§ 68
So there was the end of high life for Peter Gudge. He moved no more
in the celestial circles of Mount Olympus. He never again saw the
Chinese butler of Mr. Ackerman, nor the French parlor-maid of Mrs. Godd.
He would no more be smiled at by the two hundred and twenty-four boy
angels of the ceiling of the Hotel de Soto lobby. Peter would eat his
meals now seated on a stool in front of a lunch counter, he would really
be the humble proletarian, the "Jimmie Higgins" of his role. He put
behind him bright dreams of an accumulated competence, and settled down
to the hard day's work of cultivating the acquaintance of agitators,
visiting their homes and watching their activities, getting samples of
the literature they were circulating, stealing their letters and
address-books and note-books, and taking all these to Room 427 of the
American House.
These were busy times just now. In spite of the whippings
and the lynchings and the jailings — or perhaps because
of these very things — the radical movement was
seething. The I. W. Ws. had reorganized secretly, and
were accumulating a defense fund for their prisoners; also,
the Socialists of all shades of red and pink were busy, and the labor
men had never ceased their agitation over the Goober case. Just now they
were redoubling their activities, because Mrs. Goober was being tried
for her life. Over in Russia a mob of Anarchists had made a
demonstration in front of the American Legation, because of the
mistreatment of a man they called "Guba." At any rate, that was the way
the news came over the cables, and the news-distributing associations of
the country had been so successful in keeping the Goober case from
becoming known that the editors of the New York papers really did not
know any better, and printed the name as it came, "Guba!" which of
course gave the radicals a fine chance to laugh at them, and say, how
much they cared about labor!
The extreme Reds seemed to have everything their own
way in Russia. Late in the fall they overthrew the Russian
government, and took control of the country, and proceeded
to make peace with Germany; which put the Allies in a
frightful predicament, and introduced a new word into the
popular vocabulary, the dread word "Bolshevik." After
that, if a man suggested municipal ownership of ice-wagons,
all you had to do was to call him a "Bolshevik" and he
was done for.
However, the extremists replied to this campaign of
abuse by taking up the name and wearing it as a badge. The
Socialist local of American City adopted amid a storm of
applause a resolution to call itself the "Bolshevik local," and
the "left-wingers" had everything their own way for a
time. The leader in this wing was a man named Herbert
Ashton, editor of the American City "Clarion," the party's
paper. A newspaper-man, lean, sallow, and incredibly bitter,
Ashton apparently had spent all his life studying the
intrigues of international capital, and one never heard an
argument advanced that he was not ready with an answer.
He saw the war as a struggle between the old established
commercialism of Great Britain, whose government he described
as "a gigantic trading corporation," and the newly
arisen and more aggressive commercialism of Germany.
Ashton would take the formulas of the war propagandists
and treat them as a terrier treats a rat. So this
was a war for democracy! The bankers of Paris had for
the last twenty years been subsidizing the Russian Tsars,
who had shipped a hundred thousand exiles to Siberia to
make the world safe for democracy! The British Empire
also had gone to war for democracy — first in Ireland, then
in India and Egypt, then in the Whitechapel slums! No,
said Ashton, the workers were not to be fooled with such
bunk. Wall Street had loaned some billions of dollars to
the Allied bankers, and now the American people were
asked to shed their blood to make the world safe for those
loans!
Peter had been urging McGivney to put an end to this
sort of agitation, and now the rat-faced man told him
that the time for action had come. There was to be a big
mass meeting to celebrate the Bolshevik revolution, and
McGivney warned Peter to keep out of sight at that meeting,
because there might be some clubbing. Peter left off
his red badge, and the button with the clasped hands and
went up into the gallery and lost himself in the crowd. He
saw a great many "bulls" whom he knew scattered thru
the audience, and also he saw the Chief of Police and the
head of the city's detective bureau. When Herbert Ashton
was half way thru his tirade, the Chief strode up to the
platform and ordered him under arrest, and a score of
policemen put themselves between the prisoner and the
howling audience.
Altogether they arrested seven people; and next morning,
when they saw how much enthusiasm their action had
awakened in the newspapers, they decided to go farther
yet. A dozen of Guffey's men, with another dozen from
the District Attorney's office, raided the office of Ashton's
paper, the "Clarion," kicked the editorial staff downstairs
or threw them out of the windows, and proceeded to smash
the typewriters and the printing presses, and to carry off
the subscription lists and burn a ton or two of "literature"
in the back yard. Also they raided the headquarters of the
"Bolshevik local," and placed the seven members of the
executive committee under arrest, and the judge fixed the
bail of each of them at twenty-five thousand dollars, and
every day for a week or two the American City "Times"
would send a man around to Guffey's office, and Guffey
would furnish him with a mass of material which Peter
had prepared, showing that the Socialist program was one
of terrorism and murder.
Almost every day now Peter rendered some such service
to his country. He discovered where the I. W. W. had
hidden a printing press with which they were getting out
circulars and leaflets, and this place was raided, and the
press confiscated, and half a dozen more agitators thrown
into jail. These men declared a hunger strike, and tried
to starve themselves to death as a protest against the beatings
they got; and then some hysterical women met in the
home of Ada Ruth, and drew up a circular of protest, and
Peter kept track of the mailing of this circular, and all
the copies were confiscated in the post-office, and so one
more conspiracy was foiled. They now had several men
at work in the post-office, secretly opening the mail of the
agitators; and every now and then they would issue an
order forbidding mail to be delivered to persons whose
ideas were not sound.
Also the post-office department cancelled the second class
mailing privileges of the "Clarion," and later it barred the paper from
the mails entirely. A couple of "comrades" with automobiles then took up
the work of delivering the paper in the nearby towns; so Peter was sent
to get acquainted with these fellows, and in the night time some of
Guffey's men entered the garage, and fixed one of the cars so that its
steering gear went wrong and very nearly broke the driver's neck. So yet
another conspiracy was foiled!
