They were given thirty days in the workhouse.
The last picketing of the Emergency War Session of the Sixty-fifth Congress took place on October 6, the day Congress adjourned. There were eleven women in this picket line: Dr. Caroline Spencer, Vivian Pierce, Louise Lewis Kahle, Rose Winslow, Joy Young, Matilda Young, Minnie Henesy, Kate Heffelfinger, Maud Jamison, Lou C. Daniels.
Alice Paul led them. Congress was adjourning. The work of the Woman’s Party was going on smoothly. For the first time, Alice Paul felt that she had the leisure to go to jail.
In the Suffragist of October 13, Pauline Jacobson of the San Francisco Bulletin thus describes their arrest:
I had had much of the Western prejudice against the “militant movement” that the live Suffrage battle had become in this country. I had thought from the newspaper reports that have gone forth concerning the action of these “militant Suffragists,” that “picketing” was rowdy and unlovely. I found it a silent, a still thing—a thing sublime....
The sun, which never seems bright to me under these paler Eastern skies, slanted chill and thin through the falling golden foliage of autumn trees lining the broad avenue on which the White House stands. Diagonally across, flying the Suffrage colors, stands the handsome old Cameron House, the Headquarters of the Woman’s Party.
Suddenly that chill avenue vista became vibrant with color, with fluttering banners, wide-striped of purple, white, and gold, borne aloft on tall, imposing, war-like spears. Down the Avenue they fluttered slowly, as if moved by some mysterious force. Then I saw the force that was sending those banners forward through the careless crowds.
There were eleven women, each bearing high her colored banner. The leader, a woman frail, and slight, and very pale, her eyes and face really lit with exaltation of purpose, carried a white flag on which was printed: “Mr. President, what will you do for Woman Suffrage?” Then behind them followed the others with the vivid purple and gold flags on the spear-headed staffs. They looked neither to the right nor to the left. They seemed to me to walk so lightly that the great banners carried them; and there was the glow in all of their eyes though their faces were quite unsmiling.
The street in an instant had become alive with people who gathered about, followed, or lined the curbs, men and women—the women for the most part curious, the men for the most part disdainful, insolent, or leering. It was not a Western crowd; there was no generosity in it.
But silently, perceived by all but perceiving none, the women marched straight ahead. As they neared the White House a sailor sprang forward and tore the banner from one picket, threw it on the ground, and trampled on it. The young girl who had carried it stooped down and silently rescued her banner. I thought there was tenderness in the way she smoothed it out and tried to fasten it again to her tall staff. Four banners were torn and mutilated like that. Each girl, without a word, like the first, tried to protect her flag.