APPENDIX
A little experimenting with the manuscript of "100%" has revealed to
the writer that everybody has a series of questions they wish
immediately to ask: How much of it is true? To what extent have the
business men of America been compelled to take over the detection and
prevention of radicalism? Have they, in putting down the Reds, been
driven to such extreme measures as you have here shown?
A few of the incidents in "100%" are fictional, for example the
story of Nell Doolin and Nelse Ackerman; but everything that has social
significance is truth, and has been made to conform to facts personally
known to the writer or to his friends. Practically all the characters in
"100%" are real persons. Peter Gudge is a real person, and has several
times been to call upon the writer in the course of his professional
activities; Guffey and McGivney are real persons, and so is Billy Nash,
and so is Gladys Frisbie.
To begin at the beginning: the "Goober case" parallels in its
main outlines the case of Tom Mooney. If you wish to know about this
case, send fifteen cents to the Mooney Defense Committee, Post Office
Box 894, San Francisco, for the pamphlet, "Shall Mooney Hang," by Robert
Minor. The business men of San Francisco raised a million dollars to
save the city from union labor, and the Mooney case was the way they did
it. It happened, however, that the judge before whom Mooney was
convicted weakened, and wrote to the Attorney-General of the State to
the effect that he
had become convinced that Mooney was convicted by perjured testimony.
But meantime Mooney was in jail, and is there still. Fremont Older,
editor of the San Francisco "Call," who has been conducting an
investigation into this case, has recently written to the author:
"Altogether, it is the most amazing story I have ever had anything to do
with. When all is known that I think can be known, it will be shown
clearly that the State before an open-eyed community was able to murder
a man with the instruments that the people have provided for bringing
about justice. There isn't a scrap of testimony in either of the Mooney
or Billings cases that wasn't perjured, except that of the man who drew
the blue prints of Market Street."
To what extent has the detection and punishment of radicalism in
America passed out of the hands of public authorities and into the hands
of "Big Business?" Any business man will of course agree that when "Big
Business" has interests to protect, it must and will protect them. So
far as possible it will make use of the public authorities; but when
thru corruption or fear of politics these fail, "Big Business" has to
act for itself. In the Colorado coal strike the coal companies raised
the money to pay the state militia, and recruited new companies of
militia from their private detectives. The Reds called this "Government
by Gunmen," and the writer in his muckraking days wrote a novel about
it, "King Coal." The man who directed the militia during this coal
strike was A. C. Felts of the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency, who was
killed just the other day while governing several coal counties in West
Virginia.
You will find this condition in the lumber country of
Washington and Oregon, in the oil country of Oklahoma
and Kansas, in the copper country of Michigan, Montana and Arizona, and
in all the big coal districts. In the steel country of Western
Pennsylvania you will find that all the local authorities are officials
of the steel companies. If you go to Bristol, R. I., you will find that
the National India Rubber Company has agreed to pay the salaries of
two-thirds of the town's police force.
In every large city in America the employers' associations have
raised funds to hold down the unions and smash the Reds, and these funds
are being expended in the way portrayed in "100%." In Los Angeles the
employers' association raised a million dollars, and the result was the
case of Sydney R. Flowers, briefly sketched in this story under the name
of "Sydney." The reader who wishes the details of this case is referred
to Chapter LXVI of "The Brass Cheek." Flowers has been twice tried, and
is about to be tried a third time, and our District-Attorney is quoted
as saying that he will be tried half a dozen times if necessary. At the
last trial there were produced a total of twenty-five witnesses against
Flowers, and out of these nineteen were either Peter Gudges and
McGivneys, or else police detectives, or else employees of the local
political machine. A deputy United States attorney, talking to me about
the case, told me that he had refused to prosecute it because he
realized that the "Paul letter," upon which the arrest had been based,
was a frame-up, and that he was quite sure he knew who had written it.
He also told me that there had been formed in Los Angeles a secret
committee of fifty of the most active rich men of the town; that he
could not find out what they were doing, but they came to his offices
and demanded the secret records of the government;
and that when he refused to prosecute Flowers they had influence enough
to have the governor of California telegraph to Washington in protest.
Questioned on the witness stand, I repeated these statements, and the
deputy United States attorney was called to the stand and attributed
them to my "literary imagination."
In the old Russian and Austrian empires the technique of trapping
agitators was well developed, and the use of spies and "under cover" men
for the purpose of luring the Reds into crime was completely worked out.
