Part 14 (1/2)
The following day Miss Lucy Burns and Miss Katherine Morey of Boston carried to the White House gates ”We shall fight for the things we have always held nearest our hearts, for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own government,” and were arrested.
News had spread through the city that the pickets were to be arrested. A moderately large crowd had gathered to see the ”fun.”
One has only to come into conflict with prevailing authority, whether rightly or wrongly, to find friendly hosts vanis.h.i.+ng with lightning speed. To know that we were no longer wanted at the gates of the White House and that the police were no longer our ”friends” was enough for the mob mind.
Some members of the crowd made sport of the women. Others hurled cheap and childish epithets at them. Small boys were allowed to capture souvenirs, shreds of the banners torn from non-resistant women, as trophies of the sport.
Thinking they had been mistaken in believing the pickets were to be arrested, and having grown weary of their strenuous sport, the crowd moved on its way. Two solitary figures remained, standing on the sidewalk, flanked by the vast Pennsylvania Avenue, looking quite abandoned and alone, when suddenly without any warrant in law, they were arrested on a completely deserted avenue.
Miss Burns and Miss Morey upon arriving at the police station, insisted, to the great surprise of all the officials, upon knowing the charge against them. Major Pullman and his entire staff were utterly at a loss to know what to answer. The Administration had looked ahead only as far as threatening arrest. They doubtless thought this was all they would have to do. People could not be arrested for picketing. Picketing is a guaranteed right under the Clayton Act of
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Congress. Disorderly conduct? There had been no disorderly Iconduct. Inciting to riot? Impossible! The women had stood as silent sentinels holding the President's own eloquent words.
Doors opened and closed mysteriously. Officials and subofficials pa.s.sed hurriedly to and fro. Whispered conversations were heard.
The book on rules and regulations was hopefully thumbed. Hours pa.s.sed. Finally the two prisoners were pompously told that they had ”obstructed the traffic” on Pennsylvania Avenue, were dismissed on their own recognizance, and never brought to trial.
The following day, June 23rd, more arrests were made; two women at the White House, two at the Capitol. All carried banners with the same words of the President. There was no hesitation this time. They were promptly arrested for ”obstructing the traffic.”
They, too, were dismissed and their cases never tried. It seemed clear that the Administration hoped to suppress picketing merely by arrests. When. however. women continued to picket in the face of arrest, the Administration quickened its advance into the venture of suppression. It decided to bring the offenders to trial.
On June 26, six American women were tried, judged guilty on the technical charge of ”obstructing the traffic,” warned by the court of their ”unpatriotic, almost treasonable behavior,” and sentenced to pay a fine of twenty-five dollars or serve three days in jail.
”Not a dollar of your fine will we pay,” was the answer of the women. ”To pay a fine would be an admission of guilt. We are innocent.”
The six women who were privileged to serve the first terms of imprisonment for suffrage in this country, were Miss Katherine Morey of Ma.s.sachusetts, Mrs. Annie Arneil and Miss Mabel Vernon of Delaware, Miss Lavinia Dock of Pennsylvania, Miss Maud Jamison of Virginia, and Miss Virginia Arnold of
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North Carolina. ”Privileged” in spite of the foul air, the rats, and the mutterings of their strange comrades in jail!
Independence Day, July 4, 1917, is the occasion for two demonstrations in the name of liberty. Champ Clark, late Democratic speaker of the House, is declaiming to a cheering crowd behind the White House, ”Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.” In front of the White House thirteen silent sentinels with banners bearing the same words, are arrested. It would have been exceedingly droll if it had not been so tragic. Champ Clark and his throng were not molested. The women with practically a deserted street were arrested and served jail terms for ”obstructing traffic.”
The trial of this group was delayed to give the jail authorities time to ”vacate and tidy up,” as one prisoner confided to Miss Joy Young. It developed that ”orders” had been received at the jail immediately after the arrests and before the trial, ”to make ready for the suffragettes.” What did it matter that their case had not yet been heard? To jail they must go.
Was not the judge who tried and sentenced them a direct appointee of President Wilson? Were not the District Commissioners who gave orders to prepare the cells the direct appointees of President Wilson? And was not the Chief of Police of the District of Columbia a direct appointee of these same commissioners? And was not the jail warden who made life for the women so unbearable in prison also a direct appointee of the commissioners?
It was all a merry little ring and its cavalier att.i.tude toward the law, toward justice, and above all toward women was of no importance. The world was on fire with a grand blaze. This tiny flame would scarcely be visible. No one would notice a few ”mad”
women thrown into jail. And if the world should find it out, doubtless public opinion would agree that the women ought to stay there. And even if it should not agree,
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this little matter could all be explained away before another election.
Meanwhile the President could proclaim through official channels his disinterestedness. Observe the doc.u.ment, of which I give the substance, which he caused or allowed to be published at this time, through his Committee on Public Information.
”OFFICIAL BULLETIN”
”Published Daily under order of the President of the United States, by the Committee on Public Information.
GEORGE CREEL, Chairman.
”Furnished without charge to all newspapers, post offices, government officials and agencies of a public character for the dissemination of official news of the United States Government.”