Sffli «i*ai: ^•1 ^ C^orncU IntttcrBitg ffitbrarji 3t^aca, Stem ^ork , FROM-^ ■ » National 'Civil Lib.9rtie9 .....Bu.f.a.a.u. DATE DUE '§^ Cornell University LibraiTr D 570.8.C4A51 Case pfJ,he,.Christian^Pac»^^^^^ 3 1924 027 819 113 .S70 , ■ .8 ^Orifcntb. Sal. \^i^. -3 — - — 3^ JoLcfc (xWut (i.cnO decision as to his status, he shall decline to perform, under military direction, duties which he states to be contrary to the dictates of his conscience, shall he receive punitive treat- ment for such conduct. No man who fails to report at camp, in accordance with the instructions of his Local Board, or who, having reported, fails to make clear upon his arrival his decision to be re- garded as a conscientious objector, is entitled to the treat- ment outlined above. i In the assignment of any soldier to duty, combatant or non-combatant, the War Department recognizes no distinc- tion between service in the United States and service abroad. One further point is being urged on the War Department for adjustment. There are now in prison as deserters some men who complied with all provisions of law up the point of entraining for camp, but who notified their local boards that they declined to do so, making, howei^r, no effort to escape apprehension, taking the position that they would go only under compulsion. A number ' Df Quakers and other members of religious sects have taken this position. While they are technically deserters, they are not so in fact. An effort is being made to have such men now in prison 'lealt with as conscientious objectors where genuine scruples against 'larticipation in war are shown. Secretary Baker has made it clear '.hat for the future men refusing to entrain will not be treated as :onscientious objectors. 13 II. TREATMENT OF CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTORS IN THE FIRST DRAFT. (June 5th. 1917, to April 1, 1918.) 1. Registration. Immediately following the passage of the conscription act on May 18th, and preceding the registration on June 5th, a sharp con- troversy arose among conscientious objectors and their friends as to whether or not they should voluntarily register ui^der the law, Most organizations and radical and religious papers strongly advised^ registration as a means of recording the objectors' protest. This po- sition was taken, for instance, by the American Union Against Mili- tarism (which established a "Bureau for Conscientious Objectors" and had registered some three thousand men), by most of the So- cialist papers and by practically all the religious sects and organ- izations which expressed an opinion. No public statements advising men not to register were made by any except a few radical organ-] izations in the middle west. These were all prosecuted by the federal authorities. / ' The statement prepared by the American Union Against Mili- tarism and widely distributed throughout the country, reads as follows : V "The presence in this country of a considerable number of so-called conscitntious objectors is generally known. In recent weeks these objectors, confronted by the Conscrip- tion Act, have been undecided as to whether they should make known their conscientious scruples against war by refusing to register, or refusing military service (as dis- ' tinct from alternative civil service which may conceivably be secured hereafter), when actually drafted by the process of selection. "In realization of the necessity of concerted action in this crisis and in answer to appeals for counsel in the matter, the undersigned, after consideration which has in some cases reversed original opinion, unite in stating their belief that all conscientious objectors should register and indicate in the way provided by the law their personal opposition to participation in war. Obedience to law, to the utmost limit of conscience, is the basis of good citi- . zenship. Public understanding and sympathy, in this case, 14 should not be alienated by misdirected action. The moral issue involved should not be confused. The opportunity- provided by the bill to specify one's claims to exemption from military service should not be missed by those who desire to state their objection to that service on religious or other conscientious ground. "We therefore urge all conscientious objectors to reg- ister, stating their protest in such form as they think best, at that time. We request that the widest possible publicity be given to this statement. "Joseph D. Cannon, William F. Cochran of Baltimore ; Jonathan C. Day, John Lovejoy Elliott, Mrs. Glendower Evans of Boston; Zona Gale, of Wisconsin; Harold A. Hatch, Rev. John Haynes Holmes, Jessie W. Hughan, Mrs. Florence Kelley, Agnes B. Leach, Alice Lewisohn, Henry R. Linville, Owen R. Lovejoy, Frederick P. Lynch, Benja- min C. Marsh, Henry R. Mussey, Winter Russell, Norman M. Thomas, Oswald Garrison Villard, Lillian D. Wald, Roger N. Baldwin." (All of New York City, except where otherwise indicated.) Men who registered had quite different experiences in getting recognition of their status as conscientious objectors. Many of the registration boards refused to put down conscientious objec- tion as a claim for exemption. Others refused to accept letters filed with their registration cards in explanation of their position. On the whole, however, most objectors were able to make their position knownxfrom the start. There are no official figures to show how many registered as objectors, but the number, estimated from reports to organizations, would be in the neighborhood of 15,000 in the 9,586,508 total. Certainly several thousand more tried and failed to get such a statement on their cards. Of the very considerable number of men of military age through- out the country who refused or failed to register on June 5th, only a small proportion can be said to have done so from genuinely conscientious scruples against participation in war. Some few genuine objectors openly refused to register, either advising their boards by letter or sending statements to their local newspapers. Practically all of these men were arrested and prose- cuted for violation of the Selective Service Act. One such case is now on appeal to the U. S. Supreme Court. Several of the cases 15 decided in February by the U. S. Supreme Court in affirming the constitutionality of the Conscription Act were those' of men who openly ref«sed to register on the ground that the act was unconsti- tutional, and who were thereafter arrested and convicted. 2. Physical Examination. The next problem facing registered conscientious objectors was whether or not to take the physical examination when ordered to do so by the local boards. It was assumed by many men that taking and passing the exarnination automatically brought a man under military authority, and that men refusing to take it automatically remained under civil authority. Many men desired to remain under civil authority either as a matter of principle, or so that if they broke the law they- would be dealt with in the federal courts, where th^ retained their civil rights with a chance of appeal, while under military authority they would have no such rights. Many others balked at the idea of submitting themselves to examination for military purposes on the ground that they were neter going to be soldiers anyway. The decisions of district boards, courts and federal prosecuting officers were very varied on this matter of refusals to take the physical examination. In some cases men were prosecuted in the federal courts and sentenced to terms ranging up to one year, in precisely the same manner as men were prosecuted for refusing to register. In most cases, however, the boards ignored the offense, and certified as liable to service the men who failed or refused to. take the examination. Many men took the examination under pro- test, filing with the board at the time a further statement as to their conscientious objections to participation in war. Decisions of the courts made it clear that the military authorities were correct in their early contention that merely the passage of time brought a man under military authorityT— that he was brought into the military service upon notice to entrain for camp, regardless of his previous compliance or non-compHance with the regvilations. 3. Entraining. The next problem before many objectors was whether or not to entrain for camp when ordered to do so by the local boards. A considerable number responded under protest, filing some sort of a notice with the board, and making their position known to the officers upon reaching camp. Numbers of others refused to respond.j 16 to the summons. Most of them who can be regarded as genuine conscientious objectors, notified their boards that they would refuse to entrain voluntarily, but stated that they could be found at any time at a given address. Practically all of these men were arrested as technical deserters.' Some few were court-martialed and sentenced to prison. Most of them, however, were taken to camp and treated as conscientious objectors, where the authorities were convinced of the genuineness of their stand. A number of Quakers and members of other religious sects refused to entrain. Under the army regulations men arrested as deserters must be sent to the nearest military post. Where that was done with objec- tors refusing to entrain, the men were in most instances transferred shortly to the regular army cantonments. 4. Treatment in the Camps. A. The Order of the Secretary of War. On September 13, after the first five per cent, of drafted men had gone to the cantonments (Sept. 5 to 10), and before the general movement of men later in the month, the Secretary of War issued the following order to the commanding generals of the cantonments : "The Department has under consideration the question "^ of what constitutes "non-combatant service' in the sense that phrase is used in section 4 of the Selective Service Act. Until a definition is announced it will not be possible to designate the classes of duty to which the conscientious ob- jector may be detailed. Pending final instructions in the premises, the Secretary of War directs that this class be segregated, but not subjected to any punishment for refusal to perform duty, and that timely reports as to the numbers received at your cantonment be forwarded for his informa- tion, with such remark and recommendation by you as will enable the Department to consider the non-general question in all its phases." This cfrder was the only official policy announced on objectors during the period from September to March 20, 1918. The administration of this order in the various camps was con- siderably varied. Some of the commanding generals interpreted it sympathetically, and dealt with the men in a kindly spirit, thereby winning most of them over to some form of non-combatant service. Other officers took a hostile and arbitrary stand, creating difficulties, most of which were straightened out through Washington. 17 B. Courts-Martial. This failure on the part of some of the commanding generals and officers to interpret the purpose of Secretary Baker's order re- sulted in the courts-martial of about 40 men who refused to obey military orders. The following cases are those of objectors who, so far as We can learn, are now (April, 1918) serving prison sen- tences ordered by these courts-martial. Some of these cases were complicated by several kinds of offenses. About a dozen other long prison terms ordered by courts-martial affecting conscientious ob- jectors were either set aside by the commanding generals, or as a result of military inquiries through the Adjutant General's office. One of these at Camp Dix was a sentence of death, which was promptly set aside by the commanding general. Men Reported as Conscientious Objectors, Now in Prison by Order of Court-Martial. Camp Devens, Mass. — Tony Petroshki, 20 years. Camp Dix, New Jersey. — Charles W. Titus, 3 months. Camp Dodge, Iowa. — Otto Wangerin, 15 years; Harold Bruber, 15 years; A. S. Broms, 20 years; W. H. Treseler, R. A. ^ Carlton, Caul W. Johnson, Axel W. Carlson, Gunnard Johnson, Forris Kamman, and Nickolaus Ungar, 25 years. Camp Gordon, Georgia. — Otto Brennan, 10 years. Camp Grant, Illinois. — Gust Wittrock, 3 years ; Abraham Bieber, 1 year; H. Austin Simons, 8 years. Camp Lewis, Washington.— Eno Larsen, 5 years. Fort Worden, Washington.— Alfred Bloss, 10 years ; and Wallferd E. Marker, 10 years. Camp Taylor, Kentucky. — Earl Huckelbury, 3 years; Ernest Schneider, 10 years. Fort Adams, R. I.— John T. Dunn, Theo. Hiller and Adolph T. Yanyar, 20 years each. Fort Andrews, Mass. — Fritz Stephanovitch, 15 years. Fort McArthur, Texas.— Vane V- Dart, 10 years. Jefferson Barracks, Mo. — R. H. Franke, 10 years. Under the President's order of March 20th, all these cases are to be reviewed by the Secretary of War where it can be shown that the men were sentenced in violation of the general policy first laid down by the Secretary of War in September and later em- bodied in the President's regulations. 18 C. The Policy of Pressure. The policy of the officials in the cantonments in the long period intervening between the first draft in September and the final an- nouncement of the government's policy in March was to get as many men as possible to accept service, combatant or non-combatant. Pressure of many kinds was brought to bear to that end. A very large number, probably most of those who had originally held them- selves out as conscientious objectors upon arriving in camp, accepted some form of service before the promulgation of the order of March 20. The Russian situation was responsible for bringing into line many radical objectors who had up to then been opposed only to this particular war. The men still segregated on March 20 were for the most part men who had taken the position of refusing any service under military authority, and who had continuously refused to put on uniforms, to drill, to work or draw pay. Most of them had also refused to sign the muster-roll on arriving at camp, having made their positions clear from the start. Most of these segregated men were willing to perform only the duties incidental to cleaning up their own quarters and preparing their own meals. One of the chief difficulties has been securing segregation of men who were known to be' sincere objectors. In several of the camps the men were held either individually or in small groups in various regiments and were segregated only after many months; some not until after the President's order of March 20. In other camps men were segregated and transferred in groups to army posts and regular army camps. In some they were held in barracks with the regular soldiers. In others they were placed in separate buildings. In one camp such a building was marked "quarantined," although no men were sick ! In another .the conscientious objectors were segregated one and a half miles away from camp. The policy of pressure was evidently the natural means adopted to test the genuineness of a man's convictions. From a purely military standpoint it has been wise, for it has secured service from all who could be prevailed upon to accept. The authorities have dis- covered what the friends of the objector have always maintained — that any real brutality or injustice only stiffens resistance, and that social pressure can be relied upon to break down the weak of will. (This, however, seems not to be the view of the Provost Marshal General. See page 29.) 19 D. Brutalities. As would be expected, a number of case& of brutal treatment of objectors, either by officers ^or enlisted men, were reported. All were called to the attention 'of the War Department, and in most cases satisfactorily and promptly attended to. Everything consid- ered, the number of such cases was surprisingly small (perhaps 4 Oklahoma, on the night of Nov. 9, 1917, is an occurrence of national significance for the following reasons : — 1st. The attack on these men was committed "in the name of the women and children of Belgium." It presumed to be an attack against "disloyalty." As a matter of fact the evidence shows it was a straight out-and-out attack upon labor by em- ploying interests — the profiteers in oil. 2nd. It clearly represents the lengths of violence to which business interests will go in their attempt to crush labor or- ganization. No evidence has been produced to prove any violence on the part of the I, W. W. in the Oklahoma oil fields. 3rd. Some public officials of Tulsa and certain state and federal officials in the district as well, knew exactly what was going to happen. Some of them participated in the affair themselves. The local public machinery for law and order seems to have been deliberately used by the interests con- trolling the oiT fields to achieve their lawless purpose. These facts are set forth by the National Civil Liberties Bureau to make clear to the American public that war profi- teers are deliberately using charges of treason and disloyalty to cover attacks on the labor movement. Despite all the charges of violence against the I. W. W. throughout the coun- try there has not yet been (Feb. 10, 1918) one conviction since the war started of any member of the I. W. W. for "disloyalty" in any form or for murder, arson, destruction of property or any other violent act. Much of the violence charged to the I. W. W. is undoubtedly committed by the employers them- selves in order to create a state of terror through which they may justify extreme m-easures to crush labor. The facts in this pamphlet were secured, first from one of the men who was whipped, second, from an eye witness (a resident of Tulsa) and third, from a former investigator for the Federal Industrial Relations Commission who visited Tulsa within a few weeks after the affair. The names of those furnishing the information are omitted because of the desper- ate measures threatened by business interests in Tulsa against investigators or informants. We have the names of witnesses, and have taken precautions to satisfy ourselves of the truth of the statements made. The material speaks for itself. THE FACTS. The Cause of the Trouble. A resident of Tulsa has the following to say about the re- cent industrial struggle in the oil fields. His letter is dated, Tulsa, Dec. 21, 1917. "I think it only fair to say that the bottom cause of this trou- ble locally was that a few men, presumably belonging to the I. W. W., came into the oil fields something like a year ago and were meeting with success in getting oil-field workers — • especially pipe-line and tank builders — rto fight for better wages and shorter hours. "Not long after the outrage was committed in Butte, Mont., on the crippled I. W. W. leader (Frank Little) the home of J. Edgar Pew in this city was partly destroyed by some kind of an explosion and Mr. and Mrs. Pew narrowly escaped being killed. The news agencies at once published, it as a dastardly act of the I. W. W.'s. Mr. Pew is vice-president and active manager of the Carter Oil Co., which by the way is owned and controlled by Standard Oil, and is one of its largest producing subsidiary companies. A few weeks after the Pew home incident an explosion followed by a fire, partially de- stroyed an oil refinery that is located at Norfolk, Okla. This proper4:y was under the Carter Oil Co. management. Two men lost their lives in this accident.* The news agencies, without exception (so far as I know), exploited this as another I. W. W. outrage and predicted that this was but a beginning of what was going to happen as revenge for the treatment ac- ^ corded their, men in Montana and, Arizona. The local and state press was full of wild rumors, some even asserting that they had inside information that Oklahoma was to be flooded with I. W. W.'s and a reign of terror was in store for us ; U. S. men were making themselves very busy and finally the local police with one or two U. S. men raided the room that had been occupied by the I. W. W. and oil field workers union." A Victim's Account of the Outrage Let us tell the story of that raid and the events following, in the words of one of the men in the room, the Secretary of the Tulsa local, who went through the whole aflfair from be- '''Several men are now repotted in the press to be under arrest in Oklahoma (or dy- namiting the home of Mr. Pew and the oil refinery. As far as we can learn, the men ar- rested have no connection whatever with the I. W. W. ginning to end — arrest to whipping. His account is substan- tiated at every point by the later investigation made by a former employe of the U. S. Industrial Relations Commission. He says : — "On the night of Nov. 5, 1917, while sitting in the hall at No. 6 W. Brady St., Tulsa, Okla. (the room leased and occu- pied by the Industrial Workers of the World and used as a union meeting room), at about 8.45 P. M. five men entered the hall, to whom I at first paid no attention, as I was busy putting a monthly stamp in a member's union card book. After I had finished with the member, I walked back to where these five men had congregated at the baggage-room at the back of the hall, and spoke to them, asking if there was anything I could do for them. "One who appeared to be the leader answered 'no,' they were just looking the place over. Two of them went into the baggage-room flashing an electric flash-light around the room ; the other three walked toward the front end of the hall. I stayed at the baggage-room door, and one of the men came out and followed the other three up to the front end of the hall. The one who stayed in the baggage-room asked me if I was 'afraid he would steal sorriething.' I told him we were paying rent for the hall, and I did not think anyone had a right to search the place without a warrant. He replied he did hot give a damn if we were paying rent for four places they would search them whenever they felt like it. Presently he came out and walked toward the front end of the hall, and I followed a few steps behind him. "In the meantime the other men, who proved to be officers, appeared to be asking some our our members questions. Short- ly after, the patrol-wagon came and all the members in the hall — 10 men — were ordered into the wagon, I turned out the light in the back end of the hall, closed the desk, put the key in the door and told the long-boy 'officer' to turn out the one light. We stepped out, and I locked the door, and at the request of the 'leader' of the officers, handed him the keys. He told me to get in the wagon, I being the eleventh man' taken from the hall, and we were taken to the police station. "Nov. 6th, after staying that night in jail, I put up $100 cash bond so that I could attend to the outside business, and the trial was set for 5 o'clock P. M. Nov. 6th. Our lawyer, Chas. A. Richardson, asked for a continuance and it was granted. Trial on a charge of vagrancy was set for Nov. 7th at 5 P. M. After some argument on both sides the cases were continued until the next night, Nov. 8th, and the case against Gunnard Johnson, one of our men, was called. After four and a half hours' session the case was again adjourned until Nov. 9th, at 5 P. M., when we agreed to let the decision in Johnson's case stand for all of us. "Then several witnesses on our side were examined to prove the respectability of the hall. Johnson said he had come into town Saturday, Nov. 3rd, to get his money from the Sin- clair Oil & Gas Co. and could not get it until Monday, the 5th, and was shipping out Tuesday, the 6th, and that he had $7.80 when arrested. He was reprimanded by the judge for not hav- ing a Liberty Bond, and as near as anyone could judge from the closing remarks of Judge Evans he was found guilty and fined $100 for not having a Liberty Bond. "Our lawyer made a motion to appeal the case and the bonds were then fixed at $200 each. I was immeditely arrested as were also five spectators in the open .court-room for being L W. W.'s. One arrested was not a member of ours, but a property owner and citizen. I was searched and $30.87 taken from me as also was the receipt for the $100 bond, and we then were all placed back in the cells. "In about forty minutes, as near as we could judge, about 11 P. M., the turnkey came and called, "Get ready to go out you I. W. W. men." We dressed as rapidly as possible, were taken out of the cells, and the officer gave us back our pos- sessions, IngersoU watches, pocket knives and money, with the exception of $3 in silver of mine which they kept, giving me back $27.87. I handed the receipt for the $100 bond I had put up to the desk sergeant, and he told me he did not know anything about it, and handed the receipt back to me, which I put in my trousers pocket with the 87 cents. Twenty-seven dollars in bills was in my coat pocket. We were immediately ordered into automobiles waiting in the alley. Then we pro. ceeded one block north to First street, west one-half block to Boulder street, north across the Frisco tracks and stbpped. "Then tjie maskpd mob came up and ordered everybody to throw up their hands. Just here I wish to state I never thought any man could reach so high as those policemen did. We 6 were then bound, some with hands in front, some with hands behind, and others bound with arms hanging down their sides, the rope being wrapped around the body. Then the police were ordered to 'beat it' which they did, running, and we started for the place of execution. "When we arrived there a company of gowned and masked gunmen were there to meet us standing at 'present arms.' We were ordered out of the autos, told to get in line in front of these gunmen and another bunch of men with automatics ^nd pistols, lined up between us. Our hands were still held up, and those who were bound, in front. Then a masked man walked down the line and slashed the ropes that bound us, and we were ordered to strip to the waist, which we did, throw- ing our clothes in front of us, in individual piles — coats, vests, hats, shirts and undershirts. The boys not having had time to distribute their posssessions that were given back to them at the police station, everything was in the coats, everything that we owned in the world. "Then the whipping began. A double piece of new rope, five-eighth or three-quarters hemp being used. A man, 'the chief of detectives, stopped the whipping of each man when he thought the victim had enough. After each one was whipped another man applied the tar with a large brush, from the head to the seat. Then a brute smeared feathers over and rubbed them in. (As they did this they said, 'In the name of the women and children of Belgium.') "After they had satisfied themselves that our bodies were well abused, our clothing was thrown into a pile, gasoline poured on it, and a match applied. By the light of our earthly possessions, we were ordered to leave Tulsa, and leave run- ning and never come back. The night was dark, the road very rough, and as I was one of the last two that was whipped, tarred and feathered, and in the rear when ordered to run, 1 decided to be shot rather than stumble over the rough road. After going forty or fifty feet I stopped and went into the weeds. I told the man with me to get into the weeds also, as the shots were coming very close over us, and ordered him to lie down flat. We expected to be killed, but after 150 or 200 shots were fired they got in their autos. "After the last one had left, we went through a barbed-wire fence, across a field, called to the boys, collected them, counted up, and had all the 16 safe, though sore and nasty with the tar. After wandering around the hills for some time — ages it seemed to me^-we struck the railroad track. One man, Jack Sneed, remembered then that he knew a farmer in that vicin- ity, and he and J. F. Ryan volunteered to find the house. I built a fire to keep us from freezing. "We stood around the fire expecting- to be shot, as we did not know but what some tool of the commercial club had fol- lowed us. After a long time Sneed returned and called to us, and we went with him to a cabin and found an I. W. W. friend in the shack and 5 gallons of coal oil or kerosene, with which we cleaned the filthy stufif off of each other, and our troubles were over, as friends sent clothing and money to us that day. It being about 3 or 3.30 A. M. when we reached the cabin." The men abused, whipped and tarred were: Tom McCaf* fery, John Myers, John Doyle, Chas. Walsh, W. H. Walton, L. R. Mitchell, Jos. French, J. R. Hill, Gunnard Johnson, Robt. McDonald, John Fitzsimmons, Jos. Fisher, Gordon Dimikson, J. F. Ryan, E. M. Boyd, Jack Sneed,^ (not an I. W. W.) This is a copy of my sworn statement and every word is Truth. (Signed) „. The Police in the Mob Although this account is evidently a faithful story of just what happened, the connection between the police and the mob was not brought out. In answer to inquiry the writer stated : "It was very evident that the police force knew what was going to happen when they took us from jail, as there were extra gowns and masks provided which were put on by the Chief of Police and one detective named , and the num- ber of blows we received were regulated by the Chief of Police himself who was easily recognizable by six of us at least. It was all prearranged. The police knew where we were going, or the extra gowns and masks would not have been ready for the Chief and . There were other detectives put on rigs, but just those two were in sight of me. Nothing was said to us as to where we were going. We were simply taken out of jail and delivered to the "Knights of Liberty" and the chief went along to see the sport and whether we were game, which we were." The Press Incites to Violence To show what was obviously being planned for the night of the 9th, the following editorial, quoted from the Tulsa daily '"World," appearing on the afternoon of that day, seems conclusive. "Get Out The Hemp" "The attempt of the I. W. W. or any other organiza- tion to decrease by so much as the infinitesimal fraction of a barrel the oil supply of the government should be sternly repressed. More than ever the government needs oil. More than ever the allies of the government need oil. Any man who attempts to stop the supply for one-hundredth part of a second is a traitor and ought to be shot ! When oil was bringing less than 40- cents a bar- Tel in the open market, wages were approximately as high as they are today and there was no I. W. W. organi- zation abroad in the land to tell the people that the laborers in the oil country were being discriminated against and oppressed. "The oil country can take care of its own troubles. It does not need the I. W. W. There is not a man in the field who does not know that whatever grievance he may have does not -need the arbitrament of a labor union to solve. The oil country has always solved all of its troubles, labor troubles as well as every other kind, and the oil country can be depended upon to solve the present difficulty. "In the meantime, if the I. W. W. or its twin brother, the Oil Workers Union, gets busy in your neighborhood, kindly take occasion to decrease the supply of hemp. A knowledge of how to tie a knot that will stick might come in handy in a few days. It is no time to dally with the enemies of the country. The unrestricted produc- <^ tion of petroleum is as necessary t0| the winning of the j war as the unrestricted production of gunpowder. We [ are either going to whip Germany or Germany is going \| to whip us. The first step in the whipping of Germany 9 is to strangle the I. W. W.'s. Kill them, just as you would kill any other kind of a snake. Don't scotch 'em; kill 'em. And kill 'em dead. It is no time to waste money on trials and continuances and things like that. All that is necessary is the evidence and a firing squad. Probably the carpenters union will contribute the timber for the coffins." {Boldface type is ours.) It may be interesting to note that the editor of the Tulsa World, Glenn Conlin, who personally wrote this, attended all the trials, and that he and his wife were witnesses to the whipping, tarring and feathering, having gone along in an automobile as spectators. This gentleman shortly after was sent to Europe by Governor R. L. Williams to represent the state of Oklahoma on a mission whose purpose has not yet been made clear. The issue of loyalty and patriotism in the oil fields is well illustrated by the following editorial in the Tulsa World for November 7th, while the men were in jail, entitled "Down with the Agitators." Striking sentences from the editorjal are: "The efforts of certain agitators to stir up trouble be- tween the oil field workers and their employers is distinctly disloyal. The world needs every barrel of oil that is pro- duced or can be produced, and any movement that tends to limit production is a help to the Germans. A strike in the oil fields can have no other efifect than limitation of production, therefore, a strike or even a momentary cessation of production could benefit nobody but the Ger- man emperor." . . . "For 67 years the oil country workers and their em- ployers have got along peaceably, . . . and a union would but limit their opportunities, making the most ignorant employe in the matter of scale of wages and the matter of oppportunities the equal of the educated man." . . . "The one remedy for the vicious agitator is to ride him on a rail. If he seriously objects to that, he might be used for decoration for a telephone pole that is slightly out of place in the original design. But the workers in the oil country of Oklahoma and Kansas, the boys at the pump and at the tower should realize that now above all other times the country needs them and that their service in the 10 production of oil goes as far toward making the world safe for democracy as a bullet fired from the trenches in France." (^Boldface type ours.) More About the Trial in Court The investigator sent to Tulsa to get information made a carefully detailed report of the trial, showing the obviously lawless method of dispensing "justice" to those even remotely connected with the I. W. W. "Judge T. D. Evans, Police Judge, presiding, John B. Meserve, City Attorney, and Chas. Richardson, attorney for defendants, at which eleven men, members of the order of the I. W. W. were charged with vagrancy. "When they were arraigned, they plead "not guilty," and Mr. Richardson, addressing the court, said, "Your Honor, if the police have any evidence that these men have been guilty of any act of disloyalty to this Government, I will withdraw from the case now." Nothing further was said on this point, and they agreed to proceed with the trial by selecting one of the number and the testimony for and against this one man should apply to all the others as charged. "The man selected to be tried was a young man who had been continuously employed by a pipe-line company for sev- erg.1 months, and who had been paid off and came to Tulsa to get his check cashed on Saturday. The banks being closed at noon, he was compelled to stay in town until Monday. On Monday he contracted to go to work for another company and was to go out Tuesday morning. He was arrested on a vagrancy charge Monday p. m. and put in jail, and this trial was the following Friday. "The prosecution put several witnesses on the stand, among them the policemen who made the arrests, two of whom were Furguson and Lewis who testified they had not seen this man loitering on the streets and that they know nothing of his personal habits, except that he had a card showing he was a member of the I. W. W. "From this point the testimony took the form of trying all the eleven men charged, and the police said none of them had a police record. They testified that they had heard nothing seditious in their utterances either in their hall or elsewhere. They testified they had not known of them visiting any kind 11 of illegal or bad resorts, nor in any other way did they at- tempt to show they were guilty of any law violations what- soever. They seemed to rest their entire case on the fact that they were members of the I. W. W. "After the prosecution had failed utterly to prove any part of their charge of vagrancy, the defense introduced the Con- stitution of the I. W. W., and called the attention of the Court to the requirement that no one was eligible to mem- bership "who is not a bona-fide wage earner." The defense put on eight witnesses, some of whom were defendants, who testified as to where they worked and how long and the amount of pay they received; one of whom drew $18.00 a week, and had not lost a day in ten months and worked a great deal overtime ; and all the time in Tulsa where he had lived for six years. One had lived there eighteen years, was the father of ten children and owned his home free from in- cumbrance. "On cross examination, the City Attorney (Meserve) asked each witness what was his attitude toward the government, toward the state and toward the city, and to each received abou the same answer, expressing loyalty. Every time any of these questions were asked by the prosecution, Richardson would say, "if there is any evidence against these men or any one of them showing their disloyalty to the government, I want to know it and I demand that it be produced and I will withdraw from representing them." And each time there was no response to his request. "One of the eight witnesses for the defence told about the 'condition existing at the copper mines' and what the trouble was at Bisbee, Ariz., (which was forced on unwilling ears). This witness afterwards made a speech to the court in defense of the I. W. W.'s, which was clear and forceful, in which he discussed wages and the cost of living increase. He said privately he did this because he knew they were being tried for being members of the I. W. W. Richardson thinks this was a mistake, as he wanted to stick strictly to the charge of "vagrancy," because he knew they could not sustain that charge. "The trial ended about 10:40 o'clock on Friday night, Nov. 9th, and Judge Evans rendered a decision finding all the men 12 guilty as charged and assessing their fines at $100 each, stat- ing, 'These are no ordinary times.' Getting Ready for the Mob. "The police rushed the eleven men who had been tried into the jail and into one room just oflf the court room. One of the men said to the police, 'I have a $100 c^h bond.* The police- man said, 'That does not matter, get in here.' The man said, 'I can put up more if necessary.' But no attention was paid to this. Another one of the convicted men had up a bond. The police also arrested six others, spectators in the court room, some of whom were not members of the I. W. W., and crowded them into the same room and the door was locked. They were in this room about thirty minutes, during which time they discussed what was going to happen to them. Most of them expressed the opinion that they were going to meet with some violence, and all believed they were going to get "beat up," because they had learned that there had been posters printed — a large yellow card with the words in black letters — 'Mr. I. W. W., DON'T LET THE SUN SHINE ON YOU IN TULSA. (Signed) Vigilance Committee.' This evidence was brought out in the trial, although the posters were printed the same day of the trial. "During these few minutes in jail, the victims secreted more securely the money they had on them, in the linings of their coats and in their sleeves ( which were afterwards burne'd up by the mob ^hen they saturated their coats, vests, shirts and hats with gasoline and set fire to them. The best estimate that can be made is, that something more than five hundred dollars in greenbacks was burned)." Who Were in the Mob? The report of the investigator about the taking of the men from jail and the details of the whipping, tarring and feather- ing are much more circumstantial than in the story quoted, because drawn from a large number of witnesses. But for the purpose of accuracy, the account given suffices. The investi- gator names directly nine leaders of the mob, including five members of the police force. He says further: "Several men who were invited to join the mob refused. Among these was the Secretary of the 13 Chamber of Commerce. A lieutenant in the Home Guard said he would not say that none of the Home Guard were in the mob, but the 'Home Guard did not do it' He said they were ordered to bring down their arins and Stack them in the Arsenal, which was done after they had their drill." (It was at the arsenal that the "Knights" made up and secured their guns.) "John Moran, Deputy U. S. Marshal in charge of the Tulsa office said, 'I am opposed to that kind of business, and I tried to get them not to do it.' He also said, 'You would be sur- prised at the prominent men in town who were in this mob.' He also said, 'I have in my possession two large packages of the I. W. W. literature and correspondence, and there is not one word of disloyalty in it.' " What Happened to the Victims Afterward? Commenting on the developments following the outrage, the investigator says : "Two of the victims of the mob outrage on Nov. 9th re- turned to Tulsa because they owned their homes and their families were there. They were both arrested and thrown in jail four and six weeks respectively; they were released on habeas corpus proceedings through the efforts of their friends and lawyer, Chas. Richardson. One of them went away with his wife on a visit, the other was rearrested before he left the court room on a charge of carrying concealed weapons. He was tried and fined $100 on the evidence of eight policemen who surrounded his house and swore they saw him coming down the stairs with a pistol in his hand. He is now working out his fine on the streets of Tulsa. The report is that he will be arrested for vagrancy again as soon as this fine is paid, and this practice, will be continued until he leaves the city. He is not a member of the I. W. W. He is a carpenter by trade and has made his home in Tulsa many years. "When the Judge (the same T. D. Evans, Police Judge) as- sessed the fine of $100 for carrying concealed weapons (in his own house) he said, 'You are not guilty, but I will have to fine you one hundred dollars. These are no ordinary times.' "The other fifteen of the seventeen victims have scattered to dififerent parts of the country and most of them have ob- tained work but they have suffered all sorts of privations and 14 hardships, both physical and mental. Some of them were in ill health at the time of the outrage, and others are not strong physically and they have been living in constant fear of an- other brutal assault by the tools of the amployers." "Justice" in Tulsa. The investigator's report concludes : "After as thorough an investigation as vi^as possible, and a careful and impartial study of every phase of the Tulsa affair, your investigator states virithotit hesitancy (1) that there viras not one iota of evidence to sustain the charge of vagrancy against the eleven men fined, nor against the seventeen victims of the mob outrage, and (2) that the outrage was arranged for before the trial, tkat the plans were made with the knowl- edge, consent and assistance of the police and city officials. "Your investigator states freely that there has not been any attempt to learn who composed the mob, either will there be any attempt made to bring any of these law violators to jus- tice under the present regime. And your investigator does not recommend that any legal proceedings be undertaken until such time as there can be some show of obtaining justice. "Justice to the people of Oklahoma demands that this re- port attempt to correct another newspaper falsehood ; that is, that this mob violence met with general approval. Your in vestigator talked with more than 200 citizens both women and men, none of whom approved the mob outrage. Respectfully submitted, "January 30th, 1918. (Signed) — Public Opinion About the Outrage. It is almost superfluous to dwell upon the attitude of the public press and the public officials in Oklahoma following the outrage. So far as we can learn (and we have clippings from scores of newspapers in Oklahoma and the West) not one editorial condemning the mob outrage appeared in Okla- homa and it was almost universally condoned throughout the country. The Tulsa "World" of Nov. 16th says: "The only criticism of their action (referring to the 'Knights of Liberty') that we have seen in any of the hundred news- paper comments that have come to our attention is by way of 15 berating them for not having gone a bit stronger." Then the' "World" approvingly quotes a newspaper which said, "Along with tars and feathers there are trees and poles in this state, and rope in plenty, and the will to use them." The Tulsa "Democrat" of Nov. 16th in an editorial headed "General Approval Is Given," said, "If those determined men who larruped the 17 members of the industrial disturbers of the world and then applied the tar and feathers, were fearful that they would be given the condemnation of the country, they need have no such fear, now that the comments have been voiced by the newspapers of the country. The criminal press of the U. S. actually approves of this unlawful act." The New York "Evening Post," the Louisville "Courier- Journal," the Minneapolis "News," the St. Louis "Post-Dis- patch" and a few other liberal-minded papers voiced a pro- test, but they were lone voices in a wilderness of condonation. CONCLUSION This case illustrates once again the fact that the processes of law and the constitutional guarantees of personal liberty are absolutely dead letters in the United States where private busi- ness interests control city governments, city police and the courts. In Oklahoma their influence over state officials as well, indicates a thoroughly finished job in the private owner- ship of the government. The newspaper distortion of facts in the Oklahoma oil-fields- makes justice to the I. W. W. impossible, even though the naipes of many of the men committing this crime are known. There can be no justice for the workers in the oil fields until the control of big business over the government and the press is broken. 16 The Outrage on Rev. Herbert S. Bigelow ^ of Cincinnati, Ohio (October 28, 1917) "The cause of the United States is not aided, but is hurt, by that kind of thing. No night- riders are needed, and when the country is at war for liberty and justice they make a humili- ating contrast to our national ideals and aims." — Newton D. Baker ^ Sec'y of War, on the Bige- low outrage, Oct. 2pth. "1 want to utter my earnest protest against any manifestation of the spirit of lawlessness anywhere or in any cause. ... A man who takes the law into his hands is not the right man to co-operate in any form or development of law and institutions-.^' — Woodrow Wilson, Nov. 12, 1917. Published by the NATIONAL CIVIL LIBERTIES BUREAU 70 Fifth Avenue, New York Cijy Washington office: 647 Munsey Bldg. ,141 '^ March. 1918 The brutal outrage to Rev. Herbert Bigelow is a challenge to American sincerity and love of democracy. It cannot be dis- missed as an isolated act, the shame of one relatively small com- munity. It is a new and more serious evidence of the popular contempt for legal action, for elementary freedom of thought and speech, and of capacity for cold brutality which have^een shown in the illegal and violent disturbance of meetings and maltreat- ment of speakers in communities as widely scattered as Boston, Los Angeles, Fargo, N. D. and now Newport, Kentucky. The driving power behind American participation in this war is in large measure one of horror at the terrible German atrocities, — committed by men inflamed by the lust of battle. Yet without this miserable excuse masked men in quiet America are guilty of this barbarism against a man known and honored for years in his native state. That the real facts about the attack on Mr. Bigelow may be set before the public, the National Civil Liberties Bureau publishes this statement. This has been verified in every detail by direct consultation with Mr. Bigelow and his attorneys. NATIONAL CIVIL LIBERTIES BUREAU The Outrage on Rev. Herbert S. Bigelow MR. BIGELOW'S POSITION IN OHIO To understand why a masked band of night-riders abducted and horsewhipped Herbert S. Bigelow in the lonely moonlit hills of Kentucky, "in the name of the w^omen and children of Belgium," it is necessary first to know something of Mr. Bige- low's position in public life in Ohio and on the war. For twenty-three years he has been pastor of the People's Church of Cincinnati, an independent congregation. Mr. Bigelow has combined his church activities with extensive public service in radical democratic movements. He has fought privilege at every turn. Politically he has been a Democrat in national affairs, an independent locally. Recently (June 30th, 1917) he became a member of the Socialist Party, although at the time he ex- pressly stated that he was out of sympathy with the party's majority report opposing the war adopted at the St. Louis con- vention in April. Mr. Bigelow is known throughout the country as a reformer, single-taxer, and particularly as an advocate of popular control of government. He was President of the Ohio Constitutional Convention in 1912. The story both about his stand on the war and his activities in the fight for popular 'government in Ohio is set forth in the following signed advertisement which he placed in the Cincin- nati newspapers after the outrage. "BIGELOW'S PATRIOTISM" "In view of possible coming events, in connection with the prosecution of my assailants, I feel that the following statement should be given to the public. The motive for the attack upon me could not have been patriotism, for I was not an anti-government pacifist. On February 5th, the Commercial Tribune quoted from my speech of the day before as follows: "I am ready to go to war if necessary. I shall not be the last — I want to be the first to offer my services to my govern- ment if it calls for volunteers." Loud applause greeted this declaration by Herbert S. Bigelow before the People's Church in the Grand Opera House yesterday afternoon. "Although I am a pacifist and look upon war as terrible," he continued, "I believe that a citizen should be ready to fight for his country in return for the benefits he enjoys as a citizen. I am for my country right or wrong." This declaration in support of the government brought me into conflict with members of my church, as shown by the En- quirer of April 22nd, which said : "Evidence of a division of feeling between Mr. Bigelow and a portion of his flock were discerned throughout the meeting. His declarations favoring prosecution of the war, now that it has been declared, to a speedy conclusion, did not find favor with the anti-war element of his congregation." Concerning my stand in a church meeting at which an attempt was made to demand my resignation because of my pro- war-utterances, I wrote a private letter to Mrs. Mary Fels. This letter was written in May and with no thought of publication. After the attack, Mrs. Fels quoted from this letter in her paper. The Public, of November 2nd. This quotation from my letter follows: "I took the stand concerning the war that I did not have the information to warrant me in saying that Wilson's course was not for the best, and that I certainly had no warrant in joining in any attack on the motives of the President. In view of the decision that had been made by the Govern- ment, I said that Germany should stop fighting and agree to peace terms as outlined by the President's January 22 speech. Therefore I said I became a partisan of our government and advise all others to put aside their misgivings now and help in every way consistent with their conscience." This continued to be my attitude as shown by a Western Union telegram which I sent to Secretary of War Baker and which Mr. Baker showed to the President. Chicago, September 8th, 1917. Hon. Newton D. Baker, Washington, D. C. I am invited to speak in Milwaukee Friday night under the auspices of Socialist Party. I request information as to the Government's intention with reference to the Mil- waukee meeting. I do not approve of the so-called majority report of the Socialist Party on the war. I believe that President Wilson's answer to the Pope satisfied American public opinion and that the war should be prosecuted on that basis, but I think that most Socialists are misunder- stood, and that the suppression of their press and meetings prevents that reconciliation to the war program which would rapidly develop if they were free to talk their hearts out about it. I ask for them, as well as myself, the right to be judged after we speak and not before. Will you kindly address a reply, to-morrow, if possible, to the Grand Pacific Hotel, Chicago. HERBERT S. BIGELOW. Mr. Baker replied as follows: "I can learn of no intention on the part of any depart- ment here to interfere in any way with the meeting to which you refer." In reporting my speech. The Milwaukee Sentinel of Sept. 8th used^the following headlines: 'Socialist Speaker Praises Wilson. Milwaukee Audience Disappointed by the Rev. H. S. Bigelow's Statement of Principles. Should assist U. S. We all should work, hope and pray to HELP GOVERNMENT," he declares. Since there was no ground for attacking me as a pacifist, what was the_ motive? I confess that, in the last five years, I have been the instigator of five great fights on the public utility interests of Cincinnati and the Kentucky cities. '*He ought to be driven out of town." "Horse whipping would be too good for him." That has been the common talk in public utility circles. I believe that the evidence will show that these public utility partisans calculated that they could take advantage of the inflamed state of the public mind to strike me and hide under the cloak of patriotism. Their deed must have been planned days ahead, yet it is said, three hours before the attack, I had prayed for "the repose of the Kaiser's soul." There are a thousand auditors to bear witness that I prayed that the soul of the Kaiser might be redeemed from pride and lust of power. There is a difference between praying for the redemption of the wicked and praying foi- their repose. But cowards who hide behind masks will not balk at lies. If there was any honest patriot in that Kuklux gang who realizes that he was misled as to my attitude on the war, I for- give him, for I do not relish the thought of sending men to the penitentiary and bringing sorrow and shame upon innocent wives and children. But as for those anarchists who hunt at night and in packs, in high-powered machines, I shall fight them to the last breath of my life, although I am less eager to put them in the penitentiary than I am to destroy the privileges which make them the ene- mies of democracy. HERBERT S. BIGELOW." THE FIGHT AGAINST PRIVILEGE {From Mr. Bigelozs/s speech at the Liberty Theatre, New York, Jan. 13, 1918) "Patriotism was not the motive for the assault. T^e assault was an act of revenge, perpetrated by the public utility interests of Cincinnati and the Kentucky cities across the river, and the purpose was to punish me, not for any sentiment or acts of dis- loyalty to the United States government, but my disloyalty to these monopoly interests, to which I plead guilty and of which I am proud. "The trouble goes back to 1912, when, in the Constitutional Convention, we secured the Initiative & Referendum. No men were ever wise enough to make a constitution that would stay good long. We had just sense enough to know this so we made a constitution which the people could easily changar We invented workable provisions for the Initiative & Referendum^ not only in the constitution of the state, but in the organic municipal law of the state. "Big business campaigned especially against the Initiative & Referendum in the charter election which was held in -Sep- tember 1912. They loudly declaimed against these revolutionary doctrines, as they were called, and charged we were assailing representative government, and turning the state over to anarchy and mob-rule. "They might have forgiven us for this if we had failed, but the unpardonable sin was that we succeeded, that the people of Ohio laughed at what someone called their "well-organized despondency", and ratified these so-called revolutionary measures by over 80,000 majority. "In the fall of this same year, 1912, I was sent to the Legis- lature from Cincinnati. I produced and got through the House, of which I was a member, a bill to revoke the Cincinnati Street Railway franchise, the notorious fifty year franchise that seven- teen years before had been pushed through "the Legislature by Mark Hanna and Joseph T. Foraker. "But this, contumacious as it was, was not the limit of my disloyalty. I was personally responsible for filing a petition of ten thousand names to stop the passage of a twenty-five year franchise which the Council of Cincinnati had granted to the Kentucky street car lines. In the campaign on this franchise the corporation hung great streamers over all the crowded thorough- fares of the city bearing-this legend : "Bigelowism versus Busi- ness. Which will you have?" The people answered that by defeating the franchise by 9,000 votes out of a total of about 60,000. "The people of Cincinnati scored another victory against the public utility interests after that by defeating an ordinance to increase the charge for gas. "So it happened that since we secured the two instruments of popular government we have made some use of them in Cin- cinnati on the average of once a year in combating the aggres- sions of the public utility interests. I have been looked upon as the ring-leader of the guerilla warfare, and I have been singled out for the bitter hatred and opposition of the interests and the newspapers which they control. "'That man Bigclow ought to be driven out of town.' 'He dught to be shotf 'He ought to be tarred and -feathered.' These expressions have been heard in the clubs and big business circles of Cincinnati for the last five years. These interests, emboldened by the war, figured that the public would jump to the conclusion that they were patriots. "I will relate what happened, and let my hearers judge of the quality of their patriotism. THE OUTRAGE "On Sunday afternoon, October 28, I left the Grand Opera house and went to my office at thfr Odd Fellows' temple. After dictating copy on the peace prayer to the newspapers I went to the Metropole hotel to take supper with two friends. At 8 o'clock three of us boarded a York street car to go to York and Sixth streets, Newport, Ky., where I was to address a Socialist meeting. "On my way I stopped at the office of the Enquirer and left the copy for "Mr. Dean, the reporter who had asked me for it after the Grand Opera house meeting. "The friends with me were Vernon J. Rose of Kan- sas City and Prof. E. J. Cantrel of Minneapolis, both of whom had spoken with me at the Grand Opera house. "We arrived at the stop about 15 minutes past eight. A pleasant young man stepped up and addressed me, saying that they were afraid I was not coming and that they had just telephoned after me. "I asked him his name, which I understood to be Mooney, and I introduced him to Mr. Rose and Prof. Gantrel. "The entrance to the hall was on Sixth street, and I noticed some parties then gathered on the sidewalk, and around what appeared to be the door of the entrance. See- ing the men, I asked Mr. Mooney if there were prospects of a good meeting. He answered in the affirmative. But by that time I was up against some of the men in the crowd. A man standing near the building turned to me and said : " 'Is this Mr. Bigelow?' "I said 'yes,' and put out my hand to him. He took my hand and said : 'We want you to go over to headquarters-be- fore the meeting.' "Instantly another man seized my left hand. They snapped handcuffs on both wrists. "I said: 'Where are you going to take me?' "A man on my right answered : 'To headquarters.' "I made no response. I supposed they were Government secret service men. I preferred to rely upon my innocence of wrong and upon the justice of my Government. Resist- ance would have been likely to involve my friends with me in personal injury and serious charges, although I hardly formulated such a thought at the time. 8 "I was put in the back seat of a large machine, which was standing at the curb. My two captors seated them- selves on each side of me and holding the handcuffs. "Another man got in in the rear and stood in a stooped position, facing the crowd, with a revolver in his hand. The top of the machine was up and the curtains were quickly cloced apparently by some one on the outside. There may have been a foiirth man in the rear, for while the machine was started and began to pull away, some one tied a padded cloth over my mouth, and tied ropes around my feet. After that a bag was slipped over my head. In that position I rode with my silent companions over city pavements, across bridges, up and down hills, on country roads — some rough and some smooth — of course, I had no sense of direction, and little sense of time. But I could tell that we were riding at a high rate of speed, and while we were on city pavement, the horn was being sounded almost continuously. "Finally the machine halted. There was a light from the rear which I could see through the bag, and I was deceived by that in supposing that we were near a city lamp._^ All sat motionless for a time. I heard an approaching train. This told me that we were near a railroad and I con- cluded that they were waiting to load me on the train. I speculated as to whether I should have to be exposed with the handcuffs on the train. Just before we came to a halt a man felt me over, apparently to discover weapons. He took from my overcoat pocket a box of candy which had been given me for my daughter. "The sound of the train died away. There were whistles and movements. The curtains were pushed back. The men at my side seemed to be leaning out of the machine as though they were looking for confederates on the road. "Presently my feet were untied, the bag taken off my head and I was helped to the ground. Though still gagged, I could see. It was a bright moonlight night. There were many men, frogi 25 to 40 perhaps, wearing white masks and aprons or skirts of the same material. "These men appeared to be gathering from a line of auto- mobiles in the rear. This explained the light I had seen through the bag. The machines that had followed had remained too far in the rear foi: me to hear them. One who acted as leader held aloft an electric light, though there was no need of lighting it. "With a sweep of this object he indicated in silence that the company was to ascend the hill. It was a rather steep but short hill on which stood a little frame school house. I was led around the farther side of the building out to the rear. Before alighting from the machine my hands had been tightly fastened together. "I was led to a tree and my hands were disjoined. Other line cords were tied to each handcuff and two men drew my arms by these ropes around the tree. The Whipping "Then the leader said: 'Off with his clothes,' and my arms were released sufficiently to enable them to take off my overcoat, coat and vest and suspenders. Then a man with what appeared to be a black snake whip, which I had seen while coming up the hill, stepped forward and took position to strike. He awaited the word of the leader, who said : " 'In the name of the women and children of Belgium and France lay on.' "I was struck probably six or eight times, the man hauling off and swinging as if with all his might. When he stopped to rest, or for further command, he was ordered to continue. I can not be certain whether the same man or an- other continued the whipping. How many more times I was cut I am not sure, but not many, perhaps, ten or twelve in all. "After this, while standing almost naked, a man began cutting locks of hair off the top and front of my head. Then something out of a large bottle was poured on my head and sopped over my hair. It smelled like crude oil, which it turned out to be. "Permit the man to dress," the leader then commanded. The Mob Departs "This done, the leader began waving the men away. The most .of them disappeared around the school house and I could hear the noise Of starting machines. "But before he left, the leader said : 'You are to remain there ten minutes after we are gone.' By this time I was stood up with my face to the side of the house. 10 "The leader further said to me: 'You are to be out of Cincinnati in 36 hours arid remain away until the end of the war.' "Two men were left to guard me. One pointed a revolver at me and ordered me to sit down on the cover of the cistern. Then he said to me, pointing the gun at me: "You have been tried in the balance and found wanting.' "I said: 'On what evidence?' "He said: 'That is known by the company you keep. When we strike we strike at the top.' "After more of this sort he announced to me that when they, too, were gone, I must stay here ten minutes. I asked him in what direction was home and how far away I was. He pointed in the direction in which we had come and said it was quite a distance. "I asked Ijini if I could walk home that night and he said 'No.' "He told me that I should inquire my way at a certain farm house, the first house on the right. "After he left I began to speculate on why they put oil on my hair. The only theory that seemed reasonable was that it was intended for identification later. "I concluded that others might be waiting at that house to do a deed which the big crowd couldn't be trusted to wit- ness, and that the oil was put on to make sure that the wrong man would not be assassinated. "So I decided to go in the other direction. The Journey Back "I had walked about two hours when first one machine and then another came up in my rear. .1 eluded both of them; once I stepped into a field of standing corn. The second machine I escaped by climbing over a bridge and dropping down on a railroad track. "I knew I was walking in the direction of Erlanger, as I inquired my way of a couple in a buggy, it occurring to me 11 that if the pursuing machines were hostile they would pro- bably learn from the couple that I had been directed to Er- langer. So when I reached the Lexington pike I turned on out, coming to Florence, better known as Stringtown on the Pike. I saw what was evidently the steeple of a Catholic church and determined to go to the house of the priests While looking for this house I saw the sign of Dr. Grant, in Florence, and I knocked and the door of a Good Samaritan was opened unto me. "I had never seen Dr. Grant before — he was a perfect stranger to me, but the doctor and his wife could not have done more for me had they been life-long friends. The most difficult part of Dr. Grant's ministration was a laborious shampoo to get the oil out of my hair. I reached Dr. Grant's house about 1 :30 a. m., and thought it best not to betray my whereabouts by using the telephone that night. The doctor and I sat up the rest of the night and saw the sua-up.. "I had a much-relished breakfast with the doctor and his wife and little daughter. Then I telephoned l^o my family and found attorney Nicholas Klein at my hfeuse, searching for me. I told Mr. Klein where I was and he and a party came for me." The Search for Mr. Bigelow On the night of the outrage word had come to Mr. Bigelow's friends in Cincinnati that he had been arrested in Newport, Ky., and his attorneys, Mr. Nicholas Klein and E. F. Alexander attempted at once to locate him. Mr. Alexander says that the' general impression was that he had been taken by the federal authorities. This impression he says "was confirmed by the non-committal attitude-'of such federal authorities as could be reached. The police authorities of Covington, Newport and Cin- cinnati all denied having him in custody. About 11:30 P. M. I called personally on C. S. Weakley, the special agent of the Department of Justice? and as Mr. Bigelow's attorney demanded to know his whereabouts. Mr. Weakley without admitting or, den3n[ng knowledge said with emphasis and irritation "I have nothing to say." It later became evident that he must have been kidnapped. Mr. Bigelow was sent for by automobile and taken to Christ Hospital, where he remained one- week. The Press Reports of the Outrage The news story of the kidnapping and whipping of Mr. Bigelow was printed in the metropolitan press throughout the 12 U. S. the next morning. The cause of the whipping was gener- ally ascribed to Mr. Bigelow's alleged pacifist utterances. No mention was made of the possible identity of his abductors with the big business interests which had fought him for years in Cincinnati and Ohio politics. It is therefore not surprising that the immediate editorial comments — and /indeed those which followed — vrere hostile to Mr. Bigelow, and only mildly disap- proving of the moj). Secretary Baker's Comment Secretary of War Newton D. Baker, an old friend and as- sociate of Mr. Bigelow's, at once issued the following statement: "The cause of the United States is not aided, but is hurt, by that kind of thing. No night riders are needed, and when the country is at war for liberty and justice they make a hiimiliating contrast to our national ideals and aims." The Efforts to Bring the Mob to Justice Within a few days after the outrage Mr. Bigelow's attor- neys had offered to the Kentucky authorities a cash reward of $5,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of any man participating in that outrage. But the authorities did not bestir themselves. ^The situation was complicated by the fact that the kidnapping took place i^ Campbell County and the horse-whipping in Kenton County. Under the Kentucky law the local authorities are primarily responsible. Although an appeal was made to the Governor, there was little he could do except to express sympathy. Thos. D. Slattery, the U. S. District Attorney for the EJastem District of Kentucl^' at Covington, maintained that no federal question was presented. Mr. Bigelow's attorneys felt that a federal investigation could be secured. Mr., Bigelow therefore went to Washington and saw his friend Secretary Baker for the purpose of getting action through the Administration. Although the Department of Justice apparently went carefully into the matter, they claimed to be unable to find a legal basis on which to make an investiga- tion. John Lord O'Brian, special assistant to the Attornfcy- General, in charge of cases arising under war legislation, said to the representative of the National Civil Liberties Bureau which had moved at once to secure a federal investigation, "We will take action, will order an investigation and go to the bottom of the matter, if Mr. Bigelow or any responsible citizen will present to us evidence — we do not care whether in formal docu- 13 ments or not — which will tend to show that a federal statute has been violated, or that federal officials have been neglectful of their duty. If it be shown that a conspiracy existed to deprive Mr. Bigelow of his right of free speech in future through intimi- dation — then that should, I think, be cause for inquiry. But if some men broke the law by uniting to attack him for what he had already said, the question is different. If federal officers were impersonated, we will investigate." Mr. Bigelow's friends in New York, besides attempting to get action from Washington, planned a mass meeting at which he should come to speak, in order to stage effectively a national protest against mob violence. But Mr. Bigelow's attorneys then advised against any such meeting or any activity that would attract further public attention at the moment, because of cer- tain local developments. Protest' meetings planned for Cincin- natti and Newport, Kentucky, were called off, because of the terrorization of all the hall-owners by business interests. Mr. Alexander (Mr. Bigelow's counsel) said under date of Novem- ber 1st, "At present the forces back of the kidnapping seem powerful and determined to terrorize the owners of the theatre in which Bigelow has held his meetings, and they notified his trustees that his lease is terminated. There are indications of a wide-spread business men's mafia, which has 'Cincinnati by the throat." Efforts continued to secure an investigation through the federal authorities at Washington. Mr. Alexander stated under date of January 10th that the Attorney-General of the U. S. had finally declined to send a special attorney to take up the matter and had referred any-further action to the local federal officials. Mr. Alexander's comment was "We have no such evidence as would compel an unwilling official to take action, and without aid from Washingtoji, we feel that no earnest effort would be made." Public Protests Mr. Bigelow appeared at a meeting in New York, arranged largely for him, on the night of January 13th, held under the auspices of the National Civil Liberties Bureau. This meeting at the Liberty Theatre on the subject of "American Liberties" attracted a large crowd. It was backed by a national committee of liberals, and adopted resolutions calling for a Congressional investigation of the causes of mob violence throughout the country. One of the significant features of the attack on Mr. Bigelow was that such a thing could have happened with so little protest. 14 Only a few papers came out unequiVocally in condemnation of the mob — notably the New York Evening Post, the Springfield Republican and the New Republic. The attitude of most editori- als was that Mr. Bigelow got about what he deserved, although of course condemning the method of administering the punish- ment. The only protests from public men — certainly the only ones which found their way into the public press — were voiced by Secretary of War Baker, Senator La FoUette and Amos Pinchot." President Wilson made reference to mob violence in general at his Buffalo speech before the American Federation of Labor a few weeks later, doubtless having in mind this in- cident in Cincinnati and the mobs at Tulsa, Okla., Bisbee, Ariz., and elsewhere in the west. Big Business and Mob Violence The attack on Mr. Bigelow, undertaken in the name of pat- riotism, is at one with the similar deliberate uses of mob violence to intimidate labor and radical leaders. Precisely the same formula that was used when Mr. Bigelow was whipped, "In the name of the women and children of Belgium," was used when the seventeen I. W. W. members were whipped at Tulsa, Okla- homa. There too, the mob was robed, and high-powered ma- chines took their victims at night to a lonely place of torture. In these and other instances all the evidence unmistakably points to the deliberate organization of mob violence by the lead- ing commercial interests, obviously hiding under the cloak of patriotism their sinister attack upon those leaders who are standing for the cause of the people and the workers. In concluding his New York address Mr. Bigelow said: "That whip left no scar of malice on my soul. But it did burn into my beir^g an implacable hatred of the system that could make such fiends of men. I promise you that not a single year of my life shall pass but that I will execute some attack upon the privileges that have made these men the ugly and snarling pos- sessors of other people's wealth. They put hot coals to my lips and gave me power to stir the hearts of men. I will strike them blow for blow. I will not hunt them in packs at night, behind masks, with high-powered machines. I will not strike their bodies. But as God gives me strength I will strike the privileges that have blackened their hearts and have twisted their souls. To this ministry have I been especially dedicated by the laying on of those infamous hands that night in those lonely Kentucky hills. And from this ministry I shall never desist while life lasts." 15 National Civil Liberties^ureai^ 70 Fifth Avenue, New York Washington Office, 647 Munsey Bldg. For the maintenance in war time of the rights of free / press, free speech, peaceful assembly, liberty of con- science, and freedom from unlawful search and sdzure. Publications for Distribution Civil Liberties Why Freedom Matters, by Norman Angell (Jan., 1918). 3c $1.50 Liberty in War-time; the Situation in the U. S. in view of English experience, by Alice Edgerton (Jan., 1918). 3c $1.00 'Who Are the Traitors?" (Jan., 1918). Ic $ .50 Constitutional Rights in War-time (July, 1917). Free Free Our traditional liberties of Free Speech and Free Press, extracts from the writings of statesmen and > scholars, arranged by John Haynes Holmes. 3c $2.00 The Outrage on Rev. Herbert S. Bigelow at Cin- cinnati. ^ 3c $2.00 fhe "Knights of Liberty" Mob, and the L W. W. , Prisoners at Talsa, Oklahoma (Jan., 1918). 3c $1.00 The Case of the Christian Pacifists at Los Angeles, by Norrflan M. Thomas (Jan., 1918). 3c $2.00 Conscription and Liberty of Conscience Price Per 100 Conscription and the Conscientious Objector (Aug., 1917) including subsequent leaflet (Nov., 1917). 3c — ■ War's Heretics, a plea for the Conscientious Objector (Aug., 1917), Norman M. Thomas . 3c $2.00 Brief on aspects of the constitutionality of the con- scription act (July, 1917). 10c — Exemptions from Military Service in Great Britain; U. S. Senate Document No. 62. (July, 1917). 3c — In Course of Preparation (Reads '" March) The facts to date about the conscientious objector. 3c $2.00 The Truth About the I. W. W. (Facts in relation to the pending trial) (Jaft., 1918). 5c $3.00 The Post-office War Censorship of the Press. 3c $2.00 American Liberties in War-Tim*; a summary of the work x>i the National Civil Liberties Bureau (to Dec. 31). 3c $2.00 Leaflets The U. S. Supreme Court on War-time Liberty (ex parte Milligan). Free Free Mob Violence and the Law, from the President's A. F. of L. address. II "Andre Shuben, religious. Camp Funston, Oct. 28th. "Prisoners, including at least two conscientious ob- jectors, witnessed the brutal treatment given Dan Yoder and S. Herschberger, both from Camp Sherman, Ohio, Nov. 1st, and their accounts are substantially as follows: "These men are members of the Ammish Mennonite sect, one of the religious rules of which forbids the wear- ing of clothes fastened by buttoiis. Upon their arrival, they refused to don the uniform of military offenders. They were taken to the clothing storeroom, and undressed forcibly by sentries and were put into prison clothes. "Sergeant Morris, foreman of the clothing storeroom, then took the two prisoners to the bathroom. There they 10 again refused to co-operate. Again they were disrobed roughly. They were led under the cold showers and held there for between ten and fifteen minutes. "Herschberger took the coarse 'laundry' soap that was forced upon him, and washed himself. Yoder was led, or almost dragged, by the hair, shivering and crying noisily. Sgt. Morris, who was holding him, still by the hair, then ordered all the warm water to be turned off. Yoder re- fused to wash himself. The sergeant took a large cake of soap and a heavy fibre brush and began to scrub him, rubbed the soap up and down over his face and roughly applied the scrubbing brush to his body. "They refused to put on the uniform. Herschberger dried himself and was dressed by other prisoners and sentries. Yoder, in the hands of the sergeant, was knocked down onto the cold cement floor. Without being dried, he was forced into the uniform. During this process his head was held between the knees of Sgt. Morris. When his underclothes were on, the sergeant lifted him up by the ears. This treatment has caused these two men to submit to prison labor, against their beliefs. "Instances can be multiplied. Gelerter, when he re- fused to drill, was beaten by sentries before he was put into solitary. Even there he was deprived of his phylac- tery, a religious^ article, indispensable to him. Uren and A. Shuben were beaten in the Executive Office. Corporal Harry Hunter inflicted the bodily punishment in these last cases. His actions were unauthorized and, in consequence, he has been suspended as yard corporal. "But that is the only show of justice that the authori- ties of the institution have given in respect to these out- rages. The incidents of Yoder and Herschberger were reported by two prisoners to Capt. Harry Mitchell, Ad- jutant, and by him to Capt. L. A. Humason, Intelligence Officer. Nothing further has been done. It is not known whether reports of these aflfairs were allowed to reach of- ficials in Washington or whether proper punishment is to 11 V be meted out to the soldiers who committed these bru- talities. ... "Thomas has stated briefly how most of the political conscientious objectors regard this situation. When he submitted his letter to Colonel Sedgewick Rice, the com- mandant, he was read an order from Washington, stating that C. O.'s who have been sentenced shall be treated as the ordinary criminal soldier." 2. Extract from letter written Nov. 7th. "You will wonder at my sanity if I tell you that I am trying to pick a vegetarian existence out of the limited rations in the mess hall. There are several of us now. ' . . . One is Rose from N. Y., who passes on all the books sent to prisoners; another is Sylva, just arrived from Funston and still weak from the effects of his hunger strike, another is a robust athlete from Denver and the other four are Israelites from Benton Har- bor who tremble lest by eating a morsel of animal fat they will violate the exhortations of Holy, Writ.l The table has contributed so many to the 'hole' that some begin to fear it is enchanted. Block from Riley has just gone down for refusal to work; Geleiter from Fort Jay has been in soli- tary for weeks and several Russians have gone after him. "In the 'hole,' a dungeon in the sub-basement, the men are fed only bread and water, and are handcuffed to their cell doors for nine or more hours a day. During the first week, they stand with their hands crossed at their breasts, during the second they hang by their wrists. [We presume, with their feet on the floor. — Ed.] "The 'screws' (sentries) are brutal. I have gone down with food from the mess hall several times to observe them. The air reeks with curses and foul drule. I have not heard these fellows suggest anything nearer a human reaction than a bestial laugh at some lewd tale. It follows that these men handle the prisoners with little gentleness. Geleiter has been beaten periodically. I saw him dragged by the collar, choking across the rough floor of the corri- 12 dors and the barber shop into the bath. One sentry knocked him down upon the cement floor, another un- dressed him with such brutality that he screamed with pain and three of them forced him into the shower and scrubbed him with coarse soap. "The Russians from Riley came out of confinement yesterday wan and staggering. They have gone to work. Both are religious objectors. Some of the Russians now in confinement have gone through the worst experiences jin jail which the worst of the Tzars had to offer. They Isay that there they were permitted to cook their own food and wei-e let alone. They swear that their life there was e^sy in comparison to this. ;' "Fellows who came from Camp Sherman last week declined to don the prison garb.* Two of them persisted. They were beaten into submission and the clothes were forced on them. For a time one of them wore his bundle around his neck, refusing to touch it, but he, too, was forcibly dressed. It is said that a Captain witnessed the original beating and that he turned his back and walked off without interceding. The sentries to whom he left the job dragged the boys to the bathroom and treated them to Geleiter's experience, scrubbing the flesh of one with the \ ubiquitous galvanic soap and a coarse scrubbing brush. \ The water was so cold that the rest of us spent scarcely \three minutes under it and retreated. Yet these C. O.'s Nyere held under it for nearly fifteen minutes. Corporal / is being tried for beating up two Russians — / Holy Jumpers from Texas — ^f or their refusal to salute and / work. He administered one of his pummelings in the of- / fice of the Executive Officer who himself had to stop the '' Struggle. But he is being tried because his specific act was not authorized. The 'hole' treatment is known by everyone in all its details and is accepted by the author- '\^ ities. . . ." • From other sources, we learn that this was because of religious scruples against wearing buttons. 13 3. Letters of Nov. 14 and 15 on the situation to date. "Box 60, Fort Leavenworth, "Nov. 14. "My dear "Francis Hennessy has asked me to send you this message, for just now he cannot write. "The group of boys from Fort Riley and Camp Fun- ston came to Leavenworth more than a week ago. Most of them began working in and about the prison, but practically all have refused to work longer and are now doing penance in the 'holes.' The 'hole' is our jail, you know — a black, cold place in the sub-basement. The men hang there chained by their wrists to their cell doors for nine hours a day. They sleep on the cold cement floor between foul blankets and are given bread and water, if they will eat at all. They cannot speak and of course they can neither read nor write. [That is, they are not allowed, being chained in the dark. — Ed.J "There is brutality enough, too. Some of the men have been beaten periodically. I saw one man dragged by his collar across the rough corridor floor, screaming and choking — to the bath. He was knocked about on the floor for failing to undress and was then stripped roughly and thrust under a cold bath. ... He has since gone to the hospital. "Several Russians — Holy Jumpers fi"om Arizona — have been hunger striking in the hole. Two of them were beaten so bestially that even the authorities were shocked and the sentry is to be courtmartialed. The sentry is be- ing tried, however, only because he exceeded his authority. The other beatings and tortures are matters of general knowledge and are accepted by the authorities as justifia- ble. These Russians were so weak at the end of six days that two of them had to be sent to the hospital — veritable ghosts. . . . They are ready to die in this dungeon. Their courage, so firm and beautiful, shames the others of us. , 14 "Evan Thomas, Howard Moore,* Rose of Philadelphia, Hennessy and about 20 others are now in the pit. They are protesting against the brutalities and tortures, com- pulsory work, compulsory chapel on Sunday and against the imprisonment itself. The local officers are relentless in punishing this breach of discipline and promise one man a courtmartial, I am told, as a lesson to the rest of us. Little more could be expected of them. But from Wash- ington we hope that some recognition of the condition may be drawn. We hope, of course, that the administra- tion will act as liberally as it has so often spoken and that it will recognize the right to be free-minded religiously and politically. We feel that if the government is not committed by deed to the principle, the sacrifice we have been making has accomplished nothing — except perhaps to create a splendid social propagandist material. "We wish that someone could visit us and see with his own eyes the results of the repressive policies which these military persons call justice. . . . "We have all come to love Francis in the few days that he has been here. He is a lad of the quietest cour- age. He has not the slightest hesitancy about stepping into this dungeon. He wants you to be assured that he will come through happily. "Very truly yours, "(Signed) " "November 16. "This is a supplement to the letter I sent concerning Francis Hennessy. "The boys in the dungeon are hunger striking now, demanding their release. They are being forcibly fed in the usual manner. I cannot learn whether Francis is among them, but he said when he left me that he intended *0n November 8, 1918, the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission awarded Howard Uoore a hero medal and $500 }or the gallant rescue o/ Miss Hanney ofl Bell Island, Conn. When the award was made, he was prisoner at Fort Leavenworth for con- science' sake. Other of his comrades are no less brave. 15 going the limit. He was getting on quite happily on bread and water yesterday morning. "Rose of Philadelphia, who struck for 25 days in Camp Meade, Was taken from the wing yesterday and ordered to begin breaking rock. He refused and was forced to stand all day, the cold wind cutting his flesh, eating nothing. He went to his cell in the evening shud- dering with chills and burning with fever. Today he is out in the yard again, professing health and liberty. He is to be court-martialed, he is told, and given a long term of years in the federal penitentiary. "Others will be joining the hunger strike day by day. None will die, for the officers do not want the responsibility of making explanations to enraged parents and friends and the public generally ; but they will all have a sober time of it. As long as I am at liberty myself, I shall be happy to tell you of the condition of Hennessy — and of the others. "Very truly, "(Signed) " 4. Digest of a report by an investigator sent to Fort Leavenworth by the National Civil Liberties Bu- reau. "Nov. 18th, 1918. "The investigator states that at the time of his visit there were in confinement at Fort Leavenworth 280 con- scientious objectors, and that several had died of the re- cent epidemic of influenza. The assistant commander re- fused absolutely to allow him to copy the names of any of these men, nor would he state what treatment was given to objectors who refused to do work assigned to them. The investigator adds that from his observations, 'they would not be accorded very much consideration as human beings,' that they are 'very thinly clad,' 'are con- stantly under the eye of an armed man,' and that 'hun- dreds of armed guards of the rough-house type are with the men at all times.' " 16 5. Documents illustrating the reason why some of the men quit work in protest against the punishment of certain of their comrades. (a) Letter of prisoner No. 14822 to the Adjutant General, Washington, D. C. "U. S. Disciplinary Barracks, "Fort Leavenworth, "Nov. 5th, 1918. "From : "General Prisoner Evan W. Thomas, "Serial Number 14822, U. S. Disciplinary Barracks, "Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas. "To: "The Adjutant General, Washington, D. C. "Subject: "Treatment of Conscientious Objectors. "Sir: "In a letter written by you dated August 18th, 1918, to David JE. Eichel at Fort Riley, Kansas, you declared that it is not the policy of the government to coerce the conscience of individual objectors, but that, on the other hand, great and liberal concessions have been made to conscientious objectors. I know that the same impression has been given by the government to many other indi- viduals through letters as well as through the public state- ments of ofl&cials. "Yet the fact remains that in accordance with the reg- ulations a number of the many conscientious objectors, now confined in the Disciplinary Barracks here, are in soli- tary confinement, chained to the bars of their cells nine hours a day for conscience sake. I have been witness of the mental anguish through which some of the men have gone because they could not work in this institution, no matter what the consequences might be. I myself have on repeated occasions before coming here declared to army officers that I would not work in the Disciplinary Barracks if the consciences of others were coerced or if the work 17 was the same as non-combatant service in the army. "Nevertheless since my arrival here on Oct. 20th, I have been working. It is not my desire, even if it were possible, to interfere with the discipline of this institution, nor do I believe that that is the intention of the objectors now in solitary confinement. But the fact remains that in spite of the many liberal statements made by the govern- ment, the conscientious objector is being treated exactly as the recalcitrant or criminal soldier. "In view of the explicit promises made by the govern- ment, cannot some provision be made to relieve the situa- tion here? "Respectfully yours, "(Signed) EVAN W. THOMAS." (b) Memorandum sent to mother of prisoner No. 14822 in reply to her questions with regard to her son. November 13, 1918. MEMORANDUM FOR COMMANDANT. Circumstances under which No. 14822 came into the office and the reasons for going into solitary confinement rather than work. "1. I was in need of two reliable copyists in the office and was entering the office of the Executive Officer to apply for these men and remarked my needs to Captain Leard, who was also entering the office of the Executive Officer. He pointed out No. 14822 and said 'There is the very man you want. He is a graduate of Princeton and has had two years at Oxford, and he is now going to the Executive Officer to decline to work and to take his medi- cine for conscience' sake and what he supposes to be his duty.' "I asked the Executive Officer about this man and told him that such a man was at least entitled to an interview, and asked him to send 14822 to my office. "I talked to this prisoner No. 14822 for about thirty 18 minutes trying to convince him that he was really array- ing himself on the side of disorder, as against the law of his country and order, however his case of injustice and inconsistency might appear to him. The interview closed with my giving him the permission of coming into the office the next day, and suggested that he would save him- self further trouble by being useful to us and his country. "He came into the office the next day and said he had concluded to work for me and I put him to work with the Purchasing Department. Two days later, we found that it was necessary to put another man on the records of our registered stock. I called for 14822 and told him that I had concluded to give him this work as it was the most accurate work in its requirements in the office. He in- formed me that he was on the point of asking for an inter- view to tell me that he had made a mistake in not going to the Executive Officer and refusing to work in the first place, but feeling as he did about it, he felt that to save himself the ordinary punishment of his refusal was an act of cowardice, and that he was really diverted from his refusal to work by fear. He had thus concluded to take his medicine. I said to him, 'You have fully determined on this course — there is no further use of conversation or argument?' and he said, 'No, sir.' "I directed him to report to the Executive Officer. "(Signed) Samuel A. Smoke, "Major U. S. A. Ret. In connection with these documents it may perhaps be added that almost all of these objectors came to Fort Leavenworth after months of segregation or impris- onment in guardhouses, where many of them suffered severely from the brutality of guards and petty of- ficers. We are not issuing these documents to argue the question of conscientious objection. It is plainly evi- dent, however, that the charge of physical cowardice so often leveled against the conscientious objector is 19 false in the case of the men who are confined in Leavenworth, Without exception, they could have avoided their heavy sentences merely by accepting non-combatant service. Many, in an effort to protest against the treatment of fellow prisoners, have gone so far as to choose deliberately a course which led in- evitably to the horrors of the "hole." Misguided per- haps, fanatics perhaps, but not cowards ! The treatment administered to these men cannot conceivably be the only or the best course open to the State. They are capable of the quixotic generosity of a sympathetic strike in prison, they are eager to serve high causes outside prison walls; the State seems to confess its weakness and perplexity in finding no alter- native to the brutal method of crushing them in mind or body. The facts which we have cited raise two issues: (1) The use of torture in military prisons to en- force obedience. This is as unnecessary as it is bar- barous. Conscientious objectors may be rendering a real social service in calling attention to the use of solitary confinement, such as we have described, to which ordinary military offenders have been subjected for years. (2) Political prisoners, of whom conscientious ob- jectors are one group, should be distinguished from ordinary offenders against the criminal law. Such is the almost universal practice in Europe. In Great Britain, the so-called "absolutists" objectors were never confined in military prisons and no sentences exceeded two years. This policy was carried out in the heat of the war. Our own government has repeatedly declared its intention not to coerce the conscience of any recognized objector, yet by confining these men in military prisons, it raises the question of coercion in an acute form. From the standpoint of the well-being of the State, as truly as of the ancient American liber- ties of conscience and free speech, what possible good 20 end is served by the indefinite confinement of political prisoners who are eager to render useful service out- side prison walls? The situation is urgent. This tor- ture can have but one end — the utter breaking of the men in body, mind or spirit. . No solution of this problem short of complete par- don will satisfy the generosity or sense of fair play of the American people. But, in the meantime, it is our particular purpose to urge (a) the immediate release of men now chained in solitary confinement and the permanent abolition of this and similar obsolete forms of discipline in military prisons ; (b) the recognition of the status of conscientious objectors as political pris- oners. 21 "/ will go to work the minute I have some assurance that the Government is prepared to recognize loyalty to conscience on the part of these inoffensive harmless individuals [religious sectaries who believe that work in a military prison violates their religion'\. If they must undergo a longer sentence for their loyalty to conscience, then I will undergo it with them and I will expect the liberal and Christian sentiment of America to realize the right of these men to their consciences in the course of time. But should nothing practical come from my action I will at least feel that I have been loyal to the principles I believe in and will be happier here in 'solitary' than on the outside working." Paragraph from a letter by Evan W. Thomas, explaining his stand at the close of his first two weeks in solitary. The President on Mob Violence (July 26, 1918) My Fellow Countrymen: I take the liberty of addressing you upon a subject which so vitally affects the honor of the nation and the very character and integrity of our institutions that I trust you vdll think me justified in speaking very plainly about it. I allude to the mob spirit which has recently here and there very frequently shown its head among us, not in any single region, but in many and widely separated parts of the country. There have been many lynchings, and every one of them has been a blow "at the heart of ordered law and humane justice. No man who loves America, no man who really cares for her fame and honor and character, or who is truly loyal to her institutions, can justify mob action while the courts of justice are open and the governments of the states and the nation are ready and able to do their duty. We are at this very moment fighting lawless passion. Germany has outlawed herself among the nations because she has disregarded the sacred obligations of law and has made lynchers of her armies. Lynchers emulate her disgraceful example. I, for my part, am anxious to see every community in America rise above that level, with pride and a fixed resolution which no man or set of men can afford to despise. We proudly claim to be the champions of democracy. If we really are, in deed and in truth, let us see to it that we do not discredit our own. I say plainly that every American who takes part in the action of a mob or gives it any sort of countenance is no true son of this great democracy, but its betrayer, and does more to discredit her by that single disloyalty to her standards of law and right than the words of her statesmen or the sacrifices of her heroic boys in the trenches can do to make suffering peoples believe her to be their savior. How shaO we commend democracy to the acceptance of other peoples, if we disgrace our own by proving that it is, after all, no protection to the weak? Every mob contributes to German lies about the United States what her most gifted liars cannot improve upon by the way of calumny. They can at least say that such things cannot happen in Germany except in times of revolution, when law is swept away. I therefore very earnestly and solemnly beg that the Governors of all the states, the law officers of every community, and, above aU, the men and women of every community in the United States, all who revere America and wish to keep her name without stain Of reproach, wiU co-operate — not passively, merely, but actively and watchfully — to make an end of this disgraceful evil. It cannot live where the community does not countenance it. I have called upon the nation to put its great energy into this war and it has responded- — responded with a spirit and genius for action that has tlirUled the world. I now call upon it, upon its men and women everywhere, to see to it that its laws are kept inviolate, its fame untarnished. Let us show our utter contempt for the things that have made this war hideous among the wars of history by showing how those who love liberty and right and justice and are willing to lay down their lives for them upon foreign fields stand ready also to illustrate to all mankind their loyalty to the things at home which they wish to see established everywhere as a blessing and protection to the peoples who have never known the privileges of liberty and self-government. I can never accept any man as a champion of liberty either for ourselves or for the world, who does not reverence and obey the laws of our own beloved land, whose laws we ourselves have made. He has adopted the standards of the enemies of his country, whom he affects to despise. WooDRow Wilson. -Reprinted by the National Civil Liberties Bureau, 70 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The Truth about the I. W. W. Facts in relation to the trial at Chicago by competent industrial investigators and noted economists "The I. W. W. has exercised its strongest hold in those industries and communities where employers have most resisted the trade union movement, and where some form of protest against unjust treatment was inevitable." — President's Mediation Commission, Published by the NATIONAL CIVIL LIBERTIES BUREAU 70 Fifth Avenue, New York City Washington Office: 647 Muntey Building Jpril. 1918 The Truth About the I. W. W. <]|The object in publishing and distributing this pamphlet at this time is to furnish interested citizens with a fair statement about the I. W. W. by thoughtful and unprejudiced observers. This is necessary in view of the flood of utterly unfounded and partisan "information" constantly given out to the public. ^The writings of practically every student of the I. W. W. during the war have been carefully read, and the significant portions quoted. The only quotations from matter published before the war are from the one book on the I. W. W., "American Syn- dicalism," by John Graham Brooks, and a reference to the Paterson strike from the Survey. The preparation of the material has been the joint work of a group, comprising Geo. P. West, John A. Fitch, Prof. Carlton H. Parker, John Graham Brooks, Roger N. Bald- win, Director of the Bureau, and others. flit is not to be inferred that the editors or publishers of this pamphlet are in agreement with the principles and methods of the I. W. W. In its activities as a labor union, interested in improving the condition of wage-earners, we can find much to commend. It should be clearly understood, however, that the editors and pub- lishers do not thereby endorse its social and industrial philosophy. flThe I. W. W. is the most bitterly attacked and most deliber- ately misrepresented of all labor organizations today. The interests of our future orderly progress demand that every citizen should have an understanding of the movement drawn from other sources than the partisan statements fed out for com- mercial purposes. flA fair trial is an American right. Even the I. W. W. are en- titled to one. But they cannot get it in the tumult of war unless the truth is known. Nothing would go further to justify their philosophy than to deny a fair hearing to them. flin the earnest belief that this is a service of the highest im- portance to American institutions of liberty and democratic rights, we submit this pamphlet to the public. NATIONAL CIVIL LIBERTIES BUREAU. New York, March, 1918. CONTENTS. Page Sketches of the authorities quoted 5 Terms Commonly Used 7 Summary of the Facts 8 The Economic Basis of the I. W. W 11 The Issues at Stake in the Trial 13 The I. W. W. Purposes and Philosophy 16 The Facts About the I. W. W 20 Its Membership 20 Its Organization 22 Relations with Employers 24 Relations with the American Federation of Labor Unions '. 25 Sabotage and Violence 26 The I. W. W. and the War 31 The Facts 31 The Verdict of the President's Mediation Commission. 35 The Report of the Department of Labor 37 Patriotism and the I. W. W *. 37 Misrepresentation of the I. W. W 41 The Indictment Against the I. W. W 43 Trial by the Press 43 Trial by the Government 43 Analysis of the Indictment 47 Facts About the Defendants 54 BRIEF SKETCHES Of Each of, the Writers and Economists Quoted John.Graham Brooks of Cambridge, Mass., economist, author and lecturer; former lecturer at Harvard, University of Chicago arid University of California ; former expert for the United States Department of Labor; Honorary President of the National Con- sumers' League ; author of "Anierican Syndicalism, the L W. W." (1913), "The Social Unrest" (1903), etc., etc. With the exception of the statement on page 45, especially written for this pamphlet, all the quotations from Mr. Brooks are taken from his book on "American Syndicalism, The I. W. W.," written in 1913. Robert W. Bruere of New York City, writer and lecturer. Mr. Bruere accompanied the President's Mediation Commission on its recentv^tripi through the West to get first-hand facts about the ^industrial situation. He went as sj)ecial correspondent^ for the New York Evening Post, where his articles have been published" under the head, "Following the Trail of the I. W. W." Mr/ Bruere was a former teacher at the University of Chicago, and later execu- tive of one of.thfe largest agencies for charitable relief in New York. He was an adviser to the unions in the cloak and suit strike in New York City, 1916. The quotations are all from his recent articles in the New York Evening Post. Harold Callender of Detroit, Michigan, a writer on the Detroit News, formerly with the Kansas City Star. / Mr. Callender made a personal investigation into the labor situation during the war in industries where the I. Vf. W. is strong. The investigation was made for "Labor's National Defense Council," of which Frank P. Walsh of Kansas City, former chairman of the U. S. Commis- - sion on Industrial Relations, is the head. The quotations are from the pamphlet report made by Mr. Callender/ John A. Fitch of New York City, industrial editor of the Survey since 1912, formerly connected with the New York Bureau of La^or Statistics. All of the quotations from Mr. Fitch are from his an^icles in the Survey. WiWter Nelles of New York City, attorney, graduate of the Harvan^ Law School, counsel for the National ^Civil I^ibertiei BureaAi. "^ -^ 5 V , CarIton4i. Parker of Seattle, Wash. ^ As we go to ptress we learji of the death at Seattle of Prof. Parker, due in large part to overwork not only in his administrative duties as dean of the School of Business Administration of the University of Washing- ton, but also as a special agent of the War Department in dealing with the I. W. W. situation in the lumber industry of the northwest.. Prof. Parker in his earlier work in (California and Washington made a special study of labor problems. He contributed to the Atlantic Monthly for November, 1917, the most significant arllicle on the I. W. W. which has b^n written in recent years ("The I. W. W. — a Different View"). The quotations from Prof. Parker are all from his Atlantic- Monthly article, 'with the exception of the state- ment on page 11, which was prepared especially for this pamphlet. Prof. Thorstein Veblen of the University of Missouri, quoted- on page 27, economist and author of the "Theory of the Leisure Qdss," etc., etc. George P. West of Npw York City, associate editor of, the Public; former publicity director of the ' U./ S. Commission on Industrial Relations ; author of the Cennmission's report on the Colo- rado strike; formerly special writer for the San Francisco Bulletin on the Lawrence strike, the California hop-riote and the San Diego free speech fight, in^all of- which he made an intimate studyjif lie L W. W. The material from Mr. West was contributed especially for this pamphlet. " , ' The President's Mediation Commission, appointed by tke President in the fall of 1917 to effect settlements of labdr disputes and unrest in the West, submitted its report to the President on January 9th, 1918. The members of the Commission were Wm. B. Wilson, Secretary of Labor, Chairman ; Felix Frankfurter, Sec- retary and Counsel; Ernest P. Marsh, Verner Z. Reed, Jackson L. Spangler and John H. Walker. I TERMS , Commonly Used — and Abused— iin Connection with Radical Labor Movements. ^ ' These brief definitions given to avoid confusion and misunderstanding. They are necessarily incomplete. ' Capitalism: The present system of privately-owned indus- try, operated for profit. Socialism: The ownership of all socially necessary indus- tries by organized society, and their operation for service, not for profit. , Syndicalism: The ownershijJ arid operation of each indus- try by the worlcers in that industry, — the political State to be abolished. Guild Socialism: The ownership of all industries by the State, with o;^eration by "guilds" or trade-unions of the workers in each ^industry. Anarchism: The conception of a free society vsnthout force or compulsory control in any form. Syndicalism ex- presses its principle in the industrial field. ■ Sabotage (or, "strike on the job"): Any practice de- signed to slow up or impede production in industry. Direct Action: The oirganized industrial power of the workers. (Used to distinguish from political action.) Craft unionism: Organization of the workers by trades (carpenters, pluiribers, etc.). Used to distinguish from industrial unionism, organizatibn of the work- ers by industries (mining, building, etc.), regardless of their trades. ,7 SUMMARY OF THE FACTS. To those who have not studied the labor problem of the unskilled lAillions who toil in our harvest-fietcls, forests, mines and factories, the I. W. W. appears only as a criminal organiza- tion of "bums" and agitators, advocating murder, violence and anarchism. Since the war there has been added to this indict; ment, disloyalty, treason and pro-Germ&nism. In the mind of the average American, the I. W. W. has already been convicted. If these ideas about the I. W. W. were ; essentially true, there would be no occasion at all for ^publishing this pamphlet. It is because they are so evidently untrue upon any examination at all of the facts that we believe the American public should know at this time the findings of unj>iased students. i To the average man it seems of course incredible that any organization could be so grossly misrepresented unless there were some real reason for it. The 'widespread misrepresentation of the I. W. W. is due to three chief causes: r 1st. The radical economic doctrines taught by the I. W. W., and the "big talk" of many of the members,—^ intended to magnify the power of the organization and to scare employers. But it is almost all talk and printed words. They also openly advocate tactics common to all labor unions everywhere, but usually not talked about. 2nd. The deliberate misrepresentations by employing interests opposed to organized labor, who have taken ad- vantage of thpe doctrines to paint the I. W. W. as a ter- rorist organization of "anarchists." They thus frighten the public into an alliance with them instead of with labor. 3rd. The antagonism between the I. W. W. and the '\ older trade-unions organized by crafts and affiliated ipostly with the Ameri(»n Federation of Labor. This is due to the I. W. W. demand for a radical new form of unionism, bit- terly critical of the craft unions of the old school. 8 The Facts and Opinions Quoted in this Pamphlet Show in General: 1st. That the I. W. W. is part of a world labor movement of |a new kind, aimed to secure the soHdarity of the workers in one Organization, with an uncompromising attitude of hostility toward organized capital. Its purpose is ultimately to replace the capitalist system of production with productldn by organi- zations of -the workers themselves. It is essentially a part of the Syndicalist labor movement, which is not confined to any o^e orga:jiization or any one country. , ! ^ 2nd. That the use of "sabo^ge" (the "strike on the job") to embarrass the employer at times of labor difficulty is not directed to violence against human life, and rarely to actual de- struction of property. J , 3rd. That the so-called "revolutionary" purpose of the I. W. W. as compared with the older craft unions is best expressed in their demand for "the abolition of the wa,ge system," as con- trast;ed with the A. F. of L. "fair day's wage for a fair day's work." of men 4th. That the membership of the I. W. W. is not composed "bums" and agitators,, but for the most parf of hard-working I, chiefly American-born, engaged in migratory jobs.. 5th. That violence has been much more commonly used against ^e I. W. W. than by it; that the violence used by em- ployers is open, organised, deliberate and without any excusable proybcation ; and that the L W. W. have almost never retaliated even in the fa'ce of outrages ranging from ^urder to mob depor- tations. The Facts Quoted Show During the War; 1st. That the "disloyalty and treason" charged against the I. W. W. as part of a "conspiracy to obstruct, the war" are, so far 'as yet shown by any evidence, simply the ordinary activities of labor-unions struggUng to get better wages and conditions even in war-time. i \ ! 2nd. That the I. W. W», strikes and labor disturbances were comparatively fewer in the six months' period between the decla- ration of war and the indictments than in many similar periods in recent years. "^^ 3rd. That tljere have been many more strikes and labor disturbances during the war by unions afifiliated with the Ameri- can Federation, of Labor than with the I. W. W. 4th. That no member of the I. W. W. has been convicted in any court of any crime involving the organization in sorcalled "disloyalty" or violence from the time the war started up to date (March 1st, 1918). , ' j 5th. That the charge that pro-German propaganda is back of the I. W. W. appears to hive been made expressly for the purpose of discrediting them further. No connection whatever has been found between German agents or German money and the . I. W. W. . 6th. That many I. W. W. unions, especially those on the Atlantic seaboard, have been loyally serving, the country during the war, particularly in the loading of ammunition and war sup- plies on the docks, and in much of the work on board the trans- ports to France. They have made no trouble of any kind, be- cause working conditions and wages are good. 7th. That most of the charges of obstruction against the I. W: W. during the war are part of an organized campaign by war-profiteers ancj employing interests to use the war to cru^h , this labor organization. Under the 'cloak of patriotism they have staged such acts of violence as the Bisbee, Arizona, deportations, the hanging of Frank Little at Butte, and the tarring and feath- ering of I. W. W. prisoners at Tulsa, Okla., and elsewhere. They have sought to tie the L W. W. tag to any and all labor dis- ' turbances, that they may more easily discredit and break 'them. 8th. That the inevitable result of this misrepresentation, and indeed of the government's prosecution itself, is to increase labor unrest, to curtail war production, and to promote national disunity. Its effect is to enlist the sympathy of the older craft unions for the I. W. W. and to close the breach between the conservative and revolutionary labor movements. Air of this brings about results directly opposite to those desired by 'the government. 10 THE ^XONOMIC BASIS OF THE I. W. W. , By Carbon H'. Parker. , The I. W, W. is a symptom of a distressing industrial status. For the moment the relation of its activities to our war prepara- tion jhas befogged its economic origins, but all purposeful think- ing about even the I. W. W.'s attitude towards the war must begin with a full an^ careful consideration of these origins. All the famous revolutionary movements of history gained their cause-for-being from some intimate and unendurable opr pression and their behavior-in-revolt re;flected the degree of their suffering. The chartist and early trade union riots in England, the revolution of 1789 in France, the Nihilists' killings in Rus- sia, the bitter attacks oh the railroads by the Gi;angers of the Northwest, the extremes iijto which the' Anti-Saloon. League propaganda has evolved, are a small part of the long revolt-bata- logue of which the I. W. W. is the last entry. Each one of these movements had its natural psycho-political antecedents and much of the new history is devoted to a careful describing and re- valuation of them. ' ' At some later and less hysterical date the h W. W. phe- nomenon will be (fispassionately dissected in somewhat the following way: (1) There were in 1910 in the United States some 10,400,000 unskilled male workers. Of these some 3,500,000 moved, by discharge or qjutting, so regularly from one work town to an- other that they could be called migratory labor. Because of this unstable migratory life this labor class lost^the conventional relationship to women and child life, lost its voting frginchise, lost its habit of common comfort or dignity, and gradually^lje- came consciously a social class with fewer legal or social rights than are conventionally ascribed to Americans. The cost of this expferience wa^s aggravated by the ability and habituation of this migratory class to read about and appreciate the higher social and economic life!_ enjoyed by the American middle class. (2) The unskilled labor class itself experienced a life not markedly more satisfying than the migratories. One fourth of 11 the adult fathers of their families earned less than $400 a year, one-half earned less than $600. The minimum cost of-decent living for a family was ^approximately $800. Unemployment, destitution and uncared-for sickness was a iponotonous fa!- miliarity to them. (3;, The to-be-expected revolt against this social condition was conditioned and colored by the disillusionment touching justice and industrial democracy and the j)ersonal and intimate indignities and sufferings experienced by the migratories. The revolt^organization of the migratories, c^ed the I. W. W., fail--, ing mgst naturally to live up tcr the elevated legal and cpntract- respecting standaj^ds of the more certfifortable trade union world, was visite(f by severe middle-class censure and legal persecutiori. This sketch is fairly conq>lete and within current facts. No one doubts the full propriety of the government in suppressing ruthlessly any interference by the I. W. W. with the war prepa- raCon. All patriots should just as vehemently protest against the suppression of the normal economic protest-activities of the I. W. W. There will be neither pemument peace nor prosperity in our country till the revolt-basis of the I. W. W. is removed. And until that is done the I.'W. W. remains an unfortunately valuable symptom of a dise^^ed industrialism. -^ ■ ■■ 'I /. 12 % THE ISSUES AT STAKE IN THE TRIAL. The average man condemns the I. W. W. because he thinks that: "The organization is unlawful in its activity, un-Amei;ican in its sabotage, unpa/triotic in its relation to the flag, the govern- ment and the vi'^ar. The rest of the condemnation is a play, upon these three attributes. So proper and so sufficient has this con- deriinatory analysis become that it is a risky matter to approach the problem from anotjier angle." \ But— '. ' , , "The L W. W. can be profitably Viewed only as a psycho- logical by-product of the neglected childhood of industrial' America. It is discouraging to see the problem to-day exam- ined almost exclusively from the point of view of its relation to patriotism and conventional commercial morality." - ' — Carlton H. Parker. \ What Is The Truth? "It was probably in recognition of the /very sketchy nature of the treason evidence sb far made public that one journal has been moved to lay down the basic judicial principle that" as against the I. W. W. there is really no need of specific evidence of Sedition. By its record- and its well-known statement of prin- ciples the I. W. W. has been a treasonable organization from the ^tart. For has not the I. W. W^^always preached sabotage? And what does ^abotagq mean? /It means dropping .phosphorus balls into dry wheat-fields so that babies rnay starve. It means stones thrown into threshing machines, railroad trains ditched, lumber yards destroyed, warehoiises burned.' "Has any evidence been as yet cited ^ of wreckage and de- struction worked by the I. W. W.? Is there any other founda- tion so far made public for all the dread actuality <^ sabotage other than the commonplaces of I. W. W. dogma as expounded in their ^eoretic textbooks'? On that basis, not only the leaders of the I. W. W., but every leader and member of the . Socialist party, might have been arrested for criminal conspiracy these twenty years. Socialist theory bristles with formulas on class 13 The Truth About the I. W. W. war, and the capitalist's flag, and the common cause of ttlje workers of the world. "The belief that the Administration's policy against the I. W. W. and in a lesser degree against the Socialist party can be based on a general assumption of conspiracy and treason iji time of war is an impossible one and a dangerous one. Tfie fact cannot be explained away that the I. W. W. does embody one phase of the labor movement in this country, and only blindness' will persist in regarding every manifestation of labor trouble under I. W. W. auspices. as a pro-German conspiracy calling for the strong hand." —Editorial, N. Y. Evening Post. . "According to the newspapers, the I. W. W. is engaged in treason and terrorism. The organization is supposed to have caused every forest fire in the West^ — where, by the way, there have been fewer forest fires this season than ever before. Driv- ing spikes in lumber before it is sent to the sawmill, pinching the fruit in orchards so that it will spoiL crippling the copper, lumber and shipbuilding industries out,of spite against the gov- ernment, are commonly repeated charges against them. It is supposed to be for this reason that the states are bf ing urged to pass stringent laws making their activities and prbpaganda im- possible ; or, in the absence of such laws, to encourage the police, soldiers and citizens to raid, lynch, and drive them out of the community. "But what are the facts? What are the Industrial Workers of the World really doing? Inythe lumber camps of the north- west they are trying to force the companies to give them an eight-hour day and such decencies of life as spring cots to sleep on ihstead of, bare boards. In the copper region of Montana they are demanding facilities to enable the men to get out of a mine when the shaft takes fire. It is almost a pity to spoil the melodramatic fiction of the press, but this is the real nature of the activities of the I. W. W." —Harold Callend'er. Are the I. W. W. Entitled to a Fair Trial? " 'Equality before the law' is a much quoted phrase supposed to ^um up America's principles and practice. Is there a pro- vision anywhere in our charter law allowing the police to sus- pend the rules in the case of 'agitators,' 'disturbers,' or 'anar- chists'? Are there people in America whose beliefs and manner of living are so repugnant to popular ideals that they may be said to have no rights that any good citizen is bound to respect? If it is generally believed that a negative answer may unhesitat- 14 The Truth About the I. W. W. ingly be given to these questions it is pertinent to consider a little recent history concerning that new and revolutionary or- ganization, the I. W. W. , "Against this body are arrayed the forces of present-day society. It is denounced by the press, thundered at by the pulpit, and anathematized by the spokesmen of the business world. "There is an opposition that thinks it sees in the philosophy underlying the movement not constructive change but class war and ruin, and so resists the organization's advance. But this resistance is by legitimate means, for if .these people see peril in this new philosophy, they believe there is greater peril in setting aside the law to suit the convenience of those in authority. "There is another opposition — and to-day it seems to be the larger and stronger — that regards the I. W. W. as a peril that must be resisted to the end. f^ut this element, partly through ignorance, partly through the excitement of fea^, and partly through a consciousness of illegitimately-acquired possessions, is willing that the organization be repressed even illegally and with flagrant disregaird of the constitutional rights of the individual." —John A. Fitch, in the "Survey." Note. — It is a significant fact that, with all the talk of I. W. W. disloyalty and violence, there has not been reported as yet (March 1) since the war started one conviction of an I. W. W. mranber of any crime involving the organization in either such charge in any'^Form. This statement is based on an examination of thousands of newspaper clippings, and on the authority of the attorneys for the I. W. W.— Editors. Why They Deserve Our Attention. "No considerable force appearing among us seeking social betterment is to be held off and treated like a marauder oi* an outcast. Invariably these forces bring with them idealisms that no society can afford to lose. Much of the conscious jilan and niethod of Syndicalism is whimsically chimerical. But in it and tprough it is sdmething as sacred as the best of the great dreamers have ever brought us. In the total of this moye- -ment, the deeper, inner fact seems to be its nearness to apd sympathy with that' most heavy laden and long-enduring mass of common toilers. Alike to our peril and to our loss, shall we ignore this fact. Steadily to see it and keep it in remembrance is the beginning of such practical wisdom as we may show towa,rd it." — John Graham Brooks. 15 THE I. W. W. PURPOSES AND PHILOSOPHY. ' A Movjement of Protest and Revolt. "Those who have^ investigated and studied the lower strata of American labor hav£ long recognized the I. W. W. as purely a symptom of a certaiif' distressing state of affairs. The casual migratory laborers are the finished product of an economic en- vironment which seems cruelly efficient in turning out humaa beings modelled after all the standard*, which sbciety abhors. The history of the migratory workers shpSvs that, starting with the long hours and dreary winters of the farms they ran aw^ from, or the sour-smelling bunk-house in a coal-village, through their character-debasing experience with the drifting 'hire and fire' life in the industries, on to the vicious social and economic life of the winter unemployed, their training predetermined but one outcomevand the environment produced its type, , , ~ "The I. W. W. has importance only as an illustration of a stable American economic process. It's pitiful syndicalism, its stree^corner Spposition to the war, are the inconsequential trimmings. Its strike alone, faithful as it is to the American type/is an illuminating thing. The I. W. W., like the Grangers, the Knights of Labor, the Farmers' AUiance, the Progressiv^e ^ party, is but a phenomenon of revolt." —Carlton H. Parker. V "They may be honestly accounted for because of ihings^in- tolef^ble in our present disorders. Syndicalism, with its excesses of statement and oi action, with all the phantasm of its working method, will continue, and should continue as one -among other prodding annoyances that leave society without peace until it dedicates far more Unselfish thought and strength to avoidable disCfises like unmerited poverty, unemployment, grotesque in-t equalities in wealth possession, the forced prostitution of under- paid women, and our fatuous Ijrutalities in dealing with crime." "As for' constructive suggestion, out I.-W.,W. have so little as to embarrass the most indulgent critic. In their convulsive and iricendiary appeal to the forgotten masses there is, never- theless, a saving utility that should bring the movement within our sympathetic acceptance. To the utmost,^ we should work ' 16. -4 The Truth About the I. W. W. ^inth it as those determined to learn, from whatever source J:he ^ njjftessage comes. ■' >;.^* "Of this total rising protest against sources of unnatural in- equalities in wei^lth and opportunity, the I. W. W. is at most a ^ very tiny part. It is yet enough that they are in it, and they are. fully av^rare of the fact. For the first time they are so con- sciously related to this spirit of revolt and to the delicate indus- trial mechanism which gives them power, that only a captious temper will refuse'^em hearing." — John Graham Brooks. I. W. W. Theory and Practice. "An altogether unwarranted importance has been given to ' the syndicalist philosophy of the I. W. W. ' A few leaders use its phraseology. Of these few, not half a dozen know the mean- ing of French syndicalism or English guild socialism. To the great Pandering rank and file the I. W. W. is simply the only social break in the harsh search for work that, they have ever had ; its headquarters the only competitor of the saloon in which they are welcome." ■ — Charlton H. Parker. As a Labor Movement. "The I.W.W. can be described with complete' accuracy as the extension of the American labor strike into the zone of casual, migratory labor. All the superficial features, such as its syndi- ■ calistic philosophy, its sabotage, threats of burning and destruc- ,_ tio^, are the natural and norinal accompaniments of an organized labor disturbance in, this field> "Their philosophy is, in its simple reduction, a stomach philosophy, and their politico-indtlstrial revolt could be called without injustice a hunger ri5t." — Carlton H. Pafker. \^ Their Philosophy. The whole revolutionary philosophy of the I. W. W. is summed up in the '"Preamble" to their Constitution. Here are the class struggle, the' relation to syndi calisnt*-to the craft unions ' of the A. F. of L. and the ideal of a World-wide union of the workers abolishing the competitive industrial system. I.W.W. PREAMBLE. "Tire working class and the employing class Jiave nothing in common. 'Inhere can be no peace so long as hunger and want are fouridNimong millions of the working people and the few who make up the employing class have all the good things of life,. 17 The Truth About the I. W. W. "Between these two classes a struggle must go on unti^ the workers of the world organize as a class, take posses-' sion of the earth and the machinery of production, and %„ abolish the wage systenx We find that the centering of the management of in- dustries into/ fewer and fewer hands makes the trade Unions unable to cope with the ever growing power of the employ- ing class. The trade unions foster a state of affairs which allows one set of workers to be pitted against another set , of workers in the same industry, thereby helping defeat one ■ another in wage wars. Moreover, the trade unions aid the employing class J:o mislead the workers into the belief that the working class have interests- in common with their em- ployers. "These conditions can be changed and the interests of the working class upheld only by an organization formed in such a way that all its members in any one industry, or in all industries, if necessary, cease work whenever a strike or lockout is on in any department thereof, thus making an injury to one an injury to all. _ ' "Instead of the conservative motto, 'A fair day's wage for a fair day's work,' we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, 'Abolition of the Wage Systefn.' "It is the historic mission of the working class to do away with capitalism. The army of production must be or- ganized, notvohly for the every day struggle with capitalists, but also to carry oh production when capitalism shall have been overthrown. By organizing industrially we are form- ing the structure of the new society .within the shell of the old." What Do They Think? "Considering their opportunity, the I. W, W. read and discuss abstractions to a surprising extent. In their libraries the few novels are white-paged, while a translation of Karl Marx or Kautskyi, or the dull and theoretical pamphlets of their own leaders, are dog-eared." ■ — Carlton H. Pfl-rker. What They Want , j "The rebelling spirit of the I. W. W. is at least a wholesome disquieter of this sleep. If we add to this its own awakening appeal to the more unfavored labor in which its propaganda is carried on, we are mefely recognizing forces^ that are useful 18 The Truth About the I. W. W. ^ until a wiser way is found to do their work. This we have not " yet found, neithef have we greatly and searchingly tried to find it. So many are our social inhumanities that the rudest upset- ting will do us good if the shock of it forces us to dp our duties. "With much of the motive of the I. W. W. we may also sympathize. The goal ' at which they aim is one from which everj- parasitic and unfiir privilege shall be cut out. I ask^d one of the best of them 'What ultimately do you want?' "I want a world," he said, "in which every man shall get exactly what he earns and all he earns — a world Ifn which no man can "' live qn the labor of another." "It is not conceivable that any rational person should deny the justice and reasonableness of that ideal. Every step toward it is a step nearer a decent and more self-respecting society." — John Graham Brooks. 19 '", THE FACTS ABOUT THE I. W. W, / 1. ITS MEMBERSHIP. "The I. W. W. is a union of unskilled workers in large part employed in agriculture and in the production of raw rpaterials. While the I. W. W. appeared in the East at Lawrence, Paterson and certain other places, at the height of strike activity, its normal habitat is^n the upper Middle West and^the far West, from British Columbia down into old Mexico. But within the past year, apart from the Dakota xyheatfields and the iron ranges of Minnesota and Michigan, the zone of important activities has been Arizona, California, Washington, Idaho, Miantana and Col- -•orado. The present war time I. W. W. problem is that of its activity in the far West.. \ | "It is fortunate for our analysis that the I. W. W. me'mber- - ship in the West is consistently of one type, and one whic|i has had a uniform economic experience. It is made up of migratory workers currently called hobo labor. The term^ "hobo miner," "hobo lumberjack," and "blanket stiff" are familiar &nd necessary in accurate descriptions of Western labor conditions. Veiryl few o^ these migratory workers have lived 4ong enpugh in afly one place to establish a legal residence and to vote, and they are also womanless. Only about ten per cent, have been, married, and , theae, for the most part, either have lost thei]> -(vives or have deserted them. Many claim to be "working out," and expect eventually to return to their families. But examination usually disclos£s the fact that they have not sent money home recently, or received letters. They are 'floaters' in every social sense." — Carlton H. Parker. I "I have many times asked young men and women what first caught their interest. From the best of them it is invariably this — "Nothing hafe yet been done for labor at the bottom. Where it is helpless, ignorant, without speech,. it has been neglected and abused. It is pushed into every back alley and into all work that is hardest and. most dangerous. Society forgets it. The trade unions that should befriend it forget it too. Now comes the I. W. W- with the first bold and brotherly cry which these ignored masses have ever heard." — John Graham Brooks. 20 , The Truth About the I. W. W. "To associate the I.W.W. with a ruffian clutching a smoking bomb is a silliness that need not detain us. It is true that no revolutionary movement is w^ithout its crinjinals. They 'were ubiquitous in our War of the Revolution. They followed the wake of Garibaldi, and Mazzini was nevei" free from them. They were among the English^Chartists, and never have been absent from Ireland's long struggle for self-rule. The I. W. \^^ will not escape this common destiny. It will attract to itself many ex- tremely frail human creatures, but the movement as a whole is not to be condemned by these adherents or by the shabby device of using panicky terms like anarchist. — John Graham Brooks. .^"The membership of tlie I.W.W. which pays regular dues is an uncertain and volatile thing. While a careful study in Cali- fornia in 1915 showed but forty-five hundred affiliated members of the I. W. W. in that state, it was very evident that the func- tioning and striking membership was double this or more. In the state of Washington, in the lumber strike of this^ear, the I. W. W. membership was most probably not overjhree thousand, but the number of those active in the s^irike and joining in sup- port of the I. W. W. numbered approximately seven thousand. A careful estimate of the membership in the United States gives > seventy-five thousand. In the history of American Jabor there has appeared no organization so subject to fluctuation in mem- bership and strength." , - —Carlton H. Parker. . Of the membe'Vship of the I. W. W. in the northwestern lumber camps the President's Mediation Commission says: "Partly the rough pioneer character of the industry, but largely the failure to create a healthy social environ- ment, has resulted in the migratory, drifting character of workers. Ninety per cent, of those in the camps are de- sccibed by one of the wisest students of the problem, not too inaccurately, as 'womanless, voteless and jobless.' The fact is that about 90 per cent, of them are unmarried. Their-, work is most intermittent, the annual labor turn&ver reach- ing the extraordinary figure of over 600 per cent. There has bt6n ^. failure to make of these camps . communities. It is not to be wondered, then, that .in too many of these worlsers the instinct of workmansliip, is impaired. They are — or, rather, have been made — disintegrating^orces in society." 1 21 ^ I The Truth About the I. W. W. 2. ITS ORGANIZATION. "The Industrial Workers have an organization that is na!- tional and embraces a dozen great industries. It is not very compact ; it cannot be, dealing with men to whom a home Is an impossible luxury, men who are made migratory* by their work. The membership fluctuates widely, but has been increasing steadily. It is something like a bank account, deposits and with- drawals offsetting each other, but not varying that greatly. Its members come and go, joining during a strike but dropping out afterward. It is difficult for the officers themselves to tell what the. membership is at a particular time. "There are eleven industrial unions, with others in process of formation: Marine Transport Workers Union No. 100 (At- lantic Coast), Metal and Mkchinery Workers, Agricultural Workers, Lumber Workers, , Construction Workers (composed mostly of laborers on railroads and the comparatively unskilled in similar industries), R!ailway Workers (embracing men em- ployed in any way in transportation). Marine Transport Work- ers' Union No. 700 (Pacific Coast), Metal Mine Woi^kers, Coal Miners, Textile Workers. A unioii of domestic servants has been started on the Pacific Coast. , "The Industrial Workers operate chiefly among the unskillecl and immigrant workers whom the trade union does not reach. They organize the men who dig tunnels and lay railroad ties and fell trees in the forests^ — the most poorly paid and ill-treated. They speak for those whom a short-sighted society ignores; theirs is a voice from the bottoin. And it is answered with mili- tary stockades!" — Harold Callender. "This tenacity of life is due to the fact that the I. W. W. not only is incapable of legal death, but has in fact no formal politico-legal existence. Its treasury is merely the momentary accumulation of strike funds. Its numerous headquarters are the result of the energy of local secretaries. They are not places for executive direction of the union so much as gregarious centres where the lodging-house inhabitant or the^obo with his blanket can find light, a stove, and companionship. In the prohibition states of the West, the I. W. W^ hall hi^ been the only social substitute for the saloon for these peoplt. "The migratory workers have almost all seen better eco- nomic and social days, and carry down into their disorganized labor level traditions, if only faint ones, ^of some degree of dignity and intellectual life. To" these old-tiiioe desires the head- quarters cater. In times of strike and disorder the headquarters 22 ' The Truth About the I. W. W. become the center of the direct propaganda of action ; but when this is over its character changes to that of a rest-house, and as such is unique in the unskilled workers' history." ^-Carlton H. Parker. "Every member is an organizer, every member dispenses ' cards to his converts and collects their dues, which he scrupu- lously sends to the union. There are only a few unions, about a dozen, each union embracing ,an industry: the ideal of the In- dustrial Worker is "one big union." Each union is divided into district branches on geographical lines, and each district has an executive committee and secretary, and the same 'officers in each industrial union. , i "Only the membership by vote may call a strike, "except in case of emergency"; but such is the informality and cohesion of the organization that a strike call by a secretary is almost tantamount to a strike. A sort of "straw vote" is usually taken in advance, and often there is no other vote. It would be diffi- cult for the members of a union to ballot on a strike proposal, and would require a long time." — Harold Callender-. I , ' ■, Where It Gets Its Hold. "In all that I have been able to ascertain about outbreaks in thirteen Eastern and Western communities the I. W. W. got its grip where trade unionism hadjbeen beateh, or had no existence, or had been so weakened as to offer little resistance. ... "Pt is this war-origin of the I. W. W. which is its weakness on the constructive side. That\it is a child of strife, brings back upon{ itself the very qualities wqich are- admirable for battle, but which make stability and organiz;ation impossible. They lead to the quarrels which disrupt the attempt^, at steady team work from the very start. The practical danger to the 1. W. W. is absence of trouble. If industry were so organized as to prevent strikes, the I. W. W. would disappear. ... "On the first approach of definite responsibility the I. W. W. reflect, compare and balance. They act as the politician acts. In the high flights of agitation, demands are sweeping and all things promised. 'There shall be no compromise with the wage system because it is robbery,' are words I htard from a Speaker in the Lawrence strike. But on the first assurance that the battle was to be won, compromise was a necessity. With as much shrewd- n^s as haste, the strikers took to the ordinary bartering of prac- ' 1 23 " - • ■! The Truth About the T W. W. I tical men. As the theory passed'into a situation that must be met, thev met it in the spirit of a sensible trade union or an arbi- tration board — th^ spirit of a wholesome opportunism." ^ — John Graham Brooks. -- 3. RELATIONS WITH EMPLOYERS. "The characteristic 'of the I. W. W. movement most worthy of ser-ious consideration is the decay of the ideals of thrift and industry. To this can be added, in place of the old-tihie' tradi- tional loyalty to the employer, a sustained antagonism to him. The casual laborer of the West drifts away from his job without reflection as to the effect of this on the welfare of the employer; he feels little interest in the quality of workmanship, and is al- ways, not only a potential striker, but rea^ to take up political or leg^ war against the employing class. This sullen hostility has been steadily growing in the last ten years. It is not as melodramatic as sabotage, but vastly more important." J — Carlton H. Parker. The President's Commission says of the relations with em- ployers: , ' ! "This uncompromising attitude on the part of the em- ployers has reaped for them an organization of destructive rather than constructive, radicalism. The I. W. W. is filling the vacuum created, by the operators.;- The red card is car- ried by large numbfers throughout the Pacific Northwgst:. Efforts to rectify evils through the trade-union movement ^ have largely fa^iled because of the small headway trade unions arfe abl» to make. Operators claim that the nature of the industry presents inherent obstacles to unionization. But a dominant reason is to be found in the bitter attitude of the operators toward any organization among their em- ployees." / And Robert Bruere puts the issue in an incident of his western trip : "When I had my first interview with an Arizona mine manager," he says, "and told him that what I wanted was to make a dispassionate and impartial report of the ;Eacts behind the strikes^nd the deportations, he was magnani- " mous enough to say that he was convinped that I would be impartial. 24 • The TiiuTH About the I. W. W. ____ ., ^__ ^ " 'But,' he proceeded,/ 'however impartial you may be your decision is bound t6,i go against us.' "Why?" I asked in siirprise. " 'Because,' he concluded, 'you believe in democracy .and we don't run our mines on a democratic basis.' " 4. RELATIONS WITH THE A. F. OF L. UNIONS. "Tltiat their efforts are ordinary and legitimate in the trade- union sense, is indicated by the, fact that, as I shall show, unions affiliated with the American Federatibn oi Labor throughout ^he West generally sympathize with and support the struggle of the I. ]iV. W. The old hostility between the two movements has begun larg^ely to be broken down, and the I. W.I W., far 'from being regarded by the vfrofking class as criipinal or treasonable, ha^ been accepted simply as one of the means of securing their rights." — Harold Callender. "For those who care to see, there is abundant evidence that the trade-union movement in the United States has becomd revo- , lutionary. The much advertised split between the American ~ Federation of Labor and the I. W. W. is bridged over with sig- nificant ease when the prosecution of an I. W. W. case suggests the class struggle. This temper has jiot prevented the leaders of the American Federation from giving the support of a tradi- , tional American patriotism to the present war, but no publicist of note has dared to analyze the spread of embarrassing strikes •throughout t-he United States during the past two months, the most critical months of our war activities. .... *'A statement that the present industrial order arid its control promise a reasonable progress and happiness (and this the" middle class are forced to claim), is received as a humorous observation, not only by the I. W. W., but by American trade-unionism as well." — Carlton H. Parker. ^ > .- ^' V 1 25 I, I 1 SABOTAGE AND VIOLENCE. What Is Sabotage? , In substance, it is as old as the strike itself. It is a special- ized form of making trouble fcH: the employer. Trade uniona have been as familiar with its uses as \'yith any other weapon in their fighting career. It is the familiar i"ca c^nny" of the Scotch "which got much advertising at the stril^e of Glasgow dockers is 1889. They had asked a ri^e of wages which was refused. , The tinidn official instructed the tjien in sabotage. Farm laborers had Tbeen brought in to fill the .places of the strikers. 'Let us go baclq to the job,' said the official, 'and do it exactly as the land lubbers do it. Those butterfingers break things a,nd drop things into the water from -the docks. See to it, lads, that you imitate them until l^e masters learn their lesson. If they like that kind ■of work, let them have plenty of it.' " — John (Praham Brooks And speaking of a common form known in France as "open- mouth sabotage," Mr. Brooks says: "I have sometimes heard this delicate cruelty of exact truth telling recommended by the I. W. W. as one of the most per- fected forms of sabotage for clerks and retail vendors generally. 'Get together, study the foods, spices, candies, and every adulter- ated product. I Study the weights and measures, and all of yov tell the exact truth to every cust those too' busy or preocji^pi.ed to investigate for themselves. And this reputation had been fostered and maintained very deliberately and very successfully by employers determijied taresist'Wny movement looking toward more democracy in iridiis'try, whether it took the form of con- ventional unionism or the'industrial unionism of the I. W. W.' 2. The Employer's Attitude. We have, in that situation,ythe. background for what ocjcurred in the summer of 1917. Preaching doctrines that had seJemed^ startling, enough during peace times, the I. W. W., at the first sign that its members would join in the universal demand for - more wages, fell an easy pre^ to reactionary erhployers, who could now rely, not only on the peace-time prejudice whictr^he I. W. W. had created against t|iemselves, but on the intense popular feeling so easy to stir up against any group that could ,be placed in the position of disloyal obstructionists. I. W. W. doctrines have not changed. For twelve years the Federal Government has left them free to preach their philosophy from coast to coast. But on the outbreak of the War it became «asy for interested employers to place those doctrines in a new light— ^a light that gave them the appearance of rank treason. The mistake made by many is in taking too seriously the admittedly wild and ''fooUsh utterances of a few leaders who do not adequately represent the rank and file, who merely want a square deal. 3. Violence Against the Workers, The first open violence came in July with the Bisbee, Ari- zona, deportations by the copper companies. Miners on strike were rounded up at the point of revolvers^ and rifles, herded in 32 The Truth "About the I. W. W. a corral, loaded onto box-cars, and transported to the middle of a desert in an adjoining state. More than four hundred of them had bought Liberty Bonds ; large numbers had registered for' the draft. Many were married and had cWldren. When fihally released, they found their path back ;o their homes barred by armed m^en, acting with no authori^:y save the arbitrary power of the great Copper-mining corporations. Th'e agents of these corporations had seized the local telegraph and telephone stations and censored out-going dispatches. They held kangaroo court and passed judgment on who should be permitted to remain in the district, who should be forcibly ejected, and who ^hould be permitted to enter from without. This condition continued for weeks, in defiance of the protest of the Governor, of the State. The President's Commissioi;- after a full investigation re- ported that all these illegal acts were without justification either in law or in fact, as the striking miners had kept the peace and showed no evidence that they intended to break it. On the con- trary, they had met and resolved to return to w^rk provided the Government would take over operation of the m^nes. More specifically, the President's Commission charged the mining- corporations and their agents with specific violations of federal statutes in interfering with interstate comnjunications " and obstructing registered men from reporting .for examination for the draft. It brought these violations of the law to the attention of Attorney General Gregory at Washington. What action did his Department take? To date (March, 1918), Mr. Gregory has made not a single arrest and not one of the per- petrators of the Bisbee crimes has been indicted. On the con- trary, a high official of bne of the copper companies, himself directly concerned in the deportations, has been commissioned 3l^ Major in the army, and another has been appointed to a high position with the Red Cross. Other flagrant instances during the war of organized vio- lence against the I. W- W. by- employing interests, with little or- no attempt 'by public officials to bring the offenders to pustice, have been : ' (1) The hanging of Frank H. Little at Butte, Mont., on Augi^st 1st. Little was a member of the executive board of the L W. W., and was in Butte acting as a strike-leader.- He was -taken from his bed at 3 A.-MTby a band of masked men, dragged 33; \ The Truth About the I. W. W. to the outskirts of the city, and hurig to a railroad trestle. , (2) The whippings and outrages at Red Lodge, Mont., committed on workers suspected of being members of the I. W. W. by organized representatives of the employ'fers, who l^eld their mock court and inquisitions in the court house, and comniitted the outrages in the court-house basementj (3) The whipping, .tarring and feathering of, 17 I. W. W. prisoners at Tulsa, Oklahoma/November 9, who were taken from the police by a masked band of "Knights of Liberty," in an en- deavor to br>ak up the I. W. W. organization of the oil-workers. (4) The arrests by the militia of hundreds of I. W. W. workers in ^yashington, without warrants or declaration of mar- tial' law, follpwed by their illegal detention for long periods without charges or trial. (5) Various outrages on individual members of the I. W. W. committecj by organized employers' interests, in several instances assisted by public ofFidals— in places as widely separated as Aber- deeh, S. D., Franklin, 'N. J., and , Klamath Falls, Oregon. I ^ , ^ J 4. The Depu-tment of Justice Attitude. / It is this record that the I. W. W. contrasts with that of public officials in dealing with a labor organization. The charge against the 166 I. W. W. members indicted iiji Chicago is conj spiracy to obstruct the prosecution of the war. Any such ob- struction , would, admittedly, have been incidental to the main object of improving wages and working conditions in the mines, and lumber camps. In exactly the same way, the lawlessness of the Arizona copper corporations, primarily undertaken in the interest of Sfreater profits and of arbitrary control, incidentally resulted in obstructing prosecution of the war, as specifically stated by the President's iCommission. Again, the National Association of Manufacturers is conduct- ing a campaign against the principles adopted by the federal govfernment for dealihg with labor during the war. That is, it is seeking to prevent that degree of union recogfnition and co-operative dealing with labor on a collective basis that British experience and the best judgment of the President alrttffstttport as necessary to the prosecution of the war. But there arb no indictments and no arrests, nor even a rebuke. That the situation last sununer called for some acticBniby 34 The Iruth About the I. W. W. the Department of Justice to suppress a few extremists and g^enerally to sober the org^ization and bring it to a scjnse of responsibility, the writer believes. That such action should be more discriminating and a6comiianied by an attempt Jto under- stand the economic background of the organization is equally important. The public mind, and that of its, agents in office, should open to an unbiased examination of the claim of the I. W. W. that it is far from being an organization (ilominated by purposes that are subversive of this country's pivrposes in the war, and that all its members vrant in return for their co-opera- tion is a "square deal," — in other words, a "chance" to co-operate ^ on fair tnrms. The War Department and the Forest Service \ have given them that, with golden results. The foregoing statement should explain' in large part the • psychological background for much of the rabid I., W. W. talk and extremist writing in I. W. W. papers, some of which is' featured in the indictment. The I. W. W. leaders state that ^hey are only the expression of individual opinions, and cannot be construed as com- mitting the organization. — Geo. P. West. THE VERDICT OF THE ^RESIDENT'S MEDIATION COMMISSION. The Commission, whose inquiry was chiefly concerned with strikes and unrest in western industries, in which the I. W. W. was a conspicuous factor, concluded: (8) It is, then, to uijcorrected specific evils and the absence of a healtliy spirit' between capital and labor, due partly to these evils and pirtly to an unsound industrial structure, that we must attribute industrial difficulties which we have experienced during the war. Sinister influ- ' ences and extremist doctrine may have availed themselves of these conditions; they certainly have not created them. . (9) In fact, the overwhelming mass of the laboring population is in no sense disloyal. . . . With the ex- ception of the sacrifices of the men in the armed serVice, the greatest sacrifices have C9me from those at the lower rung of the industrial ladder. Wage increase responds last to the needs of this class of labor, and their meagre returns are hardly adequate, in view of the increased cost of living, ' to maintain even their meagre^ standard of life. It is upon 35' The TRUTff ABOuf the I. W'. W. theni the war pressure has borne riiost severely. Labor at helart is as devoted to the purposes of the Government in the^ prosecution of this war as aijy other part of society. If labor's enthusiasm is less vocal, and its feelings here and there tej^id, we will find the explanation in some of the conditions, of tbe industrial environment in which labor is placed and'\ which in many instancesvs its nearest contact^ with the activities of the war. (a) T(i^often there is a glaring inconsistency between our democratic purposes in this war abroad and the auto- * cratic conduct of some of those guiding industry at home, f This inconsistency is emphasized by such episodes as the Bisbee deportations. (b) Personal bitterness and more intense industrial strife inevitably result when the claim of ioyalty is falsely resorted to by (employers and their sympathizers as a means of defeating sincere clfiims for social justice, even though such claims be asserted in time of war. (c) So Ipng as profiteering is not comprehensively pre- vented to the full extent that governmental action can pre- vent it, just so long will a sense of inequality disturb the fullest devotion of labor's contribiition to the war. Commencing on, the labor trouble in the Southwest the Commission said : y , ^ * As is generally true of a community servin|^ a single industry, there was not the cboling atmosphere of outsiders to the conflict. The entire community was em- broiled. Such agencies of the "public" as the so-called "loyalty leagues" only served to intensify bitterness, and, more unfortunately, to the minds of workers in the West served to a'ssociate all loyalty movements with partisan and anti-union aims. Here as elsewhere the attempt of parties on one side of an economic controversy to appropriate patriotism and stigmatize the other side with disloyalty/only served to intensify the bitterness of the struggle, and to weaken the force of unity in the country. A bettpr niethod of dealihg with, the I. W. W. in the war — far more effective than prosecution to allay unrest — is stated by the Commission thus : Uncorrected evils are the greatest provocative to extremist -prbpuganda, and their correction in itself would 36 ' The Truth About the I. W. W. be the best counter-propaganda. But there is need for more affirmativeveducation. There has been too httle publicity/ ^ of an educative sort in regard to labor's relation to the warj_,. .. The purposes of the Government and the methods by vsrhicn it is pursuing, them should be brought home ■ to the fuller understanding of labor. Labor has most at stake in this war, and it will eagerly devote its all if only it be: treated with confidence and understanding, subject neither to indul- gence nor neglect, but dealt with as a part of tide citizenship ' ^ of *he State. / ' THE REPORT OF THE DEPARTMENT OF LABOR, The report of the Secreta,ry of Labor (Fifth Annual, 1917) sets forth the record of lajDor disputes in the period between the declaration of war (x\pril 6) and October 25, 1917: The report states that "{ne number of labor disputes calling for government mediation increa§^ed suddenly and enormously with the beginning of the war." ' Ari examination of the record of the 521 disputes handled by the iDepartment iij the war period to October 25 (281 strikes, 212 controvei'sies and 28 lockouts) shows that only three out of the total of 521 involved the I. W. W. in any way (qopper-miners, Arizona, ^ine-workers, Butte, Montana, and ship-yard workers, Washington. In both the^ mine-workers' strikes an A. F. of L. ijinion was involved' besides— ^the Mine, Mill and Smelter Work- ers' Union). AH the others occurred in industries either unor- ganized, or organized by unions affiliated with the A. F. of L. or the so-csdled "conservative" international unions. (Fifth Annual Report, Secretary of Labor, pp. 41-49, 60.) A comparison of the reports of the Departmetit of Labor also shows a larger proportion of labor controversies involving the L W. W. in the years preceding our entry into the war than in the six months following it. The L W. W. were comparatively quiet during that period. - • , — Editors.