat
+or victory.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I should like the Senator,&rdquo; interpolated Senator Poindexter of
+Washington, Republican, &ldquo;so long as he is discussing the action of the
+pickets, to explain to the Senate whether or not it is the action of the
+pickets . . . the militant . . . woman&rsquo;s party, that caused the President
+to change his attitude on the subject. Was he coerced into supporting this
+measure&mdash;after he had for years opposed it&mdash;because he was picketed?
+When did the President change his attitude? If it was not because he was
+picketed, will the Senator explain what was the cause of the change in the
+President&rsquo;s attitude?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Pittman did not reply directly to these questions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Senator Reed of Missouri, anti-Administration Democrat, consumed hours reading
+into the Congressional Record various press reports of militant activities. He
+dwelt particularly upon the news headlines, such as,
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Great Washington Crowd Cheers Demonstration at White House by National
+Woman&rsquo;s Party.&rdquo; . . .
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Suffragists Burn Wilson &lsquo;Idle Words&rsquo; . . .&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Money Instead of Jeers Greet Marchers and Unique Protest Against
+Withholding Vote&rdquo; . . .
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Apply Torch to President&rsquo;s Words . . . Promise to Urge Passage of
+Amendment Not Definite Enough for Militants.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Suff&rsquo;s Burn Speech . . .,Apply Torch to Wilson&rsquo;s Words
+During Demonstration-Symbol of &lsquo;Indignation&rsquo;&mdash;Throngs
+Witnessing Doings in Lafayette Square Orderly and Contribute to
+Fund&mdash;President Receives Delegation of American Suffrage Association
+Women.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Senator McKellar of Tennessee, Democrat, asked Mr. Reed if he did not believe
+that we had a right peaceably to assemble under the &ldquo;first amendment to
+our Constitution which I shall read: Congress shall make no law . . . abridging
+. . . the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the
+Government for a redress of grievances.&rdquo; Mr. Reed made no direct answer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lest the idea get abroad from the amount of time they spent in discussing the
+actions of the &ldquo;wicked militants,&rdquo; that we had had something to do
+with the situation which had resulted in Democratic despair, Senator Thomas of
+Colorado, the one Democrat who had never been able to conceal his hostility to
+us for having reduced his majority in 1914, arose to pay a tribute to the
+conservative suffrage association of America. Their &ldquo;escutcheon,&rdquo;
+he said, &ldquo;is unstained by mob methods or appeals to violence. It has
+neither picketed Presidents nor populated prisons . . . . It has carried no
+banners flaunting insults to the Executive,&rdquo; while the militants on the
+other hand have indulged in &ldquo;much tumult and vociferous braying, all for
+notoriety&rsquo;s sake.&rdquo; . . . The galleries smiled as he counseled the
+elder suffrage leaders &ldquo;not to lose courage nor yet be:
+fainthearted,&rdquo; for this &ldquo;handicap&rdquo; would soon be overcome. It
+would have taken an abler man than Senator Thomas, in the face of the nature of
+this debate, to make any one believe that we had been a &ldquo;handicap&rdquo;
+in forcing them to their position. He was the only one hardy enough to try.
+After this debate the Senate adjourned, leaving things from the point of view
+of party politics, tangled in a hopeless knot. It was to untie this knot that
+the President returned hastily from New York in answer to urgent summons by
+long distance telephone, and went to the Capitol to deliver his memorable
+address.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Vice President and Gentlemen of the Senate: The unusual circumstances of a
+world war in which we stand and are judged in the view not only of our own
+people and our own consciences but also in view of all nations and all peoples
+will, I hope, justify in your thought, as it does in mine, the message I have
+come to bring you. I regard the concurrence of the Senate in the constitutional
+amendment proposing the extension of the suffrage to women as vitally essential
+to the successful prosecution of the great war of humanity in which we are
+engaged. I have come to urge upon you the considerations which have led me to
+that conclusion. It is not only my privilege, it is also my duty to appraise
+you of every circumstance and element involved in this momentous struggle which
+seems to me to affect its very processes and its outcome. It is my duty to win
+the war and to ask you to remove every obstacle that stands in the way of
+winning it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I had assumed that the Senate would concur in the amendment because ho
+disputable principle is involved but only a question of the method by which the
+suffrage is to be extended to women. There is and can be no party issue
+involved in it. Both of our great national parties are pledged, explicitly
+pledged, to equality of suffrage for the women of the country. Neither party,
+therefore, it seems to me, can justify hesitation as to the method of obtaining
+it, can rightfully hesitate to substitute federal initiative for state
+initiative, if the early adoption, of the measure is necessary to the
+successful prosecution of the war and if the method of state action proposed in
+party platforms of 1916 is impracticable within any reasonable length of time,
+if practicable at all. And its adoption is, in my judgment, clearly necessary
+to the successful prosecution of the war and the successful realization of the
+objects for which the war is being fought.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That judgment, I take the liberty of urging upon you with solemn earnestness
+for reasons which I shall state very frankly and which I shall hope will seem
+as conclusive to you as they have seemed to me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This is a peoples&rsquo; war, and the peoples&rsquo; thinking constitutes its
+atmosphere and morale, not the predilections of the drawing room or the
+political considerations of the caucus. If we be indeed democrats and wish to
+lead the world to democracy, we can ask other peoples to accept in proof of our
+sincerity and our ability to lead them whither they wish to be led nothing less
+persuasive and convincing than our actions. Ours professions will not suffice.
+Verification must be forthcoming when verification is asked for. And in this
+case verification is asked for, asked for in this particular matter. You ask by
+whom? Not through diplomatic channels; not by Foreign Ministers, not by the
+intimations of parliaments. It is asked for by the anxious, expectant,
+suffering peoples with whom we are dealing and who are willing to put their
+destinies in some measure in our hands, if they are sure that we wish the same
+things that they wish. I do not speak by conjecture. It is not alone the voices
+of statesmen and of newspapers that reach me, and the voices of foolish and
+intemperate agitators do not reach me at all! Through many, many channels I
+have been made aware what the plain, struggling, workaday folk are thinking
+upon whom the chief terror and suffering of this tragic war falls. They are
+looking to the great, powerful, famous democracy of the West to lead them to
+the new day for which they have so long waited; and they think, in their
+logical simplicity, that democracy means that women shall play their part in
+affairs alongside men and upon an equal footing with them. If we reject
+measures like this, in ignorance or defiance of what a new age has brought
+forth, of what they have seen but we have not, they will cease to follow or to
+trust us. They have seen their own governments accept this interpretation of
+democracy,&mdash;seen old governments like Great Britain, which did not profess
+to be democratic, promise readily and as of course this justice to women,
+though they had before refused it, the strange revelations of this war having
+made many things new and plain to governments as well as to peoples.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Are we alone to refuse to learn the lesson? Are we alone to ask and take the
+utmost that women can give,&mdash;service and sacrifice of every
+kind,&mdash;and still say that we do not see what title that gives them to
+stand by our sides in the guidance of the affairs of their nation and ours? We
+have made partners of the women in this war; shall we admit them only to a
+partnership of sacrifice and suffering and toil and not to a partnership of
+privilege and of right? This war could not have been fought, either by the
+other nations engaged or by America, if it had not been for the services of the
+women,&mdash;services rendered in every sphere,&mdash;not only in the fields of
+effort in which we have been accustomed to see them work, but wherever men have
+worked and upon the very skirts and edges of the battle itself. We shall not
+only be distrusted but shall deserve to be distrusted if we do not enfranchise
+them with the fullest possible enfranchisement, as it is now certain that the
+other great free nations will enfranchise them. We cannot isolate our thought
+or our action in such a matter from the thought of the rest of the world. We
+must either conform or deliberately reject what they propose and resign the
+leadership of liberal minds to others.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The women of America arc too noble and too intelligent and too devoted to be
+slackers whether you give or withhold this thing that is mere justice; but I
+know the magic it will work in their thoughts and spirits if you give it them.
+I propose it as I would propose to admit soldiers to the suffrage, the men
+fighting in the field for our liberties and the liberties of the world, were
+they excluded. The tasks of the women lie at the very heart of the war, and I
+know how much stronger that heart will beat if you do this just thing and show
+our women that you trust them as much as you in fact and of necessity depend
+upon them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Have I said that the passage of this amendment is a vitally necessary war
+measure, and do you need further proof? Do you stand in need of the trust of
+other peoples and of the trust of our women? Is that trust an asset or is it
+not? I tell you plainly, as commander-in-chief of our armies and of the gallant
+men in our fleets, as the present spokesman of this people in our dealings with
+the men and women throughout the world who are now our partners, as the
+responsible head of a great government which stands and is questioned day by
+day as to its purposes, its principles, its hopes, whether they be serviceable
+to men everywhere or only to itself, and who must himself answer these
+questionings or be shamed, as the guide and director of forces caught in the
+grip of war and by the same token in need of every material and spiritual
+resource this great nation possesses,&mdash;I tell you plainly that this
+measure which I urge upon you is vital to the winning of the war and to the
+energies alike of preparation and of battle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And not to the winning of the war only. It is vital to the right solution of
+the great problems which we must settle, and settle immediately, when the war
+is over. We shall need then a vision of affairs which is theirs, and, as we
+have never needed them before, the sympathy and insight and clear moral
+instinct of the women of the world. The problems of that time will strike to
+the roots of many things that we have not hitherto questioned, and I for one
+believe that our safety in those questioning days, as well as our comprehension
+of matters that touch society to the quick, will depend upon the direct and
+authoritative participation of women in our counsels. We shall need their moral
+sense to preserve what is right and fine and worthy in our system of life as
+well as to discover just what it is that ought to be purified and reformed.
+Without their counselings we shall be only half wise.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That is my case. This is my appeal. Many may deny its validity, if they choose,
+but no one can brush aside or answer the arguments upon which it is based. The
+executive tasks of this war rest upon me. I ask that you lighten them and place
+in my hands instruments, spiritual instruments, which I do not now possess,
+which I sorely need, and which I have daily to apologize for not being able to
+employ. (Applause).
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a truly beautiful appeal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the applause and the excitement attendant upon the occasion of a message
+from the President had subsided, and the floor of the chamber had emptied
+itself of its distinguished visitors, the debate was resumed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If this resolution fails now,&rdquo; said Senator Jones of Washington,
+ranking Republican member of the Suffrage Committee, &ldquo;it fails for lack
+of Democratic votes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Senator Cummins of Iowa, Republican, also a member of the Suffrage Committee,
+reminded opponents of the measure of the retaliatory tactics used by President
+Wilson when repudiated by senators on other issues. &ldquo;I sincerely
+hope,&rdquo; he said tauntingly, &ldquo;that the President may deal kindly and
+leniently with those who are refusing to remove this obstacle which stands in
+his way. It has not been very long since the President retired the junior
+Senator from Mississippi [Mr. Vardaman] from public life. Why? Because he
+refused at all times to obey the commands which were issued for his direction.
+The junior Senator from Georgia [Mr. Hardwick] suffered the same fate. How do
+you hope to escape? . . . My Democratic friends are either proceeding upon the
+hypothesis that the President is insincere or that they may be able to secure
+an immunity from him that these other unfortunate aspirants for office failed
+to secure.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Senator Cummins chided Senator Reed for denouncing &ldquo;the so-called
+militants who sought to bring their influence to bear upon the situation in
+rather a more forcible and decisive method than was employed by the national
+association. . . I did not believe in the campaign they were pursuing (not one
+senator was brave enough to say outright that he did). . . .
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But that was simply a question for them to determine; and if they
+thought that in accordance with the established custom the President should
+bring his influence to bear more effectively than he had, they had a perfect
+right to burn his message; they had a perfect right to carry banners in
+Lafayette Park, in front of the White House, or anywhere else; they had a
+perfect right to bring their banners into the Capitol and display them with all
+the force and vigor which they could command. I did not agree with them; but
+they also were making a campaign for an inestimable and a fundamental right.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What would you have done, men, if you had been deprived of the right to
+vote? What would you have done if you had been deprived of the right of
+representation? Have the militants done anything worse than the revolutionary
+forces who gathered about the tea chests and threw them into the sea? . . .
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I do not believe they [the militants] committed any crime; and while I
+had no particle of sympathy with the manner in which they were conducting their
+campaign, I think their arrest and imprisonment and the treatment which they
+received while in confinement are a disgrace to the civilized world, and much
+the more a disgrace to the United States, which assumes to lead the civilized
+world in humane endeavor. They disturbed nobody save that disturbance which is
+common to the carrying forward of all propaganda by those who are intensely and
+vitally interested in it. I wish they had not done it, but I am not to be the
+judge of their methods so long as they confine themselves to those acts and to
+those words which are fairly directed to the accomplishment of their purposes.
+I cannot accept the conclusion that because these women burned a message in
+Lafayette Park or because they carried banners upon the streets in Washington
+therefore they are criminals.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The time had come to take the vote, but we knew we had not won. The roll was
+called and the vote stood 62 to 34 [Oct. 1, 1918], counting all pairs. We had
+lost by 2 votes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Instantly Chairman Jones, according to his promise to the women, changing his
+vote from &ldquo;yea&rdquo; to &ldquo;nay,&rdquo; moved for a reconsideration
+of the measure, and thus automatically kept it on the calendar of the Senate.
+That was all that could be done.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The President&rsquo;s belief in the power of words had lost the amendment. Nor
+could he by a speech, eloquent as it was, break down the opposition in the
+Senate which he had so long protected and condoned.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Our next task was to secure a reversal of the Senate vote. We modified our
+tactics slightly.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap24"></a>Chapter 19<br/>
+More Pressure</h2>
+
+<p>
+Our immediate task was to compel the President to secure a reversal of two
+votes in the Senate. It became necessary to enter again the Congressional
+elections which were a month away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By a stroke of good luck there were two senatorial contests&mdash;in New Jersey
+and New Hampshire&mdash;for vacancies in the short term. That is, we had an
+opportunity to elect two friends who would take their seats in time to vote on
+the amendment before the end of this session. It so happened that the
+Democratic candidates were pledged to vote for the amendment if elected, and
+that the Republican candidates were opposed to the amendment. We launched our
+campaign in this instance for the election of the Democratic candidates. We
+went immediately to the President to ask his assistance in our endeavor. We
+urged him personally to appeal to the voters of New Jersey and New Hampshire on
+behalf of his two candidates. As Party leader he was at the moment paying no
+attention whatever to the success of these two suffragists. Both of the
+Democratic candidates themselves appealed to President Wilson for help in their
+contests, on the basis of their suffrage advocacy. His speech to the Senate
+scarcely cold, the President refused to lend any assistance in these contests,
+which with sufficient effort might have produced the last two votes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the end of two weeks of such pressure upon the President we were unable to
+interest him in this practical endeavor. It was clear that he would move again
+only under attack. We went again, therefore, to the women voters of the west
+and asked them to withhold their support from the Democratic Senatorial
+candidates in the suffrage states in order to compel the President to assist in
+the two Eastern contests. This campaign made it clear to the President that we
+were still holding him and his party to their responsibility.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And as has been pointed out, our policy was to oppose the Democratic candidates
+at elections so long as their party was responsible for the passage of the
+amendment and did not pass it. Since there is no question between individuals
+in suffrage states&mdash;they are all suffragists&mdash;this could not increase
+our numerical strength. It could, however, and did demonstrate the growing and
+comprehensive power of the women voters.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Shortly before election, when our campaign was in full swing in the West, the
+President sent a letter appealing to the voters of New Jersey to support Mr.
+Hennessey, the Democratic candidate for the Senate. He subsequently appealed to
+the voters of New Hampshire to elect Mr. Jameson, candidate for Democratic
+Senator in New Hampshire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We continued our campaign in the West as a safeguard against relaxation by the
+President after his appeal. There were seven senatorial contests in the western
+suffrage states. In all but two of these contests&mdash;Montana and
+Nevada&mdash;the Democratic Senatorial candidates were defeated. In these two
+states the Democratic majority was greatly reduced.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Republicans won in New Jersey and New Hampshire and a Republican Congress was
+elected to power throughout the country.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The election campaign had had a wholesome effect, however, on both parties and
+was undoubtedly one of the factors in persuading the President to again appeal
+to the Senate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Immediately after the defeat in the Senate, and throughout the election
+campaign, we attempted to hold banners at the Capitol to assist our campaign
+and in order to weaken the resistance of the senators of the opposition. The
+mottoes on the banners attacked with impartial mercilessness both Democrats and
+Republicans. One read:
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+SENATOR WADSWORTH&rsquo;s REGIMENT IS FIGHTING FOR DEMOCRACY ABROAD.
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+SENATOR WADSWORTH LEFT HIS REGIMENT AND IS FIGHTING AGAINST DEMOCRACY IN THE
+SENATE.
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+SENATOR WADSWORTH COULD SERVE HIS COUNTRY BETTER BY FIGHTING WITH HIS REGIMENT
+ABROAD THAN BY FIGHTING WOMEN AT HOME.
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+Another read:
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+SENATOR SHIELDS TOLD THE PEOPLE OF TENNESSEE HE WOULD SUPPORT THE
+PRESIDENT&rsquo;S POLICIES.
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+THE ONLY TIME THE PRESIDENT WENT TO THE SENATE TO ASK ITS SUPPORT SENATOR
+SHIELDS VOTED AGAINST HIM.
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+DOES TENNESSEE BACK THE PRESIDENT&rsquo;S WAR PROGRAM OE SENATOR SHIELDS?
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+And still a third:
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+GERMANY HAS ESTABLISHED &ldquo;EQUAL, UNIVERSAL, SECRET, DIRECT
+FRANCHISE.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+THE SENATE HAS DENIED EQUAL, UNIVERSAL, SECRET SUFFRAGE TO AMERICA.
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+WHICH IS MORE OF A DEMOCRACY, GERMANY OR AMERICA?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As the women approached the Senate, Colonel Higgins, the Sergeant at Arms of
+the Senate, ordered a squad of Capitol policemen to rush upon them. They
+wrenched their banners from them, twisting their wrists and manhandling them as
+they took them up the steps, through the door, and down into the
+guardroom,&mdash;their banners confiscated and they themselves detained for
+varying periods of time. When the women insisted on knowing upon what charges
+they were held, they were merely told that &ldquo;peace and order must be
+maintained on the Capitol grounds,&rdquo; and further, &ldquo;It don&rsquo;t
+make no difference about the law, Colonel Higgins is boss here, and he has
+taken the law in his own hands.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Day after day this performance went on. Small detachments of women attempted to
+hold banners outside the United States Senate, as the women of Holland had done
+outside the Parliament in the Hague. It was difficult to believe that American
+politicians could be so devoid of humor as they showed themselves. The panic
+that overwhelms our official mind in the face of the slightest irregularity is
+appalling! Instead of maintaining peace and order, the squads of police managed
+to keep the Capitol grounds in a state of confusion. They were assisted from
+time to time by Senate pages, small errand boys who would run out and attack
+mature women with impunity. The women would be held under the most rigid
+detention each day until the Senate had safely adjourned. Then on the morrow
+the whole spectacle would be repeated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While the United States Senate was standing still under our protest world
+events rushed on. German autocracy had collapsed. The Allies had won a military
+victory. The Kaiser had that very week fled for his life because of the
+uprising of his people.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We are all free voters of a free republic now,&rdquo; was the message
+sent by the women of Germany to the women of the United States through Miss
+Jane Addams. We were at that moment heartily ashamed of our government. German
+women voting! American women going to jail and spending long hours in the
+Senate guardhouse without arrests or, charges. The war came to an end. Congress
+adjourned November 21st.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the 65th Congress reconvened for its short and final session, December
+2nd, 1918 [less than a month after our election campaign], President Wilson,
+for the first time, included suffrage in his regular message to Congress, the
+thing that we had asked of him at the opening of every session of Congress
+since March, 1918.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There were now fewer than a hundred days in which to get action from the Senate
+and so avoid losing the benefit of our victory in the House.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In his opening address to Congress, the President again appealed to the Senate
+in these words:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And what shall we say of the women&mdash;of their instant intelligence,
+quickening every task that they touched; their capacity for organization and
+coöperation, which gave their action discipline and enhanced the effectiveness
+of everything they attempted; their aptitude at tasks to which they had never
+before set their hands; their utter self-sacrifice alike in what they did and
+in what they gave? Their contribution to the great result is beyond appraisal.
+They have added a new luster to the annals of American womanhood.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The least tribute we can pay them is to make them the equals of men in
+political rights, as they have proved themselves their equals in every field of
+practical work they have entered, whether for themselves or for their country.
+These great days of completed achievement would be sadly marred were we to omit
+that act of justice. Besides the immense practical services they have rendered,
+the women of the country have been the moving spirits in the systematic
+economies in which our people have voluntarily assisted to supply the suffering
+peoples of the world and the armies upon every front with food and everything
+else we had, that might serve the common cause. The details of such a story can
+never be fully written but we carry them at our hearts and thank God that we
+can say that we are the kinsmen of such.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Again we looked for action to follow this appeal. Again we found that the
+President had uttered these words but had made no plan to translate them into
+action.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And so his second appeal to the Senate failed, coming as it did after the
+hostility of his party to the idea of conferring freedom on women nationally,
+had been approved and fostered by President Wilson for five solid years. He
+could not overcome with additional eloquence the opposition which he himself
+had so long formulated, defended, encouraged and solidified, especially when
+that eloquence was followed by either no action or only half- hearted efforts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It would now require a determined assertion of his political power as the
+leader of his party. We made a final appeal to him as leader of his party and
+while still at the height of his world power, to make such an assertion and to
+demand the necessary two votes.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap25"></a>Chapter 20<br/>
+The President Sails Away</h2>
+
+<p>
+No sooner had we set ourselves to a brief, hot campaign to compel President
+Wilson to win the final votes than he sailed away to France to attend the Peace
+Conference, sailed away to consecrate himself to the program of liberating the
+oppressed peoples of the whole world. He cannot be condemned for aiming to
+achieve so gigantic a task. But we reflected that again the President had
+refused his specific aid in an humble aspiration, for the rosy hope of a more
+boldly conceived ambition.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was positively impossible for us, by our own efforts, to win the last 2
+votes. We could only win them through the President. That he had left behind
+him his message urging the Senate to act, is true. That Administration leaders
+did not consider these words a command, is also true. It must be realized that
+even after the President had been compelled to publicly declare his support of
+the measure, it was almost impossible to get his own leaders to take seriously
+his words on suffrage. And so again the Democratic Chairman of the Rules
+Committee, in whose keeping the program lay, had no thought of bringing it to a
+vote. The Democratic Chairman of the Woman Suffrage Committee assumed not the
+slightest responsibility for its success, nor could he produce any plan whereby
+the last votes could be won. They knew, as well as did we, that the President
+only could win those last 2 votes. They made it perfectly clear that until he
+had done so, they could do nothing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Less than fifty legislative days remained to us. Something had to be done
+quickly, something bold and offensive enough to threaten the prestige of the
+President, as he was riding in sublimity to unknown heights as a champion of
+world liberty; something which might penetrate his reverie and shock him into
+concrete action. We had successfully defied the full power of his
+Administration, the odds heavily against us. We must now defy the popular
+belief of the world in this apostle of liberty. This was the feeling of the
+four hundred officers of the National Woman&rsquo;s Party, summoned to a three
+days&rsquo; conference in Washington in December, 1918. It was unanimously
+decided to light a fire in an urn, and, on the day that the President was
+officially received by France, to burn with fitting public ceremonies all the
+President&rsquo;s past and present speeches or books concerning
+&ldquo;liberty&rdquo;, &ldquo;freedom&rdquo; and &ldquo;democracy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was late afternoon when the four hundred women proceeded solemnly in single
+file from headquarters, past the White House, along the edge of the quiet and
+beautiful Lafayette Park, to the foot of Lafayette&rsquo;s statue. A slight
+mist added beauty to the pageant. The purple, white and gold banners, so
+brilliant in the sunshine, became soft pastel sails. Half the procession
+carried lighted torches; the other half banners. The crowd gathered silently,
+somewhat awe-struck by the scene. Massed about that statue, we felt a strange
+strength and solidarity, we felt again that we were a part of the universal
+struggle for liberty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The torch was applied to the pine-wood logs in the Grecian Urn at the edge of
+the broad base of the statue. As the flames began to mount, Vida Milholland
+stepped forward and without accompaniment sang again from that spot of beauty,
+in her own challenging way, the Woman&rsquo;s Marseillaise. Even the small boys
+in the crowd, always the most difficult to please, cheered and clapped and
+cried for more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. John Rogers, Jr., chairman of the National Advisory Council, said, as
+president of the ceremony:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We hold this meeting to protest against the denial of liberty to
+American women. All over the world to-day we see surging and sweeping
+irresistibly on, the great tide of democracy, and women would be derelict in
+their duty if they did not see to it that it brings freedom to the women of
+this land . . . .
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Our ceremony to-day is planned to call attention to the fact that
+President Wilson has gone abroad to establish democracy in foreign lands when
+he has failed to establish democracy at home. We burn his words on liberty
+to-day, not in malice or anger, but in a spirit of reverence for truth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This meeting is a message to President Wilson. We expect an answer. If
+the answer is more words we will burn them again. The only answer the National
+Woman&rsquo;s Party will accept is the instant passage of the amendment in the
+Senate.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The few hoots and jeers which followed all ceased, when a tiny and aged woman
+stepped from her place to the urn in the brilliant torch light. The crowd
+recognized a veteran. It was the most dramatic moment in the ceremony. Reverend
+Olympia Brown of Wisconsin, one of the first ordained women ministers in the
+country, then in her eighty-fourth year, gallant pioneer, friend and colleague
+of Susan B. Anthony, said, as she threw into the flames the speech made by the
+President on his arrival in France:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo; . . . I have fought for liberty for seventy years, and I protest
+against the President&rsquo;s leaving our country with this old fight here
+unwon.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The crowd burst into applause and continued to cheer as she was assisted from
+the plinth of the statue, too frail to dismount by herself. Then came the other
+representative women, from Massachusetts to California, from Georgia to
+Michigan, each one consigning to the flames a special declaration of the
+President&rsquo;s on freedom. The flames burned brighter and brighter and leapt
+higher as the night grew black.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The casual observer said, &ldquo;They must be crazy. Don&rsquo;t they know the
+President isn&rsquo;t at home? Why are they appealing to him in the park
+opposite the White House when he is in France?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The long line of bright torches shone menacingly as the women marched slowly
+back to headquarters, and the crowd dispersed in silence. The White House
+<i>was</i> empty. But we knew our message would be heard in France.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap26"></a>Chapter 21<br/>
+Watchfires of Freedom</h2>
+
+<p>
+December came to an end with no plan for action on the amendment assured. This
+left us January and February only before the session would end. The President
+had not yet won the necessary 2 votes. We decided therefore to keep a perpetual
+fire to consume the President&rsquo;s speeches on democracy as fast as he made
+them in Europe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And so on New Year&rsquo;s Day, 1919, we light our first watchfire of freedom
+in the Urn dedicated to that purpose. We place it on the sidewalk in a direct
+line with the President&rsquo;s front door. The wood comes from a tree in
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Independence Square, Philadelphia. It burns gaily. Women with banners stand
+guard over the watchfire. A bell hung in the balcony at headquarters tolls
+rhythmically the beginning of the watch. It tolls again as the
+President&rsquo;s words are tossed to the flames. His speech to the workingmen
+of Manchester; his toast to the King at Buckingham Palace: &ldquo;We have used
+great words, all of us. We have used the words &lsquo;right&rsquo; and
+&lsquo;justice&rsquo; and now we are to prove whether or not we understand
+these words;&rdquo; his speech at Brest; all turn into ignominious brown ashes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The bell tolls again when the watch is changed. All Washington is reminded
+hourly that we are at the President&rsquo;s gate, burning his words. From
+Washington the news goes to all the world.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+People gather to see the ceremony. The omnipresent small boys and soldiers
+jeer, and some tear the banners. A soldier rushes to the scene with a bucket of
+water which does not extinguish the flames. The fire burns as if by magic. A
+policeman arrives and uses a fire extinguisher. But the fire burns on! The
+flames are as indomitable as the women who guard them! Rain comes, but all
+through the night the watchfire burns. All through the night the women stand
+guard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Day and night the fire burns. Boys are permitted by the police to scatter it in
+the street, to break the. urn, and to demolish the banners. But each time the
+women rekindle the fire. A squad of policemen tries to demolish the fire. While
+the police are engaged at the White House gates, other women go quietly in the
+dusk to the huge bronze urn in Lafayette Park and light another watchfire. A
+beautiful blaze leaps into the air from the great urn. The police hasten
+hither. The burning contents are overturned. Alice Paul refills the urn and
+kindles a new fire. She is placed under arrest. Suddenly a third blaze is seen
+in a remote corner of the park. The policemen scramble to that corner. When the
+watchfires have been continued for four days and four nights,, in spite of the
+attempts by the police to extinguish them, general orders to arrest are sent to
+the squad of policemen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Five women are taken to the police station. The police captain is outraged that
+the ornamental urn valued at $10,000 should have been used to hold a fire which
+burned the President&rsquo;s words! His indignation leaves the defendants
+unimpressed, however, and he becomes conciliatory. Will the &ldquo;ladies
+promise to be good and light no more fires in the park?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Instead, the &ldquo;ladies&rdquo; inquire on what charge they are held. Not
+even the police captain knows. They wait at the police station to find out,
+refusing to give bail unless they are told. Meanwhile other women address the
+crowd lingering about the watchfire. The crowd asks thoughtful questions.
+Little knots of men can be seen discussing &ldquo;what the whole thing is about
+anyway.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Mildred Morris, one of the participants, overheard the following
+discussion in one group composed of an old man, a young sailor and a young
+soldier.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But whatever you think of them,&rdquo; the sailor was telling the
+soldier, &ldquo;you have to admire their sincerity and courage. They&rsquo;ve
+got to do this thing. They want only what&rsquo;s their right and real men want
+to give it to them.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But they&rsquo;ve got no business using a sidewalk in front of the White
+House for a bonfire,&rdquo; declared the soldier. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s disloyal to
+the President, I tell you, and if they weren&rsquo;t women I&rsquo;d slap their
+faces.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Listen, sonny,&rdquo; said the old man, patting the soldier&rsquo;s arm,
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m as loyal to the President as any man alive, but I&rsquo;ve got
+to admit that he ain&rsquo;t doing the right thing towards these women.
+He&rsquo;s forced everything else he&rsquo;s wanted through Congress, and if he
+wanted to give these women the vote badly enough he could force the suffrage
+amendment through. If you and I were in these women&rsquo;s places, sonny,
+we&rsquo;d act real vicious. We&rsquo;d want to come here and clean out the
+,whole White House.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But if the President doesn&rsquo;t want to push their amendment through,
+it&rsquo;s his right not to,&rdquo; argued the soldier. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s
+nobody&rsquo;s business how he uses his power.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good God!&rdquo; the sailor burst out. &ldquo;Why don&rsquo;t you go
+over and get a job shining the Kaiser&rsquo;s boots?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The women were released without bail, since no one was able to supply a charge.
+But a thorough research was instituted and out of the dusty archives some one
+produced an ancient statute that would serve the purpose. It prohibits the
+building of fires in a public place in the District of Columbia between sunset
+and sunrise. And so the beautiful Elizabethan custom of lighting watchfires as
+a form of demonstration was forbidden!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In a few days eleven women were brought to trial. There was a titter in the
+court room as the prosecuting attorney read with heavy pomposity the charge
+against the prisoners &ldquo;to wit: That on Pennsylvania Avenue, Northwest, in
+the District of Columbia they did aid and abet in setting fire to certain
+combustibles consisting of logs, paper, oil, etc., between the setting of the
+sun in the said District of Columbia on the sixth day of January and the rising
+of the sun in the said District of Columbia o f the sixth day o f January,
+1919, A. D.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The court is shocked to hear of this serious deed. The prisoners are
+unconcerned.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Call the names of the prisoners,&rdquo; the judge orders. The clerk
+calls, &ldquo;Julia Emory.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No answer!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Julia Emory,&rdquo; he calls a second time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dead silence!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The clerk tries another name, a second, a third, a fourth. Always there is
+silence!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In a benevolent tone, the judge asks the policeman to identify the prisoners.
+They identify as many as they can. An attempt is made to have the prisoners
+rise and be sworn. They sit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We will go on with the testimony,&rdquo; says the judge.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The police testify as to the important details of the crime. They were on
+Pennsylvania Avenue&mdash;they looked at their watch&mdash;they learned it was
+about 5:30&mdash;they saw the ladies in the park putting wood on fires in urns.
+&ldquo;I threw the wood on the pavement; they kept putting it back,&rdquo; says
+one policeman. &ldquo;Each time I tried to put out the fire they threw on more
+wood,&rdquo; says another. &ldquo;They kept on lighting new fires, and
+I&rsquo;d keep putting them out,&rdquo; says a third with an injured air.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The prosecuting attorney asks an important question, &ldquo;Did you command
+them to stop?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Policeman&mdash;&ldquo;I did sir, and I said, &lsquo;You ladies don&rsquo;t
+want to be arrested do you?&rsquo; They made no answer but went on attending to
+their fires.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The statute is read for the second time. Another witness is called. This time
+the district attorney asks the policeman,&mdash;&ldquo;Do you know what time
+the sun in the District of Columbia set on January 5th and rose on January
+6th?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At this profound question, the policeman hesitates, looks abashed, then says
+impressively, &ldquo;The sun in the District of Columbia set at 5 o&rsquo;clock
+January 5th, and rose at 7:28 o&rsquo;clock January 6th.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The prosecutor is triumphant. He looks expectantly at the judge.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How do you know what time the sun rose and set on those days?&rdquo;
+asks the judge.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;From the weather bureau,&rdquo; answers the policeman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The judge is perplexed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think we should have something more official,&rdquo; he says.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The prosecutor suggests that perhaps an almanac would settle the question. The
+judge believes it would. The government attorney disappears to find an almanac.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Breathless, the prisoners and spectators wait to hear the important verdict of
+the almanac. The delay is interminable. The court room is in a state of
+confusion. The prisoners, especially, are amused at the proceedings. It is
+clear their fate may hang upon a minute or two of time. An hour goes by, and
+still the district attorney has not returned. Another half hour! Presently he
+returns to read in heavy tones from the almanac. The policeman looks
+embarrassed. His information from the weather bureau differs from that of the
+almanac. His sun rose two minutes too early and continued to shine twelve
+minutes too long! However, it doesn&rsquo;t matter. The sun shone long enough
+to make the defendants guilty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The judge looks at the prisoners and announces that they are
+&ldquo;guilty&rdquo; and &ldquo;shall pay a fine of $5.00 or serve five days in
+jail.&rdquo; The Administration has learned its lesson about hunger strikes and
+evidently fears having to yield to another strike. And so it seeks safety in
+lighter sentences. The judge pleads almost piteously with them not to go to
+jail at all, and says that he will put them on probation if they will promise
+to be good and not light any more fires in the District of Columbia. The
+prisoners make no promise. They have been found guilty according to the almanac
+and they file through the little gate into the prisoners&rsquo; pen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Somehow they did not believe that whether the sun rose at 7:26 or 7:28 was the
+issue which had decided whether they should be convicted or not, and it was not
+in protest against the almanac that they straightway entered upon a hunger
+strike.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meanwhile the watchfires continued in the capital. January thirteenth, the day
+the great world Peace Conference under the President&rsquo;s leadership, began
+to deliberate on the task of administering &ldquo;right&rdquo; and
+&ldquo;justice&rdquo; to all the oppressed of the earth, twenty-three women
+were arrested in front of the White House.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Another trial! More silent prisoners! They were to be tried this time in
+groups. A roar of applause from friends in the courtroom greeted the first four
+as they came in. The judge said that he could not possibly understand the
+motive for this outburst, and added, &ldquo;If it is repeated, I shall consider
+it contempt of court.&rdquo; He then ordered the bailiff to escort the four
+prisoners out and bring them in again.&mdash;Shades of school days!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And if there is any applause this time . . .&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With this threat still in the air, the prisoners reentered and the applause was
+louder than before. Great Confusion! The judge roared at the bailiff. The
+bailiff roared at the prisoners and their friends.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Finally they rushed to the corners of the courtroom and evicted three young
+women.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Lock the doors, and see that they do not return,&rdquo; shouted the
+angry judge. Thus the dignity of the court was restored. But the group idea had
+to be abandoned. The prisoners were now brought in one at a time, and one
+policeman after another testified that, &ldquo;she kep&rsquo; alightin&rsquo;
+and alightin&rsquo; fires.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Five days&rsquo; imprisonment for each woman who &ldquo;kep&rsquo;
+alightin&rsquo;&rdquo; watchfires!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On January 25th, in Paris, President Wilson received a delegation of French
+working women who urged woman suffrage as one of the points to be settled at
+the Peace Conf6rence. The President expressed admiration for the women of
+France, and told them of his deep personal interest in the enfranchisement of
+women. He was &lsquo;honored&rsquo; and &lsquo;touched&rsquo; by their tribute.
+It was a great moment for the President. He had won the position in the eyes of
+the world of a devout champion of the liberty of women, but at the very moment
+he was speaking to these French women American women were lying in the District
+of Columbia jail for demanding liberty at his gates.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Mary Nolan, the eldest suffrage prisoner, took to the watchfire those vain
+words of the President to the French women. The flames were just
+consuming&mdash;&ldquo;All sons of freedom are under oath to see that freedom
+never suffers,&rdquo; when a whole squadron of police dashed up to arrest her.
+There was a pause when they saw her age. They drew back for an instant. Then
+one amongst them, more &ldquo;dutiful&rdquo; than the rest, quietly placed her
+under arrest. As she marched along by his side, cheers for her went up from all
+parts of the crowd.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Say what you think about them, but that little old lady has certainly
+got pluck,&rdquo; they murmured.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the bar Mrs. Nolan&rsquo;s beautiful speech provoked irrepressible applause.
+The judge ordered as many offenders as could be recognized brought before him.
+Thirteen women were hastily produced. The trial was suspended while the judge
+sentenced these thirteen to &ldquo;forty-eight hours in jail for contempt of
+court.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And so, throughout January and the beginning of February, 1919, the story of
+protest continued relentlessly.
+Watchfires&mdash;arrests&mdash;convictions&mdash;hunger
+strikes&mdash;release&mdash;until again the nation rose in protest against
+imprisoning the women and against the Senate&rsquo;s delay. Peremptory cables
+went to the President at the Peace Conference, commanding him to act. News of
+our demonstrations were well reported in the Paris press. The situation must
+have again seemed serious to him, for although reluctantly and perhaps
+unwillingly, he did begin to cable to Senate leaders, who in turn began to act.
+On February 2d, the Democratic Suffrage Senators called a meeting at the
+Capitol to &ldquo;consider ways and means.&rdquo; On February 3d, Senator Jones
+announced in the Senate that the amendment would be-brought up for discussion
+February 10th. The following evening, February 4th, a caucus of all Democratic
+Senators was called together at the Capitol by Senator Martin of Virginia,
+Democratic floor leader in the Senate. This was the first Democratic caucus
+held in the Senate since war was declared, which would seem to point to the
+anxiety of the Democrats to marshal two votes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Several hours of very passionate debate occurred, during which Senator Pollock
+of South Carolina announced for the first time his support of the measure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Senator Pollock had yielded to pressure by cable from the President as well as
+to the caucus. This gain of one vote had reduced the number of votes lacking to
+one.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Many Democratic leaders now began to show alarm lest the last vote be not
+secured. William Jennings Bryan was one leader who, rightly alarmed over such a
+situation, personally consulted with the Democratic opponents. The argument
+which he presented to them he subsequently gave to the press.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Woman suffrage is coming to the country and to the world. It will be
+submitted to the states by the next Congress, if it is not submitted by the
+present Congress.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I hope the Democrats of the South will not handicap the Democrats of the
+North by compelling them to spend the next twenty-five years explaining to the
+women of the country why their party prevented the submission of the suffrage
+amendment to the states.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This is our last chance to play an important part in bringing about this
+important reform, and it is of vital political concern that the Democrats of
+the Northern Mississippi Valley should not be burdened by the charge that our
+party prevented the passage of the suffrage amendment, especially when it is
+known that it is coming in spite of, if not with the aid of, the Democratic
+Party.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As we grew nearer the last vote the President was meeting what was perhaps his
+most bitter resistance from within. It was a situation which he could have
+prevented. His own early hostility, his later indifference and negligence, his
+actual protection given to Democratic opponents of the measure, his own
+reversal of policy practically at the point of a pistol, the half-hearted
+efforts made by him on its behalf, were all coming to fruition at the moment
+when his continued prestige was at stake. His power to get results on this
+because of belated efforts was greatly weakened. This also undermined his power
+in other undertakings essential to his continued prestige. Whereas more effort,
+at an earlier time, would have brought fairer results, now the opponents were
+solidified in their opposition, were through their votes publicly committed to
+the nation as opponents, and were unwilling to sacrifice their heavy dignity to
+a public reversal of their votes. This presented a formidable resistance,
+indeed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Therefore the Democratic blockade continued.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And so did the watchfires !
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap27"></a>Chapter 22<br/>
+Burned in Effigy</h2>
+
+<p>
+The suffrage score now stood as follows: One vote lacking in the Senate, 15
+days in which to win it, and President Wilson across the sea! The Democrats set
+February 10 as the date on which the Senate would again vote on the amendment,
+without any plan as to how the last vote would be won.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We were powerless to secure the last vote. That was still the President&rsquo;s
+problem. Knowing that he always put forth more effort under fire of protest
+from us than when not pressed, we decided to make as a climax to our watchfire
+demonstrations a more drastic form of protest. We wanted to show our contempt
+for the President&rsquo;s inadequate support which promised so much in words
+and which did so little in deeds to match the words.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And so on the day preceding the vote we burned in effigy a portrait of
+President Wilson even as the Revolutionary fathers had burned a portrait of
+King George.[1]
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[1] This is the inscription on a tablet at the State House, Dover Green, Dover,
+in commemoration of Delaware&rsquo;s revolutionary leaders.<br/>
+    Signers of the Declaration of Independence.<br/>
+    Caeser Rodney&mdash;Thomas McKain&mdash;George Read<br/>
+    At the urgent request of Thomas McKain, Caesar Rodney being then in
+Delaware, rode post haste on horseback to Philadelphia and reached Independence
+Hall July 4, 1776.<br/>
+    The following day news of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence
+reaching Dover a portrait of King George was burned on Dover Green at the order
+of the Committee of Safety. The following historic words being uttered by the
+chairman:<br/>
+    &ldquo;Compelled by strong necessity thus we destroy even the shadow of
+that king who refused to reign over a free people.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A hundred women marched with banners to the center of the sidewalk opposite the
+White House. Mingling with the party&rsquo;s tri- colored banners were two
+lettered ones which read:
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+ONLY FIFTEEN LEGISLATIVE DAYS ARE LEFT IN THIS CONGRESS.
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+FOR MORE THAN A YEAR THE PRESIDENT&rsquo;S PARTY HAS BLOCKED SUFFRAGE IN THE
+SENATE.
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+IT IS BLOCKING IT TODAY.
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+THE PRESIDENT IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE BETRAYAL OF AMERICAN WOMANHOOD.
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+And&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+WHY DOES NOT THE PRESIDENT INSURE THE PASSAGE OF SUFFRAGE IN THE SENATE
+TO-MORROW?
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+WHY DOES HE NOT WIN FROM HIS PARTY THE ONE VOTE NEEDED?
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+HAS HE AGREED TO PERMIT SUFFRAGE AGAIN TO BE PUSHED ASIDE?
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+PRESIDENT WILSON IS DECEIVING THE WORLD.
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+HE PREACHES DEMOCRACY ABROAD AND THWARTS DEMOCRACY HERE.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As the marchers massed their banners, and grouped themselves about the urn, a
+dense crowd of many thousand people closed in about them, a crowd so interested
+that it stood almost motionless for two hours while the ceremonies continued.
+The fire being kindled, and the flames leaping into the air, Miss Sue White of
+Tennessee and Mrs. Gabrielle Harris of South Carolina dropped into the fire in
+the urn a figure of President Wilson sketched on paper in black and
+white&mdash;a sort of effigy de luxe, we called it, but a symbol of our
+contempt none the less.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Henry O. Havemeyer of New York, life-long suffragist and woman of affairs,
+said as master of the ceremonies, &ldquo;Every Anglo-Saxon government in the
+world has enfranchised its women. In Russia, in Hungary, in Austria, in Germany
+itself, the women are completely enfranchised, and thirty-four women are now
+sitting in the new Reichstag. We women of America are assembled here to-day to
+voice our deep indignation that . . . American women are still deprived of a
+voice in their government at home. We mean to show that the President . . .
+.&rdquo; She was caught by the arm, placed under arrest, and forced into the
+waiting patrol wagon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thereupon the police fell upon the ceremonies, and indiscriminate arrests
+followed. Women with banners were taken; women without banners were taken.
+Women attempting to guard the fire; women standing by doing nothing at all; all
+were seized upon and rushed to the patrol. While this uproar was going on,
+others attempted to continue the speaking where Mrs. Havemeyer had left it, but
+each was apprehended as she made her attempt. Some that had been scheduled to
+speak, but were too shy to utter a word in the excitement, were also taken.
+When the &ldquo;Black Marias&rdquo; were all filled to capacity, nearby
+automobiles were commandeered, and more patrols summoned. And still not even
+half the women were captured.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The police ceased their raids suddenly. Orders to arrest no more had evidently
+been given. Some one must have suggested that a hundred additions to the
+already overcrowded jail and workhouse would be too embarrassing. Perhaps the
+ruse of arresting some, and hoping the others would scamper away at the sight
+of authority, was still in their minds.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After a brief respite they turned their attention to the fascinated crowd. They
+succeeded in forcing back these masses of people half way across Pennsylvania
+Avenue, and stationed an officer every two feet in front of them. But still
+women came to keep the fire burning. Was there no end of this battalion of
+women? The police finally declared a &ldquo;military zone&rdquo; between the
+encircling crowd and the remaining women, and no person was allowed to enter
+the proscribed area. For, another hour, then, the women stood on guard at the
+urn, and as night fell, the ceremonies ended. Sixty of them marched back to
+headquarters. Thirty-nine had been arrested.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The following morning, February 10th, saw two not unrelated scenes in the
+capital. Senators were gathering in their seats in the senate chamber to
+answer. to the roll call on the suffrage amendment. A few blocks away in the
+courthouse, thirty-nine women were being tried for their protest of the
+previous day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was no uncertainty either in the minds of the galleries or of the
+senators. Every one knew that we still lacked one vote. The debate was confined
+to two speeches, one for and one against.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the roll was called, there were voting and paired in favor of the
+amendment, 63 senators; there were voting and paired against the amendment 83
+senators. The amendment lost therefore, by one vote. Of the 63 favorable votes
+62 were Republicans and 31 Democrats. Of the 33 adverse votes 12 were
+Republicans and 21 Democrats. This means that of the 44 Republicans in the
+Senate, 32 or 73 per cent voted for the amendment. Of the 52 Democrats in the
+Senate 31 or 60 per cent voted for it. And so it was again defeated by the
+opposition of the Democratic Administration, and by the failure of the
+President to put behind it enough power to win.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meanwhile another burlesque of justice dragged wearily on in the dim courtroom.
+The judge was sentencing thirty-nine women to prison. When the twenty-sixth had
+been reached, he said wearily, &ldquo;How many more are out there?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When told that he had tried only two-thirds of the defendants, he dismissed the
+remaining thirteen without trial!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They were as guilty as their colleagues. But the judge was tired. Twenty-six
+women sent to jail is a full judicial day&rsquo;s work, I suppose.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was some rather obvious shame and unhappiness in the Senate because of
+the petty thing they had done. The prisoners in the courtroom were proud
+because they had done their utmost for the principle in which they believed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Senator Jones of New Mexico, Chairman of the Committee, and his Democratic
+colleagues refused to reintroduce the Susan B. Anthony amendment in the Senate
+immediately after this defeat. But on Monday, February 17, Senator Jones of
+Washington, ranking Republican on the Suffrage Committee, obtained unanimous
+consent and reintroduced it, thereby placing it once more on its way to early
+reconsideration.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap28"></a>Chapter 23<br/>
+Boston Militants Welcome the President</h2>
+
+<p>
+It was announced that the President would return to America on February 24th.
+That would leave seven days in which he could act before the session ended on
+March 3d. We determined to make another dramatic effort to move him further.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Boston was to be the President&rsquo;s landing place. Boston, where ancient
+liberties are so venerated, and modern ones so abridged. No more admirable
+place could have been found to welcome the President home in true militant
+fashion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wishing the whole world to know that women were greeting President Wilson, why
+they were greeting him, and what form of demonstration the greetings would
+assume, we announced our plans in advance. Upon his arrival a line of pickets
+would hold banners silently calling to the President&rsquo;s attention the
+demand for his effective aid. In the afternoon they would hold a meeting in
+Boston Common and there burn the parts of the President&rsquo;s Boston speech
+which should pertain to democracy and liberty. These announcements were met
+with official alarm of almost unbelievable extent. Whereas front pages had been
+given over heretofore to publishing the elaborate plans for the welcome to be
+extended to the President, eulogies of the President, and recitals of his great
+triumph abroad, now the large proportion of this space was devoted to clever
+plans of the police to outwit the suffragists. The sustained publicity of this
+demonstration was unprecedented. It actually filled the Boston papers for all
+of two weeks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A &ldquo;deadline,&rdquo; a diagram of which appeared in the press, was to be
+established beyond which no suffragist, no matter how enterprising, could
+penetrate to harass the over-worked President with foolish ideas about the
+importance of liberty for women. Had not this great man the cares of the world
+on his shoulders? This was no time to talk about liberty for women! The world
+was rocking and a great peace conference was sitting, and the President was
+just returning to report on the work done so far. The Boston descendants of the
+early revolutionists would do their utmost to see that no untoward event should
+mar the perfection of their plans. They would see to it that the sacred soil of
+the old Boston Common should not be disgraced.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a perfect day. Lines of marines whose trappings shone brilliantly in the
+clear sunshine were in formation to hold back the crowds from the Reviewing
+stand where the President should appear after heading the procession in his
+honor. It seemed as if all Boston were on hand for the welcome. A slender file
+of twenty-two women marched silently into the sunshine, slipped through the
+&ldquo;deadline,&rdquo; and made its way to the base&lsquo; of the Reviewing
+stand. There it unfurled its beautiful banners and took up its post directly
+facing the line of marines which was supposed to keep all suffragists at bay.
+Quite calmly and yet triumphantly, they stood there, a pageant of beauty and
+defiant appeal, which not even the most hurried passerby could fail to see and
+comprehend.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There were consultations by the officials in charge of the ceremonies. The
+women looked harmless enough, but had they not been told that they must not
+come there? They were causing no riot, in fact they were clearly adding much
+beauty&mdash;people seemed to take them as part of the elaborate
+ceremony&mdash;but officials seldom have sense of humor enough or adaptability
+enough to change quickly, especially when they have made threats. It would be a
+taint on their honor, if they did not &ldquo;pick up&rdquo; the women for the
+deed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One could hear the people reading slowly the large lettered banner:
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+MR. PRESIDENT, YOU SAID IN THE SENATE ON SEPTEMBER 20 &ldquo;WE SHALL NOT ONLY
+BE DISTRUSTED BUT WE SHALL DESERVE TO BE DISTRUSTED IF WE DO NOT ENFRANCHISE
+WOMEN.&rdquo; YOU ALONE CAN REMOVE THIS DISTRUST NOW BY SECURING THE ONE VOTE
+NEEDED TO PASS THE SUFFRAGE AMENDMENT BEFORE MARCH 4.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The American flag carried by Miss Katherine Morey of Brookline held the place
+of honor at the head of the line and there were the familiar, &ldquo;Mr.
+President, how long must women wait for liberty?&rdquo; and &ldquo;Mr.
+President, what will you do for woman suffrage?&rdquo; The other banners were
+simply purple, white and gold.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;When we had stood there about three quarters of an hour,&rdquo; said
+Katherine Morey, &ldquo;Superintendent Crowley came to me and said, &lsquo;We
+want to be as nice as we can to you suffragette ladies, but you cannot stand
+here while the President goes by, so you might as well go back now.&rsquo; I
+said I was sorry, but as we had come simply to be there at that very time, we
+would not be able to go back until the President had gone by. He thereupon made
+a final appeal to Miss Paul, who was at headquarters, but she only repeated our
+statement. The patrol wagons were hurried to the scene and the arrests were
+executed in an exceedingly gentlemanly manner. But the effect on the crowd was
+electric. The sight of &lsquo;ladies&rsquo; being put into patrols, seemed to
+thrill the Boston masses as nothing the President subsequently said was able
+to.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We were taken to the House of Detention and there charged with
+&lsquo;loitering more than seven minutes&rsquo;.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+
+<p>
+As Mrs. Agnes H. Morey, Massachusetts Chairman of the Woman&rsquo;s Party,
+later remarked:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is a most extraordinary thing. Thousands loitered from curiosity on
+the day the President arrived. Twenty-two loitered for liberty, and only those
+who loitered for liberty were arrested.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Realizing that the event of the morning had diverted public attention to our
+issue, and undismayed by the arrests, other women entered the lists to sustain
+public attention upon our demand to the President.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The ceremony on the Common began at three o&rsquo;clock. Throngs of people
+packed in closely in an effort to hear the speakers, and to catch a glimpse of
+the ceremony, presided over by Mrs. Louise Sykes of Cambridge, whose late
+husband was President of the Connecticut College for Women. From three
+o&rsquo;clock until six, women explained the purpose of the protest, the status
+of the amendment, and urged those present to help. At six o&rsquo;clock came
+the order to arrest. Mrs. C. C. Jack, wife of Professor Jack of Harvard
+University, Mrs. Mortimer Warren of Boston, whose husband was head of a base
+hospital in France, and Miss Elsie Hill, daughter of the late Congressman Hill,
+were arrested and were taken to the House of Detention, where they joined their
+comrades.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Dirty, filthy hole under the Court House,&rdquo; was the general
+characterization of the House of Detention. &ldquo;Jail was a Paradise compared
+to this depraved place,&rdquo; said Miss Morey. &ldquo;We slept in our clothes,
+four women to a cell, on iron shelves two feet wide. In the cell was an open
+toilet. The place slowly filled up during the night with drunks and
+disorderlies until pandemonium reigned. In the evening, Superintendent Crowley
+and Commissioner Curtis came to call on us. I don&rsquo;t believe they had ever
+been there before, and they were painfully embarrassed. Superintendent Crowley
+said to me, &ldquo;If you were drunk we could release you in the morning, but
+unfortunately since you are not we have got to take you into court.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the prisoners were told next morning the decision of Chief Justice Bolster
+to try each prisoner separately and in closed court, they all protested against
+such proceedings. But guards took the women by force to a private room.
+&ldquo;The Matron, who was terrified,&rdquo; said Miss Morey, &ldquo;shouted to
+the guards, &lsquo;You don&rsquo;t handle the drunks that way. You know you
+don&rsquo;t.&rsquo; But they continued to push, shove and shake the women while
+forcing them to the ante room.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;As an American citizen under arrest, I demand a public trial,&rdquo; was
+the statement of each on entering the judge&rsquo;s private trial room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While the trial was proceeding without the women&rsquo;s
+cooperation,&mdash;some were tried under wrong names, some were tried more than
+once under different names, but most of them under the name of Jane
+Doe&mdash;vigorous protests were being made to all the city officials by
+individuals among the throngs who had come to the court house to attend the
+trial. This protest was so strong that the last three women were tried in open
+court. The judge sentenced everybody impartially to eight days in j ail in lieu
+of fines, with the exception of Miss Wilma Henderson, who was released when it
+was learned that she was a minor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The women were taken to the Charles Street Jail to serve their sentences.
+&ldquo;The cells were immaculately clean,&rdquo; said Miss Morey, &ldquo;but
+there was one feature of this experience which obliterated all its advantages.
+The cells were without modern toilet facilities. The toilet equipment consisted
+of a heavy wooden bucket, about two and a half feet high and a foot and a half
+in diameter, half filled with water. No one of us will ever forget that foul
+bucket. It had to be carried to the lower floor&mdash;we were on the third and
+fourth floors&mdash;every morning. I could hardly lift mine off the floor, to
+say nothing of getting it down stairs (Miss Morey weighs 98 pounds), so there
+it stayed. Berry Pottier managed to get hers down, but was so exhausted she was
+utterly unable to get it back to her cell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The other toilet facility provided was a smaller bucket of water to wash
+in, but it was of such a strangely unpleasant odor that we did not dare use
+it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Boston reporters were admitted freely&mdash;and they wrote columns of copy.
+There was the customary ridicule, but there were friendly light touches such
+as, &ldquo;Militant Highlights&mdash;To be roommates at Vassar College and then
+to meet again as cellmates was the experience of Miss Elsie Hill and Mrs. Lois
+Warren Shaw.&rdquo; . . . &ldquo;Superintendent Kelleher didn&rsquo;t know when
+he was in Congress with Elsie Hill&rsquo;s father he would some day have
+Congressman Hill&rsquo;s daughter in his jail.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And there were friendly serious touches in these pages of sensational
+news&mdash;such as this excerpt from the front page of the Boston Traveler of
+February 25, 1919. &ldquo;The reporter admired the spirit of the women. Though
+weary from loss of sleep, the fire of a great purpose burned in their eyes . .
+. .
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was a sublime forgetting of self for the goal ahead, and whether the
+reader is in sympathy with the principle for which these women are ready to
+suffer or not, he will be forced to admire the spirit which leads them
+on.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Photographs of the women were printed day by day&mdash;giving their
+occupations, if any, noting their revolutionary ancestors, ascertaining the
+attitude of husbands and fathers. Mrs. Shaw&rsquo;s husband&rsquo;s telegram
+was typical of the support the women got. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t be
+quitters,&rdquo; he wired, &ldquo;I have competent nurses to look after the
+children.&rdquo; Mr. Shaw is a Harvard graduate and a successful manufacturer
+in Manchester, New Hampshire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Telegrams of protest from all over the country poured in upon all the Boston
+officials who had had any point of contact with the militants. All other work
+was for the moment suspended. Such is the quality of Mrs. Morey&rsquo;s
+organizing genius that she did not let a solitary official escape. Telegrams
+also went from Boston, and especially from the jail, to President Wilson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Official Boston was in the grip of this militant invasion when suddenly a man
+of mystery, one E. J. Howe, appeared and paid the women&rsquo;s fines. It was
+later discovered that the mysterious E. J. Howe alleged to have acted for a
+&ldquo;client.&rdquo; Whether the &ldquo;client&rdquo; was a part of Official
+Boston, no one ever knew. There were rumors that the city wished to end its
+embarrassment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sedate Boston had been profoundly shaken. Sedate Boston gave more generously
+than ever before to militant finances. And when the &ldquo;Prison
+Special&rdquo; arrived a few days later a Boston theatre was filled to
+overflowing with a crowd eager to hear more about their local heroines, and to
+cheer them while they were decorated with the already famous prison pin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Something happened in Washington, too, after the President&rsquo;s safe journey
+thither from Boston.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap29"></a>Chapter 24<br/>
+Democratic Congress Ends</h2>
+
+<p>
+It would be folly to say that President Wilson was not at this time aware of a
+very damning situation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The unanswerable &ldquo;Prison Special&rdquo;&mdash;a special car of women
+prisoners&mdash;was touring the country from coast to coast to keep the public
+attention, during the closing days of the session, fixed upon the suffrage
+situation in the Senate. The prisoners were addressing enormous meetings and
+arousing thousands, especially in the South, to articulate condemnation of
+Administration tactics. It is impossible to calculate the number of cables
+which, as a result of this sensational tour, reached the President during his
+deliberations at the Peace Table. The messages of protest which did not reach
+the President at the Peace Conference were waiting for him on his desk at the
+White House.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Even if some conservative Boston suffragists did present him with a beautiful
+bouquet of jonquils tied with a yellow ribbon, as their welcome home, will any
+one venture to say that that token of trust was potent enough to wipe from his
+consciousness the other welcome which led his welcomers to jail? Will any one
+contend that President Wilson upon his arrival in Washington, and after
+changing his clothes, piously remarked:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;By the way, Tumulty, I want to show you some jonquils tied with a yellow
+ribbon that were presented to me in Boston. I am moved, I think I may say
+deeply moved by this sincere tribute, to do something this morning for woman
+suffrage. Just what is the state of affairs? And does there seem to be any
+great demand for it?&rdquo; We do not know what, if anything, he did say to
+Secretary Tumulty, but we know what he did. He hurried over to the Capitol, and
+there made his first official business a conference with Senator Jones of New
+Mexico, Chairman of the Senate Suffrage Committee. After expressing chagrin
+over the failure of the measure in the Senate, the President discussed ways and
+means of getting it through.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+An immediate result of the conference was the introduction in the Senate,
+February 28th, by Senator Jones, of another resolution on suffrage. Senator
+Jones had refused to reintroduce the original suffrage resolution immediately
+after the Senate defeat, February 10th. Now he came forward with this one, a
+little differently worded, but to the same purpose as the original
+amendment.[1]
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[1] This amendment, although to the same purpose as the original amendment, was
+not as satisfactory because of possible controversial points in the enforcement
+article. The original amendment is of course crystal clear in this regard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This resolution was a concession to Senator Gay of Louisiana, Democrat, who had
+voted against the measure on February 10th, but who immediately pledged his
+vote in favor of the new resolution. Thus the sixty-fourth and last vote was
+won. The majority instantly directed its efforts toward getting a vote on the
+new resolution.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On March 1st Senator Jones attempted to get unanimous consent to consider it.
+Senator Wadsworth, of New York, Republican anti- suffragist, objected. When
+consent was again asked, the following day, Senator Weeks of Massachusetts,
+Republican anti-suffragist, objected. On the last day of the session, Senator
+Sherman of Illinois, Republican suffragist, objected. And so the Democratic
+Congress ended without passing the amendment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the face of it, these parliamentary objections from Republicans prevented
+action, when the Democrats had finally secured the necessary votes. As a matter
+of fact, however, the President and his party were responsible for subjecting
+the amendment to the tactical obstruction of individual anti-suffrage Senators.
+They waited until the last three days to make the supreme effort. That the
+President did finally get the last vote even at a moment when parliamentary
+difficulties prevented it from being voted upon, proved our contention that he
+could pass the amendment at any time he set himself resolutely to it. This last
+ineffective effort also proved how hard the President had been pushed by our
+tactics.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But it seems to me that President Wilson has a pathetic aptitude for acting a
+little too late. The fact that the majority of the Southern contingent in his
+party stood stubbornly against him on woman suffrage, was of course a real
+obstacle. But we contended that the business of a statesman who declared
+himself to be a friend of a measure was to remove even real obstacles to the
+success of that measure. Perhaps our standard was too high. It must be
+confessed that people in general are distressingly patient, easily content with
+pronouncements, and shockingly inert about seeing to it that political leaders
+act as they speak.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We had seen the President overcome far greater obstacles than stood in his way
+on this issue. We had seen him lead a country which had voted to stay out of
+the European war into battle almost immediately after they had so voted. We had
+seen him conscript the men of the same stubborn South, which had been
+conspicuously opposed to conscription. We had seen him win mothers to his war
+point of view after they had fought passionately for him and his peace program
+at election time. He had taken pains to lead men and women influential and
+obscure&mdash;to his way of thinking. I do not condemn him&mdash;I respect him
+for being able to do this. The point is that he dirt overcome obstacles when
+his heart and head were set to the task.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Since our problem was neither in his head nor his heart, it was our task to put
+it there. Having got it there, it was our - responsibility to see that it
+churned and churned there, until he had to act. We did our utmost.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For six full years, through three Congresses under President Wilson&rsquo;s
+power, the continual Democratic resistance, meandering, delays, deceits had
+left us still disfranchised. A world war had come and gone during this span of
+effort. Vast millions had died in pursuit of liberty. A Czar and a Kaiser had
+been deposed. The Russian people had revolutionized their whole social and
+economic system. And here in the United States of America we couldn&rsquo;t
+even wrest from the leader of democracy and his poor miserable associates the
+first step toward our political liberty&mdash;the passage of an amendment
+through Congress, submitting the question of democracy to the states!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What a magnificent thing it was for those women to rebel! Their solitary
+steadfastness to their objective stands out in this world of confused ideals
+and half hearted actions, clear and lonely and superb!
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap30"></a>Chapter 25<br/>
+A Farewell to President Wilson</h2>
+
+<p>
+The Republican Congress elected in November, 1918, would not sit until
+December, 1919&mdash;such is our unfortunate system&mdash;unless called
+together by the President in a special session. We had polled the new Congress
+by personal interviews and by post, and found a safe two-thirds majority for
+the amendment in the House. In the new Senate we still lacked a fateful one
+vote.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Our task was, therefore, to induce the President to call a special session of
+Congress at the earliest possible moment, and to see that he did not relax his
+efforts toward the last vote.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He won&rsquo;t do it!&rdquo; . . .&rdquo;President Wilson will never let
+the Republican Congress come together until the regular time.&rdquo; . . .
+&ldquo;Especially with himself in Europe!&rdquo; The usual points of objection
+were raised. But we persisted. We felt that the President could win this last
+vote. And the fear that a Republican Congress might, if he did not, was an
+accelerating factor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One feature of the campaign to force a special session was a demonstration in
+New York, on the eve of President Wilson&rsquo;s return to Europe, at the time
+he addressed a mass meeting in the Metropolitan Opera House on behalf of his
+proposed League of Nations. The plan of demonstration was to hold outside of
+the Opera House banners addressed to President Wilson, and to consign his
+speech to the flames of a torch at a public meeting nearby.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a clear starry night in March when the picket line of 26 women proceeded
+with tri-colored banners from New York headquarters in Forty-first street to
+the Opera House. As we neared the corner of the street opposite the Opera House
+and before we could cross the street a veritable battalion of policemen in
+close formation rushed us with unbelievable ferocity. Not a word was spoken by
+a single officer of the two hundred policemen in the attack to indicate the
+nature of our offense. Clubs were raised and lowered and the women beaten back
+with such cruelty as none of us had ever witnessed before.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The women clung to their heavy banner poles, trying to keep the banners above
+the maelstrom. But the police seized them, tore the pennants, broke the poles,
+some of them over our backs, trampled them underfoot, pounded us, dragged us,
+and in every way behaved like frantic beasts. It would have been so simple
+quietly to detain our little handful until after the President&rsquo;s speech,
+if that seemed necessary. But to launch this violent attack under the
+circumstances was madness. Not a pedestrian had paid any except friendly
+attention to the slender file of women. But the moment this happened an
+enormous crowd gathered, made up mostly of soldiers and sailors, many of whom
+had just returned from abroad and were temporarily thronging the streets of New
+York. They joined forces with the police in the attack.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Margaretta Schuyler, a beautiful, fragile young girl, was holding fast a
+silken American flag which she had carried at the head of the procession when a
+uniformed soldier jumped upon her, twisted her arms until she cried in pain,
+cursed, struggled until he had torn her flag from its pole, and then broke the
+pole across her head, exulting in his triumph over his frailer victim.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When I appealed to the policeman, who was at the moment occupied solely with
+pounding me on the back, to intercept the soldier in his cruel attack, his only
+reply was: &ldquo;Oh, he&rsquo;s helping me.&rdquo; He thereupon resumed his
+beating of me and I cried, &ldquo;Shame, shame! Aren&rsquo;t you ashamed to
+beat American women in this brutal way?&rdquo; I offered no other resistance.
+&ldquo;If we are breaking any law, arrest us! Don&rsquo;t beat us in this
+cowardly fashion!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We&rsquo;ll rush you like bulls,&rdquo; was his vulgar answer,
+&ldquo;we&rsquo;ve only just begun.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Another young woman, an aviatrice, was seized by the coat collar and thrown to
+the pavement for trying to keep hold of her banner. Her fur cap was the only
+thing that saved her skull from serious injury. As it was, she was trampled
+under foot and her face severely cut before we could rescue her with the
+assistance of a sympathetic member of the crowd. The sympathetic person was
+promptly attacked by the policeman for helping his victim to her feet. There
+were many shouts of disapproval of the police conduct and many cheers for the
+women from the dense crowd.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By this time the crowd had massed itself so thickly that we could hardly move
+an inch. It was perfectly apparent that we could neither make our way to the
+Opera House nor could we extricate ourselves. But the terrors continued. Women
+were knocked down and trampled under foot, some of them almost unconscious,
+others bleeding from the hands and face; arms were bruised and twisted;
+pocketbooks were snatched and wrist-watches stolen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When it looked as if the suffocating melee would result in the death or
+permanent injury to some of us, I was at last dragged by a policeman to the
+edge of the crowd. Although I offered not the slightest resistance, I was
+crushed continuously in the arm by the officer who walked me to the police
+station, and kept muttering: &ldquo;You&rsquo;re a bunch of
+cannibals,&mdash;cannibals,&mdash;Bolsheviks.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Upon arriving at the police station I was happily relieved to find eve of my
+comrades already there. We were all impartially cursed at; told to stand up;
+told to sit down; forbidden to speak to one another; forbidden even to smile at
+one another. One by one we were called to the desk to give our name, age, and
+various other pieces of information. We stood perfectly silent before the
+station lieutenant as he coaxingly said, &ldquo;You&rsquo;d better
+tell.&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;You&rsquo;d better give us your
+name.&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;You&rsquo;d better tell us where you live&mdash;it
+will make things easier for you.&rdquo; But we continued our silence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Disorderly conduct, interfering with the police, assaulting the police (Shades
+of Heaven! assaulting the police!), were the charges entered against us.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We were all locked in separate cells and told that we would be taken to the
+Woman&rsquo;s Night Court for immediate trial.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While pondering on what was happening to our comrades and wondering if they,
+too, would be arrested, or if they would just be beaten up by the police and
+mob, a large, fat jail matron came up and began to deliver a speech, which, ran
+something like this:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now, shure and you ladies must know that this is goin&rsquo; a bit too
+far. Now, I&rsquo;m for suffrage alright, and I believe women ought to vote,
+but why do you keep botherin&rsquo; the President? Don&rsquo;t you know he has
+got enough to think about with the League of Nations, the Peace Conference and
+fixin&rsquo; up the whole world on his mind?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In about half an hour we were taken from our cells and brought before the
+Lieutenant, who now announced, &ldquo;Well, you ladies may go now,&mdash;I have
+just received a telephone order to release you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We accepted the news and jubilantly left the station house, returning at once
+to our comrades. There the battle was still going on, and as we joined them we
+were again dragged and cuffed about the streets by the police and their aids,
+but there were no more arrests. Elsie Hill succeeded in speaking from a balcony
+above the heads of the crowd:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did you men turn back when you saw the Germans coming? What would you
+have thought of any one who did? Did you expect us to turn back? We never turn
+back, either&mdash;and we won&rsquo;t until democracy is won! Who rolled
+bandages for you when you were suffering abroad? Who bound your wounds in your
+fight for democracy? Who spent long hours of the night and the day knitting you
+warm garments? There are women here to-night attempting to hold banners to
+remind the President that democracy is not won at home; who have given their
+sons and husbands for your fight abroad. What would they say if they could see
+you, their comrades in the fight over there, attacking their mothers, their
+sisters, their wives over here? Aren&rsquo;t you ashamed that you have not
+enough sporting blood to allow us to make our fight in our own way?
+Aren&rsquo;t you ashamed that you accepted the help of women in your fight, and
+now to-night brutally attack them?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And they did listen until the police, in formation&mdash;looking now like
+wooden toys&mdash;advanced from both sides of the street and succeeded in
+entirely cutting off the crowd from Miss Hill.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The meeting thus broken up, we abandoned a further attempt that night. As our
+little, bannerless procession filed slowly back to headquarters, hoodlums
+followed us. The police of course gave us no protection and just as we were
+entering the door of our own building a rowdy struck me on the side of the head
+with a heavy banner pole. The blow knocked me senseless against the stone
+building; my hat was snatched from my head, and burned in the street. We
+entered the building to find that soldiers and sailors had been periodically
+rushing it in our absence, dragging out bundles of our banners, amounting to
+many hundreds of dollars, and burning them in the street, without any protest
+from the police.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One does not undergo such an experience without arriving at some inescapable
+truths, a discussion of which would interest me deeply but which would be
+irrelevant in this narrative.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Two hundred maddened women try to see the President&rdquo; . . .
+&ldquo;Two hundred women attack the police,&rdquo; and similar false headlines,
+appeared the next morning in the New York papers. It hurt to have the world
+think that we had attacked the police. That was a slight matter, however, for
+that morning at breakfast, aboard the George Washington, the President also
+read the New York papers. He saw that we were not submitting in silence to his
+inaction. It seems reasonable to assume that on sailing down the harbor that
+morning past the Statue of Liberty the President had some trouble to banish
+from his mind the report that &ldquo;two hundred maddened women&rdquo; had
+tried to &ldquo;make the Opera House last night.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap31"></a>Chapter 26<br/>
+President Wilson Wins the 64th Vote in Paris</h2>
+
+<p>
+The &ldquo;Prison Special,&rdquo; which was nearing the end of its dramatic
+tour, was arousing the people to call for a special session of Congress, as the
+President sailed away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Although a Republican Congress had been elected, President Wilson, as the head
+of the Administration, was still responsible for initiating and guiding
+legislation. We had to see to it that, with his Congress out of ,power, he did
+not relax his efforts on behalf of the amendment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was this situation which we were able to use to our advantage. Two new
+Democratic Senators, Senator Harrison of Mississippi and Senator Harris of
+Georgia, had been elected to sit in the incoming Congress through the
+President&rsquo;s influence. He, therefore, had very specific power over these
+two men, who were neither committed against suffrage by previous votes nor were
+they yet won to the amendment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We immediately set ourselves to the task of getting the President to win one of
+these men. From the election of these two men in the autumn to early spring,
+constant pressure was put upon the President to this end. When we could see no
+activity on the part of the President to secure the support of one of them, we
+again threatened publicly to resume dramatic protests against him. We kept the
+idea abroad that he was still responsible, and that we would continue to hold
+him so, until the amendment was passed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Such a situation gave friends of the Administration considerable alarm. They
+realized that the slightest attack on the President at that moment would
+jeopardize his many other endeavors. And so these friends of the President
+undertook to acquaint him with the facts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Senator Harris was happily in Europe at the time. A most anxious cable, signed
+by politicians in his own party, was sent to the President in Paris explaining
+the serious situation and urging him to do his utmost to secure the vote of the
+Senator at once.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Senator Harris was in Italy when he received an unexpected telegram asking him
+to come to Paris. He journeyed with all speed to the President, perhaps even
+thinking that he was about to be dispatched to some foreign post, to learn that
+the conference was for the purpose of securing his vote on the national
+suffrage amendment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Senator Harris there and then gave his vote, the 64th vote.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On that day the passage by Congress of the original Susan B. Anthony amendment
+was assured.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Instantly a cable was received at the White House carrying news to the
+suffragists of the final capture of the elusive last vote. Following
+immediately on the heels of this cable came another cable calling the new
+Congress into special session May 19th.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the light of the President&rsquo;s gradual yielding and final surrender to
+our demand, it will not be out of place to summarize briefly just what
+happened.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+President Wilson began his career as President of the United States an
+anti-suffragist. He was opposed to suffrage for women both by principle and
+political expediency. Sometimes I think he regarded suffragists as a kind of
+sect-good women, no doubt, but tiresome and troublesome. Whether he has yet
+come to see the suffrage battle as part of a great movement embracing the world
+is still a question. It is not an important question, for in any case it was
+not inward conviction but political necessity that made him act.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Believing then that suffragists were a sect, he said many things to them at
+first with no particular care as to the bearing of these things upon political
+theory or events. He offered, successively, &ldquo;consideration,&rdquo; an
+&ldquo;open mind,&rdquo; a &ldquo;closed mind,&rdquo; and &ldquo;age-long
+conviction deeply matured,&rdquo; party limitations, party concert of action,
+and what not. He saw in suffrage the &ldquo;tide rising to meet the
+moon,&rdquo; but waited and advised us to wait with him. But we did not want to
+wait, and we proceeded to try to make it impossible for him to wait, either. We
+determined to make action upon this issue politically expedient for him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the President began to perceive the potential political power of women
+voters, he first declared, as a &ldquo;private citizen,&rdquo; that suffrage
+was all right for the women of his home state, New Jersey, but that it was
+altogether wrong to ask him as President to assist in bringing it about for all
+the women of the nation. He also interested himself in writing the suffrage
+plank in the Democratic Party&rsquo;s national platform, specifically
+relegating action on suffrage to the states. Then he calmly announced that he
+could not act nationally, &ldquo;even if I wanted to,&rdquo; because the
+platform had spoken otherwise.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The controversy was lengthened. The President&rsquo;s conspicuous ability for
+sitting still and doing nothing on a controversial issue until both sides have
+exhausted their ammunition was never better illustrated than in this matter. He
+allowed the controversy to continue to the point of intellectual sterility. He
+buttressed his delays with more evasions, until finally the women intensified
+their demand for action. They picketed his official gates. But the President
+still recoiled from action. So mightily did he recoil from it that he was
+willing to imprison women for demanding it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is not extraordinary to resent being called upon to act, for it is only the
+exceptional person who springs to action, even when action is admitted to be
+desirable and necessary. And the President is not exceptional. He is
+surprisingly ordinary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While the women languished in prison, he fell back upon words&mdash;beautiful
+words, too&mdash;expressions of friendliness, good wishes, hopes, and
+may-I-nots. In this, too, he was acting like an ordinary human being, not like
+the statesman he was reputed to be. He had habituated himself to a belief in
+the power of words, and every time he uttered them to us he seemed to refortify
+himself in his belief in their power.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was the women, not the President, who were exceptional. They refused to
+accept words. They persisted in demanding acts. Step by step under terrific
+gunfire the President&rsquo;s resistance crumbled, and he yielded, one by one,
+every minor facility to the measure, always withholding from us, however, the
+main objective. Not until he had exhausted all minor facilities, and all
+possible evasions, did he publicly declare that the amendment should pass the
+House, and put it through. When he had done that we rested from the attack
+momentarily, in order to let him consummate with grace, and not under fire, the
+passage of the amendment in the Senate. He rested altogether. We were therefore
+compelled to renew the attack. He countered at first with more words. But his
+reliance upon them was perceptibly shaken when we burned them in public
+bonfires. He then moved feebly but with a growing concern toward getting
+additional votes in the Senate. And when, as an inevitable result of his
+policy&mdash;and ours&mdash;the political embarrassment became too acute,
+calling into question his honor and prestige, he covertly began to consult his
+colleagues. We pushed him the harder. He moved the faster toward concrete
+endeavor. He actually undertook to win the final votes in the Senate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There he found, however, that quite an alarming situation had developed&mdash;a
+situation which he Should have anticipated, but for which he was totally
+unprepared. Opposition in his own party had been growing more and more rigid
+and cynical. His own opposition to the amendment, his grant of immunity to
+those leaders in his party who had fought the measure, his isolating himself
+from those who might have helped&mdash;all this was coming to fruition among
+his subordinates at a time when he could least afford to be beaten on anything.
+What would have been a fairly easy race to win, if he had begun running at the
+pistol shot, had now become most difficult.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Perceiving that he had now not only to move himself, but also to overcome the
+obstacle which he had allowed to develop, we increased the energy of our
+attack. And finally the President made a supreme assertion of his power, and
+secured the last and 64th vote in the Senate. He did this too late to get the
+advantage&mdash;if any advantage is to be gained from granting a just thing at
+the point of a gun&mdash;for this last vote arrived only in time for a
+Republican Congress to use it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It seems to me that Woodrow Wilson was neither devil nor God in his manner of
+meeting the demand of the suffragists. There has persisted an astounding myth
+that he is an extraordinary man. Our experience proved the contrary. He behaved
+toward us like a very ordinary politician. Unnecessarily cruel or weakly
+tolerant, according as you view the justice of our fight, but a politician, not
+a statesman. He did not go out to meet the tide which he himself perceived was
+&ldquo;rising to meet the moon&rdquo; That would have been statesmanship. He
+let it all but engulf him before he acted. And even as a politician he failed,
+for his tactics resulted in the passage of the amendment by a Republican
+Congress.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap32"></a>Chapter 27<br/>
+Republican Congress Passes Amendment</h2>
+
+<p>
+The Republican Congress convened in Special Session May 19.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Instantly Republican leaders in control of the 66th Congress caucused and
+organized for a prompt passage of the amendment. May 21st the Republican House
+of Representatives passed the measure by a vote of 304 to 89&mdash;the first
+thing of any importance done by the new House. This was 42 votes above the
+required two-thirds majority, whereas the vote in the House in January, 1918,
+under Democratic control had given the measure only one vote more than was
+required.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Immediately the Democratic National Committee passed a resolution calling on
+the legislatures of the various states to hold special legislative sessions
+where necessary, to ratify the amendment as soon as it was through Congress, in
+order to &ldquo;enable women to vote in the national elections of 1920.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the 64th vote was assured two more Republican Senators announced their
+support, Senator Keyes of New Hampshire and Senator Hale of Maine, and on June
+4th the measure passed the Senate by a vote of 66 to 30,&mdash;2 votes more
+than needed.[1] Of the 49 Republicans in the Senate, 40 voted for the
+amendment, 9 against. Of the 47 Democrats in the Senate, 26 voted for it and 21
+against.
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[1] These figures include all voting and paired.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And so the assertion that &ldquo;the right of citizens of the United States to
+vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on
+account of sex,&rdquo; introduced into Congress by the efforts of Susan B.
+Anthony in 1878, was finally submitted to the states for ratification[1] on
+June 4th, 1919.
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[1] When a constitutional amendment has passed Congress it must be ratified by
+a majority vote of 36 state legislatures and thereupon proclaimed operative by
+the Secretary of State of the United States before it becomes the law of the
+land. For ratification data see Appendix 1.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I do not need to explain that the amendment was not won from the Republican
+Congress between May 19th and June 4th, 1919. The Republican Party had been
+gradually coming to appreciate this opportunity throughout our entire national
+agitation from 1913 to date. And our attack upon the party in power, which
+happened to be President Wilson&rsquo;s party, had been the most decisive
+factor in stimulating the opposition party to espouse our side. It is perhaps
+fortunate for the Republican Party that it was their political opponents who
+inherited this lively question in 1913. However, the political advantage is
+theirs for having promptly and ungrudgingly passed the amendment the moment
+they came into power. But it will not be surprising to any one who has read
+this book that I conclude by pointing out that the real triumph belongs to the
+women.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Our objective was the national enfranchisement of women. A tiny step, you may
+say. True! But so long as we know that this is but the first step in the long
+struggle of women for political, economic and social emancipation, we need not
+be disturbed. If political institutions as we know them to-day in their
+discredited condition break down, and another kind of
+organization&mdash;perhaps industrial&mdash;supplants them, women will battle
+for their place in the new system with as much determination as they have shown
+in the struggle just ended.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That women have been aroused never again to be content with their subjection
+there can be no doubt. That they will ultimately secure for themselves equal
+power and responsibility in whatever system of government is evolved is
+positive. How revolutionary will be the changes when women get this power and
+responsibility no one can adequately foretell. One thing is certain. They will
+not go back. They will never again be good and willing slaves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It has been a long, wearying struggle. Although drudgery has persisted
+throughout, there have been compensatory moments of great joy and beauty. The
+relief that comes after a great achievement is sweet. There is no residue of
+bitterness. To be sure, women have often resented it deeply that so much human
+energy had to be expended for so simple a right. But whatever disillusionments
+they have experienced, they have kept their faith in women. And the winning of
+political power by women will have enormously elevated their status.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap33"></a>Appendices</h2>
+
+<h3>APPENDIX 1</h3>
+
+<h5>TEXT OF THE NATIONAL SUFFRAGE AMENDMENT</h5>
+
+<p>
+Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States extending the
+right of suffrage to women.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States o f
+America in Congress assembled (twothirds of each House concurring therein),
+That the following articles be proposed to the legislatures of the several
+States as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which when
+ratified by three- fourths of the said legislatures, shall be valid as part of
+said Constitution, namely:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;ARTICLE&mdash;SEC. 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote
+shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account
+of sex.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;SEC. 2. Congress shall have power, by appropriate legislation, to
+enforce the provisions of this article.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<h5>RECORD OF ACTION ON NATIONAL SUFFRAGE AMENDMENT</h5>
+
+<p>
+In Congress
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Drafted
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By Susan B. Anthony in 1875
+</p>
+
+<p>
+First Introduced
+</p>
+
+<p>
+January 10, 1878, by Hon. A. A. Sargent, in the Senate
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Reported from Committee
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the Senate 1878, Adverse majority. 1879, Favorable minority. 1882, Favorable
+majority, adverse minority. 1884, Favorable majority, adverse minority. 1886,
+Favorable majority. 1890, Favorable majority. 1892, Favorable majority, adverse
+minority. 1896, Adverse majority. 1913, Favorable majority. 1914, Favorable
+majority. 1917, Favorable majority. 1919, Unanimously favorably.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the House 1883, Favorable majority. 1884, Adverse majority, favorable
+minority. 1886, Favorable minority. 1890, Favorable majority. 1894, Adverse
+majority. 1914, Without recommendation. 1916, Without recommendation. 1917,
+Without recommendation. 1918, Favorable majority. 1919, Favorable majority.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Voted Upon
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the Senate January 25, 1887. Yeas 16, nays 94. Absent 25 (of whom 4 were
+announced as for and 2 against). March 19, 1914. Yeas 35, nays 34, failing by
+11 of the necessary two thirds vote. October 1, 1918. Yeas 54, nays 30, failing
+by 2 of the two-thirds vote. February 10, 1919. Yeas 55, nays 29, failing by 1
+of the necessary two-thirds vote. June 4, 1919. Yeas 56, nays 25, passing by 2
+votes over necessary two-thirds majority.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the House January 12, 1915. Yeas 174, nays 204, failing by 78 of the
+necessary two-thirds vote. January 10, 1918. Yeas 274, nays 136, passing by 1
+vote over necessary two-thirds majority. May 21, 1919. Yeas 304, nays 89,
+passing by 42 votes over necessary two-thirds majority
+</p>
+
+<p>
+State; Date of Ratification; Vote: Senate, House; Party of Governor; Party
+Controlling Legislature
+</p>
+
+<p>
+1 Wisconsin June 10, 1919 24&mdash;1 54&mdash;2 Rep. Rep.<br/>
+2 *Michigan June 10, 1919 Unan. Unan. Rep. Rep.<br/>
+3 *Kansas June 16, 1919 Unan. Unan. Rep. Rep.<br/>
+4 *Ohio June 16, 1919 27&mdash;3 73&mdash;6 Dem. Rep.<br/>
+5 *New York June 16, 1919 Unan. Unan. Dem. Rep.<br/>
+6 Illinois June 17, 1919 Unan. 133&mdash;4 Rep. Rep.<br/>
+7 Pennsylvania June 24, 1919 32&mdash;6 153&mdash;44 Rep. Rep.<br/>
+8 Massachusetts June 25, 1919 34&mdash;5 184&mdash;77 Rep. Rep.<br/>
+9 *Texas June 29, 1919 Unan. 96&mdash;21 Dem. Dem.<br/>
+10 *Iowa July 2, 1919 Unan. 95&mdash;5 Rep. Rep.<br/>
+11 *Missouri July 3, 1919 28&mdash;3 125&mdash;4 Dem. Div’d.<br/>
+12 *Arkansas July 20, 1919 20&mdash;2 76&mdash;17 Dem. Dem.<br/>
+13 *Montana July 30, 1919 38&mdash;1 Unan. Dem. Rep.<br/>
+14 *Nebraska Aug. 2, 1919 Unan. Unan. Rep. Rep.<br/>
+15 *Minnesota Sept. 8, 1919 60&mdash;5 120&mdash;6 Rep. Rep.<br/>
+16 *New Hampshire Sept. 10, 1919 14&mdash;10 212&mdash;143 Rep. Rep.<br/>
+17 *Utah Sept. 30, 1919 Unan. Unan. Dem. Dem.<br/>
+18 *California Nov. 1, 1919 Unan. 73&mdash;2 Rep. Rep.<br/>
+19 *Maine Nov. 5, 1919. 24&mdash;5 72&mdash;68 Rep. Rep.<br/>
+20 *North Dakota Dec. 1, 1919 38&mdash;4 103&mdash;6 Rep. Rep.<br/>
+21 *South Dakota Dec. 4, 1919 Unan. Unan. Rep. Rep.<br/>
+22 *Colorado Dec. 12, 1919 Unan. Unan. Rep. Rep.<br/>
+23 Rhode Island Jan. 6, 1920 37&mdash;1 89&mdash;3 Rep. Rep.<br/>
+24 Kentucky Jan. 6, 1920 30&mdash;8 72&mdash;25 Rep. Div’d.<br/>
+25 *Oregon Jan. 12, 1920 Unan. Unan. Rep. Rep.<br/>
+26 *Indiana Jan. 16, 1920 43&mdash;3 Unan. Rep. Rep.<br/>
+27 *Wyoming Jan. 27, 1920 Unan. Unan. Rep. Rep.<br/>
+28 *Nevada Feb. 7, 1920 Unan. Unan. Dem. Div’d.<br/>
+29 New Jersey Feb. 10, 1920 18&mdash;2 34&mdash;24 Dem, Rep.<br/>
+30 *Idaho Feb. 11, 1920 29&mdash;6 Unan. Rep. Rep.<br/>
+31 *Arizona Feb. 12, 1920 Unan. Unan. Rep. Dem.<br/>
+32 *New Mexico Feb. 19, 1920 17&mdash;5 36&mdash;10 Rep. Rep.<br/>
+33 *Oklahoma Feb. 27, 1920 24&mdash;15 84&mdash;12 Dem. Dem.<br/>
+34 *West Virginia Mar. 10, 1920 15&mdash;14 47&mdash;40 Dem. Rep.<br/>
+35 *Washington Mar. 22, 1920 Unan. Unan. Rep. Rep.<br/>
+36 *Tennessee Aug. 18, 1920 25&mdash;4 49&mdash;47 Dem. Dem.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+* States ratifying at Special Session.
+</p>
+
+<h3>APPENDIX 2</h3>
+
+<h5>COUNTRIES IN WHICH WOMEN VOTE</h5>
+
+<p>
+Azerbaijain (Moslem) Republic 1919<br/>
+Australia 1902<br/>
+Austria 1918<br/>
+[1]Belgium 1919<br/>
+British East Africa 1919<br/>
+Canada 1918<br/>
+Czecho Slovakia 1918<br/>
+Denmark 1915<br/>
+[2]England 1918<br/>
+Finland 1906<br/>
+Germany 1918<br/>
+Holland 1919<br/>
+Hungary 1918<br/>
+Iceland 1919<br/>
+Ireland 1918<br/>
+Isle of Man 1881<br/>
+Luxembourg 1919<br/>
+[3]Mexico 1917<br/>
+New Zealand 1893<br/>
+Norway 1907<br/>
+Poland 1918<br/>
+Rhodesia 1919<br/>
+Russia 1917<br/>
+Scotland 1918<br/>
+[4]Sweden 1919<br/>
+United States 1920<br/>
+Wales 1918
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[1] Electoral Reform Bill as passed granted suffrage to widows who have not
+remarried and mothers of soldiers killed in battle or civilians shot by
+Germans.
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[2] Women over age of 30&mdash;Bill to reduce age to 21 has passed its second
+reading.
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[3] No sex qualification for voting in constitution. Women haze so far not
+availed themselves of their right to note, but are expected to do so in the
+coming elections.
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[4] To be confirmed, in 1920.
+</p>
+
+<h3>APPENDIX 3</h3>
+
+<p>
+Resolutions Demanding Investigations
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Resolution (171) to authorize an Investigation of the District of Columbia
+Workhouse.<br/>
+Introduced in the House by Miss Jeannette Rankin, Representative from
+Montana.<br/>
+October 5, 1917.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Text of Resolution:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Resolved, That a select committee of seven Members of the House of
+Representatives be appointed by the Speaker to investigate the administration
+of the District of Columbia Workhouse at Occoquan, Virginia, and to report
+thereon as early as possible during the second session of the Sixty-fifth
+Congress. Said committee is authorized to sit during the recess in Washington,
+District of Columbia and elsewhere, to subpoena witnesses, and to call for
+records relating to the said workhouse. To defray the necessary expenses of
+such investigation, including the employment of clerical assistance, the
+committee is authorized to expend not to exceed 1,000 from the contingent fund
+of the House.
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>
+Resolution (130) to authorize an Investigation of Mob Attacks on Suffragists.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Introduced in the House by John Baer, Representative from North Dakota.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+August 17, 1917.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Text of Resolution:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+WHEREAS, in the city of Washington, D. C., about 350 feet from the White House
+premises is a building known as the Cameron House, in which is located
+headquarters and main offices of a woman&rsquo;s organization at which is
+continually congregated women of character, courage and intelligence, who come
+from various sections of the United States, and
+</p>
+
+<p>
+WHEREAS, on three successive days, to wit: the 14th, 15th and 16th days of
+August, 1917, on said days immediately following the closing of the day&rsquo;s
+work by the clerks and employees of the Executive Departments, hundreds of
+these clerks and employees, acting with sailors, then and now in the service of
+the United States Navy and in uniform at the time, and soldiers, then and now
+in the service of the United States Army, also in their uniforms at the
+time,&mdash;and these clerks, employees, sailors and soldiers, and others,
+formed themselves into mobs and deliberately, unlawfully and violently damaged
+the said headquarters and offices of the said woman&rsquo;s organization by
+pelting rotten eggs through the doors and windows, shooting a bullet from a
+revolver through a window, and otherwise damaging said Cameron House, and also
+violently and unlawfully did strike, choke, drag and generally mistreat and
+injure and abuse the said women when they came defenseless upon the streets
+adjoining as well as when they were in the said building; and
+</p>
+
+<p>
+WHEREAS, the organized police of the City of Washington, District of Columbia,
+made no attempt to properly safeguard the property and persons of the said
+defenseless women, but, on the contrary, said police even seemed to encourage
+the lawless acts of the mob; and
+</p>
+
+<p>
+WHEREAS, such lawlessness is in the Capital of the United States and within a
+few hundred feet of -the Executive Mansion and offices of the President of the
+United States; and
+</p>
+
+<p>
+WHEREAS, these attacks upon defenseless women are not only an outrage and crime
+in themselves, that prove the perpetrators and those lending aid to the same to
+be cowards, but in addition, create throughout the world contempt for the
+United States and set a vicious example to the people throughout the United
+States and the world at large, of lawlessness and violence; and encourage
+designing cowards and manipulators everywhere to form mobs to molest the
+innocent and defenseless under any pretext whatever; and
+</p>
+
+<p>
+WHEREAS, there seems to be no activity or attempt on the part of any one in
+authority in the City of Washington, District of Columbia, nor by the
+government officials to apprehend, arrest or punish those perpetrating the
+violence, on account of which the same may occur indefinitely unless Congress
+acts in the premises; and
+</p>
+
+<p>
+WHEREAS, the legal status upon the premises stated would excuse the occupants
+of the Cameron House if they were so disposed in firing upon the mobs
+aforesaid, and thus create a state of greater violence and unlawless, to
+further injure the prestige and good name of the United States for maintaining
+law and order and institutions of democracy; therefore be it
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Resolved, that the Speaker appoint a Committee of seven members to investigate
+into all the facts relating to the violence and unlawful acts aforesaid, and
+make the earliest possible report upon the conditions, with the purpose in view
+of purging the army and navy of the United States and other official
+departments, of all lawless men who bring disgrace upon the American flag by
+participating in mob violence, and also to inquire regarding the conduct of all
+government employees and the police of the city of Washington, District of
+Columbia, with a view to maintaining law and order.
+</p>
+
+<h3>APPENDIX 4</h3>
+
+<p>
+Suffrage Prisoners
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Note:&mdash;Scores of women were arrested but never brought to trial; many
+others were convicted and their sentences suspended or appealed. It has been
+possible to list below only those women who actually served prison sentences
+although more than five hundred women were arrested during the agitation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MINNIE D. ABBOTT, Atlantic City, N. J., officer of the N.W.P. [National
+Woman&rsquo;s Party]. Arrested picketing July 14, 1917, sentenced to 60 days in
+Occoquan workhouse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. PAULINE ADAMS, Norfolk, Va., wife of leading physician, prominent
+clubwoman and Congressional District Chairman of the N.W.P. Arrested picketing
+Sept. 4, 1917. Sentenced to 60 days in Occoquan workhouse. Arrested watchfire
+demonstration Feb. 9, 1919, but released on account of lack of evidence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+EDITH AINGE, Jamestown, N. Y., native of England, came to America when a child,
+and has brought up family of nine brothers and sisters. Worked for state
+suffrage in N. Y. 1915. Served five jail sentences. Sentenced to 60 days in
+Occoquan for picketing Sept., 1917, 15 days in Aug., 1918, Lafayette Sq.
+meeting, and three short terms in District Jail in Jan., 1919, watchfire
+demonstrations.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+HARRIET U. ANDREWS, Kansas City, Mo., came to Washington as war worker.
+Arrested watchfire demonstration and sentenced to 5 days in District Jail Jan.,
+1919.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. ANNIE ARNEIL, Wilmington, Del., did picket duty from beginning in 1917.
+One of first six suffrage prisoners. Served eight jail sentences, 3 days, June,
+1917; 60 days in Occoquan, Aug.&mdash;Sept., 1917, picketing; 15 days, Aug.,
+1918, Lafayette Sq. meeting and five sentences of 5 days each in Jan. and Feb.,
+1919, watchfire demonstrations.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+BERTHE ARNOLD, Colorado Springs, Colo., daughter of prominent physician.
+Educated at Colo. State Univ. Student of music Phila.; member of D.A.R.;
+kindergarten teacher. Arrested Jan., 1919, watchfire demonstration, sentenced
+to 5 days in District Jail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+VIRGINIA ARNOLD, North Carolina, student George Washington and Columbia Univs.,
+school teacher, later organizer and executive secretary N.W.P, in Washington.
+Served 3 days June, 1917, with first pickets sentenced.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. W. D. ASCOUGH, Detroit, Mich. Former Conn. State Chairman, N.W.P. Studied
+for concert stage London and Paris. Abandoned concert stage to devote time to
+suffrage. Sentenced to 15 days Aug., 1918, Lafayette Sq. meeting, and 5 days
+Feb., 1919, in watchfire demonstration. Member &ldquo;Prison Special&rdquo;
+which toured country in Feb., 1919.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. ARMY Scorr BAKER, Washington, D. C., wife of Dr. Robert Baker, and
+descendant long line of army officers. Three sons in service during World War.
+Known as the diplomat of the N.W.P., and as such has interviewed practically
+every man prominent in political life. Member executive committee of N.W.P. and
+has been political chairman since 1918. Arrested picketing and sentenced to 60
+days in Occoquan, Sept., 1917.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. CHARLES W. BARNES, Indianapolis, Ind., officer of Ind. Branch, N.W.P.
+Arrested picketing Nov., 1917, sentenced to 15 days in jail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. NAOMI BARRETT, Wilmington, Del., arrested watchfire demonstration Jan. 13,
+1919. Sentenced to 5 days in District Jail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. W. J. BARTLETT, Putnam, Conn., leader Conn. State Grange. Arrested Aug.,
+1917, picketing, sentenced to 60 days.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. M. TOSCAN BENNETT, Hartford, Conn., wife of lawyer and writer, member
+D.A.R. and Colonial Dames, has been active in state suffrage work for many
+years. Member National Advisory Council, N.W.P. and Conn. state treasurer.
+Arrested Jan., 1919, watchfire demonstration. Sentenced to 5 days in District
+Jail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+HILDA BLUMBERG, New York City, native of Russia, one of youngest prisoners.
+Educated and taught school in this country. Arrested picketing, Sept., 1917;
+sentenced to 30 days in Occoquan; arrested again Nov. 10, sentenced to 15 days.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. KATE BOECKH, Washington, D. C., native of Canada, one of first women
+aeroplane pilots. Arrested picketing Aug., 1917, case appealed. Arrested
+applauding in court Jan., 1919, served 3 days.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. CATHERINE BOYLE, Newcastle, Del., munitions worker during World War.
+Arrested Jan., 1919, watchfire demonstration, sentenced to 5 days in jail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+LUCY G. BRANHAM, Baltimore, Md., organizer N.W.P., graduate Washington College,
+Md.; M. A., Johns Hopkins; graduate student Univ. of Chicago and Ph.D.
+Columbia. Won Carnegie hero medal for rescuing man and woman from drowning at
+St. Petersburg, Fla. Arrested picketing Sept., 1917, sentenced to 60 days in
+Occoquan and District Jail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. LUCY G. BRANHAM, Baltimore, Md., mother of Miss Lucy Branham, widow of Dr.
+John W. Branham who lost his life fighting a yellow fever epidemic in Ga.
+Arrested watchfire demonstration Jan., 1919; sentenced to 3 days in District
+Jail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. JOHN WINTERS BRANNAN, New York City, daughter of the late Charles A. Dana,
+founder and editor N. Y. Sun., trusted counselor of President Lincoln; wife of
+Dr. Brannan. Pres. Board of Trustees Bellevue Hospital; member executive
+committee N.W.P., state chairman New York Branch. Did brilliant state suffrage
+work as officer of Woman&rsquo;s Political Union in N. Y. Arrested picketing
+July 14, 1917, sentenced to 60 days in Occoquan; pardoned by President after
+serving 3 days. Again arrested picketing Nov. 10, 1917, sentenced to 45 days.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+JENNIE BRONENBERG, Philadelphia, Pa. Student Wharton School, Univ. of Pa.
+Arrested Feb., 1919, sentenced to 5 days in District Jail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. MARY E. BROWN, Wilmington, Del., state press chairman, N.W.P. Father
+member First Del. regiment; mother field nurse, Civil War. Descendant Captain
+David Porter, of Battleship Essex, War of 1812. Arrested watchfire
+demonstration Jan. 13, 1919, sentenced to 5 days in District Jail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+LOUISE BRYANT, New York City, formerly of Portland Ore., author, poet and
+journalist, wife of John Reed. Correspondent for Phila. Public Ledger in
+Petrograd for six months during Russian revolution. Arrested Watchfire
+demonstration Feb., 1919, sentenced to 5 days in District Jail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lucy BURNS, New York City, graduate Vassar College, student of Yale Univ. and
+Univ. of Bonn, Germany. High School teacher. Joined English militant suffrage
+movement 1909, where she met Alice Paul, with whom she joined in establishing
+first permanent suffrage headquarters in Washington in Jan., 1913; helped
+organize parade of March 3, 1913; vice chairman and member of executive
+committee Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage [later the N.W.P.], for a time
+editor of The Suffragist. Leader of most of the picket demonstrations and
+served more time in jail than any other suffragist in America. Arrested
+picketing June, 1917, sentenced to 3 days; arrested Sept., 1917, sentenced to
+60 days; arrested Nov. 10, 1917, sentenced to six months; in January, 1919,
+arrested watchfire demonstrations for which she served one 3 day and two 5 day
+sentences. She also served 4 prison terms in England.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. HENRY BUTTERWORTH, New York City, comes of an old Huguenot family. Active
+in civic and suffrage work in N. Y. for past 20 years. Charter member National
+Society of Craftsmen. Arrested picketing Nov., 1917, sentenced to 30 days in
+Occoquan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. LUCILLE A. CALME9, Princeton, Ia. Great-granddaughter of George Fowler,
+founder of New Harmony, Ind. Government worker during World War. Arrested
+watchfire demonstration Jan. 13, 1919, sentenced to 5 days in District Jail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+ELEANOR CALNAN, Methuen, Mass. Congressional district chairman of Mass. Branch
+N.W.P. Arrested picketing July 14, 1917, sentenced to 60 days in Occoquan,
+pardoned by President after 3 days; arrested Sept., 1917, sentenced to 60 days
+in Occoquan. Arrested in Boston, Feb., 1919, for participation in Boston
+demonstration at home coming of President; sentenced to 8 days in Charles St.
+Jail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. AGNES CHASE, Washington, D. C., formerly of Ill.; engaged in scientific
+research work for U. S. Dept. of Agriculture. Arrested Lafayette Sq. meeting
+August, 1918, sentenced to 10 days. Arrested watchfire demonstration Jan.,
+1919, sentenced to 5 days.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. PALYS L. CHEVRIER, New York City, arrested watchfire demonstration Jan.,
+1919, sentenced to 5 days. Member &ldquo;Prison Special&rdquo; which toured
+country in Feb., 1919.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. HELEN CHISASKI, Bridgeport, Conn., munition worker and member of
+Machinists&rsquo; Union. Arrested watchfire demonstration Jan. 13, 1919;
+sentenced to 5 days in jail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. WILLIAM CHISHOLM, Huntington, Pa., now deceased; arrested picketing Sept.
+4, 1917, sentenced to 60 days in Occoquan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+JOSEPHINE COLLINS, Framingham, Mass., owns and manages the village store at
+Framingham Center. She encountered serious opposition from some of her
+customers on account of her militant activities; one of first members N.W.P.;
+arrested in Boston Feb., 1919, for taking part in welcome to the President;
+sentenced to 8 days in Charles St. Jail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. SARAH TARLETON COLVIN, St. Paul, Minn., member famous Tarleton family of
+Alabama, wife of Dr. A. R. Colvin, Major in the Army, and Acting Surgical Chief
+at Fort McHenry during World War; graduate nurse Johns Hopkins training school,
+Red Cross nurse in this country during war; Minnesota state chairman N.W.P.
+Member &ldquo;Prison Special.&rdquo; Arrested watchfire demonstrations Jan.,
+190; sentenced to 2 terms of 5 days each.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+BETTY CONNOLLY, West Newton, Mass., household assistant, arrested in Boston,
+Feb., 1919, demonstration of welcome to President Wilson; sentenced to 8 days
+in Charles St. Jail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. ALICE M. COSU, New Orleans, La., vice chairman La. state branch N.W.P.
+Arrested picketing Nov., 1917, and sentenced to 30 days in Occoquan workhouse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+CORA CRAWFORD, Philadelphia, Pa., business woman. Marched in 1913 suffrage
+parade in Washington. Arrested watchfire demonstration Jan., 1919; sentenced to
+5 days in District Jail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+GERTRUDE CROCKER, Washington, D. C., formerly of Ill., educated at Vassar
+College and Univ. of Chicago. National Treasurer N.W.P. 1916; government
+worker, 1917. Served 3 jail sentences: 30 days for picketing in 1917, 10 days
+for assisting Lafayette Sq. meeting 1918, and 5 days for participating
+watchfire 1919.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+RUTH CROCKER, Washington, D. C., formerly of Ill., sister of Gertrude Crocker.
+Came to Washington for suffrage, later government worker. Served 30 days at
+Occoquan for picketing in 1917 and 3 days in District Jail for watchfire
+demonstration Jan., 1919.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss L. J. C. DANIELS, Grafton, Vt., and Boston. Arrested picketing Nov. 10,
+1917, sentenced to 15 days. Took part in Capitol picketing Nov., 1918; arrested
+watchfire demonstration Jan. 9, 1919, sentenced to 5 days in District Jail.
+Arrested in Boston for participation in welcome demonstration to President,
+sentenced to 8 days in Charles St. Jail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+DOROTHY DAY, New York City, member of the &ldquo;Masses&rdquo; [now the
+&ldquo;Liberator&rdquo;] staff. Arrested picketing Nov. 10, 1917, sentenced to
+30 days in Occoquan workhouse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+EDNA DIXON, Washington, D. C., daughter of physician; teacher in public
+schools. Arrested picketing Aug., 1917, sentenced to SO days in Occoquan
+workhouse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+LAVINIA L. DOCK, Fayetteville, Pa., associated with the founders of American
+Red Cross nursing service; secretary of American Federation of Nurses and
+member of International Council of Nurses. Assisted in relief work during
+Johnstown flood and during Fla. yellow fever epidemic; army nurse during
+Spanish-American War, author of &ldquo;The History of Nursing,&rdquo;
+&ldquo;The Tuberculosis Nurse,&rdquo; and a number of other text books on
+nursing. One of early workers of Henry St. Settlement in N. Y., and founder of
+visiting nurse movement in N. Y. On staff of American Journal of Nursing. One
+of first six pickets to serve prison sentence of 3 days in June, 1917. Later
+that summer she served 25 days in Occoquan; and in Nov. 15 days.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. MARY CARROLL DOWELL, Philadelphia, Pa., wife of William F. Dowell,
+magazine editor and writer with whom she has been associated in business.
+Active club and suffrage worker in Pa. and N. J., state officer Pa. branch
+N.W.P. Arrested watchfire demonstration Jan. 20, 1919, and served 5 days in
+District Jail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MARY DUBROW, Passaic, N. J.; student Univ. of N. Y.; teacher in N. J. until she
+joined suffrage ranks as organizer and speaker. Arrested watchfire
+demonstration Jan. 6, 1919, sentenced to 10 days.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+JULIA EMORY, Baltimore, Md.; daughter of late state senator, D. H. Emory. Gave
+up work for Trade Union League to work for suffrage in 1917. Sentenced to 30
+days in Occoquan for picketing Nov., 1917. After her release became organizer
+N.W.P. Aug., 1918, arrested and sentenced td 10 days Lafayette Sq. meeting.
+Jan. 7, 1919, sentenced to 10 days, and later in that month to 5 days for
+watchfire demonstrations. Led Capitol picket Oct. and Nov., 1919, and suffered
+many injuries at hands of police.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. EDMUND C. EVANs, Ardmore, Pa., one of three Winsor sisters who served
+prison terms for suffrage. Member of prominent Quaker family. Arrested
+watchfire demonstration Jan., 1919, and sentenced to 5 days in District Jail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lucy EWING, Chicago, Ill., daughter of Judge Adlai Ewing, niece of James Ewing,
+minister to Belgium under Cleveland; niece also of Adlai Stevenson,
+Vice-President under Cleveland. Officer Ill. Branch N.W.P. Arrested picketing
+Aug. 17, 1917, sentenced to 30 days in Occoquan workhouse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. ESTELLA EYLWARD, New Orleans, La. Business woman. Came to Washington to
+take part in final watchfire demonstration Feb., 1919; arrested and sentenced
+to 5 days in District Jail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MARY GERTRUDE FENDALL, Baltimore, Md., graduate of Bryn Mawr College;
+campaigned for N.W.P. in West 1916; national treasurer of organization June,
+1917, to December, 1919. Arrested and sentenced to 3 days, Jan., 1819, for
+applauding in court.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+ELLA FINDEISEN, Lawrence, Mass. Arrested picketing Nov. 10, 1917, sentenced to
+30 days at Occoquan.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+KATHARINE FISHER, Washington, D. C., native of Mass. Great- greatgranddaughter
+of Artemas Ward, ranking Major General in Revolutionary War. Teacher, social
+worker and later employee of U. S. War Risk Bureau. Written prose and verse on
+suffrage and feminist topics. Arrested picketing Sept. 13, 1917, sentenced to
+30 days at Occoquan workhouse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. ROSE GRATZ FISHSTEIN, Philadelphia, Pa., native of Russia. Came to America
+at 15. Had been imprisoned for revolutionary activities in Russia and fled to
+this country following release on bail. Operator in shirt factory; later union
+organizer; factory inspector for N. Y. State Factory Commission. Feb. 9, 1919
+arrested watchfire demonstration and sentenced to 5 days in District Jail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+ROSE FISHSTEIN, Philadelphia, Pa., sister-in-law of Mrs. Rose G. Fishstein,
+born in Russia, educated in N. Y. and Phila. Student of Temple Univ., business
+woman. Arrested watchfire demonstration, Feb., 1919, sentenced to 5 days in
+District Jail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+CATHERINE M. FLANAGAN, Hartford, Conn., state and national organizer for
+N.W.P.; formerly secretary for Conn. Woman Suffrage Association. Father came to
+this country as Irish exile because of his efforts in movement for Irish
+freedom. Arrested picketing August, 1917, sentenced to 30 days in Occoquan
+workhouse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MARTHA FOLEY, Dorchester, Mass., active worker in Mass. labor movement.
+Arrested in demonstration at homecoming of President in Boston, Feb., 1919;
+sentenced to 8 days in Charles St. Jail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. T. W. FORBES, Baltimore, Md., officer of Just Government League of Md.;
+arrested watchfire demonstration Feb. 9, 1919, sentenced to 5 days in District
+Jail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+JANET FOTHERINGHAM, Buffalo, N. Y., teacher of physical culture. Arrested
+picketing July 14, 1917, sentenced to 60 days in workhouse, but pardoned by
+President after 3 days.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MARGARET FOTHERINGHAM, Buffalo, N. Y., Red Cross dietician, stationed at
+military hospital at Waynesville, N. C., during war. Later dietician at Walter
+Reid Military Hospital, Washington, D. C. Arrested picketing Aug., 1917,
+sentenced to 60 days.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+FRANCIS FOWLER, Brookline, Mass., sentenced to 8 days in Charles St. Jail for
+participation in demonstration of welcome to President, Boston, Feb., 1919.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. MATILDA HALL GARDNER, Washington, D. C., formerly of Chicago, daughter of
+late Frederick Hall, for many years editor of Chicago Tribune, and wife of
+Gilson Gardner, Washington representative of Scripps papers. Educated Chicago,
+Paris and Brussels. Associated with Alice Paul and Lucy Burns when they came to
+Washington to begin agitation for federal suffrage and member of national
+executive committee of N.W.P. since 1914. Arrested July 14, 1917, sentenced to
+60 days in Occoquan; Jan. 13, 1919, sentenced to 5 days in District Jail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+ANNA GINSBERG, New York City; served 5 days in District jail for watchfire
+demonstration Feb., 1919.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+REBA GOMROROV, Philadelphia, Pa.; born in Kiev, Russia. Educated in U. S.
+public schools; social worker; assistant secretary and visitor for Juvenile Aid
+Society of Phila. President Office Workers&rsquo; Association; secretary of
+Penn. Industrial Section for Suffrage; member N.W.P., Trade Union League.
+Sentenced to 5 days in District Jail Jan., 1919, for watchfire demonstration.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+ALICE GRAM, Portland, Ore., graduate Univ. of Ore., came to Washington to take
+part in picket Nov. 10, 1917. Arrested and sentenced to 30 days in Occoquan
+workhouse. Following release assistant in press dept. N.W.P.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+BETTY GRAM, Portland, Ore., graduate Univ. of Ore. Abandoned stage career to
+take part in picket demonstration of Nov. 10, 1917. Worker in Juvenile courts
+of Portland. Sentenced to 30 days in Occoquan workhouse; later arrested in
+Boston demonstration of Feb., 1919, and sentenced to 8 days in Charles St.
+Jail. Business manager of The Suffragist and national organizer for N.W.P.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+NATALIE GRAT, Col. Springs, Col., daughter of treasurer Col. Branch N. W. P.
+Arrested picketing Aug. 17, 1917, sentenced to 30 days in Occoquan workhouse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. FRANCIS GREEN, New York City, one of second group of women to serve prison
+sentences for suffrage in this country. Served 3 days in District Jail
+following picket demonstration of July 4, 1917.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+GLADYS GREINER, Baltimore, Md., daughter of John E. Greiner , engineering
+expert, member of Stevens Railway Commission to Russia in 1917. Graduate of
+Forest Glen Seminary, Md.; did settlement work in mountain districts of Ky.;
+has held tennis and golf championships of Md., and for 3 years devoted all time
+to suffrage. Arrested picketing July 4, 1917, sentenced to 3 days in District
+Jail; arrested Oct. 20, 1917, sentenced to 30 days in District Jail; arrested
+Lafayette Sq. meeting Aug., 1918, sentenced to 15 days in District Jail.
+Recently taken up work in labor movement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. J. IRVING GROSS. Boston, Mass., charter member of Mass. Branch N.W.P.
+Father and husband both fought in Civil War. Arrested 5 times Lafayette Sq.
+meetings Aug., 1918, and sentenced to 15 days in District Jail. Arrested in
+Boston demonstration on Common following landing of President and sentenced to
+8 days in Charles St. Jail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+ANNA GWINTER, New York City, arrested for picketing Nov. 10, 1917, and
+sentenced to 30 days in Occoquan workhouse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+ELIZABETH HAMILTON, New York City, arrested for picketing Nov. 10, 1917, and
+sentenced to 30 days in Occoquan workhouse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+ERNESTINE HARA, New York City, young Roumanian, arrested for picketing Sept.,
+1917, and sentenced to 30 days in Occoquan workhouse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+REBECCA HARRISON Joplin, Mo., arrested final watchfire demonstration Feb. 10,
+1919; sentenced to 5 days in District Jail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. H. O. HAVEMEYER, New York City; widow of late H. O. Havemeyer; leader of
+suffrage movement for many years; one of its most eloquent speakers, and
+generous contributor to its funds; active in Liberty Loan campaigns, in the
+Land Army movement of N. Y. State, and in working for military rank for nurses.
+As member of &ldquo;Prison Special&rdquo; spoke for suffrage in the large
+cities. Arrested Feb. 10, 1919, for taking part in final watchfire
+demonstration; sentenced to 5 days in District Jail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+KATE HEFFELFINGER, Shamokin, Pa.; art student; sentenced to 6 months in
+District Jail for picketing Oct. 15, 1917; another month later added for
+previous offense. Aug., 1918, sentenced to 15 days for participating in
+Lafayette Sq. meeting; Jan., 1919, sentenced to 5 days for participation in
+watchfire demonstration.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. JESSICA HENDERSON, Boston, Mass., wife of prominent Bostonian, one of
+liberal leaders of Boston; identified with many reform movements. Mother of 6
+children, one of whom, Wilma, aged 18, was arrested with her mother, spent
+night in house of detention, and was released as minor. Sentenced to 8 days in
+Charles St. Jail Feb., 1919, for participation in Boston demonstration of
+welcome to President.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MINNIE HENNESY, Hartford, Conn.; business woman, having supported herself all
+her life; arrested for picketing Oct. 6, 1917, and sentence suspended.
+Rearrested Oct. 8, 1917, and sentenced to 6 months.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+ANNE HERKIMER, Baltimore, Md., Child Labor inspector for U. S. Children&rsquo;s
+Bureau. Arrested Feb., 1919, and sentenced to 5 days in District Jail for
+participating watchfire demonstration.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+ELSIE HILL, Norwalk, Conn.; daughter of late Ebenezer J. Hill, 21 years
+Congressman from Conn.; graduate Vassar College and student abroad. Taught
+French in District of Columbia High School. Lately devoted all her time to
+suffrage. Member of executive committee of Congressional Union 1914-1915;
+President D.C. Branch College Equal Suffrage League, and later national
+organizer for N.W.P. Aug., 1918, sentenced to 15 days in District Jail for
+speaking at Lafayette Sq. meeting. Feb., 1919, sentenced to 8 days in Boston
+for participation in welcome demonstration to President.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. GEORGE HILL, Boston, Mass.; sentenced to 8 days in Boston, Feb., 1919, for
+participation in welcome to President.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. FLORENCE BAYARD HILLES, Newcastle, Del.; daughter of late Thomas Bayard,
+first American ambassador to Great Britain and secretary of state under
+Cleveland. Munitions worker during World War. After the war engaged in
+reconstruction work in France. Chairman Del. Branch N.W.P. and member of
+national executive committee. Arrested picketing July 14, 1917, sentenced to 60
+days in Occoquan workhouse; pardoned by President after 3 days.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. J. A. H. HOPKINS (ALLISON TURNBULL), Morristown, N. J., state chairman
+N.W.P., member executive committee N.W.P. 1917, and president and officer of
+various women&rsquo;s clubs. Her husband was leader Progressive Party and later
+supported President Wilson, serving on Democratic National Campaign Committee
+in 1916. At present Chairman Committee of 48. Mrs. Hopkins arrested July 14,
+1917, for picketing, sentenced to 60 days in workhouse; pardoned by President
+after 3 days.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. L. H. HORNBBY, New York City, formerly of Ill., one of first women
+aviators in this country. Arrested for picketing Nov. 10, 1917; sentenced to 30
+days in District Jail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+ELIZABETH HOFF, Des Moines, Ia.; came to Washington to work for war department
+during war; later with Red Cross. Sentenced to 5 days in jail, Jan., 1919, for
+watchfire demonstration.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+EUNICE HUFF, Des Moines, Ia.; sister of Elizabeth; also engaged in war work in
+Washington. Sentenced to 3 days in jail Jan., 1919, for applauding suffrage
+prisoners in court.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+HAZEL HUNSINs, Billings, Mont.; graduate Vassar College; later instructor in
+Chemistry, Univ. of Mo. Joined suffrage movement as organizer for N.W.P. Later
+investigator for War Labor Board. Active in all picketing campaigns. Aug. 1918,
+sentenced to 15 days for participation in Lafayette Sq. meeting.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+JULIA HURLBUT, Morristown, N. J., vice chairman N. J. Branch N.W.P. In 1916
+assisted in Washington state campaign. Arrested picketing July 14, 1917,
+sentenced to 60 days in Occoquan workhouse; pardoned by President after 3 days.
+Engaged in war work in France during war.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MARY INGRAM, Philadelphia, Pa.; graduate Bryn Mawr College; Pa. chairman of
+N.W.P.; secretary of National Progressive League 1912. Has held offices of vice
+president of Pa. Women&rsquo;s Trade Union League, director of Bureau of
+Municipal Research of Phila-, member of board of corporators of Woman&rsquo;s
+Medical College of Pa., where she was former student. For several years manager
+woman&rsquo;s department of Bonbright and Co., investment brokers. Arrested for
+picketing July 14, 1917; sentenced to 60 days in Occoquan, pardoned by
+President after 3 days.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. MARK JACKSON, Baltimore, Md., arrested picketing Aug., 1917, sentenced to
+30 days.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+PAULA JAKOBI, New York City; playwright, author of &ldquo;Chinese Lily.&rdquo;
+Once matron of Framingham reformatory for purpose of studying prison
+conditions. Arrested picketing Nov. 10, 1917, and sentenced to 30 days in
+Occoquan workhouse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MAUD JAMISON, Norfolk, Va.; came to Washington in 1916 as volunteer worker of
+N.W.P. Later became assistant in treasurer&rsquo;s department. Had been school
+teacher and business woman before joining N.W.P. Took active part in picketing
+from the beginning; one of first group arrested, June, 1917; served 3 days in
+District Jail; later served 30 days in District Jail; Oct., 1917, sentenced to
+7 months. Released by Government after 44 days. Jan., 1919, served 5 days in
+jail for participation in watchfire demonstration.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. PEGGY BAIRD JOHNS; New York City, formerly of St. Louis, newspaper woman
+and magazine writer. Sentenced to 30 days in Occoquan workhouse Aug., 1917; and
+30 days in Nov., 1917, for picketing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+WILLIE GRACE JOHNSON, Shreveport, La., state officer, N.W.P. and prominent in
+civic work. Successful business woman. Arrested in final watchfire
+demonstration Feb., 1919. Sentenced to 5 days in District Jail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+AMY JUENGLING, Buffalo, N. Y.; of Swiss and German ancestry. Graduated with
+honors from Univ. of N. Y. Has lived in Porto Rico and North Carolina, in
+latter state doing educational work among mountaineers. At present engaged in
+Americanization work. Nov., 1917, sentenced to 30 days in Occoquan workhouse
+for picketing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+ELIZABETH GREEN KALB, Houston, Texas; graduate Rice Institute, 1916; student
+Univ. Chicago, 1916. Won Carnegie Peace Prize in Texas state intercollegiate
+oratory contest in 1915. In 1918 became active worker for N.W.P., taking part
+in Capitol picket. Arrested watchfire demonstration Jan., 1919, sentenced to 5
+days in District Jail. In charge of literature and library dept. of N.W.P. at
+national headquarters.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+RHODA KELLOGG, Minneapolis, Minn.; graduate Univ. of Minn. and Pres. of Univ.
+Equal Suffrage Club. Sentenced to ~?4 hours for applauding suffrage prisoners
+in Court Jan., 1919, sentenced to 5 days in District Jail for participation in
+watchfire demonstration same month.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. FREDERICK W. KENDALL, Hamburg, N. Y.; wife of one of editors of Buffalo
+Express; writer, public speaker and club leader. Arrested for picketing, Aug.,
+1917, and sentenced to 30 days in Occoquan workhouse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MARIE ERNST KENNEDY, Philadelphia, Pa.; formerly state chairman N.W.P. Arrested
+Feb., 1919, in watchfire demonstration, sentenced to 5 days in jail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. MARGARET WOOD KESSLER, Denver, Col.; vice president Woman&rsquo;s
+Progressive Club of Col. Sept., 1917, sentenced to 30 days in Occoquan for
+picketing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+ALICE KIMBALL, New York City. Has been engaged in Y.W.C.A. work, and as
+librarian in N. Y. Public Library, and later as labor investigator. Sentenced
+to 15 days in District Jail for taking part in Lafayette Sq. meeting Aug. 10,
+1918.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. BEATRICE KINKEAD, Montclair, N. J., active member of N.W.P. in N. J.
+Joined picket of July 14, 1917. Sentenced to 60 days in Occoquan, but pardoned
+by President after 3 days.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. RQBY E. KOENIG, Hartford, Conn. Took part in Lafayette Sq. meeting of
+Aug., 1918, and suffered sprained arm from rough treatment by police. Arrested
+and sentenced to 15 days in District Jail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+HATTIE KRUGER, Buffalo, N. Y. Trained nurse; ran for Congress on Socialist
+ticket in 1918. Worker in Lighthouse Settlement, Philadelphia, and for time
+probation officer of Juvenile Court of Buffalo. Nov. 10, 1917, sentenced to 30
+days in Occoquan workhouse for picketing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+DR. ANNA KUHN, Baltimore, Md., physician. Arrested picketing Nov. 10, 1917,
+sentenced to 30 days.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. LAWRENCE LEWIS, Philadelphia, Pa., maternal ancestor of family which took
+possession 1660 land grant in Conn. from King, paternal ancestor Michael
+Hillegas who came Phila. 1727, a founder of Phila. Academy Fine Arts, Assembly,
+etc. Son of Hillegas was first U. S. treasurer; sister of Dr. Howard A. Kelly,
+well-known surgeon, formerly professor Johns Hopkins Hospital, author of many
+medical books; sister of Mrs. R. R. P. Bradford, founder and Pres. of
+Lighthouse Settlement, Phila.; member executive committee of N.W.P. since 1913;
+chairman of finance 1918; national treasurer, 1919; chairman ratification
+committee 1920; active in state suffrage work many years; served 3 days in jail
+for picketing July, 1917; arrested Nov. 10, 1917, sentenced to 60 days;
+arrested Lafayette Sq. meeting, Aug., 1918, sentenced to 15 days; arrested
+watchfire demonstration Jan., 1919, sentenced to 5 days in jail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+KATHARINE LINCOLN, New York City, formerly of Philadelphia. Was working for
+Traveler&rsquo;s Aid when she came to picket Nov. 10, 1917. Sentenced to 30
+days in Occoquan workhouse. Worked for N.W.P. for several months; later
+campaigned for Anne Martin, candidate for U. S. Senate from Nev.&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+DR. SARAH H. LOCKREY, Philadelphia, Pa.; graduate Woman&rsquo;s Medical College
+of Pa. Served as interne Woman&rsquo;s Hospital in Phila., and later head of
+gynecological clinic of same hospital. Surgeon on West Phila. Hospital for
+Women and Children. Received degree of Fellow of American College of Surgery
+1914. Chairman of her Congressional District for the N.W.P. Aug., 1918,
+sentenced to 15 days in District Jail for taking part in Lafayette Sq. meeting.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+ELIZABETH MCSHANE, Philadelphia, Pa., graduate Vassar College; principal of
+school near Indianapolis, later business woman. Assisted in Pa. health survey,
+working with the American Medical Association. Aug., 1918, sentenced to 15 days
+in jail for participation in Lafayette Sq. meeting. Jan., 1919, served 5 days
+for participating in watchfire demonstration. Member of &ldquo;Prison
+Special&rdquo; 1919.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. ANNIE J. MAGEE, Wilmington, Del., one of first Del. supporters of N.W.P.
+Took part in many pickets. Arrested watchfire demonstration Jan., 1919, and
+sentenced to 5 days in District Jail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. EFFIE B. MAIN, Topeka, Kan., arrested for taking part in Lafayette Sq.
+meeting Aug. 10, 1918; sentenced to 10 days in District Jail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MAUD MALONE, New York City, librarian in N. Y. Lifelong suffragist; arrested
+for picketing, Sept. 4, 1917, and served sentence of 60 days at Occoquan
+workhouse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+ANNE MARTIN, Reno, Nev.; graduate Leland Stanford Univ.; studied in English
+Univs. Professor of history in Univ. of Nev. As Pres. of Nev. Woman&rsquo;s
+Civic League led successful fight for state suffrage in 1914. Served as
+legislative chairman for Congressional Union, and N.W.P. and member of
+executive committee. When N.W.P. was formed, in 1916, elected its chairman.
+When it combined with Congressional Union, she became vice chairman. In 1918
+ran on independent ticket for U. S. Senate. July 14, 1917, sentenced to 60 days
+at Occoquan workhouse for picketing. Pardoned by President after 3 days.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. LOUISE PARKER MAYO, Framingham, Mass., of Quaker descent. Taught school
+for five years before marriage to William 1. Mayo, grandson of Chief Justice
+Isaac Parker of Mass. Mother of 7 children. Arrested for picketing July 14,
+1917; sentenced to 60 days in Occoquan workhouse; pardoned by President after 3
+days.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+NELL MERCER, Norfolk, Va.; member of Norfolk Branch, N.W.P. Business woman.
+Feb., 1919, sentenced to 5 days in District Jail for participation in final
+watchfire demonstration.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+VIDA MILHOLLAND, New York City; daughter of Mr. and Mrs. John E. Milholland and
+sister of Inez Milholland Boissevain. Student at Vassar where won athletic
+championships and dramatic honors. Studied singing here and abroad, but on
+death of sister gave up career of promise to devote herself to suffrage work.
+July 4, 1917 arrested and served 3 days in District Jail for picketing. In 1919
+toured the country with &ldquo;Prison Special,&rdquo; singing at all meetings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. BERTHA MOLLER, Minneapolis, Minn., campaigned for state suffrage before
+joining N.W.P. Interested in industrial problems. Of Swedish descent, one of
+ancestors served on staff of Gustavus- Adolphus, and 2 uncles are now members
+of Swedish parliament. She served 2 ,jail sentences, one of 24 hours for
+applauding suffragists in court, and another of 5 days for participation in
+watchfire demonstration, Jan., 1919.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MARTHA W. MOORE, Philadelphia, Pa., of Quaker ancestry, student at Swarthmore
+College; charter member of Congressional Union; has devoted herself to social
+service work, Children&rsquo;s Aid, Traveler&rsquo;s Aid, etc. Arrested and
+sentenced to 5 days in District Jail Jan., 1919, for participation in watchfire
+demonstration.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. AGNES H. MOREY, Brookline, Mass., comes of line of Colonial ancestors who
+lived in Concord. Following picket of Nov. 10, 1917, sentenced to 30 days at
+District Jail and Occoquan. Chairman of Mass. Branch N.W.P., of which she was
+one of founders, and member of National Advisory Council N.W.P. Member of
+&ldquo;Suffrage Special&rdquo; of 1916, and a gifted speaker and organizer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+KATHARINE A. MOREY, Brookline, Mass., daughter of Mrs. A. H. Morey; also
+officer State Branch N.W.P. Organizer election campaign 1916 in Kansas and has
+many times assisted at national headquarters. One of first group pickets
+sentenced, served 3 days, June, 1917; Feb., 1919, arrested in Boston
+demonstration of welcome to President and sentenced to 8 days in Charles St.
+Jail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MILDRED MORRIS, Denver, Col., well-known newspaper woman of Denver. Came to
+Washington for Bureau of Public Information during war. Later investigator for
+War Labor Board. Now Washington correspondent International News Service. In
+Jan., 1919, served 5 day sentence in District Jail for lighting watchfire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. PHOEBE C. MUNNECKE, Detroit, Mich.; assisted with meetings and
+demonstrations in Washington winter of 1918-19. Jan., 1919, arrested for
+lighting watchfire, sentenced to 10 days in jail. Later sentenced to 3 days in
+jail for applauding suffrage prisoners in court.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+GERTRUDE MURPHY, Minneapolis, Minn., superintendent of music in Minn. public
+schools. Jan.; 1919, served 24-hour sentence for applauding suffragists in
+court. Later served 5 days in District Jail for participation in watchfire
+demonstration.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. MARY A. NOLAN, Jacksonville, Fla., born in Va.; descended from family of
+Duffy, Cavan, Ireland. Educated at convent of Mont CIO Chantal in W. Va. As
+young woman was teacher and leader in Southern library movement. Suffrage
+pioneer; prominent in Confederate organizations of South. In 1917 joined
+N.W.P., came to Washington to picket. Arrested Nov. 10, 1917, sentenced to 6
+days in District Jail, but sent to Occoquan workhouse. January, 1919, arrested
+many times in watchfire demonstrations; sentenced to 24 hours in jail. Oldest
+suffrage prisoner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. MARGARET OAKES, Idaho; arrested Lafayette Sq. meeting Aug., 1918, and
+sentenced to 10 days in District Jail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+ALICE PAUL, Moorestown, N. J. English Quaker ancestor imprisoned for Quaker
+beliefs died in English prison; born of Quaker parentage and brought up in this
+small Quaker town. Received her A.B. degree from Swarthmore College, and her
+M.A. and Ph.D. from Univ. of Pa. Graduate of N. Y. School of Philanthropy, and
+studied at Universities of London and Birmingham, specializing in economics and
+sociology. While in England took part in militant campaign under Mrs.
+Pankhurst. On return to America, she was appointed chairman in 1913 of the
+Congressional Committee of the National American Woman Suffrage Association.
+Founded Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage; made chairman. When this became
+an independent organization reappointed chairman. When it merged with the
+N.W.P. in 1917, she was chosen chairman of the combined organizations, and has
+continued in this office to the present date. Has served 6 prison terms for
+suffrage, 3 in England and 3 in United States. In Oct., 1919, she was sentenced
+to 7 months for picketing and served 5 weeks before released on account of
+hunger strike. While in jail suffered the severest treatment inflicted upon any
+suffrage prisoner. In Aug., 1918, sentenced to 10 days for participation in
+Lafayette Sq. meeting. In Jan., 1919, sentenced to 5 days for lighting a
+watchfire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+BERRY POTTIER, Boston, Mass., of French descent; art student; participated in
+Boston demonstration at home-coming of President, and sentenced to 8 days in
+Charles St. Jail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+EDNA M. PURTELLE, Hartford, Conn., sentenced to 5 days in District Jail for
+participation in Lafayette Sq. meeting Aug., 1918.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. R. B. QUAY, Salt Lake City, Utah; arrested in Nov. 10, 1917, picket;
+sentenced to 30 days in District Jail, but sent to Occoquan workhouse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. BETSY REYNEAU, Detroit, Mich., wife of Paul Reyneau; portrait painter.
+Arrested picketing July 14, 1917. Sentenced to 60 days in Occoquan, but
+pardoned by the President after 3 days.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. C. T. ROBERTSON, Salt Lake City, Utah; active worker for reforms affecting
+women. Arrested in Nov. 10, 1917, picket; sentenced to 30 days in District
+Jail, but sent to Occoquan workhouse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. GEORGE E. ROEWER, Belmont, Mass., graduate of Radcliffe, active suffragist
+since college days; wife of well known attorney of Boston and granddaughter of
+prominent figures in German Revolution of 1848 who were exiled to the United
+States. Sentenced to 8 days in Boston Charles St. Jail following participation
+in welcome demonstration to the President, Feb. 1919.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. JOHN ROGERS, JR., New York City, wife of Dr. John Rogers, Jr., celebrated
+thyroid expert, is a descendant of Roger Sherman, signer of the Declaration of
+Independence. A pioneer worker for state suffrage before taking up national
+work. Before entering suffrage movement active in improving conditions in New
+York public schools. Chairman Advisory Council of the N.W.P., and one of the
+most forceful speakers in the suffrage ranks. In 1916 and 1919 as member of
+&ldquo;Suffrage Special&rdquo; and &ldquo;Prison Special&rdquo; toured the
+country speaking for suffrage. July 14, 1917, sentenced to 60 days in Occoquan
+workhouse for picketing, but was pardoned by the President after 3 days.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MARGUERITE ROSSETTE, Baltimore, Md., young artist, and niece of Dr. Joshua
+Rossette, well known social worker. Took part in N.W.P. demonstrations, served
+5 days in District Jail for participation in final watchfire demonstration,
+Feb., 1919.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. ELISE T. RUSSIAN, Detroit, Mich., born in Constantinople of Armenian
+parentage. Educated in this country. Taught school in Mass. until marriage.
+State officer N.W.P. Sentenced to 5 days in District Jail for participation in
+Jan., 1919, watchfire demonstration; and 8 days in Boston in the Charles St.
+Jail for participation in welcome demonstration to President in Feb., 1919.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+NINA SAMARODIN, born in Kiev, Russia, graduate of Kiev University. In 1914 came
+to America on visit, but entered industrial fight, becoming, first, worker and
+then union organizer. Teacher Rand School of Social Science, New York.
+Sentenced to 30 days in Occoquan for picketing September, 1917.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. PHOEBE PERSONS SCOTT, Morristown, New Jersey, graduate of Smith College
+where she specialized in biology and botany. Did settlement work at New York
+Henry St. Settlement. Worked for state suffrage before joining N.W.P. and
+becoming one of its officers. Sentenced to 30 days in District Jail for
+picketing Nov. 10, 1917, but sent to Occoquan workhouse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+RUTH SCOTT, Bridgeport, Conn., munitions worker. Sentenced to 5 days in
+District Jail for participation in watchfire demonstration Jan., 1919.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+BELLE SHEINBERG, New York City; of Russian descent; student of New York Univ.,
+who left her studies to picket in Washington Nov. 10, 1917. Sentenced to 30
+days in Occoquan workhouse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. LUCILLE SHIELDS, Amarillo, Texas. Picketed regularly during 1917. July 4,
+1917, served 3 days in District Jail for picketing; served 5 days Jan. 13,
+1919, for participation in watchfire demonstration. Soon after release
+sentenced to 3 days for applauding suffrage prisoners in Court.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. MARTHA REED SHOEMAKER, Philadelphia, Pa., graduate of Vassar College.
+Served 5 days in District Jail for participation in final watchfire
+demonstration of Feb. 9, 1919.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. MARY SHORT, Minneapolis, Minn., state officer N.W.P. Sentenced to 30 days
+in Occoquan workhouse for picketing November 10, 1917.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. LOIS WARREN SHAW, Manchester, N. H., student of Vassar and Radcliffe,
+mother of six children. Wife of V. P. and General Manager McElwain Shoe Co., N.
+H., chairman N.W.P. Sentenced to 8 days in Charles St. Jail after participation
+in Boston demonstration to welcome President Feb., 1919.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+RUTH SMALL, Boston, Mass., participant in several state suffrage campaigns
+before taking up national work. In charge of Boston headquarters of N.W.P. for
+a time. For taking part in Boston demonstration on the return of the President
+in Feb., 1919, sentenced to 8 days in Charles St. Jail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+DR. CAROLINE E. SPENCER, Colorado Springs, Col., formerly of Philadelphia.
+Secretary Col. Branch, N.W.P. Graduate Woman&rsquo;s Medical College of Pa.
+October 20, 1917, arrested for picketing and sentenced to 7 months&rsquo;
+impl1sonment. For participating in watchfire demonstration Jan. 13, 1919,
+sentenced to 5 days in District Jail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. KATE STAFFORD, Oklahoma City, Okla., active worker for reforms affecting
+women and children in her own state. Mother of six children. Picketed Nov. 10,
+1917, and was sentenced to 30 days in District Jail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+DORIS STEVENS, Omaha, Neb., now resident New York City. Graduate of Oberlin
+College; social worker and teacher; organized and spoke for state suffrage
+campaigns in Ohio and Michigan; ,joined Congressional Union in 1913. Organized
+first Convention of women voters at Panama Pacific Exposition in 1915; managed
+1916 election campaign in Cal. for N.W.P. Has acted successively as executive
+secretary, organizer, legislative chairman, political chairman, and executive
+committee member of N.W.P. Arrested for picketing July 14, 1917; sentenced to
+60 days in Occoquan workhouse; pardoned by President after 3 days. Arrested N.
+Y. Mar., 1919, picket demonstration Metropolitan Opera House, but not
+sentenced.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+ELIZABETH STUYVESANT, New York City, formerly of Cincinnati; dancer by
+profession; active in settlement work and in campaign for birth-control. July
+4, 1917, arrested for picketing and sentenced to 3 days in District Jail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+ELSIE UNTERMAN, Chicago, Ill., social worker who took week&rsquo;s vacation in
+January, 1919, to come to Washington to picket. She served 3 days in District
+Jail for applauding suffragists in court.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MABEL VERNON, Wilmington, Del., Secretary N.W.P., graduate Swarthmore College.
+Fellow student with Alice Paul. Gave up position as high school teacher when
+Congressional Union was founded to become organizer and speaker. With
+remarkable gifts as a speaker, has addressed large meetings in every part of
+the country. As brilliant organizer has had charge of many important
+organization tasks of N.W.P. Organized the transcontinental trip of voting
+envoys to the President. Campaigned in Nev. 1914 and 1916. Became national
+organization chairman N.W.P. Organized the Washington picket line for several
+months. One of the first six women to serve prison sentence for suffrage in
+District Jail. For picketing June, 1917, served 3 days.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. ELSIE VERVANE, Bridgeport, Conn., munitions worker and President of
+Woman&rsquo;s Machinist Union of Bridgeport. In Jan., 1919, came to Washington
+with group of union women and took part in watchfire demonstration; arrested
+and served 5 days in District Jail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+IRIS CALDERHEAD [now wife of John Brisben Walker], Marysville, Kansas, now
+resident of Denver, Colo., daughter of former- Representative Calderhead of
+Kansas. Graduate of Univ. of Kansas and student at Bryn Mawr. Abandoned school
+teaching to work for suffrage; became organizer and speaker for N.W.P. July 4,
+1917, arrested for picketing and served 3 days in District Jail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. ROBERT WALKER, Baltimore, Md., officer Md. Branch N.W.P. A Quaker and
+graduate of Swarthmore College; wife of a captain in the late war and mother of
+3 children. Arrested July 14, 1917, for picketing and sentenced to 60 days in
+Occoquan workhouse. Pardoned by President after 3 days.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+BERTHA WALLERSTEIN, New York City, student of Barnard College; served 5 days in
+District Jail Jan., 1919, for watchfire demonstration.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. BERTHA WALMSLEY, Kansas City, Mo., holding government position at time
+arrested for applauding suffragists in court; served 3 days in District Jail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. WILLIAM UPTON WATSON, Chicago, Ill., treasurer state branch, N.W.P.
+Sentenced to 30 days Occoquan workhouse for picketing Aug. 17, 1917. Aug.,
+1918, sentenced to 5 days for participation in Lafayette Sq. meeting.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. C. WEAVER, Bridgeport, Conn., worked during war in munitions factory. Came
+to Washington for watchfire demonstration of Jan. 13, 1919; arrested and
+sentenced to 5 days in District Jail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+EVA WEAVER, Bridgeport, Conn., daughter of Mrs. C. Weaver, also worked in
+munitions factory; arrested with mother Jan. 13, 1919, and served 5 days in
+District Jail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. HELENA HILL WEED, Norwalk, Conn., graduate of Vassar and Montana School of
+Mines. One of few qualified women geologists of country. Daughter of late
+Congressman Ebenezer Hill. At one time vice-president general of D.A.R.
+Prominent member of Congressional Union and N.W.P. from early days. One of
+first pickets arrested, July 4, 1917; served 3 days in District Jail. Aug.,
+1918, arrested for participation in Lafayette Sq. meeting; sentenced to 15
+days. Jan., 1918, sentenced to 24 hours for applauding in court.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+CORA A. WEEK, New York City, of Norse descent; parents Wisconsin pioneers;
+studied art in Boston; became member Art Student&rsquo;s League of New York;
+helped organize Oliver Merson Atelier in Paris; exhibited Paris Salon. Arrested
+for picketing Nov. 10, 1917; sentenced to 30 days in District Jail. Member of
+&ldquo;Prison Special&rdquo; 1919.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+CAMILLA WHITCOMB, Worcester, Mass., chairman 4th Congressional District Mass.
+N.W.P. Nov. 10, 1917, sentenced to 30 days in jail for picketing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+SUE WHITE, Jackson, Tenn., state chairman N.W.P.; recently edited The
+Suffragist; organizer and research chairman. Belongs to prominent pioneer
+families of Tenn. and Ky. and is descendant of Marshall and Jefferson families
+of Va. Court and convention reporter for ten years; 1918 appointed by Governor
+Secretary of Tenn. State Commission for the Blind. Identified with U.D.C. and
+D.A.R., the Federation of Women&rsquo;s Clubs and Parent Teachers&rsquo;
+Association. Has done much to organize suffrage sentiment in her state. Feb. 9,
+1919, arrested and served 5 days in District Jail for participating in final
+watchfire demonstration.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MARGARET FAY WHITTEMORE, Detroit, Mich. Her grandmother, a Quaker, started
+suffrage work in Michigan. Daughter of one of leading patent attorneys of
+country. N.W.P. organizer since 1914. Imprisoned 3 days for picketing July 4,
+1917. Jan., 1919, served 24 hours in jail for applauding in court.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. HARVEY W. WILEY, Washington, D. C., daughter of General Kelton, and wife
+of Dr. Harvey Wiley, food expert and ex-director of the pure food department of
+U. S. Government. Member of national advisory council of N.W.P. Has done
+lobbying, political work and picketing for N.W.P. Nov. 10, 1917, sentenced to
+15 days in District Jail; appealed her case; later sustained by higher court.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ross WINSLOW, New York City, born in Poland and brought to this country when
+child. Began work at age of 11 in Philadelphia; for many years worked in
+hosiery factory in Pittsburg; later employed in shop in Philadelphia. Recently
+has won success as an actress. Has brilliant gifts; 1916 spoke throughout West
+in suffrage campaign of N.W.P. Oct. 15, 1917, sentenced to 7 months in District
+Jail for picketing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MARY WINSOR, Haverford, Pa.; comes of family of pioneer Quaker descent.
+Educated at Drexel Institute of Philadelphia, at Bryn Mawr and abroad. At
+request of American Academy of Political and Social Science made survey of
+English suffrage movement. Founder and Pres. of Pa. Limited Suffrage Society.
+Sept., 1917, sentenced to 60 days at Occoquan workhouse for picketing. Later
+sentenced to 10 days for participation in Lafayette Sq. meeting. Has worked and
+spoken for suffrage in many parts of the country. Member &ldquo;Prison
+Special&rdquo; Feb., 1919.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+ELLEN WINSOR, Haverford, Pa., sister of Mary Winsor and of Mrs. Edmund C.
+Evans, both of whom served prison sentences. Jan., 1919, sentenced to 5 days in
+District Jail for participation in watchfire demonstration.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MRS. KATE WINSTON, Chevy Chase, Md., wife of Prof. A. P. Winston, formerly
+Professor of economics at Univ. of Col. and at Univ. of Tokio. Jan., 1919,
+arrested and sentenced to 5 days in District Jail for participation in
+watchfire demonstration.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+CLARA WOLD, Portland, Ore., newspaper writer. Of Norwegian parentage; her
+family closely related to Henrik Ibsen. Graduate of Univ. of Ore. Took part in
+Lafayette Sq. meeting of Aug., 1918; sentenced to 15 days. Jan., 1919, arrested
+for participation in watchfire demonstration and sentenced to 5 days. For
+several months acted as editor of The Suffragist.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+JOY YOUNG, New York City, formerly of Washington, D. C., wife of Merrill
+Rogers. Former assistant on The Suffragist and later organizer for N.W.P. in
+various parts of the country. Served 3 days in District Jail for picketing July
+4, 1917.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+MATILDA YOUNG, Washington, D. C., sister of Joy Young; has devoted all her time
+to suffrage for several years. Youngest picket arrested, being 19 years old
+when she first served a prison term. For picketing Nov. 10, 1917, sentenced to
+15 days in District Jail; served two terms in jail in Jan., 1919; 5 days for
+watchfire demonstration; 3 days for applauding suffrage prisoners in court.
+</p>
+
+<h3>APPENDIX 5</h3>
+
+<p>
+Directors of National Campaign
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Executive Committees Listed by Years
+</p>
+
+<h5>CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEE</h5>
+
+<h5>EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE 1913</h5>
+
+<p>
+Miss Alice Paul, N. J., Chairman<br/>
+Miss Lucy Burns, N. Y., Vice-chairman<br/>
+Mrs. Mary R. Beard, N. Y.<br/>
+Miss Crystal Eastman, N. Y.<br/>
+Mrs. Lawrence Lewis, Pa.
+</p>
+
+<h5>CONGRESSIONAL UNION FOR WOMAN SUFFRAGE</h5>
+
+<h5>EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE 1914</h5>
+
+<p>
+Miss Alice Paul, N. J., Chairman<br/>
+Miss Lucy Burns, N. Y., Vice-chairman<br/>
+Mrs. Mary R. Beard, N. Y.<br/>
+Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont, N. Y.<br/>
+Miss Crystal Eastman, N. Y.<br/>
+Mrs. Gilson Gardner, D. C.<br/>
+Miss Elsie Hill, Conn.<br/>
+Mrs. William Kent, Cal.<br/>
+Mrs. Lawrence Lewis, Pa.
+</p>
+
+<h5>EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE 1916</h5>
+
+<p>
+Miss Alice Paul, N. J., Chairman<br/>
+Miss Lucy Burns, N. Y., Vice-chairman<br/>
+Mrs. Mary R. Beard, N. Y.<br/>
+Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont, N. Y.<br/>
+Miss Crystal Eastman, N. Y.<br/>
+Mrs. Gilson Gardner, D. C.<br/>
+Miss Elsie Hill, Conn.<br/>
+Mrs. Donald R. Hooker, Md.<br/>
+Mrs. William Kent, Cal.<br/>
+Mrs. Lawrence Lewis, Pa.
+</p>
+
+<h5>EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE 1916</h5>
+
+<p>
+Miss Alice Paul, N. J., Chairman<br/>
+Miss Lucy Burns, N. Y., Vice-chairman<br/>
+Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont, N. Y.<br/>
+Mrs. John Winters Brannan, N. Y.<br/>
+Mrs. Gilson Gardner, D. C.<br/>
+Mrs. Donald R. Hooker, Md.<br/>
+Mrs. William Kent, Cal.<br/>
+Mrs. Lawrence Lewis, Pa.<br/>
+Miss Anne Martin, Nevada<br/>
+Mrs. Harriot Stanton Blatch, N. Y.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+WOMAN&rsquo;S PARTY (Formed June, 1916)
+</p>
+
+<h5>EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE</h5>
+
+<p>
+Miss Anne Martin, Nev., Chairman<br/>
+Mrs. Phoebe Hearst, Cal., 1st Vice-chairman<br/>
+Judge Mary M. Bartelme, Ill., 2nd Vice-chairman<br/>
+Miss Mabel Vernon, Nev., Secretary<br/>
+Miss Alice Paul, N. J., ex-officio
+</p>
+
+<h5>NATIONAL WOMAN&rsquo;S PARTY</h5>
+
+<p>
+(After Amalgamation of Congressional Union and Woman&rsquo;s Party)
+</p>
+
+<h5>EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE 1917</h5>
+
+<p>
+Miss Alice Paul, N. J., Chairman<br/>
+Miss Anne Martin, Nev., Vice-chairman<br/>
+Miss Mabel Vernon, Del., Secretary<br/>
+Miss Gertrude L. Crocker, Ill., Treasurer<br/>
+Mrs. Abby Scott Baker, D. C.<br/>
+Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont, N. Y.<br/>
+Mrs. John Winters Brannan, N. Y.<br/>
+Miss Lucy Burns, N. Y.<br/>
+Mrs. Gilson Gardner, D. C.<br/>
+Mrs. Florence Bayard Hilles, Del.<br/>
+Mrs. Donald R. Hooker, Md.<br/>
+Mrs. J. A. H. Hopkins, N. J.<br/>
+Mrs. William Kent, Cal.<br/>
+Mrs. Lawrence Lewis, Pa.<br/>
+Miss Doris Stevens, N. Y.<br/>
+Miss Maud Younger, Cal.
+</p>
+
+<h5>EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE 1915</h5>
+
+<p>
+Miss Alice Paul, N. J., Chairman<br/>
+Miss Anne Martin, Nev., Vice-chairman<br/>
+Miss Mabel Vernon, Del., Secretary<br/>
+Miss Mary Gertrude Fendall, Md., Treasurer<br/>
+Mrs. Abby Scott Baker, D. C.<br/>
+Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont, N. Y.<br/>
+Mrs. John Winters Brannan, N. Y.<br/>
+Miss Lucy Burns, N. Y.<br/>
+Mrs. Gilson Gardner, D.C.<br/>
+Mrs. Thomas N. Hepburn, Conn.<br/>
+Mrs. Florence Bayard Hilles, Del.<br/>
+Mrs. Donald R. Hooker, Md.<br/>
+Mrs. Lawrence Lewis, Pa.<br/>
+Miss Doris Stevens, N. Y.<br/>
+Miss Maud Younger, Cal.
+</p>
+
+<h5>EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE 1919-1990</h5>
+
+<p>
+Miss Alice Paul, N. J., Chairman<br/>
+Miss Mabel Vernon, Del., Secretary<br/>
+Miss Mary Gertrude Fendall, Md., Treasurer<br/>
+Mrs. Abby Scott Baker, D.C.<br/>
+Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont, N.Y.<br/>
+Mrs. John Winters Brannan, N.Y.<br/>
+Miss Lucy Burns, N. Y.<br/>
+Mrs. Gilson Gardner, D. C.<br/>
+Mrs. Thomas N. Hepburn, Conn.<br/>
+Mrs. Florence Bayard Hilles, Del.<br/>
+Mrs. Donald R. Hooker, Md.<br/>
+Mrs. Henry G. Leach, N. Y.<br/>
+Mrs. Lawrence Lewis, Pa.<br/>
+Miss Doris Stevens. N. Y.<br/>
+Mrs. Richard Wainwright, D. C.<br/>
+Miss Maud Younger, Cal.
+</p>
+
+<h3>APPENDIX 6</h3>
+
+<p>
+Concerning Political Prisoners
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Definitions
+</p>
+
+<p>
+James Bryce:[1]
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[1] James Bryce made this distinction in 1889 between the two kinds of
+offenders. Letter Introductory to &ldquo;Political Prisoners at Home and
+Abroad,&rdquo; Sigerson.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Perhaps we may say that whenever the moral judgment of the community at
+large does not brand an offence as sordid and degrading, and does not feel the
+offence to be one which destroys its respect for the personal character of the
+prisoner, it may there be held that prison treatment ought to be different from
+that awarded to ordinary criminals.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+George Sigerson:[2]
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[2] &ldquo;Political Prisoners at Home and Abroad.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Men may differ, in thought and deed, on many questions without moral
+guilt. Forms of government and measures relating to the welfare and
+organization of society have been, in all ages and countries, questions on
+which men have entertained divergent convictions, and asserted their sincerity
+by conflicting action, often at grave personal sacrifice and the loss of life.
+On the other hand, all people are agreed in condemning certain acts,
+stigmatized as crimes, which offend against the well-being of the individual or
+the community.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hence, civilized states distinguish between actions concerning which
+good men may reasonably differ, and actions which all good men condemn. The
+latter, if permitted to prevail, would disintegrate and destroy the social life
+of mankind; the former, if successful, would simply reorganize it, on a
+different basis . . . . The objects may, in one generation, be branded as
+crimes, whilst in the next those who fail to make them triumph and suffered as
+malefactors are exalted as patriot martyrs, and their principles incorporated
+amongst the foundation principles of the country&rsquo;s constitution.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Attempts to effect changes by methods beyond the conventions which have
+the sanction of the majority of a community, may be rash and blameworthy
+sometimes, but they are not necessarily dishonorable, and may even occasionally
+be obligatory on conscience.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As to the incumbency upon a government to differentiate in punishments
+inflicted upon these two classes of offenders, he further says: &ldquo;When a
+Government exercises its punitive power, it should, in awarding sentence,
+distinguish between the two classes of offenders. To confound in a common
+degradation those who violate the moral law by acts which all men condemn, and
+those who offend against the established order of society by acts of which many
+men approve, and for objects which may sometime be accepted as integral parts
+of established order, is manifestly wrong in principle. It places a Government
+morally in the wrong in the eyes of masses of the population, a thing to be
+sedulously guarded against.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+George Clemenceau:[1]
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[1] Clemenceau in a speech before the French Chamber of Deputies, May 16th,
+1876, advocating amnesty for those who participated in the Commune of 1871.
+From the Annals de la Chambre des Deputies, 1876, v. 2, pp. 44-48.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Theoretically a crime committed in the interest of the criminal is a
+common law crime, while an offense committed in the public interest is a
+political crime.&rdquo; He says further, &ldquo;That an act isolated from the
+circumstances under which it was committed . . . may have the appearance of a
+common law crime . . : while viewed in connection with the circumstances under
+which it is committed (in connection with a movement) . . . it may take on a
+political character.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Maurice Parmelee:[1]
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[1] &ldquo;Criminology&rdquo; by Maurice Parmelee, Chap. XXVIII. Author also of
+&ldquo;Poverty and Social Progress,&rdquo; &ldquo;The Science of Human
+Behavior,&rdquo; &ldquo;The Principles of Anthropology and Sociology in their
+relation to Criminal Procedure.&rdquo; During the late war Dr. Parmelee was a
+Representative of the U. S. War Trade Board stationed at the American Embassy,
+London; economic advisor to the State Department, and Chairman of the Allied
+Rationing Committee which administered the German Blockade.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Common crimes are acts contrary to the law committed in the interest of
+the individual criminal or of those personally related to the criminal.
+Political crimes are acts contrary to the law committed against an existing
+government or form of government in the interest of another government or form
+of government . . . . .
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Furthermore, there are other offenses against the law which are not
+common crimes, and yet are not political crimes in the usual criminological
+sense . . . .
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Among these crimes, which are broader than the ordinary political
+crimes, are offenses in defense of the right to freedom of thought and belief,
+in defense of the right to express one&rsquo;s self in words in free speech, .
+. . and many illegal acts committed by conscientious objectors to the payment
+of taxes or to military service, the offenses of laborers in strikes and other
+labor disturbances, the violations of law committed by those who are trying to
+bring about changes in the relations between the sexes, etc.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Common crimes are almost invariably anti-social in their nature, while
+offenses which are directly or indirectly political are usually social in their
+intent, and are frequently beneficial to society in their ultimate effect. We
+are, therefore, justified in calling them social crimes, as contrasted with the
+anti-social common crimes . . . . .&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<h5>TREATMENT ACCORDED POLITICAL PRISONFRS ABROAD</h5>
+
+<p>
+It is interesting to note what other countries have done toward handling
+intelligently the problem of political offenders.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Russia was probably the first country in modern history to recognize political
+prisoners as a class,[1] although the treatment of different groups and
+individuals varied widely.
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[1] Siberia received its first exiles [non-conformists] in the 17th Century.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+First of all, the political offender was recognized as a
+&ldquo;political&rdquo; not by law, but by custom. When sure of a verdict of
+guilty, either through damaging evidence or a packed jury, the offender was
+tried. When it was impossible to commit him to trial because there were no
+proofs against him, &ldquo;Administrative Exile&rdquo; was resorted to. These
+judgments or Administrative orders to exile were pronounced in secret on
+political offenders; one member of the family of the defendant was admitted to
+the trial under the law of 1881. Those exiled by Administrative order were
+transported in cars, but stopped en route at the etapes, political prisoners
+along with common law convicts. Since 1866 politicals condemned by the courts
+to hard labor or to exile, journeyed on foot with common law convicts.[1]
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There were no hospitals for political exiles; doctors and &lsquo; surgeons
+among the exiled helped their sick comrades.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Families were permitted to follow the loved ones into exile, if they chose. For
+example, wives were allowed to stay at Lower Kara, and visit their husbands in
+the prison in Middle Kara twice a week and to bring them books.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When criminal convicts were freed in Siberia after serving a given sentence at
+hard labor, they received an allotment of land and agricultural implements for
+purposes of sustenance, and after two years the government troubled no more
+about them. They became settlers in some province of Southern Siberia. With
+political exiles it was quite different. When they had finished a seven, ten,
+or twelve year sentence, they were not liberated but transferred to the tundras
+within the Arctic Circle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fancy a young girl student exiled to a village numbering a hundred houses, with
+the government allowance of 8 to 10 shillings a month to live on. Occupations
+were closed to her, and there was no opportunity to learn a trade. She was
+forbidden to leave the town even for a few hours. The villagers were for the
+most part in fear of being suspected if seen to greet politicals in the street.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Without dress, without shoes, living in the nastiest huts, without any
+occupation, they [the exiles were mostly dying from consumption,&rdquo; said
+the Golos of February 2, 1881. They lived in constant fear of starvation. And
+the Government allowance was withdrawn if it became known that an exile
+received any monetary assistance from family or friends.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Those politicals condemned to hard labor in Siberia worked mostly in gold mines
+for three months out of twelve, during which period meat was added to their
+diet. Otherwise black bread was the main food of the diet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When held in prisons awaiting trial or convicted and awaiting transfer into
+exile, politicals did no work whatever. Their only occupation was reading.
+Common criminals had to work in prison as well as in Siberia.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the fortress of Sts. Peter and Paul,[1] Kropotkin was lodged in a cell big
+enough to shelter a big fortress gun (25 feet on the diagonal). The walls and
+floor were lined with felt to prevent communication with others. &ldquo;The
+silence in these felt- covered cells is that of a grave,&rdquo; wrote Kropotkin
+. . . . &ldquo;Here I wrote my two volumes on The Glacial Period.&rdquo; Here
+he also prepared maps and drawings. This privilege was only granted, to him,
+however, after a strong movement amongst influential circles compelled it from
+the Czar.[1a] The Geo- graphical Society for whom he was writing his thesis
+also made many pleas on his behalf. He was allowed to buy tobacco, writing
+paper and to have books&mdash;but no extra food.
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[1] In the Trubeskoi bastion, one building in the fortress.
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[1a] Set Memoirs of a Revolutionist, Kropotkin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kropotkin says that political prisoners were not subjected to corporal
+punishment, through official fear of bloodshed. But he must mean by corporal
+punishment actual beatings, for he says also, &ldquo;The black holes, the
+chains, the riveting to bar rows are usual punishments.&rdquo; And some
+politicals were al- leged to have been put in oubliettes in the Alexis
+Ravelin[2] which must have been the worst feature of all the tortures. This
+meant immurement alive in cells, in a remote spot where no contact with others
+was possible, and where the prisoner would often be chained or riveted for
+years.
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[2] Another section of Sts. Peter and Paul Fortress.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+More recently there was some mitigation of the worst fea- tures of the prison
+régime and some additional privileges were extended to politicals.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All this applied to old Russia. There is no documentary proof available yet, as
+to how Soviet Russia treats its offenders against the present government. The
+Constitution of the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic does not
+provide a status for political prisoners, but it does provide for their re
+lease. It specifically deals with amnesty which is proof of the importance with
+which it regards the question of political offenders. It says: &ldquo;The
+All-Russian Central Executive Com mittee deal with questions of state such as .
+. . the right to declare individual and general amnesty.[4]
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[3] Adopted by the 5th All-Russian Congress of Soviets, July 10, 1918.
+Reprinted from The Nation, January 4, 1919.
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[4] Article 3, Chapter 9 . . . 49 q.
+</p> <p>
+France has had perhaps the most enlightened attitude of all the nations toward
+political offenders. She absolutely guarantees special treatment, by special
+regulations, and does not leave it to the discretion of changing governments.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On August 7, 1834; Thiers, in a ministerial circular, laid down the fundamental
+principles upon which France has acted. The only obligation upon the defendant,
+according to this circular, was to prove the political nature of the
+offense,&mdash;&ldquo;that it should be demonstrated and incontestable that
+they have acted under the influence of their opinions.&rdquo;[1] Theirs
+advocated superior diet for political prisoners and no work.
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[1] Sigerson, Political prisoners at Home and Abroad, p. 89.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His edict was followed by special regulations issued for politicals under the
+Empire, February 9th, 1867, through M. Pietri, Prefect of the Seine. These
+regulations, illustrative of the care France exercised at an early date over
+her politicals, defined the housing conditions, diet, intercourse with comrades
+inside the prison and with family and friends from the outside. Their privacy
+was carefully guarded. No curious visitor was allowed to see a political unless
+the latter so desired.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kropotkin wrote[2] of his incarceration in Clairvaux prison in 1888, to which
+he and twenty-two others were transferred from Lyons after being prosecuted for
+belonging to the International Workingmen&rsquo;s Association: &ldquo;In
+France, it is generally understood that for political prisoners the loss of
+liberty and the forced inactivity are in themselves so hard that there is no
+need to inflict additional hardships.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[2] Memoirs of a Revolutionist, Kropotkin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In Clairvaux he and his comrades were given quarters in spacious rooms, not in
+cells. Kropotkin and Emile Gautier, the French anarchist, were given a separate
+room for literary work and the Academy of Sciences offered them the use of its
+library.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was no intercourse with common law prisoners. The politicals were allowed
+to wear their own clothes, to smoke, to buy food and wine from the prison
+canteen or have it brought in; they were free of compulsory work, but might, if
+they chose, do light work for which they were paid. Kropotkin mentions the
+extreme cleanliness of the prison and the &ldquo;excellent quality&rdquo; of
+the prison food.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Their windows looked down upon a little garden and also commanded a beautiful
+view of the surrounding country. They played nine- pins in the yard and made a
+vegetable and flower garden on the surface of the building&rsquo;s wall. For
+other forms of recreation, they were allowed to organize themselves into
+classes. This particular group received from Kropotkin lessons in cosmography,
+geometry, physics, languages and bookbinding. Kropotkin&rsquo;s wife was
+allowed to visit him daily and to walk with him in the prison gardens.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sebastian Faure, the great French teacher and orator, was sentenced to prison
+after the anarchist terrorism in 1894 and while there was allowed to write his
+&ldquo;La Douleur Universelle&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Paul La Fargue, son-in-law of Karl Marx, wrote his famous &ldquo;The Right to
+be Lazy&rdquo; in Sainte Pelagie prison.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+France has continued this policy to date. Jean Grave, once a shoemaker and now
+a celebrated anarchist, was condemned to six months in La Sante prison for an
+offensive article in his paper, Les Temps Nouveaux. Such is the liberty allowed
+a political that while serving this sentence he was given paper and materials
+with which to write another objectionable article, called &ldquo;La Société
+Mourante et l&rsquo;Anarchie,&rdquo; for the publication of which he received
+another six months.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is interesting to note the comparatively light sentences political offenders
+get in France. And then there is an established practice of amnesty. They
+rarely finish out their terms. Agitation for their release extends from the
+extreme revolutionary left to the members of the Chamber of Deputies,
+frequently backed by the liberal press.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Italy also distinguishes between political and common law offenders. The former
+are entitled to all the privileges of custodia honesta[1] which means they are
+allowed to wear their own clothes, work or not, as they choose; if they do
+work, one half their earnings is given to them. Their only penal obligation is
+silence during work, meals, school and prayers. A friend of Sr. Serrati, the
+ex-editor of the Italian journal Il Proletario, tells me that Serrati was a
+political prisoner during the late war; that he was sentenced to three and a
+half years, but was released at the end of six months, through pressure from
+the outside. But while there, he was allowed to write an article a day for
+Avanti, of which paper he was then an editor.
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[1] Sigerson, pp. 154-5.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Even before the Franco-Prussian War German principalities recognized political
+offenders as such. The practice continued after the federation of German states
+through the Empire and up to the overthrow of Kaiser Wilhelm. Politicals were
+held in &ldquo;honorable custody&rdquo; in fortresses where they were deprived
+only of their liberty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For revolutionary activities in Saxony in 1849, Bakunin[2] was arrested, taken
+to a Cavalry Barracks and later to Koeriigstein Fortress, where politicals were
+held. Here he was allowed to walk twice daily under guard. He was allowed to
+receive books, he could converse with his fellow prisoners and could write and
+receive numerous letters. In a letter to a friend[3] he wrote that he was
+occupied in the study of mathematics and English, and that he was
+&ldquo;enjoying Shakespeare.&rdquo; And .. : . &ldquo;they treat me with
+extraordinary humanness.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[2] The Life of Michael Bakunin&mdash;Eine Biographie von Dr. Max Nettlau.
+(Privately printed by the author. Fifty copies reproduced by the autocopyist,
+Longhaus.)
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[3] To Adolph R&mdash;&mdash; (the last name illegible) October 15, 1849.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Another letter to the same friend a month later said he was writing a defense
+of his political views in &ldquo;a comfortable room,&rdquo; with &ldquo;cigars
+and food brought in from a nearby inn.&rdquo; The death sentence was pronounced
+against him in 1850 but commuted to imprisonment for life. The same year he was
+extradited to Austria where the offense was committed, then to Russia and on to
+Siberia in 1855, whence he escaped in 1860 in an American ship.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In 1869 Bebell[1] received a sentence of three weeks in Leipzig (contrast with
+Alice Paul&rsquo;s seven months&rsquo; sentence) &ldquo;for the propagation of
+ideas dangerous to the state.&rdquo; Later for high treason based upon
+Social-Democratic agitation he was sentenced to two years in a fortress. For
+lèse majesté he served nine months in Hubertusburg&mdash;a fortress prison (in
+1871). Here politicals were allowed to pay for the cleaning of their cells, to
+receive food from a nearby inn, and were allowed to eat together in the
+corridors. They were only locked in for part of the time, and the rest of the
+time were allowed to walk in the garden. They were permitted lights until ten
+at night; books; and could receive and answer mail every day. Bebel received
+permission to share cell quarters with the elder Lielr knecht (Wilhelm), then
+serving time for his internationalism. He says that political prisoners were
+often allowed a six weeks&rsquo; leave of absence between sentences; when
+finishing one and beginning a second.
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[1] My Life, August Bebel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+According to Sigerson, politicals in Austria also were absolved from wearing
+prison clothes, might buy their own food and choose their work. I am told the
+same régime prevailed in Hungary under Franz Joseph.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The new constitution of the German Republic adopted at Weimar July 31, 1919,
+provides that[2] &ldquo;The President of the Republic shall exercise for the.
+government the right of pardon .. . . . Government amnesties require a national
+law.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[2] Article 49.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the Scandinavian countries there is no provision for special consideration
+of political prisoners, although a proposed change in Sweden&rsquo;s penal laws
+now pending includes special treatment for them, and in Denmark, although
+politicals are not recognized apart from other prisoners, the people have just
+won an amnesty for all prisoners convicted of political offense as I write.
+Neither Switzerland nor Spain makes separate provision for politicals, although
+there are many prisoners confined in their prisons for political offenses,
+especially in Spain, where there are nearly always actually thousands in
+Monjuich. Portugal also subjects political offenders to the same regime as
+criminals.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Concerning Turkey and Bulgaria, I appealed to George Andreytchine, a Bulgarian
+revolutionist who as protégé of King Ferdinand was educated at Sofia and
+Constantinople, knowing his knowledge on this point would be authentic. He
+writes: &ldquo;Turkey, which is the most backward of all modern states,
+recognized the status of political prisoners before 1895, or shortly after the
+Armenian massacres. Thousands of Bulgarian, Greek, Armenian and Arabian
+insurgents, caught with Arms in their hands, conspiring and actually in open
+rebellion against the Ottoman Empire, were sentenced to exile or hard labor,
+but were never confined in the same prisons with ordinary criminals and felons.
+They were put in more hygienical prisons where they were allowed to read and
+write and to breathe fresh air. Among some of my friends who were exiled to
+Turkish Africa for rebellion was a young scholar, Paul Shateff, by name, who
+while there wrote a remarkable monograph on the ethnology and ethnography of
+the Arabian Tribes in which he incidentally tells of the special treatment
+given him and his fellow exiles as political prisoners.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There is something to be said for the political wisdom of the Sultans.
+Amnesty is an established practice, usually at the birthday of the Sultan or
+the coming to power of a new Sultan, or on Ramadan[1], a national holiday.
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[1] The month (the ninth in the Mohammedan year) in which the first part of the
+Koran is said to have been received.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In 1908 when the young Turks assumed control of the government, all
+political prisoners were released and cared for by the state. My friend Paul
+Shateff was sent at state expense to Bruxelles to finish his studies.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Bulgaria, another one of those &lsquo;backward countries,&rsquo;
+established the political regime even earlier than Turkey. Politicals are
+allowed to read, to write books or articles for publication, to receive food
+from outside, and are periodically released on amnesty.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And now we come to England. In general England, too, give&rsquo;s political
+offenders much lighter sentences than does America, but, except in isolated
+cases, she treats them no better. She does not recognize them as political
+prisoners. If they are distinguished prisoners like Dr. Jamison, who was
+permitted to serve the sentence imposed upon him for leading an armed raid into
+the Transvaal in 1895, in a luxuriously furnished suite, to provide himself
+with books, a piano, and such food as he chose, and to receive his friends,
+special dispensation is allowed; or like William Cobbett, who was imprisoned
+for writing an alleged treasonable article in his journal, The Register, in
+1809; or Leigh Hunt for maligning the Prince Regent who, he believed, broke his
+promise to the Irish cause; Daniel O&rsquo;Connell and six associates in 1844
+for &ldquo;seditious activity&rdquo;; John Mitchell, who in 1848 was sent to
+Bermuda and then to Van Dieman&rsquo;s Land.[2] These British prisoners, while
+not proclaimed as politicals, did receive special privileges.[3]
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[2]English penal colony in Tasmania.
+</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">
+[3]For details of their handsome treatment see Sigerson, pp. 19–20,
+</p>
+
+<p>
+More recently Bertrand Russell, the distinguished man of letters who served
+sixty-one days in lieu of payment of fine for writing a pamphlet intended to
+arouse public indignation against the treatment of a certain conscientious
+objector, received special privileges. In England the matter of treatment rests
+largely with the will of the Prime Minister, who dictates the policy to the
+Home Secretary, who in turn directs the Chairman of the Board of Directors of
+Prisons. The Home Secretary may, however, of his own accord issue an order for
+special privileges if he so desires, or if there is a strong demand for such an
+order. Many government commissions and many distinguished British statesmen
+have recommended complete recognition and guarantee of the status of political
+prisoners, but the matter has been left to common law custom and precedent, and
+the character of the prime minister. In the case of Ireland the policy agreed
+upon is carried out by the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is difficult to generalize about England&rsquo;s treatment of Irish
+political offenders. From the earliest nationalist activities she has treated
+them practically all as common criminals, or worse, if such a thing is
+possible. She has either filled English prisons, or, as in the sixties, put
+them in convict ships and sent them to Bermuda and Australia for life sentences
+along with common convicts where they performed the hardest labor.. Irish
+prisoners have fought with signal and persistent courage for the rights due
+political offenders. Lately, after militant demonstrations within the prisons
+and after deaths resulting from concerted hunger striking protests, some
+additional privileges have been extended. But these can be and are withheld at
+will. There is no guarantee of them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As early as 1885 Canadian nationalists who had taken part in an insurrection in
+Upper Canada on behalf of self-government and who were sent to Van
+Dieman&rsquo;s Land in convict ships, entered a vigorous protest to Lord
+Russell, the Home Secretary, against not receiving the treatment due political
+prisoners.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+England has to her credit, then, some flexibility about extending privileges to
+politicals. We have none. England has to her credit lighter
+sentences&mdash;Irish cases excepted. No country, not excluding imperial
+Germany, has ever given such cruelly long sentences to political offenders as
+did America during the late war.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I have incorporated this discussion in such a book for two reasons: first,
+because it seemed to me important that you should know what a tremendous
+contribution the suffrage prisoners made toward this enlightened reform. They
+were the first in America to make a sustained demand to establish this
+precedent which others will consummate. They kept up the demand to the end of
+the prison episode, reinforcing it by the hunger strike protest. The other
+reason for including this discussion here is that it seems to me imperative
+that America recognize without further delay the status of political offenders.
+As early as 1872 the International Prison Congress meeting in London
+recommended a distinction in the treatment of common law criminals and
+politicals, and the resolution was agreed upon by the representatives of all
+the Powers of Europe and America with the tacit concurrence of British and
+Irish officials. And still we are behind Turkey in adopting an enlightened
+policy. We have neither regulation, statute nor precedent. Nor have we the
+custom of official flexibility.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Note&mdash;The most conspicuous political prisoner from the point of view of
+actual power the United States has ever held in custody was Jefferson Davis,
+the President of the Confederate States, during the rebellion of the South
+against the Union. He was imprisoned in Fortress Monroe and subjected to the
+most cruel and humiliating treatment conceivable. For details of his
+imprisonment see the graphic account given in &ldquo;Jefferson Davis&mdash;A
+Memoir&rdquo; by his wife, Vol. II, pp. 653-95.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
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+
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+
+Prepared by:
+Samuel R. Brown
+brown@albertus.edu
+
+
+
+
+
+Page numbers for scholarly reference are shown in curled brackets
+thus {45} throughout the text. The page number is placed at the
+start of the text of the printed page. Footnotes are shown in
+square brackets thus [1] and are placed at the bottom of the page.
+
+{iii}
+
+
+
+
+Jailed for Freedom
+
+By Doris Stevens
+
+
+
+
+{iv}
+
+
+{v}
+
+To Alice Paul
+
+Through Whose Brilliant and Devoted Leadership the Women of
+America Have Been Able to Consummate with Gladness and Gallant
+Courage Their Long Struggle for Political Liberty, This Book is
+Affectionately Dedicated
+
+{vi}
+
+Blank page
+
+{vii}
+
+Preface
+
+This book deals with the intensive campaign of the militant
+suffragists of America [1913-1919] to win a solitary thing-the
+passage by Congress of the national suffrage amendment
+enfranchising women. It is the story of the first organized
+militant ,political action in America to this end. The militants
+differed from the pure propagandists in the woman suffrage
+movement chiefly in that they had a clear comprehension of the
+forces which prevail in politics. They appreciated the necessity
+of the propaganda stage and the beautiful heroism of those who
+had led in the pioneer agitation, but they knew that this stage
+belonged to the past; these methods were no longer necessary or
+effective.
+
+For convenience sake I have called Part II "Political Action,"
+and Part III "Militancy," although it will be perceived that the
+entire campaign was one of militant political action. The
+emphasis, however, in Part II is upon political action, although
+certainly with a militant mood. In Part III dramatic acts of
+protest, such as are now commonly called militancy, are given
+emphasis as they acquired a greater importance during the latter
+part of the campaign. This does not mean that all militant deeds
+were not committed for a specific political purpose. They were.
+But militancy is as much a state of mind, an approach to a task,
+as it is the commission of deeds of protest. It is the state of
+mind of those who is their fiery idealism do not lose sight of
+the real springs of human action.
+
+There are two ways in which this story might be told. It might be
+told as a tragic and harrowing tale of martyrdom. Or it might be
+told as a ruthless enterprise of compelling a hostile
+administration to subject women to martyrdom in order to hasten
+its surrender. The truth is, it has elements of both ruthlessness
+and martyrdom. And I have tried to make them appear in a true
+proportion. It is my sincere hope that you
+
+{viii}
+
+will understand and appreciate the martyrdom involved, for it was
+the conscious voluntary gift of beautiful, strong and young
+hearts. But it was never martyrdom for its own sake. It was
+martyrdom used for a practical purpose.
+
+The narrative ends with the passage of the amendment by Congress.
+The campaign for ratification, which extended over fourteen
+months, is a story in itself. The ratification of the amendment
+by the 36th and last state legislature proved as difficult to
+secure from political leaders as the 64th and last vote in the
+United States Senate.
+
+This book contains my interpretations, which are of course
+arguable. But it is a true record of events.
+
+Doris Stevens.
+New York, August, 1920.
+
+{ix}
+
+Contents
+
+Preface {vii}
+
+Part I
+
+Leadership
+
+Chapter
+1 A Militant Pioneer-Susan B. Anthony {3}
+2 A Militant General-Alice Paul {10}
+
+Part II
+
+Political Action
+
+1 Women Invade the Capital {21}
+2 Women Voters Organize {35}
+3 The Last Deputation to�President Wilson {48}
+
+Part III
+
+Militancy
+
+1 Picketing a President {63}
+2 The Suffrage War Policy {80}
+3 The First Arrests {91}
+4 Occoquan Workhouse {99}
+5 August Riots {122}
+6 Prison Episodes {141}
+7 An Administration Protest-Dudley Field Malone Resigns {158}
+8 The Administration Yields {171}
+9 Political Prisoners {175}
+10 The Hunger Strike-A Weapon {184}
+11 Administration Terrorism {192}
+12 Alice Paul in Prison {210}
+
+{x}
+
+13 Administration-Lawlessness Exposed {229}
+14 The Administration Outwitted {241}
+15 Political Results {248}
+16 An Interlude (Seven Months) {259}
+17 New Attacks on the President {271}
+18 The President Appeals to the Senate Too Late {280}
+19 More Pressure {295}
+20 The President Sails Away {301}
+21 Watchfires of Freedom {305}
+22 Burned in Effigy {314}
+23 Boston Militants Welcome the President {319}
+24 Democratic Congress Ends {326}
+25 A Farewell to President Wilson {330}
+26 President Wilson Wins the 64th Vote in Paris {336}
+27 Republican Congress Passes Amendment {341}
+Appendices {347}
+
+{xi}
+
+Illustrations
+
+[Note: The photographs and illustrations appearing in this book
+are available on the Connecticut Distance Learning Consortium
+website www.ctdlc.org Follow the link to the Connecticut TALENT
+Program]
+
+Alice Paul
+Mrs. O.H.P. Belmont
+Democrats Attempt to Counteract Woman�s Party Campaign
+Inez Milholland Boissevain
+Scene of Memorial Service-Statuary Hall, the Capitol
+Scenes on the Picket Line
+Monster Picket-March 4, 1917
+Officer Arrests Pickets
+Women Put into Police Patrol
+Suffragists in Prison Costume
+Fellow Prisoners
+Sewing Room at Occoquan Workhouse
+Riotous Scenes on Picket Line
+Dudley Field Malone
+Lucy Burns
+Mrs. Mary Nolan, Oldest Picket
+Miss Matilda Young, Youngest Picket
+Forty-One Women Face Jail
+Prisoners Released
+�Lafayette We Are Here�
+Wholesale Arrests
+Suffragists March to LaFayette Monument
+Torch-Bearer, and Escorts
+
+{xii}
+
+Some Public Men Who Protested Against Imprisonment of Suffragists
+Abandoned Jail
+Prisoners on Straw Pallets on Jail Floor
+Pickets at Capitol
+Senate Pages and Capitol Police Attack Pickets
+The Urn Guarded by Miss Berthe Arnold
+The Bell Which Tolled the Change of Watch
+Watchfire �Legal�
+Watchfire Scattered by Police-Dr. Caroline Spencer Rebuilding it
+One Hundred Women Hold Public Conflagration
+Pickets in Front of Reviewing Stand, Boston
+Mrs. Louise Sykes Burning President Wilson�s Speech on Boston
+Common
+Suffrage Prisoners
+
+{xiii}
+
+�I do pray, and that most earnestly and constantly, for some
+terrific shock to startle the women o f the nation into a self-
+respect which mill compel them to, see the absolute degradation o
+f their present position; which will compel them to break their
+yoke of bondage and give them faith in themselves; which will
+make them proclaim their allegiance to women first . . . . The
+fact is, women are in chains, and their servitude is all the more
+debasing because they do not realize it. O to compel them to see
+and feel and to give them the courage and the conscience to speak
+and act for their own freedom, though they face the scorn and
+contempt of all the world for doing it!"
+
+Susan B. Anthony, 1872.
+
+{xiv}
+
+Blank page
+
+{1}
+
+Part I
+
+Leadership
+
+{2}
+
+Blank page
+
+{3}
+
+Chapter 1
+
+A Militant Pioneer-Susan B. Anthony
+
+Susan B. Anthony was the first militant suffragist. She has been
+so long proclaimed only as the magnificent pioneer that few
+realize that she was the first woman to defy the law for the
+political liberty of her sex.
+
+The militant spirit was in her many early protests. Sometimes
+these protests were supported by one or two followers; more often
+they were solitary protests. Perhaps it is because of their
+isolation that they stand out so strong and beautiful in a
+turbulent time in our history when all those about her were
+making compromises.
+
+It was this spirit which impelled her to keep alive the cause of
+the enfranchisement of women during the passionate years of the
+Civil War. She held to the last possible moment that no national
+exigency was great enough to warrant abandonment of woman's fight
+for independence. But one by one her followers deserted her. She
+was unable to keep even a tiny handful steadfast to this
+position. She became finally the only figure in the nation
+appealing for the rights of women when the rights of black men
+were agitating the public mind. Ardent abolitionist as she was,
+she could not tolerate without indignant protest the exclusion of
+women in all discussions of emancipation. The suffrage war policy
+of Miss Anthony can be compared to that of the militants a half
+century later when confronted with the problem of this country's
+entrance into the world war.
+
+The war of the rebellion over and the emancipation of the
+
+{4}
+
+negro man written into the constitution, women contended they had
+a right to vote under the new fourteenth amendment. Miss Anthony
+led in this agitation, urging all women to claim the right to
+vote under this amendment. In the national election of 187'2 she
+voted in Rochester, New York, her home city, was arrested, tried
+and convicted of the crime of "voting without having a lawful
+right to vote."
+
+I cannot resist giving a brief excerpt from the court records of
+this extraordinary case, so reminiscent is it of the cases of the
+suffrage pickets tried nearly fifty years later in the courts of
+the national capital.
+
+After the prosecuting attorney had presented the government's
+case, Judge Hunt read his opinion, said to have been written
+before the case had been heard, and directed the jury to bring in
+a verdict of guilty. The jury was dismissed without deliberation
+and a new trial was refused. On the following day this scene took
+place in that New York court room.
+
+JUDGE HUNT (Ordering the defendant to stand up)-Has the prisoner
+anything to say why sentence shall not be pronounced?
+
+Miss ANTHONY-Yes, your Honor, I have many things to say; for in
+your ordered verdict of guilty, you have trampled under foot
+every vital principle of our government. My natural rights, my
+civil rights, my political rights, my judicial rights, are all
+alike ignored. Robbed of the fundamental privilege of
+citizenship, I am degraded from the status of a citizen to that
+of a subject; and not only myself individually, but all my sex
+are, by your Honor's verdict doomed to political subjection under
+this so-called republican form of government.
+
+JUDGE HUNT-The Court cannot. listen to a rehearsal of argument
+which the prisoner's counsel has already consumed three hours in
+presenting.
+
+Miss ANTHONY-May it please your Honor, I am not arguing the
+question, but simply stating the reasons why sentence
+
+{5}
+
+cannot in justice be pronounced against me. Your denial of my
+citizen's right to vote, is the denial of my right of consent as
+one of the governed, the denial of my right of representation as
+one taxed, the denial of my right to a trial by jury of my peers
+as an offender against law; therefore, the denial of my sacred
+right to life, liberty, property, and
+
+JUDGE HUNT-The Court cannot allow the prisoner to go on.
+
+Miss ANTHONY-But, your Honor will not deny me this one and only
+poor privilege of protest against this highhanded outrage upon my
+citizen's rights. May it please the Court to remember that since
+the day of my arrest last November this is the first time that
+either myself or any person of my disfranchised class has been
+allowed a word of defense before judge or jury
+
+JUDGE HUNT-The prisoner must sit down, the Court cannot allow it.
+
+Miss ANTHONY-Of all my persecutors from the corner grocery
+politician who entered the complaint, to the United States
+marshal, commissioner, district attorney, district judge, your
+Honor on the bench, not one is my peer, but each and all are my
+political sovereigns . . . . Precisely as no disfranchised person
+is entitled to sit upon the jury and no woman is entitled to the
+franchise, so none but a regularly admitted lawyer is allowed to
+practice in the courts, and no woman can gain admission to the
+bar-hence, jury, judge, counsel, all must be of superior class.
+
+JUDGE HUNT-The Court must insist-the prisoner has been tried
+according to the established forms of law.
+
+Miss ANTHONY-Yes, your Honor, but by forms of law, all made by
+men, interpreted by men, administered by men, in favor of men and
+against women; and hence your Honor's ordered verdict of guilty,
+against a United States citizen for the exercise of the
+"citizen's right to vote," simply because that
+
+{6}
+
+citizen was a woman and not a man . . . . As then the slaves who
+got their freedom had to take it over or under or through the
+unjust forms of the law, precisely so now must women take it to
+get their right to a voice in this government; and I have taken
+mine, and mean to take it at every opportunity.
+
+JUDGE Hunt-The Court orders the prisoner to sit down. It will not
+allow another word.
+
+Miss ANTHONY-When I was brought before your Honor for trial I
+hoped for a broad interpretation of the constitution and its
+recent amendments, which should declare all United States
+citizens under its protecting aegis . . . . But failing to get
+this justice, failing even to get a trial by a jury-not of my
+peers-I ask not leniency at your-hands but rather the full rigor
+of the law.
+
+JUDGE HUNT-The Court must insist (here the prisoner sat down).
+The prisoner will stand up. (Here Miss Anthony rose again.) The
+sentence of the Court is that you pay a fine of $100.00 and the
+costs of the prosecution.
+
+Miss ANTHONY-May it please your Honor, I will never pay a dollar
+of your unjust penalty . . . . And I shall earnestly and
+persistently continue to urge all women to the practical
+recognition of the old Revolutionary maxim, "Resistance to
+tyranny is obedience to God."
+
+JUDGE HUNT-Madam, the Court will not order you stand committed
+until the fine is paid.
+
+Miss Anthony did not pay her fine and was never imprisoned. I
+believe the fine stands against her to this day.
+
+On the heels of this sensation came another of those dramatic
+protests which until the very end she always combined with
+political agitation. The nation was celebrating its first
+centenary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence at
+Independence Square, Philadelphia. After women had been refused
+by all in authority a humble half moment in which to present to
+the Centennial the Women's Declaration of Rights,
+
+{7}
+
+Miss Anthony insisted on being heard. Immediately after the
+Declaration of Independence had been read by a patriot, she led a
+committee of women, who with platform tickets had slipped through
+the military, straight down the center aisle of the platform to
+address the chairman, who pale with fright and powerless to stop
+the demonstration had to accept her document. Instantly the
+platform, graced as it was by national dignitaries and crowned
+heads, was astir. The women retired, distributing to the gasping
+spectators copies of their Declaration. Miss Anthony had reminded
+the nation of the hollowness of its celebration of an
+independence that excluded women.
+
+Susan B. Anthony's aim was the national enfranchisement of women.
+As soon as she became convinced that the constitution would have
+to be specifically amended to include woman suffrage, she set
+herself to this gigantic task. For a quarter of a century she
+appealed to Congress for action and to party. conventions for
+suffrage endorsement. When, however, she saw that Congress was
+obdurate, as an able and intensely practical leader she
+temporarily directed the main energy of the suffrage movement to
+trying to win individual states. With women holding the balance
+of political power, she argued, the national government will be
+compelled to act. She knew so well the value of power. She went
+to the West to get it.
+
+She was a shrewd tactician; with prophetic insight, without
+compromise. To those women who would yield to party expediency as
+advised by men, or be diverted into support of other measures,
+she made answer in a spirited letter to Lucy Stone:
+
+"So long as you and I and all women are political slaves, it ill
+becomes us to meddle with the weightier discussions of our'
+sovereign masters. It will be quite time enough for us, with
+self-respect, to declare ourselves for or against any party upon
+
+{8}
+
+the intrinsic merit of its policy, when men shall recognize us as
+their political equals . . . .
+
+"If all the suffragists of all the States could see eye to eye on
+this point, and stand shoulder to shoulder against every
+party and politician not fully and unequivocally committed to
+`Equal Rights for Women,' we should become at once the moral
+balance of power which could not fail to compel the party of
+highest intelligence to proclaim woman suffrage the chief plank
+of its platform . . . . Until that good day comes, I shall
+continue to invoke the party in power, and each party struggling
+to get into power, to pledge itself to the emancipation of our
+enslaved half of the people . . . ."
+
+She did not live to see enough states grant suffrage in the West
+to form a balance of power with which to carry out this policy.
+She did not live to turn this power upon an unwilling Congress.
+But she stood to the last, despite this temporary change of
+program, the great dramatic protagonist of national freedom for
+women and its achievement through rebellion and practical
+strategy.
+
+With the passing of Miss Anthony and her leadership, the movement
+in America went conscientiously on endeavoring to pile up state
+after state in the "free column." Gradually her followers lost
+sight of her aggressive attack and her objective-the
+enfranchisement of women by Congress. They did not sustain her
+tactical wisdom. This reform movement, like all others when
+stretched over a long period of time, found itself confined in a
+narrow circle of routine propaganda. It lacked the power and
+initiative to extricate itself. Though it had many eloquent
+agitators with devoted followings, it lacked generalship.
+
+The movement also lost Miss Anthony's militant spirit, her keen
+appreciation of the fact that the attention of the nation must be
+focussed on minority issues by dramatic acts of protest.
+
+{9}
+
+Susan B. Anthony's fundamental objective, her political attitude
+toward attaining it, and her militant spirit were revived in
+suffrage history in 1913 when Alice Paul, also of Quaker
+background, entered the national field as leader of the new
+suffrage forces in America.
+
+{10}
+
+Chapter 2
+
+A Militant General�Alice Paul
+
+Most people conjure up a menacing picture when a person is called
+not only a general, but a militant one. In appearance Alice Paul
+is anything but menacing. Quiet, almost mouselike, this frail
+young Quakeress sits in silence and baffles you with her
+contradictions. Large, soft, gray eyes that strike you with a
+positive impact make you feel the indescribable force and power
+behind them. A mass of soft brown hair, caught easily at the
+neck, makes the contour of her head strong and graceful. Tiny,
+fragile hands that look more like an X-ray picture of hands, rest
+in her lap in Quakerish pose. Her whole atmosphere when she is
+not in action is one of strength and quiet determination. In
+action she is swift, alert, almost panther-like in her movements.
+Dressed always in simple frocks, preferably soft shades of
+purple, she conforms to an individual style and taste of her own
+rather than to the prevailing vogue.
+
+I am going recklessly on to try to tell what I think about Alice
+Paul. It is difficult, for when I begin to put it down on paper,
+I realize how little we know about this laconic person, and yet
+how abundantly we feel her power, her will and her compelling
+leadership. In an instant and vivid reaction, I am either
+congealed or inspired; exhilarated or depressed; sometimes even
+exasperated, but always moved. I have seen her very presence in
+headquarters change in the twinkling of an eye the mood of fifty
+people. It is not through their affections
+
+{11}
+
+that she moves them, but through a naked force, a vital force
+which is indefinable but of which one simply cannot be unaware.
+Aiming primarily at the intellect of an audience or an
+individual, she almost never fails to win an emotional
+allegiance.
+
+I shall never forget my first contact with her. I tell it here as
+an illustration of what happened to countless women who came in
+touch with her to remain under her leadership to the end. I had
+come to Washington to take part in the demonstration on the
+Senate in July, 1913, en route to a muchneeded, as I thought,
+holiday in the Adirondacks.
+
+"Can't you stay on and help us with a hearing next week?" said
+Miss Paul.
+
+"I'm sorry," said I, "but I have promised to join a party of
+friends in the mountains for a summer holiday and . . ."
+
+"Holiday?" said she, looking straight at me. Instantly ashamed at
+having mentioned such a legitimate excuse, I murmured something
+about not having had one since before entering college.
+
+"But can't you stay?" she said.
+
+I was lost. I knew I would stay. As a matter of fact, I stayed
+through the heat of a Washington summer, returned only long
+enough at the end of the summer to close up my work in state
+suffrage and came back to join the group at Washington. And it
+was years before I ever mentioned a holiday again.
+
+Frequently she achieved her end without even a single word Of
+retort. Soon after Miss Paul came to Washington in 1913, ;she
+went to call on a suffragist in that city to ask her to donate
+;some funds toward the rent of headquarters in the Capital. The
+woman sighed. "I thought when Miss Anthony died," she said, "that
+all my troubles were at an end. She used to come to me for money
+for a federal amendment and I always told her it was wrong to ask
+for one, and that besides we would never get it. But she kept
+right on coming. Then when she died we
+
+{12}
+
+didn't hear any more about an amendment. And now you come again
+saying the same things Miss Anthony said."
+
+Miss Paul listened, said she was sorry and departed. Very shortly
+a check arrived at headquarters to cover a month's rent.
+
+A model listener, Alice Paul has unlimited capacity for letting
+the other person relieve herself of all her objections without
+contest. Over and over again I have heard this scene enacted.
+
+"Miss Paul, I have come to tell you that you are all wrong about
+this federal amendment business. I don't believe in it. Suffrage
+should come slowly but surely by the states. And although I have
+been a life-long suffragist, I just want to tell you not to count
+on me, for feeling as I do, I cannot give you any help."
+
+A silence would follow. Then Miss Paul would say ingenuously,
+"Have you a half hour to spare?"
+
+"I guess so," would come slowly from the protestant. �Why?�
+
+"Won't you please sit down right here and put the stamps on these
+letters? We have to get them in the mail by noon."
+
+"But I don't believe ��
+
+"Oh, that's all right. These letters are going to women probably
+a lot of whom feel as you do. But some of them will want to come
+to the meeting to hear our side."
+
+By this time Miss Paul would have brought a chair, and that ended
+the argument. The woman would stay and humbly proceed to stick on
+endless stamps. Usually she would come back, too, and before many
+days would be an ardent worker for the cause against which she
+thought herself invincible.
+
+Once the state president of the conservative suffrage forces in
+Ohio with whom I had worked the previous year wrote me a letter
+pointing out what madness it was to talk of winning the amendment
+in Congress "this session," and adding that
+
+{13}
+
+"nobody but a fool would ever think of it, let alone speak of it
+publicly." She was wise in politics; we were nice, eager, young
+girls, but pretty ignorant-that was the gist of her remonstrance.
+My vanity was aroused. Not wishing to be called "mad" or
+"foolish" I sat down and answered her in a friendly spirit, with
+the sole object of proving that we were wiser than she imagined.
+I had never discussed this point with anybody, as I had been in
+Washington only a few months and it had never occurred to me that
+we were not right to talk of getting the amendment in that
+particular session. But I answered my patronizing friend, in
+effect, that of course we were not fools, that we knew we would
+not get the amendment that session, but we saw no reason for not
+demanding it at once and taking it when we got it.
+
+When Miss Paul saw the carbon of that letter she said quietly,
+pointing to the part where I had so nobly defended our sagacity,
+"You must never say that again and never put it on paper." Seeing
+my embarrassment, she hastened to explain. "You see, we can get
+it this session if enough women care sufficiently to demand it
+now."
+
+Alice Paul brought back to the fight that note of immediacy which
+had gone with the passing of Miss Anthony's leadership. She
+called a halt on further pleading, wheedling, proving, praying.
+It was as if she had bidden women stand erect, with confidence in
+themselves and in their own judgments, and compelled them to be
+self-respecting enough to dare to put their freedom first, and so
+determine for themselves the day when they should be free. Those
+who had a taste of begging under the old regime and who abandoned
+it for demanding, know how fine and strong a thing it is to
+realize that you must take what is yours and not waste your
+energy proving that you are or will some day be worthy of a gift
+of power from your masters. On that glad day of discovery you
+have first freed
+
+{14}
+
+yourself to fight for freedom. Alice Paul gave to thousands of
+women the essence of freedom.
+
+And there was something so cleansing about the way in which she
+renovated ideas and processes, emotions and instincts. Her attack
+was so direct, so clear, so simple and unafraid. And her
+resistance had such a fine quality of strength.
+
+Sometimes it was a roaring politician who was baffled by this
+non-resistant force. I have heard many an irate one come into her
+office in the early days to tell her how to run the woman's
+campaign, and struggle in vain to arouse her to combat. Having
+begun a tirade, honor would compel him to see it through even
+without help from a silent adversary. And so he would get more
+and more noisy until it would seem as if one lone shout from him
+might be enough to blow away the frail object of his attack.
+Ultimately he would be forced to retire, perhaps in the face of a
+serene smile, beaten and angered that he had been able to make so
+little impression. And many the delicious remark and delightful
+quip afterward at his expense!
+
+Her gentle humor is of the highest quality. If only her opponents
+could have seen her amusement at their hysteria. At the very
+moment they were denouncing some plan of action and calling her
+"fanatical" and "hysterical" she would fairly beam with delight
+to see how well her plan had worked. Her intention had been to
+arouse them to just that state of mind, and how admirably they
+were living up to the plan. The hysteria was all on their side.
+She coolly sat back in her chair and watched their antics under
+pressure.
+
+"But don't you know," would come another thundering
+one, "that this will make the Democratic leaders so hostile that
+. . ."
+
+The looked-for note of surprise never came. She had counted ahead
+on all this and knew almost to the last shade the reaction that
+would follow from both majority and minority leaders. All this
+had been thoroughly gone over, first with
+
+{15}
+
+herself, then with her colleagues. All the "alarms" had been
+rung. The male politician could not understand why his
+wellmeaning and generously-offered advice caused not a ripple and
+not a change in plan. Such calm unconcern he could not endure. He
+was accustomed to emotional panics. He was not accustomed to a
+leader who had weighed every objection, every attack and counted
+the cost accurately.
+
+Her ability to marshal arguments for keeping her own followers in
+line was equally marked. A superficial observer would rush into
+headquarters with, "Miss Paul, don't you think it was a great
+tactical mistake to force President Wilson at this time to state
+his position on the amendment? Will it not hurt our campaign to
+have it known that he is against us?"
+
+"It is the best thing that could possibly happen to us. If he is
+against us, women should know it. They will be aroused to greater
+action if he is not allowed to remain silent upon something in
+which he does not believe. It will make it easier for us to
+campaign against him when the time comes."
+
+And another time a friend of the cause would suggest, "Would it
+not have been better not to have tried for planks in party
+platforms, since we got such weak ones?"
+
+"Not at all. We can draw the support of women with greater ease
+from a party which shows a weak hand on suffrage, than from one
+which hides its opposition behind silence."
+
+She had always to combat the fear of the more timid ones who felt
+sure with each new wave of disapproval that we would be
+submerged. "Now, I have been a supporter of yours every step of
+the way," a "fearful" one would say, "but this is really going a
+little too far. I was in the Senate gallery to-day when two
+suffrage. senators in speeches denounced the pickets and their
+suffrage banners. They said that we were setting suffrage back
+and that something ought to be done about it."
+
+"Exactly so," would come the ready answer from Miss
+Paul. "And they will do something about it only if we continue
+
+{16}
+
+to make them uncomfortable enough. Of course even suffrage
+senators will object to our pickets and our banners because they
+do not want attention called to their failure to compel the
+Administration to act. They know that as friends of the measure
+their responsibility is greater." And the "fearful" one was
+usually convinced and made stronger.
+
+I remember so well when the situation was approaching its final
+climax in Washington. Men and women, both, came to Miss Paul
+with, "This is terrible! Seven months' sentence is impossible.
+You must stop! You cannot keep this up!"
+
+With an unmistakable note of triumph in her voice Miss Paul would
+answer, "Yes, it is terrible for us, but not nearly so terrible
+as for the government. The Administration has fired its heaviest
+gun. From now on we shall win and they will lose."
+
+Most of the doubters had by this time banished their fears
+and had come to believe with something akin to superstition that
+she could never be wrong, so swiftly and surely, did they see her
+policies and her predictions on every point vindicated before
+their eyes.
+
+She has been a master at concentration, a master strategist-a
+great general. With passionate beliefs on all important social
+questions, she resolutely set herself against being seduced into
+other paths. Far from being naturally an ascetic, she has
+disciplined herself into denials and deprivations, cultural and
+recreational, to pursue her objective with the least possible
+waste of energy. Not that she did not want above all else to do
+this thing. She did. But doing it she had to abandon the easy
+life of a scholar and the aristocratic environment of a cultured,
+prosperous, Quaker family, of Moorestown, New Jersey, for the
+rigors of a ceaseless drudgery and frequent imprisonment. A
+flaming idealist, conducting the fight with the sternest kind of
+realism, a mind attracted by facts, not fancies, she has led
+fearlessly and with magnificent ruthlessness. Think-
+
+{17}
+
+ing, thinking day and night of her objective and never retarding
+her pace a moment until its accomplishment, I know no modern
+woman leader with whom to compare her. I think she must possess
+many of the same qualities that Lenin does, according to
+authentic portraits of him-cool, practical, rational, sitting
+quietly at a desk and counting the consequences, planning the
+next move before the first one is finished. And if she has
+demanded the ultimate of her followers, she has given it herself.
+Her ability to get women to work and never to let them stop is
+second only to her own unprecedented capacity for work.
+
+Alice Paul came to leadership still in her twenties, but with a
+broad cultural equipment. Degrees from Swarthmore, the University
+of Pennsylvania, and special study abroad in English universities
+had given her a scholarly background in history, politics, and
+sociology. In these studies she had specialized, writing her
+doctor's thesis on the status of women. She also did factory work
+in English industries and there acquired first hand knowledge of
+the industrial position of women. In the midst of this work the
+English militant movement caught her imagination and she
+abandoned her studies temporarily to join that movement and go to
+prison with the English suffragists.
+
+Convinced that the English women were fighting the battle for the
+women of the world, she returned to America fresh from their
+struggle, to arouse American women to action. She came bringing
+her gifts and concentration to this one struggle. She came with
+that inestimable asset, youth, and, born of youth, indomitable
+courage to carry her point in spite of scorn and
+misrepresentation.
+
+Among the thousands of telegrams sent Miss Paul the day the
+amendment finally passed Congress was this interesting message
+from Walter Clark, Chief Justice of the Supreme
+
+{18}
+
+Court of North Carolina, Southern Democrat, Confederate Veteran
+and distinguished jurist:
+
+"Will you permit me to congratulate you upon the great triumph in
+which you have been so important a factor? Your place in history
+is assured. Some years ago when I first met you I predicted that
+your name would be written `on the dusty roll the ages keep.'
+There were politicians, and a large degree of public sentiment,
+which could only be won by the methods you adopted . . . . It is
+certain that, but for you, success would have been delayed for
+many years to come."
+
+{19}
+
+Part II
+
+Political Action
+
+{20}
+
+Blank page
+
+{21}
+
+Chapter 1
+
+Women Invade the Capital
+
+Where are the people?" This was Woodrow Wilson's first question
+as he arrived at the Union Station in Washington the day before
+his first inauguration to the Presidency in March, 1913.
+
+"On the Avenue watching the suffragists parade," came the answer.
+
+The suffrage issue was brought oftenest to his attention from
+then on until his final surrender. It lay entirely with him as to
+how long women would be obliged to remind him of this issue
+before he willed to take a hand.
+
+"The people" were on the Avenue watching the suffragists parade.
+The informant was quite right. It seemed to those of us who
+attempted to march for our idea that day that the whole world was
+there-packed closely on Pennsylvania Avenue.
+
+The purpose of the procession was to dramatize in numbers and
+beauty the fact that women wanted to vote that women were asking
+the Administration in power in the national government to speed
+the day. What politicians had not been able to get through their
+minds we would give them through their eyes-often a powerful
+substitute. Our first task seemed simple actually to show that
+thousands of women wanted immediate action on their long delayed
+enfranchisement. This we did.
+
+This was the first demonstration under the leadership of Alice
+Paul, at that time chairman of the Congressional Com-
+
+{22}
+
+mittee of the National American Woman. Suffrage Association. It
+was also the beginning of Woodrow Wilson's liberal education.
+
+The Administration, without intending it, played into the hands
+of the women from this moment. The women had been given a permit
+to march. Inadequate police protection allowed roughs to attack
+them and all but break up the beautiful pageant. The fact of ten
+thousand women marching with banners and bands for this idea was
+startling enough to wake up the government and the country, but
+not so startling as ten thousand women man-handled by
+irresponsible crowds because of police indifference.
+
+An investigation was demanded and a perfunctory one held. The
+police administration was exonerated, but when the storm of
+protest had subsided the Chief of Police was quietly retired to
+private life.
+
+It was no longer a secret that women wanted to vote and that they
+wanted the President and Congress to act.
+
+A few days later the first deputation of suffragists ever to
+appear before a President to enlist his support for the passage
+of the national suffrage amendment waited upon President
+Wilson.[1] Miss Paul led the deputation. With her were Mrs.
+Genevieve Stone, wife of Congressman Stone of Illinois, Mrs.
+Harvey W. Wiley, Mrs. Ida Husted Harper, and Miss Mary Bartlett
+Dixon of Maryland. The President received the deputation in the
+White House Offices. When the women entered they found five
+chairs arranged in a row with one chair in front, like a class-
+room. All confessed to being frightened when the President came
+in and took his seat at the head of the class. The President said
+he had no opinion on the subject of woman suffrage; that he had
+never given it any thought;[2]
+
+[1]There had been individual visits to previous presidents.
+
+[2]At Colorado Springs in 1911, when Mr. Wilson was Governor of
+New Jersey and campaigning for the Presidential nomination, a
+delegation of Colorado women asked him his position on woman
+suffrage. He said, "Ladies, this is a very arguable question and
+my mind is in the midst of the argument"
+
+{23}
+
+and that above all it was his task to see that Congress
+concentrated on the currency revision and the tariff reform. It
+is recorded that the President was somewhat taken aback when Miss
+Paul addressed him during the course of the interview with this
+query, "But Mr. President, do you not understand that the
+Administration has no right to legislate for currency, tariff,
+and any other reform without first getting the consent of women
+to these reforms?"
+
+"Get the consent of women?" It was evident that this course had
+not heretofore occurred to him.
+
+"This subject will receive my most careful consideration," was
+President Wilson's first suffrage promise.
+
+He was given time to "consider" and a second deputation went to
+him, and still a third, asking him to include the suffrage
+amendment in his message to the new Congress assembling in extra
+session the following month. And still he was obsessed with the
+paramount considerations of "tariff" and "currency." He flatly
+said there would be no time to consider suffrage for women. But
+the "unreasonable" women kept right on insisting that the liberty
+of half the American people was paramount to tariff and currency.
+
+President Wilson's first session of Congress came together April
+7th, 1913. The opening day was marked by the suffragists' second
+mass demonstration. This time women delegates representing every
+one of the 435 Congressional Districts in the country bore
+petitions from the constituencies showing that the people "back
+home" wanted the amendment passed. The delegates marched on
+Congress and were received with a warm welcome and their
+petitions presented to Congress. The same day the amendment which
+bears the name of Susan B. Anthony, who drafted it in 1875, was
+reintroduced into both houses of Congress.
+
+{24}
+
+The month of May saw monster demonstrations in many cities and
+villages throughout the country, with the direct result that in
+June the Senate Committee on Suffrage made the first favorable
+report made by that committee in twenty-one years, thereby
+placing it on the Senate calendar for action.
+
+Not relaxing the pressure for a day we organized the third great
+demonstration on the last of July when a monster petition signed
+by hundreds of thousands of citizens was brought to the Senate
+asking that body to pass the national suffrage amendment. Women
+from all parts of the country mobilized in the countryside of
+Maryland where they were met with appropriate ceremonies-by the
+Senate Woman Suffrage Committee. The delegation motored in gaily
+decorated automobiles to Washington and went direct to the
+Senate, where the entire day was given over to suffrage
+discussion.
+
+Twenty-two senators spoke in favor of the amendment in presenting
+their petitions. Three spoke against it. For the first time in
+twenty-six years suffrage was actually debated in Congress. That
+day was historic.
+
+Speeches? Yes. Greetings? Yes. Present petitions from their
+constituencies? Gladly. Report it from the Senate Committee? They
+had to concede that. But passage of the amendment? That was
+beyond their contemplation.
+
+More pressure was necessary. We appealed to the women voters, of
+whom there were then four million, to come into action.
+
+"Four million women voters are watching you," we said to
+Congress. We might as well have said, "There are in the South Sea
+Islands four million heathens."
+
+It was clear that these distant women voters had no relation in
+the senatorial mind to the realism of politics. We decided to
+bring some of these women voters to Washington: Having failed to
+get the Senate to act by August, we invited the Council of Women
+Voters to hold its convention in Wash-
+
+{25}
+
+ington that Congress might learn this simple lesson: women did
+vote; there were four million of them; they had a voters'
+organization; they cared about the enfranchisement of all
+American women; they wanted the Senate to act; suffrage was no
+longer a moral problem; it could be made a practical political
+problem with which men and parties would have to reckon.
+
+Voting women made their first impression on Congress that summer.
+
+Meanwhile the President's "paramount issues"-tariff and currency-
+had been disposed of. With the December Congress approaching, he
+was preparing another message. We went to him again. This time it
+was the women from his own home state, an influential deputation
+of seventy-three women, including the suffrage leaders from all
+suffrage organizations in New Jersey. The women urged him to
+include recommendation of the suffrage resolution in his message
+to the new Congress. He replied:
+
+"I am pleased, indeed, to greet you and your adherents here, and
+I will say to you that I was talking only yesterday with several
+members of Congress in regard to a Suffrage Committee in the
+House. The subject is one in which I am deeply interested, and
+you may rest assured that I will give it my earnest attention."
+
+In interesting himself in the formation of a special committee to
+sit on suffrage in the House, the President was doing the
+smallest thing, to be sure, that could be done, but he was doing
+something. This was a distinct advance. It was our task to press
+on until all the maze of Congressional machinery had been used to
+exhaustion. Then there would be nothing left to do but to pass
+the amendment.
+
+A fourth time that year the determination of women to secure the
+passage of the amendment was demonstrated. In December, the
+opening week of the new Congress, the annual convention of the
+National American Woman Suffrage Asso-
+
+{26}
+
+ciation was held in Washington. Miss Lucy Burns, vice chairman of
+its Congressional Committee and also of the Congressional Union,
+was applauded to the echo by the whole convention when she said:
+
+"The National American Woman Suffrage Association is assembled in
+Washington to ask the Democratic Party to enfranchise the women
+of America.
+
+"Rarely in the history of the country has a party been more
+powerful than the Democratic Party is to-day. It controls the
+Executive Office, the Senate and more than two-thirds of the
+members of the House of Representatives. It is in a position to
+give us effective and immediate help.
+
+"We ask the Democrats to take action now. Those who hold power
+are responsible to the country for the use of it. They are
+responsible not only for what they do, but for what they do not
+do. Inaction establishes just as clear a record as does a policy
+of open hostility.
+
+"We have in our hands to-day not only the weapon of a just cause;
+we have the support of ten enfranchised states comprising one-
+fifth of the United States Senate, one-seventh of the House of
+Representatives, and one-sixth of the electoral vote. More than
+3,600,000 women have a vote in Presidential elections. It is
+unthinkable that a national government which represents women,
+and which appeals periodically for the suffrages of women, should
+ignore the issue of the right of all women to political freedom.
+
+"We cannot wait until after the passage of scheduled
+Administration reforms . . . . Congress is free to take action on
+our question in the present session. We ask the Administration to
+support the woman suffrage amendment in Congress with its whole
+strength."
+
+This represented the attitude of the entire suffrage movement
+toward the situation in the winter of 1913. At no time did the
+militant group deviate from this position until the amendment was
+through Congress.
+
+It was difficult to make the Administration believe that the
+women meant what they said, and that they meant to use
+
+{27}
+
+everything in their power and resourcefulness to see it carried
+out.
+
+Men were used to having women ask them for suffrage. But they
+were disconcerted at being asked for it now; at being threatened
+with political chastisement if they did not yield to the demand.
+
+In spite of the repeated requests to President Wilson that he
+include support of the measure in his message to Congress, he
+delivered his message December end while the convention was still
+in session, and failed to make any mention of the suffrage
+amendment. He recommended self-government for Filipino men
+instead.
+
+Immediately Miss Paul organized the entire convention into a
+fifth deputation to protest against this failure and to urge
+support in a subsequent message. Dr. Anna Howard Shaw led the
+interview. In reply to her eloquent appeal for his assistance,
+the President said in part: "I am merely the spokesman of my
+party . . . . I am not at liberty to urge upon Congress in
+messages, policies which have not had the organic consideration
+of those for whom I am spokesman. I am by my own principles shut
+out, in the language of the street, from `starting anything.' I
+have to confine myself to those things which have been embodied
+as promises to the people at an election."
+
+I shall never forget that day. Shafts of sunlight came in at the
+window and fell full and square upon the white-haired leader who
+was in the closing days of her power. Her clear, deep, resonant
+voice, ringing with the genuine love of liberty, was in sharp
+contrast to the halting, timid, little and technical answer of
+the President. He stooped to utter some light pleasantry which he
+thought would no doubt please the "ladies." It did not provoke
+even a faint smile. Dr. Shaw had dramatically asked, "Mr.
+President, if you cannot speak for us and your party will not,
+who then, pray, is there to speak for us?"
+
+{28}
+
+"You seem very well able to speak for yourselves, ladies," with a
+broad smile, followed by a quick embarrassment when no one
+stirred.
+
+"We mean, Mr. President, who will speak for us with authority"
+came back the hot retort from Dr. Shaw.
+
+The President made no reply. Instead he expressed a desire to
+shake the hands of the three hundred delegates. A few felt that
+manners compelled them to acquiesce; the others filed out without
+this little political ceremony.
+
+Alice Paul's report to the national convention for her year's
+work as Chairman of the Congressional Committee of the National
+American Woman Suffrage Association, and as Chairman also of the
+Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage, showed that a budget of
+twenty-seven thousand dollars had been raised and expended under
+her leadership as against ten dollars spent during the previous
+year on Congressional work. At the beginning of the year there
+was no interest in work with Congress. It was considered
+hopeless. At the close of the year 1918 it had become a practical
+political issue. Suffrage had entered the national field to stay.
+
+At this point the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage was
+obliged to become an independent body in order to continue this
+vigorous policy which the conservative suffrage leaders were
+unwilling to follow.
+
+Hearings, deputations to the President, petitions to Congress,
+more persistent lobbying, all these things continued during the
+following year under Miss Paul's leadership with the result that
+a vote in the Senate was taken, though at ran inopportune
+moment,-the first vote in the Senate since 188'7. The vote stood
+86 to '84-thereby failing by 11 votes of the necessary two-thirds
+majority. This vote, nevertheless, indicated that a new strength
+in the suffrage battle had forced Congress to take some action.
+
+In the House, the Rules Committee on a vote of 4 to 4
+
+{29}
+
+refused to create a suffrage committee. We appealed to the
+Democratic caucus to see if tie party sustained this action. We
+wished to establish their party responsibility, one way or
+another, and by securing the necessary signatures to a petition,
+we compelled the caucus to meet. By a vote of 128 to 57 the
+caucus declared " . . . that the question of woman suffrage is a
+state and not a federal question," as a substitute for the milder
+resolution offered, providing for the creation of a committee on
+woman suffrage. If this had left any doubt as to how the
+Democratic Party, as a party, stood, this doubt was conveniently
+removed by Representative Underwood, the Majority Leader of the
+House, when he said on the floor of the House the following day:
+"The Democratic Party last night took the distinctive position
+that it was not in favor of this legislation because it was in
+favor of the states controlling the question of suffrage . . . .
+I not only said I was opposed to it, but I said the Party on this
+side of the Chamber was opposed to it, and the Party that has
+control of the legislation in Congress certainly has the right to
+say that it will not support a measure if it is not in accordance
+with its principles."
+
+Meanwhile the President had said to a deputation of workingwomen
+who waited upon him in February, "Until the Party, as such, has
+considered a matter of this very supreme importance, and taken
+its position, I am not at liberty to speak for it; and yet I am
+not at liberty to speak for it as an individual, for I am not an
+individual."
+
+"But we ask you to speak to your party, not for it," answered
+Mrs. Glendower Evans, Chairman of the deputation, amid evident
+presidential embarrassment.
+
+Those women who had been inclined perhaps to accept the
+President's words as true to fact, entertained doubts when a .few
+days later he demanded of his party in Congress the repeal of the
+free tolls provision in the Panama Canal tolls act. In so doing,
+he not only recommended action not endorsed by his
+
+{30}
+
+party, but he demanded action which his party had specifically
+declared against.
+
+It was necessary to appeal again to the nation. We called for
+demonstrations. of public approval of the amendment in every
+state on May 2. Thousands of resolutions were passed calling for
+action in Congress. These resolutions were made the center of
+another great demonstration in Washington, May 9, when thousands
+of women in, procession carried them to the Capitol where
+beautiful and impressive ceremonies were held on the Capitol
+steps. The resolutions were formally received by members of
+Congress and the demonstration ended dramatically with a great
+chorus of women massed on the steps singing "The March of the
+Women" to the thousands of spectators packed closely together on
+the Capitol grounds.
+
+And still the President withheld his support.
+
+Under our auspices five hundred representative club women of the
+country waited upon him in another appeal for help.[1] To them he
+explained his "passion for local self-government," which led to
+his conviction "that this is a matter for settlement by the
+states[2] and not by the federal government . . . ."
+
+Women had to face the fact that the 63rd Congress had made a
+distinctly hostile record on suffrage. The President, as leader
+of his party, had seven times refused all aid; the Democratic
+Party had recorded its opposition through an adverse vote in the
+Senate and a caucus vote in the House forbidding even
+consideration of the measure.
+
+It became clear that some form of political action would have to
+be adopted which would act as an accelerator to the
+Administration. This feeling was growing momentarily among many
+women, but it was conspicuously strong in the mind of Mrs. Oliver
+H. P. Belmont, recognized as one of the ablest
+
+[1]7th deputation to the President, June 30, 1914.
+
+[2]This amounted to virtual opposition because of the great
+difficulties, (some of them almost insuperable) involved in
+amending many state constitutions.
+
+{31}
+
+suffrage leaders in the country. Anticipating the unfriendly
+record made by the Democrats in the 63rd Congress, Mrs. Belmont
+had come to Miss Paul and to her vice-chairman, Miss Lucy Burns,
+to urge the formulation of a plan whereby we could strike at
+Administration opposition through the women voters of the West.
+Miss Paul had the same idea and welcomed the support of this plan
+by so able a leader.
+
+Mrs. Belmont was impatient to do nationally what she had already
+inaugurated in New York State suffrage work-make suffrage an
+election issue. She was the first suffragist in America to be
+"militant" enough to wage a campaign against office-seekers on
+the issue of woman suffrage. She was roundly denounced by the
+opposition press, but she held her ground. It is interesting to
+record that she defeated the first candidate for the New York
+Assembly ever campaigned against on this issue.
+
+She had associated herself with the Pankhursts in England and was
+the first suffrage leader here publicly to commend the tactics of
+the English militants. Through her, Mrs. Pankhurst made her first
+visits to America, where she found a sympathetic audience. Even
+among the people who understood and believed in English tactics,
+the general idea here was that only in the backward country of
+England was "militancy" necessary. In America, men would give
+women what women wanted without a struggle.
+
+Mrs. Belmont was the one suffrage leader who foresaw a militant
+battle here whenever women should determine to ask for their
+freedom immediately. In a great measure she prepared the way for
+that battle.
+
+Since the movement had not even advanced to the stage of
+political action at that time, however, Mrs. Belmont realized
+that political action would have to be exhausted before
+attempting more aggressive tactics. Not knowing whether Miss Paul
+had contemplated inaugurating political action in the
+
+{32}
+
+national field, she sought out the new leader and urged her to
+begin at, once to organize the women's power for use in the
+approaching national elections.
+
+Those interested in the woman's movement are fairly familiar with
+Mrs. Belmont's early state suffrage work and her work with the
+militants in England, but they do not know as much about her
+national work. It is not easy for a woman of vast wealth to be
+credited with much else in America than the fact of generosity in
+giving money to the cause in which she believes. Wealth dazzles
+us and we look no further. Mrs. Belmont has given hundreds of
+thousands of dollars to suffrage, both state and national, but
+she has given greater gifts in her militant spirit, her political
+sagacity and a marked tactical sense. She was practically the
+only leader formerly associated with the conservative forces who
+had the courage to extricate herself from the old routine
+propaganda and adventure into new paths. She always approached
+the struggle for liberty in a wholesome revolutionary mood. She
+was essentially a leader, and one who believed in action-always
+action.
+
+Until the movement in America regained its militant spirit, her
+heart was primarily with the English women, because she thought
+their fight so magnificent that it would bring suffrage to women
+in England sooner than our slow-going methods would bring it to
+us. In 1910, when English militancy was at its height, Mrs.
+Belmont gave out an interview in London, in which she predicted
+that English women would have the suffrage before us. She even
+went so far as to say that we in America would have to create an
+acute situation here, probably a form of militancy, before we
+could win. At the same time the President of the International
+Suffrage Alliance said in London: "The suffrage movement in
+England- resembles a battle. It is cruel and tragic. Ours in
+America is an evolution-less dramatic, slow but more sure." Facts
+sustained Mrs. Belmont's prophecy. Facts did not sustain the
+other
+
+{33}
+
+prediction. English women got the vote in 1918. American women
+were not enfranchised nationally until August, 1920.
+
+The following is the political theory and program approved by
+Mrs. Belmont and submitted to the Congressional Union, by its
+chairman, Alice Paul, at a conference of the organization at the
+home of Mrs. Belmont in Newport in August, 1914:
+
+The dominant party (at that time the Democratic Party) is
+responsible for all action and therefore for action on suffrage.
+
+This party's action had been hostile to this measure.
+
+The dominant party in the approaching election must be convinced,
+and through it all other parties, that opposition to suffrage is
+inexpedient.
+
+All parties will be convinced when they see that their opposition
+costs them votes.
+
+Our fight is a political one.
+
+We must appeal for support to the constituency which is most
+friendly to suffrage, that constituency being the voting women.
+
+An attempt must be made, no matter how small, to organize the
+women's vote.
+
+An appeal must be made to the women voters in the nine suffrage
+states to withhold their support from the Democrats nationally,
+until the national Democratic Party ceases to block the suffrage
+amendment.
+
+This is non-partisanship in the highest degree, as it calls upon
+women to forego previous allegiance to a party. If they are
+Democrats in this instance, ,they must vote against their party.
+If the Republican Party were in power and pursued a similar
+course, we would work against that party.
+
+The party which sees votes falling away will change its attitude.
+
+After we have once affected by this means the outcome of a
+national election, even though slightly, every party will
+hesitate to trifle with our measure any longer.
+
+All candidates from suffrage states are professing suffragists,
+and therefore we have nothing to lose by defeating a
+
+{34}
+
+member of the dominant party in those states. Another suffragist
+will take his place.
+
+Men will object to being opposed because of their party
+responsibility in spite of their friendliness individually to
+suffrage. But women certainly have a right to further through the
+ballot their wishes on the suffrage question, as well as on other
+questions like currency, tariff, and what not.
+
+This can only be done by considering the Party record, for as the
+individual record and individual pledges go, all candidates are
+practically equal.
+
+We, as a disfranchised class, consider our right to vote,
+preeminently over any other issue in any party's program.
+
+Political leaders will resent our injecting our issue into their
+campaign, but the rank and file will be won when they see the
+loyalty of women to women.
+
+This policy will be called militant and in a sense it is, being
+strong, positive and energetic.
+
+If it is militant to appeal to women to use their vote to bring
+suffrage to this country, then it is militant to appeal to men or
+women to use their vote to any good end.
+
+To the question of "How will we profit if another party comes
+in?" our answer will be that adequate political chastisement of
+one party for its bad suffrage record through a demonstration of
+power by women voters affecting the result of the national
+election, will make it easier to get action from any party in
+power
+
+Amidst tremendous enthusiasm this plan was accepted by the little
+conference of women at Newport, and $7,000 pledged in a few
+moments to start it. There was a small group of women, an
+infinitely small budget with which to wage a campaign in nine
+states, but here was also enthusiasm and resolute determination.
+
+A tiny handful of women-never more than two, more often only one
+to a state-journeyed forth from Washington into the nine suffrage
+states of the West to put before the voting women this political
+theory, and to ask them to support it.
+
+{35}
+
+Chapter 2
+
+Women Voters Organize
+
+It can't be done." "Women don't care about suffrage." I "Once
+they've got it, it is a dead issue." "To talk of arousing the
+Western women to protest against the Congressional candidates of
+the National Democratic Party in the suffrage states, when every
+one of them is a professing suffragist, is utter folly." So ran
+the comment of the political wise acres in the autumn of 1914.
+
+But the women had faith in their appeal.
+
+It is impossible to give in a few words any adequate picture of
+the anger of Democratic leaders at our entrance into the
+campaign. Six weeks before election they woke up to find the
+issue of national suffrage injected into a campaign which they
+had meant should be no more stirring than an orderly and
+perfunctory endorsement of the President's legislative program.
+
+The campaign became a very hot one during which most of the
+militancy seemed to be on the side of the political leaders.
+Heavy fists came down on desks. Harsh words were spoken.
+Violent threats were made. In Colorado, where I was cam-
+paigning, I was invited politely but firmly by the Democratic
+leader to leave the state the morning after I had arrived. "You
+can do no good here. I would advise you to leave at once.
+Besides, your plan is impracticable and the women will not
+support it."
+
+"Then why do you object to my being here?" I asked.
+
+"You have no right to ask women to do this . . . ."
+
+Some slight variation of this experience was met by every
+
+{36}
+
+woman who took part in this campaign. Of course, the Democratic
+leaders did not welcome an issue raised unexpectedly, and one
+which forced them to spend an endless amount of time apologizing
+for and explaining the Democratic Party's record. Nor did they
+relish spending more money publishing more literature, in short,
+adding greatly to the burdens of their campaign. The candidates,
+a little more suave than the party leaders, proved most
+eloquently that they had been suffragists
+"from birth." One candidate even claimed a suffrage inheritance
+from his great-grandmother.
+
+This first entry of women into a national election on the
+suffrage amendment was little more than a quick, brilliant
+dash. With all its sketchiness, however, it had immediate
+political results, and when the election was over, there came
+tardily a general public recognition that the Congressional
+Union had made a real contribution to these results. In the
+nine suffrage states women vote3 for 45 members of Congress.
+For 43 of these seats the Democratic Party ran candidates.
+We opposed in our campaign all of these candidates. Out of
+the 43 Democratic candidates running, only 9.0 were elected.
+While it was not our primary aim to defeat candidates it was
+generally conceded that we had contributed to these defeats.
+
+Our aim in this campaign was primarily to call to the attention
+of the public the bad suffrage record of the Democratic Party.
+The effect of our campaign was soon evident in Congress. The most
+backward member realized for the first time that women had voted.
+Even the President perceived that the movement had gained new
+strength, though he was not yet politically moved by it. He was
+still "tied to a conviction"[1] which he had had all his life
+that suffrage "ought to be brought about state by state."
+
+Enough strength and determination among women had
+
+[1]Statement to Deputation of Democratic women (eighth
+deputation) at the White House, Jan. 6, 1915.
+
+{37}
+
+been demonstrated to the Administration, however, to make them
+want to do something "just as good" as the thing we asked.  The
+Shafroth-Palmer[1] Resolution was introduced, providing for a
+constitutional amendment permitting a national initiative and
+referendum on suffrage in the states, thereby forcing upon women
+the very course we had sought to circumvent.  This red herring
+drawn across the path had been accepted by the conservative suff-
+ragists evidently in a moment of hopelessness, and their strength
+put behind it, but the politicians who persuade them to back it
+knew that it was merely an attempt to evade the issue.
+
+This made necessary a tremendous campaign throughout the country
+by the Congressional Union, with the result that the compromise
+measure was eventually abandoned. During its life, however,
+politicians were happy in the opportunity to divide their support
+between it and the original amendment, which was still pending.
+To offset this danger and to show again in dramatic fashion the
+strength and will of the women voters to act on this issue, we
+made political work among the western women the principal effort
+of the year 1915, the year preceding the presidential election.
+Taking advantage of the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San
+Francisco, we opened suffrage headquarters in the Palace of
+Education on the exposition grounds. From there we called the
+first Woman Voters' Convention ever held in the world for the
+single purpose of attaching political strength to the movement.
+Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont was chairman of the committee which signed
+the convention call.
+
+Women from all the voting states assembled in a mass convention
+September 14, 15 and 16. There is not time to describe
+
+[1]This resolution was introduced in the Senate by Senator
+Shafroth of Colorado, Democrat; in the House by Representative A.
+Mitchell Palmer of Pennsylvania, Democrat, later Attorney General
+in President Wilson's Cabinet. Both men, although avowed
+supporters of the original Susan B. Anthony amendment, backed
+this evil compromise.
+
+{38}
+
+the beauty of the pageantry which surrounded that gathering, nor
+of the emotional quality which was at high pitch throughout the
+sessions. These women from the deserts of Arizona, from the farms
+of Oregon, from the valleys of California, from the mountains of
+Nevada and Utah, were in deadly earnest. They had answered the
+call and they meant to stay in the fight until it was won. The
+convention went on record unanimously for further political
+action on behalf of national suffrage and for the original
+amendment without compromise, and pledged itself to use all power
+to this end without regard to the interests of any existing
+political party.
+
+Two emissaries, Sara Bard Field and Frances Joliffe, both of
+California, were commissioned by women voters at the final
+session, when more than ten thousand people were present, to go
+to the President and Congress bearing these resolutions and
+hundreds of thousands of signatures upon a petition gathered
+during the summer. They would speak directly to the President
+lest he should be inclined to take lightly the women voters'
+resolutions.
+
+The envoys, symbolic of the new strength that was to come out of
+the West, made their journey across continent by automobile. They
+created a sensation all along the way, received as they were by
+governors, by mayors, by officials high and low, and by the
+populace. Thousands more added their names to the petition and it
+was rolled up to gigantic proportions until in December when
+unrolled it literally stretched over miles as it was borne to the
+Capitol with honor escorts.
+
+The action of the convention scarcely cold, and the envoys mid-
+way across the continent, the President hastened to New Jersey to
+cast his vote for suffrage in a state referendum. He was careful
+to state that he did so as a private citizen, "not as the leader
+of my party in the nation" He repeated his position, putting the
+emphasis upon his opposition to national suffrage, rather than on
+his belief in suffrage for his state.
+
+{39}
+
+"I believe that it (suffrage) should be settled by the states and
+not by the national government, and that in no circumstances
+should it be made a party question; and my view has grown
+stronger at every turn of the agitation." He knew women were
+asking the powerful aid of the President of the United States,
+not the aid of Mr. Wilson of Princeton, New Jersey. The state
+amendment in New Jersey was certain to fail, as President Wilson
+well knew. Casting a vote for it would help his case with women
+voters, and still not bring suffrage in the East a step nearer.
+
+The envoys' reception at the Capitol was indeed dramatic.
+Thousands of women escorted them amid bands and banners to the
+halls of Congress, where they were received by senators and
+representatives and addressed with eloquent speeches. The envoys
+replied by asking that their message be carried by friends of the
+measure to the floor of the Senate and House, and this was done.
+
+The envoys waited upon the President at the White House. This
+visit of the representatives of women with power marked rather an
+advance in the President's position. He listened with an eager
+attention to the story of the new-found power and what women
+meant to do with it. For the first time on record, he said he had
+"an open mind" on the question of national suffrage, and would
+confer with his party colleagues.
+
+The Republican and Democratic National Committees heard the case
+of the envoys. They were given a hearing before the Senate
+Suffrage Committee and before the House Judiciary in one of the
+most lively and entertaining inquisitions in which women ever
+participated.
+
+No more questions on mother and home! No swan song on the passing
+of charm and womanly loveliness! Only agile scrambling by each
+committee member to ask with eagerness and some heat, "Well, if
+this amendment has not passed Congress by then, what will you do
+in the elections of 1916?" It
+
+{40}
+
+was with difficulty that the women were allowed to tell their
+story, so eager was the Committee to jump ahead to political
+consequences. "Sirs, that depends upon what you gentlemen do. We
+are asking a simple thing-" But they never got any further from
+the main base of their interest.
+
+"If President Wilson comes out for it and his party does
+not" from a Republican member, "will you-"
+
+"I object to introducing partisan discussions here," came
+shamelessly from a Democratic colleague. And so the hearing
+passed in something of a verbal riot, but with no doubt as to the
+fact that Congressmen were alarmed by the prospect of women
+voting as a protest group.
+
+The new year found the Senate promptly reporting the measure
+favorably again, but the Judiciary Committee footballed it to its
+sub-committee, back to the whole committee, postponed it, marked
+time, dodged defeated it.
+
+The problem of neutrality toward the European war was agitating
+the minds of political leaders. Nothing like suffrage for women
+must be allowed to rock the ship even slightly! Oh, no, indeed;
+it was men's business to keep the nation out of war. Men never
+had shown marked skill at keeping nations out of war in the
+history of the world. But never mind! Logic must not be pressed
+too hard upon the "reasoning" sex. This time, men would do it.
+
+The exciting national election contest was approaching. Party
+conventions were scheduled to meet in June while the amendment
+languished at the Capitol. It was clear that more highly
+organized woman-power would have to be called into action before
+the national government would speed its pace. To the women voters
+the Eastern women went for decisive assistance. A car known as
+the "Suffrage Special," carrying distinguished Eastern women and
+gifted speakers, made an
+
+{41}
+
+extensive tour of the West and under the banner of the
+Congressional Union called again upon the women voters to come to
+Chicago on June 5th to form a new party,-The Woman's Party[1]-to
+serve as long as should be necessary as the balance of power in
+national contests, and thus to force action from the old parties.
+
+The instant response which met this appeal surpassed the most
+optimistic hopes. Thousands of women assembled in Chicago for
+this convention, which became epoch-making not only in .the
+suffrage fight but in the whole woman movement. For the first
+time in history, women came together to organize their political
+power into a party to free their own sex. For the first time in
+history representatives of men's political parties came to plead
+before these women voters for the support of their respective
+parties.
+
+The Republican Party sent as its representatives John Hays
+Hammond and C. S. Osborn, formerly Governor of Michigan. The
+Democrats sent their most persuasive orator, President Wilson's
+friend, Dudley Field Malone, Collector of the Port of New York.
+Allan Benson, candidate for the Presidency on the Socialist
+ticket, represented the Socialist Party. Edward Polling,
+Prohibition leader, spoke for the Prohibition Party, arid Victor
+Murdock and Gifford Pinchot for The Progressive Party.
+
+All laid their claims for suffrage support before the women with
+the result that the convention resolved itself into another
+political party-The Woman's Party. A new party with but one
+plank-the immediate passage of the federal suffrage amendment-a
+party determined to withhold its support from all existing
+parties until women were politically free, and to punish
+politically any party in power which did not use its
+
+[1]The Woman's Party started with a membership of all
+Congressional Union members in suffrage states. Anne Martin of
+Nevada was elected chairman.
+
+{42}
+
+power to free women; a party which became a potent factor of
+protest in the following national election.
+
+This first step towards the solidarity of women quickly brought
+results. The Republican National Convention, meeting immediately.
+after the Woman's Party Convention, and the Democratic National
+Convention the week following, both included suffrage planks in
+their national platforms for the first time in history. To be
+sure, they were planks that failed to satisfy us. But the mere
+hint of organized political action on suffrage had moved the two
+dominant parties to advance a step. The new Woman's Party had
+declared suffrage a national political issue. The two major
+parties acknowledged the issue by writing it into their party
+platforms.
+
+The Republican platform was vague and indefinite on national
+suffrage. The Democratic Party made its suffrage plank specific
+against action by Congress. It precisely said, "We recommend the
+extension of the franchise to the women of the country by the
+states upon the same terms as men." It was openly stated at the
+Democratic Convention by leading Administration Democrats that
+the President himself had written this suffrage plank. If the
+Republicans could afford to write a vague and indefinite plank,
+the President and his party could not. They as the party in power
+had been under fire and were forced to take sides. They did so.
+The President chose the plank and his subordinates followed his
+lead. It may be remarked in passing that this declaration so
+solidified the opposition within the President's party that when
+the President ultimately sought to repudiate it, he met stubborn
+resistance.
+
+Protected by the President's plank, the Democratic Congress
+continued to block national suffrage. It would not permit it even
+to be reported from the Judiciary Committee. The party platform
+was written. The President, too, found it easy to hide behind the
+plank which he had himself written,
+
+{43}
+
+counting on women to be satisfied. To Mrs. D. E. Hooker of
+Richmond, Virginia, who as a delegate from the Virginia
+Federation of Labor, representing 60,000 members, went to him
+soon after to ask his support of the amendment, the President
+said, "I am opposed by conviction and political traditions to
+federal action on this question. Moreover, after the plank which
+was adopted in the Democratic platform at St. Louis, I could not
+comply with the request contained in this resolution even if I
+wished to do so."
+
+President Wilson could not act because the party plank which he
+had written prevented him from doing so!
+
+Meanwhile the women continued to protest.
+
+Miss Mabel Vernon of Delaware, beloved and gifted crusader, was
+the first member of the Woman's Party to commit a "militant" act.
+President Wilson, speaking at the dedication services of the
+Labor Temple in Washington, was declaring his interest in all
+classes and all struggles. He was proclaiming his beliefs in the
+abstractions of liberty and justice, when Miss Vernon, who was
+seated on the platform from which he was speaking, said in her
+powerful voice, "Mr. President, if you sincerely desire to
+forward the interests of all the people, why do you oppose the
+national enfranchisement of, women?" Instant consternation arose,
+but the idea had penetrated to the farthest corner of the huge
+assembly that women were protesting to the President against the
+denial of their liberty.
+
+The President found time to answer, "That is one of the things
+which we will have to take counsel over later," and resumed his
+speech. Miss Vernon repeated her question later and was ordered
+from the meeting by the police.
+
+As the summer wore on, women realized that they would have to
+enter the national contest in the autumn. Attention was focussed
+on the two rival presidential candidates, Woodrow Wilson and
+Charles Evans Hughes, the Republican nominee, upon whom the new
+Woman's Party worked diligently
+
+{44}
+
+for prompt statements of their position on the national
+amendment.
+
+The next political result of the new solidarity of women
+was Mr. Hughes' declaration on August 1st, 1916: "My view is that
+the proposed amendment should be submitted and ratified and the
+subject removed from political discussion."
+
+The Democratic Congress adjourned without even report
+ing the measure to that body for a vote, and went forthwith to
+the country to ask reelection.
+
+We also went to the country. We went to the women voters to lay
+before them again the Democratic Party's record now complete
+through one Administration. We asked women voters again to
+withhold their support nationally from President Wilson and his
+party.
+
+The President accepted at once the opportunity to speak before a
+convention of suffragists at Atlantic City in an effort to prove
+his great belief in suffrage. He said poetically, "The tide is
+rising to meet the moon . . . . You can afford to wait" Whatever
+we may have thought of his figure of speech, we disagreed with
+his conclusion.
+
+The campaign on, Democratic speakers throughout the West found an
+unexpected organized force among women, demanding an explanation
+of the past conduct of the Democratic Party and insisting on an
+immediate declaration by the President in favor of the amendment.
+Democratic orators did their utmost to meet this opposition.
+"Give the President time. He can't do everything at once." "Trust
+him once more; he will do it for you next term." "He kept us out
+of war. He is the best friend the mothers of the nation ever
+had" "He stood by you. Now you women stand by him." "What good
+will votes do you if the Germans come over here and take your
+country?" And so on. Enticing doctrine to women-the peace lovers
+of the human race.
+
+Although we entered this contest with more strength than
+
+{45}
+
+we had had in 1914, with a budget five times as large and with
+piled-up evidence of Democratic hostility, we could rot have
+entered a more difficult contest. The people were excited to an
+almost unprecedented pitch over the issue of peace versus war. In
+spite of the difficulty of competing with this emotional issue
+which meant the immediate disposal of millions of lives, it was
+soon evident that the two issues were running almost neck and
+neck in the Western territory.
+
+No less skilled a campaigner than William Jennings Bryan took the
+stump in the West against the Woman's Party. At least a third of
+each speech was devoted to suffrage. He urged. He exhorted. He
+apologized. He explained. He pleaded. He condemned. Often he was
+heckled. Often he saw huge "VOTE AGAINST WILSON! HE KEPT US OUT
+OF SUFFRAGE!" banners at the doors of his meetings. One woman in
+Arizona, who, unable longer to listen in patience to the glory of
+"a democracy where only were governed those who consented,"
+interrupted him. He coldly answered, "Madam, you cannot pick
+cherries before they are ripe." By the time he got to.
+California, however, the cherries had ripened considerably, for
+Mr. Bryan came out publicly for the national amendment.
+
+What was true of Mr. Bryan was true of practically every
+Democratic campaigner. Against their wills they were forced to
+talk about suffrage, although they had serenely announced at the
+opening of the campaign that it was "not an issue in this
+campaign." Some merely apologized and explained. Others, like
+Dudley Field Malone, spoke for the federal amendment, and
+promised to work to put it through the next Congress, "if only
+you women will stand by Wilson and return him to power."
+
+Space will not permit in this book to give more than a hint of
+the scope and strength of our campaign. If it were possible to
+give a glimpse of the speeches made by men in that cam-
+
+{46}
+
+paign, you would agree that it was not peace alone that was the
+dominant issue, but peace and suffrage. It must be made perfectly
+clear that the Woman's Party did not attempt to elect Mr. Hughes.
+It did not feel strong enough to back a candidate in its first
+battle, and did not conduct its fight affirmatively at all. No
+speeches were made for Mr. Hughes and the Republican Party. The
+appeal was to vote a vote of protest against Mr. Wilson and his
+Congressional candidates, because he and his party had had the
+power to pass the amendment through Congress and had refused to
+do so. That left the women free to choose from among the
+Republicans, Socialists and Prohibitionists. It was to be
+expected that the main strength of the vote taken from Mr. Wilson
+would go to Mr. Hughes, as few women perhaps threw their votes to
+the minority parties. But just as the Progressive Party's protest
+had been effective in securing progressive legislation without
+winning the election, so the Woman's Party hoped its protest
+would bring results in Congress without attempting to win the
+election.
+
+History will never know in round numbers how many women voted
+against the President and his party at this crisis, for there are
+no records kept for men and women separately, except in one
+state, in Illinois. The women there voted two to one against Mr.
+Wilson and for Mr. Hughes.
+
+Men outnumber women throughout the entire western territory; in
+some states, two and three to one; in Nevada, still higher. But,
+whereas, in the election of 191, President Wilson got 69
+electoral votes from the suffrage states, in the 1916 election,
+when the whole West was aflame for him because of his peace
+policy, he got only 5'7. Enthusiasm for Mr. Hughes in the West
+was not sufficiently marked to account entirely for the loss of
+these 12 electoral votes. Our claim that Democratic opposition to
+suffrage had cost many of them was never seriously denied.
+
+{47}
+
+The Democratic Judiciary Committee of the House which had refused
+to report suffrage to the House for a vote, had only one
+Democratic member from a suffrage state, Mr. Taggart of Kansas,
+standing for reelection. This was the only spot where women could
+strike out against the action of this committee-and Mr. Taggart.
+They struck with success. He was defeated almost wholly by the
+women's votes.
+
+With a modest campaign fund of slightly over fifty thousand
+dollars, raised almost entirely in small sums, the women had
+forced the campaign committee of the Democratic Party to assume
+the defensive and to practically double expenditure and work on
+this issue. As much literature was used on suffrage as on peace
+in the suffrage states.
+
+Many Democrats although hostile to our campaign said without
+qualification that the Woman's Party protest was the only factor
+in the campaign which stemmed the western tide toward Wilson, and
+which finally made California the pivotal state and left his
+election in doubt for a week.
+
+Again, with more force, national suffrage had been injected into
+a campaign where it was not wanted, where the leaders had hoped
+the single issue of "peace" would hold the center of the stage.
+Again many women had stood together on this issue and put woman
+suffrage first. And the actual reelection of President Wilson had
+its point of advantage, too, for it enabled us to continue the
+education of a man in power who had already had four years of
+lively training on the woman question.
+
+{48}
+
+Chapter 3
+
+The Last Deputation to President Wilson
+
+Of the hundreds of women who volunteered for the last Western
+campaign, perhaps the most effective in their appeal were the
+disfranchised Eastern women.
+
+The most dramatic figure of them all was Inez Milholland
+Boissevain, the gallant and beloved crusader who gave her life
+that the day of women's freedom might be hastened. Her last words
+to the nation as she fell fainting on the platform in California
+were, "Mr. President, how long must women wait for liberty?" Her
+fiery challenge was never heard again. She never recovered from
+the terrific strain of the campaign which had undermined her
+young strength. Her death touched the heart of the nation; her
+sacrifice, made so generously for liberty, lighted anew the fire
+of rebellion in women, and aroused from inertia thousands never
+before interested in the liberation of their own sex.
+
+Memorial meetings were held throughout the country at which women
+not only paid radiant tribute to Inez Milholland, but
+reconsecrated themselves to the struggle and called again upon
+the reelected President and his Congress to act.
+
+The most impressive of these memorials was held on Christmas Day
+in Washington. In Statuary Hall under the dome of the Capitol-the
+scene of memorial services for Lincoln and Garfield-filled with
+statues of outstanding figures in the struggle for political and
+religious liberty in this country, the first memorial service
+ever held in the Capitol to honor a woman, was held for this
+gallant young leader.
+
+{49}
+
+Boy choristers singing the magnificent hymn
+
+"Forward through the darkness
+Leave behind the night,
+Forward out of error,
+Forward into light"
+
+led into the hall the procession of young girl banner-bearers.
+Garbed in simple surplices, carrying their crusading banners high
+above their heads, these comrades of Inez Milholland Boissevain
+seemed more triumphant than sad. They seemed to typify the spirit
+in which she gave her life.
+
+Still other young girls in white held great golden banners
+flanking the laurel-covered dais, from which could be read the
+inscriptions: "Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay
+down his life for his friend" . . . "Without extinction is
+liberty; Without retrograde is equality" . . . "As He died to
+make men holy let us die to make men free" . . .
+
+From behind the heavy velvet curtains came the music of voices
+and strings, and the great organ sounded its tragic and
+triumphant tones.
+
+Miss Maud Younger of California was chosen to make the memorial
+address on this occasion. She said in part:
+
+"We are here to pay tribute to Inez Milholland Boissevain, who
+was our comrade. We are here in the nation's capital, the seat of
+our democracy, to pay tribute to one who gave up her life to
+realize that democracy . . . .
+
+"Inez Milholland walked down the path of life a radiant being.
+She went into work with a song in her heart. She went into battle
+with a laugh on her lips. Obstacles inspired her, discouragement
+urged her on. She loved work and she loved battle. She loved life
+and laughter and light, and above all else she loved liberty.
+With a loveliness beyond most, a kindliness, a beauty of mind and
+soul, she typified always the best and noblest in womanhood. She
+was the flaming torch that went ahead to light the way-the symbol
+of light and freedom . . .
+
+{50}
+
+"Symbol of the woman's struggle, it was she who carried to the
+West the appeal of the unenfranchised, and carrying it, made her
+last appeal on earth, her last journey in life.
+
+"As she set out upon her last journey, she seems to have had the
+clearer vision, the spiritual quality of one who has already set
+out for another world. With infinite understanding and intense
+faith in her mission, she was as one inspired. Her meetings were
+described as `revival meetings,' her audiences as `wild with
+enthusiasm.' Thousands acclaimed her, thousands were turned away
+unable to enter . . .
+
+"And she made her message very plain.
+
+"She stood for no man, no party. She stood only for woman. And
+standing thus she urged:
+
+�`It is women for women now and shall be until the fight is won!
+Together we shall stand shoulder to shoulder for the greatest
+principle the world has-ever known, the right of self-government.
+
+�`Whatever the party that has ignored the claims of women we as
+women must refuse to uphold it. We must refuse to uphold any
+party until all women are free.
+
+�`We have nothing but our spirits to rely on and the vitality of
+our faith, but spirit is invincible.
+
+�'It is only for a little while. Soon the fight will be over.
+Victory is in sight.'
+
+"Though she did not live to see that victory, it is sweet to know
+that she lived to see her faith in women justified. In one of her
+last letters she wrote:
+
+"`Not only did we reckon accurately on women's loyalty to women,
+but we likewise realized that our appeal touched a certain
+spiritual, idealistic quality in the western woman voter, a
+quality which is yearning to find expression in political life.
+At the idealism of the Woman's Party her whole nature flames into
+enthusiasm and her response is immediate. She gladly transforms a
+narrow partisan loyalty into loyalty to a principle, the
+establishment of which carries with it no personal advantage to
+its advocate, but merely the satisfaction of achieving one more
+step toward the emancipation of mankind . . . . We are bound to
+win. There never has been a fight yet where interest was pitted
+against principle that principle did not triumph!'
+
+{51}
+
+" . . The trip was fraught with hardship. Speaking day and night,
+she would take a train at two in the morning to arrive at eight;
+then a train at midnight to arrive at five in the morning. Yet
+she would not change the program; she would not leave anything
+out . . .
+
+"And so . . . her life went out in glory in the shining cause of
+freedom.
+
+"And as she had lived loving liberty, working for liberty,
+fighting for liberty, so it was that with this word on her lips
+she fell. `How long must women wait for liberty?' she cried and
+fell-as surely as any soldier upon the field of honor-as truly as
+any who ever gave up his life for an ideal.
+
+"As in life she had been the symbol of the woman's cause so in
+death she is the symbol of its sacrifice. The whole daily
+sacrifice, the pouring out of life and strength that is the toll
+of woman's prolonged struggle.
+
+"Inez Milholland is one around whom legends will grow up.
+Generations to come will point out Mount Inez and tell of the
+beautiful woman who sleeps her last sleep on its slopes.
+
+"They will tell of her in the West, tell of the vision of
+loveliness as she flashed through on her last burning mission,
+flashed through to her death-a falling star in the western
+heavens.
+
+"But neither legend nor vision is liberty, which was her life.
+Liberty cannot die. No work for liberty can be lost. It lives on
+in the hearts of the people, in their hopes, their aspira-
+tions, their activities. It becomes part of the life of the
+nation. What Inez Milholland has given to the world lives on
+forever.
+
+"We are here to-day to pay tribute to Inez Milholland Boissevain,
+who was our comrade. Let our tribute be not words which pass, nor
+song which flies, nor flower which fades. Let it be this: that we
+finish the task she could not finish; that with new strength we
+take up the struggle in which fighting beside us she fell; that
+with new faith we here consecrate ourselves to the cause of
+woman's freedom until that cause is won; that with new devotion
+we go forth, inspired by her sacrifice, to the end that her
+sacrifice be not in vain, for dying she shall bring to pass that
+which living she could not achieve women, full democracy for the
+nation.
+
+"Let this be our tribute, imperishable, to Inez Milholland
+Boissevain."
+
+{52}
+
+Miss Anne Martin of Nevada, chairman of the Woman's Party,
+presided over the services. Other speakers were Honorable George
+Sutherland, United States Senator from Utah, representing the
+United States Congress; and Honorable Rowland S. Mahany, former
+member of Congress and lifelong friend of the Milholland family.
+
+Mrs. William Kent of California, wife of Representative Kent,
+presented two resolutions which the vast audience approved by
+silently rising. One resolution, a tribute of rare beauty,
+prepared by Zona Gale, a friend of Inez Milholland, was a
+compelling appeal to all women to understand and to reverence the
+ideals of this inspiring leader. The other was an appeal to the
+Administration for action.
+
+The pageantry of surpliced choristers and the long line of girl
+standard-bearers retired to the strains of the solemn
+recessional. The great audience sat still with bowed heads as the
+voices in the distance dropped in silence. Instantly the strains
+of the Marseillaise, filling the great dome with its stirring and
+martial song of hope, were taken up by the organ and the strings,
+and the audience was lifted to its feet singing as if in
+anticipation of the triumph of liberty.
+
+The women were in no mood merely to mourn the loss of a comrade-
+leader. The government must be shown again its share of
+responsibility. Another appeal must be made to the President who,
+growing steadily in control over the people and over his
+Congress, was the one leader powerful enough to direct
+his party to accept this reform. But he was busy gathering
+his power to lead them elsewhere. Again we would have to
+compete with pro-war anti-war sentiment. But it was no time
+to relax.
+
+Following the holiday season a deputation of over three hundred
+women carried to the White House the Christmas Day memorial for
+Inez Milholland and other memorials from similar
+
+{53}
+
+services. The President was brought face to face with the new
+protest of women against the continued waste of physical and
+spiritual energy in their battle. There is no better way to
+picture the protest than to give you something verbatim from the
+speeches made that memorable day. This was the first meeting of
+suffragists with the President since the campaign against him in
+the previous autumn. It was only because of the peculiar
+character of the appeal that he consented to hear them.
+
+Miss Younger presented the national memorial to him and
+introduced Mrs. John Winters Brannan, who made no plea to the
+President but merely gave him the New York memorial which read as
+follows:
+
+"This gathering of men and women, assembled on New Year's day in
+New York to hold a memorial service in honor of Inez Milholland
+Boissevain, appeals to you, the President of the United States,
+to end the outpouring of life and effort that has been made for
+the enfranchisement of women for more than seventy years in this
+country. The death of this lovely and brave women symbolizes the
+whole daily sacrifice that vast numbers of women have made and
+are making for the sake of political freedom. It has made vivid
+the `constant unnoticed tragedy of, this prolonged effort for a
+freedom that is acknowledged just, but still denied.'
+
+"It is not given to all to be put to the supreme test and to
+accept that test with such gallant gladness as she did. The
+struggle, however, has reached the point where it requires such
+intensity of effort-relentless and sustained-over the whole vast
+country, that the health of thousands of noble women is being
+insidiously undermined. If this continues, and it will continue
+until victory is won, we know only too surely that many women
+whom the nation can ill spare will follow in the footsteps of
+Inez Milholland.
+
+"We desire to make known to you, Mr. President, our deep sense of
+wrong being inflicted upon women in making them spend their
+health and strength and forcing them to abandon other work that
+means fuller self-expression, in order to win
+
+{54}
+
+freedom under a government that professes to believe in
+democracy.
+
+"There is only one cause for which it is right to risk health
+and life. No price is too high to pay for liberty. So long as
+lives of women are required, these lives will be given.
+
+"But we beg of you, Mr. President, so to act that this ghastly
+price will not have to be paid. Certainly it is a grim irony that
+a Republic should exact it. Upon you at this moment rests a
+solemn responsibility; for with you it rests to decide whether
+the life of this brilliant, dearly-loved woman whose glorious
+death we commemorate to-day, shall be the last sacrifice of fife
+demanded of American women in their struggle for self-government.
+
+"We ask you with all the fervor and earnestness of our souls to
+exert your power over Congress in behalf of the national
+enfranchisement of women in the same way you have so successfully
+used it on other occasions and for far less important measures.
+
+"We are confident that if the President of the United States
+decides that this act of justice shall be done in the present
+session of Congress, it will be done. We know further that if the
+President does not urge it, it will not be done. . . "
+
+A fraction of a moment of silence follows, but it is long enough
+to feel strongly the emotional state of mind of the President. It
+plainly irritates him to be so plainly spoken to. We are
+conscious that his distant poise on entering is dwindling to
+petty confusion. There is something inordinately cool about the
+fervor of the women. This too irritates him. His irritation only
+serves to awaken in every woman new strength. It is a wonderful
+experience to feel strength take possession of your being in a
+contest of ideas. No amount of trappings, no ' amount of
+authority, no number of plainclothes men, nor the glamour of the
+gold-braided attaches, nor the vastness of the great reception
+hall, nor the dazzle of the lighted crystal chandeliers, and
+above all not the mind of your opponent can cut in on your slim,
+hard strength. You are more than invincible. Your mind leaps
+ahead to the infinite liberty of which
+
+{55}
+
+yours is only a small part. You feel his strength in authority,
+his weakness in vision. He does not follow. He feels sorrow for
+us. He patronizes us. He must temper his irritation at our
+undoubted fanaticism and unreason. We, on the other hand, feel so
+superior to him. Our strength to demand is so much greater than
+his power to withhold. But he does not perceive this.
+
+In the midst of these currents the serene and appealing voice of
+Sara Bard Field came as a temporary relief to the President-but
+only temporary. Shy brought tears to the eyes of the women as she
+said in presenting the California memorial resolutions:
+
+"Mr. President, a year ago I had the honor of calling upon you
+with a similar deputation. At that time we brought from my
+western country a great petition from the voting women urging
+your assistance in the passage of the federal amendment for
+suffrage. At that time you were most gracious to us. You showed
+yourself to be in line with all the progressive leaders by your
+statement to us that you could change your mind and would
+consider doing so in connection with this amendment. We went away
+that day with hope in our hearts, but neither the hope inspired
+by your friendly words nor the faith we had in you as an advocate
+of democracy kept us from working day and night in the interest
+of our cause.
+
+"Since that day when we came to you, Mr. President, one of our
+most beautiful and beloved comrades, Inez Milholland, has paid
+the price of her life for this cause. The untimely death of a
+young woman like this-a woman for whom the world has such bitter
+need-has focussed the attention of the men and women of the
+nation on the fearful waste of women which this fight for the
+ballot is entailing. The same maternal instinct for the
+preservation of life-whether it be the physical life of a child
+or the spiritual life of a cause is sending women into this
+battle for liberty with an urge which gives them no rest night or
+day. Every advance of liberty has demanded its quota of human
+sacrifice, but if I had time I could show you that we have paid
+in a measure that is running over. In the
+
+{56}
+
+light of Inez Milholland's death, as we look over the long
+backward trail through which we have sought our political
+liberty, we are asking how long must this struggle go on.
+
+"Mr. President, to the nation more than to women alone is this
+waste of maternal force significant. In industry such a waste of
+money and strength would not be permitted. The modern trend is
+all toward efficiency. Why is such waste permitted in the making
+of a nation?
+
+"Sometimes I think it must be very hard to be a President, in
+respect to his contacts with people as well as in the great
+business he must perform. The exclusiveness necessary to a great
+dignitary holds him away from that democracy of communion,
+necessary to a full understanding of what the people .are really
+thinking and desiring. I feel that this deputation to-day fails
+in its mission if, because of the dignity of your office and the
+formality of such an occasion, we fail to bring you the throb of
+woman's desire for freedom and her eagerness to ally herself when
+once the ballot is in her hand, with all those activities to
+which you, yourself, have dedicated your life. Those tasks which
+this nation has set itself to do are her tasks as well as man's.
+We women who are here to-day are close to this desire of women.
+We cannot believe that you are our enemy or indifferent to the
+fundamental righteousness of our demand.
+
+"We have come here to you in your powerful office as our helper.
+We have come in the name of justice, in the name of democracy, in
+the name of all women who have fought and died for this cause,
+and in a peculiar way with our hearts bowed in sorrow, in the
+name of this gallant girl who died with the word `liberty' on her
+lips. We have come asking you this day to speak some favorable
+word to us that we may know that you will use your good and great
+office to end this wasteful struggle of women."
+
+The highest point in the interview had been reached. Before the
+President began his reply, we were aware that the high moment had
+gone. But we listened.
+
+"Ladies, I had not been apprised that you were coming here to
+make any representations that would issue an appeal to me.
+
+{57}
+
+I had been told that you were coming to present memorial
+resolutions with regard to the very remarkable woman whom your
+cause has lost. I, therefore, am not prepared to say anything
+further than I have said on previous occasions of this sort.
+
+"I do not need to tell you where my own convictions and my own
+personal purpose lie, and I need not tell you by what
+circumscriptions I am bound as leader of a party. As the leader
+of a party my commands come from that party and not from private
+personal convictions.
+
+"My personal action as a citizen, of course, comes from no source
+but my own conviction. and, therefore, my position has been so
+frequently defined, and I hope so candidly defined, and it is so
+impossible for me until the orders of my party are changed, to do
+anything other than I am doing as a party leader, that I think
+nothing more is necessary to be said.
+
+"I do want to say this: I do not see how anybody can fail to
+observe from the utterances of the last campaign that the
+Democratic Party is more inclined than the opposition to assist
+in this great cause, and it has been a matter of surprise to me,
+and a matter of very great regret that so many of those who were
+heart and soul for this cause seemed so greatly to misunderstand
+arid misinterpret the attitude of parties. In this country, as in
+every other self-governing country, it is really through the
+instrumentality of parties that things can be accomplished. They
+are not accomplished by the individual voice but by concerted
+action, and that action must come only so fast as you can concert
+it. I have done my best and shall continue to do my best to
+concert it in the interest of a cause in which I personally
+believe."
+
+Dead silence. The President stands for a brief instant at
+the end of his words as if waiting for some faint stir of
+approval which does not come. He has the baffled air of a dis-
+appointed actor who has failed to "get across." Then he turns
+abruptly on his heel and the great doors swallow him up. Silently
+the women file through the corridor and into the fresh
+air.
+
+The women returned to the spacious headquarters across
+
+{58}
+
+the park all of one mind. How little the President knew about
+women! How he underestimated their intelligence and penetration
+of things political,! Was it possible that he really thought
+these earnest champions of liberty would merely carry resolutions
+of sorrow and regret to the President?
+
+But this was not the real irony. How lightly he had shifted the
+responsibility for getting results to his party. With what
+coldness he had bade us "concert opinion," a thing which he alone
+could do. That was pretty hard to bear, coming as it did when
+countless forms of appeal had been 'exhausted by which women
+without sufficient power could "concert" anything. The movement
+was almost at the point of languishing so universal was the
+belief in the nation that suffrage for women was inevitable. And
+yet he and his party remained immovable.
+
+The three hundred women of the memorial deputation became on
+their return to headquarters a spirited protest meeting.
+
+Plans of action in the event the President refused to help had
+been under consideration by Miss Paul and her executive committee
+for some time, but they were now presented for the first time for
+approval. There was never a more dramatic moment at which to ask
+the women if they were ready for drastic action.
+
+Harriot Stanton Blatch, daughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and a
+powerful leader of women, voiced the feeling of the entire body
+when she said, in a ringing call for action:
+
+"We have gone to Congress, we have gone to the President during
+the last four years with great deputations, with small
+deputations. We have shown the interest all over the country in
+self-government for women-something that the President as a great
+Democrat ought to understand and respond to instantly. Yet he
+tells us to-day that we must win his party. He said it was
+strange that we did not see before election that
+
+{59}
+
+his party was more favorable to us than the Republican party. How
+did it show its favor? How did he show his favor today to us? He
+says we have got to convert his party . . . Why? Never before did
+the Democratic Party lie more in the hands of one man than it
+lies to-day in the hands of President Wilson. Never did the
+Democratic Party have a greater leader, and never was it more
+susceptible to the wish of that leader, than is the Democratic
+Party of to-day to President Wilson. He controls his party, and I
+don't think he is too modest to know it. He can mould it as he
+wishes and he has moulded it. He moulded it quickly before
+election in the matter of the eight-hour law. Was that in his
+party platform? He had to crush and force his party to pass that
+measure. Yet he is not willing to lay a finger's weight on his
+party to-day for half the people of the United States . . . . Yet
+to-day he tells us that we must wait more-and more.
+
+"We can't organize bigger and more influential deputations. We
+can't organize bigger processions. We can't, women, do anything
+more in that line. We have got to take a new departure. We have
+got to keep the question before him all the time. We have got to
+begin and begin immediately.
+
+"Women, it rests with us. We have got to bring to the President,
+individually, day by day, week in and week out, the idea that
+great numbers of women want to be free, wall be free, and want to
+know what he is going to do about it.
+
+"Won't you come and join us in standing day after day at the
+gates of the White House with banners asking, `What will you do,
+Mr. President, for one-half the people of this nation?' Stand
+there as sentinels-sentinels of liberty, sentinels of self-
+government-silent sentinels. Let us stand beside the gateway
+where he must pass in and out, so that he can never fail to
+realize that there is a tremendous earnestness and insistence
+back of this measure. Will you not show your allegiance today to
+this ideal of liberty? Will you not be a silent sentinel of
+liberty and self-government?"
+
+Deliberations continued. Details were settled. Three thousand
+dollars was raised in a few minutes among these women, fresh from
+the President's rebuff. No one suggested
+
+{60}
+
+waiting until the next Presidential campaign. No one even
+mentioned the fact that time was precious, and we could wait
+no longer. Every one seemed to feel these things without
+troubling to put them into words. Volunteers signed up for
+sentinel duty and the fight was on.
+
+{61}
+
+Part III
+
+Militancy
+
+�I will write a song for the President, full of menacing signs,
+And back of it all, millions of discontented eyes.�
+
+Walt Whitman
+
+{62}
+
+Blank page
+
+{63}
+
+Chapter 1
+
+Picketing a President
+
+When all suffrage controversy has died away it will be the little
+army of women with their purple, white and gold banners, going to
+prison for their political freedom, that will be remembered. They
+dramatized to victory the long suffrage fight in America. The
+challenge of the picket line roused the government out of its
+half-century sleep of indifference. It stirred the country to hot
+controversy. It made zealous friends and violent enemies. It
+produced the sharply-drawn contest which forced the surrender of
+the government in the second Administration of President Wilson.
+
+The day following the memorial deputation to the President,
+January 10th, 1917, the first line of sentinels, a dozen in
+number, appeared for duty at the White House gates. In retrospect
+it must seem to the most inflexible person a reasonably mild and
+gentle thing to have done. But at the same time it caused a
+profound stir. Columns of front page space in all the newspapers
+of the country gave more or less dispassionate accounts of the
+main facts. Women carrying banners were standing quietly at the
+White House gates "picketing" the President; women wanted
+President Wilson to put his power behind the suffrage amendment
+in Congress. That did not seem so shocking and only a few editors
+broke out into hot condemnation.
+
+When, however, the women went back on the picket line the next
+day and the next and the next, it began to dawn upon the excited
+press that such persistence was "undesirable" . . .
+
+{64}
+
+"unwomanly" ...dangerous." Gradually the people most hostile to
+the idea of suffrage in any form marshaled forth the fears which
+accompany every departure from the prescribed path. Partisan
+Democrats frowned. Partisan Republicans chuckled. The rest
+remained in cautious silence to see how "others" would take it.
+Following the refrain of the press, the protest-chorus grew
+louder.
+
+"Silly women" . . : "unsexed" . . ." pathological" . . .
+"They must be crazy" . . . "Don't they know anything about
+politics?" . . . "What can Wilson do? He does not have to sign
+the constitutional amendment." . . . So ran the comment from the
+wise elderly gentlemen sitting buried in their cushioned chairs
+at the gentlemen's club across the Park, watching eagerly the
+"shocking," "shameless" women at the gates of the White House. No
+wonder these gentlemen found the pickets irritating! This
+absorbing topic of conversation, we are told, shattered many an
+otherwise quiet afternoon and broke up many a quiet game. Here
+were American women before their very eyes daring to shock them
+into having to think about liberty. And what was worse-liberty
+for women. Ah well, this could not go on,-this insult to the
+President. They could with impunity condemn him and gossip about
+his affairs. But that women should stand at his gates asking for
+liberty that was a sin without mitigation.
+
+Disapproval was not confined merely to the gentlemen in their
+Club. I merely mention them as an example, for they were our
+neighbors, and the strain on them day by day, as our beautiful
+banners floated gaily out from our headquarters was, I am told, a
+heavy one.
+
+Yet, of course, we enjoyed irritating them. Standing on the icy
+pavement on a damp, wintry day in the penetrating cold of a
+Washington winter, knowing that within a stone's throw of our
+agony there was a greater agony than ours there was a joy in
+that!
+
+{65}
+
+There were faint rumblings also in Congress, but like so many of
+its feelings they were confined largely to the cloak rooms.
+Representative Emerson of Ohio did demand from the floor of the
+House that the "suffrage guard be withdrawn, as it is an insult
+to the President," but his protest met with no response whatever
+from the other members. His oratory fell on indifferent ears. And
+of course there were always those in Congress who got a vicarious
+thrill watching women do in their fight what they themselves had
+not the courage to do in their own. Another representative, an
+anti-suffrage Democrat, inconsiderately called us "Iron-jawed
+angels," and hoped we would retire. But if by these protests
+these congressmen hoped to arouse their colleagues, they failed.
+
+We were standing at the gates of the White House because
+the American Congress had become so supine that it could not
+or would not act without being compelled to act by the Presi-
+dent. They knew that if they howled at us it would only afford
+an opportunity to retort "Very well then, if you do not like
+us at the gates of your leader; if you do not want us to `insult'
+the President, end this agitation by taking the matter into
+your own hands and passing the amendment." Such a sug-
+gestion would be almost as severe a shock as our picketing.
+The thought of actually initiating legislation left a loyal Demo-
+cratic follower transfixed.
+
+The heavy dignity of the Senate forbade their meddling much in
+this controversy over tactics. Also they were more interested in
+the sporting prospect of our going into the world war. There was
+no appeal to blood-lust in the women's fight. There were no
+shining rods of steel. There was no martial music. We were not
+pledging precious lives and vast billions in our crusade for
+liberty. The beginning of our fight did indeed seem tiny and
+frail by the side of the big game of war, and so the senators
+were at first scarcely aware of our presence.
+
+But the intrepid women stood their long vigils, day
+
+{66}
+
+by day, at the White House gates, through biting wind and driving
+rain, through sleet and snow as well as sunshine, waiting for the
+President to act. Above all the challenges of their banners rang
+this simple, but insistent one:
+
+Mr. President
+
+How Long Must Women Wait for Liberty?
+
+The royal blaze of purple, white and gold-the Party's tricolored
+banners-made a gorgeous spot of color against the bare,
+blacklimbed trees.
+
+There were all kinds of pickets and so there were all kinds of
+reactions to the experience of picketing. The beautiful lady, who
+drove up in her limousine to do a twenty minute turn on the line,
+found it thrilling, no doubt. The winter tourist who had read
+about the pickets in her home paper thought it would be "so
+exciting" to hold a banner for a few minutes. But there were no
+illusions in the hearts of the women who stood at their posts day
+in and day out. None of them will tell you that they felt
+exalted, ennobled, exhilarated, possessed of any rare and exotic
+emotion. They were human beings before they were pickets. Their
+reactions were those of any human beings called upon to set their
+teeth doggedly and hang on to an unpleasant job.
+
+"When will that woman come to relieve me? I have stood here an
+hour and a half and my feet are like blocks of ice," was a more
+frequent comment from picket to picket than "Isn't it glorious to
+stand here defiantly no matter what the stupid people say about
+us?"
+
+"I remember the thousand and one engaging things that would come
+to my mind on the picket line. It seemed that anything but
+standing at a President's gate would be more diverting. But there
+we stood.
+
+And what were the reflections of a President as he saw the
+indomitable little army at his gates? We can only venture to
+
+{67}
+
+say from events which happened. At first he seemed amused and
+interested. Perhaps he thought it a trifling incident staged by a
+minority of the extreme "left" among suffragists and anticipated
+no popular support for it. When he saw their persistence through
+a cruel winnter his sympathy was touched. He ordered the guards
+to invite them in for a cup of hot coffee, which they declined.
+He raised his hat to them as he drove through the line. Sometimes
+he smiled. As yet he was not irritated. He was fortified in his
+national power.
+
+With the country's entrance into the war and his immediate
+elevation to world leadership, the pickets began to be a serious
+thorn in his flesh. His own statements of faith in democracy and
+the necessity for establishing it .throughout the world left him
+open to attack. His refusal to pay the just bill owed the women
+and demanded by them brought irritation.
+
+What would you do if you owed a just bill and every day
+some one stood outside your gates as a quiet reminder to the
+whole world that you had not paid it?
+
+You would object. You would get terribly irritated. You would
+call the insistent one all kinds of harsh names. You
+might even arrest him. But the scandal would be out.
+
+Rightly or wrongly, your sincerity would be touched; faith
+in you would be shaken a bit. Perhaps even against your will you
+would yield.
+
+But you would yield. And that was the one important fact
+to the women.
+
+This daily sight, inspiring, gallant and impressive, escaped no
+visitor to the national capital. Distinguished visitors from the
+far corners of the earth passed by the pickets on those days
+which made history. Thousands read the compelling messages
+on the banners, and literally hundreds of thousands learned the
+story, when the visitors got "back home."
+
+Real displeasure over the sentinels by those who passed was
+negligible. There was some mirth and joking, but the vast
+
+{68}
+
+majority were filled with admiration, either silent or expressed.
+
+"Keep it up." . . . "You are on the right track." . . .
+"Congratulations." . . . "I certainly admire your pluck-stick to
+it and you will get it." . . . This last from a military officer
+. . . . "It is an outrage that you women should have to stand
+here and beg for your rights. We gave it to our women in
+Australia long ago:" . . . This from a charming gentleman who
+bowed approvingly.
+
+Often a lifted hat was held in sincere reverence over the heart
+as some courteous gentleman passed along the picket line. Of
+course there were some who came to try to argue with the pickets;
+who attempted to dissuade them from their persistent course. But
+the serene, good humor and even temper of the women would not
+allow heated arguments to break in on the military precision of
+their line. If a question was asked, a picket would answer
+quietly. An occasional sneer was easy to meet. That required no
+acknowledgment.
+
+A sweet old veteran of the Civil War said to one of my comrades:
+"Yous all right; you gotta fight for your rights in this world,
+and now that we are about to plunge into another war, I want to
+tell you women there'll be no end to it unless you women get
+power. We can't save ourselves and we need you . . . . I am 84
+years old, and I have watched this fight since I was a young man.
+Anything I can do to help, I want to do. I am living at the Old
+Soldiers' Home and I ain't got mach money, but here's something
+for your campaign. It's all I got, and God bless you, you've
+gotta win." He spoke the last sentence almost with desperation as
+he shoved a crumpled $2.00 bill into her hand. His spirit made it
+a precious gift.
+
+Cabinet members passed and repassed. Congressmen by the hundreds
+came and went. Administration leaders tried to conceal under an.
+artificial indifference their sensitiveness to our strategy.
+
+And domestic battles were going on inside the homes
+
+{69}
+
+throughout the country, for women were coming from every state in
+the Union, to take their place on the line. For the first time
+good "suffrage-husbands" were made uncomfortable. Had they not
+always believed in suffrage? Had they not always been
+uncomplaining when their wife's time was given to suffrage
+campaigning? Had they not, in short, been good sports about the
+whole thing? There was only one answer. They had. But it had been
+proved that all the things that women had done and all the things
+in which their menfolk had cooperated, were not enough. Women
+were called upon for more intensive action. "You cannot go to
+Washington and risk your health standing in front of the White
+House. I cannot have it."
+
+"But the time has come when we have to take risks of health or
+anything else."
+
+"Well, then, if you must know, I don't believe in it. Now I am a
+reasonable man and I have stood by you all the way up to now, but
+I object to this. It isn't ladylike, and it will do the cause
+more harm than good. You women lay yourselves open to ridicule."
+
+"That's just it-that's a fine beginning. As soon as men get tired
+laughing at us, they will do something more about it. They won't
+find our campaign so amusing before long."
+
+"But I protest. You've no right to go without considering me."
+
+"But if your country called you in a fight for democracy, as it
+is likely to do at any moment, you'd go, wouldn't you?"
+
+"Why, of course."
+
+"Of course you would. You would go to the front and leave me to
+struggle on as best I could without you. That is the way you
+would respond to your country's call, whether it was a righteous
+cause or not. Well, I am going to the front too. I am going to
+answer the women's call to fight for democracy. I would be
+ashamed of myself if I were not willing to
+
+{70}
+
+join my comrades. I am sorry that you object, but if you will
+just put yourself in my place you will see that I cannot do
+otherwise."
+
+It must be recorded that there were exceptional men of sensitive
+imaginations who urged women against their own hesitancy. They
+are the handful who gave women a hope that they would not always
+have to struggle alone for their liberation. And women passed by
+the daily picket line as spectators, not as participants.
+Occasionally a woman came forward to remonstrate, but more often
+women were either too shy to advance or so enthusiastic that
+nothing could restrain them. The more kind-hearted of them,
+inspired by the dauntless pickets in the midst of a now freezing
+temperature, brought mittens, fur pieces, golashes, wool
+-lined raincoats: hot bricks to stand on, coffee in thermos
+bottles and what not.
+
+Meanwhile the pickets became a household word in Washington, and
+very soon were the subject of animated conversation in
+practically every corner of the nation. The Press cartoonists, by
+their friendly and satirical comments, helped a great deal in
+popularizing the campaign. In spite of the bitter editorial
+comment of most of the press, the humor of the situation had an
+almost universal appeal.
+
+At the Washington dinner of the Gridiron Club, probably the best
+known press club in the world,--a dinner at which President
+Wilson was a guest,-one of the songs sung for his benefit was as
+follows:
+
+"We're camping to-night on the White House grounds
+
+Give us a rousing cheer;
+
+Our golden flag we hold aloft, of cops we have no fear.
+
+Many of the pickets are weary to-night,
+
+Wishing for the war to cease; many are the chilblains and frost-
+bites too; It is no life of ease.
+
+Camping to-night, camping to-night,
+
+Camping on the White House grounds."
+
+{71}
+
+The White House police on duty at the gates came to treat the
+picketers as comrades.
+
+"I was kinds worried," confessed one burly officer when the
+pickets were five minutes late one day. "We thought perhaps you
+weren't coming and we world have to hold down this place alone."
+
+The bitter-enders among the opponents of suffrage broke into such
+violent criticism that they won new friends to the amendment.
+
+People who had never before thought of suffrage for women had to
+think of it, if only to the extent of objecting to the way in
+which we asked for it. People who had thought a little about
+suffrage were compelled to think more about it. People who had
+believed in suffrage all their lives, but had never done a,
+stroke of work for it, began to make speeches about it, if only
+for the purpose of condemning us.
+
+Some politicians who had voted for it when there were not enough
+votes to carry the measure loudly threatened to commit political
+suicide by withdrawing their support. But it was easy to see at a
+glance that they would not dare to run so great a political risk
+on an issue growing daily more important.
+
+As soon as the regular picket line began to be accepted as a
+matter of course, we undertook to touch it up a bit to sustain
+public interest. State days were inaugurated, beginning with
+Maryland. The other states took up the idea with enthusiasm.
+There was a College Day, when women representing 15 American
+colleges stood on the line; a Teachers' Day, which found the long
+line represented by almost every state in the Union, and a
+Patriotic Day, when American flags mingled with the party's
+banners carried by representatives of the Women's Reserve Corps,
+Daughters of the Revolution and other patriotic organizations.
+And there were professional days when women doctors, lawyers and
+nurses joined the picket appeal.
+
+Lincoln's birthday anniversary saw another new feature.
+
+{72}
+
+A long line of women took out banners bearing the slogans:
+
+LINCOLN STOOD FOR WOMAN SUFFRAGE 60 YEARS AGO.
+
+MR. PRESIDENT, WHY DO YOU BLOCK THE NATIONAL SUFFRAGE AMENDMENT
+TO-DAY?
+
+WHY ARE YOU BEHIND LINCOLN?
+
+and another:
+
+AFTER THE CIVIL WAR, WOMEN ASKED FOR POLITICAL FREEDOM. THEY WERE
+TOLD TO WAIT--THIS WAS THE NEGRO'S HOUR. IN 1917 AMERICAN WOMEN
+STILL ASK FOR FREEDOM.
+
+WILL YOU, MR. PRESIDENT, TELL THEM TO WAIT-THAT THIS IS THE PORTO
+RICANS HOUR?[1]
+
+A huge labor demonstration on the picket line late in February
+brought women wage earners from office and factory throughout the
+Eastern States.
+
+A special Susan B. Anthony Day on the anniversary of the birth of
+that great pioneer, served to remind. the President who said,
+"You can afford to wait," that the women had been waiting and
+fighting for this legislation to pass Congress since the year
+1878.
+
+More than one person came forward to speak with true religious
+fervor of the memory of the great Susan B. Anthony. Her name is
+never mentioned nor her words quoted without finding such a
+response.
+
+In the face of heavy snow and rain, dozens of young women stood
+in line, holding special banners made for this occasion.
+Thousands of men and women streaming home from work in the early
+evening read words of hers spoken during the Civil
+
+[1]President Wilson had just advocated self-government for Porto
+Rican men.
+
+
+{73}
+
+War, so completely applicable to the policy of the young banner-
+bearers at the gates.
+
+WE PRESS OUR DEMAND FOR THE BALLOT AT THIS TIME IN NO NARROW,
+CAPIOUS OR SELFISH SPIRIT, BUT FROM PUREST PATRIOTISM FOR THE
+HIGHEST GOOD OF EVERY CITIZEN, FOR THE SAFETY OF THE REPUBLIC AND
+A3 A GLORIOUS EXAMPLE TO THE NATIONS OF THE EARTH.
+
+AT THIS TIME OUR GREATEST NEED IS NOT MEN O$ MONEY, VALIANT
+GENERALS OR BRILLIANT VICTORIES, BUT A CONSISTENT NATIONAL POLICY
+BASED UPON THE PRINCIPLE THAT ALL GOVERNMENTS DERIVE THEIR JUST
+POWERS FROM THE CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED.
+
+THE RIGHT OF SELF-GOVERNMENT FOR ONE-HALF OF ITS PEOPLE IS OF FAR
+MORE VITAL CONSEQUENCE TO THE NATION THAN ANY OR ALL OTHER
+QUESTIONS.
+
+During the reunion week of the Daughters and Veterans of the
+Confederacy, the picket line was the center of attraction for the
+sight-seeing veterans and their families. For the first time in
+history the troops of the Confederacy had crossed the Potomac and
+taken possession of the capital city. The streets were lined with
+often tottering but still gallant old men, whitehaired and
+stooped, wearing their faded badges on their gray uniforms, and
+carrying their tattered flags.
+
+It seemed to the young women on picket duty during those days
+that not a single veteran had failed to pay his respects to the
+pickets. They came and came; and some brought back their wives to
+show them the guard at the gates.
+
+One old soldier with tears in his dim eyes came to say, "I've
+done sentinel duty in my time. I know what it is . . .
+
+{74}
+
+And now it's your turn. You young folks have the strength and the
+courage to keep it up . . . . You are going to put it through!"'
+
+One sweet old Alabamian came shyly up to one of the pickets and
+said, "I say, Miss, this is the White House, isn't it?"
+
+Before she could answer, he added: "We went three times around
+the place and I told the boys, the big white house in the center
+was the White House, but they wasn't believing me and I wasn't
+sure, but as soon as I saw you girls coming with your flags, to
+stand here, I said, `This must be the White House. This is sure
+enough where the President lives; here are the pickets with their
+banners that we read about down home."' A note of triumph was in
+his frail voice.
+
+The picket smiled, and thanked him warmly, as he finished with,
+"You are brave girls. You are bound to get him, pointing his
+shaking finger toward the White House.
+
+President Wilson's second inauguration was rapidly approaching.
+Also war clouds were gathering with all the increased
+emotionalism that comes at such a crisis. Some additional
+demonstration of power and force must be made before the
+President's inauguration and before the excitement of our entry
+into the war should plunge our agitation into obscurity. This was
+the strategic moment to assemble our forces in convention in
+Washington.
+
+Accordingly, the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage and the
+Woman's Party, that section of the Congressional Union in
+suffrage states made up of women voters, convened in Washington
+and decided unanimously to unite their strength, money and
+political power in one organization, and called it the National
+Woman's Party.
+
+The following officers were unanimously elected to direct the
+activities of the new organization: Chairman of the National
+Woman's Party, Miss Alice Paul, New Jersey; Vice-
+
+{75}
+
+chairman, Miss Anne Martin, Nevada; secretary, Miss Mabel Vernon,
+Nevada; treasurer, Miss Gertrude Crocker, Illinois; executive
+members, Miss Lucy Burns, Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont, Mrs. John
+Winters Brannan, New York; Mrs. Gilson Gardner, Illinois; Mrs.
+Robert Baker, Washington, D. C.; Mrs. William Kent and Miss Maud
+Younger, California; Mrs. Florence Bayard Hilles, Delaware; Mrs.
+Donald Hooker, Maryland; Mrs. J. A. H. Hopkins, New Jersey; Mrs.
+Lawrence Lewis, Pennsylvania, and Miss Doris Stevens, Nebraska.
+
+The convention came to a close on the eve of inauguration,
+culminating in the dramatic picket line made up of one thousand
+delegates who sought an interview with the President. The purpose
+of the interview was to carry to him the resolutions of the
+convention, and further plead with him to open his second
+administration with a promise to back the amendment.
+
+In our optimism we hoped that this glorified picket-pageant might
+form a climax to our three months of picketing. The President
+admired persistence. He said so. He also said he appreciated the
+rare tenacity shown by our women. Surely "now" he would be
+convinced! No more worrying persistence would be needed ! The
+combined political strength of the western women and the
+financial strength of the eastern women would surely command his
+respect and entitle us to a hearing.
+
+What actually happened?
+
+It was a day of high wind and stinging, icy rain, that March 4th,
+1917, when a thousand women, each bearing a banner, struggled
+against the gale to keep their banners erect. It is always
+impressive to see a thousand people march, but the impression was
+imperishable when these thousand women marched in rain-soaked
+garments, hands bare, gloves roughly torn by the sticky varnish
+from the banner poles and the streams of water running down the
+poles into the palms of their hands. It was a sight to impress
+even the most hardened
+
+{76}
+
+spectator who had seen all the various forms of the suffrage
+agitation in Washington. For more than two hours the women
+circled the White House-the rain never ceasing for an instant-
+hoping to the last moment that at least their leaders would be
+allowed to take in to the President the resolutions which they
+were carrying.
+
+Long before the appointed hour for the march to start, thousands
+of spectators sheltered by umbrellas and raincoats lined the
+streets to watch the procession. Two bands whose men managed to
+continue their spirited music in spite of the driving rain led
+the march playing "Forward Be Our Watchword"; "The Battle Hymn of
+the Republic"; "Onward Christian Soldiers"; "The Pilgrim's
+Chorus" from Tannhauser; "The Coronation March" from Le Prophete,
+the Russian Hymn and "The Marsellaise"
+
+Miss Vida Milholland led the procession carrying her sister's
+last words, "Mr. President, how long must women wait for
+liberty?" She was followed by Miss Beulah Amidon of North Dakota,
+who carried the banner that the beloved Inez Milholland carried
+in her first suffrage procession in New York. The long line of
+women fell in behind.
+
+Most extraordinary precautions had been taken about the White
+House. Everything had been done except the important thing. There
+were almost as many police officers as marchers. The Washington
+force had been augmented by a Baltimore contingent and squads of
+plainclothes men. On every fifty feet of curb around the entire
+White House grounds there was a policeman., About the same
+distance apart on the inside of the tall picket-fence which
+surrounds the grounds were as many more.
+
+We proceeded to the main gate. Locked! I was marshalling at the
+head of the line and so heard first hand what passed between the
+leaders and the guards. Miss Anne, Martin addressed the guard
+
+{77}
+
+"We have come to present some important resolutions to the
+President of the United States."
+
+"I have orders to keep the gates locked, Ma'am."
+
+"But there must be some mistake. Surely the President does not
+mean to refuse to see at least . . ."
+
+"Those are my only orders, Ma'am."
+
+The procession continued on to the second gate on Pennsylvania
+Avenue. Again locked. Before we could address the somewhat
+nervous policeman who stood at the gates, he hastened to say,
+"You can't come in here; the gates are locked."
+
+"But it is imperative; we are a thousand women from all States in
+the Union who have come all the way to Washington to see the
+President and lay before him . . ."
+
+"No orders, Ma'am."
+
+The line made its way to the third and last gate the gate leading
+to the Executive offices. As we came up to this gate a small army
+of grinning clerks and secretaries manned the windows of the
+Executive offices, evidently amused at the sight of the women
+struggling in the wind and rain to keep their banners intact.
+Miss Martin, Mrs. William Kent of California, Mrs. Florence
+Bayard Hilles of Delaware, Miss Mary Patterson of Ohio, niece of
+John C. Patterson of Dayton, Mrs. J. A. H. Hopkins of New Jersey,
+Miss Eleanor Barker of Indiana, and Mrs. Mary Darrow Weible of
+North Dakota,-the leaders -stayed at the gate, determined to get
+results from the guard, while the women continued to circle the
+White House.
+
+"Will you not carry a message to the President's Secretary asking
+him to tell the President that we are here waiting to see him?"
+
+"Can't do that, Ma'am."
+
+"Will you then take our cards to the Secretary to the president,
+merely announcing to him that we are here, so that he may send
+somebody to carry in our resolutions?"
+
+Still the guard hesitated. Finally he left the gate and
+
+{78}
+
+carried the message a distance of a few rods into the Executive
+offices. He had scarcely got inside when he rushed back to his
+post. When we sought to ascertain what had happened to the cards-
+-had they been given and what the answer was-he quietly confided
+to us that he had been reprimanded for even attempting to bring
+them in and informed us that the cards were still in his pocket.
+"I have orders to answer no questions and to carry no messages.
+If you have anything to leave here you might take it to the
+entrance below the Executive offices, and-when I go off my beat
+at six o'clock I will leave it as I go by the White House."
+
+We examined this last entrance suggested. It, did not strike us
+as the proper place to leave an important message for the
+President.
+
+"What is this entrance used for?" I asked the guard.
+
+"It's all right, lady. If you've got something you'd like to
+leave, leave it with me. It will be safe."
+
+I retorted that we were not seeking safety for our message, but
+speed in delivery.
+
+The guard continued: "This is the gate where Mrs. Wilson's
+clothes and other packages are left."
+
+It struck us as scarcely fitting that we should leave our
+resolutions amongst "Mrs. Wilson's clothes and other packages,"
+so we returned to the last locked gate to ask the guard if he had
+any message in the meantime for us. He shook his head
+regretfully.
+
+Meanwhile the women marched and marched, and the rain fell harder
+and as the afternoon wore on the cold seemed almost unendurable.
+
+The white-haired grandmothers in the procession-there were some
+as old as 84-were as energetic as the young girls of 20. What was
+this immediate hardship compared to eternal subjection! Women
+marched and waited-waited and marched,
+
+{79}
+
+under the sting of the biting elements and under the worse sting
+of the indignities heaped upon them. It was impossible to believe
+that in democratic America they could not see the President to
+lay before him their grievance.
+
+It was only when they saw the Presidential limousine, in the late
+afternoon, roll luxuriously out of the grounds, and through the
+gates down Pennsylvania Avenue, that the weary marchers realized
+that President Wilson had deliberately turned them away unheard!
+
+The car for an instant, as it came through the gates, divided the
+banner-bearers on march. President and Mrs. Wilson looked
+straight ahead as if the long line of purple, white and gold were
+invisible.
+
+All the women who took part in that march will tell you what was
+burning in their hearts on that dreary day. Even if reasons had
+been offered-and they were not-genuine reasons why the President
+could not see them, it would not have cooled the women's heat.
+Their passionate resentment went deeper than any reason could
+possibly have gone.
+
+This one single incident probably did more than any other to make
+women sacrifice themselves. Even something as thin as diplomacy
+on the part of President Wilson might have saved him many
+restless hours to follow, but he did not take the trouble to
+exercise even that.
+
+The women returned to headquarters and there wrote a letter which
+was dispatched with the resolutions to President Wilson. In a
+letter to the National Woman's Party, acknowledging the receipt
+of them, he concluded by saying: "May I not once more express my
+sincere interest in the cause of woman suffrage?"
+
+Three months of picketing had not been enough. We must not only
+continue on duty at his gates but also, at the gates of Congress.
+
+{80}
+
+Chapter 2
+
+The Suffrage War Policy
+
+President Wilson called the War Session of the Sixty-fifth
+Congress on April 2, 1917.
+
+On the opening day of Congress not only were the pickets again on
+duty at the White House, but another picket line was inaugurated
+at the Capitol. Returning senators and congressmen were surprised
+when greeted with great golden banners reading:
+
+RUSSIA AND ENGLAND ARE ENFRANCHISING THEIR WOMEN IN WAR-TIME. HOW
+LONG MUST AMERICAN WOMEN WAIT FOR THEIR LIBERTY
+
+The last desperate flurries in the pro-war and anti-war camps
+were focused on the Capitol grounds that day. There swarmed about
+the grounds and through the buildings pacifists from all over the
+country wearing white badges, and advocates of war, wearing the
+national colors. Our sentinels at the Capitol stood strangely
+silent, and almost aloof, strong in their dedication to
+democracy, while the peace and war agitation circled about them.
+
+With lightning speed the President declared that a state of war
+existed. Within a fortnight following, Congress declared war on
+Germany and President Wilson voiced his memorable, "We shall
+fight for the things we have always carried nearest our hearts
+for democracy-for the right of those who submit to authority to
+have a voice in their own government." Inspir-
+
+{81}
+
+ing words indeed! The war message concluded with still another
+defense of the fight for political liberty: "To such a task we
+can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are
+and everything that we have, with the pride of those who know
+that the day has come when America is privileged to spend her
+blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and
+happiness and the peace which she has treasured. God helping her,
+she can do no less."
