Part 12 (2/2)

If we will look into this matter a little, we shall discover certain sinister motives back of this work of the detective agencies. It is well enough understood by them that violence creates a state of reaction. One very keen observer has pointed out that ”the anarchist tactics are so serviceable to the reactionaries that, whenever a draconic, reactionary law is required, they themselves manufacture an anarchist plot or attempted crime.”[43] Kropotkin himself, in telling the story of ”The Terror in Russia,” points out that a certain Azeff, who for sixteen years was an agent of the Russian police, was also the chief organizer of acts of terrorism among the social revolutionists.[44] Every conceivable crime was committed under his direct instigation, including even the murder of some officials and n.o.bles. The purpose of the work of this police agent was, of course, to serve the Russian reactionaries and to furnish them a pretext and excuse for the most b.l.o.o.d.y measures of repression. In America ”hireling a.s.sa.s.sins,” ex-convicts, and thugs in the employ of detective agencies commit very much the same crimes for the same purpose. And the men on strike, who have neither planned nor dreamed of planning an outrage, suddenly find themselves faced by the military forces, who have not infrequently in the past shot them down.

That the lawless situations which make these infamous acts possible, and to the general public often excusable, are the deliberate work of mercenaries, is, to my mind, open to no question whatever.

Anyone who cares to look up the history of the labor movement for the last hundred years will find that in every great strike private detectives and police agents have been at work provoking violence. It is almost incredible what a large number of criminal operations can be traced to these paid agents. From 1815 to the present day the bitterness of nearly every industrial conflict of importance has been intensified by the work of these spies, thugs, and _provocateurs_. ”It was not until we became infested by spies, incendiaries, and their dupes--distracting, misleading, and betraying--that physical force was mentioned among us,”

says Bamford, speaking of the trade-union activity of 1815-1816. ”After that our moral power waned, and what we gained by the accession of demagogues we lost by their criminal violence and the estrangement of real friends.”[45] Some of the notable police agents that appear in the history of labor are Powell, Mitch.e.l.l, Legg, Stieber, Greif, Fleury, Baron von Ungern-Sternberg, Schroeder-Brennwald, Krueger, Kaufmann, Peukert, Haupt, Von Ehrenberg, Friedeman, Weiss, Schmidt, and Ihring-Mahlow. In addition we find Andre, Andrieux, Pourbaix, Melville, and scores of other high police officials directing the work of these agents. In America, McPartland, Schaack, and Orchard--to mention the most notorious only--have played infamous roles in provoking others, or in undertaking themselves, to commit outrages. There were and are, of course, thousands of others besides those mentioned, but these are historic characters, who planned and executed the most dastardly deeds in order to discredit the trade-union and socialist movements. The s.p.a.ce here is too limited to go into the historic details of this commerce in violence. But he who is curious to pursue the study further will find a list of references at the end of the volume directing him to some of the sources of information.[46] He will there discover an appalling record of crime, for, as Thomas Beet points out, hardly a strike occurs where these special officers are not sent to make trouble. There are sometimes thousands of them at work, and, if one undertook to go into the various trials that have arisen as a result of labor disputes, one could prepare a long list of murders committed by these ”hireling a.s.sa.s.sins.”

The pecuniary interest of the detective agencies in provoking crime is immense. It is obvious enough, if one will but think of it, that these detective agencies depend for their profit on the existence, the extension, and the promotion of criminal operations. The more that people are frightened by the prospect of danger to their property or menace to their lives, the more they seek the aid of detectives. Nothing proves so advantageous to detectives as epidemics of strikes and even of robberies and murders. The heyday of their prosperity comes in that moment when a.s.saults upon men and property are most frequent. Nothing would seem to be clearer, then, than that it is to the interest of these agencies to create alarm, to arouse terror, and, through these means, to enlarge their patronage. When a trade or profession has not only every pecuniary incentive to create trouble, but when it is also largely promoted by notorious criminals and other vicious elements, the amount of mischief that is certain to result from the combination may well exceed the powers of imagination.

And it must not be forgotten that this trade has developed into a great and growing business, actuated by exactly the same economic interests as any other business. With the agencies making so much per day for each man employed, the way to improve business is to get more men employed.

