the outbreak of the war, the White House gates were closed for the first
time in its history. The pickets without often informed the guards
within as to the kind of vehicle that demanded entrance of them. The
guards came to treat them as comrades patrolling the same beat. Once,
when the pickets were five minutes late, one of these guards said: “We
thought you weren’t coming, and we’d have to hold down this place
alone.”
When the pickets reconvened with the Special War Session of the
Sixty-fifth Congress on April 2, the White House police were most
demonstrative in their welcome. They were glad to see them back: they
said they had missed them. And indeed they had come to look on the women
as a kind of auxiliary police force. Once, when somebody asked a
policeman, “When is the President coming out?” Mary Gertrude Fendall
said, “I guess you’d like a dollar for every time people ask you that.”
The policeman answered, “I’d rather have a dollar for every time they
ask when are the Suffragists coming out?” The country at large had
accepted the pickets. The directors of the sight-seeing busses pointed
them out as one of the city’s sights. Tourists said, oftener and
oftener, “Well, we weren’t quite sure where the White House was until we
saw you pickets.” And when these tourists used to crowd about the gates,
waiting for the President’s limousine to come out, and the signal was
flashed that the Presidential motor had started, the guards pressed the
crowds away. “Back!” they would order. “Back! Back! All back but the
pickets! No one allowed inside the line but the pickets!”
As can be imagined, Headquarters was a busy place during the picketing;
and sometimes a hectic one. Later, of course, when the arrests began,
and mobs besieged it, it seethed with excitement. It was not easy always
to find women with the leisure and the inclination to serve on the
picket line before the arrests. But, when arrests began and
imprisonments followed, naturally it became increasingly difficult.
Many members of the Woman’s Party in Washington looked on their
picketing as a part of the day’s work. Mrs. William Kent, who said that
no public service she had ever done gave her such an exalted feeling,
always excused herself early from teas on Monday. “I picket Mondays from
two to six,” she explained simply.
* * * * *
Watchers said that those high groups of purple, white, and gold banners
coming down the streets of Washington were like the sails, magically
vivid and luminous, of some strange ship. They were indeed the sails of
a ship—the mightiest that women ever launched—but only the women who
manned those sails saw that ship.
_3. The War on the Pickets_
“I have no son to give my country to fight for democracy abroad and
so I send my daughter to Washington to fight for democracy at home.”
Mrs. S. H. B. GRAY of Colorado.
It will be remembered that the arrest of Lucy Burns and Katherine
Morey—the first of a series extending over more than a year—occurred on
June 22.
On June 23, Mrs. Lawrence Lewis and Gladys Greiner were arrested in
front of the White House. On the same day, Mabel Vernon and Virginia
Arnold were arrested at the Capitol.
On June 25, twenty women bore Suffrage banners to their stations. The
slogans on these banners were:
HOW LONG MUST WOMEN WAIT FOR LIBERTY?
MR. PRESIDENT, YOU SAY “LIBERTY IS A FUNDAMENTAL
DEMAND OF THE HUMAN SPIRIT.”
WE ADDRESS OUR DEMAND FOR THE BALLOT AT THIS TIME
IN NO NARROW, CAPTIOUS, OR SELFISH SPIRIT, BUT FROM
PUREST PATRIOTISM FOR THE HIGHEST GOOD OF EVERY CITIZEN
FOR THE SAFETY OF THE REPUBLIC AND AS A GLORIOUS EXAMPLE
TO THE NATIONS OF THE EARTH.
Twelve women were arrested. They were: Mabel Vernon, Lucy Burns, Gladys
Greiner, Katherine Morey, Elizabeth Stuyvesant, Lavinia Dock, Berta
Crone, Pauline Clarke, Virginia Arnold, Maude Jamison, Annie Arniel, and
Mrs. Townsend Scott.
On Tuesday, June 26, nine women were arrested for carrying the same
banners. They included some of the women from the day before, and, in
addition, Vivian Pierce and Hazel Hunkins.
A high-handed detail of this arrest was that the women were overpowered
by the police before they had proceeded half a block.
Most of these women were released after each arrest. The last six to be
arrested were asked to return to court for trial.
On June 27, six American women were tried in the police court of the
District of Columbia.
These women were: Virginia Arnold, Lavinia Dock, Maud Jamison, Katherine
Morey, Annie Arniel, Mabel Vernon.
The women defended themselves. Mabel Vernon, who conducted the case,
demanded that the banners they had carried be exhibited in court. It
made a comic episode in the midst of the court proceedings when the
policeman, who had been sent for them, returned, bristling all over his
person with banner sticks, and trailing in every direction the purple,
white, and gold. The courtroom crowd burst out laughing when they read
the legend:
MR. PRESIDENT, YOU SAY “LIBERTY IS THE FUNDAMENTAL DESIRE OF THE
HUMAN SPIRIT.”
There was a technical discussion as to how much sidewalk space the young
women occupied, and how near the White House palings they stood. The
Suffrage group had photographs which showed the deserted pavements at
the time of the arrests.
The women cross-examined the police who testified that there was no
crowd at that time of the morning and that the women stood with their
backs to the White House fence.
The Judge said: “If you had kept on moving, you would be all right.”
“I find these defendants guilty as charged,” was his verdict, “of
obstructing the highway in violation of the police regulations and the
Act of Congress, and impose a fine of twenty-five dollars in each case,
or in default of that, three days’ imprisonment.”
The six young women refused to pay the fine. They were each sentenced to
three days in the District jail.
When the first pickets came out of jail, a hundred women, representing
many States, gave them a reception breakfast in the garden of Cameron
House.
A subsequent chapter will relate the prison experiences of these women
and of the long line of their successors.
* * * * *
The next picket line went out on Independence Day, July 4, 1917. Five
women marched from Headquarters bearing purple, white, and gold banners.
They were: Helena Hill Weed, Vida Milholland, Gladys Greiner, Margaret
Whittemore, Iris Calderhead. Helena Hill Weed carried a banner:
GOVERNMENTS DERIVE THEIR JUST POWER FROM
THE CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED.
Following the advice of the Judge, they kept moving. Across the street,
a crowd had gathered in expectation of arrests. Standing about were
policemen—a newspaper man said twenty-nine. The police walked along
parallel with the women, and the crowd followed them. As the banner
bearers crossed the street to the White House, the police seized them
before they could get onto the sidewalks. An augmenting crowd surged
about them. Some of the onlookers protested, but most of them took their
cue from the police, and tore the flags away from the women. Apart from
the pickets, Kitty Marion, who for some weeks had been selling the
_Suffragist_ on the streets, was attacked by a by-stander who snatched
her papers away from her, tearing one of them up. Miss Marion was
arrested. She protested at the behavior of her assailant and he was
arrested too. Hazel Hunkins, who was not a part of the procession, came
upon a man who had seized one of the banners carried by the pickets and
was bearing it away. Miss Hunkins attempted to get it from him, and she
also was arrested.
The police commandeered automobiles, and commenced bundling the women
into them.
Immediately another group of women came marching up Pennsylvania Avenue
on the opposite side of the street. This second group contained Mrs.
Frances Green, Mrs. Lawrence Lewis, Lucile Shields, Joy Young, Elizabeth
Stuyvesant, Lucy Burns. Joy Young, who is a little creature, led this
group. They reached the West gate of the White House, and there the
police arrested them. A Washington paper described with great glee how,
like a tigress, little Joy Young fought to retain her banner, and how
finally three policemen managed to overpower her. The women were booked
for “unlawful assembly” all except Kitty Marion, who was charged with
“disorderly conduct.”
Helena Hill Weed and Lucy Burns cross-examined the witnesses on behalf
of the women. Mrs. Weed insisted that the torn, yellow banner should be
brought into court. Throughout the trial, it hung suspended from the
Judge’s bench—GOVERNMENTS DERIVE THEIR JUST POWERS FROM THE CONSENT OF
THE GOVERNED. Lucy Burns, examining the police officers, asked why
citizens carrying banners on June 21 were protected by the police, and
on July 4 arrested for doing the same thing. The officer replied that
they were protected on June 21 because he had no orders for that day.
The orders which came later were, he said, not to allow picketing,
though he admitted there were no directions about seizing banners. The
women brought out by skillful cross-questioning that it was the action
of the police which had collected a disorderly crowd, and not the
marching of the two groups of women; that at the former trial of a group
of Suffrage pickets, the Judge himself had declared that marching
pickets did not violate the law.
Lucy Burns summed up the case for the Suffragists as follows:
I wish to state first—she said—as the others have stated, that we
proceeded quietly down the street opposite the White House with our
banners; that we intended to keep marching; that our progress was
halted by the police, not the crowd. There was no interference on
the part of the crowd until after the police had arrested us and
turned their backs on the crowd. Our contention is as others have
stated that the presence of the crowd there was caused by the action
of the police and the previous announcement of the police that they
would arrest the pickets, and not by our action which was entirely
legal.
In the second place I wish to call your attention to the fact that
there is no law whatever against our carrying banners through the
streets of Washington, or in front of the White House. It has been
stated that we were directed by the police not to carry banners
before the White House, not to picket at the White House. That is
absolutely untrue. We have received only one instruction from the
chief of police and that was delivered by Major Pullman in person.
He said that we must not carry banners outside of Headquarters. We
have had no other communication on this subject since that time.
We, of course, realized that that was an extraordinary direction,
because I don’t think it was ever told an organization that it could
not propagate its views, and we proceeded naturally to assume that
Major Pullman would not carry out that order in action because he
would not be able to sustain it in any just court.
We have only been able since to judge instructions by the action of
the police, and the actions of the police have varied from day to
day, so that as a point of fact, we don’t know what the police have
been ordered to do—what is going to be done. On one occasion we
stepped out of Headquarters with a banner—the so-called Russian
banner—and it was torn to fragments before we had reached the gate
of our premises, although Major Pullman had given no notice to us at
that time. Another time we proceeded down Madison Place with
banners, walking in front of the Belasco Theatre, and were arrested.
Another time we were allowed to proceed down Madison Place and the
north side of the Avenue and were not molested.
Now the district attorney has stated that on account of the action
of this court a few days ago, we knew and deliberately did wrong.
But we were advised then by the Judge—and he was familiar with the
first offense—that we would have been all right if we had kept on
walking. On July 4 we kept on walking and this is the result of that
action.
I myself was informed on June 22 by various police, that if I would
keep on walking, my action would be entirely legal. We were innocent
of any desire to do anything wrong when we left our premises.
It is evident that the proceedings in this court are had for the
purpose of suppressing our appeal to the President of the United
States, and not for the purpose of accusing us of violating the
police regulations regarding traffic in the District of Columbia.
The eleven women were found “Guilty,” and sentenced to pay a fine of
twenty-five dollars or to serve three days in the District jail. They
refused to pay the fine, and were sent to jail. The case against Hazel
Hunkins was dismissed. Kitty Marion was found “Not Guilty,” of
disorderly conduct.
In the meantime, Alice Paul had been seized with what looked like a
severe illness. A physician finally warned her that she might not live
two weeks. It was decided, on July 14, to send her to a hospital in
Philadelphia for treatment. The day before she left, a meeting of the
Executive Board was held at her bedside in the Washington hospital.
Although later diagnosis proved more favorable, and Miss Paul was to be
away from Washington only a month, many of the women present at that
meeting believed that they would never see her again. That was a
poignant moment, for the devotion of her adherents to their leader can
neither be described nor measured. But they felt that there was only one
way to serve her if she left them forever and that was to carry out her
plans.... The next day they went out on the picket line.
That next day was the French national holiday—July 14. The Woman’s Party
had, as was usual with them when they planned a demonstration, announced
this through the press.
On the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille, therefore, three groups
of women carrying banners, one inscribed with the French national motto:
LIBERTY, EQUALITY, FRATERNITY, and the Woman’s Party colors, marched one
after another from Headquarters.
In the first group were Mrs. J. A. H. Hopkins, Mrs. Paul Reyneau, Mrs.
B. R. Kincaid, Julia Hurburt, Minnie D. Abbot, Anne Martin.
In the second group were, Amelia Himes Walker, Florence Bayard Hilles,
Mrs. Gilson Gardner, Janet Fotheringham.
In the third group were Mrs. John Winters Brannan, Mrs. John Rogers,
Jr., Louise P. Mayo, Doris Stevens, Mary H. Ingham, Eleanor Calnan.
A big crowd, attracted by the expectation of excitement, had collected
outside Headquarters. The police made no effort to disperse them. When
the first group appeared, there was some applause and cheering. They
crossed the street, and took up their station at the upper gate of the
White House. As nothing happened to the first group, the second group,
led by Amelia Himes Walker, emerged from Headquarters and took up a
position at the lower gate of the White House. However, the instant the
two groups had established themselves, the policemen, who had been
making a pretense of clearing the sidewalks, immediately arrested them.
The third group of pickets, however, came forward undismayed, their
flags high. The crowd applauded them; then fell back and permitted the
pickets to take their places. The police in this third case waited for
four minutes, watches in hand. Then they arrested the women on the
charge of “violating an ordinance.”
At the station the sixteen women were booked for “unlawful assembly.” On
July 17, Judge Mullowny, sentenced the sixteen women to sixty days in
Occoquan Workhouse on the charge of “obstructing traffic.”
A detailed consideration of the treatment of the pickets in Occoquan and
the Jail is reserved for a later chapter. It will, therefore, be stated
briefly here that these sixteen women were pardoned by the President
after three days in Occoquan. However, they were submitted to
indignities there such as white prisoners were nowhere else compelled to
endure. When J. A. H. Hopkins and Gilson Gardner were permitted to visit
their wives, they did not at first recognize them in the haggard,
exhausted-looking group of creatures in prison garb, sitting in the
reception room. One of the women, however, seeing her husband, half rose
from her chair.
“You sit down!” Superintendent Whittaker yelled, pointing his finger at
her.
* * * * *
J. A. H. Hopkins, who had been a member of the Democratic National
Campaign Committee of 1916, went immediately to the President and told
him the conditions under which these women were being held. Gilson
Gardner, a well-known newspaper man who had supported Wilson throughout
the previous election campaign, wrote a long communication to the
President on the same subject. Dudley Field Malone, Collector of the
Port of New York and one of the President’s closest friends and warmest
advisors, who was later in so gallant a way to show his disapproval of
the Suffrage situation, saw the President also. President Wilson
professed himself as being “shocked” at his revelations. He said he did
not know what was going on at Occoquan.
“After this, Mr. President,” Mr. Malone replied, “you _do_ know.”
* * * * *
After her release, Mrs. J. A. H. Hopkins wanted to find out whether this
pardon also meant that the President supported their Amendment. She
therefore wrote him the following letter:
MY DEAR MR. PRESIDENT:
The pardon issued to me by you is accompanied by no explanation. It
can have but one of two meanings—either you have satisfied yourself,
as you personally stated to Mr. Hopkins, that I violated no law of
the country, and no ordinance of this city, in exercising my right
of peaceful petition, and therefore you, as an act of justice,
extended to me your pardon, or you pardoned me to save yourself the
embarrassment of an acute and distressing political situation.
In this case, in thus saving yourself, you have deprived me of the
right through appeal to prove by legal processes that the police
powers of Washington despotically and falsely convicted me on a
false charge, in order to save you personal or political
embarrassment.
As you have not seen fit to tell the public the true reason, I am
compelled to resume my peaceful petition for political liberty. If
the police arrest me, I shall carry the case to the Supreme Court if
necessary. If the police do not arrest me, I shall believe that you
do not believe me guilty. This is the only method by which I can
release myself from the intolerable and false position in which your
unexplained pardon has placed me.
Mr. Hopkins and I repudiate absolutely the current report that I
would accept a pardon which was the act of your good nature.
In this case, which involves my fundamental constitutional rights,
Mr. Hopkins and myself do not desire your Presidential benevolence,
but American justice.
Furthermore, we do not believe that you would insult us by extending
to us your good-nature under these circumstances.
This pardon without any explanation of your reasons for its
issuance, in no way mitigates the injustice inflicted upon me by the
violation of my constitutional civil right.
Respectfully yours,
ALISON TURNBULL HOPKINS.
After having written this letter, quite alone and at the crowded hour of
five o’clock in the afternoon, Mrs. Hopkins carried a banner to the
White House gates, and stood there for ten minutes. The banner said: WE
ASK NOT PARDON FOR OURSELVES BUT JUSTICE FOR ALL AMERICAN WOMEN. A large
and curious crowd gathered, but nobody bothered her. While she stood
there, the President passed through the gates and saluted.
* * * * *
On Monday, July 23, exactly a month from the time that the police had
first interfered with the picketing and the Suffragists, the daily
Suffrage picket was resumed. The crowds streaming home in the afternoon
from the offices, laughed when they saw the banners at the White House
gates again. Some stopped to congratulate the women.
Time went on and still the President did nothing about putting the
Amendment through. As always when it was not strikingly brought to his
attention, Suffrage seemed to pass from his mind. It became again
necessary to call his attention to the Amendment. Often it seemed as
though the President’s attention could be gained only by calling the
country’s attention to his inaction.
Within a week appeared a new banner. Elihu Root, the Special Envoy of
the United States to Russia, had just come home from a country which had
enfranchised its women. With the other members of the American Mission
to Russia, he called at the White House, and at the gates he was
confronted by these words:
TO ENVOY ROOT:
YOU SAY THAT AMERICA MUST THROW ITS MANHOOD IN THE
SUPPORT OF LIBERTY.
WHOSE LIBERTY?
THIS NATION IS NOT FREE. 20,000,000 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 FREE FOR DEMOCRACY BEFORE
HE ASKS THE MOTHERS OF AMERICA TO THROW THEIR SONS TO
THE SUPPORT OF DEMOCRACY IN EUROPE.
ASK HIM HOW HE COULD REFUSE LIBERTY TO AMERICAN
CITIZENS WHEN HE HAS FORCED MILLIONS OF AMERICAN BOYS
OUT OF THEIR COUNTRY TO DIE FOR LIBERTY.
For two hours, Lucy Ewing and Mary Winsor stood holding this banner. It
attracted the largest crowd that the pickets had as yet experienced. But
the police managed them perfectly—although in the courts there had been
plenty of testimony that they could not manage similar crowds—and
without a word of protest—although half a block was completely
obstructed for two hours.
The following day saw scenes the most violent in the history of the
pickets. This was August 14. Catherine Flanagan’s story of this period
of terror is one of the most thrilling in the annals of the Party:
That day a new banner was carried for the first time by Elizabeth
Stuyvesant—the “Kaiser” banner. The banner read:
KAISER WILSON, HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN YOUR SYMPATHY WITH
THE POOR GERMANS BECAUSE THEY WERE NOT SELF-GOVERNING?
TWENTY MILLION AMERICAN WOMEN ARE NOT SELF-GOVERNING.
TAKE THE BEAM OUT OF YOUR OWN EYE.
I do not remember when Elizabeth took this banner out, but I think she
was on the four o’clock shift. For a half an hour people gathered about
the banner. The crowd grew and grew. You felt there was something
brewing in them, but what, you could not guess. Suddenly it came—a man
dashed from the crowd and tore the banner down. Immediately, one after
another, the other banners were torn down. As fast as this happened, the
banner bearers went back to Headquarters; returned with tri-colors and
reinforcements; took up their stations again. Finally the whole line of
pickets, bannerless by this time, marched back to Headquarters. The
crowd, which was fast changing into a mob, followed us into Madison
Place. As the pickets emerged again, the mob jumped them at the very
doors of Cameron House, tore their banners away from them and destroyed
them. By this time the mob, which had become a solid mass of people,
choking the street and filling the park, had evolved a leader, a yeoman
in uniform, who incited everybody about him to further work of
destruction. Suddenly, as if by magic, a ladder appeared in their midst.
A yeoman placed it against Cameron House, and accompanied by a little
boy, he started up. He pulled down the tri-color of the Woman’s Party
which hung over the door. In the meantime, it was impossible for us to
take any banners out. We locked the door, but two strange women, unknown
to the Woman’s Party, came in. They opened a window on the second floor
and were about to push the ladder, on which the sailor and the little
boy still stood, back into the street when Ella Morton Dean drew them
away.
At the other side of the house and at the same moment, another member of
the crowd climbed up the balcony and pulled down the American flag which
hung beside the tri-color. Immediately Virginia Arnold and Lucy Burns
appeared on the balcony carrying, the one the Kaiser banner and the
other the tri-color. The crowd began to throw eggs, tomatoes, and apples
at them, but the two girls stood, Virginia Arnold white, Lucy Burns
flushed, but—everybody who saw them comments on this—with a look of
steady consecration, absolutely motionless, holding the tri-color which
had never before been taken from its place over the door at
Headquarters.
Suddenly a shot rang out from the crowd. A bullet went through a window
of the second story, directly over the heads of two women who stood
there—Ella Morton Dean and Georgiana Sturgess—and imbedded itself in the
ceiling of the hall. The only man seen to have a revolver was a yeoman
in uniform, who immediately ran up the street. By this time Elizabeth
Stuyvesant had joined Lucy Burns and Virginia Arnold on the balcony;
others also came. Three yeomen climbed up onto the balcony and wrested
the tri-color banners from the girls. As one of these men climbed over
the railing, he struck Georgiana Sturgess. “Why did you do that?” she
demanded, dumbfounded. The man paused a moment, apparently as amazed as
she. “I don’t know,” he answered; then he tore the banner out of her
hands and descended the ladder. Lucy Burns, whose courage is physical as
well as spiritual, held her banner until the last moment. It seemed as
though she were going to be dragged over the railing of the balcony, but
two of the yeomen managed to tear it from her hands before this
occurred. New banners were brought to replace those that had
disappeared.
While this was going on, Katherine Morey and I went out the back way of
Headquarters, made our way to the White House gates, unfurled a Kaiser
banner, and stood there for seventeen minutes unnoticed. There was a
policeman standing beside each of us, but when the yeoman who had led
the mob and who was apparently about to report for duty, tore at the
banner, they did not interfere. We were dragged along the pavements, but
the banner was finally destroyed.
