CHAPTER XII LABOR
David Lamar—Labor's National Peace Council—The embargo conference—The attempted longshoremen's strike—Dr. Dumba's recall.
Labor produced munitions. The hands of labor could be frightened away from work by explosions, their handiwork could be bombed on the railways, the wharves, the lighters, and the ships, but a surer method than either of those was the perversion of the hearts of labor. So thought Count von Bernstorff and Dr. Albert, who dealt in men. So thought Berlin—the General Staff sent this message to America:
"January 26—For Military Attaché. You can obtain particulars as to persons suitable for carrying on sabotage in the United States and Canada from the following persons: (1) Joseph McGarrity, Philadelphia; (2) John P. Keating, Michigan Avenue, Chicago; (3) Jeremiah O'Leary, 16 Park Row, New York.
"One and two are absolutely reliable and discreet. Three is reliable, but not always discreet. These persons were indicated by Sir Roger Casement. In the United States sabotage can be carried out on every kind of factory for supplying munitions of war."
(Signed) "Representative of General Staff."[3]
So too thought von Rintelen, who hired men—usually the wrong ones.
Full of his project, he cast about for an intermediary. No sly chemist or muscular wharf-rat would do for this delicate task of anesthetizing men with the gas of German propaganda while it tied their hands and amputated their centres of right and wrong; the candidate must be a man of affairs, intimate with the chiefs of labor, skillful in execution, and the abler the better. Von Rintelen would pay handsomely for the right man. Whereupon David Lamar, the "Wolf of Wall Street," appeared on the scene and applied for the job—an entrance auspicious for the United States, for the newcomer's philosophy (if one could judge from his previous career) was "Me First."
In an attempt to defraud J. P. Morgan & Co., and the United States Steel Corporation Lamar had once impersonated Representative A. Mitchell Palmer in certain telephone interviews. (Palmer became custodian of alien property after the United States entered the war.) He was convicted and sentenced to two years' imprisonment in Atlanta Penitentiary. He appealed the case, and while he was out on bail pending the appeal, he fell in with Rintelen.
In April, 1915, a New Yorker who dealt in publicity was introduced to Rintelen, or "Hansen," by Dr. Schimmel. Rintelen offered the publicity man $25,000 to conduct a campaign of propaganda for more friendly relations with Germany, to offset the commercial power Great Britain bade fair to have at the end of the war, and assured him that he would go to any extreme to prevent shipments of munitions to the Allies. The war, he said, would be decided not in Europe but in America. There must be strikes in the munitions factories.
When the publicity man heard also that Rintelen was trying to stir up trouble with Mexico, he wrote on May 13 to Joseph Tumulty, President Wilson's secretary, informing him of the German's intentions. He was referred to the Department of Justice, and at their dictation continued in contact with Rintelen. Shortly thereafter David Lamar and his friend Henry Martin took a trip to Minneapolis, where they met Congressman Frank Buchanan and Ex-Congressman Robert Fowler, both of Illinois. Out of that conference grew a plan for forming a labor organization the object of which was ostensibly peace, and actually an embargo upon the shipment of munitions abroad, but whether Buchanan and Fowler knew of von Rintelen's connection with the scheme remains to be proved. It can be readily seen that such a labor organization, if it had actually represented organized labor, could have forced such a stoppage, either by its collective potential voting power and influence, or by fostering a nation-wide strike of munitions workers.
The nucleus formed in Chicago, about one William F. Kramer. "Buchanan and Fowler came to me in June here in Chicago," said Kramer, "and told me about their plan to form a council. We opened headquarters, and we engaged two organizers, James Short and J. J. Cundiff, who got $50 a week apiece, a secretary, L. P. Straube, who got $50 a week, and a stenographer. I was a vice-president, but I didn't get anything. We were known then as Labor's Peace Council of Chicago, and we were supposed to be in it because of our convictions against the shipment of munitions. And I'll say that organized labor was made the goat."
Buchanan had no idea of restricting the council to one city. He called upon Samuel Gompers, head of the American Federation of Labor, at Atlantic City on June 9 and tried to induce him to back a movement in Washington for an embargo. Gompers refused flatly and completely to have anything to do with the plan, especially when Buchanan made known his associates. Those associates were busy meanwhile lobbying in Congress, representing themselves as friends of organized labor, and pressing the embargo question. About a week later Congressman Buchanan inflated the Chicago organization into Labor's National Peace Council, with headquarters at Washington, to recommend the convocation of a special session of Congress at once to "promote universal peace," which meant simply "to promote the introduction and enactment of an embargo." Its members met frequently, and annoyed the President and other important men,—even Andrew Carnegie,—with their importunings for attention, and got exactly what they wanted—wide publicity.
