your special attention, as a sanitation, the totally inadequate sustenance given to these prisoners.
The food at the county jail at Washington is much better than the food at Occoquan, but still bad enough. This increased excellence of food is set off by the miserable ventilation of the cells, in which these noble women are kept in solitary confinement. Not only have they had a struggle to get the windows open slightly, but also at the time of their morning meal, the sweeping is done. The air of the cells is filled with dust and they try to cover their coffee and other food with such articles as they can find to keep the dust out of their food. Better conditions for promoting tuberculosis could not be found.
I appeal to you as a well-known sanitarian to get the Board of Charities to make such rules and regulations as would secure to prisoners of all kinds, and especially to political prisoners, as humane an environment as possible.
I also desire to ask that the Board of Charities would authorize me to make inspections of food furnished to prisoners at Occoquan and at the District Jail, and to have physical and chemical analysis made without expense to the Board, in
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order to determine more fully the nutritive environment in which the prisoners live.
Sincerely,
(Signed) HARVEY WILEY.
This striking telegram from Richard Bennett, the distinguished actor, must have arrested the attention of the Administration.
September 22, 1917.
Hon. Newton Baker,
Secretary of War,
War Department,
Washington, D. C.
I have been asked to go to France personally, with the film of “Damaged Goods,” as head of a lecture corps to the American army. On reliable authority I am told that American women, because they have dared demand their political freedom, are held in vile conditions in the Government workhouse in Washington; are compelled to paint the negro toilets for eight hours a day; are denied decent food and denied communication with counsel. Why should I work for democracy in Europe when our American women are denied democracy at home? If I am to fight for social hygiene in France, why not begin at Occoquan workhouse?
RICHARD BENNETT.
Mr. Bennett never received a reply to this message.
Charming companionships grew up in prison. Ingenuity at lifting the dull monotony of imprisonment brought to light many talents for camaraderie which amused not only the suffrage prisoners but the “regulars.” Locked in separate cells, as in the District Jail, the suffragists could still communicate by song. The following lively doggerel to the tune of “Captain Kidd” was sung in chorus to the accompaniment of a hair comb. It became a saga. Each day a new verse was added, relating the day’s particular controversy with the prison authorities.
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We worried Woody-wood,
As we stood, as we stood,
We worried Woody-wood,
As we stood.
We worried Woody-wood,
And we worried him right good;
We worried him right good as we stood.
We asked him for the vote,
As we stood, as we stood,
We asked him for the vote
As we stood,
We asked him for the vote,
But he’d rather write a note,
He’d rather write a note so we stood.
We’ll not get out on bail,
Go to jail, go to jail-
We’ll not get out on bail,
We prefer to go to jail,
We prefer to go to jail-we’re not frail.
We asked them for a brush,
For our teeth, for our teeth,
We asked them for a brush
For our teeth.
We asked them for a brush,
They said, “There ain’t no rush,”
They said, “There ain’t no rush-darn your teeth.”
We asked them for some air,
As we choked, as we choked,
We asked them for some air
As we choked.
We asked them for some air
And they threw us in a lair,
They threw us in a lair, so we choked.
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We asked them for our nightie,
As we froze, as we froze,
We asked them for our nightie
As we froze.
We asked them for our nightie,
And they looked-hightie-tightie-
They looked hightie-tightie-so we froze.
Now, ladies, take the hint,
As ye stand, as ye stand,
Now, ladies, take the hint,
As ye stand.
Now, ladies, take the hint,
Don’t quote the Presidint,
Don’t quote the Presidint, as ye stand.
Humor predominated in the poems that came out of prison. There was never any word of tragedy.
Not even an intolerable diet of raw salt pork, which by actual count of Miss Margaret Potheringham, a teacher of Domestic Science and Dietetics, was served the suffragists sixteen times in eighteen days, could break their spirit of gayety. And when a piece of fish of unknown origin was slipped through the tiny opening in the cell door, and a specimen carefully preserved for Dr. Wiley-who, by the way, was unable to classify it-they were more diverted than outraged.
Sometimes it was a “prayer” which enlivened the evening hour before bedtime. Mary Winsor of Haverford, Pennsylvania, was the master prayer-maker. One night it was a Baptist prayer, another a Methodist, and still another a stern Presbyterian prayer. The prayers were most disconcerting to the matron for the “regulars” became almost hysterical with laughter, when they should be slipping into sleep. It was trying also to sit in the corridor and hear your daily cruelties narrated to God and punishment asked. This is what happened to the embarrassed warden and jail attendants if they came to protest.
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Sometimes it was the beautiful voice of Vida Milholland which rang through the corridors of the dreary prison, with a stirring Irish ballad, a French love song, or the Woman’s Marseillaise.
Again the prisoners would build a song, each calling out from cell to cell, and contributing a line. The following song to the tune of “Charlie Is My Darling” was so written and sung with Miss Lucy Branham leading:
SHOUT THE REVOLUTION OF WOMEN
Shout the revolution
Of women, of women,
Shout the revolution
For liberty.
Rise, glorious women of the earth,
The voiceless and the free
United strength assures the birth
Of true democracy.
REFRAIN
Invincible our army,
Forward, forward,
Triumphant daughters pressing
To victory.
Shout the revolution
of women, of women,
Shout the revolution
For liberty.
Men’s revolution born in blood,
But ours conceived in peace,
We hold a banner for a sword,
Till all oppression cease.
REFRAIN
Prison, death, defying,
Onward, onward,
Triumphant daughters pressing
To victory.
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The gayety was interspersed with sadness when the suffragists learned of new cruelties heaped upon the helpless ones, those who were without influence or friends. .. They learned of that barbarous punishment known as “the greasy pole” used upon girl prisoners. This method of punishment consisted of strapping girls with their hands tied behind them to a greasy pole from which they were partly suspended. Unable to keep themselves in an upright position, because of the grease on the pole, they slipped almost to the floor, with their arms all but severed from the arm sockets, suffering intense pain for long periods of time. This cruel punishment was meted out to prisoners for slight infractions of the prison rules.
The suffrage prisoners learned also of the race hatred which the authorities encouraged. It was not infrequent that the jail officers summoned black girls to attack white women, if the latter disobeyed. This happened in one instance to the suffrage prisoners who were protesting against the warden’s forcibly taking a suffragist from the workhouse without telling her or her comrades whither she was being taken. Black girls were called and commanded to physically attack the suffragists. The negresses, reluctant to do so, were goaded to deliver blows upon the women by the warden’s threats of punishment.
And as a result of our having been in prison, our headquarters has never ceased being the mecca of many discouraged “inmates,” when released. They come for money. They come for work. They come for spiritual encouragement to face life after the wrecking experience of imprisonment. Some regard us as “fellow prisoners.” Others regard us as “friends at court.”
Occasionally we meet a prison associate in the workaday world. Long after Mrs. Lawrence Lewis’ imprisonment, when she was working on ratification of the amendment in Delaware, she was greeted warmly by a charming young woman who came forward at a meeting. “Don’t you remember me?” she asked, as
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Mrs. Lewis struggled to recollect. “Don’t you remember me? I met you in Washington.”
“I’m sorry but I seem to have forgotten where I met you,” said Mrs. Lewis apologetically.
“In jail,” came the answer hesitantly, whereupon Mrs. Lewis listened sympathetically while her fellow prisoner told her that she had been in jail at the tipie Mrs. Lewis was, that her crime was bigamy and that she was one of the traveling circus troupe then in Dover.
“She brought up her husband, also a member of the circus,” said Mrs. Lewis in telling of the incident, “and they both joined enthusiastically in a warm invitation to come and see them in the circus.”
As each group of suffragists was released an enthusiastic welcome was given to them at headquarters and at these times, in the midst of the warmth of approving and appreciative comrades, some of the most beautiful speeches were delivered. I quote a part of Katharine Fisher’s speech at a dinner in honor of released prisoners:
Five of us who are with you to-night have recently come out from the workhouse into the world. A great change? Not so much of a change for women, disfranchised women. In prison or out, American women are not free. Our lot of physical freedom simply gives us and the public a new and vivid sense of what our lack of political freedom really means.
Disfranchisement is the prison of women’s power and spirit. Women have long been classed with criminals so far as their voting rights are concerned. And how quick the Government is to live up to its classification the minute women determinedly insist upon these rights. Prison life epitomizes all life under undemocratic rule. At Occoquan, as at the Capitol and the White House, we faced hypocrisy, trickery and treachery on the part of those in power. And the constant appeal to us to “cooperate” with the workhouse authorities sounded wonderfully like the exhortation addressed to all women to “support the Government.”
