I asked one of the pickets once how the other prisoners regarded them. She answered: “They called us ‘the strange ladies.’”
II
TELLING THE COUNTRY
In the meantime, the country had not been kept misinformed or uninformed in regard to the treatment of the pickets. Of course, the press teemed with descriptions of their protests and its results. Again and again their activities pushed war news out of the preferred position on the front page of the newspapers. Again and again they snatched the headlines from important personages and events. But despite flaming headlines, these newspaper accounts were inevitably brief and incomplete; sometimes unfair. The Woman’s Party determined that the great rank and file, who might be careless or cautious of newspaper narration, should hear the whole extraordinary story. Picketing began in January, 1917. By the end of September, long before Alice Paul’s arrest and through October and November, therefore, speakers were sent all over the United States. Alice Paul divided the States into four parts, twelve States each: Maud Younger went to the South; Mrs. Lawrence Lewis and Mabel Vernon to the Middle West; Anne Martin to the far West; Abby Scott Baker and Doris Stevens to the East. Ahead of them went the swift band of organizers who always so ably and intensively prepared the way for Woman’s Party activity.
Public opinion became more and more intrigued, began to blaze oftener and oftener into protest as successive parties of pickets were arrested. The climax, of course, was the climactic Administration mistake—the arrest of Alice Paul. And as it began to dawn on the country that she was kept incommunicado ... that she was in the psychopathic ward ... alienists ... hunger-striking ... forcible feeding....
The speakers had extraordinary experiences, especially those who went into the strongholds of the Democrats in the South. Again and again when they told about the jail conditions, and how white women were forced into association with the colored prisoners, were even compelled to paint the toilets used by the colored prisoners, men would rise in the audience and say, “There are a score of men here who’ll go right up to Washington and burn that jail down.” It has been said that Warden Zinkham received by mail so many threats against his life that he went armed.
From Headquarters, telegrams were sent to speakers as the situation grew at Washington, informing them as to the arrests, the actions of the police, sentences, et caetera. Often these telegrams would come in the midst of a speech. The speaker always read them to the audience. Once after Doris Stevens had read such a telegram, “Do you protest against this?” she demanded of her audience. “We do!” they yelled, rising as one man to their feet.
Suddenly while everything was apparently going smoothly, audiences large, indignantly sympathetic, actively protestive, change came. Everywhere obstacles were put in the way of the speakers. That this was the result of concerted action on the part of the authorities was evident from the fact that within a few days four speakers in different parts of the country felt this blocking influence.
In Arkansas they recalled Mabel Vernon’s permit for the Court House. In Connecticut, newspapers began to call Berta Crone pro-German, to attack her in a scurrilous manner.