 CHAPTER IX POLITICAL PRISONERS Thinking 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 offence 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. Ms. 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 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 labours 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 non-resistant. 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 by-elections, going to Holloway prison together where they joined the English women, on hunger strike. Miss Burns remained organizing in Scotland while Miss Paul was obliged to return to America after serious illness following a 30-day period of imprisonment, during all of which time she was forcibly fed. Miss Burns and she did not meet again until 1913, three 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 strategists 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 walls 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 District of Columbia, as political prisoners we the undersigned refused 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 women's 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 Moloni 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 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 right's 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. 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, and a surprisingly widespread 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 Farrah Samaritan 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 Samaritan. 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 Akaquan 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 offence, 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 Samaritan 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 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 the 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 Samaritan, Baltimore, Maryland. Another Russian, Maria Muravsky, author and poet, who had herself been imprisoned in Tsarist Russia 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, footnote, reprinted from the suffragist, February 8, 1919. End of footnote. 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. 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 crimes sustained our contention, that we clearly came under the category of political, if any, crime. We pointed as proof to James Brice, Joyce Sigerson, Maurice Parmele, 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. Footnote. Speech before the French Chamber of Deputies, May 16th, 1876, advocating amnesty for those who participated in the Commune of 1871, from the Annelais de la Chambre de disputes, 1876, volume 2, pages 44 to 48. End of footnote. We called to their attention the established custom of special treatment of political prisoners in Russia, France, Italy, and even Turkey. We told them, that as early as 1872, 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. Footnote. Sigerson, political prisoners at home and abroad, page 10. End of footnote. Mr. John Corrin, International Prison Commissioner, Footnote. Appointed and sponsored by the Department of State as Delegate to the International Prison Congress. End of footnote. For the United States, was throughout this agitation making a study of this very problem. As Chairman of a Special Committee of the American Prison Association, empowered to investigate the problem of political prisoners for America, he made a report at the annual meeting of the American Prison Association in New York, October 1919, entitled, The Political Offenders and Their Status in Prison. Footnote. Mr. Corrin discusses the political offender from the penilogical, not the social point of view. End of footnote. 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 witnessed the suffragist cases in Washington. These militants were completely out of place in a workhouse. They could not be made to submit to discipline fashion 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 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 contact 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. 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 women's suffrage. May I not express to you my very deep interest in the campaign in New York for the adoption of women's 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 women's 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? 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 it 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 amusic likenesses to the suffrage hunger strike. According to the Brayan law, footnote, Joyce, a social history of ancient Ireland, volume 1, chapter 8, end of footnote, which was the code of 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 counterfast. 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 Treon to compel him to have compassion on his treons' slaves. Footnote. Tripartite life of St. Patrick. One-seventy-seven. End of footnote. He also fasted against a heretical city to compel it to become orthodox. He fasted against the pagan king Loguar to constrain him to his will. This form of hunger strike was further used under the Breyan law as compulsion to obtain a request. For example, the Leinster men on one occasion fasted on St. Kolumpkil till they obtained from him the promise that an external 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 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 Hindus, Sitting Daharna. The hunger strike was continuously used in Russia by prisoners to obtain more humane practices toward them. Kropotkin. Footnote. C. In Russian and French prisons. P. Kropotkin. Footnote. Sites 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 Rarkov 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 one. Brzezkovsky. Footnote. For Russia's freedom by Ernest Poole. An interview with Brzezkovsky. End of footnote. Tales of a Strike by Seventeen 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 Schleschberg 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 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 won. 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, Ruzo Winklowska, 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 Consumer's League and later a vivid and eloquent power in the suffrage movement. Her group proceeded 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. 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 also 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 today 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 syphilictic 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 syphilictic 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 syphilictic child and 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 operated on for tonsillitis. They also bathed in the same tub. The syphilictic 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 syphilictics. 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 too 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 outstanding tiredness, I am all right. I am waiting to see what happens when the President realizes that brutal bullying isn't quite a statesman-like method for settling a demand for justice at home. At least, if men are supine enough to endure, women, to their eternal glory, are knocked. 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 Dr. 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 suspicious. She insisted it was she, and as it happened she was right. Imagine anyone 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, like ours, for such an offense as ours, even in England. Footnote. Sentence of seven months for obstructing traffic. End of footnote. 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'm 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 twelve o'clock, then fell asleep for a while. 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. 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 in subordinate. It's strange, isn't it? If you ask for food fit to eat, as we did, you are in subordinate. And if you refuse food, you are in subordinate. I'm using. 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. 