The daily banner. (Cambridge, Md.) 1897-2008, 1913-03-07
WOMEN REPEAT
INDICNITIES
suffragists Tell Of Experiences
in Mondays Parade.
PUT BLAME ON POLICE

Declare Officials Made Little Effort to
Hold Back Hoodlums Who Rushed
and InsuIted Them.
Washington, March TALES OF in
dignities and affronts from the crowds
and Indifference and laughing COM
ments from the police were recounted
before the senate committee that has
begun an investigation into the Al
legged lack of protection given the
great suffrage pageant of last Mon
day.
Women prominent in national al
fairs and in suffrage councils told OF
their harrassed progress through
surging crowds of men and boys,
whom the police, they say, made little
effort to hold back.
Their stories differed in detail be-
cause of the various viewpoints from
which the Pennsylvania avenue march
had been observed, but their state
ments as to the general attitude OF
the police were Endorsed by, Rear Ad-
miral Van Reypen, retired, and George
f. Bowerman, librarian of the Carne-
gle library of Washington. who ap-
peared as witnesses against the police
department.
s Miss Julia Lathrop, chief Of the chill
dren's bureau of the department OF
commerce and labor, one of the march,
ers in the suffrage parade, said the
few policemen she saw seemed to be
merely standing in the front row of
the spectators"
Mrs. Harriet Taylor Upton, of War
rem, Ohio, in charge of the Ohio divi-
sion of the parade, declared that
crowds of "youngish men" surged in
so close that the marchers could hard
ly walk two abreast; that "good ma
tured drunken men" pushed against
the marchers' lines without restraint
by the police, and that the few officers
in sight did nothing to protect the pro-
cession.
Congress had passed special act
directing the Washington police de-
partment to prevent any interference
with the suffrage procession" In the
questions put to the women witnesses
Senators Jones, Dillingham; and Pom
creme tried to secure definite informa-
ton as to why the protection had been
so inadequate and as to the number
of police on hand and the manner in
which they acted toward the women
marchers.
Bursts of laughter came frequent8E
as women told of their experiences
Mrs. linton said there were. some =
Derby women in the Ohio division, and
she was afraid good natured drum
ken man" would fall against them.
$50 we all hurried on and got past,
and he fell back in Wisconsin, or Wy
oming, or somewhere back there" she
said.
She declared the police laughed at
the scenes and made no effort to help.
The most inefficient, she said. were
the plain clothes men, sworn in for
the occasion, who carried their au-
thority in the badges on their coats.
5 Mrs. Agnes M. jerks, of Concord,
N. H., who had her daughter and 9TH
er young girls with her in the New
Hampshire division, told one of the
most striking stories. She declared
uniformed policemen had encouraged
the crowd in its disorder, and that she
had been so alarmed at the action Of
the officers toward the young girls
that the children we're placed in the
center OF the procession, where they
were protected by older women.
1.-THE crowd hooted and jeered," she
said; "men tried to get the flowers
from our coats, and one man stuck his
foot out in front Of my daughter and
tried to trip her. At another point two
policemen in uniforms were standing
together and talking and were encour-
aging the crowd to jeer us. One po-
liceman looked as though he was go
ing to take hold of the young girls
who were marching with US. We were
more frightened by the police than by
the crowds"
None of the women could give the
number of the policemen who had ex-
hibited Indifference or antagonism, al
though several thought they could
identity some of them. The witnesses
were almost unanimous in declaring
that few policemen were in sight, and
no mounted officers, and that there
seemed to be no successful effort to
control the crowds until the cavalry
men came on the scene.