§ 80
The I. W. W. had bobbed up again in American City, and had ventured
to open another headquarters. Peter did not dare go to the place
himself, but he coached a couple of young fellows whom McGivney brought
to him, teaching them the Red lingo, and how to worm their way into the
movement. Before long one of them was secretary of the local; and Peter,
directing their activities. received reports twice a week of everything
the "wobblies" were planning and doing. Peter and Gladys were figuring
out another bomb conspiracy to direct attention to these dangerous men,
when one day Peter picked up the morning paper and discovered that a
kind Providence had delivered the enemy into his hands.
Up in the lumber country of the far Northwest, in a
little town called Centralia, the "wobblies" had had their
headquarters raided and smashed, just as in American City.
They had got themselves another meeting-place, and again
the members of the Chamber of Commerce and the Merchants'
and Manufacturers' Association had held a secret meeting and resolved to
wipe them out. The "wobblies" had appealed to the authorities for
protection, and when protection was refused, they had printed a leaflet
appealing to the public. But the business men went ahead with their
plans. They arranged for a parade of returned soldiers on the
anniversary of Armistice Day, and they diverted this parade out of its
path so that it would pass in front of the I. W. W. headquarters. Some
of the more ardent members carried ropes, symbolic of what they meant to
do; and they brought the parade to a halt in front of the headquarters,
and set up a yell and started to rush the hall. They battered in the
door, and had pushed their way half thru it when the "wobblies" opened
fire from inside, killing several of the paraders.
Then, of course, the mob flew into a frenzy of fury. They beat
the men in the hall, some of them into insensibility; they flung them
into jail, and battered and tortured them, and took one of them out of
jail and carried him away in an automobile, and after they had mutilated
him as Shawn Grady had been mutilated, they hanged him from a bridge. Of
course they saw to it that the newspaper stories which went out from
Centralia that night were the right kind of stories; and next morning
all America read how a group of "wobblies" had armed themselves with
rifles, and concealed themselves on the roof of the I. W. W.
headquarters, and deliberately and in cold blood had opened fire upon a
peaceful parade of unarmed war veterans.
Of course the country went wild, and the Guffeys and
McGivneys and Gudges all over the United States realized
that their chance had come. Peter instructed the secretary of the I. W.
W. local of American City to call a meeting for that evening, to adopt a
resolution declaring the press stories from Centralia to be lies. At the
same time another of Guffey's men, an ex-army officer still wearing his,
uniform, caused a meeting of the American Legion to be summoned; he made
a furious address to the boys, and at nine o'clock that night some
two-score of them set out, armed with big monkey-wrenches from their
automobiles, and raided the I. W. W. headquarters, and battered the
members over the head with the monkey-wrenches, causing several to leap
from the window and break their legs. Next morning the incident was
reported in the American City "Times" with shouts of glee, and
District-attorney Burchard issued a public statement to the effect that
no effort would be made to punish the soldier boys; the "wobblies" had
wanted "direct action," and they had got it, and it would be assumed
that they were satisfied.
Then the members of the American Legion, encouraged
by this applause, and instigated by Guffey's ex-army officer,
proceeded to invade and wreck every radical meeting-place
in the city. They smashed the "Clarion" office and the
Socialist Party headquarters again, and confiscated more
tons of literature. They wrecked a couple of book-stores,
and then, breaking up into small groups, they inspected all
the news-stands in the city, and wherever they found Red
magazines like the Nation or the New Republic, they tore
up the copies and threatened the agents with arrest. They
invaded the rooms of a literary society called the Ruskin
Club, frequented mostly by amiable old ladies, and sent
some of these elderly dames into hysterics. They discovered
the "Russian Peoples' Club," which had hitherto been
overlooked because it was an educational organization. But
of course no Russian could be trusted these days — all of
them were Bolsheviks, or on the way to becoming Bolsheviks,
which was the same thing; so Guffey organized a raid
on this building, and some two hundred Russians were
clubbed and thrown downstairs or out of windows, and an
elderly teacher of mathematics had his skull cracked, and
a teacher of music had some teeth knocked out.
There were several million young Americans who had been put into
military uniform, and had guns put into their hands, and been put thru
target practice and bayonet drill, and then had not seen any fighting.
These fellows were, as the phrase has it, "spoiling for a fight;" and
here was their chance. It was just as much fun as trench warfare, and
had the advantage of not being dangerous. When the raiding parties came
back, there were no missing members, and no casualties to be telegraphed
to heartbroken parents. Some fool women got together and tried to
organize a procession to protest against the blockade of Russia; the
raiders fell upon these women, and wrecked their banners, and tore their
clothing to bits, and the police hustled what was left of them off to
jail. It happened that a well-known "sporting man," that is to say a
race-track frequenter, came along wearing a red necktie, and the
raiders, taking him for a Bolshevik, fell upon him and pretty nearly
mauled the life out of him. After that there was protest from people who
thought it unwise to break too many laws while defending law and order,
so the district attorney's office arranged to take on the young soldier
boys as deputy sheriffs, and give them all badges, legal and proper.
