"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.