+
+Now that the United States was actually involved in war, we were
+face to face with the question, which we had considered at the
+convention the previous month, when war was rumored, as to what
+position we, as an organization, should take in this situation.
+
+The atmosphere of that convention had been dramatic in the
+extreme. Most of the delegates assembled had been approached
+either before going to Washington or upon arriving, and urged to
+use their influence to persuade the organization to abandon its
+work for the freedom of women and turn its activities into war
+channels. Although war was then only rumored, the hysterical
+attitude was already prevalent. Women were asked to furl their
+banners and give up their half century struggle for democracy, to
+forget the liberty that was most precious to their hearts.
+
+"The President will turn this Imperialistic war into a crusade
+for democracy." . . . "Lay aside your own fight and help us crush
+Germany, and you will find yourselves rewarded with a vote out of
+the nation's gratitude," were some of the appeals made to our
+women by government officials high and low and by the rank and
+file of men and women. Never in history did a band of women stand
+together with more sanity and greater solidarity than did these
+1000 delegates representing thousands more throughout the States.
+
+As our official organ, The Suffragist, pointed out editorially,
+in its issue of April 21st, 1917: Our membership was
+
+{82}
+
+made up of women who had banded together to secure political
+freedom for women. We were united on no other subject. Some would
+offer passive resistance to the war; others would become devoted
+followers of a vigorous military policy. Between these, every
+shade of opinion was represented. Each was loyal to the ideas
+which she held for her country. With the character of these
+various ideals, the National Woman's Party, we maintained, had
+nothing to do. It was concerned only with the effort to obtain
+for women the opportunity to give effective expression, through
+political power, to their ideals, whatever they might be.
+
+The thousand delegates present at the convention, though
+differing widely on the duty of the individual in war, were
+unanimous in voting that in the event of war, the National
+Woman's Party, as an organization, should continue to work for
+political liberty for women and for that alone, believing as the
+convention stated in its resolutions, that in so doing the
+organization "serves the highest interest of the country." They
+were also unanimous in the opinion that all service which
+individuals wished to give to war or peace should be given
+through groups organized for such purposes, and not through the
+Woman's Party, a body created, according to its constitution, for
+one purpose only-"to secure an amendment to the United States
+Constitution enfranchising women."
+
+We declared officially through our organ that this held "as the
+policy of the Woman's Party, whatever turn public events may
+take."
+
+Very few days after we were put upon a national war basis it
+became clear that never was there greater need of work for
+internal freedom in the country. Europe, then approaching her
+third year of war, was increasing democracy in the midst of the
+terrible conflict. In America at that very moment women were
+being told that no attempt at electoral reform had any place in
+the country's program "until the war is over." The Demo-
+
+{83}
+
+crats met in caucus and decided that only "war measures" should
+be included in the legislative program, and announced that no
+subjects would be considered by them, unless the President urged
+them as war measures.
+
+Our task was, from that time on, to make national suffrage a war
+measure.
+
+We at once urged upon the Administration the wisdom of accepting
+this proposed reform as a war measure, and pointed out the
+difficulty of waging a war for democracy abroad while democracy
+was denied at home. But the government was not willing to profit
+by the experience of its Allies in extending suffrage to women,
+without first offering a terrible and brutal resistance.
+
+We must confess that the problem of dramatizing our fight for
+democracy in competition with the drama of a world-war, was most
+perplexing. Here were we, citizens without power and recognition,
+with the only weapons to which a powerless class which does not
+take up arms can resort. We could not and would not fight with
+men's weapons. Compare the methods women adopted to those men use
+in the pursuit of democracy; bayonets, machine guns, poison gas,
+deadly grenades, liquid fire, bombs, armored tanks, pistols,
+barbed wire entanglements, submarines, mines-every known
+scientific device with which to annihilate the enemy!
+
+What did we do?
+
+We continued to fight with our simple, peaceful, almost quaint
+device -a banner. A little more fiery, perhaps; pertinent to the
+latest political controversy, but still only a banner inscribed
+with militant truth!
+
+Just as our political strategy had been to oppose, at elections,
+the party in power which had failed to use its power to free
+women, so now our military strategy was based on the military
+doctrine of concentrating all one's forces on the enemy's weakest
+point. To women the weakest point in the
+
+{84}
+
+Administration's political lines during the war was the
+inconsistency between a crusade for world democracy and the
+denial of democracy at home. This was the untenable position of
+President Wilson and the Democratic Administration, from which we
+must force them to retreat. We could force ,such a retreat when
+we had exposed to the world this weakest point.
+
+Just as the bluff of a democratic crusade must be called, so must
+the knight-leader of the crusade be exposed to the critical eyes
+of the world. Here was the President, suddenly elevated to the
+position of a world leader with the almost pathetic trust of the
+peoples of the world. Here was the champion of their democratic
+aspirations. Here was a kind of universal Moses, expected to lead
+all peoples out of bondage no matter what the bondage, no matter
+of how long standing.
+
+The President's elevation to this unique pinnacle of power was at
+once an advantage and a disadvantage to us. It was an advantage
+to us in that it made our attack more dramatic. One supposed to
+be impeccable was more vulnerable. It was a disadvantage to have
+to overcome this universal trust and world-wide popularity. But
+this conflict of wits and brains against power only enhanced our
+ingenuity.
+
+On the day the English mission headed by Mr. Balfour, and the
+French mission headed by M. Viviani, visited the White House, we
+took these inscriptions to the picket line:
+
+WE SHALL FIGHT FOR THE THINGS WE HAVE ALWAYS CARRIED NEAREST OUR
+HEARTS
+
+DEMOCRACY SHOULD BEGIN AT HOME
+
+WE DEMAND JUSTICE AND SELF-GOVERNMENT IN OUR OWN LAND
+
+Embarrassing to say these things before foreign visitors? We
+hoped it would be. In our capacity to embarrass Mr. Wilson in his
+Administration, lay our only hope of success. We had to keep
+before the country the flagrant inconsistency of
+
+{85}
+
+the President's position. We intended to know why, if
+democracy were so precious as to demand the nation's blood and
+treasure for its achievement abroad, its execution at home was so
+undesirable.
+
+Meanwhile:
+
+"I tell you solemnly, ladies and gentlemen, we cannot any longer
+postpone justice in these United States"-President Wilson.
+
+"I don't wish to sit down and let any man take care of me without
+my at least having a voice in it, and if he doesn't listen to my
+advice, I am going to make it as unpleasant as I can President
+Wilson,-and other challenges were carried on banners to the
+picket line.
+
+Some rumblings of political action began to be heard. The
+Democratic majority had appointed a Senate Committee on Woman
+Suffrage whose members were overwhelmingly for federal action.
+The chairman, Senator Andreas Jones of New Mexico, promised an
+early report to the Senate. There were scores of gains in
+Congress. Representatives and Senators were tumbling over each
+other to introduce similar suffrage resolutions. We actually had
+difficulty in choosing the man whose name should stamp our
+measure.
+
+A minority party also was moved to act. Members of the
+Progressive Party met in convention in St. Louis on April 12, 13
+and 14 and adopted a suffrage plank which demanded "the nation-
+wide enfranchisement of women . . . ."
+
+In addition to this plank they adopted a resolution calling for
+the establishment of democracy at home "at a time when the United
+States is entering into an international war for democracy" and
+instructing the chairman of the convention "to request a
+committee consisting of representatives of all liberal groups to
+go to Washington to present to the President and the Congress of
+the United States a demand for immediate sub-
+
+{86}
+
+mission of an amendment to the United States constitution
+enfranchising women."
+
+They appointed a committee from the convention to carry these
+resolutions to the President. The committee included Mr. J. A. H.
+Hopkins of the Progressive Party, as chairman; Dr. E. A. Rumley
+of the Progressive-Republican Party and Vice President of the New
+York Evening Mail; Mr. John Spargo of the Socialist Party; Mr.
+Virgil Hinshaw, chairman of the Executive Committee of the
+Prohibition Party; and Miss Mabel Vernon, Secretary of the
+National Woman's Party. It was the first suffrage conference with
+the President after the declaration of war, and was the last
+deputation on suffrage by minority party leaders. The conference
+was one of the utmost informality and friendliness.
+
+The President was deeply moved, indeed, almost to the point of
+tears, when Miss Mabel Vernon said, "Mr. President, the feelings
+of many women in this country are best expressed by your own
+words in your war message to Congress . . . . To every woman who
+reads that message must come at once this question: If the right
+of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own
+government is so sacred a cause to foreign people as to
+constitute the reason for our entering the international war in
+its defense, will you not, Mr. President, give immediate aid to
+the measure before Congress demanding self-government for the
+women of this country?"
+
+The President admitted that suffrage was constantly pressing upon
+his mind for reconsideration. He added, however, that the program
+for the session was practically complete and intimated that it
+did not include the enfranchisement of women.
+
+He informed the Committee that he had written a letter to Mr.
+Pou, Chairman of the Rules Committee of the House, expressing
+himself as favoring the creation of a Woman Suffrage Committee in
+that body. While we had no objection to
+
+{87}
+
+having the House create a Suffrage Committee, we were not
+primarily interested in the amplification of Congressional
+machinery, unless this amplification was to be followed by the
+passage of the amendment. The President could as easily have
+written the Senate Committee on Suffrage or the Judiciary
+Committee of the House, advising an immediate report on the
+suffrage resolution, as have asked for the creation of another
+committee to report on the subject.
+
+He made no mention of his state-by-state conviction, however, as
+he had in previous interviews, and the Committee of Progressives
+understood him to have at least tacitly accepted federal action.
+
+The House Judiciary Committee continued to refuse to act and the
+House Rules Committee steadily refused to create a Suffrage
+Committee.
+
+Hoping to win back to the fold the wandering Progressives who had
+thus demonstrated their allegiance to suffrage and seeing an
+opportunity to embarrass the Administration, the, Republicans
+began to interest themselves in action on the amendment. In the
+midst of Democratic delays, Representative James R. Mann,
+Republican leader of the House, moved to discharge the Judiciary
+Committee from further consideration of the suffrage amendment.
+No matter if the discussion which followed did revolve about the
+authorization of an expenditure of $10,000 for the erection of a
+monument to a dead President as a legitimate war measure. It was
+clear from the partisan attitude of those who took part in the
+debate that we were advancing to that position where we were as
+good political material to be contested over by opposing
+political groups as was a monument to a dead President. And if
+the Democrats could defend such an issue as a war measure, the
+Republicans wanted to know why they should ignore suffrage for
+women as a war measure. And it was encouraging to find ourselves
+thus
+
+{88}
+
+suddenly and spontaneously sponsored by the Republican leader.
+
+The Administration was aroused. It did not know how far the
+Republicans were prepared to go in their drive for action, so on
+the day of this flurry in the House the snail-like Rules
+Committee suddenly met in answer to the call of its chairman, Mr.
+Pou, and by a vote of 6 to 5 decided to report favorably on the
+resolution providing for a Woman Suffrage Committee in the House
+"after all pending war measures have been disposed of."
+
+Before the meeting, Mr. Pou made a last appeal to the Woman's
+Party to remove the pickets . . . . "We can't possibly win as
+long as pickets guard the White House and Capitol," Mr. Pou had
+said. The pickets continued their vigil and the motion carried.
+
+Still uncertain as to the purposes of the Republicans, the
+Democrats were moved to further action.
+
+The Executive Committee of the Democratic National Committee,
+meeting in Washington a few days later, voted 4 to 9. to
+"officially urge upon the President that he call the two Houses
+of Congress together and recommend the immediate submission of
+the Susan B. Anthony amendment." This action which in effect
+reversed the plank in the Democratic platform evidently aroused
+protests from powerful quarters. Also the Republicans quickly
+subsided when they saw the Democrats making an advance. And so
+the Democratic Executive Committee began to spread abroad the
+news that its act was not really official, but merely reflected
+the "personal conviction" of the members present. It extracted
+the official flavor, and so of course no action followed in
+Congress.
+
+And so it went-like a great game of chess. Doubtless the
+politicians believed they were moved from their own true and
+noble motives. The fact was that the pickets had moved the
+Democrats a step. The Republicans had then attempted to
+
+{89}
+
+take two steps, whereupon the Democrats must continue to move
+more rapidly than their opponents. Behind this matching of
+political wits by the two parties stood the faithful pickets
+compelling them both to act.
+
+Simultaneously with these moves and counter-moves in political
+circles, the people in all sections of this vast country began to
+speak their minds. Meetings were springing up everywhere, at
+which resolutions were passed backing up the picket line and
+urging the President and Congress to act. Even the South, the
+Administration's stronghold, sent fiery telegrams demanding
+action. Alabama, South Carolina, Texas, Maryland, Mississippi, as
+well as the West, Middle West, New England and the East-the
+stream was endless.
+
+Every time a new piece of legislation was passed; the war
+tax bill, food conservation or what not,-women from unex-
+pected quarters sent to the Government their protest against
+the passage of measures so vital to women without women's
+consent, coupled with an appeal for the liberation of women.
+Club women, college women, federations of labor; various
+kinds of organizations sent protests to the Administration
+leaders. The picket line, approaching its sixth month of duty,
+had aroused the country to an unprecedented interest in suf-
+frage; it had rallied widespread public support to the amend-
+ment as a war measure, and had itself become almost univer-
+sally accepted if not universally approved. And in the midst
+of picketing ands in spite of all the prophecies and fears that
+"picketing" would "set back the cause," within one month,
+Michigan, Nebraska and Rhode Island granted Presidential
+suffrage to women.
+
+The leaders were busy marshaling their forces behind the
+President's war program, which included the controversial
+Conscription and Espionage Bills, then pending, and did not
+relish having our question so vivid in the public mind. Even when
+the rank and file of Congress gave consideration to questions not
+
+{90}
+
+in the war program, they had to face a possible charge of
+inconsistency, insincerity or bad faith. The freedom of Ireland,
+for example, was not in the program. And when 132 members of the
+House cabled Lloyd George that nothing would do more for American
+enthusiasm in the war than a settlement of the Irish question, we
+took pains to ascertain the extent of the belief in liberty at
+home of these easy champions of Irish liberty. When we found that
+of the 132 men only 5'7 believed in liberty for American women,
+we were not delicate in pointing out to the remaining "(5 that
+their belief in liberty for Ireland would appear more sincere if
+they believed in a democratic reform such as woman suffrage here.
+
+The manifestations of popular approval of suffrage, the constant
+stream of protests to the Administration against its delay
+nationally, and the shame of having women begging at its gates,
+could result in only one of two things. The Administration had
+little choice. It must yield to this pressure from the people or
+it must suppress the agitation which was causing such interest.
+It must pass the amendment or remove the troublesome pickets.
+
+It decided to remove the pickets.
+
+{91}
+
+Chapter 3
+
+The First Arrests
+
+The Administration chose suppression. They resorted to force in
+an attempt to end picketing. It was a policy doomed to failure as
+certainly as all resorts to force to kill agitation have failed
+ultimately. This marked the beginning of the adoption by the
+Administration of tactics from which they could never extricate
+themselves with honor. Unfortunately for them they were entering
+upon this policy toward women which savored of czarist practices,
+at the very moment they were congratulating the Russians upon
+their liberation from the oppression of a Czar. This fact
+supplied us with a fresh angle of attack.
+
+President Wilson sent a Mission to Russia to add America's appeal
+to that of the other Allies to keep that impoverished country in
+the war. Such was our-democratic zeal to persuade Russia to
+continue the war and to convince her people of its democratic
+purposes, and of the democratic quality of America, that Elihu
+Root, one of the President's envoys, stated in Petrograd that he
+represented a republic where "universal, direct, equal and secret
+suffrage obtained." We subjected the President to attack through
+this statement.
+
+Russia also sent a war mission to our country for purposes of
+cooperation. This occasion offered us the opportunity again to
+expose the Administration's weakness in claiming complete
+political democracy while women were still denied their political
+freedom.
+
+It was a beautiful June day when all Washington was agog
+
+{92}
+
+with the visit of the Russian diplomats to the President. As
+the car carrying the envoys passed swiftly through the gates
+of the White House there stood on the picket line two silent
+sentinels, Miss Lucy Burns of New York and Mrs. Lawrence
+Lewis of Philadelphia, both members of the National Executive
+Committee, with a great lettered banner which read:
+
+TO THE RUSSIAN ENVOYS
+
+PRESIDENT WILSON AND ENVOY ROOT ARE DECEIVING
+RUSSIA WHEN THEY SAY "WE ARE A DEMOCRACY, HELP
+US WIN THE WORLD WAR SO THAT DEMOCRACY MAY
+SURVIVE"
+
+WE THE WOMEN OF AMERICA TELL YOU THAT AMER
+ICA IS NOT A DEMOCRACY. TWENTY-MILLION AMERI'
+CAN WOMEN ARE DENIED THE RIGHT TO VOTE. PRESI
+DENT WILSON IS THE CHIEF OPPONENT OF THEIR NA
+TIONAL ENFRANCHISEMENT.
+
+HELP US MAKE THIS NATION REALLY FREE. TELL OUR
+GOVERNMENT IT MUST LIBERATE ITS PEOPLE BEFORE
+IT CAN CLAIM FREE RUSSIA AS AN ALLY,
+
+Rumors that the suffragists would make a special demonstration
+before the Russian Mission had brought a great crowd to the far
+gate of the White House; a crowd composed almost entirely of men.
+
+Like all crowds, this crowd had its share of hoodlums and roughs
+who tried to interfere with the women's order of the day. There
+was a flurry of excitement over this defiant message of truth,
+but nothing that could not with the utmost ease have been settled
+by one policeman.
+
+There was the criticism in the press and on the lips of men that
+we were embarrassing our Government before the eyes of foreign
+visitors. In answering the criticism, Miss Paul publicly stated
+our position thus: "The intolerable conditions
+
+{93}
+
+against which we protest can be changed in the twinkling of an
+eye. The responsibility for our protest is, therefore, with the
+Administration and not with the women of America, if the lack of
+democracy at home weakens the Administration in its fight for
+democracy three thousand miles away."
+
+This was too dreadful. A flurry at the gates of the Chief of the
+nation at such a time would never do. Our allies in the crusade
+for democracy must not know that we had a day-by-day unrest at
+home. Something must be done to stop this expose at once. Had
+these women no manners? Had they no shame? Was the fundamental
+weakness in our boast of pure and perfect democracy to be so
+wantonly displayed with impunity?
+
+Of course it was embarrassing. We meant it to be. The truth must
+be told at all costs. This was no time for manners.
+
+Hurried conferences behind closed doors! Summoning of the
+military to discuss declaring a military zone around the White
+House! Women could not advance on drawn bayonets. And if they did
+. . . What a picture! Common decency told the more humane leaders
+that this would never do. I daresay political wisdom crept into
+the reasoning of others.
+
+Closing the Woman's Party headquarters was discussed. Perhaps a
+raid! And all for what? Because women were holding banners asking
+for the precious principle at home that men were supposed to be
+dying for abroad.
+
+Finally a decision was reached embodying the combined wisdom of
+all the various conferees. The Chief of Police, Major Pullman,
+was detailed to "request" us to stop "picketing" and to tell us
+that if we continued to picket, we would be arrested._
+
+"We have picketed for six months without interference," said Miss
+Paul. "Has the law been changed?"
+
+"No," was the reply, "but you must stop it."
+
+"But, Major Pullman, we have consulted our lawyers and know we
+have a legal right to picket."
+
+{94}
+
+"I warn you, you will be arrested if you attempt to picket
+again."
+
+The following day Miss Lucy Burns and Miss Katherine Morey of
+Boston carried to the White House gates "We shall fight for the
+things we have always held nearest our hearts, for democracy, for
+the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in
+their own government," and were arrested.
+
+News had spread through the city that the pickets were to be
+arrested. A moderately large crowd had gathered to see the "fun."
+One has only to come into conflict with prevailing authority,
+whether rightly or wrongly, to find friendly hosts vanishing with
+lightning speed. To know that we were no longer wanted at the
+gates of the White House and that the police were no longer our
+"friends" was enough for the mob mind.
+
+Some members of the crowd made sport of the women. Others hurled
+cheap and childish epithets at them. Small boys were allowed to
+capture souvenirs, shreds of the banners torn from non-resistant
+women, as trophies of the sport.
+
+Thinking they had been mistaken in believing the pickets were to
+be arrested, and having grown weary of their strenuous sport, the
+crowd moved on its way. Two solitary figures remained, standing
+on the sidewalk, flanked by the vast Pennsylvania Avenue, looking
+quite abandoned and alone, when suddenly without any warrant in
+law, they were arrested on a completely deserted avenue.
+
+Miss Burns and Miss Morey upon arriving at the police station,
+insisted, to the great surprise of all the officials, upon
+knowing the charge against them. Major Pullman and his entire
+staff were utterly at a loss to know what to answer. The
+Administration had looked ahead only as far as threatening
+arrest. They doubtless thought this was all they would have to
+do. People could not be arrested for picketing. Picketing is a
+guaranteed right under the Clayton Act of
+
+{95}
+
+Congress. Disorderly conduct? There had been no disorderly
+I	conduct. Inciting to riot? Impossible! The women had stood
+as silent sentinels holding the President's own eloquent words.
+
+Doors opened and closed mysteriously. Officials and subofficials
+passed hurriedly to and fro. Whispered conversations were heard.
+The book on rules and regulations was hopefully thumbed. Hours
+passed. Finally the two prisoners were pompously told that they
+had "obstructed the traffic" on Pennsylvania Avenue, were
+dismissed on their own recognizance, and never brought to trial.
+
+The following day, June 23rd, more arrests were made; two women
+at the White House, two at the Capitol. All carried banners with
+the same words of the President. There was no hesitation this
+time. They were promptly arrested for "obstructing the traffic."
+They, too, were dismissed and their cases never tried. It seemed
+clear that the Administration hoped to suppress picketing merely
+by arrests. When. however. women continued to picket in the face
+of arrest, the Administration quickened its advance into the
+venture of suppression. It decided to bring the offenders to
+trial.
+
+On June 26, six American women were tried, judged guilty on the
+technical charge of "obstructing the traffic," warned by the
+court of their "unpatriotic, almost treasonable behavior," and
+sentenced to pay a fine of twenty-five dollars or serve three
+days in jail.
+
+"Not a dollar of your fine will we pay," was the answer of the
+women. "To pay a fine would be an admission of guilt. We are
+innocent."
+
+The six women who were privileged to serve the first terms of
+imprisonment for suffrage in this country, were Miss Katherine
+Morey of Massachusetts, Mrs. Annie Arneil and Miss Mabel Vernon
+of Delaware, Miss Lavinia Dock of Pennsylvania, Miss Maud Jamison
+of Virginia, and Miss Virginia Arnold of
+
+{96}
+
+North Carolina. "Privileged" in spite of the foul air, the rats,
+and the mutterings of their strange comrades in jail!
+
+Independence Day, July 4, 1917, is the occasion for two
+demonstrations in the name of liberty. Champ Clark, late
+Democratic speaker of the House, is declaiming to a cheering
+crowd behind the White House, "Governments derive their just
+powers from the consent of the governed." In front of the White
+House thirteen silent sentinels with banners bearing the same
+words, are arrested. It would have been exceedingly droll if it
+had not been so tragic. Champ Clark and his throng were not
+molested. The women with practically a deserted street were
+arrested and served jail terms for "obstructing traffic."
+
+The trial of this group was delayed to give the jail authorities
+time to "vacate and tidy up," as one prisoner confided to Miss
+Joy Young. It developed that "orders" had been received at the
+jail immediately after the arrests and before the trial, "to make
+ready for the suffragettes." What did it matter that their case
+had not yet been heard? To jail they must go.
+
+Was not the judge who tried and sentenced them a direct appointee
+of President Wilson? Were not the District Commissioners who gave
+orders to prepare the cells the direct appointees of President
+Wilson? And was not the Chief of Police of the District of
+Columbia a direct appointee of these same commissioners? And was
+not the jail warden who made life for the women so unbearable in
+prison also a direct appointee of the commissioners?
+
+It was all a merry little ring and its cavalier attitude toward
+the law, toward justice, and above all toward women was of no
+importance. The world was on fire with a grand blaze. This tiny
+flame would scarcely be visible. No one would notice a few "mad"
+women thrown into jail. And if the world should find it out,
+doubtless public opinion would agree that the women ought to stay
+there. And even if it should not agree,
+
+{97}
+
+this little matter could all be explained away before another
+election.
+
+Meanwhile the President could proclaim through official channels
+his disinterestedness. Observe the document, of which I give the
+substance, which he caused or allowed to be published at this
+time, through his Committee on Public Information.
+
+"OFFICIAL BULLETIN"
+
+"Published Daily under order of the President of the United
+States, by the Committee on Public Information.
+
+GEORGE CREEL, Chairman.
+
+"Furnished without charge to all newspapers, post offices,
+government officials and agencies of a public character for the
+dissemination of official news of the United States Government."
+
+"Washington, July 3, 1917. No. 46-Vol. i."
+
+There follows a long editorial[1] which laments the public
+attention which has centered on the militant campaign, appeals to
+editors and reporters not to "encourage" us in our peculiar
+conduct by printing defies to the President of the United States
+even when "flaunted on a pretty little purple and gold banner"
+and exhorts the public to control its thrills. The official
+bulletin concludes with:
+
+"It is a fact that there remains in America one man who has known
+exactly the right attitude to take and maintain toward the
+pickets. A whimsical smile, slightly puckered at the roots by a
+sense of the ridiculous, a polite bow-and for the rest a complete
+ignoring of their existence. He happens to be the man around whom
+the little whirlwind whirls-the President of the United States."
+And finally with an admonition that "the rest' of the country ...
+take example from him in its emotional reaction to the picket
+question."
+
+[1]From the Woman Citizen.
+
+{98}
+
+The Administration pinned its faith on jail--that institution of
+convenience to the oppressor when he is strong in power and his
+weapons are effective. When the oppressor miscalculates the
+strength of the oppressed, jail loses its convenience.
+
+{99}
+
+Chapter 4
+
+Occoquan Workhouse
+
+It is Bastille Day, July fourteenth. Inspiring scenes and tragic
+sacrifices for liberty come to our minds. Sixteen women march in
+single file to take their own "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" to
+the White House gates. It is the middle of a hot afternoon. A
+thin line of curious spectators is seen in the park opposite the
+suffrage headquarters. The police assemble from obscure spots;
+some afoot, others on bicycles. They close in on the women and
+follow them to the gates.
+
+The proud banner is scarcely at the gates when the leader is
+placed under arrest. Her place is taken by another. She is taken.
+Another, and still another steps into the breach and is arrested.
+
+Meanwhile the crowd grows, attracted to the spot by the presence
+of the police and the patrol wagon. Applause is heard. There are
+cries of "shame" for the police, who, I must say, did not always
+act as if they relished carrying out what they termed "orders
+from higher up." An occasional hoot from a small boy served to
+make the mood of the hostile ones a bit gayer. But for the most
+part an intense silence fell upon the watchers, as they saw not
+only younger women, but whitehaired grandmothers hoisted before
+the public gaze into the crowded patrol, their heads erect, their
+eyes a little moist and their frail hands holding tightly to the
+banner until wrested from them by superior brute force.
+
+This is the first time most of the women have ever seen a
+
+{100}
+
+police station, and they are interested in, their surroundings.
+They are not interested in helping the panting policeman count
+them over and identify them. Who arrested whom? That becomes the
+gigantic question.
+
+"Will the ladies please tell which officer arrested them?"
+
+They will not. They do not intend to be a party to this outrage.
+Finally the officers abandon their attempt at identification.
+They have the names of the arrestees and will accept bail for
+their appearance Monday.
+
+"Well girls, I've never seen but one other court in my life and
+that was the Court of St. James. But I must say they are not very
+much alike," was the cheery comment of Mrs. Florence Bayard
+Hilles,[1] as we entered the court room on Monday.
+
+The stuffy court room is packed to overflowing. The fat, one-eyed
+bailiff is perspiring to no purpose. He cannot make the throng
+"sit down." In fact every one who has anything to do with the
+pickets perspires to no purpose. Judge Mullowny takes his seat,
+looking at once grotesque and menacing on his red throne.
+
+"Silence in the court room," from the sinister-eyed bailiff. And
+a silence. follows so heavy that it can be heard.
+
+Saturday night's both black and white-are tried first. The
+suffrage prisoners strain their ears to hear the pitiful pleas of
+these unfortunates, most of whom come to the bar without counsel
+or friend. Scraps of evidence are heard.
+
+JUDGE: "You say you were not quarreling, Lottie?"
+
+LOTTIE: "I sho' do yo' hono'. We wuz jes singin'-we wuz sho' nuf,
+sah."
+
+JUDGE: "Singing, Lottie? Why your neighbors here testify to the
+fact that you were making a great deal of noise so much that they
+could not sleep."
+
+[1]Mrs. Hilles is the daughter of the late Thomas Bayard,
+formerly America's ambassador to Great Britain, and Secretary of
+State in President Cleveland's cabinet.
+
+{101}
+
+LOTTIE: "I tells yo' honor' we wuz jes singin' lak we allays do.�
+
+JUDGE : "What were you singing?"
+
+LOTTIE: "Why, hymns, sah."
+
+The judge smiles cynically.
+
+A neatly-attired white man with a wizened face again takes the
+stand against Lottie. Hymns or no hymns he could not sleep. The
+judge pronounces a sentence of "six months in the workhouse," for
+Lottie.
+
+And so it goes on.
+
+The suffrage prisoners are the main business of the morning.
+Sixteen women come inside the railing which separates "tried"
+from "untried" and take their seats.
+
+"Do the ladies wish the government to provide them with counsel?"
+
+They do not.
+
+"We shall speak in our own behalf. We feel that we can best
+represent ourselves," we announce. Miss Anne Martin and I act as
+attorneys for the group.
+
+The same panting policemen who could not identify the people they
+had arrested give their stereotyped, false and illiterate
+testimony. The judge helps them over the hard places and so does
+the government's attorney. They stumble to an embarrassed finish
+and retire.
+
+An aged government clerk, grown infirm in the service, takes the
+stand and the government attorney proves through him that there
+is a White House; that it has a side-walk in front of it, and a
+pavement, and a hundred other overwhelming facts. The pathetic
+clerk shakes his dusty frame and slinks off the stand. The
+prosecuting attorney now elaborately proves that we walked, that
+we carried banners, that we were arrested by the aforesaid
+officers while attempting to hold our banners at the White House
+gates.
+
+Each woman speaks briefly in her own defense. She de-
+
+{102}
+
+nounces the government's policy with hot defiance. The blame is
+placed squarely at the door of the Administration, and in
+unmistakable terms. Miss Anne Martin opens for the defense:
+
+"This is what we are doing with our banners before the White
+House, petitioning the most powerful representative of the
+government, the President of the United States, for a redress of
+grievances; we are asking him to use his great power to secure
+the passage of the national suffrage amendment.
+
+"As long as the government and the representatives of the
+government prefer to send women to jail on petty and technical
+charges, we will go to jail. Persecution has always advanced the
+cause of justice. The right of American women to work for
+democracy must be maintained . . . . We would hinder, not help,
+the whole cause of freedom for women, if we weakly submitted to
+persecution now. Our work for the passage of the amendment must
+go on. It will go on."
+
+Mrs. John Rogers, Jr., descendant of Roger Sherman, one of the
+signers of the Declaration of Independence, speaks: "We are not
+guilty of any offence, not even of infringing a police
+regulation. We know full well that we stand here because the
+President of the United States refuses to give liberty to
+American women. We believe, your Honor, that the wrong persons
+are before the bar in this Court . . . ."
+
+"I object, your Honor, to this woman making such a statement here
+in Court," says the District Attorney.
+
+"We believe the President is the guilty one and that we are
+innocent."
+
+"Your Honor, I object," shouts the Government's attorney.
+
+The prisoner continues calmly: "There are votes enough and there
+is time enough to pass the national suffrage amendment through
+Congress at this session. More than 200 votes in the House and
+more than 50 in the Senate are pledged to this amendment. The
+President puts his power behind all measures in which he takes a
+genuine interest. If he will say one
+
+{103}
+
+frank word advocating this measure it will pass as a piece of war
+emergency legislation."
+
+Mrs. Florence Bayard Hilles speaks in her own defense: "For
+generations the men of my family have given their services to
+their country. For myself, my training from childhood has been
+with a father who believed in democracy and who belonged to the
+Democratic Party. By inheritance and connection I am a Democrat,
+and to a Democratic President I went with my appeal . . . . What
+a spectacle it must be to the thinking people of this country to
+see us urged to go to war for democracy in a foreign land, and to
+see women thrown into prison who plead for that same cause at
+home.
+
+"I stand here to affirm my innocence of the charge against me.
+This court has not proven that I obstructed traffic. My presence
+at the White House gate was under the constitutional right of
+petitioning the government for freedom or for any other cause.
+During the months of January, February, March, April and May
+picketing was legal. In June it suddenly becomes illegal . . . .
+
+
+"My services as an American woman are being conscripted by order
+of the President of the United States to help win the world war
+for democracy . . . . `for the right of those who submit to
+authority to have a voice in their own government.' I shall
+continue to plead for the political liberty of American women-and
+especially do I plead to the President, since he is the one
+person who . . . can end the struggles of American women to take
+their proper places in a true democracy."
+
+There is continuous objection from the prosecutor, eager advice
+from the judge, "you had better keep to the charge of obstructing
+traffic" But round on round of applause comes from the intent
+audience, whenever a defiant note is struck by the prisoners, and
+in spite of the sharp rapping of the gavel confusion reigns. And
+how utterly puny the "charge" is! If it were true that the
+prisoners actually obstructed the traffic,
+
+{104)
+
+how grotesque that would be. The importance of their demand, the
+purity of their reasoning, the nobility and gentle quality of the
+prisoners at the bar; all conspire to make the charge against
+them, and the attorney who makes it, and the judge who hears it,
+petty and ridiculous.
+
+But justice must proceed.
+
+Mrs. Gilson Gardner of Washington, D. C., a member of the
+Executive Committee of the National Woman's party, and the wife
+of Gilson Gardner, a well-known Liberal and journalist, speaks:
+
+"It is impossible for me to believe that we were arrested
+because we were obstructing traffic or blocking the public high-
+way.
+
+"We have been carrying on activities of a distinctly political
+nature, and these political activities have seemingly disturbed
+certain powerful influences. Arrests followed. I submit that
+these arrests are purely political and that the charge of an
+unlawful assemblage and of obstructing traffic is a political
+subterfuge. Even should I be sent to jail which, I could not,
+your Honor, anticipate, I would be in jail, not because I
+obstructed traffic, but because I have offended politically,
+because I have demanded of this government freedom for women."
+
+It was my task to sum up for the defense. The judge sat bored
+through my statement. "We know and I believe the Court knows
+also," I said, "that President Wilson and his Administration are
+responsible for our being here to-day. It is a fact that they
+gave the orders which caused our arrest and appearance before
+this bar.
+
+"We know and you know, that the District Commissioners are
+appointed by the President, that the present commissioners were
+appointed by President Wilson. We know that you, your Honor, were
+appointed to the bench by President Wilson, and that the district
+attorney who prosecutes us was appointed by the President. These
+various officers would not dare bring us
+
+{105}
+
+here under these false charges without the policy having been
+decided upon by the responsible leaders.
+
+"What is our real crime? What have these distinguished and
+liberty-loving women done to bring them before this court of
+justice? Why, your Honor, their crime is that they peacefully
+petitioned the President of the United States for liberty. What
+must be the shame of our nation before the world when it becomes
+known that here we throw women into jail who love liberty and
+attempt to peacefully petition the President for it? These women
+are nearly all descended from revolutionary ancestors or from
+some of the greatest libertarian statesmen this country has
+produced. What would these men say now if they could see that
+passion for liberty which was in their own hearts rewarded in the
+twentieth century with foul and filthy imprisonment!
+
+"We say to you, this outrageous policy of stupid and brutal
+punishment will not dampen the ardor of the women. Where sixteen
+of us face your judgment to-day there will be sixty tomorrow, so
+great will be the indignation of our colleagues in this fight."
+
+The trial came to an end after a tense two days. The packed
+court-room fat in a terrible silence awaiting the judge's answer.
+
+There were distinguished men present at the trial-men who also
+fight for their ideals. There was Frederic C. Howe, then
+Commissioner of Immigration of the Port of New York, Frank P.
+Walsh, International labor leader, Dudley Field Malone, then
+Collector of the Port of New York, Amos Pinchot, liberal leader,
+John A. H. Hopkins, then liberal-progressive leader in New Jersey
+who had turned his organization to the support of the President
+and become a member of the President's Campaign Committee, now
+chairman of the Committee of Fortyeight and whose beautiful wife
+was among the prisoners, Allen McCurdy, secretary of the
+Committee of Forty-eight and many
+
+{106}
+
+others. One and all came forward to protest to us during the
+adjournment. "This is monstrous." . . . "Never have I seen
+evidence so disregarded." . . . "This is a tragic farce" . . .
+
+"He will never dare sentence you."
+
+It was reported to us that the judge used the interim to
+telephone to the District building, where the District
+Commissioners sit. He returned to pronounce, "Sixty days in the
+workhouse in default of a twenty-five dollar fine."
+
+The shock was swift and certain to all the spectators. We would
+not of course pay the unjust fine imposed, for we were not guilty
+of any offense.
+
+The judge attempted persuasion. "You had better decide to pay
+your fines," he ventured. And "you will not find jail a pleasant
+place to be." It was clear that neither he nor his confreres had
+imagined women would accept with equanimity so drastic a
+sentence. It was now their time to be shocked. Here were
+"ladies"-that was perfectly clear-"ladies" of unusual
+distinction. Surely they would not face the humiliation of a
+workhouse sentence which involved not only imprisonment but penal
+servitude! The Administration was wrong again.
+
+"We protest against this unjust sentence and conviction," we
+said, "but we prefer the workhouse to the payment of a fine
+imposed for an offense of which we are not guilty." We filed into
+the "pen," to join the other prisoners, and wait for the "black
+maria" to carry us to prison.
+
+We are all taken to the District Jail, where we are put through
+the regular catechism: "Were you ever in prison before?-Age-
+birthplace-father-mother-religion and what not?" We are then
+locked up,-two to a cell. What will happen next?
+
+The sleek jailer, whose attempt to be cordial provokes a certain
+distrust, comes to our corridor to "turn us over" to our next
+keeper-the warden of Occoquan. We learn that the
+
+{107}
+
+workhouse is not situated in the District of Columbia but in
+Virginia.
+
+Other locked wagons with tiny windows up near the driver now take
+us, side by side with drunks and disorderlies, prostitutes and
+thieves, to the Pennsylvania Station. Here we embark for the
+unknown terrors of the workhouse, filing through crowds at the
+station, driven on by our "keeper," who resembles Simon Legree,
+with his long stick and his pushing and shoving to hurry us
+along. The crowd is quick to realize that we are prisoners,
+because of our associates. Friends try to bid us a last farewell
+and slip us a sweet or fruit, as we are rushed through the iron
+station gates to the train.
+
+Warden Whittaker is our keeper, thin and old, with a cruel mouth,
+brutal eyes and a sinister birthmark on his temple. He guards
+very anxiously his "dangerous criminals" lest they
+try to leap out of the train to freedom! We chat a little and
+attempt to relax from the strain that we have endured since
+Saturday. It is now late in the afternoon of Tuesday.
+
+The dusk is gathering. It is almost totally dark when we alight
+at a tiny station in what seems to us a wilderness. It is a
+deserted country. Even the gayest member of the party, I am sure,
+was struck with a little terror here.
+
+More locked wagons, blacker than the dusk, awaited us. The prison
+van jolted and bumped along the rocky and hilly
+road. A cluster of lights twinkled beyond the last hill, and we
+knew that we were coming to our temporary summer residence. I can
+still see the long thin line of black poplars against the
+smoldering afterglow. I did not know then what tragic things they
+concealed.
+
+We entered a well-lighted office. A few guards of ugly demeanor
+stood about. Warden Whittaker consulted with the hard-faced
+matron, Mrs. Herndon, who began the prison routine. Names were
+called, and each prisoner stepped to the
+
+{108}
+
+desk to get her number, to give up all jewelry, money, handbags,
+letters, eye-glasses, traveling bags containing toilet
+necessities, in fact everything except the clothes on her body.
+
+From there we were herded into the long bare dining room where we
+sat dumbly down to a bowl of dirty sour soup. I say dumbly-for
+now began the rule of silence. Prisoners are punished for
+speaking to one another at table. They cannot even whisper, much
+less smile or laugh. They must be conscious always of their
+"guilt." Every possible thing is done to make the inmates feel
+that they are and must continue to be antisocial creatures.
+
+We taste our soup and crust of bread. We try so hard to eat it
+for we are tired and hungry, but no one of us is able to get it
+down. We leave the table hungry and slightly nauseated.
+
+Another long march in silence through various channels into a
+large dormitory and through a double line of cots ! Then we
+stand, weary to the point of fainting, waiting the next ordeal.
+This seemed to be the juncture at which we lost all that is left
+us of contact with the outside world,-our clothes.
+
+An assistant matron, attended by negress prisoners, relieves us
+of our clothes. Each prisoner is obliged to strip naked without
+even the protection of a sheet, and proceed across what seems
+endless space, to a shower bath. A large tin bucket stands on the
+floor and in this is a minute piece of dirty soap, which is
+offered to us and rejected. We dare not risk the soap used by so
+many prisoners. Naked, we return from the bath to receive our
+allotment of coarse, hideous prison clothes, the outer garments
+of which consist of a bulky mother-hubbard wrapper, of bluish
+gray ticking and a heavy apron of the same dismal stuff. It takes
+a dominant personality indeed to survive these clothes. The thick
+unbleached muslin undergarments are of designs never to be
+forgotten! And the thick stockings and forlorn shoes! What
+torture to put on shoes that are alike for each foot and made to
+fit just anybody who may happen along.
+
+{109}
+
+Why are we being ordered to dress? It is long past the bed-time
+hour.
+
+Our suspense is brief. All dressed in cloth of "guilt" we are led
+into what we later learn is the "recreation" room. Lined up
+against its wall, we might any other time have bantered about the
+possibility of being shot, but we are in no mood to jest. The
+door finally opens and in strides Warden Whittaker with a
+stranger beside him.
+
+He reviews his latest criminal recruits, engaging the stranger
+meanwhile in whispered conversation. There are short, uncertain
+laughs. There are nods of the head and more whispers.
+
+"Well, ladies, I hope you are all comfortable. Now make
+yourselves at home here. I think you will find it healthy here.
+You'll weigh more when you go out than when you came in. You will
+be allowed to write one letter a month-to your family. Of course
+we open and read all letters coming in and going out. To-morrow
+you will be assigned your work. I hope you will sleep well. Good
+night!"
+
+We did not answer. We looked at each other.
+
+News leaked through in the morning that the stranger had been a
+newspaper reporter. The papers next morning were full of the
+"comfort" and "luxury" of our surroundings. The "delicious" food
+sounded most reassuring to the nation. In fact no word of the
+truth was allowed to appear.
+
+The correspondent could not know that we went back to our cots to
+try to sleep side by side with negro prostitutes. Not that we
+shrank from these women on account of their color, but how
+terrible to know that, the institution had gone out of its way to
+bring these prisoners from their own wing to the white wing in an
+attempt to humiliate us. There was plenty of room in the negro
+wing. But prison must be made so unbearable that no more women
+would face it. That was the policy attempted here.
+
+{110}
+
+We tried very hard to sleep and forget our hunger and weariness.
+But all the night through our dusky comrades padded by to the
+lavatory, and in the streak of bright light which shot across the
+center of the room, startled heads could be seen bobbing up in
+the direction of a demented woman in the end cot. Her weird
+mutterings made us fearful. There was no sleep in this strange
+place.
+
+Our thoughts turn to the outside world. Will the women care? Will
+enough women believe that through such humiliation all may win
+freedom? Will they believe that through our imprisonment their
+slavery will be lifted the sooner? Less philosophically, will the
+government be moved by public protest? Will such protest come?
+
+The next morning brought us a visitor from suffrage headquarters.
+The institution hoped that the visitor would use her persuasion
+to make us pay our fines and leave and so she was admitted. We
+learned the cheering news, that immediately after sentence had
+been pronounced by the Court, Dudley Field Malone had gone direct
+to the White House to protest to the President. His protest was
+delivered with heat. The President said that he was "shocked" at
+the sixty day sentence, that he did not know it had been done,
+and made other evasions. Mr. Malone's report of his interview
+with the President is given in full in a subsequent chapter.
+
+Following Mr. Malone, Mr. J. A. H. Hopkins went to the White
+House. "How would you like to have your wife sleep in a dirty
+workhouse next to prostitutes?" was his direct talk to the
+President. Again the President was "shocked." No wonder! Mr. and
+Mrs. Hopkins had been the President's dinner guests not very long
+before, celebrating his return to power. They had supported him
+politically and financially in New Jersey. Now Mrs. Hopkins had
+been arrested at his gate and thrown into prison.
+
+In reporting the interview, Mr. Hopkins said:
+
+{111}
+
+"The President asked me for suggestions as to what might be done,
+and I replied that in view of the seriousness of the present
+situation the only solution lay in immediate passage of the Susan
+B. Anthony amendment."
+
+Gilson Gardner also went to the White House to leave his hot
+protest. And there were others.
+
+Telegrams poured in from all over the country. The press printed
+headlines which could not but arouse the sympathy of thousands.
+Even people who did not approve of picketing the White House
+said, "After all, what these women have done is certainly not
+`bad' enough to merit such drastic punishment"
+
+And women protested. From coast to coast there poured in at our
+headquarters copies of telegrams sent to Administration leaders.
+Of course not all women by any means had approved this method of
+agitation. But the government's action had done more than we had
+been able to do for them. It had made them feel sex-conscious.
+Women were being unjustly treated. Regardless of their feelings
+about this particular procedure, they stood up and objected.
+
+For the first time, I believe, our form of agitation began to
+seem a little more respectable than the Administration's handling
+of it. But the Administration did not know this fact yet.
+
+"Everybody in line for the work-room!"
+
+We were thankful to leave our inedible breakfast. We were unable
+to drink the greasy black coffee. The pain in the tops of our
+heads was acute.
+
+"What you all down here for?" asked a young negress, barely out
+of her teens, as she casually fingered her sewing material.
+
+"Why, I held a purple, white and gold banner at the gates of the
+White House."
+
+{112}
+
+"You don' say so! What de odders do?"
+
+"Same thing. We all held banners at the White House gates asking
+President Wilson to give us the vote."
+
+"An' yo' all got sixty days fo' dat?"
+
+"Yes. You see the President thought it would be a good idea to
+send us to the workhouse for asking for the vote. You know women
+want to vote and have wanted to for a long time in our country"
+
+"O-Yass'm, I know. I seen yo' parades, an' meetin's, an'
+everythin'. I know whah yo' all live, right near the White House.
+You's alright. I hopes yo' git it, fo' women certainly do need
+protextion against men like Judge Mullowny. He has us allatime
+picked up an' sen' down here.
+
+"They sen' yo' down here once, an' then yo' come out without a
+cent, and try to look fo' a job, an' befo' yo' can fin' one a cop
+walks up an' asks yo' whah yo' live, an' ef yo' haven't got a
+place yet, becaus' yo' ain' got a cent to ren' one with, he says,
+`Come with me, I'll fin' yo' a home,' an' hustles yo' off to the
+p'lice station an' down heah again, an' you're called a 4vag'
+(vagrant). What chance has we niggahs got, I ask ya? I hopes yo'
+all gits a vote an' fixes up somethings for women!"
+
+"You see that young girl over there?" said another prisoner, who
+in spite of an unfortunate life had kept a remnant of her early
+beauty. I nodded.
+
+"Well, Judge Mullowny gave her thirty days for her first offense,
+and when he sentenced her, she cried out desperately, `Don't send
+me down there, Judge! If you do, I'll kill myself!' What do you
+think he said to that? `I'll give you six months in which to
+change your mind!"'
+
+I reflected. The judge that broke this pale-faced, silent girl
+was the appointee of the President. It was the task of such a man
+to sentence American women to the workhouse for demanding
+liberty.
+
+Conversing with the "regulars" was forbidden by the
+
+{113}
+
+wardress, but we managed, from time to time, to talk to our
+fellow prisoners with stealthiness.
+
+"We knew somethin' was goin' to happen," said one negro girl,
+"because Monday the close we had on wer' took off us an' we were
+giv' these old patched ones. We wuz told they wanted to take
+`stock,� but we heard they wuz bein' washed fo' you-all
+suff'agettes."
+
+The unpleasantness at wearing the formless garments of these
+unfortunates made us all wince. But the government's calculation
+aroused our hot indignation. We were not convicted until Tuesday
+and our prison garments were ready Monday!
+
+"You must not speak against the President," said the servile
+wardress, when she discovered we were telling our story to the
+inmates. "You know you will be thrashed if you say anything more
+about the President; and don't forget you're on Government
+property and may be arrested for treason if it happens again."
+
+We doubted the seriousness of this threat of thrashing until one
+of the girls confided to us that such outrages happened often. We
+afterward obtained proof of these brutalities.[1]
+
+"Old Whittaker beat up that girl over there just last week and
+put her in the `booby' house on bread and water for five days."
+
+"What did she do?" I asked.
+
+"Oh, she an' another girl got to scrapping in the blackberry
+patch and she didn't pick enough berries. .�
+
+"All put up your work, girls, and get in line." This from the
+wardress, who sped up the work in the sewing room. It was lunch
+time, and though we were all hungry we dreaded going to the
+silence and the food in that gray dining room with the vile
+odors. We were counted again as we filed out, carrying our heavy
+chairs with us as is the workhouse custom.
+
+[1]See affidavit of Mrs. Bovee, page 144.
+
+{114}
+
+"Do they do this all the time?" I asked. It seemed as though
+needless energy was being spent counting and recounting our
+little group.
+
+"Wouldn't do anybody any good to try to get away from here," said
+one of the white girls. "Too many bloodhounds!"
+
+"Bloodhounds!" I asked in amazement, for after all these women
+were not criminals but merely misdemeanants.
+
+"Oh, yes. Just a little while ago, three men tried to get away
+and they turned bloodhounds after them and shot them dead-and
+they weren't bad men either."
+
+When our untasted supper was over that night we were ordered into
+the square, bare-walled "recreation" room, where we and the other
+prisoners sat, and sat, and sat, our chairs against the walls, a
+dreary sight indeed, waiting for the fortyfive minutes before
+bedtime to pass. The sight of two negro girl prisoners combing
+out each other's lice and dressing their kinky hair in such a way
+as to discourage permanently a return of the vermin did not
+produce in us exactly a feeling of "recreation." But we tried to
+sing. The negroes joined in, too, and soon outsang us, with their
+plaintive melodies and hymns. Then back to our cells and another
+attempt to sleep.
+
+A new ordeal the next morning! Another of the numberless
+"pedigrees" is to be taken. One by one we were called to the
+warden's office.
+
+"Were your father or mother ever insane?"
+
+"Are you a confirmed drunkard, chronic or moderate drinker?"
+
+"Do you smoke or chew or use tobacco in any form?"
+
+"Married or single?"
+
+"Single."
+
+"How many children?"
+
+"None."
+
+{115}
+
+"What religion do you profess?"
+
+"Christian."
+
+"What religion do you profess?" in a higher pitched voice.
+
+I did not clearly comprehend. "Do you mean `Am I a Catholic or a
+Protestant?' I am a Christian."
+
+But it was of no avail. She wrote down, "None."
+
+I protested. "That is not accurate. I insist that I am a
+Christian, or at least I try to be one."
+
+"You must learn to be polite," she retorted almost fiercely, and
+I returned to the sewing room.
+
+For the hundredth time we asked to be given our toothbrushes,
+combs, handkerchiefs and our own soap. The third day of
+imprisonment without any of these essentials found us depressed
+and worried over our unsanitary condition. We plead also for
+toilet paper. It was senseless to deny these necessities. It is
+enough to imprison people. Why seek to degrade them utterly?
+
+The third afternoon we were mysteriously summoned into the
+presence of Superintendent Whittaker. He seemed warm and cordial.
+We were ordered drawn up in a semi-circle.
+
+"Ladies, there is a rumor that you may be pardoned," he began.
+
+"By whom?" asked one.
+
+"For what?" asked another. "We are innocent women. There is
+nothing to pardon us for."
+
+"I have come to ask you what you would do if the President
+pardoned you."
+
+"We would refuse to accept it," came the ready response from
+several.
+
+"I shall leave you for a while to consider this. Mind! I have not
+yet received information of a pardon, but I have been asked to
+ascertain your attitude."
+
+Our consultation was brief. We were of one mind. We
+
+{116}
+
+were unanimous in wishing to reject a pardon for a crime which we
+had never committed. We said so with some spirit when Mr.
+Whittaker returned for our decision.
+
+"You have no choice. You are obliged to accept a pardon."
+
+That settled it, and we waited. That the protest on the outside
+had been strong enough to precipitate action from the government
+was the subject of our conversation. Evidently it had not been
+strong enough to force action on the suffrage amendment, but it
+was forcing action, and that was important.
+
+Mr. Whittaker returned triumphant.
+
+"Ladies, you are pardoned by the President. You are free to go as
+soon as you have taken off your prison clothes and put on your
+own."
+
+It was sad to leave the other prisoners behind. Especially
+pathetic were the girls who helped us with our clothes. They
+whispered such eager appeals in our ears, telling us of their
+drastic sentences for trifling offenses and of the cruel
+punishments. It was hard to resist digressing into some effort at
+prison reform. That way lay our instincts. Our reason told us
+that we must first change the status of women.
+
+As we were leaving the workhouse to return to Washington we had
+an unexpected revelation of the attitude of officialdom toward
+our campaign. Addressing Miss Lucy Burns, who had arrived to
+assist us in getting on our way, Superintendent Whittaker, in an
+almost unbelievable rage, said, "Now that you women are going
+away, I have something to say and I want to say it to you. The
+next lot of women who come here won't be treated with the same
+consideration that these women were." I will show later on how he
+made good this terrible threat.
+
+Receiving a Presidential pardon through the Attorney General had
+its amusing aspect. My comrades shared this amusement when I told
+them the following incident.
+
+On the day after our arrest, I was having tea at the Chevy
+
+{117}
+
+Chase Country Club in Washington. Quite casually a gentleman
+introduced me to Mr. Gregory, the Attorney General.
+
+"I see you were mixed up with the suffragettes yesterday," was
+the Attorney General's first remark to the gentleman. And before
+the latter could explain that he had settled accounts quietly but
+efficiently with a hoodlum who was attempting to trip the women
+up on their march, the chief law officer of the United States
+contributed this important suggestion: "You know what I'd do if I
+was those policemen. I'd just take a hose out with me and when
+the women came out with their banners, why I'd just squirt the
+hose on 'em . . . ."
+
+"But Mr. Gregory . . ."
+
+"Yes, sir! If you can just make what a woman does look
+ridiculous, you can sure kill it . . . ."
+
+"But, Mr. Attorney General, what right would the police have to
+assault these or any other women?" the gentleman managed finally
+to interpolate.
+
+"Hup-hup-"denoting great surprise, came from the Attorney
+General, as he looked to me for reassurance.
+
+His expectant look vanished when I said, "Mr. Gregory, did it
+ever occur to you that it might make the government
+look ridiculous instead of the women?"
+
+You can imagine bow the easy manner of one who is sure of his
+audience melted from his face.
+
+"This is one of the women arrested yesterday," continued the
+gentleman, while the Attorney General smothered a "Well, I'll be
+. . ."
+
+"I am out on bail," I said. " To-morrow we go to jail. It is all
+prearranged, you understand. The trial is merely a matter of
+form."
+
+The highest law officer of the land fled gurgling. s
+
+The day following our release Mrs. J. A. H. Hopkins carried a
+picket banner to the gates of the White House to test
+
+{118}
+
+the validity of the pardon. Her banner read, "We do not ask
+pardon for ourselves but justice for all American women." A
+curious crowd, as large as had collected on those days when the
+police arrested women for "obstructing traffic," stood watching
+the lone picket. The President passed through the gates and
+saluted. The police did not interfere.
+
+Daily picketing was resumed and no arrests followed for the
+moment.
+
+It was now August, three months since the Senate Suffrage
+Committee authorized its chairman, Mr. Jones, to report the
+measure to the Senate for action. Mr. Jones said, however, that
+he was too busy to make a report; .that he wanted to make a
+particularly brilliant one, one that would "be a contribution to
+the cause"; that he did not approve of picketing, but that he
+would report the measure "in a reasonable time." So much for the
+situation in the Senate!
+
+From the House we gathered some interesting evidence. We reminded
+Mr. Webb, Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, that out of a
+total membership of twenty-one men on his committee, twelve were
+Democrats, two-thirds of whom were opposed to the measure; we
+reminded him that the Republicans on the committee were for
+action. Mr. Webb wrote in answer:
+
+"The Democratic caucus passed a resolution that only war
+emergency measures would be considered during this extra session,
+and that the President might designate from time to time special
+legislation which he regarded as war legislation, and such would
+be acted on by the House. The President, not having designated
+woman suffrage and national prohibition so far as war measures,
+the judiciary committee up to this time has not felt warranted
+under the caucus rule, in reporting either of these measures. If
+the President should request either or both of them as war
+measures, then I think the Committee would attempt to take some
+action on them promptly. So you see after all it is important to
+your cause to make the
+
+{119}
+
+President see that woman suffrage comes within the rules laid
+down."[1]
+
+Here was a frank admission of the assumption upon which women had
+gone to jail-that the President was responsible for action on the
+amendment.
+
+Now that we were again allowed to picket the White House, the
+Republicans seized the opportunity legitimately to embarrass
+their opponents by precipitating a bitter debate.
+
+Senator Cummins of Iowa, Republican member of the Suffrage
+Committee, moved, as had Mr. Mann in the House at an earlier
+date, to discharge the Suffrage Committee for failing to make the
+report authorized by the entire Committee. Mr. Cummins said,
+among other things:
+
+". . . I look upon the resolution as definitely and certainly a
+war measure. There is nothing that this country could do which
+would strengthen it more than to give the disfranchised women . .
+. the opportunity to vote . . . .
+
+"Last week . . . I went to the Chairman of the Committee and told
+him that . . . we had finished the hearings, reached a conclusion
+and that it was our bounden duty to make the report to the Senate
+. . . . I asked him if he would not call a meeting of the
+Committee. He said that it would be impossible, that he had some
+other engagements which would prevent a meeting of the
+Committee."
+
+Senator Cummins explained that he finally got the promise of the
+Chairman that a meeting of the Committee would be called on a
+given date. When it was not called he made his motion.
+
+Chairman Jones made some feeble remarks and some evasive excuses
+which meant nothing, and which only further aroused Republican
+friends of the measure on the Committee.
+
+Senator Gronna of North Dakota, Republican, interrupted
+
+[1]Italics are mine.
+
+{120}
+
+him with the direct question, "I ask the chairman of this
+committee why this joint resolution has not been reported? The
+Senator, who is chairman of the committee, I suppose, knows as
+well as I do that the people of the entire country are anxious to
+have this joint resolution submitted and to be given an
+opportunity to vote upon it.
+
+Senator Johnson of California, Republican, proposed that Chairman
+Jones consent to call the Committee together to consider
+reporting out the bill, which Senator Jones flatly refused to do.
+
+Senator Jones of Washington, another Republican member of the
+Committee, added:
+
+"I agree with the Senator from Iowa that this is a war measure
+and ought to be considered as such at this time. I do not see how
+we can very consistently talk democracy while disfranchising the
+better half of our citizenship-1 may not approve of the action of
+the women picketing the White House, but neither do I approve of
+what I consider the lawless action toward these women in
+connection with the picketing . . . ."
+
+"I do not want to think the chairman does not desire to call the
+committee together because of some influence outside of Congress
+as some have suggested . . . ."
+
+At this point Senator Hollis of New Hampshire, Democrat, arose to
+say:
+
+"There is a small but very active group of women suffragists who
+have acted in such a way that some who are ardently in favor of
+woman suffrage believe that their action should not be encouraged
+by making a favorable report at this time."
+
+Senator Johnson protested at this point, but Senator Hollis
+continued:
+
+"To discharge the committee would focus the attention of the
+country upon the action and would give undue weight to what has
+been done by the active group of woman suffragists."
+
+{121}
+
+I think that any student of psychology will acknowledge that our
+picketing had stimulated action in Congress, and that what was
+now needed was some still more provocative action from us.
+
+{122}
+
+Chapter 5
+
+August Riots
+
+Imprisoning women had met with considerable public disapproval,
+and attendant political embarrassment to the Administration. That
+the presidential pardon would end this embarrassment was
+doubtless the hope of the Administration. The pickets, however,
+returned to their posts in steadily increasing numbers. Their
+presence at the gates was desired by the Administration no more
+now than it had been before the arrests and imprisonments. But
+they had found no way to rid themselves of the pickets. And as
+another month of picketing drew to an end the Administration
+ventured to try other ways to stop it and with it the consequent
+embarrassment. Their methods became physically more brutal and
+politically more stupid. Their conduct became lawless in the
+extreme.
+
+Meanwhile the President had drafted the young men of America in
+their millions to die on foreign soil for foreign democracy. He
+had issued a special appeal to women to give their work, their
+treasure and their sons to this enterprise. At the same time his
+now gigantic figure stood obstinately across the path to our main
+objective. It was our daily task to keep vividly in his mind that
+objective. It was our responsibility to compel decisive action
+from him.
+
+Using the return of Envoy Root from his mission to Russia
+
+{123}
+
+as another dramatic opportunity to speak to the President we took
+to the picket line these mottoes:
+
+TO ENVOY ROOT
+
+YOU SAY THAT AMERICA MUST THROW ITS MANHOOD TO THE SUPPORT OF
+LIBERTY.
+
+WHOSE LIBERTY?
+
+THIS NATION IS NOT FREE. TWENTY MILLION WOMEN ARE DENIED BY THE
+PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES THE RIGHT TO REPRESENTATION IN
+THEIR OWN GOVERNMENT.
+
+TELL THE PRESIDENT THAT HE CANNOT FIGHT AGAINST LIBERTY AT HOME
+WHILE HE TELLS US TO FIGHT FOR LIBERTY ABROAD.
+
+TELL HIM TO MAKE AMERICA SAFE FOR DEMOCRACY BEFORE HE ASKS THE
+MOTHERS OF AMERICA TO THROW THEIR SONS TO THE SUPPORT OF
+DEMOCRACY IN EUROPE.
+
+ASK HIM HOW HE CAN REFUSE LIBERTY TO AMERICAN CITIZENS WHEN HE IS
+FORCING MILLIONS OF AMERICAN BOYS OUT OF THEIR COUNTRY TO DIE FOR
+LIBERTY.
+
+At no time during the entire picketing was the traffic on
+Pennsylvania Avenue so completely obstructed as it was for the
+two hours during which this banner made its appearance on the
+line. Police captains who three weeks before were testifying that
+the police could not manage the crowds, placidly looked on while
+these new crowds increased.
+
+We did not regard Mr. Wilson as our President. We felt that he
+had neither political nor moral claim to our allegiance. War had
+been made without our consent. The war would be finished and very
+likely a bad peace would be written without our consent. Our
+fight was becoming increasingly difficult-I
+
+{124}
+
+might almost say desperate. Here we were, a band of women
+fighting with banners, in the midst of a world armed to the
+teeth. And so it was not very difficult to understand how high
+spirited women grew more resentful, unwilling to be a party to
+the President's hypocrisy, the hypocrisy so eager to sacrifice
+life without stint to the vague hope of liberty abroad, while
+refusing to assist in the peaceful legislative steps which would
+lead to self-government in our own country. As a matter of fact
+the President's constant oratory on freedom and democracy moved
+them to scorn. They were stung into a protest so militant as to
+shock not only the President but the public. We inscribed on our
+banner what countless American women` had long thought in their
+hearts.
+
+The truth was not pleasant but it had to be told. We submitted to
+the world, through the picket line, this question:
+
+KAISER WILSON
+HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN HOW YOU SYMPATHIZED WITH THE POOR GERMANS
+BECAUSE THEY WERE NOT SELF GOVERNED?
+
+20,000,000 AMERICAN WOMEN ARE NOT SELF-GOVERNED.
+TAKE THE BEAM OUT OF YOUR OWN EYE.
+
+We did not expect public sympathy at this point. We knew that not
+even the members of Congress who had occasionally in debate, but
+more frequently in their cloak rooms, and often to us privately,
+called the President "autocrat"-"Kaiser"-"Ruler"-"King"-"Czar"-
+would approve our telling the truth publicly.
+
+Nor was it to be expected that eager young boys, all agog to
+fight Germans, would be averse to attacking women in the
+meantime. They were out to fight and such was the public hysteria
+that it did not exactly matter whom they fought.
+
+{125}
+
+And so those excited boys of the Army and Navy attacked the women
+and the banner. The banner was destroyed. Another was brought up
+to take its place. This one met the same fate. Meanwhile a crowd
+was assembling in front of the White House either to watch or to
+assist in the attacks. At the very moment when one banner was
+being snatched away and destroyed, President and Mrs. Wilson
+passed through the gates on their way to a military review at
+Fort Myer. The President saw American women being attacked, while
+the police refused them protection.
+
+Not a move was made by the police to control the growing crowd.
+Such inaction is always a signal for more violence on the part of
+rowdies. As the throng moved to and fro between the White House
+and our Headquarters immediately opposite, so many banners were
+destroyed that finally Miss Lucy Burns, Miss Virginia Arnold and
+Miss Elizabeth Stuyvesant took those remaining to the second and
+third floor balconies of our building and hung them out. At this
+point there was not a picket left on the street. The crowd was
+clearly obstructing the traffic, but no attempt was made to move
+them back or to protect the women, some of whom were attacked by
+sailors on their own doorsteps. The two police officers present
+watched without interference while three sailors brought a ladder
+from the Belasco Theater in the same block, leaned it against the
+side of the Cameron House, the Headquarters, climbed up to the
+second floor balcony, mounted the iron railing and tore down all
+banners and the American flag. One sailor administered a severe
+blow in the face with his clenched fist upon Miss Georgina
+Sturgis of Washington.
+
+"Why did you do that?" she demanded.
+
+The man halted for a brief instant in obvious amazement and said,
+"I don't know." And with a violent wrench he tore the banner from
+her hands and ran down the ladder.
+
+The narrow balcony was the scene of intense excitement.
+
+{126}
+
+But for Miss Burns' superb strength she would have been dragged
+over the railing of the balcony to be plunged to the ground. The
+mob watched with fascination while she swayed to and fro in her
+wrestle with two young sailors. And still no attempt by the
+police to quell the riot!
+
+The climax came when in the late afternoon a bullet was fired
+through one of the heavy glass windows of the second floor,
+embedding itself in the ceiling. The bullet grazed past the head
+of Mrs. Ella Morton Dean of Montana. Captain Flather of the 1st
+Precinct, with two detectives, later examined the holes and
+declared they had been made by a 38 caliber revolver, but no
+attempt was ever made to find the man who had drawn the revolver.
+
+Meanwhile eggs and tomatoes were hurled at our fresh banners
+flying from the flag poles on the building.
+
+Finally police reserves were summoned and in less than five
+minutes the crowd was pushed back and the street cleared.
+Thinking now that they could rely on the protection of the
+police, the women started with their banners for the White House.
+But the police looked on while all the banners were destroyed, a
+few paces from Headquarters. More banners ,went out,-purple,
+white and gold ones. They, too, were destroyed before they
+reached the White House.
+
+This entire spectacle was enacted on August 14, within a stone's
+throw of the White House.
+
+Miss Paul summed up the situation when she said:
+
+"The situation now existing in Washington exists because
+President Wilson permits it. Orders were first handed down to the
+police to arrest suffragists. The clamor over their imprisonments
+made this position untenable. The police were then ordered to
+protect suffragists. They were then ordered to attack
+suffragists. They have now been ordered to encourage
+irresponsible crowds to attack suffragists. No police head would
+dare so to besmirch his record without orders from his
+
+{127}
+
+responsible chief. The responsible chief in the National Capital
+is the President of the United States."
+
+Shortly after the incident of the "Kaiser banner" I was speaking
+in Louisville, Kentucky. The auditorium was packed and
+overflowing with men and women who had come to hear the story of
+the pickets.
+
+Up to this time we had very few members in Kentucky and
+had anticipated in this Southern State, part of President
+Wilson ,'s stronghold, that our Committee would meet with no
+enthusiasm and possibly with warm hostility.
+
+I had related briefly the incidents leading up to the picketing
+and the Government's suppressions. I was rather cautiously
+approaching the subject of the "Kaiser banner," feeling timid and
+hesitant, wondering how this vast audience of Southerners would
+take it. Slowly I read the inscription on the famous banner,
+"Kaiser Wilson, have you forgotten how you sympathized with the
+poor Germans because they were not self-governed? Twenty million
+American women are not self-governed. Take the beam out of your
+own eye."
+
+I hardly reached the last word, still wondering what the,
+intensely silent audience would do, when a terrific outburst of
+applause mingled with shouts of "Good! Good! He is, he is!" came
+to my amazed ears. As the applause died down there was almost
+universal good-natured laughter. Instead of the painstaking and
+eloquent explanation which I was prepared to offer, I had only to
+join in their laughter.
+
+A few minutes later a telegram was brought to the platform
+announcing further arrests. I read:
+
+"Six more women sentenced to-day to 30 days in Occoquan
+workhouse."
+
+Instant cries of "Shame! Shame! It's an outrage!" Scores of men
+and two women were on their feet calling for the passage of a
+resolution denouncing the Administration's policy
+
+{128}
+
+of persecution. The motion of condemnation was put. It seemed as
+if the entire audience seconded it. It went through instantly,
+unanimously, and again with prolonged shouts and applause.
+
+The meeting continued and I shall never forget that audience. It
+lingered to a late hour, almost to midnight, asking questions,
+making brief "testimonials" from the floor with almost
+evangelical fervor. Improvised collection baskets were piled high
+with bills. Women volunteered for picket duty and certain
+imprisonment, and the following day a delegation left for
+Washington.
+
+I cite this experience of mine because it was typical. Every one
+who went through the country telling the story had similar
+experiences at this time. Indignation was swift and hot. Our mass
+meetings everywhere became meetings of protest during the entire
+campaign.
+
+And resolutions of protest which always went immediately by wire
+from such meetings to the President, his cabinet and to his
+leaders in Congress, of course created increasing uneasiness in
+Democratic circles.
+
+On August 15th the pickets again attempted to take their posts on
+the line.
+
+On this day one lettered banner and fifty purple, white and gold
+flags were destroyed by a mob led by sailors in uniform. Alice
+Paul was knocked down three times by a sailor in uniform and
+dragged the width of the White House sidewalk in his frenzied
+attempt to tear off leer suffrage sash.
+
+Miss Katharine Morey of Boston was also knocked to the pavement
+by a sailor, who took her flag and then darted off into the
+crowd. Miss Elizabeth Stuyvesant was struck by a soldier in
+uniform and her blouse torn from her body. Miss Maud Jamison of
+Virginia was knocked down and dragged along the sidewalk. Miss
+Beulah Amidon of North Dakota was knocked down by a sailor.
+
+{129}
+
+In the midst of these riotous scenes, a well-known Washington
+correspondent was emerging from the White House, after an
+interview with the President. Dr. Cart' Grayson, the President's
+physician, accompanying him to the door, advised:
+
+"You had better go out the side entrance. Those damned women are
+in the front."
+
+In spite of this advice the correspondent made his exit through
+the same gate by which he had entered, and just in time to ward
+off an attack by a sailor on one of the frailest girls in the
+group.
+
+The Administration, in its desperation, ordered the police to
+lawlessness. On August 16th, fifty policemen led the mob in
+attacking the women. Hands were bruised and arms twisted lit'
+police officers and plainclothes men. Two civilians who tried to
+rescue the women from the attacks of the police were arrested.
+The police fell upon these young women with more brutality even
+than the mobs they had before encouraged. Twenty-five lettered
+banners and 123 Party flags were destroyed by mobs and police on
+this afternoon.
+
+As the crowd grew more dense, the police temporarily retired from
+the attack. When their activities had summoned a sufficiently
+large and infuriated mob, they would rest.
+And so the passions of the mob continued unchecked upon these
+irrepressible women, and from day to day the Administration gave
+its orders.
+
+Finding that riots and mob attacks had not terrorized the
+pickets, the Administration decided again to arrest the women in
+the hope of ending the agitation. Having lost public sympathy
+through workhouse sentences, having won it back by pardoning the
+women, the Administration felt it could afford to risk losing it
+again, or rather felt that it had supplied itself with an
+appropriate amount of stage-setting.
+
+And so on the third day of the riotous attacks, when it was clear
+that the pickets would persist, the Chief of Police called
+
+{130}
+
+at headquarters to announce to Miss Paul that "orders have been
+changed and henceforth women carrying banners will be arrested"
+
+Meanwhile the pickets heard officers shout to civilian friends as
+they passed-"Come back at four o'clock."
+
+Members of the daily mob announced at the noon hour in various
+nearby restaurants that "the suffs will be arrested to-day at 4
+o'clock."
+
+Four o'clock is the hour the Government clerks begin to swarm
+homewards. The choice of this hour by the police to arrest the
+women would enable them to have a large crowd passing the White
+House gates to lend color to the fiction that "pickets were
+blocking the traffic."
+
+Throughout the earlier part of the afternoon the silent sentinels
+stood unmolested, carrying these mottoes:
+
+ENGLAND AND RUSSIA ARE ENFRANCHISING WOMEN IN WAR-TIME.
+
+HOW LONG MUST WOMEN WAIT FOB LIBERTY?
+
+THE GOVERNMENT ORDERS OUR BANNERS DESTROYED BECAUSE THEY TELL THE
+TRUTH.
+
+At four o'clock the threatened arrests took place. The women
+arrested were Miss Lavinia Dock of Pennsylvania, Miss Edna Dixon
+of Washington, D. C., a young public school teacher; Miss Natalie
+Gray of Colorado, Mrs. Win. Upton Watson and Miss Lucy Ewing of
+Chicago, and Miss Catherine Flanagan of Connecticut.
+
+Exactly forty minutes were allowed for the trial of these six
+women. One police officer testified that they were "obstructing
+traffic."
+
+None of the facts of the hideous and cruel manhandling by the
+mobs and police officers was allowed to be brought out. Nothing
+the women could say mattered. The judge pro-
+
+{131}
+
+nounced : "Thirty days in Occoquan workhouse in lieu of a $10.00
+fine."
+
+And so this little handful of women, practically all of them tiny
+and frail of physique, began the cruel sentence of 30 days
+in the workhouse, while their cowardly assailants were not even
+reprimanded, nor were those who destroyed over a thousand
+dollars' worth of banners apprehended.
+
+The riots had attracted sufficient attention to cause some
+anxiety in Administration circles. Protests against us and others
+against the rioters pressed upon them. Congress was provoked into
+a little activity; activity which reflected some doubt as to the
+wisdom of arresting women without some warrant in law.
+
+Two attempts were made, neither of which was successful, to give
+the Administration more power and more law.
+
+Senator Culberson of Texas, Democrat, offered a bill authorizing
+President Wilson at any time to prohibit any person from
+approaching or  entering any place in short blanket authority
+granting the President or his officials limitless power over the
+actions of human beings. Realizing that this could be used to
+prohibit picketing the White House we appeared before a committee
+hearing on the bill and spoke against it. The committee did not
+have the boldness to report such a bill.
+
+Senator Myers of Montana, an influential member of the
+Democratic majority, introduced into the Senate a few days later
+a resolution making it illegal to picket the White House. The
+shamelessness of admitting to the world that acts for which women
+had been repeatedly sentenced to jail, and for which women were
+at that moment lying in prison, were so legal as to make
+necessary a special act of Congress against them, was appalling.
+The Administration policy seemed to be "Let us put women in jail
+first-let us enact a law to keep them there afterwards,"
+
+{132}
+
+This tilt between Senator Brandegee, of Connecticut, antisuffrage
+Republican, and Senator Myers, suffrage Democrat, took place when
+Mr. Myer's presented his bill:
+
+MR. BRANDEGEE: . . . Was there any defect in the legal
+proceedings by which these trouble makers were sentenced and put
+in jail a few weeks ago?
+
+MR. MYERS: None that I know of. I am not in a position to pass
+upon that. I do not believe any was claimed . . . .
+
+MR. BRANDEGEE: Inasmuch as the law was sufficient to land them in
+jail . . . I fail to see why additional legislation is necessary
+on the subject.
+
+MR. MYERS: There seems to be a doubt in the mind of some whether
+the present law is sufficient and I think it ought to be put
+beyond doubt. I think . . . the laws are not stringent or severe
+enough . . . .
+
+MR. BRANDEGEE : They were stringent enough to land the
+malefactors in jail . . . .
+
+In spite of Senator Myers' impassioned appeal to his colleagues,
+be was unable to command any support for his bill. I quote this
+from his speech in the Senate August 18, 1917:
+
+MR. MYERS: Mr. President, I wish to say a few words about the
+bill I have just introduced. It is intended for the enactment of
+better and more adequate legislation to prevent the infamous,
+outrageous, scandalous, and, I think, almost treasonable actions
+that have been going on around the White House for months past,
+which President of the United States have been a gross insult to
+the and to the people of the United States; I mean the so-called
+picketing of the White House. . . These disgusting proceedings
+have been going on for months, and if there is no adequate law to
+stop them, I think there ought to be.
+
+"I believe the President, in the generosity of his heart, erred
+when he pardoned some of the women who have been conducting these
+proceedings, after they had been sentenced to
+
+{133}
+
+60 days in the workhouse. I believe they deserved the sentence,
+and they ought to have been compelled to serve it . . . .
+
+"I for one am not satisfied longer to sit here idly day by day
+and submit to having the President of the United States insulted
+with impunity before the people of the country and before all the
+world. It is a shame and reproach.
+
+"I hope this bill . . . will receive careful consideration and
+that it may be enacted into law and may be found an adequate
+preventive and punishment for such conduct."
+
+This bill, which died a well-deserved death, is so amusing as to
+warrant reproduction. Although lamenting our comparison between
+the President and the Kaiser, it will be seen that Senator Myers
+brought forth a thoroughly Prussian document:
+
+A BILL
+
+For the better protection and enforcement of peace and order and
+the public welfare in the District of Columbia.
+
+Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives o f the
+United States o f America in Congress assembled, That when the
+United States shall be engaged in war it shall be unlawful for
+any person or persons to carry, hold, wave, exhibit, display, or
+have in his or her possession in any public road, highway, alley,
+street, thoroughfare, park, or other public place in the District
+of Columbia, any banner, flag, streamer, sash, or other device
+having thereon any words or language with reference to the
+President or the Vice President of the United States, or any
+words or language with reference to the Constitution of the
+United States, or the right of suffrage, or right of citizenship,
+or any words or language with reference to the duties of any
+executive official or department of the United States, or with
+reference to any proposed amendment to the Constitution of the
+United States, or with reference to any law or proposed law of
+the United States, calculated to bring the President of the
+United States or the Government of the United States into
+contempt, or which may tend to cause confusion, or excitement, or
+obstruction of the streets or sidewalks thereof, or any passage
+in any public place.
+
+{134}
+
+Sec. 2. That any person committing any foregoing described
+offense shall, upon conviction thereof, for each offense be fined
+not less than $100 nor more than $1,000 or imprisoned not less
+than thirty days nor more than one year, or by both such fine and
+imprisonment.
+
+Voices were raised in our behalf, also, and among them I note the
+following letter written to Major Pullman by Gilson Gardner:[1]
+
+Mr. Raymond Pullman,
+Chief of Police,
+Washington, D. C.
+
+My dear Pullman,-
+
+I am writing as an old friend to urge you to get right in this
+matter of arresting the suffrage pickets. Of course the only way
+for you to get right is to resign. It has apparently
+become impossible for you to stay in office and do your duty. The
+alternative is obvious.
+
+You must see, Pullman, that you cannot be right in what you have
+done in this matter. You have given the pickets adequate
+protection; but you have arrested them and had them sent to jail
+and the workhouse; you have permitted the crowd to mob them, and
+then you have had your officers do much the same thing by
+forcibly taking their banners from them. In some of the actions
+you must have been wrong. If it was right to give them protection
+and let them stand at the White House for five months, both
+before and after the war, it was not right to do what you did
+later.
+
+You say that it was not right when you were "lenient" and gave
+them protection. You cannot mean that. The rightness or wrongness
+must be a matter of law, not of personal discretion, and for you
+to attempt to substitute your discretion is to set up a little
+autocracy m place of the settled laws of the land. This would
+justify a charge of "Kaiserism" right here in our capital city.
+
+The truth is, Pullman, you were right when you gave these women
+protection. That is what the police are for. When
+
+[1]The distinguished journalist who went to Africa to meet
+Theodore Roosevelt and accompanied him on his return journey to
+America.
+
+{135}
+
+there are riots they are supposed to quell them, not by quelling
+the "proximate cause," but by quelling the rioters.
+
+I know your police officers now quite well and know that they are
+most happy when they are permitted to do their duty. They did not
+like the dirty business of permitting a lot of sailors and street
+rifraff to rough the girls. All that went against the grain, but
+when you let them protect the pickets, as you did March third,
+when a thousand women marched around and around the White House,
+the officers were as contented as they were efficient.
+
+Washington has a good police force and there has never been a
+minute when they could not have scattered any group gathered at
+the White House gates and given perfect protection to the women
+standing there.
+
+You know why they did not do their duty.
+
+In excusing what you have done, you say that the women carried
+banners with "offensive" inscriptions on them. You refer to the
+fact that they have addressed the President as "Kaiser Wilson."
+As a matter of fact not an arrest you have made-and the arrests
+now number more than sixty-has been for carrying one of those
+"offensive" banners. The women were carrying merely the suffrage
+colors or quotations from President Wilson's writings.
+
+But, suppose the banners were offensive. Who made you censor of
+banners? The law gives you no such power. Even when you go
+through the farce of a police court trial the charge is
+"obstructing traffic"; which shows conclusively that you are not
+willing to go into court on the real issue.
+
+No. As Chief of Police you have no more right to complain of the
+sentiments of a banner than you have of the sentiments in an
+editorial in the Washington Post, and you have no more right to
+arrest the banner-bearer than you have to arrest the owner of the
+Washington Post . . . . Congress refused to pass a press
+censorship law. There are certain lingering traditions to the
+effect that a people's liberties are closely bound up with the
+right to talk things out and those who are enlightened know that
+the only proper answer to words is words. When force is opposed
+to words there is ground for the charge of "Kaiserism." . .
+
+There was just one thing for you to have done, Pullman,
+
+{136}
+
+and that was to give full and adequate protection to these women,
+no matter what banners they carried or what ideas their banners
+expressed. If there is any law that can be invoked against the
+wording of the banners it was the business of others in the
+government to start the legal machinery which would abate them.
+It was not lawful to abate them by mob violence, or by arrests.
+And if those in authority over you were not willing that you thus
+do your duty, it was up to you to resign.
+
+After all it would not be such a terrible thing, Pullman, for you
+to give up being Chief of Police, particularly when you are not
+permitted to be chief of police, but must yield your judgment to
+the district commissioners who have yielded their judgment to the
+White House. Being Chief of Police under such circumstances can
+hardly be worth while. You are a young man and the world is full
+of places for young men with courage enough to save their self-
+respect at the expense of their jobs. You did that once,-back in
+the Ballinger-Pinchot days. Why not now?
+
+Come out and help make the fight which must be made to recover
+and protect the liberties which are being filched from us here at
+home. There is a real fight looming up for real democracy. You
+will not be alone. There are a lot of fine young men, vigorous
+and patriotic, in and out of the Administration who are preparing
+for this fight. Yours will not be the only resignation. But why
+not be among the first? Don't wait. Let them have your
+resignation. now and let me be the first to welcome and
+congratulate you.
+
+Sincerely,
+(Signed) GILSON GARDNER.
+
+Representative John Baer of North Dakota, having witnessed for
+himself the riotous scenes, immediately introduced into the House
+a resolution[1] demanding an investigation of conditions in the
+Capital which permitted mobs to attack women. This, too, went to
+certain death. Between the members who did not dare denounce the
+Administration and the others who did dare denounce the women, we
+had to stand quite
+
+[1]See Appendix 3 for full text of resolution.
+
+{137}
+
+solidly on our own program, and do our best to keep them nervous
+over the next step in the agitation.
+
+The press throughout the entire country at this time protested
+against mob violence and the severe sentences pronounced upon the
+women who had attempted to hold their banners steadfast.
+
+The Washington (D. C.) Herald, August 19, printed the following
+editorial:
+
+There is an echo of the President's phrase about the "firm hand
+of stern repression" in the arrest, conviction and jailing of the
+six suffragists; a touch of ruthlessness in their incarceration
+at Occoquan along with women of the street, pickpockets and other
+flotsam and jetsam. Still, the suffragists are not looking for
+sympathy, and it need not be wasted upon them.
+
+The police have arrived at a policy, although no one knows
+whether it will be sufficiently stable and consistent to last out
+the week . . . . Washington is grateful that the disgraceful
+period of rioting and mob violence in front of the White House is
+at an end, and another crisis in the militant crusade to bring
+the Susan B. Anthony amendment before Congress has been reached.
+
+What is the next step? No one knows. Picketing doubtless will
+continue, or an effort will be made to continue it; and
+militancy, if the police continue to arrest, instead of giving
+the women protection, will pass into a new phase. The suffragists
+as well as the public at large are thankful that the police
+department has finally determined to arrest the pickets, instead
+of allowing them to be mobbed by hoodlums .
+
+. . . The public eye will be on Occoquan for the next few weeks,
+to find out how these women bear up under the Spartan treatment
+that is in store for them. If they have deliberately sought
+martyrdom, as some critics have been unkind enough to suggest,
+they have it now. And if their campaign, in the opinion of
+perhaps the great majority of the public, has been misguided,
+admiration for their pluck will not be withheld.
+
+The Boston Journal of August 20, 1917, said in an editorial
+written by Herbert N. Pinkham, Jr.:
+
+{138}
+
+	That higher authorities than the Washington police were
+responsible for the amazing policy of rough house employed
+against the suffrage pickets has been suspected from the very
+beginning. Police power in Washington is sufficient to protect a
+handful of women against a whole phalanx of excited or inspired
+government clerks and uniformed hoodlums, if that power were
+used.
+
+. . . In our nation's capital, women have been knocked down and
+dragged through the streets by government employees-including
+sailors in uniform. The police are strangely absent at such
+moments, as a rule, and arrive only in time to arrest a few women
+. . . .
+
+Perhaps the inscriptions on the suffrage banners were not
+tactful. It is sometimes awkward indeed to quote the President's
+speeches after the speeches have "grown cold." Also a too
+vigorous use of the word "democracy" is distasteful to some
+government dignitaries, it seems. But right or wrong, the
+suffragists at Washington are entitled to police protection, even
+though in the minds of the Administration they are not entitled
+to the ballot.
+
+Perhaps, even in America, we must have a law forbidding people to
+carry banners demanding what they consider their political
+rights. Such a law would, of course, prohibit political parades
+of all kinds, public mass meetings and other demonstrations of
+one set of opinions against another set. Such a law has been
+proposed by Senator Myers of Montana, the author of the latest
+censorship and anti-free speech bill. It may be necessary to pass
+the law, if it is also necessary that the public voice be stilled
+and the nation become dumb and subservient.
+
+But until there is such a law . . . people must be protected
+while their actions remain within the law. If their opinions
+differ from ours, we must refrain from smashing their faces, if a
+certain number of people believe that they have the right to vote
+we may either grant their claim or turn them sadly away, but we
+may not roll them into the gutter; if they see fit to tell us our
+professions of democracy are empty, we may smile sorrowfully and
+murmur a prayer for their ignorance but we may not pelt them with
+rotten eggs and fire a shot through the window of their dwelling;
+if, denied a properly
+
+{139}
+
+dignified hearing, they insist upon walking through the streets
+with printed words on a saucy banner, we may be amazed at their
+zeal and pitiful of their bad taste, but even for the sake of
+keeping their accusations out of sight of our foreign visitors
+(whom we have trained to believe us perfect) we may not send them
+to jail . . . .
+
+All this suffrage shouting in Washington has as its single object
+the attainment of President Wilson's material support for equal
+suffrage . . . .
+
+President Wilson's word would carry the question into Congress
+ . . .
+
+Would there be any harm in letting Congress vote on a suffrage
+resolution? That would end the disturbance and it would make our
+shield of national justice somewhat brighter.
+
+It looks like President Wilson's move.
+
+Between these opposing currents of protest and support, the
+Administration drifted helplessly. Unwilling to pass the
+amendment, it continued to send women to prison.
+
+On the afternoon of September 4th, President Wilson led his first
+contingent of drafted "soldiers of freedom" down Pennsylvania
+Avenue in gala parade, on the first lap of their journey to the
+battlefields of France. On the same afternoon a slender line of
+women-also "soldiers of freedom"-attempted to march in
+Washington.
+
+As they attempted to take up their posts, two by two, in front of
+the Reviewing Stand, opposite the White House, they were gathered
+in and swept away by the police like common street criminals-
+their golden banners scarcely flung to the breeze.
+
+MR. PRESIDENT, HOW LONG MUST WOMEN BE DENIED A VOICE IN A
+GOVERNMENT WHICH IS CONSCRIPTING THEIR SONS?
+
+was the offensive question on the first banner carried by Miss
+Eleanor Calnan of Massachusetts and Miss Edith Ainge of New York.
+
+{140}
+
+The Avenue was roped off on account of the parade. There was
+hardly any one passing at the time; all traffic had been
+temporarily suspended, so there was none to obstruct. But the
+Administration's policy must go on. A few moments and Miss Lucy
+Branham of Maryland and Mrs. Pauline Adams of Virginia marched
+down the Avenue, their gay banners waving joyously in the autumn
+sun, to fill up the gap of the two comrades who had been
+arrested. They, too, were shoved into the police automobile,
+their banners still high and appealing, silhouetted against the
+sky as they were hurried to the police station.
+
+The third pair of pickets managed to cross the Avenue, but were
+arrested immediately they reached the curb. Still others
+advanced. The crowd began to line the ropes and to watch eagerly
+the line of women indomitably coming, two by two, into the face
+of certain arrest. A fourth detachment was arrested in the middle
+of the Avenue on the trolley tracks. But still they came.
+
+A few days later more women were sent to the workhouse for
+carrying to the picket line this question:
+
+"President Wilson, what did you mean when you said: `We have seen
+a good many singular things happen recently. We have been told
+there is a deep disgrace resting upon the origin of this nation.
+The nation originated in the sharpest sort of criticism of public
+policy. We originated, to put it in the vernacular, in a kick,
+and if it be unpatriotic to kick, why then the grown man is
+unlike the child. We have forgotten the very principle of our
+origin if we have forgotten how to object, how to resist, how to
+agitate, how to pull down and build up, even to the extent of
+revolutionary practices, if it be necessary to readjust matters.
+I have forgotten my history, if that be not true history."'
+
+The Administration had not yet abandoned hope of removing the
+pickets. They persisted in their policy of arrests and longer
+imprisonments.
+
+{141}
+
+Chapter 6
+
+Prison Episodes
+
+During all this time the suffrage prisoners were enduring the
+miserable and petty tyranny of the government workhouse at
+Occoquan. They were kept absolutely incommunicado. They were not
+allowed to see even their nearest relatives, should any be within
+reach, until they had been in the institution two weeks.
+
+Each prisoner was allowed to write one outgoing letter a month,
+which, after being read by the warden, could be sent or withheld
+at his whim.
+
+All incoming mail and telegrams were also censored by the
+Superintendent and practically all of them denied the prisoners.
+Superintendent Whittaker openly boasted of holding up the
+suffragists' mail: "I am boss down here," he said to visitors who
+asked to see the prisoners, or to send in a note. "I consider the
+letters and telegrams these prisoners get are treasonable. They
+cannot have them." He referred to messages commending the women
+for choosing prison to silence, and bidding them stand steadfast
+to their program.
+
+Of course all this was done in the hope of intimidating not only
+the prisoners, but also those who came wanting to see them.
+
+It was the intention of the women to abide as far as possible by
+the routine of the institution, disagreeable and unreasonable as
+it was. They performed the tasks assigned to them. They ate the
+prison food without protest. They wore the coarse prison clothes.
+But at the end of the first week of detention
+
+{142}
+
+they became so weak from the shockingly bad food that they began
+to wonder if they could endure such a system. The petty tyrannies
+they could endure. But the inevitable result of a diet of sour
+bread, half-cooked vegetables, rancid soup with worms in it, was
+serious.
+
+Finally the true condition of affairs trickled to the outside
+world through the devious routes of prison messengers.
+
+Senator J. Hamilton Lewis, of Illinois, Democratic whip in the
+Senate, heard alarming reports of two of his constituents, Miss
+Lucy Ewing, daughter of Judge Ewing, niece of Adlai Stevenson,
+Vice-President in Cleveland's Administration, niece of James
+Ewing, minister to Belgium in the same Administration, and Mrs.
+William Upton Watson of Chicago. He made a hurried trip to the
+workhouse to see them. The fastidious Senator was
+shocked-shocked at the appearance of the prisoners, shocked at
+the tale they told, shocked that "ladies" should be subjected to
+such indignities. "In all my years of criminal practice," said
+the Senator to Gilson Gardner, who had accompanied him to the
+workhouse, "I have never seen prisoners so badly treated, either
+before or after conviction." He is a gallant gentleman who would
+be expected to be uncomfortable when he actually saw ladies
+suffer. It was more than gallantry in this instance, however, for
+he spoke in frank condemnation of the whole "shame and outrage"
+of the thing.
+
+It is possible that he reported to other Administration officials
+what he had learned during his visit to the workhouse for very
+soon afterwards it was announced that an investigation of
+conditions in the workhouse would be held. That was, of course,
+an admirable maneuver which the Administration could make. "Is
+the President not a kind man? He pardoned some women. Now he
+investigates the conditions under which others are imprisoned.
+Even though they are lawless women, he wishes them well treated."
+
+It would sound "noble" to thousands.
+
+{143}
+
+Immediately the District Commissioners announced this
+investigation, Miss Lucy Burns, acting on behalf of the National
+Woman's Party, sent a letter to Commissioner Brownlow. After
+summing up the food situation Miss Burns wrote:
+
+When our friends were sent to prison, they expected the food
+would be extremely plain, but they also expected that
+. . enough eatable food would be given them to maintain them in
+their ordinary state of health. This has not been the case.
+
+The testimony of one of the prisoners, Miss Lavinia Dock, a
+trained nurse, is extremely valuable on the question of food
+supplied at Occoquan. Miss Dock is Secretary of the American
+Federation of Nurses. She has had a distinguished career in her
+profession. She assisted in the work after the Johnstown flood
+and during the yellow fever epidemic in Florida. During the
+Spanish war she organized the Red Cross work with Clara Barton.
+`I really thought,' said Miss Dock, when I last saw her, `that I
+could eat everything, but here I have hard work choking down
+enough food to keep the life in me.'
+
+I am sure you will agree with me that these conditions should be
+instantly remedied. When these and other prisoners were sentenced
+to prison they were sentenced to detention and not to starvation
+or semi-starvation.
+
+The hygienic conditions have been improved at Occoquan since a
+group of suffragists were imprisoned there. But they are still
+bad. The water they drink is kept in an open pail, from which it
+is ladled into a drinking cup. The prisoners frequently dip the
+drinking cup directly into the pail.
+
+The same piece of soap is used for every prisoner. As the
+prisoners in Occoquan are sometimes seriously afflicted with
+disease, this practice is appallingly negligent.
+
+Concerning the general conditions of the person, I am enclosing
+with this letter, affidavit of Mrs. Virginia Bovee, an ex-officer
+of the workhouse . . . . The prisoners for whom I am counsel are
+aware that cruel practices go on at Occoquan. On one occasion
+they heard Superintendent Whittaker kicking a woman in the next
+room. They heard Whittaker's voice, the sound of blows, and the
+woman�s cries.
+
+{144}
+
+I lay these facts before you with the knowledge that you will be
+glad to have the fullest possible information given you
+concerning the institution for whose administration you as
+Commissioner of the District of Columbia are responsible.'
+
+Very respectfully yours,
+(Signed) LUCY BURNS.
+
+Mrs. Bovee, a matron, was discharged from the workhouse because
+she tried to be kind to the suffrage prisoners. She also gave
+them warnings to guide them past the possible contamination of
+hideous diseases. As soon as she was discharged from the
+workhouse she went to the headquarters of the Woman's Party and
+volunteered to make an affidavit. The affidavit of Mrs. Bovee
+follows:
+
+I was discharged yesterday as an officer of Occoquan workhouse.
+For eight months I acted as night officer, with no complaint as
+to my performance of my duties. Yesterday Superintendent
+Whittaker told me I was discharged and gave me two hours in which
+to get out. I demanded the charges from the matron, Mrs. Herndon,
+and I was told that it was owing to something that Senator Lewis
+has said.
+
+I am well acquainted with the conditions at Occoquan. I have had
+charge of all the suffragist prisoners who have been there. I
+know that their mail has been withheld from them. Mrs. Herndon,
+the matron, reads the mail, and often discussed it with us at the
+officers' table. She said of a letter sent to one of the
+suffragist pickets now in the workhouse, "They told her to keep
+her eyes open and notice everything. She will never get that
+letter," said Mrs. Herndon. ,Then she corrected herself, and
+added, "Not until she goes away." Ordinarily the mail not given
+the prisoners is destroyed. The mail for the suffragists is saved
+for them until they are ready to go away. I have Seen three of
+the women have one letter each, but that is all. The three were
+Mrs. Watson, Miss Ewing, and I think Miss Flanagan.
+
+The blankets now being used in the prison have been in use since
+December without being washed or cleaned. Blankets are washed
+once a year. Officers are warned not to touch any
+
+{145}
+
+of the bedding. The one officer who handles it is compelled by
+the regulations to wear rubber gloves while she does so. The
+sheets for the ordinary prisoners are not changed completely,
+even when one is gone and another takes her bed. Instead the top
+sheet is put on the bottom, and one fresh sheet is given them. I
+was not there when these suffragists arrived, and I do not know
+how their bedding was arranged. I doubt whether the authorities
+would have dared to give them one soiled sheet.
+
+The prisoners with disease are not always isolated, by any means.
+In the colored dormitory there are two women in the advanced
+stages of consumption. Women suffering from, syphilis, who have
+open sores, are put in the hospital. But those whose sores are
+temporarily healed are put in the same dormitory with the others.
+There have been several such in my dormitory.
+
+When the prisoners come they must undress and take a shower bath.
