What will they do? I cannot say. There are things on every page of this book which are libelous unless they are true. If I am brought into court and required to prove them, I may be facing a judge who has been appointed by the interests I have exposed, a jury which has been selected by the interests I have exposed, a prosecuting attorney who is looking to these interests for his campaign-funds and his publicity at the next election. The trial will be conducted on this simple basis—that everything favorable to me is kept from the public, and everything that can be made to seem unfavorable to me is sent by telegraph and cable all over the world.
I would not mind losing what little property I own in the world; I would not mind going to jail for this book. There are only two things I would mind—first, having the book barred from circulation, and second, being discredited in the eyes of those I seek to influence in favor of Social Justice. So in this, the last word I may be able to get to you on the subject, I wish to warn you of one crucial fact, which is this:
Our police and prosecuting authorities, our political machines and Big Business interests, are many of them practiced in the art of producing in court whatever testimony may be required in an emergency. There are few traction interests or other public service corporations in America which do not regularly employ perjured witnesses in case of need; and those which have given up the custom have done so merely because they have got the courts and the jury system so completely in their hands that they no longer care what evidence is introduced against them. We have seen Tom Mooney held in jail for three years, entirely upon the basis of perjured testimony. Even the trial judge has written that he is satisfied that Tom Mooney is innocent—but still Tom Mooney stays in jail!
I am doing what I can to get this book to the people. I intend to go on doing what I can to that end. Meantime I say to you, my readers, what I said to my wife when I went out to Colorado on behalf of the coal-strikers: “Whatever you read about me, don’t worry. If there is any scandal, pay no attention to it, for that is the way they fight in Denver.”
That is the way Big Business fights all over America.
The above was written in August. In November I am reading the page proofs of the book, and “Big Business” steps forward to prove me a prophet. A plot is laid against me, so wanton and so utterly without basis of truth that no less than an assassin could have planned it. I escaped—but by a margin so narrow that it is unpleasant to think about it. Literally by a minute or two of time I missed having printed on the front page of every big newspaper in America convincing evidence that I am a secret German conspirator, contriving underhand plots for the undermining of my country! My wife remarks: “I have been watching the radical movement for seven or eight years, and I have heard much about ‘frame-ups.’ I always thought it was foolish talk, cheap melodrama; but now I know that the ‘frame-up’ is a real thing, and it has changed my whole view of the class struggle.”
I have mentioned on page [399] how I made a speech before the City Club of Los Angeles, exposing the dishonesty of the “Los Angeles Times,” whereupon the “Times” opened up a furious attack upon me, demanding that I should be put in jail. I have quoted one sample of its ravings. Every day or so for a week it printed similar abuse, and it continues the attack, both editorially and in its news columns. I have stated publicly in the “Appeal to Reason” that I am collecting evidence against the “Times,” and preparing a book exposing it; so the “Times” proclaims me as “the trumpet of Bolshevism,” and will be satisfied with nothing short of a life sentence for me.
There is in Los Angeles a returned soldiers’ paper, the “Dugout.” The editor, Sydney R. Flowers, is an American citizen who was in South Africa at the outbreak of the war, and was so anxious to fight the Kaiser that he left his wife and baby and enlisted. Invalided to England, he tried again to enlist, and finally enlisted in Canada, and served for three years in Belgium and France. He was twice wounded and once gassed, and has only one lung as a result. Returning to his home in Los Angeles with his wife and child, he found the war veterans’ organization being courted as a strike-breaking agency by the Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Association of the city. Flowers rebelled, and started a rival organization, the Allied World War Veterans, and with the support of these veterans he started the “Dugout.” I met him, and heard him speak several times, and gave him my support to the extent of raising some money. He told me of the efforts of the “M. and M.” to bribe him, and of their plots against him; he knew, and I knew, that there were spies in his office.
There came to the office a letter from a stranger who signed himself “Paul Rightman.” The envelope bore a Chicago return address, but had been mailed in Los Angeles. It was typewritten, and the type was bad, the ribbon double, with traces of red showing here and there. “Paul” suggested to Flowers that he should send sample copies of his paper to Socialist and labor papers abroad. Flowers, who is out to prevent the next war by the spirit of international fraternity, thought this a good idea; his impulse was encouraged by a mysterious Austrian who happened into his office a few minutes after the letter arrived, and suggested to him exactly the sort of letter he should write to these foreign editors—most of whom, by a curious coincidence, happened to be in Silesia, where American troops are going!
Flowers wrote the letters and mailed them, and an hour or two after he had mailed them, two men who have been seen frequently in the offices of the “M. and M.,” called upon Flowers’ wife and terrified her by the announcement that her husband had committed a crime which would cause him to be sent to jail for life; his only chance was to drop the “Dugout,” and he had one hour in which to make his decision. Flowers was summoned by a telephone call, purporting to come from the United States District Attorney’s office. He obeyed this call, and in the hallway of the Federal Building was met by two mysterious persons who exhibited shields of authority, and informed him that he had three minutes in which to decide whether he would drop the “Dugout” or be sent to jail for life.