Jailed for Freedom Part 16

There were distinguished men present at the trial-men who also fight for their ideals. There was Frederic C. Howe, then Commissioner of Immigration of the Port of New York, Frank P.

Walsh, International labor leader, Dudley Field Malone, then Collector of the Port of New York, Amos Pinchot, liberal leader, John A. H. Hopkins, then liberal-progressive leader in New Jersey who had turned his organization to the support of the President and become a member of the President's Campaign Committee, now chairman of the Committee of Fortyeight and whose beautiful wife was among the prisoners, Allen McCurdy, secretary of the Committee of Forty-eight and many

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others. One and all came forward to protest to us during the adjournment. "This is monstrous." . . . "Never have I seen evidence so disregarded." . . . "This is a tragic farce" . . .

"He will never dare sentence you."

It was reported to us that the judge used the interim to telephone to the District building, where the District Commissioners sit. He returned to p.r.o.nounce, "Sixty days in the workhouse in default of a twenty-five dollar fine."

The shock was swift and certain to all the spectators. We would not of course pay the unjust fine imposed, for we were not guilty of any offense.

The judge attempted persuasion. "You had better decide to pay your fines," he ventured. And "you will not find jail a pleasant place to be." It was clear that neither he nor his confreres had imagined women would accept with equanimity so drastic a sentence. It was now their time to be shocked. Here were "ladies"-that was perfectly clear-"ladies" of unusual distinction. Surely they would not face the humiliation of a workhouse sentence which involved not only imprisonment but penal servitude! The Administration was wrong again.

"We protest against this unjust sentence and conviction," we said, "but we prefer the workhouse to the payment of a fine imposed for an offense of which we are not guilty." We filed into the "pen," to join the other prisoners, and wait for the "black maria" to carry us to prison.

We are all taken to the District Jail, where we are put through the regular catechism: "Were you ever in prison before?-Age- birthplace-father-mother-religion and what not?" We are then locked up,-two to a cell. What will happen next?

The sleek jailer, whose attempt to be cordial provokes a certain distrust, comes to our corridor to "turn us over" to our next keeper-the warden of Occoquan. We learn that the

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workhouse is not situated in the District of Columbia but in Virginia.

Other locked wagons with tiny windows up near the driver now take us, side by side with drunks and disorderlies, prost.i.tutes and thieves, to the Pennsylvania Station. Here we embark for the unknown terrors of the workhouse, filing through crowds at the station, driven on by our "keeper," who resembles Simon Legree, with his long stick and his pushing and shoving to hurry us along. The crowd is quick to realize that we are prisoners, because of our a.s.sociates. Friends try to bid us a last farewell and slip us a sweet or fruit, as we are rushed through the iron station gates to the train.

Warden Whittaker is our keeper, thin and old, with a cruel mouth, brutal eyes and a sinister birthmark on his temple. He guards very anxiously his "dangerous criminals" lest they try to leap out of the train to freedom! We chat a little and attempt to relax from the strain that we have endured since Sat.u.r.day. It is now late in the afternoon of Tuesday.

The dusk is gathering. It is almost totally dark when we alight at a tiny station in what seems to us a wilderness. It is a deserted country. Even the gayest member of the party, I am sure, was struck with a little terror here.

More locked wagons, blacker than the dusk, awaited us. The prison van jolted and b.u.mped along the rocky and hilly road. A cl.u.s.ter of lights twinkled beyond the last hill, and we knew that we were coming to our temporary summer residence. I can still see the long thin line of black poplars against the smoldering afterglow. I did not know then what tragic things they concealed.

We entered a well-lighted office. A few guards of ugly demeanor stood about. Warden Whittaker consulted with the hard-faced matron, Mrs. Herndon, who began the prison routine. Names were called, and each prisoner stepped to the

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desk to get her number, to give up all jewelry, money, handbags, letters, eye-gla.s.ses, traveling bags containing toilet necessities, in fact everything except the clothes on her body.

From there we were herded into the long bare dining room where we sat dumbly down to a bowl of dirty sour soup. I say dumbly-for now began the rule of silence. Prisoners are punished for speaking to one another at table. They cannot even whisper, much less smile or laugh. They must be conscious always of their "guilt." Every possible thing is done to make the inmates feel that they are and must continue to be antisocial creatures.

We taste our soup and crust of bread. We try so hard to eat it for we are tired and hungry, but no one of us is able to get it down. We leave the table hungry and slightly nauseated.

Another long march in silence through various channels into a large dormitory and through a double line of cots ! Then we stand, weary to the point of fainting, waiting the next ordeal.

This seemed to be the juncture at which we lost all that is left us of contact with the outside world,-our clothes.

An a.s.sistant matron, attended by negress prisoners, relieves us of our clothes. Each prisoner is obliged to strip naked without even the protection of a sheet, and proceed across what seems endless s.p.a.ce, to a shower bath. A large tin bucket stands on the floor and in this is a minute piece of dirty soap, which is offered to us and rejected. We dare not risk the soap used by so many prisoners. Naked, we return from the bath to receive our allotment of coa.r.s.e, hideous prison clothes, the outer garments of which consist of a bulky mother-hubbard wrapper, of bluish gray ticking and a heavy ap.r.o.n of the same dismal stuff. It takes a dominant personality indeed to survive these clothes. The thick unbleached muslin undergarments are of designs never to be forgotten! And the thick stockings and forlorn shoes! What torture to put on shoes that are alike for each foot and made to fit just anybody who may happen along.

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Why are we being ordered to dress? It is long past the bed-time hour.

Our suspense is brief. All dressed in cloth of "guilt" we are led into what we later learn is the "recreation" room. Lined up against its wall, we might any other time have bantered about the possibility of being shot, but we are in no mood to jest. The door finally opens and in strides Warden Whittaker with a stranger beside him.

He reviews his latest criminal recruits, engaging the stranger meanwhile in whispered conversation. There are short, uncertain laughs. There are nods of the head and more whispers.

"Well, ladies, I hope you are all comfortable. Now make yourselves at home here. I think you will find it healthy here.

You'll weigh more when you go out than when you came in. You will be allowed to write one letter a month-to your family. Of course we open and read all letters coming in and going out. To-morrow you will be a.s.signed your work. I hope you will sleep well. Good night!"

We did not answer. We looked at each other.

News leaked through in the morning that the stranger had been a newspaper reporter. The papers next morning were full of the "comfort" and "luxury" of our surroundings. The "delicious" food sounded most rea.s.suring to the nation. In fact no word of the truth was allowed to appear.

The correspondent could not know that we went back to our cots to try to sleep side by side with negro prost.i.tutes. Not that we shrank from these women on account of their color, but how terrible to know that, the inst.i.tution had gone out of its way to bring these prisoners from their own wing to the white wing in an attempt to humiliate us. There was plenty of room in the negro wing. But prison must be made so unbearable that no more women would face it. That was the policy attempted here.

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We tried very hard to sleep and forget our hunger and weariness.

But all the night through our dusky comrades padded by to the lavatory, and in the streak of bright light which shot across the center of the room, startled heads could be seen bobbing up in the direction of a demented woman in the end cot. Her weird mutterings made us fearful. There was no sleep in this strange place.

Our thoughts turn to the outside world. Will the women care? Will enough women believe that through such humiliation all may win freedom? Will they believe that through our imprisonment their slavery will be lifted the sooner? Less philosophically, will the government be moved by public protest? Will such protest come?

The next morning brought us a visitor from suffrage headquarters.

The inst.i.tution hoped that the visitor would use her persuasion to make us pay our fines and leave and so she was admitted. We learned the cheering news, that immediately after sentence had been p.r.o.nounced by the Court, Dudley Field Malone had gone direct to the White House to protest to the President. His protest was delivered with heat. The President said that he was "shocked" at the sixty day sentence, that he did not know it had been done, and made other evasions. Mr. Malone's report of his interview with the President is given in full in a subsequent chapter.

Following Mr. Malone, Mr. J. A. H. Hopkins went to the White House. "How would you like to have your wife sleep in a dirty workhouse next to prost.i.tutes?" was his direct talk to the President. Again the President was "shocked." No wonder! Mr. and Mrs. Hopkins had been the President's dinner guests not very long before, celebrating his return to power. They had supported him politically and financially in New Jersey. Now Mrs. Hopkins had been arrested at his gate and thrown into prison.

In reporting the interview, Mr. Hopkins said:

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"The President asked me for suggestions as to what might be done, and I replied that in view of the seriousness of the present situation the only solution lay in immediate pa.s.sage of the Susan B. Anthony amendment."

Gilson Gardner also went to the White House to leave his hot protest. And there were others.

Telegrams poured in from all over the country. The press printed headlines which could not but arouse the sympathy of thousands.

Even people who did not approve of picketing the White House said, "After all, what these women have done is certainly not 'bad' enough to merit such drastic punishment"

And women protested. From coast to coast there poured in at our headquarters copies of telegrams sent to Administration leaders.

Of course not all women by any means had approved this method of agitation. But the government's action had done more than we had been able to do for them. It had made them feel s.e.x-conscious.

Women were being unjustly treated. Regardless of their feelings about this particular procedure, they stood up and objected.

For the first time, I believe, our form of agitation began to seem a little more respectable than the Administration's handling of it. But the Administration did not know this fact yet.

"Everybody in line for the work-room!"

We were thankful to leave our inedible breakfast. We were unable to drink the greasy black coffee. The pain in the tops of our heads was acute.

"What you all down here for?" asked a young negress, barely out of her teens, as she casually fingered her sewing material.