We have no English equivalent for the phrase "agent provocateur," but in
the last four years we have put thousands of them at work in America. In
the case against Flowers three witnesses were produced who had been
active among the I. W. Ws., trying to incite crime, and were being paid
to give testimony for the state. One of these men admitted that he had
himself burned some forty barns, and was now receiving three hundred
dollars a month and expenses. At the trial of William Bross Lloyd in
Chicago, charged with membership in the Communist party, a similar
witness was produced. Santeri Nourteva, of, the Soviet Bureau in New
York, has charged that Louis C. Fraina, editor of the "Revolutionary
Age," was a government agent, and Fraina wrote into the platform of the
Communist party the planks which were used in prosecuting and deporting
its members. On December 27, 1919, the chief of the Bureau of
Investigation of the Department of Justice in Washington sent to the
head of his local bureau in Boston a telegram containing the following
sentences: "You should arrange with your under cover informants to have
meetings of the Communist Party and Communist Labor Party held on the
night
set. I have been informed by some of the bureau officers that such
arrangements will be made." So much evidence of the activity of the
provocateur was produced before Federal Judge G. W. Anderson that he
declared as follows: "What does appear beyond reasonable dispute is
that the Government owns and operates some part of the Communist Party."
It appears that Judge Anderson does not share the high opinion of
the "under cover" operative set forth by the writer of "100%." Says
Judge Anderson: "I cannot adopt the contention that Government spies are
any more trustworthy, or less disposed to make trouble in order to
profit therefrom, than are spies in private industry. Except in time of
war, when a Nathan Hale may be a spy, spies are always necessarily drawn
from the unwholesome and untrustworthy classes. A right-minded man
refuses such a job. The evil wrought by the spy system in industry has,
for decades, been incalculable. Until it is eliminated, decent human
relations cannot exist between employers and employees, or even among
employees. It destroys trust and confidence; it kills human kindliness;
it propagates hate."
To what extent have the governmental authorities of America been
forced to deny to the Reds the civil rights guaranteed to good Americans
by the laws and the constitution? The reader who is curious on this
point may send the sum of twenty-five cents to the American Civil
Liberties Union, 138 West 13th Street, New York, for the pamphlet
entitled, "Report upon the Illegal Practices of the United States
Department of Justice," signed by twelve eminent lawyers in the country,
including a dean of the Harvard Law school, and a United States attorney
who resigned
because of his old-fashioned ideas of law. This pamphlet contains
sixty-seven pages, with numerous exhibits and photographs. The practices
set forth are listed under six heads: Cruel and unusual punishments;
arrests without warrant; unreasonable searches and seizures; provocative
agents; compelling persons to be witnesses against themselves;
propaganda by the Department of Justice. The reader may also ask for the
pamphlet entitled "Memorandum Regarding the Persecution of the Radical
Labor Movement in the United States;" also for the pamphlet entitled
"War Time Prosecution and Mob Violence," dated March, 1919, giving a
list of cases which occupies forty pages of closely printed type. Also
he might read "The Case of the Rand School," published by the Rand
School of Social Science, 7 East Fifteenth Street, New York, and the
pamphlets published by the National Office of the Socialist Party, 220
South Ashland Blvd., Chicago, dealing with the prosecutions of that
organization.
To what extent has it been necessary to torture the
Reds in prison in America? Those who are interested are
advised to write to Harry Weinberger, 32 Union Square,
New York, for the pamphlet entitled "Twenty Years Prison,"
dealing with the case of Mollie Steimer, and three
others who were sentenced for distributing a leaflet protesting
against the war on Russia; also to the American
Civil Liberties Union for the pamphlet entitled "Political
Prisoners in Federal Military Prisons," also the pamphlet,
"Uncle Sam: Jailer," by Winthrop D. Lane, reprinted from
the "Survey;" also the pamphlet entitled "The Soviet of
Deer Island, Boston Harbor," published by the Boston
Branch of the American Civil Liberties Union; also for
the publications of the American Industrial Company, and
the American Freedom Foundation, 166 West Washington
St., Chicago.
There may be some reader with a sense of humor who
asks about the brother of a United States senator being
arrested for reading a paragraph from the Declaration of
Independence. This gentleman was the brother of United
States Senator France of Maryland, and curiously enough,
the arrest took place in the city of Philadelphia, where the
Declaration of Independence was adopted. There may be
some reader who is curious about a clergyman being indicted
and arrested in Winnipeg for having quoted the
prophet Isaiah. The paragraph from the indictment in
question reads as follows: "That J. S. Woodsworth, on
or about the month of June, in the year of our Lord one
thousand nine hundred and nineteen, at the City of Winnipeg,
in the Province of Manitoba, unlawfully and seditiously
published seditious libels in the words and figures
following: `Woe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees,
and that write grievousness which they have prescribed;
to turn aside the needy from judgment, and to take
away their right from the poor of my people that widows
may be their prey and that they may rob the fatherless.
. . . And they shall build houses and inhabit them,
and they shall plant vineyards and eat the fruit of them.
They shall not build and another inhabit, they shall not
plant and another eat; for as the days of a tree are the days
of my people. and mine elect shall long enjoy the work of
their hands.' "
There has been reference in this book to the Centralia
case. No one can consider that he understands the technique
of holding down the Reds until he has studied this
case, and therefore every friend of "Big Business" should
send fifty cents, either to the I. W. W. Headquarters, 1001
West Madison Street, Chicago, or to the "Liberator," New
York, or to the "Appeal to Reason," Girard, Kansas, for
the booklet, "The Centralia Conspiracy," by Ralph Chaplin,
who attended the Centralia trial, and has collected all the
details and presents them with photographs and documents.
Many other stories about the I. W. W. have been told in
the course of "100%." The reader will wish to know, are
these men really so dangerous, and have the business men
of America been driven to treat them as here described.
The reader may again address the I. W. W. National Headquarters
for a four-page leaflet with the quaint title, "With
Drops of Blood the History of the Industrial Workers of
the World has Been Written." Despite the fact that it is a
bare record of cases, there are many men serving long terms
in prison in the United States for the offense of having in
their possession a copy of this leaflet, "With Drops of
Blood." But the readers of this book, being all of them
100% Americans engaged in learning the technique of
smashing the Reds, will, I feel sure, not be interfered with
by the business men. Also I trust that the business men
will not object to my reprinting a few paragraphs from the
leaflet, in order to make the public realize how dangerously
these Reds can write. I will, of course, not follow their
incendiary example and spatter my page with big drops of
imitation blood. I quote:
"We charge that I. W. W. members have been murdered,
and mention here a few of those who have lost their
lives:
"Joseph Michalish was shot to death by a mob of so-called
citizens. Michael Hoey was beaten to death in San Diego. Samuel Chinn
was so brutally beaten in the county jail at Spokane, Washington, that
he died from the injuries. Joseph Hillstrom was judicially murdered
within the walls of the penitentiary at Salt Lake City, Utah. Anna
Lopeza, a textile worker, was shot and killed, and two other Fellow
Workers were murdered during the strike at Lawrence, Massachusetts.
Frank Little, a cripple, was lynched by hirelings of the Copper Trust at
Butte, Montana. John Looney, A. Robinowitz, Hugo Gerlot, Gustav
Johnson, Felix Baron, and others were killed by a mob of Lumber Trust
gunmen on the Steamer Verona at the dock at Everett, Washington. J. A.
Kelly was arrested and re-arrested at Seattle, Washington; finally died
from the effects of the frightful treatment he received. Four members of
the I. W. W. were killed at Grabow, Louisiana, where thirty were shot
and seriously wounded. Two members were dragged to death behind an
automobile at Ketchikan, Alaska.
"These are but a few of the many who have given up
their lives on the altar of Greed, sacrificed in the ages-long
struggle for Industrial Freedom.
"We charge that many thousands of members of this
organization have been imprisoned, on most occasions arrested
without warrant and held without charge. To verify
this statement it is but necessary that you read the report
of the Commission on Industrial Relations wherein is given
testimony of those who know of conditions at Lawrence,
Massachusetts, where nearly 900 men and women were
thrown into prison during the Textile Workers' Strike at
that place. This same report recites the fact that during
the Silk Workers' Strike at Paterson, New Jersey, nearly
1,900 men and women were cast into jail without charge or
reason. Throughout the northwest these kinds of outrages
have been continually perpetrated against members of the
I. W. W. County jails and city prisons in nearly every
state in the Union have held or are holding members of
this organization.
"We charge that members of the I. W. W. have been
tarred and feathered. Frank H. Meyers was tarred and
feathered by a gang of prominent citizens at North Yakima,
Washington. D. S. Dietz was tarred and feathered by a
mob led by representatives of the Lumber Trust at Sedro,
Wooley, Washington. John L. Metzen, attorney for the
Industrial Workers of the World, was tarred and feathered
and severely beaten by a mob of citizens of Staunton, Illinois.
At Tulsa, Oklahoma, a mob of bankers and other
business men gathered up seventeen members of the I. W.
W., loaded them in automobiles, carried them out of town
to a patch of woods, and there tarred and feathered and
beat them with rope.
"We charge that members of the Industrial Workers
of the World have been deported, and cite the cases of
Bisbee, Arizona, where 1,164 miners, many of them members
of the I. W. W., and their friends, were dragged out
of their homes, loaded upon box cars, and sent out of the
camp. They were confined for months at Columbus, New
Mexico. Many cases are now pending against the copper
companies and business men of Bisbee. A large number
of members were deported from Jerome, Arizona. Seven
members of the I. W. W. were deported from Florence,
Oregon, and were lost for days in the woods, Tom Lassiter,
a crippled news vender, was taken out in the middle
of the night and badly beaten by a mob for selling the Liberator
and other radical papers.
"We charge that members of the I. W. W. have been
cruelly and inhumanly beaten. Hundreds of members can
show scars upon their lacerated bodies that were inflicted
upon them when they were compelled to run the gauntlet.
Joe Marko and many others were treated in this fashion at
San Diego, California. James Rowan was nearly beaten to
death at Everett, Washington. At Lawrence, Massachusetts,
the thugs of the Textile Trust beat men and women
who had been forced to go on strike to get a little more of
the good things of life. The shock and cruel whipping
which they gave one little Italian woman caused her to
give premature birth to a child. At Red Lodge, Montana,
a member's home was invaded and he was hung by the
neck before his screaming wife and children. At Franklin,
New Jersey, August 29, 1917, John Avila, an I. W. W.,
was taken in broad daylight by the chief of police and an
auto-load of business men to a woods near the town and
there hung to a tree. He was cut down before death ensued,
and badly beaten. It was five hours before Avila
regained consciousness, after which the town "judge" sentenced
him to three months at hard labor.
"We charge that members of the I. W. W. have been
starved. This statement can be verified by the conditions
existing in most any county jail where members of the I.
W. W. are confined. A very recent instance is at Topeka,
Kansas, where members were compelled to go on a hunger
strike as a means of securing food for themselves that
would sustain life. Members have been forced to resort to
the hunger strike as a means of getting better food in
many places. You are requested to read the story written
by Winthrop D. Lane, which appears in the Sept. 6, 1919,
number of `The Survey.' This story is a graphic description
of the county jails in Kansas.
"We charge that I. W. W. members have been denied
the right of citizenship, and in each instance the judge
frankly told the applicants that they were refused on account
of membership in the Industrial Workers of the
World, accompanying this with abusive remarks; members
were denied their citizenship papers by judge Hanford at
Seattle, Washington, and judge Paul O'Boyle at Scranton,
Pennsylvania.
"We charge that members of the I. W. W. have been
denied the privilege of defense. This being an organization
of working men who had little or no funds of their own, it
was necessary to appeal to the membership and the working
class generally for funds to provide a proper defense. The
postal authorities, acting under orders from the Postmaster-General at Washington, D. C., have deliberately prevented
the transportation of our appeals, our subscription lists, our
newspapers. These have been piled up in the postoffices
and we have never received a return of the stamps affixed
for mailing.
"We charge that the members of the I. W. W. have
been held in exorbitant bail. As an instance there is the
case of Pietro Pierre held in the county jail at Topeka,
Kansas. His bond was fixed at $5,000, and when the
amount was tendered it was immediately raised to $10,000.
This is only one of the many instances that could be recorded.
"We charge that members of the I. W. W. have been
compelled to submit to involuntary servitude. This does
not refer to members confined in the penitentiaries, but
would recall the reader's attention to an I. W. W. member
under arrest in Birmingham, Alabama, taken from the
prison and placed on exhibition at a fair given in that city
where admission of twenty-five cents was charged to see
the I. W. W."
Finally, for the benefit of the reader who asks how it happens
that such incidents are not more generally known to the public, I will
reprint the following, from pages 382-383 of "The Brass Check," dealing
with the "New York Times," and its treatment of the writer's novel,
"Jimmie Higgins":
"In the last chapters. of this story an American soldier
is represented as being tortured in an American military
prison. Says the `Times':
`Mr. Sinclair should produce the evidence upon which he
bases his astounding accusations, if he has any. If he has
simply written on hearsay evidence, or, worse still, let himself
be guided by his craving to be sensational, he has laid
himself open not only to censure but to punishment.'
"In reply to this, I send to the `Times' a perfectly respectful
letter, citing scores of cases, and telling the `Times' where hundreds
of other cases may be found. The `Times' returns this letter without
comment. A couple of months pass, and as a result of the ceaseless
agitation of the radicals, there is a congressional investigation, and
evidence of atrocious cruelties is forced into the newspapers. The
`Times' publishes an editorial entitled, `Prison Camp Cruelties,' the
first sentence of which reads: `The fact that
American soldiers confined in prison-camps have been treated with
extreme brutality may now be regarded as established.' So again I write
a polite letter to the `Times,' pointing out that I think they owe me an
apology. And how does the `Times' treat that? It alters my letter
without my permission. It cuts out my request for an apology, and also
my quotation of its own words calling for my punishment! The `Times,'
caught in a hole, refuses to let me remind its readers that it wanted me
`punished' for telling the truth! `All the News that's Fit to Print!' "