Red Web - Blair Coan




The Reptile Changes Its Spots

"The Great International Soviet Republic will be born in 1920!"

Such was the hope expressed in the bolshevik May Day proclamation in 1919. Realization of the hope fell considerably short. The campaign of violence, by which revolutionary mass action was hoped for in the United States—a nation which the bolsheviki call the one remaining bulwark of capitalism—failed to accomplish its purpose.

Notwithstanding the wobbling and temporizing of the Wilson Administration, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer continued to kindle the fires of hatred for himself among the reds by his relentless warfare upon the forces of radicalism which had made the year 1919 well-nigh a nightmare for orderly government in the United States.

"During the latter part of 1919," said Secretary of State Charles E. Hughes, summarizing a bit of history in his report of sensational facts submitted to the subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations of the Sixty-eighth Congress, "the Department of Justice submitted to the Department of Labor a large amount of evidence on the Communist Party of America. This resulted in the issuance of a large number of warrants of arrest for deportation hearings. The cases were based upon the theory that the Communist Party of America advocated the overthrow by force and violence of the government of the United States and, therefore, its officers and members who were aliens, were subject to deportation as being members of an organization proscribed by the immigration laws."

"The situation had become so acute and the spread of ultra-radicalism so broad," continued Secretary Hughes, "that by the end of 1920 most of the states had passed laws against anarchy, criminal syndicalism, sabotage, red flag demonstrations, and organizations advocating the use of force or violence in a political or economic program."

Of course the most notable of the cases at the time was that of the soviet "ambassador" Martens, against whom a mass of evidence had been obtained by the Department of Justice which turned it over to the Department of Labor. The sub-committee of the Senate committee on Foreign Relations of the Sixty-sixth Congress, whose investigation of bolshevik propaganda was touched upon in the preceding chapter, had continued its hearings in 1920, and the result of these hearings was a recommendation that Martens, instead of being recognized by the government, be deported as an alien engaged in the promotion of propaganda and activities subversive to orderly government in the United States. The deportation order was issued in December, 1920. The Russian government, meanwhile sensing defeat of its efforts to foist itself upon the United States as a government and obtain the recognition of Martens as its "ambassador," issued orders "withdrawing" Martens and closing the "embassy" in New York City.

Among the first personages of prominence to arise, in the face of the overwhelming mass of evidence of the subversive purposes of Martens and the crowd he had assembled about him, and to protest against the deportation order, was United States Senator Joseph I. France, of Maryland, who had made a trip to Russia and came back primed to join with the reds in their demand for recognition by the State Department of the soviet government of Russia and of Martens as the Russian envoy to the United States. Senator France had been elected to the Senate as a Republican. In the Senate he was one of Senator Robert M. LaFollette's supporters and admirers, and was a member of the national council of the People's Legislative Service, the LaFollette propaganda bureau directed by the radical, Basil M. Manly. Of the People's Legislative Service we shall hear considerably more later.

Throughout 1920, as well as in 1919, the government faced an onslaught of appeals for the recognition of Russia under bolshevik rule and of abuse for the failure to heed the appeals. The Amalgamated Clothing Workers were insistent that the bolshevik government be recognized and that Martens be received on a diplomatic plane. According to evidence presented to the New York State Legislative Committee investigation of red activities in New York, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers' organization was linked with the Communist Party of America.

The Socialist party of the United States went on record as demanding the recognition of Russia by the American government, as did the Committee of Forty-eight, headed by J.A.H. Hopkins, another organization and individual occupying conspicuous parts in events of subsequent interest and importance. The national convention of the Socialist Party, held in May, 1920, delivered itself of lusty cheers for the Russian soviets, and nominated Eugene V, Debs—then in the Atlanta federal prison—as its candidate for the presidency. Debs responded to the bestowal of this honor by declaring his party should support "the revolution" with all its power. Recognition of Martens by the State Department was "demanded" by the New York State Socialist party in July, 1920, and radical organizations of all shades joined in the cry for the recognition of Russia and its "ambassador" and participated in the demand for the scalp of the "labor baiter," Attorney General Palmer.

"Victory" for the proletarian cause in the United States in 1924 was the prediction of Debs, as the Socialists sent a special mission to Russia in 1920. "Recognition of the soviets," was the cry of the radical factions controlling the International Association of Machinists, whose President, William H. Johnston, a socialist, was secretary-treasurer of Senator LaFollette's People's Legislative Service, and became the leading spirit in the Conference for Progressive Political Action and its campaign of 1924 to make LaFollette and Wheeler President and Vice President.

[Illustration] from The Red Web by Blair Coan

HON. HARRY M. DAUGHERTY, ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES.


A particularly bitter attack upon Attorney General Palmer for the raids and arrests directed by the Department of Justice against the reds in 1920 was made by the National Popular Government League early in 1921, as the Wilson administration was drawing to a close. This organization, sponsored, among others, by Jackson H. Ralston, whose connection with the attempted impeachment of Attorney General Daugherty in 1922 will be discussed later, subsequently promoted the circulation of a book, The Deportation Delirium of 1920, by the radical assistant Secretary of Labor in the Wilson Administration, Louis F. Post.

Ralston had appeared for Assistant Secretary of Labor Louis F, Post in an investigation of Attorney General Palmer by a sub-committee of the House Committee on Rules in 1920, an investigation that fell flat, and then presented to a sub-committee of the Senate Committee on Judiciary, in January, 1921, the charges preferred by the Popular Government League. In the conduct of these proceedings, Senator Thomas J. Walsh, of Montana, enacted the role of "prosecutor" of the Attorney General and ate a considerable quantity of fire in his endeavor to make a case against Mr. Palmer. By the time the Attorney General got through with his accusers, who had charged him with violations of law in the conduct of his campaign against the reds, it appears that he had them on the run, and this investigation fell as flat as the earlier one.

Attorney General Palmer, however, submitted to a Senate Committee a report in defense of the Department of Justice that was so loaded with evidence of red revolution, with its pink and yellow approval and applause, that his conduct of warfare against bolshevik propagandists and plotters was fully justified in the eyes of patriotic American citizens.

When the Harding administration came into power in March, 1921, the Communist Party of America, operating under strict supervision of and discipline laid down by the Communist Internationale headquarters in Moscow, was functioning and had been functioning illegally, or "underground," as the communists are inclined to characterize the operations. To quote Secretary Hughes' explanatory communication, accompanying the mass of evidence he submitted in 1924 to the sub-committee of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations:

"There was in existence during that period of time within the Communist party certain factions, but for all practical purposes the Communist movement was united in its ultimate aims and ends, the differences that existed being limited largely to personal leadership. The Communist Internationale was finally moved, by the differences existing among the various factions, to pass upon the question of unity and to cement the communist movement within the United States in 1920 and 1921."

As the result of and in compliance with orders from Moscow, a unity convention was held in May, 1921, unity of the factions within the Communist party itself accomplished, and a revised program and constitution adopted. The revision of the program recognized and confessed the blunders of 1919, which led to retaliatory measures on the part of the Federal Department of Justice and the legislatures of the various states. The recognition of these blunders, the realization that a program almost exclusively devoted to violence could lead nowhere, particularly with the Wilson administration supplanted by one less afflicted at the top with pink sympathies, tolerance and "watchful waiting," prompted the formulation of plans for a change of tactics,

Heretofore, political or parliamentary action on the part of the Communist movement itself had been scoffed at, and every effort devoted to organization for revolution by force and violence. Now, however, it had been determined that, although forceful overthrow of the American government should be the ultimate aim, it was necessary first so to weaken the government by a process of "boring from within" that operations of a violently revolutionary character might be carried out with less resistance by the government itself. The new scheme of operations, then, became one that subordinated force and violence to political or parliamentary revolution.

Said the revised Program and Constitution of the Communist Party of America:

"The proletarian revolution comes at a moment of economic crisis precipitating a political crisis. The politicoeconomic crisis causes a collapse in the capitalist order.

"The proletarian revolution is a long process. It begins with the destruction of the capitalist state and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and ends only with the complete transformation of the capitalist system into the communist society. . . . "

"Every class struggle is a political struggle. The object of the class struggle which inevitably develops into civil war, is the conquest of political power. . . ."

"The Communist party of America recognizes that the revolutionary proletariat must use all means of propaganda and agitation to win over the exploited masses. One of these means is parliamentary activity. . . . "

"The American bourgeois state was quick to recognize the communist parties in America as its historic and deadly enemies. It employed all its power in a vicious onslaught against them. Being outlawed, the communist parties reorganized as underground, illegal parties. Thus, for the present, the Communist Party of America, is prevented from participating in the elections under its own name. . . . "

"The Communist Party of America will support with all its power every movement for the liberation of the oppressed colonial peoples of the United States. The Communist party will fight against the economic aggression of American capitalists upon the populations of the weaker American republics. . . . "

"In the United States of North America, where, on account of historical circumstances, there was lacking a broad revolutionary movement even before the war, the communists are still before the first and simplest task of creating a communist nucleus and connecting it with the working masses," said Lenin, Radek, Bukharin, Trotzky, Zinoviev and Kamenev in their Theses on Tactics, submitted to the third congress of the Comintern. (Communist Internationale.) "The present economic crisis, which has thrown five million people out of work, affords a very favorable soil for this kind of work. Conscious of the imminent danger of a radicalized labor movement becoming subject to communist influence, American capital tries to crush and destroy the young communist movement by means of barbarous persecution. The Communist party was forced into an illegalized existence under which it would, according to capitalist expectation, in the absence of any contact with the masses, dwindle into a propagandist sect and lose its vitality. The Communist Internationale draws the attention of the Communist party of America (unified) to the fact that the illegalized organization must not only serve as the ground for collecting and crystallizing the active communist forces, but that it is the party's duty to try all ways and means to get out of the illegalized condition into the open, among the wide masses. It is the duty of the party to find the means and forms to unite these masses politically, through public activity, into the struggle against American capitalism."

The Communist party of America, therefore, to carry out the mandate of the Comintern to form a so-called legal political organism in the United States, organized what was known as the American Labor Alliance in the summer of 1921. This organization soon afterward became what is now known as the Workers' party. This transformation led to another split in the leadership of the organization which required the further services of the Central Executive Committee of the Comintern to straighten out.

For the guidance of the reorganized and re-unified communist movement, now destined to practice a dual system of operations—one illegal and "underground", the other in the open—the Comintern transmitted from Moscow a program bearing the title, Concerning the Next Tasks of the Communist Party in America.

A few quotations from this "thesis" prepared by the executive committee of the Comintern are both interesting and enlightening:

"In order to assist the American comrades in working out and formulating their line of action, the Executive Committee of the Communist Internationale proposes for their examination, the following main points: . . .

". . . The general elections in which hundreds of thousands of workers take part, cannot be rejected as being merely a peaceful movement with which the communists will have nothing to do. Further, certain mass organizations which not only are not communistic, but are not proletarian in composition, must be utilized by communist strategy for the benefit of the proletarian class struggle. As for instance, the existing mass movement of small farmers (who are, in a sense, semi-proletarian), and even movements of middle class farmers under some circumstances. . . ."

. . . . The fighting proletarian is to be led from one stage to another in the revolutionizing process by means of suitable slogans, . . . ."

". . . . Communist demands for immediate concessions to the workers are formulated, not to be 'reasonable' from the point of view of capitalism, but to be reasonable from the point of view of the struggling workers, regardless of the state's power to grant them without weakening itself. Thus, for instance, a demand for payment out of the government treasury, of full, unionstandard wages for millions of unemployed workers, but damaging from the point of view of the capitalist state and the capitalist wage competition which the state demands."

"We suggest a few examples of the type of demands that may be made. . . . "

"Favoring a close alliance between the United Mine Workers of America with the Railroad Brotherhoods and all other unions for common action to raise the standard of living of all workers in both industries. . . . "

"For the immediate recognition and unrestricted trade with Soviet Russia. For the reestablishment of postal agreement with Russia."

And so on.

Advising the communists to participate in all general election campaigns, municipal, state, congressional and presidential; counseling that they conceal their underground apparatus to better advantage and develop it more effectively "within the outer framework" of legal campaign organizations and election activities; suggesting that "of course, the Communist party can develop upon labor organizations" and can "even launch a legal revolutionary Labor party; declaring that "a legal press" and "organized groupings of sympathizers within the trade unions" are imperative, the "Thesis" from Moscow continued:

". . . . The government of the United States will not now permit a 'Communist party' to exist but it is compelled to permit 'parties' to exist in an otherwise almost unrestricted variety, for the purpose of its own preservation. . . . The state attempts, wherever it can, to exclude a truly proletarian revolutionary party from this public field. It attempts first to exterminate the revolutionary party, if possible, or second, to terrorize and corrupt the revolutionary party into subservience to capital law which makes revolution impossible, or third, at least to confine the revolutionary party's operations to the narrow sphere that can be reached secretly."

"A Communist party must defeat all these attempts. It must not be exterminated. It must unequivocably refuse to obey capitalist law, and must urge the working class to the violent destruction of the entire legal machinery."

"Destruction of the entire legal machinery!" That is something for the reader to remember.

The Communist, official organ published "underground" by the Communist party, had this in its issue for September, 1921:

"Comrades, conditions known to all of us and at present beyond control make it impossible for us to go into an elaboration of the details involved in our plans. . . Suffice it to say that our Central Executive Committee is not pledged to any iron-clad formula as to our machinery for country-wide work. We frankly recognize that the form is a matter mainly dependent upon the prevailing party and outside conditions."

And in another place, same issue:

"The Communist party of America has now reached a point where a change of tactics (the change noted above) is an absolute necessity. This change is vital not only to the party but to the progress of the entire American labor movement. The mountain did not go te Mahommet, so Mahommet must go to the mountain. The masses do not and will not come to our underground organization, so we must organize above and carry our agitation on on a legal basis."

In December, 1921, the first convention of the Workers' party, built upon the foundation laid by the American Labor Alliance and organized to function as the "open" or "legal" branch of the illegal and underground Communist party of America, was held in New York City. "The resumption of trade relations with Russia, and the recognition (by the United States government) of the Soviet Republic," continued to be a foremost and vital plank of the party program.

This gathering marked the preliminary preparations for the participation by the red radicals in the congressional elections of 1922,



A Bulwark Of Orderly Government

As has been already quite clearly indicated, the thorn in the side of bolshevism in the United States throughout 1919 and 1920 was the federal Department of Justice under the generalship of A. Mitchell Palmer. To discredit and cripple the Department of Justice were imperative to whatever degree of success the red radicals hoped to attain, for the simple reason that the breakdown of orderly government in all of its functions is surely the natural consequence of a breakdown of that arm of the government the function of which is the maintenance of domestic tranquility by the enforcement of law and the safeguarding of order which laws and law enforcement are intended to insure.

"Destruction of the entire legal machinery," was the communist aim, as set forth in the "thesis" from the Comintern, quoted in the previous chapter. To be sure, the word "destruction" was preceded by the word "violent," in the advice to the American reds transmitted to them from Moscow, but demoralization must necessarily precede destruction, whether the destruction be accomplished by violence or by milder means.

Now, let it not be understood by the reader that the writer of these pages has it in mind, for a single instant, to suggest that anyone other than the criminal bolshevik agents themselves entertained the thought or desire to promote violent revolution in the United States.

United States Senator Joseph I. France, of Maryland, spoke at a mass meeting in New York City early in January, of 1921, in protest against the ousting of the soviet "ambassador," Martens; later in that month he bitterly assailed Mr. Palmer's conduct of the federal Department of Justice; after the Harding administration came into power and Harry M. Daugherty became Attorney General, he participated in a debate in Carnegie Hall, New York, with Senator King, of Utah, a staunch opponent of the reds, and advocated United States recognition of soviet Russia, and so stirred up did the reds attending the debate become that they rushed the stage from which the debate was delivered.

But it is unthinkable, of course, that Senator France at any time entertained any thoughts in common with the bolshevik program for civil war against constituted authority in the United States. Wholly regardless of his consciousness of the fact, however, and wholly regardless of whether he ever realized it afterwards, the Senator from Maryland was giving aid and comfort to enemies of the American republic— enemies who had no scruples of any kind against the overthrow of the American government and the establishment, in its stead, of a reign of bolshevik chaos by any means at all possible to them.

The same is to be said of Senator Thomas J. Walsh, of Montana, who "prosecuted" Attorney General Palmer before the sub-committee of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The same is to be said about the many others who figure prominently in this narrative because they have enacted roles as "dupes" of red radicalism since the bolsheviks mastered Russia, and of innumerable others equally misled but too inconspicuous to warrant identification.

It is perhaps well for Mr. Palmer that his obligations to his country, as the chief law-enforcing officer of the federal government, came to an end with the termination of the Wilson administration, What would surely have been his fate, had not a change of administration come to his rescue, fell to the lot of another man.

President Harding had no sooner selected and installed the Attorney General of his Cabinet, Harry M. Daugherty, than the guns that had been bombarding Palmer were turned and levelled upon his successor, Mr. Daugherty. This would have been true, had the appointee to the Attorney Generalship been any other man fit and big enough for the job. It would have been true had the man been anyone but a mollycoddle or a Morris Hillquit—and, of course, had it been the latter the bombardment would have been from another quarter.

The guns were turned, sighted and levelled at Daugherty, but the bombardment, at any rate that of the heavy artillery, did not begin at once. There was considerable sniping throughout 1921, and at frequent intervals the "resignation rumor" was put into circulation as a sort of feeler of the new Attorney General's sense of security. The quality of Daugherty was not so very well known outside of Ohio, at first; and it was not known for a certainty among the natural enemies of the Department of Justice that he was not something of a mollycoddle upon whom mild tactics might have sufficient influence to make the use of poison gas and high explosives unnecessary. So that, except for the sniping and bush-whacking and minor attempts at intimidation, the heavy artillery destined ultimately to open up on him remained virtually inactive. The first few months of the new administration were notable chiefly for the propaganda use that was made of a "general amnesty" campaign directed at both President Harding and the Attorney General.

The "amnesty" campaign was, of course, nothing more or less than a propaganda campaign in the interests of the radical movement. The prime factors in General Defense Committee, functioning in Chicago, and the American Civil Liberties Union, headquarters in New York City, were then and are now far less concerned, sentimentally, with the fate of individual "political prisoners" than they were and are in the establishment of a principle which they always call "free speech" but which is, in fact, freedom to advocate destructive revolutionary acts without danger of unpleasant consequences to the advocators.

Prof. Paul Frederick Brissenden, formerly of the faculty of the University of California, later of the faculty of Columbia University, described as having "traveled extensively through the industrial regions of the country as a special agent for the United States Department of Labor," and the author in 1919 of a book entitled The I.W.W.; a Study of American Syndicalism, wrote a pamphlet for distribution by the General Defense Committee after the "amnesty campaign" had been waged for a time upon the Harding administration. Justice and the I.W.W. was the title of it. One of the professor's arguments in behalf of the I.W.W. was that "its members would stack up not unfavorably with 'the Founding Fathers' who, as is well known, urged the unlawful destruction of property by the destruction of tea and by the burning of stamped paper." What the professor overlooked, however, was the fact that the "Founding Fathers" were quite aware that discovery and arrest at the hands of the officers of King George would involve highly unpleasant consequences, of which they were not only cognizant but which they were entirely prepared and willing to experience. It is quite probable, in fact, that Nathan Hale, for one, would have scoffed at even the suggestion of amnesty or of the organization of a defense committee in his behalf.

The pamphlet referred to, extensively circulated by the General Defense Committee, which also staged a number of demonstrations in Washington and brought delegations of "pickets" to do duty at the gates of the White House, contained, in addition to the animadversions of the distinguished professor, a particularly vitriolic attack upon the Attorney General, reprinted from the New York Call, a socialist newspaper.

As already suggested, the reds who were the most passionate and industrious workers for the professed objects of the General Defense Committee and the American Civil Liberties Union were interested considerably less in obtaining freedom for so-called "political prisoners" than they were in using the "amnesty campaign" as a smokescreen for their agitation of class warfare. Had President Harding issued a decree of general amnesty, releasing at one swoop the entire mob of criminals whose freedom from the federal jail houses was demanded by the amnesty campaigners, the props would have been knocked completely from under the campaigners in this particular line. But even that would not have quieted them. They would simply have concentrated their energies in some other direction for the demoralization of government, particularly the legal branch of it.

The fact that some of the prisoners on their lists were released by the President, upon recommendation from Attorney General Daugherty, was gall and wormwood to them. Particularly was their hatred of Attorney General Daugherty kindled by the release, in December, 1921, of Eugene V. Debs, and nothing angered them more than the magnanimous attitude of the Attorney General in his consideration of the case of Debs. For Debs in jail, reasoned they with not a little merit, was a far greater revolutionary propagandist himself, dressed in his cloak of "martyrdom" and "suffering" for the cause of the proletariat, than he ever had been or ever could be running at large. At heart, the reds would greatly have preferred that none of their "martyred comrades" received compassionate consideration by the Attorney General or the president. President Harding commuted the sentences of twenty-seven "politicals" on Christmas Day, 1921, but there remained in prison 114 others, for which the reds among the amnesty campaigners were truly grateful because, so long as there was one still in jail, they and their campaign had legs to stand on.

It was not long after the coming in of the Harding administration that the reds, and the misled pinks and parlor bolsheviks, who indulged them with both moral and financial support, encountered the reality that the Attorney General was no mollycoddle and that, furthermore, unlike Mr. Palmer, he had the full and unqualified support of his President. So, as in the case of Palmer, they began working upon the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue—the Capitol end—finding sympathetic ears among "dupes" that had served their purposes in the previous administration and among bollweevil politicians more concerned with the promotion of partisan and personal interests than in either honesty in government or ethics in politics.

Among those selected as a medium through which to bombard the Department of Justice, by way of the United States Senate, was Senator William E. Borah, of Idaho, who had played a sort of second fiddle to Senator Walsh, of Montana, during the investigation of the complaints of the National Popular Government League against Attorney General Palmer, and who, also, had revealed some sympathetic tendencies with respect to the soviet government of Russia. Senator Borah was the recipient, early in February, of a telegram from Harry Feinberg, I.W.W. journalist and lawyer, representing the General Defense Committee, charging Attorney General Daugherty with using the federal Department of Justice as "a center for anti-labor propaganda." Although this telegram in itself may not have got anywhere in particular, it served admirably as a wedge, full advantage of which was taken in due time, and Senator Borah as a public advocate of the "cause" of the "politicals" was exploited by the General Defense Committee along with Rep. George Huddleston, vice-chairman of LaFollette's People's Legislative Service, the public utterances of both being published in pamphlet form for distribution as part of the continuation of the "amnesty campaign."

The "amnesty campaign" continued, by the way, long after other campaigns of a more direct character had been instituted against the Harding-Coolidge administration of the government generally and the Department of Justice particularly, and when the propaganda had been "sold" to the press of the country and all but thirty-two of the so-called "politicals" had been released, the New Republic, highbrow journal of the pinks and parlor bolsheviki, observed:

"The act of amnesty by which President Harding released twenty-seven political prisoners serving sentence under wartime laws will be received with satisfaction tempered with indignation. What two years ago would have been a bold and generous declaration of good will appears now as a delayed, grudging and rather cowardly measure of reparation. The President has bowed for two years to the truculence of the American Legion and the malevolence of his Attorney General. . . . The campaign must go on."

