"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: