I ask myself, therefore: How can I do better, at the beginning of this book, than to tell you what I saw at the harbor? This strike was a blazing searchlight, thrown into the very vitals of our invisible government; if you will follow it, you will see the whole system, and understand every detail of its mechanism. So I ask you to set aside for the moment all questions of labor unions, criminal syndicalism, anything of that sort; come with me as a plain American, believing in the Constitution, believing in the people, and their right to run their own affairs. Follow the story of this labor struggle—and before you get to the end of it you will magically find yourself reading about the schools, and learning who has taken them away from you, and why they have done it, and what it means to you and your children.
CHAPTER II
THE ADVENTURE OF THE UNIVERSITY CLUB
The first step in this narrative is to explain how it happened that the writer of this book, a muck-raker and enemy of society, was in the office of Mr. Irwin Hays Rice, president of the Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Association of Los Angeles, and chief of the Black Hand, at the very moment when Mr. Rice was conspiring with his fellow chiefs for the smashing of the harbor strike. This story is amusing in itself, and not altogether alien to education.
In April, 1923, I received a letter from the secretary of the University Club of Pasadena, my home city, asking if I would consent to lecture before the club on the subject of “The Goose-step.” I replied that I was busy, and made it a rule to decline invitations to lecture. Then came a telephone call from a member of the club, begging me to reconsider my decision; here were a group of men, influential in the community, some of whom had read “The Goose-step” and thought they could answer me, and wanted a chance to try. It would be an adventure for them, and might teach me something. To oblige a friend, I accepted, and the lecture was announced at a dinner of the club, and the announcement was published in the local newspapers—upon the club’s initiative, please note.
At once the Black Hand got busy; and a week or two later a gentleman called at my home, obviously embarrassed and pink in the face, explaining that he was the president of the University Club of Pasadena. The executive committee had held a meeting the previous evening and decided that in view of certain objections, I should be respectfully requested to consent to have the lecture called off. Knowing my community, I was sympathetic towards the blushing respectable gentleman—an ex-naval officer who would have faced the guns of a foreign foe, but dared not face a new idea. I answered that I would be content to have the lecture forgotten.
But an hour or two later a newspaper reporter called me up, asking if I had heard that the action of the University Club had been taken at the instance of William J. Burns, head of the Burns Detective Agency and chief of the United States Secret Service. Naturally, I was interested in that news; as a matter of tactics, when I find a man like Burns after me, I go to meet him head on. I at once telegraphed, asking Mr. Burns if it was true that he had called me “a dangerous enemy of the United States government.” The result was a tangle of falsehoods, and if I proceed to untangle them, do not think that I am rambling. Before we get through with this book we shall discover that the big private detective agencies are an important part of the educational system of the United States, and so what we learn about Mr. Burns and his methods will be to the point.
The great detective telegraphed me from San Francisco that my name had not been the subject of discussion at any time during his visit to Los Angeles. I was not satisfied with that, and telegraphed again, saying that I wanted to know if he had mentioned me at any time in Southern California, and if he had done so, would he say openly and for publication what he had said against me. In the meantime there had been published a United Press dispatch from San Francisco, quoting Mr. Burns as saying that if he had mentioned me, it had been “as a private individual and not as a government official.” Therefore I pointed out to Mr. Burns that he could not say anything about me as a private citizen; whatever he said would be assumed by everyone to be based upon information he had got as head of the United States Secret Service. This brought a second telegram from Mr. Burns, as follows:
Replying to your second wire, I made no statements concerning you as a private citizen or government official at Pasadena or elsewhere, nor have I ever undermined the character of you or any other person. I want to also deny that I ever made any statement to the United Press as stated in your telegram, and for your further information let me assure you whenever I express myself concerning you or anyone else I will not hesitate to admit it.
That seemed explicit, and I was prepared to accept it. But you note that it left the United Press in a bad light; and representatives of the United Press took the matter up, and wired their head office in San Francisco, receiving the information that the interview with Mr. Burns had been given to Frank Clarvoe, one of their most trusted and experienced men. Mr. Clarvoe had been with Mr. Burns in his hotel room when the telegram from me arrived, and Mr. Burns had allowed Mr. Clarvoe to make a copy of this telegram, and had dictated a reply, slowly and distinctly, so that Mr. Clarvoe could write it down. The manager of the United Press added that this was evidently one of those frequent cases where parties talk and afterwards wish to deny it.
In the meantime I had been interviewing the executive committee of the University Club of Pasadena, holding over the heads of these gentlemen the threat of a slander suit, and thereby inducing each of them in turn to state upon exactly what basis he had repeated the statements about Mr. Burns and myself. So the report was definitely traced to Mr. Irwin Hays Rice, president of the Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Association of Los Angeles, and one of the chiefs of the Black Hand. Mr. Rice, in a conversation over the telephone, had stated to the secretary of the club that Mr. Burns had described me as “a parlor pink and a dangerous enemy of the United States government.”