The action of the Court this morning makes more glaring than ever the injustice of holding nineteen women on sixty and thirty day sentences in Occoquan Workhouse for the same offense of petitioning for liberty which we committed. We will use our unexpected freedom to press our campaign with ever-increasing vigor.
On October 15, four pickets, under suspended sentence from their picketing of October 6, went out again. They were Rose Winslow, Kate Heffelfinger, Minnie Henesy, Maud Jamison. The police were taken absolutely by surprise. It was ten minutes before the patrol wagons appeared. In the meantime, of course, a crowd gathered to see what was going to happen. When the patrol stopped at the curb, an officer approached the pickets. “Move on!” he ordered, and, before the pickets could move on, or even make a reply—“I will put you under arrest,” and immediately, “You are under arrest.” Rose Winslow, one of the pickets, lifted her banner high, and marched with the air of a conqueror to the waiting patrol. The crowd burst into spontaneous applause.
In court Rose Winslow said:
We have seen officers of the law permit men to assault women, to destroy their banners, to enter their residences. How, then, can you ask us to have respect for the law? We thought that by dismissing the Suffragists without sentence this Court had finally decided to recognize our legal right to petition the government. We shall continue to picket because it is our right. On the tenth of November there will be a long line of Suffragists who will march to the White House gates to ask for political liberty. You can send us to jail, but you know that we have broken no law. You know that we have not even committed the technical offense on which we were arrested. You know that we are guiltless.
Judge Mullowny gave them the choice between a twenty-five dollar fine and six months in the district workhouse. They, of course, refused to pay the fine.
At half-past four on October 20, Alice Paul led a deputation of three pickets to the West gate of the White House. The others were Dr. Caroline Spencer, Gladys Greiner, Gertrude Crocker. Alice Paul carried a banner with the words of President Wilson which had appeared recently on the posters for the Second Liberty Bond Loan of 1917:
THE TIME HAS COME TO CONQUER OR SUBMIT. FOR US THERE
CAN BE BUT ONE CHOICE. WE HAVE MADE IT.
Dr. Caroline Spencer’s banner bore the watchword of ’76: