Altogether they arrested seven people; and next morning, when they saw how much enthusiasm their action had awakened in the newspapers, they decided to go farther yet. A dozen of Guffey’s men, with another dozen from the District Attorney’s office, raided the office of Ashton’s paper, the “Clarion,” kicked the editorial staff downstairs or threw them out of the windows, and proceeded to smash the typewriters and the printing presses, and to carry off the subscription lists and burn a ton or two of “literature” in the back yard. Also they raided the headquarters of the “Bolshevik local,” and placed the seven members of the executive committee under arrest, and the judge fixed the bail of each of them at twenty-five thousand dollars, and every day for a week or two the American City “Times” would send a man around to Guffey’s office, and Guffey would furnish him with a mass of material which Peter had prepared, showing that the Socialist program was one of terrorism and murder.
Almost every day now Peter rendered some such service to his country. He discovered where the I. W. W. had hidden a printing press with which they were getting out circulars and leaflets, and this place was raided, and the press confiscated, and half a dozen more agitators thrown into jail. These men declared a hunger strike, and tried to starve themselves to death as a protest against the beatings they got; and then some hysterical women met in the home of Ada Ruth, and drew up a circular of protest, and Peter kept track of the mailing of this circular, and all the copies were confiscated in the post-office, and so one more conspiracy was foiled. They now had several men at work in the post-office, secretly opening the mail of the agitators; and every now and then they would issue an order forbidding mail to be delivered to persons whose ideas were not sound.
Also the post-office department cancelled the second class mailing privileges of the “Clarion,” and later it barred the paper from the mails entirely. A couple of “comrades” with automobiles then took up the work of delivering the paper in the nearby towns; so Peter was sent to get acquainted with these fellows, and in the night time some of Guffey’s men entered the garage, and fixed one of the cars so that its steering gear went wrong and very nearly broke the driver’s neck. So yet another conspiracy was foiled!
Section 69
Peter was really happy now, because the authorities were thoroughly roused, and when he brought them new facts, he had the satisfaction of seeing something done about it. Ostensibly the action was taken by the Federal agents, or by the District Attorney’s office, or by the city police and detectives; but Peter knew that it was always himself and the rest of Guffey’s agents, pulling the wires behind the scenes. Guffey had the money, he was working for the men who really counted in American City; Guffey was the real boss. And all over the country it was the same; the Reds were being put out of business by the secret agents of the Chambers of Commerce and the Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Associations, and the “Improve America League,” and such like camouflaged organizations.
They had everything their own way, because the country was at war, the war excitement was blazing like a prairie fire all over the land, and all you had to do was to call a man a pro-German or a Bolshevik, and to be sufficiently excited about it, and you could get a mob together and go to his home and horsewhip him or tar and feather him or lynch him. For years the big business men had been hating the agitators, and now at last they had their chance, and in every town, in every shop and mill and mine they had some Peter Gudge at work, a “Jimmie Higgins” of the “Whites,” engaged in spying and “snooping” upon the “Jimmie Higgins” of the “Reds.” Everywhere they had Guffeys and McGivneys to direct these activities, and they had “strong arm men,” with guns on their hips and deputy sheriffs’ and other badges inside their coats, giving them unlimited right to protect the country from traitors.
There were three or four million men in the training camps, and every week great convoys were sent out from the Eastern ports, loaded with troops for “over there.” Billions of dollars worth of munitions and supplies were going, and all the yearnings and patriotic fervors of the country were likewise going “over there.” Peter read more speeches and sermons and editorials, and was proud and glad, knowing that he was taking his humble part in the great adventure. When he read that the biggest captains of industry and finance were selling their services to the government for the sum of one dollar a year, how could he complain, who was getting twenty dollars every week? When some of the Reds in their meetings or in their “literature” declared that these captains of industry and finance were the heads of companies which were charging the government enormous prices and making anywhere from three to ten times the profits they had made before the war—then Peter would know that he was listening to an extremely dangerous Bolshevik; he would take the name of the man to McGivney, and McGivney would pull his secret wires, and the man would suddenly find himself out of a job—or maybe being prosecuted by the health department of the city for having set out a garbage can without a cover.
After persistent agitation, the radicals had succeeded in persuading a judge to let out McCormick and the rest of the conspirators on fifty thousand dollars bail apiece. That was most exasperating to Peter, because it was obvious that when you put a Red into jail, you made him a martyr to the rest of the Reds you made him conspicuous to the whole community, and then if you let him out again, his speaking and agitating were ten times as effective as before. Either you ought to keep an agitator in jail for good, or else you ought not put him in at all. But the judges didn’t see that—their heads were full of a lot of legal bunk, and they let David Andrews and the other Red lawyers hood-wink them. Herbert Ashton and his Socialist crowd also got out on bail, and the “Clarion” was still published and openly sold on the news-stands. While it didn’t dare oppose the war any more, it printed every impolite thing it could possibly collect about the “gigantic trading corporation” known as the British Government, and also about the “French bankers” and the “Italian imperialists.” It clamored for democracy for Ireland and Egypt and India, and shamelessly defended the Bolsheviki, those pro-German conspirators and nationalizers of women.