Peter reported to McGivney what was planned, and McGivney promised
that the police would be on hand. Peter warned him to be careful and
have the police be gentle; at which McGivney grinned, and answered
that he would see to that.
It was all very simple, and took less than ten minutes of time. The
truck drew up on Main Street, and a young orator stepped forward and
announced to his fellow citizens that the time had come for the
workers to make known their true feelings about the draft. Never
would free Americans permit themselves to be herded into armies and
shipped over seas and be slaughtered for the benefit of
international bankers. Thus far the orator had got, when a policeman
stepped forward and ordered him to shut up. When he refused, the
policeman tapped on the sidewalk with his stick, and a squad of
eight or ten came round the corner, and the orator was informed that
he was under arrest. Another orator stepped forward and took up the
harangue, and when he also had been put under arrest, another, and
another, until the whole six of them, including Peter, were in hand.
The crowd had had no time to work up any interest one way or the
other, A patrol-wagon was waiting, and the orators were bundled in
and driven to the station-house, and next morning they were haled
before a magistrate and sentenced each to fifteen days. As they had
been expecting to get six months, they were a happy bunch of “left
wingers.”
And they were still happier when they saw how they were to be
treated in jail. Ordinarily it was the custom of the police to
inflict all possible pain and humiliation upon the Reds. They would
put them in the revolving tank, a huge steel structure of many cells
which was turned round and round by a crank. In order to get into
any cell, the whole tank had to be turned until that particular cell
was opposite the entrance, which meant that everybody in the tank
got a free ride, accompanied by endless groaning and scraping of
rusty machinery; also it meant that nobody got any consecutive
sleep. The tank was dark, too dark to read, even if they had had
books or papers. There was nothing to do save to smoke cigarettes
and shoot craps, and listen to the smutty stories of the criminals,
and plot revenge against society when they got out again. But up in
the new wing of the jail were some cells which were clean and bright
and airy, being only three or four feet from a row of windows. In
these cells they generally put the higher class of criminals--women
who had cut the throats of their sweethearts, and burglars who had
got I away with the swag, and bankers who had plundered whole
communities. But now, to the great surprise of five out of the six
anti-militarists, the entire party was put in one of these big
cells, and allowed the privilege of having reading matter and of
paying for their own food. Under these circumstances martyrdom
became a joke, and the little party settled down to enjoy life. It
never once occurred to them to think of Peter Gudge as the source of
this bounty. They attributed it, as the French say, “to their
beautiful eyes.”
There was Donald Gordon, who was the son of a well-to-do business
man, and had been to college, until he was expelled for taking the
doctrines of Christianity too literally and expounding them too
persistently on the college campus. There was a big, brawny
lumber-jack from the North, Jim Henderson by name, who had been
driven out of the camps for the same reason, and had appalling
stories to tell of the cruelties and hardships of the life of a
logger. There was a Swedish sailor by the name of Gus, who had
visited every port in the world, and a young Jewish cigar-worker who
had never been outside of American City, but had travelled even more
widely in his mind.
The sixth man was the strangest character of all to Peter; a shy,
dreamy fellow with eyes so full of pain and a face so altogether
mournful that it hurt to look at him. Duggan was his name, and he
was known in the movement as the “hobo poet.” He wrote verses,
endless verses about the lives of society’s outcasts; he would get
himself a pencil and paper and sit off in the corner of the cell by
the hour, and the rest of the fellows, respecting his work, would
talk in whispers so as not to disturb him. He wrote all the time
while the others slept, it seemed to Peter. He wrote verses about
the adventures of his fellow-prisoners, and presently he was writing
verses about the jailers, and about other prisoners in this part of
the jail. He would have moods of inspiration, and would make up
topical verses as he went along; then again he would sink back into
his despair, and say that life was hell, and making rhymes about it
was childishness.
There was no part of America that Tom Duggan hadn’t visited, no
tragedy of the life of outcasts that he hadn’t seen. He was so
saturated with it that he couldn’t think of anything else. He would
tell about men who had perished of thirst in the desert, about
miners sealed up for weeks in an exploded mine, about matchmakers
poisoned until their teeth fell out, and their finger nails and even
their eyes. Peter could see no excuse for such morbidness, such
endless harping upon the horrible things of life. It spoiled all his
happiness in the jail--it was worse than little Jennie’s talking
about the war!