Atlanta Georgian. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1912-1939, 1913-09-26
DR.. Charles F. Aked
Writes on
AMERICAN WOMEN
AND MILITANCY
By DIR. CHARLES F. AKED

them outside; they were nauled
by blackguards. They continued
to go to meetings and TO inter-
rupt. The violence grew. Filthy
scoundrels offered themselves as
stewards" that is to say, as
chuckers- out. at meetings for the
opportunity it gave them of COM
uniting indecent assaults upon
women and girls in the act Of
carrying them and bundling them
out of meetings.
The women were prosecuted;
not the roughs. They were
charged with all sorts of fancied
offenses, such as assaulting po-
icemen, etc. Had they paid the
small fines imposed the world
would have heard no more of 1t.
But they refused to pay the fine,
and they went to Jail. Here they
were treated as the worst of
criminals are treated. Women of
refinement, university women,
girls among the sweetest and most
engaging of their sex, were forced
TO strip. stand in a line of women
as nude as themselves. vicious
women, pickpockets, thieves and
criminals of every kind, waiting
for their bath, and go into the
same bath tub and the same wa
ter as these women had been In.
The prison system has been
changed because OF the suffer-
ings and through the agitation of
these women.
The women refused food. Then
the Government adopted the foul
and disgusting practice Of forci-
bic feeding. believe that 1t is
entirely Illegal. I believe that If
the women had carried this mat
ter from court to court they would
have proved before the end that
the prison authorities had been
guilty of assault. That is only an
opinion. The fact is clear that
atrocious and hideous cruelties
have been inflicted upon some OF
the noblest women living upon the
earth at the present time.
Yet these things did not drive
the women to crime.
Asquith committed himself to a
great suffrage measure-but il
was for men!
Women Were Ignored.
There has been for some years
an agitation for the amendment
of the franchise and registration
laws. I took part in II myself.
Millions of men are without the
vote in Great Britain. Asquith
undertook to remedy this state of
things. But the demands of wom-
en- were ignored.
Mrs. Pankhurst and the women
who follow her could bear no
more. They had borne indecent
assault, Imprisonment, the atroci-
ties of forcibIe feeding: some Of
them had suffered unto blood. But
this last insult, the enfranchise-
ment Of unenfranchised men, on
whose behalf there has been only
slight and sporadic agitation, and
the denial to them of the vote they
claimed, seemed to them the last
indignity, the cruelest and cow
ardliest assault Of all.
And they resorted to violence.
Here part company from them.
They have committed assaults.
They have resorted to fire. They
have employed dynamite. They
have attacked the innocent as we'll
as the guilty, the openly sympa-
thetic friend as we'll as the indif-
ferent person or the avowed oppo-
nent of their cause.
can not be a party to wrong
doing.
While they were willing to suf-
fer wrong, I applauded them.
When they begin to do wrong it
is impossible longer to defend
them. 1t is not right to do wrong.
Bloodshed and crime, the torch,
gunpowder and dynamite are not
the weapons which I care to see
women employer men, either
in advocacy of a mighty moral
movement in the dawn of the
twentieth century