LABOR
David Lamar--Labor's National Peace Council--The embargo
conference--The attempted longshoremen's strike--Dr. Dumba's
recall.
Labor produced munitions. The hands of labor could be frightened
away from work by explosions, their handiwork could be bombed on the
railways, the wharves, the lighters, and the ships, but a surer method
than either of those was the perversion of the hearts of labor. So
thought Count von Bernstorff and Dr. Albert, who dealt in men. So
thought Berlin--the General Staff sent this message to America:
"January 26--For Military Attaché. You can obtain particulars as
to persons suitable for carrying on sabotage in the United States
and Canada from the following persons: (1) Joseph McGarrity,
Philadelphia; (2) John P. Keating, Michigan Avenue, Chicago; (3)
Jeremiah O'Leary, 16 Park Row, New York.
"One and two are absolutely reliable and discreet. Three is
reliable, but not always discreet. These persons were indicated by
Sir Roger Casement. In the United States sabotage can be carried
out on every kind of factory for supplying munitions of war."
(Signed) "REPRESENTATIVE OF GENERAL STAFF."[3]
So too thought von Rintelen, who hired men--usually the wrong ones.
Full of his project, he cast about for an intermediary. No sly chemist
or muscular wharf-rat would do for this delicate task of anesthetizing
men with the gas of German propaganda while it tied their hands and
amputated their centres of right and wrong; the candidate must be a man
of affairs, intimate with the chiefs of labor, skillful in execution,
and the abler the better. Von Rintelen would pay handsomely for the
right man. Whereupon David Lamar, the "Wolf of Wall Street," appeared
on the scene and applied for the job--an entrance auspicious for the
United States, for the newcomer's philosophy (if one could judge from
his previous career) was "Me First."
In an attempt to defraud J. P. Morgan & Co., and the United States
Steel Corporation Lamar had once impersonated Representative A.
Mitchell Palmer in certain telephone interviews. (Palmer became
custodian of alien property after the United States entered the war.)
He was convicted and sentenced to two years' imprisonment in Atlanta
Penitentiary. He appealed the case, and while he was out on bail
pending the appeal, he fell in with Rintelen.
In April, 1915, a New Yorker who dealt in publicity was introduced to
Rintelen, or "Hansen," by Dr. Schimmel. Rintelen offered the publicity
man $25,000 to conduct a campaign of propaganda for more friendly
relations with Germany, to offset the commercial power Great Britain
bade fair to have at the end of the war, and assured him that he would
go to any extreme to prevent shipments of munitions to the Allies. The
war, he said, would be decided not in Europe but in America. There must
be strikes in the munitions factories.
When the publicity man heard also that Rintelen was trying to stir up
trouble with Mexico, he wrote on May 13 to Joseph Tumulty, President
Wilson's secretary, informing him of the German's intentions. He was
referred to the Department of Justice, and at their dictation continued
in contact with Rintelen. Shortly thereafter David Lamar and his friend
Henry Martin took a trip to Minneapolis, where they met Congressman
Frank Buchanan and Ex-Congressman Robert Fowler, both of Illinois. Out
of that conference grew a plan for forming a labor organization the
object of which was ostensibly peace, and actually an embargo upon the
shipment of munitions abroad, but whether Buchanan and Fowler knew of
von Rintelen's connection with the scheme remains to be proved. It can
be readily seen that such a labor organization, if it had actually
represented organized labor, could have forced such a stoppage, either
by its collective potential voting power and influence, or by fostering
a nation-wide strike of munitions workers.
The nucleus formed in Chicago, about one William F. Kramer. "Buchanan
and Fowler came to me in June here in Chicago," said Kramer, "and told
me about their plan to form a council. We opened headquarters, and we
engaged two organizers, James Short and J. J. Cundiff, who got $50
a week apiece, a secretary, L. P. Straube, who got $50 a week, and
a stenographer. I was a vice-president, but I didn't get anything.
We were known then as Labor's Peace Council of Chicago, and we were
supposed to be in it because of our convictions against the shipment of
munitions. And I'll say that organized labor was made the goat."
