Section 8 of Jailed for Freedom. This is the LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Janet O'Reilly www.O'Reilly-Fire.com Jailed for Freedom by Doris Stevens. Part 3 Chapter 5 August Riots. Imprisoning women had met with considerable public disapproval and attendant political embarrassment to the administration. That the presidential pardon would end this embarrassment was doubtless the hope of the administration. The pickets however returned to their posts in steadily increasing numbers. Their presence at the gates was desired by the administration no more now than it had been before the arrests and imprisonments. But they had found no way to rid themselves of the pickets. And as another month of picketing drew to an end the administration ventured to try other ways to stop it and with it the consequent embarrassment.  Their conduct became lawless in the extreme. Meanwhile the president had drafted the young men of America in their millions to die on foreign soil for foreign democracy. He had issued a special appeal to women to give their work, their treasure and their sons to this enterprise. At the same time his now gigantic figure stood obstinately across the path to our main objective. It was our daily task to keep vividly in his mind that objective. It was our responsibility to compel decisive action from him. Using the return of Envoy Rude from his mission to Russia has another dramatic opportunity to speak to the president. We took to the picket line these models. To Envoy Rude you say that America must throw its manhood to the support of liberty. Whose liberty this nation is not free. Twenty million women are denied by the president of the United States. The right to representation in their own government. Tell the president that he cannot fight against liberty at home while he tells us to fight for liberty abroad. Tell him to make America safe for democracy before he asks the mothers of America to throw their sons to the support of democracy in Europe.  At no time during the entire picketing was the traffic on Pennsylvania Avenue so completely obstructed as it was for the two hours during which this banner made its appearance on the line. Police captains who three weeks before were testifying that the police could not manage the crowds. Placically looked on while these crowds increased. We did not regard Mr. Wilson as our president. We felt that he had neither political nor moral claim to our allegiance. War had been made without our consent. The war would be finished and very likely a bad piece would be written without our consent. Our fight was becoming increasingly difficult. I might almost say desperate. Here we were a band of women fighting with banners in the midst of a world armed to the teeth. And so it was not very difficult to understand how high spirited women grew more resentful unwilling to be a party to the president's hypocrisy. The hypocrisy so eager to sacrifice life without stint to the vague hope of liberty abroad while refusing to assist in the peaceful legislative steps which would lead to self-government in our own country. As a matter of fact, the president's constant oratory on freedom and democracy moved them to scorn. They were stung into a protest so militant as to shock not only the president but the public. We inscribed on our banner what countless American women had long thought in their hearts. The truth was not pleasant, but it had to be told. We submitted to the world through the picket line this question. Kaiser Wilson, have you forgotten how you sympathize with the poor Germans because they were not self-governed? Twenty million American women are not self-governed. Take the beam out of your own eye. We did not expect public sympathy at this point. We knew that not even the members of Congress who had occasionally in debate, but more frequently in their cloakrooms and often to us privately, called the president, autocrat, Kaiser ruler, king, czar would approve are telling the truth publicly. Nor was it to be expected that eager young boys, all a god to fight Germans, would be averse to attacking women in the meantime. They were out to fight and such was the public hysteria that it did not exactly matter whom they fought. And so those excited boys of the army and navy attacked the women and the banner. The banner was destroyed. Another was brought up to take its place. This one met the same fate. Meanwhile, a crowd was assembling in front of the White House either to watch or to assist in the attacks. At the very moment when one banner was being snatched away and destroyed, president and Mrs. Wiltson passed through the gates on their way to a military review at Fort Meyer. The president saw American women being attacked while the police refused them protection. Not a move was made by the police to control the growing crowd. Such inaction is always a signal for more violence on the part of the rowdies. As the throng move to and fro between the White House and our headquarters immediately opposite, so many banners were destroyed that finally, Ms. Lucy Burns, Ms. Virginia Arnold, and Ms. Elizabeth Stuyvesant took those remaining to the second and third floor balconies of our building and hung them out. At this point, there was not a picket left on the street. The crowd was clearly obstructing the traffic, but no attempt was made to move them back or to protect the women, some of whom were attacked by sailors on their own doorsteps. The two police officers present watched without interference while three sailors brought a ladder from the Belasco Theater in the same block, leaned it against the side of the camera and house, the headquarters, climbed up to the second floor balcony, mounted the iron railing, and tore down all banners and the American flag.  Why did you do that, she demanded. The man halted for a brief instant in obvious amazement and said, I don't know, and with a violent wrench he tore the banner from her hands and ran down the ladder. The narrow balcony was the scene of intense excitement, but for Ms. Burns' superb strength she would have been dragged over the railing of the balcony to be plunged to the ground. The mob watched with fascination while she swayed to and fro in her wrestle with two young sailors and still no attempt by the police to quell the riot. The climax came when in the late afternoon a bullet was fired through one of the heavy glass windows of the second floor, embedding itself in the ceiling. The bullet grazed past the head of Mrs. Ella Morton Dean of Montana, Captain Flather of the First Precinct, with two detectives, later examined the holes and declared they had been made by a .38 caliber revolver, but no attempt was ever made to find the man who had drawn the revolver. Meanwhile, eggs and tomatoes were hurled at our fresh banners, flying from the flag poles on the building. Finally, police reserves were summoned. In less than five minutes the crowd was pushed back and the street cleared, thinking now that they could rely on the protection of the police. The women started with their banners for the White House, but the police slipped on while all the banners were destroyed, a few paces from headquarters. More banners went out, purple, white, and gold ones. They, too, were destroyed before they reached the White House. This entire spectacle was enacted on August 14 within a stone's throw of the White House. Miss Paul summed up the situation when she said, The situation now existing in Washington exists because President Wilson permits it. Orders were first handed down to the police to arrest suffragists. The clamor over their imprisonments made this position untenable. The police were then ordered to protect suffragists. They were then ordered to attack suffragists. They have now been ordered to encourage irresponsible crowds to attack suffragists. No police head would dare so to be smirked his record without orders from his responsible chief. The responsible chief in the national capitol is the president of the United States. Shortly after the incident of the Kaiser banner, I was speaking in Louisville, Kentucky. The auditorium was packed and overflowing with men and women who had come to hear the story of the pickets. Up to this time we had very few members in Kentucky and had anticipated in this southern state, part of President Wilson's stronghold, that our committee would meet with no enthusiasm and possibly with warm hostility. I had related briefly the incidents leading up to the picketing and the government's suppressions. I was rather cautiously approaching the subject of the Kaiser banner, feeling timid and hesitant, wondering how this vast audience of Southerners would take it. Slowly I read the inscription on the famous banner. Kaiser Wilson, have you forgotten how you sympathized with the poor Germans because they were not self-governed? Twenty million American women are not self-governed. Take the beam out of your own eye. I hardly reached the last word, still wondering what the intensely silent audience would do when a terrific outburst of applause mingled with shouts of good, good, he is, he is, came to my amazed ears. As the applause died down, there was almost universal good-natured laughter. Instead of the pains taking an eloquent explanation which I was prepared to offer, I had only to join in their laughter. A few minutes later a telegram was brought to the platform, announcing further arrests. I read, six more women sentenced today to 30 days in O'Clockwood Workhouse. Instant cries of shame, shame, it's an outrage. Scars of men and women were on their feet, calling for the passage of a resolution denouncing the administration's policy of persecution. The motion of condemnation was put. It seemed as if the entire audience seconded it. It went through instantly, unanimously, and again, with prolonged shouts and applause. The meeting continued, and I shall never forget that audience. It lingered to a late hour, almost to midnight, asking questions, making brief testimonials from the floor with almost evangelical fervor. Improvised collection baskets were piled high with bills. Women volunteered for picket duty and certain imprisonment, and the following day a delegation left for Washington. I cite this experience of mine because it was typical. Everyone who went through the country telling the story had similar experiences at this time. Indignation was swift and hot. Our mass meetings everywhere became meetings of protest during the entire campaign, and resolutions of protest which always went immediately by wire from such meetings to the President, his cabinet, and to his leaders in Congress, of course, created increasing uneasiness in democratic circles. On August 15th, the pickets again attempted to take their posts on the line. On this day, one lettered banner and fifty purple, white, and gold flags were destroyed by a mob led by sailors in uniform. Alice Paul was knocked down three times by a sailor in uniform and dragged the width of the White House sidewalk in his frenzied attempt to tear off her suffrage sash. Miss Catherine Morrie of Boston was also knocked to the pavement by a sailor who took her flag and then darted off into the crowd. Miss Elizabeth Stuyvesant was struck by a soldier in uniform and her blouse torn from her body. Miss Mod Jamison of Virginia was knocked down and dragged along the sidewalk. Miss Bula Amidun of North Dakota was knocked down by a sailor. In the midst of these riotous scenes a well-known Washington correspondent was emerging from the White House after an interview with the President. Dr. Cart Grayson, the President's physician, accompanying him to the door, advised, you had better go out the side entrance. Those damned women are in the front. In spite of this advice the correspondent made his exit through the same gate by which he had entered and just in time to ward off an attack by a sailor on one of the fraless girls in the group. The administration in its desperation ordered the police to lawlessness. On August 16th, 50 policemen led the mob in attacking the women. Hands were bruised and arms were twisted by police officers and plain clothesmen. Two civilians who tried to rescue the women from the attacks of the police were arrested. The police fell upon these young women with more brutality even than the mobs they had before encouraged. Twenty-five lettered banners and 123 party flags were destroyed by mobs and police on this afternoon. As the crowd grew more dense the police temporarily retired from the attack. When their activities had summoned a sufficiently large and infuriated mob they would rest. And so the passions of the mob continued unchecked upon these irrepressible women and from day to day the administration gave its orders. Finding that riots and mob attacks had not terrorized the pickets the administration decided again to arrest the women in the hope of ending the agitation. Having lost public sympathy through workhouse sentences having won it back by pardoning the women the administration felt it could afford to risk losing it again or rather felt that it had supplied itself with an appropriate amount of stage setting. And so on the third day of the riotous attacks when it was clear that the pickets would persist the chief of police called a headquarters to announce to Ms. Paul that orders have been changed and henceforth women carrying banners will be arrested. Meanwhile the pickets heard officers shout to civilian friends as they passed. Come back at four o'clock. Members of the Daily Mob announced at the noon hour in various nearby restaurants that the Sufs will be arrested today at four o'clock. Four o'clock is the hour the government clerks begin to swarm homers. The choice of this hour by the police to arrest the women would enable them to have a large crowd passing the White House gates to lend color to the fiction that pickets were blocking the traffic. Throughout the earlier part of the afternoon the silent sentinels stood unmolested carrying these models. England and Russia are enfranchising women in wartime. How long must women wait for liberty? The government orders our banners destroyed because they tell the truth. At four o'clock the threatened arrests took place. The women arrested were Miss Levina Dock of Pennsylvania, Miss Edna Dixon of Washington D.C., a young public school teacher, Miss Natalie Gray of Colorado, Mrs. Wynn, Upton Watson, and Miss Lucy Ewing of Chicago, and Miss Catherine Flanagan of Connecticut. Exactly 40 minutes were allowed for the trial of these six women. One police officer testified that they were obstructing traffic. None of the facts of the hideous and cruel manhandling by the mobs and the police officers was allowed to be brought out. Nothing the women could say mattered. The judge pronounced thirty days in O'clock when workhouse in lieu of a ten-dollar fine. And so this little handful of women, practically all of them tiny and frail of physique, began the cruel sentence of thirty days in the workhouse while their cowardly assailants were not even reprimanded, nor were those who destroyed over thousand dollars worth of banners apprehended. The riots had attracted sufficient attention to cause some anxiety in administration circles. Protests against us and others against the rioters pressed upon them. Congress was provoked into a little activity, activity which reflected some doubt as to the wisdom of arresting women without some warrant in law. Two attempts were made, neither of which was successful, to give the administration more power and more law. Senator Colberson of Texas, Democrat, offered a bill authorizing President Wilson at any time to prohibit any person from approaching or entering any place in short blanket authority, granting the president or his officials limitless power over the actions of human beings. Realizing that this could be used to prohibit picketing, the White House we appeared before a committee hearing on the bill and spoke against it. The committee did not have the boldness to report such a bill. Senator Myers of Montana, an influential member of the Democratic majority, introduced into the Senate a few days later a resolution making it illegal to pick at the White House. The shamelessness of admitting to the world that acts for which women had been repeatedly sentenced to jail and for which women were at that moment lying in prison were so legal as to make necessary a special act of Congress against them was appalling. The administration policy seemed to be let us put women in jail first, let us enact a law to keep them there afterwards. This tilt between Senator Brandigy of Connecticut, anti-suffrage Republican, and Senator Myers, suffrage Democrat took place when Mr. Myers presented his bill. Mr. Brandigy, was there any defect in the legal proceedings by which these troublemakers were sentenced and put in jail a few weeks ago? Mr. Myers, none that I know of, I am not in a position to pass upon that. I do not believe any was claimed. Mr. Brandigy, in as much as the law was sufficient to land them in jail, I fail to see why additional legislation is necessary on the subject. Mr. Myers, there seems to be a doubt in the mind of some whether the present law is sufficient, and I think it ought to be put beyond doubt. I think the laws are not stringent or severe enough. Mr. Brandigy, they were stringent enough to land the malfactors in jail. In spite of Senator Myers' impassioned appeal to his colleagues he was unable to command any support for his bill. I quote this from his speech in the Senate, August 18, 1917. Mr. Myers, Mr. President, I wish to say a few words about the bill I have just introduced. It is intended for the enactment of better and more adequate legislation to prevent the infamous outrageous scandalous and I think almost treasonable actions that have been going on around the White House for months past, which President of the United States have been a gross insult to, and to the people of the United States. I mean the so-called picketing of the White House. These disgusting proceedings have been going on for months, and if there is no adequate law to stop them, I think there ought to be. I believe the President in the generosity of his heart erred when he pardoned some of the women who have been conducting these proceedings after they had been sentenced to sixty days in the workhouse. I believe they deserve the sentence and they ought to have been compelled to serve it. I, for one, am not satisfied any longer to sit here idly day by day and submit to having the President of the United States insulted with impunity before the people of the country and before all the world. It is a shame and reproach. I hope this bill will receive careful consideration and that it may be enacted into law and may be found inadequate, preventative and punishment for such conduct. This bill which died a well-deserved death is so amusing as to warrant reproduction. Although lamenting our comparison between the President and the Kaiser, it will be seen that Senator Myers brought forth thoroughly Prussian document. A bill. For the better protection and enforcement of peace and order and the public welfare in the District of Columbia, be it enacted by the Senate and the House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled that when the United States shall be engaged in war at it shall be unlawful for any person or persons to carry, hold, wave, exhibit, display, or have in his or her possession in any public road, highway, alley, street, thoroughfare, park, or other public place in the District of Columbia, any banner, flag, streamer, sash, or other device having thereon any words or language with references to the President or the Vice President of the United States or any words or language with reference to the Constitution of the United States or the right of suffrage or right of citizenship or any words or language with references to the duties of any Executive, official, or Department of the United States or with reference to any proposed amendment to the Constitution of the United States or with reference to any law or proposed law of the United States calculated to bring President of the United States or the Government of the United States into contempt or which may tend to cause confusion or excitement or obstruction of the streets or sidewalks thereof or any passage in any public place. Section 2, that any person committing any foregoing described offense shall, upon conviction thereof, for each offense be fined not less than one hundred dollars nor more than a thousand dollars, or imprisoned not less than thirty days nor more than one year, or by both such fine and imprisonment. Voices were raised in our behalf also and among them I note the following letter written to Major Pullman by Gilson Gardner. Gilson Gardner is the distinguished journalist who went to Africa to meet Theodore Roosevelt and accompanied him on his return journey to America. Mr. Raymond Pullman, Chief of Police, Washington, D.C. My dear Pullman, I am writing as an old friend to urge you to get right in this matter of arresting the suffrage pickets. Of course the only way for you to get this right is to resign. It has apparently become impossible for you to stay in office and do your duty. The alternative is obvious. You must see Pullman that you cannot be right in what you have done in this matter. You have given the pickets adequate protection, but you have arrested them and have sent them to jail in the workhouse. You have permitted the crowd to mob them and then you have had your officers do much the same thing by forcibly taking their banners from them. In some of the actions you must have been wrong. If it was right to give them protection and let them stand at the White House for five months, both before and after the war, it was not right to do what you did later. You say that it was not right when you were lenient and gave them protection. You cannot mean that. The rightness or wrongness must be a matter of law, not of personal discretion and for you to attempt to substitute your discretion is to set up a little autocracy in place of the settled laws of the land. This would justify a charge of Kaiserism right here in our capital city. The truth is, Pullman, you were right when you gave those women protection. That is what the police are for. When there are riots they are supposed to quell them, not by quelling the proximate cause, but by quelling the rioters. I know your police officers now quite well and know that they are most happy when they are permitted to do their duty. They did not like the dirty business of permitting a lot of sailors and street riffraff to rough the girls. All that went against the grain, but when you let them protect the pickets as you did March 3rd, when a thousand women marched around and around the White House, the officers were contented as they were efficient. Washington has a good police force and there has never been a minute when they could not have scattered any group gathered at the White House gates and given perfect protection to the women standing there. You know why they did not do their duty. In excusing what you have done, you say that the women carried banners with offensive inscriptions on them. You have referred 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 arrest 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 that charges obstructing traffic, which shows conclusively that you are not willing to go into a court on the real issue. No, as a chief of police you have no more right to complain of the sentiments of a banner than you have of the sentiments in an editorial in the Washington Post and you have no more right to arrest the banner bearer than you have to arrest the owner of the Washington Post. Congress refused to pass a press censorship law. There are certain lingering traditions to the effect that a people's liberties are closely bound up with the right to talk things out and those who are enlightened know that the only proper answer to words is words. When force is opposed to words there is a ground for the charge of Kaiserism. There was just one thing for you to have done, Pullman, and that was to give full and adequate protection to these women, no matter what banners they carried or what I did as their banners if there is any law that can be invoked against the wording of the banners it was the business of others in the government to start the legal machinery which would abate them. It was not lawful to abate them by mob violence or by arrests and if those in authority over you were not willing that you thus do your duty it was up to you to resign. After all it would not be such a terrible thing, Pullman, for you to give up being chief of police particularly when you are not permitted to be chief of police but must yield your judgment to the district commissioners who have yielded their judgment to the White House. Being chief of police under such circumstances can hardly be worthwhile.  You did that once back in ballander pinchot days. Why not now? Come out and make the fight which must be made to recover and protect the liberties which are being filched from us here at home. There is a real fight looming up for real democracy. You will not be alone. There are a lot of fine young men vigorous and patriotic in and out of the administration who are preparing for this fight. Years will not be the only resignation but why not be among the first? Don't wait. Let them have your resignation now and let me be the first to welcome and congratulate you sincerely signed Giltson Gardener. Representative John Bayer of North Dakota having witnessed for himself the riotous scenes immediately introduced into the house a resolution demanding an investigation of conditions in the capital which permitted mobs to attack women. This too went to certain death. Between the members who did not dare denounce the administration and the others who did dare denounce the women we had to stand quite solidly on our own program and do our best to keep them nervous over the next step in the agitation.  The Washington DC Herald August 19 printed the following editorial. There is an echo of the president's phrase about the firm hand of stern repression in the arrest, conviction, and jailing of the six suffragists a touch of ruthlessness in their incarceration at Ocaquan along with women of the street pickpockets and other flotsam and jetsam. Still the suffragists are not looking for sympathy and it need not be wasted upon them. The police have arrived at a policy although no one knows whether it will be sufficiently stable and consistent to last out the week. Washington is grateful that the disgraceful period of rioting and mob violence in front of the White House is at an end and another crisis is in the militant crusade to bring the Susan B. Anthony amendment before Congress has been reached. What is the next step? No one knows. Picketing doubtless will continue or an effort will be made to continue it and militancy if the police continue to arrest instead of giving the women protection will pass into a new phase. The suffragists as well as the public at large are thankful that the police department has finally determined to arrest the pickets instead of allowing them to be mobbed by hoodlums. The public eye will be on Ocaquan for the next few weeks to find out how these women bear up under the Spartan treatment that is in store for them. If they have deliberately sought martyrdom as some critics have been unkind enough to suggest they have it now and if they're campaigning the opinion of perhaps the great majority of the public has been misguided admiration for their pluck will not be withheld. The Boston Journal of August 20, 1917 set in an editorial written by Herbert and Pinkham Jr. That higher authorities than the Washington police were responsible for the amazing policy of rough house employed against the suffrage pickets has been suspected from the very beginning. Police power in Washington is sufficient to protect a handful of women against a whole phalanx of excited or inspired government clerks and uniformed hoodlums if that power were used. In our nation's capital women have been knocked down and dragged through the streets by government employees including sailors in uniform. The police are strangely absent at such moments as a rule and arrive only in time to arrest a few women. Perhaps the inscriptions on the suffrage banners were not tactful. It is sometimes awkward indeed to quote the president's speeches after the speeches have grown cold. Also, a too vigorous use of the word democracy is distasteful to some government dignitaries it seems. But either wrong the suffragists at Washington are entitled to police protection even though in the minds of the administration they are not entitled to the ballot. Perhaps even in America we must have a law forbidding people to carry banners demanding what they consider their political rights. Such a law would of course prohibit political parades of all kinds public mass meetings and other demonstrations of one set of opinions against another set. Such a law has been proposed by Senator Myers of Montana the author of the later censorship an anti-free speech bill. It may be necessary to pass the law if it is also necessary that the public voice be stilled and the nation become dumb and subservient. But until there is such a law people must be protected while their actions remain within the law. If their opinions differ from ours we must refrain from smashing their faces. If a certain number of people believe that they have the right to vote we may either grant their claim or turn them sadly away. But we may not roll them into the gutter. If they see fit to tell us our professions of democracy are empty we may smile sorrowfully and murmur a prayer for their ignorance but we may not pelt them with rotten eggs and fire a shot through a window of their dwelling. If denied a properly dignified hearing they insist upon walking through the streets with printed words on a saucy banner we may be amazed at their zeal and pitiful of their bad taste but even for the sake of keeping their accusations out of sight of our foreign visitors whom we have trained to believe us as perfect we may not send them to jail. All this suffrage shouting in Washington has as its single object the attainment of President Wilson's material support for equal suffrage. President Wilson's word would carry the question into Congress. Would there be any harm in letting Congress vote on a suffrage resolution? That would end the disturbance and it would make our shield of national justice somewhat brighter. It looks like President Wilson's move. Between these opposing currents of protest and support the administration drifted helplessly unwilling to pass the amendment it continued to send women to prison. On the afternoon of September 4th President Wilson led his first contingent of drafted soldiers of freedom down Pennsylvania Avenue in a Gala Parade on the first lap of their journey to the battlefields of France. On the same afternoon a slender line of women also soldiers of freedom attempted to march in Washington as they attempted to take up their post two by two in front of the reviewing stand opposite the White House they were gathered in and swept away by the police like common street criminals their golden banners scarcely flung to the breeze. Mr. President how long must women be denied a voice in a government which is conscripting their sons? Was this the offensive question on the first banner carried by Ms. Eleanor Cowlin of Massachusetts and Ms. Edith Angel of New York? The avenue was roped off on account of the parade there was hardly anyone passing at the time all traffic had been temporarily suspended so there was none to obstruct but the administration's policy must go on. A few moments and Ms. Lucy Branham of Maryland and Mrs. Pauline Adams of Virginia marched down the avenue their gay banners waving joyously in the autumn sun to fill up the gap of the two comrades who had been arrested they too were shoved into the police automobile their banners still high and appealing silhouetted against the sky as they were hurried to the police station the third pair of pickets managed to cross the avenue but were arrested immediately as they reached the curb still others advanced the crowd began to line the ropes and to watch eagerly the line of women indomitably coming two by two into the face of certain arrest a fourth detachment was arrested in the middle of the avenue on the trolley tracks but still they came a few days later more women were sent to the workhouse for carrying to the picket line this question President Wilson what did you mean when you said we have seen a good many singular things happen recently we have been told there is a deep disgrace resting upon the origin of this nation the nation originated in the sharpest sort of criticism of public policy we originated to put it in the vernacular in a kick and if it be unpatriotic to kick why then the grown man is unlike the child we have forgotten the very principle of our origin if we have forgotten how to object how to resist how to agitate how to pull down and build up even to the extent of revolutionary practices if it be necessary to readjust matters I have forgotten my history if that not be true history the administration had not yet abandoned hope of removing the pickets they persisted in their policy of arrest and longer imprisonments end of section eight recording by Janet O'Reilly from Utah www.O'Reilly-fire.com the suffrage prisoners were enduring the miserable and petty tyranny of the government workhouse at Occoquan they were kept absolutely in communicado they were not allowed to see even their nearest relatives should any be within reach until they had been in the institution two weeks each prisoner was allowed to write one outgoing letter a month which after being read by the warden could be sent or withheld at his whim all incoming mail and telegrams were also censored by the superintendent and practically all of them denied the prisoners superintendent Whitaker openly boasted of holding up the suffragists mail I am boss down here he said to visitors who asked to see the prisoners or to send in a note I consider the letters and telegrams these prisoners get are treasonable they cannot have them he referred to messages commending the women for choosing prison to silence and bidding them stand steadfast to their program of course all this was done in the hope of intimidating not only the prisoners but also those who came wanting to see them it was the intention of the women to abide as far as possible by the routine of the institution disagreeable and unreasonable as it was they performed the tasks assigned to them they ate the prison food without protest they wore the course prison clothes but at the end of the first week of detention they became so weak from the shockingly bad food that they began to wonder if they could endure such a system the petty tyrannies they could endure but the inevitable result of a diet of sour bread half cooked vegetables rancid soup with worms in it was serious finally the true condition of affairs trickled to the outside world through the devious routes of prison messengers Senator J. Hamilton Lewis of Illinois Democratic Whip in the Senate heard alarming reports of two of his constituents Miss Lucy Ewing daughter of Judge Ewing niece of Adlai Stevenson vice president in Cleveland's administration niece of James Ewing minister to Belgium in the same administration and Mrs. William Upton Watson of Chicago he made a hurried trip to the workhouse to see them the fastidious senator was shocked shocked at the appearance of the prisoners shocked at the tale they told shocked that ladies should be subject to such indignities in all my years of criminal practice said the senator to Gilson Gardner who had accompanied him to the workhouse I have never seen prisoners so badly treated either before or after conviction he is a gallant gentleman who would be expected to be uncomfortable when he actually saw ladies suffer it was more than gallantry in this instance however for he spoke in frank condemnation of the whole shame and outrage of the thing it is possible that he reported to other administration officials what he had learned during his visit to the workhouse for very soon afterwards it was announced that an investigation of conditions in the workhouse would be held that was of course an admirable maneuver which the administration could make is the president not a kind man he pardoned some women now he investigates the conditions under which the others are imprisoned even though they are lawless women he wishes them well treated it would sound noble to thousands immediately the district commissioners announced this investigation miss lucy burns acting on behalf of the national women's party sent a letter to commissioner brownlow after summing up the food situation miss burns wrote when our friends were sent to prison they expected the food would be extremely plain but they also expected that enough eatable food would be given them to maintain them in their ordinary state of health this has not been the case the testimony of one of the prisoners miss lavinia doc a trained nurse is extremely valuable on the question of food supplied to dacoquan miss doc is secretary of the american federation of nurses she has had a distinguished career in her profession she assisted in the work after the johnstown flood and during the yellow fever epidemic in florida during the spanish war she organized the red crosswork with claire barton i really thought said miss doc when i last saw her that i could eat everything but here i have hard work choking down enough food to keep the life in me i'm sure you will agree with me that these conditions should be instantly remedied when these and other prisoners were sentenced to prison they were sentenced to detention and not to starvation or semi starvation the hygienic conditions have been improved at dacoquan 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 dacoquan are sometimes seriously afflicted with disease this practice is appallingly negligent concerning the general conditions of the prison i am enclosing with this letter affidavit of miss virginia bovey an ex-officer of the workhouse the prisoners for whom i am counsel are aware that cruel practices go on at dacoquan on one occasion they heard superintendent whitaker kicking a woman in the next room they heard whitaker's voice the sound of blows and the woman's cries i lay these facts before you with the knowledge that you will be glad to have the fullest possible information given you concerning the institution for whose administration you as commissioner of the district of columbia are responsible very respectful yours signed lucy burns mrs bovey a matron was discharged from the workhouse because she tried to be kind to the suffrage prisoners she also gave them warnings to guide them past the possible contamination of hideous diseases as soon as she was discharged from the workhouse she went to the headquarters of the woman's party and volunteered to make an affidavit the affidavit of mrs bovey follows i was discharged yesterday as an officer of dacoquan workhouse for eight months i acted as night officer with no complaint as to my performance of my duties yesterday superintendent whitaker told me i was discharged and gave me two hours in which to get out i demanded the charges from the matron mrs herndon and i was told that it was owing to something that senator lewis has said i am well acquainted with the conditions at dacoquan i have had charge of all the suffragist prisoners who have been there i know that their mail has been withheld from them mrs herndon the matron reads the mail and often discussed it with us at the officer's table she said of a letter sent to one of the suffragist pickets now in the workhouse they told her to keep her eyes open and notice everything she will never get that letter said mrs herndon then she corrected to herself and added not until she goes away ordinarily the mail not given to the prisoners is destroyed the mail for the suffragists is saved for them until they are ready to go away i have seen three of the women have one letter each but that is all the three were mrs watson mrs ewing and i think mrs flanagan the blankets now being used in the prison have been in use since december without being washed or cleaned blankets are washed once a year officers are warned not to touch any of the bedding the one officer who handles it is compelled by the regulations to wear rubber gloves while she does so the sheets for the ordinary prisoners are not changed completely even when one is gone and another takes her bed instead the top sheet is put on the bottom and one fresh sheet is given them i was not there when these suffragists arrived and i did not know how their bedding was arranged i doubt whether the authorities would have dared to give them one soiled sheet the prisoners with disease are not always isolated by any means in the colored dormitory there are two women in the advanced stages of consumption women suffering from syphilis who have open sores are put in the hospital but those whose sores are temporarily healed are put in the same dormitory with the others there have been several such in my dormitory when the prisoners come they must undress and take a shower bath for this they take a piece of soap from a bucket in the storeroom when they are finished they throw the soap back in the bucket the suffragists are permitted three showers a week and have only these pieces of soap which are common to all inmates there is no soap at all in washrooms the beans, hominy, rice, cornmeal which is exceedingly coarse like chicken feed and cereal have all had worms in them sometimes the worms float on top of the soup often they are found in the cornbread the first suffragists sent the worms to Whitaker 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 officer's table we have very good milk the prisoners do not have any butter or sugar and no milk except by order of the doctor prisoners are punished by being put on bread or water or by being beaten I know of one girl who's been kept 17 days on only water this month in the booby house the same was kept 19 days on water last year because she beat superintendent Whitaker when he tried to beat her superintendent Whitaker or his son are the only ones who beat the girls officers are not allowed to lay a hand on them in punishment I know of one girl beaten until the blood had to be scrubbed from her clothing and from the floor of the booby house I have never actually seen a girl beaten but I have seen her afterwards and I've heard the cries and blows Dorothy Warfield was beaten and the suffragists heard the beating signed Mrs. Virginia Beauvais subscribed and sworn to before me this day of disgust 1917 Joseph H. Batt Notary public while the administration was planning an investigation of the conditions in the workhouse which made it difficult for women to sustain health through a 30 day sentence it was through its police court sentencing more women to 60 day sentences under the same conditions the administration was giving some thought to its plan of procedure but not enough to master the simple fact that women would not stop going to prison until something had been done which promised passage of the amendment through congress new forms of intimidation and hardship were offered by Superintendent Whitaker Mrs. Frederick Kendall of Buffalo, New York a frail and highly sensitive woman was put in a punishment cell on bread and water under a charge of impudence Mrs. Kendall says that her impudence consisted of protesting to the matron that scrubbing the floors on my hands and knees was too severe work for me as I had been unable for days to eat the prison food my impudence further consisted in asking for lighter work Mrs. Kendall was refused in the clean clothing she should have had the day she was put in solitary confinement and was thus forced to wear the same clothing 11 days she was refused a night dress or clean linen for the cot her only toilet accommodations was an open pail for four days she was allowed no water for toilet purposes her diet consisted of three thin slices of bread and three cups of water carried to her in a paper cup which frequently leaked out half the meager supply before it got to Mrs. Kendall's cell representative and Mrs. Charles Bennett Smith of Buffalo friends of Mrs. Kendall created a considerable disturbance when they learned of this cruel treatment with the result that Mrs. Kendall was finally given clean clothing and taken from her confinement when she walked from her cell to greet Mrs. Genevieve Clark Thompson daughter of Champ Clark Speaker of the House and Mrs. Roberta Bradshaw other friends who through the speaker's influence had obtained special permission to see Mrs. Kendall she fell in a dead faint it was such shocking facts as these that the commissioners and their investigating board were vainly trying to keep from the country for the sake of the reputation of the administration for attempting to speak to Mrs. Kendall through her cell door to inquire us to her health while in solitary Ms. Lucy Burns was placed on a bread and water diet Ms. Jeanette Rankin of Montana the only woman member of Congress was moved by these and similar revelations calling for a congressional investigation of the workhouse there were among the suffrage prisoners women of all shades of social opinion the following letter by Ms. Gavinter the young Russian worker was smuggled out of the workhouse this appeal to Meyer London was rather pathetic since not even he the only socialist member in Congress stood up to denounce the treatment of the pickets Comrade Meyer London I am eight years in this movement three and a half years a member of the socialist party branches two and four of the Bronx and I have been an active member of the waste makers union since 1910 I am from New York but I am now in Baltimore where I got acquainted with the comrades who asked me to pick at the White House and of course I expressed my willingness to help the movement I am now in the workhouse I want to get out and help in the work as I am more revolutionary than the woman's party yet conditions here are so bad that I feel I must stay here and help women get their rights we are enslaved here I am suffering very much from hunger and nearly blind from the bad nourishment the food is chiefly soup cereal with worms bread just baked and very heavy even this poor food we do not get enough I do not eat meat when I told the doctor that he said you must eat and if you don't like it here you can go tell the judge you won't pick it anymore and then you can get out of here but I told him that I could not go against my principles and my belief he asked do you believe you should break the law I replied I have picketed wherever I had a chance for eight years and I have never broken the law picketing is legal please come here as quickly as possible as we need your help will you give the information in this letter to the newspapers please pardon this scrap of papers I have nothing else to write on I would write to other comrades to Hilquid or Paulson but you are in the congress and can do more yours for the cause signed Annick Vinter Occoquan Workhouse Friday, September 21st Ms. Govinter swore to Anapa David when she came out in which she said in part the days that we had to stand on scaffolds and ladders to paint the dormitories I was so weak from lack of food I was dizzy and in constant danger of falling when they told me to scrub the floors of the lavatories I refused because I have to work for my living and I could not afford to get any of the awful diseases that women down there have I obeyed all the rules of the institution the only times I stopped working was because I was too sick to work signed Anna Govinter sworn to before me and subscribed in my presence this thirteenth day of October 1917 signed C. Laramore Kealy Notary public DC Half a hundred women was the government's toll for one month continuous arrests kept the issue hot and kept people who cared in constant protest it is impossible to give space to the countless beautiful messages which were sent to the women or the fervent protests which went to government officials Among the hundreds of thousands of protests was a valuable one by Dr. Harvey Wiley the celebrated food expert in a letter to Dr. George M. Kober member of the board in control of the jail and workhouse and a well-known sanitarium Dr. Wiley wrote November 3, 1917 Dear Dr. Kober I am personally acquainted with many of the women who have been confined at Occoquan and at the district jail and have heard from their own lips an account of the nutrition and sanitary conditions prevailing at both places I therefore feel constrained to make known to you the conditions as they have been told to me and as I believe them actually to exist as I understand it there is no purpose in penal servitude of lowering the vitality of the prisoner or in inviting disease yet both of these conditions prevail both at Occoquan and at the district jail first of all the food question the diet furnished the prisoners at Occoquan especially is of a character to invite all kinds of infections that may prevail and to lower the vitality so that the resistance to disease is diminished I have fortunately come into possession of samples of the food actually given to these women I have kept samples of the milk religiously for over two weeks to see if I could detect the least particle of fat and have been unable to perceive any the fat of milk is universally recognized by dietitians as its most important nutritive character I understand that a dairy is kept on the farm at Occoquan and yet it is perfectly certain that no whole milk is served or ever has been served to one of the so-called picketers in that jail I have not had enough of the sample to make a chemical analysis but being somewhat experienced in milk I can truthfully say that it seems to me to be watered skimmed milk I also have a sample of the pea soup served the pea grains are coarsely broken often more than half of a pea being served in one piece they never have been cooked but are in a perfectly raw state and found to be inedible by the prisoners I have also samples of the cornbread which is most unattractive and repellent to the eye and to the taste all of these witnesses say that the white bread apparently is of good quality but the diet in every case is the cause of constipation except in the case of pea soup which brings on diarrhea and vomiting as nutrition is the very foundation of sanitation I wish to call to your special attention as a sanitarian the totally inadequate sustenance given to these prisoners the food at the county jail in washington is much better than the food at acaquan but still bad enough this increased excellence of food is set off by the miserable ventilation of the cells in which these noble women are kept in solitary confinement not only have they had a struggle to get the windows open slightly but also at the time of their morning meal the sweeping is done the air of the cells is filled with dust and they try to cover their coffee and other food with such articles as they can find to keep the dust out of their food better conditions for promoting tuberculosis could not be found I appeal to you as a well-known sanitarian to get the board of charities to make such rules and regulations as would secure to prisoners of all kinds and especially to political prisoners as humane an environment as possible I also desire to ask that the board of charities would authorize me to make inspections of food furnished to prisoners at acaquan and at the district jail and to have physical and chemical analysis made without expense to the board in order to determine more fully the nutritive environment in which the prisoners live sincerely signed Harvey Wiley this striking telegram from Richard Bennett the distinguished actor must have arrested the attention of the administration September 22nd 1917 Honorable Newton Baker secretary of war war department Washington DC I have been asked to go to France personally with the film of damaged goods as head of a lecture corps to the American army on reliable authority I am told that American women because they have dared demand their political freedom are held in vile conditions in the government workhouse in Washington are compelled to paint the Negro toilets for eight hours a day are denied decent food and denied communication with counsel why should I work for democracy in Europe when our American women are denied democracy at home if I am to fight for social hygiene in France why not begin at acaquan workhouse Richard Bennett Mr. Bennett never received a reply to this message charming companionships grew up in prison ingenuity at lifting the dull monotony of imprisonment brought to light many talents for camaraderie which amused not only the suffrage prisoners but the regulars locked in separate cells as in the district jail the suffragists could still communicate by song the following lively doggerel to the tune of Captain Kid was sung in chorus to the accompaniment of a hair comb it became a saga each day a new verse was added relating the day's particular controversy with the prison authorities we worried Woody Wood as we stood as we stood we worried Woody Wood as we stood we worried Woody Wood and we worried him right good we worried him right good as we stood we asked him for the vote as we stood as we stood we asked him for the vote as we stood we asked him for the vote but he'd rather write a note he'd rather write a note so we stood will not get out on bail Go to jail. Go to jail. We'll not get out on bail. We prefer to go to jail. We prefer to go to jail. We're not frail. We ask them for a brush for our teeth for our teeth. We ask them for a brush for our teeth. We ask them for a brush. They said there ain't no rush. They said there ain't no rush. Darn your teeth. We ask them for some air as we choked as we choked. We ask them for some air as we choked. We ask them for some air and they threw us in a a lair. They threw us in a lair, so we choked. We asked them for our nightie, as we froze as we froze. We asked them for our nightie, as we froze. We asked them for our nightie, and they looked tidy tidy. They looked tidy tidy, so we froze. Now ladies, take the hint, as you stand, as you stand. Now ladies, take the hint, as you stand. Now ladies, take the hint, don't quote the president, don't quote the president, as you stand. Humor predominated in the poems that came out of the prison, there was never any word of tragedy. Not even an intolerable diet of raw salt-pork, which by actual count of Miss Margaret Potheringham, a teacher of domestic science and dietetics, was served the suffragist sixteen times in eighteen days, could break their spirit of gaiety. And when a piece of fish of unknown origin was slipped through the tiny opening in the cell door, and a specimen carefully preserved for Dr. Wiley, who by the way was unable to classify it, they were more diverted than outraged. Sometimes it was a prayer which enlivened the evening hour before bedtime. Mary Windsor of Haverford, Pennsylvania, was the master prayer-maker. One night it was a Baptist prayer, another a Methodist, and still another a stern Presbyterian prayer. The prayers were most disconcerting to the matron, for the regulars became almost hysterical with laughter, when they should be slipping into sleep. It was trying also to sit in the corridor and hear your daily cruelties narrated to God in punishment asked. This is what happened to the embarrassed warden and jail attendants if they came to protest. Sometimes it was the beautiful voice of Vita Mulholland, which rang through the corridors of the dreary prison, with a stirring Irish ballad, a French love song, or the women's Marseilles. Again the prisoners would build a song, each calling out from cell to cell, and contributing a line. The following song, to the tune of Charlie is My Darling, was so written and sung with Miss Lucy Brannum leading, Shout the Revolution of Women. Shout the Revolution of Women of Women, Shout the Revolution for Liberty. Rise glorious women of the earth, the voiceless and the free, united strength assures the birth of true democracy, refrain, invincible our army, forward, forward, triumphant daughters pressing to victory. Shout the Revolution of Women of Women, Shout the Revolution for Liberty. Men's revolution born in blood, but ours conceived in peace. We hold a banner for a sword, till all oppression cease, refrain. Prison death defying, onward, onward, triumphant daughters pressing to victory. The gaiety was interspersed with sadness when the suffragists learned of new cruelties heaped upon the helpless ones, those who were without influence or sense, they learned of that barbarous punishment known as the greasy pole used upon girl prisoners. This method of punishment consisted of strapping girls with their hands tied behind them to a greasy pole from which they were partly suspended. Unable to keep themselves in an upright position because of the grease on the pole, they slipped almost to the floor with their arms all but severed from the arm sockets, suffering intense pain for long periods of time. This cruel punishment was meted out to prisoners for slight infractions of the prison rules. The suffrage prisoners learned also of the race hatred which the authorities encouraged. It was not infrequent that the jail officers summoned black girls to attack white women if the latter disobeyed. This happened in one instance to the suffrage prisoners who were protesting against the wardens forcibly taking a suffragist from the workhouse without telling her or her comrades whether she was being taken. Black girls were called and commanded to physically attack the suffragists. The nagresses, reluctant to do so, were goaded to deliver blows upon the women by the wardens' threats of punishment. And as a result of our having been in prison, our headquarters has never ceased being the mecca of many discouraged inmates when released. They come from money, they come for work, they come for spiritual encouragement to face life after the wrecking experience of imprisonment. Some regard us as fellow prisoners, others regard us as friends at court. Occasionally we meet a prison associate in the work-a-day world. Long after Mrs. Lawrence Lewis's imprisonment when she was working on ratification of the amendment in Delaware, she was greeted warmly by a charming young woman who came forward at a meeting. Don't you remember me, she asked, as Mrs. Lewis struggled to recollect? Don't you remember me? I met you in Washington. I'm sorry, but I seem to have forgotten where I met you, said Mrs. Lewis apologetically. In jail came the answer hesitantly, whereupon Mrs. Lewis listened sympathetically while her fellow prisoner told her that she had been in jail at the time Mrs. Lewis was, that her crime was bigamy and that she was one of the traveling circus troop then in Dover. She brought up her husband, also a member of the circus, at Mrs. Lewis in telling of the incident, and they both joined enthusiastically in a warm invitation to come and see them in the circus. As each group of suffragists was released, an enthusiastic welcome was given to them at headquarters at these times. In the midst of the warmth of approving and appreciative comrades some of the most beautiful speeches were delivered. I quote a part of Catherine Fisher's speech at a dinner in honor of released prisoners. Five of us who are here with you tonight have recently come out from the workhouse into the world. A great change? Not so much of a change for women, disenfranchised women. In prison or out, American women are not free. Our lot of physical freedom simply gives us and the public a new and vivid sense of what our lack of political freedom really means. Disenfranchisement is the prison of women's power and spirit. Women have been long-classed with criminals so far as their voting rights are concerned, and how quick the government is to live up to its classification the women determinedly insist upon these rights. Prison life epitomizes all life under undemocratic rule. At Ocquan, as at the Capitol and the White House, we faced hypocrisy, trickery, and treachery on the part of those in power, and the constant appeal to us to cooperate with the workhouse authorities sounded wonderfully like the exhortation addressed to all women to support the government. Is that the law of the District of Columbia, I ask Superintendent Whitaker concerning a statement he had made to me? It is the law, he answered, because it is the rule I make. The answer of Whitaker is the answer Wilson makes to women every time the government, of which he is the head, and acts a lot and at the same time continues to refuse to pass the Susan B. Anthony amendment. We seem today to stand before you free, but I have no sense of freedom because I have left comrades at Ocquan and because other comrades may at any moment join them there. While comrades are there, what is our freedom? It is as empty as the so-called political freedom of women who have won suffrage by a state referendum. Like them we are free only within limits. We must not let our voice be drowned by war trumpets or cannon. If we do, we shall find ourselves when the war is over with a peace that will only prolong our struggle, a democracy that will belie its name by leaving out half the people. The administration continued to send women to the workhouse and the district jail for 30 and 60 day sentences. End of section 9. Section 10 of Jailed for Freedom. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by David O'Connell. Jailed for Freedom by Doris Stevens. Part 3, Chapter 7. An Administration Protest. Dudley Field Malone Resigns. Dudley Field Malone was known to the country as sharing the intimate confidence and friendship of President Wilson. He had known and supported the President from the beginning of the President's political career. He had campaigned twice through New Jersey with Mr. Wilson as governor. He had managed Mr. Wilson's campaigns in many states for the nomination before the Baltimore Convention. He had toured the country with Mr. Wilson in 1912. And it was he who led to victory President Wilson's fight for California in 1916. So when Mr. Malone went to the White House in July 1917 to protest against the administration's handling of the suffrage question, he went not only as a confirmed suffragist, but also as a confirmed supporter and member of the Wilson administration. The one who had been chosen to go to the West in 1916 to win women voters to the Democratic Party. Mr. Malone has consented to tell for the first time in this record of the militant campaign what happened at his memorable interview with President Wilson in July 1917. An interview which he followed up two months later with his resignation as collector of the Port of New York. I quote the story in his own words. Frank P. Walsh, Amos Pinchot, Frederick C. Howe, J. A. H. Hopkins, Alan McCurdy, and I were present throughout the trial of the 16 women in July. Immediately after the police court judge had pronounced his sentence of 60 days in the Acoquan Workhouse upon these first offenders, on the alleged charge of a traffic violation, I went over to Ann Martin, one of the women's counsel, and offered to act as attorney on the appeal of the case. I then went to the court clerk's office and telephoned to President Wilson at the White House, asking him to see me at once. It was 3 o'clock. I called a taxicab, drove direct to the executive offices, and met him. I began by reminding the president that in the seven years and a half of our personal and political association, we had never had a serious difference. He was good enough to say that my loyalty to him had been one of the happiest circumstances of his public career. But I told him I had come to place my resignation in his hands, as I could not remain a member of any administration which dared to send American women to prison for demanding national suffrage. I also informed him that I had offered to act as counsel for the suffragists on the appeal of their case. He asked me for full details of my complaint and attitude. I told Mr. Wilson everything I had witnessed from the time we saw the suffragists arrested in front of the White House to their sentence in the police court. I observed that although we might not agree with the manners of picketing, citizens had a right to petition the president or any other official of the government for a redress of grievances. He seemed to acquiesce in this view and reminded me that the women had been unmolested at the White House gates for over five months, adding that he had even ordered the head usher to invite the women on cold days to come into the White House and warm themselves and have coffee. If the situation is, as you describe it, it is shocking, said the president. The manhandling of the women by the police was outrageous, and the entire trial before a judge of your own appointment was a perversion of justice, I said. This seemed to annoy the president, and he replied with asperity, why do you come to me in this indignant fashion for things which have been done by the police officials of the city of Washington? Mr. President, I said, the treatment of these women is the result of carefully laid plans made by the district commissioners of the city of Washington, who were appointed to office by you. Newspaper men of unquestioned information and integrity have told me that the district commissioners have been in consultation with your private secretary, Mr. Tomalti, and that the secretary of the treasury, Mr. Makadu, set in at conference when the policy of these arrests was being determined. The president asserted his ignorance of all this. Do you mean to tell me, he said, that you intend to resign, to repudiate me and my administration and sacrifice me for your views on this suffrage question? His attitude then angered me, and I said, Mr. President, if there is any sacrifice in this unhappy circumstance, it is I who am making the sacrifice. I was sent twice as your spokesman in the last campaign to the women's suffrage states of the West. You have since been good enough to say publicly and privately that I did as much as any man to carry California for you. After my first tour, I had a long conference with you here at the White House on the political situation in those states. I told you that I found your strength with women voters lay in the fact that you had with great patience and statesmanship kept this country out of the European war. But that your great weakness with women voters was that you had not taken any step throughout your entire administration to urge the passage of the Federal Suffrage Amendment, which Mr. Hughes was advocating and which alone can enfranchise all the women of the nation. You asked me then how I met this situation, and I told you that I promised the women voters of the West that if they showed political sagacity to choose you as against Mr. Hughes, I would do everything in my power to get your administration to take up and pass the suffrage amendment. You were pleased and approved of what I had done. I returned to California and repeated this promise, and so far as I am concerned, I must keep my part of that obligation. I reiterated to the president my earlier appeal that he assists suffrage as an urgent war measure and a necessary part of America's program for world democracy, to which the president replied, the enfranchisement of women is not at all necessary to a program of democracy, and I see nothing in the argument that it is a war measure unless you mean that American women will not loyally support the war unless they are given the vote. I firmly denied this conclusion of the president and told him that while American women with or without the vote would support the United States government against German militarism, yet it seemed to me a great opportunity of his leadership to remove this grievance which women generally felt against him and his administration. Mr. President, I urged, if you, as the leader, will persuade the administration to pass the federal amendment, you will release from the suffrage fight the energies of thousands of women which will be given with redoubled zeal to the support of your program for international justice. But the president absolutely refused to admit the validity of my appeal, though it was as a war measure that the president some months later demanded that the Senate pass the suffrage amendment. The president was visibly moved as I added, you are the president now, re-elected to office. You ask if I am going to sacrifice you. You sacrifice nothing by my resignation, but I lose much. I quit a political career. I give up a powerful office in my own state.  But most of all, I sever a personal association with you of the deepest affection which you know has meant much to me these past seven years. But I cannot and will not remain in office and see women thrown into jail because they demand their political freedom. The president earnestly urged me not to resign, saying, what will the people of the country think when they hear that the collector of the Port of New York has resigned because of an injustice done to a group of suffragists by the police officials of the city of Washington? My reply to this was, with all respect for you, Mr. President, my explanation to the public will not be as difficult as yours. If I am compelled to remind the public that you have appointed to office and can remove all the important officials of the city of Washington. The president ignored this and insisted that I should not resign, saying, I do not question your intense conviction about this matter, as I know you have always been an ardent suffragist. And since you feel as you do, I see no reason why you should not become their counsel and take this case up on appeal without resigning from the administration. But, I said, Mr. President, that arrangement would be impossible for two reasons. First, these women would not want me as their counsel if I were a member of your administration, for it would appear to the public then as if your administration was not responsible for the indignities to which they have been subjected, and your administration is responsible. And secondly, I cannot accept your suggestion because it may be necessary in the course of the appeal vigorously to criticize and condemn members of your cabinet and others close to you. And I could not adopt this policy while remaining in office under you. The president seemed greatly upset and finally urged me as a personal service to him to go at once and perfect the case on appeal for the suffragists, but not to resign until I had thought it over for a day and until he had had an opportunity to investigate the facts I had presented to him. I agreed to this and we closed the interview with the president saying, if you consider my personal request and do not resign, please do not leave Washington without coming to see me. I left the executive offices and never saw him again. There was just a day and a half left to perfect the exceptions for the appeal under the rules of procedure. No stenographic record of the trial had been taken which put me under the greatest legal difficulties. I was in the midst of these preparations for appeal the next day when I learned to my surprise that the president had pardoned the women. He had not even consulted me as their attorney. Moreover, I was amazed that since the president had said he considered the treatment of the women shocking, he had pardoned them without stating that he did so to correct a grave injustice. I felt certain that the high spirited women in the workhouse would refuse to accept the pardon as a mere benevolent act on the part of the president. I at once went down to the workhouse in Virginia. My opinion was confirmed. The group refused to accept the president's pardon. I advised them that as a matter of law, no one could compel them to accept the pardon, but that as a matter of fact, they would have to accept it for the attorney general would have them all put out of the institution bag in baggage. So as a solution of the difficulty and in view of the fact that the president had said to me that their treatment was shocking, I made public the following statement. The president's pardon is an acknowledgement by him of the grave injustice that has been done. This he never denied. Under this published interpretation of his pardon, the women at Occoquin accepted the pardon and returned to Washington. The incident was closed. I returned to New York. During the next two months, I carefully watched the situation. Six or eight more groups of women in that time were arrested on the same false charges, tried and imprisoned in the same illegal way. Finally, a group of women was arrested in September on the identical circumstances as those in July was tried in the same lawless fashion and given the same sentence of 60 days in the workhouse. The president may have been innocent of responsibility for the first arrests, but he was personally and politically responsible for all the arrests that occurred after his pardon of the first group. Under this development, it seemed to me that self-respect demanded action. So I sent my resignation to the president, publicly stated my attitude and regretfully left his administration. Mr. Malone's resignation in September, 1917 came with a sudden shock because the entire country and surely the administration thought him quieted and subdued by the president's personal appeal to him in July. Mr. Malone was shocked that the policy of arrests should be continued. Mr. Wilson and his administration were shocked that anyone should care enough about the liberty of women to resign a lucrative post in the government. The nation was shocked into the realization that this was not a street brawl between women and policemen, but a controversy between suffragists and a powerful administration. We had said so, but it would have taken months to convince the public that the president was in any way responsible. Mr. Malone did what we could only have done with the greatest difficulty and after more prolonged sacrifices. He laid the responsibility squarely and dramatically where it belonged. It is impossible to overemphasize what a tremendous acceleration Mr. Malone's fine, solitary and generous act gave to the speedy breakdown of the administration's resistance. His sacrifice lightened ours. Women ought to be willing to make sacrifices for their own liberation, but for a man to have the courage and imagination to make such a sacrifice for the liberation of women is unparalleled. Mr. Malone called to the attention of the nation the true cause of the obstruction and suppression. He reproached the president and his colleagues after mature consideration in the most honorable and vital way by refusing longer to associate himself with an administration which backed such policies. And Mr. Malone's resignation was not only welcomed by the militant group. The conservative suffrage leaders, although they hardly disapprove to picketing, were as outspoken in their gratitude. Alice Stone Blackwell, the daughter of Lucy Stone, herself a pioneer suffrage leader and editor, wrote to Mr. Malone, "'May I express my appreciation and gratitude for the excellent and manly letter that you have written to President Wilson on women's suffrage? I am sure that I am only one of many women who feel thankful to you for it. The picketing seems to me a very silly business, and I am sure it is doing the cause harm instead of good, but the picketers are being shamefully and illegally treated, and it is a thousand pities for President Wilson's own sake that he ever allowed the Washington authorities to enter on this course of persecution. It was high time for someone to make a protest, and you have made one that has been heard far and wide. Mrs. Kerry Chapman-Cat, the President of the National American Women's Suffrage Association, wrote, "'I was in Maine when your wonderful letter announcing your resignation came out. It was the noblest act that any man ever did on behalf of our cause. The letter itself was a high-minded appeal.' Mrs. Norman DeArre Whitehouse, the President of the New York State Women's Suffrage Party, with which Mr. Malone had worked for years, wired, "'Although we disagree with you on the question of picketing, every suffragist must be grateful to you for the gallant support you are giving our cause and the great sacrifice you are making.'" Mrs. James Lee's Laidlaw, Vice Chairman of the New York Suffrage Party, said, "'No words of mine can tell you how our hearts have been lifted and our purposes strengthened in this tremendous struggle in New York State by the reading of your powerful and noble utterances in your letter to President Wilson. There flashed through my mind all the memories of nights of chivalry and of romance that I have ever read, and they all paled before your championship and the sacrifice and the high-spirited leadership that it signifies, where you lead, I believe, thousands of other men will follow, even though at a distance and most inadequately. And from the women voters of California with whom Mr. Malone had kept faith came the message, "'The Liberty-loving women of California greet you as one of the few men in history who have been willing to sacrifice material interests for the liberty of a class to which they themselves do not belong. We are thrilled by your inspiring words. We appreciate your sympathetic understanding of the viewpoint of disenfranchised women. We are deeply grateful for the incalculable benefit of your active assistance in the struggle of American women for political liberty and for a real democracy. I reprint Mr. Malone's letter of resignation which sets forth in detail his position. September 7th, 1917. The President, the White House, Washington, D.C. Dear Mr. President, last autumn, as the representative of your administration, I went into the women's suffrage states to urge your reelection. The most difficult argument to meet among the seven million voters was the failure of the Democratic Party throughout four years of power to pass the federal suffrage amendment looking toward the enfranchisement of all the women of the country. Throughout those states, and particularly in California, which ultimately decided the election by the votes of women, the women voters were urged to support you, even though Judge Hughes had already declared for the federal suffrage amendment, because you and your party, through liberal leadership, were more likely nationally to enfranchise the rest of the women of the country than were your opponents. And if the women of the West voted to reelect you, I promised them that I would spend all my energy at any sacrifice to myself to get the present Democratic administration to pass the federal suffrage amendment. But the present policy of the administration in permitting splendid American women to be sent to jail in Washington, not for carrying offensive banners, not for picketing, but on the technical charge of obstructing traffic, is a denial even of their constitutional right to petition for and demand the passage of the federal suffrage amendment. It therefore now becomes my profound obligation actively to keep my promise to the women of the West. In more than 20 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 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's citizens are denied the right to vote on the policies of the government which demands of them such sacrifice? For this reason, many of your most ardent friends and supporters feel that the passage of the federal suffrage amendment is a war measure which could appropriately be urged by you at this session of Congress. It is true that this amendment would have to come from Congress, but the present Congress shows no earnest desire to enact this legislation for the simple reason that you, as the leader of the party in power, have not yet suggested it. For the whole country gladly acknowledges, Mr. President, that no vital piece of legislation has come through Congress these five years except by your extraordinary and brilliant leadership. And what millions of men and women today hope is that you will give the federal suffrage amendment to the women of the country by the valor of your leadership now. It will hearten the mothers of the nation, eliminate a just grievance, and turn the devoted energies of brilliant women to a more hearty support of the government in this crisis. As you well know, in dozens of speeches in many states, I have advocated your policies and the war. I was the first man of your administration nearly five years ago to publicly advocate preparedness and helped to found the first Plattsburgh training camp. And if, with our troops mobilizing in France, you will give American women this measure for their political freedom, they will support with greater enthusiasm your hope and the hope of America for world freedom. I have not approved all the methods recently adopted by women in pursuit of their political liberty, yet, Mr. President, the Committee on Suffrage of the United States Senate was formed in 1883 when I was one year old. This same federal suffrage amendment was first introduced in Congress in 1878. Brave women like Susan B. Anthony were petitioning Congress for the suffrage before the Civil War, and at the time of the Civil War, men like William Lloyd Garrison, Horace Greeley and Wendell Phillips assured the suffrage leaders that if they abandoned their fight for suffrage, when the war was ended, the men of the nation out of gratitude, would enfranchise the women of the country. And if the men of this country had been peacefully demanding for over half a century the political right or privilege to vote and had been continuously ignored or met with evasion by successive Congresses, as have the women, you, Mr. President, as a lover of liberty would be the first to comprehend and forgive their inevitable impatience and righteous indignation, will not this administration be reelected to power by the hope and faith of the women of the West handsomely reward that faith by taking action now for the passage of the federal suffrage amendment? In the port of New York during the last four years, billions of dollars in the export and import trade of the country have been handled by the men of the Custom Service. Their treatment of the traveling public has radically changed. Their vigilance supplied the evidence of the Lusitania note. The neutrality was rigidly maintained. The great German fleet guarded, captured and repaired. Substantial economies and reforms have been concluded and my art 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 to give all my leisure time to fight as hard for the political freedom of women as I have always fought for your liberal leadership. It seems a long seven years, Mr. President, since I first campaigned with you when you were running for governor of New Jersey. In every circumstance throughout those years, I have served you with the most respectful affection and unshadowed devotion. It is no small sacrifice now for me as a member of your administration to sever our political relationship. But I think it is high time that men in this generation at some cost to themselves stood up to battle for the national enfranchisement of American women. So in order effectively to keep my promise made in the West and more freely to go into this larger field of democratic effort, I hereby resign my office as collector of the Port of New York to take effect at once or at your earliest convenience. Yours respectfully, signed Dudley Field Malone. The president's answer has never before been published. USS Mayflower, 12 September, 1917. The White House, Washington. My dear Mr. Collector, your letter of September 7th reached me just before I left home and I have, I am sorry to say, been unable to reply to it sooner. I must frankly say that I cannot regard your reasons for resigning your position as collector of customs as convincing, but it is so evidently your wish to be relieved from the duties of the office that I do not feel at liberty to withhold my acceptance of your resignation. Indeed, I judge from your letter that any discussion of the reasons would not be acceptable to you and that it is your desire to be free of the restraints of public office. I therefore accept your resignation to take effect as you have wished. I need not say that our long association in public affairs makes me regret the action you have taken most sincerely. Very truly yours, signed Woodrow Wilson. The Honorable Dudley Field Malone, Collector of Customs, New York City. To this Mr. Malone replied, New York and why, September 15th, 1917. The President, The White House, Washington, D.C. Dear Mr. President, Thank you sincerely for your courtesy, for I knew you were on a well-earned holiday and I did not expect an earlier reply to my letter of September 7th, 1917. After a most careful re-reading of my letter, I am unable to understand how you could judge that any discussion by you of my reasons for resigning would not be acceptable to me since my letter was an appeal to you on specific grounds for action now by the Administration on the Federal Suffrage Amendment. However, I am profoundly grateful to you for your prompt acceptance of my resignation. Yours respectfully, signed Dudley Field Malone. It may have been accidental, but it is interesting to note that the first public statement of Mr. Byron Newton, appointed by the Administration to succeed Mr. Malone as Collector of the Port of New York, was a bitter denunciation of all women's suffrage, whether by state or national action. Part Three, Chapter Eight. The Administration Yields. Immediately after Mr. Malone's sensational resignation, the Administration sought another way to remove the persistent pickets without passing the amendment. It yielded on a point of machinery. It gave us a report in the Senate and a committee in the House and expected us to be grateful. The press had turned again to more sympathetic accounts of our campaign and exposed the prison regime we were undergoing. We were now for a moment the object of sympathy. The Administration was the butt of considerable hostility. Sensing their predicament and fear in any loss of prestige, they risked a slight advance. Senator Jones, Chairman of the Suffrage Committee, made a visit to the Workhouse. Scarcely had the women recovered from the surprise of his visit when the Senator, on the following day, September 15th, filed the favorable report which had been lying with his committee since May 15th, exactly six months. The report, which he had so long delayed because he wanted, he said, to make it a particularly brilliant and elaborate one, read, the Committee on Women's Suffrage, to which was referred the joint resolution proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, conferring upon women the right of suffrage, having the same under consideration, beg leave to report it back to the Senate with a recommendation that the joint resolution do pass. This report to the Senate was immediately followed by a vote of 181 to 107 in the House of Representatives in favor of creating a Committee on Women's Suffrage in the House. This vote was indicative of the strength of the amendment in the House. The resolution was sponsored by Representative Pau, Chairman of the Rules Committee and Administration Leader, himself an anti-suffragist. It is an interesting study in psychology to consider some of the statements made in this peculiarly heated debate the day this vote was taken. Scores of congressmen anxious to refute the idea that the indomitable picket had had anything to do with their action, revealed naively how surely it had. Of the 291 men present, not one man stood squarely up for the right of the hundreds of women who petitioned for justice. Some indirectly and many inadvertently, however, paid eloquent tribute to the suffrage picket. From the moment Representative Pau in opening the debate spoke of the nationwide request for the Committee and the President's sanction of the Committee, the accusations and counter accusations concerning the wisdom of appointing it in the face of the pickets were many an animated. Mr. Meeker of Missouri, Democrat, protested against Congress, yielding to the nagging of a certain group. Mr. Cantrell of Kentucky, Democrat, believed that millions of Christian women in the nation should not be denied the right of having a Committee in the House to study the problem of suffrage because of the mistakes of some few of their sisters. One had as well say, he went on, that there should be no police in Washington because the police force of this city permitted daily thousands of people to obstruct the streets and impede traffic and permitted almost the mobbing of the women without arresting the offenders. There was a lawful and peaceful way in which the police of this city could have taken charge of the banners of the pickets without permitting the women carrying them to be the objects of mob violence. To see women roughly handled by rough men on the streets of the capital of the nation is not a pleasing sight to Kentuckians and to red-blooded Americans and let us hope the like will never again be seen here. Mr. Walsh, an anti-suffrage Democrat from Massachusetts, deplored taking any action which would seem to yield to the demand of the pickets who carried banners which if used by a poor working man in an attempt to get his rights would speedily have put him behind the bars for treason or sedition and these poor bewildered deluded creatures after their disgusting exhibition can thank their stars that because they wear skirts they are now incarcerated for misdemeanors of a minor character to supinely yield to a certain class of women picketing the gates of the official residence, yes, even posing with their short skirts and their short hair within the views of this very capital and our office buildings, with banners which would seek to lead the people to believe that because we did not take action during this war session upon suffrage, if you please, and grant them the right of the ballot that we were traitors to the American Republic would be monstrous. The subject of the creation of a committee on suffrage was almost entirely forgotten. The congressmen were utterly unable to shake off the ghosts of the pickets. The pickets had not influenced their actions. The very idea was appalling to Representative Stafford of Wisconsin, anti-suffrage Republican, who joined in the Democratic protests. He said, if a suffrage committee is created, the militant class will exclaim, ah, see how we have driven the great House of Representatives to recognize our rights. If we keep up the sort of practices, we will compel the House, when they come to vote on the constitutional amendment, to surrender obediently likewise. He spoke the truth and finished dramatically with, gentlemen, there is only one question before the House today, and that is, if you look at it from a political aspect, whether you wish to approve of the practices of these women who have been disgracing their cause here in Washington for the past several months. Representative Volstead of Minnesota, Republican, came the closest of all to real courage in his protest. In this discussion, some very unfair comments have been made upon the women who picketed the White House. While I do not approve of picketing, I disapprove more strongly of the hoodlum methods pursued in suppressing the practice. I gather from the press that this is what took place. Some women did in a peaceable and perfectly lawful manner display suffrage banners on the public street near the White House. To stop this, the police allowed the women to be mobbed and then because the mob obstructed the street, the women were arrested and fined while the mob went scot-free. The suffrage committee in the House was appointed. The creation of this committee, which had been pending since 1913, was now finally granted in September, 1917. To be sure, this was accomplished only after an inordinate amount of time, money and effort had been spent on a sustained and relentless campaign of pressure. But the administration had yielded. As a means to remove the pickets, however, this yielding had failed. We ask no more machinery. We demand the passage of the amendment, said the pickets as they lengthened their line. End of section 10.