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“Is that the law of the District of Columbia?” I asked Superintendent Whittaker concerning a statement he had made to me. “It is the law,” he answered, “because it is the rule I make.” The answer of Whittaker is the answer Wilson makes to women every time the Government, of which he is the head, enacts a law and at the same time continues to refuse to pass the Susan B. Anthony amendment . . . .
We seem to-day to stand before you free, but I have no sense of freedom because I have left comrades at Occoquan and because other comrades may at any moment join them there . . . .
While comrades are there what is our freedom? It is as empty as the so-called political freedom of women who have won suffrage by a state referendum. Like them we are free only within limits . . . .
We must not let our voice be drowned by war trumpets or cannon. If we do, we shall find ourselves, when the war is over, with a peace that will only prolong our struggle, a democracy that will belie its name by leaving out half the people.
The Administration continued to send women to the workhouse and the District Jail for thirty and sixty day sentences.
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Chapter 7
An Administration Protest-Dudley Field Malone Resigns
Dudley Field Malone was known to the country as sharing the intimate confidence and friendship of President Wilson. He had known and supported the President from the beginning of the President’s political career. He had campaigned twice through New Jersey with Mr. Wilson as Governor; he had managed Mr. Wilson’s campaigns in many states for the nomination before the Baltimore Convention; he had toured the country with Mr. Wilson in 1912 ; and it was he who led to victory President Wilson’s fight for California in 1916.
So when Mr. Malone went to the White House in July, 1917, to protest against the Administration’s handling of the suffrage question, he went not only as a confirmed suffragist, but also a5 a confirmed supporter and member of the Wilson Administration-the one who had been chosen to go to the West in 1916 to win women voters to the Democratic Party.
Mr. Malone has consented to tell for the first time, in this record of the militant campaign, what happened at his memorable interview with President Wilson in July, 1917, an interview which he followed up two months later with his resignation as Collector of the Port of New York. I quote the story in his own words:
Frank P. Walsh, Amos Pinchot, Frederic C. Howe, J. A. H. Hopkins, Allen McCurdy and I were present throughout the trial of the sixteen women in July. Immediately after the police court judge had pronounced his sentence of sixty days
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in the Occoquan workhouse upon these “first offenders,” on the alleged charge of a traffic violation, I went over to Anne Martin, one of the women’s counsel, and offered to act as attorney on the appeal of the case. I then went to the court clerk’s office and telephoned to President Wilson at the Whit House, asking him to see me at once. It was three o’clock. I called a taxicab, drove direct to the executive offices and met him.
I began by reminding the President that in the seven years and a half of our personal and political association we had never had a serious difference. He was good enough to say that my loyalty to him bad been one of the happiest circumstances of his public career. But I told him I had come to place my resignation in his hands as I could not remain a member of any administration which dared to send American women to prison for demanding national suffrage. I also informed him that I had offered to act as counsel for the suffragists on the appeal of their case. He asked me for full details of my complaint and attitude. I told Mr. Wilson everything I had witnessed from the time we saw the suffragists arrested in front of the White House to their sentence in the police court. I observed that although we might not agree with the “manners” of picketing, citizens had a right to petition the President or any other official of the government for a redress of grievances. He seemed to acquiesce in this view, and reminded me that the women had been unmolested at the White House gates for over five months, adding that he had even ordered the head usher to invite the women on cold days to come into the White House and warm themselves and have coffee.
“If the situation is as you describe it, it is shocking,” said the President’. “The manhandling of the women by the police was outrageous and the entire trial (before a judge of your own appointment) was a perversion of justice,” I said. This seemed to annoy the President and he replied with asperity, “Why do you come to me in this indignant fashion for things which have been done by the police officials of the city of Washington?”
“Mr. President,” I said, “the treatment of these women is the result of carefully laid plans made by the District Com-
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missioners of the city of Washington, who were appointed to office by you. Newspaper men of unquestioned information and integrity have told me that the District Commissioners have been in consultation with your private secretary, Mr. Tumulty, and that the Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. McAdoo, sat in at a conference when the policy of these arrests was being determined.”
The President asserted his ignorance of all this.
“Do you mean to tell me,” he said, “that you intend to resign, to repudiate me and my Administration and sacrifice me for your views on this suffrage question?”
His attitude then angered me and I said, “Mr. President, if there is any sacrifice in this unhappy circumstance, it is I who am making the sacrifice. I was sent twice as your spokesman in the last campaign to the Woman Suffrage States of the West. You have since been good enough to say publicly and privately that I did as much as any man to carry California for you. After my first tour I had a long conference with you here at the White House on the political situation in those states. I told you that I found your strength with women voters lay in the fact that you had with great patience and statesmanship kept this country out of the European war. But that your great weakness with women voters was that you had not taken any step throughout your entire Administration to urge the passage of the Federal Suffrage Amendment, which Mr. Hughes was advocating and which alone can enfranchise all the women of the nation. You asked me then how I met this situation, and I told you that I promised the women voters of the West that if they showed the political sagacity to choose you as against Mr. Hughes, I would do everything in my power to get your Administration to take up and pass the suffrage amendment. You were pleased and approved of what I had done. I returned to California and repeated this promise, and so far as I am concerned, I must keep my part of that obligation.”
I reiterated to the President my earlier appeal that he assist suffrage as an urgent war measure and a necessary part of America’s program for world democracy, to which the President replied: “The enfranchisement of women is not at all necessary to a program of democracy and I see nothing in
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the argument that it is a war measure unless you mean that American women will not loyally support the war unless they are given the vote.” I firmly denied this conclusion of the President and told him that while American women with or without the vote would support the United States Government against German militarism, yet it seemed to me a great opportunity of his leadership to remove this grievance which women generally felt against him and his administration. “Mr. President,” I urged, “if you, as the leader, will persuade the administration to pass the Federal Amendment you will release from the suffrage fight the energies of thousands of women which will be given with redoubled zeal to the support of your program for international justice.” But the President absolutely refused to admit the validity of my appeal, though it was as a “war measure” that the President some months later demanded that the Senate pass the suffrage amendment.
The President was visibly moved as I added, “You are the President now, reelected to office. You ask if I am going to sacrifice you. You sacrifice nothing by my resignation. But I lose much. I quit a political career. I give up a powerful office in my own state. I, who have no money, sacrifice a lucrative salary, and go back to revive my law practice. But most of all I sever a personal association with you of the deepest affection which you know has meant much to me these past seven years. But I cannot and will not remain in office and see women thrown into jail because they demand their political freedom.”
The President earnestly urged me not to resign, saying, “What will the people of the country think when they hear that the Collector of the Port of New York has resigned because of an injustice done to a group of suffragists by the police officials of the city of Washington?”
My reply to this was, “With all respect for you, Mr. President, my explanation to the public will not be as difficult as yours, if I am compelled to remind the public that you have appointed to office and can remove all the important officials of the city of Washington.”
The President ignored this and insisted that I should not resign, saying, “I do not question your intense conviction about this matter as I know you have always been an ardent suf-
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fragist; and since you feel as you do I see no reason why you should not become their counsel and take this case up on appeal without resigning from the Administration.”
“But,” I said, “Mr. President, that arrangement would be impossible for two reasons; first, these women would not want me as their counsel if I were a member of your Administration, for it would appear to the public then as if your Administration was not responsible for the indignities to which they have been subjected, and your Administration is responsible; and, secondly, I cannot accept your suggestion because it may be necessary in the course of the appeal vigorously to criticize and condemn members of your cabinet and others close to you, and I could not adopt this policy while remaining in office under you.” The President seemed greatly upset and finally urged me as a personal service to him to go at once and perfect the case on appeal for the suffragists, but not to resign until I had thought it over for a day, and until he had had an opportunity to investigate the facts I had presented to him. I agreed to this, and we closed the interview with the President saying, “If you consider my personal request and do not resign, please do not leave Washington without coming to see me.” I left the executive offices and never saw him again.
There was just a day and a half left to perfect the exceptions for the appeal under the rules of procedure. No stenographic record of the trial had been taken, which put me under the greatest legal difficulties. I was in the midst of these preparations for appeal the next day when I learned to my surprise that the President had pardoned the women. He had not even consulted me as their attorney. Moreover, I was amazed that since the President had said he considered the treatment of the women “shocking,” he had pardoned them without stating that he did so to correct a grave injustice. I felt certain that the high-spirited women in the workhouse would refuse to accept the pardon as a mere “benevolent” act on the part of the President.
I at once went down to the workhouse in Virginia. My opinion was confirmed. The group refused to accept the President’s pardon. I advised them that as a matter of law no one could compel them to accept the pardon, but that as a matter of fact they would have to accept it, for the Attorney
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General would have them all put out of the institution bag and baggage. So as a solution of the difficulty and in view of the fact that the President had said to me that their treatment was “shocking” I made public the following statement:
“The President’s pardon is an acknowledgment by him of the grave injustice that has been done:” This he never denied.
Under this published interpretation of his pardon the women at Occoquan accepted the pardon and returned to Washington. The incident was closed. I returned to New York. During the next two months I carefully watched the situation. Six or eight more groups of women in that time were arrested on the same false charges, tried and imprisoned in the same illegal way. Finally a group of women was arrested in September under the identical circumstances as those in July, was tried in the same lawless fashion and given the same sentence of “sixty days in the workhouse.” The President may have been innocent of responsibility for the first arrests, but he was personally and politically responsible for all the arrests that occurred after his pardon of the first, group. Under this development it seemed to me that self-respect demanded action, so I sent my resignation to the President, publicly stated my attitude and regretfully left his Administration.”
Mr. Malone’s resignation in September, 1917, came with a sudden shock, because the entire country and surely the Administration thought him quieted and subdued by the President’s personal appeal to him in July.
Mr. Malone was shocked that the policy of arrests should be continued. Mr. Wilson and his Administration were shocked that any one should care enough about the liberty of women to resign a lucrative post in the Government. The nation was shocked into the realization that this was not a street brawl between women and policemen, but a controversy between suffragists and a powerful Administration. We had said so but it would have taken months to convince the public that the President was in any way responsible. Mr. Malone did what we could only have done with the greatest difficulty and after more pro-
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longed sacrifices. He laid the responsibility squarely and dramatically where it belonged. It is impossible to overemphasize what a tremendous acceleration Mr. Malone’s fine, solitary and generous act gave to the speedy break-down of the Administration’s resistance. His sacrifice lightened ours.
Women ought to be willing to make sacrifices for their own liberation, but for a man to have the courage and imagination to make such a sacrifice for the liberation of women is unparalleled. Mr. Malone called to the attention of the nation the true cause of the obstruction and suppression. He reproached the President and his colleagues after mature consideration, in the most honorable and vital way,-by refusing longer to associate himself with an Administration which backed such policies.
And Mr. Malone’s resignation was not only welcomed by the militant group. The conservative suffrage leaders, although they heartily disapproved of , picketing, were as outspoken in their gratitude.
Alice Stone Blackwell, the daughter of Lucy Stone, herself a pioneer suffrage leader and editor, wrote to Mr. Malone:
“May I express my appreciation and gratitude for the excellent and manly letter that you have written to President Wilson on woman suffrage? I am sure that I am only one of many women who feel thankful to you for it.
“The picketing seems to me a very silly business, and I am sure it is doing the cause harm instead of good; but the picketers are being shamefully and illegally treated, and it is a thousand pities, for President Wilson’s own sake, that he ever allowed the Washington authorities to enter on this course of persecution. It was high time for some one to make a protest, and you have made one that has been heard far and wide . . . .”
Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, the President of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, wrote:
“I was in Maine when your wonderful letter announcing your resignation came out. It was the noblest act that any man
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ever did on behalf of our cause. The letter itself was a high minded appeal . . . . “
Mrs. Norman de R. Whitehouse, the President of the New York State Woman Suffrage Party, with which Mr. Malone had worked for years, wired:
“Although we disagree with you on the question of picketing every suffragist must be grateful to you for the gallant support you are giving our cause and the great sacrifice you are making.”
Mrs. James Lees Laidlaw, Vice Chairman of the New York Suffrage Party, said:
“No words of mine can tell you how our hearts have been lifted and our purposes strengthened in this tremendous struggle in New York State by the reading of your powerful and noble utterances in your letter to President Wilson. There flashed through my mind all the memories of Knights of chivalry and of romance that I have ever read, and they all paled before your championship, and the sacrifice and the high-spirited leadership that it signifies. Where you lead, I believe, thousands of other men will follow, even though at a distance, and most inadequately . . . .”
And from the women voters of California with whom Mr. Malone had kept faith came the message:
“The liberty-loving women of California greet you as one of the few men in history who have been willing to sacrifice material interests for the liberty of a class to which they themselves do not belong. We are thrilled by your inspiring words. We appreciate your ‘sympathetic understanding of the viewpoint of disfranchised women. We are deeply grateful for the incalculable benefit of your active assistance in the struggle of American women for political liberty and for a real Democracy.”
I reprint Mr. Malone’s letter of resignation which sets forth in detail his position.
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September 7, 1917.
The President,
The White House,
Washington, D. C.
Dear Mr. President:
Last autumn, as the representative of your Administration, I went into the woman suffrage states to urge your reelection. The most difficult argument to meet among the seven million voters was the failure of the Democratic party, throughout four years of power, to pass the federal suffrage amendment looking toward the enfranchisement of all the women of the country. Throughout those states, and particularly in California, which ultimately decided the election by the votes of women, the women voters were urged to support you, even though Judge Hughes had already declared for the federal suffrage amendment, because you and your party, through liberal leadership, were more likely nationally to enfranchise the rest of the women of the country than were your opponents.
And if the women of the West voted to reelect you, I promised them that I would spend all my energy, at any sacrifice to myself, to get the present Democratic Administration to pass the federal suffrage amendment.
But the present policy of the Administration, in permitting splendid American women to be sent to jail in Washington, not for carrying offensive banners, not for picketing, but on the technical charge of obstructing traffic, is a denial even of their constitutional right to petition for, and demand the passage of, the federal suffrage amendment. It, therefore, now becomes my profound obligation actively to keep my promise to the women of the West.
In more than twenty states it is a practical impossibility to amend the state constitutions; so the women of those States can only be enfranchised by the passage of the federal suffrage amendment. Since England and Russia, in the midst of the great war, have assured the national enfranchisement of their women, should we not be jealous to maintain our democratic leadership in the world by the speedy national enfranchisement of American women?
To me, Mr. President, as I urged upon you in Washington two months ago, this is not only a measure of justice and democracy, it is also an urgent war measure. The women of
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the nation are, and always will be, loyal to the country, and the passage of the suffrage amendment is only the first step toward their national emancipation. But unless the government takes at least this first step toward their enfranchisement, how can the government ask millions of American women, educated in our schools and colleges, and millions of American women, in our homes, or toiling for economic independence in every line of industry, to give up by conscription their men and happiness to a war for democracy in Europe, while these women citizens are denied the right to vote on the policies of the Government which demands of them such sacrifice?
For this reason many of your most ardent friends and supporters feel that the passage of the federal suffrage amendment is a war measure which could appropriately be urged by you at this session of Congress. It is true that this amendment would have to come from Congress, but the present Congress shows no earnest desire to enact this legislation for the simple reason that you, as the leader of the party in power, have not yet suggested it.
For the whole country gladly acknowledges, Mr. President, that no vital piece of legislation has come through Congress these five years except by your extraordinary and brilliant leadership. And what millions of men and women to-day hope is that you will give the federal suffrage amendment to the women of the country by the valor of your leadership now. It will hearten the mothers of the nation, eliminate a just grievance, and turn the devoted energies of brilliant women to a more hearty support of the Government in this crisis.
As you well know, in dozens of speeches in many states I have advocated your policies and the war. I was the first man of your Administration, nearly five years ago, to publicly advocate preparedness, and helped to found the first Plattsburg training camp. And if, with our troops mobilizing in France, you will give American women this measure for their political freedom, they will support with greater enthusiasm your hope and the hope of America for world freedom.
I have not approved all the methods recently adopted by women in pursuit of their political liberty; yet, Mr. President, the Committee on Suffrage of the United States Senate was formed in 1883, when I was one year old; this same federal
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suffrage amendment was first introduced in Congress in 187’8, brave women like Susan B. Anthony were petitioning Congress for the suffrage before the Civil War, and at the time of the Civil War men like William Lloyd Garrison, Horace Greeley, and Wendell Phillips assured the suffrage leaders that if they abandoned their fight for suffrage, when the war was ended the men of the nation “out of gratitude” would enfranchise the women of the- country.