Buchanan had no idea of restricting the council to one city. He called
upon Samuel Gompers, head of the American Federation of Labor, at
Atlantic City on June 9 and tried to induce him to back a movement
in Washington for an embargo. Gompers refused flatly and completely
to have anything to do with the plan, especially when Buchanan made
known his associates. Those associates were busy meanwhile lobbying
in Congress, representing themselves as friends of organized labor,
and pressing the embargo question. About a week later Congressman
Buchanan inflated the Chicago organization into Labor's National Peace
Council, with headquarters at Washington, to recommend the convocation
of a special session of Congress at once to "promote universal peace,"
which meant simply "to promote the introduction and enactment of an
embargo." Its members met frequently, and annoyed the President and
other important men,--even Andrew Carnegie,--with their importunings
for attention, and got exactly what they wanted--wide publicity.
About July 10 Andrew D. Meloy, whose office in New York Rintelen was
sharing at the time, noticed that his German associate began to keep a
clipping-file of news of the Council. Meloy learned of the project, and
assured Rintelen that he was foolhardy to attempt, by bribery of labor
officials, to divert common labor from earning high wages. To which
Rintelen replied brusquely: "Thanks. You come into this business about
11:45 o'clock."
Rintelen sent a telegram to Lamar in Chicago on July 16, the text of
which follows:
"E. Ruskay, Room 700 B, Sherman Hotel, Chicago.
"Party who receives $12,500 monthly from competitors is now
interfering with business in hand. Do you know of any way and
means to check him? Wire.
"F. BROWN."
"Ruskay" was Lamar. Later in the day the German sent this message:
"Twelve thousand five hundred now at capitol. Conference here
today plans to guarantee outsiders and settlement possible within
few days. New issue urgently needed. Notify B."
The "party" mentioned in the first despatch was the code designation
for Gompers, and he was indicated in the second message as "Twelve
thousand five hundred." "B" was Buchanan, upon whose connection with
labor Rintelen told Meloy the success of the plan rested. Lamar hurried
to New York, arriving July 19, and met Rintelen in a limousine at the
100th Street entrance to Central Park; on the ride which followed the
"Wolf" told Rintelen that a strike then going on among the munitions
workers at Bridgeport was "only a beginning of his efforts," and that
within thirty days the industry would be paralyzed throughout the
country. Meloy advanced the information that Gompers had just gone to
Bridgeport to stop the strike, to which Lamar replied:
"Buchanan will settle Gompers within twenty-four hours!"
The clippings kept coming in as testimony to the vigorous work being
done by the organization's press bureau: the Council attacked the
Federal Reserve Banks as "munitions trusts," it cited on July 8 nine
ships lying in port awaiting munitions cargoes, and attacked Dudley
Field Malone, then Collector of the Port of New York, for permitting
such ships to clear; it claimed to represent a million labor votes,
and four million and a half farmers; it listened eagerly to an address
by Hannis Taylor, a disciple of the late warmhearted Secretary of
State, Mr. Bryan, in which Taylor criticized President Wilson and
was roundly cheered by the German-American element in the audience.
Semi-occasionally during the midsummer heat Charles Oberwager, attorney
for the Council (whose firm had received handsome fees from von Papen),
rose to deny any German connection with the organization. The Council
assailed Secretary Lansing as a man "whose radicalism was liable to
plunge this nation into war." The Council assailed, in fact, any
project which furthered the interests of the Allies. Rintelen began to
have his doubts of the effectiveness of Lamar's work. The bank account
in the Trans-Atlantic Trust Company had dwindled from $800,000 to
$40,000, and Rintelen admitted that his transactions with Lamar cost
him several hundred thousand dollars. Labor's National Peace Conference
died quietly, Lamar flitted away to a country estate at Pittsfield,
Mass., and Rintelen started across the Atlantic Ocean.
August wore on. The Council was getting ready for a second gaseous
session, when Milton Snelling, a representative of the Washington
Central Labor Union, who had been elected a first vice-president of the
Council, withdrew from its membership, because he "discovered persons
participating in the meetings who have been hanging on the fringe of
the labor movement for their own personal aggrandizement, men who have
been discarded ... others never having been members of any organization
of labor," and because Jacob C. Taylor, the cigar-making delegate from
East Orange, N. J., said, in answer to a query as to the Council's
purpose: "We want to stop the export of munitions to the Allies. You
see Germany can make all the munitions she wants." Then--and it may
be coincidence--about one week later the _New York World_ began its
publication of certain of the papers found in the brief case which Dr.
Heinrich Albert, of the German Embassy, allowed to escape him on a New
York elevated train; on August 19 Buchanan resigned the Council, and
Taylor was elected to succeed him.
Indictments were returned against Rintelen, as well as against Lamar,
Martin, Buchanan and their associates, on December 28, 1915. Buchanan
at once exploded with a retaliatory demand for the impeachment of
United States District Attorney Marshall, upon which Congress dared
not take action. Marshall gracefully retired from the trial in May,
1916, lest he prejudice the Government's case, and Lamar, Martin and
Rintelen were convicted of infraction of the Sherman Anti-Trust Law and
sentenced to one year each in a New Jersey prison. Thus ended Labor's
National Peace Council, thanks to David Lamar.
The project for an embargo looked attractive to the Embassy,
however--so attractive that while the Council was at the height of its
activity, Baron Kurt von Reiswitz wrote on July 22, 1915, from Chicago
to Dr. Albert:
"Everything else concerning the proposed embargo conference you
will find in the enclosed copy of the report to the Ambassador. A
change has, however, come up, as the mass meeting will have to be
postponed on account of there being insufficient time for the necessary
preparations. It will probably be held there in about two weeks.
"Among others the following have agreed to coöperate: Senator
Hitchcock, Congressman Buchanan, William Bayard Hale of New York and
the well known pulpit orator, Dr. Aked (born an Englishman), from San
Francisco.
"Hitchcock seemed to be very strong for the plan. He told our
representative at a conference in Omaha: 'If this matter is organized
in the right way you will sweep the United States.'
"For your confidential information I would further inform you that the
leadership of the movement thus far lies in the hands of two gentlemen
(one in Detroit and one in Chicago) who are firmly resolved to work
toward the end that the German community, which, of course, will be
with us without further urging, shall above all things remain in the
background, and that the movement, to all outward appearances, shall
have a purely American character. I have known both the gentlemen very
well for a long time and know that personal interest does not count
with them; the results will bring their own reward.
"For the purposes of the inner organization, to which we attribute
particular importance, we have assured ourselves of the coöperation of
the local Democratic boss, Roger C. Sullivan, as also Messrs. Sparman,
Lewis and McDonald, the latter of the _Chicago American_. Sullivan was
formerly leader of the Wilson campaign and is a deadly enemy of Wilson,
as the latter did not keep his word to make him a Senator; therefore,
principally, the sympathy of our cause."
One is inclined to wonder where Rintelen's vast credits went, during
his short visits in 1915. Lamar took a goodly sum, as we have seen;
the negotiations for the purchase of the Krag rifles cost him no small
amount; his ship bomb activities required a considerable payroll.
But as further evidence of the high cost of causing trouble, we must
consider briefly the profligate methods he employed in other attempts
to inflame and seduce labor.
A walkout by the longshoremen of the Atlantic coast would cripple the
supply of munitions to Europe, and might be successful enough to cause
a shell famine in France of which the Central Powers could readily
take advantage. There were 23,000 dock-workers in American ports; they
must be guaranteed a certain wage for five weeks of strike; the cost
in wages alone would therefore amount to about $1,635,000, besides
service fees to intermediaries. He had the money, and the first step
was taken in the otherwise placid city of Boston.
On May 7, 1915, the day the _Lusitania_ sank, William P. Dempsey, the
secretary-treasurer of the Atlantic Coast International Longshoremen's
Union, met Dennis Driscoll, a Boston labor leader and former city
office-holder, at the old Quincy House in Hanover Street. Driscoll
said that Matthew Cummings, a wealthy Boston grocer, had outlined to
him the plan for the strike, and said he was acting for parties who
were willing to pay a million dollars. Dempsey maintained his poise
when the startling information was recited, but he was frightened,
and at the conclusion of the interview he telegraphed at once to T.
