[1]For text of Miss Rankin's resolution see Appendix 3. more, where I got acquainted with the comrades who asked me to picket the White House, and of course I expressed my willingness to help the movement. I am now in the workhouse. I want to get out and help in the work as I am more revolutionary than the Woman's Party, yet conditions here are so bad that I feel I must stay here and help women get their rights. We are enslaved here. I am suffering very much from hunger and nearly blind from bad nourishment. The food is chiefly soup, cereal with worms, bread just baked and very heavy. Even this poor food, we do not get enough. I do not eat meat. When I told the doctor that he said, "You must eat, and if you don't like it here, you go and tell the judge you won't picket any more, and then you can get out of here." But I told him that I could not go against my principles and my belief. He asked, "Do you believe you should break the law?" I replied, "I have picketed whenever I had a chance for eight years and have never broken the law. Picketing is legal."

Please come here as quickly as possible, as we need your help.

Will you give the information in this letter to the newspapers?

Please pardon this scrap of paper as I have nothing else to write on. I would write to other comrades, to Hillquit or Paulsen, but you are in the Congress and can do more.

Yours for the Cause,

(Signed) ANNA GVINTER. OCCOQUAN WORKHOUSE, Friday, Sept. 21.

Miss Gvinter swore to an affidavit when she came out in which she said in part:

. . . The days that we had to stand on scaffolds and ladders to paint the dormitories, I was so weak from lack of food I was dizzy and in constant danger of falling.

. . . When they told me to scrub the floors of the lavatories I refused, because I have to work for my living and I could not afford to get any of the awful diseases that women down there have.

I obeyed all the rules of the institution. The only times I stopped working was because I was too sick to work.

(Signed) ANNA GVINTER.

Sworn to before me and subscribed in my presence this 13th day of October, 1917.

(Signed) C. LARIMORE KEELEY, Notary Public, D. C.