And if the men of this country had been peacefully demanding for over half a century the political right or privilege to vote, and had been continuously ignored or met with evasion by successive Congresses, as have the women, you, Mr. President, as a lover of liberty, would be the first to comprehend and forgive their inevitable impatience and righteous indignation. Will not this Administration, reelected to power by the hope and faith of the women of the West, handsomely reward that faith by taking action now for the passage of the federal suffrage amendment?
In the Port of New York, during the last four years, billions of dollars in the export and import trade of the country have been handled by the men of the customs service; their treatment of the traveling public has radically changed, their vigilance supplied the evidence of the Lusitania note; the neutrality was rigidly maintained; the great German fleet guarded, captured, and repaired-substantial economies and reforms have been concluded and my ardent industry has been given to this great office of your appointment.
But now I wish to leave these finished tasks, to return to my profession of the law, and to give all my leisure time to fight as hard for the political freedom of women as I have always fought for your liberal leadership.
It seems a long seven years, Mr. President, since I first campaigned with you when you were running for Governor of New Jersey. In every circumstance throughout those years I have served you with the most respectful affection and unshadowed devotion. It is no small sacrifice now for me, as a member of your Administration, to sever our political relationship. But I think it is high time that men in this generation, at some cost to themselves, stood up to battle for the national enfranchisement of American women. So in order effectively
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to keep my promise made in the West and more freely to go into this larger field of democratic effort, I hereby resign my office as Collector of the Port of New York, to take effect at once, or at your earliest convenience.
Yours respectfully,
(Signed) DUDLEY FIELD MALONE.
The President’s answer has never before been published:
U. S. S. MAYFLOWER,
12 September, 1917.
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON
My dear Mr. Collector:
Your letter of September 7th reached me just before I left home and I have, I am sorry to say, been unable to reply to it sooner.
I must frankly say that I cannot regard your reasons for resigning your position as Collector of Customs as convincing, but it is so evidently your wish to be relieved from the duties of the office that I do not feel at liberty to withhold my acceptance of your resignation. Indeed, I judge from your letter that any discussion of the reasons would not be acceptable to you and that it is your desire to be free of the restraints of public office. I, therefore, accept your resignation, to take effect as you have wished.
I need not say that our long association in public affairs makes me regret the action you have taken most sincerely.
Very truly yours,
(Signed) WOODROW WILSON.
Hon. Dudley Field Malone,
Collector of Customs,
New York City.
To this Mr. Malone replied:
New York, N.Y.,
September 15th, 1917.
The President,
The White House,
Washington, D. C.
Dear Mr. President:
Thank you sincerely for your courtesy, for I knew you were on a well-earned holiday and I did not expect an earlier reply to my letter of September 7th, 1917.
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After a most careful re-reading of my letter, I am unable to understand how you could judge that any discussion by you of my reasons for resigning would not be acceptable to me since my letter was an appeal to you on specific grounds for action now by the Administration on the Federal Suffrage amendment.
However, I am profoundly grateful to you for your prompt acceptance of my resignation.
Yours respectfully,
(Signed) DUDLEY FIELD MALONE.
It may have been accidental but it is interesting to note that the first public statement of Mr. Byron Newton, appointed by the Administration to succeed Mr. Malone as Collector of the Port of New York, was a bitter denunciation of all woman suffrage whether by state or national action.
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Chapter 8
The Administration Yields
Immediately after Mr. Malone’s sensational resignation the Administration sought another way to remove the persistent pickets without passing the amendment. It yielded on a point of machinery. It gave us a report in the Senate and a committee in the House and expected us to be grateful.
The press had turned again to more sympathetic accounts of our campaign and exposed the prison regime we were undergoing. We were now for a moment the object of sympathy; the Administration was the butt of considerable hostility. Sensing their predicament and fearing any loss of prestige, they risked a slight advance.
Senator Jones, Chairman of the Suffrage Committee, made a visit to the workhouse. Scarcely had the women recovered from the surprise of his visit when the Senator, on the following day, September 15th, filed the favorable report which had been lying with his Committee since May 15th, exactly six months.
The Report, which he had so long delayed because he wanted [he said] to make it a particularly brilliant and elaborate one, read:
“The Committee on Woman Suffrage, to which was referred the joint resolution proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, conferring upon women the right of suffrage, having the same under consideration, beg leave to report it back to the Senate with the recommendation that the joint resolution do pass.”
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This report to the Senate was immediately followed by a vote of 181 to 107 in the House of Representatives in favor of creating a Committee on Woman Suffrage in the House. This vote was indicative of the strength of the amendment in the House. The resolution was sponsored by Representative Pou, Chairman of the Rules Committee and Administration leader, himself an anti- suffragist.
It is an interesting study in psychology to consider some of the statements made in the peculiarly heated debate the day this vote was taken.
Scores of Congressmen, anxious to refute the idea that the indomitable picket had had anything to do with their action, revealed naively how surely it had.
Of the 291 men present, not one man stood squarely up for the right of the hundreds of women who petitioned for justice. Some indirectly and many, inadvertently, however, paid eloquent tribute to the suffrage picket.
From the moment Representative Pou in opening the debate spoke of the nation-wide request for the committee, and the President’s sanction of the committee, the accusations and counter- accusations concerning the wisdom of appointing it in the face of the pickets were many and animated.
Mr. Meeker of Missouri, Democrat, protested against Congress “yielding to the nagging of a certain group.”
Mr. Cantrill of Kentucky, Democrat, believed that “millions of Christian women in the nation should not be denied the right of having a Committee in the House to study the problem of suffrage because of the mistakes of some few of their sisters.”
“One had as well say,” he went on, “that there should be no police in Washington because the police force of this city permitted daily thousands of people to obstruct the streets and impede traffic and permitted almost the mobbing of the women without arresting the offenders. There was a lawful and peaceful way in which the police of this city could have taken charge
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of the banners of the pickets without permitting the women carrying them to be the objects of mob violence. To see women roughly handled by rough men on the streets of the capital of the nation is not a pleasing sight to Kentuckians and to red-blooded Americans, and let us hope the like will never again be seen here.”
Mr. Walsh, an anti-suffrage Democrat from Massachusetts, deplored taking any action which would seem to yield to the demand of the pickets who carried banners which “if used by a poor workingman in an attempt to get his rights would speedily have put him behind the bars for treason or sedition, and these poor, bewildered, deluded creatures, after their disgusting exhibition can thank their stars that because they wear skirts they are now incarcerated for misdemeanors of a minor character . . . . To supinely yield to a certain class of women picketing the gates of the official residence,-yes, even posing with their short skirts and their short hair within the view of this `very capitol and our office buildings,’ with banners which would seek to lead the people to believe that because we did not take action during this war session upon suffrage, if you please, and grant them the right of the ballot that we were traitors to the American Republic, would be monstrous.”
The subject of the creation of a committee on suffrage was almost entirely forgotten. The Congressmen were utterly unable to shake off the ghosts of the pickets. The pickets had not influenced their actions! The very idea was appalling to Representative Stafford of Wisconsin, anti-suffrage Republican, who joined in the Democratic protests. He said:
“If a Suffrage Committee is created the militant class will exclaim, `Ah, see how we have driven the great House of Representatives to recognize our rights. If we keep up this sort of practices, we will compel the House, when they come to vote on the constitutional amendment, to surrender obediently likewise’.”
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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.
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Chapter 9
Political Prisoners
Finding that a Suffrage Committee in the House and a report in the Senate had not silenced our banners, the Administration cast about for another plan by which to stop the picketing. This time they turned desperately to longer terms of imprisonment. They were indeed hard pressed when they could choose such a cruel and stupid course.
Our answer to this policy was more women on the picket line, on the outside, and a protest on the inside of prison.
We decided, in the face of extended imprisonment, to demand to be treated as political prisoners. We felt that, as a matter of principle, this was the dignified and self-respecting thing to do, since we had offended politically, not criminally. We believed further that a determined, organized effort to make clear to a wider public the political nature of the offense would intensify the Administration’s embarrassment and so accelerate their final surrender.
It fell to Lucy Burns, vice chairman of the organization, to be the leader of the new protest. Miss Burns is in appearance the very symbol of woman in revolt. Her abundant and glorious red hair burns and is not consumed-a flaming torch. Her body is strong and vital. It is said that Lucy Stone had the “voice” of the pioneers. Lucy Burns without doubt possessed the “voice” of the modern suffrage movement. Musical, appealing, persuading-she could move the most resistant person. Her talent as an orator is of the kind that makes for instant
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intimacy with her audience. Her emotional quality is so powerful that her intellectual capacity, which is quite as great, is not always at once perceived.
I find myself wanting to talk about her as a human being rather than as a leader of women. Perhaps it is because she has such winning, lovable qualities. It was always difficult for her to give all of her energy and power to a movement. She yearned to play, to read, to study, to be luxuriously indolent, to revel in the companionship of her family, to which she is ardently devoted; to do any one of a hundred things more pleasant than trying to reason with a politician or an unawakened member of her own sex. But for these latter labors she had a most gentle and persuasive genius, and she would not shrink from hours of close argument to convince a person intellectually and emotionally.
Unlike Miss Paul, however, her force is not nonresistant. Once in the combat she takes delight in it; she is by nature a rebel. She is an ideal leader for the stormy and courageous attack-reckless and yet never to the point of unwisdom.
From the time Miss Burns and Miss Paul met for the first time in Cannon Row Police Station, London, they have been constant co- workers in suffrage. Both were students abroad at the time they met. They were among the hundred women arrested for attempting to present petitions for suffrage to Parliament. This was the first time either of them had participated in a demonstration. But from then on they worked together in England and Scotland organizing, speaking, heckling members of the government, campaigning at bye- elections; going to Holloway Prison together, where they joined the Englishwomen on hunger strike. Miss Burns remained organizing in Scotland while Miss Paul was obliged to return to America after serious illness following a thirty day period of imprisonment, during all of which time she was forcibly fed.
Miss Burns and she did not meet again until 1913-three
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years having intervened-when they undertook the national work on Congress. Throughout the entire campaign Miss Burns and Miss Paul counseled with one another on every point of any importance. This combination of the cool strategist and passionate rebel-each sharing some of the attributes of the other-has been a complete and unsurpassed leadership.
You have now been introduced, most inadequately, to Lucy Burns, who was to start the fight inside the prison.
She had no sooner begun to organize her comrades for protest than the officials sensed a “plot,” and removed her at once to solitary confinement. But they were too late. Taking the leader only hastened the rebellion. A forlorn piece of paper was discovered, on which was written their initial demand, It was then passed from prisoner to prisoner through holes in the wall surrounding leaden pipes, until a finished document had been perfected and signed by all the prisoners.
This historic document-historic because it represents the first organized group action ever made in America to establish the status of political prisoners-said:
To the Commissioners of the Distinct of Columbia:
As political prisoners, we, the undersigned, refuse to work while in prison. We have taken this stand as a matter of principle after careful consideration, and from it we shall not recede.
This action is a necessary protest against an unjust sentence. In reminding President Wilson of his pre-election promises toward woman suffrage we were exercising the right of peaceful petition, guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States, which declares peaceful picketing is legal in the District of Columbia. That we are unjustly sentenced has been well recognized-when President Wilson pardoned the first group of suffragists who had been given sixty days in the workhouse, and again when Judge Mullowny suspended sentence for the last group of picketers. We wish to point out the inconsistency and injustice of our sentences-some of us have been given sixty days, a later group thirty days, and
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another group given a suspended sentence for exactly the same action.
Conscious, therefore, of having acted in accordance with the highest standards of citizenship, we ask the Commissioners of the District to grant us the rights due political prisoners. We ask that we no longer be segregated and confined under locks and bars in small groups, but permitted to see each other, and that Miss Lucy Burns, who is in full sympathy with this letter, be released from solitary confinement in another building and given back to us.
We ask exemption from prison work, that our legal right to consult counsel be recognized, to have food sent to us from outside, to supply ourselves with writing material for as much correspondence as we may need, to receive books, letters, newspapers, our relatives and friends.
Our united demand for political treatment has been delayed, because on entering the workhouse we found conditions so very bad that before we could ask that the suffragists be treated as political prisoners, it was necessary to make a stand for the ordinary rights of human beings for all the inmates. Although this has not been accomplished we now wish to bring the important question of the status of political prisoners to the attention of the commissioners, who, we are informed, have full authority to make what regulations they please for the :District prison and workhouse.
The Commissioners are requested to send us a written reply so that we may be sure this protest has reached them.
Signed by,
MARY WINSOR, Lucy BRANHAM, ERNESTINE HARA, HILDA BLUMBERG, MAUD MALONE, PAULINE F. ADAMS, ELEANOR. A. CALNAN, EDITH AINGE, ANNIE ARNEIL, DOROTHY J. BARTLETT, MARGARET FOTHERINGHAM.
The Commissioners’ only answer to this was a hasty transfer of the signers and the leader, Miss Burns, to the District Jail, where they were put in solitary confinement. The women were not only refused the privileges asked but were denied some of the usual privileges allowed to ordinary criminals.
Generous publicity was given to these reasonable demands,
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and a surprisingly wide-spread protest followed the official denial of them. Scores of committees went to the District Commissioners. Telegrams backing up the women’s demand again poured in upon all responsible administrators, from President Wilson down. Not even foreign diplomats escaped protest or appeal.
Miss Vera Samarodin sent to the Russian Ambassador the following touching letter, concerning her sister, which is translated from the Russian:-
The Russian Ambassador,
Washington, D.C.
Excellency:
I am appealing to you to help a young Russian girl imprisoned in the workhouse near Washington. Her name is Nina Samarodin. I have just come from one of the two monthly visits I am allowed to make her, as a member of her family.
The severity and cruelty of the treatment she is receiving at Occoquan are so much greater than she would have to suffer in Russia for the simple political offense she is accused of having committed that I hope you will be able to intercede with the officials of this country for her.
Her offense, aside from the fact that she infringed no law nor disturbed the peace, had only a political aim, and was proved to be political by the words of the judge who sentenced her, for he declared that because of the innocent inscription on her banner he would make her sentence light.
Since her imprisonment she has been forced to wear the dress of a criminal, which she would not in Russia; she has had to eat only the coarse and unpalatable food served the criminal inmates, and has not been allowed, as she would in Russia, to have other food brought to her; nor has she, as she would be there been under the daily care of a physician. She is not permitted to write letters, nor to have free access to books and other implements of study. Nina Samarodin has visibly lost in weight and strength since her imprisonment, and she has a constant headache from hunger.
Her motive in holding the banner by the White House, I
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feel, cannot but appeal to you, Excellency, for she says it was the knowledge that her family were fighting in Russia in this great war for democracy, and that she was cut off from serving with them that made her desire to do what she could to help the women of this nation achieve the freedom her own people have.
Will you, if it is within your power, attempt to have her recognized as a political prisoner, and relieve the severity of the treatment she is receiving for obeying this impulse born of her love of liberty and the dictates of her conscience?
I have, Excellency, the honor to be,
Respectfully, your countrywoman,
(Signed) VERA SAMARODIN,
Baltimore, Maryland.
Another Russian, Maria Moravsky, author and poet, who had herself been imprisoned in Czarist Russia and who was touring America at the time of this controversy, expressed her surprise that our suffrage prisoners should be treated as common criminals. She wrote:[1] “I have been twice in the Russian prison; life in the solitary cell was not sweet; but I can assure you it was better than that which American women suffragists must bear.
“We were permitted to read and write; we wore our own clothes; we were not forced to mix with the criminals; we did no work. (Only a few women exiled to Siberia for extremely serious political crimes were compelled to work.) And our guardians and even judges respected us; they felt we were victims, because we struggled for liberty.”
The Commissioners, who bad to bear the responsibility of an answer to these protests and to the demand of the prisoners, contended to all alike that political prisoners did not exist.
“We shall be happy to establish a precedent,” said the women.
“But in America,” stammered the Commissioners, “there is no need for such a thing as political prisoners.”
[1]Reprinted from The Suffragist, Feb. 8, 1919.
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“The very fact that we can be sentenced to such long terms for a political offense shows that there does exist, in fact, a group of people who have come into conflict with state power for dissenting from the prevailing political system,” our representatives answered.
We cited definitions of political offenses by eminent criminologists, penologists, sociologists, statesmen and historians. We declared that all authorities on political crime sustained our contention and that we clearly came under the category of political, if any crime. We pointed as proof to James Bryce, George Sigerson, Maurice Parmelee and even to Clemenceau, who defined the distinction between political offenses and common law crimes thus: ” . . . theoretically a crime committed in the interest of the criminal is a common law crime, while an offense committed in the public interest is a political crime.”[1]
We called to their attention the established custom of special treatment of political prisoners in Russia, France, Italy and even Turkey.[2]
We told them that as early as 18’72 the International Prison Congress meeting in London recommended a distinction in the treatment of political and common law criminals and the resolution of recommendation was “agreed upon by the representatives of all the Powers of Europe and America-with the tacit concurrence of British and Irish officials.”[3]
Mr. John Koren, International Prison Commissioner[4] for the United States, was throughout this agitation making a study of this very problem. As chairman of a Special Commit-
[1]Speech before the French Chamber of Deputies May 16, 1876, advocating amnesty for those who participated in the Commune of 1871. From the Annales de la Chambre des Deputes, 1876, v. 2, pp. 44-48.
[2]Those interested in the question of political prisoners and their treatment abroad may want to read Concerning Political Prisoners, Appendix 6.
[3]Siegerson, Political Prisoners at Home and Abroad, p. 10.
[4]Appointed and sponsored by the Department of State as delegate to the International Prison Congress.
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tee of the American Prison Association, empowered to investi- gate the problem of political prisoners for America, he made a report at the annual meeting of the American Prison Associ- ation in New York, October, 1919, entitled “The Political Of fenders and their Status in Prison”[1] in which he says:
“The political offender . . . must be measured by a different rule, and . . . is a creature of extraordinary and temporary conditions . . . .
“There are times in which the tactics used in the pursuit of political recognition may result in a technical violation of the law for which imprisonment ensues, as witness the suffragist cases in Washington . . . . These militants were completely out of place in a workhouse, . . . they could not be made to submit to discipline fashioned to meet the needs of the derelicts of society, and . . . they therefore destroyed it for the entire institution.”
There was no doubt in the official mind but that our claim was just. But the Administration would not grant this demand, as such, of political prisoners. It must continue to persuade public opinion that our offense was not of a political nature; that it was nothing more than unpleasant and unfortunate riotous conduct in the capital. The legend of “a few slightly mad women seeking notoriety” must be sustained. Our demand was never granted, but it was kept up until the last imprisonment and was soon reinforced by additional protest tactics. Our suffrage prisoners, however, made an important contribution toward establishing this reform which others will consummate. They were the first in America to organize and sustain this demand over a long period of time. In America we maintain a most backward policy in dealing with political prisoners. We have neither regulation nor precedent for special treatment of them. Nor have we official flexibility.
[1]Mr. Koren discusses the political offender from the penological, not the social, point of view.
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This controversy was at its height in the press and in the public mind when President Wilson sent the following message, through a New York State suffrage leader, on behalf of the approaching New York referendum on state woman suffrage:
“May I not express to you my very deep interest in the campaign in New York for the adoption of woman suffrage, and may I not say that I hope no voter will be influenced in his decision with regard to the great matter by anything the so-called pickets may have done here in Washington. However justly they may have laid themselves open to serious criticism, their action represents, I am sure, so small a fraction of the women of the country who are urging the adoption of woman suffrage that it would be most unfair and argue a narrow view to allow their actions to prejudice the cause itself. I am very anxious to see the great state of New York set a great example in this matter.”
This statement showed a political appreciation of the growing power of the movement. Also it would be difficult to prove that the “small fraction” had not shown political wisdom in injecting into the campaign the embarrassment of a controversy which was followed by the above statement of *the President. In the meantime he continued to imprison in Washington the “so-called pickets” whom he hoped would not influence the decision of the men voters of New York. It will be remembered, in passing, that the New York voters adopted suffrage at this time, although they had rejected it two years earlier. If the voters of New York were influenced at all by the “so-called pickets,” could even President Wilson himself satisfactorily prove that it had been an adverse influence?
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Chapter 10
The Hunger Strike-A Weapon
When the Administration refused to grant the demand of the prisoners and of that portion of the public which supported them, for the rights of political prisoners, it was decided to resort to the ultimate protest-weapon inside prison. A hunger strike was undertaken, not only to reinforce the verbal demand for the rights of political prisoners, but also as a final protest against unjust imprisonment and increasingly long sentences. This brought the Administration face to face with a more acute embarrassment. They had to choose between more stubborn resistance and capitulation: They continued for a while longer on the former path.
Little is known in this country about the weapon of the hunger strike. And so at first it aroused tremendous indignation. “Let them starve to death,” said the thoughtless one, who did not perceive that that was the very thing a political administration could least afford to do. “Mad fanatics,” said a kindlier critic. The general opinion was that the hunger strike was “foolish.”
Few people realize that this resort to the refusal of food is almost as old as civilization. It has always represented a passionate desire to achieve an end. There is not time to go into the religious use of it, which would also be pertinent, but I will cite a few instances which have tragic and amusing likenesses to the suffrage hunger strike.
According to the Brehon Law,[1] which was the code of
[1]Joyce, A Social History of Ancient Ireland, Vol. I, Chapter VIII.
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ancient Ireland by which justice was administered under ancient Irish monarchs (from the earliest record to the 17th century), it became the duty of an injured person, when all else failed, to inflict punishment directly, for wrong done. “The plaintiff `fasted on’ the defendant.” He went to the house of the defendant and sat upon his doorstep, remaining there without food to force the payment of a debt, for example. The debtor was compelled by the weight of custom and public opinion not to let the plaintiff die at his door, and yielded. Or if he did not yield, he was practically outlawed by the community, to the point of being driven away. A man who refused to abide by the custom not only incurred personal danger but lost all character.
If resistance to this form of protest was resorted to it had to take the form of a counter-fast. If the victim of such a protest thought himself being unjustly coerced, he might fast in opposition, “to mitigate or avert the evil.”
“Fasting on a man” was also a mode of compelling action of another sort. St. Patrick fasted against King Trian to compel him to have compassion on his [Trian’s] slaves.[1] He also fasted against a heretical city to compel it to become orthodox.[2] He fasted against the pagan King Loeguire to “constrain him to his will.”[3]
This form of hunger strike was further used under the Brehon Law as compulsion to obtain a request. For example, the Leinstermen on one occasion fasted on St. Columkille till they obtained from him the promise that an extern King should never prevail against them.
It is interesting to note that this form of direct action was adopted because there was no legislative machinery to enforce justice. These laws were merely a collection of customs attaining the force of law by long usage, by hereditary habit, and by
[1]Tripartite Life of St. Patrick, CLXXVII, p. 218. [2]Ibid. CLXXVII, p. 418.
[3]Ibid. CLXXVII, p. 556.
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public opinion. Our resort to this weapon grew out of the same situation. The legislative machinery, while empowered to give us redress, failed to function, and so we adopted the fast.
The institution of fasting on a debtor still exists in the East. It is called by the Hindoos “sitting dharna.”
The hunger strike was continuously used in Russia by prisoners to obtain more humane practices toward them. Kropotkin 1 cites an instance in which women prisoners hunger struck to get their babies back. If a child was born to a woman during her imprisonment the babe was immediately taken from her and not returned. Mothers struck and got their babies returned to them.
He cites another successful example in Rharkoff prison in 1878 when six prisoners resolved to hunger strike to death if necessary to win two things-to be allowed exercise and to have the sick prisoners taken out of chains.
There are innumerable instances of hunger strikes, even to death, in Russian prison history. But more often the demands of the strikers were won.. Breshkovsky[2] tells of a strike by 17 women against outrage, which elicited the desired promises from the warden.
As early as 1877 members of the Land and Liberty Society s imprisoned for peaceful and educational propaganda, in the Schlusselburg Fortress for political prisoners, hunger struck against inhuman prison conditions and frightful brutalities and won their points.
During the suffrage campaign in England this weapon was used for the double purpose of forcing the release of imprisoned militant suffragettes, and of compelling the British government to act.
Among the demonstrations was a revival of the ancient Irish
[1]See In Russian and French Prisons, P. Kropotkin.
[2]For Russia’s Freedom, by Ernest Poole,-An Interview with Breshkovsky.
[3]See The Russian Bastille, Simon O. Pollock.
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custom by Sylvia Pankhurst, who in addition to her hunger strikes within prison, “fasted on” the doorstep of Premier Asquith to compel him to see a deputation of women on the granting of suffrage to English women. She won.
Irish prisoners have revived the hunger strike to compel either release or trial of untried prisoners and have Lyon. As I write, almost a hundred Irish prisoners detained by England for alleged nationalist activities, but not brought to trial, hunger struck to freedom. As a direct result of this specific hunger strike England has promised a renovation of her practices in dealing with Irish rebels.
And so it was that when we came to the adoption of this accelerating tactic, we had behind us more precedents for winning our point than for losing. We were strong in the knowledge that we could “fast on” President Wilson and his powerful Administration, and compel him to act or “fast back.”
Among the prisoners who with Alice Paul led the hunger strike was a very picturesque figure, Rose Winslow (Ruza Wenclawska) of New York, whose parents had brought her in infancy from Poland to become a citizen of “free” America. At eleven she was put at a loom in a Pennsylvania mill, where she wove hosiery for fourteen hours a day until tuberculosis claimed her at nineteen. A poet by nature she developed her mind to the full in spite of these disadvantages, and when she was forced to abandon her loom she became an organizer for the Consumers’ League, and later a vivid and eloquent power in the suffrage movement.
Her group preceded Miss Paul’s by about a week in prison.
These vivid sketches of Rose Winslow’s impressions while in the prison hospital were written on tiny scraps of paper and smuggled out to us, and to her husband during her imprisonment. I reprint them in their original form with cuts but no editing.
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“If this thing is necessary we will naturally go through with it. Force is so stupid a weapon. I feel so happy doing my bit for decency-for our war, which is after all, real and fundamental.”
“The women are all so magnificent, so beautiful. Alice Paul is as thin as ever, pale and large-eyed. We have been in solitary for five weeks. There is nothing to tell but that the days go by somehow. I have felt quite feeble the last few days faint, so that I could hardly get my hair brushed, my arms ached so. But to-day I am well again. Alice Paul and I talk back and forth though we are at opposite ends of the building and, a hall door also shuts us apart. But occasionally thrills-we escape from behind our iron-barred doors and visit. Great laughter and rejoicing!”
To her husband:
“My fainting probably means nothing except that I am not strong after these weeks. I know you won’t be alarmed.
I told about a syphilitic colored woman with one leg. The other one cut off, having rotted so that it was alive with maggots when she came in. The remaining one is now getting as bad. They are so short of nurses that a little colored girl of twelve, who is here waiting to have her tonsils removed, waits on her. This child and two others share a ward with a syphilitic child of three or four years, whose mother refused to have it at home. It makes you absolutely ill to see it. I am going to break all three windows as a protest against their confining Alice Paul with these!
“Dr. Gannon is chief of a hospital. Yet Alice Paul and I found we had been taking baths in one of the tubs here, in which this syphilitic child, an incurable, who has his eyes bandaged all the time, is also bathed. He has been here a year. Into the room where he lives came yesterday two children to be
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operated on for tonsillitis. They also bathed in the same tub. The syphilitic woman has been in that room seven months. Cheerful mixing, isn’t it? The place is alive with roaches, crawling all over the walls, everywhere. I found one in my bed the other day . . . .”
“There is great excitement about my two syphilitics. Each nurse is being asked whether she told me. So, as in all institutions where an unsanitary fact is made public, no effort is made to make the wrong itself right. All hands fall to, to find the culprit, who made it known, and he is punished.”
“Alice Paul is in the psychopathic ward. She dreaded forcible feeding frightfully, and I hate to think how she must be feeling. I had a nervous time of it, gasping a long time afterward, and my stomach rejecting during the process. I spent a bad, restless night, but otherwise I am all right. The poor soul who fed me got liberally besprinkled during the process. I heard myself making the most hideous sounds . . . . One feels so forsaken when one lies prone and people shove a pipe down one’s stomach.” ‘
“This morning but for an astounding tiredness, I am all right. I am waiting to see what happens when the President realizes that brutal bullying isn’t quite a statesmanlike method for settling a demand for justice at home. At least, if men are supine enough to endure, women-to their eternal glory-are not.
“They took down the boarding from Alice Paul’s window yesterday, I heard. It is so delicious about Alice and me. Over in the jail a rumor began that I was considered insane and would be examined. Then came Doctor White, and said he had come to see ‘the thyroid case.’ When they left we argued about the matter, neither of us knowing which was considered `suspi-
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cious.’ She insisted it was she, and, as it happened, she was right. Imagine any one thinking Alice Paul needed to be `under observation!’ The thick-headed idiots!”
“Yesterday was a bad day for me in feeding. I was vomiting continually during the process. The tube has developed an irritation somewhere that is painful.
“Never was there a sentence[1] like ours for such an offense as ours, even in England. No woman ever got it over there even for tearing down buildings. And during all that agitation we were busy saying that never would such things happen in the United States. The men told us they would not endure such frightfulness.”
“Mary Beard and Helen Todd were allowed to stay only a minute, and I cried like a fool. I am getting over that habit, I think.
“I fainted again last night. I just fell flop over in the bathroom where I was washing my hands and was led to bed when I recovered, by a nurse. I lost. consciousness just as I got there again. I felt horribly faint until 12 o’clock, then fell asleep for awhile.”
“I was getting frantic because you seemed to think Alice was with me in the hospital. She was in the psychopathic ward. The same doctor feeds us both, and told me. Don’t let them tell you we take this well. Miss Paul vomits much. I do, too, except when I’m not nervous, as I have been every time against my will. I try to be less feeble-minded. It’s the nervous reaction, and I can’t control it much. I don’t imagine bathing one’s food in tears very good for one.
“We think of the coming feeding all day. It is horrible.
[1]Sentence of seven months for “obstructing traffic.”
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The doctor thinks I take it well. I hate the thought of Alice Paul and the others if I take it well.”
“We still get no mail; we are `insubordinate.’ It’s strange, isn’t it; if you ask for food fit to eat, as we did, you are `insubordinate’; and if you refuse food you are `insubordinate.’ Amusing. I am really all right. If this continues very long I perhaps won’t be. I am interested to see how long our so-called `splendid American men’ will stand for this form of discipline.
“All news cheers one marvelously because it is hard to feel anything but a bit desolate and forgotten here in this place.
“All the officers here know we are making this hunger strike that women fighting for liberty may be considered political prisoners; we have told them. God knows we don’t want other women ever to have to do this over again.”
There have been sporadic and isolated cases of hunger strikes in this country but to my knowledge ours was the first to be organized and sustained over a long period of time. We shall see in subsequent chapters how effective this weapon was.
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Chapter 11
Administration Terrorism
The Administration tried in another way to stop picketing. It sentenced the leader, Alice Paul, to the absurd and desperate sentence of seven months in the Washington jail for “obstructing traffic.”
With the “leader” safely behind the bars for so long a time, the agitation would certainly weaken! So thought the Administration! To their great surprise, however, in the face of that reckless and extreme sentence, the longest picket line of the entire campaign formed at the White House in the late afternoon of November 10th. Forty-one women picketed in protest against this wanton persecution of their leader, as well as against the delay in passing the amendment. Face to face with an embarrassing number of prisoners the Administration used its wits and decided to reduce the number to a manageable size before imprisoning this group. Failing of that they tried still another way out. They resorted to imprisonment with terrorism.
In order to show how widely representative of the nation this group of pickets was, I give its personnel complete:
First Group
New York-Mrs. John Winters Brannan, Miss Belle Sheinberg, Mrs. L. H. Hornsby, Mrs. Paula Jakobi, Mrs. Cyn- thia Cohen, Miss M. Tilden Burritt, Miss Dorothy Day, Mrs. Henry Butterworth, Miss Cora Week, Mrs. P. B. Johns, Miss
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Elizabeth Hamilton, Mrs. Ella O. Guilford, New York City; Miss Amy Juengling, Miss Hattie Kruger, Buffalo.
Second Group
Massachusetts-Mrs. Agnes H. Morey, Brookline; Mrs. William Bergen and Miss Camilla Whitcomb, Worcester; Miss Ella Findeisen, Lawrence; Miss L. J. C. Daniels, Boston. New Jersey-Mrs. George Scott, Montclair. Pennsylvania-Mrs. Lawrence Lewis, Miss Elizabeth McShane, Miss Katherine Lincoln, Philadelphia.
Third Group
California-Mrs. William Kent, Kentfield. Oregon-Miss Alice Gram, Miss Betty Gram, Portland. Utah-Mrs. R. B. Quay, Mrs. T. C. Robertson, Salt Lake City. Colorado-Mrs. Eva Decker, Colorado Springs, Mrs. Genevieve Williams, Manitou.
Fourth Group
Indiana-Mrs. Charles W. Barnes, Indianapolis. Oklahoma-Mrs. Kate Stafford, Oklahoma City. Minnesota-Mrs. J. H. Short, Minneapolis. Iowa-Mrs. A. N. Beim, Des Moines; Mrs. Catherine Martinette, Eagle Grove.
Fifth Group
New York-Miss Lucy Burns, New York City. District of Columbia-Mrs. Harvey Wiley.
Louisiana-Mrs. Alice M. Cosu, New Orleans. Maryland-Miss Mary Bartlett Dixon, Easton; Miss Julia Emory, Baltimore.
Florida-Mrs. Mary I. Nolan, Jacksonville.
There were exceptionally dramatic figures in this group. Mrs. Mary Nolan of Florida, seventy-three years old, frail in
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health but militant in spirit, said she had come to take her place with the women struggling for liberty in the same spirit that her revolutionary ancestor, Eliza Zane, had carried bullets to the fighters in the war for independence.
Mrs. Harvey Wiley looked appealing and beautiful as she said in court, “We took this action with great consecration of spirit, with willingness to sacrifice personal liberty for al] the women of the country.”
Judge Mullowny addressed the prisoners with many high-sounding words about the seriousness of obstructing the traffic in the national capital, and inadvertently slipped into a discourse on Russia, and the dangers of revolution. We always wondered why the government was not clever enough to eliminate political discourses, at least during trials, where the offenders were charged with breaking a slight regulation. But their minds were too full of the political aspect of our offense to conceal it. “The truth of the situation is that the court has not been given power to meet it,” the judge lamented. “It is very, very puzzling-I find you guilty of the offense charged, but will take the matter of sentence under advisement.”
And so the “guilty” pickets were summarily released.
The Administration did not relish the incarceration of forty-one women for another reason than limited housing accommodations. Forty-one women representing sixteen states in the union might create a considerable political dislocation. But these same forty-one women were determined to force the Administration to take its choice. It could allow them to continue their peaceful agitation or it could stand the reaction which was bound to come from imprisoning them. And so the forty-one women returned to the White House gates to resume’ their picketing. They stood guard several minutes before the police, taken unawares, could summon sufficient force to arrest them, and commandeer enough cars to carry them to police headquarters. As the Philadelphia North American pointed
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out: “There was no disorder. The crowd waited with interest and in a noticeably friendly spirit to see what would happen. There were frequent references to the pluck of the silent sentinels.”
The following morning the women were ordered by Judge Mullowny to “come back on Friday. I am not yet prepared to try the case.”
Logic dictated that either we had a right to stand at the gates with our banners or we did not have that right; but the Administration was not interested in logic. It had to stop picketing. Whether this was done legally or illegally, logically or illogically, clumsily or dexterously, was of secondary importance. Picketing must be stopped!
Using their welcome release to continue their protest, the women again marched with their banners to the White House in an attempt to picket. Again they were arrested. No one who saw that line will ever forget the impression it made, not only on friends of the suffragists, but on the general populace of Washington, to see these women force with such magnificent defiance the hand of a wavering Administration. On the following morning they were sentenced to from six days to six months in prison. Miss Burns received six months.
In pronouncing the lightest sentence upon Mrs. Nolan, the judge said that he did so on account of her age. He urged her, however, to pay her fine, hinting that jail might be too severe on her and might bring on death. At this suggestion, tiny Mrs. Nolan pulled herself up on her toes and said with great dignity: “Your Honor, I have a nephew fighting for democracy in France. He is offering his life for his country. I should be ashamed if I did not join these brave women in their fight for democracy in America. I should be proud of the honor to die in prison for the liberty of American women.” Even the judge seemed moved by her beautiful and simple spirit.
In spite of the fact that the women were sentenced to serve
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their sentences in the District Jail, where they would join Miss Paul and her companions, all save one were immediately sent to Occoquan workhouse.
It had been agreed that the demand to be treated as political prisoners, inaugurated by previous pickets, should be continued, and that failing to secure such rights they would unanimously refuse to eat food or do prison labor.
Any words of mine would be inadequate to tell the story of the prisoners’ reception at the Occoquan workhouse. The following is the statement of Mrs. Nolan, dictated upon her release, in the presence of Mr. Dudley Field Malone:
It was about half past seven at night when we got to Occoquan workhouse. A woman [Mrs. Herndon] was standing behind a desk when we were brought into this office, and there were five or six men also in the room. Mrs. Lewis, who spoke for all of us, . . . ;said she must speak to Whittaker, the superintendent of the place.
“You’ll sit here all night, then,” said Mrs. Herndon.
I saw men begin to come upon the porch, but I didn’t think anything about it. Mrs. Herndon called my name, but I did not answer. . . ‘
Suddenly the door literally burst open and Whittaker burst in like a tornado; some men followed him. We could see a crowd of them on the porch. They were not in uniform. They looked as much like tramps as anything. They seemed to come in-and in-and in. One had a face that made me think of an ourang-outang. Mrs. Lewis stood up. Some of us had been sitting and lying on the floor, we were so tired. She had hardly begun to speak, saying we demanded to be treated as political prisoners, when Whittaker said:
“You shut up. I have men here to handle you.” Then he shouted, “Seize her!” I turned and saw men spring toward her, and then some one screamed, “They have taken Mrs. Lewis.”
A man sprang at me and caught me by the shoulder. I am used to remembering a bad foot, which I have had for years, and I remember saying, “I’ll come with you; don’t drag me;
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I have a lame foot.” But I was jerked down the steps and away into the dark. I didn’t have my feet on the ground. I guess that saved me. I heard Mrs. Cosu, who was being dragged along with me, call, “Be careful of your foot.”
Out of doors it was very dark. The building to which they took us was lighted up as we came to it. I only remember the American flag flying above it because it caught the light from a window in the wing. We were rushed into a large room that we found opened on a large hall with stone cells on each side. They were perfectly dark. Punishment cells is what they call them. Mine was filthy. It had no window save a slip at the top and no furniture but an iron bed covered with a thin straw pad, and an open toilet flushed from outside the cell . . . .
In the hall outside was a man called Captain Reems. He had on a uniform and was brandishing a thick stick and shouting as we were shoved into the corridor, “Damn you, get in here.”
I saw Dorothy Day brought in. She is a frail girl. The two men handling her were twisting her arms above her head. Then suddenly they lifted her up and banged her down over the arm of an iron bench-twice. As they ran me past, she was lying there with her arms out, and we heard one of the men yell, “The suffrager! My mother ain’t no suffrager. I’ll put you through .”
At the end of the corridor they pushed me through a door. Then I lost my balance and fell against the iron bed. Mrs. Cosu struck the wall. Then they threw in two mats and two dirty blankets. There was no light but from the corridor. The door was barred from top to bottom. The walls and floors were brick or stone cemented over. Mrs. Cosu would not let me lie on the floor. She put me on the couch and stretched out on the floor on one of the two pads they threw in. We had only lain there a few minutes, trying to get our breath, when Mrs. Lewis, doubled over and handled like a sack of something, was literally thrown in. Her head struck the iron bed. We thought she was dead. She didn’t move. We were crying over her as we lifted her to the pad on my bed, when we heard Miss Burns call:
“Where is Mrs. Nolan?”
I replied, “I am here.”
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Mrs. Cosu called out, “They have just thrown Mrs. Lewis in here, too.”
At this Mr. Whittaker came to the door and told us not to dare to speak, or he would put the brace and bit in our mouths and the straitjacket on our bodies. We were so terrified we kept very still. Mrs. Lewis was not unconscious; she was only stunned. But Mrs. Cosu was desperately ill as the night wore on. She had a bad heart attack and was then vomiting. We called and called. We asked them1to send our own doctor, because we thought she was dying . . . . They [the guards paid no attention. A cold wind blew in on us from the outside, and we three lay there shivering and only half conscious until morning.
“One at a time, come out,” we heard some one call at the barred door early in the morning. I went first. I bade them both good- by. I didn’t know where I was going or whether I would ever see them again. They took me to Mr. Whittaker’s office, where he called my name.
“You’re Mrs. Mary Nolan,” said Whittaker.
“You’re posted,” said I.
“Are you willing to put on prison dress and go to the workroom?” said he.
I said, “No.”
“Don’t you know now that I am Mr. Whittaker, the superintendent?” he asked.
“Is there any age limit to your workhouse?” I said. “Would a woman of seventy-three or a child of two be sent here?”
I think I made him think. He motioned to the guard.
“Get a doctor to examine her,” he said.
In the hospital cottage I was met by Mrs. Herndon and taken to a little room with two white beds and a hospital table.
“You can lie down if you want to,” she said.
I took off my coat and hat. I just lay down on the bed and fell