^ . \ PATRIOTISM AND THE I. W. W. While it may be clear that the I. W. W. has not deliberately obstructed the war, it is equally evident that they do not share any great enthusiasm for it. Says Carlton H. Parker of the general attitude of labor : "A reasonable deduction from the industrial facts would be that the American labor class is not participating^in the '37 The Trut^ Asout the I. W. W. \ /.. them the war pressure has borne liost severely. Labor at hejart is as devoted to the purposes of the Government in thevprosecution of this war as aijy other part of society. If labor'^ enthusiasm is less vocal; and its feelings here and there tepid, we will find the explanation in some of the condition's, of tbe industrial environment in which labor is placed and^ which in many instancesvs its nearest contact- with the activities of the war. (a) TOT'often there is a glaring inconsistency between our democriiic purposes in this war abroad and the auto- ' cratic condudl of some of those guiding industry at home,' < This inconsistje.ncy is emphasized by such episodes as the Bisbee deportations. (b) Personal bitterness and more intense industrial strife inevitably result when the claim of Joyalty is falsely resorted to byjemployers and their sympathizers as a means of defeating sincere clfiims for social justice, even though such claims be asserted in time of war. i (c) So Ipng as profiteering is not comprehensively pre- vented to the full extent that g9vernmental action can pre- vent it, just so long will a sense of inequality disturb the ^ fullest devotion of labor's contribiition to the war. Commencing on, the labor trouble in the Southwest the Commission said : ^ y , ^ ' As is generally true of a conimunity serving a single ^industry, there was not the cboling atmosphere of outsiders to the conflict. The entire community was em- broiled. Such agencies of the "public" as the so-called "loyalty leagues" only served to intensify bitterness, andj more unfortunately, to the miflds of workers in the West served to a^ssociate all loyalty movements with partisan and anti-union aims. , , Here as elsewhere the attempt of parties on one side of an economic; controversy to appropriate patriotism and stigmatize the other side with disloyalty/ only served to intensify the bitterness of the struggle, and to weaken the force of unity in the country. A bettpr rn^thod of dealitig with, the I. W. W. in the war — far more eflfective than prosecution to allay unrest — is stated by the Commission thus : Uncorrected evils are the greatest provocative to extremist -prbpuganda, and their correction in , itself would 36 The Truth About the I. W. W. be the best counter-propag-anda. But there is need for more affirmative .^education. There has been too Httle puMicity; of an educative sort in regard to labor's relation to the wad^. The purposes of the Government and the methods by which it is pursuing, them should be brought home to the fuller understanding of labor. Labor has most at stake in this w^ar, and it will eagerly devote its all if only it be treated with confidence and understanding, subject neither to indul- gence nor neglect, but dealt with as a part of t^e citizenship ', of *he State. / ; > THE REPORT OF THE DEPARTMENT OF LABOR. The report of the Secretary of Labor (Fifth Annual, 1917) sets forth the record of labor disputes in the period between the declaration of war (April 6) and October 25, 1917; The report states that "tile number of labor disputes calling for government mediation increased suddenly and enormously with the beginning of the war." An examination of the record of the 521 disputes handled by the iDepartment iq the. war period to October 25 (281 strikes, 212 controversies and 28 lockouts) shows that only three out of the total of 521 involved the I. W. W. in any way (qopper-miners, Arizona, mine-workers, Butte, Montana, and ship-yard workers, Washington. In both the mine-workers' strikes an A. F. of L. ijinion was involved' besides — ^the Mine, Mill and Smelter Work- ers' Union). All the others occurred in industries either unor- ganized, or organized by unions affiliated with thie A. F. of L. or the so-called "conservative" international unions. (Fifth Annual Report, Secretary of Labor, pp. '41-49, 60.) A comparison of the reports of the Department of Labor also shows a larger proportion of labor controversies involving the I. W. W. in the years preceding our entry into the war than in the six months following it. The L W. W. were comparatively quiet during that period. - • — Editors. - . \ PATRIOTISM AND THE I. W. W. While it may be clear that the I. W. W. has not deliberately obstructed the war, it is equally evident that they do not share any great enthusiasm for it. Says, Carlton H. Parker, of the general attitude of labor: "A reasonable deduction from the industrial facts would be that the American labor class is not participating-in the '37 The Truth About the I. W. W. kind of patriotic fervor that is in vogue among the uppfcr middle class. It is not sufficient to say that their wage demaods occujiy their attention. Coupl^ed with this ancient interest is a set of traditional and complicating forces which determine the attitude, of labor. The recital of the war- profits in steel, in copper, ill foods, in medicines, doe? not fall on an ordinarily receptive audience. It falls on the minds of a labor plass with a long-cherished background of ^uspicion.f ' , And further, Prof. Parker quotes an I. W- W. on tl^e lack of enthusiasm for the war — expressing a point of view not un- common in the Northwest: "You ask me why the I. W. W. is not patriotic to the United States. If you were a bum without a blanket; if , ypu had lef f your lyife and kids when you went West for a job, and haVi never located them since; if your job never kept you long enough in a place to qualify you to Vote ; if ' / you slept in a lousy, sour bunk-house, and atft food just as rotten as they could give you and g€t by with it ; if deputy sheriffs shot your cooking cans full of holes and spilled your grub on the ground; if your wages, were lowered on you when the bosses thought the^ had you down ; if there , was one law for Ford, Suhr, and Mooney and another for Harry Thaw ; if every person who represented law and .order and the nati6n beat you up, railroaded yoU to jail, and the good Ch^ristian people cheered and told them to go to it, how in hell do you expect a man to be patriotic ? This ' war is a business juan,'i_aSLA&d..we„dQiiI]L,.S£e..-why we should go out an d get £hot in ord er to s ave, the ^lovely state of affair^ that" we now erijoy."^ But contrast \Vith this the altitude ,of the I. W. W. long- shoremen in the East — a Well-pajd, decently treated group of, men, at least on the Philadelphia docks. The following state- ment byHheir local secretary has been verified by personal in- vestigation : "The members of the Marine Transport Workers (an I. W. W. organization) have be|en' loading and unloading Trans-Atlantic steamers in the Port of Philadelphia since May, 1913. There are about 3,0GX) men doing this work night and day and therp has never been an accident since we |iave been organized. I i ^' "The American Line and the Atlantic Transport Line 38 ^ The Truth Aboxjt the I. W. W. work is done by non-union labpr, with the exception of the powder work which is done by our men. These lines are the only lines that have transported troops from here since the war. This work/ consists of general cargo, powder, munitions of all kinds, and cattle. Never to my knowledge since this country entered the war has this organization obstructed the Government in any way." Members of this union are working no%v on practically all the eastern docks and on board troop and munition ships, without the slightest question as to their loyalty. In their hall at Phila- delphia they have an honor list of Liberty Bond buyers vnik 162 names (March, 1918), and are collecting data for a service flag. — Editors. "As an organization we have handled ore and muni- tions. The fact is' that every pound of munitions in the Philadelphia Navy Yard is handled by members of this or- ganization, and munitions carried out of New York Harbor are carried out by members of this organization. There is coming a day of accounting to place this orgafaization in its true light before the public." — George^ P. Vanderz'eer, general counsel for the I. W. W, — Statement in court, Jan., 1918. Further light is thrown on the attitude of the I. W. W. to the war by the following paragraphs from a public statement issued by the Seattle branches of the organization : "There are employers, great and small, who are taking advantage of present conditions to vent their animosity against the I. W. W. and other organizations of labor, and ' are disguising their brutality under the cloak of patriotism. "The I. Y{. W. is a labor union. It hag no hatred for the workers of any nationality, but it most distinctly is not pro-German,. Thousands of I. W. W. members registered, were drafted and are now in the training camps ; others proclaimed themselves to be conscientious objectors and are paying the pehalty for having taken that stand; some did not register at all ; this is the record of practically all organ- izations, religious, political and economic "I. W. W. speakers and the I. W. W. press have been careful to confine their efforts entirely to the work of edu- cation and organization along industrial lines, and any opinion expressed that is at variance with that policy is an individual matter! Reports that I. W. W. papers and speak- 39 f / The Truth About the I. W. W. ers have \ been defaming the flag or advising the violent overthrow of the government are untrue, as you can easily find out for yourself by reading the papers and listening to the various lectures. Such reports are purposely spreac^in order to create a condition favorable to mob violence."/ ^ The Charge of Pro-Germanism. .j After a considerably press campaign to identify the I. W. W. and German propaganda, the newspapers carried last' summer a semi-official denial in the iorm of statements from the Depart- ment of Justice. _ \ > 'i The Washington correspondent of^e New York Times stat the following despatch chi July 16, carried on Tuesday, July 17, under the,se heads: DOUBT TEUTONS PAID AGITATORS OF. I. W. W. Federal Agents Fail to Verify Rumor of German Financing of Western 'Strikes. "Wa^ngton, Juy 16. — ^Reports that the activities of In- dustrial Workers of the World in the west^ recently had beeij financed by German gold havp failed of substantiation after an exhaustive investigation by agents of the Department of Justice. "Officials said today they believed that nearly all the German money in this^ country had been located,, and that virtually none of it has been used in that way. - \ "Reports from various parts of the west today told of arrests of members of the I. W. W. under the President's alien enemy proclamation. It was said, however, that the percentage of- German sympathizers found in the organization was believed to be no higher than that in many other organizations." < ';■■ . ( '^x ,40 MISREPRESENTATION OF THE I. W. W. In the Press. "The domination of the press of this country over the form and method of pubHcity has given Americans a deep-seated bias in favor of a vivid and dramatic presentation of all' problems, economic or moral. The rather gray and sodden explanation of any labor revolt By reference to the commonplace and miserable experiences of the labor grouji' would lack this indispensable vividness. Just as the French enjoy the sordid stories of theV life of the petty thief when garnished and labeled 'Pictures of the Parisian Apache,' so the casual American demands white hoods arid mystery for the Kentucky night-riders and a dread, sabot- age-usifagXinderground apparition for the I. W. W. An impor- tant portion of the I. W. W.' terrorism can be traced directly ' back to the inarticulated public demand that the I. W. W. news- story produce a thrill." — Carlton H. Parker. By Exploiters. y "Growing out of this newspaper attitude is a tendency even rnj>re serious because more widespread — a hot-headed intoler- ance that wiJl believe any accusation of the I. W. W., however unsupported by facts ; and support any aggression, however un- justifiable or lawless, that may be directed against them. "Because of this tendency, 4nscnq>ulous enqdoyers are en- deavoring to take advantage of th^ (fisrepute of the I. W. W. in order to further their own ulterior ends. Hardly a strike occurs in whicl^the cry of 'I. W. W. influence' is not immediately raised. The street car strike in San Francisco, now in progress, vwas ascribed to the I. W. W., though it is being handled by a [representative of the Amalgamated Association of Street and Electric Railway Employes, a union affiliated with the American Federation of Labor. The strike of iron workers in the. ship- yards, ail members of unions affiliated with the American Fed- eration of Labor, was said to be fomented by the I. W. W. The move for an eight-hour dky in the lumber camps of Washiri'gton, endorsed by no less a person than Newton D. Baker, Secre^tary of i r The Truth About^ the I. W. W. ' War, was denounced to the world as a part of the I. W. W. con- spiracy to injure the government. ... "It is most disheartening tliat these exploiters can resort to extreme lawlessness in the furtherance of their ends without evoking a .protest from the public. Because of this spirit of acquiescence, the dread initials of the Industrial Workers of the World can be used not only to injure the legitimate labor mpve- ment everywhere, but also as a red herring across the trail of those employers who do not hesitate to use the nation's plight as an opportunity to strengthen their own unjust practices. — John A. Fitch. There is further proof of these deliberate efforts of em- ployers to identify all labor with the I. W. W. so as to discredit it. Robert Bri^ere says of the situation in Arizona : "The mystery began to clear soon after the President's Commission opened its conferences in Phoenix. It devel- oped early in these hearings that in the State of Arizona all labcMT leaders, all strikes, and all persons who sympathize or are suspected of sympathizing with strikers are lumped under the general designation of '1. W. W.' or 'Wobbly.' That is no doubt the reason why, when Secretary Wilson, Chairman of the President's Commission, stated during the hearings in Globe that he himself was a member in good standing in the Coal Miners' Union, the witness who was testifying interrupted his story to zisk whether the secre- tary or other membeirs of the Commission belonged to the I. W. W. i"This fantastip enlargement of the meaning of Wob- ', bly we fouhd to be universal. Very few people had any accurate knowledge of the tenets or tactics of th^ I. W. W. The three letters had come to*stand in the popular mind as a symbol of something bordering on black magic. They were repeated over and over again by the press, like the tappings of an Oriental drum, and were always accopipanied with suggestions of impending violence. It was in this way that it TCcame possible to use them to work ordinarily rational communities op into a state of unreasoning frenzy, into hysterical mobs resorting to violence to i dispel tbe fear of such violence as haiqiened in Bisbee." > 42 ( THE INDICTMENTS AGAINST THE I. W. W. 113 Leaders Under Iiufictment at Chicago; Some Hundreds of Others Indicted Elsewhere. Trial by the Press. "We find that in a majority of the newspapers of the cotintry the indicted members of the I. W. W. have already been tried and found guilty. Despite the fact that we do not yet know wha^t evidence the government has to present, some of the newspapers are going wild over the fact that William D. Haywood made ar- rangements to have Pouget's book, Sabotage, translated into Finnish. Sabotage is a pernicious doctrine, but preaching it does not constitute, seditious conspiracy, as the new^spaper writers veQT well know. Moreover, we have known, since the I. W- W. w^s organized, in I9it)4, that one of its doctrines is the practice of sabotage." — John A. Fitch in the "Survey." Trial by the Government. "Repressive dealing with manifestations of labor unrest is the source of much. bitterness, turns radical lalbor leaders into martyrs,' and thus increases their following, and, worst of all, in the minds of workers tends to implicate the Government a» a partisan in an economic conflict. The problem is a delicate and difficult one." , — Presidents Mediation Commission. < "PLAYING WITH DYNAMITE." (Editorial in the Public, Nov. 16, 1917.) "Professi(inal detectives and the well-meaning assistant pros- ecutors of the Department of Justice should not be given a free hand in handling the I. W. W. situation. There is evidence that they are as ignorant of American sociology'as were the advisers of Louis XVI of French sociology. And they are aided and abetted in their ignorance by an equally ignorant press, so that nothing but approving comment follows the most stupid and (Jar^gerous tactics. "The situation in this country with respect to unskilled and unorganized labor is full of dynamite. Every trade unioh leader knows it. The President knows it. It is the dynamite engen- 43 V Thb; Truth About the I. W. W. dered by the existence of a large class conscious of injustice, burning with resentment, and wholly without organization through which to express itself. The I. W. W. does not represeivt it in any authorized way. But it comes nearer being its spokes- man than any other organizAtiori. Members of the I. W. W. or men who have been: profou^jdly influenced by their propaganda may be found in every unorganized labor force in the country. The I. W. W. is not an' organization so much as it is a spirit and a vocabulary. And because no strike or audible protest follows the various assaults on I. W. W. leaders, let us not be too su^ that their influence is negligible, that the Department's policy and that of the mobs that get encouragement from this policy is not breeding a slow, dangerous, smoldering resentment. "An instant retaliation would be far less dangerous, much easier to handle, than a spirit that may at some critical juncture in the future flare out in a strike of steel workers or slaughter- house workers or miners or oil refiners. No one knows about ( this. Perhaps the Government can imprison or mobs horsewhip every laborer in the country who sympathizes with the I. W. W., and our unorganized, unskilled, exploited wa^e workers will take it lying down. Perhaps they will not. But the situation should not., be handled by men who have never read, let alone pondered, the government reports that show that hardly tnore than half of the adult male wage earners in the United States earn enough in a year to support a family i'n decency and comfort. The I. W. W. leaders now in jail know those rieports by heart. , ^ "The real crime of Haywood and most of tfae rest was the conducting of an aggressive propaganda and strike program on behalf of laborers who are interested solely in obtaining better conditions of life and labor. But that feeling has been manipu^ lated and organized by men whose economic interests, whose right to exploit their fellows without let or hindrance, have been interfered with, and properly, by I. W. W. agitation. In so far as the I. W. W. stand as spokesmen and representatives of the most exploited class of American labor, they must be handled by men who are something more than outraged patriots, with a patriotism that coincides with a belief in their right to exploit others. No one knows to what degree- they do so stand, and least of all the detectives and prosecutors of the Department of Jus- tice. These assume too readily that they can' dispose of the. whole problem by putting a few men in jail. "But to assault the I. W. W. as a whole is to assault the only spokesmen and to suppress the only articulation possessed by a 44 The^ Truth About the I. W. W. class of wage wortc^rs on which several of our most vital basic industries are utterly dependent — a class numbering many mil- lions of men. , . ."^ | Governments and the Labor Problem. "Since the outbreak of the war, from eveiy, available source open to pie, I have followed the struggles of governments with labor. It is a story as motnentous for the future as the war itself. Whether it is in France, Italy, England or Australia, the most unmistakable of all lessons and the most distinct of all warnings / is this, that force and all in£sci1minate piuiishm^nt of bo£es of men is not only the least effective but by far the most dangerous procedure. It does nothing but multiply troubles. In no country will this prove truer than in .our own. , V ^ "I, lay no weight in this on any merely sentimental or phil- anthropic view. It is solely a question of good sense and prac- tical statesmanship." — John Graham Brooks. _y Effect of Prosecution on Worhers. Robert Bruere says of the effect of the policy of prosecution a.s against conciliation: "If, at this strategic moment, the Government could bring itself to adc^t and extend the statesmanlike policy of its own Forest Service, I believe that the strike of the lumberjacks which is scheduled for the coming spring might be averted. I feel very strongly about this matter, because I believe that the policy of uncompromising hostility toward the 1. W. W. work- men which . y . is being pushed by the United States De- partment of Justice, is jeopardizing the success of our aeroplane programme, whose immediate execution is absolutely essential for the successful prosecuti&nd use of all of which said means and methods was to be made in reckless and utter disregard of the rights of all persons not members of said organization, and especially of the right of the United States to execiite its above-enumerated laws," 48 , The Truth About the I. W. W. residt of impeding the enumerated laws.° Since people are pre- sumed to intend the natural consequences of their acts, it is in- tended thus to give color to the charge that the defendants, what- ever their actual mental obliviousness, must stand as if they in- tended to impede the enumerated laws. \ To make good its case on this theory the prosecution will have to dispose of a difficulty. The indictment says that the defendants had it in mind to promote the abolition of capitalism by "unlawful means," invdlving assaults, murders, etc., and destruction of property. It does not say, however, that these unlawful means were specific, involving particular violent; acts on definite occasions or under given circumstances. On the contrary, the . inference of intention to do violent acts which would necessarily tend to impede the enumerated laws is to be drawn, not from any definite decision to do such acts, but fronv^ the general theory of conduct attributed to the I. W. W. The indictment says that that theory excludes resort to I "political action," i. e., direct appeal to voters and legislators »for changes in law. This may be assumed to be true. It says \also that that theory involves indi£Ference to legality. To a limited extent this may be assumed to be capable of proof, in that the illegality of an act would not of itself raise a moral qualm or scruple against it in the I. W. W. mind. But it would be absurd to assume that it can be proved that they cdrry disregard of law to the point of disrega^rd of the practical expediency of • keeping within it. Some of them may believe, for example, that the more strikes we have, the nearer we shall get to a millenium — that strikes' as strikes are excellent, regardless of just grounds. But they probably could not instigate a groundless strike, and they pretty sXifely -would not, if they could. A mine where owners refuse to install bulkhead passages after the suffocation of a few hundred men for want of them is good soil for an '\ I. W. W. krike — but the strike will not be for expropriation of the owners ; it will t?fe for passages in bulkheads. Some of them may have no, scruple against destroying railway track to prevent i the introduction of strike-breakers. But they will not do it if ' no strike-breakers appear, or if they can keep' them away by ""said defendants well knowing . . . that the necessary effect of ' their so doing would be ... to hinder and delay and in part to pre- vent the execution- of said laws above enumerated, through interference with the production and manufacture of divers articles, to wit, muni- tions, ships, fuel," etc., "and thr'ough interference with and prevention of the transportation of said articles and of said military and naval forces." 49 The Truth About the I. W. W. peaceful picketing ; and there would be no inherent likelihood of their doing it in any case. They might go on for generations voicing the most abhorrent theories which Assistant Attorney^ General can possibly attribute to them without either commit- ting or resolving to conunit a single violent acL The weakness of the prosecution's theory of guilt lies in its insistence up ' 19 3/29/18. Brooklyn, N. Y.— John Ferlan, 3 months for al- leged seditious utterances. 4/6/18. Sacramento, Gal.— Five I, W. W.'s indicted for conspiracy to hamper the government in its prosecution of the war. , 4/10/18. New York, N. Y.— Henry Schneider, 6 months for sneering at Liberty Loan. 4/18/18. Mankato, Minn. — Joseph Widman, indicted for seditious utterances. 4/4/18. Los Angeles, Cal. — Sam Jesky, 90 days for alleged seditious utterances. 4/6/18. Los Angeles, Cal. — A. Rothenpieler, convicted of alleged seditious utterances. 4/18/18. Minneapolis, Minn. — Carl F. Groseneck and George W. Freerks, under indictment for "orally advocating that citizens should not aid the government in the prosecution of the war." V. INTERFERENCE BY PUBLIC OFFICIALS WITH RIGHT OF PEACEFUL ASSEMBLAGE. 8/21/17. Hanover, Minn. — Sheriff of Hennepin Co., with deputies went to Hanover, Wright Co., and broke up meeting called to form a People's Council local. 9/16/17. Hartford, Conn.— A. E. Whitehead and Annie R. Hale, arrested while speaking at People's Council meeting. 9/5/17. Minneapolis, Minn. — ^People's Council forbiddea by Governor to hold convention. • 9/7/17. Chicago, 111. — People's Council Convention broken up by state militia under Governor's orders. In November, Scott Nearing meetings interfered with at Duluth, Minn., San Francisco and San Jose, Cal. 11/12/17. Omaha, Neb.— Construction Workers conven- tion of I. W. W. raided, hall wrecked and 65 members arrested. 1/28/18. Parkston, S. D.— Socialist Party State Conven- tion broken up by police. 3/2/18. Buffalo, N. Y.— Socialist Party meeting, Mrs. Kate Richard O'Hare speaking, forbidden by City Council. 20 4/5/18. New York, N. Y. — Police close hall where Scott Nearing intended to speak under auspices of the Socialist Party. In many places in Minnesota during the last few months the Non-Partisan League has been forbidden to hold meetings. Individual, cases are too numerous and information is too in- complete to mention. VI. SEARCH AND SEIZURE. Including only the important cases. While most of these raids were made with proper warrants, some of them were not, even when conducted by federal agents. Scores of minor raids by local officials have been conducted without lawful warrants. 1. I. W. W. Cases. 9/5/17. Every I. W. W. Hall in the country raided by federal officers. 11/13/17. Miami, Ariz.— I. W. W. hall and office of the Local Defense Council raided by cavalry, deputy sheriffs and agents of the Dept. of Justice. All literature and records were taJcen. 11/17/17. Fresno, Cal.— House of Fred Little, an I. W. W., raided for third time by Federal officers. 12/17/17. Chicago, 111. — I. W. W. headquarters raided and occupied for 12 days by Federal officers. Several thousand dollars' worth of literature was confiscated. 12/20/17. Seattle, Wash.— I. W. W. Defense Committee headquarters and offices of Industrial Worker raided by federal officers with search warrant who seized all records, furniture, etc. 12/21/17. Cleveland, 0. — Plant of International Publishing Co. raided by agents of Department of Justice and many I. W. W. and Socialist posters seized. ' 2/23/18. Portland, Ore. — I. W. W. hall raided and wrecked by federal authorities looking for draft slackers. ^ 2. International Bible Students' |: Association. 3/1/18. Brooklyn, N. Y. — Two auto loads of literature seized "by Military Intelligence Bureau. 21 3/3/18. Los Angeles, Cal. — Three thousand copies of "The Finished Mystery" seized by the Military Intelligence Bureau. 3/5/18. Hazelton, Pa. — Headquarters I. B. S. A. raided and 200 books confiscated by American Protective League agents. 3/16/18. Fort Worth, Texas.— 5,000 copies "The Finished Mystery" seized by federal officials. 3/17/18. St. Louis, Mo.— 10,000 copies "The Finished Mystery" seized by agents of Dept. of Justice. 3/23/18. Lisbon, 0.— Fifteen copies of "The Finished Mystery" seized by Sheriff on orders from federal authorities. 3/24/18. Galveston, Tex.— 45,000 copies of "The Finished Mystery" seized by federal deputy marshal. 3. Other Cases. 9/5/17. Chicago, III.— Offices of National Socialist Party raided by Federal officers. 9/13/17. Toledo, O.— Scott Nearing's house raided by Federal officers. 9/14/17. Detroit, Mich.— Offices of Socialist Labor Party raided by Federal authorities. Books and literature seized. 9/29/17. Columbus, 0. — Social Labor Party offices raided. 12/29/17. San Francisco, Cal. — House of Alexander and Louise Harding Horr raided while owners were in jail in de- fault of excessive bail exacted after their arrest on charge of "not moving on." 1/23/18. Los Angeles, Cal. — Norbert Myles, held for 5 days without warrant by military authorities. 1/23/18. Cleveland, O.— Socialist Party offices raided by Federal officers. 3/27/18. San Francisco, Cal.— People's Council office raided by officials several times (including also 11/22/17). 22 INDEX Page Anton, Adolph 7 Avila, John 10 Auerswald, Eev. C. H 13 Austrian Workmen (3) 8 Baer, Dr. Eliz 14 Balbas, Vincente 13 Battig, Leon 6 Baker, R. E 16 Baker, C 1*? Baker, F 19 Beck, J. M 19 Berkman, Alexander 18 Becker, M 18 Beilfuss, Paul 6 Bell, Josephine 14 Bentall, J. 13, 18 Berger, Victor 15 Bergen, Mrs. Frances 6 Bienneman, Dr 7 Bigelow, Herhert B Birkner, John 8 Blodgett, D. T 14 BoUman, Frederick 10 Bosco, Paul 12 Bosky, Edward 19 Bourg, G. J 10 Boutwell, I. T 13 Breidel, George 11 Broms, Allan S 18 Capers, H. C 7 Carlisle, George 9 Cheyney^ C. E 17 Chovenson, S. H 9 Christian Pacifists 5 Coldwell, Joseph 13 Collins, Eev. M. D 16 Construction Workers' Convention of I. W. W 20 Cooperider, Walter 8 Cornell, Thomas 13 Cully, James 17 Darkow, Martin 17 Dell, Floyd '. . 14 Derman, William 19 Doe, Perley 14 Dudae, Louis 10 ^ Duncan, W. B 9 Dunning, Jesse 18 Dutsch, Henry B Eastman, Max 14 Edwards, W. R 11 Ellis, Rev. J. H 5 Engdahl, Louis 15 Eschman, Leo J S Fairchild, Fred 15 Ferlan, John 20 Ford, E. B 19. Ford, Elix 19 Foster, Edward , 9 Fraina, L. C 17 Frank, Charles 9 23 Page Freerks, Geo. W 20 French, E. J 9 Friederich, August 6 Friends of Irish Freedom 5 Gaebler, Fred 16 Geanapolus, George 9 German Farmers (6) 6 Germer, Adolph 15 Gilbert. Joseph 19 Glintenkamp, H. J 14 Golden, Joseph 11 Goldman, Emma 18 » Goldstein, Robert 13 Gracely, Elias 12 Grats, William 7 Griffen, C. B 9 GroeschI, Edmund 16 Groseneck, Carl F 20 GustoflE, Rudolph 9 Hale, Annie R. 20 Hall, Ves 16 Harden, Robert 12 Hardin. Floyd 19 Harding, Eva 17 Harper, S. J 17 Harris, Norman M 7 Hathaway, Mell 11 Haupt, Tobias 15 Head, Wm. J 14 Hendricksen, Rev. H. M 12 Hennacy, A. A 17 Hennig, Paul 17 Henninger, C. J 15 Hicks, Eev. W. M 7 Hitt, Orlando 17 Hoegen, Maximilian Von 6 Hoffman, Henry 6 Hofstede, Edward 17 Horr, Louise Harding 21 ^ Hunter, Wm. A 8 International Bible Students' As- sociation (Finished Mystery) . . 22 International Publlsmng Co 21 Isensee, William 12 1. W. W 14, 15, 20, 21 Jablowski, A 15 Jesky, Sam 20 Jordan, David Starr 5 Keenan, L. H 6 Kirchner, H. E 12 Knutson, Alfred 11 Koerber, Dr. Adolph 15 Kolbe, Fred 10 Kornemann, Conrad 12 Koski, Emil 11 Kovabky, Rev. J 6 KrafEt, Frederick 13 Kruse.v William 15 Kubecka, John 8 Page Laur, Lucy 10 Lewis, J. A •■ 11 Lind, H. C 10 Lindenberg, Stanley 19 Little, Frank 10 Little. Fred 21. Logeda, M 19 Lundin. Gustave 6 Mackley, Harold 12 Manahan, James 11 Marakenko, Onofray 16 Martin, Will 15 Matehwski, John 20 Maynard, George 8 McNabb, Will 9 McNally, Edward 16 Melanos, Stephen 8 Merriman, W 10 Metzen, J. L 6 Meyer, Harry 9 Meyers, David M 16 Monal, Fritz 7 Montenegrins (13) 17 Moore, Abe 12 Mueller, Henry 7 Myers, H. B 11 Myles, Norbert 22 Nagel, Henry 15 National Socialist Party 22 Nearing, Scott 15, 19, 20, 21, 22 Oberdan, Severino 6 Oberlee, Frank 7 Oburn, Emmett 6 O'Connel, Daniel 18 O'Hare, Mrs. Kate Richards ISi 21 O'Leary, Jeremiah A. 14 Olivereau. Louise 12 Otis. Edward 17 Paine, Elizabeth 9 Paine, Margaret 9 Pass, Joe 18 Pass, Morris 18 People's Council Local 20 People's Council Meeting 20 Peter. C. H 10 Peterson, James A 13 Pettigrew. R. F 14 Phillips. Albert 9 Pierce, Clinton 14 Piggott Printing Co 11 Prager. Robert P 7 Prisse. William 7 Ramp, Floyd 15 Reed, John 14 Regas Bros 7 Eempfer, Wm. C 6 Eheimer, Henry - 8 Richter, A. C 7 Robinson, Dr. Wm. J 16 Rogalski, Henry - 9 Rogers, Bruce 19 Rogers, 0. Merrill 14 Page Rothenpieler, A 20 Euthenberg, C. E .- 17 Eynders, John W 10 Sadler, Sam 18 Scharf, Otto 9 Schaufhausen, Ludwig 15 Schenck, C. T 14 Schimler, Prof. E. A 7 Schneider, Harry 20 Schultz, Carl 9 Selby, Mrs. Margaret 7 Senkis, Tony 9 Shidler. Al 15 Shutt, Rev. E. C 16 Sims, Rev. W. T 5 Slaugh, Peter 19 Smith, G 12 Smith, L 8 Smith, 19 Socialist Labor Party 22 Socialist Party 16 Socialist Party Meeting.; 13 Socialist Rally 20 Socialist Party offices 22 Stafford. Mrs. Harley 8 Steinbeck, A. H 13 Stokes, Rose Pastor.... 16 Story, Harold 19 Story, Sarah 16 Stratemeyer, E. H 5 Sugarman, A. L 13 Tanner, W. B 16 Townley, A. C ^ 19 Townsley, H. E '. 17 Tucker, Irwin St. John 16 Turner, Harry 15 Van Hunt, William 19 Wagenknecht, A 17 Wagner, Wm 16 Waldron, Rev. 0. A 14 Waldrop, William 11 Wallace, Daniel 13 Watson, Claud 8 Wells, Hulet IS Werner, Adolph 17 Westbrook, O. F 6 Whitaker, Robert 19 White, Elmer 6 Whitehead, A 20 Widman, Jos 20 Wilhide, J. M 16 Wishek, J. H 16 Wold, Carl A 19 Woodward, W. Theo 18 Young, Art 14 Zerbe, William 9 Zimmerman, Joseph 17 24 WHY FREEDOM MAHERS By Norman Angell Herein it is shoMOi that: 1. The motive of many of the most dangerous measures taken in restraint of freedom is poli- tical, and their introduction is prompted, not so muout the daily facts of life aind experience that is needed before we can hope to apply learning with any advantage— or even without disaster — to such things as the management of society. The Bishop and the Bootblack Authority always tries to prevent this questioning of its premises by the unlearned. To the bishop it seems pre- posterous and an obvious menace to society and good morality that his conclusions in theology should be ques- tioned by any bootblack. But experience has shown over and over again that the Bishop is sure to go wrong unless his conclusions are questioned and checked by the boot- black; and that unless the bootblack has the liberty of so doing both will fall into the ditch. Exactly the service which extricated us from the intel- lectual and moral confusion that resulted in such cateistro- 13 WHY FREEDOM MATTERS phes in the field of religion, is needed in the field of politics. From certain learned folk — ^writers, poets, professors (Ger- man and other), joumeJists, historians, and rulers — the public have taken certain ideas touching Patriotism, Na- tionalism, Imperialism, the nature of our obligation to the , State, and so on ; ideas which may be right or wrong, but which we are all agreed, curiously enough — ^will have to be very much changed if men are ever to live together in peace and freedom; just as certain notions concerning the institution of private property will have to be changed if the mass of men are to live in plenty. Where the Militarist Is Right It b a commonplace of militarist argument that so long as men feel as they do about their fatherland, about pat- riotism and nationalism, internationalism will be an im- possibility. If that is true — and I think it is — peace and freedom and welfare will wait until those lairge issues have been raised in men's minds with sufficient vividness to bring about a change of ideas and so a change of feeling with reference to them. The situation would indeed be helpless if the nature of human relationships depended upon the possession by the people as a whole of expert knowledge in complex ques- tions of that kind. But happily, the Sarajevo murders would never have developed into a world war but for the fact that there had been cultivated in Europe suspicions, hatreds, insane passions and cupidities, due largely to false conceptions of a few simple facts in political relationship: conceptions concerning the necessary rivalry of nations, the idea that what one nation gets another loses, that States are doomed by a fate over which they have no control to struggle together for the space and opportunities of a limited world. But for the atmosphere that these ideas create (as false theological notions once created a similar atmosphere between rival religious groups) , most of these at present difficult and insoluble problems of nationality 14 WHY FREEDOM MATTERS and frontiers and government, woidd, as the common say- ing is, have solved themselves. Our Need of Heresy Now I am suggesting here that we axe drifting to a condition of institutions calculated to suppress these her- esies, to prevent such questions as these being asked. We believe that it is pernicious that they should be asked at all, and the power of the State is being used for the purpose of preventing it. What I have been concerned to show is that our welfare and freedom really do depend upon our preserving this right of the individual conscience to the ex- pression of its convictions; this RIGHT OF THE HERETIC TO HIS HERESY. And I base the claim here, not upon any conception of abstract "right" — -but upon utility, our need of heresy, upon the fact that if we do not preserve it, it is not lone the individual heretic who will suffer, but all of us, society. By suppressing the free dissemination of unpopular ideas we render ourselves incapable of governing ourselves to our own advantage said we shall perpetuate that condition of helplessness and slavery for the msiss which all our his- tory so far has shown. 15 National Civil Liberties iSureau 70 Fifth Avenue, New York Washington Office, 647 Munsey Bldg. For the maintenance in war time of the rights of free press, free speech, peaceful assembly, liberty of con- science, and freed'om from unlawful search and seizure. Publications for Distribution Conscription and Liberty of Conscience Conscription and the Conscientious Obj'ector {Aug., 1917) including subsequent leaflet (Nov., 1917). War's Heretics, a plea for the Conscientious Objector (Aug., 1917), Norman M. Thomas . Brief on aspects of the constitutionality of the con- scription act (July, 1917). Exemptions from Military Service in Great Britain; U. S. Senate Document No. 62. (July, 1917). Civil Liberties Price Pet 100 3c 3o 10c 3c 3c Why Freedom Matters, by Norman Angell (Jan., 1918) Liberty in War-time; the Situation in the U. S. in view of English experience, by Alice Edgerton (Jan., 1918). 3c 'Who Are the Traitors?" (Jan., 1918). Ic Constitutional Rights in War-time (July, 1917). Free Our traditional liberties of Free Speech and Free Press, extracts from the writings of statesmen and scholars, arranged by John Haynes Holmes. The Outrage on Rev. Herbert S. Bigelow at Cin- cinnati. The "Knights of Liberty" Mob, and the I. W. W. Prisoners at Tulsa, Oklahoma (Jan., 1918). The Case of the Christian Pacifists at Los Angeles, by Norman M. Thomas (Jan., 1918). 3c 3c 3c 3c In Course of Preparation (Read^ in March) The facts to date about the conscientious objector. 3c The Truth About the I. W. W. (Facts in relation to the pending trial) (Jan., 1918). 5c The Post-office War Censorship of the Press. 3c American Liberties in War-Time ; a summary of the work of the National Civil Liberties Bureau (to Dec. 31). 3c Leaflets The U. S. Supreme Court on War-time Liberty (ex parte Milligan). Free Mob Violence and the Law, from the President's A. F. of L. address. " The political effect of suppression of minority opinion, by Prof. F. H. Giddings. " $2.00 $1.50 $1.00 $ .50 Free $2.00 $2.00 $1.00 $2.00 $2.00 $3.00 $2.00 $2.00 Free A set of one each of the above publications, except the legal brief, will be sent upon receipt of $.50. Any citizen will be put on the regular mailing list upon application. J The World Safe for Democracy By John A. Hohson This article presents a clear and compact analysis of the social conflict underlying in large part the present suppression of opinion. It is indirectly a telling argu- ment for freedom of expression, if we are to achieve that democratic world order for which America entered the war Reprinted from the SURVEY of June 29th, 1918 Reprinted by the NATIONAL CIVIL LIBERTIES BUREAU 70 Fifth Avenue, New York City Wuhington Office: 647 Muniey Building The World Safe for Democracy On more than one critical occasion the writer of this article, a ■well-hnown English economist, has helped English liberals to choose between contending policies by baring the fundamental principles involved and pointing out probable distant effects. His writings on the economic structure of modern society notably influenced English statecraft during the socially constructive period between ipo6 and the outbreak of the ivar. In recent months Mr. Hobson has applied his methods of inquiry and analysis, to the ba^sic political issues which, arising from the war, will be the center of party conflict in the western nations, but especially his own, perhaps for two decades. This article gives, in a condensed form, some of the arguments sus- tained at greater length in Mr. Hobson's recent book, Democracy After the War. — Editor Survey. THE enthusiastic adoption by our European statesmen and publicists of President Wilson's famous declaration that the object of the war is to make the world a safe place for democracy is either a momentous act of spiritual conversion or the last word in camouflage. For while no one would dispute the gen- uineness of Mr. Wilson's attachment to the great ideal, the past records of most political leaders in this and other European countries bear little testimony to the vigor of their new-found faith; While it is true that the forms of political self-government inhere in the constitutions of the European Allies, as in that of the United States, the spirit of democracy has hitherto pulsed feebly through these organs. Moreover, social analysis has made it evident that political democracy is inseparable from industrial democracy, and that the complete failure of the peoples hitherto to attain the latter is chiefly responsible for the defects of the former. No thoughtful democrat can accept the shallow representation of the war as a conflict of free democracies upon the one hand, against military despotism upon the other, or feel assurance that the mere defeat or even the destruction of the latter will in itself afford security for the attainment of his ideal. For while Prussianism stands, indeed, for the negative of democracy, is the allied power which shall defeat it entitled to the positive assertion of that name? I do not here dwell upon the obvious fact that war itself, being the operation of arbitrarily directed force, is the antithesis of democ- 3 racy, and that every nation during the process of war is compelled to suspend many of its ordinary liberties. It is admitte(^h*t'< the help of Beelzebub must be invoked in order to expel the ^ivil of Prussian militarism. The necessary cost of this tactic must^ow- ever, not be left out of account when we regard the war as an instrument for achieving democracy. For it can hardly be denied that a prolonged suspension of ordinary civil and political liberties, not to speak of the fetters upon economic freedom, must go some way towards establishing the habit and temper of arbitrary rule upon the one hand, of unquestioning sub- mission on the other. In a word, war makes for a "servile state" with ever-extending areas of despotism, and the fact that peoples in the stress of the emergency accept this ciu*- tailment of their liberties does . not purchase for them im- munity from the practical and spiritual reactions of this servitude. They will be less able to look after their own affairs in the future in consequence of this experience. In considering the possibility of achieving democracy as the fruits of a successful war, we cannot do otherwise than approach our subject by this gate. For the practical problem will ha;ve been transformed by the experience of the war-time, I must not be taken to prejudice the issue if I insist that we must realize at the outset that the reactionary forces, the enemies of democ- racy, will be more strongly entrenched when the war ends than they were before, and will be more clearly conscious of the need and nature of their defenses. However the war ends, a profound sense of inseairity alike in international relations and in domestic affairs will for some time afford support to the emergency powers wielded by every govern- ment. Military force will everywhere be at hand, and ftie disposi- tion to use it, so as to maintain social and industrial order, will be rife among "the authorities." The difficulty^f the tasks of demob- ilization and of restoring the tenor of pre/war economic life must involve the long retention of many of the extraordinary powers wielded by governments. Nor is it possible to suppose that, when this early period of reconstruction is got through, the social economic structure and working of this or any other belligerent country will , return to the pre-war conditions. The state, with its arbitrary or ill-checked executive powers, will be found in permanent possession of large new functions, political, social, economic. Railroads and mines, electric power, banking and insurance, chemicals and other "key industries," will either be nationalized or tightly controlled by the state, and. local authorities will also possess greatly extended powers. Society, through its instrument the state, will keep an eye upon and lend a hand to "its" citizens and "its" producers from the cradle (and before) to the schoolroom, the workshop and office, right on to^the grave. Collective Enterprise Here to Stay The whole attitude of mind towards the state will have been transformed. Hitherto the balance was heavily on the side of indi- vidual choice, private enterprise, free personal contract. Henceforth it will be on the side of social organization, public operations, col- lective co-operative arrangements. This is what must happen, whether we as individuals like it or not. As one of your own great men has said, "There is no way of unscrambling eggs." The war has shut off return to pre-war private enterprise and free competi- tion in industry, commerce and finance. This statement, of course, must not be taken absolutely. It applies to the large routine enter- prises. Great scope for personal enterprise and lucrative business will doubtless remain in numerous by-paths and new developments. Indeed, wherever business is left "free," there will be an active rush to establish combines, trusts, syndicates and other modes of suc- cessful profiteering. This will be one of the chief barriers to the realization of industrial democracy, for it will tend to substitute lateral for vertical divisions among the workers whq constitute the body of the "demos." The Parties to the Struggle But the central problem will be that of the ownership and control of the new powerful state. A complicated struggle for its possession must occur. Between whom ? What are the opposed forces in the battle for democracy? If I reply, capital and labor, I shall seem to many to be taking a crudely class economic view of a situation in which many other causes, political, moral and spiritual, 5 are involved, and to be offering a purely "materialistic" interpreta- tion of history. Surely, it will be said, if this v^rorld-war has taught no other lesson, it has shown that every people sets before itself other aims than economic gain as of supreme value (whether these aims be political dominion, patriotism, honor or the supremacy of law) and for this attainment is willing to sacrifice all material goofls, money, and life itself. Can it then be true that the struggle for the democracy to come must be realized primarily and essentially as an economic struggle between the propertied classes and the proletariat ? It is not easy to give a plain answer to this question without appearing guilty of gross exaggeration. The spirit of collective free-will, self-determination in the larger sense, cannot indeed be comprehended merely, or mainly, as an economic process. Its spirit- ual contents are comprised of all the human needs, aspirations and activities for whose satisfaction men and women work as members of organized society. Humanity at its higher level, in its better moods, appraises the economic processes far lower than health, beauty, knowledge and spiritual goods, and the efforts to attain these latter play a larger and larger part in the meaning of civiliza- tion. And yet in a crisis like this, when civiliza,tion is literally shaken to its foundations, it is to these foundatic^is that we must closely look in the process of reinstating it upon a democratic model. Among the great nineteenth century prophets of democracy it fell, to the most spiritually-minded of them all, Mazzini, to recognize that political democracy was inseparable from economic, and that the distinctive error of the French revolution and its sequel was the failure to realize this truth. It is, therefore, not any over-apprize- ment of material goods but the plain reading of history that obliges us to see that the first condition of a world safe for democracy is to set the ownership of property and the control of industry u^on a democratic basis. Before the war this demand was emerging more urgently on the consciousness of the different nations, and was seeking satisfaction sometimes by peaceful, sometimes by explosive pressure. The political atmosphere was everywhere rife with economic agitation. When calmer analysis is possible, and causes for the war are sought further afield than the catastrophic events of 1914, it will be found that inextricably blended with tlie lust of political power which impelled the central states and Russia to force the pace of militarist preparations, were the gathering standards of domestic strife, and that even in those other states which least willed the war, and were most conscious of their purely defensive motives, the menace of internal dissensions was a secret contributory incentive to militarism. Nay, taking a still larger survey, the historian will find, in the commercial and financial forces that for several genera- tions had been moulding the imperialistic and foreign policies of the western states, influences which were secretly preparing the way for the inevitable conflict. These economic motives were not greater in the volume of human passion that they bore than the other political and social forces with which they coalesced ; but they were operated with clearer consciousness and closer direction. If a society of nations is in the future to replace this aggressive anarchy, the selfish play of these commercial and financial forces must be stopped. They can only be stopped by the establishment of democracies which are at on£e political and economic, in which the peoples shall control the machinery of industry, trade and finance, sufficiently to prohibit class-war within the nations, while securing international peace. I cannot in this brief survey discuss the question how much state-socialism is involved in the process. For the really focal point is whether it is possible for the respective peoples to meet and to combat successfully the array of reactionary forces that will be in actual occupation of the seats of gov- ernment in every country when the war is over, so as to win possession of their national governments. Their numbers, the mere ownership of the franchise, the formal right to elect legis- lators, will not suffice. These powers have in some considerable measure long been vested in the so-called "democratic" peoples. They have proved quite illusory. In no one of these "democ- racies" has the free intelligent will of a people been able to express itself in the legislative and administrative government. Why not? Because the popular will has not been reasonably organized or morally determined. 7 The Hewrt of the Conflict Hegel truly said, "The people is that part of the state which does not know what it really wants" {was er zvill). So long as this is true, democracy in any real sense remains impossible. And here lies the very heart of the coming conflict. All the intellectual and moral as well as the financial resources of the ruling and possessing classes that hate and fear democracy (though doing lip service) will be used so to control and dope public opinion aS to prevent the formation and emergence of a popular will reasonable enough to master the state, and through the state to reform property, industry and other social institutions. The press, the church, the school, the university, the club, the party machine, the library, the theatre, the cinema and other popular recreations, every mode of influencing public opinion through politics, social power and finance, will be organized as never before to check the intel- lectual and moral growth of real democracy. This is the vicious circle of reactionary powers with which the peoples, struggling for political, economic and spiritual sovereignty, will be confronted. Popular control of government seems impracticable so long as economic oligarchy keeps its hands on the levers of party and the organs of public opinion. But popular control of gov- ernment is necessary in order to dislodge the economic oli- garchy, and to secure the means of liberating, informing and organizing public opinion. In order to break this vicious circle the peoples must conduct a simultaneous attack upon the political, economic and spiritual positions. For only so can the will of the peoples prevail and the world be made a safe, or even a possible, place for democracy. 1^