The propagandist basic purpose of the "amnesty campaign" became the more apparent when fifty-two members of the I.W.W. had declined to make application for individual clemency. These men were serving terms in the federal penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kansas. Subsequent to the filing of a petition with President Harding by the General Defense Committee in July, 1922, the prisoners attached their signatures to "an open letter" to the President, the letter being, of course, not so much for the enlightenment of the President as for the purpose to which it was put—namely, publication as a pamphlet for circulation on a large scale as part of the general radical campaign of propaganda against the government and, particularly, against the Department of Justice.

"Freedom of speech," as viewed ever by the red radical, is freedom to advocate, without limit of any kind whatsoever, any doctrine that is, on the face of it, subversive to existing government and subservient to any and all causes inimical to "capitalist society" regardless of how violently destructive such doctrines may be. It is that "freedom of speech" and "freedom of the press" which led to the conviction of the communist, Gitlow, whose sentence was recently upheld by the United States Supreme Court, and which led to a great many other arrests, convictions and prison sentences of equally dangerous reds whose fate has met with the approval of the American courts which have made it clear that there is, after all, at least a slight distinction between "freedom" and "license."

"We feel we owe it to the loyal men and women outside of these walls who still believe in freedom of speech, assemblage and the press, to remain steadfast and uphold these ideals even at the cost of continued incarceration," said the martyred ones in their "open letter" to President Harding. "We can not do otherwise than refuse to recant. We must continue to refuse to beg for a pardon which in common justice ought to have been accorded to us long ago. . . ."

"Because of Mr. Daugherty's action in giving out false information about our cases (any and all information given out by the Attorney General being labeled as "false" by the amnesty campaigners) we have little confidence in his motives or of those in the Department which he heads. Frankly, we are fearful that applications for clemency would give the Attorney General an opportunity to make a gesture of fairness, by releasing some of us and holding the rest to serve out the savage sentences imposed by the courts."

"It is pretty generally known that to intelligent wage-workers and to students of social science that the Industrial Workers of the World is a labor union, and not a mere anti-war nor anti-militaristic organization. Its avowed object is to create among the disinherited workers a spirit of solidarity similar to that enjoyed by the employing class, which at present owns and controls practically all of the earth and the machinery of production.

"The purpose of this solidarity, as stated in the preamble of the I.W.W., is 'to enable the workers to carry on the everyday struggle with the employing class and to carry on production when capitalism is overthrown, . . . We believed in 1917, and we believe now, that the present social and economic order is wasteful, planless, chaotic and criminal. We are frankly dissatisfied with this arrangement of things, which we call capitalism. We seek to replace it with a well-ordered and scientifically managed system in which the actual producers will own, democratically control and have access to the earth and machinery of production of goods for the benefit of the many instead of the enrichment of the few."

Continuing, the prisoners held themselves up as "martyrs" to the "White Terror," a name given by the Russian bolsheviki to all forms of opposition to the "Red Terror" which they imposed upon Russia and now seek to impose upon the whole world; and concluding, they declined in any way to repent or to recant their adherence to and continued participation in the so-called "working class revolution" for the overthrow of capitalist society and of existing government in the United States.

During all this period, during a period of actual crises far more potentially perilous to the stability of the American republic than the mass of patriotic citizens of these United States have so far been brought to realize, the bulwark of orderly government was, as is always the case when the country is presumably upon a peacetime footing, the Federal Department of Justice. When the Federal Department of Justice does not or can not function efficiently, with the interests of its client, the government, foremost in the mind of its chief officer, the country is in peril. If the importance of the Department of Justice to national stability ever was demonstrated, it was in the year 1922, the history of which it is the purpose of the writer to review in some detail. But before that, let us turn back a bit, once more, and have another look at 1921 and some political events of that year that are significant in their relationship to history that unfolded afterward.