He asked, “How many miscarriages have you had? How much sickness in your family? How much does your husband earn?” The answers were seven, eight, nine dollars a week. At last one woman more miserable and more poverty-stricken than the rest was summoned. “How many children have you?” “Eight and three that didn’t live.” “What does your husband earn?” “Ten dollars a veek—ven he vorks.” Judge Freschi finally exclaimed, “I can’t stand this any longer,” and the court adjourned over the week-end. J.J. was jubilant, because he said there was nothing for him to do; the court was arguing his case for him. I myself was feeling a little conscience-smitten. A mass meeting of sympathizers had been organized by the Committee of One Hundred for that evening in Carnegie Hall, and I went straight there from the courtroom. I had a speech ready in which I said we were being persecuted, not prosecuted; that the judges were no better than witch-burners. It was unfortunate, but copies had already been released to the press and the wording could not be changed. Helen Todd, the Chairman, a grand person who had been trained under Jane Addams, had given the mothers of Brownsville places of honor on the platform to let everybody see what kind of women we were fighting for. She asked for twenty volunteers to follow the example of the English suffragettes who had gone on hunger strikes en masse, but no women whose names registered socially in the public mind were willing thus to join in protesting against the law; only working girls came forward. Three days later Jessie Ashley and I took the train for Albany with Mrs. Pinchot, who was a close friend of Governor Charles S. Whitman, to ask him to appoint a commission to investigate birth control and make a report to the State Legislature. The Governor, who was fair and intelligent, quite distinctly representing a class of liberal politicians, received us cordially. Ethel and her hunger strike had been front-page news for ten days; in the subway, on street corners, everywhere people gathered, she was being discussed. In Washington and Albany congressmen and legislators were sending out for the latest details. Governor Whitman naturally asked about her, and we seized the opportunity to try to impress on him the outrageousness of making her suffer for so just a cause. He said directly her incarceration was a disgrace to the State. He was entirely out of sympathy with the courts and judges, and offered a pardon conditional upon her ceasing to disseminate birth control information. But I had not come to ask that favor. “My sister wouldn’t take a pardon,” I replied, much to the distress of Mrs. Pinchot. However, I accepted gratefully his letter to the warden at Blackwell’s Island authorizing me to see her.