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Friday October 8, 1915
From the Chicago Day Book: Jane Whitaker Reports from the Picket Line
STORY OF TWO GIRLS SHOWS THE EFFECT OF POLICE BRUTALITY
ON THE WORKING CLASS
BY JANE WHITAKER
They are just two out of over 300 who have had similar "experiences in the past few days, but their story is a revelation. It shows what this brutality of the police in their battle on the side of the manufacturers is doing. It shows how it weakens in the minds of the best element of the working people their respect for the law when the representatives of it break it by arresting people guilty of no offense, by tearing the clothing of women, by riding at women in an effort to terrorize them, by talking to in a manner that would cause the arrest of any other man guilty of it.
They are two very young girls. Rebecca is 20 and has been working three years. Eva is 21 and has been working four years. They are both pretty, dainty girls, neither very tall nor very strong. They are both sensitive, the kind of girls who shrink from publicity, who are incapable of violence under any but extraordinary conditions, but the youngest of the two said:
"Was I angry when I was arrested? When he held me so tight that he tore my coat? If I had a hatpin and could have had my hands free I would have stuck it into him. I could have-"
She stopped, then her voice softened. "We weren't doing anything. There were three of us, Esther, Eva and myself, walking on Market and Van Buren sts.
"It is our fight to try to show those who are working that they are taking our bread and butter. But if we had been talking to them it would have been different. We were talking
to no one. There wasn't any one but ourselves and the policemen on the street.
"A policeman who had Sergeant F. on his cap said: 'You girls get off the street.' I asked him if we couldn't walk on the street when we were doing nothing, and he grabbed hold of Eva and she cried that he was hurting her hand. It is swollen today because he did hurt it.
"It was so unfair. When she cried out I rushed to him and I said: "You do not need to hurt her; she has done nothing,' and then Policeman 190 got hold of me and he held me so tightly I couldn't move my arm and I begged him to loosen his hold because he hurt me, and he held tighter so that the sleeve of my coat was pulled so tight around my arm that it tore.
"Then Officer 921 got hold of Eva and they tried to drag us over the sidewalk like beasts, but I kept my feet and the other girls did, too. They took us to the Harrison street police station and locked us in two hours, and I never slept all night, I was so excited. But we will go back there and picket again. This is our fight for a living and the police have no right to arrest us for nothing."
"It would be different if we had been yelling at 'scabs'," said Eva. "But we don't get any chance. That is the part that makes it seem sad. The scabs who are taking our bread and butter from us are taken along the street by three or four policemen to protect them, while we, who are trying only to get better conditions for ourselves and for all the clothing workers, are arrested for walking on a city street
"While we were waiting for the patrol Officer 921 said to me, when I told him I did not understand why we couldn't walk on a street: 'Why didn't you stay on the other side of the river where you belong?' I told him this was America, the land of liberty, where people are free and that he talked like a foreigner. He said, pointing with his club to the sidewalk: 'I was born right here.' 'Then you better lay down and die here,' I told him.
"I am not ashamed of being arrested because it was for nothing, and I guess I will grow used to it before the trouble is over, but I do not know why they tear our clothes and insult us. Officer 190 told us he would teach us a lesson, so that we wouldn't feel so fresh in the future. But you will find us on that street whenever we have to go there. We are fighting the bosses and the scabs to get a living. We have nothing to do with the police. We don't break the law and they don't arrest us for breaking the law. They arrest us because the boss tells them to."
When it was called to the attention of Chief of Police Healey that mounted police rode on the sidewalks at girls guilty of no violation of the law, Healey scoffed. Judge for yourself if it is true.
Saturday morning, for the same reason that the strikers were on Jackson blvd.-the performance of duty-I followed about twenty of them from Halsted and Harrison to Jackson and Desplaines. As I did not know any of them I walked quite a little in the rear, merely staying close enough to observe what was happening in case of trouble.
The twenty turned north on Desplaines street and Mounted Officer 570 shouted and rode up on the sidewalk, galloping his horse until he was almost on top of them, though so far they had not done a single thing but walk on the street.
They turned fearfully, though on each face was a look of outrage they dared not put in words, and they walked south on Desplaines where Mounted Officer 309 rode at them and tried to crowd one girl against the wall.
Once again they permitted themselves to be driven while only the humanity in the horse which made him try to avoid stepping on them saved them from the brute in the human
being who tried to urge the horse on them.
I was quite a little separated from the crowd when the two mounted officers saw me taking the number of Motorcycle Officer 4400, who was shouting: "Ride them down if they don't go fast enough."
One of the mounted officers turned his horse directly at me:
"You get off the street;" he said. "I told you before."
That was the first time he had spoken to me, and as the horse seemed headed straight at me I knew just a moment of fear and then the feeling the strikers know possessed me. Outrage against the injustice and the brutality of it made me stand still.
My reporter's card was, and had been, in very plain evidence. As the horse loomed right before me I glanced at it and at the officers and said nothing.
Both of them reined in and the one in the rear came up beside the other to read while an officer on foot also scrutinized the card.
The one who had charged me turned his horse. The other muttered something and sneered. The officer on foot flashed at me:
"You're taking our numbers, ain't you? Be sure you don't miss any. Have you got mine? Don't miss it."
I thanked him and took his number. It was No. 250.
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[Photograph added.]
Below the fold our readers can find further reporting on the "monster strike" from the Chicago