(From Lynd, Nonviolence in America. Bobbs-Merrill, 1968) (Originally in Doris Stevens, Jailed For Freedom (New York: Boni and Liverwright,1920), pp. 175, 177-3L78, 184-191. 15. Suffragettes, Letters from Prison, 1917 The struggle for women's rights began as a phase of the abolitionist movement. Garrison insisted that women be permitted to participate in antislavery meetings, and women leaders such as Susan B. Antbony and Lucretia Mott urged freedom for both the slave and the unfranchised female. After the Civil War most male abolitionists concluded that the vote for women should be deferred so that the vote for the Negro could be won. Victory in the women's suffrage struggle came fifty years later, during World War 1. Led now by a new and more militant group of spokesmen, such as Alice Paul, the suffragettes did not hesitate to press their domestic concern in a world at war. They picketed persistently in Washington, D. C. When arrested, they continued their protest in jail. The following passages, from a book by a participant in the movement, describe prison protest, first by petition, then by a refusal to work and eat. The suffering of the suffragettes moved the nation, prompted the resignation of the Collector of Customs for the Port of New York, contributed to the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, and established significant precedents for later nonviolent demonstrators. Political Prisoners .1 Finding that a Suffrage Committee in the House and a reporti, in the Senate had not silenced our banners, the Administration cast about for another plan by Nvbicb to stop the picketing. This time they turned desperately to longer terms of imprisonment. They were indeed hard pressed when they could choose such a cruel and stupid course. Our answer to this policy was more women on the picket line, on the outside, and a protest on the inside of prison. We decided, in the face of extended imprisonment, to demand to be treated as political prisoners. We felt that, as a matter of principle, this was the dignified and self-respecting thing to do, since we had offended politically, not criminally. We believed further that a determined, organized effort to make clear to a wider public the political nature of the offense would intensify the Administration's embarrassment and so accelerate their final surrender. It fell to Lucy Burns, vice chairman of the organization, to be the leader of the new protest.... She had no sooner begun to organize her comrades for protest than the officials sensed a "plot," and removed her at once to solitary confinement. But they were too late. Taking the leader only hastened the rebellion. A forlorn piece of paper was discovered, on which was written their initial demand. It was then -passed from prisoner to prisoner through holes in the wall surrounding leaden pipes, until a finished document had been perfected and signed by all the prisoners. This historic document-historic because it represents the first organized group action ever made in America to establish the status of political prisoners-said: To the Commissioners of the District of Columbia: As political prisoners, we, the undersigned, refuse to work while in prison. We have taken this stand as a matter of principle after careful consideration, and from it we shall not recede. This action is a necessary protest against an unjust sen- tence. In reminding President Wilson of his pre-election promises toward woman suffrage we were exercising the right of peaceful petition, guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States, which declares peaceful picketing is legal in the District of Columbia. That we are unjustly sentenced has been well recognized-wben President Wilson pardoned the first group of suffragists who had been given sixty days in the workhouse, and again when judge Mullowny suspended sen- tence for the last group of picketers. We wish to point out the inconsistency and injustice of our sentences-some of us have been given sixty days, a later group thirty days, and another group given a suspended sentence for exactly the same action. Conscious, therefore, of having acted in accordance with the highest standards of citizenship, we ask the Commissioners of the District to grant us the rights due political prisoners. We ask that we no longer be segregated and confined under locks and bars in small groups, but permitted to see each other, and that Miss Lucy Burns, who is in full sympathy with this letter, be released from solitary confinement in another building and given back to us. We ask exemption from prison work, that our legal right to consult counsel be recognized, to have food sent to us from outside, to supply ourselves with writing material for as much correspondence as we may need, to receive books, letters, newspapers, our relatives and friends. Our united demand for political treatment has been delayed, because on. entering the workhouse we found conditions so very bad that before we could ask that the suffragists be treated as political prisoners, it was necessary to make a stand for the ordinary rights of human beings for all the inmates. Although this has not been accomplished we now wish to bring the important question of the status of political prisoners to the attention of the commissioners, who, we are informed, have full authority to make what regulations they please for the District prison and workhouse. The Commissioners are requested to send us a written reply so that we may be sure this protest has reached them. Signed by, MARY WINSOR, Lucy BRANHAM, ERNESTINE HARA, HILDA BLUMBERG, MAUD MALONE, PAULINE F. ADAMS, ELEANOR A. CALNAN, EDITH AINGE, ANNIE ARNEIL, DOROTHY J. BARTLETT, MARGARET FOTHERINGHAM. The Commissioners' only answer to this was a hasty transfer of the signers and the leader, Miss Burns, to the District jail, where they were put in solitary confinement. The women were not only refused the privileges asked but were denied some of the usual privileges allowed to ordinary criminals. The Hunger Strike-A Weapon When the Administration refused to grant the demand of the prisoners and of that portion of the public which supported them, for the rights of political prisoners, it was decided to resort to the ultimate protest-weapon inside prison. A hunger strike was undertaken, not only to reinforce the verbal demand for the rights of political prisoners, but also as