[3] Siegerson, Political Prisoners at Home and Abroad, p. 10.
Mr. John Koren, International Prison Commissioner[4] for the United States, was throughout this agitation making a study of this very problem. As chairman of a Special Committee of the American Prison Association, empowered to investi- gate the problem of political prisoners for America, he made a report at the annual meeting of the American Prison Associ- ation in New York, October, 1919, entitled “The Political Of fenders and their Status in Prison”[5] in which he says:
[4] Appointed and sponsored by the Department of State as delegate to the International Prison Congress.
[5] Mr. Koren discusses the political offender from the penological, not the social, point of view.
“The political offender . . . must be measured by a different rule, and . . . is a creature of extraordinary and temporary conditions . . . .
“There are times in which the tactics used in the pursuit of political recognition may result in a technical violation of the law for which imprisonment ensues, as witness the suffragist cases in Washington . . . . These militants were completely out of place in a workhouse, . . . they could not be made to submit to discipline fashioned to meet the needs of the derelicts of society, and . . . they therefore destroyed it for the entire institution.”
There was no doubt in the official mind but that our claim was just. But the Administration would not grant this demand, as such, of political prisoners. It must continue to persuade public opinion that our offense was not of a political nature; that it was nothing more than unpleasant and unfortunate riotous conduct in the capital. The legend of “a few slightly mad women seeking notoriety” must be sustained. Our demand was never granted, but it was kept up until the last imprisonment and was soon reinforced by additional protest tactics. Our suffrage prisoners, however, made an important contribution toward establishing this reform which others will consummate. They were the first in America to organize and sustain this demand over a long period of time. In America we maintain a most backward policy in dealing with political prisoners. We have neither regulation nor precedent for special treatment of them. Nor have we official flexibility.
This controversy was at its height in the press and in the public mind when President Wilson sent the following message, through a New York State suffrage leader, on behalf of the approaching New York referendum on state woman suffrage:
“May I not express to you my very deep interest in the campaign in New York for the adoption of woman suffrage, and may I not say that I hope no voter will be influenced in his decision with regard to the great matter by anything the so-called pickets may have done here in Washington. However justly they may have laid themselves open to serious criticism, their action represents, I am sure, so small a fraction of the women of the country who are urging the adoption of woman suffrage that it would be most unfair and argue a narrow view to allow their actions to prejudice the cause itself. I am very anxious to see the great state of New York set a great example in this matter.”
This statement showed a political appreciation of the growing power of the movement. Also it would be difficult to prove that the “small fraction” had not shown political wisdom in injecting into the campaign the embarrassment of a controversy which was followed by the above statement of *the President. In the meantime he continued to imprison in Washington the “so-called pickets” whom he hoped would not influence the decision of the men voters of New York. It will be remembered, in passing, that the New York voters adopted suffrage at this time, although they had rejected it two years earlier. If the voters of New York were influenced at all by the “so-called pickets,” could even President Wilson himself satisfactorily prove that it had been an adverse influence?