The Red Conspiracy Part 34

"Let the st.u.r.dy toilers of the Pacific Coast raise the Red standard of revolt."

"All hail to the revolution."

"I enter the prison doors a flaming revolutionist, my head erect, my spirit untamed, and my soul unconquered."

"In Russia and Germany our valiant comrades are leading the proletarian revolution.... They are setting the heroic example for world-wide emulation. Let us, like them, scorn and repudiate the cowardly compromisers within our ranks, challenge and defy the robber-cla.s.s power, and fight it out on that line to victory or death."

This favorite leader of the radicals of America was convicted by jury of violation of the Espionage Law on September 12, 1918, and two days later sentenced to serve ten years in the penitentiary. The case was appealed on the ground that the Espionage Act was an unconst.i.tutional abridgment of the right of free speech. The decision of the United States Supreme Court was handed down on March 10, 1919. In the words of a Socialist work, Trachtenberg's Labor Year Book, 1919-1920, page 102, "The Court held that the law was not contrary to the Const.i.tution and affirmed the sentence imposed upon Debs by the lower court. The decision was unanimous that the nature and intended effect of his speech was to obstruct recruiting and enlistment in the army."

Yet this same Year Book, in its account of "The Emergency Convention of the Socialist Party" at Chicago in August-September, 1919, says, page 409: "The Convention went on record offering the presidential nomination of the party to Eugene V. Debs, the nomination to be ratified at the 1920 Convention."

On March 5, 1920, at Albany, in the final argument for the five suspended Socialist a.s.semblymen, according to the "New York Times" of March 6, 1920, Seymour Stedman said of Debs: "He represents in a sense the Socialist movement. Perhaps he represents it more completely than any other man in this country."

In order that the reader may understand the extreme way in which lawbreakers like Debs and Victor L. Berger were justified by those defending the five suspended Socialists at Albany, we give an extract from the testimony of Morris Hillquit on February 19, 1920, as reported in the "New York Times" of the next day:

"The testimony leading up to Mr. Hillquit's admissions was given after Martin Conboy of counsel for the Judiciary Committee had read into the record a speech and a signed article by Victor L. Berger.

In the speech, delivered at the Socialist National Convention in 1908, Mr. Berger said:

"'I have no doubt that in the last a.n.a.lysis we must shoot, and when it comes to shooting, Wisconsin will be there.'

"In the signed article which appeared in a Socialist newspaper published in Milwaukee the following year, he wrote:

"'Socialists and workingmen should ... have rifles and the necessary rounds of ammunition ... and be prepared to back up their ballots with their bullets.'"

In reply, according to the "New York Times" of February 20, 1920, putting his own far-fetched construction on Victor L. Berger's words, Morris Hillquit himself advanced the doctrine of "a little shooting" in the following statement:

"'History ... has shown that when the privileged minority is about to lose its privileges ... it tries to destroy reform or lawful revolutionary movements by force, ... and in a case of this kind it may come to shooting.

"'It is not at all impossible that, even in this country, when the majority of the people will be ready to introduce substantial reform and take away the privileges of the profiteering cla.s.s by const.i.tutional, legal methods, these self-same profiteering interests will take offense and try to play some trick upon the people, and in that case it is possible--as a matter of prophecy, not as a matter of program, so far as we are concerned--that the people of this country will be compelled to supplement their political action by a little shooting.'"

Testifying the same day, Hillquit endorsed Debs as follows, according to the "New York Times" of February 20, 1920:

"When asked if Debs is a candidate of the Socialist Party for President, Mr. Hillquit replied:

"'If any voice or influence of mine could accomplish anything, he certainly will be nominated at the next convention.'

"'The Supreme Court has pa.s.sed upon the conviction of Debs and affirmed it,' said ex-Judge Sutherland, of counsel.

'Notwithstanding this judgment, you still declare that Mr. Debs represents and personifies the att.i.tude of the Socialist Party on the subject of loyalty to the United States Government?'

"'I do not say that he represents the att.i.tude of the Socialist Party. I think I said that he represents the highest and n.o.blest sentiments of United States citizenship and American loyalty....

Debs was convicted only for saying things, not for doing things. I do not for a moment doubt he said the things he is charged with having said.' ...

"'Do you uphold and approve of, as a leader of the Socialist Party, the words that Mr. Debs p.r.o.nounced, and for which he was convicted?'

"'I haven't got his complete speech before me. I do not want to commit the Party in this general way to every statement. I will say, as a whole, I read his speech at the time and my impression was that it was a perfectly innocent, honest expression of opposition to war for very good and patriotic motives.' ...

"'Have you any respect at all for the decision of the tribunal to the contrary?'

"'I have respect to this effect: that I know that it is final and binding and in practice will go. I do not have respect in the sense of believing that it is just, impartial, and well-reasoned out.'

"'Mr. Hillquit, do you wish to be understood as saying that you approve of the words spoken by Mr. Debs for which he was convicted?'

"'Are you trying to get me a little conviction, also, Judge?' asked the witness.

"'I am not in a position to indorse every word and every phrase because I have not the speech before me,' he continued. 'As a rule, I fully indorsed his statements on the subject of the war, expressed, I suppose, in that speech and in other speeches.... I share with all my comrades the greatest respect for Debs, and cannot think any compliment too high for him.'

"'And you think it was that largeness of view, do you, that led Mr.

Debs to say the things which brought him into conflict with the law of the United States?'

"'Absolutely, just in the same way as it once happened to one Jesus of Nazareth.'"

"'And you say that notwithstanding the highest judicial authority known under the Const.i.tution has declared him guilty of doing that, and in contempt of that authority, notwithstanding that authority, you say that he is the man that should be placed in the President's chair by the votes of the Socialist Party?'

"'I do.'

"'If Mr. Debs were elected in 1920, how would you proceed to inaugurate[12] him, as he is serving a twenty-year sentence?' asked a.s.semblyman Jenks.

"'The chances are that prior to the time he would be called upon to occupy the chair the powers that be would sober up enough to know that the present conviction is an improper and inhuman act and liberate him.'"

On several occasions at the trial, in spite of Hillquit's studied effort to cast an air of innocency over his party, menacing words escaped from this crafty leader. He could not restrain them even at the end, on March 3, 1920, when summing up the case for the Socialist defendants at Albany, according to the following account in the "Sun and New York Herald" of March 4, 1920:

"Justifying the general strike as an emergency weapon, Mr. Hillquit made this startling statement interpreted in some quarters as an open threat:

"'The workers of this country have the right "to call a general strike" and it is well that they should at least hold it in abeyance as a possible instrument in some cases, in very exceptional emergencies. I will say that the general strike has been used abroad for the purpose of enforcing political action.'

"'A labor party is being formed,' Mr. Hillquit said, 'in some parts of the country. Suppose it should elect representatives to the Legislature and a capitalist in that Legislature should get up and say "I don't approve of your programme; get out of my Legislature."

"'I say this would be eminently a case where the workers would be justified in declaring a general strike until such time as their const.i.tutional rights are actually accorded to them.'"

To this "veiled threat" Martin Conboy, counsel for the Judiciary Committee, replied the next day in summing up for the prosecution. We quote his words from the "Sun and New York Herald" of March 5, 1920:

"'Under the veil of a simile a threat was employed that if you gentlemen concluded that these five Socialist a.s.semblymen should not sit in this chamber as members of this a.s.sembly a general strike might be called. In the whole history devoted to the development of this idea there has been no more frank exposition of the doctrine than that. It is proof, sufficient and satisfactory to the point of a demonstration of the charge that has been made in this case.

"'The threat carries itself further. You must not only admit them, but you must take their legislative programme and exact it into law; otherwise the general strike will again be employed.

"'No opportunity is lost by the leaders of the Socialist Party to impress upon the rank and file that it is impossible to achieve ultimate triumph by political action. For this reason the American Federation of Labor is subjected to continuous attacks and misrepresentation. For this reason Debs, originally an ardent trade unionist, abandoned and repudiated his former a.s.sociates after joining the Socialist Party.'"

The hypocritical defense made by the Socialists at Albany, through which the unchanged character of the unrepentant plotters has constantly revealed itself, should put us on our guard. Brought into the light by wholesale arrests and deportations, all branches of radicalism, in this country and at Moscow, have adopted new tactics of deception. They profess peace and a return to peaceful methods, claim the liberties which belong only to the law-abiding, and hide behind the sympathies of those who are easily taken in. Yet they justify all their misdeeds, and withdraw none of their evil principles, but rather reaffirm them, with subtlety. What does this mean? It means that the old conspirators, whose overt acts have lately crowded our law-courts, hope to fool the American people into letting them continue their propaganda unto lawlessness under a thin mask of conformity to the very laws they seek to destroy.

Although the "Red" conspiracy, as a result of government prosecution, has taken on disguises and gone under ground, it is not, thus, less virulent and dangerous, but more so. Evidence of deceit appeared in the "One Big Union Monthly" for February, 1920, to which lack of s.p.a.ce prevents more than a mere allusion. That issue contained articles showing even the I. W. W. preparing an alibi and a disguise. They argued that their organization was not "illegal," and that its famous Preamble meant "evolution" and not "revolution." Another article urged the I. W.

W. to give up its name and amalgamate with other industrial unions in a new organization to be known as The One Big Union.

Still more significant, the same magazine for February, 1920, published a new incitement to revolution by Leon Trotzky, together with a "Call for Proletarian International" signed by "The Bureau of the Central All-Russian Council of Industrial Unions" and an "Appeal of the Russian Industrial Unions to the Workers of the Allied Countries" signed by "The Bureau of the All-Russian Council of Industrial Union." The "call"

reads:

"The Central All-Russian Council of Industrial Unions invites all economic organizations based on the real and revolutionary cla.s.s struggle for the liberation of labor through the proletarian dictatorship to solidify anew their ranks against the international league of brigands, to break with the international of conciliators, and to proceed in unison with the Central All-Russian Council of Industrial Unions toward the organization of a truly international conference of all Socialistic labor unions and veritable revolutionary workers' syndicates.

"We beg all economic labor organizations that accept the program of the revolutionary cla.s.s struggle to respond to our call and enter in a direct touch with us."