a final protest against unjust imprisonment and increasingly long sentences. This brought the Administration face to face with a more acute embarrassment. They had to choose between more stubborn resistance and capitulation. They continued for a while longer on the former path. Little is known in this country about the weapon of the hunger strike. And so at first it aroused tremendous indignation. "Let them starve to death," said the thoughtless one, wbo did not perceive that that was the very thing a political administration could least afford to do. "Mad fanatics," said a kindlier critic. The general opinion was that the hunger strike was "foolish." Few people realize that this resort to the refusal of food is almost as old as civilization. It has always represented a passionate desire to acbieve an end. There is not time to go into the religious use of it, which would also be pertinent, but I will cite a few instances which bave tragic and amusing likenesses to the suffrage hunger strike. According to the Brehon Law, which was the code of ancient Ireland by which justice was administered under ancient Irisb monarchs (from the earliest record to the 7th century), it became the duty of an injured person, when all else failed, to inflict punishment directly, for wrong done. "The plaintiff 'fasted on' the defendant." He went to the house of the defendant and sat upon his doorstep, remaining there without food to force the payment of a debt, for example. The debtor was compelled by the weight of custom and public opinion not to let the plaintiff die at his door, and yielded. Or if he did not yield, he was practically outlawed by the community, to the point of being driven away. A man who refused to abide by the custom not only incurred personal danger but lost all character. If resistance to this form of protest was resorted to it had to take the form of a counter-fast. If the victim of such a protest thought himself being unjustlv coerced, be might fast in oppo- sition, "to mitigate or avert the evil." "Fasting on a man" was also a mode of compelling action of anotber sort. St. Patrick fasted against King Trian to compel him to have compassion on bis [Trian's] slaves. He also fasted against a heretical city to compel it to become orthodox. He fasted against the pagan King Loeguire to "constrain bim to his will." This form of hunger strike was furtber used under the Brehon Law as compulsion to obtain a request. For example, the Leinstermen on one occasion fasted on St. Columkille till they obtained from him the promise that an extern King should never prevail against them. It is interesting to note that this form of direct action was adopted because there was no legislative machinery to enforce justice. These laws were merely a collection of customs attain- ing the force of law by long usage, by hereditary babit, and by public opinion. Our resort to this weapon grew out of the same situation. The legislative machinery, while empowered to give us redress, failed to function, and so we adopted the fast. The institution of fasting on a debtor still exists in the East. It is called by the Hindoos "sitting dbarna." The hunger strike was continuously used in Russia by pris- oners to obtain more humane practices toward them. Kropotkin cites an instance in which women prisoners hunger struck to get their babies back. If a child was born to a woman during her imprisonment the babe was immediately taken from her and not returned. Motbers struck and got their babies returned to tbem. He cites another successful example in Kharkoff prison in 1878 when six prisoners resolved to hunger strike to death if necessary to win two things-to be allowed exercise and to have the sick prisoners taken out of chains. There are innumerable instances of bunger strikes, even to death, in Russian prison history. But more often the demands of the strikers were won. Breshkovsky tells of a strike by 17 women against outrage, wbich elicited the desired promises from the warden. As early as i877 members of the Land and Liberty Society imprisoned for peaceful and educational propaganda, in the Schlusselburg Fortress for political prisoners, hunger struck against inhuman prison conditions and frightful brutalities and won their points. During the suffrage campaign in England this weapon was used for the double purpose of forcing the release of imprisoned militant suffragettes, and of compelling the British government to act. Among the demonstrations was a revival of the ancient Irisb custom by Sylvia Pankhurst, wbo in addition to her bunger strikes within prison, "fasted on" the doorstep of Premier Asquith to compel him to see a deputation of women on the granting of suffrage to English women. She won. Irish prisoners bave revived the hunger strike to compel either release or trial of untried prisoners and bave won. As I write, almost a hundred Irish prisoners detained by England for alleged nationalist activities, but not brought to trial, hunger struck to freedom. As a direct result of this specific hunger strike England has promised a renovation of her practices in dealing with Irish rebels. And so it was that when we came to the adoption of this accelerating tactic, we had behind us more precedents for winning our point than for losing. We were strong in the knowledge that we could "fast on" President Wilson and his powerful Administration, and compel him to act or "fast back." Among the prisoners who with Alice Paul led the hunger strike was a very picturesque figure, Rose Winslow (Ruza Wenclawska) of New York, whose parents bad brought her in infancy from Poland to become a citizen of "free" America. At eleven she was put at a loom in a Pennsylvania mill, where she wove hosiery for fourteen hours a day until tuberculosis claimed her at nineteen. A poet by nature she developed her mind to the full in spite of these disadvantages, and when she was forced to abandon her loom she became an organizer for the Consumers' League, and later a vivid and eloquent power in the suffrage movement. Her group preceded Miss Paul's by about a week in prison. These vivid sketches of Rose Winslow's impressions while in the prison hospital were written on tiny scraps of paper and smuggled out to us, and to her husband during her imprisonment. I reprint them in their original form with cuts but no editing. "if this thing is necessary we will naturally go through with it. Force is so stupid a weapon. I feel so happy doing my bit for decency-for our war, which is after all, real and funda- mental." "The women are all so magnificent, so beautiful. Alice Paul is as thin as ever, pale and large-eyed. We have been in soli- tary for five weeks. There is nothing to tell but that the days go by somehow. I have felt quite feeble the last few days-faint, so that I could hardly get my bair brushed, my arms ached so. But to-day I am well again. Alice Paul and I talk back and forth though we are at opposite ends of the building and a hall door also shuts us apart. But occasionally-thrills-we escape from behind our iron-barred doors and visit. Great laughter and rejoicing!" [To her husband] "My fainting probably means nothing except that I am not strong after these weeks. I know you won't be alarmed. "I told about a syphilitic colored woman with one leg. The other one was cut off, having rotted so that it was alive with maggots when she came in. The remaining one is now getting as bad. They are so short of nurses that a little colored girl of twelve, who is here waiting to have her tonsils removed, waits on her. This child and two others share a ward with a syphilitic child of three or four years, whose mother refused to have it at home. It makes you absolutely ill to see it. I am going to break all three windows as a protest against their confining Alice Paul with these! "Dr. Gannon is chief of a hospital. Yet Alice Paul and I found we had been taking baths in one of the tubs here, in which this -syphilitic child, an incurable, who has his eyes bandaged all the time, is also bathed. He has been here a year. Into the room where he lives came yesterday two children to be operated on for tonsillitis. They also bathed in the same tub. The syphilitic woman has been in that room seven months. Cheerful mixing, isn't it? The place is alive with roaches, crawling all over the walls, everywhere. I found one in my bed the other day. . . ." "There is great excitement about my two syphilitics. Each nurse is being asked whether she told me. So, as in all institu- tions where an unsanitary fact is made public, no effort is made to make the wrong itself right. All hands fall to, to find the culprit, wbo made it known, and he is punished." "Alice Paul is in the psychopathic ward. She dreaded. forcible feeding frightfully, and I hate to think how she must be feeling. I bad a nervous time of it, gasping a long time after- ward, and my stomac rejecting during the process. I spent a bad, restless night, but otherwise I am all right. The poor soul who fed me got liberally besprinkled during the process. I heard myself making the most hideous sounds.... One feels so forsaken when lies prone and people shove a pipe down one's stomach." "This morning but for an astounding tiredness, I am all right. I am waiting to see what happens wben the President realizes that brutal bullying isn't quite a statesmanlike method for settling a demand for justice at home. At least, if men are supine enough to endure, women, to their eternal glory-are not. "They took down the boarding from Alice Paul's window yesterday, I heard. It is so delicious about Alice and me. Over in the jail a rumor began that I was considered insane and would be examined. Then came Doctor White, and said he had come to see 'the thyroid case.' When they left we argued about the matter, neither of us knowing which was considered suspicious.' She insisted it was she, and, as it happened, she was right. Imagine any one thinking Alice Paul needed to be under observation!' The thick-headed idiots!" "Yesterday was a bad dav for me in feeding. I was vomiting continually during the process. The tube has developed an irritation somewhere that is painful. "Never was there a sentence like ours for such an offense as ours, even in England. No woman ever got it over there even for tearing down buildings. And during all that agitation we were busy saying that never would such things happen in the United States. The men told us they would not endure such frightfulness." "Mary Beard and Helen Todd-were allowed to stay only a minute, and I cried like a fool. I am getting over that habit, I think. "I fainted again last night. I just fell flop over in the bath- room where I was washing my hands and was led to bed when I recovered, by a nurse. I lost consciousness just as I got there again. I felt horribly faint until 12 o'clock, then fell asleep for awhile." "I was getting frantic because you seemed to think Alice was with me in the hospital. She was in the psychopathic ward. 'The same doctor feeds us both, and told me. Don't let them tell you we take this well. Miss Paul vomits much. I do, too, except when I'm not nervous, as I have been every time against my will. I try to be less feeble-minded. It's the nervous reaction, and I can't control it much. I don't imagine bathing one's food in tears very good for one. "We think of the coming feeding all day. It is horrible. The doctor thinks I take it well. I hate the thought of Alice Paul and the others if I take it well." "We still get no mail; we are 'insubordinate.' It's strange, isn't it; if you ask for food fit to eat, as we did, you are 'insubordinate'; and if you refuse food you are 'insubordinate.' Amusing. I am really all right. If this continues very long I perhaps won't be. I am interested to see how long our so-called I splendid American men' will stand for this form of discipline. "All news cheers one marvelously because it is hard to feel anything but a bit desolate and forgotten here in this place."All the officers here know we are making this hunger strike that women fighting for liberty may be considered political prisoners; we have told them. God knows we don't want other women ever to have to do this over again." - There have been sporadic and isolated cases of hunger strikes in this country but to my knowledge ours was the first to be organized and sustained over a long period of time .... "All the officers here know we are making this hunger strike that women fighting for liberty may be considered political prisoners; we have told them. God knows we don't want other women ever to have to do this over again." - There have been sporadic and isolated cases of hunger strikes in this country but to my knowledge ours was the first to be organized and sustained over a long period of time ....