Rumors of trouble or actual deeds, such as an explosion of dynamite or an a.s.sault, help to make the detective indispensable to the employer. It is with an eye to business, therefore, that the private detective creates trouble. It is with a keen sense of his own material interest that he keeps the employer in a state of anxiety regarding what may be expected from the men. And, naturally enough, the modern employer, unlike a trained ruler such as Bismarck, never seems to realize that most of the alarming reports sent him are ma.s.ses of lies. Nothing appears to have been clearer to the Iron Chancellor than that his own police forces, in order to gain favor, ”lie and exaggerate in the most shameful manner.”[47] But such an idea seems never to enter the minds of the great American employers, who, although becoming more and more like the ruling cla.s.ses of Europe, are not yet so wise. However, the great employer, like the great ruler, is unable now to meet his employees in person and to find out their real views. Consequently, he must depend upon paid agents to report to him the views of his men. This might all be very well if the returns were true. But, when it happens that evil reports are very much to the pecuniary advantage of the man who makes them, is it likely that there will be any other kind of report?

Thousands of employers, therefore, are coming more and more to be convinced that their workmen spend most of their time plotting against them. It seems unreasonable that sane men could believe that their employees, who are regularly at work every day striving with might and main to support and bring up decently their families, should be at the same time planning the most diabolical outrages. Nothing is rarer than to find criminals among workingmen, for if they were given to crime they would not be at work. But with the great modern evil--the separation of the cla.s.ses--there comes so much of misunderstanding and of mistrust that the employer seems only too willing to believe any paid villain who tells him that his tired and worn laborers have murder in their hearts. The cla.s.s struggle is a terrible fact; but the cla.s.s hatred and the personal enmity that are growing among both masters and men in the United States are natural and inevitable results of this system of spies and informers.

How widespread this evil has become is shown by the fact that nearly every large corporation now employs numerous spies, informers, and special officers, from whom they receive daily reports concerning the conversations among their men and the plans of the unions. Thousands of these detectives are, in fact, members of the unions. The employers are, of course, under the impression that they are thus protecting themselves from misinformation and also from the possibility of injury, but, as we have seen, they are in reality placing themselves at the mercy of these spies in the same manner as every despot in the past has placed himself at the mercy of those who brought him information. It may, perhaps, be possible that the Carnegie Company in 1892, the railroads in 1894, and the mine owners in 1904 were convinced that their employees were under the influence of dangerous men. Very likely they were told that their workmen were planning a.s.saults upon their lives and property. It would not be strange if these large owners of property had been so informed.

Indeed, the economics of this whole wretched commerce becomes clear only when we realize that the terror that results from such reports leads these capitalists to employ more and more hirelings, to pay them larger and larger fees, and in this manner to reward lies and to make even a.s.saults prove immensely profitable to the detectives. So it happens that the great employers are chiefly responsible for introducing among their men the very elements that are making for riot, crime, and anarchy.

Close and intimate relations with the employers and with the men during several fiercely fought industrial conflicts have convinced me that the struggle between them rarely degenerates to that plane of barbarism in which either the men or the masters deliberately resort to, or encourage, murder, arson, and similar crimes. So far as the men are concerned, they have every reason in the world to discourage violence, and nothing is clearer to most of them than the solemn fact that every time property is destroyed, or men injured, the employers win public support, the aid of the press, the pulpit, the police, the courts, and all the powers of the State. Men do not knowingly injure themselves or persist in a course adverse to their material interests. It is true, as I think I have made clear in the previous chapters, that some of the workers do advocate violence, and, in a few cases that instantly became notorious, labor leaders have been found guilty of serious crimes. That these instances are comparatively rare is explained, of course, by the fact that violence is known invariably to injure the cause of the worker. It would be strange, therefore, if the workers did systematically plan outrages. On the other hand, it would be strange if the employers did not at times rejoice that somebody--the workmen, the detectives, or others--had committed some outrage and thus brought the public sentiment and the State's power to the aid of the employers. One cannot escape the thought that the employers would hardly finance so readily these so-called detectives, and inquire so little into their actual deeds, if they were not convinced that violence at the time of a strike materially aids the employer. Yet, despite evidence to the contrary, it may, I think, be said with truth that the lawlessness attending strikes is not, as a rule, the result of deliberate planning on the part of the men or of the masters.

There are, of course, numerous exceptions, and if we find the McNamaras on the one side, we also find some unscrupulous employers on the other.

To the latter, violence becomes of the greatest service, in that it enables them to say with apparent truth that they are not fighting reasonable, law-abiding workmen, but a.s.sa.s.sins and incendiaries. No course is easier for the employer who does not seek to deal honestly with his men, and none more secure for that employer whose position is wholly indefensible on the subject of hours and wages, than to sidetrack all these issues by hypocritically declaring that he refuses to deal with men who are led by criminals. And it is quite beyond question that some such employers have deliberately urged their ”detectives” to create trouble. Positive evidence is at hand that a few such employers have themselves directed the work of incendiaries, thugs, and rioters. With such amazing evidence as we have recently had concerning the systematically lawless work of the Manufacturers' a.s.sociation, it is impossible to free the employers of all personal responsibility for the outrages committed by their criminal agents. There are many different ways in which violence benefits the employer, and it may even be said that in all cases it is only to the interest of the employer. As a matter of fact, with the systems of insurance now existing, any injury to the property of the employer means no loss to him whatever. The only possible loss that he can suffer is through the prolongation and success of the strike. If the workers can be discredited and the strike broken through the aid of violence, the ordinary employer is not likely to make too rigid an investigation into whether or not his ”detectives”

had a hand in it.

Curiously enough, the general public never dreams that special officers are responsible for most of the violence at times of strike, and, while the men loudly accuse the employers, the employers loudly accuse the men. The employers are, of course, informed by the detectives that the outrages have been committed by the strikers, and the detectives have seen to it that the employers are prepared to believe that the strikers are capable of anything. On the other hand, the men are convinced that the employers are personally responsible. They see hundreds and sometimes thousands of special officers swarming throughout the district. They know that these men are paid by somebody, and they are convinced that their bullying, insulting talk and actions represent the personal wishes of the employers. When they knock down strikers, beat them up, arrest them, or even shoot them, the men believe that all these acts are dictated by the employers. It is utterly impossible to describe the bitterness that is aroused among the men by the presence of these thugs. And the testimony taken by various commissions regarding strikes proves clearly enough that strikes are not only embittered but prolonged by the presence of detectives. Again and again, mediators have declared that, as soon as thugs are brought into the conflict, the settlement of a strike is made impossible until either the employers or the men are exhausted by the struggle. A number of reputable detectives have testified that the chief object of those who engage in ”strike-breaking”

is to prolong strikes in order to keep themselves employed as long as possible. Thus, the employers as well as the men are the victims of this commerce in violence.

It will, I am sure, be obvious to the reader that it would require a very large volume to deal with all the various phases of the work of the detective in the numerous great strikes that have occurred in recent years. I have endeavored merely to mention a few instances where their activities have led to the breaking down of all civil government. It is important, however, to emphasize the fact that there is no strike of any magnitude in which these hirelings are not employed. I have taken the following quotation as typical of numerous circulars which I have seen, that have been issued by detective agencies: ”This bureau has made a specialty of handling strikes for over half a century, and our clients are among the largest corporations in the world. During the recent trouble between the steamboat companies and the striking longsh.o.r.emen in New York City this office ... supplied one thousand guards.... Our charges for guards, motormen, conductors, and all cla.s.ses of men during the time of trouble is $5.00 per day, your company to pay transportation, board, and lodge the men.”[48] Here is another agency that has been engaged in this business for half a century, and there are thousands of others engaged in it now. One of them is known to have in its employ constantly five thousand men. And, if we look into the deeds of these great armies of mercenaries, we find that there is not a state in the Union in which they have not committed a.s.sault, arson, robbery, and murder. Several years ago at Lattimer, Pennsylvania, a perfectly peaceable parade of two hundred and fifty miners was attacked by guards armed with Winchester rifles, with the result that twenty-nine workers were killed and thirty others seriously injured. This was deliberate and unprovoked slaughter. Recently, in the Westmoreland mining district, no less than twenty striking miners have been murdered, while several hundred have been seriously injured. On one occasion deputies and strike-breakers became intoxicated and ”shot up the town” of Latrobe. In the recent strike against the Lake Carriers' a.s.sociation six union men were killed by private detectives. In Tampa, Florida, in Columbus, Ohio, in Birmingham, Alabama, in Lawrence, Ma.s.sachusetts, in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in the mining districts of West Virginia, and in innumerable other places many workingmen have been murdered, not by officers of the law, but by privately paid a.s.sa.s.sins.

