"By whom?" asked one.
"For what?" asked another. "We are innocent women. There is nothing to pardon us for."
"I have come to ask you what you would do if the President pardoned you."
"We would refuse to accept it," came the ready response from several.
"I shall leave you for a while to consider this. Mind! I have not yet received information of a pardon, but I have been asked to ascertain your att.i.tude."
Our consultation was brief. We were of one mind. We
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were unanimous in wishing to reject a pardon for a crime which we had never committed. We said so with some spirit when Mr.
Whittaker returned for our decision.
"You have no choice. You are obliged to accept a pardon."
That settled it, and we waited. That the protest on the outside had been strong enough to precipitate action from the government was the subject of our conversation. Evidently it had not been strong enough to force action on the suffrage amendment, but it was forcing action, and that was important.
Mr. Whittaker returned triumphant.
"Ladies, you are pardoned by the President. You are free to go as soon as you have taken off your prison clothes and put on your own."
It was sad to leave the other prisoners behind. Especially pathetic were the girls who helped us with our clothes. They whispered such eager appeals in our ears, telling us of their drastic sentences for trifling offenses and of the cruel punishments. It was hard to resist digressing into some effort at prison reform. That way lay our instincts. Our reason told us that we must first change the status of women.
As we were leaving the workhouse to return to Washington we had an unexpected revelation of the att.i.tude of officialdom toward our campaign. Addressing Miss Lucy Burns, who had arrived to a.s.sist us in getting on our way, Superintendent Whittaker, in an almost unbelievable rage, said, "Now that you women are going away, I have something to say and I want to say it to you. The next lot of women who come here won"t be treated with the same consideration that these women were." I will show later on how he made good this terrible threat.
Receiving a Presidential pardon through the Attorney General had its amusing aspect. My comrades shared this amus.e.m.e.nt when I told them the following incident.
On the day after our arrest, I was having tea at the Chevy
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Chase Country Club in Washington. Quite casually a gentleman introduced me to Mr. Gregory, the Attorney General.
"I see you were mixed up with the suffragettes yesterday," was the Attorney General"s first remark to the gentleman. And before the latter could explain that he had settled accounts quietly but efficiently with a hoodlum who was attempting to trip the women up on their march, the chief law officer of the United States contributed this important suggestion: "You know what I"d do if I was those policemen. I"d just take a hose out with me and when the women came out with their banners, why I"d just squirt the hose on "em . . . ."
"But Mr. Gregory . . ."
"Yes, sir! If you can just make what a woman does look ridiculous, you can sure kill it . . . ."
"But, Mr. Attorney General, what right would the police have to a.s.sault these or any other women?" the gentleman managed finally to interpolate.
"Hup-hup-"denoting great surprise, came from the Attorney General, as he looked to me for rea.s.surance.
His expectant look vanished when I said, "Mr. Gregory, did it ever occur to you that it might make the government look ridiculous instead of the women?"
You can imagine bow the easy manner of one who is sure of his audience melted from his face.
"This is one of the women arrested yesterday," continued the gentleman, while the Attorney General smothered a "Well, I"ll be . . ."
"I am out on bail," I said. " To-morrow we go to jail. It is all prearranged, you understand. The trial is merely a matter of form."
The highest law officer of the land fled gurgling. s
The day following our release Mrs. J. A. H. Hopkins carried a picket banner to the gates of the White House to test
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the validity of the pardon. Her banner read, "We do not ask pardon for ourselves but justice for all American women." A curious crowd, as large as had collected on those days when the police arrested women for "obstructing traffic," stood watching the lone picket. The President pa.s.sed through the gates and saluted. The police did not interfere.
Daily picketing was resumed and no arrests followed for the moment.
It was now August, three months since the Senate Suffrage Committee authorized its chairman, Mr. Jones, to report the measure to the Senate for action. Mr. Jones said, however, that he was too busy to make a report; .that he wanted to make a particularly brilliant one, one that would "be a contribution to the cause"; that he did not approve of picketing, but that he would report the measure "in a reasonable time." So much for the situation in the Senate!
From the House we gathered some interesting evidence. We reminded Mr. Webb, Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, that out of a total membership of twenty-one men on his committee, twelve were Democrats, two-thirds of whom were opposed to the measure; we reminded him that the Republicans on the committee were for action. Mr. Webb wrote in answer:
"The Democratic caucus pa.s.sed a resolution that only war emergency measures would be considered during this extra session, and that the President might designate from time to time special legislation which he regarded as war legislation, and such would be acted on by the House. The President, not having designated woman suffrage and national prohibition so far as war measures, the judiciary committee up to this time has not felt warranted under the caucus rule, in reporting either of these measures. If the President should request either or both of them as war measures, then I think the Committee would attempt to take some action on them promptly. So you see after all it is important to your cause to make the
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President see that woman suffrage comes within the rules laid down."[1]
Here was a frank admission of the a.s.sumption upon which women had gone to jail-that the President was responsible for action on the amendment.
Now that we were again allowed to picket the White House, the Republicans seized the opportunity legitimately to embarra.s.s their opponents by precipitating a bitter debate.
Senator c.u.mmins of Iowa, Republican member of the Suffrage Committee, moved, as had Mr. Mann in the House at an earlier date, to discharge the Suffrage Committee for failing to make the report authorized by the entire Committee. Mr. c.u.mmins said, among other things:
". . . I look upon the resolution as definitely and certainly a war measure. There is nothing that this country could do which would strengthen it more than to give the disfranchised women . .
. the opportunity to vote . . . .
"Last week . . . I went to the Chairman of the Committee and told him that . . . we had finished the hearings, reached a conclusion and that it was our bounden duty to make the report to the Senate . . . . I asked him if he would not call a meeting of the Committee. He said that it would be impossible, that he had some other engagements which would prevent a meeting of the Committee."
Senator c.u.mmins explained that he finally got the promise of the Chairman that a meeting of the Committee would be called on a given date. When it was not called he made his motion.
Chairman Jones made some feeble remarks and some evasive excuses which meant nothing, and which only further aroused Republican friends of the measure on the Committee.
Senator Gronna of North Dakota, Republican, interrupted
[1]Italics are mine.
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him with the direct question, "I ask the chairman of this committee why this joint resolution has not been reported? The Senator, who is chairman of the committee, I suppose, knows as well as I do that the people of the entire country are anxious to have this joint resolution submitted and to be given an opportunity to vote upon it.
Senator Johnson of California, Republican, proposed that Chairman Jones consent to call the Committee together to consider reporting out the bill, which Senator Jones flatly refused to do.