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Peter reported to McGivney what was planned, and McGivney promised
that the police would be on hand. Peter warned him to be careful and
have the police be gentle; at which McGivney grinned, and answered that
he would see to that.
It was all very simple, and took less than ten minutes
of time. The truck drew up on Main Street, and a young
orator stepped forward and announced to his fellow citizens
that the time had come for the workers to make
known their true feelings about the draft. Never would
free Americans permit themselves to be herded into armies
and shipped over seas and be slaughtered for the benefit of
international bankers. Thus far the orator had got, when a policeman
stepped forward and ordered him to shut up. When he refused, the
policeman tapped on the sidewalk with his stick, and a squad of eight or
ten came round the corner, and the orator was informed that he was under
arrest. Another orator stepped forward and took up the harangue, and
when he also had been put under arrest, another, and another, until the
whole six of them, including Peter, were in hand.
The crowd had had no time to work up any interest one way or the
other, A patrol-wagon was waiting, and the orators were bundled in and
driven to the station-house, and next morning they were haled before a
magistrate and sentenced each to fifteen days. As they had been
expecting to get six months, they were a happy bunch of "left wingers."
And they were still happier when they saw how they were to be
treated in jail. Ordinarily it was the custom of the police to inflict
all possible pain and humiliation upon the Reds. They would put them in
the revolving tank, a huge steel structure of many cells which was
turned round and round by a crank. In order to get into any cell, the
whole tank had to be turned until that particular cell was opposite the
entrance, which meant that everybody in the tank got a free ride,
accompanied by endless groaning and scraping of rusty machinery; also it
meant that nobody got any consecutive sleep. The tank was dark, too dark
to read, even if they had had books or papers. There was nothing to do
save to smoke cigarettes and shoot craps, and listen to the smutty
stories of the criminals, and plot revenge against society when they got
out again.
But up in the new wing of the jail were some cells which were clean and
bright and airy, being only three or four feet from a row of windows. In
these cells they generally put the higher class of criminals — women who
had cut the throats of their sweethearts, and burglars who had got I
away with the swag, and bankers who had plundered whole communities. But
now, to the great surprise of five out of the six anti-militarists, the
entire party was put in one of these big cells, and allowed the
privilege of having reading matter and of paying for their own food.
Under these circumstances martyrdom became a joke, and the little party
settled down to enjoy life. It never once occurred to them to think of
Peter Gudge as the source of this bounty. They attributed it, as the
French say, "to their beautiful eyes."
There was Donald Gordon, who was the son of a well-to-do business
man, and had been to college, until he was expelled for taking the
doctrines of Christianity too literally and expounding them too
persistently on the college campus. There was a big, brawny lumber-jack
from the North, Jim Henderson by name, who had been driven out of the
camps for the same reason, and had appalling stories to tell of the
cruelties and hardships of the life of a logger. There was a Swedish
sailor by the name of Gus, who had visited every port in the world, and
a young Jewish cigar-worker who had never been outside of American City,
but had travelled even more widely in his mind.
The sixth man was the strangest character of all to
Peter; a shy, dreamy fellow with eyes so full of pain and
a face so altogether mournful that it hurt to look at him.
Duggan was his name, and he was known in the movement
as the "hobo poet." He wrote verses, endless verses about the lives of
society's outcasts; he would get himself a pencil and paper and sit off
in the corner of the cell by the hour, and the rest of the fellows,
respecting his work, would talk in whispers so as not to disturb him. He
wrote all the time while the others slept, it seemed to Peter. He wrote
verses about the adventures of his fellow-prisoners, and presently he
was writing verses about the jailers, and about other prisoners in this
part of the jail. He would have moods of inspiration, and would make up
topical verses as he went along; then again he would sink back into his
despair, and say that life was hell, and making rhymes about it was
childishness.
There was no part of America that Tom Duggan hadn't visited, no
tragedy of the life of outcasts that he hadn't seen. He was so saturated
with it that he couldn't think of anything else. He would tell about men
who had perished of thirst in the desert, about miners sealed up for
weeks in an exploded mine, about matchmakers poisoned until their teeth
fell out, and their finger nails and even their eyes. Peter could see no
excuse for such morbidness, such endless harping upon the horrible
things of life. It spoiled all his happiness in the jail — it was worse
than little Jennie's talking about the war!