By this time the crowd had thinned a little in front of Headquarters.
The front door had been unlocked when we went back. Five different
times, however, we and others, led always by Lucy Burns, made an effort
to bear our banners to the White House gates again. Always, a little
distance from Headquarters, we were beset by the mob and our banners
destroyed.
About five o’clock, the police reserves appeared and cleared the street.
Thereupon, every woman who had been on picket duty that day, bearing
aloft the beautiful tri-color, went over to the White House gates,
marched up and down the pavements three times. The police protected us
until we started home. When, however, our little procession crossed the
street to the park, the crowd leaped upon us again, and again destroyed
our banners. Madeline Watson was knocked down and kicked. Two men
carried her into Headquarters.
While the crowd was milling its thickest before Headquarters, somebody
said to a policeman standing there, “Why don’t you arrest those men?”
“Those are not our orders,” the policeman replied.
Twenty-two lettered banners and fourteen tri-color flags were destroyed
that day.
During all the early evening, men were trying to climb over the back
fence of the garden to get into Cameron House. None of us went to bed
that night. We were afraid that something—we knew not what—might happen.
The next day, August 15, was only a degree less violent. The Suffrage
pickets went on duty as usual at twelve o’clock, and picketed all that
afternoon.
All the afternoon yeomen, small boys, and hoodlums attacked the women
without hindrance. Elizabeth Stuyvesant was struck by a soldier who
destroyed her flag. Beulah Amidon was thrown down by a sailor, who stole
her flag. Alice Paul was knocked down three times. One sailor dragged
her thirty feet along the White House sidewalk in his attempts to tear
off her Suffrage sash, gashing her neck brutally. They were without
protection until five o’clock.
During this time they lost fifty tri-color banners and one Kaiser
banner.
The pickets were, of course, constantly going back to Headquarters for
new banners, and constantly returning with them.
At five o’clock, in anticipation of the President’s appearance, and
while still the turmoil was going on, five police officers quickly and
efficiently cleared a wide aisle in front of each gate, and as quickly
and as efficiently drove the mob across the street. The President,
however, left by a rear gate.
On the next day, August 16, the policy toward the pickets changed again.
Fifty policemen appeared on the scene, and instead of permitting
Suffragists to be attacked by others, they attacked them themselves.
Virginia Arnold was set upon by three police officers. Before she could
relinquish her banner to them, her arms were twisted and her hands
bruised. Elizabeth Stuyvesant, Natalie Gray, and Lucy Burns were all
severely handled by the police. Elizabeth Smith and Ruth Crocker, who
were carrying furled flags, were knocked down. When men, more
chivalrous-minded than the crowd, came to their rescue, they were
arrested.
In the late afternoon, the crowd grew denser. The police, therefore,
ceased their efforts, and waited while the crowd attacked the women and
destroyed their banners An officer threatened to arrest one young woman
who defended her banner against an assailant.
“Here, give that up!” called the second officer to a girl who was
struggling with a man for the possession of her flag.
During these days of mob attacks, the pickets had been put to it to get
outside Headquarters to some coign of vantage where they could stand for
a few seconds before the inevitable rush. For the first time in the
history of their picketing the girls could not carry their banners on
poles. Either the mobs seized them or the policemen who lined the
sidewalks outside Headquarters. The pickets carried them inside their
sweaters and hats, in sewing bags, or pinned them, folded in newspapers
or magazines, under their skirts. One picket was followed by crowds who
caught a gleam of yellow at the hem of her gown. When they got to the
White House, the pickets held the banners in their hands. Lucy Burns
kept sending out relays with new banners to take the place of those
which were torn.
Catherine Flanagan says that on August 16 when the four o’clock shift of
the picket line started out, Lucy Burns pointed to rolls of banners done
up in various receptacles and said, “Take out as many of these as you
can carry and keep them concealed until it is necessary to use them.”
The eight pickets distributed the banners in different parts of their
clothes, and approaching the White House by various routes, suddenly
lined themselves against the White House fence, each unfurling a Kaiser
banner at the word of command. They were faced by forty policemen,
policewomen, and secret service men. Instantly the police were on them.
The pickets held the banners as long as it was physically possible—it
took three policemen to remove each banner. The policemen heaved sighs
of relief, as though their work for the day was done, turned, and moved
to the edge of the pavement. Instantly, eight more banners appeared and
as instantly they fell on the pickets again. This happened seven times.
As often as the police turned with captured banners in their hands,
reinforcing pickets in the crowd handed fresh banners to the pickets at
the gates. Fifty-six Kaiser banners were captured this day. When the
Kaiser banners were exhausted, the eight pickets returned to
Headquarters and soon emerged bearing the tri-color. The tactics of the
police changed then. They did not, themselves, attack the pickets, but
they permitted the crowds to do so. In all, one hundred and forty-eight
flags were destroyed.
* * * * *
On August 17, Major Pullman, police head of Washington, called upon
Alice Paul, and warned her that young women carrying banners would be
arrested.
Alice Paul replied, “The picketing will go on as usual.”
In a letter to his friend, Major Pullman, quoted in the _Suffragist_ of
August 25, Gilson Gardner put the case concisely and decisively....
You must see, Pullman, that you cannot be right in what you have
done in this matter. You have given the pickets adequate protection;
you have arrested them and had them sent to jail and the workhouse,
you have permitted the crowds 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 these 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 it was not right and that you were “lenient,” when you 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 in place of the settled laws of the land. That would
justify a charge of “Kaiserism” right here in our Capitol 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 I find that they are
most happy when they are permitted to do their duty. They did not
like that dirty business of permitting a lot of sailors and street
riffraff to rough the girls....
It is not my opinion alone when I say that the women were entitled
to police protection, not arrest. President Wilson has stated
repeatedly that these women were entirely within their legal and
constitutional rights, and that they should not have been molested.
Three reputable men, two of them holding office in this
Administration, have told me what the President said, and I have no
reason to doubt their word. If the President has changed his mind he
has not changed the law or the Constitution, and what he said three
weeks ago is just as true today.
In excusing what you have done, you say that the women have 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 on 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 bearers than you have to arrest the owner of the
_Washington Post_. So long as the law against obscenity and
profanity is observed, you have no business with the words on the
banners. 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._
During the entire afternoon of that day—August 17—the day that Major
Pullman called on Alice Paul—the sentinels stood at their posts. One of
the banners read:
ENGLAND AND RUSSIA ARE ENFRANCHISING WOMEN IN WAR TIME;
Another:
THE GOVERNMENT ORDERS OUR BANNERS DESTROYED BECAUSE THEY TELL THE TRUTH.
At intervals of fifteen minutes—for two hours—the pickets were told by a
captain of police that they would be arrested if they did not move. But
they held their station. At half-past four, the hour at which the
thousand of government clerks invade the streets, there was enough of a
crowd to give the appearance that the pickets were “blocking traffic.”
Lavinia Dock; Edna Dixon; Natalie Gray; Madeline Watson; Catherine
Flanagan; Lucy Ewing, were arrested soon after four o’clock. Their trial
lasted just forty minutes. One police officer testified that they were
obstructing traffic. They all refused to pay the ten-dollar fine, which,
though it would have released them, would also have been an admission of
guilt, and Police Magistrate Pugh sentenced them to serve thirty days in
the Government Workhouse.
* * * * *
On August 23, six women appeared at the White House, bearing banners.
They were, Pauline Adams; Gertrude Hunter; Clara Fuller; Kate Boeckh;
Margaret Fotheringham; Mrs. Henry L. Lockwood. All of their banners
quoted words from the President’s works:
I TELL YOU SOLEMNLY, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, WE CANNOT
POSTPONE JUSTICE ANY LONGER IN THESE UNITED
STATES, AND I DON’T WISH TO SIT DOWN AND LET ANY MAN
TAKE CARE OF ME WITHOUT MY HAVING AT LEAST A VOICE IN
IT; AND IF HE DOESN’T LISTEN TO MY ADVICE I AM GOING TO
MAKE IT AS UNPLEASANT FOR HIM AS I CAN.
In ten minutes they were all arrested. When they appeared before Police
Magistrate Pugh, Clara Kinsley Fuller said in part:
I am the editor, owner, and publisher of a daily and weekly
newspaper in Minnesota. I pay taxes to this government, yet I have
nothing to say in the making of those laws which control me, either
as an individual or as a business woman. Taxation without
representation is undemocratic. For that reason, I came to
Washington to help the Federal Amendment fight. When I learned that
President Wilson said that picketing was perfectly legal, I went on
the picket line and did my bit towards making democracy safe at
home, while our men are abroad making democracy safe for the world.
Margaret Fotheringham, a school-teacher, said:
I have fifteen British cousins who are in the fighting line abroad.
Some are back very badly wounded, and others are still in France. I
have two brothers who are to be in our fighting line. They were not
drafted; they enlisted. I am made of the same stuff that those boys
are made of; and, whether it is abroad or at home, we are fighting
for the same thing. We are fighting for the thing we hold nearest
our hearts—for democracy.
To these pleas, Judge Pugh answered that the President was “not the one
to petition for justice”; that the people of the District virtuously
refrained from picketing the White House for the vote for themselves
“for fear the military would take possession of the streets.”
I quote the _Suffragist_ of September 2.
Here is a sample of Judge Pugh’s logic:
“These ladies have been told repeatedly that this law was ample to
prevent picketing in front of the White House, or anywhere else on
the sidewalks of the District of Columbia; that it was not the
fashion to petition Congress in that way, to stand in front of the
White House, the President’s mansion, to petition somebody else, a
mile and a half away. The President does not have to be
petitioned.... You ladies observe all the laws that give you
benefits, property rights that legislatures composed of men have
passed ... and those that are aimed at preserving the peace and good
order of the community you do not propose to observe.”
And much more to the same effect, which proved that Judge Pugh knew
nothing of the long vigil of the pickets at the doors of Congress,
and apparently nothing of the President’s actual dictatorship.
Finally he admitted that he did not care to send “ladies of
standing” to jail, and would refrain if they promised to stop
picketing, although they were not charged with picketing. In the
face of the dead silence that followed, he pronounced sentence: A
fine of twenty-five dollars or thirty days at Occoquan Workhouse.
Every woman refused to pay the fine.
Attorney Matthew O’Brien represented the women in the District
Court, appealing finally from the judgment of the court.
On August 28, the same women, with Cornelia Beach, Vivian Pierce, Maud
Jamison, and Lucy Burns, were again arrested, and given the same
sentence. An appeal was granted them again, the Judge announcing that
this was the last appeal he would give in the picketing cases until a
decision had been given by the Court of Appeals.
* * * * *
On September 4, the day of the parade of the drafted men, thirteen women
were arrested. They were: Abby Scott Baker, Dorothy Bartlett, Annie
Arniel, Pauline Adams, Mrs. W. W. Chisholm, Lucy Burns, Margaret
Fotheringham, Lucy Branham, Julia Emory, Eleanor Calnan, Edith Ainge,
Maude Malone, Mary Winsor.
