That afternoon, the same women, except that Bertha Arnold was substituted for Mrs. Pope, mounted the steps bearing a large banner which read:
WE PROTEST AGAINST THE 34 WILFUL SENATORS WHO HAVE
DELAYED THE POLITICAL FREEDOM OF AMERICAN WOMEN.
THEY HAVE OBSTRUCTED THE WAR PROGRAM OF THE PRESIDENT.
THEY HAVE LINED UP THE SENATE WITH PRUSSIA BY
DENYING SELF-GOVERNMENT TO THE PEOPLE.
All the afternoon, the banner bearers were detained in the courtroom at intervals. When they were released, they went back to the Capitol; were arrested; detained in the courtroom again; released again.
On the morning of October 10, four more pickets, Edith Ainge, Bertha Moller, Maud Jamison, Clara Wold, started for the Capitol. Crowds of men and women gathered in the park to see what was going to happen, and rows of police stood on the Capitol steps awaiting the pickets. As soon as the big protest banner was unfurled, the police seized it. Maud Jamison and Clara Wold tried to mount the steps with the tri-color, but several policemen rushed upon them, and conducted them up the steps and into the Capitol building. As the police said over and over again that there were no arrests, the women insisted on carrying their banners.
Protesting against the curious and inconsistent action on the part of the police, the women were conducted into the presence of the captain. He iterated and reiterated that this action was all in accordance with the rules of Colonel Higgins, the Democratic Sergeant-at-Arms who is under the Rules Committee which carries out the Democratic program. The Suffragists demanded by what authority they were held and the captain informed them that it did not make any difference about the law, that Colonel Higgins had taken the law into his own hands. The four Suffragists waited for a few minutes. Their purple, white, and gold banners had been confiscated, but the protest banner was still there. Suddenly, without any interference from anybody, they took up their protest banner, walked out of the guard room, went over to the Senate Office Building and stood with it, at the top of the steps, the rest of the day. Later Vivian Pierce, Mrs. Stewart Polk, Mary Gertrude Fendall and Gladys Greiner joined this group of pickets.
In the meantime, other Suffragists were trying vainly to take the Suffrage colors to the Capitol steps. They walked from the Office Building on to the Plaza by twos. The instant they appeared, policemen, rushing down the steps, rushing from the curb, rushing from the crowd which had gathered, seized them. They tried to wrench the banners away; and this was, of course, an unequal contest, in which sometimes the women were pulled completely off the ground and always their wrists painfully twisted. But the women clung to the banners, walked as calmly as the situation permitted into the Capitol, and down to the guard room. Here the banners were always confiscated, but they, themselves, were released. If anybody in the crowd showed any disposition to resent the attitude of the police, he was placed under arrest too; but he also was released.