Mrs. Hartrum screamed. Her cries were heard by an attendant in the yard, who came to her assistance, but Weiss had fled. The attendant got into an automobile and followed the street car, and when Weiss alighted uptown with his children, he was arrested by the traffic policeman, the story of Weiss having been previously related to him by the attendant.
Weiss was taken to police headquarters, the proper authorities were notified, and after a thorough investigation his parole was annulled and he was again committed to the Federal jail. Investigation showed that Weiss was really an anarchist at heart, and on the same day the assault was committed upon Mrs. Hartrum, the following advertisement appeared in the Dayton Journal:
WANTED—Dayton men and women out of work to send names and addresses to FRANK WEISS, Post Office, Box 387, to form a union to get Justice to make the American workman’s home a decent place to live in.
A few days later the good word came to us that Weiss had been interned at Fort Oglethorpe until after the war, and will be deported at that time.
If a few hundred thousand more went with Herr Weiss, this country would be yet better off. His attitude is not unusual—America is simply a place for making easy money, but Germany is the real place for a man! How should we feel about letting in a few hundred thousands of the recently demobilized German army? It is reported in the European despatches that many of them are planning to come to America as soon as possible. The ablest publicists of the day agree that American immigration must be sharply restricted. Some extremists believe that practically all immigration should be stopped for a term of ten years.
CHAPTER X
THE STORY OF DETROIT
History of the Great Munition City—Clock-Like Mechanism of A. P. L.—How the War Plants were Protected—Guarding the Neck of the Great Lakes Bottle.
It often has been said that the shipping of the Great Lakes, all of which passes through the Detroit River, is greater in annual tonnage than that which goes through the Suez Canal or the Panama Canal. A continual procession of ore ships and carriers of other freight passes by the water front of Detroit, going and coming on the clear, blue, rapid flood of the river which may be called the “neck of the bottle” of the Great Lakes.
Obviously, such a situation, collecting the riches of an empire, is one offering its own purely geographical menace. An unwatched enemy could sit on Detroit River front and destroy untold billions in property in the course of a month. But no such enemy did any such thing in this war.
Speaking of Detroit itself, without reference to its geographical situation, it is to be said that it had as many munition contracts as any city in the United States—Detroit contracts for war material and munitions ran over $400,000,000. These great war plants attracted the attention of men hostile to this country. No one can tell how much harm was wished against such enterprises by aliens who only awaited their opportunity. The point is that this twenty miles of water front of Detroit, these miles of railroad tracks for switching facilities, these many great buildings where manufacturing went on, were kept free from any destructive enemy activity. That is a great story of itself, and far greater than it would have been had it to record some great disaster—interesting and thrilling, but none the less a disaster. Detroit had no disasters. Instead, it had the A. P. L.