The banner these women bore was inscribed:
MR. PRESIDENT, HOW LONG MUST WOMEN BE DENIED A VOICE
IN THE GOVERNMENT THAT IS CONSCRIPTING THEIR SONS?
They were sent to Occoquan for sixty days.
At this vivid interval in the history of the Woman’s Party occurred a
notable incident.
Dudley Field Malone, who had long been a staunch friend of the Woman’s
Party—and one of the few men who had been willing to make a sacrifice
for Suffrage—resigned his position as Collector of the Port of New York
as a protest against the intolerable Suffrage situation. This was a
_beau geste_ on the part of Mr. Malone. There are those who believe that
that gallant deed will go rolling down the centuries gathering luster as
it rolls. It had an inevitable effect, not only on the members of the
Woman’s Party, but on the members of other Suffrage organizations as
well, and it produced a profound impression on the country at large.
His letter of resignation reads as follows:
NEW YORK, N. Y., Sept. 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 re-election. 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 towards the
enfranchisement of all the women in 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 re-elect you, I promised them
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, nor 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
millions of men and women today hope 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, publicly to 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 the
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, re-elected 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 for 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,
DUDLEY FIELD MALONE.
On September 13, six pickets left Headquarters at half-past four in the
afternoon. They were: Katherine Fisher, Mrs. Frederick Willard Kendall,
Mrs. Mark Jackson, Ruth Crocker, Nina Samardin, Eleanor Gwinter. The two
lettered banners were borne by Miss Fisher and Mrs. Kendall:
HOW LONG MUST WOMEN WAIT FOR LIBERTY?
MR. PRESIDENT, WHAT WILL YOU DO FOR WOMAN SUFFRAGE?
They marched straight to the lower gate. A crowd had already collected
there. Another crowd lined the edge of the sidewalk across the street on
Lafayette Square. There were two police officers on the White House
sidewalk, and several across the way.
The crowd made way for the group of pickets, and they took their
accustomed places at the gate. For a few minutes nothing happened.
During all these days of roughness and riot, it had been very difficult
to take pictures. It seemed as though the thing the police most feared
was the truth. They would not permit the moving-picture men to record
these vivid events. They even confiscated cameras. Photographers ran the
risk always of having their cameras destroyed. On this day, Gladys
Greiner, a Suffragist, was taking pictures of the crowd. As she leveled
her kodak at a police captain, he kicked her. She continued to take her
pictures nevertheless. A sailor and a marine, both in uniform, instead
of moving as the police had ordered, came closer and closer to the
pickets. Suddenly, the sailor snatched the banner from the pole. The two
men tore the banner into pieces; passed the scraps to their friends. The
police looked on without interference. Then they arrested the women.
They were taken to Judge Mullowny.
Judge Mullowny had been away for two months from the bench. In the
meantime, his ideas on the offense of picketing had undergone another
change. His first decision in regard to the Suffragists was that they
obstructed traffic, and, in regard to the banners, that they “had
nothing to do with the case.” Later, he decided that the banners were
“treasonable.” Now, in regard to their banner, _How Long Must Women Wait
for Liberty?_, he decided: “Since this banner is unlikely to give
offense, I will give you women a light sentence this time.”
All evidence except that of the two policemen was ruled out. In regard
to the conduct of the police captain in kicking Miss Greiner, the Judge
said: “I have nothing to do with those things; they have nothing to do
with the case.”
He asked, “Would you pay a fine instead of going to prison, if I made
the fine fifty cents?”
“Not if you made it five cents,” replied Mrs. Kendall, who spoke for the
six prisoners.
He therefore sentenced them to thirty days in the government workhouse.
On September 22, four more Suffragists were arrested. They were Peggy
Baird Johns, Margaret Wood Kessler, Ernestine Hara, Hilda Blumberg. They
carried a new banner this time, quoting words from an early work of the
President. It said:
PRESIDENT WILSON, WHAT DID YOU MEAN WHEN YOU SAID, “WE HAVE SEEN A
GOOD MANY SINGULAR THINGS HAPPEN RECENTLY. WE HAVE BEEN TOLD THAT IT
IS UNPATRIOTIC TO CRITICIZE PUBLIC ACTION. WELL, IF IT IS, THERE IS
A DEEP DISGRACE RESTING UPON THE ORIGIN OF THIS NATION. THIS 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 IS
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 _Suffragist_ of September 29 describes this event:
When the pickets this week took up their stations at the East gate
of the White House, and unfurled the “seditious” utterance of the
President himself, the banner was almost immediately confiscated by
the two police officers who had hurried to the spot. They seemed
anxious to keep from the little pressing crowd the fact that the
President had once been not only a Democrat, but a democrat.
The two officers then stood directly in front of the little group of
women carrying tri-colored flags, with their backs to what crowd
there was. More than half of the wide White House sidewalks were
vacant of pedestrians. The officers had evidently been ordered to
let the crowd collect for a certain number of minutes before they
arrested the women. They betrayed not the slightest interest in the
spectators, but watched their victims with bored attention as they
waited for the patrol....
The four young women were, on the following day, after the usual
court proceeding, sentenced to thirty days in the government
workhouse for “obstructing traffic.”
A brief statement was made by each of the little group. “We are not
citizens,” said these young women. “We are not represented. We were
silently, peacefully attempting to gain the freedom of twenty
million women in the United States of America. We have broken no
law. We are guilty of no crime. We have been illegally arrested. We
demand our freedom, and we shall continue to ask for it until the
government acts.”
They were given thirty days in the workhouse.
The last picketing of the Emergency War Session of the Sixty-fifth
Congress took place on October 6, the day Congress adjourned. There were
eleven women in this picket line: Dr. Caroline Spencer, Vivian Pierce,
Louise Lewis Kahle, Rose Winslow, Joy Young, Matilda Young, Minnie
Henesy, Kate Heffelfinger, Maud Jamison, Lou C. Daniels.
Alice Paul led them. Congress was adjourning. The work of the Woman’s
Party was going on smoothly. For the first time, Alice Paul felt that
she had the leisure to go to jail.
In the _Suffragist_ of October 13, Pauline Jacobson of the _San
Francisco Bulletin_ thus describes their arrest:
I had had much of the Western prejudice against the “militant
movement” that the live Suffrage battle had become in this country.
I had thought from the newspaper reports that have gone forth
concerning the action of these “militant Suffragists,” that
“picketing” was rowdy and unlovely. I found it a silent, a still
thing—a thing sublime....
The sun, which never seems bright to me under these paler Eastern
skies, slanted chill and thin through the falling golden foliage of
autumn trees lining the broad avenue on which the White House
stands. Diagonally across, flying the Suffrage colors, stands the
handsome old Cameron House, the Headquarters of the Woman’s Party.
Suddenly that chill avenue vista became vibrant with color, with
fluttering banners, wide-striped of purple, white, and gold, borne
aloft on tall, imposing, war-like spears. Down the Avenue they
fluttered slowly, as if moved by some mysterious force. Then I saw
the force that was sending those banners forward through the
careless crowds.
There were eleven women, each bearing high her colored banner. The
leader, a woman frail, and slight, and very pale, her eyes and face
really lit with exaltation of purpose, carried a white flag on which
was printed: “Mr. President, what will you do for Woman Suffrage?”
Then behind them followed the others with the vivid purple and gold
flags on the spear-headed staffs. They looked neither to the right
nor to the left. They seemed to me to walk so lightly that the great
banners carried them; and there was the glow in all of their eyes
though their faces were quite unsmiling.
The street in an instant had become alive with people who gathered
about, followed, or lined the curbs, men and women—the women for the
most part curious, the men for the most part disdainful, insolent,
or leering. It was not a Western crowd; there was no generosity in
it.
But silently, perceived by all but perceiving none, the women
marched straight ahead. As they neared the White House a sailor
sprang forward and tore the banner from one picket, threw it on the
ground, and trampled on it. The young girl who had carried it
stooped down and silently rescued her banner. I thought there was
tenderness in the way she smoothed it out and tried to fasten it
again to her tall staff. Four banners were torn and mutilated like
that. Each girl, without a word, like the first, tried to protect
her flag.
And then, like a flash, those eleven women, a few feet apart, were
flanking either side of the wide White House gates like living
statues, only their colored banners fluttering upward. They stood
facing the coming and going crowd silently. There was the pale
little leader with her staff bare; the crowd had torn away that
simple question on the white flag....
Then came shouted orders, the sudden waving of blue-coated arms, and
the elbowing to the front of blue coats with much gold braid. The
police were scattering the curious crowd. Above their orders came
the clang of the patrol. Next the eleven statues had disappeared
from the White House gates. They were being crowded to the front by
the fat officer in the uniform. They were still silent and still
proud. There was something majestic even in the way each stooped her
head to enter the small door of the patrol wagon. And the last
uniformed officer who had gathered together the brilliant flags sat
in front, where they still fluttered triumphant in the wind as the
patrol clanged off and the crowd shouted.
I followed them to the police station. It seemed to me there was
strange delay in the procedure of accepting bail for people charged
with so simple an offense—for they were charged with “obstructing
traffic.” That same day, I had seen dense crowds watching the World
Series returns, with mounted police to clear a space for the cars.
There were no arrests for blocking traffic. They were finally
released on bail for trial the following Monday.
The eleven women were tried on October 8. They refused to recognize the
Court. They would not be sworn. They would not question witnesses. They
would not speak in their own behalf.
Alice Paul said—I quote the _Suffragist_:
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.
The Judge did not sentence the eleven women. He suspended sentence and
restored the bail furnished by the Suffragists for their appearance. For
this surprising change of front, no reason was given. Though apparently
inconsistent, it was perfectly consistent with the policy of an
Administration quite dazed and uncertain in regard to its treatment of
the picketing women.
In point of fact, the Court did not sentence the women because Congress
was adjourning. They did not dismiss the charge, however.
Regarding the freeing of the pickets Miss Paul said:
We are glad that the authorities have retreated at last from their
untenable position, and grown wary of prosecuting women for
peacefully petitioning for political liberty.
The action of the Court this morning makes more glaring than ever
the injustice of holding nineteen women on sixty and thirty day
sentences in Occoquan Workhouse for the same offense of petitioning
for liberty which we committed. We will use our unexpected freedom
to press our campaign with ever-increasing vigor.
On October 15, four pickets, under suspended sentence from their
picketing of October 6, went out again. They were Rose Winslow, Kate
Heffelfinger, Minnie Henesy, Maud Jamison. The police were taken
absolutely by surprise. It was ten minutes before the patrol wagons
appeared. In the meantime, of course, a crowd gathered to see what was
going to happen. When the patrol stopped at the curb, an officer
approached the pickets. “Move on!” he ordered, and, before the pickets
could move on, or even make a reply—“I will put you under arrest,” and
immediately, “You are under arrest.” Rose Winslow, one of the pickets,
lifted her banner high, and marched with the air of a conqueror to the
waiting patrol. The crowd burst into spontaneous applause.