V. O'Connor, the president of the union, requesting an interview. The
two union men met in Albany and discussed the affair pro and con,
arriving at the conclusion that they had best reveal the plot to the
Government. O'Connor accordingly told of the negotiations to Secretary
Wilson of the Department of Labor, and then in connivance with the
Secret Service, went on dealing with the grocer, constantly pressing
him for the identity of the principals who, he said, were prepared
to supply all the necessary money. He implicated George Sylvestor
Viereck, the editor of a subsidized German propaganda-weekly called
_The Fatherland_, and said that he had been introduced to him by Edmund
von Mach. Neither of those men figured except as intermediaries, and
Cummings suggested that Dr. Bernhard Dernburg, a loyal propagandist
then in the United States, was the director of the enterprises. Owing
to the high pitch of public feeling over the _Lusitania_, Cummings
could not receive permission from his superiors to go ahead with
O'Connor, but he did his best to keep O'Connor interested. The latter,
fearing that German agents were at work on the Pacific coast, took a
trip to the far West, and during his absence Cummings telegraphed him
twice. There the affair ended, for O'Connor ignored the message, and
on July 14 returned to New York to find that a German attempt to force
a walkout on the New York waterfront had failed, and that Cummings had
stopped playing with fire and had gone back to his grocery in Boston.
When the Government turned the story over to a newspaper to publish
on September 13, the time was not ripe to fix the responsibility for
the attempt. Dr. Dernburg was a popular scapegoat at the time, and
the implication of his authority in the attempt was allowed to stand.
Rintelen was in Donington Hall, a prison camp in England, and it was
months thereafter before the United States and British Secret Services
had fully compared notes on him. By that time there were other charges
lying against him which promised better cases than an abortive attempt
to promote a strike 'longshore.
We have witnessed the cumulative influence of newspaper reports in
surrounding Labor's National Peace Council with an almost genuine
atmosphere of national interest; we have been able to picture the
hostility which the publication of the longshoremen's strike story
aroused in legitimately organized labor; and although as a typical
instance of newspaper influence we should postpone the following
incident, it is a temptation too great to resist. It is the story of
The Story That Cost an Ambassador, and if any further plea for its
introduction be needed, let it be that it is another subtle attempt
upon labor in the summer of 1915.
[Illustration: _Copyright, International Film Service_
Dr. Constantin Dumba, Austrian ambassador to the United States,
recalled after the disclosures of the correspondence captured on the
war correspondent, Archibald]
James F. J. Archibald, an American correspondent who had seen most of
the wars of recent years, and who wanted to see more, set sail from New
York on August 21, 1915, for Amsterdam, with his wife, his campaign
clothes, and a portfolio. At Falmouth, England, the usual search party
came aboard, and inspected the papers in the portfolio. Archibald
proved to be an unofficial despatch-bearer, upon whom his German and
Austrian acquaintances in the United States placed great reliance--such
men as Papen, Bernstorff, and Dr. Constantine Dumba sent reports to
their governments in his care.
On September 5 the _New York World_ burst forth with the text of one
of the letters--one from Dr. Dumba, the Austro-Hungarian ambassador at
Washington, to his chief in the foreign office at Vienna, Baron Burian.
It is worth reproducing here intact:
"New York, August 20."
"Your Excellency:
"Yesterday evening Consul-General von Nuber received the enclosed
aide memoire from the chief editor of the local influential paper
_Szabadsag_, after a previous conversation with me in pursuance
of his verbal proposals to arrange for strikes at Bethlehem in
Schwab's steel and munitions factory and also in the middle West.
"Archibald, who is well known to your Excellency, leaves today
at 12 o'clock on board the _Rotterdam_ for Berlin and Vienna. I
take this rare and safe opportunity of warmly recommending these
proposals to your Excellency's favorable consideration. It is my
impression that we can disorganize and hold up for months, if
not entirely prevent, the manufacture of munitions in Bethlehem
and the middle West, which, in the opinion of the German
military attaché, is of great importance and amply outweighs the
comparatively small expenditure of money involved.
