A little experimenting with the manuscript of “100%" has revealed to the writer that everybody has a series of questions they wish immediately to ask: How much of it is true? To what extent have the business men of America been compelled to take over the detection and prevention of radicalism? Have they, in putting down the Reds, been driven to such extreme measures as you have here shown? A few of the incidents in “100%" are fictional, for example the story of Nell Doolin and Nelse Ackerman; but everything that has social significance is truth, and has been made to conform to facts personally known to the writer or to his friends. Practically all the characters in “100%" are real persons. Peter Gudge is a real person, and has several times been to call upon the writer in the course of his professional activities; Guffey and McGivney are real persons, and so is Billy Nash, and so is Gladys Frisbie.
To begin at the beginning: the “Goober case” parallels in its main outlines the case of Tom Mooney. If you wish to know about this case, send fifteen cents to the Mooney Defense Committee, Post Office Box 894, San Francisco, for the pamphlet, “Shall Mooney Hang,” by Robert Minor. The business men of San Francisco raised a million dollars to save the city from union labor, and the Mooney case was the way they did it. It happened, however, that the judge before whom Mooney was convicted weakened, and wrote to the Attorney-General of the State to the effect that he had become convinced that Mooney was convicted by perjured testimony. But meantime Mooney was in jail, and is there still. Fremont Older, editor of the San Francisco “Call,” who has been conducting an investigation into this case, has recently written to the author: “Altogether, it is the most amazing story I have ever had anything to do with. When all is known that I think can be known, it will be shown clearly that the State before an open-eyed community was able to murder a man with the instruments that the people have provided for bringing about justice. There isn’t a scrap of testimony in either of the Mooney or Billings cases that wasn’t perjured, except that of the man who drew the blue prints of Market Street.”
To what extent has the detection and punishment of radicalism in America passed out of the hands of public authorities and into the hands of “Big Business?” Any business man will of course agree that when “Big Business” has interests to protect, it must and will protect them. So far as possible it will make use of the public authorities; but when thru corruption or fear of politics these fail, “Big Business” has to act for itself. In the Colorado coal strike the coal companies raised the money to pay the state militia, and recruited new companies of militia from their private detectives. The Reds called this “Government by Gunmen,” and the writer in his muckraking days wrote a novel about it, “King Coal.” The man who directed the militia during this coal strike was A. C. Felts of the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency, who was killed just the other day while governing several coal counties in West Virginia.
You will find this condition in the lumber country of Washington and Oregon, in the oil country of Oklahoma and Kansas, in the copper country of Michigan, Montana and Arizona, and in all the big coal districts. In the steel country of Western Pennsylvania you will find that all the local authorities are officials of the steel companies. If you go to Bristol, R. I., you will find that the National India Rubber Company has agreed to pay the salaries of two-thirds of the town’s police force.
In every large city in America the employers’ associations have raised funds to hold down the unions and smash the Reds, and these funds are being expended in the way portrayed in “100%.” In Los Angeles the employers’ association raised a million dollars, and the result was the case of Sydney R. Flowers, briefly sketched in this story under the name of “Sydney.” The reader who wishes the details of this case is referred to Chapter LXVI of “The Brass Cheek.” Flowers has been twice tried, and is about to be tried a third time, and our District-Attorney is quoted as saying that he will be tried half a dozen times if necessary. At the last trial there were produced a total of twenty-five witnesses against Flowers, and out of these nineteen were either Peter Gudges and McGivneys, or else police detectives, or else employees of the local political machine. A deputy United States attorney, talking to me about the case, told me that he had refused to prosecute it because he realized that the “Paul letter,” upon which the arrest had been based, was a frame-up, and that he was quite sure he knew who had written it. He also told me that there had been formed in Los Angeles a secret committee of fifty of the most active rich men of the town; that he could not find out what they were doing, but they came to his offices and demanded the secret records of the government; and that when he refused to prosecute Flowers they had influence enough to have the governor of California telegraph to Washington in protest. Questioned on the witness stand, I repeated these statements, and the deputy United States attorney was called to the stand and attributed them to my “literary imagination.”
In the old Russian and Austrian empires the technique of trapping agitators was well developed, and the use of spies and “under cover” men for the purpose of luring the Reds into crime was completely worked out. We have no English equivalent for the phrase “agent provocateur,” but in the last four years we have put thousands of them at work in America. In the case against Flowers three witnesses were produced who had been active among the I. W. Ws., trying to incite crime, and were being paid to give testimony for the state. One of these men admitted that he had himself burned some forty barns, and was now receiving three hundred dollars a month and expenses. At the trial of William Bross Lloyd in Chicago, charged with membership in the Communist party, a similar witness was produced. Santeri Nourteva, of, the Soviet Bureau in New York, has charged that Louis C. Fraina, editor of the “Revolutionary Age,” was a government agent, and Fraina wrote into the platform of the Communist party the planks which were used in prosecuting and deporting its members. On December 27, 1919, the chief of the Bureau of Investigation of the Department of Justice in Washington sent to the head of his local bureau in Boston a telegram containing the following sentences: “You should arrange with your under cover informants to have meetings of the Communist Party and Communist Labor Party held on the night set. I have been informed by some of the bureau officers that such arrangements will be made.” So much evidence of the activity of the provocateur was produced before Federal Judge G. W. Anderson that he declared as follows: “What does appear beyond reasonable dispute is that the Government owns and operates some part of the Communist Party.”
It appears that Judge Anderson does not share the high opinion of the “under cover” operative set forth by the writer of “100%.” Says Judge Anderson: “I cannot adopt the contention that Government spies are any more trustworthy, or less disposed to make trouble in order to profit therefrom, than are spies in private industry. Except in time of war, when a Nathan Hale may be a spy, spies are always necessarily drawn from the unwholesome and untrustworthy classes. A right-minded man refuses such a job. The evil wrought by the spy system in industry has, for decades, been incalculable. Until it is eliminated, decent human relations cannot exist between employers and employees, or even among employees. It destroys trust and confidence; it kills human kindliness; it propagates hate.”
To what extent have the governmental authorities of America been forced to deny to the Reds the civil rights guaranteed to good Americans by the laws and the constitution? The reader who is curious on this point may send the sum of twenty-five cents to the American Civil Liberties union, 138 West 13th Street, New York, for the pamphlet entitled, “Report upon the Illegal Practices of the United States Department of Justice,” signed by twelve eminent lawyers in the country, including a dean of the Harvard Law school, and a United States attorney who resigned because of his old-fashioned ideas of law. This pamphlet contains sixty-seven pages, with numerous exhibits and photographs. The practices set forth are listed under six heads: Cruel and unusual punishments; arrests without warrant; unreasonable searches and seizures; provocative agents; compelling persons to be witnesses against themselves; propaganda by the Department of Justice. The reader may also ask for the pamphlet entitled “Memorandum Regarding the Persecution of the Radical Labor Movement in the United States;” also for the pamphlet entitled “War Time Prosecution and Mob Violence,” dated March, 1919, giving a list of cases which occupies forty pages of closely printed type. Also he might read “The Case of the Rand School,” published by the Rand School of Social Science, 7 East Fifteenth Street, New York, and the pamphlets published by the National Office of the Socialist Party, 220 South Ashland Blvd., Chicago, dealing with the prosecutions of that organization.
To what extent has it been necessary to torture the Reds in prison in America? Those who are interested are advised to write to Harry Weinberger, 32 union Square, New York, for the pamphlet entitled “Twenty Years Prison,” dealing with the case of Mollie Steimer, and three others who were sentenced for distributing a leaflet protesting against the war on Russia; also to the American Civil Liberties union for the pamphlet entitled “Political Prisoners in Federal Military Prisons,” also the pamphlet, “Uncle Sam: Jailer,” by Winthrop D. Lane, reprinted from the “Survey;” also the pamphlet entitled “The Soviet of Deer Island, Boston Harbor,” published by the Boston Branch of the American Civil Liberties union; also for the publications of the American Industrial Company, and the American Freedom Foundation, 166 West Washington St., Chicago.
There may be some reader with a sense of humor who asks about the brother of a United States senator being arrested for reading a paragraph from the Declaration of Independence. This gentleman was the brother of United States Senator France of Maryland, and curiously enough, the arrest took place in the city of Philadelphia, where the Declaration of Independence was adopted. There may be some reader who is curious about a clergyman being indicted and arrested in Winnipeg for having quoted the prophet Isaiah. The paragraph from the indictment in question reads as follows: “That J. S. Woodsworth, on or about the month of June, in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and nineteen, at the City of Winnipeg, in the Province of Manitoba, unlawfully and seditiously published seditious libels in the words and figures following: ‘Woe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees, and that write grievousness which they have ............