While I do not approve of picketing, I disapprove more strongly of the hoodlum methods pursued in suppressing the practice.
The conservative suffrage leaders, although they heartily disapproved of , picketing, were as outspoken in their gratitude.
"Although we disagree with you on the question of picketing every suffragist must be grateful to you for the gallant support you are giving our cause and the great sacrifice you are making."
I observed that although we might not agree with the "manners" of picketing, citizens had a right to petition the President or any other official of the government for a redress of grievances.
"The picketing seems to me a very silly business, and I am sure it is doing the cause harm instead of good; but the picketers are being shamefully and illegally treated, and it is a thousand pities, for President Wilson's own sake, that he ever allowed the Washington authorities to enter on this course of persecution.
But the present policy of the Administration, in permitting splendid American women to be sent to jail in Washington, not for carrying offensive banners, not for picketing, but on the technical charge of obstructing traffic, is a denial even of their constitutional right to petition for, and demand the passage of, the federal suffrage amendment.