Again we were reassured, and our confidence in the Premier's pledge remained unshaken throughout the campaign, although Mr. Lloyd-George continued to throw out hints that the promises of facilities for the bill were altogether illusory. We could not believe him, and when, two months later, I was asked in America: "When will English women vote?" I replied with perfect conviction, "Next year."
This was in Louisville, Kentucky, where I attended the 1911 Annual Convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association.
I remember this third visit to the United States with especial pleasure. I was the guest in New York of Dr. and Mrs. John Winters Brannan, and through the courtesy of Dr. Brannan, who is at the head of all the city hospitals, I saw something of the penal system and the institutional life of America. We visited the workhouse and the penitentiary on Blackwell's Island, and although I am told that these places are not regarded as model institutions, I can assure my readers that they are infinitely superior to the English prisons where women are punished for trying to win their political freedom. In the American prisons, much as they lacked in some essentials, I saw no solitary confinement, no rule of silence, no deadly air of officialdom. The food was good and varied, and above all there was an air of kindness and good feeling between the officials and the prisoners that is almost wholly lacking in England.
But, after all, in the United States as in other countries, the problem of the relations between unfranchised women and the State remains unsolved and unsatisfactory. One night my friends took me to that sombre and terrible institution, the Night Court for Women. We sat on the bench with the magistrate, and he very courteously explained everything to us. The whole business was heart-breaking. All the women, with one exception—an old drunkard—were charged with solicitation. Most of them were of high type by nature. It all seemed so hopeless, and it was clear that they were victims of an evil system. Their conviction was a foregone conclusion.
The magistrate said that in most cases the reason for their coming there was economic. One case of a little cigar maker, who said very simply that she only went on the streets when out of work, and that when in work she earned $8 a week, was very tragic and touching. I could not keep the Night Court out of my speeches after that. The whole dreadful injustice of women's lives seemed mirrored in that place.
I went as far west as the Pacific Coast on this visit, spending Christmas day in Seattle, and for the first time seeing a community where women and men existed on terms of exact equality. It was a delightful experience. As I wrote home to our members, the men of the western States seemed to my eyes eager, earnest, rough men, building a great community in a great hurry, but never have I seen greater respect, courtesy and chivalry shown to women than in that one Suffrage State it has been my privilege to visit.
I am getting a little ahead of my story, however. It was in November, when I was in the city of Minneapolis, that a crushing blow descended on the English suffragists. I learned of this through cabled despatches in the newspapers and from private cables, and was so staggered that I could scarcely command myself sufficiently to fill my immediate engagements. This was the news, that the Government had broken their plighted word and had deliberately destroyed the Conciliation Bill. My first wild thought, on hearing of this act of treachery, was to cancel all engagements and return to England, but my final decision to remain afterwards proved the right one, because the women at home, without a moment's loss of time, struck the answering blow, guided by that insight which has been characteristic of every act of the members of our Union. I did not return to England until January 11, 1912, and by that time great deeds had been done. Our movement had entered upon a new and more vigorous stage of militancy.