"But even if strikes do not occur it is probable that we should
extort under pressure more favorable conditions of labor for our
poor downtrodden fellow countrymen in Bethlehem. These white
slaves are now working twelve hours a day, seven days a week. All
weak persons succumb and become consumptive. So far as German
workmen are found among the skilled hands means of leaving will be
provided immediately for them.
"Besides this, a private German registry office has been
established which provides employment for persons who voluntarily
have given up their places. It already is working well. We shall
also join in and the widest support is assured us.
"I beg your Excellency to be so good as to inform me with
reference to this letter by wireless. Reply whether you agree. I
remain, with great haste and respect,
"DUMBA."
The aide memoire, written by the editor of a Hungarian weekly,
proposed to create unrest by a campaign in foreign language newspapers
circulated free to labor, muck-raking labor conditions in Bethlehem,
Youngstown, Cleveland, Pittsburg, and Bridgeport, where there were
great numbers of foreign workmen, Hungarians, Austrians, and Germans.
This was to be supplemented by a "horror novel" similar to the bloody
effort of Upton Sinclair to describe the Chicago stockyards. Special
agents of unrest, roll-turners, steel workers, soapbox orators,
picnic organizers, were all to be insinuated into the plants to
stir up the workmen. This editor had stirred them up a few weeks
before at Bridgeport--the strike which Lamar claimed as his own
accomplishment--and he presented to Baron Burian a really comprehensive
plan for creating unrest through his well-subsidized foreign-language
press. And in passing it on, Dr. Dumba stood sponsor for it.
The British government saw in the discovery of the letter and the cool
impudence of it, a rare chance for propaganda in America. So, as has
been said, the _World_ published the story, and at once the wrath of
the truly American people justified President Wilson in doing what he
and Secretary Lansing had already determined to do--to send Dr. Dumba
home. Perhaps Dumba's reference to the "self-willed temperament of the
President" in another note found on Archibald had something to do with
the haste with which the Ambassador's recall was demanded; it followed
on the heels of the publication of the letter:
"By reason of the admitted purpose and intent of Mr. Dumba to
conspire to cripple legitimate industries of the United States
and to interrupt their legitimate trade, and by reason of
the flagrant violation of diplomatic propriety in employing
an American citizen protected by an American passport as a
secret bearer of official despatches through the lines of the
enemy of Austria-Hungary, the President directs us to inform
your Excellency that Mr. Dumba is no longer acceptable to the
Government of the United States as the Ambassador of his Imperial
Majesty at Washington."
So went Dumba.
After his departure Baron Zwiedinek, his chargé d'affaires, and
Consul von Nuber advertised widely in Hungarian newspapers calling on
Austrians and Hungarians at work in munitions plants to leave. If they
wrote the Embassy on the subject, the reply they received read:
"It is demanded that patriotism, no less than fear of punishment,
should cause every one to quit his work immediately."
But neither threats, nor walking delegates, nor German spies could
check the output of shells and guns. An attempt made by Dr. Albert
to buy, for $50,000, a strike in Detroit motor factories failed. The
factories were making money as they had never made money before,
and labor was buying luxuries. To the American munitions-worker a
comfortable supply of money meant much more than the shrill bleat of
the Central Powers. And what was more, he was not entirely satisfied
that the right was all on Germany's side. (Our space does not
permit, nor is definite information at present available, to discuss
the anarchist, socialist, and I. W. W. elements of labor, and their
relations to Germany. These three factors, especially the last named,
effected in the years 1914-1918 a sufficient amount of industrial
unrest to qualify them as allies, if not actual servants, of the
Kaiser. Whether they were employed by Germany will be brought out in a
trial which began in Chicago in April, 1918.)
FOOTNOTE:
[3] McGarrity, Keating, and O'Leary, upon the publication of this
despatch, uttered vigorous denials of any connection with or knowledge
of the despatch or the affairs mentioned.