Back Jailed for Freedom
Chapters (39)
  1. Feature
  2. Preface
  3. Part I
  4. Chapter 1
  5. Chapter 2
  6. Part II
  7. Chapter 1
  8. Chapter 2
  9. Chapter 3
  10. Part III
  11. Chapter 1
  12. Chapter 2
  13. Chapter 3
  14. Chapter 4
  15. Chapter 5
  16. Chapter 6
  17. Chapter 7
  18. Chapter 8
  19. Chapter 9
  20. Chapter 10
  21. Chapter 11
  22. Chapter 12
  23. Chapter 13
  24. Chapter 14
  25. Chapter 15
  26. Chapter 16
  27. Chapter 17
  28. Chapter 18
  29. Chapter 19
  30. Chapter 20
  31. Chapter 21
  32. Chapter 22
  33. Chapter 23
  34. Chapter 24
  35. Chapter 25
  36. Chapter 26
  37. Chapter 27
  38. You are reading a Deluxe Edition:
  39. Copyright

[1]See Appendix 3 for full text of resolution. solidly on our own program, and do our best to keep them nervous over the next step in the agitation.

The press throughout the entire country at this time protested against mob violence and the severe sentences pronounced upon the women who had attempted to hold their banners steadfast.

The Washington (D. C.) Herald, August 19, printed the following editorial:

There is an echo of the President's phrase about the "firm hand of stern repression" in the arrest, conviction and jailing of the six suffragists; a touch of ruthlessness in their incarceration at Occoquan along with women of the street, pickpockets and other flotsam and jetsam. Still, the suffragists are not looking for sympathy, and it need not be wasted upon them.

The police have arrived at a policy, although no one knows whether it will be sufficiently stable and consistent to last out the week . . . . Washington is grateful that the disgraceful period of rioting and mob violence in front of the White House is at an end, and another crisis in the militant crusade to bring the Susan B. Anthony amendment before Congress has been reached.

What is the next step? No one knows. Picketing doubtless will continue, or an effort will be made to continue it; and militancy, if the police continue to arrest, instead of giving the women protection, will pass into a new phase. The suffragists as well as the public at large are thankful that the police department has finally determined to arrest the pickets, instead of allowing them to be mobbed by hoodlums .

. . . The public eye will be on Occoquan for the next few weeks, to find out how these women bear up under the Spartan treatment that is in store for them. If they have deliberately sought martyrdom, as some critics have been unkind enough to suggest, they have it now. And if their campaign, in the opinion of perhaps the great majority of the public, has been misguided, admiration for their pluck will not be withheld.

The Boston Journal of August 20, 1917, said in an editorial written by Herbert N. Pinkham, Jr.:

That higher authorities than the Washington police were responsible for the amazing policy of rough house employed against the suffrage pickets has been suspected from the very beginning. Police power in Washington is sufficient to protect a handful of women against a whole phalanx of excited or inspired government clerks and uniformed hoodlums, if that power were used.

. . . In our nation's capital, women have been knocked down and dragged through the streets by government employees-including sailors in uniform. The police are strangely absent at such moments, as a rule, and arrive only in time to arrest a few women . . . .