§ 77
Peter was duly scolded, and put to work as an "office man" at his old
salary of twenty dollars a week. It was his duty to consult with
Guffey's many "operatives," to tell them everything he knew about this
individual Red or that organization of Reds. He would use his inside
knowledge of personalities and doctrines and movements to help in
framing up testimony, and in setting traps for too ardent agitators. He
could no longer pose as a Red himself, but sometimes there were cases
where he could do detective work without being recognized; when, for
example, there was a question of fixing a juror, or of investigating the
members of a panel.
The I. W. Ws. had been put out of business in American City, but
the Socialists were still active, in spite of prosecutions and
convictions. Also there was a new peril looming up; the returned
soldiers were coming back, and a lot of them were dissatisfied,
presuming to complain of their treatment in the army, and of the lack of
good jobs at home, and even of the peace treaty which the President was
arranging in Paris. They had fought to make the world safe for
democracy, and here, they said, it had been made safe for the
profiteers. This was plain Bolshevism, and in its most dangerous form,
because these fellows had learned to use guns, and couldn't very well be
expected to become pacifists right off the bat.
There had been a great labor shortage during the war,
and some of the more powerful unions had taken the general
rise in prices as an excuse for demanding higher wages.
This naturally had made the members of the Chamber of
Commerce and the Merchants' and Manufacturers' Association
indignant, and now they saw their chance to use
these returned soldiers to smash strikes and to break the
organizations of the labor men. They proceeded to organize
the soldiers for this purpose; in American City the Chamber
of Commerce contributed twenty-five thousand dollars to
furnish the club-rooms for them, and when the trolley
men went on strike the cars were run by returned soldiers
in uniform.
There was one veteran, a fellow by the name of Sydney, who
objected to this program. He was publishing a paper, the "Veteran's
Friend," and began to use the paper to protest against his comrades
acting as what he called "scabs." The secretary of the Merchants' and
Manufacturers' Association sent for him and gave him a straight talking
to, but he went right ahead with his campaign, and so Guffey's office
was assigned the task of shutting him up. Peter, while he could not take
an active part in the job, was the one who guided it behind the scenes.
They proceeded to plant spies in Sydney's office, and they had so many
that it was really a joke; they used to laugh and say that they trod on
one another's toes. Sydney was poor, and had not enough money to run his
paper, so he accepted any volunteer labor that came along. And Guffey
sent him plenty of volunteers — no less than seven operatives — one
keeping Sydney's books, another helping with his mailing, two more
helping to raise funds among the labor unions, others dropping in every
day or two to advise him. Nevertheless Sydney went right ahead with his
program of denouncing
the Merchants' and Manufacturers' Association,
and denouncing the government for its failure to provide
farms and jobs for the veterans.
One of Guffey's "under cover operatives" — that was the technical
term for the Peter Gudges and Joe Angells — was a man by the name of
Jonas. This Jonas called himself a "philosophic anarchist," and posed as
the reddest Red in American City; it was his habit to rise up in radical
meetings and question the speaker, and try to tempt him to justify
violence and insurrection and "mass-action." If he repudiated these
ideas, then Jonas would denounce him as a "mollycoddle," a "pink tea
Socialist," a "labor faker." Other people in the audience would
applaud, and so Guffey's men would find out who were the real Red
sympathizers.
Peter had long suspected Jonas, and now he was sent to meet him
in Room 427 of the American House, and together they framed up a job on
Sydney. Jonas wrote a letter, supposed to come from a German "comrade,"
giving the names of some papers in Europe to which the editor should
send sample copies of his magazine. This letter was mailed to Sydney,
and next morning Jonas wandered into the office, and Sydney showed him
the letter, and Jonas told him that these were labor papers, and the
editors would no doubt be interested to know of the feelings of American
soldiers since the war. Sydney sat down to write a letter, and Jonas
stood by his side and told him what to write: "To my erstwhile enemies
in arms I send fraternal greetings, and welcome you as brothers in the
new co-operative commonwealth which is to be" — and so on, the usual
Internationalist patter, which all these agitators were
spouting day and night, and which ran off the ends of their pens
automatically. Sydney mailed these letters, and the sample copies of the
magazine, and Guffey's office tipped off the postoffice authorities, who
held up the letters. The book-keeper, one of Guffey's operatives, went
to the Federal attorney and made affidavit that Sydney had been carrying
on a conspiracy with the enemy in war-time, and a warrant was issued,
and the offices of the magazine were raided, the subscription-lists
confiscated, and everything in the rooms dumped out into the middle of
the floor.
So there was a little job all Peter's own; except that Jonas, the
scoundrel, claimed it for his, and tried to deprive Peter of the credit!
So Peter was glad when the Federal authorities looked the case over and
said it was a bum job, and they wouldn't monkey with it. However, the
evidence was turned over to District-attorney Burchard, who wasn't quite
so fastidious, and his agents made another raid, and smashed up the
office again, and threw the returned soldier into jail. The judge fixed
the bail at fifteen thousand dollars, and the American City "Times"
published the story with scare-headlines all the way across the front
page — how the editor of the "Veteran's Friend" had been caught
conspiring with the enemy, and here was a photographic copy of his
treasonable letter, and a copy of the letter of the mysterious German
conspirator with whom he had been in relations! They spent more than a
year trying that editor, and although he was out on bail, Guffey saw to
it that he could not get a job anywhere in American City; his paper was
smashed and his family near to starvation.
