On November 17, three more women—Mrs. Harvey Wiley, Mrs. William Kent, and Elizabeth McShane—were sentenced to fifteen days on the November 10 charges.
All these prisoners except four were sent to the Occoquan Workhouse.
Habeas corpus proceedings became necessary—owing to conditions which will presently be set forth—and a writ was procured; but only after numberless obstacles were surmounted. The case came up in the United States District Court at Alexandria, Virginia, with Judge Edmund Waddill sitting. Judge Waddill ordered the prisoners transferred to the jail on the ground that they should have been confined there instead of at Occoquan Workhouse. Later the Court of Appeals reversed this decision. In the meantime, brought to the jail, the government was faced with the necessity of forcibly feeding the majority of these women, already weakened from hunger-striking.
Here, perhaps, is the place to tell of a curious incident that happened during Alice Paul’s jail term. For this to strike the reader with the force it deserves, he must remember that Alice Paul was held almost incommunicado, that she saw but two friends from the outside, and then only for a few minutes, that she could not confer with her counsel, Dudley Field Malone, who had to overcome extraordinary obstacles—had finally to threaten habeas corpus proceedings and to see high officials who were his personal friends—to get to her. Two newspaper men were admitted, but they were friendly to the Administration.
One evening, at nine o’clock—an hour when all the prisoners were supposed to be in bed—the door opened and a stranger entered her room. He proved to be David Lawrence, a newspaper man, very well known as one who was closely associated with the Administration. He did not say that he had come from the Administration, but, of course, it is obvious that if he had not been in favor with the Administration, he would not have been admitted. He stayed two hours, and Miss Paul talked over the situation with him.
I now quote Miss Younger, who has told this episode on many platforms:
He asked Miss Paul how long she and the other pickets would give the Administration before they began picketing again. She said it would depend upon the attitude the Administration and Congress seemed to be taking toward the Federal Amendment. He said he believed the prohibition bill would be brought up and passed, and after that was out of the way the Suffrage bill would be taken up.
He asked if we would be content to have it go through one House this session and wait till the next session for it to pass the other House. Miss Paul said that if the bill did not go through both Houses this session, the Woman’s Party would not be satisfied.
Then the man said he believed that the President would not mention Suffrage in his message at the opening of Congress, but would make it known to the leaders of Congress that he wanted it passed and would see that it passed.
He said in effect: Now the great difficulty is for these hunger-strikers to be recognized as political prisoners. Every day you hunger-strike, you advertise the idea of political prisoners throughout the country. It would be the easiest thing in the world for the Administration to treat you as political prisoners; to put you in a fine house in Washington; give you the best of food; take the best of care of you; but if we treat you as political prisoners, we would have to treat other groups which might arise in opposition to the war program as political prisoners too, and that would throw a bomb in our war program. It would never do. It would be easier to give you the Suffrage Amendment than to treat you as political prisoners.