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 quote-unquote obstructing traffic. With the leader safely behind 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-Branon, Ms. Belle Shineberg, Mrs. L. H. Hornsby, Mrs. Paula Jacoby, Mrs. Cynthia Cohen, Ms. M. Tilden Burritt, Ms. Dorothy Day, Mrs. Henry Butterworth, Ms. Cora Week, Ms. P. B. Johns, Ms. Elizabeth Hamilton, Mrs. Ella O. Guilford, New York City, Ms. Amy Jungling, Ms. Hattie Krueger, Buffalo. Second group, Massachusetts, Mrs. Agnes H. Moray Brookline, Mrs. William Bergen and Ms. Camilla Whitcomb-Wuster, Ms. Ella Feindyson, Lawrence, Ms. L. J. C. Daniels, Boston, New Jersey, Ms. George Scott Montclair, Pennsylvania, Ms. Lawrence Lewis, Ms. Elizabeth McShane, Ms. Catherine Lincoln, Philadelphia. Third group, California, Ms. William Kent Kentfield, Oregon, Ms. Alice Graham, Ms. Betty Graham, Portland, Utah, Mrs. RBK, Mrs. T. C. Robertson, Salt Lake City, Colorado, Ms. Eva Decker, Colorado Springs, Ms. Genevieve Williams, Manitou. Fourth group, Indiana, Ms. Charles W. Barnes, Indianapolis, Oklahoma, Ms. Kate Stafford, Oklahoma City, Minnesota, Ms. J. H. Short, Minneapolis, Iowa, Ms. A. N. Beam, Des Moines, Ms. Catherine Martinette, Eagle Grove. Fifth group, New York, Ms. Lucy Burns, New York City, District of Columbia, Ms. Harvey Wiley, Louisiana, Ms. Alice M. Cosue, New Orleans, Maryland, Ms. Mary Bartlett Dixon, Easton, Ms. Julia Emory, Baltimore, Florida, Ms. Mary I. Nolan, Jacksonville. There were exceptionally dramatic figures in this group. Mrs. Mary Nolan of Florida, 73 years old, frail in 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. Ms. 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 all the women of the country. Judge Maloney 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 only a slight regulation, but their minds were too full of the political aspect of our offence 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 offence 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 would 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 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 Maloney 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, and 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 pick it. 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 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, Y'all 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 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 prisoner's 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. Harrington, 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 Whitaker, the superintendent of the place. He'll sit here all night then, said Mrs. Harrington. I saw men begin to come up on the porch, but I didn't think anything about it. Mrs. Harrington called my name, but I did not answer. Suddenly, the door literally burst open, and Whitaker 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 orangutan. Ms. Lewis stood up. Some of us had been sitting in line on the floor. We were so tired. She had hardly begun to speak, saying we demanded to be treated as political prisoners when Whitaker 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 someone screamed, they have taken Ms. Lewis. A man sprung at me and caught me by the shoulder. I'm used to remembering the bad foot which I've had for years. And I remember saying, I come with you. Don't drag me. I have a lame foot. But I was jerked down the steps and away into the dock. I didn't have my feet on the ground. I guess that saved me. I heard Mrs. Cusole, who was being drugged along with me, called, be careful of your foot. And 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 wind. 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 called them. Mine was filthy. It had no windows, 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 and the two men handling her were twisting her arms up 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 suffragette. My mother ain't no suffragette. I 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. Cosue struck the wall and 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 and the walls and floors were brick or stone cemented over. Mrs. Cosue 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 or something was literally thrown in. Her head struck the iron bed. We thought she was dead. She didn't move and we were crying over her as we lifted her to the pad on my bed when we heard Ms. Burns call, where is Mrs. Nolan? I replied I am here. Mrs. Cosue called out they've just thrown Mrs. Lewis in here too. At this, Mr. Whitaker came to the door and told us not to dare to speak or he would put the brace and bitten our mouths in a straight jacket on our bodies. We were so terrified we kept very still. Mrs. Lewis was not unconscious. She was only stunned but Mrs. Cosue was desperately ill as the night wore on. She had a bad heart attack and was then vomiting and we called and called. We asked them to send our own doctor because we thought she was dying and they, the gods, paid no attention. A cold wind blew in on us from the outside and we three laid there shivering and only half conscious until morning. One of the time come out we heard someone call at the bar door early in the morning. I went first. I bathed them both goodbye. I didn't know where I was going or whether I would ever see them again. And they took me to Mr. Whitaker's office where he called my name. Your Mrs. Maranolan said Whitaker. Your postage said I. Are you willing to put on prison dress and go to the work room? said he. I said no. Don't you know now that I am Mr. Whitaker the superintendent? he asked. Is there any age limit to your work house? I said what a woman a 73 or a child of two be sent here? I think I made him think. Emotion to the God. Get a doctor to examine her. He said in the hospital cottage I was met by Mrs. Harrington and taken to a little room with two white beds in 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 a bed and fell into a kind of stupa. It was nearly noon and I had had no food off of me since the sandwiches our friends brought us in the courtroom at noon the day before. The doctor came in and examined my heart. Then he examined my lame foot. It had a long blue bruise above the ankle. Well they had knocked me as they took me across the night before. He asked me what caused the bruise. I said those friends when they drug me up to the cell last night. It was paining me. He asked if I wanted lintiment and I said only hot water. They brought that and I noticed they did not lock the door. A negro trust it was there and I fell back again into the same stupa. The next day they brought me some toast and a plate of food. The first I had been offered in over 36 hours. I just looked at the food and motioned it away. It made me sick. I was released on the sixth day and passed the dispensary as I came out. There were a group of my friends Mrs. Brandon and Mrs. Morey and many others. They had on course striped dresses and big grotesque ever shoes. I burst into tears as they led me away. Signed Mary I. Nolan November 21, 1917. The day following their commitment to Occoquan, Mr. O'Brien of Council was directed to see the women to ascertain their condition. Friends and relatives were alarmed as not a line of news had been allowed to penetrate to the world. Mr. O'Brien was denied admission and forced to come back to Washington without any report whatsoever. The next day Mr. O'Brien again attempted to see his clients as did also the mother of Miss Matilda Young, the youngest prisoner in Mr. Whitaker's care, and Miss Catherine Morey who went asking to see her mother. Miss Morey was held under armed guard half a mile from the prison. Admission was denied to all of them. The terrible anxiety at headquarters was not relieved the third day by a report brought from the workhouse by one of the Marines stationed at Quantico Station, Virginia, who had been summoned to the workhouse on the night the women arrived. He brought news that unknown tortures were going on. Mr. O'Brien immediately forced his way through by a court order and brought back to headquarters the astounding news of the campaign of terrorism which had started the moment the prisoners had arrived and which was being continued at that moment. Miss Lucy Burns, who had assumed responsibility for the welfare of the women, had managed to secrete small scraps of paper and a tiny pencil and jot down briefly the day-by-day events at the workhouse. This week of brutality which rivaled old Russia if it did not outstrip it was almost the blackest page in the administration's cruel fight against women. Here are some of the scraps of Miss Burns' day-by-day log smuggled out of the workhouse. Miss Burns is so gifted a writer that I feel apologetic for using these scraps in their raw form, but I know she will forgive me. Wednesday, November 14th. Demanded to see Superintendent Whitaker, request refused. Mrs. Herondon, the matron, said we would have to wait up all night. One of the men-guards said he would put us in a sardine box and put mustard on us. Superintendent Whitaker came at 9 p.m. He refused to hear our demand for political rights. Seized by guards from behind flung off my feet and shot out of the room. All of us were seized by men-guards and dragged to cells in men's part. Dorothy Day was roughly used, back-twisted. Mrs. Mary A. Nolan, 73-year-old picket from Jacksonville, Florida, flung into cell. Mrs. Lawrence Lewis shot by my cell. I slept with Dorothy Day in a single bed. I was handcuffed all night and manacled to the bars part of the time for asking the others how they were, and was threatened with a straight jacket and a buckle-gag. Thursday, November 16th. Asked for Whitaker, who came. He seized Julia Emery by the back of her neck and threw her into the room very brutally. She is a little girl. I asked for counsel to learn the status of the case. I was told to shut up and was again threatened with a straight jacket and a buckle-gag. Later, I was taken to put on prison clothes, refused and resisted strenuously. I was then put in a room where delirium tremens patients are kept. On the seventh day, when Miss Lucy Burns and Mrs. Lawrence Lewis were so weak that Mr. Whitaker feared their death, they were forcibly fed and taken immediately to the jail in Washington. Of the experience, Mrs. Lewis wrote, I was seized, and laid on my back where five people held me, a young colored woman leaping upon my knees which seemed to break under the weight. Dr. Gannon then forced the tube through my lips and down my throat, eye gasping and suffocating with the agony of it. I didn't know where to breathe from and everything turned black when the fluid began pouring in. I was moaning and making the most awful sounds quite against my will, for I did not wish to disturb my friends in the next room. Finally, the tube was withdrawn. I lay motionless. After a while I was dressed and carried in a chair to a waiting automobile, laid on the back seat and driven into Washington to the jail hospital. Previous to the feeding, I had been forcibly examined by Dr. Gannon, I protesting that I wished a woman physician. Of this experience, Ms. Burns wrote on tiny scraps of paper, Wednesday, twelve midnight. Yesterday afternoon at about four or five, Mrs. Lewis and I were asked to go to the operating room, went there and found our clothes. Told we were to go to Washington, no reason as usual. When we were dressed, Dr. Gannon appeared and said he wished to examine us, both refused, were dragged through halls by force, our clothing partly removed by force, and we were examined, heart tested, blood pressure and pulse taken, of course such data is of no value after such a struggle. Dr. Gannon told me then I must be fed, was stretched on bed, two doctors, matron, four-colored prisoners present, Whitaker in hall. I was held down by five people at legs, arms and head. I refused to open mouth. Gannon pushed tube up left nostril. I turned and twisted my head all I could, but he managed to push it up. It hurts nose and throat very much, and makes nose bleed freely. Tube drawn out covered with blood. Operation leaves one very sick. Food dumped directly into stomach feels like a ball of lead. Left nostril, throat and muscles of neck very sore all night. After this I was brought into the hospital in an ambulance. Mrs. Lewis and I placed in same room, slept hardly at all. This morning Dr. Ladd appeared with his tube. Mrs. Lewis and I said we would not be forcibly fed, said he would call in men guards and force us to submit, went away and we were not fed at all this morning. We hear them outside now, cracking eggs. With Miss Burns and Miss Lewis who were regarded as leaders in the hunger strike protest removed to the district jail, Mr. Whitaker and his staff at Occoquan began a systematic attempt to break down the morale of the hunger strikers. Each one was called to the mat and interrogated. Will you work? Will you put on prison clothes? Will you eat? Will you stop picketing? Will you go without paying your fine and promise never to pick it again? How baffled he must have been. The answer was definite and final. Their resistance was superb. One of the few warning incidents during the gray days of our imprisonment was the unexpected sympathy and understanding of one of the government doctors, wrote Miss Betty Graham of Portland, Oregon. This is the most magnificent sacrifice I have ever seen made for a principal. He said, I never believed that American women would care so much about freedom. I have seen women in Russia undergo extreme suffering for their ideals, but unless I had seen this with my own eyes, I would never have believed it. My sister hunger struck in Russia, where she was imprisoned for refusing to reveal the whereabouts of two of her friends, indicted for a government offense. She was fed after three days. You girls are on your ninth day of hunger strike and your condition is critical. It is a great pity that such women should be subjected to this treatment. I hope that you will carry your point and force the end of the government soon. The mother of Matilda Young, the youngest picket, anxiously appealed to Mr. Tumulti, secretary to President Wilson and a family friend, to be allowed to see the president and ask for a special order to visit her daughter. Failing to secure this, she went daily to Mr. Tumulti's office asking if he himself would not intercede for her. Mr. Tumulti assured her that her daughter was in safe hands and that she need give herself no alarm. The stories of the inhuman treatment at Akikuan were false and that she must not believe them. Finally, Mrs. Young pleaded to be allowed to send additional warm clothing to her daughter whom she knew to be too lightly clad for the vigorous temperature of November. Mr. Tumulti assured her that the women were properly clothed and refused to permit the clothing to be sent. The subsequent stories of the women showed what agonies they had endured because they were inadequately clad from the dampness of the cells into which they were thrown. Mrs. John Winters Brannon was among the women who endured the night of terror. Mrs. Brannon is the daughter of Charles A. Dana, founder of the New York Sun, and that great American Patriot of Liberty who was a trusted associate and counselor of Abraham Lincoln. Mrs. Brannon, lifelong suffragist, is an aristocrat of intellect and feeling who has always allied herself with libertarian movements. This was her second term of imprisonment. She wrote a comprehensive affidavit of her experience. After narrating the events which led up to the attack, she continues, Superintendent Whitaker then shouted out in a loud tone a voice, Seize these women! Take them off! That one! That one! Take her off! The guards rushed forward at an almost indescribable scene of violent confusion ensued. I saw one of the guards seize her, Lucy Burns, by the arms, twist or force them back of her, and one or two other guards seized her by the shoulders shaking her violently. I then took up my heavy-sealed skin coat, which was lying by, and put it on in order to prepare myself if attacked. I was trembling at the time and was stunned with terror at the situation as it had developed and said to the Superintendent, I will give my name under protest, and started to walk towards the desk whereon lay the books. The Superintendent shouted to me, Oh no, you won't. Don't talk about protest. I won't have any of that nonsense. I saw the guards seizing the different women of the party with the utmost violence, the furniture being overturned in the room a scene of the utmost disturbance. I saw Miss Lincoln lying on the floor with every appearance of having just been thrown down by the two guards who were standing over her in a menacing attitude. Seeing the general disturbance, I gave up all idea of giving my name at the desk and instinctively joined my companions to go with them and share whatever was in store for them. The whole group of women were thrown, dragged, or herded out of the office onto the porch down the steps to the ground and forced to cross the road to the administration building. During all of this time Superintendent Whitaker was directing the whole attack. All of us were thrown into different cells in the men's prison, I being put in one with four other women, the cell containing a narrow bed and one chair which was immediately removed. During the time that we were being forced into the cells, the guards kept up and uproar, shouting, banging the iron doors, clanging bars, making a terrifying noise. I and one of my companions were lying down on the narrow bed on which were a blanket and one pillow. The door of the cell was opened and a mattress and a blanket being thrown in. The door was violently banged too. My other companions arranged the mattress on the floor and lay down, covering themselves with the blanket. I looked across the corridor and saw Miss Lincoln and asked her whether she was all right, being anxious to know whether she had been hurt by the treatment in the office building. Instantly Superintendent Whitaker rushed forward shouting at me, Stop that! Not another word from your mouth or I will handcuff you, gag you, and put you in a straight jacket. I wished to state again that the cells into which we were put were situated in the man's prison. There was no privacy for the women, and if any of us wished to undress we would be subject to the viewer observation of the guards who remained in the corridor and who could at any moment look at us. Furthermore, the water closets were in full view of the corridor where Superintendent Whitaker and the guards were moving about. The flushing of these closets could only be done from the corridor and we were forced to ask the guards to do this for us, the men who had shortly before attacked us. None of the matrons or women attendants appeared at any time that night, no water was brought to us for washing, no food was offered to us. I was exhausted by what I had seen and been through, and spent the night in absolute terror of further attack and of what might still be in store for us. I thought of the young girls who were with us and feared for their safety. The guards acted brutal in the extreme, incited to their brutal conduct towards us by the Superintendent. I thought of the offence with which we had been charged, merely that of obstructing traffic, and felt that the treatment that we had received was out of all proportion to the offence with which we were charged, and that the Superintendent, the matron, and guards would not have dared to act towards us as they had acted. Unless they relied upon the support of higher authorities. It seemed to me that everything had been done from the time we reached the workhouse to terrorize us, and my fear, lest the extreme of outrage would be worked upon the young girls of our party, became intense. It is impossible for me to describe the terror of that night. The affidavit then continues with the story of how Mrs. Brannon was compelled the following morning to put on prison clothes, was given a cup of skimmed milk and a slice of toast, and then taken to the sewing room where she was put to work, sewing on the underdrawers of the male prisoners. I was half fainting all of that day, and requested permission to lie down, feeling so ill. I could not sleep, having a sense of constant danger. I was almost paralyzed and in wretched physical condition. On Friday afternoon Mrs. Herndon led us through some woods nearby for about three-quarters of a mile, seven of us being in the party. We were so exhausted and weary that we were obliged to stop constantly to rest. On our way back from the walk we heard the baying of hounds very near us in the woods. The matron said, You must hurry. The bloodhounds are loose. One of the party, Miss Findison, asked whether they would attack us to which the matron replied, This is just what they would do. And hurried us along. The baying grew louder and nearer at times, and then more distant as the dogs rushed back and forth, and this went on until we reached the sewing room. The effect of this upon our nerves can better be imagined than described. Every conceivable lie was tried, in an effort to force the women to abandon their various form of resistance. They were told that no efforts were being made from the outside to reach them, and that their attorney had been called off of the case. Each one was told that she was the only one hunger striking. Each one was told that all the others had put on prison clothes and were working. Although they were separated from one another, they suspected the lies and remained strong in their resistance. After Mr. O'Brien's one visit and the subsequent reports in the press, he was thereafter refused admission to the workhouse. The judge had sentenced these women to jail, but the district commissioners had ordered them committed to the workhouse. It was evident that the administration was anxious to keep this group away from Alice Paul and her companions as they counted on handling the rebellion more easily in two groups than one. Meanwhile, the condition of the prisoners in the workhouse grew steadily worse. It was imperative that we force the administration to take them out of the custody of Superintendent Whitaker immediately. We decided to take the only course open to obtain a writ of habeas corpus. A hurried journey by counsel to United States District Judge Waddle of Norfolk, Virginia, brought the writ. It compelled the government to bring the prisoners into court and show cause why they should not be returned to the district jail. This conservative southern judge said of the petition for the writ, It is shocking and blood curdling. There followed a week more melodramatic than the most stirring moving picture film. Although the writ had been applied for in the greatest secrecy, a detective suddenly appeared to accompany Mr. O'Brien from Washington to Norfolk during his stay in Norfolk and back to Washington. Telephone wires at our headquarters were tapped. It was evident that the administration was cognizant of every move in this procedure before it was executed. No sooner was our plan decided upon than friends of the administration besought us to abandon the habeas corpus proceedings. One member of the administration sent an emissary to our headquarters with the following appeal. If you will only drop these proceedings, I can absolutely guarantee you that the prisoners will be removed from the workhouse to the jail in a week. In a week? They may be dead by that time, we answered. We cannot wait. But I tell you, you must not proceed. Why this mysterious week, we asked. Why not tomorrow? Why not instantly? I can only tell you that I have a positive guarantee of the district commissioners that the women will be removed. There were three reasons why the authorities wished for a week's time. They were afraid to move the women in their weakened condition, and before the end of the week they hoped to increase their facilities for forcible feeding at the workhouse. They also wished to conceal the treatment of the women, the exposure of which would be inevitable in any court proceedings. And lastly, the administration was anxious to avoid opening up the whole question of the legality of the very existence of the workhouse in Virginia. Persons convicted in the district for acts committed in violation of district law were transported to Virginia, alien territory, to serve their terms. It was a moot point whether the prisoners were so treated with sufficient warrant in law. Eminent jurists held that the district had no right to convict a person under its laws and commit that person to confinement in another state. They contended that sentence imposed upon a person for unlawful acts in the district should be executed in the district. Hundreds of persons who had been convicted in the District of Columbia and who had served their sentences in Virginia had been without money or influence enough to contest this doubtful procedure in the courts. The administration was alarmed. We quickened our pace. A member of the administration rushed his attorney as courier to the women in the workhouse to implore them not to consent to the habeas corpus proceedings. He was easily admitted and tried to extort from one prisoner at a time a promise to reject the plan. The women suspected his solicitude and refused to make any promise whatsoever without first being allowed to see their own attorney. We began at once to serve the writ. Ordinarily, this would be an easy thing to do, but for us, it developed into a very difficult task. A deputy marshal must serve the writ. Counsel sought a deputy. For miles around Washington, not one was to be found at his home or lodgings. None could be reached by telephone. Meanwhile, Mr. Whitaker had sped from the premises of the workhouse to the district, where he kept himself discreetly hidden for several days. When a deputy was found, six attempts were made to serve the writ. All failed. Finally, by a ruse, Mr. Whitaker was caught at his home late at night. He was aroused to a state of violent temper and made feudal threats of reprisal when he learned that he must produce the suffrage prisoners at the court in Alexandria, Virginia, on the day of November 23rd. Jailed for Freedom by Doris Stevens Part 3 Chapter 12 Alice Paul in Prison Great passions when they run through a whole population inevitably find a great spokesman. A people cannot remain dumb which is moved by profound impulses of conviction, and when spokesmen and leaders are found effective concert of action seems to follow as naturally. Men spring together for common action under a common impulse which has taken hold upon their very natures, and governments presently find that they have those to reckon with who know not only what they want but also the most effective means of making governments uncomfortable until they get it. Governments find themselves, in short, in the presence of agitation, of systematic movements of opinion which do not merely flare up in spasmodic flames and then die down again, but burn with an accumulating ardor which can be checked and extinguished only by removing the grievances and abolishing the unacceptable institutions which are its fuel. Casual discontent can be allayed, but agitation fixed upon conviction cannot be. To fight it is merely to augment its force. It burns irrepressibly in every public assembly, quiet it there, and it gathers head at street corners, drive it dense in its smoulders and private dwellings in social gatherings, in every covert of talk, only to break forth more violently than ever because denied vent and air. It must be reckoned with. Governments have been very resourceful in parrying agitation, in diverting it, in seeming to yield to it, and then cheating it of its objects, entiring it out or evading it, but the end, whether it comes soon or late, is quite certain to be always the same. Constitutional government in the United States, Woodrow Wilson, PhD, LLD, President of Princeton University. The special session of the 65th Congress, known as the War Congress, adjourned in October 1917, having passed every measure recommended as a war measure by the President. In addition, it found time to protect by law migratory birds, to appropriate forty-seven million dollars for deepening rivers and harbors, and to establish more federal judgeships. No honest person would say that lack of time and pressure of war legislation had prevented its consideration of the suffrage measure. If one-hundredth part of the time consumed by its members in spreading the wings of the overworked eagle, and in uttering to bored ears homemade patriotic verse had been spent in considering the liberty of women, this important legislation could have been dealt with. Week after week, Congress met only for three days, and then often merely for prayer and a few hours of purposeless talking. We had asked for liberty and had got a suffrage committee appointed in the House to consider the pros and cons of suffrage, and a favorable report in the Senate from the Committee on Women's Suffrage, nothing more. On the very day and hour of the adjournment of the special session of the War Congress, Alice Paul led eleven women to the White House gates to protest against the administration's allowing its lawmakers to go home without action on the suffrage amendment. Two days later Alice Paul and her colleagues were put on trial. Many times during previous trials I had heard the district attorney for the government shake his finger at Miss Paul and say, We'll get you yet, just wait, and when we do we'll give you a year. It was reported from very authentic sources that Attorney General Gregory had earlier in the agitation seriously considered arresting Miss Paul for the administration on the charge of conspiracy to break the law. We were told this plan was abandoned because as one of the Attorney General's staff put it, no jury would convict her. However, here she was in their hands, in the courtroom. Proceedings opened with the customary formality. The eleven prisoners sat silently at the bar reading their morning papers or a book or enjoying a moment of luxurious idleness, oblivious of the comical movements of a perturbed court. Nothing in the world so baffles the pompous dignity of a court as non-resistant defendants. The judge cleared his throat and the attendants made meaningless gestures. Will the prisoners stand up and be sworn? They will not. Will they question witnesses? They will not. Will they speak in their own behalf? The slender, quiet-voiced, quicker girl arose from her seat. The crowded courtroom pressed forward breathlessly. She said calmly and with unconcern. We do not wish to make any plea before this court. We do not consider ourselves subject to this court, since as an unenfranchised class we have nothing to do with the making of the laws which have put us in this position. What a disconcerting attitude to take! Miss Paul sat down quietly and unexpectedly as she had arisen. The judge moved uneasily in his chair. The gentle way in which it was said was disarming. Would the judge hold him in contempt? He had not time to think. His part of the comedy he had expected to run smoothly, and here was this defiant little woman, calmly stating that we were not subject to the court and that we would therefore have nothing to do with the proceedings. The murmurs had grown to a babble of conversation. A sharp wrap of the gavel restored order and permitted Judge Maloney to say, Unfortunately, I am here to support the laws that are made by Congress and, of course, I am bound by those laws, and you are bound by them as long as you live in this country and not withstanding the fact that you do not recognize the law. Everybody strained his ears for the sentence. The administration had threatened to get the leader. Would they dare? Another pause. I shall suspend sentence for the time being, came solemnly from the judge. Was it that they did not dare confine Miss Paul? Were they beginning actually to perceive the real strength of the movement and the protest that would be aroused if she were imprisoned? Again, we thought perhaps this marked the end of the jailing of women. But though the pickets were released on suspended sentences, there was no indication of any purpose on the part of the administration of acting on the amendment. Two groups, some of those on suspended sentence, others first offenders, again marched to the White House gates. The following motto. The time has come to conquer or submit. For us, there can be but one choice. We have made it. A quotation from President's Second Liberty Lone Appeal was carried by Miss Paul. Dr. Carolyn E. Spencer of Colorado carried, Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God. All were brought to trial again. The trial of Miss Paul's group ran as follows. Mr. Hart, prosecuting attorney for the government. Sergeant Lee, were you on Pennsylvania Avenue near the White House Saturday afternoon? Sergeant Lee, I was. Mr. Hart, at what time? Lee, about 4.35 in the afternoon. Hart, tell the court what you saw. Lee, a little after half past four, when the department clerks were all going home out Pennsylvania Avenue, I saw four suffragettes coming down Madison Place, cross the avenue, and continue on Pennsylvania Avenue to the gate of the White House, where they divided two on the right and two on the left side of the gate. Hart, what did you do? Lee, I made my way through the crowd that was surrounding them and told the ladies they were violating the law by standing at the gates, and wouldn't they please move on. Hart, did they move on? Lee, they did not, and they didn't answer either. Hart, what did you do then? Lee, I placed them under arrest. Hart, what did you do then? Lee, I asked the crowd to move on. Mr. Hart then arose and summing up said, Your Honor, these women have said that they will pick it again. I ask you to impose the maximum sentence. Such confused legal logic was indeed droll. You ladies seem to feel that we discriminate in making arrests and in sentencing you, said the judge heavily. The result is that you forced me to take the most drastic means in my power to compel you to obey the law. More legal confusion. Six months, said the judge to the first offenders, and then you will serve one month more to the others. Ms. Paul's parting remark to the reporters who intercepted her on her way from the courtroom to begin her seven-month sentence was, We are being imprisoned not because we obstructed traffic, but because we pointed out to the President the fact that he was obstructing the cause of democracy at home while Americans were fighting for it abroad. I'm going to let Alice Paul tell her own story as she related it to me one day after her release. It was late afternoon when we arrived at the jail. There we found the suffragists who had preceded us locked in cells. The first thing I remember was the distress of the prisoners about the lack of fresh air. Evening was approaching. Every window was closed tight. The air in which we would be obliged to sleep was foul. There were about eighty Negro and white prisoners crowded together, tear upon tear, frequently two in a cell. I went to a window and tried to open it. Instantly a group of men, prison guards, appeared. Picked me up bodily, threw me into a cell, and locked the door. Rose Winslow and the others were treated in the same way. Determined to preserve our health and that of the other prisoners, we began a concerted fight for fresh air. The windows were about twenty feet distant from the cells, and two sets of iron bars intervened between us and the windows. But we instituted an attack upon them as best we could. Our tin drinking cups, the electric light bulbs, every available article of meager supply in each cell, including my treasured copy of Browning's poems, which I had secretly taken in with me, was thrown through the windows. By this simultaneous attack from every cell, we succeeded in breaking one window before our supply of tiny weapons was exhausted. The fresh October air came in like an exhilarating gale. The broken window remained untouched throughout the entire stay of this group and all the later groups of suffragists. Thus was one what the regulars in jail called the first breath of air in their time. The next day we organized ourselves into a little group for the purpose of rebellion. We determined to make it impossible to keep us in jail. We determined, moreover, that as long as we were there we would keep up an unremitting fight for the rights of political prisoners. One by one little points were conceded to quiet resistance. There was the practice of sweeping the corridors in such a way that the dust filled the cells. The prisoners would be choking to the gasping point as they sat helpless locked in the cells, while a great cloud of dust enveloped them from the tears above and below. As soon as our tin drinking cups which were sacrificed in our attack upon the windows were restored to us, we instituted a campaign against the dust. Tin cup after tin cup was filled and its contents thrown out into the corridor from every cell, so that the water began to trickle down from tear to tear. The district commissioners, the board of charities, and other officials were summoned by the prison authorities. Buried consultations were held. Nameless officials passed by in review and looked upon the dampened floor. Thereafter the corridors were dampened and the sweeping into the cells ceased. And so another reform was won. There is absolutely no privacy allowed a prisoner in a cell. You are suddenly peered out by curious strangers who look in at you all hours of the day and night, by officials, by attendants, by interested philanthropic visitors, and by prison reformers, until one sense of privacy is so outraged that one rises in rebellion. We set out to secure privacy, but we did not succeed, for to allow privacy in prison is against all institutional thought and habit. Our only available weapon was our blanket, which was no sooner put in front of our bars than it was forcibly taken down by Word and Zinken. Our meals had consisted of a little almost raw salt pork, some sort of liquid, I am not sure whether it was coffee or soup bread and occasionally molasses. How we cherished the bread and molasses. We saved it from meal to meal so as to try to distribute the nourishment over a longer period, as almost everyone was unable to eat the raw pork. Lucy Branham, who was more valiant than the rest of us, called out from her cell one day, shut your eyes tight and close your mouth over the pork and swallow it without chewing it. Then you can do it. This heroic practice kept Miss Branham in fairly good health, but to the rest it seemed impossible, even with our eyes closed, to crunch our teeth into the raw pork. However gaily you start out in prison to keep up a rebellious protest is nevertheless a terribly difficult thing to do in the face of the constant cold and hunger of under nourishment. Bread and water and occasional molasses is not a diet destined to sustain rebellion long, and soon weakness overtook us. At the end of two weeks of solitary confinement without any exercise, without going outside of our cells, some of the prisoners were released, having finished their terms, but five of us were left serving seven month sentences and two one month sentences. With our number thus diminished to seven, the authorities felt able to cope with us. The doors were unlocked and we were permitted to take exercise. Rose Winslow fainted as soon as she got into the yard and was carried back to her cell. I was too weak to move from my bed. Rose and I were taken on stretchers that night to the hospital. For one brief night we occupied beds in the same ward in the hospital. Here we decided upon the hunger strike as the ultimate form of protest left us. The strongest weapon left with which to continue within the prison our battle against the administration. Ms. Paul was held absolutely in communicado in the prison hospital. No attorney, no member of her family, no friend could see her. With Ms. Burns in prison also it became imperative that I consult Ms. Paul as to a matter of policy. I was peremptorily refused admission by Warden Zinkan, so I decided to attempt to communicate with her from below her window. This was before we had established what in prison parlance is known as the grapevine route. The grapevine route consists of smuggling messages oral or written via a friendly guard or prisoner who has access to the outside world. Just before twilight I hurried in a taxi to the far away spot temporarily abandoned the cab and walked past the dismal cemetery which skirts the prison grounds. I had fortified myself with a diagram of the grounds and knew which entrance to attempt in order to get to the hospital wing where Ms. Paul lay. We had also ascertained her floor and room. I must first pick the right building, proceed to the proper corner, and finally select the proper window. The sympathetic chauffeur loaned me a very seedy looking overcoat which I wrapped about me. Having deposited my hat inside the cab I turned up the collar, drew in my chin, and began surreptitiously to circle the devious paths leading to a side entrance of the grounds. My heart was palpitating, for the authorities had threatened arrest if any suffragists were found on the prison grounds, and aside from my personal feelings I could not at that moment abandon headquarters. Making a desperate effort to act like an experienced and trusted attendant of the prison I roamed about and tried not to appear roaming. I successfully passed two guards and reached the desired spot which was by good luck temporarily deserted. I succeeded in calling up loudly enough to be heard by Ms. Paul, but softly enough not to be heard by the guards. I shall never forget the shock of her appearance at that window in the gathering dusk. Everything in the world seemed black gray except her ghostlike face, so startling, so inaccessible. It drove everything else from my mind for an instant, but as usual, she was in complete control of herself. She began to hurl questions at me faster than I could answer. How were the convention plans progressing? Had the speakers been secured for the mass meeting? How many women had signed up to go out on the next picket line? And so on. Conditions at Occoquan are frightful, said I. We are planning to get out of there and move quickly, shouted the guard who came abruptly around the corner of the building. I tried to finish my message. We are planning to habeas corpus the women out of Occoquan and have them transferred up here. Get out of there, I tell you. Damn you! By this time he was upon me. He grabbed me by the arm and began shaking me. You will be arrested if you did not get off these grounds he continued to shake me while I shouted back. Do you approve of this plan? I was being forced along so rapidly that I was out of range of her faint voice and could not hear the answer. I pleaded with the guard to be allowed to go back quietly and speak a few more words with Miss Paul, but he was inflexible. Once out of the grounds I went unnoticed to the cemetery and sat on a tombstone to wait a little while before making another attempt, hoping the guard would not expect me to come back. The lights were beginning to twinkle in the distance, and it was now almost total darkness. I consulted any watch and realized that in 40 minutes Miss Paul and her comrades would again be going through the torture of forcible feeding. I waited 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes. Then I went back to the grounds again. I started through another entrance, but I had proceeded only a few paces when I was forcibly evicted. Again I returned to the cold tombstone. I believe that I never in my life felt more utterly miserable and impotent. There were times as I have said when we felt inordinately strong. This was one of the times when I felt that we were frail reeds in the hands of cruel and powerful oppressors. My thoughts were at first with Alice Paul, at that moment being forcibly fed by men jailers and men doctors. I remembered then the man warden who had refused the highly reasonable request to visit her, and my thoughts kept right on up the scale till I got to the man president, the pinnacle of power against us. I was indeed desolate. I walked back to the hidden taxi, hurried to headquarters and plunged into my work, trying all night to convince myself that the sting of my wretchedness was being mitigated by activity toward a release from this state of affairs. Later we established daily communication with Miss Paul through one of the charwoman who scrubbed the hospital floors. She carried paper and pencil carefully concealed upon her. On entering Miss Paul's room she would with very comical stealth, first elaborately push Miss Paul's bed against the door, then crawl practically under it, and pass from this point of concealment the coveted paper and pencil. Then she would linger over the floor to the last second, imploring Miss Paul to hasten her writing. Faithfully every evening this silent dusky messenger made her long journey after her day's work, and patiently waited while I wrote an answering note to be delivered to Miss Paul the following morning. Thus it was that in the hospital Miss Paul directed our campaign, in spite of the administration's most painstaking plans to the contrary. Miss Paul's story continues here from the point where I interrupted it. From the moment we undertook the hunger strike a policy of unremitting intimidation began. One authority after another, high and low, in and out of prison, came to attempt to force me to break the hunger strike. You will be taken to a very unpleasant place if you don't stop this, was a favorite threat of the prison officials. As they would hint vaguely of the psychopathic ward and Saint Elizabeth's, the government insane asylum, they alternately bullied and hinted. Another threat was you will be forcibly fed immediately if you don't stop, this from Dr. Gannon. There was nothing to do in the midst of these continuous threats, with always the very unpleasant place hanging over me, and so I lay perfectly silent on my bed. After about three days of the hunger strike a man entered my room in the hospital and denounced himself as Dr. White, the head of Saint Elizabeth's. He said that he had been asked by District Commissioner Gardner to make an investigation. I later learned that he was Dr. William A. White, the eminent alienist, coming close to my bedside and addressing the attendant who stood at a few respectful paces from him. Dr. White said, Does this case talk? Why wouldn't I talk? I answered quickly. Oh, these cases frequently will not talk, you know. He continued an explanation. Indeed, I'll talk, I said gaily, not having the faintest idea that this was an investigation of my sanity. Talking is our business, I continued. We talked to anyone on earth who was willing to listen to our suffrage speeches. Please talk, said Dr. White. Tell me about suffrage. Why you have opposed the President, the whole history of your campaign, why you pick it, what you hope to accomplish by it. Just talk freely. I drew myself together, sat up right in bed, propped myself up for a discourse of some length, and began to talk. The stenographer whom Dr. White brought with him took down in shorthand everything that was said. I may say it was one of the best speeches I ever made. I recited the long history and struggle of the suffrage movement from its early beginning and narrated the political theory of our activities up to the present moment, outlining the status of the suffrage amendment in Congress at that time. In short, I told him everything. He listened attentively, interrupting only occasionally to say, But has not President Wilson treated you women very badly? Whereupon I still unaware that I was being examined, launched forth into an explanation of Mr. Wilson's political situation and the difficulties he had confronting him. I continued to explain why we felt our relief lay with him. I cited his extraordinary power, his influence over his party, his undisputed leadership in the country, always painstakingly explaining that we opposed President Wilson merely because he happened to be the President, not because he was President Wilson. Again came an interruption from Dr. White. But isn't President Wilson directly responsible for the abuses and indignities which have been heaped upon you? You are suffering now as a result of his brutality, are you not? Again I explained that it was impossible for us to know whether President Wilson was personally acquainted in any detail with the facts of our present condition, even though we knew that he had concurred in the early decision to arrest our women. Presently Dr. White took out a small light and held it up to my eyes. Suddenly it dawned upon me that he was examining me personally, that his interest in the suffrage, agitation, and the jail conditions did not exist, and that he was merely interested in my reactions to the agitation and to jail. Even then I was reluctant to believe that I was the subject of mental investigation and I continued to talk. But he continued and what I realized with a sudden shock was an attempt to discover in me symptoms of the persecution mania, how simple he had apparently thought it would be to prove that I had an obsession on the subject of President Wilson. The day following he came again, this time bringing with him the district commissioner, Mr. Gardner, to whom he asked me to repeat everything that had been said the day before. For the second time we went through the history of the suffrage movement, and again his inquiry suggested his persecution mania clue, when the narrative touched upon the President and his responsibility for the obstruction of the suffrage amendment. Dr. White would turn to his associate with the remark, note the reaction. Then came another alien as Dr. Hickling, attached to the psychopathic ward in the district jail, with more threats and suggestions if the hunger strike continued. Finally they departed, and I was left to wonder what would happen next. Doubtless my sense of humor helped me, but I confess I was not without fear of this mysterious place which they continued to threaten. It appeared clear that it was their intention either to discredit me as the leader of the agitation by casting doubt upon my sanity, or else to intimidate us into retreating from the hunger strike. After the examination by the alienists, Commissioner Gardner, with whom I had previously discussed our demand for treatment as political prisoners, made another visit. All these things you say about the prison conditions may be true, said Mr. Gardner. I am a new Commissioner, and I do not know. You give an account of a very serious situation in the jail. The jail authorities give exactly the opposite. Now I promise you we will start an investigation at once to see who is right, you or they. If it is found you are right, we shall correct the conditions at once. If you will give up the hunger strike, we will start the investigation at once. Will you consent to treat the suffragists as political prisoners in accordance with the demands laid before you? I replied. Commissioner Gardner refused, and I told him that the hunger strike would not be abandoned, but they had by no means exhausted every possible facility for breaking down our resistance. I overheard the Commissioner say to Dr. Gannon on leaving, go ahead, take her and feed her. I was there upon, put upon a stretcher, and carried into the psychopathic ward. There were two windows in the room. Dr. Gannon immediately ordered one window nailed from top to bottom. He then ordered the door leading into the hallway taken down, and an iron barred cell door put in its place. He departed with the command to a nurse to observe her. Following this direction, all through the day, once every hour, the nurse came to observe me. All through the night, once every hour, she came in, turned on an electric light, sharpened my face, and observed me. This ordeal was the most terrible torture, as it prevented my sleeping for more than a few minutes at a time, and if I did finally get to sleep, it was only to be shocked immediately and to wide awakeness with the pitiless light. Dr. Hickling, the jail alienist, also came often to observe me. Commissioner Gardner and others doubtless officials came to peer through my barred door. One day a young intern came to take a blood test. I protested mildly, saying that it was unnecessary, and that I objected. Oh, well, said the young doctor with a sneer and a supercilious shrug. You know you're not mentally competent to decide such things. And the test was taken over my protest. It is scarcely possible to convey to you one's reaction to such an atmosphere. Here I was surrounded by people on their way to the insane asylum. Some were waiting for their commitment papers, others had just gotten them. And all the while, everything possible was done to attempt to make me feel that I, too, was a mental patient. At this time, forcible feeding began in the district jail. Ms. Paul and Ms. Winslow, the first two suffragettes to undertake the hunger strike, went through the operation of forcible feeding this day and three times a day on each succeeding day until their release from prison three weeks later. The hunger strike spread immediately to other suffrage prisoners in the jail and to the workhouse as recorded in the preceding chapter. One morning, Ms. Paul's story continues. The friendly face of a kindly old man standing on top of a ladder suddenly appeared at my window. He began to nail heavy boards across the window from the outside. He smiled and spoke a few kind words and told me to be of good cheer. He confided to me in a sweet and gentle way that he was in prison for drinking, that he had been in many times, but that he believed he had never seen anything so inhuman as boarding up this window and depriving a prisoner of light and air. There was only time for a few hurried moments of conversation as I lay upon my bed, watching the boards go up until his figure was completely hidden, and I heard him descending the ladder. After this window had been boarded up, no light came into the room except the top half of the other window and almost no air. The authorities seemed determined to deprive me of air and light. Meanwhile, in those gray, long days, the mental patients in the psychopathic ward came and peered through my barred door. At night in the early morning, all through the day, there were cries and shrieks and moans from the patients. It was terrifying. One particularly melancholy moan used to keep up hour after hour with the regularity of a heartbeat. I said to myself, now I have to endure this. I have got to live through this somehow. I'll pretend these moans are the noise of an elevated train, beginning faintly in the distance and getting louder as it comes nearer. Such childish devices were helpful to me. The nurses could not have been more beautiful in their spirit and offered every kindness. But imagine being greeted in the morning by a kindly nurse, a new one who had just come on duty, with, I know you are not insane. The nurses explained the procedure of sending a person to the insane asylum. Two alienists examined a patient in the psychopathic ward, signed an order committing the patient to St. Elizabeth's asylum, and there the patient is sent at the end of one week. No trial, no counsel, no protest from the outside world. This was the customary procedure. I began to think as the week wore on that this was probably their plan for me. I could not see my family or friends. Counsel was denied me. I saw no other prisoners and heard nothing of them. I could see no papers. I was entirely in the hands of alienists, prison officials, and hospital staff. I believe I have never in my life before feared anything or any human being. But I confess I was afraid of Dr. Gannon, the jail physician. I dreaded the hour of his visit. I will show you who rules this place. You think you do, but I will show you that you are wrong. Some such friendly greeting as this was frequent from Dr. Gannon on his daily round. Anything you desire, you shall not have. I will show you who is on top in this institution, was his attitude. After nearly a week had passed, Dudley Field Malone finally succeeded in forcing an entrance by an appeal to court officials and made a vigorous protest against confining me in the psychopathic ward. He demanded also that the boards covering the window be taken down. This was promptly done and again the friendly face of the old man became visible as the first board disappeared. I thought when I put this up America would not stand for this long, he said, and began to assure me that nothing dreadful would happen. I cherished the memory of that sweet old man. The day after Mr. Malone's threat of court proceedings, the seventh day of my stay in the psychopathic ward, the attendance suddenly appeared with a stretcher. I did not know whether I was being taken to the insane asylum as threatened or back to the hospital. One never knows in prison where one is being taken. No reason is ever given for anything. It turned out to be the hospital. After another week spent by Miss Paul on hunger strike in the hospital, the administration was forced to capitulate. The doors of the jail were suddenly opened and all suffrage prisoners were released. With extraordinary swiftness the administration's almost incredible policy of intimidation had collapsed. Miss Paul had been given the maximum sentence of seven months, and at the end of five weeks the administration was forced to acknowledge defeat. They were in a most unenviable position. If she and her comrades had offended in such degree as to warrant so cruel a sentence with such base stupidity on their part in administering it, she most certainly deserved to be detained for the full sentence. The truth is, every idea of theirs had been subordinated to the one desire of stopping the picketing agitation. To this end they had exhausted all their weapons of force. For my conversation and correspondence with Dr. White it is clear that as an alienist he did not make the slightest allegation to warrant removing Miss Paul to the psychopathic ward. On the contrary, he wrote, I felt myself in the presence of an unusually gifted personality, and she was wonderfully alert and keen, possessed of an absolute conviction of her cause, with industry and courage sufficient to avail herself of them all diplomatic possibilities. He praised the most admirable, coherent, logical and forceful way in which she discussed with him the purpose of our campaign, and yet the administration put her in the psychopathic ward and threatened her with the insane asylum. An interesting incident occurred during the latter part of Miss Paul's imprisonment. Having been cut off entirely from outside communication, she was greatly surprised one night at a late hour to find a newspaper man admitted for an interview with her. Mr. David Lawrence then generally accepted as the administration journalist and one who wrote for the various newspapers throughout the country defending the policies of the Wilson administration was announced. It was equally well known that this correspondence habit was due to ascertain the position of the leaders on important questions, keeping intimately in touch with opinion in White House circles at the same time. Mr. Lawrence came, as he said, of his own volition and not as an emissary from the White House. But in view of his close relation to affairs, his interview is significant as possibly reflecting an administration attitude at that point in the campaign. The conversation with Miss Paul revolved first about our fight for the right of political prisoners. Miss Paul outlining the wisdom and justice of this demand. The administration could very easily hire a comfortable house in Washington and detain you all there, said Mr. Lawrence. But don't you see that your demand to be treated as political prisoners is infinitely more difficult to grant than to give you the Federal Suffrage Amendment? If we give you these privileges, we shall have to extend them to conscientious objectors and to all prisoners now confined for political opinions. This the administration cannot do. The political prisoners' protest then had actually encouraged the administration to choose the lesser of two evils, some action on behalf of the amendment. Suppose, continued Mr. Lawrence, the administration should pass the amendment through one House of Congress next session and go to the country in the 1918 elections on that record. And if sustained in it, pass it through the other House a year from now. Would you then agree to abandon picketing? Nothing short of the passage of the amendment through Congress will end our agitation. Miss Paul quietly answered for the thousandth time. Since Mr. Lawrence disavows any connection with the administration in this interview, I can only remark that events followed exactly in the order he outlined. That is, the administration attempted to satisfy the women by putting the amendment through the House and not through the Senate. It was during Miss Paul's imprisonment that the 41 women went in protest to the picket line and were sent to the workhouse, as narrated in the previous chapter. The terrorism they endured at Acoquan rents simultaneously with the attempted intimidation of Miss Paul and her group in the jail. End of section 13.