THE EMPIRE OF THE BLACK HAND
Let us now survey the situation in Southern California as I settle down
to the writing of this book. The storm has blown over for the moment.
Twenty-eight of the strikers—the best of their leaders—have been shipped
off to the jute mill for from two to twenty-eight years. The others are
back in the slave-market, bidding against one another for the lives of
themselves and their families. Those who were active in the strike are
black-listed; even though they own homes at the harbor, they cannot find
employment, but must sell out and move on. And meantime, the men who
robbed them are enjoying the “swag.” Mr. Andrew B. Hammond has gone back
to San Francisco, to the comforts of the Bohemian Club, and the Pacific
Union Club, and the Commercial Club, and the San Francisco Golf Club;
while Mr. I. H. Rice continues to run the political and business affairs
of Los Angeles.
Some lovers of fair play have organized a branch of the American Civil
Liberties Union, to teach the people of this community the elementary
idea that the Constitution applies to the poor as well as to the rich.
True to our program of the open forum, we call upon Mr. Rice and
courteously invite him to set forth his ideas of constitutional rights
to one of our audiences. Mr. Rice declines the invitation, and so does
Mr. Harry Haldeman, president of the Better America Federation, and so
does Mr. Marco Hellman, the banker, and So does Captain John D.
Fredericks, congressman-elect of the Merchants’ and Manufacturers’
Association and the Chamber of Commerce—it is reported that they put up
twelve thousand dollars additional salary for him, because so important
a man could not afford to go to Congress otherwise!
Among the “tips” which came to me in the course of the struggle was one
to the effect that Captain Plummer and Chief Oaks were each presented
with a gold watch as a tribute of gratitude from the Merchants’ and
Manufacturers’ Association. At a hearing before the Ministerial Union I
had opportunity to ask Captain Plummer about this matter; he admitted
with evident embarrassment that he had got a gold watch. I asked him if
it was engraved in acknowledgment of his services to the Merchants’ and
Manufacturers’ Association; his answer was that it was engraved “From
the Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Association for services to the
community.” He added, somewhat naively, that he could not imagine how I
had got that information. “No one but Mr. Rice and the jeweler were
supposed to know about that watch!”
With six hundred men packed into the filthy jails of Los Angeles, some
of them with faces bloody from the fists of Chief Oaks, the chief
himself went off to the convention of chiefs of police at Buffalo. He
went in glory, taking the policemen’s and firemen’s band of sixty
pieces; the expenses of this tour being in part paid by the protected
under-world, and in part loaned by Marco Hellman, banker and chief of
the Black Hand. Mr. Hellman went to the station to see the party off,
and on their return he went again to welcome them. Day by day we
followed in our newspapers the progress of this tour; they had royal
receptions in our biggest cities—and also in Lebanon, Missouri, the
village which contributed our great chief of police to the world. The
local newspaper mentioned that Mount Vernon was the birthplace of George
Washington, and Springfield, Illinois, was the birthplace of Abraham
Lincoln!
In the meantime, our Civil Liberties Union was collecting affidavits of
men who had been beaten and starved and tortured in jail. We presented
these affidavits to the mayor, and the mayor referred us to the city
council; we presented them to the city council, and the city council
referred us to the police commission; we presented them to the police
commission, and the police commission referred them to the committee of
the whole. As I said at one of our mass meetings: “It is called the
committee of the hole because it hides and nobody can find it.” We were
told that the charges would be considered when Chief Oaks came back; the
chief came back, and went before the City Club, and in a burst of glory
stated that if anyone had charges against any police official he would
personally take them before the grand jury. Whereupon we made
application to him to present to the grand jury the charge that Chief
Oaks had beaten prisoners in jail—and he did not keep his promise. We
had brought the charges before the Ministerial Union of the city, and
the ministers appointed a committee to investigate; this committee met,
and heard many witnesses, but took no action, and has never met
again.[B]
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Footnote B:
While the rest of this book is being written, Chief Oaks becomes
involved in a factional dispute in the Police Department, and his
enemies publish affidavits by the police officials of a neighboring
town, to the effect that Oaks was arrested a few days ago, while
parked in a lonely road with a young woman and a half-gallon jug of
whiskey. So Oaks is no longer chief, but plain lieutenant of police,
and is telling his friends that he intends to have the inscription cut
from his gold watch and to sell it.
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The ministers were prejudiced against us, because of something they had
read in the “Times”; a statement that the United States Department of
Justice had investigated the American Civil Liberties Union and
ascertained it to be “the defense branch of the I. W. W.”: this on the
authority of “Agent Townsend of the Department of Justice.” We went to
call on the head of the Department of Justice in Los Angeles, and
learned that there was no “Agent Townsend,” nor had the Department
obtained any such information concerning the American Civil Liberties
Union. We then called upon the managing editor of the “Times” and
presented this information. He promised to look further into the matter;
and next morning he published another statement, reiterating the charge,
this time giving a formal signed statement by “Agent Townsend of the
Department of Justice.” The matter was put before the Department of
Justice at Washington, which replied in writing that there was no such
person as “Agent Townsend of the Department of Justice.” A copy of this
was mailed to the “Times,” with an offer to submit the original. But the
“Times” made no reply, and published no retraction. I go into these
minute details, because later on I shall assert that the “Times”
deliberately lied about the school teachers of Los Angeles; and I wish
you to understand that I mean exactly what I say.
The theme of this book is the schools—public schools and private
schools, primary and grammar and high schools; and now I have to carry
out my promise, to show you that this same Black Hand of Southern
California controls our board of education, putting its own
representatives thereon; that it controls our school funds, wasting them
in graft; that it controls our teachers, browbeating them and
underpaying them and denying them their rights as citizens; that it
controls our children, drilling them, suppressing them, putting poison
thoughts into their minds—so that they shall come out perfect little
bigots, prepared to hate and if necessary to tar and feather and lynch
those people who try to apply real Americanism to America, and to
protect the rights of the poor as well as of the rich. In other words,
what the Black Hand wants, and what it has made for itself, is schools
which will turn out a generation of children who will stand for all the
infamies I have just narrated, and will regard them as right and
necessary and patriotic actions, and the men who perpetrate them as
courageous public officials and high-minded patriots.