He asked, “Would you pay a fine instead of going to prison, if I made the fine fifty cents?”
“Not if you made it five cents,” replied Mrs. Kendall, who spoke for the six prisoners.
He therefore sentenced them to thirty days in the government workhouse.
On September 22, four more Suffragists were arrested. They were Peggy Baird Johns, Margaret Wood Kessler, Ernestine Hara, Hilda Blumberg. They carried a new banner this time, quoting words from an early work of the President. It said:
PRESIDENT WILSON, WHAT DID YOU MEAN WHEN YOU SAID, “WE HAVE SEEN A GOOD MANY SINGULAR THINGS HAPPEN RECENTLY. WE HAVE BEEN TOLD THAT IT IS UNPATRIOTIC TO CRITICIZE PUBLIC ACTION. WELL, IF IT IS, THERE IS A DEEP DISGRACE RESTING UPON THE ORIGIN OF THIS NATION. THIS NATION ORIGINATED IN THE SHARPEST SORT OF CRITICISM OF PUBLIC POLICY. WE ORIGINATED, TO PUT IT IN THE VERNACULAR, IN A KICK AND IF IT IS UNPATRIOTIC TO KICK, WHY, THEN THE GROWN MAN IS UNLIKE THE CHILD. WE HAVE FORGOTTEN THE VERY PRINCIPLE OF OUR ORIGIN IF WE HAVE FORGOTTEN HOW TO OBJECT, HOW TO RESIST, HOW TO AGITATE, HOW TO PULL DOWN AND BUILD UP EVEN TO THE EXTENT OF REVOLUTIONARY PRACTICES IF IT BE NECESSARY TO READJUST MATTERS. I HAVE FORGOTTEN MY HISTORY IF THAT BE NOT TRUE HISTORY.”
The Suffragist of September 29 describes this event:
When the pickets this week took up their stations at the East gate of the White House, and unfurled the “seditious” utterance of the President himself, the banner was almost immediately confiscated by the two police officers who had hurried to the spot. They seemed anxious to keep from the little pressing crowd the fact that the President had once been not only a Democrat, but a democrat.
The two officers then stood directly in front of the little group of women carrying tri-colored flags, with their backs to what crowd there was. More than half of the wide White House sidewalks were vacant of pedestrians. The officers had evidently been ordered to let the crowd collect for a certain number of minutes before they arrested the women. They betrayed not the slightest interest in the spectators, but watched their victims with bored attention as they waited for the patrol....
The four young women were, on the following day, after the usual court proceeding, sentenced to thirty days in the government workhouse for “obstructing traffic.”
A brief statement was made by each of the little group. “We are not citizens,” said these young women. “We are not represented. We were silently, peacefully attempting to gain the freedom of twenty million women in the United States of America. We have broken no law. We are guilty of no crime. We have been illegally arrested. We demand our freedom, and we shall continue to ask for it until the government acts.”