IN WHICH I GET ARRESTED
The purpose of the previous chapter was to explain to you the series of
events whereby it came about that Upton Sinclair, muckraker and enemy of
society, was in the office of the president of the Merchants’ and
Manufacturers’ Association of Los Angeles, at ten o’clock on the morning
of Monday, May 7th, 1923.
My brother-in-law, Hunter Kimbrough, and myself had come without
appointment; at the same time two gentlemen came in who had an
appointment—so a polite clerk explained. I had not presented my card,
and no one there knew either Kimbrough or myself; we were invited to sit
down, and did so, while the other gentlemen were escorted into the inner
office. We made no effort to listen to what went on, but we had to hear
it, because the door of the inner office was left ajar, and the talk was
carried on in tones which caused the clerks in the outer office to drop
their work and look at one another and grin.
“Who is that?” asked the young lady stenographer.
“That’s Mr. Hammond,” was the answer of the chief clerk. “He owns a
couple of hundred thousand acres of timber land, and he’s got about
twenty ships tied up at the harbor.”
“Oh,” said the young lady stenographer, “then he’s got a right to pound
on the table.”
He exercised his right, and pounded, and cursed so freely that the young
lady was moved to get up and close the office door; but still we heard
the uproar. The substance of it was that the San Pedro strike, which had
been on for about two weeks, must be smashed without another day’s
delay. Mr. Rice argued and expostulated; they were doing their best.
Finally he promised there would be “a meeting” that afternoon, and
arrangements would be made. That you may understand clearly, I explain
that Mr. Andrew B. Hammond, president of the Hammond Lumber Company, is
one of the big “open shop” despots of San Francisco, a bigger man even
than Mr. Rice; and he had come down on the night train to lay down the
law to the timid crowd at Los Angeles and insist that his ships be
moved. Wishing to make sure there was no mistake in identity, I engaged
the head clerk in conversation, asking him how long he thought “those
irate ship-owners” would stay in there. He rose to the bait and
discussed the “irate ship-owners,” assuring me that they would not need
to stay much longer; the Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Association was
not going to have any trouble in opening up the harbor. Subsequently, as
part of the preparing of this manuscript, I wrote to Mr. Hammond, asking
if he cared to deny that he was in Mr. Rice’s office at the hour
specified. He did not reply.
Come now to San Pedro, where three thousand men are fighting to get
their babies a chance to grow up into full-sized human beings. They have
won their strike, they have won it strictly under the law; they have
kept order rigidly—having even smashed the boot-leggers, to the great
dismay of the police! Here again I do not have to ask you to take my
word for it: Police Captain Plummer, in command at the harbor, stated to
my brother-in-law, Hunter Kimbrough, in the presence of several
witnesses, that he had no fault to find with the I. W. W., they were
fine fellows, and had kept order through the strike. Also he stated in
the presence of witnesses: “I smashed that strike.” Before an
investigating committee of the clergymen of Los Angeles he stated: “Yes,
I said that, and I’ll say it again.” Officer Wyckoff—who arrested
us—stated to Hunter Kimbrough, in the presence of two ladies, whose
signed statements I have, that “Black Jack” Jerome, the strike-breaker,
had brought in hundreds of gunmen, heavily armed; Captain Plummer had
disarmed them, but someone saw to it that they received another supply
of arms.
Mr. Hammond and his Shipyard Owners’ Association and his horde of gunmen
having failed to provoke violence, or to move the ships, Mr. Rice must
act; and how is he to act? For ten or twenty years he and his Black Hand
have been preparing for precisely such an emergency; they have been
buying both political machines, and controlling the nominations of all
candidates, so that now they have their own governor, their own
legislators, their own mayor, their own city council, their own chief of
police, and their own judges. They control the governmental machine from
top to bottom; and they give the orders, let this strike be smashed.
The man who put through the job is Asa Keyes, then deputy district
attorney, since promoted to be district attorney as reward for his
efficiency. “The mayor is not handling this situation,” said Chief of
Police Oaks to me. “The man we’re getting our orders from is Asa Keyes,
and if you want to speak at the harbor, see him.” Keyes is the man who
has been enforcing the “suspicion of criminal syndicalism” law; he pays
an army of secret agents and provocateurs, and a year or two ago he
stated to two different informants of mine: “I have spent between four
and five thousand dollars, trying to ‘get’ Kate Crane Gartz and Upton
Sinclair. If ever I become chief, I will spend ten times that amount to
‘get’ them.”
Mr. Rice, Mr. Keyes, Chief Oaks, and Captain Plummer attended the
“meeting” which Mr. Rice promised to Mr. Hammond. “I have attended
several conferences of the Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Association,”
said the naive Captain Plummer to Hunter Kimbrough, in the presence of
witnesses. “Mr. Rice was present and Mr. Marco Hellman, and others.”
Marco Hellman, the biggest banker of Los Angeles, we shall hear of again
before long.
In the early days of the strike a Presbyterian clergyman and Harvard
graduate was arrested while addressing the strikers, the charge being
“blocking traffic.” Police Magistrate Sheldon, in sentencing him to
jail, said: “Why don’t you hire a hall, or speak upon private property?
Then you will not be molested.” The strikers thought this was good
advice; they found a piece of vacant land, whose lessor was willing for
it to be used for mass meetings, and on this land, known as “Liberty
Hill,” the strikers held numerous meetings. At one of these meetings a
group of them raised the flags of fifteen nations, with the American
flag at the top, and the flag of Russia included. There were Russians
among the strikers, and presumably they thought their country had a
right to be represented.
This incident took place five days after the meeting between Messrs.
Rice and Hammond, and it afforded the pretext for which the police were
waiting. “You’ve lost your constitutional rights now!” shouted Captain
Plummer, and he arrested twenty-eight men for the crime of raising the
red flag. Again and again, in negotiations with the police officials,
and with Mayor George E. Cryer, we were told that this act of raising
the red flag afforded complete justification for the abrogation of all
civil liberties at the harbor. It seems therefore worth noting what
happened some three weeks later, when these men were arraigned in court
upon the charge. Police Magistrate Crawford declared that in his opinion
everyone who displayed a red flag should be sent to prison, but
unfortunately the Supreme Court of California had declared the red flag
ordinance of the city of Los Angeles unconstitutional!
In the three days that followed, the police arrested a total of six
hundred men; they arrested hundreds for attempting to speak on Liberty
Hill; they arrested hundreds for singing and cheering on the street. Any
slightest sign of sympathy with the strike or with other arrested men
was enough to cause a man to be tapped on the shoulder by the police and
told to report at the police station. Crowds of men were surrounded on
the street, loaded into trucks, carted off to the police station, and
packed away in cells. George Chalmers Richmond, Episcopal clergyman from
Philadelphia, was arrested when walking along the street, having in mind
the criminal intention of addressing the strikers when he reached the
place of meeting. A restaurant proprietor was dragged out from behind
his counter and thrown into jail, upon the charge of helping to prolong
the strike—that is, he had fed the strikers and their children. In
describing these incidents, the Los Angeles “Times” stated that the
police announced their intention “to arrest all idle men at the harbor.”
The city of Los Angeles boasts of being the fastest growing city in the
world, but its jails have not grown at all in the last thirty years. To
describe them as death-traps would not be using reckless language, but
merely quoting from reports of one public body after another which has
investigated and denounced them. The jails were already crowded; and
here were six hundred more men suddenly thrust into them! Some of the
“tanks,” built to hold twenty or thirty men, were required to hold a
hundred, and it was literally impossible for all the men to sit down at
once. All the jails were swarming with vermin, there was no bedding
obtainable, and the food was atrocious. These things not being enough,
wanton cruelty and torture was added. In one of the “tanks,” because the
men persisted in singing, the jailers sealed up all the ventilation and
turned on the steam heat for two hours. Ninety-five men were in this
hole, and many of them swooned. Other men were chained up by the thighs,
so that they could not quite sit down. We have the affidavits of several
men to the fact that Chief of Police Oaks personally reviled the
prisoners, calling them liars and degenerates; and when one of the men
spoke up and said this was not true, Oaks called him out from the
“tank,” and in the presence of many witnesses struck him in the face and
knocked him down again and again, pounding him until the chief was
exhausted.
