Five of us who are with you to-night have recently come out from the workhouse into the world. A great change? Not so much of a change for women, disfranchised women. In prison or out, American women are not free. Our lot of physical freedom simply gives us and the public a new and vivid sense of what our lack of political freedom really means. Disfranchisement is the prison of women’s power and spirit. Women have long been classed with criminals so far as their voting rights are concerned. And how quick the Government is to live up to its classification the minute women determinedly insist upon these rights. Prison life epitomizes all life under undemocratic rule. At Occoquan, as at the Capitol and the White House, we faced hypocrisy, trickery and treachery on the part of those in power. And the constant appeal to us to “cooperate” with the workhouse authorities sounded wonderfully like the exhortation addressed to all women to “support the Government.” “Is that the law of the District of Columbia?” I asked Superintendent Whittaker concerning a statement he had made to me. “It is the law,” he answered, “because it is the rule I make.” The answer of Whittaker is the answer Wilson makes to women every time the Government, of which he is the head, enacts a law and at the same time continues to refuse to pass the Susan B. Anthony amendment . . . . We seem to-day to stand before you free, but I have no sense of freedom because I have left comrades at Occoquan and because other comrades may at any moment join them there . . . . While comrades are there what is our freedom? It is as empty as the so-called political freedom of women who have won suffrage by a state referendum. Like them we are free only within limits . . . . We must not let our voice be drowned by war trumpets or cannon. If we do, we shall find ourselves, when the war is over, with a peace that will only prolong our struggle, a democracy that will belie its name by leaving out half the people. The Administration continued to send women to the workhouse and the District Jail for thirty and sixty day sentences. Chapter 7 An Administration Protest—Dudley Field Malone Resigns Dudley Field Malone was known to the country as sharing the intimate confidence and friendship of President Wilson. He had known and supported the President from the beginning of the President’s political career. He had campaigned twice through New Jersey with Mr. Wilson as Governor; he had managed Mr. Wilson’s campaigns in many states for the nomination before the Baltimore Convention; he had toured the country with Mr. Wilson in 1912 ; and it was he who led to victory President Wilson’s fight for California in 1916.