+For this they take a piece of soap from a bucket in the store
+room. When they are finished they throw the soap back in the
+bucket. The suffragists are permitted three showers a week and
+have only these pieces of soap which are common to all inmates.
+There is no soap at all in wash rooms.
+
+The beans, hominy, rice, cornmeal (which is exceedingly coarse,
+like chicken feed) and cereal have all had worms in them.
+Sometimes the worms float on top of the soup. Often they are
+found in the cornbread. The first suffragists sent the worms to
+Whittaker on a spoon. On the farm 'is a fine herd of Holsteins.
+The cream is made into butter and sold to the tuberculosis
+hospital in Washington. At the officers' table we have very good
+milk. The prisoners do not have any butter or sugar, and no milk
+except by order of the doctor.
+
+Prisoners are punished by being put on bread or water, or by
+being beaten. I know of one girl who has been kept seventeen days
+on only water this month in the "booby house." The ,same was kept
+nineteen days on water last year because she .beat Superintendent
+Whittaker when he tried to beat her.
+
+Superintendent Whittaker or his son are the only ones who beat
+the girls. Officers are not allowed to lay a hand on them in
+punishment. I know of one girl beaten until the blood had to be
+scrubbed from her clothing and from the floor of the
+
+{146}
+
+"booby house." I have never actually seen a girl beaten, but I
+have seen her afterwards and I have heard the cries and blows.
+Dorothy Warfield was beaten and the suffragists heard the
+beating.
+
+(Signed) MRS. VIRGINIA BOVEE.
+
+Subscribed and sworn to before me this day of disgust, 1917.
+JOSEPH H. BATT, Notary Public.
+
+While the Administration was planning an investigation of the
+conditions in the workhouse, which made it difficult for women to
+sustain health through a thirty day sentence, it was, through its
+police court, sentencing more women to sixty day sentences, under
+the same conditions. The Administration was giving some thought
+to its plan of procedure, but not enough to master the simple
+fact that women would not stop going to prison until something
+had been done which promised passage of the amendment through
+Congress.
+
+New forms of intimidation and hardship were offered by
+Superintendent Whittaker.
+
+Mrs. Frederick Kendall of Buffalo, New York, a frail and
+highly sensitive woman, was put in a "punishment cell" on bread
+and water, under a 'charge of "impudence." Mrs. Kendall says
+that her impudence consisted of "protesting to the matron that
+scrubbing floors on my hands and knees was too severe work for
+me as I had been unable for days to eat the prison food. My
+impudence further consisted in asking for lighter work."
+
+Mrs. Kendall was refused the clean clothing she should have had
+the day she was put in solitary confinement and was thus forced
+to wear the same clothing eleven days. She was refused a
+nightdress or clean linen for the cot. Her only toilet
+accommodations was an open pail. For four days she was allowed no
+water for toilet purposes., Her diet consisted of three thin
+slices of bread and three cups of water, carried to her in a
+
+{147}
+
+paper cup which frequently leaked out half the meager supply
+before it got to Mrs. Kendall's cell.
+
+Representative and Mrs. Charles Bennet Smith, of Buffalo, friends
+of Mrs. Kendall, created a considerable disturbance when they
+learned of this cruel treatment, with the result that Mrs.
+Kendall was finally given clean clothing and taken from her
+confinement. When she walked from her cell to greet Mrs.
+Genevieve Clark Thompson, daughter of Champ Clark, Speaker of the
+House, and Miss Roberta Bradshaw, other friends, who, through the
+Speaker's influence, had obtained special permission to see Mrs.
+Kendall, she fell in a dead faint. It was such shocking facts as
+these that the Commissioners and their investigating board were
+vainly trying to keep from the country for the sake of the
+reputation of the Administration.
+
+For attempting to spear to Mrs. Kendall through her cell door, to
+inquire as to her health, while in solitary, Miss Lucy Burns was
+placed on a bread and water diet.
+
+Miss Jeannette Rankin of Montana, the only woman member of
+Congress, was moved by these and similar revelations to introduce
+a resolution[1] calling for a Congressional investigation of the
+workhouse.
+
+There were among the suffrage prisoners women of all shades of
+social opinion.
+
+The following letter by Miss Gvinter, the young Russian worker,
+was smuggled out of the workhouse. This appeal to Meyer London
+was rather pathetic, since not even he, the only Socialist member
+in Congress, stood up to denounce the treatment of the pickets.
+
+Comrade Meyer London:
+
+I am eight years in this movement, three and a half years a
+member of the Socialist Party, Branches 2 and 4 of the Bronx, and
+I have been an active member of the Waist Makers' Union since
+1910. I am from New York, but am now in Balti-
+
+[1]For text of Miss Rankin's resolution see Appendix 3.
+
+{148}
+
+more, where I got acquainted with the comrades who asked me to
+picket the White House, and of course I expressed my willingness
+to help the movement. I am now in the workhouse. I want to get
+out and help in the work as I am more revolutionary than the
+Woman's Party, yet conditions here are so bad that I feel I must
+stay here and help women get their rights. We are enslaved here.
+I am suffering very much from hunger and nearly blind from bad
+nourishment. The food is chiefly soup, cereal with worms, bread
+just baked and very heavy. Even this poor food, we do not get
+enough. I do not eat meat. When I told the doctor that he said,
+"You must eat, and if you don't like it here, you go and tell the
+judge you won't picket any more, and then you can get out of
+here." But I told him that I could not go against my principles
+and my belief. He asked, "Do you believe you should break the
+law?" I replied, "I have picketed whenever I had a chance for
+eight years and have never broken the law. Picketing is legal."
+
+Please come here as quickly as possible, as we need your help.
+
+Will you give the information in this letter to the newspapers?
+
+Please pardon this scrap of paper as I have nothing else to write
+on. I would write to other comrades, to Hillquit or Paulsen, but
+you are in the Congress and can do more.
+
+Yours for the Cause,
+
+(Signed) ANNA GVINTER.
+OCCOQUAN WORKHOUSE, Friday, Sept. 21.
+
+Miss Gvinter swore to an affidavit when she came out in which she
+said in part:
+
+. . . The days that we had to stand on scaffolds and ladders to
+paint the dormitories, I was so weak from lack of food I was
+dizzy and in constant danger of falling.
+
+. . . When they told me to scrub the floors of the lavatories I
+refused, because I have to work for my living and I could not
+afford to get any of the awful diseases that women down there
+have.
+
+{149}
+
+I obeyed all the rules of the institution. The only times I
+stopped working was because I was too sick to work.
+
+(Signed) ANNA GVINTER.
+
+Sworn to before me and subscribed in my presence this 13th day of
+October, 1917.
+
+(Signed) C. LARIMORE KEELEY,
+Notary Public, D. C.
+
+Half a hundred women was the government's toll for one month:-
+.Continuous arrests kept the issue hot and kept people who cared
+in constant protest. It is impossible to give space to the
+countless beautiful messages which were sent to the women, or the
+fervent protests which went to government officials. Among the
+hundreds of thousands of protests was a valuable one by Dr.
+Harvey Wiley, the celebrated food expert, in a letter to Dr.
+George M. Kober, member of the Board in control of the jail and
+workhouse, and a well-known sanitarium. Dr. Wiley wrote:
+
+November 3, 1917.
+
+Dear Dr. Kober:
+
+I am personally acquainted with many of the women who have been
+confined at Occoquan, and at the District jail, and have heard
+from their own lips an account of the nutrition and sanitary
+conditions prevailing at both places.
+
+I, therefore, feel constrained to make known to you the
+conditions, as they have been told to me, and as I believe them
+actually to exist.
+
+As I understand it, there is no purpose in penal servitude of
+lowering the vitality of the prisoner, or in inviting disease.
+Yet both of these conditions prevail both at Occoquan and at the
+District jail. First of all, the food question. The diet
+furnished the prisoners at Occoquan especially is of a character
+to invit6 all kinds of infections that may prevail, and to lower
+the vitality so that the resistance to disease is diminished. I
+have fortunately come into possession of samples of the food
+actually given to these women. I have kept samples of the milk
+religiously for over two weeks to see if I could
+
+{150}
+
+detect the least particle of fat, and have been unable to
+perceive any. The fat of milk is universally recognized by
+dieticians as its most important nutritive character. I
+understand that a dairy is kept on the farm at Occoquan, and yet
+it is perfectly certain that no whole milk is served or ever has
+been served to one of the so-called "picketers" in that jail. I
+have not had enough of the sample to make a chemical analysis,
+but being somewhat experienced in milk, I can truthfully say that
+it seems to me to be watered skimmed milk. I also have a sample
+of the pea soup served. The pea grains are coarsely broken, often
+more than half of a pea, being served in one piece. They never
+have been cooked, but are in a perfectly raw state, and found to
+be inedible by the prisoners.
+
+I have also samples of the corn bread which is most unattractive
+and repellant to the eye and to the taste. All of these witnesses
+say that the white bread apparently is of good quality, but the
+diet in every case is the cause of constipation, except in the
+case of pea soup, which brings on diarrhea and vomiting. As
+nutrition is the very foundation of sanitation, I wish to call to
+your special attention, as a sanitation, the totally inadequate
+sustenance given to these prisoners.
+
+The food at the county jail at Washington is much better than the
+food at Occoquan, but still bad enough. This increased excellence
+of food is set off by the miserable ventilation of the cells, in
+which these noble women are kept in solitary confinement. Not
+only have they had a struggle to get the windows open slightly,
+but also at the time of their morning meal, the sweeping is done.
+The air of the cells is filled with dust and they try to cover
+their coffee and other food with such articles as they can find
+to keep the dust out of their food. Better conditions for
+promoting tuberculosis could not be found.
+
+I appeal to you as a well-known sanitarian to get the Board of
+Charities to make such rules and regulations as would secure to
+prisoners of all kinds, and especially to political prisoners, as
+humane an environment as possible.
+
+I also desire to ask that the Board of Charities would authorize
+me to make inspections of food furnished to prisoners at Occoquan
+and at the District Jail, and to have physical and chemical
+analysis made without expense to the Board, in
+
+{151}
+
+order to determine more fully the nutritive environment in which
+the prisoners live.
+
+Sincerely,
+
+(Signed) HARVEY WILEY.
+
+This striking telegram from Richard Bennett, the distinguished
+actor, must have arrested the attention of the Administration.
+
+September 22, 1917.
+
+Hon. Newton Baker,
+Secretary of War,
+War Department,
+Washington, D. C.
+
+I have been asked to go to France personally, with the film of
+"Damaged Goods," as head of a lecture corps to the American army.
+On reliable authority I am told that American women, because they
+have dared demand their political freedom, are held in vile
+conditions in the Government workhouse in Washington; are
+compelled to paint the negro toilets for eight hours a day; are
+denied decent food and denied communication with counsel. Why
+should I work for democracy in Europe when our American women are
+denied democracy at home? If I am to fight for social hygiene in
+France, why not begin at Occoquan workhouse?
+
+RICHARD BENNETT.
+
+Mr. Bennett never received a reply to this message.
+
+Charming companionships grew up in prison. Ingenuity at lifting
+the dull monotony of imprisonment brought to light many talents
+for camaraderie which amused not only the suffrage prisoners but
+the "regulars." Locked in separate cells, as in the District
+Jail, the suffragists could still communicate by song. The
+following lively doggerel to the tune of "Captain Kidd" was sung
+in chorus to the accompaniment of a hair comb. It became a saga.
+Each day a new verse was added, relating the day's particular
+controversy with the prison authorities.
+
+{152)
+
+We worried Woody-wood,
+As we stood, as we stood,
+We worried Woody-wood,
+As we stood.
+We worried Woody-wood,
+And we worried him right good;
+We worried him right good as we stood.
+
+We asked him for the vote,
+As we stood, as we stood,
+We asked him for the vote
+As we stood,
+We asked him for the vote,
+But he'd rather write a note,
+He'd rather write a note so we stood.
+
+We'll not get out on bail,
+Go to jail, go to jail-
+We'll not get out on bail,
+We prefer to go to jail,
+We prefer to go to jail-we're not frail.
+
+We asked them for a brush,
+For our teeth, for our teeth,
+We asked them for a brush
+For our teeth.
+We asked them for a brush,
+They said, "There ain't no rush,"
+They said, "There ain't no rush-darn your teeth."
+
+We asked them for some air,
+As we choked, as we choked,
+We asked them for some air
+As we choked.
+We asked them for some air
+And they threw us in a lair,
+They threw us in a lair, so we choked.
+
+{153}
+
+We asked them for our nightie,
+As we froze, as we froze,
+We asked them for our nightie
+As we froze.
+We asked them for our nightie,
+And they looked-hightie-tightie-
+They looked hightie-tightie-so we froze.
+
+Now, ladies, take the hint,
+As ye stand, as ye stand,
+Now, ladies, take the hint,
+As ye stand.
+Now, ladies, take the hint,
+Don't quote the Presidint,
+Don't quote the Presidint, as ye stand.
+
+Humor predominated in the poems that came out of prison. There
+was never any word of tragedy.
+
+Not even an intolerable diet of raw salt pork, which by actual
+count of Miss Margaret Potheringham, a teacher of Domestic
+Science and Dietetics, was served the suffragists sixteen times
+in eighteen days, could break their spirit of gayety. And when a
+piece of fish of unknown origin was slipped through the tiny
+opening in the cell door, and a specimen carefully preserved for
+Dr. Wiley-who, by the way, was unable to classify it-they were
+more diverted than outraged.
+
+Sometimes it was a "prayer" which enlivened the evening hour
+before bedtime. Mary Winsor of Haverford, Pennsylvania, was the
+master prayer-maker. One night it was a Baptist prayer, another a
+Methodist, and still another a stern Presbyterian prayer. The
+prayers were most disconcerting to the matron for the "regulars"
+became almost hysterical with laughter, when they should be
+slipping into sleep. It was trying also to sit in the corridor
+and hear your daily cruelties narrated to God and punishment
+asked. This is what happened to the embarrassed warden and jail
+attendants if they came to protest.
+
+{154}
+
+Sometimes it was the beautiful voice of Vida Milholland which
+rang through the corridors of the dreary prison, with a stirring
+Irish ballad, a French love song, or the Woman's Marseillaise.
+
+Again the prisoners would build a song, each calling out from
+cell to cell, and contributing a line. The following song to the
+tune of "Charlie Is My Darling" was so written and sung with Miss
+Lucy Branham leading:
+
+SHOUT THE REVOLUTION OF WOMEN
+
+Shout the revolution
+Of women, of women,
+Shout the revolution
+For liberty.
+Rise, glorious women of the earth,
+The voiceless and the free
+United strength assures the birth
+Of true democracy.
+
+REFRAIN
+
+Invincible our army,
+Forward, forward,
+Triumphant daughters pressing
+To victory.
+
+Shout the revolution
+of women, of women,
+Shout the revolution
+For liberty.
+Men's revolution born in blood,
+But ours conceived in peace,
+We hold a banner for a sword,
+Till all oppression cease.
+
+REFRAIN
+
+Prison, death, defying,
+Onward, onward,
+Triumphant daughters pressing
+To victory.
+
+{155}
+
+The gayety was interspersed with sadness when the suffragists
+learned of new cruelties heaped upon the helpless ones, those who
+were without influence or friends. .. They learned of that
+barbarous punishment known as "the greasy pole" used upon girl
+prisoners. This method of punishment consisted of strapping girls
+with their hands tied behind them to a greasy pole from which
+they were partly suspended. Unable to keep themselves in an
+upright position, because of the grease on the pole, they slipped
+almost to the floor, with their arms all but severed from the arm
+sockets, suffering intense pain for long periods of time. This
+cruel punishment was meted out to prisoners for slight
+infractions of the prison rules.
+
+The suffrage prisoners learned also of the race hatred which the
+authorities encouraged. It was not infrequent that the jail
+officers summoned black girls to attack white women, if the
+latter disobeyed. This happened in one instance to the suffrage
+prisoners who were protesting against the warden's forcibly
+taking a suffragist from the workhouse without telling her or her
+comrades whither she was being taken. Black girls were called and
+commanded to physically attack the suffragists. The negresses,
+reluctant to do so, were goaded to deliver blows upon the women
+by the warden's threats of punishment.
+
+And as a result of our having been in prison, our headquarters
+has never ceased being the mecca of many discouraged "inmates,"
+when released. They come for money. They come for work. They come
+for spiritual encouragement to face life after the wrecking
+experience of imprisonment. Some regard us as "fellow prisoners."
+Others regard us as "friends at court."
+
+Occasionally we meet a prison associate in the workaday world.
+Long after Mrs. Lawrence Lewis' imprisonment, when she was
+working on ratification of the amendment in Delaware, she was
+greeted warmly by a charming young woman who came forward at a
+meeting. "Don't you remember me?" she asked, as
+
+{156}
+
+Mrs. Lewis struggled to recollect. "Don't you remember me?
+I met you in Washington."
+
+"I'm sorry but I seem to have forgotten where I met you,"
+said Mrs. Lewis apologetically.
+
+"In jail," came the answer hesitantly, whereupon Mrs.
+Lewis listened sympathetically while her fellow prisoner told her
+that she had been in jail at the tipie Mrs. Lewis was, that her
+crime was bigamy and that she was one of the traveling circus
+troupe then in Dover.
+
+"She brought up her husband, also a member of the circus," said
+Mrs. Lewis in telling of the incident, "and they both joined
+enthusiastically in a warm invitation to come and see them in the
+circus."
+
+As each group of suffragists was released an enthusiastic welcome
+was given to them at headquarters and at these times, in the
+midst of the warmth of approving and appreciative comrades, some
+of the most beautiful speeches were delivered. I quote a part of
+Katharine Fisher's speech at a dinner in honor of released
+prisoners:
+
+Five of us who are with you to-night have recently come out from
+the workhouse into the world. A great change? Not so much of a
+change for women, disfranchised women. In prison or out, American
+women are not free. Our lot of physical freedom simply gives us
+and the public a new and vivid sense of what our lack of
+political freedom really means.
+
+Disfranchisement is the prison of women's power and spirit. Women
+have long been classed with criminals so far as their voting
+rights are concerned. And how quick the Government is to live up
+to its classification the minute women determinedly insist upon
+these rights. Prison life epitomizes all life under undemocratic
+rule. At Occoquan, as at the Capitol and the White House, we
+faced hypocrisy, trickery and treachery on the part of those in
+power. And the constant appeal to us to "cooperate" with the
+workhouse authorities sounded wonderfully like the exhortation
+addressed to all women to "support the Government."
+
+{157}
+
+"Is that the law of the District of Columbia?" I asked
+Superintendent Whittaker concerning a statement he had made to
+me. "It is the law," he answered, "because it is the rule I
+make." The answer of Whittaker is the answer Wilson makes to
+women every time the Government, of which he is the head, enacts
+a law and at the same time continues to refuse to pass the Susan
+B. Anthony amendment . . . .
+
+We seem to-day to stand before you free, but I have no sense of
+freedom because I have left comrades at Occoquan and because
+other comrades may at any moment join them there . . . .
+
+While comrades are there what is our freedom? It is as empty as
+the so-called political freedom of women who have won suffrage by
+a state referendum. Like them we are free only within limits . .
+. .
+
+We must not let our voice be drowned by war trumpets or cannon.
+If we do, we shall find ourselves, when the war is over, with a
+peace that will only prolong our struggle, a democracy that will
+belie its name by leaving out half the people.
+
+The Administration continued to send women to the workhouse and
+the District Jail for thirty and sixty day sentences.
+
+{158}
+
+Chapter 7
+
+An Administration Protest-Dudley Field Malone Resigns
+
+Dudley Field Malone was known to the country as sharing the
+intimate confidence and friendship of President Wilson. He had
+known and supported the President from the beginning of the
+President's political career. He had campaigned twice through New
+Jersey with Mr. Wilson as Governor; he had managed Mr. Wilson's
+campaigns in many states for the nomination before the Baltimore
+Convention; he had toured the country with Mr. Wilson in 1912 ;
+and it was he who led to victory President Wilson's fight for
+California in 1916.
+
+So when Mr. Malone went to the White House in July, 1917, to
+protest against the Administration's handling of the suffrage
+question, he went not only as a confirmed suffragist, but also a5
+a confirmed supporter and member of the Wilson Administration-the
+one who had been chosen to go to the West in 1916 to win women
+voters to the Democratic Party.
+
+Mr. Malone has consented to tell for the first time, in this
+record of the militant campaign, what happened at his memorable
+interview with President Wilson in July, 1917, an interview which
+he followed up two months later with his resignation as Collector
+of the Port of New York. I quote the story in his own words:
+
+Frank P. Walsh, Amos Pinchot, Frederic C. Howe, J. A.
+H. Hopkins, Allen McCurdy and I were present throughout
+the trial of the sixteen women in July. Immediately after the
+police court judge had pronounced his sentence of sixty days
+
+{159}
+
+in the Occoquan workhouse upon these "first offenders," on the
+alleged charge of a traffic violation, I went over to Anne
+Martin, one of the women's counsel, and offered to act as
+attorney on the appeal of the case. I then went to the court
+clerk's office and telephoned to President Wilson at the Whit
+House, asking him to see me at once. It was three o'clock. I
+called a taxicab, drove direct to the executive offices and met
+him.
+
+I began by reminding the President that in the seven years and a
+half of our personal and political association we had never had a
+serious difference. He was good enough to say that my loyalty to
+him bad been one of the happiest circumstances of his public
+career. But I told him I had come to place my resignation in his
+hands as I could not remain a member of any administration which
+dared to send American women to prison for demanding national
+suffrage. I also informed him that I had offered to act as
+counsel for the suffragists on the appeal of their case. He asked
+me for full details of my complaint and attitude. I told Mr.
+Wilson everything I had witnessed from the time we saw the
+suffragists arrested in front of the White House to their
+sentence in the police court. I observed that although we might
+not agree with the "manners" of picketing, citizens had a right
+to petition the President or any other official of the government
+for a redress of grievances. He seemed to acquiesce in this view,
+and reminded me that the women had been unmolested at the White
+House gates for over five months, adding that he had even ordered
+the head usher to invite the women on cold days to come into the
+White House and warm themselves and have coffee.
+
+"If the situation is as you describe it, it is shocking," said
+the President'. "The manhandling of the women by the police was
+outrageous and the entire trial (before a judge of your own
+appointment) was a perversion of justice," I said. This seemed to
+annoy the President and he replied with asperity, "Why do you
+come to me in this indignant fashion for things which have been
+done by the police officials of the city of Washington?"
+
+"Mr. President," I said, "the treatment of these women is the
+result of carefully laid plans made by the District Com-
+
+{160}
+
+missioners of the city of Washington, who were appointed to
+office by you. Newspaper men of unquestioned information and
+integrity have told me that the District Commissioners have been
+in consultation with your private secretary, Mr. Tumulty, and
+that the Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. McAdoo, sat in at a
+conference when the policy of these arrests was being
+determined."
+
+The President asserted his ignorance of all this.
+
+"Do you mean to tell me," he said, "that you intend to resign, to
+repudiate me and my Administration and sacrifice me for your
+views on this suffrage question?"
+
+His attitude then angered me and I said, "Mr. President, if there
+is any sacrifice in this unhappy circumstance, it is I who am
+making the sacrifice. I was sent twice as your spokesman in the
+last campaign to the Woman Suffrage States of the West. You have
+since been good enough to say publicly and privately that I did
+as much as any man to carry California for you. After my first
+tour I had a long conference with you here at the White House on
+the political situation in those states. I told you that I found
+your strength with women voters lay in the fact that you had with
+great patience and statesmanship kept this country out of the
+European war. But that your great weakness with women voters was
+that you had not taken any step throughout your entire
+Administration to urge the passage of the Federal Suffrage
+Amendment, which Mr. Hughes was advocating and which alone can
+enfranchise all the women of the nation. You asked me then how I
+met this situation, and I told you that I promised the women
+voters of the West that if they showed the political sagacity to
+choose you as against Mr. Hughes, I would do everything in my
+power to get your Administration to take up and pass the suffrage
+amendment. You were pleased and approved of what I had done. I
+returned to California and repeated this promise, and so far as I
+am concerned, I must keep my part of that obligation."
+
+I reiterated to the President my earlier appeal that he assist
+suffrage as an urgent war measure and a necessary part of
+America's program for world democracy, to which the President
+replied: "The enfranchisement of women is not at all necessary to
+a program of democracy and I see nothing in
+
+{161}
+
+the argument that it is a war measure unless you mean that
+American women will not loyally support the war unless they are
+given the vote." I firmly denied this conclusion of the President
+and told him that while American women with or without the vote
+would support the United States Government against German
+militarism, yet it seemed to me a great opportunity of his
+leadership to remove this grievance which women generally felt
+against him and his administration. "Mr. President," I urged, "if
+you, as the leader, will persuade the administration to pass the
+Federal Amendment you will release from the suffrage fight the
+energies of thousands of women which will be given with redoubled
+zeal to the support of your program for international justice."
+But the President absolutely refused to admit the validity of my
+appeal, though it was as a "war measure" that the President some
+months later demanded that the Senate pass the suffrage
+amendment.
+
+The President was visibly moved as I added, "You are the
+President now, reelected to office. You ask if I am going to
+sacrifice you. You sacrifice nothing by my resignation. But I
+lose much. I quit a political career. I give up a powerful office
+in my own state. I, who have no money, sacrifice a lucrative
+salary, and go back to revive my law practice. But most of all I
+sever a personal association with you of the deepest affection
+which you know has meant much to me these past seven years. But I
+cannot and will not remain in office and see women thrown into
+jail because they demand their political freedom."
+
+The President earnestly urged me not to resign, saying, "What
+will the people of the country think when they hear that the
+Collector of the Port of New York has resigned because of an
+injustice done to a group of suffragists by the police officials
+of the city of Washington?"
+
+My reply to this was, "With all respect for you, Mr. President,
+my explanation to the public will not be as difficult as yours,
+if I am compelled to remind the public that you have appointed to
+office and can remove all the important officials of the city of
+Washington."
+
+The President ignored this and insisted that I should not resign,
+saying, "I do not question your intense conviction about this
+matter as I know you have always been an ardent suf-
+
+{162}
+
+fragist; and since you feel as you do I see no reason why you
+should not become their counsel and take this case up on appeal
+without resigning from the Administration."
+
+"But," I said, "Mr. President, that arrangement would be
+impossible for two reasons; first, these women would not want me
+as their counsel if I were a member of your Administration, for
+it would appear to the public then as if your Administration was
+not responsible for the indignities to which they have been
+subjected, and your Administration is responsible; and, secondly,
+I cannot accept your suggestion because it may be necessary in
+the course of the appeal vigorously to criticize and condemn
+members of your cabinet and others close to you, and I could not
+adopt this policy while remaining in office under you." The
+President seemed greatly upset and finally urged me as a personal
+service to him to go at once and perfect the case on appeal for
+the suffragists, but not to resign until I had thought it over
+for a day, and until he had had an opportunity to investigate the
+facts I had presented to him. I agreed to this, and we closed the
+interview with the President saying, "If you consider my personal
+request and do not resign, please do not leave Washington without
+coming to see me." I left the executive offices and never saw him
+again.
+
+There was just a day and a half left to perfect the exceptions
+for the appeal under the rules of procedure. No stenographic
+record of the trial had been taken, which put me under the
+greatest legal difficulties. I was in the midst of these
+preparations for appeal the next day when I learned to my
+surprise that the President had pardoned the women. He had not
+even consulted me as their attorney. Moreover, I was amazed that
+since the President had said he considered the treatment of the
+women "shocking," he had pardoned them without stating that he
+did so to correct a grave injustice. I felt certain that the
+high-spirited women in the workhouse would refuse to accept the
+pardon as a mere "benevolent" act on the part of the President.
+
+I at once went down to the workhouse in Virginia. My opinion was
+confirmed. The group refused to accept the President's pardon. I
+advised them that as a matter of law no one could compel them to
+accept the pardon, but that as a matter of fact they would have
+to accept it, for the Attorney
+
+{163}
+
+General would have them all put out of the institution bag and
+baggage. So as a solution of the difficulty and in view of the
+fact that the President had said to me that their treatment was
+"shocking" I made public the following statement:
+
+"The President's pardon is an acknowledgment by him of the grave
+injustice that has been done:" This he never denied.
+
+Under this published interpretation of his pardon the women at
+Occoquan accepted the pardon and returned to Washington. The
+incident was closed. I returned to New York. During the next two
+months I carefully watched the situation. Six or eight more
+groups of women in that time were arrested on the same false
+charges, tried and imprisoned in the same illegal way. Finally a
+group of women was arrested in September under the identical
+circumstances as those in July, was tried in the same lawless
+fashion and given the same sentence of "sixty days in the
+workhouse." The President may have been innocent of
+responsibility for the first arrests, but he was personally and
+politically responsible for all the arrests that occurred after
+his pardon of the first, group. Under this development it seemed
+to me that self-respect demanded action, so I sent my resignation
+to the President, publicly stated my attitude and regretfully
+left his Administration."
+
+Mr. Malone's resignation in September, 1917, came with a sudden
+shock, because the entire country and surely the Administration
+thought him quieted and subdued by the President's personal
+appeal to him in July.
+
+Mr. Malone was shocked that the policy of arrests should be
+continued. Mr. Wilson and his Administration were shocked that
+any one should care enough about the liberty of women to resign a
+lucrative post in the Government. The nation was shocked into the
+realization that this was not a street brawl between women and
+policemen, but a controversy between suffragists and a powerful
+Administration. We had said so but it would have taken months to
+convince the public that the President was in any way
+responsible. Mr. Malone did what we could only have done with the
+greatest difficulty and after more pro-
+
+{164}
+
+longed sacrifices. He laid the responsibility squarely and
+dramatically where it belonged. It is impossible to overemphasize
+what a tremendous acceleration Mr. Malone's fine, solitary and
+generous act gave to the speedy break-down of the
+Administration's resistance. His sacrifice lightened ours.
+
+Women ought to be willing to make sacrifices for their own
+liberation, but for a man to have the courage and imagination to
+make such a sacrifice for the liberation of women is
+unparalleled. Mr. Malone called to the attention of the nation
+the true cause of the obstruction and suppression. He reproached
+the President and his colleagues after mature consideration, in
+the most honorable and vital way,-by refusing longer to associate
+himself with an Administration which backed such policies.
+
+And Mr. Malone's resignation was not only welcomed by the
+militant group. The conservative suffrage leaders, although they
+heartily disapproved of , picketing, were as outspoken in their
+gratitude.
+
+Alice Stone Blackwell, the daughter of Lucy Stone, herself a
+pioneer suffrage leader and editor, wrote to Mr. Malone:
+
+"May I express my appreciation and gratitude for the excellent
+and manly letter that you have written to President Wilson on
+woman suffrage? I am sure that I am only one of many women who
+feel thankful to you for it.
+
+"The picketing seems to me a very silly business, and I am sure
+it is doing the cause harm instead of good; but the picketers are
+being shamefully and illegally treated, and it is a thousand
+pities, for President Wilson's own sake, that he ever allowed the
+Washington authorities to enter on this course of persecution. It
+was high time for some one to make a protest, and you have made
+one that has been heard far and wide . . . ."
+
+Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, the President of the National American
+Woman Suffrage Association, wrote:
+
+"I was in Maine when your wonderful letter announcing your
+resignation came out. It was the noblest act that any man
+
+{165}
+
+ever did on behalf of our cause. The letter itself was a high
+minded appeal . . . . "
+
+Mrs. Norman de R. Whitehouse, the President of the New York State
+Woman Suffrage Party, with which Mr. Malone had worked for years,
+wired:
+
+"Although we disagree with you on the question of picketing every
+suffragist must be grateful to you for the gallant support you
+are giving our cause and the great sacrifice you are making."
+
+Mrs. James Lees Laidlaw, Vice Chairman of the New York Suffrage
+Party, said:
+
+"No words of mine can tell you how our hearts have been lifted
+and our purposes strengthened in this tremendous struggle in New
+York State by the reading of your powerful and noble utterances
+in your letter to President Wilson. There flashed through my mind
+all the memories of Knights of chivalry and of romance that I
+have ever read, and they all paled before your championship, and
+the sacrifice and the high-spirited leadership that it signifies.
+Where you lead, I believe, thousands of other men will follow,
+even though at a distance, and most inadequately . . . ."
+
+And from the women voters of California with whom Mr. Malone had
+kept faith came the message:
+
+"The liberty-loving women of California greet you as one of the
+few men in history who have been willing to sacrifice material
+interests for the liberty of a class to which they themselves do
+not belong. We are thrilled by your inspiring words. We
+appreciate your 'sympathetic understanding of the viewpoint of
+disfranchised women. We are deeply grateful for the incalculable
+benefit of your active assistance in the struggle of American
+women for political liberty and for a real Democracy."
+
+I reprint Mr. Malone's letter of resignation which sets forth in
+detail his position.
+
+{166}
+
+September 7, 1917.
+
+The President,
+The White House,
+Washington, D. C.
+
+Dear Mr. President:
+
+Last autumn, as the representative of your Administration, I went
+into the woman suffrage states to urge your reelection. The most
+difficult argument to meet among the seven million voters was the
+failure of the Democratic party, throughout four years of power,
+to pass the federal suffrage amendment looking toward the
+enfranchisement of all the women of the country. Throughout those
+states, and particularly in California, which ultimately decided
+the election by the votes of women, the women voters were urged
+to support you, even though Judge Hughes had already declared for
+the federal suffrage amendment, because you and your party,
+through liberal leadership, were more likely nationally to
+enfranchise the rest of the women of the country than were your
+opponents.
+
+And if the women of the West voted to reelect you, I promised
+them that I would spend all my energy, at any sacrifice to
+myself, to get the present Democratic Administration to pass the
+federal suffrage amendment.
+
+But the present policy of the Administration, in permitting
+splendid American women to be sent to jail in Washington, not for
+carrying offensive banners, not for picketing, but on the
+technical charge of obstructing traffic, is a denial even of
+their constitutional right to petition for, and demand the
+passage of, the federal suffrage amendment. It, therefore, now
+becomes my profound obligation actively to keep my promise to the
+women of the West.
+
+In more than twenty states it is a practical impossibility to
+amend the state constitutions; so the women of those States can
+only be enfranchised by the passage of the federal suffrage
+amendment. Since England and Russia, in the midst of the great
+war, have assured the national enfranchisement of their women,
+should we not be jealous to maintain our democratic leadership in
+the world by the speedy national enfranchisement of American
+women?
+
+To me, Mr. President, as I urged upon you in Washington two
+months ago, this is not only a measure of justice and democracy,
+it is also an urgent war measure. The women of
+
+{167}
+
+the nation are, and always will be, loyal to the country, and the
+passage of the suffrage amendment is only the first step toward
+their national emancipation. But unless the government takes at
+least this first step toward their enfranchisement, how can the
+government ask millions of American women, educated in our
+schools and colleges, and millions of American women, in our
+homes, or toiling for economic independence in every line of
+industry, to give up by conscription their men and happiness to a
+war for democracy in Europe, while these women citizens are
+denied the right to vote on the policies of the Government which
+demands of them such sacrifice?
+
+For this reason many of your most ardent friends and supporters
+feel that the passage of the federal suffrage amendment is a war
+measure which could appropriately be urged by you at this session
+of Congress. It is true that this amendment would have to come
+from Congress, but the present Congress shows no earnest desire
+to enact this legislation for the simple reason that you, as the
+leader of the party in power, have not yet suggested it.
+
+For the whole country gladly acknowledges, Mr. President, that no
+vital piece of legislation has come through Congress these five
+years except by your extraordinary and brilliant leadership. And
+what millions of men and women to-day hope is that you will give
+the federal suffrage amendment to the women of the country by the
+valor of your leadership now. It will hearten the mothers of the
+nation, eliminate a just grievance, and turn the devoted energies
+of brilliant women to a more hearty support of the Government in
+this crisis.
+
+As you well know, in dozens of speeches in many states I have
+advocated your policies and the war. I was the first man of your
+Administration, nearly five years ago, to publicly advocate
+preparedness, and helped to found the first Plattsburg training
+camp. And if, with our troops mobilizing in France, you will give
+American women this measure for their political freedom, they
+will support with greater enthusiasm your hope and the hope of
+America for world freedom.
+
+I have not approved all the methods recently adopted by women in
+pursuit of their political liberty; yet, Mr. President, the
+Committee on Suffrage of the United States Senate was formed in
+1883, when I was one year old; this same federal
+
+{168}
+
+suffrage amendment was first introduced in Congress in 187'8,
+brave women like Susan B. Anthony were petitioning Congress for
+the suffrage before the Civil War, and at the time of the Civil
+War men like William Lloyd Garrison, Horace Greeley, and Wendell
+Phillips assured the suffrage leaders that if they abandoned
+their fight for suffrage, when the war was ended the men of the
+nation "out of gratitude" would enfranchise the women of the-
+country.
+
+And if the men of this country had been peacefully demanding for
+over half a century the political right or privilege to vote, and
+had been continuously ignored or met with evasion by successive
+Congresses, as have the women, you, Mr. President, as a lover of
+liberty, would be the first to comprehend and forgive their
+inevitable impatience and righteous indignation. Will not this
+Administration, reelected to power by the hope and faith of the
+women of the West, handsomely reward that faith by taking action
+now for the passage of the federal suffrage amendment?
+
+In the Port of New York, during the last four years, billions of
+dollars in the export and import trade of the country have been
+handled by the men of the customs service; their treatment of the
+traveling public has radically changed, their vigilance supplied
+the evidence of the Lusitania note; the neutrality was rigidly
+maintained; the great German fleet guarded, captured, and
+repaired-substantial economies and reforms have been concluded
+and my ardent industry has been given to this great office of
+your appointment.
+
+But now I wish to leave these finished tasks, to return to my
+profession of the law, and to give all my leisure time to fight
+as hard for the political freedom of women as I have always
+fought for your liberal leadership.
+
+It seems a long seven years, Mr. President, since I first
+campaigned with you when you were running for Governor of New
+Jersey. In every circumstance throughout those years I have
+served you with the most respectful affection and unshadowed
+devotion. It is no small sacrifice now for me, as a member of
+your Administration, to sever our political relationship. But I
+think it is high time that men in this generation, at some cost
+to themselves, stood up to battle for the national
+enfranchisement of American women. So in order effectively
+
+{169}
+
+to keep my promise made in the West and more freely to go into
+this larger field of democratic effort, I hereby resign my office
+as Collector of the Port of New York, to take effect at once, or
+at your earliest convenience.
+
+Yours respectfully,
+
+(Signed) DUDLEY FIELD MALONE.
+
+The President's answer has never before been published:
+
+U. S. S. MAYFLOWER,
+12 September, 1917.
+
+THE WHITE HOUSE
+WASHINGTON
+
+My dear Mr. Collector:
+
+Your letter of September 7th reached me just before I left home
+and I have, I am sorry to say, been unable to reply to it sooner.
+
+I must frankly say that I cannot regard your reasons for
+resigning your position as Collector of Customs as convincing,
+but it is so evidently your wish to be relieved from the duties
+of the office that I do not feel at liberty to withhold my
+acceptance of your resignation. Indeed, I judge from your letter
+that any discussion of the reasons would not be acceptable to you
+and that it is your desire to be free of the restraints of public
+office. I, therefore, accept your resignation, to take effect as
+you have wished.
+
+I need not say that our long association in public affairs makes
+me regret the action you have taken most sincerely.
+
+Very truly yours,
+(Signed) WOODROW WILSON.
+
+Hon. Dudley Field Malone,
+Collector of Customs,
+New York City.
+
+To this Mr. Malone replied:
+
+New York, N.Y.,
+September 15th, 1917.
+
+The President,
+The White House,
+Washington, D. C.
+
+Dear Mr. President:
+
+Thank you sincerely for your courtesy, for I knew you were on a
+well-earned holiday and I did not expect an earlier reply to my
+letter of September 7th, 1917.
+
+{170}
+
+After a most careful re-reading of my letter, I am unable to
+understand how you could judge that any discussion by you of my
+reasons for resigning would not be acceptable to me since my
+letter was an appeal to you on specific grounds for action now by
+the Administration on the Federal Suffrage amendment.
+
+However, I am profoundly grateful to you for your prompt
+acceptance of my resignation.
+
+Yours respectfully,
+(Signed) DUDLEY FIELD MALONE.
+
+It may have been accidental but it is interesting to note that
+the first public statement of Mr. Byron Newton, appointed by the
+Administration to succeed Mr. Malone as Collector of the Port of
+New York, was a bitter denunciation of all woman suffrage whether
+by state or national action.
+
+{171}
+
+Chapter 8
+
+The Administration Yields
+
+Immediately after Mr. Malone's sensational resignation the
+Administration sought another way to remove the persistent
+pickets without passing the amendment. It yielded on a point of
+machinery. It gave us a report in the Senate and a committee in
+the House and expected us to be grateful.
+
+The press had turned again to more sympathetic accounts of our
+campaign and exposed the prison regime we were undergoing. We
+were now for a moment the object of sympathy; the Administration
+was the butt of considerable hostility. Sensing their predicament
+and fearing any loss of prestige, they risked a slight advance.
+
+Senator Jones, Chairman of the Suffrage Committee, made a visit
+to the workhouse. Scarcely had the women recovered from the
+surprise of his visit when the Senator, on the following day,
+September 15th, filed the favorable report which had been lying
+with his Committee since May 15th, exactly six months.
+
+The Report, which he had so long delayed because he wanted [he
+said] to make it a particularly brilliant and elaborate one,
+read:
+
+"The Committee on Woman Suffrage, to which was referred the
+joint resolution proposing an amendment to the Constitution of
+the United States, conferring upon women the right of suffrage,
+having the same under consideration, beg leave to report it back
+to the Senate with the recommendation that the joint resolution
+do pass."
+
+{172}
+
+This report to the Senate was immediately followed by a vote of
+181 to 107 in the House of Representatives in favor of creating a
+Committee on Woman Suffrage in the House. This vote was
+indicative of the strength of the amendment in the House. The
+resolution was sponsored by Representative Pou, Chairman of the
+Rules Committee and Administration leader, himself an anti-
+suffragist.
+
+It is an interesting study in psychology to consider some of the
+statements made in the peculiarly heated debate the day this vote
+was taken.
+
+Scores of Congressmen, anxious to refute the idea that the
+indomitable picket had had anything to do with their action,
+revealed naively how surely it had.
+
+Of the 291 men present, not one man stood squarely up for the
+right of the hundreds of women who petitioned for justice. Some
+indirectly and many, inadvertently, however, paid eloquent
+tribute to the suffrage picket.
+
+From the moment Representative Pou in opening the debate spoke of
+the nation-wide request for the committee, and the President's
+sanction of the committee, the accusations and counter-
+accusations concerning the wisdom of appointing it in the face of
+the pickets were many and animated.
+
+Mr. Meeker of Missouri, Democrat, protested against Congress
+"yielding to the nagging of a certain group."
+
+Mr. Cantrill of Kentucky, Democrat, believed that "millions of
+Christian women in the nation should not be denied the right of
+having a Committee in the House to study the problem of suffrage
+because of the mistakes of some few of their sisters."
+
+"One had as well say," he went on, "that there should be no
+police in Washington because the police force of this city
+permitted daily thousands of people to obstruct the streets and
+impede traffic and permitted almost the mobbing of the women
+without arresting the offenders. There was a lawful and peaceful
+way in which the police of this city could have taken charge
+
+{173}
+
+of the banners of the pickets without permitting the women
+carrying them to be the objects of mob violence. To see women
+roughly handled by rough men on the streets of the capital of the
+nation is not a pleasing sight to Kentuckians and to red-blooded
+Americans, and let us hope the like will never again be seen
+here."
+
+Mr. Walsh, an anti-suffrage Democrat from Massachusetts, deplored
+taking any action which would seem to yield to the demand of the
+pickets who carried banners which "if used by a poor workingman
+in an attempt to get his rights would speedily have put him
+behind the bars for treason or sedition, and these poor,
+bewildered, deluded creatures, after their disgusting exhibition
+can thank their stars that because they wear skirts they are now
+incarcerated for misdemeanors of a minor character . . . . To
+supinely yield to a certain class of women picketing the gates of
+the official residence,-yes, even posing with their short skirts
+and their short hair within the view of this `very capitol and
+our office buildings,' with banners which would seek to lead the
+people to believe that because we did not take action during this
+war session upon suffrage, if you please, and grant them the
+right of the ballot that we were traitors to the American
+Republic, would be monstrous."
+
+The subject of the creation of a committee on suffrage was almost
+entirely forgotten. The Congressmen were utterly unable to shake
+off the ghosts of the pickets. The pickets had not influenced
+their actions! The very idea was appalling to Representative
+Stafford of Wisconsin, anti-suffrage Republican, who joined in
+the Democratic protests. He said:
+
+"If a Suffrage Committee is created the militant class will
+exclaim, `Ah, see how we have driven the great House of
+Representatives to recognize our rights. If we keep up this sort
+of practices, we will compel the House, when they come to vote on
+the constitutional amendment, to surrender obediently likewise'."
+
+{174}
+
+He spoke the truth, and finished dramatically with:
+
+"Gentlemen, there is only one question before the House today and
+that is, if you look at it from a political aspect, whether you
+wish to approve of the practices of these women who have been
+disgracing their cause here in Washington for the past several
+months."
+
+Representative Volstead, of Minnesota, Republican, came the
+closest of all to real courage in his protest:-
+
+"In this discussion some very unfair comments have been made upon
+the women who picketed the White House. While I do not approve of
+picketing, I disapprove more strongly of the hoodlum methods
+pursued in suppressing the practice. I gather from the press that
+this is what took place. Some women did in a peaceable, and
+perfectly lawful manner, display suffrage banners on the public
+street near the White House. To stop this the police allowed the
+women to be mobbed, and then because the mob obstructed the
+street, the women were arrested and fined, while the mob went
+scot-free . . . ."
+
+The Suffrage Committee in the House was appointed. The creation
+of this committee, which had been pending since 1913, was now
+finally granted in September, 1917. To be sure this was
+accomplished only after an inordinate amount of time, money and
+effort had been spent on a sustained and relentless campaign of
+pressure. But the Administration had yielded.
+
+As a means to remove the pickets, however, this yielding had
+failed. "We ask no more machinery; we demand the passage of the
+amendment," said the pickets as they lengthened their line.
+
+{175}
+
+Chapter 9
+
+Political Prisoners
+
+Finding that a Suffrage Committee in the House and a report in
+the Senate had not silenced our banners, the Administration cast
+about for another plan by which to stop the picketing. This time
+they turned desperately to longer terms of imprisonment. They
+were indeed hard pressed when they could choose such a cruel and
+stupid course.
+
+Our answer to this policy was more women on the picket line, on
+the outside, and a protest on the inside of prison.
+
+We decided, in the face of extended imprisonment, to demand to be
+treated as political prisoners. We felt that, as a matter of
+principle, this was the dignified and self-respecting thing to
+do, since we had offended politically, not criminally. We
+believed further that a determined, organized effort to make
+clear to a wider public the political nature of the offense would
+intensify the Administration's embarrassment and so accelerate
+their final surrender.
+
+It fell to Lucy Burns, vice chairman of the organization, to be
+the leader of the new protest. Miss Burns is in appearance the
+very symbol of woman in revolt. Her abundant and glorious red
+hair burns and is not consumed-a flaming torch. Her body is
+strong and vital. It is said that Lucy Stone had the "voice" of
+the pioneers. Lucy Burns without doubt possessed the "voice" of
+the modern suffrage movement. Musical, appealing, persuading-she
+could move the most resistant person. Her talent as an orator is
+of the kind that makes for instant
+
+{176}
+
+intimacy with her audience. Her emotional quality is so powerful
+that her intellectual capacity, which is quite as great, is not
+always at once perceived.
+
+I find myself wanting to talk about her as a human being rather
+than as a leader of women. Perhaps it is because she has such
+winning, lovable qualities. It was always difficult for her to
+give all of her energy and power to a movement. She yearned to
+play, to read, to study, to be luxuriously indolent, to revel in
+the companionship of her family, to which she is ardently
+devoted; to do any one of a hundred things more pleasant than
+trying to reason with a politician or an unawakened member of her
+own sex. But for these latter labors she had a most gentle and
+persuasive genius, and she would not shrink from hours of close
+argument to convince a person intellectually and emotionally.
+
+Unlike Miss Paul, however, her force is not nonresistant. Once in
+the combat she takes delight in it; she is by nature a rebel. She
+is an ideal leader for the stormy and courageous attack-reckless
+and yet never to the point of unwisdom.
+
+From the time Miss Burns and Miss Paul met for the first time in
+Cannon Row Police Station, London, they have been constant co-
+workers in suffrage. Both were students abroad at the time they
+met. They were among the hundred women arrested for attempting to
+present petitions for suffrage to Parliament. This was the first
+time either of them had participated in a demonstration. But from
+then on they worked together in England and Scotland organizing,
+speaking, heckling members of the government, campaigning at bye-
+elections; going to Holloway Prison together, where they joined
+the Englishwomen on hunger strike. Miss Burns remained organizing
+in Scotland while Miss Paul was obliged to return to America
+after serious illness following a thirty day period of
+imprisonment, during all of which time she was forcibly fed.
+
+Miss Burns and she did not meet again until 1913-three
+
+{177}
+
+years having intervened-when they undertook the national work on
+Congress. Throughout the entire campaign Miss Burns and Miss Paul
+counseled with one another on every point of any importance. This
+combination of the cool strategist and passionate rebel-each
+sharing some of the attributes of the other-has been a complete
+and unsurpassed leadership.
+
+You have now been introduced, most inadequately, to Lucy Burns,
+who was to start the fight inside the prison.
+
+She had no sooner begun to organize her comrades for protest than
+the officials sensed a "plot," and removed her at once to
+solitary confinement. But they were too late. Taking the leader
+only hastened the rebellion. A forlorn piece of paper was
+discovered, on which was written their initial demand, It was
+then passed from prisoner to prisoner through holes in the
+wall surrounding leaden pipes, until a finished document had been
+perfected and signed by all the prisoners.
+
+This historic document-historic because it represents the first
+organized group action ever made in America to establish the
+status of political prisoners-said:
+
+To the Commissioners of the Distinct of Columbia:
+
+As political prisoners, we, the undersigned, refuse to work while
+in prison. We have taken this stand as a matter of principle
+after careful consideration, and from it we shall not recede.
+
+This action is a necessary protest against an unjust sentence. In
+reminding President Wilson of his pre-election promises toward
+woman suffrage we were exercising the right of peaceful petition,
+guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States, which
+declares peaceful picketing is legal in the District of Columbia.
+That we are unjustly sentenced has been well recognized-when
+President Wilson pardoned the first group of suffragists who had
+been given sixty days in the workhouse, and again when Judge
+Mullowny suspended sentence for the last group of picketers. We
+wish to point out the inconsistency and injustice of our
+sentences-some of us have been given sixty days, a later group
+thirty days, and
+
+{178}
+
+another group given a suspended sentence for exactly the same
+action.
+
+Conscious, therefore, of having acted in accordance with the
+highest standards of citizenship, we ask the Commissioners of the
+District to grant us the rights due political prisoners. We ask
+that we no longer be segregated and confined under locks and bars
+in small groups, but permitted to see each other, and that Miss
+Lucy Burns, who is in full sympathy with this letter, be released
+from solitary confinement in another building and given back to
+us.
+
+We ask exemption from prison work, that our legal right to
+consult counsel be recognized, to have food sent to us from
+outside, to supply ourselves with writing material for as much
+correspondence as we may need, to receive books, letters,
+newspapers, our relatives and friends.
+
+Our united demand for political treatment has been delayed,
+because on entering the workhouse we found conditions so very bad
+that before we could ask that the suffragists be treated as
+political prisoners, it was necessary to make a stand for the
+ordinary rights of human beings for all the inmates. Although
+this has not been accomplished we now wish to bring the important
+question of the status of political prisoners to the attention of
+the commissioners, who, we are informed, have full authority to
+make what regulations they please for the :District prison and
+workhouse.
+
+The Commissioners are requested to send us a written reply so
+that we may be sure this protest has reached them.
+
+Signed by,
+
+MARY WINSOR, Lucy BRANHAM, ERNESTINE HARA, HILDA BLUMBERG, MAUD
+MALONE, PAULINE F. ADAMS, ELEANOR. A. CALNAN, EDITH AINGE, ANNIE
+ARNEIL, DOROTHY J. BARTLETT, MARGARET FOTHERINGHAM.
+
+The Commissioners' only answer to this was a hasty transfer of
+the signers and the leader, Miss Burns, to the District Jail,
+where they were put in solitary confinement. The women were not
+only refused the privileges asked but were denied some of the
+usual privileges allowed to ordinary criminals.
+
+Generous publicity was given to these reasonable demands,
+
+{179}
+
+and a surprisingly wide-spread protest followed the official
+denial of them. Scores of committees went to the District
+Commissioners. Telegrams backing up the women's demand again
+poured in upon all responsible administrators, from President
+Wilson down. Not even foreign diplomats escaped protest or
+appeal.
+
+Miss Vera Samarodin sent to the Russian Ambassador the following
+touching letter, concerning her sister, which is translated from
+the Russian:-
+
+The Russian Ambassador,
+Washington, D.C.
+
+Excellency:
+
+I am appealing to you to help a young Russian girl imprisoned in
+the workhouse near Washington. Her name is Nina Samarodin. I have
+just come from one of the two monthly visits I am allowed to make
+her, as a member of her family.
+
+The severity and cruelty of the treatment she is receiving at
+Occoquan are so much greater than she would have to suffer in
+Russia for the simple political offense she is accused of having
+committed that I hope you will be able to intercede with the
+officials of this country for her.
+
+Her offense, aside from the fact that she infringed no law nor
+disturbed the peace, had only a political aim, and was proved to
+be political by the words of the judge who sentenced her, for he
+declared that because of the innocent inscription on her banner
+he would make her sentence light.
+
+Since her imprisonment she has been forced to wear the dress of a
+criminal, which she would not in Russia; she has had to eat only
+the coarse and unpalatable food served the criminal inmates, and
+has not been allowed, as she would in Russia, to have other food
+brought to her; nor has she, as she would be there been under the
+daily care of a physician. She is not permitted to write letters,
+nor to have free access to books and other implements of study.
+Nina Samarodin has visibly lost in weight and strength since her
+imprisonment, and she has a constant headache from hunger.
+
+Her motive in holding the banner by the White House, I
+
+{180}
+
+feel, cannot but appeal to you, Excellency, for she says it was
+the knowledge that her family were fighting in Russia in this
+great war for democracy, and that she was cut off from serving
+with them that made her desire to do what she could to help the
+women of this nation achieve the freedom her own people have.
+
+Will you, if it is within your power, attempt to have her
+recognized as a political prisoner, and relieve the severity of
+the treatment she is receiving for obeying this impulse born of
+her love of liberty and the dictates of her conscience?
+
+I have, Excellency, the honor to be,
+
+Respectfully, your countrywoman,
+
+(Signed) VERA SAMARODIN,
+Baltimore, Maryland.
+
+Another Russian, Maria Moravsky, author and poet, who had herself
+been imprisoned in Czarist Russia and who was touring America at
+the time of this controversy, expressed her surprise that our
+suffrage prisoners should be treated as common criminals. She
+wrote:[1] "I have been twice in the Russian prison; life in the
+solitary cell was not sweet; but I can assure you it was better
+than that which American women suffragists must bear.
+
+"We were permitted to read and write; we wore our own clothes; we
+were not forced to mix with the criminals; we did no work. (Only
+a few women exiled to Siberia for extremely serious political
+crimes were compelled to work.) And our guardians and even judges
+respected us; they felt we were victims, because we struggled for
+liberty."
+
+The Commissioners, who bad to bear the responsibility of an
+answer to these protests and to the demand of the prisoners,
+contended to all alike that political prisoners did not exist.
+
+"We shall be happy to establish a precedent," said the women.
+
+"But in America," stammered the Commissioners, "there is no need
+for such a thing as political prisoners."
+
+[1]Reprinted from The Suffragist, Feb. 8, 1919.
+
+{181}
+
+"The very fact that we can be sentenced to such long terms for a
+political offense shows that there does exist, in fact, a group
+of people who have come into conflict with state power for
+dissenting from the prevailing political system," our
+representatives answered.
+
+We cited definitions of political offenses by eminent
+criminologists, penologists, sociologists, statesmen and
+historians. We declared that all authorities on political crime
+sustained our contention and that we clearly came under the
+category of political, if any crime. We pointed as proof to James
+Bryce, George Sigerson, Maurice Parmelee and even to Clemenceau,
+who defined the distinction between political offenses and common
+law crimes thus: " . . . theoretically a crime committed in the
+interest of the criminal is a common law crime, while an offense
+committed in the public interest is a political crime."[1]
+
+We called to their attention the established custom of special
+treatment of political prisoners in Russia, France, Italy and
+even Turkey.[2]
+
+We told them that as early as 18'72 the International Prison
+Congress meeting in London recommended a distinction in the
+treatment of political and common law criminals and the
+resolution of recommendation was "agreed upon by the
+representatives of all the Powers of Europe and America-with the
+tacit concurrence of British and Irish officials."[3]
+
+Mr. John Koren, International Prison Commissioner[4] for the
+United States, was throughout this agitation making a study of
+this very problem. As chairman of a Special Commit-
+
+[1]Speech before the French Chamber of Deputies May 16, 1876,
+advocating amnesty for those who participated in the Commune of
+1871. From the Annales de la Chambre des Deputes, 1876, v. 2, pp.
+44-48.
+
+[2]Those interested in the question of political prisoners and
+their treatment abroad may want to read Concerning Political
+Prisoners, Appendix 6.
+
+[3]Siegerson, Political Prisoners at Home and Abroad, p. 10.
+
+[4]Appointed and sponsored by the Department of State as delegate
+to the International Prison Congress.
+
+{182}
+
+tee of the American Prison Association, empowered to investi-
+gate the problem of political prisoners for America, he made a
+report at the annual meeting of the American Prison Associ-
+ation in New York, October, 1919, entitled "The Political Of
+fenders and their Status in Prison"[1] in which he says:
+
+"The political offender . . . must be measured by a different
+rule, and . . . is a creature of extraordinary and temporary
+conditions . . . .
+
+"There are times in which the tactics used in the pursuit of
+political recognition may result in a technical violation of the
+law for which imprisonment ensues, as witness the suffragist
+cases in Washington . . . . These militants were completely out
+of place in a workhouse, . . . they could not be made to submit
+to discipline fashioned to meet the needs of the derelicts of
+society, and . . . they therefore destroyed it for the entire
+institution."
+
+There was no doubt in the official mind but that our claim was
+just. But the Administration would not grant this demand, as
+such, of political prisoners. It must continue to persuade public
+opinion that our offense was not of a political nature; that it
+was nothing more than unpleasant and unfortunate riotous conduct
+in the capital. The legend of "a few slightly mad women seeking
+notoriety" must be sustained. Our demand was never granted, but
+it was kept up until the last imprisonment and was soon
+reinforced by additional protest tactics. Our suffrage prisoners,
+however, made an important contribution toward establishing this
+reform which others will consummate. They were the first in
+America to organize and sustain this demand over a long period of
+time. In America we maintain a most backward policy in dealing
+with political prisoners. We have neither regulation nor
+precedent for special treatment of them. Nor have we official
+flexibility.
+
+[1]Mr. Koren discusses the political offender from the
+penological, not the social, point of view.
+
+{183}
+
+This controversy was at its height in the press and in the public
+mind when President Wilson sent the following message, through a
+New York State suffrage leader, on behalf of the approaching New
+York referendum on state woman suffrage:
+
+"May I not express to you my very deep interest in the campaign
+in New York for the adoption of woman suffrage, and may I not say
+that I hope no voter will be influenced in his decision with
+regard to the great matter by anything the so-called pickets may
+have done here in Washington. However justly they may have laid
+themselves open to serious criticism, their action represents, I
+am sure, so small a fraction of the women of the country who are
+urging the adoption of woman suffrage that it would be most
+unfair and argue a narrow view to allow their actions to
+prejudice the cause itself. I am very anxious to see the great
+state of New York set a great example in this matter."
+
+This statement showed a political appreciation of the growing
+power of the movement. Also it would be difficult to prove that
+the "small fraction" had not shown political wisdom in injecting
+into the campaign the embarrassment of a controversy which was
+followed by the above statement of *the President. In the
+meantime he continued to imprison in Washington the "so-called
+pickets" whom he hoped would not influence the decision of the
+men voters of New York. It will be remembered, in passing, that
+the New York voters adopted suffrage at this time, although they
+had rejected it two years earlier. If the voters of New York were
+influenced at all by the "so-called pickets," could even
+President Wilson himself satisfactorily prove that it had been an
+adverse influence?
+
+{184}
+
+Chapter 10
+
+The Hunger Strike-A Weapon
+
+When the Administration refused to grant the demand of the
+prisoners and of that portion of the public which supported them,
+for the rights of political prisoners, it was decided to resort
+to the ultimate protest-weapon inside prison. A hunger strike was
+undertaken, not only to reinforce the verbal demand for the
+rights of political prisoners, but also as a final protest
+against unjust imprisonment and increasingly long sentences. This
+brought the Administration face to face with a more acute
+embarrassment. They had to choose between more stubborn
+resistance and capitulation: They continued for a while longer on
+the former path.
+
+Little is known in this country about the weapon of the hunger
+strike. And so at first it aroused tremendous indignation. "Let
+them starve to death," said the thoughtless one, who did not
+perceive that that was the very thing a political administration
+could least afford to do. "Mad fanatics," said a kindlier critic.
+The general opinion was that the hunger strike was "foolish."
+
+Few people realize that this resort to the refusal of food is
+almost as old as civilization. It has always represented a
+passionate desire to achieve an end. There is not time to go into
+the religious use of it, which would also be pertinent, but I
+will cite a few instances which have tragic and amusing
+likenesses to the suffrage hunger strike.
+
+According to the Brehon Law,[1] which was the code of
+
+[1]Joyce, A Social History of Ancient Ireland, Vol. I, Chapter
+VIII.
+
+{185}
+
+ancient Ireland by which justice was administered under ancient
+Irish monarchs (from the earliest record to the 17th century), it
+became the duty of an injured person, when all else failed, to
+inflict punishment directly, for wrong done. "The plaintiff
+`fasted on' the defendant." He went to the house of the defendant
+and sat upon his doorstep, remaining there without food to force
+the payment of a debt, for example. The debtor was compelled by
+the weight of custom and public opinion not to let the plaintiff
+die at his door, and yielded. Or if he did not yield, he was
+practically outlawed by the community, to the point of being
+driven away. A man who refused to abide by the custom not only
+incurred personal danger but lost all character.
+
+If resistance to this form of protest was resorted to it had to
+take the form of a counter-fast. If the victim of such a protest
+thought himself being unjustly coerced, he might fast in
+opposition, "to mitigate or avert the evil."
+
+"Fasting on a man" was also a mode of compelling action of
+another sort. St. Patrick fasted against King Trian to compel him
+to have compassion on his [Trian's] slaves.[1] He also fasted
+against a heretical city to compel it to become orthodox.[2] He
+fasted against the pagan King Loeguire to "constrain him to his
+will."[3]
+
+This form of hunger strike was further used under the Brehon Law
+as compulsion to obtain a request. For example, the Leinstermen
+on one occasion fasted on St. Columkille till they obtained from
+him the promise that an extern King should never prevail against
+them.
+
+It is interesting to note that this form of direct action was
+adopted because there was no legislative machinery to enforce
+justice. These laws were merely a collection of customs attaining
+the force of law by long usage, by hereditary habit, and by
+
+[1]Tripartite Life of St. Patrick, CLXXVII, p. 218.
+[2]Ibid. CLXXVII, p. 418.
+[3]Ibid. CLXXVII, p. 556.
+
+{186}
+
+public opinion. Our resort to this weapon grew out of the same
+situation. The legislative machinery, while empowered to give us
+redress, failed to function, and so we adopted the fast.
+
+The institution of fasting on a debtor still exists in the East.
+It is called by the Hindoos "sitting dharna."
+
+The hunger strike was continuously used in Russia by prisoners to
+obtain more humane practices toward them. Kropotkin 1 cites an
+instance in which women prisoners hunger struck to get their
+babies back. If a child was born to a woman during her
+imprisonment the babe was immediately taken from her and not
+returned. Mothers struck and got their babies returned to them.
+
+He cites another successful example in Rharkoff prison in 1878
+when six prisoners resolved to hunger strike to death if
+necessary to win two things-to be allowed exercise and to have
+the sick prisoners taken out of chains.
+
+There are innumerable instances of hunger strikes, even to death,
+in Russian prison history. But more often the demands of the
+strikers were won.. Breshkovsky[2] tells of a strike by 17 women
+against outrage, which elicited the desired promises from the
+warden.
+
+As early as 1877 members of the Land and Liberty Society s
+imprisoned for peaceful and educational propaganda, in the
+Schlusselburg Fortress for political prisoners, hunger struck
+against inhuman prison conditions and frightful brutalities and
+won their points.
+
+During the suffrage campaign in England this weapon was used for
+the double purpose of forcing the release of imprisoned militant
+suffragettes, and of compelling the British government to act.
+
+Among the demonstrations was a revival of the ancient Irish
+
+[1]See In Russian and French Prisons, P. Kropotkin.
+
+[2]For Russia's Freedom, by Ernest Poole,-An Interview with
+Breshkovsky.
+
+[3]See The Russian Bastille, Simon O. Pollock.
+
+{187}
+
+custom by Sylvia Pankhurst, who in addition to her hunger strikes
+within prison, "fasted on" the doorstep of Premier Asquith to
+compel him to see a deputation of women on the granting of
+suffrage to English women. She won.
+
+Irish prisoners have revived the hunger strike to compel either
+release or trial of untried prisoners and have Lyon. As I write,
+almost a hundred Irish prisoners detained by England for alleged
+nationalist activities, but not brought to trial, hunger struck
+to freedom. As a direct result of this specific hunger strike
+England has promised a renovation of her practices in dealing
+with Irish rebels.
+
+And so it was that when we came to the adoption of this
+accelerating tactic, we had behind us more precedents for winning
+our point than for losing. We were strong in the knowledge that
+we could "fast on" President Wilson and his powerful
+Administration, and compel him to act or "fast back."
+
+Among the prisoners who with Alice Paul led the hunger strike was
+a very picturesque figure, Rose Winslow (Ruza Wenclawska) of New
+York, whose parents had brought her in infancy from Poland to
+become a citizen of "free" America. At eleven she was put at a
+loom in a Pennsylvania mill, where she wove hosiery for fourteen
+hours a day until tuberculosis claimed her at nineteen. A poet by
+nature she developed her mind to the full in spite of these
+disadvantages, and when she was forced to abandon her loom she
+became an organizer for the Consumers' League, and later a vivid
+and eloquent power in the suffrage movement.
+
+Her group preceded Miss Paul's by about a week in prison.
+
+These vivid sketches of Rose Winslow's impressions while in the
+prison hospital were written on tiny scraps of paper and smuggled
+out to us, and to her husband during her imprisonment. I reprint
+them in their original form with cuts but no editing.
+
+{188}
+
+"If this thing is necessary we will naturally go through with it.
+Force is so stupid a weapon. I feel so happy doing my bit for
+decency-for our war, which is after all, real and fundamental."
+
+"The women are all so magnificent, so beautiful. Alice Paul is as
+thin as ever, pale and large-eyed. We have been in solitary for
+five weeks. There is nothing to tell but that the days go by
+somehow. I have felt quite feeble the last few days faint, so
+that I could hardly get my hair brushed, my arms ached so. But
+to-day I am well again. Alice Paul and I talk back and forth
+though we are at opposite ends of the building and, a hall door
+also shuts us apart. But occasionally thrills-we escape from
+behind our iron-barred doors and visit. Great laughter and
+rejoicing!"
+
+To her husband:
+
+"My fainting probably means nothing except that I am not strong
+after these weeks. I know you won't be alarmed.
+
+�I told about a syphilitic colored woman with one leg. The other
+one cut off, having rotted so that it was alive with maggots when
+she came in. The remaining one is now getting as bad. They are so
+short of nurses that a little colored girl of twelve, who is here
+waiting to have her tonsils removed, waits on her. This child and
+two others share a ward with a syphilitic child of three or four
+years, whose mother refused to have it at home. It makes you
+absolutely ill to see it. I am going to break all three windows
+as a protest against their confining Alice Paul with these!
+
+"Dr. Gannon is chief of a hospital. Yet Alice Paul and I found we
+had been taking baths in one of the tubs here, in which this
+syphilitic child, an incurable, who has his eyes bandaged all the
+time, is also bathed. He has been here a year. Into the room
+where he lives came yesterday two children to be
+
+{189}
+
+operated on for tonsillitis. They also bathed in the same tub.
+The syphilitic woman has been in that room seven months. Cheerful
+mixing, isn't it? The place is alive with roaches, crawling all
+over the walls, everywhere. I found one in my bed the other day .
+. . ."
+
+"There is great excitement about my two syphilitics. Each nurse
+is being asked whether she told me. So, as in all institutions
+where an unsanitary fact is made public, no effort is made to
+make the wrong itself right. All hands fall to, to find the
+culprit, who made it known, and he is punished."
+
+"Alice Paul is in the psychopathic ward. She dreaded forcible
+feeding frightfully, and I hate to think how she must be feeling.
+I had a nervous time of it, gasping a long time afterward, and my
+stomach rejecting during the process. I spent a bad, restless
+night, but otherwise I am all right. The poor soul who fed me got
+liberally besprinkled during the process. I heard myself making
+the most hideous sounds . . . . One feels so forsaken when one
+lies prone and people shove a pipe down one's stomach."
+'
+"This morning but for an astounding tiredness, I am all right. I
+am waiting to see what happens when the President realizes that
+brutal bullying isn't quite a statesmanlike method for settling a
+demand for justice at home. At least, if men are supine enough to
+endure, women-to their eternal glory-are not.
+
+"They took down the boarding from Alice Paul's window yesterday,
+I heard. It is so delicious about Alice and me. Over in the jail
+a rumor began that I was considered insane and would be examined.
+Then came Doctor White, and said he had come to see 'the thyroid
+case.' When they left we argued about the matter, neither of us
+knowing which was considered `suspi-
+
+{190}
+
+cious.' She insisted it was she, and, as it happened, she was
+right. Imagine any one thinking Alice Paul needed to be `under
+observation!' The thick-headed idiots!"
+
+"Yesterday was a bad day for me in feeding. I was vomiting
+continually during the process. The tube has developed an
+irritation somewhere that is painful.
+
+"Never was there a sentence[1] like ours for such an offense as
+ours, even in England. No woman ever got it over there even for
+tearing down buildings. And during all that agitation we were
+busy saying that never would such things happen in the United
+States. The men told us they would not endure such
+frightfulness."
+
+"Mary Beard and Helen Todd were allowed to stay only a minute,
+and I cried like a fool. I am getting over that habit, I think.
+
+"I fainted again last night. I just fell flop over in the
+bathroom where I was washing my hands and was led to bed when I
+recovered, by a nurse. I lost. consciousness just as I got there
+again. I felt horribly faint until 12 o'clock, then fell asleep
+for awhile."
+
+"I was getting frantic because you seemed to think Alice was with
+me in the hospital. She was in the psychopathic ward. The same
+doctor feeds us both, and told me. Don't let them tell you we
+take this well. Miss Paul vomits much. I do, too, except when I'm
+not nervous, as I have been every time against my will. I try to
+be less feeble-minded. It's the nervous reaction, and I can't
+control it much. I don't imagine bathing one's food in tears very
+good for one.
+
+"We think of the coming feeding all day. It is horrible.
+
+[1]Sentence of seven months for "obstructing traffic."
+
+{191}
+
+The doctor thinks I take it well. I hate the thought of Alice
+Paul and the others if I take it well."
+
+"We still get no mail; we are `insubordinate.' It's strange,
+isn't it; if you ask for food fit to eat, as we did, you are
+`insubordinate'; and if you refuse food you are `insubordinate.'
+Amusing. I am really all right. If this continues very long I
+perhaps won't be. I am interested to see how long our so-called
+`splendid American men' will stand for this form of discipline.
+
+"All news cheers one marvelously because it is hard to feel
+anything but a bit desolate and forgotten here in this place.
+
+"All the officers here know we are making this hunger strike that
+women fighting for liberty may be considered political prisoners;
+we have told them. God knows we don't want other women ever to
+have to do this over again."
+
+There have been sporadic and isolated cases of hunger strikes in
+this country but to my knowledge ours was the first to be
+organized and sustained over a long period of time. We shall see
+in subsequent chapters how effective this weapon was.
+
+{192}
+
+Chapter 11
+
+Administration Terrorism
+
+The Administration tried in another way to stop picketing. It
+sentenced the leader, Alice Paul, to the absurd and desperate
+sentence of seven months in the Washington jail for "obstructing
+traffic."
+
+With the "leader" safely behind the bars for so long a time, the
+agitation would certainly weaken! So thought the Administration!
+To their great surprise, however, in the face of that reckless
+and extreme sentence, the longest picket line of the entire
+campaign formed at the White House in the late afternoon of
+November 10th. Forty-one women picketed in protest against this
+wanton persecution of their leader, as well as against the delay
+in passing the amendment. Face to face with an embarrassing
+number of prisoners the Administration used its wits and decided
+to reduce the number to a manageable size before imprisoning this
+group. Failing of that they tried still another way out. They
+resorted to imprisonment with terrorism.
+
+In order to show how widely representative of the nation this
+group of pickets was, I give its personnel complete:
+
+First Group
+
+New York-Mrs. John	Winters Brannan, Miss Belle
+Sheinberg, Mrs. L. H. Hornsby, Mrs. Paula Jakobi, Mrs. Cyn-
+thia Cohen, Miss M. Tilden Burritt, Miss Dorothy Day, Mrs.
+Henry Butterworth, Miss Cora Week, Mrs. P. B. Johns, Miss
+
+
+{193}
+
+Elizabeth Hamilton, Mrs. Ella O. Guilford, New York City; Miss
+Amy Juengling, Miss Hattie Kruger, Buffalo.
+
+Second Group
+
+Massachusetts-Mrs. Agnes H. Morey, Brookline; Mrs. William Bergen
+and Miss Camilla Whitcomb, Worcester; Miss Ella Findeisen,
+Lawrence; Miss L. J. C. Daniels, Boston.
+New Jersey-Mrs. George Scott, Montclair.
+Pennsylvania-Mrs. Lawrence Lewis, Miss Elizabeth McShane, Miss
+Katherine Lincoln, Philadelphia.
+
+Third Group
+
+California-Mrs. William Kent, Kentfield.
+Oregon-Miss Alice Gram, Miss Betty Gram, Portland.
+Utah-Mrs. R. B. Quay, Mrs. T. C. Robertson, Salt Lake City.
+Colorado-Mrs. Eva Decker, Colorado Springs, Mrs. Genevieve
+Williams, Manitou.
+
+Fourth Group
+
+Indiana-Mrs. Charles W. Barnes, Indianapolis.
+Oklahoma-Mrs. Kate Stafford, Oklahoma City.
+Minnesota-Mrs. J. H. Short, Minneapolis.
+Iowa-Mrs. A. N. Beim, Des Moines; Mrs. Catherine Martinette,
+Eagle Grove.
+
+Fifth Group
+
+New York-Miss Lucy Burns, New York City.
+District of Columbia-Mrs. Harvey Wiley.
+Louisiana-Mrs. Alice M. Cosu, New Orleans.
+Maryland-Miss Mary Bartlett Dixon, Easton; Miss Julia Emory,
+Baltimore.
+Florida-Mrs. Mary I. Nolan, Jacksonville.
+
+There were exceptionally dramatic figures in this group. Mrs.
+Mary Nolan of Florida, seventy-three years old, frail in
+
+{194}
+
+health but militant in spirit, said she had come to take her
+place with the women struggling for liberty in the same spirit
+that her revolutionary ancestor, Eliza Zane, had carried bullets
+to the fighters in the war for independence.
+
+Mrs. Harvey Wiley looked appealing and beautiful as she said in
+court, "We took this action with great consecration of spirit,
+with willingness to sacrifice personal liberty for al] the women
+of the country."
+
+Judge Mullowny addressed the prisoners with many high-sounding
+words about the seriousness of obstructing the traffic in the
+national capital, and inadvertently slipped into a discourse on
+Russia, and the dangers of revolution. We always wondered why the
+government was not clever enough to eliminate political
+discourses, at least during trials, where the offenders were
+charged with breaking a slight regulation. But their minds were
+too full of the political aspect of our offense to conceal it.
+"The truth of the situation is that the court has not been given
+power to meet it," the judge lamented. "It is very, very
+puzzling-I find you guilty of the offense charged, but will take
+the matter of sentence under advisement."
+
+And so the "guilty" pickets were summarily released.
+
+The Administration did not relish the incarceration of forty-one
+women for another reason than limited housing accommodations.
+Forty-one women representing sixteen states in the union might
+create a considerable political dislocation. But these same
+forty-one women were determined to force the Administration to
+take its choice. It could allow them to continue their peaceful
+agitation or it could stand the reaction which was bound to come
+from imprisoning them. And so the forty-one women returned to the
+White House gates to resume' their picketing. They stood guard
+several minutes before the police, taken unawares, could summon
+sufficient force to arrest them, and commandeer enough cars to
+carry them to police headquarters. As the Philadelphia North
+American pointed
+
+{195}
+
+out: "There was no disorder. The crowd waited with interest and
+in a noticeably friendly spirit to see what would happen. There
+were frequent references to the pluck of the silent sentinels."
+
+The following morning the women were ordered by Judge Mullowny to
+"come back on Friday. I am not yet prepared to try the case."
+
+Logic dictated that either we had a right to stand at the gates
+with our banners or we did not have that right; but the
+Administration was not interested in logic. It had to stop
+picketing. Whether this was done legally or illegally, logically
+or illogically, clumsily or dexterously, was of secondary
+importance. Picketing must be stopped!
+
+Using their welcome release to continue their protest, the women
+again marched with their banners to the White House in an attempt
+to picket. Again they were arrested. No one who saw that line
+will ever forget the impression it made, not only on friends of
+the suffragists, but on the general populace of Washington, to
+see these women force with such magnificent defiance the hand of
+a wavering Administration. On the following morning they were
+sentenced to from six days to six months in prison. Miss Burns
+received six months.
+
+In pronouncing the lightest sentence upon Mrs. Nolan, the judge
+said that he did so on account of her age. He urged her, however,
+to pay her fine, hinting that jail might be too severe on her and
+might bring on death. At this suggestion, tiny Mrs. Nolan pulled
+herself up on her toes and said with great dignity: "Your Honor,
+I have a nephew fighting for democracy in France. He is offering
+his life for his country. I should be ashamed if I did not join
+these brave women in their fight for democracy in America. I
+should be proud of the honor to die in prison for the liberty of
+American women." Even the judge seemed moved by her beautiful and
+simple spirit.
+
+In spite of the fact that the women were sentenced to serve
+
+{196}
+
+their sentences in the District Jail, where they would join Miss
+Paul and her companions, all save one were immediately sent to
+Occoquan workhouse.
+
+It had been agreed that the demand to be treated as political
+prisoners, inaugurated by previous pickets, should be continued,
+and that failing to secure such rights they would unanimously
+refuse to eat food or do prison labor.
+
+Any words of mine would be inadequate to tell the story of the
+prisoners' reception at the Occoquan workhouse. The following is
+the statement of Mrs. Nolan, dictated upon her release, in the
+presence of Mr. Dudley Field Malone:
+
+It was about half past seven at night when we got to Occoquan
+workhouse. A woman [Mrs. Herndon] was standing behind a desk when
+we were brought into this office, and there were five or six men
+also in the room. Mrs. Lewis, who spoke for all of us, . . .
+;said she must speak to Whittaker, the superintendent of the
+place.
+
+"You'll sit here all night, then," said Mrs. Herndon.
+
+I saw men begin to come upon the porch, but I didn't think
+anything about it. Mrs. Herndon called my name, but I did not
+answer. . . '
+
+Suddenly the door literally burst open and Whittaker burst in
+like a tornado; some men followed him. We could see a crowd of
+them on the porch. They were not in uniform. They looked as much
+like tramps as anything. They seemed to come in-and in-and in.
+One had a face that made me think of an ourang-outang. Mrs. Lewis
+stood up. Some of us had been sitting and lying on the floor, we
+were so tired. She had hardly begun to speak, saying we demanded
+to be treated as political prisoners, when Whittaker said:
+
+"You shut up. I have men here to handle you." Then he shouted,
+"Seize her!" I turned and saw men spring toward her, and then
+some one screamed, "They have taken Mrs. Lewis."
+
+A man sprang at me and caught me by the shoulder. I am used to
+remembering a bad foot, which I have had for years, and I
+remember saying, "I'll come with you; don't drag me;
+
+{197}
+
+I have a lame foot." But I was jerked down the steps and away
+into the dark. I didn't have my feet on the ground. I guess that
+saved me. I heard Mrs. Cosu, who was being dragged along with me,
+call, "Be careful of your foot."
+
+Out of doors it was very dark. The building to which they took us
+was lighted up as we came to it. I only remember the American
+flag flying above it because it caught the light from a window in
+the wing. We were rushed into a large room that we found opened
+on a large hall with stone cells on each side. They were
+perfectly dark. Punishment cells is what they call them. Mine was
+filthy. It had no window save a slip at the top and no furniture
+but an iron bed covered with a thin straw pad, and an open toilet
+flushed from outside the cell . . . .
+
+In the hall outside was a man called Captain Reems. He had on a
+uniform and was brandishing a thick stick and shouting as we were
+shoved into the corridor, "Damn you, get in here."
+
+I saw Dorothy Day brought in. She is a frail girl. The two men
+handling her were twisting her arms above her head. Then suddenly
+they lifted her up and banged her down over the arm of an iron
+bench-twice. As they ran me past, she was lying there with her
+arms out, and we heard one of the men yell, "The suffrager! My
+mother ain't no suffrager. I'll put you through ."
+
+At the end of the corridor they pushed me through a door. Then I
+lost my balance and fell against the iron bed. Mrs. Cosu struck
+the wall. Then they threw in two mats and two dirty blankets.
+There was no light but from the corridor. The door was barred
+from top to bottom. The walls and floors were brick or stone
+cemented over. Mrs. Cosu would not let me lie on the floor. She
+put me on the couch and stretched out on the floor on one of the
+two pads they threw in. We had only lain there a few minutes,
+trying to get our breath, when Mrs. Lewis, doubled over and
+handled like a sack of something, was literally thrown in. Her
+head struck the iron bed. We thought she was dead. She didn't
+move. We were crying over her as we lifted her to the pad on my
+bed, when we heard Miss Burns call:
+
+"Where is Mrs. Nolan?"
+
+I replied, "I am here."
+
+{198}
+
+Mrs. Cosu called out, "They have just thrown Mrs. Lewis in here,
+too."
+
+At this Mr. Whittaker came to the door and told us not to dare to
+speak, or he would put the brace and bit in our mouths and the
+straitjacket on our bodies. We were so terrified we kept very
+still. Mrs. Lewis was not unconscious; she was only stunned. But
+Mrs. Cosu was desperately ill as the night wore on. She had a bad
+heart attack and was then vomiting. We called and called. We
+asked them1to send our own doctor, because we thought she was
+dying . . . . They [the guards paid no attention. A cold wind
+blew in on us from the outside, and we three lay there shivering
+and only half conscious until morning.
+
+"One at a time, come out," we heard some one call at the barred
+door early in the morning. I went first. I bade them both good-
+by. I didn't know where I was going or whether I would ever see
+them again. They took me to Mr. Whittaker's office, where he
+called my name.
+
+"You're Mrs. Mary Nolan," said Whittaker.
+
+"You're posted," said I.
+
+"Are you willing to put on prison dress and go to the workroom?"
+said he.
+
+I said, "No."
+
+"Don't you know now that I am Mr. Whittaker, the superintendent?"
+he asked.
+
+"Is there any age limit to your workhouse?" I said. "Would a
+woman of seventy-three or a child of two be sent here?"
+
+I think I made him think. He motioned to the guard.
+
+"Get a doctor to examine her," he said.
+
+In the hospital cottage I was met by Mrs. Herndon and taken to a
+little room with two white beds and a hospital table.
+
+"You can lie down if you want to," she said.
+
+I took off my coat and hat. I just lay down on the bed and fell
+into a kind of stupor. It was nearly noon and I had had no food
+offered me since the sandwiches our friends brought us in the
+courtroom at noon the day before.
+
+The doctor came and examined my heart. Then he examined my lame
+foot. It had a long blue bruise above the ankle, where they had
+knocked me as they took me across the night
+
+{199}
+
+before. He asked me what caused' the bruise. I said, "Those
+fiends when they dragged me to the cell last night." It was
+paining me. He asked if I wanted liniment and I said only hot
+water. They brought that, and I noticed they did not lock the
+door. A negro trusty was there. I fell back again into the same
+stupor.
+
+The next day they brought me some toast and a plate of food, the
+first I had been offered in over 36 hours. I just looked at the
+food and motioned it away. It made me sick . . . . I was released
+on the sixth day and passed the dispensary as I came out. There
+were a group of my friends, Mrs. Brannan and Mrs. Morey and many
+others. They had on coarse striped dresses and big, grotesque,
+heavy shoes. I burst into tears as they led me away.
+
+(Signed) MARY I. NOLAN.
+November 21, 1917,
+
+The day following their commitment to Occoquan Mr. O'Brien, of
+counsel, was directed to see the women, to ascertain their
+condition. Friends and relatives were alarmed, as not a line of
+news had been allowed to penetrate to the world. Mr. O'Brien was
+denied admission and forced to come back to Washington without
+any report whatsoever.
+
+The next day Mr. O'Brien again attempted to see his clients, as
+did also the mother of Miss Matilda Young, the youngest prisoner
+in Mr. Whittaker's care, and Miss Katherine Morey, who went
+asking to see her mother. Miss Morey was held under armed guard
+half a mile from the prison. Admission was denied to all of them.
+
+The terrible anxiety at Headquarters was not relieved the third
+day by a report brought from the workhouse by one of the marines
+stationed at Quantico Station, Virginia, who had been summoned to
+the workhouse on the night the women arrived. He brought news
+that unknown tortures were going on. Mr. O'Brien immediately
+forced his way through by a court order, and brought back to
+Headquarters the astounding news
+
+{200}
+
+of the campaign of terrorism which had started the moment the
+prisoners had arrived, and which was being continued at that
+moment. Miss Lucy Burns, who had assumed responsibility for the
+welfare of the women, had managed to secrete small scraps of
+paper and a tiny pencil, and jot down briefly the day by day
+events at the workhouse.
+
+This week of brutality, which rivaled old Russia, if it did not
+outstrip it, was almost the blackest page in the Administration's
+cruel fight against women.
+
+Here are some of the scraps of Miss Burn's day-by-day log,
+smuggled out of the workhouse. Miss Burns is so gifted a writer
+that I feel apologetic for using these scraps in their raw form,
+but I know she will forgive me.
+
+WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 14. Demanded to see Superintendent Whittaker.
+Request refused. Mrs. Herndon, the matron, said we would have to
+wait up all night. One of the men guards said he would "put us in
+sardine box and put mustard on us." Superintendent Whittaker came
+at 9 p. m. He refused to hear our demand for political rights.
+Seized by guards from behind, flung off my feet, and shot out of
+the room. All of us were seized by men guards and dragged to
+cells in men's part. Dorothy Day was roughly used-back twisted.
+Mrs. Mary A. Nolan ('73-year-old picket from Jacksonville,
+Florida) flung into cell. Mrs. Lawrence Lewis shot past my cell.
+I slept with Dorothy Day in a single bed. I was handcuffed all
+night and manacled to the bars part of the time for asking the
+others how they were, and was threatened with a straitjacket and
+a buckle gag.
+
+THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 16 . . . . Asked for Whittaker, who came. He
+seized Julia Emory by the back of her neck and threw her into the
+room very brutally. She is a little girl. I asked for counsel to
+learn the status of the case. I was told to "shut up," and was
+again threatened with a straitjacket and a buckle gag. Later I
+was taken to put on prison clothes, refused and resisted
+strenuously. I was then put in a room where delirium tremens
+patients are kept.
+
+{201}
+
+On the seventh day, when Miss Lucy Burns and Mrs. Lawrence Lewis
+were so weak that Mr. Whittaker feared their death, they were
+forcibly fed and taken immediately to the jail in Washington. Of
+the experience Mrs. Lewis wrote:-
+
+I was seized and laid on my back, where five people held me, a
+young colored woman leaping upon my knees, which seemed to break
+under the weight. Dr. Gannon then forced the tube through my lips
+and down my throat, I gasping and suffocating with the agony of
+it. I didn't know where to breathe from and everything turned
+black when the fluid began pouring in. I was moaning and making
+the most awful sounds quite against my will, for I did not wish
+to disturb my friends in the next room. Finally the tube was
+withdrawn. I lay motionless. After a while I was dressed and
+carried in a chair to a waiting automobile, laid on the back seat
+and driven into Washington to the jail hospital. Previous to the
+feeding I had been forcibly examined by Dr. Gannon, I protesting
+that I wished a woman physician.
+
+Of this experience, Miss Burns wrote on tiny scraps of paper:
+
+WEDNESDAY, 12 m. Yesterday afternoon at about four or five, Mrs.
+Lewis and I were asked to go to the operating room. Went there
+and found our clothes. Told we were to go to Washington. No
+reason as usual. When we were dressed, Dr. Gannon appeared, and
+said he wished to examine us. Both refused. Were dragged through
+halls by force, our clothing partly removed by force, and we were
+examined, heart tested, blood pressure and pulse taken. Of course
+such data was of no value after such a struggle. Dr. Gannon told
+me then I must be fed. Was stretched on bed, two doctors, matron,
+four colored prisoners present, Whittaker in hall. I was held
+down by five people at legs, arms, and head. I refused to open
+mouth. Gannon pushed tube up left nostril. I turned and twisted
+my head all I could, but he managed to push it up. It hurts nose
+and throat very much and makes nose bleed freely. Tube drawn out
+covered with blood. Operation leaves one very sick. Food dumped
+directly into stomach feels like a ball
+
+{202}
+
+of lead. Left nostril, throat and muscles of neck very sore all
+night. After this I was brought into the hospital in an
+ambulance. Mrs. Lewis and I placed in same room. Slept hardly at
+all. This morning Dr. Ladd appeared with his tube. Mrs. Lewis and
+I said we would not be forcibly fed. Said he would call in men
+guards and force us to submit. Went away and we were not fed at
+all this morning. We hear them outside now cracking eggs.
+
+With Miss Burns and Mrs. Lewis, who were regarded as leaders in
+the hunger strike protest, removed to the district jail, Mr.
+Whittaker and his staff at Occoquan began a systematic attempt to
+break down the morale of the hunger strikers. Each one was called
+to the mat and interrogated.
+
+"Will you work?"-"Will you put on prison clothes?" "Will you
+eat?"-"Will you stop picketing?"-"Will you go without paying your
+fine and promise never to picket again?"
+
+How baffled he must have been! The answer was definite and final.
+Their resistance was superb.
+
+"One of the few warning incidents during the gray days of our
+imprisonment was the unexpected sympathy and understanding of one
+of the government doctors," wrote Miss Betty Gram of Portland,
+Oregon.
+
+"�This is the most magnificent sacrifice I have ever seen made
+for a principle [he said I never believed that American women
+would care so much about freedom. I have seen women in Russia
+undergo extreme suffering for their ideals, but unless I had seen
+this with my own eyes I never would have believed it. My sister
+hunger struck in Russia, where she was imprisoned for refusing to
+reveal the whereabouts of two of her friends indicted for a
+government offense. She was fed after three days. You girls are
+on your ninth day of hunger strike and your condition is
+critical. It is a great pity that such women should be subjected
+to this treatment. I hope that you will carry your point and
+force the hand of the government soon'."
+
+
+{203}
+
+The mother of Matilda Young, the youngest picket, anxiously
+appealed to Mr. Tumulty, Secretary to President Wilson, and a
+family friend, to be allowed to see the President and ask for a
+special order to visit her daughter. Failing to secure this, she
+went daily to Mr. Tumulty's office asking if he himself would not
+intercede for her. Mr. Tumulty assured her that her daughter was
+in safe hands, that she need give herself no alarm, the stories
+of the inhuman treatment at Occoquan were false, and that she
+must not believe them. Finally Mrs. Young pleaded to be allowed
+to send additional warm clothing to her daughter, whom she knew
+to be too lightly clad for the vigorous temperature of November.
+Mr. Tumulty assured her that the women were properly clothed, and
+refused to permit the clothing to be sent. The subsequent stories
+of the women showed what agonies they had endured, because they
+were inadequately clad, from the dampness of the cells into which
+they were thrown.
+
+Mrs. John Winters Brannan was among the women who endured the
+"night of terror." Mrs. Brannan is the daughter of Charles A.
+Dana, founder of the New York Sun and that great American patriot
+of liberty who was a trusted associate -and counselor of Abraham
+Lincoln. Mrs. Brannan, life-long suffragist, is an aristocrat of
+intellect and feeling, who has always allied herself with
+libertarian movements. This was her second term of imprisonment.
+She wrote a comprehensive affidavit of her experience. After
+narrating the events which led up to the attack, she continues:
+
+Superintendent Whittaker . . . then shouted out in a loud tone of
+voice, "Seize these women, take them off, that one, that one;
+take her off." The guards rushed forward and an almost
+indescribable scene of violent confusion ensued. I . . . saw one
+of the guards seize her [Lucy Burns] by the arms, twist or force
+them back of her, and one or two other guards seize her by the
+shoulders, shaking her violently . . . .
+
+{204}
+
+I then . . took up my heavy sealskin coat, which was lying by,
+and put it on, in order to prepare myself if attacked . . . . I
+was trembling at the time and was stunned with terror at the
+situation as it had developed, and said to the superintendent, "I
+will give my name under protest," and started to walk towards the
+desk whereon lay the books. The superintendent shouted to me,
+"Oh, no, you won't; don't talk about protest; I won't have any of
+that nonsense."
+
+I . . . saw the guards seizing the different women of the party
+with the utmost violence, the furniture being overturned and the
+room a scene of the utmost disturbance. I saw Miss Lincoln lying
+on the floor, with every appearance of having just been thrown
+down by the two guards who were standing over her in a menacing
+attitude. Seeing the general disturbance, I gave up all idea of
+giving my name at the desk, and instinctively joined my
+companions, to go with them and share whatever was in store for
+them. The whole group of women were thrown, dragged or herded out
+of the office on to the porch, down the steps to the ground, and
+forced to cross the road . . . to the Administration Building.
+
+During all of this time, . . . Superintendent Whittaker was . . .
+directing the whole attack. . . .
+
+. . .All of us were thrown into different cells in the men's
+prison, I being put in one with four other women, the cell
+containing a narrow bed and one chair, which was immediately
+removed . . . .
+
+During the time that we were being forced into the cells
+the guards kept up an uproar, shouting, banging the iron
+doors, clanging bars, making a terrifying noise.
+
+I and one of my companions were lying down on the narrow bed, on
+which were a blanket and one pillow. The door of the cell was
+opened and a mattress and a blanket being thrown in, the door was
+violently banged to . . . . My other . . . companions arranged
+the mattress on the floor and lay down, covering themselves with
+the blanket.
+
+. . . I looked across the corridor and saw Miss Lincoln, . and
+asked her whether she was all right, being anxious to know
+whether she had been hurt by the treatment in the office
+building. . . Instantly Superintendent Whittaker rushed forward,
+shouting at me, "Stop that; not another word from your
+
+{205}
+
+mouth, or I will handcuff you, gag you and put you in a
+straitjacket. . .
+
+I wish to state again that the cells into which we were put were
+situated in the men's prison. There was no privacy for the women,
+and if any of us wished to undress we would be subject to the
+view or observation of the guards who remained in the corridor
+and who could at any moment look at us . . . . Furthermore, the
+water closets were in full view of the corridor where
+Superintendent Whittaker and the guards were moving about. The
+flushing of these closets could only be done from the corridor,
+and we were forced to ask the guards to do this for us,-the men
+who had shortly before attacked us . . . .
+
+None of the matrons or women attendants appeared at any time that
+night. No water was brought to us for washing, no food was
+offered to us . . . .
+
+I was exhausted by what I had seen and been through, and spent
+the night in absolute terror of further attack and of what might
+still be in store for us. I thought of the young girls who were
+with us and feared for their safety. The guards
+acted brutal in the extreme, incited to their brutal conduct
+towards us, . . , by the superintendent. I thought of the offense
+with which we had been charged,-merely that of obstructing
+traffic,-and felt that the treatment that we had received was out
+of all proportion to the offense with which we were charged, and
+that the superintendent, the matron and guards would not have
+dared to act towards us as they had acted unless they relied upon
+the support of higher authorities. It seemed to me that
+everything had been done from the time we reached the workhouse
+to terrorize us, and my fear lest the extreme of outrage would be
+worked upon the young girls of our party became intense.
+
+It is impossible for me to describe the terror of that night. . .
+
+The affidavit then continues with the story of how Mrs. Brannan
+was compelled the following morning to put on prison clothes, was
+given a cup of skimmed milk and a slice of toast, and then taken
+to the sewing room, where she was put to work sewing on the
+underdrawers of the male prisoners.
+
+{206}
+
+I was half fainting all of that day and . . . requested
+permission to lie down, feeling so ill . . . . I could not sleep,
+having a sense of constant danger . . . . I was almost paralyzed
+and in wretched physical condition.
+
+On Friday afternoon Mrs. Herndon [matron]. . . led us
+through some woods nearby, for about three-quarters of a mile,
+seven of us being in the party. We were so exhausted and weary
+that we were obliged to stop constantly to rest. On our way back
+from the walk we heard the baying of hounds very near us in the
+woods. The matron said, "You must hurry, the bloodhounds are
+loose." One of the party, Miss Findeisen, asked whether they
+would attack us, to which the matron replied, "That is just what
+they would do," and hurried us along. The baying grew louder and
+nearer at times and then more distant, as the dogs rushed back
+and forth, and this went on until we reached the sewing room. The
+effect of this upon our nerves can better be imagined than
+described . . . .
+
+Every conceivable lie was tried in an effort to force the women
+to abandon their various form of resistance. They were told that
+no efforts were being made from the outside to reach them, and
+that their attorney had been called off the case. Each one was
+told that she was the only one hunger striking. Each one was told
+that all the others had put on prison clothes and were working.
+Although they were separated from one another they suspected the
+lies and remained strong in their resistance. After Mr. O'Brien's
+one visit and the subsequent reports in the press he was
+thereafter refused admission to the workhouse.
+
+The judge had sentenced these women to the jail, but the District
+Commissioners had ordered them committed to the workhouse. It was
+evident that the Administration was anxious to keep this group
+away from Alice Paul and her companions, as they counted on
+handling the rebellion more easily in two groups than one.
+
+Meanwhile the condition of the prisoners in the workhouse grew
+steadily worse. It was imperative that we force the Ad-
+
+{207}
+
+ministration to take them out of the custody of Superintendent
+Whittaker immediately. We decided to take the only course open-to
+obtain a writ of habeas corpus. A hurried journey by counsel to
+United States District Judge Waddill of Norfolk, Virginia,
+brought the writ. It compelled the government to bring the
+prisoners into court and show cause why they should not be
+returned to the district jail. This conservative, Southern judge
+said of the petition for the writ, "It is shocking and blood-
+curdling."
+
+There followed a week more melodramatic than the most stirring
+moving picture film. Although the writ had been applied for in
+the greatest secrecy, a detective suddenly appeared to accompany
+Mr. O'Brien from Washington to Norfolk, during his stay in
+Norfolk, and back to Washington. Telephone wires at our
+headquarters were tapped.
+
+It was evident that the Administration was cognizant of every
+move in this procedure before it was executed. No sooner was our
+plan decided upon than friends of the Administration besought us
+to abandon the habeas corpus proceedings. One member of the
+Administration sent an emissary to our headquarters with the
+following appeal:
+
+"If you will only drop these proceedings, I can absolutely
+guarantee you that the prisoners will be removed from the
+workhouse to the jail in a week:"
+
+"In a week? They may be dead by that time," we answered. "We
+cannot wait."
+
+"But I tell you, you must not proceed."
+
+"Why this mysterious week?" we asked. "Why not tomorrow? Why not
+instantly?"
+
+"I can only tell you that I have a positive guarantee of the
+District Commissioners that the women will be removed," he said
+in conclusion. We refused to grant his request.
+
+There were three reasons why the authorities wished for a week's
+time. They were afraid to move the women in their
+
+{208}
+
+weakened condition and before the end of the week they hoped to
+increase their facilities for forcible feeding at the workhouse.
+They also wished to conceal the treatment of the women, the
+exposure of which would be inevitable in any court proceedings.
+And lastly, the Administration was anxious to avoid opening up
+the whole question of the legality of the very existence of the
+workhouse in Virginia.
+
+Persons convicted in the District for acts committed in violation
+of District law were transported to Virginia-alien territory-to
+serve their terms. It was a moot point whether prisoners were so
+treated with sufficient warrant in law. Eminent jurists held that
+the District had no right to convict a person under its laws and
+commit that person to confinement in another state. They
+contended that sentence imposed upon a person for unlawful acts
+in the District should be executed in the District.
+
+Hundreds of persons who had been convicted in the District of
+Columbia and who had served their sentences in Virginia had been
+without money or influence enough to contest this doubtful
+procedure in the courts. The Administration was alarmed.
+
+We quickened our pace. A member of the Administration rushed his
+attorney as courier to the women in the workhouse to implore them
+not to consent to the habeas corpus proceedings. He was easily
+admitted and tried to extort from one prisoner at a time a
+promise to reject the plan. The women suspected his solicitude
+and refused to make any promise whatsoever without first being
+allowed to see their own attorney.
+
+We began at once to serve the writ. Ordinarily this would be an
+easy thing to do. But for us it developed into a very difficult
+task. A deputy marshal must serve the writ. Counsel sought a
+deputy. For miles around 'Washington, not one was to be found at
+his home or lodgings. None could be reached by telephone.
+
+Meanwhile Mr. Whittaker, had sped from the premises of
+
+{209}
+
+the workhouse to the District, where he kept himself discreetly
+hidden for several days. When a deputy was found, six attempts
+were made to serve the writ. All failed. Finally by a ruse, Mr.
+Whittaker was caught at his home late at night. He was aroused to
+a state of violent temper and made futile threats of reprisal
+when he learned that he must produce the suffrage prisoners at
+the Court in Alexandria, Virginia, on the day of November twenty-
+third.
+
+{210}
+
+Chapter 12
+
+Alice Paul in Prison
+
+Great passions when they run through a whole population,
+inevitably find a great spokesman. A people cannot remain dumb
+which is moved by profound impulses of conviction; and when
+spokesmen and leaders are found, effective concert of action
+seems to follow as naturally. Men spring together for common
+action under a common impulse which has taken hold upon their
+very natures, and governments presently find that they have those
+to reckon with who know not only what they want, but also the
+most effective means of making governments uncomfortable until
+they get it. Governments find themselves, in short, in the
+presence of Agitation, of systematic movements of opinion, which
+do not merely flare up in spasmodic flames and then die down
+again, but burn with an accumulating ardor which can be checked
+and extinguished only by removing the grievances, and abolishing
+the unacceptable institutions which are its fuel. Casual
+discontent can be allayed, but agitation fixed upon conviction
+cannot be. To fight it is merely to augment its force. It burns
+irrepressibly in every public assembly; quiet it there, and it
+gathers head at street corners; drive it thence, and it smolders
+in private dwellings, in social gatherings, in every covert of
+talk, only to break forth more violently than ever because denied
+vent and air. It must be reckoned with . . . .
+
+Governments have been very resourceful in parrying agitation, in
+diverting it, in seeming to yield to it, and then cheating it of
+its objects, in tiring it out or evading it . . . . But the end,
+whether it comes soon or late, is quite certain to be always the
+same.
+
+�Constitutional Government in the United States."
+Woodrow Wilson, Ph.D., LL.D.,
+President of Princeton University.
+
+The special session of the 65th Congress, known as the "War
+Congress," adjourned in October, 1917, having passed every
+measure recommended as a war measure by the President.
+
+In addition, it found time to protect by law migratory birds, to
+appropriate forty-seven million dollars for deepening rivers and
+harbors, and to establish more federal judgeships. No honest
+person would say that lack of time and pressure of
+
+{211}
+
+war legislation had prevented its consideration of the suffrage
+measure. If one-hundredth part of the time consumed by its
+members in spreading the wings of the overworked eagle, and in
+uttering to bored ears "home-made" patriotic verse, had been
+spent in considering the liberty of women, this important
+legislation could have been dealt with. Week after week Congress
+met only for three days, and then often merely for prayer and a
+few hours of purposeless talking.
+
+We had asked for liberty, and had got a suffrage committee
+appointed in the House to consider the pros and cons of suffrage,
+and a favorable report in the Senate from the Committee on Woman
+Suffrage, nothing more.
+
+On the very day and hour of the adjournment of the special
+session of the War Congress, Alice Paul led eleven women to the
+White House gates to protest against the Administration's
+allowing its lawmakers to go home without action on the suffrage
+amendment.
+
+Two days later Alice Paul and her colleagues were put on trial.
+
+Many times during previous trials I had heard the District
+Attorney for the government shake his finger at Miss Paul and
+say, "We'll get you yet . . . . Just wait; and when we do, we'll
+give you a year!"
+
+It was reported from very authentic sources that Attorney General
+Gregory had, earlier in the agitation, seriously considered
+arresting Miss Paul for the Administration, on the charge of
+conspiracy to break the law. We were told this plan was abandoned
+because, as one of the Attorney General's staff put it, "No jury
+would convict her."
+
+However, here she was in their hands, in the courtroom.
+
+Proceedings opened with the customary formality. The eleven
+prisoners sat silently at the bar, reading their morning papers,
+or a book, or enjoying a moment of luxurious idleness, oblivious
+of the comical movements of a perturbed court.
+
+{212}
+
+Nothing in the world so baffles the pompous dignity of a court as
+non-resistant defendants. The judge cleared his throat and the
+attendants made meaningless gestures.
+
+"Will the prisoners stand up and be sworn?"
+
+They will not.
+
+"Will they question witnesses?"
+
+They will not.
+
+"Will they speak in their own behalf ?"
+
+The slender, quiet-voiced Quaker girl arose from her seat. The
+crowded courtroom pressed forward breathlessly. She said calmly
+and with unconcern: "We do not wish to make any plea before this
+court. We do not consider ourselves subject to this court, since
+as an unenfranchised class we have nothing to do with the making
+of the laws which have put us in this position."
+
+What a disconcerting attitude to take! Miss Paul sat down as
+quietly and unexpectedly as she had arisen. The judge moved
+uneasily in his chair. The gentle way in which it was said was
+disarming. Would the judge hold them in contempt? He had not time
+to think. His part of the comedy he had expected to run smoothly,
+and here was this defiant little woman calmly stating that we
+were not subject to the court, and that we would therefore have
+nothing to do with the proceedings. The murmurs had grown to a
+babel of conversation. A sharp rap of the gavel restored order
+and permitted Judge Mullowny to say: "Unfortunately, I am here to
+support the laws that are made by Congress, and, of course, I am
+bound by those laws; and you are bound by them as long as you
+live in this country, notwithstanding the fact that you do not
+recognize the law."
+
+Everybody strained his ears for the sentence. The Administration
+had threatened to "get" the leader. Would they dare?
+
+Another pause!
+
+{213}
+
+"I shall suspend sentence for the time being," came solemnly from
+the judge.
+
+Was it that they did not dare confine Miss Paul? Were they
+beginning actually to perceive the real strength of the movement
+and the protest that would be aroused if she were imprisoned?
+Again we thought perhaps this marked the end of the jailing of
+women.
+
+But though the pickets were released on suspended sentences,
+there was no indication of any purpose on the part of the
+Administration of acting on the amendment. Two groups, some of
+those on suspended sentence, others first offenders, again
+marched to the White House gates. The following motto:
+
+THE TIME HAS COME TO CONQUER OR SUBMIT; FOR US THERE CAN BE	BUT
+ONE CHOICE-WE HAVE MADE IT.
+
+a quotation from the President's second Liberty Loan appeal, was
+carried by Miss Paul.
+
+Dr. Caroline E. Spencer of Colorado carried:
+
+RESISTANCE TO TYRANNY IS OBEDIENCE TO GOD.
+
+All were brought to trial again.
+
+The trial of Miss Paul's group ran as follows:
+
+MR. HART (Prosecuting Attorney for the Government):
+Sergeant Lee, were you on Pennsylvania Avenue near the White
+House Saturday afternoon?
+
+SERGEANT LEE: I was.
+
+MR. HART: At what time?
+
+LEE: About 4:35 in the afternoon.
+
+HART: Tell the court what you saw.
+
+LEE: A little after half-past four, when the department clerks
+were all going home out Pennsylvania Avenue, I saw four
+
+{214}
+
+suffragettes coming down Madison Place, cross the Avenue and
+continue on Pennsylvania Avenue to the gate of the White
+House, where they divided two on the right and two on the left
+side of the gate.
+
+HART: What did you do?
+
+LEE: I made my way through the crowd that was surrounding them
+and told the ladies they were violating the law by standing at
+the gates, and wouldn't they please move on?
+
+HART: Did they move on?
+
+LEE: They did not; and they didn't answer either.
+
+HART: What did you do then?
+
+LEE: I placed them under arrest.
+
+HART: What did you do then?
+
+LEE: I asked the crowd to move on.
+
+Mr. Hart then arose and summing up said: "Your Honor, these women
+have said that they will picket again. I ask you to impose the
+maximum sentence."
+
+Such confused legal logic was indeed drole!
+
+"You ladies seem to feel that we discriminate in making arrests
+and in sentencing you," said the judge heavily. "The result is
+that you force me to take the most drastic means in my power to
+compel you to obey the law."
+
+More legal confusion!
+
+"Six months," said the judge to the first offenders, "and then
+you will serve one month more," to the others.
+
+Miss Paul's parting remark to the reporters who intercepted her
+on her way from the courtroom to begin her seven months' sentence
+was:
+
+"We are being imprisoned, not because we obstructed traffic, but
+because we pointed out to the President the fact that he was
+obstructing the cause of democracy at home, while Americans were
+fighting for it abroad."
+
+I am going to let Alice Paul tell her own story, as she related
+it to me one day after her release:
+
+{215}
+
+It was late afternoon when we arrived at the jail. There we found
+the suffragists who had preceded us, locked in cells.
+
+The first thing I remember was the distress of the prisoners
+about the lack of fresh air. Evening was approaching, every
+window was closed tight. The air in which we would be obliged to
+sleep was foul. There were about eighty negro and white prisoners
+crowded together, tier upon tier, frequently two in a cell. I
+went to a window and tried to open it. Instantly a group of men,
+prison guards, appeared; picked me up bodily, threw me into a
+cell and locked the door. Rose Winslow and the others were
+treated in the same way.
+
+Determined to preserve out health and that of the other
+prisoners, we began a concerted fight for fresh air. The windows
+were about twenty feet distant from the cells, and two sets of
+iron bars intervened between us and the windows, but we
+instituted an attack upon them as best we could. Our tin drinking
+cups, the electric light bulbs, every available article of the
+meagre supply in each cell, including my treasured copy of
+Browning's poems which I had secretly taken in with me, was
+thrown through the windows. By this simultaneous attack from
+every cell, we succeeded in breaking one window before our supply
+of tiny weapons was exhausted. The fresh October air came in like
+an exhilarating gale. The broken window remained untouched
+throughout the entire stay of this group and all later groups of
+suffragists. Thus was won what the "regulars" in jail called the
+first breath of air in their time.
+
+The next day we organized ourselves into a little group for the
+purpose of rebellion. We determined to make it impossible to keep
+us in jail. We determined, moreover, that as long as we were
+there we would keep up an unremitting fight for the rights of
+political prisoners.
+
+One by one little points were conceded to quiet resistance. There
+was the practice of sweeping the corridors in such a way that the
+dust filled the cells. The prisoners would be choking to the
+gasping point, as they sat, helpless, locked in the cells, while
+a great cloud of dust enveloped them from tiers above and below.
+As soon as our tin drinking cups, which were sacrificed in our
+attack upon the windows, were restored to us, we instituted a
+campaign against the dust. Tin cup after tin cup was filled and
+its contents thrown out into the corridor
+
+{216}
+
+from every cell, so that the water began to trickle down from
+tier to tier. The District Commissioners, the Board of Charities,
+and other officials were summoned by the prison authorities.
+Hurried consultations were held. Nameless officials passed by in
+review and looked upon the dampened floor. Thereafter the
+corridors were dampened and the sweeping into the cells ceased.
+And so another reform was won.
+
+There is absolutely no privacy allowed a prisoner in a cell. You
+are suddenly peered at by curious strangers, who look in at you
+all hours of the day and night, by officials, by attendants, by
+interested philanthropic visitors, and by prison reformers, until
+one's sense of privacy is so outraged that one rises in
+rebellion. We set out to secure privacy, but we did not succeed,
+for, to allow privacy in prison, is against all institutional
+thought and habit. Our only available weapon was our blanket,
+which was no sooner put in front of our bars than it was forcibly
+taken down by Warden Zinkhan.
+
+Our meals had consisted of a little almost raw salt pork, some
+sort of liquid-I am not sure whether it was coffee or soup-bread
+and occasionally molasses. How we cherished the bread and
+molasses! We saved it from meal to meal so as to try to
+distribute the nourishment over a longer period, as almost every
+one was unable to eat the raw pork. Lucy Branham, who was more
+valiant than the rest of us, called out from her cell, one day,
+"Shut your eyes tight, close your mouth over the pork and swallow
+it without chewing it. Then you can do it." This heroic practice
+kept Miss Branham in fairly good health, but to the rest it
+seemed impossible, even with our eyes closed, to crunch our teeth
+into the raw pork.
+
+However gaily you start out in prison to keep up a rebellious
+protest, it is nevertheless a terribly difficult thing to do in
+the face of the constant cold and hunger of undernourishment.
+Bread and water, and occasional molasses, is not a diet destined
+to sustain rebellion long. And soon weakness overtook us.
+
+At the end of two weeks of solitary confinement, without any
+exercise, without going outside of our cells, some of the
+prisoners were released, having finished their terms, but five of
+us were left serving seven months' sentences, and two, one month
+sentences. With our number thus diminished to seven,
+
+{217}
+
+the authorities felt able to cope with us. The doors were
+unlocked and we were permitted to take exercise. Rose Winslow
+fainted as soon as she got into the yard, and was carried back to
+her cell. I was too weak to move from my bed. Rose and I were
+taken on stretchers that night to the hospital.
+
+For one brief night we occupied beds in the same ward in the
+hospital. Here we decided upon the hunger strike, as the ultimate
+form of protest left us-the strongest weapon left with which to
+continue within the prison our battle against the Administration.
+
+Miss Paul was held absolutely incommunicado in the prison
+hospital. No attorney, no member of her family, no friend could
+see her. With Miss Burns in prison also it became imperative that
+I consult Miss Paul as to a matter of policy. I was peremptorily
+refused admission by Warden Zinkhan, so I decided to attempt to
+communicate with her from below her window. This was before we
+had established what in prison parlance is known as the "grape-
+vine route." The grape-vine route consists of smuggling messages
+oral or written via a friendly guard or prisoner who has access
+to the outside world.
+
+Just before twilight, I hurried in a taxi to the far-away spot,
+temporarily abandoned the cab and walked past the dismal cemetery
+which skirts the prison grounds. I had fortified myself with a
+diagram of the grounds, and knew which entrance to attempt, in
+order to get to the hospital wing where Miss Paul lay. We had
+also ascertained her floor and room. I must first pick the right
+building, proceed to the proper corner, and finally select the
+proper window.
+
+The sympathetic chauffeur loaned me a very seedy looking overcoat
+which I wrapped about me. Having deposited my hat inside the cab,
+I turned up the collar, drew in my chin and began surreptitiously
+to circle the devious paths leading to a side entrance of the
+grounds. My heart was palpitating, for the authorities had
+threatened arrest if any suffragists were
+
+{218}
+
+found on the prison grounds, and aside from my personal feelings,
+I could not at that moment abandon headquarters.
+
+Making a desperate effort to act like an experienced and trusted
+attendant of the prison, I roamed about and tried not to appear
+roaming. I successfully passed two guards, and reached the
+desired spot, which was by good luck temporarily deserted. I
+succeeded in calling up loudly enough to be heard by Miss Paul,
+but softly enough not to be heard by the guards.
+
+I shall never forget the shock of her appearance at that window
+in the gathering dusk. Everything in the world seemed black-gray
+except her ghost-like face, so startling, so inaccessible. It
+drove everything else from my mind for an instant. But as usual
+she was in complete control of herself. She began to hurl
+questions at me faster than I could answer. "How were the
+convention plans progressing?" . . . "Had the speakers been
+secured for the mass meeting?" . . . "How many women had signed
+up to go out on the next picket line?" And so on.
+
+"Conditions at Occoquan are frightful," said I. "We are planning
+to . . ."
+
+"Get out of there, and move quickly," shouted the guard, who came
+abruptly around the corner of the building. I tried to finish my
+message. "We are planning to habeas corpus the women out of
+Occoquan and have them transferred up here."
+
+"Get out of there, I tell you. Damn you!" By this time he was
+upon me. He grabbed me by the arm and began shaking me. "You will
+be arrested if you do not get off these grounds." He continued to
+shake me while I shouted back, "Do you approve of this plan?"
+
+I was being forced along so rapidly that I was out of range of
+her faint voice and could not hear the answer. I plead with the
+guard to be allowed to go back quietly and speak a few more words
+with Miss Paul, but he was inflexible. Once out of the grounds I
+went unnoticed to the cemetery and sat on a
+
+{219}
+
+tombstone to wait a little while before making another attempt,
+hoping the guard would not expect me to come back. The lights
+were beginning to twinkle in the distance and it was now almost
+total darkness. I consulted any watch and realized that in forty
+minutes Miss Paul and her comrades would again be going through
+the torture of forcible feeding. I waited five minutes-ten
+minutes-fifteen minutes. Then I went back to the grounds again. I
+started through another entrance, but had proceeded only a few
+paces when I was forcibly evicted. Again I returned to the cold
+tombstone. I believe that I never in my life felt more utterly
+miserable and impotent. There were times, as I have said, when we
+felt inordinately strong. This was one of the times when I felt
+that we were frail reeds in the hands of cruel and powerful
+oppressors. My thoughts were at first with Alice Paul, at that
+moment being forcibly fed by men jailers and men doctors. I
+remembered then the man warden who had refused the highly
+reasonable request to visit her, and my thoughts kept right on up
+the scale till I got to the man-President-the pinnacle of power
+against us. I was indeed desolate. I walked back to the hidden
+taxi, hurried to headquarters, and plunged into my work, trying
+all night to convince myself that the sting of my wretchedness
+was being mitigated by activity toward a release from this state
+of affairs.
+
+Later we established daily communication with Miss Paul through
+one of the charwomen who scrubbed the hospital floors. She
+carried paper and pencil carefully concealed upon her. On
+entering Miss Paul's room she would, with very comical stealth,
+first elaborately push Miss Paul's bed against the door, then
+crawl practically under it, and pass from this point of
+concealment the coveted paper and pencil. Then she would linger
+over the floor to the last second, imploring Miss Paul to hasten
+her writing. Faithfully every evening this silent, dusky
+
+{220}
+
+messenger made her long journey after her day's work, and
+patiently waited while I wrote an answering note to be delivered
+to Miss Paul the following morning. Thus it was that while in the
+hospital Miss Paul directed our campaign, in spite of the
+Administration's most painstaking plans to the contrary.
+
+Miss Paul's story continues here from the point where I
+interrupted it.
+
+From the moment we undertook the hunger strike, a policy of
+unremitting intimidation began. One authority after another, high
+and low, in and out of prison, came to attempt to force me to
+break the hunger strike.
+
+"You will be taken to a very unpleasant place if you don't stop
+this," was a favorite threat of the prison officials, as they
+would hint vaguely of the psychopathic ward, and St. Elizabeth's,
+the Government insane asylum. They alternately bullied and
+hinted. Another threat was "You will be forcibly fed immediately
+if you don't stop"-this from Dr. Gannon. There was nothing to do
+in the midst of these continuous threats, with always the "very
+unpleasant place" hanging over me, and so I lay perfectly silent
+on my bed.
+
+After about three days of the hunger strike a man entered my room
+in the hospital and announced himself as Dr. White, the head of
+St. Elizabeth's. He said that he had been asked by District
+Commissioner Gardner to make an investigation. I later learned
+that he was Dr. William A. White, the eminent alienist.
+
+Coming close to my bedside and addressing the attendant, who
+stood at a few respectful paces from him, Dr. White said: "Does
+this case talk?"
+
+"Why wouldn't I talk?" I answered quickly.
+
+"Oh, these cases frequently will not talk, you know," he
+continued in explanation.
+
+"Indeed I'll talk," I said gaily, not having the faintest idea
+that this was an investigation of my sanity.
+
+"Talking is our business," I continued, "we talk to any one on
+earth who is willing to listen to our suffrage speeches."
+
+"Please talk," said Dr. White. "Tell me about suffrage;
+
+{221}
+
+why you have opposed the President; the whole history of your
+campaign, why you picket, what you hope to accomplish by it. Just
+talk freely."
+
+I drew myself together, sat upright in bed, propped myself up for
+a discourse of some length, and began to talk. The stenographer
+whom Dr. White brought with him took down in shorthand everything
+that was said.
+
+I may say it was one of the best speeches I ever made. I recited
+the long history and struggle of the suffrage movement from its
+early beginning and narrated the political theory' of our
+activities up to the present moment, outlining the status of the
+suffrage amendment in Congress at that time. In short, I told him
+everything. He listened attentively, interrupting only
+occasionally to say, "But, has not President Wilson treated you
+women very badly?" Whereupon, I, still unaware that I was being
+examined, launched forth into an explanation of Mr. Wilson's
+political situation and the difficulties he had confronting him.
+I continued to explain why we felt our relief lay with him; I
+cited his extraordinary power, his influence over his party, his
+undisputed leadership in the country, always painstakingly
+explaining that we opposed President Wilson merely because he
+happened to be President, not because he was President Wilson.
+Again came an interruption from Dr. White, "But isn't President
+Wilson directly responsible for the abuses anal indignities which
+have been heaped upon you? You are suffering now as a result of
+his brutality, are you not?" Again I explained that it was
+impossible for us to know whether President Wilson was personally
+acquainted in any detail with the facts of our present condition,
+even though we knew that he had concurred in the early decision
+to arrest our women.
+
+Presently Dr. White took out a small light and held it up to my
+eyes. Suddenly it dawned upon me that he was examining me
+personally; that his interest in the suffrage agitation and the
+jail conditions did not exist, and that he was merely interested
+in my reactions to the agitation and to jail. Even then I was
+reluctant to believe that I was the subject of mental
+investigation and I continued to talk.
+
+But he continued in what I realized with a sudden shock, was an
+attempt to discover in me symptoms of the persecution
+
+{222}
+
+mania. How simple he had apparently thought it would be, to prove
+that I had an obsession on the subject of President Wilson!
+
+The day following he came again, this time bringing with him the
+District Commissioner, Mr. Gardner, to whom he asked me to repeat
+everything that had been said the day before. For the second time
+we went through the history of the suffrage movement, and again
+his inquiry suggested his persecution mania clue? When the
+narrative touched upon the President and his responsibility for
+the obstruction of the suffrage amendment, Dr. White would turn
+to his associate with the remark: "Note the reaction."
+
+Then came another alienist , Dr. Hickling, attached to the
+psychopathic ward in the District Jail, with more threats and
+suggestions, if the hunger strike continued. Finally they
+departed, and I was left to wonder what would happen next.
+Doubtless my sense of humor helped me, but I confess A was not
+without fear of this mysterious place which they continued to
+threaten.
+
+It appeared clear that it was their intention either to discredit
+me, as the leader of the agitation, by casting doubt upon my
+sanity, or else to intimidate us into retreating from the
+hunger strike.
+
+After the examination by the alienists, Commissioner Gardner,
+with whom I had previously discussed our demand for treatment as
+political prisoners, made another visit. "All these things you
+say about the prison conditions may be true," said Mr. Gardner,
+"I am a new Commissioner, and I do not know. You give an account
+of a very serious situation in the jail. The jail authorities
+give exactly the opposite. Now I promise you we will start an
+investigation at once to see who is right, you or they. If it is
+found you are right, we shall correct the conditions at once. If
+you will give up the hunger strike, we will start the
+investigation at once."
+
+"Will you consent to treat the suffragists as political
+prisoners, in accordance with the demands laid before you?" I
+replied.
+
+Commissioner Gardner refused, and I told him that the hunger
+strike would not be abandoned. But they had by no means exhausted
+every possible facility for breaking down our
+
+{223}
+
+resistance. I overheard the Commissioner say to Dr. Gannon on
+leaving, "Go ahead, take her and feed her."
+
+I was thereupon put upon a stretcher and carried into the
+psychopathic ward.
+
+There were two windows in the room. Dr. Gannon immediately
+ordered one window nailed from top to bottom. He then ordered the
+door leading into the hallway taken down and an iron-barred cell
+door put in its place. He departed with the command to a nurse to
+"observe her."
+
+Following this direction, all through the day once every hour,
+the nurse came to "observe" me. All through the night, once every
+hour she came in, turned on an electric light sharp in my face,
+and "observed" me. This ordeal was the most terrible torture, as
+it prevented my sleeping for more than a few minutes at a time.
+And if I did finally get to sleep it was only to be shocked
+immediately into wide-awakeness with the pitiless light.
+
+Dr. Hickling, the jail alienist, also came often to "observe" me.
+Commissioner Gardner and others-doubtless officials came to peer
+through my barred door.
+
+One day a young interne came to take a blood test. I protested
+mildly, saying that it was unnecessary and that I objected. "Oh,
+well," said the young doctor with a sneer and a supercilious
+shrug, "you know you're not mentally competent to decide such
+things." And the test was taken over my protest.
+
+It is scarcely possible to convey to you one's reaction to such
+an atmosphere. Here I was surrounded by people on their way to
+the insane asylum. Some were waiting for their commitment papers.
+Others had just gotten them. And all the while everything
+possible was done to attempt to make me feel that I too was a
+"mental patient."
+
+At this time forcible feeding began in the District Jail. Miss
+Paul and Miss Winslow, the first two suffragists to undertake the
+hunger strike, went through the operation of forcible feeding
+this day and three times a day on each succeeding day until their
+release from prison three weeks later. The
+
+{224}
+
+hunger strike spread immediately to other suffrage prisoners in
+the jail and to the workhouse as recorded in the preceding
+chapter.
+
+One morning [Miss Paul's story continues the friendly face of a
+kindly old man standing on top of a ladder suddenly appeared at
+my window. He began to nail heavy boards across the window from
+the outside. He smiled and spoke a few kind words and told me to
+be of good cheer. He confided to me in a sweet and gentle way
+that he was in prison for drinking, that he had been in many
+times, but that he believed he had never seen anything so inhuman
+as boarding up this window and depriving a prisoner of light and
+air. There was only time for a few hurried moments of
+conversation, as I lay upon my bed watching the boards go up
+until his figure was completely hidden and I heard him descending
+the ladder.
+
+After this window had been boarded up no light came into the room
+except through the top half of the other window, and almost no
+air. The authorities seemed determined. to deprive me of air and
+light.
+
+Meanwhile in those gray, long days, the mental patients in the
+psychopathic ward came and peered through my barred door. At
+night, in the early morning, all through the day there were cries
+and shrieks and moans from the patients. It was terrifying. One
+particularly melancholy moan used to keep up hour after hour,
+with the regularity of a heart beat. I said to myself, "Now I
+have to endure this. I have got to live through this somehow.
+I'll pretend these moans are the noise of an elevated train,
+beginning faintly in the distance and getting louder as it comes
+nearer." Such childish devices were helpful to me.
+
+The nurses could not have been more beautiful in their spirit and
+offered every kindness. But imagine being greeted in the morning
+by a kindly nurse, a new one who had just come on duty, with, "I
+know you are not insane." The nurses explained the procedure of
+sending a person to the insane asylum. Two alienists examine a
+patient in the psychopathic ward, sign an order committing the
+patient to St. Elizabeth's Asylum, and there. the patient is sent
+at the end of one week.
+
+{225}
+
+No trial, no counsel, no protest from the outside world! This was
+the customary procedure.
+
+I began to think as the week wore on that this was probably their
+plan for me. I could not see my family or friends; counsel was
+denied me; I saw no other prisoners and heard nothing of them; I
+could see no papers; I was entirely in the hands of alienists,
+prison officials and hospital staff.
+
+I believe I have never in my life before feared anything or any
+human being. But I confess I was afraid of Dr. Gannon, the jail
+physician. I dreaded the hour of his visit.
+
+"I will show you who rules this place. You think you do. But I
+will show you that you are wrong." Some such friendly greeting as
+this was frequent from Dr. Gannon on his daily round. "Anything
+you desire, you shall not have. I will show you who is on top in
+this institution," was his attitude.
+
+After nearly a week had passed, Dudley Field Malone finally
+succeeded in forcing an entrance by an appeal to court officials
+and made a vigorous protest against confining me in the
+psychopathic ward. He demanded also that the boards covering the
+window be taken down. This was promptly done and again the
+friendly face of the old man became visible, as the first board
+disappeared.
+
+"I thought when I put this up America would not stand for this
+long," he said, and began to assure me that nothing dreadful
+would happen. I cherish the memory of that sweet old man.
+
+The day after Mr. Malone's threat of court proceedings, the
+seventh day of my stay in the psychopathic ward, the attendants
+suddenly appeared with a stretcher. I did not know whither I was
+being taken, to the insane asylum, as threatened, or back to the
+hospital-one never knows in prison where one is being taken, no
+reason is ever given for anything. It turned out to be the
+hospital.
+
+After another week spent by Miss Paul on hunger strike in the
+hospital, the Administration was forced to capitulate. The doors
+of the jail were suddenly opened, and all suffrage prisoners were
+released.
+
+With extraordinary swiftness the Administration's almost
+
+{226}
+
+incredible policy of intimidation had collapsed. Miss Paul had
+been given the maximum sentence of seven months, and at the end
+of five weeks the Administration was forced to acknowledge
+defeat. They were in a most unenviable position. If she and her
+comrades had offended in such degree as to warrant so cruel a
+sentence, (with such base stupidity on their part in
+administering it) she most certainly deserved to be detained for
+the full sentence. The truth is, every idea of theirs had been
+subordinated to the one desire of stopping the picketing
+agitation. To this end they had exhausted all their weapons of
+force.
+
+From my conversation and correspondence with Dr. White, it is
+clear that as an alienist he did not make the slightest
+allegation to warrant removing Miss Paul to the psychopathic
+ward. On the contrary he wrote, "I felt myself in the presence of
+an unusually gifted personality" and . . . "she was wonderfully
+alert and keen . . . possessed of an absolute conviction of her
+cause . . . with industry and courage sufficient to avail herself
+of them [all diplomatic possibilities. He praised the "most
+admirable, coherent, logical and forceful way" in which she
+discussed with him the purpose of our campaign.
+
+And yet the Administration put her in the psychopathic ward and
+threatened her with the insane asylum.
+
+An interesting incident occurred during the latter part of Miss
+Paul's imprisonment. Having been cut off entirely from outside
+communication, she was greatly surprised one night at a late hour
+to find a newspaper man admitted for an interview with her. Mr.
+David Lawrence, then generally accepted as the Administration
+journalist, and one who wrote for the various newspapers
+throughout the country defending the policies of the Wilson
+Administration, was announced. It was equally well known that
+this correspondent's habit was to ascertain the position of the
+leaders on important questions, keeping inti-
+
+{227}
+
+mately in touch with opinion in White House circles at the same
+time.
+
+Mr. Lawrence came, as he said, of his own volition, and not as an
+emissary from the White House. But in view of his close relation
+to affairs, his interview is significant as possibly reflecting
+an Administration attitude at that ,point in the campaign.
+
+The conversation with Miss Paul revolved first about our fight
+for the right of political prisoners, Miss Paul outlining the
+wisdom and justice of this demand.
+
+"The Administration could very easily hire a comfortable house in
+Washington and detain you all there," said Mr. Lawrence, "but
+don't you see that your demand to be treated as' political
+prisoners is infinitely more difficult to grant than to give you
+the federal suffrage amendment? If we give you these privileges
+we shall have to extend them to conscientious objectors and to
+all prisoners now confined for political opinions. This the
+Administration cannot do."
+
+The political prisoners protest, then, had actually encouraged
+the Administration to choose the lesser of two evils some action
+on behalf of the amendment.
+
+"Suppose," continued Mr. Lawrence, "the Administration should
+pass the amendment through one house of Congress next session and
+go to the country in the 1918 elections on that record and if
+sustained in it, pass it through the other house a year from now.
+Would you then agree to abandon picketing?"
+
+"Nothing short of the passage of the amendment through Congress
+will end our agitation," Miss Paul quietly answered for the
+thousandth time.
+
+Since Mr. Lawrence disavows any connection with the
+4dministration in this interview, I can only remark that events
+followed exactly in the order he outlined; that is, the Admin-
+
+{228}
+
+istration attempted to satisfy the women by putting the amendment
+through the House and not through the Senate.
+
+It was during Miss Paul's imprisonment that the forty-one women
+went in protest to the picket line and were sent to the
+workhouse, as narrated in the previous chapter. The terrorism
+they endured at Occoquan ran simultaneously with the attempted
+intimidation of Miss Paul and her group in the jail.
+
+{229}
+
+Chapter 13
+
+Administration Lawlessness Exposed
+
+In August, 1917, when it was clear that the policy of imprisoning
+suffragists would be continued indefinitely, and under longer
+sentences, the next three groups of pickets to be arrested asked
+for a decision from the highest court, the District Court of
+Appeals. Unlike other police courts in the country, there is no
+absolute right of appeal-from the Police Court of the District of
+Columbia. Justice Robb, of the District Court of Appeals, after
+granting two appeals, refused to grant any more, upon the ground
+that he had discretionary power to grant or withhold an appeal.
+When further right of appeal was denied us, and when the
+Administration persisted in arresting us, we were compelled
+either to stop picketing or go to prison.
+
+The first appealed case was heard by the Court of Appeals on
+January 8, 1918, and the decision[1] handed down in favor of the
+defendants on March 4, 1918. This decision was concurred in by
+all three judges, one of whom was appointed by President Wilson,
+a second by President Roosevelt and the third by President Taft.
+
+In effect the decision declared that every one of the 218
+suffragists arrested up to that time was illegally arrested,
+illegally convicted, and illegally imprisoned. The whole policy
+of the Administration in arresting women was by this decision
+held up to the world as lawless. The women could, if they had
+chosen, have filed suits for damages for false arrest and
+imprisonment at once.
+
+[1]See Hunter vs. District of Columbia, 47 App. Cas. (D. C.) p.
+406.
+
+{230}
+
+The appeal cases of the other pickets were ordered dismissed and
+stricken from the records. Dudley Field Malone was chief counsel
+in the appeal.
+
+Another example of ethical, if not legal lawlessness, was shown
+by the Administration in the following incident. Throughout the
+summer and early autumn we had continued to press for an
+investigation of conditions at Occoquan, promised almost four
+months earlier.
+
+October 2nd was the date finally set for an investigation to be
+held in the District Building before the District Board of
+Charities. Armed with 18 affidavits and a score of witnesses as
+to the actual conditions at Occoquan, Attorney Samuel C. Brent
+and Judge J. K. N. Norton, both of Alexandria, Virginia, acting
+as counsel with Mr. Malone, appeared before the Board on the
+opening day and asked to be allowed to present their evidence.
+They were told by the Board conducting the investigation that
+this was merely "an inquiry into the workhouse conditions and
+therefore would be held in secret without reporters or outsiders
+present." The attorneys demanded a public hearing, and insisted
+that the question was of such momentous importance that the
+public was entitled to hear both sides of it. They were told they
+might submit in writing any evidence they wished to bring before
+the Board. They refused to produce testimony for a "star chamber
+proceeding," and refused to allow their witnesses to be heard
+unless they could be heard in public.
+
+Unable to get a public hearing, counsel left the following letter
+with the President of the Board:
+
+Hon. John Joy Edson,
+President Board of Charities,
+Washington, D. C.
+
+Dear Sir:-We are counsel for a large group of citizens, men and
+women, who have in the past been associated with Occoquan work
+house as officials or inmates and who are ready
+
+{231}
+
+to testify to unspeakable conditions of mismanagement, graft,
+sanitary depravity, indignity and brutality at the institution.
+
+We are glad you are to conduct this long-needed inquiry and shall
+cooperate in every way to get at the truth of conditions in
+Occoquan through your investigation, provided you make the
+hearings public, subpoena all available witnesses, including men
+and women now prisoners at Occoquan, first granting them
+immunity, and provided you give counsel an opportunity to examine
+and cross examine all witnesses so called.
+
+We are confident your honorable board will see the justice and
+wisdom of a public inquiry. If charges so publicly made are
+untrue the management of Occoquan work house is entitled to
+public vindication, and if these charges are true, the people of
+Washington and Virginia should publicly know what kind of a
+prison they have in their midst, and the people of the country
+should publicly know the frightful conditions in this institution
+which is supported by Congress and the government of the United
+States.
+
+We are ready with our witnesses and affidavits to aid your
+honorable board in every way, provided you meet the conditions
+above named. But if you insist on a hearing behind closed doors
+we cannot submit our witnesses to a star chamber proceeding and
+shall readily find another forum in which to tell the American
+public the vivid story of the Occoquan work house.
+
+Respectfully yours,
+(Signed)	DUDLEY FIELD MALONE,
+J. K. N. NORTON,
+SAMUEL G. BRENT.
+
+Subsequently the District Board of Charities reported findings on
+their secret investigation. After a lengthy preamble, in which
+they attempted to put the entire blame upon the suffrage
+prisoners, they advised:
+
+That the investigation directed by the Commissioners of the
+District of Columbia be postponed until the conditions of unrest,
+excitement, and disquiet at Occoquan have been overcome:
+
+That the order relieving W. H. Whittaker as superintend-
+
+{232}
+
+ent, temporarily and without prejudice, be revoked, and Mr.
+Whittaker be restored to his position as superintendent:[1]
+
+That the members of the National Woman's Party now at Occoquan be
+informed that unless they obey the rules of the institution and
+discontinue their acts of insubordination and riot, they will be
+removed from Occoquan to the city jail and placed in solitary
+confinement.
+
+In announcing the report to the press the District Commissioners
+stated that they approved the recommendations of the Board of
+Charities "after most careful consideration," and that "as a
+matter of fact, the District workhouse at Occoquan is an
+institution of which the commissioners are proud, and is a source
+of pride to every citizen of the nation's Capital."
+
+That the Administration was in possession of the true facts
+concerning Mr. Whittaker and his conduct in office there can be
+no doubt. But they supported him until the end of their campaign
+of suppression.
+
+Another example of the Administration's lawlessness appeared in
+the habeas corpus proceedings by which we rescued the prisoners
+at the workhouse from Mr. Whittakers custody. The trial occurred
+on November 23rd.
+
+No one present can ever forget the tragi-comic scene enacted in
+the little Virginia court room that cold, dark November morning.
+There was Judge Waddill[2]-who had adjourned his sittings in
+Norfolk to hasten the relief of the prisoners-a mild mannered,
+sweet-voiced Southern gentleman. There was Superintendent
+Whittaker in his best Sunday clothes, which mitigated very little
+the cruel and nervous demeanor which no one who has come under
+his control will ever forget. His thugs were there, also dressed
+in their best clothes, which only exaggerated their coarse
+features and their shifty eyes. Mrs. Herndon, the thin-lipped
+matron, was there, looking nervous
+
+[1]Pending the investigation Mr. Whittaker was suspended, and his
+first assistant, Alonzo Tweedale, served in the capacity of
+superintendent.
+
+[2]Appointed to the bench by President Roosevelt.
+
+{233}
+
+and trying to seem concerned about the prisoners in her charge.
+Warden Zinkhan was there seeming worried at the prospect of the
+prisoners being taken from the care of Superintendent Whittaker
+and committed to him-he evidently unwilling to accept the
+responsibility.
+
+Dudley Field Malone and Mr. O'Brien of counsel, belligerent in
+every nerve, were ready to try the case. The two dapper
+government attorneys, with immobile faces, twisted nervously in
+their chairs. There was the bevy of newspaper reporters
+struggling for places in the little courtroom, plainly
+sympathetic, for whatever they may have had to write for the
+papers they knew that this was a battle for justice against
+uneven odds. There were as many eager spectators as could be
+crowded into so small an area. Upon the whole an air of
+friendliness prevailed in this little court at 'Alexandria which
+we had never felt in the Washington courts. And the people there
+experienced a shock when the slender file of women, haggard, red-
+eyed, sick, came to the bar. Some were able to walk to their
+seats; others were so weak that they had to be stretched out 6n
+the wooden benches with coats propped under their heads for
+pillows. Still others bore the marks of the attack of the "night
+of terror." Many of the prisoners lay back in their chairs hardly
+conscious of the proceedings which were to. free them. Mrs.
+Brannan collapsed utterly and had to be carried to a couch in an
+ante-room.
+
+It was discovered just as the trial was to open that Miss Lucy
+Burns and Mrs. Lawrence Lewis, who it will be remembered had been
+removed to the jail before the writ had been issued, were absent
+from among the prisoners.
+
+"They are too ill to be brought into court," Mr. Whittaker
+replied to the attorneys for the defense.
+
+"We demand that they be brought into court at our risk," answered
+counsel for the defense.
+
+The government's attorneys sustained Mr. Whittaker in
+
+{234}
+
+not producing them. It was clear that the government did not
+her wish to have Miss Burns with the marks still fresh on
+wrists from her manacling and handcuffing, and Mrs. Lewes with a
+fever from the shock of the first night, brought before the judge
+who was to decide the case.
+
+"If it was necessary to handcuff Miss Burns to the bars of her
+cell, we consider her well enough to appear," declared Mr.
+O'Brien. . "We consider we ought to know what has happened to all
+of these petitioners since these events. While I was at Occoquan
+Sunday endeavoring to see my clients, Mr. Whittaker was trying to
+induce the ladies, who, he says, are too sick to be brought here,
+to dismiss this proceeding. Failing in that, he refused to let me
+see them, though I had an order from Judge Mullowny, and they
+were taken back to the District of Columbia. From that time to
+this, though I had your Honor's order which you signed in
+Norfolk, the superintendent of the Washington jail also refused
+to allow me to see my clients, saying that your order had no
+effect in the District of Columbia."
+
+"If there are any petitioners that you claim have not been
+brought here because they have been carried beyond the
+jurisdiction of the courts, I think we should know it," ruled the
+court. "Counsel for these ladies want them here; and they say
+that they ought to be here and are well enough to b here; that
+the respondent here has spirited them away and put them beyond
+the jurisdiction of the court. On that showing, unless there is
+some reason why they ought not to come, they should be here."
+
+Miss Burns and Mrs. Lewes were accordingly ordered brought to
+court.
+
+This preliminary skirmish over, the opening discussion revolved
+about a point of law as to whether the Virginia District Court
+had authority to act in this case.
+
+After hearing both sides on this point, Judge Waddill said:
+
+{235}
+
+"These are not state prisoners; they are prisoners of the
+District of Columbia. They are held by an order of the court
+claiming to have jurisdiction in the District of Columbia.
+But they are imprisoned in the Eastern District of Virginia, in
+Occoquan workhouse which, very much to our regret, is down
+here, and is an institution that we alone have jurisdiction over.
+No court would fail to act when such a state of affairs as is set
+forth in this petition is brought to its attention.
+
+"Here was a case concerning twenty-five or thirty ladies. The
+statement as to their treatment was bloodcurdling; it was
+shocking to man's ideas of humanity if it is true. They are here
+in court, and yet your answer denies all these facts which they
+submit, It is a question whether you can do that anal yet deny
+these petitioners the right of testimony."
+
+Proceeding with this argument, the defense contended that the act
+itself of the District Commissioners in sending prisoners to the
+Occoquan 	workhouse was illegal; that no formal transfer from one
+institution to another had ever been made, the sentencing papers
+distinctly stating that all prisoners were committed to "the
+Washington Asylum and Jail."
+
+"We deny that the records of the Commissioners of the District of
+Columbia can show that there was any order made by the Board for
+the removal of these women. The liberty of a citizen cannot be so
+disregarded and trifled with that any police official or jailer
+may at his own volition, commit and hold him in custody and
+compel him to work. The liberty of the people depends upon a
+broader foundation."
+
+Repeated questions brought out from Mr. Zinkhan, Warden of the
+Jail, the fact that the directions given by the Commissioners to
+transfer prisoners from the jail to Occoquan rested entirely upon
+a verbal order given "five or six years ago."
+
+"Do you really mean," interrupted the court, "that the only
+authority you have on the part of the Commissioners of
+
+{236}
+
+the District of Columbia to transfer parties down to Occoquan is
+a verbal order made five or six years ago?"
+
+Questions by the defense brought out the fact also that Mr.
+Zinkhan could remember in detail the first oral orders he had
+received for such a transfer, dating back to 1911, although he
+could not remember important details as to how he had received
+the orders concerning the suffragists committed to his care! He
+only knew that "orders were oral and explicit."
+
+Q. [By defense in court You say the three commissioners were
+present?
+
+A. Sure.
+
+Q. Who else was present?
+
+A. I am not sure just now who else was present. I remember
+somebody else was there, but I don't remember just who . . . .
+
+Q. Were the three commissioners present at the time Mr.
+[Commissioner] Brownlow gave you this order?
+
+A. Yes.
+
+Q. You say it was a verbal order of the Commissioners?
+
+A. Yes.
+
+Q. Was the clerk of the Board present?
+
+A. I think not.
+
+Q. And you cannot remember who was present aside from the three
+Commissioners?
+
+A. No, I cannot remember just now.
+
+Q. Try to recollect who was present at that meeting when this
+order was given, aside from the Commissioners. There was somebody
+else present?
+
+A. It is my impression that there was some one other person
+present, but I am not sure just now who it was.
+
+Q. It was some official, some one well known, was it not . . . .?
+
+A. I am not sure. . . .
+
+{237}
+
+[This conference was one in which Mr. McAdoo was reported to have
+participated.]
+
+The gentle judge was distressed when in answer to a question by
+the government's attorney as to what Mr. Zinkhan did when the
+prisoners were given into his charge, the warden replied:
+
+A. I heard early in the afternoon of the sentence, and I did not
+get away from the Commissioners' meeting until nearly 4 o'clock
+and I jumped in my machine and went down to the jail, and I think
+at that time six of them had been delivered there and were in the
+rotunda of the jail, and a few minutes after that a van load
+came. The remaining number of ten or twelve had not arrived, but
+inasmuch as the train had to leave at 5 o'clock and there would
+not be time enough to receive them in the jail and get them there
+in time for the train, I took the van that was there right over
+to the east end of the Union Station, and I think I took some of
+the others in my machine and another machine we had there carried
+some of the others over, and we telephoned the other van at
+Police Court to go direct to the east end of the Union Station
+and to deliver them to me. I had of course the commitments of
+those that were brought up to the jail-about 20 of them-and
+received from the officer of the court the other commitments of
+the last van load, and there I turned all of them except one that
+I kept back . . over to the receiving and discharging officer
+representing the District Workhouse, and they were taken down
+there that evening.
+
+There followed some questioning of the uneasy warden as to how he
+used this power to decide which prisoners should remain in jail
+and which should be sent to Occoquan. Warden Zinkhan stuttered
+something about sending "all the able bodied prisoners to
+Occoquan-women able to perform useful work"-and that
+"humanitarian motives" usually guided him in his selection. It
+was a difficult task for the warden for he had to
+
+{238}
+
+conceal just why the suffrage prisoners were sent to Occoquan,
+and in so doing had to invent "motives" of his own.
+
+Q. [By defense.] Mr. Zinkhan, were you or were you not actuated
+by humanitarian motives when you sent this group of women to the
+Occoquan Workhouse?
+
+A. Yes.
+
+Q. Were you actuated by humanitarian motives when you sent Mrs.
+Nolan, a woman of 73 years, to the workhouse? Did you think that
+she could perform some service at Occoquan that it was necessary
+to get her out of district jail and go down there?
+
+Warden Zinkhan gazed at the ceiling, shifted in his chair and
+hesitated to answer. The question was repeated, and finally the
+warden admitted uncomfortably that he believed he was inspired by
+"humanitarian motives."
+
+"Mrs. Nolan, will you please stand up?" called out Mr. Malone.
+
+All eyes turned toward the front row, where Mrs. Nolan slowly got
+to her feet. The tiny figure of a woman with pale face and snowy
+hair, standing out dramatically against her black bonnet and
+plain black dress, was answer enough.
+
+Warden Zinkhan's answers after that came even more haltingly. He
+seemed inordinately fearful of trapping himself by his own words.
+
+"The testimony has brought out the fact," the judge remarked at
+this point, "that two of these ladies were old and one of them is
+a delicate lady. Her appearance would indicate that she is not
+strong. Under this rule, if one of these ladies had been eighty
+years old and unable to walk she would have gone along with the
+herd and nobody would have dared to say `ought this to be done?'
+Would the Commissioners in a case of that sort, if they gave
+consideration to it, think of sending such an individual there?
+Was not that what the law expected them to do, and not take them
+off in droves and inspect them
+
+{239}
+
+at the Union Station and shoot them on down? Yet that is about
+what was done in this case."
+
+In summing up this phase of the case in an eloquent appeal, Mr.
+Malone said:
+
+"Can the Commissioners, with caprice and no order and no record
+except that orally given five or six years ago, and one which
+this warden now says was given `oral and explicit,' transfer
+defendants placed in a particular institution, and under a
+particular kind of punishment arbitrarily to another institution,
+and add to their punishment?
+
+"Even if we admit that the Commissioners had power, did Congress
+ever contemplate that any District Commissioners would dare to
+exercise power affecting the life and health of defendants in
+this fashion? Did Congress ever contemplate that, by mere whim,
+these things could be done? I am sure it did not, and even on the
+admission of the government that they had the power, they have
+exercised this power in such a scandalous fashion that it is
+worthy of the notice of the court and worthy of the remedy which
+we seek-the removal of the suffrage prisoners from the Occoquan
+workhouse."
+
+After a brief recess, Judge Waddill rendered this decision: "The
+locking up of thirty human beings is an unusual sort of thing and
+judicial officers ought to be required to stop long enough to see
+whether some prisoners ought to go and some not; whether some
+might not be killed by going; or whether they should go dead or
+alive. This class o f prisoners and this number of prisoners
+should haze been given special consideration. There cannot be any
+controversy about this question . . . . You ought to lawfully
+lock them up instead of unlawfully locking them up-if they are to
+be locked up . . . . The petitioners are, therefore, one and all,
+in the Workhouse 'without semblance of authority or legal process
+of any kind . . . . and they will accordingly be remanded to the
+custody of the Superintendent of the Washington Asylum and Jail."
+. . .
+
+{240}
+
+It having been decided that the prisoners were illegally detained
+in the workhouse, it was not necessary to go into a discussion of
+the cruelties committed upon the prisoners while there.
+
+The government's attorneys immediately announced that they would
+appeal from the decision of Judge Waddill. Pending such an appeal
+the women were at liberty to be paroled in the custody of
+counsel. But since they had come from the far corners of the
+continent and since some of them had served out almost half of
+their sentence, and did not wish in case of an adverse decision
+on the appeal, to have to return later to undergo the rest of
+their sentence, they preferred to finish their sentences.
+
+These were the workhouse prisoners thus remanded to the jail who
+continued the hunger strike undertaken at the workhouse, and made
+a redoubtable reinforcement to Alice Paul and Rose Winslow and
+their comrades 'on strike in the jail when the former arrived.
+
+{241}
+
+Chapter 14
+
+The Administration Outwitted
+
+With thirty determined women on hunger strike, of whom eight were
+in a state of almost total collapse, the Administration
+capitulated. It could not afford to feed thirty women forcibly
+and risk the social and political consequences; nor could it let
+thirty women starve themselves to death, and likewise take the
+consequences. For by this time one thing was clear, and that was
+that the discipline and endurance of the women could not be
+broken. And so all the prisoners were unconditionally released on
+November 27th and November 28th.
+
+On leaving prison Miss Paul said: "The commutation of sentences
+acknowledges them to be unjust and arbitrary. The attempt to
+suppress legitimate propaganda has failed.
+
+"We hope that no more demonstrations will be necessary, that the
+amendment will move steadily on to passage and ratification
+without further suffering or sacrifice. But what we do depends
+entirely upon what the Administration does. We have one aim: the
+immediate passage of the federal amendment"
+
+Running parallel to the protest made inside the prison, a
+public protest of nation-wide proportions had been made
+against continuing to imprison women. Deputations of in-
+fluential women had waited upon all party leaders, cabinet
+officials, heads of the war boards, in fact every friend of the
+Administration, pointing out that we had broken no law, that
+
+{242}
+
+we were unjustly held, and that .the Administration would suffer
+politically for their handling of the suffrage agitation.
+
+A committee of women, after some lively fencing with the
+Secretary of War, finally drove Mr. Baker to admit that women had
+been sent to prison for a political principle; that they were not
+petty disturbers but part of a great fundamental struggle.
+Secretary Baker said, "This [the suffrage struggle] is a
+revolution. There have been revolutions all through his-
+tory. Some have been justified and some have not. The burden of
+responsibility to decide whether your revolution is justified or
+not is on you. The whole philosophy of your movement seems to be
+to obey no laws until you have a voice in those laws."
+
+At least one member of the Cabinet thus showed that he had caught
+something of the purpose and depth of our movement. He never
+publicly protested, however, against the Administration's policy
+of suppression.
+
+Mr. McAdoo, then Secretary of the Treasury, gave no such evidence
+of enlightenment as Mr. Baker. A committee of women endeavored to
+see him. He was reported "out. But we expect him here soon."
+
+We waited an hour. The nervous private secretary returned to say
+that he had been mistaken. "The Secretary will not be in until
+after luncheon."
+
+"We shall wait," said Mrs. William Kent, chairman of the
+deputation. "We have nothing more important to do to-day than to
+see Secretary McAdoo. We are willing to wait the whole day, if
+necessary, only it is imperative that we see him."
+
+The private secretary's spirits sank. He looked as if he would
+give anything to undo his inadvertence in telling us that the
+Secretary was expected after luncheon! Poor man! We settled down
+comfortably to wait, a formidable looking committee of twenty
+women.
+
+There was the customary gentle embarrassment of attend-
+
+{243}
+
+ants whose chief is in a predicament from which they seem
+powerless to extricate him, but all were extremely courteous. The
+attendant at the door brought us the morning papers to read.
+Gradually groups of men began to arrive and cards were sent in
+the direction of the spot where we inferred the Secretary of the
+Treasury was safely hidden, hoping and praying for our early
+retirement.
+
+Whispered conversations were held. Men disappeared in and out of
+strange doors. Still we waited.
+
+Finally as the fourth hour of our vigil was dragging on, a
+lieutenant appeared to announce that the Secretary was very sorry
+but that he would not be able to see us "at all." We consulted,
+and finally sent in a written appeal, asking for "five minutes of
+his precious time on a matter of grave importance." More waiting!
+Finally a letter was brought to us directed to Mrs. William Kent,
+with the ink of the Secretary of the Treasury's signature still
+wet. With no concealment of contempt, he declared that under no
+circumstances could he speak with women who had conducted such an
+outrageous campaign in such an "illegal" way. We smiled as we
+learned from his pronouncement that "picketing" was "illegal,"
+for we were not supposed to have been arrested for picketing. The
+tone of his letter, its extreme bitterness, tended to confirm
+what we had always been told, that Mr. McAdoo assisted in
+directing the policy of arrests and imprisonment.
+
+I have tried to secure this letter for reproduction but
+unfortunately Mrs. Kent did not save it. We all remember its
+bitter passion, however, and the point it made about our "illegal
+picketing."
+
+Congress convened on December 4th. President Wilson delivered a
+message, restating our aims in the war. He also recommended a
+declaration of a state of war against Austria; the control of
+certain water power sites; export trade-combination; railway
+legislation; and the speeding up of all neces-
+
+{244}
+
+sary appropriation legislation. But he did not mention the
+suffrage amendment. Having been forced to release the prisoners,
+he again rested.
+
+Immediately we called a conference in Washington of the Executive
+Committee and the National Advisory Council of the Woman's Party.
+Past activities were briefly reviewed and the political situation
+discussed. It is interesting to note that the Treasurer's report
+made at this conference showed that receipts in some months
+during the picketing had been double what they were the same
+month the previous year when there was no picketing. In one month
+of picketing the receipts went as high as six times the normal
+amount. For example in July of 1917, when the arrests had just
+begun, receipts for the month totalled $21,628.65 as against
+$8,690.62 for July of 1916. In November, 1917, when the militant
+situation was at its highest point, there was received at
+National Headquarters $81,117.87 as against $15,008.18 received
+in November, 1916. Still there were those who said we had no
+friends!
+
+A rumor that the President would act persisted. But we could not
+rely on rumor. We decided to accelerate him and his
+Administration by filing damage suits amounting to $800,000
+against the District Commissioners, against Warden Zinkhan,
+against Superintendent Whittaker and Captain Reams, a workhouse
+guard.[1] They were brought in no spirit of revenge, but merely
+that the Administration should not be allowed to forget its
+record of brutality, unless it chose to amend its conduct by
+passing the amendment. The suits were brought by the women woo
+suffered the greatest abuse during the "night of terror" at the
+workhouse.
+
+If any one is still in doubt as to the close relation between the
+Court procedure in our case and the President's actions,
+
+[1]We were obliged to bring the suits against individuals, as we
+could not in the law bring them against the government.
+
+{245}
+
+this letter to one of our attorneys in January, 1918, must
+convince him.
+
+My dear Mr. O'Brien:
+
+I wish you would advise me as soon as you conveniently can, what
+will be done with the suffragist cases now pending against
+Whittaker and Reams in the United States District Court at
+Alexandria.
+
+I have heard rumors, the truth of which you will understand
+better than I, that these cases will be dropped if the President
+comes out in favor of woman suffrage. This, I understand, he will
+do and certainly hope so, as I am personally in favor of it and
+have been for many years. But in case of his delay in taking any
+action, will you agree to continue these cases for the present?
+
+Very truly yours,
+
+(Signed) F. H. STEVENS,
+Assistant Corporation Counsel, D. C.
+
+In order to further fortify themselves, the District
+Commissioners, when the storm had subsided, quietly removed
+Warden Zinkhan from the jail and Superintendent Whittaker
+resigned his post at the workhouse, presumably under pressure
+from the Commissioners.
+
+The Woman's Party conference came to a dramatic close during that
+first week in December with an enormous mass meeting in the
+Belasco Theatre in Washington. On that quiet Sunday afternoon, as
+the President came through his gates for his afternoon drive, a
+passageway had to be opened for his motor car through the crowd
+of four thousand people who were blocking Madison Place in an
+effort to get inside the Belasco Theatre. Inside the building was
+packed to the rafters. The President saw squads of police
+reserves, who had been for the past six months arresting pickets
+for him, battling with a crowd that was literally storming the
+theatre in their eagerness to do honor to those who had been
+arrested. Inside there was a fever heat of enthusiasm, bursting
+cheers, and
+
+{246}
+
+thundering applause which shook the building. America has never
+before nor since seen such a suffrage meeting.
+
+Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont, chairman, opened the meeting by saying:
+
+"We are here this afternoon to do honor to a hundred gallant
+women, who have endured the hardship and humiliation of
+imprisonment because they love liberty.
+
+"The suffrage pickets stood at the White House gates for ten
+months and dramatized the women's agitation for political
+liberty. Self-respecting and patriotic American women will no
+longer tolerate a government which denies women the right to
+govern themselves. A flame of rebellion is abroad among women,
+and the stupidity and brutality of the government in this revolt
+have only served to increase its heat.
+
+"As President Wilson wrote, `Governments have been very
+successful in parrying agitation, diverting it, in seeming to
+yield to it and then cheating it, tiring it out or evading it.
+But the end, whether it comes soon or late, is quite certain to
+be the same.' While the government has endeavored to parry, tire,
+divert, and cheat us of our goal, the country has risen in
+protest against this evasive policy of suppression until to-day
+the indomitable pickets with their historic legends stand
+triumphant before the nation."
+
+Mrs. William Kent, who had led the last picket line of forty-one
+women, was chosen to decorate the prisoners.
+
+"In honoring these women, who were willing to go to jail for
+liberty," said Mrs. Kent, "we are showing our love of country and
+devotion to democracy." The long line of prisoners filed past her
+and amidst constant cheers and applause, received a tiny silver
+replica of a cell door, the same that appears in miniature on the
+title page of this book.
+
+As proof of this admiration for what the women had done, the
+great audience in a very few moments pledged $86,826 to continue
+the campaign. Many pledges were made in honor of
+
+{247}
+
+Alice Paul, Inez Milholland, Mrs. Belmont, Dudley Field Malone,
+and all the prisoners. Imperative resolutions calling upon
+President Wilson and his Administration to act, were unanimously
+passed amid an uproar.
+
+{248}
+
+Chapter 15
+
+Political Results
+
+Immediately following the release of the prisoners and the
+magnificent demonstration of public support of them, culminating
+at the mass meeting recorded in the preceding chapter, political
+events happened thick and fast. Committees in Congress acted on
+the amendment. President Wilson surrendered and a date for the
+vote was set.
+
+The Judiciary Committee of the House voted 18 to 2 to report the
+amendment to that body. The measure, it will be remembered, was
+reported to the Senate in the closing days of the previous
+session, and was therefore already before the Senate awaiting
+action.[1]
+
+To be sure, the Judiciary Committee voted to report the amendment
+without recommendation. But soon after, the members of the -
+Suffrage Committee, provision for which had also been made during
+the war session, were appointed. All but four members of this
+committee were in favor of national suffrage, and immediately
+after its formation it met to organize and decided to take the
+suffrage measure out of the hands of the Judiciary Committee and
+to press for a vote.
+
+A test of strength came on December 18th.
+
+On a trivial motion to refer all suffrage bills to the new
+suffrage committee, the vote stood 204 to 10'7. This vote,
+although unimportant in itself, clearly promised victory for the
+amendment in the House. In a few days, Representative Mon-
+
+[1]See Chapter 8.
+
+{249}
+
+dell of Wyoming, Republican, declared that the Republican side of
+the House would give more than a two-thirds majority of its
+members to the amendment.
+
+"It is up to our friends on the Democratic side to see that the
+amendment is not defeated through hostility or indifference on
+their side," said Mr. Mondell.
+
+Our daily poll of the House showed constant gains. Pledges from
+both Democratic and Republican members came thick and fast;
+cabinet members for the first time publicly declared their belief
+in the amendment. A final poll, however, showed that we lacked a
+few votes of the necessary two-thirds majority to pass the
+measure in the House.
+
+No stone was left unturned in a final effort to get the President
+to secure additional Democratic votes to insure the passage of
+the amendment. Finally, on the eve of the vote President Wilson
+made his first declaration of support of the amendment through a
+committee of Democratic Congressmen. During the vote the
+following day Representative Cantrill of Kentucky, Democrat,
+reported the event to the House. He said in part:
+
+It was my privilege yesterday afternoon to be one of a committee
+of twelve to ask the President for advice and counsel on this
+important measure (prolonged laughter and jeers). Mr. Speaker, in
+answer to the sentiment expressed by part of the House, I desire
+to say that at no time and upon no occasion am I ever ashamed to
+confer with Woodrow Wilson upon any important question (laughter,
+applause, and, jeers) and that part of the House that has jeered
+that statement before it adjourns to-day will follow absolutely
+the advice which he gave this committee yesterday afternoon.
+(Laughter and applause.) After conference with the President
+yesterday afternoon he wrote with his own hands the words which I
+now read to you, and each member of the committee was authorized
+by the President to give full publicity to the following:
+
+"The committee found that the President had not felt at liberty
+to volunteer his advice to Members of Congress in this
+
+{250}
+
+important matter, but when we sought his advice (laughter) he
+very frankly and earnestly advised us to vote for the amendment
+as an act of right and justice to the women of the country and o
+f the world."
+
+. . . To my Democratic brethren who have made these halls ring
+with their eloquence in their pleas to stand by the President, I
+will say that now is your chance to stand by the President and
+vote for this amendment, "as' an act of right and justice to the
+women of the country and of the world" . . .
+
+Do you wish to do that which is right and just toward the women
+of your own country? If so, follow the President's advice and
+vote for this amendment. It will not do to follow the President
+in this great crisis in the world's history on those matters only
+which are popular in your own districts. The true test is to
+stand by him, even though your own vote is unpopular at home. The
+acid test for a Member of Congress is for him to stand for right
+and justice even if misunderstood at home at first. In the end,
+right and justice will prevail
+everywhere.
+
+ . . . No one thing connected with the war is of more importance
+at this time than meeting the reasonable demand of millions of
+patriotic and Christian women of the Nation that the amendment
+for woman suffrage be submitted to the States . . . .
+
+The amendment passed the House January 10, 1918, by a vote of 274
+to l36-a two-thirds majority with one vote to spare-exactly forty
+years to a day from the time the suffrage amendment was first
+introduced into Congress, and exactly one year to a day from the
+time the first picket banner appeared at the gates o f the White
+House.
+
+Eighty-three per cent of the Republicans voting on the measure,
+voted in favor of it, while only fifty per cent of the Democrats
+voting, voted for it. Even after the Republicans had pledged
+their utmost strength, more than two-thirds of their membership,
+votes were still lacking to make up the Democratic deficiency,
+and the President's declaration that the measure ought to pass
+the House, produced them from his own
+
+{251}
+
+party. Those who contend that picketing had "set back the
+clock,"-that it did "no good,"-that President Wilson would "not
+be moved by it"-have, we believe, the burden of proof on their
+side of the argument. It is our firm belief that the solid year
+of picketing, with all its political ramifications, did compel
+the President to abandon his opposition and declare himself for
+the measure. I do not mean to say that many things do not
+cooperate in a movement toward a great event. I do mean to say
+that picketing was the most vital force amongst the elements
+which moved President Wilson. That picketing had compelled
+Congress to see the question in terms of political capital is
+also true. From the first word uttered in the House debate, until
+the final roll-call, political expediency was the chief motif.
+
+Mr. Lenroot of Wisconsin, Republican, rose to say:
+
+"May I suggest that there is a distinction between the Democratic
+members of the Committee on Rules and the Republican members, in
+this, that all of the Republican members are for this
+proposition?" This was met with instant applause from the
+Republican side.
+
+Representative Cantrill prefaced his speech embodying the
+President's statement, which caused roars and jeers from the
+opposition, with the announcement that he was not willing to risk
+another election, with the voting women of the West, and the
+amendment still unpassed.
+
+Mr. Lenroot further pointed out that: "From a Republican
+standpoint-from a partisan standpoint, it would be an advantage
+to Republicans to go before the people in the next election and
+say that this resolution was defeated by southern Democrats."
+
+An anti-suffragist tried above the din and noise to remind Mr.
+Lenroot that three years before Mr. Lenroot had voted "No," but a
+Republican colleague came suddenly to the rescue with "What about
+Mr. Wilson?" which was followed by, "He
+
+{252}
+
+kept us out of war," and the jeers on the Republican side became
+more pronounced.
+
+This interesting political tilt took place when Representatives
+Dennison and Williams of Illinois, and Representative Kearns of
+Ohio, Republicans, fenced with Representative Raker of
+California, Democrat, as he attempted, with an evident note of
+self-consciousness, to make the President's reversal seem less
+sudden.
+
+MR. DENNISON : It was known by the committee that went to see the
+President that the Republicans were going to take this matter up
+and pass it in caucus, was it not?'
+
+MR. RAKER: I want to say to my Republican friends upon this
+question that I have been in conference with the President for
+over three years upon this question . . . .
+
+MR. KEARNS: How did the women of California find out and learn
+where the President stood on this thing just before election last
+fall? Nobody else seemed to know it.
+
+MR. RAKER: They knew it.
+
+MR. KEARNS: How did they find it out?
+
+MR. RAKER: I will take a minute or two
+
+MR. KEARNS: I wish the gentleman would.
+
+MR. RAKER: The President went home and registered. The President
+went home and voted for woman suffrage.
+
+MR. KEARNS: He said he believed in it for the several states . .
+. .
+
+MR. RAKER: One moment�
+
+MR. KEARNS : That is the only information they had upon the
+subject, is it?
+
+MR. WILLIAMS: . . . Will the gentleman yield?
+
+MR. RAKER: I cannot yield.
+
+MR. WILLIAMS: Just for a question.
+
+MR. RAKER: I cannot yield . . . .
+
+That the President's political speed left some overcome was clear
+from a remark of Mr. Clark of Florida when he said:
+
+{253}
+
+"I was amused at my friend from Oklahoma, Mr. Ferris, who wants
+us to ,stand with the President. God knows I want to stand with
+him. I am a Democrat, and I want to follow the leader of my
+party, and I am a pretty good lightning change artist myself
+sometimes (laughter); but God knows I cannot keep up with his
+performance. (Laughter.) Why, the President wrote a book away
+back yonder" . . . and he quoted generously from President
+Wilson's many statements in defense of state rights as recorded
+in his early writings.
+
+Mr. Hersey of Maine, Republican, drew applause when he made a
+retort to the Democratic slogan, "Stand by the President." He
+said:
+
+"Mr. Speaker, I am still `standing with the President,' or, in
+other words, the President this morning is standing with me."
+
+The resentment at having been forced by the pickets to the point
+of passing the amendment was in evidence throughout the debate.
+
+Representative Gordon of Ohio, Democrat, said with bitter
+ness : "We are threatened by these militant suffragettes with a
+direct and lawless invasion by the Congress of the United States
+of the rights of those States which have refused to confer upon
+their women the privilege of voting. This attitude on the part
+of some of the suffrage Members of this House is on an exact
+equality with the acts of these women militants who have spent
+the last summer and fall, while they were not in the district
+jail or workhouse, in coaxing, teasing, and nagging the Presi
+dent of the United States for the purpose of inducing him, by
+coercion, to club Congress into adopting this joint resolution."
+
+Shouts of "Well, they got him!" and "They got it!" from all
+sides, followed by prolonged laughter and jeers, interrupted the
+flow of his oratory.
+
+Mr. Ferris of Oklahoma, Democrat, hoped to minimize the
+effectiveness of the picket.
+
+{254}
+
+"Mr. Speaker," he said, "I do not approve or believe in picketing
+the White House, the National Capitol, or any other station to
+bring about votes for women. I do not approve of wild militancy,
+hunger strikes, and efforts of that sort. I do not approve of the
+course of those women that . . ., become agitators, lay off their
+womanly qualities in their efforts to secure votes. I do not
+approve of anything unwomanly anywhere, any time, and my course
+to-day in supporting this suffrage amendment is not guided by
+such conduct on the part of a very few women here or elsewhere."
+(Applause.)
+
+Representative Langley of Kentucky, Republican, was able to see
+picketing in a fairer light:
+
+"Much has been said pro and con about `picketing',-that rather
+dramatic chapter in the history of this great movement. It is not
+my purpose to speak either in criticism or condemnation of that;
+but if it be true-I do not say that it is, because I do not know-
+but if it be true, as has been alleged, that certain promises
+were made, as a result of which a great campaign was won, and
+those promises were not kept, I wonder whether in that silent,
+peaceful protest that was against this broken faith, there can be
+found sufficient warrant for the indignities which the so-called
+`pickets' suffered; and when in passing up and down the Avenue I
+frequently witnessed cultured, intellectual women arrested and
+dragged off to prison because of their method, of giving
+publicity to what they believed to be the truth, I will confess
+that the question sometimes arose in my mind whether when the
+impartial history of this great struggle has been written their
+names may not be placed upon the roll of martyrs to the cause to
+which they were consecrating their lives in the manner that they
+deemed most effective."
+
+Mr. Mays of Utah was one Democrat who placed the responsibility
+for militancy where it rightly belonged when he said:
+
+{255}
+
+"Some say to-day that they are ashamed of the action of the
+militants in picketing the Capitol: . . . But we should be more
+ashamed of the unreasonable stubbornness on the part of the men
+who refused them the justice they have so long and patiently
+asked."
+
+And so the debate ran on. Occasionally one caught a glimmer of
+real comprehension, amongst these men about to vote upon our
+political liberty; but more often the discussion stayed on a very
+inferior level.
+
+And there were gems imperishable!
+
+Even friends of the measure had difficulty not to romanticize
+about "Woman-God's noblest creature" . . . "man's better
+counterpart" . . . "humanity's perennial hope" . . . "the world's
+object most to be admired and loved" . . . and so forth.
+
+Representative Elliott of Indiana, Republican, favored the
+resolution because-"A little more than four hundred years ago
+Columbus discovered America. Before that page of American history
+was written he was compelled to seek the advice and assistance of
+a woman. From that day until the present day the noble women of
+America have done their part in times of peace and of war . . ."
+
+If Queen Isabella was an argument in favor for Mr. Elliott of
+Indiana, Lady Macbeth played the opposite part for Mr. Parker of
+New Jersey, Republican . . . . "I will not debate the question as
+to whether in a time of war women are the best judges of policy.
+That great student of human nature, William Shakespeare, in the
+play of Macbeth, makes Lady Macbeth eager for deeds of blood
+until they are committed and war is begun and then just as eager
+that it may be stopped." . . .
+
+Said Mr. Gray of New Jersey, Republican: "A nation will endure
+just so long as its men are virile. History, physiology, and
+psychology all show that giving woman equal political rights with
+man makes ultimately for the deterioration of manhood. It is,
+therefore, not only because I want our country to
+
+{256}
+
+win this war but because I want our nation to possess the male
+virility necessary to guarantee its future existence that I am
+opposed to the pending amendment."
+
+The hope was expressed that President Wilson's conversion would
+be like that of St. Paul, "and that he will become a master-
+worker in the vineyards of the Lord for this proposition."
+(Applause.)
+
+Mr. Gallivan, Democrat, although a representative of
+Massachusetts, "the cradle of American liberty," called upon a
+great Persian philosopher to sustain him in his support. " `Dogs
+bark, but the caravan moves on.' . . . Democracy cannot live half
+free and half female."
+
+Mr. Dill of Washington, Democrat, colored his support with the
+following tribute: " . . . It was woman who first learned to
+prepare skins of animals for protection from the elements, and
+tamed and domesticated the dog and horse and cow. She was a
+servant and a slave . . . . To-day she is the peer of man."
+
+Mr. Little of Kansas, Republican, tried to bring his colleagues
+back to a moderate course by interpolating:
+
+"It seems to me, gentlemen, that it is time for us to learn that
+woman is neither a slave nor an angel, but a human being,
+entitled to be treated with ordinary common sense in the
+adjustment of human affairs . . . ."
+
+But this calm statement could not allay the terror of
+Representative Clark of Florida, Democrat, who cried: "In the
+hearings before the committee it will be found that one of the
+leaders among the suffragettes declared that they wanted the
+ballot for `protection', and when asked against whom she desired
+`protection' she promptly and frankly replied, `men.' My God, has
+it come to pass in America that the women of the land need to be
+protected from the men?" The galleries quietly nodded their
+heads, and Mr. Clark continued to predict either the complete
+breakdown of family life . . . . or "they [man and wife] must
+think alike, act alike, have the same ideals of life,
+
+{257}
+
+and look forward with like vision to the happy consummation
+`beyond the vale.' . . .
+
+"God knows that . . . when you get factional politics limited to
+husband and wife, oh, what a spectacle will be presented, my
+countrymen . . . . Love will vanish, while hate ascends the
+throne . . . .
+
+"To-day woman stands the uncrowned queen in the hearts of all
+right-thinking American men; to her as rightful sovereign we
+render the homage of protection, respect, love, and may the
+guiding hand of an all-wise Providence stretch forth in this hour
+of peril to save her from a change of relation which must bring
+in its train, discontent, sorrow, and pain," he concluded
+desperately, with the trend obviously toward "crowning" the
+queens.
+
+There was the disturbing consideration that women know too much
+to be trusted. "I happen to have a mother," said Mr. Gray of New
+Jersey, Republican, "as most of us have, and incidentally I think
+we all have fathers, although a father does not count for much
+any more. My mother has forgotten more political history than he
+ever knew, and she knows more about the American government and
+American political economy than he has ever shown symptoms of
+knowing, and for the good of mankind as well as the country she
+is opposed to women getting into politics."
+
+The perennial lament for the passing of the good old days was
+raised by Representative Welty of Ohio, Democrat, who said:
+
+"The old ship of state has left her moorings and seems to be
+sailing on an unknown and uncharted sea. The government founded
+in the blood of our fathers is fading away. Last fall, a year
+ago, both parties recognized those principles in their platforms,
+and each candidate solemnly declared that he would abide by them
+if elected. But lo, all old things are passing away, and the lady
+from Montana has filed a bill asking
+
+{258}
+
+that separate citizenship be granted to American women marrying
+foreigners."
+
+Representative Greene of Massachusetts, Republican, all but shed
+tears over the inevitable amending of the Constitution:
+
+"I have read it [the Constitution] many times, and there have
+been just 17 amendments adopted since the original Constitution
+was framed by the master minds whom God had inspired in the cabin
+of the Mayflower to formulate the Constitution of the Plymouth
+Colony which was made the basis of the Constitution of
+Massachusetts and subsequently resulted in the establishment of
+the Constitution of the United States under which we now live . .
+. ."
+
+Fancy his shock at finding the pickets triumphant.
+
+"Since the second session of the Sixty-fifth Congress opened," he
+said, "I have met several women suffragists from the State of
+Massachusetts. I have immediately propounded to them this one
+question: �Do you approve or disapprove of the suffrage banners
+in front of the White House . . . ?' The answer in nearly every
+case to my question was: `I glory in that demonstration' . . .
+the response to my question was very offensive, and I immediately
+ordered these suffrage advocates from my office."
+
+And again the pickets featured in the final remarks of Mr. Small
+of North Carolina, Democrat, who deplored the fact that advocates
+of the amendment had made it an issue inducing party rivalry.
+"This is no party question, and such efforts will be futile. It
+almost equals in intelligence the scheme of that delectable and
+inane group of women who picketed the White House on the theory
+that the President could grant them the right to vote."
+
+Amid such gems of intellectual delight the House of the great
+American Congress passed the national suffrage amendment.
+
+We turned our entire attention then to the Senate.
+
+{259}
+
+Chapter 16
+
+An Interlude (Seven Months)
+
+The President had finally thrown his power to putting the
+amendment through the House. We hoped he would follow this up by
+insisting upon the passage of the amendment in the Senate. We
+ceased our acts of dramatic protest for the moment and gave our
+energies to getting public pressure upon him, to persuade him to
+see that the Senate acted. We also continued to press directly
+upon recalcitrant senators of the minority party who could be won
+only through appeals other than from the President.
+
+There are in the Senate 96 members-2 elected from each of the 48
+states. To pass a constitutional amendment through the Senate, 64
+votes are necessary, a two-thirds majority. At this point in the
+campaign, 58 senators were pledged to support the measure and 48
+were opposed. We therefore had to win 11 more votes. A measure
+passed through one branch of Congress must be passed through the
+other branch during the life of that Congress, otherwise it dies
+automatically and must be born again in a new Congress. We
+therefore had only the remainder of the first regular session of
+the 65th Congress and, failing of that, the short second session
+from December, 1918, to March, 1919, in which to win those votes.
+
+Backfires were started in the states of the senators not yet
+committed to the amendment. Organized demand for action in the
+Senate grew to huge proportions.
+
+We turned also to the leading influential members of the
+respective parties for active help.
+
+{260}
+
+Colonel Roosevelt did his most effective suffrage work at this
+period in a determined attack upon the few unconvinced Republican
+Senators. The Colonel was one of the few leaders in our national
+life who was never too busy to confer or to offer and accept
+suggestions as to procedure. He seemed to have imagination about
+women. He never took a patronizing attitude nor did he with moral
+unction dogmatically tell you how the fight should be waged and
+won. He presupposed ability among women leaders. He was not
+offended, morally or politically, by our preferring to go to jail
+rather than to submit in silence. In fact, he was at this time
+under Administration fire, because of his bold attacks upon some
+of their policies, and remarked during an interview at Oyster
+Bay:
+
+"I may soon join you women in jail. One can never tell these
+days."
+
+His sagacious attitude toward conservative and radical suffrage
+forces was always delightful and indicative of his appreciation
+of the political and social value of a movement's having vitality
+enough to disagree on methods. None of the banal philosophy that
+"you can never win until all your forces get together" from the
+Colonel. One day, as I came into his office for an interview, I
+met a member of the conservative suffragists just leaving, and we
+spoke. In his office the Colonel remarked, "You know, I
+contemplated having both you and Mrs. Whitney come to see me at
+the same time, since it was on a similar mission, but I didn't
+quite know whether the lion and the lamb would lie down together,
+and I thought I'd better take no chances . . . . But I see you're
+on speaking terms," he added. I answered that our relations were
+extremely amiable, but remarked that the other side might not
+like to be called "lambs."
+
+"You delight in being the lions-on that point I am safe, am I
+not?" And he smiled his widest smile as he plunged into a vivid
+expository attack upon the Senatorial opponents of
+
+{261}
+
+suffrage in his own party. He wrote letters to them. If this
+failed, he invited them to Oyster Bay for the week-end. Never did
+he abandon them until there was literally not a shadow of hope to
+bank on.
+
+When the Colonel got into action something always happened on the
+Democratic side. He made a public statement to Senator Gallinger
+of New Hampshire, Republican leader in the Senate, in which lie
+pointed to the superior support of the Republicans and urged even
+more liberal party support to ensure the passage of the amendment
+in the Senate. Action by the Democrats followed fast on the heels
+of this public statement.
+
+The National Executive Committee of the Democratic party, after a
+referendum vote of the members of the National Committeemen,
+passed a resolution calling for favorable action in the Senate.
+Mr. A. Mitchell Palmer wrote to the Woman's Party saying that
+this resolution must be regarded as "an official expression of
+the Democratic Party through the only organization which can
+speak for it between national conventions."
+
+The Republican National Committee meeting at the same time
+commended the course taken by Republican Representatives who had
+voted for the amendment in the House, and declared their position
+to be "a true interpretation of the thought of the Republican
+Party."
+
+Republican and Democratic state, county and city committees
+followed the lead and called for Senate action.
+
+State legislatures in rapid succession called upon the Senate to
+pass the measure, that they in turn might immediately ratify.
+North Dakota, New York, Rhode Island, Arizona, Texas and other
+states acted in this matter.
+
+Intermittent attempts on the Republican side to force action,
+followed by eloquent speeches from time to time, piquing their
+opponents, left the Democrats bison-like across
+
+{262}
+
+the path. The majority of them were content to rest upon the
+action taken in the House.
+
+I was at this time Chairman of the Political Department of the
+Woman's Party, and in that capacity interviewed practically every
+national leader in both majority parties. I can not resist
+recording a few impressions.
+
+Colonel William Boyce Thompson of New York, now Chairman of Ways
+and Means of the Republican National Committee, who with Raymond
+Robins had served in Russia as member of the United States Red
+Cross. Mission, had just returned. The deadlock was brought to
+his attention. He immediately responded in a most effective way.
+In a brief but dramatic speech at a great mass meeting of the
+Woman's Party, at Palm Beach, Florida, he said:
+
+"The story of the brutal imprisonment in Washington of women
+advocating suffrage is shocking and almost incredible. I became
+accustomed in Russia to the stories of men and women who served
+terms of imprisonment under the Czar, because of their love of
+liberty, but did not know that women in my own country had been
+subjected to brutal treatment long since abandoned in Russia.
+
+"I wish now to contribute ten thousand dollars to the campaign
+for the passage of the suffrage amendment through the Senate,,
+one hundred dollars for each of the pickets who went to prison
+because she stood at the gates of the White House, asking for the
+passage of the suffrage measure."
+
+This was the largest single contribution received during the
+national agitation. Colonel Thompson had been a suffragist all
+his life, but he now became actively identified with the work for
+the national amendment. Since then he has continued to give
+generously of his money and to lend his political prestige as
+often as necessary.
+
+Colonel House was importuned to use his influence to win
+additional Democratic votes in the Senate, or better still to
+
+{263}
+
+urge the President to win them. Colonel House is an interesting
+but not unfamiliar type in politics. Extremely courteous, mild
+mannered, able, quickly sympathetic, he listens with undistracted
+attention to your request. His round bright eyes snap as he comes
+at you with a counter-proposal. It seems so reasonable. And while
+you know he is putting back upon you the very task you are trying
+to persuade him to undertake, he does it so graciously that you
+can scarcely resist liking it. He has the manner of having done
+what you ask without actually doing more than to make you feel
+warm at having met him. It is a kind of elegant statecraft which
+has its point of grace, but which is exasperating when
+effectiveness is needed. Not that Colonel House was not a
+supporter of the federal amendment. He was. But his gentle, soft
+and traditional kind of diplomacy would not employ high-powered
+pressure. "I shall be going to Washington soon on other matters,
+and I shall doubtless see the President. Perhaps he may bring up
+the subject in conversation, and if he does, and the opportunity
+offers itself, I may be able to do something." Some such gentle
+threat would come from the Colonel. He was not quite so tender,
+however, in dealing with Democratic senators, after the President
+declared for the amendment. He did try to win them.
+
+Ex-President Taft, then joint Chairman of the National War Labor
+Board, was interviewed at his desk just after rendering an
+important democratic labor award.
+
+"No, indeed! I'll do nothing for a proposition which adds more
+voters to our electorate. I thought my position on this question
+was well known," said Mr. Taft.
+
+"But we thought you doubtless had changed your mind since the
+beginning of our war for democracy-" I started to answer.
+
+"This is not a war for democracy," he said emphatically, looking
+quizzically at me for my assertion; "if it were, I
+
+{264}
+
+wouldn't be doing anything for it .... The trouble in this
+country is we've got too many mm voting as it is. Why, I'd take
+the vote away from most of the men," he added. I wanted to ask
+him what men he would leave voting. I wanted also to tell him
+they were taking the vote away from one class of men in Russia at
+that moment.
+
+Instead, I said, "Well, I'm not quite sure whom we could trust to
+sit in judgment"-while he looked smiling and serene, as much as
+to say, "Oh, that would be a simple matter."
+
+"However," I said, "we have no quarrel with you. You are an
+avowed aristocrat, and we respect your candor. Our quarrel is
+with democrats who will not trust their own doctrines." Again he
+smiled with as much sophistication as such a placid face could
+achieve, and that was all. I believe Mr. Taft has lately modified
+his attitude toward women voting. I do not know how he squares
+that with his distaste of democracy.
+
+There was Samuel Gompers, President of the American Federation of
+Labor, high in Administration confidence. It was a long wait
+before Abby Scott Baker and I were allowed into his sanctum.
+
+"Well, ladies, what can I do for you?" was the opening question,
+and we' thought happily here is a man who will not bore us with
+his life record on behalf of women. He comes to the point with
+direction.
+
+"Will you speak to the President on behalf of your organization,
+which has repeatedly endorsed national suffrage, to induce him to
+put more pressure behind the Senate which is delaying suffrage?"
+we asked with equal direction. We concealed a heavy sigh as a
+reminiscent look came into his shrewd, wan eyes, and he began:
+
+"Doubtless you ladies do not know that as long ago as1888"-I
+believe that was the date-"my organization sent a petition to the
+United States Congress praying for the adop-
+
+{265}
+
+tion of this very amendment and we have stood for it ever since .
+. . ."
+
+"Don't you think it is about time that prayer was answered?" we
+ventured to interrupt. But his reverie could not be disturbed. He
+looked at us coldly, for he was living in the past, and continued
+to recount the patient, enduring qualities of his organization.
+
+"I will speak to my secretary and see what the organization can
+do," he said finally. We murmured again that it was the President
+we wished him to speak to, but we left feeling reasonably certain
+that there would be no dynamic pressure from this cautious
+leader.
+
+Herbert Hoover was the next man we sought. Here we encountered
+the well-groomed secretary who would not carry our cards into his
+chief.
+
+"Mr. Hoover has appointments a week ahead," he said. "For
+example, his chart for to-day includes a very important
+conference with some grain men from the Northwest," . . . and he
+continued to recite the items of the chart, ending with "a dinner
+at the White House to-night."
+
+"If we could see him for just five minutes," we persisted, "he
+could do what we ask this very night at the White House." But the
+trained-to-protect secretary was obdurate.
+
+"We shall leave a written request for five minutes at Mr.
+Hoover's convenience," we said, and prepared the letter.
+
+Time passed without answer. Mrs. Baker and I were compelled to go
+again to Mr. Hoover's office.
+
+Again we were greeted by the affable secretary, who on this
+occasion recounted not only his chief's many pressing
+engagements, but his devoted family life-his Saturday and Sunday
+habits which were "so dreadfully cut into by his heavy work:" We
+were sympathetic but firm. Would Mr. Hoover not be willing to
+answer our letter? Would he not be willing to state publicly that
+he thought the amendment ought to be passed
+
+{266}
+
+in the Senate? Would the secretary, in short, please go to him to
+ascertain if he' would be willing to say a single word in behalf
+of the political liberty of women? The secretary disappeared and
+returned to say, "Mr. Hoover wishes me to tell you ladies he can
+give no time whatever to the consideration of your question until
+after the war is over. This is final."
+
+The Chief Food Administrator would continue to demand sacrifices
+of women throughout the war, but he would not give so much as a
+thought to their rights in return. Mr. Hoover was the only.
+important man in public life who steadfastly refused to see our
+representatives. After announcing his candidacy for nomination to
+the Presidency he authorized his secretary to write us a letter
+saying he had always been for woman suffrage.
+
+Mr. Bainbridge Colby, then member of the Emergency Fleet
+Corporation of the Shipping Board and member of the Inter-Allied
+Council which sat on shipping problems, now Secretary of State in
+President Wilson's Cabinet, was approached as a suffragist, known
+to have access to the President. Mr. Colby had just returned from
+abroad when I saw him. He is a cultivated gentleman, but he knows
+how to have superlative enthusiasm.
+
+"In the light of the world events," he said, "this reform is
+insignificant. No time or energy ought to be diverted from the
+great program of crushing the Germans."
+
+"But can we not do that," I asked, "without neglecting internal
+liberties?"
+
+Mr. Colby is a strong conformist. He became grave. When I was
+indiscreet enough to reveal that I was inclined to pin my faith
+to the concrete liberty of women, rather than to a vague and
+abstract "human freedom," which was supposed to descend upon the
+world, once the Germans were beaten, I know he wanted to call me
+"seditious." But he is a gallant
+
+{267}
+
+gentleman and he only frowned with distress. He continued with
+enthusiasm to plan to build ships.
+
+Bernard Baruch, then member of the Advisory Committee of the
+Council of National Defense, later economic expert at the Peace
+Conference, was able to see the war and the women's problem at
+the same time. He is an able politician and was therefore
+sensitive to our appeal; he saw the passage of the amendment as a
+political asset. I do not know how much he believed in the
+principle. That was of minor importance. What was important was
+that he agreed to tell the President that he believed it wise to
+put more pressure on the measure in the Senate. Also I believe
+Mr. Baruch was one member of the Administration who realized in
+the midst of the episode that arresting women was bad politics,
+to say nothing of the doubtful chivalry of it.
+
+George Creel, chairman of the Committee on Public Information,
+was also asked for help. We went to him many times, because his
+contact with the President was constant. A suffragist of long
+standing, he nevertheless hated our militant tactics, for he knew
+we were winning and the Administration was losing. He is a
+strange composite. Working at terrific tension and mostly under
+fire, he was rarely in calm enough mood to sit down and devise
+ways and means.
+
+"But I talk to the President every day on this matter" and-"I am
+doing all I can"-and-"The President is doing all he can"-he would
+drive at you-without stopping for breath.
+
+"But if you will just ask him to get Senator"
+
+"He is working on the Senator now. You people must give him time.
+He has other things to do," he would say, sweeping aside every
+suggestion. Familiar advice!
+
+Charles D. Hilles, former Chairman of the Republican National
+Committee, was a leader who had come slowly to believe in
+national suffrage. But, once convinced, he was a
+
+{268}
+
+faithful and dependable colleague who gave practical political
+assistance.
+
+William Randolph Hearst in powerful editorials called upon the
+Senators to act. Mr. R. J. Caldwell of New York, life-long
+suffragist, financier and man of affairs, faithfully and
+persistently stood by the amendment and by the militants. A more
+generous contributor and more diligent ally could not be found. A
+host of public men were interviewed and the great majority of
+them did help at this critical juncture. It is impossible to give
+a list that even approaches adequacy, so I shall not attempt it.
+
+Our pressure from below and that of the leaders from above began
+to have its effect. An attempt was made by Administration leaders
+to force a vote on May 19, 1918. Friends interceded when it was
+shown that not enough votes were pledged to secure passage. Again
+the vote was tentatively set for June 27th and again postponed.
+
+The Republicans, led by Senator Gallinger, provided skirmishes
+from time to time. The Administration was accused on the floor of
+blocking action, to which accusation its leaders did not even
+reply.
+
+Still unwilling to believe that we would be forced to resume our
+militancy we attempted to talk to the President again A special
+deputation of women munition workers was sent to him under our
+auspices. The women waited for a week, hoping he would consent to
+see them among his receptions-to the Blue Devils of France, to a
+Committee of Indians, to a Committee of Irish Patriots, and so
+forth.
+
+"No time," was the answer. And the munition workers were forced
+to submit their appeal in writing.
+
+"We are only a few of the thousands of American women," they
+wrote the President, "who are forming a growing part of the army
+at home. The work we are doing is hard and dangerous to life and
+health, making detonators, handling TNT, the
+
+{269}
+
+highest of all explosives. We want to be recognized by our
+country, as much her citizens as our soldiers are."
+
+Mr. Tumulty replied for the President:
+
+"The President asks me to say that nothing you or your associates
+could say could possibly increase his very deep interest in this
+matter and that he is doing everything that he could with honor
+and propriety do in behalf of the [suffrage] amendment."
+
+An opportunity was given the President to show again his sympathy
+for a world-wide endeavor just after having ignored this specific
+opportunity at home. He hastened to accept the larger field. In
+response to a memorial transmitted through Mrs. Carrie Chapman
+Catt, President of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, the
+French Union for Woman Suffrage urged the President to use his
+aid on their behalf "which will be a powerful influence for woman
+suffrage in the entire world." The memorial was endorsed by the
+suffrage committee of Great Britain, Italy, Belgium, and
+Portugal. The President took the occasion to say: "The democratic
+reconstruction of the world will not have been completely or
+adequately obtained until women are admitted to the suffrage. As
+for America it is my earnest hope that the Senate of the United
+States will give an unmistakable answer by passing the federal
+amendment before the end of this session."
+
+Meanwhile four more Democratic Senators pledged their support to
+the amendment. Influenced by the President's declaration of
+support, and by widespread demands from their constituents,
+Senators Phelan of California, King of Utah, Gerry of Rhode
+Island, and Culberson of Texas abandoned the ranks of the
+opposition.
+
+During this same period the Republican side of the Senate gave
+five more Republican Senators to the amendment. They were
+Senators McCumber of North Dakota, Kellogg of Minnesota, Harding
+of Ohio, Page of Vermont, and Sutherland of
+
+{270}
+
+West Virginia. All of these men except Senator McCumber[1] were
+won through the pressure from Republican Party leaders.
+
+This gain of nine recruits reduced to two the number of votes to
+be won.
+
+When at the end of seven months from the time the amendment had
+passed the House, we still lacked these two votes, and the
+President gave no assurance that he would put forth sufficient
+effort to secure them, we were compelled to renew our attacks
+upon the President.
+
+[1]Senator McCumber, though opposed, was compelled to support the
+measure, by the action of the N. D. legislature commanding him to
+do so.
+
+{271}
+
+Chapter 17
+
+New Attacks on the President
+
+The Senate was about to recess. No assurance was given by the
+majority that suffrage would be considered either before or after
+the recess. Alarmed and aroused, we decided upon a national
+protest in Washington August 6th, the anniversary of the birth of
+Inez Milholland.
+
+The protest took the form of a meeting at the base of the
+Lafayette monument in the park, directly opposite the White
+House. Women from many states in the Union, dressed in white,
+hatless and coatless in the midsummer heat of Washington, marched
+t0 the monument carrying banners of purple, white and gold, led
+by a standard-bearer carrying the American flag. They made a
+beautiful mass of color as they grouped themselves around the
+statue, against the abundant green foliage of the park.
+
+The Administration met this simple reasonable form of protest by
+further arrests.
+
+Mrs. Lawrence Lewis of Philadelphia, the first speaker, began:
+"We are here because when our country is at war for liberty and
+democracy . . ." At that point she was roughly seized by a
+policeman and placed under arrest. The great audience stood in
+absolute and amazed silence.
+
+Miss Hazel Hunkins of Montana took her place. "Here at the statue
+of Lafayette, who fought for the liberty of this country," she
+began, "and under the American flag, I am asking for . . ." She
+was immediately arrested.
+
+Miss Vivian Pierce of California began: "President Wilson
+
+{272}
+
+has said . . .' She was dragged from the plinth to the waiting
+patrol.
+
+One after another came forward in an attempt to speak, but no one
+was allowed to continue. Wholesale arrests followed. Just as the
+women were being taken into custody, according to the New York
+Evening World of August 13th, "the President walked out of the
+northeast gate of the White House and up Pennsylvania Avenue for
+a conference with Director General of Railroads McAdoo. The
+President glanced across the street and smiled."
+
+Before the crowd could really appreciate what had happened,
+forty-eight women had been hustled to the police station by the
+wagon load, their gay banners floating from the backs of the
+somber patrols. They were told that the police had arrested them
+under the orders of Col. C. S. Ridley, the President's military
+aide, and assistant to the Chief Engineer attached to the War
+Department. All were released on bail and ordered to appear in
+court the following day.
+
+When they appeared they were informed by the Government's
+attorney that he would have to postpone the trial until the
+following Tuesday so that he might examine witnesses to see "what
+offense, if any, the women would be charged with."
+
+"I cannot go on with this case," he said, "I have had no orders.
+There are no precedents for cases like these . . . ."
+
+The women demanded that their cases be dismissed, or else a
+charge made against them. They were merely told to return on the
+appointed day. Such was the indignation aroused against the
+Administration for taking this action that Senator Curtis of
+Kansas, Republican whip, could say publicly:
+
+"The truth of this statement is made evident by the admission of
+the court that the forty-eight suffragists are arrested upon
+absolutely no charges, and that these women, among them munition
+workers and Red Cross workers, are held in Washington until next
+Tuesday, under arrest, while the United
+
+{273}
+
+States attorney for the District of Columbia decides for what
+offense, `if any,' they were arrested.
+
+"The meeting was called to make a justified protest against
+continued blocking of the suffrage amendment by the Democratic
+majority in the Senate. It is well known that three-fourths of
+the Republican membership in the Senate are ready to vote for the
+amendment, but under the control of the Democratic majority the
+Senate has recessed for six weeks without making any provision
+for action on this important amendment.
+
+"In justice to the women who have been working so hard for the
+amendment it should be passed at the earliest date, and if action
+is not taken on it soon after the resumption of business in the
+Senate there is every possibility that it will not be taken
+during this Congress, and the hard-won victory in the House of
+Representatives will have been won for nothing."
+
+When they finally came to trial ten days after their arrest, to
+face the charge of "holding a meeting in public grounds," and for
+eighteen of the defendants an additional charge of "climbing on a
+statue," the women answered the roll call but remained silent
+thereafter. The familiar farce ensued. Some were released for
+lack of identification. The others were sentenced to the District
+Jail-for ten days if they had merely assembled to hold a public
+meeting, for fifteen days if they had also "climbed on a statue"
+
+The Administration evidently hoped by lighter sentences to avoid
+a hunger strike by the prisoners.
+
+The women were taken immediately to a building, formerly used as
+a man's workhouse, situated in the swamps of the District prison
+grounds. This building, which had been declared unfit for human
+habitation by a committee appointed under President Roosevelt in
+1909, and which had been uninhabited ever since, was now
+reopened, nine years later, to receive twenty-six women who had
+attempted to hold a meeting in a public park in Washington. The
+women protested in a
+
+{274}
+
+body and demanded to be treated as political prisoners. This
+being refused, all save two very elderly women, too frail to do
+so, went on hunger strike at once.
+
+This last lodgment was the worst. Hideous aspects which had not
+been encountered in the workhouse and jail proper were
+encountered here. The cells, damp and cold, were below the level
+of the upper door and entirely below the high windows. The doors
+of the cell were partly of solid steel with only a small section
+of grating, so that a very tiny amount of light penetrated the
+cells. The wash basins were small and unsightly; the toilet open,
+with no pretense of covering. The cots were of iron, without any
+spring, and with only a thin straw pallet to lie upon. The
+heating facilities were antiquated and the place was always cold.
+So frightful were the nauseating odors which permeated the place,
+and so terrible was the drinking water from the disused pipes,
+that one prisoner after another became violently ill.
+
+"I can hardly describe that atmosphere," said Mrs. W. D. Ascough,
+of Connecticut. "It was a deadly sort of smell, insidious and
+revolting. It oppressed and stifled us. There was no escape."
+
+As a kind of relief from these revolting odors, they took their
+straw pallets from the cells to the floor outside. They were
+ordered back to their cells but refused in a body to go. They
+preferred the stone floors to the vile odors within, which kept
+them nauseated.
+
+Conditions were so shocking that Senators began to visit their
+constituents in this terrible hole. Many of them protested to the
+authorities. Protests came in from the country, too.
+
+At the end of the fifth day the Administration succumbed to the
+hunger strike and released the prisoners, trembling with
+weakness, some of them with chills and some of them in a high
+
+{275}
+
+fever, scarcely able even to walk to the ambulance or motor car.
+
+We had won from the Administration, however, a concession to our
+protest. Prior to the release of the prisoners we had announced
+that in spite of the previous arrests a second protest meeting
+would be held on the same spot. A permit to hold this second
+protest meeting was granted us.
+
+"I have been advised [Col. Ridley wrote to Miss Paul that you
+desire to hold a demonstration in Lafayette Square on Thursday,
+August 9.2d. By direction of the chief of engineers, U. S. Army,
+you are hereby granted permission to hold this demonstration. You
+are advised good order must prevail."
+
+"We received yesterday [Miss Paul replied] your permit for a
+suffrage demonstration in Lafayette Park this afternoon, and are
+very glad that our meetings are no longer to be interfered with.
+Because of the illness of so many of our members, due to their
+treatment in prison this last week, and with the necessity of
+caring for them at headquarters, we are planning to hold our neat
+meeting a little later. We have not determined on the exact date
+but we will inform you of the time as soon as it is decided
+upon."
+
+It was reported on credible authority that this concession -was
+the result of a conference at which the President, Secretary of
+War Baker and Colonel Ridley were present. It was said that
+Secretary Baker and Colonel Ridley persuaded the President to
+withdraw the orders to arrest us and allow our meetings to go on,
+even though they took the form of attacks upon the President.
+
+Two days after the release of the women, the Republican Party,
+for the first time in the history of woman suffrage, caucused in
+the Senate in favor of forcing suffrage to a vote.
+
+The resolution which was passed unanimously by the caucus
+determined to "insist upon consideration immediately" and
+`also to insist upon a final vote . . . at the earliest possible
+
+{276}
+
+moment .... Provided, That this resolution shall not be construed
+as in any way binding the action or vote of any Member of the
+Senate upon the merits of the said woman suffrage amendment."
+
+While not a direct attempt, therefore, to win more Republican
+Senators, this proved a very great tactical contribution to the
+cause. The Republicans were proud of their suffrage strength.
+They knew the Democrats were not. With the Congressional
+elections approaching the Republicans meant to do their part
+toward acquainting the country with the Administration's policy
+of vacillation and delay. This was not only helpful to the
+Republicans politically; it was also advantageous to the
+amendment in that it goaded the majority into action.
+
+Nine months had passed since the vote in the House and we were
+perilously near the end of the session, when on the 16th of
+September, Senator Overman, Democrat, Chairman of the Rules
+Committee, stated to our Legislative Chairman that suffrage was
+"not on the program for this session" and that the Senate would
+recess in a few days for the election campaigns without
+considering any more legislation. On the same day Senator Jones,
+Chairman of the Suffrage Committee, announced to us that he would
+not even call his Committee together to consider taking a vote.
+
+We had announced a fortnight earlier that another protest
+'meeting would be held at the base of the Lafayette Monument that
+day, September 16th, at four o'clock. No sooner had this protest
+been announced than the President publicly stated that he would
+receive a delegation of Southern and Western women partisans on
+the question of the amendment at two o'clock the same day.
+
+To this delegation he said, "I am, as I think you know, heartily
+in sympathy with you. I have endeavored to assist you in every
+way in my power, and I shall continue to do so.
+
+{277}
+
+I will do all I can to urge the passage of the amendment by an
+early vote."
+
+Presumably this was expected to disarm us and perhaps silence our
+demonstration. However, it merely moved us to make another hasty
+visit to Senator Overman, Chairman of the Rules Committee, and to
+Senator Jones, Chairman of the Suffrage Committee, between the
+hours of two and four to see if the President's statement that he
+would do all he could to secure an early vote had altered their
+statements made earlier in the day.
+
+These Administration leaders assured us that their statements
+stood; that no provision had been made for action on the
+amendment; that the President's statement did not mean that a
+vote would be taken this session; and that they did not
+contemplate being so advised by him.
+
+Such a situation was intolerable. The President was uttering more
+fine words, while his Administration leaders interpreted them to
+mean nothing, because they were not followed up by action on his
+part.
+
+We thereupon changed our demonstration at four o'clock to a more
+drastic form of protest. We took these words of the President to
+the base of Lafayette Monument and burned them in a flaming
+torch.
+
+A throng gathered to hear the speakers. Ceremonies were opened
+with the reading of the following appeal by Mrs. Richard
+Wainwright, wife of Rear-Admiral Wainwright:
+
+"Lafayette, we are here!
+
+"We, the women of the United States, denied the liberty which you
+helped to gain, and for which we have asked in vain for sixty
+years, turn to you to plead for us.
+
+"Speak, Lafayette, dead these hundred years but still living in
+the hearts of the American people. Speak again to plead for us
+like the bronze woman at your feet, condemned like us to a silent
+appeal. She offers you a sword. Will you not use
+
+{278}
+
+for us the sword of the spirit, mightier far than the sword she
+holds out to you?
+
+"Will you not ask the great leader of democracy to look upon the
+failure of our beloved country to be in truth the place where
+every one is free and equal and entitled to a share in the
+government? Let that outstretched hand of yours pointing to the
+White House recall to him his words and promises, his trumpet
+call for all of us, to see that the world is made safe for
+democracy.
+
+"As our army now in France spoke to you there, saying here we are
+to help your country fight for liberty, will you not speak here
+and now for us, a little band with no army, no power but justice
+and right, no strength but in our Constitution and in the
+Declaration of Independence; and win a great victory again in
+this country by giving us the opportunity we ask,,--to be heard
+through the Susan B. Anthony amendment.
+
+"Lafayette, we are here!"
+
+Before the enthusiastic applause for Mrs. Wainwright's appeal had
+died away, Miss Lucy Branham of Baltimore stepped forward with a
+flaming torch, which she applied to the President's latest words
+on suffrage. The police looked on and smiled, and the crowd
+cheered as she said:
+
+"The torch which I hold symbolizes the burning indignation of the
+women who for years have been given words without action . . . .
+
+"For five years women have appealed to this President and his
+party for political freedom. The President has given words, and
+words, and words. To-day women receive more words. We announce to
+the President and the whole world to-day, by this act of ours,
+our determination that words shall not longer be the only reply
+given to American women-our determination that this same
+democracy for whose establishment abroad we are making the utmost
+sacrifice, shall also prevail at home.
+
+{279}
+
+"We have protested to this Administration by banners; we have
+protested by speeches; we now protest by this symbolic act.
+
+"As in the ancient fights for liberty, the crusaders for freedom
+symbolized their protest against those responsible for injustice
+by consigning their hollow phrases to the flames, so we, on
+behalf of thousands of suffragists, in this same way to-day
+protest against the action of the President and his party in
+delaying the liberation of American women."
+
+Mrs. Jessie Hardy Mackaye of Washington, D. C., then came forward
+to the end of the plinth to speak, and as she appeared, a man in
+the crowd handed her a twenty-dollar bill for the campaign in the
+Senate. This was the signal for others. Bills and coins were
+passed up. Instantly marshals ran hither and thither collecting
+the money in improvised baskets while the cheers grew louder and
+louder. Many of the policemen present were among the donors.
+
+Burning President Wilson's words had met with popular approval
+from a large crowd!
+
+The procession of women was starting back to headquarters, the
+police were eagerly clearing the way for the line; the crowd was
+dispersing in order; the great golden banner, "Mr. President,
+what will you do for woman suffrage?" was just swinging past the
+White House gate, when President Wilson stepped into his car for
+the afternoon drive.
+
+{280}
+
+Chapter 18
+
+President Wilson Appeals to the Senate Too Late
+
+The next day the Administration completely reversed its policy.
+Almost the first Senate business was an announcement on the floor
+by Senator Jones, Chairman of the Suffrage Committee, that the
+suffrage amendment would be considered in the Senate September
+26th. And Senator Overman, Chairman of the Rules Committee,
+rather shyly remarked to our legislative chairman that he had
+been "mistaken yesterday." It was "now in the legislative
+program." The Senate still stood 6Q votes for and 34 against the
+amendment-2 votes lacking. The President made an effort among
+individual Democrats to secure them. But it was too feeble an
+effort and he failed.
+
+Chairman Jones took charge of the measure on the floor. The
+debate opened with a long and eloquent. speech by Senator
+Vardaman of Mississippi, Democrat, in support of the amendment.
+"My estimate of woman," said he, in conclusion, "is well
+expressed in the words employed by a distinguished author who
+dedicated his book to a `Little mountain, a great meadow, and a
+woman,' `To the mountain for the sense of time, to the
+meadow for the sense of space, and of everything."'
+
+Senator McCumber of North Dakota, Republican, followed with a
+curious speech. His problem was to explain why, although opposed
+to suffrage, he would vote for the amendment. Beginning with the
+overworked "cave man" and "beasts of the forests," and down to
+the present day, "the male had
+
+{281}
+
+always protected the female" He always would! Forgetting recent
+events in the Capital, he went so far as to say, " . . . In our
+courts she ever finds in masculine nature an asylum of
+protection, even though she may have committed great wrong. While
+the mind may be convinced beyond any doubt, the masculine heart
+finds it almost impossible to pronounce the word `guilty' against
+a woman." Scarcely had the galleries ceased smiling at this idea
+when he treated them to a novel application of the biological
+theory of inheritance. "The political field," he declared,
+"always has been and probably always will be an arena of more or
+less bitter contest. The political battles leave scars as ugly
+and lacerating as the physical battles, and the more sensitive
+the nature the deeper and more lasting the wound. And as no man
+can enter this contest or be a party to it and assume its
+responsibilities without feeling its blows and suffering its
+wounds, much less can woman with her more emotional and more
+sensitive nature.
+
+"But . . . you may ask why should she be relieved from the scars
+and wounds of political contest? Because they do not affect her
+alone but are transmitted through her to generations yet to come
+. . . . "
+
+The faithful story of the sinking ship was invoked by the Senator
+from North Dakota. One might almost imagine after listening to
+Congressional debates for some years that traveling on sinking
+ships formed a large part of human experience. "Fathers, sons,
+and brothers," said the Senator in tearful voice, "guarding the
+lifeboats until every woman from the highest to the lowest has
+been made safe, waving adieu with a smile of cheer on their lips,
+while the wounded vessel slowly bears them to a strangling death
+and a watery tomb, belie the charge . . " that woman needs her
+citizenship as a form of protection.
+
+In spite of these opinions, however, the Senator was obliged to
+vote for the amendment because his state had so ordered.
+
+{282}
+
+Senator Hardwick of Georgia, Democrat, felt somewhat betrayed
+that the suffrage plank in the platform of his party in 1916,
+recommending state action, should be so carelessly set aside.
+"There is not a Democratic Senator present," said Mr. Hardwick,
+"who does not know the history that lies back of the adoption of
+that plank. There is not a Democratic Senator who does not know
+that the plank was written here in Washington and sent to the
+convention and represented the deliberate voice of the
+administration and of the party on this question, which was to
+remit this question to the several States for action . . . .
+
+"The President of the United States . . . was reported to have
+sent this particular plank . . .from Washington, supposedly by
+the hands of one of his Cabinet officers." The fact that his own
+party and the Republican party were both advancing on suffrage
+irritated him into denouncing the alacrity with which
+"politicians and senators are trying to get on the band wagon
+first."
+
+Senator McKellar of Tennessee, Democrat, reduced the male
+superiority argument to simple terms when he said: " . . . Taking
+them by and large, there are brainy men and brainy women, and
+that is about all there is to the proposition."
+
+Our armies were sweeping victorious toward Germany. There was
+round on round of eloquence about the glories of war. Rivers of
+blood flowed. And always the role of woman was depicted as a
+contented binding of wounds. There were those who thought woman
+should be rewarded for such service. Others thought she ought to
+do it without asking anything in return. But all agreed that this
+was her role. There was no woman's voice in that body to protest
+against the perpetuity of such a role.
+
+The remarks of Senator Reed of Missouri, anti-suffrage Democrat,
+typify this attitude. �. . . Women in my state
+
+{283}
+
+believe in the old-fashioned doctrine that men should fight the
+battles on the red line; that men should stand and bare their
+bosoms to the iron hail; and that back of them, if need be, there
+shall be women who may bind up the wounds and whose tender hands
+may rest upon the brow of the valiant soldier who has gone down
+in the fight.
+
+"But, sir, that is woman's work, and it has been woman's work
+always . . . . The woman who gave her first born a final kiss and
+blessed him on his way to battle," had, according to the Senator
+from Missouri, earned a "crown of glory . . . gemmed with the
+love of the world."
+
+And with Senator Walsh of Montana, Democrat, "The women of
+America have already written a glorious page in the history of
+the greatest of wars that have vexed the world. They, like
+Cornelia, have given, and freely given, their jewels to their
+country."
+
+Some of us wondered.
+
+Senator McLean of Connecticut, anti-suffrage Republican, flatly
+stated "that all questions involving declarations of war and
+terms of peace should be left to that sex which must do the
+fighting and the dying on the battlefield." And he further said
+that until boys between 18 and 21 who had just been called to the
+colors should ask for the vote, "their mothers should be and
+remain both proud and content" without it. He concluded with an
+amusing account of the history of the ballot box. "This joint
+resolution," he said, "goes beyond the seas and above the clouds.
+It attempts to tamper with the ballot box, over which mother
+nature always has had and always will have supreme control; and
+such attempts always have ended and always will end in failure
+and misfortune."
+
+Senator Phelan of California, Democrat, made a straightforward,
+intelligent speech.
+
+Senator Beckham of Kentucky, Democrat, deplored the idea that man
+was superior to woman. He pleaded "guilty to
+
+{284}
+
+the charge of Romanticism." He said, "But I look upon woman as
+superior to man." Therefore he could not trust her with a vote.
+He had the hardihood to say further, with the men of the world at
+each other's throats, . . . "Woman is the civilizing, refining,
+elevating influence that holds man from barbarism." We charged
+him with ignorance as well as romanticism when he said in
+closing, "It is the duty of man to work and labor for woman; to
+cut the wood, to carry the coal, to go into the fields in the
+necessary labor to sustain the home where the woman presides and
+by her superior nature elevates him to higher and better
+conceptions of life."
+
+Meanwhile Senator Shafroth of Colorado, Democrat, lifelong
+advocate of suffrage, was painstakingly asking one senator after
+another, as he had been for years, "Does not the Senator believe
+that the just powers of government are derived from the consent
+of the governed?" and then-"But if you have the general principle
+acknowledged that the just powers of government are derived from
+the consent of the governed." . . . and so forth. But the idea of
+applying the Declaration of Independence to modern politics
+fairly put them to sleep.
+
+These samples of senatorial profundity may divert, outrage, or
+bore us, but they do not represent the real battle. It is not
+that the men who utter these sentiments do not believe them. More
+is the pity, they do. But they are smoke screens-mere skirmishes
+of eloquence or foolishness. They do not represent the motives of
+their political acts.
+
+The real excitement began when Senator Pittman of Nevada,
+Democrat, attempted to reveal to the senators of his party the
+actual seriousness of the political crisis in which the Democrats
+were now involved. He also attempted to shift the blame for
+threatened defeat of the amendment to the Republican side of the
+chamber. There was a note of desperation in his voice, too, since
+he knew that President Wilson had not
+
+{285}
+
+up to that moment won the two votes lacking. The gist of Senator
+Pittman's remarks was this: The Woman's Party has charged the
+Senate Woman Suffrage Committee, which is in control of the
+Democrats, and the President himself, with the responsibility fob
+obstructing a vote on the measure. "I confess," said he, that
+this is "having its effect as a campaign argument" in the woman
+suffrage states.
+
+Senator Wolcott of Delaware, Democrat, interrupted him to ask if
+this was "the party that has been picketing here in Washington?"
+Senator Pittman, having just paid this tribute to our campaign in
+the West, hastened to say that it was, but that there was another
+association, the National American Woman Suffrage Association,
+which had always conducted its campaign in a "lady-like-modest-
+and intelligent way" and which had "never mixed in politics."
+
+Waving a copy of the Suffragist in the air, Senator Pittman began
+his attempt to shift responsibility to the Republican side, for
+the critical condition of the amendment. He denounced the
+Republicans for caucusing on the amendment and deciding
+unanimously to press for a vote, when they the Republicans] knew
+there were two votes lacking. He scored us for having given so
+much publicity to the action of the caucus and declared with
+vehemence that a "trick" had been executed through Senator Smoot
+which he would not allow to go unrevealed. Senator Pittman
+charged that the Republicans had promised enough votes to pass
+the amendment and that upon that promise the Democrats had
+brought the measure on the floor; that the Republicans thereupon
+withdrew enough votes to cause the defeat of the amendment.
+Whether or not this was true, at any rate, as Senator Smoot
+pointed out, the Democratic Chairman in charge of the measure
+could at any moment send the measure back to Committee, safe from
+immediate defeat. This was true, but not exactly a suggestion to
+be welcomed by the Democrats.
+
+{286}
+
+"Yes," replied Senator Pittman, "and then if we move to refer it
+back to the committee, the Senator from Utah would say again,
+`The Democrats are obstructing the passage of this amendment . .
+. . We told you all the time they wanted to kill it.' . . . If we
+refer it back to the committee, then we will be charged, as we
+have been all the time in the suffrage states, with trying to
+prevent a vote on it, and still the Woman's Party campaign will
+go on as it is going on now; and if we vote on it they will say:
+`We told you the Democrats would kill it, because the President
+would not make 332 on his side vote for it'."
+
+That was the crux of the whole situation. The Democrats had been
+manaeuvered into a position where they could neither afford to
+move to refer the amendment back to the committee, nor could they
+afford to press it to a losing vote. They were indeed in an
+exceedingly embarrassing predicament.
+
+Throughout hours of debate, Senator Pittman could not get away
+from the militants. Again and again, he recited our deeds of
+protest, our threats of reprisal, our relentless strategy of
+holding his party responsible for defeat or victory.
+
+"I should like the Senator," interpolated Senator Poindexter of
+Washington, Republican, "so long as he is discussing the action
+of the pickets, to explain to the Senate whether or not it is the
+action of the pickets . . . the militant . . . woman's party,
+that caused the President to change his attitude on the subject.
+Was he coerced into supporting this measure -after he had for
+years opposed it-because he was picketed? When did the President
+change his attitude? If it was not because he was picketed, will
+the Senator explain what was the cause of the change in the
+President's attitude?"
+
+Mr. Pittman did not reply directly to these questions.
+
+Senator Reed of Missouri, anti-Administration Democrat, consumed
+hours reading into the Congressional Record various
+
+{287}
+
+press reports of militant activities. He dwelt particularly upon
+the news headlines, such as,
+
+"Great Washington Crowd Cheers Demonstration at White House by
+National Woman's Party." . . .
+
+"Suffragists Burn Wilson `Idle Words' . . ."
+
+"Money Instead of Jeers Greet Marchers and Unique Protest Against
+Withholding Vote" . . .
+
+"Apply Torch to President's Words . . . Promise to Urge Passage
+of Amendment Not Definite Enough for Militants."
+
+"Suff's Burn Speech . . .,Apply Torch to Wilson's Words During
+Demonstration-Symbol of `Indignation'-Throngs Witnessing Doings
+in Lafayette Square Orderly and Contribute to Fund-President
+Receives Delegation of American Suffrage Association Women."
+
+Senator McKellar of Tennessee, Democrat, asked Mr. Reed if he did
+not believe that we had a right peaceably to assemble under the
+"first amendment to our Constitution which I shall read: Congress
+shall make no law . . . abridging . . . the right of the people
+peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a
+redress of grievances." Mr. Reed made no direct answer.
+
+Lest the idea get abroad from the amount of time they spent in
+discussing the actions of the "wicked militants," that we had had
+something to do with the situation which had resulted in
+Democratic despair, Senator Thomas of Colorado, the one Democrat
+who had never been able to conceal his hostility to us for having
+reduced his majority in 1914, arose to pay a tribute to the
+conservative suffrage association of America. Their "escutcheon,"
+he said, "is unstained by mob methods or appeals to violence. It
+has neither picketed Presidents nor populated prisons . . . . It
+has carried no banners flaunting insults to the Executive," while
+the militants on the other hand have indulged in "much tumult and
+vociferous braying, all for notoriety's sake." . . . The
+galleries smiled as he counseled
+
+{288}
+
+the elder suffrage leaders "not to lose courage nor yet be:
+fainthearted," for this "handicap" would soon be overcome. It
+would have taken an abler man than Senator Thomas, in the face of
+the nature of this debate, to make any one believe that we had
+been a "handicap" in forcing them to their position. He was the
+only one hardy enough to try. After this debate the Senate
+adjourned, leaving things from the point of view of party
+politics, tangled in a hopeless knot. It was to untie this knot
+that the President returned hastily from New York in answer to
+urgent summons by long distance telephone, and went to the
+Capitol to deliver his memorable address.
+
+Mr. Vice President and Gentlemen of the Senate: The unusual
+circumstances of a world war in which we stand and are judged in
+the view not only of our own people and our own consciences but
+also in view of all nations and all peoples will, I hope, justify
+in your thought, as it does in mine, the message I have come to
+bring you. I regard the concurrence of the Senate in the
+constitutional amendment proposing the extension of the suffrage
+to women as vitally essential to the successful prosecution of
+the great war of humanity in which we are engaged. I have come to
+urge upon you the considerations which have led me to that
+conclusion. It is not only my privilege, it is also my duty to
+appraise you of every circumstance and element involved in this
+momentous struggle which seems to me to affect its very processes
+and its outcome. It is my duty to win the war and to ask you to
+remove every obstacle that stands in the way of winning it.
+
+I had assumed that the Senate would concur in the amendment
+because ho disputable principle is involved but only a question
+of the method by which the suffrage is to be extended to women.
+There is and can be no party issue involved in it. Both of our
+great national parties are pledged, explicitly pledged, to
+equality of suffrage for the women of the country. Neither party,
+therefore, it seems to me, can justify hesitation as to the
+method of obtaining it, can rightfully hesitate to substitute
+federal initiative for state initiative, if the early adoption,
+of the measure is necessary to the successful prose-
+
+{289}
+
+cution of the war and if the method of state action proposed in
+party platforms of 1916 is impracticable within any reasonable
+length of time, if practicable at all. And its adoption is, in my
+judgment, clearly necessary to the successful prosecution of the
+war and the successful realization of the objects for which the
+war is being fought.
+
+That judgment, I take the liberty of urging upon you with solemn
+earnestness for reasons which I shall state very frankly and
+which I shall hope will seem as conclusive to you as they have
+seemed to me.
+
+This is a peoples' war, and the peoples' thinking constitutes its
+atmosphere and morale, not the predilections of the drawing room
+or the political considerations of the caucus. If we be indeed
+democrats and wish to lead the world to democracy, we can ask
+other peoples to accept in proof of our sincerity and our ability
+to lead them whither they wish to be led nothing less persuasive
+and convincing than our actions. Ours professions will not
+suffice. Verification must be forthcoming when verification is
+asked for. And in this case verification is asked for, asked for
+in this particular matter. You ask by whom? Not through
+diplomatic channels; not by Foreign Ministers, not by the
+intimations of parliaments. It is asked for by the anxious,
+expectant, suffering peoples with whom we are dealing and who are
+willing to put their destinies in some measure in our hands, if
+they are sure that we wish the same things that they wish. I do
+not speak by conjecture. It is not alone the voices of statesmen
+and of newspapers that reach me, and the voices of foolish and
+intemperate agitators do not reach me at all! Through many, many
+channels I have been made aware what the plain, struggling,
+workaday folk are thinking upon whom the chief terror and
+suffering of this tragic war falls. They are looking to the
+great, powerful, famous democracy of the West to lead them to the
+new day for which they have so long waited; and they think, in
+their logical simplicity, that democracy means that women shall
+play their part in affairs alongside men and upon an equal
+footing with them. If we reject measures like this, in ignorance
+or defiance of what a new age has brought forth, of what they
+have seen but we have not, they will cease to follow or to trust
+us. They have seen their own governments accept this inter-
+
+{290}
+
+pretation of democracy,-seen old governments like Great Britain,
+which did not profess to be democratic, promise readily and as of
+course this justice to women, though they had before refused it,
+the strange revelations of this war having made many things new
+and plain to governments as well as to peoples.
+
+Are we alone to refuse to learn the lesson? Are we alone to ask
+and take the utmost that women can give,-service and sacrifice of
+every kind,-and still say that we do not see what title that
+gives them to stand by our sides in the guidance of the affairs
+of their nation and ours? We have made partners of the women in
+this war; shall we admit them only to a partnership of sacrifice
+and suffering and toil and not to a partnership of privilege and
+of right? This war could not have been fought, either by the
+other nations engaged or by America, if it had not been for the
+services of the women, services  rendered in every sphere,-not
+only in the fields of effort in which we have been accustomed to
+see them work, but wherever men have worked and upon the very
+skirts and edges of the battle itself. We shall not only be
+distrusted but shall deserve to be distrusted if we do not
+enfranchise them with the fullest possible enfranchisement, as it
+is now certain that the other great free nations will enfranchise
+them. We cannot isolate our thought or our action in such a
+matter from the thought of the rest of the world. We must either
+conform or deliberately reject what they propose and resign the
+leadership of liberal minds to others.
+
+The women of America arc too noble and too intelligent and too
+devoted to be slackers whether you give or withhold this thing
+that is mere justice; but I know the magic it will work in their
+thoughts and spirits if you give it them. I propose it as I would
+propose to admit soldiers to the suffrage, the men fighting in
+the field for our liberties and the liberties of the world, were
+they excluded. The tasks of the women lie at the very heart of
+the war, and I know how much stronger that heart will beat if you
+do this just thing and show our women that you trust them as much
+as you in fact and of necessity depend upon them.
+
+Have I said that the passage of this amendment is a vitally
+necessary war measure, and do you need further proof? Do
+
+{291}
+
+you stand in need of the trust of other peoples and of the trust
+of our women? Is that trust an asset or is it not? I tell you
+plainly, as commander-in-chief of our armies and of the gallant
+men in our fleets, as the present spokesman of this people in our
+dealings with the men and women throughout the world who are now
+our partners, as the responsible head of a great government which
+stands and is questioned day by day as to its purposes, its
+principles, its hopes, whether they be serviceable to men
+everywhere or only to itself, and who must himself answer these
+questionings or be shamed, as the guide and director of forces
+caught in the grip of war and by the same token in need of every
+material and spiritual resource this great nation possesses,-I
+tell you plainly that this measure which I urge upon you is vital
+to the winning of the war and to the energies alike of
+preparation and of battle.
+
+And not to the winning of the war only. It is vital to the right
+solution of the great problems which we must settle, and settle
+immediately, when the war is over. We shall need then a vision of
+affairs which is theirs, and, as we have never needed them
+before, the sympathy and insight and clear moral instinct of the
+women of the world. The problems of that time will strike to the
+roots of many things that we have not hitherto questioned, and I
+for one believe that our safety in those questioning days, as
+well as our comprehension of matters that touch society to the
+quick, will depend upon the direct and authoritative
+participation of women in our counsels. We shall need their moral
+sense to preserve what is right and fine and worthy in our system
+of life as well as to discover just what it is that ought to be
+purified and reformed. Without their counselings we shall be only
+half wise.
+
+That is my case. This is my appeal. Many may deny its validity,
+if they choose, but no one can brush aside or answer the
+arguments upon which it is based. The executive tasks of this war
+rest upon me. I ask that you lighten them and place in my hands
+instruments, spiritual instruments, which I do not now possess,
+which I sorely need, and which I have daily to apologize for not
+being able to employ. (Applause).
+
+It was a truly beautiful appeal.
+
+{292}
+
+When the applause and the excitement attendant upon the occasion
+of a message from the President had subsided, and the floor of
+the chamber had emptied itself of its distinguished visitors, the
+debate was resumed.
+
+"If this resolution fails now," said Senator Jones of Washington,
+ranking Republican member of the Suffrage Committee, "it fails
+for lack of Democratic votes."
+
+Senator Cummins of Iowa, Republican, also a member of the
+Suffrage Committee, reminded opponents of the measure of the
+retaliatory tactics used by President Wilson when repudiated by
+senators on other issues. "I sincerely hope," he said tauntingly,
+"that the President may deal kindly and leniently with those who
+are refusing to remove this obstacle which stands in his way. It
+has not been very long since the President retired the junior
+Senator from Mississippi [Mr. Vardaman] from public life. Why?
+Because he refused at all times to obey the commands which were
+issued for his direction. The junior Senator from Georgia [Mr.
+Hardwick] suffered the same fate. How do you hope to escape? . .
+. My Democratic friends are either proceeding upon the hypothesis
+that the President is insincere or that they may be able to
+secure an immunity from him that these other unfortunate
+aspirants for office failed to secure."
+
+Senator Cummins chided Senator Reed for denouncing "the so-called
+militants who sought to bring their influence to bear upon the
+situation in rather a more forcible and decisive method than was
+employed by the national association. . . I did not believe in
+the campaign they were pursuing (not one senator was brave enough
+to say outright that he did). . . .
+
+"But that was simply a question for them to determine; and if
+they thought that in accordance with the established custom the
+President should bring his influence to bear more effectively
+than he had, they had a perfect right to burn his message; they
+had a perfect right to carry banners in Lafay-
+
+{293}
+
+ette Park, in front of the White House, or anywhere else; they
+had a perfect right to bring their banners into the Capitol and
+display them with all the force and vigor which they could
+command. I did not agree with them; but they also were making a
+campaign for an inestimable and a fundamental right.
+
+"What would you have done, men, if you had been deprived of the
+right to vote? What would you have done if you had been deprived
+of the right of representation? Have the militants done anything
+worse than the revolutionary forces who gathered about the tea
+chests and threw them into the sea? . . .
+
+"I do not believe they [the militants] committed any crime; and
+while I had no particle of sympathy with the manner in which they
+were conducting their campaign, I think their arrest and
+imprisonment and the treatment which they received while in
+confinement are a disgrace to the civilized world, and much the
+more a disgrace to the United States, which assumes to lead the
+civilized world in humane endeavor. They disturbed nobody save
+that disturbance which is common to the carrying forward of all
+propaganda by those who are intensely and vitally interested in
+it. I wish they had not done it, but I am not to be the judge of
+their methods so long as they confine themselves to those acts
+and to those words which are fairly directed to the
+accomplishment of their purposes. I cannot accept the conclusion
+that because these women burned a message in Lafayette Park or
+because they carried banners upon the streets in Washington
+therefore they are criminals."
+
+The time had come to take the vote, but we knew we had not won.
+The roll was called and the vote stood 62 to 34 [Oct. 1, 1918],
+counting all pairs. We had lost by 2 votes.
+
+Instantly Chairman Jones, according to his promise to the women,
+changing his vote from "yea" to "nay," moved for a
+reconsideration of the measure, and thus automatically kept it on
+the calendar of the Senate. That was all that could be done.
+
+{294}
+
+The President's belief in the power of words had lost the
+amendment. Nor could he by a speech, eloquent as it was, break
+down the opposition in the Senate which he had so long protected
+and condoned.
+
+Our next task was to secure a reversal of the Senate vote. We
+modified our tactics slightly.
+
+{295}
+
+Chapter 19
+
+More Pressure
+
+Our immediate task was to compel the President to secure a
+reversal of two votes in the Senate. It became necessary to enter
+again the Congressional elections which were a month away.
+
+By a stroke of good luck there were two senatorial contests-in
+New Jersey and New Hampshire-for vacancies in the short term.
+That is, we had an opportunity to elect two friends who would
+take their seats in time to vote on the amendment before the end
+of this session. It so happened that the Democratic candidates
+were pledged to vote for the amendment if elected, and that the
+Republican candidates were opposed to the amendment. We launched
+our campaign in this instance for the election of the Democratic
+candidates. We went immediately to the President to ask his
+assistance in our endeavor. We urged him personally to appeal to
+the voters of New Jersey and New Hampshire on behalf of his two
+candidates. As Party leader he was at the moment paying no
+attention whatever to the success of these two suffragists. Both
+of the Democratic candidates themselves appealed to President
+Wilson for help in their contests, on the basis of their suffrage
+advocacy. His speech to the Senate scarcely cold, the President
+refused to lend any assistance in these contests, which with
+sufficient effort might have produced the last two votes.
+
+At the end of two weeks of such pressure upon the President we
+were unable to interest him in this practical endeavor. It was
+clear that he would move again only under attack. We
+
+{296}
+
+went again, therefore, to the women voters of the west and asked
+them to withhold their support from the Democratic Senatorial
+candidates in the suffrage states in order to compel the
+President to assist in the two Eastern contests. This campaign
+made it clear to the President that we were still holding him and
+his party to their responsibility.
+
+And as has been pointed out, our policy was to oppose the
+Democratic candidates at elections so long as their party was
+responsible for the passage of the amendment and did not pass it.
+Since there is no question between individuals in suffrage
+states-they are all suffragists-this could not increase our
+numerical strength. It could, however, and did demonstrate the
+growing and comprehensive power of the women voters.
+
+Shortly before election, when our campaign was in full swing in
+the West, the President sent a letter appealing to the voters of
+New Jersey to support Mr. Hennessey, the Democratic candidate for
+the Senate. He subsequently appealed to the voters of New
+Hampshire to elect Mr. Jameson, candidate for Democratic Senator
+in New Hampshire.
+
+We continued our campaign in the West as a safeguard against
+relaxation by the President after his appeal. There were seven
+senatorial contests in the western suffrage states. In all but
+two of these contests-Montana and Nevada-the Democratic
+Senatorial candidates were defeated. In these two states the
+Democratic majority was greatly reduced.
+
+Republicans won in New Jersey and New Hampshire and a Republican
+Congress was elected to power throughout the country.
+
+The election campaign had had a wholesome effect, however, on
+both parties and was undoubtedly one of the factors in persuading
+the President to again appeal to the Senate.
+
+Immediately after the defeat in the Senate, and throughout the
+election campaign, we attempted to hold banners at the Capitol to
+assist our campaign and in order to weaken the
+
+{297}
+
+resistance of the senators of the opposition. The mottoes on the
+banners attacked with impartial mercilessness both Democrats and
+Republicans. One read:
+
+SENATOR WADSWORTH's REGIMENT IS FIGHTING FOR DEMOCRACY ABROAD.
+
+SENATOR -WADSWORTH LEFT HIS REGIMENT AND IS FIGHTING AGAINST
+DEMOCRACY IN THE SENATE.
+
+SENATOR WADSWORTH COULD SERVE HIS COUNTRY BETTER BY FIGHTING WITH
+HIS REGIMENT ABROAD THAN BY FIGHTING WOMEN AT HOME.
+
+Another read:
+
+SENATOR SHIELDS TOLD THE PEOPLE OF TENNESSEE HE WOULD SUPPORT THE
+PRESIDENT'S POLICIES.
+
+THE ONLY TIME THE PRESIDENT WENT TO THE SENATE TO ASK ITS SUPPORT
+SENATOR SHIELDS VOTED AGAINST HIM.
+
+DOES TENNESSEE BACK THE PRESIDENT'S WAR PROGRAM OE SENATOR
+SHIELDS?
+
+And still a third:
+
+GERMANY HAS ESTABLISHED "EQUAL, UNIVERSAL, SECRET, DIRECT
+FRANCHISE."
+
+THE SENATE HAS DENIED EQUAL, UNIVERSAL, SECRET SUFFRAGE TO
+AMERICA.
+
+WHICH IS MORE OF A DEMOCRACY, GERMANY OR AMERICA?
+
+As the women approached the Senate, Colonel Higgins, the Sergeant
+at Arms of the Senate, ordered a squad of Capitol policemen to
+rush upon them. They wrenched their banners from them, twisting
+their wrists and manhandling them as they took them up the steps,
+through the door, and down
+
+{298}
+
+into the guardroom,-their banners confiscated and they themselves
+detained for varying periods of time. When the women insisted on
+knowing upon what charges they were held, they were merely told
+that "peace and order must be maintained on the Capitol grounds,"
+and further, "It don't make no difference about the law, Colonel
+Higgins is boss here, and he has taken the law in his own hands."
+
+Day after day this performance went on. Small detachments of
+women attempted to hold banners outside the United States Senate,
+as the women of Holland had done outside the Parliament in the
+Hague. It was difficult to believe that American politicians
+could be so devoid of humor as they showed themselves. The panic
+that overwhelms our official mind in the face of the slightest
+irregularity is appalling! Instead of maintaining peace and
+order, the squads of police managed to keep the Capitol grounds
+in a state of confusion. They were assisted from time to time by
+Senate pages, small errand boys who would run out and attack
+mature women with impunity. The women would be held under the
+most rigid detention each day until the Senate had safely
+adjourned. Then on the morrow the whole spectacle would be
+repeated.
+
+While the United States Senate was standing still under our
+protest world events rushed on. German autocracy had collapsed.
+The Allies had won a military victory. The Kaiser had that very
+week fled for his life because of the uprising of his people.
+
+"We are all free voters of a free republic now," was the message
+sent by the women of Germany to the women of the United States
+through Miss Jane Addams. We were at that moment heartily ashamed
+of our government. German women voting! American women going to
+jail and spending long hours in the Senate guardhouse without
+arrests or, charges. The war came to an end. Congress adjourned
+November 21st.
+
+When the 65th Congress reconvened for its short and final
+
+{299}
+
+session, December 2nd, 1918 [less than a month after our election
+campaign], President Wilson, for the first time, included
+suffrage in his regular message to Congress, the thing that we
+had asked of him at the opening of every session of Congress
+since March, 1918.
+
+There were now fewer than a hundred days in which to get action
+from the Senate and so avoid losing the benefit of our victory in
+the House.
+
+In his opening address to Congress, the President again appealed
+to the Senate in these words:
+
+"And what shall we say of the women-of their instant
+intelligence, quickening every task that they touched; their
+capacity for .organization and cooperation, which gave their
+action discipline and enhanced the effectiveness of everything
+they attempted; their aptitude at tasks to which they had never
+before set their hands; their utter self-sacrifice alike in what
+they did and in what they gave? Their contribution to the great
+result is beyond appraisal. They have added a new luster to the
+annals of American womanhood.
+
+"The least tribute we can pay them is to make them the equals of
+men in political rights, as they have proved themselves their
+equals in every field of practical work they have entered,
+whether for themselves or for their country. These great days of
+completed achievement would be sadly marred were we to omit that
+act of justice. Besides the immense practical services they have
+rendered, the women of the country have been the moving spirits
+in the systematic economies in which our people have voluntarily
+assisted to supply the suffering peoples of the world and the
+armies upon every front with food and everything else we had,
+that might serve the common cause. The details of such a story
+can never be fully written but we carry them at our hearts and
+thank God that we can say that we are the kinsmen of such."
+
+Again we looked for action to follow this appeal. Again
+
+{300}
+
+we found that the President had uttered these words but had made
+no plan to translate them into action.
+
+And so his second appeal to the Senate failed, coming as it did
+after the hostility of his party to the idea of conferring
+freedom on women nationally, had been approved and fostered by
+President Wilson for five solid years. He could not overcome with
+additional eloquence the opposition which he himself had so long
+formulated, defended, encouraged and solidified, especially when
+that eloquence was followed by either no action or only half-
+hearted efforts.
+
+It would now require a determined assertion of his political
+power as the leader of his party. We made a final appeal to him
+as leader of his party and while still at the height of his world
+power, to make such an assertion and to demand the necessary two
+votes.
+
+{301}
+
+Chapter 20
+
+The President Sails Away
+
+No sooner had we set ourselves to a brief, hot campaign to compel
+President Wilson to win the final votes than he sailed away to
+France to attend the Peace Conference, sailed away to consecrate
+himself to the program of liberating the oppressed peoples of the
+whole world. He cannot be condemned for aiming to achieve so
+gigantic a task. But we reflected that again the President had
+refused his specific aid in an humble aspiration, for the rosy
+hope of a more boldly conceived ambition.
+
+It was positively impossible for us, by our own efforts, to win
+the last 2 votes. We could only win them through the President.
+That he had left behind him his message urging the Senate to act,
+is true. That Administration leaders did not consider these words
+a command, is also true. It must be realized that even after the
+President had been compelled to publicly declare his support of
+the measure, it was almost impossible to get his own leaders to
+take seriously his words on suffrage. And so again the Democratic
+Chairman of the Rules Committee, in whose keeping the program
+lay, had no thought of bringing it to a vote. The Democratic
+Chairman of the Woman Suffrage Committee assumed not the
+slightest responsibility for its success, nor could he produce
+any plan whereby the last votes could be won. They knew, as well
+as did we, that the President only could win those last 2 votes.
+They made it perfectly clear that until he had done so, they
+could do nothing.
+
+{302}
+
+Less than fifty legislative days remained to us. Something had to
+be done quickly, something bold and offensive enough to threaten
+the prestige of the President, as he was riding in sublimity to
+unknown heights as a champion of world liberty; something which
+might penetrate his reverie and shock him into concrete action.
+We had successfully defied the full power of his Administration,
+the odds heavily against us. We must now defy the popular belief
+of the world in this apostle of liberty. This was the feeling of
+the four hundred officers of the National Woman's Party, summoned
+to a three days' conference in Washington in December, 1918. It
+was unanimously decided to light a fire in an urn, and, on the
+day that the President was officially received by France, to burn
+with fitting public ceremonies all the President's past and
+present speeches or books concerning "liberty", "freedom" and
+"democracy."
+
+It was late afternoon when the four hundred women proceeded
+solemnly in single file from headquarters, past the White House,
+along the edge of the quiet and beautiful Lafayette Park, to the
+foot of Lafayette's statue. A slight mist added beauty to the
+pageant. The purple, white and gold banners, so brilliant in the
+sunshine, became soft pastel sails. Half the procession carried
+lighted torches; the other half banners. The crowd gathered
+silently, somewhat awe-struck by the scene. Massed about that
+statue, we felt a strange strength and solidarity, we felt again
+that we were a part of the universal struggle for liberty.
+
+The torch was applied to the pine-wood logs in the Grecian Urn at
+the edge of the broad base of the statue. As the flames began to
+mount, Vida Milholland stepped forward and without accompaniment
+sang again from that spot of beauty, in her own challenging way,
+the Woman's Marseillaise. Even the small boys in the crowd,
+always the most difficult to please, cheered and clapped and
+cried for more.
+
+{303}
+
+Mrs. John Rogers, Jr., chairman of the National Advisory Council,
+said, as president of the ceremony:
+
+"We hold this meeting to protest against the denial of liberty to
+American women. All over the world to-day we see surging and
+sweeping irresistibly on, the great tide of democracy, and women
+would be derelict in their duty if they did not see to it that it
+brings freedom to the women of this land . . . .
+
+"Our ceremony to-day is planned to call attention to the fact
+that President Wilson has gone abroad to establish democracy in
+foreign lands when he has failed to establish democracy at home.
+We burn his words on liberty to-day, not in malice or anger, but
+in a spirit of reverence for truth.
+
+"This meeting is a message to President Wilson. We expect an
+answer. If the answer is more words we will burn them again. The
+only answer the National Woman's Party will accept is the instant
+passage of the amendment in the Senate."
+
+The few hoots and jeers which followed all ceased, when a tiny
+and aged woman stepped from her place to the urn in the brilliant
+torch light. The crowd recognized a veteran. It was the most
+dramatic moment in the ceremony. Reverend Olympia Brown of
+Wisconsin, one of the first ordained women ministers in the
+country, then in her eighty-fourth year, gallant pioneer, friend
+and colleague of Susan B. Anthony, said, as she threw into the
+flames the speech made by the President on his arrival in France:
+
+" . . . I have fought for liberty for seventy years, and I
+protest against the President's leaving our country with this old
+fight here unwon."
+
+The crowd burst into applause and continued to cheer as she was
+assisted from the plinth of the statue, too frail to dismount by
+herself. Then came the other representative women, from
+Massachusetts to California, from Georgia to Michigan, each one
+consigning to the flames a special declaration of the
+
+{304}
+
+President's on freedom. The flames burned brighter and brighter
+and leapt higher as the night grew black.
+
+The casual observer said, "They must be crazy. Don't they know
+the President isn't at home? Why are they appealing to him in the
+park opposite the White House when he is in France?"
+
+The long line of bright torches shone menacingly as the women
+marched slowly back to headquarters, and the crowd dispersed in
+silence. The White House was empty. But we knew our message would
+be heard in France.
+
+{305}
+
+Chapter 21
+
+Watchfires of Freedom
+
+December came to an end with no plan for action on the amendment
+assured. This left us January and February only before the
+session would end. The President had not yet won the necessary 2
+votes. We decided therefore to keep a perpetual fire to consume
+the President's speeches on democracy as fast as he made them in
+Europe.
+
+And so on New Year's Day, 1919, we light our first watchfire of
+freedom in the Urn dedicated to that purpose. We place it on the
+sidewalk in a direct line with the President's front door. The
+wood comes from a tree in
+
+Independence Square, Philadelphia. It burns gaily. Women with
+banners stand guard over the watchfire. A bell hung in the
+balcony at headquarters tolls rhythmically the beginning of the
+watch. It tolls again as the President's words are tossed to the
+flames. His speech to the workingmen of Manchester; his toast to
+the King at Buckingham Palace: "We have used great words, all of
+us. We have used the words `right' and `justice' and now we are
+to prove whether or not we understand these words;" his speech at
+Brest; all turn into ignominious brown ashes.
+
+The bell tolls again when the watch is changed. All Washington is
+reminded hourly that we are at the President's gate, burning his
+words. From Washington the news goes to all the world.
+
+People gather to see the ceremony. The omnipresent small boys and
+soldiers jeer, and some tear the banners. A soldier rushes to the
+scene with a bucket of water which does not extin-
+
+{306}
+
+guish the flames. The fire burns as if by magic. A policeman
+arrives and uses a fire extinguisher. But the fire burns on! The
+flames are as indomitable as the women who guard them! Rain
+comes, but all through the night the watchfire burns. All through
+the night the women stand guard.
+
+Day and night the fire burns. Boys are permitted by the police to
+scatter it in the street, to break the. urn, and to demolish the
+banners. But each time the women rekindle the fire. A squad of
+policemen tries to demolish the fire. While the police are
+engaged at the White House gates, other women go quietly in the
+dusk to the huge bronze urn in Lafayette Park and light another
+watchfire. A beautiful blaze leaps into the air from the great
+urn. The police hasten hither. The burning contents are
+overturned. Alice Paul refills the urn and kindles a new fire.
+She is placed under arrest. Suddenly a third blaze is seen in a
+remote corner of the park. The policemen scramble to that corner.
+When the watchfires have been continued for four days and four
+nights,, in spite of the attempts by the police to extinguish
+them, general orders to arrest are sent to the squad of
+policemen.
+
+Five women are taken to the police station. The police captain is
+outraged that the ornamental urn valued at $10,000 should have
+been used to hold a fire which burned the President's words! His
+indignation leaves the defendants unimpressed, however, and he
+becomes conciliatory. Will the "ladies promise to be good and
+light no more fires in the park?"
+
+Instead, the "ladies" inquire on what charge they are held. Not
+even the police captain knows. They wait at the police station to
+find out, refusing to give bail unless they are told. Meanwhile
+other women address the crowd lingering about the watchfire. The
+crowd asks thoughtful questions. Little knots of men can be seen
+discussing "what the whole thing is about anyway."
+
+Miss Mildred Morris, one of the participants, overheard
+
+{307}
+
+the following discussion in one group composed of an old man, a
+young sailor and a young soldier.
+
+"But whatever you think of them," the sailor was telling the
+soldier, "you have to admire their sincerity and courage. They've
+got to do this thing. They want only what's their right and real
+men want to give it to them."
+
+"But they've got no business using a sidewalk in front of the
+White House for a bonfire," declared the soldier. "It's disloyal
+to the President, I tell you, and if they weren't women I'd slap
+their faces."
+
+"Listen, sonny," said the old man, patting the soldier's arm,
+"I'm as loyal to the President as any man alive, but I've got to
+admit that he ain't doing the right thing towards these women.
+He's forced everything else he's wanted through Congress, and if
+he wanted to give these women the vote badly enough he could
+force the suffrage amendment through. If you and I were in these
+women's places, sonny, we'd act real vicious. We'd want to come
+here and clean out the ,whole White House."
+
+"But if the President doesn't want to push their amendment
+through, it's his right not to," argued the soldier. "It's
+nobody's business how he uses his power."
+
+"Good God!" the sailor burst out. "Why don't you go over and get
+a job shining the Kaiser's boots?"
+
+The women were released without bail, since no one was able to
+supply a charge. But a thorough research was instituted and out
+of the dusty archives some one produced an ancient statute that
+would serve the purpose. It prohibits the building of fires in a
+public place in the District of Columbia between sunset and
+sunrise. And so the beautiful Elizabethan custom of lighting
+watchfires as a form of demonstration was forbidden!
+
+In a few days eleven women were brought to trial. There was a
+titter in the court room as the prosecuting attorney read
+
+{308}
+
+with heavy pomposity the charge against the prisoners "to wit:
+That on Pennsylvania Avenue, Northwest, in the District of
+Columbia they did aid and abet in setting fire to certain
+combustibles consisting of logs, paper, oil, etc., between the
+setting of the sun in the said District of Columbia on the sixth
+day of January and the rising of the sun in the said District of
+Columbia o f the sixth day o f January, 1919, A. D."
+
+The court is shocked to hear of this serious deed. The prisoners
+are unconcerned.
+
+"Call the names of the prisoners," the judge orders. The clerk
+calls, "Julia Emory."
+
+No answer!
+
+"Julia Emory," he calls a second time.
+
+Dead silence!
+
+The clerk tries another name, a second, a third, a fourth. Always
+there is silence!
+
+In a benevolent tone, the judge asks the policeman to identify
+the prisoners. They identify as many as they can. An attempt is
+made to have the prisoners rise and be sworn. They sit.
+
+"We will go on with the testimony," says the judge.
+
+The police testify as to the important details of the crime. They
+were on Pennsylvania Avenue they looked at their watch-they
+learned it was about 5:30-they saw the ladies in the park putting
+wood on fires in urns. "I threw the wood on the pavement; they
+kept putting it back," says one policeman. "Each time I tried to
+put out the fire they threw on more wood," says another. "They
+kept on lighting new fires, and I'd keep putting them out," says
+a third with an injured air.
+
+The prosecuting attorney asks an important question, "Did you
+command them to stop?"
+
+Policeman-"I did sir, and I said, `You ladies don't want to be
+arrested do you?' They made no answer but went on attending to
+their fires."
+
+{309}
+
+The statute is read for the second time. Another witness is
+called. This time the district attorney asks the policeman, "Do
+you know what time the sun in the District of Columbia set on
+January 5th and rose on January 6th?"
+
+At this profound question, the policeman hesitates, looks
+abashed, then says impressively, "The sun in the District of
+Columbia set at 5 o'clock January 5th, and rose at 7:9.8 o'clock
+January 6th."
+
+The prosecutor is triumphant. He looks expectantly at the judge.
+
+"How do you know what time the sun rose and set on those days?"
+asks the judge.
+
+"From the weather bureau," answers the policeman.
+
+The judge is perplexed.
+
+"I think we should have something more official," he says.
+
+The prosecutor suggests that perhaps an almanac would settle the
+question. The judge believes it would. The government attorney
+disappears to find an almanac.
+
+Breathless, the prisoners and spectators wait to hear the
+important verdict of the almanac. The delay is interminable. The
+court room is in a state of confusion. The prisoners, especially,
+are amused at the proceedings. It is clear their fate may hang
+upon a minute or two of time. An hour goes by, and still the
+district attorney has not returned. Another half hour! Presently
+he returns to read in heavy tones from the almanac. The policeman
+looks embarrassed. His information from the weather bureau
+differs from that of the almanac. His sun rose two minutes too
+early and continued to shine twelve minutes too long! However, it
+doesn't matter. The sun shone long enough to make the defendants
+guilty.
+
+The judge looks at the prisoners and announces that they are
+"guilty" and "shall pay a fine of $5.00 or serve five days in
+jail." The Administration has learned its lesson about hunger
+strikes and evidently fears having to yield to another
+
+{310}
+
+strike. And so it seeks safety in lighter sentences. The judge
+pleads almost piteously with them not to go to jail at all, and
+says that he will put them on probation if they will promise to
+be good and not light any more fires in the District of Columbia.
+The prisoners make no promise. They have been found guilty
+according to the almanac and they file through the little gate
+into the prisoners' pen.
+
+Somehow they did not believe that whether the sun rose at 7 :26
+or 7:28 was the issue which had decided whether they should be
+convicted or not, and it was not in protest against the almanac
+that they straightway entered upon a hunger strike.
+
+Meanwhile the watchfires continued in the capital. January
+thirteenth, the day the great world Peace Conference under the
+President's leadership, began to deliberate on the task of
+administering "right" and "justice" to all the oppressed of the
+earth, twenty-three women were arrested in front of the White
+House.
+
+Another trial! More silent prisoners! They were to be tried this
+time in groups. A roar of applause from friends in the courtroom
+greeted the first four as they came in. The judge said that he
+could not possibly understand the motive for this outburst, and
+added, "If it is repeated, I shall consider it contempt of
+court." He then ordered the bailiff to escort the four prisoners
+out and bring them in again.-Shades of school days!
+
+"And if there is any applause this time . . ."
+
+With this threat still in the air, the prisoners reentered and
+the applause was louder than before. Great Confusion! The judge
+roared at the bailiff. The bailiff roared at the prisoners and
+their friends.
+
+Finally they rushed to the corners of the courtroom and evicted
+three young women.
+
+"Lock the doors, and see that they do not return," shouted
+
+{311}
+
+the angry judge. Thus the dignity of the court was restored. But
+the group idea had to be abandoned. The prisoners were now
+brought in one at a time, and one policeman after another
+testified that, "she kep' alightin' and alightin' fires."
+
+Five days' imprisonment for each woman who "kep' alightin"'
+watchfires!
+
+On January 25th, in Paris, President Wilson received a delegation
+of French working women who urged woman suffrage as one of the
+points to be settled at the Peace Conf6rence. The President
+expressed admiration for the women of France, and told them of
+his deep personal interest in the enfranchisement of women. He
+was `honored' and `touched' by their tribute. It was a great
+moment for the President. He had won the position in the eyes of
+the world of a devout champion of the liberty of women, but at
+the very moment he was speaking to these French women American
+women were lying in the District of Columbia jail for demanding
+liberty at his gates.
+
+Mrs. Mary Nolan, the eldest suffrage prisoner, took to the
+watchfire those vain words of the President to the French women.
+The flames were just consuming-"All sons of freedom are under
+oath to see that freedom never suffers," when a whole squadron of
+police dashed up to arrest her. There was a pause when they saw
+her age. They drew back for an instant. Then one amongst them,
+more "dutiful" than the rest, quietly placed her under arrest. As
+she marched along by his side, cheers for her went up from all
+parts of the crowd.
+
+"Say what you think about them, but that little old lady has
+certainly got pluck," they murmured.
+
+At the bar Mrs. Nolan's beautiful speech provoked irrepressible
+applause. The judge ordered as many offenders as could be
+recognized brought before him. Thirteen women were hastily
+produced. The trial was suspended while the judge
+
+{312}
+
+
+sentenced these thirteen to "forty-eight hours in jail for
+contempt of court."
+
+And so, throughout January and the beginning of February, 1919,
+the story of protest continued relentlessly. Watchfires-arrests-
+convictions-hunger strikes - release - until again the nation
+rose in protest against imprisoning the women and against the
+Senate's delay. Peremptory cables went to the President at the
+Peace Conference, commanding him to act. News of our
+demonstrations were well reported in the Paris press. The
+situation must have again seemed serious to him, for although
+reluctantly and perhaps unwillingly, he did begin to cable to
+Senate leaders, who in turn began to act. On February 2d, the
+Democratic Suffrage Senators called a meeting at the Capitol to
+"consider ways and means." On February 3d, Senator Jones
+announced in the Senate that the amendment would be-brought up
+for discussion February 10th. The following evening, February
+4th, a caucus of all Democratic Senators was called together at
+the Capitol by Senator Martin of Virginia, Democratic floor
+leader in the Senate. This was the first Democratic caucus held
+in the Senate since war was declared, which would seem to point
+to the anxiety of the Democrats to marshal two votes.
+
+Several hours of very passionate debate occurred, during which
+Senator Pollock of South Carolina announced for the first time
+his support of the measure.
+
+Senator Pollock had yielded to pressure by cable from the
+President as well as to the caucus. This gain of one vote had
+reduced the number of votes lacking to one.
+
+Many Democratic leaders now began to show alarm lest the last
+vote be not secured. William Jennings Bryan was one leader who,
+rightly alarmed over such a situation, personally consulted with
+the Democratic opponents. The argument which he presented to them
+he subsequently gave to the press.
+
+{313}
+
+
+"Woman suffrage is coming to the country and to the world. It
+will be submitted to the states by the next Congress, if it is
+not submitted by the present Congress.
+
+"I hope the Democrats of the South will not handicap the
+Democrats of the North by compelling them to spend the next
+twenty-five years explaining to the women of the country why
+their party prevented the submission of the suffrage amendment to
+the states.
+
+"This is our last chance to play an important part in bringing
+about this important reform, and it is of vital political concern
+that the Democrats of the Northern Mississippi Valley should not
+be burdened by the charge that our party prevented the passage of
+the suffrage amendment, especially when it is known that it is
+coming in spite of, if not with the aid of, the Democratic
+Party."
+
+As we grew nearer the last vote the President was meeting what
+was perhaps his most bitter resistance from within. It was a
+situation which he could have prevented. His own early hostility,
+his later indifference and negligence, his actual protection
+given to Democratic opponents of the measure, his own reversal of
+policy practically at the point of a pistol, the half-hearted
+efforts made by him on its behalf, were all coming to fruition at
+the moment when his continued prestige was at stake. His power to
+get results on this because of belated efforts was greatly
+weakened. This also undermined his power in other undertakings
+essential to his continued prestige. Whereas more effort, at an
+earlier time, would have brought fairer results, now the
+opponents were solidified in their opposition, were through their
+votes publicly committed to the nation as opponents, and were
+unwilling to sacrifice their heavy dignity to a public reversal
+of their votes. This presented a formidable resistance, indeed.
+
+Therefore the Democratic blockade continued.
+
+And so did the watchfires !
+
+{314}
+
+Chapter 22
+
+Burned in Effigy
+
+The suffrage score now stood as follows: One vote lacking in the
+Senate, 15 days in which to win it, and President Wilson across
+the sea! The Democrats set February 10 as the date on which the
+Senate would again vote on the amendment, without any plan as to
+how the last vote would be won.
+
+We were powerless to secure the last vote. That was still the
+President's problem. Knowing that he always put forth more effort
+under fire of protest from us than when not pressed, we decided
+to make as a climax to our watchfire demonstrations a more
+drastic form of protest. We wanted to show our contempt for the
+President's inadequate support which promised so much in words
+and which did so little in deeds to match the words.
+
+And so on the day preceding the vote we burned in effigy a
+portrait of President Wilson even as the Revolutionary fathers
+had burned a portrait of King George.[1]
+
+[1]This is the inscription on a tablet at the State House, Dover
+Green, Dover, in commemoration of Delaware's revolutionary
+leaders.
+
+Signers of the Declaration of Independence.
+Caeser Rodney-Thomas McKain-George Read
+At the urgent request of Thomas McKain, Caesar Rodney being then
+in Delaware, rode post haste on horseback to Philadelphia and
+reached Independence Hall July 4, 1776.
+
+The following day news of the adoption of the Declaration of
+Independence reaching Dover a portrait of King George was burned
+on Dover Green at the order of the Committee of Safety. The
+following historic words being uttered by the chairman:
+
+"Compelled by strong necessity thus we destroy even the shadow of
+that king who refused to reign over a free people."
+
+{315}
+
+A hundred women marched with banners to the center of the
+sidewalk opposite the White House. Mingling with the party's tri-
+colored banners were two lettered ones which read:
+
+ONLY FIFTEEN LEGISLATIVE DAYS ARE LEFT IN THIS CONGRESS.
+
+FOR MORE THAN A YEAR THE PRESIDENT'S PARTY HAS BLOCKED SUFFRAGE
+IN THE SENATE.
+
+IT IS BLOCKING IT TODAY.
+
+THE PRESIDENT IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE BETRAYAL OF AMERICAN
+WOMANHOOD.
+
+And-
+
+WHY DOES NOT THE PRESIDENT INSURE THE PASSAGE OF SUFFRAGE IN THE
+SENATE TO-MORROW?
+
+WHY DOES HE NOT WIN FROM HIS PARTY THE ONE VOTE NEEDED?
+
+HAS HE AGREED TO PERMIT SUFFRAGE AGAIN TO BE PUSHED ASIDE?
+
+PRESIDENT WILSON IS DECEIVING THE WORLD.
+
+HE PREACHES DEMOCRACY ABROAD AND THWARTS DEMOCRACY HERE.
+
+As the marchers massed their banners, and grouped themselves
+about the urn, a dense crowd of many thousand people closed in
+about them, a crowd so interested that it stood almost motionless
+for two hours while the ceremonies continued. The fire being
+kindled, and the flames leaping into the air, Miss Sue White of
+Tennessee and Mrs. Gabrielle Harris of South Carolina dropped
+into the fire in the urn a figure of President Wilson sketched on
+paper in black and white -a sort of effigy de luxe, we called it,
+but a symbol of our contempt none the less.
+
+Mrs. Henry O. Havemeyer of New York, life-long suffragist and
+woman of affairs, said as master of the ceremonies, "Every
+
+{316}
+
+Anglo-Saxon government in the world has enfranchised its women.
+In Russia, in Hungary, in Austria, in Germany itself, the women
+are completely enfranchised, and thirty-four women are now
+sitting in the new Reichstag. We women of America are assembled
+here to-day to voice our deep indignation that . . . American
+women are still deprived of a voice in their government at home.
+We mean to show that the President . . . ." She was caught by the
+arm, placed under arrest, and forced into the waiting patrol
+wagon.
+
+Thereupon the police fell upon the ceremonies, and indiscriminate
+arrests followed. Women with banners were taken; women without
+banners were taken. Women attempting to guard the fire; women
+standing by doing nothing at all; all were seized upon and rushed
+to the patrol. While this uproar was going on, others attempted
+to continue the speaking where Mrs. Havemeyer had left it, but
+each was apprehended as she made her attempt. Some that had been
+scheduled to speak, but were too shy to utter a word in the
+excitement, were also taken. When the "Black Marias" were all
+filled to capacity, nearby automobiles were commandeered, and
+more patrols summoned. And still not even half the women were
+captured.
+
+The police ceased their raids suddenly. Orders to arrest no more
+had evidently been given. Some one must have suggested that a
+hundred additions to the already overcrowded jail and workhouse
+would be too embarrassing. Perhaps the ruse of arresting some,
+and hoping the others would scamper away at the sight of
+authority, was still in their minds.
+
+After a brief respite they turned their attention to the
+fascinated crowd. They succeeded in forcing back these masses of
+people half way across Pennsylvania Avenue, and stationed an
+officer every two feet in front of them. But still women came to
+keep the fire burning. Was there no end of this battalion of
+women? The police finally declared a "military zone" between the
+encircling crowd and the remaining
+
+{317}
+
+women, and no person was allowed to enter the proscribed area.
+For, another hour, then, the women stood on guard at the urn, and
+as night fell, the ceremonies ended. Sixty of them marched back
+to headquarters. Thirty-nine had been arrested.
+
+The following morning, February 10th, saw two not unrelated
+scenes in the capital. Senators were gathering in their seats in
+the senate chamber to answer. to the roll call on the suffrage
+amendment. A few blocks away in the courthouse, thirty-nine women
+were being tried for their protest of the previous day.
+
+There was no uncertainty either in the minds of the galleries or
+of the senators. Every one knew that we still lacked one vote.
+The debate was confined to two speeches, one for and one against.
+
+When the roll was called, there were voting and paired in favor
+of the amendment, 63 senators; there were voting and paired
+against the amendment 83 senators. The amendment lost therefore,
+by one vote. Of the 63 favorable votes 62 were Republicans and 31
+Democrats. Of the 33 adverse votes 12 were Republicans and 21
+Democrats. This means that of the 44 Republicans in the Senate,
+32 or 73 per cent voted for the amendment. Of the 52 Democrats in
+the Senate 31 or 60 per cent voted for it. And so it was again
+defeated by the opposition of the Democratic Administration, and
+by the failure of the President to put behind it enough power to
+win.
+
+Meanwhile another burlesque of justice dragged wearily on in the
+dim courtroom. The judge was sentencing thirty-nine women to
+prison. When the twenty-sixth had been reached, he said wearily,
+"How many more are out there?"
+
+When told that he had tried only two-thirds of the defendants, he
+dismissed the remaining thirteen without trial!
+
+They were as guilty as their colleagues. But the judge was tired.
+Twenty-six women sent to jail is a full judicial day's work, I
+suppose.
+
+{318}
+
+There was some rather obvious shame and unhappiness in the Senate
+because of the petty thing they had done. The prisoners in the
+courtroom were proud because they had done their utmost for the
+principle in which they believed.
+
+Senator Jones of New Mexico, Chairman of the Committee, and his
+Democratic colleagues refused to reintroduce the Susan B. Anthony
+amendment in the Senate immediately after this defeat. But on
+Monday, February 17, Senator Jones of Washington, ranking
+Republican on the Suffrage Committee, obtained unanimous consent
+and reintroduced it, thereby placing it once more on its way to
+early reconsideration.
+
+{319}
+
+Chapter 23
+
+Boston Militants Welcome the President
+
+It was announced that the President would return to America on
+February 24th. That would leave seven days in which he could act
+before the session ended on March 3d. We determined to make
+another dramatic effort to move him further.
+
+Boston was to be the President's landing place. Boston, where
+ancient liberties are so venerated, and modern ones so abridged.
+No more admirable place could have been found to welcome the
+President home in true militant fashion.
+
+Wishing the whole world to know that women were greeting
+President Wilson, why they were greeting him, and what form of
+demonstration the greetings would assume, we announced our plans
+in advance. Upon his arrival a line of pickets would hold banners
+silently calling to the President's attention the demand for his
+effective aid. In the afternoon they would hold a meeting in
+Boston Common and there burn the parts of the President's Boston
+speech which should pertain to democracy and liberty. These
+announcements were met with official alarm of almost unbelievable
+extent. Whereas front pages had been given over heretofore to
+publishing the elaborate plans for the welcome to be extended to
+the President, eulogies of the President, and recitals of his
+great triumph abroad, now the large proportion of this space was
+devoted to clever plans of the police to outwit the suffragists.
+The sustained publicity of this demonstration was unprecedented.
+It actually filled the Boston papers for all of two weeks.
+
+{320}
+
+A "deadline," a diagram of which appeared in the press, was to be
+established beyond which no suffragist, no matter how
+enterprising, could penetrate to harass the over-worked President
+with foolish ideas about the importance of liberty for women. Had
+not this great man the cares of the world on his shoulders? This
+was no time to talk about liberty for women! The world was
+rocking and a great peace conference was sitting, and the
+President was just returning to report on the work done so far.
+The Boston descendants of the early revolutionists would do their
+utmost to see that no untoward event should mar the perfection of
+their plans. They would see to it that the sacred soil of the old
+Boston Common should not be
+disgraced.
+
+It was a perfect day. Lines of marines whose trappings shone
+brilliantly in the clear sunshine were in formation to hold back
+the crowds from the Reviewing stand where the President should
+appear after heading the procession in his honor. It seemed as if
+all Boston were on hand for the welcome. A slender file of
+twenty-two women marched silently into the sunshine, slipped
+through the 'deadline," and made its way to the base` of the
+Reviewing stand. There it unfurled its beautiful banners and took
+up its post directly facing the line of marines which was
+supposed to keep all suffragists at bay. Quite calmly and yet
+triumphantly, they stood there, a pageant of beauty and defiant
+appeal, which not even the most hurried passerby could fail to
+see and comprehend.
+
+There were consultations by the officials in charge of the
+ceremonies. The women looked harmless enough, but had they not
+been told that they must not come there? They were causing no
+riot, in fact they were clearly adding much beauty. People seemed
+to take them as part of the elaborate ceremony but officials
+seldom have sense of humor enough or adaptability enough to
+change quickly, especially when they have made
+
+{321}
+
+threats. It would be a taint on their honor, if they did not
+"pick up" the women for the deed.
+
+One could hear the people reading slowly the large lettered
+banner:
+
+MR. PRESIDENT, YOU SAID IN THE SENATE ON SEPTEMBER 20 "WE SHALL
+NOT ONLY BE DISTRUSTED BUT WE SHALL DESERVE TO BE DISTRUSTED IF
+WE DO NOT ENFRANCHISE WOMEN." YOU ALONE CAN REMOVE THIS DISTRUST
+NOW BY SECURING THE ONE VOTE NEEDED TO PASS THE SUFFRAGE
+AMENDMENT BEFORE MARCH 4.
+
+The American flag carried by Miss Katherine Morey of Brookline
+held the place of honor at the head of the line and there were
+the familiar, "Mr. President, how long must women wait for
+liberty?" and "Mr. President, what will you do for woman
+suffrage?" The other banners were simply purple, white and gold.
+
+"When we had stood there about three quarters of an hour," said
+Katherine Morey, "Superintendent Crowley came to me and said, `We
+want to be as nice as we can to you suffragette ladies, but you
+cannot stand here while the President goes by, so you might as
+well go back now.' I said I was sorry, but as we had come simply
+to be there at that very time, we would not be able to go back
+until the President had gone by. He thereupon made a final appeal
+to Miss Paul, who was at headquarters, but she only repeated our
+statement. The patrol wagons were hurried to the scene and the
+arrests were executed in an exceedingly gentlemanly manner. But
+the effect on the crowd was electric. The sight of `ladies' being
+put into patrols, seemed to thrill the Boston masses as nothing
+the President subsequently said was able to.
+
+"We were taken to the House of Detention and there charged with
+`loitering more than seven minutes'."
+
+{322}
+
+As Mrs. Agnes H. Morey, Massachusetts Chairman of the Woman's
+Party, later remarked:
+
+"It is a most extraordinary thing. Thousands loitered from
+curiosity on the day the President arrived. Twenty-two loitered
+for liberty, and only those who loitered for liberty were
+arrested."
+
+Realizing that the event of the morning had diverted public
+attention to our issue, and undismayed by the arrests, other
+women entered the lists to sustain public attention upon our
+demand to the President.
+
+The ceremony on the Common began at three o'clock. Throngs of
+people packed in closely in an effort to hear the speakers, and
+to catch a glimpse of the ceremony, presided over by Mrs. Louise
+Sykes of Cambridge, whose late husband was President of the
+Connecticut College for Women. From three o'clock until six,
+women explained the purpose of the protest, the status of the
+amendment, and urged those present to help. At six o'clock came
+the order to arrest. Mrs. C. C. Jack, wife of Professor Jack of
+Harvard University, Mrs. Mortimer Warren of Boston, whose husband
+was head of a base hospital in France, and Miss Elsie Hill,
+daughter of the late Congressman Hill, were arrested and were
+taken to the House of Detention, where they joined their
+comrades.
+
+"Dirty, filthy hole under the Court House," was the general
+characterization of the House of Detention. "Jail was a Paradise
+compared to this depraved place," said Miss Morey. "We slept in
+our clothes, four women to a cell, on iron shelves two feet wide.
+In the cell was an open toilet. The place slowly filled up during
+the night with drunks and disorderlies until pandemonium reigned.
+In the evening, Superintendent Crowley and Commissioner Curtis
+came to call on us. I don't believe they had ever been there
+before, and they were painfully embarrassed. Superintendent
+Crowley said to me, "If you were
+
+{323}
+
+drunk we could release you in the morning, but unfortunately
+since you are not we have got to take you into court."
+
+When the prisoners were told next morning the decision of Chief
+Justice Bolster to try each prisoner separately and in closed
+court, they all protested against such proceedings. But guards
+took the women by force to a private room. "The Matron, who was
+terrified," said Miss Morey, "shouted to the guards, `You don't
+handle the drunks that way. You know you don't.' But they
+continued to push, shove and shake the women while forcing them
+to the ante room."
+
+"As an American citizen under arrest, I demand a public trial,"
+was the statement of each on entering the judge's private trial
+room.
+
+While the trial was proceeding without the women's cooperation;
+some were tried under wrong names, some were tried more than once
+under different names, but most of them under the name of Jane
+Doe-vigorous protests were being made to all the city officials
+by individuals among the throngs who had come to the court house
+to attend the trial. This protest was so strong that the last
+three women were tried in open court. The judge sentenced
+everybody impartially to eight days in j ail in lieu of fines,
+with the exception of Miss Wilma Henderson, who was released when
+it was learned that she was a minor.
+
+The women were taken to the Charles Street Jail to serve their
+sentences. "The cells were immaculately clean," said Miss Morey,
+"but there was one feature of this experience which obliterated
+all its advantages. The cells were without modern toilet
+facilities. The toilet equipment consisted of a heavy wooden
+bucket, about two and a half feet high and a foot and a half in
+diameter, half filled with water. No one of us will ever forget
+that foul bucket. It had to be carried to the lower floor-we were
+on the third and fourth floors-every morning. I could hardly lift
+mine off the floor, to say nothing of getting
+
+{324}
+
+it down stairs (Miss Morey weighs 98 pounds), so there it stayed.
+Berry Pottier managed to get hers down, but was so exhausted she
+was utterly unable to get it back to her cell.
+
+"The other toilet facility provided was a smaller bucket of water
+to wash in, but it was of such a strangely unpleasant odor that
+we did not dare use it."
+
+The Boston reporters were admitted freely-and they wrote columns
+of copy. There was the customary ridicule, but there were
+friendly light touches such as, "Militant Highlights-To be
+roommates at Vassar College and then to meet again as cellmates
+was the experience of Miss Elsie Hill and Mrs. Lois Warren Shaw."
+. . . "Superintendent Kelleher didn't know when he was in
+Congress with Elsie Hill's father he would some day have
+Congressman Hill's daughter in his jail."
+
+And there were friendly serious touches in these pages of
+sensational news-such as this excerpt from the front page of the
+Boston Traveler of February 25, 1919. "The reporter admired the
+spirit of the women. Though weary from loss of sleep, the fire of
+a great purpose burned in their eyes . . . .
+
+"It was a sublime forgetting of self for the goal ahead, and
+whether the reader is in sympathy with the principle for which
+these women are ready to suffer or not, he will be forced to
+admire the spirit which leads them on."
+
+Photographs of the women were printed day by day giving their
+occupations, if any, noting their revolutionary ancestors,
+ascertaining the attitude of husbands and fathers. Mrs. Shaw's
+husband's telegram was typical of the support the women got.
+"Don't be quitters," he wired, "I have competent nurses to look
+after the children." Mr. Shaw is a Harvard graduate and a
+successful manufacturer in Manchester, New Hampshire.
+
+Telegrams of protest from all over the country poured in upon all
+the Boston officials who had had any point of contact with the
+militants. All other work was for the moment sus-
+
+{325}
+
+pended. Such is the quality of Mrs. Morey's organizing genius
+that she did not let a solitary official escape. Telegrams also
+went from Boston, and especially from the jail, to President
+Wilson.
+
+Official Boston was in the grip of this militant invasion when
+suddenly a man of mystery, one E. J. Howe, appeared and paid the
+women's fines. It was later discovered that the mysterious E. J.
+Howe alleged to have acted for a "client." Whether the "client"
+was a part of Official Boston, no one ever knew. There were
+rumors that the city wished to end its embarrassment.
+
+Sedate Boston had been profoundly shaken. Sedate Boston gave more
+generously than ever before to militant finances. And when the
+"Prison Special" arrived a few days later a Boston theatre was
+filled to overflowing with a crowd eager to hear more about their
+local heroines, and to cheer them while they were decorated with
+the already famous prison pin.
+
+Something happened in Washington, too, after the President's safe
+journey thither from Boston.
+
+{326}
+
+Chapter 24
+
+Democratic Congress Ends
+
+It would be folly to say that President Wilson was not at this
+time aware of a very damning situation.
+
+The unanswerable "Prison Special"-a special car of women
+prisoners-was touring the country from coast to coast to keep the
+public attention, during the closing days of the session, fixed
+upon the suffrage situation in the Senate. The prisoners were
+addressing enormous meetings and arousing thousands, especially
+in the South, to articulate condemnation of Administration
+tactics. It is impossible to calculate the number of cables
+which, as a result of this sensational tour, reached the
+President during his deliberations at the Peace Table. The
+messages of protest which did not reach the President at the
+Peace Conference were waiting for him on his desk at the White
+House.
+
+Even if some conservative Boston suffragists did present him with
+a beautiful bouquet of jonquils tied with a yellow ribbon, as
+their welcome home, will any one venture to say that that token
+of trust was potent enough to wipe from his consciousness the
+other welcome which led his welcomers to jail? Will any one
+contend that President Wilson upon his arrival in Washington, and
+after changing his clothes, piously remarked:
+
+"By the way, Tumulty, I want to show you some jonquils tied with
+a yellow ribbon that were presented to me in Boston. I am moved,
+I think I may say deeply moved by this sincere tribute, to do
+something this morning for woman suffrage.
+
+{327}
+
+Just what is the state of affairs? And does there seem to be any
+great demand for it?" We do not know what, if anything, he did
+say to Secretary Tumulty, but we know what he did. He hurried
+over to the Capitol, and there made his first official business a
+conference with Senator Jones of New Mexico, Chairman of the
+Senate Suffrage Committee. After expressing chagrin over the
+failure of the measure in the Senate, the President discussed
+ways and means of getting it through.
+
+An immediate result of the conference was the introduction in the
+Senate, February 28th, by Senator Jones, of another resolution on
+suffrage. Senator Jones had refused to reintroduce the original
+suffrage resolution immediately after the Senate defeat, February
+10th. Now he came forward with this one, a little differently
+worded, but to the same purpose as the original amendment.[1]
+
+This resolution was a concession to Senator Gay of Louisiana,
+Democrat, who had voted against the measure on February 10th, but
+who immediately pledged his vote in favor of the new resolution.
+Thus the sixty-fourth and last vote was won. The majority
+instantly directed its efforts toward getting a vote on the new
+resolution.
+
+On March 1st Senator Jones attempted to get unanimous consent to
+consider it. Senator Wadsworth, of New York, Republican anti-
+suffragist, objected. When consent was again asked, the following
+day, Senator Weeks of Massachusetts, Republican anti-suffragist,
+objected. On the last day of the session, Senator Sherman of
+Illinois, Republican suffragist, objected. And so the Democratic
+Congress ended without passing the amendment.
+
+On the face of it, these parliamentary objections from
+Republicans prevented action, when the Democrats had finally
+
+[1]This amendment, although to the same purpose as the original
+amendment, was not as satisfactory because of possible
+controversial points in the enforcement article. The original
+amendment is of course crystal clear in this regard.
+
+{328}
+
+secured the necessary votes. As a matter of fact, however, the
+President and his party were responsible for subjecting the
+amendment to the tactical obstruction of individual anti-suffrage
+Senators. They waited until the last three days to make the
+supreme effort. That the President did finally get the last vote
+even at a moment when parliamentary difficulties prevented it
+from being voted upon, proved our contention that he could pass
+the amendment at any time he set himself resolutely to it. This
+last ineffective effort also proved how hard the President had
+been pushed by our tactics.
+
+But it seems to me that President Wilson has a pathetic aptitude
+for acting a little too late. The fact that the majority of the
+Southern contingent in his party stood stubbornly against him on
+woman suffrage, was of course a real obstacle. But we contended
+that the business of a statesman who declared himself to be a
+friend of a measure was to remove even real obstacles to the
+success of that measure. Perhaps our standard was too high. It
+must be confessed that people in general are distressingly
+patient, easily content with pronouncements, and shockingly inert
+about seeing to it that political leaders act as they speak.
+
+We had seen the President overcome far greater obstacles than
+stood in his way on this issue. We had seen him lead a country
+which had voted to stay out of the European war into battle
+almost immediately after they had so voted. We had seen him
+conscript the men of the same stubborn South, which had been
+conspicuously opposed to conscription. We had seen him win
+mothers to his war point of view after they had fought
+passionately for him and his peace program at election time. He
+had taken pains to lead men and women influential and obscure to
+his way of thinking. I do not condemn him-I respect him for being
+able to do this. The point is that he dirt overcome obstacles
+when his heart and head were set to the task.
+
+{329}
+
+Since our problem was neither in his head nor his heart, it was
+our task to put it there. Having got it there, it was our -
+responsibility to see that it churned and churned there, until he
+had to act. We did our utmost.
+
+For six full years, through three Congresses under President
+Wilson's power, the continual Democratic resistance, meandering,
+delays, deceits had left us still disfranchised. A world war had
+come and gone during this span of effort. Vast millions had died
+in pursuit of liberty. A Czar and a Kaiser had been deposed. The
+Russian people had revolutionized their whole social and economic
+system. And here in the United States of America we couldn't even
+wrest from the leader of democracy and his poor miserable
+associates the first step toward our political liberty-the
+passage of an amendment through Congress, submitting the question
+of democracy to the states!
+
+What a magnificent thing it was for those women to rebel! Their
+solitary steadfastness to their objective stands out in this
+world of confused ideals and half hearted actions, clear and
+lonely and superb!
+
+{330}
+
+Chapter 25
+
+A Farewell to President Wilson
+
+The Republican Congress elected in November, 1918, would not sit
+until December, 1919-such is our unfortunate system-unless called
+together by the President in a special session. We had polled the
+new Congress by personal interviews and by post, and found a safe
+two-thirds majority for the amendment in the House. In the new
+Senate we still lacked a fateful one vote.
+
+Our task was, therefore, to induce the President to call a
+special session of Congress at the earliest possible moment, and
+to see that he did not relax his efforts toward the last vote.
+
+"He won't do it!" . . ."President Wilson will never let the
+Republican Congress come together until the regular time." . . .
+"Especially with himself in Europe!" The usual points of
+objection were raised. But we persisted. We felt that the
+President could win this last vote. And the fear that a
+Republican Congress might, if he did not, was an accelerating
+factor.
+
+One feature of the campaign to force a special session was a
+demonstration in New York, on the eve of President Wilson's
+return to Europe, at the time he addressed a mass meeting in the
+Metropolitan Opera House on behalf of his proposed League of
+Nations. The plan of demonstration was to hold outside of the
+Opera House banners addressed to President Wilson, and to consign
+his speech to the flames of a torch at a public meeting nearby.
+
+{331}
+
+It was a clear starry night in March when the picket line of 26
+women proceeded with tri-colored banners from New York
+headquarters in Forty-first street to the Opera House. As we
+neared the corner of the street opposite the Opera House and
+before we could cross the street a veritable battalion of
+policemen in close formation rushed us with unbelievable
+ferocity. Not a word was spoken by a single officer of the two
+hundred policemen in the attack to indicate the nature of our
+offense. Clubs were raised and lowered and the women beaten back
+with such cruelty as none of us had ever witnessed before.
+
+The women clung to their heavy banner poles, trying to keep the
+banners above the maelstrom. But the police seized them, tore the
+pennants, broke the poles, some of them over our backs, trampled
+them underfoot, pounded us, dragged us, and in every way behaved
+like frantic beasts. It would have been so simple quietly to
+detain our little handful until after the President's speech, if
+that seemed necessary. But to launch this violent attack under
+the circumstances was madness. Not a pedestrian had paid any
+except friendly attention to the slender file of women. But the
+moment this happened an enormous crowd gathered, made up mostly
+of soldiers and sailors, many of whom had just returned from
+abroad and were temporarily thronging the streets of New York.
+They joined forces with the police in the attack.
+
+Miss Margaretta Schuyler, a beautiful, fragile young girl, was
+holding fast a silken American flag which she had carried at the
+head of the procession when a uniformed soldier jumped upon her,
+twisted her arms until she cried in pain, cursed, struggled until
+he had torn her flag from its pole, and then broke the pole
+across her head, exulting in his triumph over his frailer victim.
+
+When I appealed to the policeman, who was at the moment occupied
+solely with pounding me on the back, to intercept the
+
+{332}
+
+soldier in his cruel attack, his only reply was: "Oh, he's
+helping me." He thereupon resumed his beating of me and I cried,
+"Shame, shame! Aren't you ashamed to beat American women in this
+brutal way?" I offered no other resistance. "If we are breaking
+any law, arrest us! Don't beat us in this cowardly fashion!"
+
+"We'll rush you like bulls," was his vulgar answer, "we've only
+just begun."
+
+Another young woman, an aviatrice, was seized by the coat collar
+and thrown to the pavement for trying to keep hold of her banner.
+Her fur cap was the only thing that saved her skull from serious
+injury. As it was, she was trampled under foot and her face
+severely cut before we could rescue her with the assistance of a
+sympathetic member of the crowd. The sympathetic person was
+promptly attacked by the policeman for helping his victim to her
+feet. There were many shouts of disapproval of the police conduct
+and many cheers for the women from the dense crowd.
+
+By this time the crowd had massed itself so thickly that we could
+hardly move an inch. It was perfectly apparent that we could
+neither make our way to the Opera House nor could we extricate
+ourselves. But the terrors continued. Women were knocked down and
+trampled under foot, some of them almost unconscious, others
+bleeding from the hands and face; arms were bruised and twisted;
+pocketbooks were snatched and wrist-watches stolen.
+
+When it looked as if the suffocating melee would result in the
+death or permanent injury to some of us, I was at last dragged by
+a policeman to the edge of the crowd. Although I offered not the
+slightest resistance, I was crushed continuously in the arm by
+the officer who walked me to the police station, and kept
+muttering: "You're a bunch of cannibals, cannibals,-Bolsheviks."
+
+Upon arriving at the police station I was happily relieved
+
+{333}
+
+to find eve of my comrades already there. We were all impartially
+cursed at; told to stand up; told to sit down; forbidden to speak
+to one another; forbidden even to smile at one another. One ' by
+one we were called to the desk to give our name, age, and various
+other pieces of information. We stood perfectly silent before the
+station lieutenant as he coaxingly said, "You'd better tell."-
+"You'd better give us your name." "You'd better tell us where you
+live-it will make things easier for you." But we continued our
+silence.
+
+Disorderly conduct, interfering with the police, assaulting the
+police (Shades of Heaven! assaulting the police!), were the
+charges entered against us.
+
+We were all locked in separate cells and told that we would be
+taken to the Woman's Night Court for immediate trial.
+
+While pondering on what was happening to our comrades and
+wondering if they, too, would be arrested, or if they would just
+be beaten up by the police and mob, a large, fat jail matron came
+up and began to deliver a speech, which, ran something like this:
+
+"Now, shure and you ladies must know that this is goin' a bit too
+far. Now, I'm for suffrage alright, and I believe women ought to
+vote, but why do you keep botherin' the President? Don't you know
+he has got enough to think about with the League of Nations, the
+Peace Conference and fixin' up the whole world on his mind?"
+
+In about half an hour we were taken from our cells and brought
+before the Lieutenant, who now announced, "Well, you ladies may
+go now,-I have just received a telephone order to release you."
+
+We accepted the news and jubilantly left the station house,
+returning at once to our comrades. There the battle was still
+going on, and as we joined them we were again dragged and cuffed
+about the streets by the police and their aids, but there
+
+{334}
+
+were no more arrests. Elsie Hill succeeded in speaking from a
+balcony above the heads of the crowd:
+
+"Did you men turn back when you saw the Germans coming? What
+would you have thought of any one who did? Did you expect us to
+turn back? We never turn back, either and we won't until
+democracy is won! Who rolled bandages for you when you were
+suffering abroad? Who bound your wounds in your fight for
+democracy? Who spent long hours of the night and the day knitting
+you warm garments? There are women here to-night attempting to
+hold banners to remind the President that democracy is not won at
+home; who have given their sons and husbands for your fight
+abroad. What would they say if they could see you, their comrades
+in the fight over there, attacking their mothers, their sisters,
+their wives over here? Aren't you ashamed that you have not
+enough sporting blood to allow us to make our fight in our own
+way? Aren't you ashamed that you accepted the help of women in
+your fight, and now to-night brutally attack them?"
+
+And they did listen until the police, in formation-looking now
+like wooden toys-advanced from both sides of the street and
+succeeded in entirely cutting off the crowd from Miss Hill.
+
+The meeting thus broken up, we abandoned a further attempt that
+night. As our little, bannerless procession filed slowly back to
+headquarters, hoodlums followed us. The police of course gave us
+no protection and just as we were entering the door of our own
+building a rowdy struck me on the side of the head with a heavy
+banner pole. The blow knocked me senseless against the stone
+building; my hat was snatched from my head, and burned in the
+street. We entered the building to find that soldiers and sailors
+had been periodically rushing it in our absence, dragging out
+bundles of our banners, amounting to many hundreds of dollars,
+and burning them in the street, without any protest from the
+police.
+
+One does not undergo such an experience without arriving
+
+{335}
+
+at some inescapable truths, a discussion of which would interest
+me deeply but which would be irrelevant in this narrative.
+
+"Two hundred maddened women try to see the President" . . . "Two
+hundred women attack the police," and similar false headlines,
+appeared the next morning in the New York papers. It hurt to have
+the world think that we had attacked the police. That was a
+slight matter, however, for that morning at breakfast, aboard the
+George Washington, the President also read the New York papers.
+He saw that we were not submitting in silence to his inaction. It
+seems reasonable to assume that on sailing down the harbor that
+morning past the Statue of Liberty the President had some trouble
+to banish from his mind the report that "two hundred maddened
+women" had tried to "make the Opera House last night."
+
+{336}
+
+Chapter 26
+
+President Wilson Wins the 64th Vote in Paris
+
+The "Prison Special," which was nearing the end of its dramatic
+tour, was arousing the people to call for a special session of
+Congress, as the President sailed away.
+
+Although a Republican Congress had been elected, President
+Wilson, as the head of the Administration, was still responsible
+for initiating and guiding legislation. We had to see to it that,
+with his Congress out of ,power, he did not relax his efforts on
+behalf of the amendment.
+
+There was this situation which we were able to use to our
+advantage. Two new Democratic Senators, Senator Harrison of
+Mississippi and Senator Harris of Georgia, had been elected to
+sit in the incoming Congress through the President's influence.
+He, therefore, had very specific power over these two men, who
+were neither committed against suffrage by previous votes nor
+were they yet won to the amendment.
+
+We immediately set ourselves to the task of getting the President
+to win one of these men. From the election of these two men in
+the autumn to early spring, constant pressure was put upon the
+President to this end. When we could see no activity on the part
+of the President to secure the support of one of them, we again
+threatened publicly to resume dramatic protests against him. We
+kept the idea abroad that he was still responsible, and that we
+would continue to hold him so, until the amendment was passed.
+
+Such a situation gave friends of the Administration con-
+
+{337}
+
+siderable alarm. They realized that the slightest attack on the
+President at that moment would jeopardize his many other
+endeavors. And so these friends of the President undertook to
+acquaint him with the facts.
+
+Senator Harris was happily in Europe at the time. A most anxious
+cable, signed by politicians in his own party, was sent to the
+President in Paris explaining the serious situation and urging
+him to do his utmost to secure the vote of the Senator at once.
+
+Senator Harris was in Italy when he received an unexpected
+telegram asking him to come to Paris. He journeyed with all speed
+to the President, perhaps even thinking that he was about to be
+dispatched to some foreign post, to learn that the conference was
+for the purpose of securing his vote on the national suffrage
+amendment.
+
+Senator Harris there and then gave his vote, the 64th vote.
+
+On that day the passage by Congress of the original Susan B.
+Anthony amendment was assured.
+
+Instantly a cable was received at the White House carrying news
+to the suffragists of the final capture of the elusive last vote.
+Following immediately on the heels of this cable came another
+cable calling the new Congress into special session May 19th.
+
+In the light of the President's gradual yielding and final
+surrender to our demand, it will not be out of place to summarize
+briefly just what happened.
+
+President Wilson began his career as President of the United
+States an anti-suffragist. He was opposed to suffrage for women
+both by principle and political expediency. Sometimes I think he
+regarded suffragists as a kind of sect-good women, no doubt, but
+tiresome and troublesome. Whether he has yet come to see the
+suffrage battle as part of a great movement embracing the world
+is still a question. It is not an
+
+{338}
+
+important question, for in any case it was not inward conviction
+but political necessity that made him act.
+
+Believing then that suffragists were a sect, he said many things
+to them at first with no particular care as to the bearing of
+these things upon political theory or events. He offered,
+successively, "consideration," an "open mind," a "closed mind,"
+and "age-long conviction deeply matured," party limitations,
+party concert of action, and what not. He saw in suffrage the
+"tide rising to meet the moon," but waited and advised us to wait
+with him. But we did not want to wait, and we proceeded to try to
+make it impossible for him to wait, either. We determined to make
+action upon this issue politically expedient for him.
+
+When the President began to perceive the potential political
+power of women voters, he first declared, as a "private citizen,"
+that suffrage was all right for the women of his home state, New
+Jersey, but that it was altogether wrong to ask him as President
+to assist in bringing it about for all the women of the nation.
+He also interested himself in writing the suffrage plank in the
+Democratic Party's national platform, specifically relegating
+action on suffrage to the states. Then he calmly announced that
+he could not act nationally, "even if I wanted to," because the
+platform had spoken otherwise.
+
+The controversy was lengthened. The President's conspicuous
+ability for sitting still and doing nothing on a controversial
+issue until both sides have exhausted their ammunition was never
+better illustrated than in this matter. He allowed the
+controversy to continue to the point of intellectual sterility.
+He buttressed his delays with more evasions, until finally the
+women intensified their demand for action. They picketed his
+official gates. But the President still recoiled from action. So
+mightily did he recoil from it that he was willing to imprison
+women for demanding it.
+
+It is not extraordinary to resent being called upon to act,
+
+{339}
+
+for it is only the exceptional person who springs to action, even
+when action is admitted to be desirable and necessary. And the
+President is not exceptional. He is surprisingly ordinary.
+
+While the women languished in prison, he fell back upon words-
+beautiful words, too expressions of friendliness, good wishes,
+hopes, and may-I-nots. In this, too, he was acting like an
+ordinary human being, not like the statesman he was reputed to
+be. He had habituated himself to a belief in the power of words,
+and every time he uttered them to us he seemed to refortify
+himself in his belief in their power.
+
+It was the women, not the President, who were exceptional. They
+refused to accept words. They persisted in demanding acts. Step
+by step under terrific gunfire the President's resistance
+crumbled, and he yielded, one by one, every minor facility to the
+measure, always withholding from us, however, the main objective.
+Not until he had exhausted all minor facilities, and all possible
+evasions, did he publicly declare that the amendment should pass
+the House, and put it through. When he had done that we rested
+from the attack momentarily, in order to let him consummate with
+grace, and not under fire, the passage of the amendment in the
+Senate. He rested altogether. We were therefore compelled to
+renew the attack. He countered at first with more words. But his
+reliance upon them was perceptibly shaken when we burned them in
+public bonfires. He then moved feebly but with a growing concern
+toward getting additional votes in the Senate. And when, as an
+inevitable result of his policy-and ours-the political
+embarrassment became too acute, calling into question his honor
+and prestige, he covertly began to consult his colleagues. We
+pushed him the harder. He moved the faster toward concrete
+endeavor. He actually undertook to win the final votes in the
+Senate.