Such was the situation on May 15th. The “Times” for that morning
announced that the city council had appropriated money to build a
stockade, in which to hold the strike prisoners, and all the remaining
strikers at the harbor were to be thrown into this pen. I was about to
begin the writing of this book, but I found it impossible to keep my
peace of mind in a “bull-pen” civilization, and decided to do what I
could to remind the authorities of Southern California that there is
still supposed to be a Constitution in this country.
With seven friends I went to interview the mayor that afternoon. The
interview lasted an hour, and developed curious notions upon the part of
the chief executive of a large city concerning the meaning of civil
rights. According to Mayor Cryer, all the arrests which had been made
night after night on Liberty Hill, and the complete abrogation of the
rights of freedom of speech and of assemblage, were justified by the
fact that somebody unknown had violated the unconstitutional ordinance
of the city of Los Angeles against the displaying of a red flag. The
wholesale arrests of hundreds of men upon the street day after day were
justified by the fact that on one occasion some rowdy unknown had
shouted: “Here comes Captain Plummer, that fat prostitute.” I said: “Mr.
Mayor, according to your way of reasoning, if some one were to upset a
peanut stand on Broadway and steal the peanuts, you would feel justified
in arresting everybody in sight and closing the thoroughfare to traffic
for a month.”
Our mayor is a politician, and cautious. He would not say that it was
the duty of the police to smash the harbor strike, neither would he say
that a group of American citizens had the right to proceed to Liberty
Hill and there read the Constitution of their country and explain to all
who might care to hear them the meaning of the Bill of Rights. His
proposition was that we should go to the harbor and ask permission of
Captain Plummer, and if Plummer refused, the mayor would “review” his
decision. To this we answered that the essence of the situation was
time; the strikers were being robbed of their rights every hour, and
civil liberties were not subject to review by either a police captain or
a mayor. The upshot of the hour’s argument was that Mayor Cryer made the
specific promise that he would telephone to Captain Plummer and instruct
him that we were to be “protected in our constitutional rights, and not
molested so long as we did not incite to violence.” Let it be added that
at his next interview the mayor denied that he had made this promise.
Now, I shall not take up space in detailing what happened to our little
group. Suffice it to say, we repaired to the harbor, a dozen ladies and
gentlemen, with two lawyers; and in an interview with Chief of Police
Oaks we were informed that if we attempted to read the Constitution of
the United States on Liberty Hill we would be arrested and jailed
without bail. Four of us, Prince Hopkins, Hugh Hardyman, Hunter
Kimbrough, and the writer, did attempt to read the Constitution. I
personally read Article One of the first amendment, and was then placed
under arrest. Kimbrough started to read the Declaration of Independence.
Hopkins remarked, “We have not come here to incite to violence.”
Hardyman remarked, “This is a most delightful climate.” For these words
they were arrested—all four of us for “suspicion of criminal
syndicalism.”[A] We were held “incommunicado” for eighteen hours, and an
effort was then made to rush us into court a few minutes before closing
time, and have us committed and spirited away again, so that we could be
given the “third degree”; but this plot was balked, owing to the fact
that a confidant of Chief Oaks betrayed it to my wife, and our lawyers
got to the court and demanded and obtained bail. A week later we went
again to the harbor and held our mass meeting, and said to ten or
fifteen thousand people everything that we had to say. Next day the
police turned loose all but twenty-eight of the six hundred men they had
arrested; and some three weeks later a police judge threw out the case
against us four. So ended our little adventure in “criminal
syndicalism.”
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Footnote A:
Extract from a letter written by a student of Washington University,
St. Louis, now visiting in Santa Monica, California: “The St. Louis
papers had only short accounts, which said that Upton Sinclair and
several other I. W. W. had been arrested on a charge of Syndicalism.
And my friends out here tell me that a raid was made when Upton
Sinclair, after having submitted a most innocuous abstract of his
speech to the authorities, exhorted a strikers’ meeting to break
loose, smash all windows in sight, and dump the street-cars off the
tracks. He also attacked the integrity and honor of the chief of
police.”
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