Men were heard to say, one to another, “Stick around here. Something’s going to happen this afternoon. I saw it this morning.” To them, of course, it was merely an entertaining exhibition.
Obeying Orders.
Washington Police Arresting White House Pickets Before the Treasury Building.
Photo Copr. Harris and Ewing, Washington, D. C.
The Patrol Wagon Waiting the Arrival of the Suffrage Pickets.
Photo Copr. Harris and Ewing, Washington, D. C.
An enlisting sergeant used often to make his way through the crowds saying, “Now you have shown your spirit, boys, come and enlist!”
At all times, however, the people who annoyed, and later ill-treated the girls, were very young men—often in uniform. After a while there appeared men in plain clothes with groups of men in khaki, or yeomen, who were obviously in the crowd for the purpose of making trouble for the Suffragists. These people did not like cameras, and the moving picture people who, appreciating the news value of the situation, tried to get views of the crowd, did so at the risk of having their cameras smashed. Indeed, Helena Hill Weed once dispersed a crowd by pointing a camera at them. This was the worst element the pickets had to deal with—unthinking young men of a semi-brutalized type. Of course, boys took their cue from their elders, and snatched or destroyed banners where they could. After a demonstration, you would come across groups of them, marching with the tattered banners that they had managed to steal.
“When is the shooting going to begin?” one little boy was heard to ask once.
In the very midst of the riots, one would come across older men cutting up banners into small pieces which they gave away as souvenirs.
Of course, there were chivalrous spirits who protested against the treatment of the pickets by the police—protested even after they were threatened with arrest. Some of them were actually arrested, and one of them fined.