So there was the end of high life for Peter Gudge. He moved no more
in the celestial circles of Mount Olympus. He never again saw the
Chinese butler of Mr. Ackerman, nor the French parlor-maid of Mrs.
Godd. He would no more be smiled at by the two hundred and
twenty-four boy angels of the ceiling of the Hotel de Soto lobby.
Peter would eat his meals now seated on a stool in front of a lunch
counter, he would really be the humble proletarian, the “Jimmie
Higgins” of his role. He put behind him bright dreams of an
accumulated competence, and settled down to the hard day’s work of
cultivating the acquaintance of agitators, visiting their homes and
watching their activities, getting samples of the literature they
were circulating, stealing their letters and address-books and
note-books, and taking all these to Room 427 of the American House.
These were busy times just now. In spite of the whippings and the
lynchings and the jailings--or perhaps because of these very
things--the radical movement was seething. The I. W. Ws. had
reorganized secretly, and were accumulating a defense fund for their
prisoners; also, the Socialists of all shades of red and pink were
busy, and the labor men had never ceased their agitation over the
Goober case. Just now they were redoubling their activities, because
Mrs. Goober was being tried for her life. Over in Russia a mob of
Anarchists had made a demonstration in front of the American
Legation, because of the mistreatment of a man they called “Guba.”
At any rate, that was the way the news came over the cables, and the
news-distributing associations of the country had been so successful
in keeping the Goober case from becoming known that the editors of
the New York papers really did not know any better, and printed the
name as it came, “Guba!” which of course gave the radicals a fine
chance to laugh at them, and say, how much they cared about labor!
The extreme Reds seemed to have everything their own way in Russia.
Late in the fall they overthrew the Russian government, and took
control of the country, and proceeded to make peace with Germany;
which put the Allies in a frightful predicament, and introduced a
new word into the popular vocabulary, the dread word “Bolshevik.”
After that, if a man suggested municipal ownership of ice-wagons,
all you had to do was to call him a “Bolshevik” and he was done for.
However, the extremists replied to this campaign of abuse by taking
up the name and wearing it as a badge. The Socialist local of
American City adopted amid a storm of applause a resolution to call
itself the “Bolshevik local,” and the “left-wingers” had everything
their own way for a time. The leader in this wing was a man named
Herbert Ashton, editor of the American City “Clarion,” the party’s
paper. A newspaper-man, lean, sallow, and incredibly bitter, Ashton
apparently had spent all his life studying the intrigues of
international capital, and one never heard an argument advanced that
he was not ready with an answer. He saw the war as a struggle
between the old established commercialism of Great Britain, whose
government he described as “a gigantic trading corporation,” and the
newly arisen and more aggressive commercialism of Germany.
Ashton would take the formulas of the war propagandists and treat
them as a terrier treats a rat. So this was a war for democracy! The
bankers of Paris had for the last twenty years been subsidizing the
Russian Tsars, who had shipped a hundred thousand exiles to Siberia
to make the world safe for democracy! The British Empire also had
gone to war for democracy--first in Ireland, then in India and
Egypt, then in the Whitechapel slums! No, said Ashton, the workers
were not to be fooled with such bunk. Wall Street had loaned some
billions of dollars to the Allied bankers, and now the American
people were asked to shed their blood to make the world safe for
those loans!
Peter had been urging McGivney to put an end to this sort of
agitation, and now the rat-faced man told him that the time for
action had come. There was to be a big mass meeting to celebrate the
Bolshevik revolution, and McGivney warned Peter to keep out of sight
at that meeting, because there might be some clubbing. Peter left
off his red badge, and the button with the clasped hands and went up
into the gallery and lost himself in the crowd. He saw a great many
“bulls” whom he knew scattered thru the audience, and also he saw
the Chief of Police and the head of the city’s detective bureau.
When Herbert Ashton was half way thru his tirade, the Chief strode
up to the platform and ordered him under arrest, and a score of
policemen put themselves between the prisoner and the howling
audience.
Altogether they arrested seven people; and next morning, when they
saw how much enthusiasm their action had awakened in the newspapers,
they decided to go farther yet. A dozen of Guffey’s men, with
another dozen from the District Attorney’s office, raided the office
of Ashton’s paper, the “Clarion,” kicked the editorial staff
downstairs or threw them out of the windows, and proceeded to smash
the typewriters and the printing presses, and to carry off the
subscription lists and burn a ton or two of “literature” in the back
yard. Also they raided the headquarters of the “Bolshevik local,”
and placed the seven members of the executive committee under
arrest, and the judge fixed the bail of each of them at twenty-five
thousand dollars, and every day for a week or two the American City
“Times” would send a man around to Guffey’s office, and Guffey would
furnish him with a mass of material which Peter had prepared,
showing that the Socialist program was one of terrorism and murder.
Almost every day now Peter rendered some such service to his
country. He discovered where the I. W. W. had hidden a printing
press with which they were getting out circulars and leaflets, and
this place was raided, and the press confiscated, and half a dozen
more agitators thrown into jail. These men declared a hunger strike,
and tried to starve themselves to death as a protest against the
beatings they got; and then some hysterical women met in the home of
Ada Ruth, and drew up a circular of protest, and Peter kept track of
the mailing of this circular, and all the copies were confiscated in
the post-office, and so one more conspiracy was foiled. They now had
several men at work in the post-office, secretly opening the mail of
the agitators; and every now and then they would issue an order
forbidding mail to be delivered to persons whose ideas were not
sound.
Also the post-office department cancelled the second class mailing
privileges of the “Clarion,” and later it barred the paper from the
mails entirely. A couple of “comrades” with automobiles then took up
the work of delivering the paper in the nearby towns; so Peter was
sent to get acquainted with these fellows, and in the night time
some of Guffey’s men entered the garage, and fixed one of the cars
so that its steering gear went wrong and very nearly broke the
driver’s neck. So yet another conspiracy was foiled!