About July 10 Andrew D. Meloy, whose office in New York Rintelen was sharing at the time, noticed that his German associate began to keep a clipping-file of news of the Council. Meloy learned of the project, and assured Rintelen that he was foolhardy to attempt, by bribery of labor officials, to divert common labor from earning high wages. To which Rintelen replied brusquely: "Thanks. You come into this business about 11:45 o'clock."
Rintelen sent a telegram to Lamar in Chicago on July 16, the text of which follows:
"E. Ruskay, Room 700 B, Sherman Hotel, Chicago.
"Party who receives $12,500 monthly from competitors is now interfering with business in hand. Do you know of any way and means to check him? Wire.
"F. Brown."
"Ruskay" was Lamar. Later in the day the German sent this message:
"Twelve thousand five hundred now at capitol. Conference here today plans to guarantee outsiders and settlement possible within few days. New issue urgently needed. Notify B."
The "party" mentioned in the first despatch was the code designation for Gompers, and he was indicated in the second message as "Twelve thousand five hundred." "B" was Buchanan, upon whose connection with labor Rintelen told Meloy the success of the plan rested. Lamar hurried to New York, arriving July 19, and met Rintelen in a limousine at the 100th Street entrance to Central Park; on the ride which followed the "Wolf" told Rintelen that a strike then going on among the munitions workers at Bridgeport was "only a beginning of his efforts," and that within thirty days the industry would be paralyzed throughout the country. Meloy advanced the information that Gompers had just gone to Bridgeport to stop the strike, to which Lamar replied:
"Buchanan will settle Gompers within twenty-four hours!"
The clippings kept coming in as testimony to the vigorous work being done by the organization's press bureau: the Council attacked the Federal Reserve Banks as "munitions trusts," it cited on July 8 nine ships lying in port awaiting munitions cargoes, and attacked Dudley Field Malone, then Collector of the Port of New York, for permitting such ships to clear; it claimed to represent a million labor votes, and four million and a half farmers; it listened eagerly to an address by Hannis Taylor, a disciple of the late warmhearted Secretary of State, Mr. Bryan, in which Taylor criticized President Wilson and was roundly cheered by the German-American element in the audience. Semi-occasionally during the midsummer heat Charles Oberwager, attorney for the Council (whose firm had received handsome fees from von Papen), rose to deny any German connection with the organization. The Council assailed Secretary Lansing as a man "whose radicalism was liable to plunge this nation into war." The Council assailed, in fact, any project which furthered the interests of the Allies. Rintelen began to have his doubts of the effectiveness of Lamar's work. The bank account in the Trans-Atlantic Trust Company had dwindled from $800,000 to $40,000, and Rintelen admitted that his transactions with Lamar cost him several hundred thousand dollars. Labor's National Peace Conference died quietly, Lamar flitted away to a country estate at Pittsfield, Mass., and Rintelen started across the Atlantic Ocean.
August wore on. The Council was getting ready for a second gaseous session, when Milton Snelling, a representative of the Washington Central Labor Union, who had been elected a first vice-president of the Council, withdrew from its membership, because he "discovered persons participating in the meetings who have been hanging on the fringe of the labor movement for their own personal aggrandizement, men who have been discarded ... others never having been members of any organization of labor," and because Jacob C. Taylor, the cigar-making delegate from East Orange, N. J., said, in answer to a query as to the Council's purpose: "We want to stop the export of munitions to the Allies. You see Germany can make all the munitions she wants." Then—and it may be coincidence—about one week later the New York World began its publication of certain of the papers found in the brief case which Dr. Heinrich Albert, of the German Embassy, allowed to escape him on a New York elevated train; on August 19 Buchanan resigned the Council, and Taylor was elected to succeed him.
Indictments were returned against Rintelen, as well as against Lamar, Martin, Buchanan and their associates, on December 28, 1915. Buchanan at once exploded with a retaliatory demand for the impeachment of United States District Attorney Marshall, upon which Congress dared not take action. Marshall gracefully retired from the trial in May, 1916, lest he prejudice the Government's case, and Lamar, Martin and Rintelen were convicted of infraction of the Sherman Anti-Trust Law and sentenced to one year each in a New Jersey prison. Thus ended Labor's National Peace Council, thanks to David Lamar.
The project for an embargo looked attractive to the Embassy, however—so attractive that while the Council was at the height of its activity, Baron Kurt von Reiswitz wrote on July 22, 1915, from Chicago to Dr. Albert:
"Everything else concerning the proposed embargo conference you will find in the enclosed copy of the report to the Ambassador. A change has, however, come up, as the mass meeting will have to be postponed on account of there being insufficient time for the necessary preparations. It will probably be held there in about two weeks.
"Among others the following have agreed to coöperate: Senator Hitchcock, Congressman Buchanan, William Bayard Hale of New York and the well known pulpit orator, Dr. Aked (born an Englishman), from San Francisco.
"Hitchcock seemed to be very strong for the plan. He told our representative at a conference in Omaha: 'If this matter is organized in the right way you will sweep the United States.'
"For your confidential information I would further inform you that the leadership of the movement thus far lies in the hands of two gentlemen (one in Detroit and one in Chicago) who are firmly resolved to work toward the end that the German community, which, of course, will be with us without further urging, shall above all things remain in the background, and that the movement, to all outward appearances, shall have a purely American character. I have known both the gentlemen very well for a long time and know that personal interest does not count with them; the results will bring their own reward.
"For the purposes of the inner organization, to which we attribute particular importance, we have assured ourselves of the coöperation of the local Democratic boss, Roger C. Sullivan, as also Messrs. Sparman, Lewis and McDonald, the latter of the Chicago American. Sullivan was formerly leader of the Wilson campaign and is a deadly enemy of Wilson, as the latter did not keep his word to make him a Senator; therefore, principally, the sympathy of our cause."
One is inclined to wonder where Rintelen's vast credits went, during his short visits in 1915. Lamar took a goodly sum, as we have seen; the negotiations for the purchase of the Krag rifles cost him no small amount; his ship bomb activities required a considerable payroll. But as further evidence of the high cost of causing trouble, we must consider briefly the profligate methods he employed in other attempts to inflame and seduce labor.
A walkout by the longshoremen of the Atlantic coast would cripple the supply of munitions to Europe, and might be successful enough to cause a shell famine in France of which the Central Powers could readily take advantage. There were 23,000 dock-workers in American ports; they must be guaranteed a certain wage for five weeks of strike; the cost in wages alone would therefore amount to about $1,635,000, besides service fees to intermediaries. He had the money, and the first step was taken in the otherwise placid city of Boston.
On May 7, 1915, the day the Lusitania sank, William P. Dempsey, the secretary-treasurer of the Atlantic Coast International Longshoremen's Union, met Dennis Driscoll, a Boston labor leader and former city office-holder, at the old Quincy House in Hanover Street. Driscoll said that Matthew Cummings, a wealthy Boston grocer, had outlined to him the plan for the strike, and said he was acting for parties who were willing to pay a million dollars. Dempsey maintained his poise when the startling information was recited, but he was frightened, and at the conclusion of the interview he telegraphed at once to T. V. O'Connor, the president of the union, requesting an interview. The two union men met in Albany and discussed the affair pro and con, arriving at the conclusion that they had best reveal the plot to the Government. O'Connor accordingly told of the negotiations to Secretary Wilson of the Department of Labor, and then in connivance with the Secret Service, went on dealing with the grocer, constantly pressing him for the identity of the principals who, he said, were prepared to supply all the necessary money. He implicated George Sylvestor Viereck, the editor of a subsidized German propaganda-weekly called The Fatherland, and said that he had been introduced to him by Edmund von Mach. Neither of those men figured except as intermediaries, and Cummings suggested that Dr. Bernhard Dernburg, a loyal propagandist then in the United States, was the director of the enterprises. Owing to the high pitch of public feeling over the Lusitania, Cummings could not receive permission from his superiors to go ahead with O'Connor, but he did his best to keep O'Connor interested. The latter, fearing that German agents were at work on the Pacific coast, took a trip to the far West, and during his absence Cummings telegraphed him twice. There the affair ended, for O'Connor ignored the message, and on July 14 returned to New York to find that a German attempt to force a walkout on the New York waterfront had failed, and that Cummings had stopped playing with fire and had gone back to his grocery in Boston.
When the Government turned the story over to a newspaper to publish on September 13, the time was not ripe to fix the responsibility for the attempt. Dr. Dernburg was a popular scapegoat at the time, and the implication of his authority in the attempt was allowed to stand. Rintelen was in Donington Hall, a prison camp in England, and it was months thereafter before the United States and British Secret Services had fully compared notes on him. By that time there were other charges lying against him which promised better cases than an abortive attempt to promote a strike 'longshore.
We have witnessed the cumulative influence of newspaper reports in surrounding Labor's National Peace Council with an almost genuine atmosphere of national interest; we have been able to picture the hostility which the publication of the longshoremen's strike story aroused in legitimately organized labor; and although as a typical instance of newspaper influence we should postpone the following incident, it is a temptation too great to resist. It is the story of The Story That Cost an Ambassador, and if any further plea for its introduction be needed, let it be that it is another subtle attempt upon labor in the summer of 1915.
Dr. Constantin Dumba, Austrian ambassador to the United
States, recalled after the disclosures of the correspon-
dence captured on the war correspondent, Archibald
James F. J. Archibald, an American correspondent who had seen most of the wars of recent years, and who wanted to see more, set sail from New York on August 21, 1915, for Amsterdam, with his wife, his campaign clothes, and a portfolio. At Falmouth, England, the usual search party came aboard, and inspected the papers in the portfolio. Archibald proved to be an unofficial despatch-bearer, upon whom his German and Austrian acquaintances in the United States placed great reliance—such men as Papen, Bernstorff, and Dr. Constantine Dumba sent reports to their governments in his care.
On September 5 the New York World burst forth with the text of one of the letters—one from Dr. Dumba, the Austro-Hungarian ambassador at Washington, to his chief in the foreign office at Vienna, Baron Burian. It is worth reproducing here intact:
"New York, August 20."
"Your Excellency:
"Yesterday evening Consul-General von Nuber received the enclosed aide memoire from the chief editor of the local influential paper Szabadsag, after a previous conversation with me in pursuance of his verbal proposals to arrange for strikes at Bethlehem in Schwab's steel and munitions factory and also in the middle West.
"Archibald, who is well known to your Excellency, leaves today at 12 o'clock on board the Rotterdam for Berlin and Vienna. I take this rare and safe opportunity of warmly recommending these proposals to your Excellency's favorable consideration. It is my impression that we can disorganize and hold up for months, if not entirely prevent, the manufacture of munitions in Bethlehem and the middle West, which, in the opinion of the German military attaché, is of great importance and amply outweighs the comparatively small expenditure of money involved.
"But even if strikes do not occur it is probable that we should extort under pressure more favorable conditions of labor for our poor downtrodden fellow countrymen in Bethlehem. These white slaves are now working twelve hours a day, seven days a week. All weak persons succumb and become consumptive. So far as German workmen are found among the skilled hands means of leaving will be provided immediately for them.
"Besides this, a private German registry office has been established which provides employment for persons who voluntarily have given up their places. It already is working well. We shall also join in and the widest support is assured us.
"I beg your Excellency to be so good as to inform me with reference to this letter by wireless. Reply whether you agree. I remain, with great haste and respect,
"Dumba."
The aide memoire, written by the editor of a Hungarian weekly, proposed to create unrest by a campaign in foreign language newspapers circulated free to labor, muck-raking labor conditions in Bethlehem, Youngstown, Cleveland, Pittsburg, and Bridgeport, where there were great numbers of foreign workmen, Hungarians, Austrians, and Germans. This was to be supplemented by a "horror novel" similar to the bloody effort of Upton Sinclair to describe the Chicago stockyards. Special agents of unrest, roll-turners, steel workers, soapbox orators, picnic organizers, were all to be insinuated into the plants to stir up the workmen. This editor had stirred them up a few weeks before at Bridgeport—the strike which Lamar claimed as his own accomplishment—and he presented to Baron Burian a really comprehensive plan for creating unrest through his well-subsidized foreign-language press. And in passing it on, Dr. Dumba stood sponsor for it.
The British government saw in the discovery of the letter and the cool impudence of it, a rare chance for propaganda in America. So, as has been said, the World published the story, and at once the wrath of the truly American people justified President Wilson in doing what he and Secretary Lansing had already determined to do—to send Dr. Dumba home. Perhaps Dumba's reference to the "self-willed temperament of the President" in another note found on Archibald had something to do with the haste with which the Ambassador's recall was demanded; it followed on the heels of the publication of the letter:
"By reason of the admitted purpose and intent of Mr. Dumba to conspire to cripple legitimate industries of the United States and to interrupt their legitimate trade, and by reason of the flagrant violation of diplomatic propriety in employing an American citizen protected by an American passport as a secret bearer of official despatches through the lines of the enemy of Austria-Hungary, the President directs us to inform your Excellency that Mr. Dumba is no longer acceptable to the Government of the United States as the Ambassador of his Imperial Majesty at Washington."
So went Dumba.
After his departure Baron Zwiedinek, his chargé d'affaires, and Consul von Nuber advertised widely in Hungarian newspapers calling on Austrians and Hungarians at work in munitions plants to leave. If they wrote the Embassy on the subject, the reply they received read:
"It is demanded that patriotism, no less than fear of punishment, should cause every one to quit his work immediately."
But neither threats, nor walking delegates, nor German spies could check the output of shells and guns. An attempt made by Dr. Albert to buy, for $50,000, a strike in Detroit motor factories failed. The factories were making money as they had never made money before, and labor was buying luxuries. To the American munitions-worker a comfortable supply of money meant much more than the shrill bleat of the Central Powers. And what was more, he was not entirely satisfied that the right was all on Germany's side. (Our space does not permit, nor is definite information at present available, to discuss the anarchist, socialist, and I. W. W. elements of labor, and their relations to Germany. These three factors, especially the last named, effected in the years 1914-1918 a sufficient amount of industrial unrest to qualify them as allies, if not actual servants, of the Kaiser. Whether they were employed by Germany will be brought out in a trial which began in Chicago in April, 1918.)