+
+There he found, however, that quite an alarming situation
+
+{340}
+
+had developed-a situation which he Should have anticipated, but
+for which he was totally unprepared. Opposition in his own party
+had been growing more and more rigid and cynical. His own
+opposition to the amendment, his grant of immunity to those
+leaders in his party who had fought the measure, his isolating
+himself from those who might have helped-all this was coming to
+fruition among his subordinates at a time when he could least
+afford to be beaten on anything. What would have been a fairly
+easy race to win, if he had begun running at the pistol shot, had
+now become most difficult.
+
+Perceiving that he had now not only to move himself, but also to
+overcome the obstacle which he had allowed to develop, we
+increased the energy of our attack. And finally the President
+made a supreme assertion of his power, and secured the last and
+64th vote in the Senate. He did this too late to get the
+advantage-if any advantage is to be gained from granting a just
+thing at the point of a gun-for this last vote arrived only in
+time for a Republican Congress to use it.
+
+It seems to me that Woodrow Wilson was neither devil nor God in
+his manner of meeting the demand of the suffragists. There has
+persisted an astounding myth that he is an extraordinary man. Our
+experience proved the contrary. He behaved toward us like a very
+ordinary politician. Unnecessarily cruel or weakly tolerant,
+according as you view the justice of our fight, but a politician,
+not a statesman. He did not go out to meet the tide which he
+himself perceived was "rising to meet the moon" That would have
+been statesmanship. He let it all but engulf him before he acted.
+And even as a politician he failed, for his tactics resulted in
+the passage of the amendment by a Republican Congress.
+
+{341}
+
+Chapter 27
+
+Republican Congress Passes Amendment
+
+The Republican Congress convened in Special Session May 19.
+
+Instantly Republican leaders in control of the 66th Congress
+caucused and organized for a prompt passage of the amendment. May
+21st the Republican House of Representatives passed the measure
+by a vote of 304 to 89-the first thing of any importance done by
+the new House. This was 42 votes above the required two-thirds
+majority, whereas the vote in the House in January, 1918, under
+Democratic control had given the measure only one vote more than
+was required.
+
+Immediately the Democratic National Committee passed a resolution
+calling on the legislatures of the various states to hold special
+legislative sessions where necessary, to ratify the amendment as
+soon as it was through Congress, in order to "enable women to
+vote in the national elections of 1920."
+
+When the 64th vote was assured two more Republican Senators
+announced their support, Senator Keyes of New Hampshire and
+Senator Hale of Maine, and on June 4th the measure passed the
+Senate by a vote of 66 to 30,-2 votes more than needed.[l] Of the
+49 Republicans in the Senate, 40 voted for the amendment, 9
+against. Of the 47 Democrats in the Senate, 26 voted for it and
+21 against.
+
+And so the assertion that "the right of citizens of the United
+States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the
+
+[1]These figures include all voting and paired.
+
+{342}
+
+United States or by any state on account of sex," introduced into
+Congress by the efforts of Susan B. Anthony in 1878, was finally
+submitted to the states for ratification[1] on June 4th, 1919.
+
+I do not need to explain that the amendment was not won from the
+Republican Congress between May 19th and June 4th, 1919. The
+Republican Party had been gradually coming to appreciate this
+opportunity throughout our entire national agitation from 1913 to
+date. And our attack upon the party in power, which happened to
+be President Wilson's party, had been the most decisive factor in
+stimulating the opposition party to espouse our side. It is
+perhaps fortunate for the Republican Party that it was their
+political opponents who inherited this lively question in 1913.
+However, the political advantage is theirs for having promptly
+and ungrudgingly passed the amendment the moment they came into
+power. But it will not be surprising to any one who has read this
+book that I conclude by pointing out that the real triumph
+belongs to the women.
+
+Our objective was the national enfranchisement of women. A tiny
+step, you may say. True! But so long as we know that this is but
+the first step in the long struggle of women for political,
+economic and social emancipation, we need not be disturbed. If
+political institutions as we know them to-day in their
+discredited condition break down, and another kind of
+organization-perhaps industrial-supplants them, women will battle
+for their place in the new system with as much determination as
+they have shown in the struggle just ended.
+
+That women have been aroused never again to be content with their
+subjection there can be no doubt. That they will ultimately
+secure for themselves equal power and responsibility
+
+[1]When a constitutional amendment has passed Congress it must be
+ratified by a majority vote of 36 state legislatures and
+thereupon proclaimed operative by the Secretary of State of the
+United States before it becomes the law of the land. For
+ratification data see Appendix 1.
+
+{343}
+
+in whatever system of government is evolved is positive. How
+revolutionary will be the changes when women get this power and
+responsibility no one can adequately foretell. One thing is
+certain. They will not go back. They will never again be good and
+willing slaves.
+
+It has been a long, wearying struggle. Although drudgery has
+persisted throughout, there have been compensatory moments of
+great joy and beauty. The relief that comes after a great
+achievement is sweet. There is no residue of bitterness. To be
+sure, women have often resented it deeply that so much human
+energy had to be expended for so simple a right. But whatever
+disillusionments they have experienced, they have kept their
+faith in women. And the winning of political power by women will
+have enormously elevated their status.
+
+{344}
+
+Blank
+
+{345}
+
+Appendices
+
+{346}
+
+Blank
+
+{347}
+
+APPENDIX 1
+
+TEXT OF THE NATIONAL SUFFRAGE AMENDMENT
+
+Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States
+extending the right of suffrage to women.
+
+Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United
+States o f America in Congress assembled (twothirds of each House
+concurring therein), That the following articles be proposed to
+the legislatures of the several States as an amendment to the
+Constitution of the United States, which when ratified by three-
+fourths of the said legislatures, shall be valid as part of said
+Constitution, namely:
+
+"ARTICLE-SEC. 1. The right of citizens of the United States to
+vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by
+any State on account of sex.
+
+"SEC. 2. Congress shall have power, by appropriate legislation,
+to enforce the provisions of this article."
+
+{348}
+
+RECORLD OF ACTION ON NATIONAL SUFFRAGE AMENDMENT
+
+In Congress
+
+Drafted
+
+By Susan B. Anthony in 1875
+
+First Introduced
+
+January 10, 1878, by Hon. A. A. Sargent, in the Senate
+
+Reported from Committee
+
+In the Senate
+1878, Adverse majority.
+1879, Favorable minority.
+1882, Favorable majority, adverse minority.
+1884, Favorable majority, adverse minority.
+1886, Favorable majority.
+1890, Favorable majority.
+1892, Favorable majority, adverse minority.
+1896, Adverse majority.
+1913, Favorable majority.
+1914, Favorable majority.
+1917, Favorable majority.
+1919, Unanimously favorably.
+
+In the House
+1883, Favorable majority.
+1884, Adverse majority, favorable minority.
+1886, Favorable minority.
+1890, Favorable majority.
+1894, Adverse majority.
+1914, Without recommendation.
+1916, Without recommendation.
+1917, Without recommendation.
+1918, Favorable majority.
+1919, Favorable majority.
+
+Voted Upon
+
+In the Senate
+January 25, 1887. Yeas 16, nays 94. Absent 25 (of whom 4 were
+announced as for and 2 against).
+March 19, 1914. Yeas 35, nays 34, failing by 11 of the necessary
+two thirds vote.
+October 1, 1918. Yeas 54, nays 30, failing by 2 of the two-thirds
+vote.
+February 10, 1919. Yeas 55, nays 29, failing by 1 of the
+necessary two-thirds vote.
+June 4, 1919. Yeas 56, nays 25, passing by 2 votes over necessary
+two-thirds majority.
+
+In the House
+January 12, 1915. Yeas 174, nays 204, failing by 78 of the
+necessary two-thirds vote.
+January 10, 1918. Yeas 274, nays 136, passing by 1 vote over
+necessary two-thirds majority.
+May 21, 1919. Yeas 304, nays 89, passing by 42 votes over
+necessary two-thirds majority
+
+{349}
+
+State; Date of Ratification; Vote: Senate, House;	Party of
+Governor; Party Controlling Legislature
+
+1	Wisconsin June 10, 1919	24-1	54-2	  Rep. Rep.
+2	*Michigan	June 10, 1919	Unan. Unan. Rep. Rep.
+3	*Kansas	June 16, 1919	Unan. Unan. Rep. Rep.
+4	*Ohio	June 16, 1919	27-3	73-6	  Dem. Rep.
+5	*New York	June 16, 1919	Unan. Unan. Dem. Rep.
+6	Illinois	June 17, 1919	Unan. 133-4 Rep. Rep.
+7	Pennsylvania 	June 24, 1919	32-6	153-44	Rep.	Rep.
+8	Massachusetts 	June 25, 1919	34-5	184-77	Rep.	Rep.
+9	*Texas	June 29, 1919	Unan. 96-21 Dem. Dem.
+10	*Iowa	July	2, 1919	Unan. 95-5  Rep. Rep.
+11	*Missouri July	3, 1919	28-3	125-4  Dem. Div�d.
+12	*Arkansas	July 20, 1919	20-2	76-17  Dem. Dem.
+13	*Montana	July 30, 1919	38-1	 Unan. Dem. Rep.
+14	*Nebraska	Aug. 2, 1919	Unan. Unan. Rep. Rep.
+15	*Minnesota 	Sept. 8, 1919	60-5	120-6 Rep. Rep.
+16	*New Hampshire Sept. 10, 1919	14-10 212-143	Rep. Rep.
+17	*Utah	Sept. 30, 1919	Unan. Unan. Dem. Dem.
+18	*California 	Nov. 1, 1919	Unan. 73-2 Rep. Rep.
+19	*Maine	Nov. 5, 1919.	24-5	72-68 Rep. Rep.
+20	*North Dakota 	Dec. 1, 1919	38-4	103-6 Rep. Rep.
+21	*South Dakota 	Dec. 4, 1919	Unan. Unan. Rep. Rep.
+22	*Colorado	Dec. 12, 1919	Unan. Unan. Rep. Rep.
+23	Rhode Island 	Jan.	6, 1920	37-1	89-3	Rep.	Rep.
+24	Kentucky	Jan.	6, 1920	30-8	72-25 Rep. Div�d.
+25	*Oregon	Jan.	12, 1920	Unan. Unan.	Rep.	Rep.
+26	*Indiana	Jan.	16, 1920	43-3	 Unan.	Rep.	Rep.
+27	*Wyoming	Jan.	27, 1920	Unan. Unan.	Rep.	Rep.
+28	*Nevada	Feb.	7, 1920	Unan. Unan.	Dem.	Div�d.
+29	New Jersey	Feb.	10,	1920	18-2	34-24	Dem,	Rep.
+30	*Idaho	Feb. 11, 1920	29-6	Unan.	Rep.	Rep.
+31	*Arizona	Feb.	12, 1920	Unan. Unan.	Rep.	Dem.
+32	*New Mexico 	Feb. 19, 1920	17-5	36-10	Rep.	Rep.
+33	*Oklahoma	Feb. 27, 1920	24-15	84-12	Dem.	Dem.
+34	*West Virginia Mar. 10, 1920	15-14	47-40	Dem.	Rep.
+35	*Washington	Mar. 22, 1920	Unan.	Unan.	Rep.	Rep.
+36	*Tennessee	Aug. 18, 1920	25-4	49-47	Dem.	Dem.
+
+* States ratifying at Special Session.
+
+{350}
+
+APPENDIX 2
+
+COUNTRIES IN WHICH WOMEN VOTE
+
+Azerbaijain (Moslem) Republic 1919
+Australia  1902
+Austria  1918
+[1]Belgium 1919
+British East Africa 1919
+Canada 1918
+Czecho Slovakia 1918
+Denmark 1915
+[2]England 1918
+Finland 1906
+Germany 1918
+Holland 1919
+Hungary 1918
+Iceland 1919
+Ireland 1918
+Isle of Man 1881
+Luxembourg 1919
+[3]Mexico 1917
+New Zealand 1893
+Norway 1907
+Poland 1918
+Rhodesia 1919
+Russia 1917
+Scotland 1918
+[4]Sweden 1919
+United States 1920
+Wales 1918
+
+[1]Electoral Reform Bill as passed granted suffrage to widows who
+have not remarried and mothers of soldiers killed in battle or
+civilians shot by Germans.
+[2]Women over age of 80-Bill to reduce age to 21 has passed its
+second reading.
+[3]No sex qualification for voting in constitution. Women haze so
+far not availed themselves of their right to note, but are
+expected to do so in the coming elections.
+[4]To be confirmed, in 1920.
+
+{351}
+
+Appendix 3
+
+Resolutions Demanding Investigations
+
+Resolution (171) to authorize an Investigation of the District of
+Columbia Workhouse.
+Introduced in the House by Miss Jeannette Rankin, Representative
+from Montana.
+October 5, 1917.
+
+Text of Resolution:
+
+Resolved, That a select committee of seven Members of the House
+of Representatives be appointed by the Speaker to investigate the
+administration of the District of Columbia Workhouse at Occoquan,
+Virginia, and to report thereon as early as possible during the
+second session of the Sixty-fifth Congress. Said committee is
+authorized to sit during the recess in Washington, District of
+Columbia and elsewhere, to subpoena witnesses, and to call for
+records relating to the said workhouse. To defray the necessary
+expenses of such investigation, including the employment of
+clerical assistance, the committee is authorized to expend not to
+exceed 1,000 from the contingent fund of the House.
+
+Resolution (180) to authorize an Investigation of Mob Attacks on
+Suffragists.
+Introduced in the House by John Baer, Representative from North
+Dakota.
+August 17, 1917.
+
+Text of Resolution:
+
+{352}
+
+WHEREAS, in the city of Washington, D. C., about 350 feet from
+the White House premises is a building known as the Cameron
+House, in which is located headquarters and main offices of a
+woman's organization at which is continually congregated women of
+character, courage and intelligence, who come from various
+sections of the United States, and
+
+WHEREAS, on three successive days, to wit: the 14th, 15th and
+16th days of August, 1917, on said days immediately following the
+closing of the day's work by the clerks and employees of the
+Executive Departments, hundreds of these clerks and employees,
+acting with sailors, then and now in the service of the United
+States Navy and in uniform at the time, and soldiers, then and
+now in the service of the United States Army, also in their
+uniforms at the time,-and these clerks, employees, sailors and
+soldiers, and others, formed themselves into mobs and
+deliberately, unlawfully and violently damaged the said
+headquarters and offices of the said woman's organization by
+pelting rotten eggs through the doors and windows, shooting a
+bullet from a revolver through a window, and otherwise damaging
+said Cameron House, and also violently and unlawfully did strike,
+choke, drag and generally mistreat and injure and abuse the said
+women when they came defenseless upon the streets adjoining as
+well as when they were in the said building; and
+
+WHEREAS, the organized police of the City of Washington, District
+of Columbia, made no attempt to properly safeguard the property
+and persons of the said defenseless women, but, on the contrary,
+said police even seemed to encourage the lawless acts of the mob;
+and
+
+WHEREAS, such lawlessness is in the Capital of the United States
+and within a few hundred feet of -the Executive Mansion and
+offices of the President of the United States; and
+
+WHEREAS, these attacks upon defenseless women are not only an
+outrage and crime in themselves, that prove the
+
+{353}
+
+perpetrators and those lending aid to the same to be cowards, but
+in addition, create throughout the world contempt for the United
+States and set a vicious example to the people throughout the
+United States and the world at large, of lawlessness and
+violence; and encourage designing cowards and manipulators
+everywhere to form mobs to molest the innocent and defenseless
+under any pretext whatever; and
+
+WHEREAS, there seems to be no activity or attempt on the part of
+any one in authority in the City of Washington, District of
+Columbia, nor by the government officials to apprehend, arrest or
+punish those perpetrating the violence, on account of which the
+same may occur indefinitely unless Congress acts in the premises;
+and
+
+WHEREAS, the legal status upon the premises stated would excuse
+the occupants of the Cameron House if they were so disposed in
+firing upon the mobs aforesaid, and thus create a state of
+greater violence and unlawless, to further injure the prestige
+and good name of the United States for maintaining law and order
+and institutions of democracy; therefore be it
+
+Resolved, that the Speaker appoint a Committee of seven members
+to investigate into all the facts relating to the violence and
+unlawful acts aforesaid, and make the earliest possible report
+upon the conditions, with the purpose in view of purging the army
+and navy of the United States and other official departments, of
+all lawless men who bring disgrace upon the American flag by
+participating in mob violence, and also to inquire regarding the
+conduct of all government employees and the police of the city of
+Washington, District of Columbia, with a view to maintaining law
+and order.
+
+{354}
+
+Appendix 4
+
+Suffrage Prisoners
+
+Note:-Scores of women were arrested but never brought to trial;
+many others were convicted and their sentences suspended or
+appealed. It has been possible to list below only those women who
+actually served prison sentences although more than five hundred
+women were arrested during the agitation.
+
+MINNIE D. ABBOTT, Atlantic City, N. J., officer of the N.W.P.
+[National Woman's Party]. Arrested picketing July 14, 1917,
+sentenced to 60 days in Occoquan workhouse.
+
+MRS. PAULINE ADAMS, Norfolk, Va., wife of leading physician,
+prominent clubwoman and Congressional District Chairman of the
+N.W.P. Arrested picketing Sept. 4, 1917. Sentenced to 60 days in
+Occoquan workhouse. Arrested watchfire demonstration Feb. 9,
+1919, but released on account of lack of evidence.
+
+EDITH AINGE, Jamestown, N. Y., native of England, came to America
+when a child, and has brought up family of nine brothers and
+sisters. Worked for state suffrage in N. Y. 1915. Served five
+jail sentences. Sentenced to 60 days in Occoquan for picketing
+Sept., 1917, 15 days in Aug., 1918, Lafayette Sq. meeting, and
+three short terms in District Jail in Jan., 1919, watchfire
+demonstrations.
+
+HARRIET U. ANDREWS, Kansas City, Mo., came to Washington as war
+worker. Arrested watchfire demonstration and sentenced to 5 days
+in District Jail Jan., 1919.
+
+MRS. ANNIE ARNEIL, Wilmington, Del., did picket duty from
+beginning in 1917. One of first six suffrage prisoners. Served
+eight jail sentences, 3 days, June, 1917; 60 days in Occoquan,
+Aug.-Sept., 1917, picketing; 15 days, Aug., 1918, Lafayette Sq.
+meeting and five sentences of 5 days each in Jan. and Feb., 1919,
+watchfire demonstrations.
+
+BERTHE ARNOLD, Colorado Springs, Colo., daughter of prominent
+physician. Educated at Colo. State Univ. Student of music Phila.;
+member of D.A.R.; kindergarten teacher. Arrested Jan., 1919,
+watchfire demonstration, sentenced to 5 days in District Jail.
+
+VIRGINIA ARNOLD, North Carolina, student George Washington and
+Columbia Univs., school teacher, later organizer and executive
+secretary N.W.P, in Washington. Served 3 days June, 1917, with
+first pickets sentenced.
+
+{355}
+
+MRS. W. D. ASCOUGH, Detroit, Mich. Former Conn. State Chairman,
+N.W.P. Studied for concert stage London and Paris. Abandoned
+concert stage to devote time to suffrage. Sentenced to 15 days
+Aug., 1918, Lafayette Sq. meeting, and 5 days Feb., 1919, in
+watchfire demonstration. Member "Prison Special" which toured
+country in Feb., 1919.
+
+MRS. ARMY Scorr BAKER, Washington, D. C., wife of Dr. Robert
+Baker, and descendant long line of army officers. Three sons in
+service during World War. Known as the diplomat of the N.W.P.,
+and as such has interviewed practically every man prominent in
+political life. Member executive committee of N.W.P. and has been
+political chairman since 1918. Arrested picketing and sentenced
+to 60 days in Occoquan, Sept., 1917.
+
+MRS. CHARLES W. BARNES, Indianapolis, Ind., officer of Ind.
+Branch, N.W.P. Arrested picketing Nov., 1917, sentenced to 15
+days in jail.
+
+MRS. NAOMI BARRETT, Wilmington, Del., arrested watchfire
+demonstration Jan. 13, 1919. Sentenced to 5 days in District
+Jail.
+
+MRS. W. J. BARTLETT, Putnam, Conn., leader Conn. State Grange.
+Arrested Aug., 1917, picketing, sentenced to 60 days.
+
+MRS. M. TOSCAN BENNETT, Hartford, Conn., wife of lawyer and
+writer, member D.A.R. and Colonial Dames, has been active in
+state suffrage work for many years. Member National Advisory
+Council, N.W.P. and Conn. state treasurer. Arrested Jan., 1919,
+watchfire demonstration. Sentenced to 5 days in District Jail.
+
+HILDA BLUMBERG, New York City, native of Russia, one of youngest
+prisoners. Educated and taught school in this country. Arrested
+picketing, Sept., 1917; sentenced to 30 days in Occoquan;
+arrested again Nov. 10, sentenced to 15 days.
+
+MRS. KATE BOECKH, Washington, D. C., native of Canada, one of
+first women aeroplane pilots. Arrested picketing Aug., 1917, case
+appealed. Arrested applauding in court Jan., 1919, served 3 days.
+
+MRS. CATHERINE BOYLE, Newcastle, Del., munitions worker during
+World War. Arrested Jan., 1919, watchfire demonstration,
+sentenced to 5 days in jail.
+
+LUCY G. BRANHAM, Baltimore, Md., organizer N.W.P., graduate
+Washington College, Md.; M. A., Johns Hopkins; graduate student
+Univ. of Chicago and Ph.D. Columbia. Won Carnegie hero medal for
+rescuing man and woman from drowning at St. Petersburg, Fla.
+Arrested picketing Sept., 1917, sentenced to 60 days in Occoquan
+and District Jail.
+
+MRS. LUCY G. BRANHAM, Baltimore, Md., mother of Miss Lucy
+Branham, widow of Dr. John W. Branham who lost his life fighting
+a yellow fever epidemic in Ga. Arrested watchfire demonstration
+Jan., 1919; sentenced to 3 days in District Jail.
+
+MRS. JOHN WINTERS BRANNAN, New York City, daughter of the late
+Charles A. Dana, founder and editor N. Y. Sun., trusted counselor
+of President Lincoln; wife of Dr. Brannan. Pres. Board of
+Trustees Bellevue Hos-
+
+{356}
+
+pital; member executive committee N.W.P., state chairman New York
+Branch. Did brilliant state suffrage work as officer of Woman's
+Political Union in N. Y. Arrested picketing July 14, 1917,
+sentenced to 60 days in Occoquan; pardoned by President after
+serving 3 days. Again arrested picketing Nov. 10, 1917, sentenced
+to 45 days.
+
+JENNIE BRONENBERG, Philadelphia, Pa. Student Wharton School,
+Univ. of Pa. Arrested Feb., 1919, sentenced to 5 days in District
+Jail.
+
+MRS. MARY E. BROWN, Wilmington, Del., state press chairman,
+N.W.P. Father member First Del. regiment; mother field nurse,
+Civil War. Descendant Captain David Porter, of Battleship Essex,
+War of 1812. Arrested watchfire demonstration Jan. 13, 1919,
+sentenced to 5 days in District Jail.
+
+LOUISE BRYANT, New York City, formerly of Portland Ore., author,
+poet and journalist, wife of John Reed. Correspondent for Phila.
+Public Ledger in Petrograd for six months during Russian
+revolution. Arrested Watchfire demonstration Feb., 1919,
+sentenced to 5 days in District Jail.
+
+Lucy BURNS, New York City, graduate Vassar College, student of
+Yale Univ. and Univ. of Bonn, Germany. High School teacher.
+Joined English militant suffrage movement 1909, where she met
+Alice Paul, with whom she joined in establishing first permanent
+suffrage headquarters in Washington in Jan., 1913; helped
+organize parade of March 3, 1913; vice chairman and member of
+executive committee Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage [later
+the N.W.P.], for a time editor of The Suffragist. Leader of most
+of the picket demonstrations and served more time in jail than
+any other suffragist in America. Arrested picketing June, 1917,
+sentenced to 3 days; arrested Sept., 1917, sentenced to 60 days;
+arrested Nov. 10, 1917, sentenced to six months; in January,
+1919, arrested watchfire demonstrations for which she served one
+3 day and two 5 day sentences. She also served 4 prison terms in
+England.
+
+MRS. HENRY BUTTERWORTH, New York City, comes of an old Huguenot
+family. Active in civic and suffrage work in N. Y. for past 20
+years. Charter member National Society of Craftsmen. Arrested
+picketing Nov., 1917, sentenced to 30 days in Occoquan.
+
+MRS. LUCILLE A. CALME9, Princeton, Ia. Great-granddaughter of
+George Fowler, founder of New Harmony, Ind. Government worker
+during World War. Arrested watchfire demonstration Jan. 13, 1919,
+sentenced to 5 days in District Jail.
+
+ELEANOR CALNAN, Methuen, Mass. Congressional district chairman of
+Mass. Branch N.W.P. Arrested picketing July 14, 1917, sentenced
+to 60 days in Occoquan, pardoned by President after 3 days;
+arrested Sept., 1917, sentenced to 60 days in Occoquan. Arrested
+in Boston, Feb., 1919, for participation in Boston demonstration
+at home coming of President; sentenced to 8 days in Charles St.
+Jail.
+
+MRS. AGNES CHASE, Washington, D. C., formerly of Ill.; engaged in
+scientific research work for U. S. Dept. of Agriculture. Arrested
+Lafayette Sq. meeting August, 1918, sentenced to 10 days.
+Arrested watchfire demonstration Jan., 1919, sentenced to 5 days.
+
+{357}
+
+MRS. PALYS L. CHEVRIER, New York City, arrested watchfire
+demonstration Jan., 1919, sentenced to 5 days. Member "Prison
+Special" which toured country in Feb., 1919.
+
+MRS. HELEN CHISASKI, Bridgeport, Conn., munition worker and
+member of Machinists' Union. Arrested watchfire demonstration
+Jan. 13, 1919; sentenced to 5 days in jail.
+
+MRS. WILLIAM CHISHOLM, Huntington, Pa., now deceased; arrested
+picketing Sept. 4, 1917, sentenced to 60 days in Occoquan.
+
+JOSEPHINE COLLINS, Framingham, Mass., owns and manages the
+village store at Framingham Center. She encountered serious
+opposition from some of her customers on account of her militant
+activities; one of first members N.W.P.; arrested in Boston Feb.,
+1919, for taking part in welcome to the President; sentenced to 8
+days in Charles St. Jail.
+
+MRS. SARAH TARLETON COLVIN, St. Paul, Minn., member famous
+Tarleton family of Alabama, wife of Dr. A. R. Colvin, Major in
+the Army, and Acting Surgical Chief at Fort McHenry during World
+War; graduate nurse Johns Hopkins training school, Red Cross
+nurse in this country during war; Minnesota state chairman N.W.P.
+Member "Prison Special." Arrested watchfire demonstrations Jan.,
+190; sentenced to 2 terms of 5 days each.
+
+BETTY CONNOLLY, West Newton, Mass., household assistant, arrested
+in Boston, Feb., 1919, demonstration of welcome to President
+Wilson; sentenced to 8 days in Charles St. Jail.
+
+MRS. ALICE M. COSU, New Orleans, La., vice chairman La. state
+branch N.W.P. Arrested picketing Nov., 1917, and sentenced to 30
+days in Occoquan workhouse.
+
+CORA CRAWFORD, Philadelphia, Pa., business woman. Marched in 1913
+suffrage parade in Washington. Arrested watchfire demonstration
+Jan., 1919; sentenced to 5 days in District Jail.
+
+GERTRUDE CROCKER, Washington, D. C., formerly of Ill., educated
+at Vassar College and Univ. of Chicago. National Treasurer N.W.P.
+1916; government worker, 1917. Served 3 jail sentences: 30 days
+for picketing in 1917, 10 days for assisting Lafayette Sq.
+meeting 1918, and 5 days for participating watchfire 1919.
+
+RUTH CROCKER, Washington, D. C., formerly of Ill., sister of
+Gertrude Crocker. Came to Washington for suffrage, later
+government worker. Served 30 days at Occoquan for picketing in
+1917 and 3 days in District Jail for watchfire demonstration
+Jan., 1919.
+
+Miss L. J. C. DANIELS, Grafton, Vt., and Boston. Arrested
+picketing Nov. 10, 1917, sentenced to 15 days. Took part in
+Capitol picketing Nov., 1918; arrested watchfire demonstration
+Jan. 9, 1919, sentenced to 5 days in District Jail. Arrested in
+Boston for participation in welcome demonstration to President,
+sentenced to 8 days in Charles St. Jail.
+
+DOROTHY DAY, New York City, member of the "Masses" [now the
+"Liberator"] staff. Arrested picketing Nov. 10, 1917, sentenced
+to 30 days in Occoquan workhouse.
+
+{358}
+
+EDNA DIXON, Washington, D. C., daughter of physician; teacher in
+public schools. Arrested picketing Aug., 1917, sentenced to SO
+days in Occoquan workhouse.
+
+LAVINIA L. DOCK, Fayetteville, Pa., associated with the founders
+of American Red Cross nursing service; secretary of American
+Federation of Nurses and member of International Council of
+Nurses. Assisted in relief work during Johnstown flood and during
+Fla. yellow fever epidemic; army nurse during Spanish-American
+War, author of "The History of Nursing," "The Tuberculosis
+Nurse," and a number of other text books on nursing. One of early
+workers of Henry St. Settlement in N. Y., and founder of visiting
+nurse movement in N. Y. On staff of American Journal of Nursing.
+One of first six pickets to serve prison sentence of 3 days in
+June, 1917. Later that summer she served 25 days in Occoquan; and
+in Nov. 15 days.
+
+MRS. MARY CARROLL DOWELL, Philadelphia, Pa., wife of William F.
+Dowell, magazine editor and writer with whom she has been
+associated in business. Active club and suffrage worker in Pa.
+and N. J., state officer Pa. branch N.W.P. Arrested watchfire
+demonstration Jan. 20, 1919, and served 5 days in District Jail.
+
+MARY DUBROW, Passaic, N. J.; student Univ. of N. Y.; teacher in
+N. J. until she joined suffrage ranks as organizer and speaker.
+Arrested watchfire demonstration Jan. 6, 1919, sentenced to 10
+days.
+
+JULIA EMORY, Baltimore, Md.; daughter of late state senator, D.
+H. Emory. Gave up work for Trade Union League to work for
+suffrage in 1917. Sentenced to 30 days in Occoquan for picketing
+Nov., 1917. After her release became organizer N.W.P. Aug., 1918,
+arrested and sentenced td 10 days Lafayette Sq. meeting. Jan. 7,
+1919, sentenced to 10 days, and later in that month to 5 days for
+watchfire demonstrations. Led Capitol picket Oct. and Nov., 1919,
+and suffered many injuries at hands of police.
+
+MRS. EDMUND C. EVANs, Ardmore, Pa., one of three Winsor sisters
+who served prison terms for suffrage. Member of prominent Quaker
+family. Arrested watchfire demonstration Jan., 1919, and
+sentenced to 5 days in District Jail.
+
+Lucy EWING, Chicago, Ill., daughter of Judge Adlai Ewing, niece
+of James Ewing, minister to Belgium under Cleveland; niece also
+of Adlai Stevenson, Vice-President under Cleveland. Officer Ill.
+Branch N.W.P. Arrested picketing Aug. 17, 1917, sentenced to 30
+days in Occoquan workhouse.
+
+MRS. ESTELLA EYLWARD, New Orleans, La. Business woman. Came to
+Washington to take part in final watchfire demonstration Feb.,
+1919; arrested and sentenced to 5 days in District Jail.
+
+MARY GERTRUDE FENDALL, Baltimore, Md., graduate of Bryn Mawr
+College; campaigned for N.W.P. in West 1916; national treasurer
+of organization June, 1917, to December, 1919. Arrested and
+sentenced to 3 days, Jan., 1819, for applauding in court.
+
+{359}
+
+ELLA FINDEISEN, Lawrence, Mass. Arrested picketing Nov. 10, 1917,
+sentenced to 30 days at Occoquan.
+
+KATHARINE FISHER, Washington, D. C., native of Mass. Great-
+greatgranddaughter of Artemas Ward, ranking Major General in
+Revolutionary War. Teacher, social worker and later employee of
+U. S. War Risk Bureau. Written prose and verse on suffrage and
+feminist topics. Arrested picketing Sept. 13, 1917, sentenced to
+30 days 'at Occoquan workhouse.
+
+MRS. ROSE GRATZ FISHSTEIN, Philadelphia, Pa., native of Russia.
+Came to America at 15. Had been imprisoned for revolutionary
+activities in Russia and fled to this country following release
+on bail. Operator in shirt factory; later union organizer;
+factory inspector for N. Y. State Factory Commission. Feb. 9,
+1919 arrested watchfire demonstration and sentenced to 5 days in
+District Jail.
+
+ROSE FISHSTEIN, Philadelphia, Pa., sister-in-law of Mrs. Rose G.
+Fishstein, born in Russia, educated in N. Y. and Phila. Student
+of Temple Univ., business woman. Arrested watchfire
+demonstration, Feb., 1919, sentenced to 5 days in District Jail.
+
+CATHERINE M. FLANAGAN, Hartford, Conn., state and national
+organizer for N.W.P.; formerly secretary for Conn. Woman Suffrage
+Association. Father came to this country as Irish exile because
+of his efforts in movement for Irish freedom. Arrested picketing
+August, 1917, sentenced to 30 days in Occoquan workhouse.
+
+MARTHA FOLEY, Dorchester, Mass., active worker in Mass. labor
+movement. Arrested in demonstration at homecoming of President in
+Boston, Feb., 1919; sentenced to 8 days in Charles St. Jail.
+
+MRS. T. W. FORBES, Baltimore, Md., officer of Just Government
+League of Md.; arrested watchfire demonstration Feb. 9, 1919,
+sentenced to 5 days in District Jail.
+
+JANET FOTHERINGHAM, Buffalo, N. Y., teacher of physical culture.
+Arrested picketing July 14, 1917, sentenced to 60 days in
+workhouse, but pardoned by President after 3 days.
+
+MARGARET FOTHERINGHAM, Buffalo, N. Y., Red Cross dietician,
+stationed at military hospital at Waynesville, N. C., during war.
+Later dietician at Walter Reid Military Hospital, Washington, D.
+C. Arrested picketing Aug., 1917, sentenced to 60 days.
+
+FRANCIS FOWLER, Brookline, Mass., sentenced to 8 days in Charles
+St. Jail for participation in demonstration of welcome to
+President, Boston, Feb., 1919.
+
+MRS. MATILDA HALL GARDNER, Washington, D. C., formerly of
+Chicago, daughter of late Frederick Hall, for many years editor
+of Chicago Tribune, and wife of Gilson Gardner, Washington
+representative of Scripps papers. Educated Chicago, Paris and
+Brussels. Associated with Alice Paul and Lucy Burns when they
+came to Washington to begin agitation for federal suffrage and
+member of national executive committee of N.W.P. since 1914.
+Arrested July 14, 1917, sentenced to 60 days in Occoquan; Jan.
+13, 1919, sentenced to 5 days in District Jail.
+
+{360}
+
+ANNA GINSBERG, New York City; served 5 days in District jail for
+watchfire demonstration Feb., 1919.
+
+REBA GOMROROV, Philadelphia, Pa.; born in Kiev, Russia. Educated
+in U. S. public schools; social worker; assistant secretary and
+visitor for Juvenile Aid Society of Phila. President Office
+Workers' Association; secretary of Penn. Industrial Section for
+Suffrage; member N.W.P., Trade Union League. Sentenced to 5 days
+in District Jail Jan., 1919, for watchfire demonstration.
+
+ALICE GRAM, Portland, Ore., graduate Univ. of Ore., came to
+Washington to take part in picket Nov. 10, 1917. Arrested and
+sentenced to 30 days in Occoquan workhouse. Following release
+assistant in press dept. N.W.P.
+
+BETTY GRAM, Portland, Ore., graduate Univ. of Ore. Abandoned
+stage career to take part in picket demonstration of Nov. 10,
+1917. Worker in Juvenile courts of Portland. Sentenced to 30 days
+in Occoquan workhouse; later arrested in Boston demonstration of
+Feb., 1919, and sentenced to 8 days in Charles St. Jail. Business
+manager of The Suffragist and national organizer for N.W.P.
+
+NATALIE GRAT, Col. Springs, Col., daughter of treasurer Col.
+Branch N. W. P. Arrested picketing Aug. 17, 1917, sentenced to 30
+days in Occoquan workhouse.
+
+MRS. FRANCIS GREEN, New York City, one of second group of women
+to serve prison sentences for suffrage in this country. Served 3
+days in District Jail following picket demonstration of July 4,
+1917.
+
+GLADYS GREINER, Baltimore, Md., daughter of John E. Greiner ,
+engineering expert, member of Stevens Railway Commission to
+Russia in 1917. Graduate of Forest Glen Seminary, Md.; did
+settlement work in mountain districts of Ky.; has held tennis and
+golf championships of Md., and for 3 years devoted all time to
+suffrage. Arrested picketing July 4, 1917, sentenced to 3 days in
+District Jail; arrested Oct. 20, 1917, sentenced to 30 days in
+District Jail; arrested Lafayette Sq. meeting Aug., 1918,
+sentenced to 15 days in District Jail. Recently taken up work in
+labor movement.
+
+MRS. J. IRVING GROSS. Boston, Mass., charter member of Mass.
+Branch N.W.P. Father and husband both fought in Civil War.
+Arrested 5 times Lafayette Sq. meetings Aug., 1918, and sentenced
+to 15 days in District Jail. Arrested in Boston demonstration on
+Common following landing of President and sentenced to 8 days in
+Charles St. Jail.
+
+ANNA GWINTER, New York City, arrested for picketing Nov. 10,
+1917, and sentenced to 30 days in Occoquan workhouse.
+
+ELIZABETH HAMILTON, New York City, arrested for picketing Nov.
+10, 1917, and sentenced to 30 days in Occoquan workhouse.
+
+ERNESTINE HARA, New York City, young Roumanian, arrested for
+picketing Sept., 1917, and sentenced to 30 days in Occoquan
+workhouse.
+
+REBECCA HARRISON Joplin, Mo., arrested final watchfire
+demonstration Feb. 10, 1919; sentenced to 5 days in District
+Jail.
+
+{361}
+
+MRS. H. O. HAVEMEYER, New York City; widow of late H. O.
+Havemeyer; leader of suffrage movement for many years; one of its
+most eloquent speakers, and generous contributor to its funds;
+active in Liberty Loan campaigns, in the Land Army movement of N.
+Y. State, and in working for military rank for nurses. As member
+of "Prison Special" spoke for suffrage in the large cities.
+Arrested Feb. 10, 1919, for taking part in final watchfire
+demonstration; sentenced to 5 days in District Jail.
+
+KATE HEFFELFINGER, Shamokin, Pa.; art student; sentenced to 6
+months in District Jail for picketing Oct. 15, 1917; another
+month later added for previous offense. Aug., 1918, sentenced to
+15 days for participating in Lafayette Sq. meeting; Jan., 1919,
+sentenced to 5 days for participation in watchfire demonstration.
+
+MRS. JESSICA HENDERSON, Boston, Mass., wife of prominent
+Bostonian, one of liberal leaders of Boston; identified with many
+reform movements. Mother of 6 children, one of whom, Wilma, aged
+18, was arrested with her mother, spent night in house of
+detention, and was released as minor. Sentenced to 8 days in
+Charles St. Jail Feb., 1919, for participation in Boston
+demonstration of welcome to President.
+
+MINNIE HENNESY, Hartford, Conn.; business woman, having supported
+herself all her life; arrested for picketing Oct. 6, 1917, and
+sentence suspended. Rearrested Oct. 8, 1917, and sentenced to 6
+months.
+
+ANNE HERKIMER, Baltimore, Md., Child Labor inspector for U. S.
+Children's Bureau. Arrested Feb., 1919, and sentenced to 5 days
+in District Jail for participating watchfire demonstration.
+
+ELSIE HILL, Norwalk, Conn.; daughter of late Ebenezer J. Hill, 21
+years Congressman from Conn.; graduate Vassar College and student
+abroad. Taught French in District of Columbia High School. Lately
+devoted all her time to suffrage. Member of executive committee
+of Congressional Union 1914-1915; President D.C. Branch College
+Equal Suffrage League, and later national organizer for N.W.P.
+Aug., 1918, sentenced to 15 days in District Jail for speaking at
+Lafayette Sq. meeting. Feb., 1919, sentenced to 8 days in Boston
+for participation in welcome demonstration to President.
+
+MRS. GEORGE HILL, Boston, Mass.; sentenced to 8 days in Boston,
+Feb., 1919, for participation in welcome to President.
+
+MRS. FLORENCE BAYARD HILLES, Newcastle, Del.; daughter of late
+Thomas Bayard, first American ambassador to Great Britain and
+secretary of state under Cleveland. Munitions worker during World
+War. After the war engaged in reconstruction work in France.
+Chairman Del. Branch N.W.P. and member of national executive
+committee. Arrested picketing July 14, 1917, sentenced to 60 days
+in Occoquan workhouse; pardoned by President after 3 days.
+
+MRS. J. A. H. HOPKINS (ALLISON TURNBULL), Morristown, N. J.,
+state chairman N.W.P., member executive committee N.W.P. 1917,
+and president and officer of various women's clubs. Her husband
+was leader Progressive Party and later supported President
+Wilson, serving on Democratic National Campaign Committee in
+1916. At present Chairman Committee of
+
+{362}
+
+48. Mrs. Hopkins arrested July 14, 1917, for picketing, sentenced
+to 60 days in workhouse; pardoned by President after 3 days.
+
+MRS. L. H. HORNBBY, New York City, formerly of Ill., one of first
+women aviators in this country. Arrested for picketing Nov. 10,
+1917; sentenced to 30 days in District Jail.
+
+ELIZABETH HOFF, Des Moines, Ia.; came to Washington to work for
+war department during war; later with Red Cross. Sentenced to 5
+days in jail, Jan., 1919, for watchfire demonstration.
+
+EUNICE HUFF, Des Moines, Ia.; sister of Elizabeth; also engaged
+in war work in Washington. Sentenced to 3 days in jail Jan.,
+1919, for applauding suffrage prisoners in court.
+
+HAZEL HUNSINs, Billings, Mont.; graduate Vassar College; later
+instructor in Chemistry, Univ. of Mo. Joined suffrage movement as
+organizer for N.W.P. Later investigator for War Labor Board.
+Active in all picketing campaigns. Aug. 1918, sentenced to 15
+days for participation in Lafayette Sq. meeting.
+
+JULIA HURLBUT, Morristown, N. J., vice chairman N. J. Branch
+N.W.P. In 1916 assisted in Washington state campaign. Arrested
+picketing July 14, 1917, sentenced to 60 days in Occoquan
+workhouse; pardoned by President after 3 days. Engaged in war
+work in France during war.
+
+MARY INGRAM, Philadelphia, Pa.; graduate Bryn Mawr College; Pa.
+chairman of N.W.P.; secretary of National Progressive League
+1912. Has held offices of vice president of Pa. Women's Trade
+Union League, director of Bureau of Municipal Research of Phila-,
+member of board of corporators of Woman's Medical College of Pa.,
+where she was former student. For several years manager woman's
+department of Bonbright and Co., investment brokers. Arrested for
+picketing July 14, 1917; sentenced to 60 days in Occoquan,
+pardoned by President after 3 days.
+
+MRS. MARK JACKSON, Baltimore, Md., arrested picketing Aug., 1917,
+sentenced to 30 days.
+
+PAULA JAKOBI, New York City; playwright, author of "Chinese
+Lily." Once matron of Framingham reformatory for purpose of
+studying prison conditions. Arrested picketing Nov. 10, 1917, and
+sentenced to 30 days in Occoquan workhouse.
+
+MAUD JAMISON, Norfolk, Va.; came to Washington in 1916 as
+volunteer worker of N.W.P. Later became assistant in treasurer's
+department. Had been school teacher and business woman before
+joining N.W.P. Took active part in picketing from the beginning;
+one of first group arrested, June, 1917; served 3 days in
+District Jail; later served 30 days in District Jail; Oct., 1917,
+sentenced to 7 months. Released by Government after 44 days.
+Jan., 1919, served 5 days in jail for participation in watchfire
+demonstration.
+
+MRS. PEGGY BAIRD JOHNS; New York City, formerly of St. Louis,
+newspaper woman and magazine writer. Sentenced to 30 days in
+Occoquan workhouse Aug., 1917; and 30 days in Nov., 1917, for
+picketing.
+
+{363}
+
+WILLIE GRACE JOHNSON, Shreveport, La., state officer, N.W.P. and
+prominent in civic work. Successful business woman. Arrested in
+final watchfire demonstration Feb., 1919. Sentenced to 5 days in
+District Jail.
+
+AMY JUENGLING, Buffalo, N. Y.; of Swiss and German ancestry.
+Graduated with honors from Univ. of N. Y. Has lived in Porto Rico
+and North Carolina, in latter state doing educational work among
+mountaineers. At present engaged in Americanization work. Nov.,
+1917, sentenced to 30 days in Occoquan workhouse for picketing.
+
+ELIZABETH GREEN KALB, Houston, Texas; graduate Rice Institute,
+1916; student Univ. Chicago, 1916. Won Carnegie Peace Prize in
+Texas state intercollegiate oratory contest in 1915. In 1918
+became active worker for N.W.P., taking part in Capitol picket.
+Arrested watchfire demonstration Jan., 1919, sentenced to 5 days
+in District Jail. In charge of literature and library dept. of
+N.W.P. at national headquarters.
+
+RHODA KELLOGG, Minneapolis, Minn.; graduate Univ. of Minn. and
+Pres. of Univ. Equal Suffrage Club. Sentenced to ~?4 hours for
+applauding suffrage prisoners in Court Jan., 1919, sentenced to 5
+days in District Jail for participation in watchfire
+demonstration same month.
+
+MRS. FREDERICK W. KENDALL, Hamburg, N. Y.; wife of one of editors
+of Buffalo Express; writer, public speaker and club leader.
+Arrested for picketing, Aug., 1917, and sentenced to 30 days in
+Occoquan workhouse.
+
+MARIE ERNST KENNEDY, Philadelphia, Pa.; formerly state chairman
+N.W.P. Arrested Feb., 1919, in watchfire demonstration, sentenced
+to 5 days in jail.
+
+MRS. MARGARET WOOD KESSLER, Denver, Col.; vice president Woman's
+Progressive Club of Col. Sept., 1917, sentenced to 30 days in
+Occoquan for picketing.
+
+
+ALICE KIMBALL, New York City. Has been engaged in Y.W.C.A. work,
+and as librarian in N. Y. Public Library, and later as labor
+investigator. Sentenced to 15 days in District Jail for taking
+part in Lafayette Sq. meeting Aug. 10, 1918.
+
+MRS. BEATRICE KINKEAD, Montclair, N. J., active member of N.W.P.
+in N. J. Joined picket of July 14, 1917. Sentenced to 60 days in
+Occoquan, but pardoned by President after 3 days.
+
+MRS. RQBY E. KOENIG, Hartford, Conn. Took part in Lafayette Sq.
+meeting of Aug., 1918, and suffered sprained arm from rough
+treatment by police. Arrested and sentenced to 15 days in
+District Jail.
+
+HATTIE KRUGER, Buffalo, N. Y. Trained nurse; ran for Congress on
+Socialist ticket in 1918. Worker in Lighthouse Settlement,
+Philadelphia, and for time probation officer of Juvenile Court of
+Buffalo. Nov. 10, 1917, sentenced to 30 days in Occoquan
+workhouse for picketing.
+
+DR. ANNA KUHN, Baltimore, Md., physician. Arrested picketing Nov.
+10, 1917, sentenced to 30 days.
+
+{364}
+
+MRS. LAWRENCE LEWIS, Philadelphia, Pa., maternal ancestor of
+family which took possession 1660 land grant in Conn. from King,
+paternal ancestor Michael Hillegas who came Phila. 1727, a
+founder of Phila. Academy Fine Arts, Assembly, etc. Son of
+Hillegas was first U. S. treasurer; sister of Dr. Howard A.
+Kelly, well-known surgeon, formerly professor Johns Hopkins
+Hospital, author of many medical books; sister of Mrs. R. R. P.
+Bradford, founder and Pres. of Lighthouse Settlement, Phila.;
+member executive committee of N.W.P. since 1913; chairman of
+finance 1918; national treasurer, 1919; chairman ratification
+committee 1920; active in state suffrage work many years; served
+3 days in jail for picketing July, 1917; arrested Nov. 10, 1917,
+sentenced to 60 days; arrested Lafayette Sq. meeting, Aug., 1918,
+sentenced to 15 days; arrested watchfire demonstration Jan.,
+1919, sentenced to 5 days in jail.
+
+KATHARINE LINCOLN, New York City, formerly of Philadelphia. Was
+working for Traveler's Aid when she came to picket Nov. 10, 1917.
+Sentenced to 30 days in Occoquan workhouse. Worked for N.W.P. for
+several months; later campaigned for Anne Martin, candidate for
+U. S. Senate from Nev. 	`
+
+DR. SARAH H. LOCKREY, Philadelphia, Pa.; graduate Woman's Medical
+College of Pa. Served as interne Woman's Hospital in Phila., and
+later head of gynecological clinic of same hospital. Surgeon on
+West Phila. Hospital for Women and Children. Received degree of
+Fellow of American College of Surgery 1914. Chairman of her
+Congressional District for the N.W.P. Aug., 1918, sentenced to 15
+days in District Jail for taking part in Lafayette Sq. meeting.
+
+ELIZABETH MCSHANE, Philadelphia, Pa., graduate Vassar College;
+principal of school near Indianapolis, later business woman.
+Assisted in Pa. health survey, working with the American Medical
+Association. Aug., 1918, sentenced to 15 days in jail for
+participation in Lafayette Sq. meeting. Jan., 1919, served 5 days
+for participating in watchfire demonstration. Member of "Prison
+Special" 1919.
+
+MRS. ANNIE J. MAGEE, Wilmington, Del., one of first Del.
+supporters of N.W.P. Took part in many pickets. Arrested
+watchfire demonstration Jan., 1919, and sentenced to 5 days in
+District Jail.
+
+MRS. EFFIE B. MAIN, Topeka, Kan., arrested for taking part in
+Lafayette Sq. meeting Aug. 10, 1918; sentenced to 10 days in
+District Jail.
+
+MAUD MALONE, New York City, librarian in N. Y. Lifelong
+suffragist; arrested for picketing, Sept. 4, 1917, and served
+sentence of 60 days at Occoquan workhouse.
+
+ANNE MARTIN, Reno, Nev.; graduate Leland Stanford Univ.; studied
+in English Univs. Professor of history in Univ. of Nev. As Pres.
+of Nev. Woman's Civic League led successful fight for state
+suffrage in 1914. Served as legislative chairman for
+Congressional Union, and N.W.P. and member of executive
+committee. When N.W.P. was formed, in 1916, elected its chairman.
+When it combined with Congressional Union, she became vice
+chairman. In 1918 ran on independent ticket for U. S. Senate.
+July 14, 1917, sentenced to 60 days at Occoquan workhouse for
+picketing. Pardoned by President after 3 days.
+
+{365}
+
+MRS. LOUISE PARKER MAYO, Framingham, Mass., of Quaker descent.
+Taught school for five years before marriage to William 1. Mayo,
+grandson of Chief Justice Isaac Parker of Mass. Mother of 7
+children. Arrested for picketing July 14, 1917; sentenced to 60
+days in Occoquan workhouse; pardoned by President after 3 days.
+
+NELL MERCER, Norfolk, Va.; member of Norfolk Branch, N.W.P.
+Business woman. Feb., 1919, sentenced to 5 days in District Jail
+for participation in final watchfire demonstration.
+
+VIDA MILHOLLAND, New York City; daughter of Mr. and Mrs. John E.
+Milholland and sister of Inez Milholland Boissevain. Student at
+Vassar where won athletic championships and dramatic honors.
+Studied singing here and abroad, but on death of sister gave up
+career of promise to devote herself to suffrage work. July 4,
+1917 arrested and served 3 days in District Jail for picketing.
+In 1919 toured the country with "Prison Special," singing at all
+meetings.
+
+MRS. BERTHA MOLLER, Minneapolis, Minn., campaigned for state
+suffrage before joining N.W.P. Interested in industrial problems.
+Of Swedish descent, one of ancestors served on staff of Gustavus-
+Adolphus, and 2 uncles are now members of Swedish parliament. She
+served 2 ,jail sentences, one of 24 hours for applauding
+suffragists in court, and another of 5 days for participation in
+watchfire demonstration, Jan., 1919.
+
+MARTHA W. MOORE, Philadelphia, Pa., of Quaker ancestry, student
+at Swarthmore College; charter member of Congressional Union; has
+devoted herself to social service work, Children's Aid,
+Traveler's Aid, etc. Arrested and sentenced to 5 days in District
+Jail Jan., 1919, for participation in watchfire demonstration.
+
+MRS. AGNES H. MOREY, Brookline, Mass., comes of line of Colonial
+ancestors who lived in Concord. Following picket of Nov. 10,
+1917, sentenced to 30 days at District Jail and Occoquan.
+Chairman of Mass. Branch N.W.P., of which she was one of
+founders, and member of National Advisory Council N.W.P. Member
+of "Suffrage Special" of 1916, and a gifted speaker and
+organizer.
+
+KATHARINE A. MOREY, Brookline, Mass., daughter of Mrs. A. H.
+Morey; also officer State Branch N.W.P. Organizer election
+campaign 1916 in Kansas and has many times assisted at national
+headquarters. One of first group pickets sentenced, served 3
+days, June, 1917; Feb., 1919, arrested in Boston demonstration of
+welcome to President and sentenced to 8 days in Charles St. Jail.
+
+MILDRED MORRIS, Denver, Col., well-known newspaper woman of
+Denver. Came to Washington for Bureau of Public Information
+during war. Later investigator for War Labor Board. Now
+Washington correspondent International News Service. In Jan.,
+1919, served 5 day sentence in District Jail for lighting
+watchfire.
+
+MRS. PHOEBE C. MUNNECKE, Detroit, Mich.; assisted with meetings
+and demonstrations in Washington winter of 1918-19. Jan., 1919,
+arrested for lighting watchfire, sentenced to 10 days in jail.
+Later sentenced to 3 days in jail for applauding suffrage
+prisoners in court.
+
+{366}
+
+GERTRUDE MURPHY, Minneapolis, Minn., superintendent of music in
+Minn. public schools. Jan.; 1919, served 24-hour sentence for
+applauding suffragists in court. Later served 5 days in District
+Jail for participation in watchfire demonstration.
+
+MRS. MARY A. NOLAN, Jacksonville, Fla., born in Va.; descended
+from family of Duffy, Cavan, Ireland. Educated at convent of Mont
+CIO Chantal in W. Va. As young woman was teacher and leader in
+Southern library movement. Suffrage pioneer; prominent in
+Confederate organizations of South. In 1917 joined N.W.P., came
+to Washington to picket. Arrested Nov. 10, 1917, sentenced to 6
+days in District Jail, but sent to Occoquan workhouse. January,
+1919, arrested many times in watchfire demonstrations; sentenced
+to 24 hours in jail. Oldest suffrage prisoner.
+
+MRS. MARGARET OAKES, Idaho; arrested Lafayette Sq. meeting Aug.,
+1918, and sentenced to 10 days in District Jail.
+
+ALICE PAUL, Moorestown, N. J. English Quaker ancestor imprisoned
+for Quaker beliefs died in English prison; born of Quaker
+parentage and brought up in this small Quaker town. Received her
+A.B. degree from Swarthmore College, and her M.A. and Ph.D. from
+Univ. of Pa. Graduate of N. Y. School of Philanthropy, and
+studied at Universities of London and Birmingham, specializing in
+economics and sociology. While in England took part in militant
+campaign under Mrs. Pankhurst. On return to America, she was
+appointed chairman in 1913 of the Congressional Committee of the
+National American Woman Suffrage Association. Founded
+Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage; made chairman. When this
+became an independent organization reappointed chairman. When it
+merged with the N.W.P. in 1917, she was chosen chairman of the
+combined organizations, and has continued in this office to the
+present date. Has served 6 prison terms for suffrage, 3 in
+England and 3 in United States. In Oct., 1919, she was sentenced
+to 7 months for picketing and served 5 weeks before released on
+account of hunger strike. While in jail suffered the severest
+treatment inflicted upon any suffrage prisoner. In Aug., 1918,
+sentenced to 10 days for participation in Lafayette Sq. meeting.
+In Jan., 1919, sentenced to 5 days for lighting a watchfire.
+
+BERRY POTTIER, Boston, Mass., of French descent; art student;
+participated in Boston demonstration at home-coming of President,
+and sentenced to 8 days in Charles St. Jail.
+
+EDNA M. PURTELLE, Hartford, Conn., sentenced to 5 days in
+District Jail for participation in Lafayette Sq. meeting Aug.,
+1918.
+
+MRS. R. B. QUAY, Salt Lake City, Utah; arrested in Nov. 10, 1917,
+picket; sentenced to 30 days in District Jail, but sent to
+Occoquan workhouse.
+
+MRS. BETSY REYNEAU, Detroit, Mich., wife of Paul Reyneau;
+portrait painter. Arrested picketing July 14, 1917. Sentenced to
+60 days in Occoquan, but pardoned by the President after 3 days.
+
+MRS. C. T. ROBERTSON, Salt Lake City, Utah; active worker for
+reforms affecting women. Arrested in Nov. 10, 1917, picket;
+sentenced to 30 days in District Jail, but sent to Occoquan
+workhouse.
+
+(367}
+
+MRS. GEORGE E. ROEWER, Belmont, Mass., graduate of Radcliffe,
+active suffragist since college days; wife of well known attorney
+of Boston and granddaughter of prominent figures in German
+Revolution of 1848 who were exiled to the United States.
+Sentenced to 8 days in Boston Charles St. Jail following
+participation in welcome demonstration to the President, Feb.
+1919.
+
+MRS. JOHN ROGERS, JR., New York City, wife of Dr. John Rogers,
+Jr., celebrated thyroid expert, is a descendant of Roger Sherman,
+signer of the Declaration of Independence. A pioneer worker for
+state suffrage before taking up national work. Before entering
+suffrage movement active in improving conditions in New York
+public schools. Chairman Advisory Council of the N.W.P., and one
+of the most forceful speakers in the suffrage ranks. In 1916 and
+1919 as member of "Suffrage Special" and "Prison Special" toured
+the country speaking for suffrage. July 14, 1917, sentenced to 60
+days in Occoquan workhouse for picketing, but was pardoned by the
+President after 3 days.
+
+MARGUERITE ROSSETTE, Baltimore, Md., young artist, and niece of
+Dr. Joshua Rossette, well known social worker. Took part in
+N.W.P. demonstrations, served 5 days in District Jail for
+participation in final watchfire demonstration, Feb., 1919.
+
+MRS. ELISE T. RUSSIAN, Detroit, Mich., born in Constantinople of
+Armenian parentage. Educated in this country. Taught school in
+Mass. until marriage. State officer N.W.P. Sentenced to 5 days in
+District Jail for participation in Jan., 1919, watchfire
+demonstration; and 8 days in Boston in the Charles St. Jail for
+participation in welcome demonstration to President in Feb.,
+1919.
+
+NINA SAMARODIN, born in Kiev, Russia, graduate of Kiev
+University. In 1914 came to America on visit, but entered
+industrial fight, becoming, first, worker and then union
+organizer. Teacher Rand School of Social Science, New York.
+Sentenced to 30 days in Occoquan for picketing September, 1917.
+
+MRS. PHOEBE PERSONS SCOTT, Morristown, New Jersey, graduate of
+Smith College where she specialized in biology and botany. Did
+settlement work at New York Henry St. Settlement. Worked for
+state suffrage before joining N.W.P. and becoming one of its
+officers. Sentenced to 30 days in District Jail for picketing
+Nov. 10, 1917, but sent to Occoquan workhouse.
+
+RUTH SCOTT, Bridgeport, Conn., munitions worker. Sentenced to 5
+days in District Jail for participation in watchfire
+demonstration Jan., 1919.
+
+BELLE SHEINBERG, New York City; of Russian descent; student of
+New York Univ., who left her studies to picket in Washington Nov.
+10, 1917. Sentenced to 30 days in Occoquan workhouse.
+
+MRS. LUCILLE SHIELDS, Amarillo, Texas. Picketed regularly during
+1917. July 4, 1917, served 3 days in District Jail for picketing;
+served 5 days Jan. 13, 1919, for participation in watchfire
+demonstration. Soon after release sentenced to 3 days for
+applauding suffrage prisoners in Court.
+
+{368}
+
+MRS. MARTHA REED SHOEMAKER, Philadelphia, Pa., graduate of Vassar
+College. Served 5 days in District Jail for participation in
+final watchfire demonstration of Feb. 9, 1919.
+
+MRS. MARY SHORT, Minneapolis, Minn., state officer N.W.P.
+Sentenced to 30 days in Occoquan workhouse for picketing November
+10, 1917.
+
+MRS. LOIS WARREN SHAW, Manchester, N. H., student of Vassar and
+Radcliffe, mother of six children. Wife of V. P. and General
+Manager McElwain Shoe Co., N. H., chairman N.W.P. Sentenced to 8
+days in Charles St. Jail after participation in Boston
+demonstration to welcome President Feb., 1919.
+
+RUTH SMALL, Boston, Mass., participant in several state suffrage
+campaigns before taking up national work. In charge of Boston
+headquarters of N.W.P. for a time. For taking part in Boston
+demonstration on the return of the President in Feb., 1919,
+sentenced to 8 days in Charles St. Jail.
+
+DR. CAROLINE E. SPENCER, Colorado Springs, Col., formerly of
+Philadelphia. Secretary Col. Branch, N.W.P. Graduate Woman's
+Medical College of Pa. October 20, 1917, arrested for picketing
+and sentenced to 7 months' impl1sonment. For participating in
+watchfire demonstration Jan. 13, 1919, sentenced to 5 days in
+District Jail.
+
+MRS. KATE STAFFORD, Oklahoma City, Okla., active worker for
+reforms affecting women and children in her own state. Mother of
+six children. Picketed Nov. 10, 1917, and was sentenced to 30
+days in District Jail.
+
+DORIS STEVENS, Omaha, Neb., now resident New York City. Graduate
+of Oberlin College; social worker and teacher; organized and
+spoke for state suffrage campaigns in Ohio and Michigan; ,joined
+Congressional Union in 1913. Organized first Convention of women
+voters at Panama Pacific Exposition in 1915; managed 1916
+election campaign in Cal. for N.W.P. Has acted successively as
+executive secretary, organizer, legislative chairman, political
+chairman, and executive committee member of N.W.P. Arrested for
+picketing July 14, 1917; sentenced to 60 days in Occoquan
+workhouse; pardoned by President after 3 days. Arrested N. Y.
+Mar., 1919, picket demonstration Metropolitan Opera House, but
+not sentenced.
+
+ELIZABETH STUYVESANT, New York City, formerly of Cincinnati;
+dancer by profession; active in settlement work and in campaign
+for birth-control. July 4, 1917, arrested for picketing and
+sentenced to 3 days in District Jail.
+
+ELSIE UNTERMAN, Chicago, Ill., social worker who took week's
+vacation in January, 1919, to come to Washington to picket. She
+served 3 days in District Jail for applauding suffragists in
+court.
+
+MABEL VERNON, Wilmington, Del., Secretary N.W.P., graduate
+Swarthmore College. Fellow student with Alice Paul. Gave up
+position as high school teacher when Congressional Union was
+founded to become organizer and speaker. With remarkable gifts as
+a speaker, has addressed large meetings in every part of the
+country. As brilliant organizer has had charge of many important
+organization tasks of N.W.P. Organized
+
+{369}
+
+the transcontinental trip of voting envoys to the President.
+Campaigned in Nev. 1914 and 1916. Became national organization
+chairman N.W.P. Organized the Washington picket line for several
+months. One of the first six women to serve prison sentence for
+suffrage in District Jail. For picketing June, 1917, served 3
+days.
+
+MRS. ELSIE VERVANE, Bridgeport, Conn., munitions worker and
+President of Woman's Machinist Union of Bridgeport. In Jan.,
+1919, came to Washington with group of union women and took part
+in watchfire demonstration; arrested and served 5 days in
+District Jail.
+
+IRIS CALDERHEAD [now wife of John Brisben Walker], Marysville,
+Kansas, now resident of Denver, Colo., daughter of former-
+Representative Calderhead of Kansas. Graduate of Univ. of Kansas
+and student at Bryn Mawr. Abandoned school teaching to work for
+suffrage; became organizer and speaker for N.W.P. July 4, 1917,
+arrested for picketing and served 3 days in District Jail.
+
+MRS. ROBERT WALKER, Baltimore, Md., officer Md. Branch N.W.P. A
+Quaker and graduate of Swarthmore College; wife of a captain in
+the late war and mother of 3 children. Arrested July 14, 1917,
+for picketing and sentenced to 60 days in Occoquan workhouse.
+Pardoned by President after 3 days.
+
+BERTHA WALLERSTEIN, New York City, student of Barnard College;
+served 5 days in District Jail Jan., 1919, for watchfire
+demonstration.
+
+MRS. BERTHA WALMSLEY, Kansas City, Mo., holding government
+position at time arrested for applauding suffragists in court;
+served 3 days in District Jail.
+
+MRS. WILLIAM UPTON WATSON, Chicago, Ill., treasurer state branch,
+N.W.P. Sentenced to 30 days Occoquan workhouse for picketing Aug.
+17, 1917. Aug., 1918, sentenced to 5 days for participation in
+Lafayette Sq. meeting.
+
+MRS. C. WEAVER, Bridgeport, Conn., worked during war in munitions
+factory. Came to Washington for watchfire demonstration of Jan.
+13, 1919; arrested and sentenced to 5 days in District Jail.
+
+EVA WEAVER, Bridgeport, Conn., daughter of Mrs. C. Weaver, also
+worked in munitions factory; arrested with mother Jan. 13, 1919,
+and served 5 days in District Jail.
+
+MRS. HELENA HILL WEED, Norwalk, Conn., graduate of Vassar and
+Montana School of Mines. One of few qualified women geologists of
+country. Daughter of late Congressman Ebenezer Hill. At one time
+vice-president general of D.A.R. Prominent member of
+Congressional Union and N.W.P. from early days. One of first
+pickets arrested, July 4, 1917; served 3 days in District Jail.
+Aug., 1918, arrested for participation in Lafayette Sq. meeting;
+sentenced to 15 days. Jan., 1918, sentenced to 24 hours for
+applauding in court.
+
+CORA A. WEEK, New York City, of Norse descent; parents Wisconsin
+pioneers; studied art in Boston; became member Art Student's
+League
+
+{370}
+
+of New York; helped organize Oliver Merson Atelier in Paris;
+exhibited Paris Salon. Arrested for picketing Nov. 10, 1917;
+sentenced to 30 days in District Jail. Member of "Prison Special"
+1919.
+
+CAMILLA WHITCOMB, Worcester, Mass., chairman 4th Congressional
+District Mass. N.W.P. Nov. 10, 1917, sentenced to 30 days in jail
+for picketing.
+
+SUE WHITE, Jackson, Tenn., state chairman N.W.P.; recently edited
+The Suffragist; organizer and research chairman. Belongs to
+prominent pioneer families of Tenn. and Ky. and is descendant of
+Marshall and Jefferson families of Va. Court and convention
+reporter for ten years; 1918 appointed by Governor Secretary of
+Tenn. State Commission for the Blind. Identified with U.D.C. and
+D.A.R., the Federation of Women's Clubs and Parent Teachers'
+Association. Has done much to organize suffrage sentiment in her
+state. Feb. 9, 1919, arrested and served 5 days in District Jail
+for participating in final watchfire demonstration.
+
+MARGARET FAY WHITTEMORE, Detroit, Mich. Her grandmother, a
+Quaker, started suffrage work in Michigan. Daughter of one of
+leading patent attorneys of country. N.W.P. organizer since 1914.
+Imprisoned 3 days for picketing July 4, 1917. Jan., 1919, served
+24 hours in jail for applauding in court.
+
+MRS. HARVEY W. WILEY, Washington, D. C., daughter of General
+Kelton, and wife of Dr. Harvey Wiley, food expert and ex-director
+of the pure food department of U. S. Government. Member of
+national advisory council of N.W.P. Has done lobbying, political
+work and picketing for N.W.P. Nov. 10, 1917, sentenced to 15 days
+in District Jail; appealed her case; later sustained by higher
+court.
+
+Ross WINSLOW, New York City, born in Poland and brought to this
+country when child. Began work at age of 11 in Philadelphia; for
+many years worked in hosiery factory in Pittsburg; later employed
+in shop in Philadelphia. Recently has won success as an actress.
+Has brilliant gifts; 1916 spoke throughout West in suffrage
+campaign of N.W.P. Oct. 15, 1917, sentenced to 7 months in
+District Jail for picketing.
+
+MARY WINSOR, Haverford, Pa.; comes of family of pioneer Quaker
+descent. Educated at Drexel Institute of Philadelphia, at Bryn
+Mawr and abroad. At request of American Academy of Political and
+Social Science made survey of English suffrage movement. Founder
+and Pres. of Pa. Limited Suffrage Society. Sept., 1917, sentenced
+to 60 days at Occoquan workhouse for picketing. Later sentenced
+to 10 days for participation in Lafayette Sq. meeting. Has worked
+and spoken for suffrage in many parts of the country. Member
+"Prison Special" Feb., 1919.
+
+ELLEN WINSOR, Haverford, Pa., sister of Mary Winsor and of Mrs.
+Edmund C. Evans, both of whom served prison sentences. Jan.,
+1919, sentenced to 5 days in District Jail for participation in
+watchfire demonstration.
+
+MRS. KATE WINSTON, Chevy Chase, Md., wife of Prof. A. P. Winston,
+formerly Professor of economics at Univ. of Col. and at Univ. of
+Tokio. Jan., 1919, arrested and sentenced to 5 days in District
+Jail for participation in watchfire demonstration.
+
+{371}
+
+CLARA WOLD, Portland, Ore., newspaper writer. Of Norwegian
+parentage; her family closely related to Henrik Ibsen. Graduate
+of Univ. of Ore. Took part in Lafayette Sq. meeting of Aug.,
+1918; sentenced to 15 days. Jan., 1919, arrested for
+participation in watchfire demonstration and sentenced to 5 days.
+For several months acted as editor of The Suffragist.
+
+JOY YOUNG, New York City, formerly of Washington, D. C., wife of
+Merrill Rogers. Former assistant on The Suffragist and later
+organizer for N.W.P. in various parts of the country. Served 3
+days in District Jail for picketing July 4, 1917.
+
+MATILDA YOUNG, Washington, D. C., sister of Joy Young; has
+devoted all her time to suffrage for several years. Youngest
+picket arrested, being 19 years old when she first served a
+prison term. For picketing Nov. 10, 1917, sentenced to 15 days in
+District Jail; served two terms in jail in Jan., 1919; 5 days for
+watchfire demonstration; 3 days for applauding suffrage prisoners
+in court.
+
+{372}
+
+Appendix 5
+
+Directors of National Campaign
+
+Executive Committees Listed by Years
+
+CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEE
+
+EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE 1913
+
+Miss Alice Paul, N. J., Chairman
+Miss Lucy Burns, N. Y., Vice-chairman
+Mrs. Mary R. Beard, N. Y.
+Miss Crystal Eastman, N. Y.
+Mrs. Lawrence Lewis, Pa.
+
+CONGRESSIONAL UNION FOR WOMAN SUFFRAGE
+
+EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE 1914
+
+Miss Alice Paul, N. J., Chairman
+Miss Lucy Burns, N. Y., Vice-chairman
+Mrs. Mary R. Beard, N. Y.
+Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont, N. Y.
+Miss Crystal Eastman, N. Y.
+Mrs. Gilson Gardner, D. C.
+Miss Elsie Hill, Conn.
+Mrs. William Kent, Cal.
+Mrs. Lawrence Lewis, Pa.
+
+EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE 1916
+
+Miss Alice Paul, N. J., Chairman
+Miss Lucy Burns, N. Y., Vice-chairman
+Mrs. Mary R. Beard, N. Y.
+Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont, N. Y.
+Miss Crystal Eastman, N. Y.
+Mrs. Gilson Gardner, D. C.
+Miss Elsie Hill, Conn.
+Mrs. Donald R. Hooker, Md.
+Mrs. William Kent, Cal.
+Mrs. Lawrence Lewis, Pa.
+
+EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE 1916
+
+Miss Alice Paul, N. J., Chairman
+Miss Lucy Burns, N. Y., Vice-chairman
+
+{373}
+
+Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont, N. Y.
+Mrs. John Winters Brannan, N. Y.
+Mrs. Gilson Gardner, D. C.
+Mrs. Donald R. Hooker, Md.
+Mrs. William Kent, Cal.
+Mrs. Lawrence Lewis, Pa.
+Miss Anne Martin, Nevada
+Mrs. Harriot Stanton Blatch, N. Y.
+
+WOMAN'S PARTY (Formed June, 1916)
+
+EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
+
+Miss Anne Martin, Nev., Chairman
+Mrs. Phoebe Hearst, Cal., 1st Vice-chairman
+Judge Mary M. Bartelme, Ill., 2nd Vice-chairman
+Miss Mabel Vernon, Nev., Secretary
+Miss Alice Paul, N. J., ex-officio
+
+NATIONAL WOMAN'S PARTY
+
+(After Amalgamation of Congressional Union and Woman's Party)
+
+EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE 1917
+
+Miss Alice Paul, N. J., Chairman
+Miss Anne Martin, Nev., Vice-chairman
+Miss Mabel Vernon, Del., Secretary
+Miss Gertrude L. Crocker, Ill., Treasurer
+Mrs. Abby Scott Baker, D. C.
+Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont, N. Y.
+Mrs. John Winters Brannan, N. Y.
+Miss Lucy Burns, N. Y.
+Mrs. Gilson Gardner, D. C.
+Mrs. Florence Bayard Hilles, Del.
+Mrs. Donald R. Hooker, Md.
+Mrs. J. A. H. Hopkins, N. J.
+Mrs. William Kent, Cal.
+Mrs. Lawrence Lewis, Pa.
+Miss Doris Stevens, N. Y.
+Miss Maud Younger, Cal.
+
+EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE 1915
+
+Miss Alice Paul, N. J., Chairman
+Miss Anne Martin, Nev., Vice-chairman
+Miss Mabel Vernon, Del., Secretary
+Miss Mary Gertrude Fendall, Md., Treasurer
+Mrs. Abby Scott Baker, D. C.
+Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont, N. Y.
+Mrs. John Winters Brannan, N. Y.
+Miss Lucy Burns, N. Y.
+Mrs. Gilson Gardner, D.C.
+Mrs. Thomas N. Hepburn, Conn.
+Mrs. Florence Bayard Hilles, Del.
+
+
+{374}
+
+Mrs. Donald R. Hooker, Md.
+Mrs. Lawrence Lewis, Pa.
+Miss Doris Stevens, N. Y.
+Miss Maud Younger, Cal.
+
+EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE 1919-1990
+
+Miss Alice Paul, N. J., Chairman
+Miss Mabel Vernon, Del., Secretary
+Miss Mary Gertrude Fendall, Md., Treasurer
+Mrs. Abby Scott Baker, D.C.
+Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont, N.Y.
+Mrs. John Winters Brannan, N.Y.
+Miss Lucy Burns, N. Y.
+Mrs. Gilson Gardner, D. C.
+Mrs. Thomas N. Hepburn, Conn.
+Mrs. Florence Bayard Hilles, Del.
+Mrs. Donald R. Hooker, Md.
+Mrs. Henry G. Leach, N. Y.
+Mrs. Lawrence Lewis, Pa.
+Miss Doris Stevens. N. Y.
+Mrs. Richard Wainwright, D. C.
+Miss Maud Younger, Cal.
+
+{375}
+
+Appendix 6
+
+Concerning Political Prisoners
+
+Definitions
+
+James Bryce:[1]
+
+"Perhaps we may say that whenever the moral judgment of the
+community at large does not brand an offence as sordid and
+degrading, and does not feel the offence to be one which destroys
+its respect for the personal character of the prisoner, it may
+there be held that prison treatment ought to be different from
+that awarded to ordinary criminals."
+
+George Sigerson:[2]
+
+"Men may differ, in thought and deed, on many questions without
+moral guilt. Forms of government and measures relating to the
+welfare and organization of society have been, in all ages and
+countries, questions on which men have entertained divergent
+convictions, and asserted their sincerity by conflicting action,
+often at grave personal sacrifice and the loss of life. On the
+other hand, all people are agreed in condemning certain acts,
+stigmatized as crimes, which offend against the well-being of the
+individual or the community.
+
+"Hence, civilized states distinguish between actions concerning
+which good men may reasonably differ, and actions
+
+[1]James Bryce made this distinction in 1889 between the two
+kinds of offenders. Letter Introductory to "Political Prisoners
+at Home and Abroad," Sigerson.
+
+[2]"Political Prisoners at Home and Abroad."
+
+{376}
+
+which all good men condemn. The latter, if permitted to prevail,
+would disintegrate and destroy the social life of mankind; the
+former, if successful, would simply reorganize it, on a different
+basis . . . . The objects may, in one generation, be branded as
+crimes, whilst in the next those who fail to make them triumph
+and suffered as malefactors are exalted as patriot martyrs, and
+their principles incorporated amongst the foundation principles
+of the country's constitution.
+
+"Attempts to effect changes by methods beyond the conventions
+which have the sanction of the majority of a community, may be
+rash and blameworthy sometimes, but they are not necessarily
+dishonorable, and may even occasionally be obligatory on
+conscience."
+
+As to the incumbency upon a government to differentiate in
+punishments inflicted upon these two classes of offenders, he
+further says: "When a Government exercises its punitive power, it
+should, in awarding sentence, distinguish between the two classes
+of offenders. To confound in a common degradation those who
+violate the moral law by acts which all men condemn, and those
+who offend against the established order of society by acts of
+which many men approve, and for objects which may sometime be
+accepted as integral parts of established order, is manifestly
+wrong in principle. It places a Government morally in the wrong
+in the eyes of masses of the population, a thing to be sedulously
+guarded against."
+
+George Clemenceau:[1]
+
+"Theoretically a crime committed in the interest of the criminal
+is a common law crime, while an offense committed in the public
+interest is a political crime." He says further, "That an act
+isolated from the circumstances under which it was committed . .
+. may have the appearance of a common
+
+[1]Clemenceau in a speech before the French Chamber of Deputies,
+May 16th, 1876, advocating amnesty for those who participated in
+the Commune of 1871. From the Annals de la Chambre des Deputies,
+1876, v. 2, pp. 44-48.
+
+{377}
+
+law crime . . : while viewed in connection with the circumstances
+under which it is committed (in connection with a movement) . . .
+it may take on a political character."
+
+Maurice Parmelee:[1]
+
+"Common crimes are acts contrary to the law committed in the
+interest of the individual criminal or of those personally
+related to the criminal. Political crimes are acts contrary to
+the law committed against an existing government or form of
+government in the interest of another government or form of
+government . . . . .
+
+"Furthermore, there are other offenses against the law which are
+not common crimes, and yet are not political crimes in the usual
+criminological sense . . . .
+
+"Among these crimes, which are broader than the ordinary
+political crimes, are offenses in defense of the right to freedom
+of thought and belief, in defense of the right to express one's
+self in words in free speech, . . . and many illegal acts
+committed by conscientious objectors to the payment of taxes or
+to military service, the offenses of laborers in strikes and
+other labor disturbances, the violations of law committed by
+those who are trying to bring about changes in the relations
+between the sexes, etc.
+
+"Common crimes are almost invariably anti-social in their nature,
+while offenses which are directly or indirectly political are
+usually social in their intent, and are frequently beneficial to
+society in their ultimate effect. We are, therefore, justified in
+calling them social crimes, as contrasted with the anti-social
+common crimes . . . . ."
+
+[1]"Criminology" by Maurice Parmelee, Chap. XXVIII. Author also
+of "Poverty and Social Progress," "The Science of Human
+Behavior," "The Principles of Anthropology and Sociology in their
+relation to Criminal Procedure." During the late war Dr. Parmelee
+was a Representative of the U. S. War Trade Board stationed at
+the American Embassy, London; economic advisor to the State
+Department, and Chairman of the Allied Rationing Committee which
+administered the German Blockade.
+
+{378}
+
+TREATMENT ACCORDED POLITICAL PRISONFRS ABROAD
+
+It is interesting to note what other countries have done toward
+handling intelligently the problem of political offenders.
+
+Russia was probably the first country in modern history to
+recognize political prisoners as a class,[1] although the
+treatment of different groups and individuals varied widely.
+
+First of all, the political offender was recognized as a
+�political" not by law, but by custom. When sure of a verdict of
+guilty, either through damaging evidence or a packed jury, the
+offender was tried. When it was impossible to commit him to trial
+because there were no proofs against him, "Administrative Exile"
+was resorted to. These judgments or Administrative orders to
+exile were pronounced in secret on political offenders; one
+member of the family of the defendant was admitted to the trial
+under the law of 1881. Those exiled by Administrative order were
+transported in cars, but stopped en route at the etapes,
+political prisoners along with common law convicts. Since 1866
+politicals condemned by the courts to hard labor or to exile,
+journeyed on foot with common law convicts.[1]
+
+There were no hospitals for political exiles; doctors and `
+surgeons among the exiled helped their sick comrades.
+
+Families were permitted to follow the loved ones into exile, if
+they chose. For example, wives were allowed to stay at Lower
+Kara, and visit their husbands in the prison in Middle Kara twice
+a week and to bring them books.
+
+When criminal convicts were freed in Siberia after serving a
+given sentence at hard labor, they received an allotment of land
+and agricultural implements for purposes of sustenance, and after
+two years the government troubled no more about
+
+[1]Siberia received its first exiles [non-conformists] in the
+17th Century.
+
+{379}
+
+them. They became settlers in some province of Southern Siberia.
+With political exiles it was quite different. When they had
+finished a seven, ten, or twelve year sentence, they were not
+liberated but transferred to the tundras within the Arctic
+Circle.
+
+Fancy a young girl student exiled to a village numbering a
+hundred houses, with the government allowance of 8 to 10
+shillings a month to live on. Occupations were closed to her, and
+there was no opportunity to learn a trade. She was forbidden to
+leave the town even for a few hours. The villagers were for the
+most part in fear of being suspected if seen to greet politicals
+in the street.
+
+"Without dress, without shoes, living in the nastiest huts,
+without any occupation, they [the exiles were mostly dying from
+consumption," said the Golos of February 2, 1881. They lived in
+constant fear of starvation. And the Government allowance was
+withdrawn if it became known that an exile received any monetary
+assistance from family or friends.
+
+Those politicals condemned to hard labor in Siberia worked mostly
+in gold mines for three months out of twelve, during which period
+meat was added to their diet. Otherwise black bread was the main
+food of the diet.
+
+When held in prisons awaiting trial or convicted and awaiting
+transfer into exile, politicals did no work whatever. Their only
+occupation was reading. Common criminals had to work in prison as
+well as in Siberia.
+
+In the fortress of Sts. Peter and Paul,[1] Kropotkin was lodged
+in a cell big enough to shelter a big fortress gun (25 feet on
+the diagonal). The walls and floor were lined with felt to
+prevent communication with others. "The silence in these felt-
+covered cells is that of a grave," wrote Kropotkin . . . . "Here
+I wrote my two volumes on The Glacial Period." Here
+
+[1]In the Trubeskoi bastion, one building in the fortress.
+
+{380}
+
+he also prepared maps and drawings. This privilege was
+only granted, to him, however, after a strong movement amongst
+influential circles compelled it from the Czar.[1] The Geo-
+graphical Society for whom he was writing his thesis also made
+many pleas on his behalf. He was allowed to buy tobacco,
+writing paper and to have books-but no extra food.
+
+Kropotkin says that political prisoners were not subjected
+to corporal punishment, through official fear of bloodshed.
+But he must mean by corporal punishment actual beatings, for
+he says also, "The black holes, the chains, the riveting to bar
+rows are usual punishments." And some politicals were al-
+leged to have been put in oubliettes in the Alexis Ravelin[2]
+which must have been the worst feature of all the tortures.
+This meant immurement alive in cells, in a remote spot where
+no contact with others was possible, and where the prisoner
+would often be chained or riveted for years.
+
+More recently there was some mitigation of the worst fea-
+tures of the prison regime and some additional privileges were
+extended to politicals.
+
+All this applied to old Russia. There is no documentary
+proof available yet, as to how Soviet Russia treats its offenders
+against the present government. The Constitution of the Rus-
+sian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic' does not provide a
+status for political prisoners, but it does provide for their re
+lease. It specifically deals with amnesty which is proof of
+the importance with which it regards the question of political
+offenders. It says: "The All-Russian Central Executive Com
+mittee deal with questions of state such as . . . the right to
+declare individual and general amnesty.[4]
+
+France has had perhaps the most enlightened attitude of
+all the nations toward political offenders. She absolutely
+
+[1]Set Memoirs of a Revolutionist, Kropotkin.
+[2]Another section of Sts. Peter and Paul Fortress.
+[3]Adopted by the 5th All-Russian Congress of Soviets, July 10,
+1918. Reprinted from The Nation, January 4, 1919.
+[4]Article 3, Chapter 9 . . . 49 q.
+
+{381}
+
+guarantees special treatment, by special regulations, and does
+not leave it to the discretion of 'changing governments.
+
+On August 7, 1884; Thiers, in a ministerial circular, laid down
+the fundamental principles upon which France has acted. The only
+obligation upon the defendant, according to this circular, was to
+prove the political nature of the offense, "that it should be
+demonstrated and incontestable that they have acted under the
+influence of their opinions."[1] Theirs advocated superior diet
+for political prisoners and no work.
+
+His edict was followed by special regulations issued for
+politicals under the Empire, February 9th, 1867, through M.
+Pietri, Prefect of the Seine. These regulations, illustrative of
+the care France exercised at an early date over her politicals,
+defined the housing conditions, diet, intercourse with comrades
+inside the prison and with family and friends from the outside.
+Their privacy was carefully guarded. No curious visitor was
+allowed to see a political unless the latter so desired.
+
+Kropotkin wrote[2] of his incarceration in Clairvaux prison in
+1888, to which he and twenty-two others were transferred from
+Lyons after being prosecuted for belonging to the International
+Workingmen's Association: "In France, it is generally understood
+that for political prisoners the loss of liberty and the forced
+inactivity are in themselves so hard that there is no need to
+inflict additional hardships."
+
+In Clairvaux he and his comrades were given quarters in spacious
+rooms, not in cells. Kropotkin and Emile Gautier, the French
+anarchist, were given a separate room for literary work and the
+Academy of Sciences offered them the use of its library.
+
+There was no intercourse with common law prisoners. The
+politicals were allowed to wear their own clothes, to smoke, to
+buy food and wine from the prison canteen or have it brought
+
+[1]Sigerson, Political prisoners at Home and Abroad, p. 89.
+[2]Memoirs of a Revolutionist, Kropotkin.
+
+{382}
+
+in; they were free of compulsory work, but might, if they chose,
+do light work for which they were paid. Kropotkin mentions the
+extreme cleanliness of the prison and the "excellent quality" of
+the prison food.
+
+Their windows looked down upon a little garden and also commanded
+a beautiful view of the surrounding country. They played nine-
+pins in the yard and made a vegetable and flower garden on the
+surface of the building's wall. For other forms of recreation,
+they were allowed to organize themselves into classes. This
+particular group received from Kropotkin lessons in cosmography,
+geometry, physics, languages and bookbinding. Kropotkin's wife
+was allowed to visit him daily and to walk with him in the prison
+gardens.
+
+Sebastian Faure, the great French teacher and orator, was
+sentenced to prison after the anarchist terrorism in 1894 and
+while there was allowed to write his "La Douleur Universelle"
+
+Paul La Fargue, son-in-law of Karl Marx, wrote his famous "The
+Right to be Lazy" in Sainte Pelagie prison.
+
+France has continued this policy to date. Jean Grave, once a
+shoemaker and now a celebrated anarchist, was condemned to six
+months in La Sante prison for an offensive article in his paper,
+Les Temps Nouveaux. Such is the liberty allowed a political that
+while serving this sentence he was given paper and materials with
+which to write another objectionable article, called "La Societe
+Mourante et 1'Anarchie," for the publication of which he received
+another six months.
+
+It is interesting to note the comparatively light sentences
+political offenders get in France. And then there is an
+established practice of amnesty. They rarely finish out their
+terms. Agitation for their release extends from the extreme
+revolutionary left to the members of the Chamber of Deputies,
+frequently backed by the liberal press.
+
+Italy also distinguishes between political and common law
+
+{383}
+
+offenders. The former are entitled to all the privileges of
+custodia honesta[1] which means they are allowed to wear their
+own clothes, work or not, as they choose; if they do work, one
+half their earnings is given to them. Their only penal obligation
+is silence during work, meals, school and prayers. A friend of
+Sr. Serrati, the ex-editor of the Italian journal Il Proletario,
+tells me that Serrati was a political prisoner during the late
+war; that he was sentenced to three and a half years, but was
+released at the end of six months, through pressure from the
+outside. But while there, he was allowed to write an article a
+day for Avanti, of which paper he was then an editor.
+
+Even before the Franco-Prussian War German principalities
+recognized political offenders as such. The practice continued
+after the federation of German states through the Empire and up
+to the overthrow of Kaiser Wilhelm. Politicals were held in
+"honorable custody" in fortresses where they were deprived only
+of their liberty.
+
+For revolutionary activities in Saxony in 1849, Bakunin[2] was
+arrested, taken to a Cavalry Barracks and later to Koeriigstein
+Fortress, where politicals were held. Here he was allowed to walk
+twice daily under guard. He was allowed to receive books, he
+could converse with his fellow prisoners and could write and
+receive numerous letters. In a letter to a friend $ he wrote that
+he was occupied in the study of mathematics and English, and that
+he was "enjoying Shakespeare." And .. : . "they treat me with
+extraordinary humanness."
+
+Another letter to the same friend a month later said he was
+writing a defense of his political views in "a comfortable room,"
+with "cigars and food brought in from a nearby inn."
+
+[1]Sigerson, pp. 154-5.
+[2]The Life of Michael Bakunin-Eine Biographie von Dr. Max
+Nettlau. (Privately printed by the author. Fifty copies
+reproduced by the autocopyist, Longhaus.)
+[3]To Adolph R- (the last name illegible) October 15, 1849.
+
+{384}
+
+The death sentence was pronounced against him in 1850 but
+commuted to imprisonment for life. The same year he was
+extradited to Austria where the offense was committed, then to
+Russia and on to Siberia in 1855, whence he escaped in 1860 in an
+American ship.
+
+In 1869 Bebell[1] received a sentence of three weeks in Leipzig
+(contrast with Alice Paul's seven months' sentence) "for the
+propagation of ideas dangerous to the state." Later for high
+treason based upon Social-Democratic agitation he was sentenced
+to two years in a fortress. For lese majeste he served nine
+months in Hubertusburg-a fortress prison (in 1871). Here
+politicals were allowed to pay for the cleaning of their cells,
+to receive food from a nearby inn, and were allowed to eat
+together in the corridors. They were only locked in for part of
+the time, and the rest of the time were allowed to walk in the
+garden. They were permitted lights until ten at night; books; and
+could receive and answer mail every day. Bebel received
+permission to share cell quarters with the elder Lielr knecht
+(Wilhelm), then serving time for his internationalism. He says
+that political prisoners were often allowed a six weeks' leave of
+absence between sentences; when finishing one and beginning a
+second.
+
+According to Sigerson, politicals in Austria also were absolved
+from wearing prison clothes, might buy their own food and choose
+their work. I am told the same regime prevailed in Hungary under
+Franz Joseph.
+
+The new constitution of the German Republic adopted at Weimar
+July 31, 1919, provides that[2] "The President of the Republic
+shall exercise for the. government the right of pardon .. . . .
+Government amnesties require a national law."
+
+In the Scandinavian countries there is no provision for special
+consideration of ~ political prisoners, although a proposed
+
+[1]My Life, August Bebel.
+[2]Article 49.
+
+{385}
+
+change in Sweden's penal laws now pending includes special
+treatment for them, and in Denmark, although politicals are not
+recognized apart from other prisoners, the people have just won
+an amnesty for all prisoners convicted of political offense as I
+write. Neither Switzerland nor Spain makes separate provision for
+politicals, although there are many prisoners confined in their
+prisons for political offenses, especially in Spain, where there
+are nearly always actually thousands in Monjuich. Portugal also
+subjects political offenders to the same regime as criminals.
+
+Concerning Turkey and Bulgaria, I appealed to George
+Andreytchine, a Bulgarian revolutionist who as protege of King
+Ferdinand was educated at Sofia and Constantinople, knowing his
+knowledge on this point would be authentic. He writes: "Turkey,
+which is the most backward of all modern states, recognized the
+status of political prisoners before 1895, or shortly after the
+Armenian massacres. Thousands of Bulgarian, Greek, Armenian and
+Arabian insurgents, caught with Arms in their hands, conspiring
+and actually in open rebellion against the Ottoman Empire, were
+sentenced to exile or hard labor, but were never confined in the
+same prisons with ordinary criminals and felons. They were put in
+more hygienical prisons where they were allowed to read and write
+and to breathe fresh air. Among some of my friends who were
+exiled to Turkish Africa for rebellion was a young scholar, Paul
+Shateff, by name, who while there wrote a remarkable monograph on
+the ethnology and ethnography of the Arabian Tribes in which he
+incidentally tells of the special treatment given him and his
+fellow exiles as political prisoners.
+
+"There is something to be said for the political wisdom of the
+Sultans. Amnesty is an established practice, usually at the
+birthday of the Sultan or the coming to power of a new Sultan, or
+on Ramadan[1], a national holiday.
+
+{386}
+
+"In 1908 when the young Turks assumed control of the government,
+all political prisoners were released and cared for by the state.
+My friend Paul Shateff was sent at state expense to Bruxelles to
+finish his studies.
+
+"Bulgaria, another one of those `backward countries,' established
+the political regime even earlier than Turkey. Politicals are
+allowed to read, to write books or articles for publication, to
+receive food from outside, and are periodically released on
+amnesty."
+
+And now we come to England. In general England, too, give's
+political offenders much lighter sentences than does America,
+but, except in isolated cases, she treats them no better. She
+does not recognize them as political prisoners. If they are
+distinguished prisoners like Dr. Jamison, who was permitted to
+serve the sentence imposed upon him for leading an armed raid
+into the Transvaal in 1895, in a luxuriously furnished suite, to
+provide himself with books, a piano, and such food as he chose,
+and to receive his friends, special dispensation is allowed; or
+like William Cobbett, who was imprisoned for writing an alleged
+treasonable article in his journal, The Register, in 1809; or
+Leigh Hunt for maligning the Prince Regent who, he believed,
+broke his promise to the Irish cause; Daniel O'Connell and six
+associates in 1844 for "seditious activity"; John Mitchell, who
+in 1848 was sent to Bermuda and then to Van Dieman's Land.[2]
+These British prisoners, while not proclaimed as politicals, did
+receive special privileges.[3]
+
+More recently Bertrand Russell, the distinguished man of letters
+who served sixty-one days in lieu of payment of fine for
+
+[1]The month (the ninth in the Mohammedan year) in which the
+first part of the Koran is said to have been received.
+[2]English penal colony in Tasmania.
+[3]For details of their handsome treatment see Sigerson, pp. 19-
+20,
+
+{387}
+
+writing a pamphlet intended to arouse public indignation against
+the treatment of a certain conscientious objector, received
+special privileges. In England the matter of treatment rests
+largely with the will of the Prime Minister, who dictates the
+policy to the Home Secretary, who in turn directs the Chairman of
+the Board of Directors of Prisons. The Home Secretary may,
+however, of his own accord issue an order for special privileges
+if he so desires, or if there is a strong demand for such an
+order. Many government commissions and many distinguished British
+statesmen have recommended complete recognition and guarantee of
+the status of political prisoners, but the matter has been left
+to common law custom and precedent, and the character of the
+prime minister. In the case of Ireland the policy agreed upon is
+carried out by the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.
+
+It is difficult to generalize about England's treatment of Irish
+political offenders. From the earliest nationalist activities she
+has treated them practically all as common criminals, or worse,
+if such a thing is possible. She has either filled English
+prisons, or, as in the sixties, put them in convict ships and
+sent them to Bermuda and Australia for life sentences along with
+common convicts where they performed the hardest labor.. Irish
+prisoners have fought with signal and persistent courage for the
+rights due political offenders. Lately, after militant
+demonstrations within the prisons and after deaths resulting from
+concerted hunger striking protests, some additional privileges
+have been extended. But these can be and are withheld at will.
+There is no guarantee of them.
+
+As early as 1885 Canadian nationalists who had taken part in an
+insurrection in Upper Canada on behalf of self-government and who
+were sent to Van Dieman's Land in convict ships, entered a
+vigorous protest to Lord Russell, the Home Secre-
+
+{388}
+
+tary, against not receiving the treatment due political
+prisoners.
+
+England has to her credit, then, some flexibility about extending
+privileges to politicals. We have none. England has to her credit
+lighter sentences-Irish cases excepted. No country, not excluding
+imperial Germany, has ever given such cruelly long sentences to
+political offenders as did America during the late war.
+
+I have incorporated this discussion in such a book for two
+reasons: first, because it seemed to me important that you should
+know what a tremendous contribution the suffrage prisoners made
+toward this enlightened reform. They were the first in America to
+make a sustained demand to establish this precedent which others
+will consummate. They kept up the demand to the end of the prison
+episode, reinforcing it by the hunger strike protest. The other
+reason for including this discussion here is that it seems to me
+imperative that America recognize without further delay the
+status of political offenders. As early as 1872 the International
+Prison Congress meeting in London recommended a distinction in
+the treatment of common law criminals and politicals, and the
+resolution was agreed upon by the representatives of all the
+Powers of Europe and America with the tacit concurrence of
+British and Irish officials. And still we are behind Turkey in
+adopting an enlightened policy. We have neither regulation,
+statute nor precedent. Nor have we the custom of official
+flexibility.
+
+Note-The most conspicuous political prisoner from the point of
+view of actual power the United States has ever held in custody
+was Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederate States,
+during the rebellion of the South against the Union. He was
+imprisoned in Fortress Monroe and subjected to the most cruel and
+humiliating treatment conceivable. For details of his
+imprisonment see the graphic account given in "Jefferson Davis--A
+Memoir" by his wife, Vol. II, pp. 653-95.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Jailed for Freedom, by Doris Stevens
+
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