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.