In court Rose Winslow said:
We have seen officers of the law permit men to assault women, to
destroy their banners, to enter their residences. How, then, can you
ask us to have respect for the law? We thought that by dismissing
the Suffragists without sentence this Court had finally decided to
recognize our legal right to petition the government. We shall
continue to picket because it is our right. On the tenth of November
there will be a long line of Suffragists who will march to the White
House gates to ask for political liberty. You can send us to jail,
but you know that we have broken no law. You know that we have not
even committed the technical offense on which we were arrested. You
know that we are guiltless.
Judge Mullowny gave them the choice between a twenty-five dollar fine
and six months in the district workhouse. They, of course, refused to
pay the fine.
* * * * *
At half-past four on October 20, Alice Paul led a deputation of three
pickets to the West gate of the White House. The others were Dr.
Caroline Spencer, Gladys Greiner, Gertrude Crocker. Alice Paul carried a
banner with the words of President Wilson which had appeared recently on
the posters for the Second Liberty Bond Loan of 1917:
THE TIME HAS COME TO CONQUER OR SUBMIT. FOR US THERE
CAN BE BUT ONE CHOICE. WE HAVE MADE IT.
Dr. Caroline Spencer’s banner bore the watchword of ’76:
RESISTANCE TO TYRANNY IS OBEDIENCE TO GOD.
They were arrested as soon as the police had permitted what seemed a
sufficient crowd to gather, placed in the patrol wagon, and taken to the
district jail.
The officer testified as follows—the italics are my own:
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 would not they please move on.
Assistant District Attorney Hart asked: Did they move on?
Lee answered: _They did not, and they did not answer either._
Hart: What did you do then?
Lee: Placed them under arrest.
The two women who carried the banners—Alice Paul and Caroline
Spencer—were sentenced to seven months in jail; the other two pickets
were offered the choice of a five dollar fine or thirty days, and, of
course, took the thirty days.
On the same occasion, Rose Winslow and those who were arrested with her,
Maud Jamison, Kate Heffelfinger, Minnie Henesy—both on October 4 and
October 15—came up for further sentence. Rose Winslow described very
vigorously the confusion of the Suffragists who, she admitted, were not
more nonplussed than Judge Mullowny admitted the Court was. She said:
You sentence us to jail for a few days, then you sentence us to the
workhouse for thirty days, then sixty, and then you suspend
sentence. Sometimes we are accused of carrying seditious banners,
then of obstructing traffic. How do you expect us to see any
consistency in the law, or in your sentences?
The Court smiled, and pronounced an additional thirty days, saying:
“First, you will serve six months, and then you will serve one month
more.”
* * * * *
Alice Paul had been in jail ever since October 20. When the news first
got out, women came from all over the country to join the picket forces.
It was decided that on November 10, forty-one women should go out on the
picket line as a protest against her imprisonment. But on the night of
November 9, these forty-one women—accompanied by sympathizers and
friends—went down to the jail where their leader was confined.
Headquarters had heard from Alice Paul from time to time, and Alice Paul
had heard from Headquarters—by means of a cleaning-woman in the jail. In
her _Jailed for Freedom_, Doris Stevens tells how she went down to the
jail and talked to Alice Paul from the yard. Catherine Flanagan and Mrs.
Sophie Meredith had communicated with her in this same manner. And once
Vida Milholland came and sang under her window. But this was the first
time that a deputation visited their imprisoned leader.
The house in which Warden Zinkham lived was close to the wing in which
Alice Paul was imprisoned. The leader of the delegation, Katherine
Morey, accompanied by Catherine Flanagan, went to Zinkham’s door and
rang the bell; asked to see him. They were told that he was ill and
could not be seen. Immediately, the two girls gave a prearranged signal
to the silent crowd of pickets back of them. With one accord, they ran
and grouped themselves under Alice Paul’s window. Before the guards
could rush upon them and push them out of the yard, they had managed to
call up to her their names; the large sum of money which that day had
come into the Treasury; that forty-one of them would protest against her
imprisonment on the picket line the next day.
* * * * *
The next morning, the picket line of forty-one women marched from
Headquarters in five groups. The first was led by Mrs. John Winters
Brannan.
As usual, the pickets bore golden-lettered banners. As usual, they bore
purple, white, and gold flags. As usual, they walked slowly—always a
banner’s length apart. They moved over to Pennsylvania Avenue; took up
their silent statuesque position at the East and West gates of the White
House.
The thick stream of government clerks, hastening with home-going
swiftness, paused to look at them. Involuntarily they applauded the
women when they were arrested. This happened almost immediately, the
police hurrying the pickets into the line of waiting patrols. Suddenly
the crowd raised a shout:
“There come some more!”
The second picket line numbered ten women.
They also bore golden lettered banners. They also bore flags of purple,
white, and gold. They were arrested immediately.
The applause continued to grow and grow in volume.
Immediately a third group appeared, and after they had been arrested, a
fourth; and, on their arrest, a fifth. For half an hour a continuous
line of purple, white, and gold blazed its revolutionary path through
the grayness of the November afternoon.
Mary A. Nolan of Florida headed the fifth group of pickets. Little,
frail, lame, seventy years old, her gallantry elicited from the two
lines of onlookers applause, cheers, calls of encouragement.
“Keep right on!” one voice emerged from the noise. “You’ll make them
give it to you!”
The women of the first group were: Mrs. John Winters Brannan, Belle
Sheinberg, L. H. Hornesby, Paula Jakobi, Cynthia Cohen, M. Tilden
Burritt, Dorothy Day, Mrs. Henry Butterworth, Cora Weeks, Peggy Baird
Johns, Elizabeth Hamilton, Ella Guilford, Amy Juengling, Hattie Kruger.
The women of the second group were: Agnes H. Morey, Mrs. William Bergen,
Camilla Whitcomb, Ella Findeisen, Lou Daniels, Mrs. George Scott, Mrs.
Lawrence Lewis, Elizabeth McShane, Kathryn Lincoln.
The women of the third group were: Mrs. William Kent, Alice Gram, Betty
Gram, Mrs. R. B. Quay, Mrs. C. T. Robertson, Eva Decker, Genevieve
Williams.
The women of the fourth group were: Mrs. Charles W. Barnes, Kate
Stafford, Mrs. J. H. Short, Mrs. A. N. Beim, Catherine Martinette.
The women of the fifth group were: Mrs. Harvey Wiley, Alice Cosu, Mary
Bartlett Dixon, Julia Emory, Mary A. Nolan, Lucy Burns.
The forty-one women were tried on November 12. They were charged with
“obstructing traffic,” and pleaded “Not Guilty.” The police sergeants
and plain-clothes men gave their testimony which was refuted absolutely
by witnesses for the defendants—Helena Hill Weed, Olivia Dunbar
Torrence, Marie Manning Gasch, Mary Ingham.
Mrs. John Winters Brannan said:
The responsibility for an agitation like ours against injustice
rests with those who deny justice, not those who demand it. Whatever
may be the verdict of this Court, we shall continue our agitation
until the grievance of American women is redressed.
Mrs. Harvey Wiley said:
I want to state that we took this action with great consecration of
spirit. We took this action with willingness to sacrifice our
personal liberty in order to focus the attention of the nation on
the injustice of our disfranchisement, that we might thereby win
political liberty for all the women of the country. The Constitution
says that Congress shall not in any way abridge the right of
citizens peacefully to assembly and petition. That is exactly what
we did. We peacefully assembled and then proceeded with our petition
to the President for the redress of our grievance of
disfranchisement. The Constitution does not specify the form of
petition. Ours was in the form of a banner. To say that we “broke
traffic regulations” when we exercised our constitutional right of
petition is therefore unconstitutional.
Judge Mullowny admitted the embarrassment of the Administration.
“The trouble of the situation is that the Court has not been given power
to meet it,” he complained. “It is very, very puzzling.”
A little after three o’clock, he dismissed the pickets without imposing
sentence. He said he would take the case under advisement.
* * * * *
An hour later, twenty-seven of the women who had just been tried—with,
in addition, Mrs. William L. Colt, Elizabeth Smith, Matilda Young, Hilda
Blumberg—emerged from Headquarters. They walked twice up and down in
front of the White House before they took their places at the gates.
The police were dumbfounded by their unexpected onslaught. There were no
patrols waiting. But they pulled themselves together, arrested the
pickets, and commandeered cars in which to take them to the police
headquarters.
The thirty-one women were ordered to appear in court on November 14.
There, after waiting all the morning, Judge Mullowny told them to come
back Friday.
At Headquarters, it was believed that this was not only a challenge to
the quality of their spirit, but to the degree of their patience.
Many women had come from a long distance to make this protest. Not all
could spare the time, money, and vitality. Their answer to that
challenge was instant and convincing. On the afternoon of November 13,
the picket line went out again—thirty-one of them.
The pickets blazed their way through dense, black throngs. The crowd was
distinctly friendly.
Suddenly one of the banners disappeared; another and another until six
of them were destroyed; the bare poles proceeded on their way however.
The same person accomplished all this—the uniformed yeoman who dragged
Alice Paul across thirty feet of pavement on August 15. But this time,
the crowd—friendly—manifested its disapproval, and the police arrested
him. The pickets stood for a long time, their line stretching from gate
to gate, until they began to think that the Administration had changed
its tactics. Then suddenly the patrol wagon gong sounded in the
distance. Presently they were all arrested.
Many of the pickets had been tried the day before. As their bail had not
been refunded, they refused to give more. They were kept that night in
the house of detention. As this institution had but two rooms with eight
beds each, some of the women slept on the floor. They were tried and
sentenced the next day. One of them—the aged Mrs. Nolan—got six days,
three fifteen days, twenty-four thirty days, two—Mrs. Lawrence Lewis and
Mrs. John Winters Brannan—sixty days, and one—Lucy Burns—six months.
It was this group of women who went through the Night of Terror,
subsequently to be described.
* * * * *
On November 17, three more women—Mrs. Harvey Wiley, Mrs. William Kent,
and Elizabeth McShane—were sentenced to fifteen days on the November 10
charges.
All these prisoners except four were sent to the Occoquan Workhouse.
Habeas corpus proceedings became necessary—owing to conditions which
will presently be set forth—and a writ was procured; but only after
numberless obstacles were surmounted. The case came up in the United
States District Court at Alexandria, Virginia, with Judge Edmund Waddill
sitting. Judge Waddill ordered the prisoners transferred to the jail on
the ground that they should have been confined there instead of at
Occoquan Workhouse. Later the Court of Appeals reversed this decision.
In the meantime, brought to the jail, the government was faced with the
necessity of forcibly feeding the majority of these women, already
weakened from hunger-striking.
Here, perhaps, is the place to tell of a curious incident that happened
during Alice Paul’s jail term. For this to strike the reader with the
force it deserves, he must remember that Alice Paul was held almost
incommunicado, that she saw but two friends from the outside, and then
only for a few minutes, that she could not confer with her counsel,
Dudley Field Malone, who had to overcome extraordinary obstacles—had
finally to threaten habeas corpus proceedings and to see high officials
who were his personal friends—to get to her. Two newspaper men were
admitted, but they were friendly to the Administration.
One evening, at nine o’clock—an hour when all the prisoners were
supposed to be in bed—the door opened and a stranger entered her room.
He proved to be David Lawrence, a newspaper man, very well known as one
who was closely associated with the Administration. He did not say that
he had come from the Administration, but, of course, it is obvious that
if he had not been in favor with the Administration, he would not have
been admitted. He stayed two hours, and Miss Paul talked over the
situation with him.
I now quote Miss Younger, who has told this episode on many platforms:
He asked Miss Paul how long she and the other pickets would give the
Administration before they began picketing again. She said it would
depend upon the attitude the Administration and Congress seemed to
be taking toward the Federal Amendment. He said he believed the
prohibition bill would be brought up and passed, and after that was
out of the way the Suffrage bill would be taken up.
He asked if we would be content to have it go through one House this
session and wait till the next session for it to pass the other
House. Miss Paul said that if the bill did not go through both
Houses this session, the Woman’s Party would not be satisfied.
Then the man said he believed that the President would not mention
Suffrage in his message at the opening of Congress, but would make
it known to the leaders of Congress that he wanted it passed and
would see that it passed.
He said in effect: Now the great difficulty is for these
hunger-strikers to be recognized as political prisoners. Every day
you hunger-strike, you advertise the idea of political prisoners
throughout the country. It would be the easiest thing in the world
for the Administration to treat you as political prisoners; to put
you in a fine house in Washington; give you the best of food; take
the best of care of you; but if we treat you as political prisoners,
we would have to treat other groups which might arise in opposition
to the war program as political prisoners too, and that would throw
a bomb in our war program. It would never do. It would be easier to
give you the Suffrage Amendment than to treat you as political
prisoners.
On November 27 and 28, a few days after Miss Paul’s strange
experience—suddenly, quite arbitrarily, and with no reason assigned—the
government released all the Suffrage prisoners.
The speakers of the Woman’s Party began telling this story of the visit
to Alice Paul’s cell, everywhere. It finally appeared in the _Milwaukee
Leader_ and in the _San Francisco Bulletin_ in an article written by
John D. Barry. The National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage
immediately questioned the truth of this episode.
Congress reconvened on December 3. The President, true to David
Lawrence’s prophecy, did not mention Suffrage in his message to
Congress. However, on January 9, 1918, on the evening of the victorious
vote in the House—as will subsequently and in more detail again be
told—the President declared for the Federal Amendment.
Minnie Bronson, the General Secretary of the National Association
Opposed to Woman Suffrage, immediately sent Alice Paul a letter of
apology for questioning the truth of her statement. In that letter, she
repeats Maud Younger’s statement in regard to this visit to Alice Paul
in prison, and says:
The inference contained in this article that the President of the
United States would under cover assist a proposition which he had
publicly and unqualifiedly repudiated, seemed to us unworthy of his
high office, and we felt justified in defending him from what seemed
an unwarranted and unbelievable accusation.
However, the President’s subsequent public support of the Federal
Suffrage Amendment, his announcement coming on the eve of the vote
in the House of Representatives, indicates the truth of your
original assertion, and we therefore deem it incumbent upon
ourselves to apologize for having questioned Miss Younger’s
statement.
We are sending a copy of this letter to the President and members of
Congress.
Very truly yours,
MINNIE BRONSON.
Perhaps a word should be said of description—and even of explanation—in
regard to the crowds who harried the Suffragists. Of course, in all
crowds there is a hoodlum element, and if that element is not held down
by the police, it rapidly becomes the controlling power; tends to become
more and more destructive. The police, as has been indicated from time
to time, adopted various policies. At first, they maintained order. Then
they began to permit the rowdy element in the crowds to do as it
pleased. Later, they even worked with these destructive forces.
Men were heard to say, one to another, “Stick around here. Something’s
going to happen this afternoon. I saw it this morning.” To them, of
course, it was merely an entertaining exhibition.
[Illustration: OBEYING ORDERS. WASHINGTON POLICE ARRESTING WHITE HOUSE
PICKETS BEFORE THE TREASURY BUILDING.
Photo Copr. Harris and Ewing, Washington, D. C.]
[Illustration: THE PATROL WAGON WAITING THE ARRIVAL OF THE SUFFRAGE
PICKETS.
Photo Copr. Harris and Ewing, Washington, D. C.]
An enlisting sergeant used often to make his way through the crowds
saying, “Now you have shown your spirit, boys, come and enlist!”
At all times, however, the people who annoyed, and later ill-treated the
girls, were very young men—often in uniform. After a while there
appeared men in plain clothes with groups of men in khaki, or yeomen,
who were obviously in the crowd for the purpose of making trouble for
the Suffragists. These people did not like cameras, and the moving
picture people who, appreciating the news value of the situation, tried
to get views of the crowd, did so at the risk of having their cameras
smashed. Indeed, Helena Hill Weed once dispersed a crowd by pointing a
camera at them. This was the worst element the pickets had to deal
with—unthinking young men of a semi-brutalized type. Of course, boys
took their cue from their elders, and snatched or destroyed banners
where they could. After a demonstration, you would come across groups of
them, marching with the tattered banners that they had managed to steal.
“When is the shooting going to begin?” one little boy was heard to ask
once.
In the very midst of the riots, one would come across older men cutting
up banners into small pieces which they gave away as souvenirs.
Of course, there were chivalrous spirits who protested against the
treatment of the pickets by the police—protested even after they were
threatened with arrest. Some of them were actually arrested, and one of
them fined.
Often—very often indeed—the waiting crowds broke into spontaneous
applause when group after group marched from Headquarters into the
certainty of arrest. Those who were Anglo-Saxons inevitably admired the
sporting quality of these women.
Perhaps a negro street sweeper summed it up better than anybody else. He
said: “I doan know what them women want, but I know they ain’t skeered!”
The reader is probably asking by this time what was the effect of the
picketing on the Woman’s Party itself. The first reaction was exactly
what he would guess—that members resigned in large numbers. The second,
however, was one which he might not expect—that new members joined in
large numbers. In other words, the militant action which alienated some
women brought others into the organization; women who were aroused by
the simple and immediate demands of the Woman’s Party and by the courage
and the forthrightness with which it pushed those demands; women who had
become impatient at the _impasse_ to which the older generation of
Suffrage workers had brought the Suffrage Amendment. The majority of the
people who deserted came back later.
As far as money was concerned, the effect was magical. In some months
during the picketing the receipts were double what they had been the
corresponding months of the previous year when there had been no
picketing. Once those receipts jumped as high as six times the normal
amount. This was what happened in England during the militant period.
4. _The Court and the Pickets_
“So long as you send women to prison for asking for justice, so long
will women be ready to go in such a cause.”
ANNE MARTIN to the judge before whom she was tried.
After Judge Waddill’s decision that the commitment of the pickets to
Occoquan was illegal, the pickets filed sixteen suits for damage. Eight
of these were against Whittaker, Superintendent of the Workhouse at
Occoquan, and his assistant, Captain Reams, on account of their brutal
treatment of the women while at Occoquan Workhouse. They were filed in
the United States Court for the Western District of Virginia at
Richmond. The other eight were against the Commissioners of the District
of Columbia and Superintendent Zinkham of the District Jail for the
unlawful transfer of the pickets to the institution of Whittaker at
Occoquan. These suits were filed in the Supreme Court of the District of
Columbia at Washington.
The appeals in the cases of two groups of women arrested August 23 and
28 came up in the District of Columbia Court of Appeals on January 8,
1918, before Chief Justice Smyth, and Justices Robb and Van Orsdel.
Matthew O’Brien, of Washington, and Dudley Field Malone, of New York,
appeared for the Suffragists. Corporation Counsel Stevens conducted the
case for the government.
“Suppose,” suggested Justice Robb, “some upholders of Billy Sunday
should go out on the streets with banners on which were painted some
of Billy’s catch phrases, and should stand with their backs to the
fence, and a curious crowd gathered, some of whom created disorder
and threw stones at the carriers of the banners. Who should be
arrested, those who created the disorder, or the banner carriers?”
Mr. Stevens gave it as his opinion that both parties should be
arrested.
“Did I make myself clear that the banner carriers were perfectly
peaceful?” Justice Robb asked.
“When it is commonly known there is a forty-foot sidewalk there?”
Justice Van Orsdel reinforced him.
“Well, then,” observed Attorney O’Brien, when he answered Mr.
Stevens in his argument, “the honorable Justices obstruct traffic,
according to learned counsel’s definition, when court adjourns, and
they walk down the street together.”
On March 4, Judge Van Orsdel handed down the opinion, which was
concurred in by the other two judges of the court, that in the case of
those pickets who appealed, no information had been filed justifying
their arrest and sentence. Since the offense of every other picket who
was arrested was identical with that of these twelve who appealed their
case, they were all illegally arrested, illegally convicted and
illegally imprisoned. The Appellate Court thus reversed the decision of
the District Police Court. In addition, it ordered the cases dismissed.
All of the costs involved in the cases, it was decided, should be paid
by the Court of the District of Columbia, for which an appropriation
would have to be made by Congressional enactment.
Later, the case of Mrs. Harvey Wiley came up. It will be remembered that
Mrs. Wiley was one of the forty-three women who picketed the President
on November in the last picket line demonstration. She was sentenced to
serve fifteen days in the District Jail. Dr. Wiley, her husband,
appealed her case. Early in April the Court decided that there was no
information filed justifying her arrest. So that she also was illegally
arrested, illegally convicted, and illegally imprisoned.
Yet in spite of the brutalities to which the Courts sentenced the
pickets, unconsciously they furthered the Suffrage cause. The women
turned the Court sessions into Suffrage meetings. In defending their
case at one of the early trials, the pickets, each taking up the story
where the other left it, told the entire history of the Suffrage
movement. Crowds thronged the Court. People attended these trials who
had never been to a Suffrage meeting in their lives.
5. _The Strange Ladies_
THE EMPTY CUP
Evening at Occoquan. Rain pelts the workhouse roof. The prison
matrons are sewing together for the Red Cross. The women prisoners
are going to bed in two long rows. Some of the Suffrage pickets lie
reading in the dim light. Through the dark, above the rain, rings
out a cry.
We listen at the windows. (Oh, those cries from punishment cells!) A
voice calls one of us by name. “Miss Burns! Miss Burns! Will you see
that I have a drink of water?” Lucy Burns arises; slips on the
coarse blue prison gown. Over it her swinging hair, red-gold, throws
a regal mantle.
She begs the night-watch to give the girl water. One of the matrons
leaves her war-bandages; we see her hasten to the cell. The light in
it goes out. The voice despairing cries: “She has taken away the cup
and she will not bring me water.” Rain pours on the roof. The
Suffragists lie awake. The matrons work busily for the Red Cross.
KATHERINE ROLSTON FISHER, _The Suffragist_, October 17, 1917.
WOMAN’S PARTY SONG
_Composed in Prison by the Suffrage Pickets_
SHOUT THE REVOLUTION OF WOMEN
Tune (Scotch):
“Charlie Is My Darling.”
