In the meantime, the country had not been kept misinformed or uninformed in regard to the treatment of the pickets. Of course, the press teemed with descriptions of their protests and its results. Again and again their activities pushed war news out of the preferred position on the front page of the newspapers. Again and again they snatched the headlines from important personages and events. But despite flaming headlines, these newspaper accounts were inevitably brief and incomplete; sometimes unfair. The Woman’s Party determined that the great rank and file, who might be careless or cautious of newspaper narration, should hear the whole extraordinary story. Picketing began in January, 1917. By the end of September, long before Alice Paul’s arrest and through October and November, therefore, speakers were sent all over the United States. Alice Paul divided the States into four parts, twelve States each: Maud Younger went to the South; Mrs. Lawrence Lewis and Mabel Vernon to the Middle West; Anne Martin to the far West; Abby Scott Baker and Doris Stevens to the East. Ahead of them went the swift band of organizers who always so ably and intensively prepared the way for Woman’s Party activity.

Public opinion became more and more intrigued, began to blaze oftener and oftener into protest as successive parties of pickets were arrested. The climax, of course, was the climactic Administration mistake—the arrest of Alice Paul. And as it began to dawn on the country that she was kept incommunicado ... that she was in the psychopathic ward ... alienists ... hunger-striking ... forcible feeding....

293The speakers had extraordinary experiences, especially those who went into the strongholds of the Democrats in the South. Again and again when they told about the jail conditions, and how white women were forced into association with the colored prisoners, were even compelled to paint the toilets used by the colored prisoners, men would rise in the audience and say, “There are a score of men here who’ll go right up to Washington and burn that jail down.” It has been said that Warden Zinkham received by mail so many threats against his life that he went armed.

From Headquarters, telegrams were sent to speakers as the situation grew at Washington, informing them as to the arrests, the actions of the police, sentences, et caetera. Often these telegrams would come in the midst of a speech. The speaker always read them to the audience. Once after Doris Stevens had read such a telegram, “Do you protest against this?” she demanded of her audience. “We do!” they yelled, rising as one man to their feet.

Suddenly while everything was apparently going smoothly, audiences large, indignantly sympathetic, actively protestive, change came. Everywhere obstacles were put in the way of the speakers. That this was the result of concerted action on the part of the authorities was evident from the fact that within a few days four speakers in different parts of the country felt this blocking influence.

In Arkansas they recalled Mabel Vernon’s permit for the Court House. In Connecticut, newspapers began to call Berta Crone pro-German, to attack her in a scurrilous manner.

Anne Martin’s meeting throughout the West had gone on without interruption of any kind. When, however, she arrived in Los Angeles, she was met by a Federal officer and told that there could be no meeting in Los Angeles. Miss Martin’s answer was to read to him a section on the right of free speech and assemblage, to inform him that he could not prevent the meeting, to assure him that he was welcome 294to attend it, and to invite him to arrest her if she made any seditious remarks. The attempt was then made to get her right to use the hotel ball-room, in which she was to hold the meeting, canceled. However, when Miss Martin told the management that she had made the same speech at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco, they agreed to let her have the hall. Federal officers sat on the platform and interrupted her speech, saying, “You’ve said enough about the President now.” Anne Martin replied, “If I’ve said anything seditious it’s your duty to arrest me. Otherwise I’m going on with my speech.” The audience applauded. Within a few minutes, five hundred dollars was collected in that audience for the struggle in the Capitol. Later, one of the Secret Service men warned Miss Martin not to make the same speech in San Diego. “I told him,” Miss Martin said, “to follow me and arrest me at any time he wished to, but in the meantime to stop speaking to me.” She had no further trouble in California.

Maud Younger’s experiences in the South and West were so incredible in these days of free speech that it deserves a detailed narration.

She had passed through nine southern Democratic States. Every speech had been received enthusiastically, with sympathy, and without question. Suddenly the cry of “Treason,” “Pro-German,” was raised. She was to speak at Dallas, Texas, on Monday, November 18. But the organizer found she could not engage a hall nor even a room at the hotel in which Miss Younger could speak. The Mayor would not allow her to hold a street meeting. Miss Younger, whose speeches are always the maximum of accuracy, informedness, feeling—coupled with a kind of diplomatic suavity—offered to submit her speech for censorship. They refused her even that. Finally on Monday morning a hall was found and engaged. The people who rented it canceled that engagement on Monday afternoon. The reporters flocked to see Miss Younger, who astutely said to them, “Of course the President is not responsible for—etc, 295 etc.”—ad libitum—not responsible, in brief, for all the things she would have said in her speech. Miss Condon, who was organizing in that vicinity, had a little office on the top floor and decided to hold a meeting there. Miss Younger spoke to a small audience drummed up as hastily as possible, notifying newspaper and police when the audience was about to arrive. There were detectives present. Miss Younger takes great joy in the fact that in attending this meeting, these detectives, following the accepted tactics of detectives, heavy-handedly—or heavy-footedly—got out of the elevator on the floor below; tiptoed solemnly up to the floor of the meeting, thus proclaiming loudly to the world that they were detectives.

In Memphis, Miss Younger had the assistance of Sue White, who, not then a member of the Woman’s Party, became subsequently one of its most active, able, and devoted workers. Miss White who is very well known in her State, had just gained great public approbation by registering fifty thousand women for war work. She fought h............