§ 59
The motor purred softly, and the car sped as if upon wings thru the
suburbs of American City, and to the country beyond. There were cars in
front, and other cars behind, a long stream of white lights flying out
into the country. They came to a grove of big pine trees, which rose two
or three feet thick, like church arches, and covered the ground beneath
them with a soft, brown carpet. It was a well-known picnic place, and
here all the cars were gathering by appointment. Evidently it had all
been pre-arranged, with that efficiency which is the pride of 100%
Americans. A man with a black mask over his face stood in the center of
the grove, and shouted his directions thru a megaphone, and each car as
it swept in ranged itself alongside the next car in a broad circle, more
than a hundred feet across. These cars of the younger members of the
Chamber of Commerce and the Merchants' and Manufacturers' Association
were well behaved — they were accustomed to sliding precisely into place
according to orders of a megaphone man, when receptions were being
given, or when the younger members and their wives and fiancées,
clad in soft silks and satins, came rolling up to their dinner-parties
and dances.
The cars came and came, until there was just room
enough for the last one to slide in. Then at a shouted
command, "Number one!" a group of men stepped out of one of the cars,
dragging a handcuffed prisoner. It was Michael Dubin, the young Jewish
tailor who had spent fifteen days in jail with Peter. Michael was a
student and dreamer, and not used to scenes of violence; also, he
belonged to a race which expresses its emotions, and consequently is
offensive to 100% Americans. He screamed and moaned while the masked men
un-handcuffed him, and took off his coat and tore his shirt in the back.
They dragged him to a tree in the center of the ring, a somewhat smaller
tree, just right for his wrists to meet around and be handcuffed again.
There he stood in the blinding glare of thirty or forty cars, writhing
and moaning, while one of the black-masked men stripped off his coat and
got ready for action. He produced a long black-snake whip, and stood
poised for a moment; then in a booming voice the man with the megaphone
shouted, "Go!" and the whip whistled thru the air and was laid across
the back of Michael, and tore into the flesh so that the blood leaped
into sight. There was a scream of anguish, and the victim began to twist
and turn and kick about as if in his death-throes. Again the whip
whistled, and again you heard the thud as it tore into the flesh, and
another red stripe leaped to view.
Now the younger members of the Chamber of Commerce and the
Merchants' and Manufacturers' Association were in excellent condition
for this evening's labor. They were not pale and thin, underfed and
overworked, as were their prisoners; they were sleek and rosy, and
ashine with health. It was as if long years ago their fathers had
foreseen the Red menace, and the steps that would have to be taken to
preserve 100% Americanism; the fathers had imported
a game which consisted of knocking little white balls around a field
with various styles and sizes of clubs. They had built magnificent
club-houses out here in the suburbs, and had many hundreds of acres of
ground laid out for this game, and would leave their occupations of
merchanting and manufacturing early in the afternoon, in order to repair
to these fields and keep their muscles in condition. They would hold
tournaments, and vie with one another, and tell over the stories of the
mighty strokes which they had made with their clubs, and of the hundreds
of strokes they had made in a single afternoon. So the man with the
black-snake whip was "fit," and didn't need to stop for breath. Stroke
after stroke he laid on, with a splendid rhythmic motion; he kept it up
easily, on and on. Had he forgotten? Did he think this was a little
white ball he was swinging down upon? He kept on and on, until you could
no longer count the welts, until the whole back of Michael Dubin was a
mass of raw and bleeding flesh. The screams of Michael Dubin died away,
and his convulsive struggling ceased, and his head hung limp, and he
sunk lower and lower upon the tree.
At last the master of ceremonies stepped forward and
ordered a halt, and the man with the whip wiped the sweat
from his forehead with his shirt-sleeve, and the other men
unchained the body of Michael Dubin, and dragged it a
few feet to one side and dumped it face downward in the
pine-leaves.
"Number two!" called the master of ceremonies, in a
clear, compelling voice, as if he were calling the figures
of a quadrille; and from another car another set of men
emerged, dragging another prisoner. It was Bert Glikas, a
"blanket-stiff" who was a member of the I. W. W.'s executive committee,
and had had two teeth knocked out in a harvest-strike only a couple of
weeks previously. While they were getting off his coat, he managed to
get one hand free, and he shook it at the spectators behind the white
lights of the automobiles. "God damn you!" he yelled; and so they tied
him up, and a fresh man stepped forward and picked up the whip, and spit
on his hands for good luck, and laid on with a double will; and at every
stroke Glikas yelled a fresh curse; first in English, and then, as if he
were delirious, in some foreign language. But at last his curses died
away, and he too sank insensible, and was unhitched and dragged away and
dumped down beside the first man. "Number three!" called the master of
ceremonies.
