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.