S—— had a twin brother engaged in the tea importing business in New York. In July, 1917, the twin brother referred to said that he would not fight the Kaiser, that he was a German. He was even more rabid than the subject of this report. It was rumored here for some time that S—— was a German spy but there was never anything definite to verify the rumor, though he was very active in gathering all sorts of information regarding the material resources of the United States. He cultivated the acquaintance of the amateur wireless operators here, and was a fairly expert telegraph operator himself. Mr. R—— stated: “If S—— is in the Intelligence Department in France, it is an extremely dangerous thing and might cause a terrible disaster.”
After S—— went to Washington last fall, and after he had received his commission in the United States Army, he wrote a letter severely criticising the United States War Department for inefficiency. His strictures were of such a nature that B—— said to R—— that he was very sorry that he had read it. S—— and B—— burned the letter. This letter criticised the methods of the War Department, stated that things were badly handled, and that our preparations for war were inadequate and inefficiently managed. This letter was written after S—— had received his commission as First Lieutenant in the United States Army and was stationed in Washington. A German friend admitted that S—— was violently pro-German before our country entered the war. He said that Germany had a right to sink our ships after giving us warning of the restricted zone in which German submarines were operating. He justified the sinking of the Lusitania, and expressed no sympathy for the people who lost their lives, stating that they got what they deserved as they had no business on the ship. He justified the invasion of Belgium as a war necessity, and condoned Germany’s violation of her pledge to preserve the integrity of Belgium because it was a war measure. S—— regarded the Germans as a superior people, and admired the Kaiser greatly. He was much opposed to the entry of the United States into the war, said that he was so sorry that we had gotten into it, and that it was not our affair but England’s.
It has been thought advisable to take these widely separated cases and to give them in detail rather than to present summaries of a large number of cases which may or may not have resulted in sentences or internments. An examination of these instances will show the fairness and shrewdness with which the League’s Chiefs and Operatives worked, as well as their unflagging interest in the work offered them. It also will be apparent that a single investigation might involve a great deal of patient, hard work.
CHAPTER X
THE GREAT I. W. W. TRIAL
Story of the Greatest Criminal Prosecution Known in the Jurisprudence of America—The Lawless Acts Leading up to the Arrests—Methods of Violence Used by Members of the I. W. W.—Sabotage and Terror—Chief Figures of the Trial—Incidents from the Inside.
The greatest trial with which the American Protective League was identified was the genuine cause celébrè known all over the world as the I. W. W. trial. It began in the Federal Court for Chicago, presided over by Judge Kenesaw M. Landis (the same of fame in the Standard Oil case), on April 1, 1918, and ended with ninety-seven convictions and sentences in one lot. The case was concluded at two in the afternoon of August 30, 1918.
The trial lasted for five months. The preparation for it covered two years or more. The record is said to be the most elaborate and complete ever prepared in any case at law. The case was by no means a Chicago or Illinois case, but was a national and indeed an international one. The documentary and other evidence preserved in the rooms of the Bureau of Investigation in Chicago is so voluminous as to pass belief, and it includes more proof of the depravity of the human mind than any like assemblage of written and printed material known to man. It is the record of the attempted ruin of this republic.
With this great case, the American Protective League had been connected practically all the time from the date of its own inception. It had men shadowing the suspects, men intercepting their mail, men ingratiating themselves into their good graces, men watching all their comings and goings, men transcribing and indexing the reports, men looking into the law in all its phases as bearing on these cases. No one knows how many A. P. L. operatives, in all the states from Michigan westward, worked on this case for months before an arrest was made. There were fifteen lawyers, all of them members of the League, not one of whom got a cent of pay, who worked for a full year helping the Bureau of Investigation to brief the evidence. There you see the A. P. L. in action.
For months and years before the arrests, the Industrial Workers of the World, as they call themselves, had been notorious for their anarchy and violence. Countless acts of ruthlessness had marked their career; millions and perhaps billions in property had been destroyed by them; their leader had been tried for the murder of a governor of a Western state, though acquitted. Nothing lacked in their record of lawlessness and terror, and they were inspired by a Hun-like frightfulness as well as a Hun-like cunning which for a time both excited and baffled the agents of the law in a dozen Western States.
The I. W. W. as an organization began, according to their Secretary and Treasurer, W. H. Haywood, in 1904, in an amalgamation agreed to by officers of the Western Federation of Miners and the American Labor Union. The theory of the band, reduced to its least common denominator, was that of striking terror by secret acts of violence. Their ethics were precisely those of the barnburner, who works in the dark. What was their reason for their acts? None. They all had had their fair chance in America—more than a fair chance. But, because some men had wealth, they thought they also should have, and if it was not offered them free, then they would show their resentment by destroying wealth and injuring those who had it. Their plea was the wish to “aid the laboring man.” God save the mark! They did more to hurt the cause of labor than could have been done in any other way in the world. They stained the name of this republic so black that the most rabid labor unions in Europe protested and disowned them. And they got their reward for that; or at least some of them have, and more will have before the tale is told.