Now we see a sudden transformation in Lamar’s circumstances. The frayed debtor appeared in his old haunts garbed in the most fastidious selections of the tailor; the accumulated debts of years were paid; the subway and the street car gave way to automobiles—and Lamar was particular that the garage should supply only the fine car that was father to the Liberty motor. He moved his family from a cheap apartment in New York to a fine house at Pittsfield, Mass. His own quarters were the hotels Astor and Belmont in New York, the Willard in Washington, the La Salle in Chicago, the Claypool in Indianapolis. Things were looking up.
Lamar carried other men with him on his rising tide of fortune. Frank Buchanan, labour Representative in Congress from the Seventh District of Illinois (North Chicago), likewise became a traveller and the patron of exclusive hotels. Henry B. Martin, who eked out a precarious living in the lobbies of Congress, after a dubious career as an officer of the Knights of Labour in the ’nineties, framed his wizened figure in a new and luxurious setting. H. Robert Fowler, the splendid high light of whose gray life as a half-lawyer, half-farmer, in a country town in Illinois, was expiring in the last days of a term in Congress, was suddenly revived, before his final extinguishment, by the light glittering from anonymous gold. Herman J. Schulteis, whose talents, insufficient for success in the law, had been more profitably employed in the defunct Anti-Trust League (of which more later), rose rapidly in the monetary scale.
These men were the instruments Lamar used in his scheme to stop the munitions industry and to get Rintelen’s money. That scheme was to build up a great political organization of labouring men and farmers. This organization would oppose the making and shipment of munitions; it would exert pressure to compel workers to abandon the factories, and it would exert pressure to compel Congress to declare an embargo on the shipment of arms. This organization was labelled “Labour’s National Peace Council.”
Lamar, fortified with Rintelen’s money, launched his scheme in Washington. This scheme was an inspiration of genius. Able lawyers have declared that no cleverer conspiracy has ever come to their attention. Its beauty was its simplicity. Rintelen dealt with no one but Lamar—the other leaders never saw him, and most of them never heard of him until after the scheme was exposed by the Government. In his turn, Lamar operated entirely through Martin. To Martin he gave his instructions to see labour leaders, to organize the fake Peace Council, to hold its camouflage “convention,” to flood the country with lecturers and printed matter urging an embargo on munitions. And through Martin he paid the bills.
Lamar and Martin were old associates. They had worked together in the Anti-Trust League, another of the creations of Lamar’s restless mind. The Anti-Trust League originated in the feverish ’nineties, when the country had its fears that the growth of great corporations spelled the control of the Government by monopolies. The League had its days of prominence when it was financed by big interests that used it to fight other big interests to get the things they both wanted. But in 1915 the League was a skeleton, consisting of Lamar, Martin, Schulteis, and a few others, held together by the bond of small salaries drawn from some source that preferred to remain unknown.
When Martin undertook to organize Labour’s National Peace Council, under the direction of Lamar, the first man he approached was Frank Buchanan. Buchanan was labour’s leading champion on the floor of Congress. He had been president of the international union of the structural iron workers, and he had earned the confidence of organized labour, and the friendship of Samuel Gompers, the patriarch of organized labour.
Lamar, Buchanan, and Martin, assisted by Fowler and Schulteis, engineered a mass meeting of workingmen in Chicago in June, 1915, at which resolutions were adopted calling for a convention of labourers and farmers at Washington to protest against the traffic in munitions. The same men, with this “mandate” behind them, met in Washington on June 22d, and organized Labour’s National Peace Council. They prepared printed appeals, in the high language of humanitarianism, addressed to the labour unions and the granges, and mailed them by the ton to all parts of the country. They offered to pay all travelling expenses and for lost time to delegates which these bodies should send to a convention to be held in Washington on July 31st and August 1st.
As a preliminary to this convention, Martin paid labour leaders and other speakers to go into all sections of the United States and address labour unions and granges. Probably all these speakers acted in good faith. They were pacifists, and when they got an opportunity to preach their doctrine, they accepted it. The opportunity seemed legitimate enough—the name of Frank Buchanan as a sponsor of the movement was sufficient. Their audiences, too, were sincere. Workmen and farmers had before their eyes the contrast of their own peaceful land with a Europe drenched in blood. The blessings of peace were never more apparent. They sent delegates gladly to a meeting that seemed designed to perpetuate those blessings.
But Samuel Gompers opposed the convention of Labour’s National Peace Council. He, too, was a pacifist—had for years taken a leading part in the movement for international peace. But Gompers was a thoughtful man as well. And experienced. And wise. He told Buchanan some things Buchanan should have told himself. Buchanan came from Chicago to Atlantic City to meet Mr. Gompers and upbraid him for his opposition to the Council. Mr. Gompers gave him some fatherly advice. In effect, he said:
“Frank, you have earned a good name in labour. We are proud of you, and we trust you. You are at life’s meridian, with years of useful service ahead. But listen to an old man, who sees the shadows growing very long, and who has watched many movements come and go. You are in wrong. This scheme is bad. There is too much easy money being passed around in it. Labour hasn’t got money to spend like this. Somebody who has not labour’s interests at heart is putting up that money.