Flowers promised me he would do that, and I hung up the receiver. Two or three minutes after he left his office with the letter in his pocket there were two agents of the District Attorney’s office of Los Angeles County looking for him at his office. When he returned there were four of them on hand, and they held him up and proceeded to make another raid. The man in charge, I might mention, was C. E. Sebastian, once mayor of the city, prosecuted for a sexual crime, kicked out of office by the people, and now working as a detective for the District Attorney’s office!
The first thing this man did was to examine all Flowers’ letters—letters on his desk, letters in the drawers of his desk, letters in his pockets. There were some hundred and fifty letters altogether, and they went over them all several times, studying the return addresses on the envelopes. They spent something like an hour and a half at it, and their balked anger was comically evident. In their whispered consultations Flowers heard them mention my name several times, and once he heard Sebastian say: “He’s a slick one.”
Flowers was haled before the Grand Jury, indicted under the Criminal Syndicalism law, and thrown into jail at once. The authorities fixed the bail at fifteen thousand dollars, which they hoped would be prohibitive, and denied Flowers the right to see his counsel that night. They have taken every scrap of paper belonging to the magazine. They have frightened off one printer and raided another, and so they think they have smashed the “Dugout.”
Come to my lawyer’s office for a minute and examine this mysterious “Paul” letter. It is a long letter, very abusive and stupid, and I won’t waste space on it, except to point out one more of the subtle traps that were placed in it. One sentence denouncing the acts of the government agents adds the phrase: “as I stated in the papers.” It so happens that out of the half million population of Los Angeles, just one person had been quoted in the newspapers as protesting against the raid on the “Dugout,” and that one person was myself. So when this letter was published, the newspapers would be able to say: Upton Sinclair is carrying a secret correspondence with a pro-German conspirator, using the alias “Paul.” But you see, he forgets and puts his name on the envelope! And also he gives himself away in the text of the letter—he identifies himself as the mysterious conspirator!
If you have any doubt that this was the plan, you have only to look at the “Los Angeles Times” next morning; a double-column, front page story about this second raid on the “Dugout,” giving the full text of the first “Paul” letter as a part of Flowers’ “conspirings” with the enemy—and without any hint that this mysterious “Paul” might be an imaginary person! If the second “Paul” letter had been found, that too would have been published in full, and the entire country would have read a story to the effect that both letters had come from Upton Sinclair, who was thus caught red-handed in a vile German conspiracy against his country!
Maybe you are like my wife; maybe you never believed in the “frame-up.” But study this case, and see what else you can make of it. Ask yourself: How comes it that the raids of both the Federal agents and of the Los Angeles County officers are so precisely timed to the arrival of letters from a mysterious “Paul” whom nobody has ever seen? And how comes it that this mysterious “Paul” puts the name of Upton Sinclair on his envelope? If “Paul” is afraid to put his own name on the envelope, why does he not mail it without return address, as millions of letters are mailed every day? And why does he employ the words: “As I stated in the papers”—when he hasn’t stated anything whatever in the papers, and when Flowers must know he hasn’t stated anything? Is it not plain that some dark agency is here working behind the scenes, plotting to ruin Upton Sinclair, and “tipping off” both the Federal authorities and the county authorities at the precise critical moment?
What is this agency? I do not know, and my lawyer, who takes this conspiracy very seriously, will not permit me to guess in public. But he admits my right to study these “Paul” letters, and to point out a peculiar bit of internal evidence. It would seem that this dark agency which is plotting to ruin Upton Sinclair is also interested in injuring the “Los Angeles Examiner.” The first “Paul” letter offers to supply Flowers with the names of more German papers, if he will insert a request in the personal columns of the “Examiner”; and the “Times” publishes this letter in full, calling particular attention to the damaging mention of the “Examiner.” Day after day the “Times” is attacking the “Examiner,” calling it a pro-German sheet; and here is a German conspirator using this pro-German sheet as a medium for his schemes!
The above is what is done to me before this book comes out. What will be done after my enemies have actually read the book, I cannot imagine. All I can do is to repeat my warning to you. Twenty years ago old “One-hoss” Wayland told me he had made it the rule of his life never to write a letter that he would not publish in the “Appeal to Reason.” And that is the principle upon which I have always carried on my propaganda. I have no secrets. What I have to say is said once a week in a full page of the “Appeal,” and the opposition to violence and conspiracy in the class struggle which I there write in public I advocate just as vigorously in private, and all my friends know it. So, if at any time you read that a carload of dynamite bombs has been found in my home, or that I have been carrying on a cipher correspondence with some foreign assassins, or that I have poisoned my wife and eloped with a chorus girl, or that I have taken a job on the “Los Angeles Times”—please go back and read this warning, and understand what is being done to both of us.
CONCLUSION
When I first talked over this book with my wife, she gave me a bit of advice: “Give your facts first, and then call your names.” So throughout this book I have not laid much stress on the book’s title. Perhaps you are wondering just where the title comes in!