Shout the Revolution
Of Women, of Women,
Shout the Revolution
Of Liberty.
Rise, glorious women of the earth,
The voiceless and the free,
United strength assures the birth
Of True Democracy.
Invincible our army,
Forward, forward,
Strong in faith we’re marching
To Victory.
Shout the Revolution
Of Women, of Women,
Shout the Revolution
Of Liberty.
Men’s revolutions born in blood
But ours conceived in peace
We hold a banner for a sword,
’Til all oppression cease,
Prison, death defying,
Onward, onward,
Triumphant daughters marching
To Victory.
The preceding two chapters have been concerned mainly with the treatment
of the pickets at the hands of the law. We now approach a much graver
matter—their treatment at the hands of the prison authorities. This
chapter describes what is one of the most disgraceful episodes in the
history of the United States. It is futile to argue that what happened
in the District Jail and at Occoquan Workhouse, and later at the
abandoned Workhouse, was unknown to the Administration. The Suffragists,
indeed, published it to the entire country. That the treatment to which
the pickets were subjected was the result of orders from above is almost
demonstrable. It must be remembered that the officials who are
responsible for what happened to the pickets—the three Commissioners who
govern the District of Columbia, the police court judges, the Chief of
Police, the warden of the jail, the superintendent of Occoquan
Workhouse, are directly or indirectly answerable to the President.
* * * * *
When the first pickets came out of prison (arrested on June 27, 1917),
their spirit was that of women who have willingly gone to jail for a
cause—and was in consequence entirely without self-pity.
In a speech at a breakfast tendered them in the garden at Headquarters,
Mabel Vernon sounded this note:
_I_ do not want any one here to think we have been martyrs because
of this jail experience we have had. There was no great hardship
connected with it. It was a very simple thing to do—to be imprisoned
for three days, really two nights and a day. Do not think we have
gone through any great sacrifices.
But I do not feel patient about this experience. I do not want to go
back to jail, and I do not want others to go, _because it should not
be necessary_.
The jail in which the women were first imprisoned was the conventional
big white-washed octagonal building with wings at both sides. This was
as filthy then as any place could be. The bathroom, with its shower was
a damp, dank, dark place. The jail was filled with vermin and rats.
Julia Emory said that, in the night, prisoners could actually hear the
light cell chairs being moved, so big and strong were the rats. The
prisoners complained so constantly that finally the prison officials put
poison about; but this did not decrease them. Then they brought a dog,
but the dog was apparently afraid of the rats. The girls used to hear
the matrons telling visitors that they had got rid of the rats by means
of this dog. One night, Julia Emory beat three rats in succession off
her bed. Alice Paul says that among her group of jailed pickets was one
whose shrieks nightly filled the jail as the rats entered her cell.
On July 17, however, when the sixteen women charged with obstructing
traffic went to Occoquan Workhouse, things got much worse. Occoquan is
charmingly situated, and, judged superficially, seems a model
institution. It consists of a group of white buildings placed in a
picturesque combination of cultivated fields with distant hills. All
about lie the pleasant indications of rural life—crops; cows grazing;
agricultural implements; even flower gardens. The District Jail cannot
compare with it for charm of situation. It has not even a pretense of
the meretricious effect of cleanliness which Occoquan shows.
Nevertheless, no picket who went to Occoquan emerged without a sinister
sense of the horror of the place. Lucy Burns, of whom it may almost be
said that she knows no fear, confesses that at Occoquan she suffered
with nameless and inexplicable terrors. This evidence is all the more
strange because, I reiterate, Occoquan has an effect of cleanliness, of
open air, of comfort; almost of charm. One reason for this sinister
atmosphere was that no question the pickets put was ever answered
directly. If they asked to see Superintendent Whittaker, he was always
out—they could see him tomorrow. If they made a request, it would be
granted to them in two days, or next week. The women’s ward was a long,
clean, sunny, airy room with two rows of beds—like a hospital ward. Here
they put colored prisoners to sleep in the same room with the
Suffragists. Moreover, they set the Suffragists to paint the lavatories
used by the colored women. The matron who handled the bedclothes was
compelled to wear rubber gloves, but the Suffragists were permitted no
such luxury—even in painting the lavatories. Indeed, often they slept in
beds in which the blankets had not been changed or cleaned since the
last occupant. It seemed a part of their premeditated system in the
treatment of the Suffragists that they made them all undress in the same
bathroom, and, without any privacy, take shower baths one after another.
The punishment cells, of which later we shall hear in reference to the
Night of Terror, were in another building. These were tiny brick rooms
with tiny windows, very high up.
A young relative of one of the jail officials, in the uniform of an
officer of the United States Army, used to come into this building at
night, and look in through the undraped grating of these cells. Once he
unlocked the door, and came into a room where two young pickets were
sleeping. “Are you a physician?” one of them had the presence of mind to
ask.
He answered that he was not. She lay down, and covered her head with the
bedclothes. Presently he left.
There were open toilets in all these cells, and they could only be
flushed from the outside. It was necessary always to call a man guard to
do this. They came, or not, as they pleased.
In the _Suffragist_ of July 28, 1917, occurs the first account of
Occoquan, by Mrs. Gilson Gardner. Mrs. Gardner, it will be remembered,
was one of that early group of sixteen pickets whom the President
pardoned after three days.
She says:
The short journey on the train was pleasant and uneventful. From the
station at Occoquan the women sent to the Workhouse were put into
three conveyances; two were filled with white women and the third
with colored women. In the office of the Workhouse we stood in a
line and one at a time were registered and given a number. The
matron called us by number and first name to the desk. Money and
jewelry were accounted for and put in the safe. We were then sent to
the dining-room. The meal of soup, rye bread, and water was not
palatable....
From the dining-room we were taken to the dormitory. At one end of
the long room, a white woman and two colored women were waiting for
us. Before these women we were obliged, one by one, to remove all
our clothing, and after taking a shower bath, put on the Workhouse
clothes. These clothes consisted of heavy unbleached muslin chemises
and drawers, a petticoat made of ticking, and a heavy dark gray
cotton mother hubbard dress. The last touch was a full, heavy, dark
blue apron which tied around the waist. The stockings were thick and
clumsy. There were not enough stockings, and those of us who did not
have stockings during our sojourning there were probably rather
fortunate. We were told to wear our own shoes for the time being, as
they did not have enough in stock. The one small rough towel that
was given to us we were told must be folded and tucked into our
aprons. The prisoners were permitted to have only what they could
carry.
The dormitory was clean and cool and we longed to go to bed, but we
were told we must dress and go into the adjoining room where
Superintendent Whittaker would see us. Mr. Whittaker brought with
him a man whom we afterward learned was a newspaper man. The
superintendent informed us that for about an hour we could do as we
chose, and pointing to the piano said that we might play and sing.
The piano was not unlocked while we were there, but that night no
one had a desire to sing. Although Mr. Whittaker’s words were few
and not unpleasant, we realized that our presence did not cause him
either embarrassment or regret.
We were told that one dormitory was given up to colored women; in
the other one, the one in which we were to sleep, there would be
both colored and white women. We had asked to be allowed to have our
toilet things and were told we could not have them until the next
morning, that is, we would be permitted to have our combs and
toothbrushes then. But we were not permitted to have these until
Thursday. One woman told us we must not lend our comb to other
prisoners and must not mingle with the colored women....
The days were spent in the sewing-room. We were permitted to talk in
low tones, two or three being allowed to sit together. While we were
there, the sewing was very light. We turned hems on sheets and
pillow slips and sewed on the machine. There were both white and
colored women working in the sewing-room. The work was monotonous
and our clothing extremely heavy.
The great nervous strain came at meal time. All the women ate in one
big room. The white women sat at one side. The meal lasted thirty
and sometimes forty minutes. The food to us was not palatable, but
we all tried to be sensible and eat enough to keep up our strength.
The real problem, however, was not the food; it was the enforced
silence. We were not allowed to speak in the dining-room, and after
a conscientious effort to eat, the silent waiting was curiously
unpleasant....
The use of the pencil is forbidden at all times. Each inmate is
permitted to write but two letters a month, one to her family and
one business letter. All mail received and sent is opened and read
by one of the officials. Next to our longing for our own toilet
articles was our desire for a pencil and a scrap of paper. Another
rule which makes life in the Workhouse more difficult than life in
the jail is that the Workhouse prisoners are not permitted to
receive any food sent in from outside.
We found that the other prisoners were all amazed at the excessive
sentences we had received. Old offenders, they told us, received
only thirty days.
In the _Suffragist_ of August 11, Doris Stevens, who was a member of the
same group says:
No woman there will ever forget the shock and the hot resentment
that rushed over her when she was told to undress before the entire
company, including two negress attendants and a harsh-voiced
wardress, who kept telling us that it was “after hours,” and they
“had worked too long already today,” as if it were our fault that we
were there. We silenced our impulse to resist this indignity, which
grew more poignant as each woman nakedly walked across the great
vacant space to the doorless shower....
“We knew something was goin’ to happen,” said one negro girl,
“because Monday,” (we were not sentenced until Tuesday) “the clo’es
we had on were took off us and we were given these old patched ones.
We was told they wanted to take stock, but we heard they were being
washed for you-all Suffragists.”
It will be remembered that this was that early group of pickets whom the
President pardoned after the appeals of J. A. H. Hopkins, Dudley Field
Malone, and Gilson Gardner. Before leaving they were taken to
Superintendent Whittaker.
Asking for the attention of Miss Burns and the rest of them, he said:
“_Now that you are going, I have something to say to you._” And
turning to Miss Burns, he continued, “_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._”
Mrs. Virginia Bovee, an officer of Occoquan Workhouse, was discharged in
September. At that time Lucy Burns filed charges with Commissioner
Brownlow of the District of Columbia concerning conditions in the
Workhouse. Evidence is submitted on Whittaker’s brutal treatment of
other prisoners, but our concern must be with his treatment of the
Suffragists.
Lucy Burns says in that complaint:
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 afflicted with disease, this practice is
appallingly negligent.
Mrs. Bovee’s affidavit reads in part:
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 has to handle 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 has gone and
another takes her bed. Instead, the top sheet is put on the bottom,
and one fresh sheet given them. I was not there when these
Suffragists arrived, so 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 diseases are not always isolated, by any means.
In the colored dormitory there are now two women in 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 storeroom.
When they have 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 the washrooms.
The beans, hominy, rice, corn meal (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 corn
bread. 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.
As time went on and great numbers of pickets were arrested, more and
more indignities were put on them. They were, in every sense, political
prisoners, and were entitled to the privileges of political prisoners.
In all countries distinction is made in the treatment of political
prisoners. Of course, the hope of the Administration was that these
degrading conditions would discourage the picketing, and, of course, the
results were—as has happened in the fight for liberty during the whole
history of mankind—that more and more women came forward and offered
themselves.
In the _Suffragist_ for October 13, 1917 (“From the Log of a Suffrage
Picket”), Katherine Rolston Fisher writes the following:
Upon entering Occoquan Workhouse, we were separated from the
preceding group of Suffragists. Efforts were made by the officers to
impress us by their good will towards us. Entirely new clothing,
comfortable rooms in the hospital, and the substitution of milk and
buttered toast for cold bread, cereal, and soup, ameliorated the
trials of the table. The head matron was chatty and confidential.
She told us of the wonderful work of the superintendent in creating
these institutions out of the wilderness and of the kindness shown
by the officers to inmates. She lamented that some of the other
Suffragists did not appreciate what was done for them....
“Why are we segregated from all the white prisoners?” I asked the
superintendent of the Workhouse. Part of the time we were not
segregated from the colored prisoners, a group of whom were moved
into the hospital and shared with us the one bathroom and toilet.
“That is for your good and for ours,” was the bland reply....
That was quite in the tone of his answer to another inquiry made
when the superintendent told me that no prisoner under
punishment—that is, in solitary confinement—was allowed to see
counsel. “Is that the law of the District of Columbia?” I inquired.
“It is the law here because it is the rule I make,” he replied.
We learned what it is to live under a one-man law. The doctor’s
orders for our milk and toast and even our medicine were
countermanded by the superintendent, so we were told. Our counsel
after one visit was forbidden, upon a pretext, to come again.
On Tuesday, September 18, we were made to exchange our new gingham
uniforms for old spotted gray gowns covered with patches upon
patches; were taken to a shed to get pails of paint and brushes, and
were set to painting the dormitory lavatories and toilets. By this
time we were all hungry and more or less weak from lack of food. A
large brush wet with white paint weighs at least two pounds. Much of
the work required our standing on a table or stepladder and reaching
above our heads. I think the wiser of us rested at every
opportunity, but we did not refuse to work.
All this time we had been without counsel for eight days....
The food, which had been a little better, about the middle of the
month reached its zenith of rancidity and putridity. We tried to
make a sport of the worm hunt, each table announcing its score of
weevils and worms. When one prisoner reached the score of fifteen
worms during one meal, it spoiled our zest for the game....
We had protested from the beginning against doing any manual labor
upon such bad and scanty food as we received....
Mrs. Kendall, who was the most emphatic in her refusal, was promptly
locked up on bread and water. The punishment makes a story to be
told by itself. It clouded our days constantly while it lasted and
while we knew not half of what she suffered....
All this time—five days—Mrs. Kendall was locked up, her pallid face
visible through the windows to those few Suffragists who had
opportunity and ventured to go to her window for a moment at the
risk of sharing her fate.
Ada Davenport Kendall’s story runs as follows:
For stating that she was too weak from lack of food to scrub a floor
and that the matron’s reply that there was no other work was
“hypocritical,” Mrs. Kendall was confined in a separate room for
four days for _profanity_. She was refused the clean clothing she
should have on the day of her confinement, and was therefore forced
to wear the same clothing for eleven days. She was refused a
nightdress, or clean linen for the bed in the room. The linen on her
bed was soiled from the last occupant and Mrs. Kendall lay on top of
it all. The only toilet accommodation consisted of an open pail.
Mrs. Kendall was allowed no water for toilet purposes during the
four days, and was given three thin slices of bread and three cups
of water a day. The water was contained in a small paper cup, and on
several occasions it seeped through.
Friends of Mrs. Kendall’s obtained permission to see her. She was then
given clean clothing, and taken from the room in which she was in
solitary confinement. When the door opened upon her visitors, she
fainted.
Aroused by an inspection of samples of food smuggled out to him by
Suffrage prisoners, Dr. Harvey Wiley, the food expert, requested the
Board of Charities to permit him to make an investigation of the food.
“A Diet of Worms won one revolution, and I expect it will win another,”
promulgated Dr. Wiley.
* * * * *
The most atrocious experience of the pickets at Occoquan was, however,
on the night known to them generally as _The Night of Terror_. This
happened to that group of Suffragists who were arrested on November 14,
sentenced to Occoquan, and who immediately went on hunger-strike as a
protest against not being treated as political prisoners and as the last
protest they could make against their imprisonment. Whittaker was away
when they arrived, and they were kept in the office which was in the
front room of one of the small cottages. Out of these groups there
always evolved a leader. If the group included the suave and determined
Lucy Burns, she inevitably took command. If it included Mrs. Lawrence
Lewis, equally velvet-voiced and immovable, she inevitably became
spokesman. This group included both. The Suffragists were then still
making their demand to be treated as political prisoners, and so, when
the woman at the desk—a Mrs. Herndon—attempted to ask the usual
questions, Mrs. Lewis, speaking for the rest, refused to answer them,
saying that she would wait and talk to Mr. Whittaker.
“You will sit here all night then,” said Mrs. Herndon.
The women waited for hours.
Mrs. Lewis always describes what follows as a sinister reversal of a
French tale of horror she read in her girlhood. In that story, people
began mysteriously to disappear from a group. One of them would be
talking one instant—the next he was gone; the space where he stood was
empty. In this case, slowly, silently, and in increasing numbers, men
began to appear from outside, three and then four.
Mrs. Herndon again tried to get the Suffragists to register, but they
made no reply.
“You had better answer up, or it will be the worse for you,” said one
man.
“I will handle you so you’ll be sorry you made me,” said another.
The Suffragists did not reply. Mrs. Nolan says that she could see that
Mrs. Herndon was afraid of what was going to happen.
Suddenly the door burst open, and Whittaker came rushing in from a
conference, it was later discovered, of the District of Columbia
Commissioners at the White House—followed by men—more and more of them.
The Suffragists had been sitting or lying on the floor. Mrs. Lewis stood
up.
“We demand to be treated as political pris——” she began. But that was as
far as she got.
“You shut up! I have men here glad to handle you!” Whittaker said.
“Seize her!”
Two men seized Mrs. Lewis, dragged her out of the sight of the remaining
Suffragists.
In the meantime, another man sprang at Mrs. Nolan, who, it will be
remembered, was over seventy years old, very frail and lame. She says:
I am used to being careful of my bad foot, and I remember saying: “I
will come with you; do not drag me. I have a lame foot.” But I was
dragged down the steps and away into the dark. I did not have my
feet on the ground. I guess that saved me.
It was black outside, and all Mrs. Nolan remembers was the approach to a
low, dark building from which, made brilliantly luminous by a window
light, flew the American flag.
As Mrs. Nolan entered the hall, a man in the Occoquan uniform,
brandishing a stick, called, “Damn you! Get in there!” Before she was
shot through this hall, two men brought in Dorothy Day,—a very slight,
delicate girl; her captors were twisting her arms above her head.
Suddenly they lifted her, brought her body down twice over the back of
an iron bench. One of the men called: “The damned Suffrager! My mother
ain’t no Suffrager! I will put you through hell!” Then Mrs. Nolan’s
captors pulled her down a corridor which opened out of this room, and
pushed her through the door.
Back of Mrs. Nolan, dragged along in the same way, came Mrs. Cosu, who,
with that extraordinary thoughtfulness and tenderness which the pickets
all developed for each other, called to Mrs. Nolan: “Be careful of your
foot!”
The bed broke Mrs. Nolan’s fall, but Mrs. Cosu hit the wall. They had
been there but a few minutes when Mrs. Lewis, all doubled over like a
sack of flour, was thrown in. Her head struck the iron bed, and she fell
to the floor senseless.
The other women thought she was dead. They wept over her.
Ultimately, they revived Mrs. Lewis, but Mrs. Cosu was desperately ill
all night, with a heart attack and vomiting. They were afraid that she
was dying, and they called at intervals for a doctor, but although there
was a woman and a man guard in the corridor, they paid no attention.
There were two mattresses and two blankets for the three, but that was
not enough, and they shivered all night long.
In the meantime, I now quote from Paula Jakobi’s account. We go back to
that moment in the detention room when they seized Mrs. Lewis.
“And seize her!” rang in my ears, and Whittaker had me by the arm.
“And her!” he said, indicating Dorothy Day. Miss Day resisted. Her
arm was through the handle of my bag. Two men pulled her in one
direction, while two men pulled me in the opposite direction. There
was a horrible mix-up. Finally, the string of the bag broke. Two men
dragged her from the room. I saw it was useless to resist. The man
at the right of me left me, and tightly grasped in the clutches of
the man at my left, I was led to a distant building.
When Julia Emory, who was rushed along just after Mrs. Jakobi, entered
the building, the two guards were smashing Dorothy Day’s back over the
back of a chair; she was crying to Paula Jakobi for help; and Mrs.
Jakobi, struggling with the other two guards, was trying to get to her.
They placed Julia Emory in a cell opposite Lucy Burns.
Of the scene in the reception room of the Workhouse, Mrs. John Winters
Brannan, who saw all this from a coign of vantage which apparently
surveyed the whole room, says:
I firmly believe that, no matter how we behaved, Whittaker had
determined to attack us as part of the government plan to suppress
picketing.... Its (the attack’s) perfectly unexpected ferocity
stunned us. I saw two men seize Mrs. Lewis, lift her from her feet,
and catapult her through the doorway. I saw three men take Miss
Burns, twisting her arms behind her, and then two other men grasp
her shoulders. There were six to ten guards in the room, and many
others collected on the porch—forty to fifty in all. These all
rushed in with Whittaker when he first entered.
Instantly the room was in havoc. The guards brought from the male
prison fell upon us. I saw Miss Lincoln, a slight young girl, thrown
to the floor. Mrs. Nolan, a delicate old lady of seventy-three, was
mastered by two men. The furniture was overturned, and the room was
a scene of havoc.
Whittaker in the center of the room directed the whole attack,
inciting the guards to every brutality.
The whole group of women were thrown, dragged, and hurled out of the
office, down the steps, and across the road and field to the
Administration Building, where another group of bullies was waiting
for us. The assistant superintendent, Captain Reams, was one of
these, armed with a stick which he flourished at us, as did another
man. The women were thrown roughly down on benches.
In the meantime, Lucy Burns, fighting desperately all the way, had been
deposited in a cell opposite.
As always, when she was arrested, she took charge of the situation. In
her clear, beautiful voice, she began calling the roll one name after
another, to see if all were there and alive. The guards called, “Shut
up!” but she paid no more attention to them than if they had not spoken.
“Where is Mrs. Lewis?” she demanded. Mrs. Cosu answered: “They have just
thrown her in here.” The guard yelled to them that if they spoke again,
he would put them in strait-jackets. Mrs. Nolan and Mrs. Cosu were so
terrified that they kept still for a while.
But Lucy Burns went right on calling the roll. When she refused—at the
guard’s orders—to stop this, they handcuffed her wrists and fastened the
handcuffs above her head to the cell door. They threatened her with a
buckle gag. Little Julia Emory could do nothing to help, of course, but
she put her hands above her head in exactly the same position and stood
before her door until they released Lucy Burns. Lucy Burns wore her
handcuffs all night.
Mrs. Henry Butterworth, for some capricious reason, was taken away from
the rest, and placed in a part of the jail where there were only men.
They told her that she was alone with the men, and that they could do
what they pleased with her. Her Night of Terror was doubly
terrifying—with this menace hanging over her.
For a description of the rest of that night, and of succeeding days, I
quote the account of Paula Jakobi: