Jailed for Freedom Part 25

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 a.s.sociate 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 Was.h.i.+ngton."

"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.

Disfranchis.e.m.e.nt is the prison of women's power and spirit. Women have long been cla.s.sed with criminals so far as their voting rights are concerned. And how quick the Government is to live up to its cla.s.sification 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 pa.s.s 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 friends.h.i.+p 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 p.r.o.nounced 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 a.s.sociation we had never had a serious difference. He was good enough to say that my loyalty to him bad been one of the happiest circ.u.mstances 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 att.i.tude. 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 pet.i.tion 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 fas.h.i.+on for things which have been done by the police officials of the city of Was.h.i.+ngton?"

"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 Was.h.i.+ngton, 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 a.s.serted 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 att.i.tude then angered me and I said, "Mr. President, if there is any sacrifice in this unhappy circ.u.mstance, 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 statesmans.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.s 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 a.s.sist suffrage as an urgent war measure and a necessary part of America's program for world democracy, to which the President replied: "The enfranchis.e.m.e.nt 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 leaders.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.s the suffrage amendment.