The Story of the Woman's PartyGillmore, Inez Haynes
History
The Story of the Woman's Party
Gillmore, Inez Haynes
National Woman's Party; Paul, Alice, 1885-1977; Women -- Suffrage -- United States
As far as money was concerned, the effect was magical. In some months
during the picketing the receipts were double what they had been the
corresponding months of the previous year when there had been no
picketing. Once those receipts jumped as high as six times the normal
amount. This was what happened in England during the militant period.
4. _The Court and the Pickets_
“So long as you send women to prison for asking for justice, so long
will women be ready to go in such a cause.”
ANNE MARTIN to the judge before whom she was tried.
After Judge Waddill’s decision that the commitment of the pickets to
Occoquan was illegal, the pickets filed sixteen suits for damage. Eight
of these were against Whittaker, Superintendent of the Workhouse at
Occoquan, and his assistant, Captain Reams, on account of their brutal
treatment of the women while at Occoquan Workhouse. They were filed in
the United States Court for the Western District of Virginia at
Richmond. The other eight were against the Commissioners of the District
of Columbia and Superintendent Zinkham of the District Jail for the
unlawful transfer of the pickets to the institution of Whittaker at
Occoquan. These suits were filed in the Supreme Court of the District of
Columbia at Washington.
The appeals in the cases of two groups of women arrested August 23 and
28 came up in the District of Columbia Court of Appeals on January 8,
1918, before Chief Justice Smyth, and Justices Robb and Van Orsdel.
Matthew O’Brien, of Washington, and Dudley Field Malone, of New York,
appeared for the Suffragists. Corporation Counsel Stevens conducted the
case for the government.
“Suppose,” suggested Justice Robb, “some upholders of Billy Sunday
should go out on the streets with banners on which were painted some
of Billy’s catch phrases, and should stand with their backs to the
fence, and a curious crowd gathered, some of whom created disorder
and threw stones at the carriers of the banners. Who should be
arrested, those who created the disorder, or the banner carriers?”
Mr. Stevens gave it as his opinion that both parties should be
arrested.
“Did I make myself clear that the banner carriers were perfectly
peaceful?” Justice Robb asked.
“When it is commonly known there is a forty-foot sidewalk there?”
Justice Van Orsdel reinforced him.
“Well, then,” observed Attorney O’Brien, when he answered Mr.
Stevens in his argument, “the honorable Justices obstruct traffic,
according to learned counsel’s definition, when court adjourns, and
they walk down the street together.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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