Suffragists -- United States; Women -- Suffrage -- United States
Under this published interpretation of his pardon the women at Occoquan
accepted the pardon and returned to Washington. The incident was
closed. I returned to New York. During the next two months I carefully
watched the situation. Six or eight more groups of women in that time
were arrested on the same false charges, tried and imprisoned in the
same illegal way. Finally a group of women was arrested in September
under the identical circumstances as those in July, was tried in the
same lawless fashion and given the same sentence of “sixty days in the
workhouse.” The President may have been innocent of responsibility for
the first arrests, but he was personally and politically responsible
for all the arrests that occurred after his pardon of the first, group.
Under this development it seemed to me that self-respect demanded
action, so I sent my resignation to the President, publicly stated my
attitude and regretfully left his Administration.”
Mr. Malone’s resignation in September, 1917, came with a sudden shock,
because the entire country and surely the Administration thought him
quieted and subdued by the President’s personal appeal to him in July.
Mr. Malone was shocked that the policy of arrests should be continued.
Mr. Wilson and his Administration were shocked that any one should care
enough about the liberty of women to resign a lucrative post in the
Government. The nation was shocked into the realization that this was
not a street brawl between women and policemen, but a controversy
between suffragists and a powerful Administration. We had said so but
it would have taken months to convince the public that the President
was in any way responsible. Mr. Malone did what we could only have done
with the greatest difficulty and after more prolonged sacrifices. He
laid the responsibility squarely and dramatically where it belonged. It
is impossible to overemphasize what a tremendous acceleration Mr.
Malone’s fine, solitary and generous act gave to the speedy break-down
of the Administration’s resistance. His sacrifice lightened ours.
Women ought to be willing to make sacrifices for their own liberation,
but for a man to have the courage and imagination to make such a
sacrifice for the liberation of women is unparalleled. Mr. Malone
called to the attention of the nation the true cause of the obstruction
and suppression. He reproached the President and his colleagues after
mature consideration, in the most honorable and vital way,—by refusing
longer to associate himself with an Administration which backed such
policies.
And Mr. Malone’s resignation was not only welcomed by the militant
group. The conservative suffrage leaders, although they heartily
disapproved of , picketing, were as outspoken in their gratitude.
Alice Stone Blackwell, the daughter of Lucy Stone, herself a pioneer
suffrage leader and editor, wrote to Mr. Malone:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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