Istwa Nou

Jacques Roumain and Hudicourt finished three months in prison in the same weeks that Sylvain, Garoute and Thérèse Hudicourt filed their petition for authorisation. Vincent knew the names and the families behind them. He had visited the Garoute house and seen the books and newspapers kept there, some of it Marxist. Whatever weighed with him, a labour department run by women or the proposed changes to family life, the petition read as the leading edge of something more radical, and his government refused it. The League dissolved in April 1934. Sylvain later gave two reasons for the collapse. The government objected to the agenda itself: secondary schools for girls, economic independence for married women, equal pay for equal work, the vote, a women's labour department, and the closing of brothels. The second reason was internal. Most members were cautious and had no wish to be on the wrong side of the palace, while a small group would have fought anything. Arrest was a live risk, for the women and for the men in their families.