“Well, why didn’t you do it?”
“I couldn’t promise that.”
“But you didn’t have to keep your promise!”
The ever-present bitterness arose, not from being caught in the act, but from being convicted without having been, according to their own belief, proved guilty. It was the woeful mental attitude rather than the actual physical condition of their imprisonment which so appalled me. Not one of them intended to go straight. They hated the police who were drawing good salaries from the State and getting credit for putting them in jail; yet all the time they had been smarter. This sounds inconsistent, but it was their peculiar psychological twist.
I talked it over later with several judges to whom it was rather a new point of view. Among other cases I cited that of a brothel keeper who conducted her house as a club and did it so carefully that no evidence could be obtained against her. Therefore, a detective had put opium in the plumbing and she had been sentenced on a narcotic charge, although it was well known this was not her offense.
“The prisoners were guilty, weren’t they?” said one of the judges. “You know that, don’t you?”
“Yes,” I rejoined, “but to my mind that doesn’t end the State’s responsibility. It seems to me your detectives should be more intelligent than the criminals they are set to catch.”
The girls at Queens Penitentiary were unaware they were entitled to bring a far more serious charge against society than clumsy and inept police methods. I have never since visited an institution for juvenile offenders without thinking how stupid people are not to recognize that most adolescents are subjected to temptation on some occasion or other; that anyone, in an emotional fragment of time, when young and when the consequences are not clear, may do some forbidden thing. More often than not it is merely incidental, and in no way warrants a life of penance.
The only brutal treatment I received was during the last two hours. Since my fingerprints had not been taken on arrival, Warden McCann first tried to talk me into compliance. His argument that all prisoners’ prints must be on file, that not having them was unheard of, got us nowhere. I refused to submit, even though it postponed my release. He then turned me over to two keepers. One held me, the other struggled with my arms, trying to force my fingers down on the inkpad. I do not know from what source I drew my physical strength, but I managed to prevent my hands from touching it. My arms were bruised and I was weak and exhausted when an officer at headquarters, where J.J. was protesting against the delay, telephoned an order to discharge me without the usual ceremony.
March 6, 1917, dawned a bitter, stinging morning. Through the metal doors I stepped, and the tingling air beat against my face. No other experience in my life has been like that. Gathered in front were my old friends who had frozen through the two hours waiting to celebrate “Margaret’s coming out party.” They lifted their voices in the Marseillaise. Behind them at the upper windows were my new friends, the women with whom I had spent the month, and they too were singing. Something choked me. Something still chokes me whenever I hear that triumphant music and ringing words, “Ye sons of freedom wake to glory!”