Even while writing these lines I notice a telegram to the _Appeal to Reason_ from Adolph Germer, an official of the United Mine Workers of America, that some thugs, formerly in West Virginia, are now in Colorado, and that their first work there was to shoot down in cold blood a well-known miner. John Walker, a district president of the United Mine Workers of America, telegraphs the same day to the labor press that two of the strikers in the copper mines in Michigan were shot down by detectives, in the effort, he says, to provoke the men to violence. Anyone who cares to follow the labor press for but a short period will be astonished to find how frequently such outrages occur, and he will marvel that men can be so self-controlled as the strikers usually are under such terrible provocation. I mention hastily these facts in order to emphasize the point that the cases in which I have gone into detail in this chapter are more or less typical of the b.l.o.o.d.y character of many of the great strikes because of the deeds of the so-called detectives.

Brief, however, as this statement is of the work of these anarchists ”without phrase” and of the great commerce they have built up, it must, nevertheless, convince anyone that republican inst.i.tutions cannot long exist in a country which tolerates such an extensive private commerce in lawlessness and crime. Government by law cannot prevail in the same field with a widespread and profitable traffic in disorder, thuggery, arson, and murder. Here is a whole brood of mercenaries, the output of hundreds of great penitentiaries, that has been organized and systematized into a great commerce to serve the rich and powerful. Here is a whole mess of infamy developed into a great private enterprise that militates against all law and order. It has already brought the United States on more than one occasion to the verge of civil war. And, despite the fact that numerous judges have publicly condemned the work of these agencies, and that various governmental commissions have deprecated in the most solemn words this traffic in crime, it continues to grow and prosper in the most alarming manner. Certainly, no student of history will doubt that, if this commerce is permitted to continue, it will not be long until no man's life, honor, or property will be secure. And it is a question, even at this moment, whether the legislators have the courage to attack this powerful American Mafia that has already developed into a ”vested interest.”

As I said at the beginning, no other country has this form of anarchy to contend with. In all countries, no doubt, there are a.s.sociations of criminals, and everywhere, perhaps, it is possible for wealthy men to employ criminals to work for them. But even the Mafia, the Camorra, and the Black Hand do not exist for the purpose of collecting and organizing mercenaries to serve the rich and powerful. Nor anywhere else in the world are these criminals made special officers, deputy sheriffs, deputy marshals, and thus given the authority of the State itself. The a.s.sumption is so general that the State invariably stands behind the private detective that few seem to question it, and even the courts frequently recognize them as quasi-public officials. Thus, the State itself aids and abets these mercenary anarchists, while it sends to the gallows idealist anarchists, such as Henry, Vaillant, Lingg, and their like. That the State fosters this ”infant industry” is the only possible explanation for the fact that in every industrial conflict of the past the real provokers and executors of arson, riot, and murder have escaped prison, while in every case labor leaders have been put in jail--often without warrant--and in many cases kept there for many months without trial. Even the writ of _habeas corpus_ has been denied them repeatedly.

Without the active connivance of the State such conditions could not exist. However, the State goes even further in its opposition to labor.

The power of a state governor to call out the militia, to declare even a peaceful district in a state of insurrection, and to abolish the writ of _habeas corpus_ is a very great power indeed and one that is unquestionably an anomaly in a republic. If that power were used with equal justice, it might not create the intense bitterness that has been so frequently aroused among the workers by its exercise. Again and again it has been used in the interest of capital, but there is not one single case in all the records where this extraordinary prerogative has been exercised to protect the interest of the workers. It is not, then, either unreasonable or unjustifiable that among workmen the sentiment is almost unanimous that the State stands invariably against them. The three instances which I have dealt with here at some length prove conclusively that there is now no penalty inflicted upon the capitalist who hires thugs to invade a community and shoot down its citizens, or upon those who hire him these a.s.sa.s.sins, or upon the a.s.sa.s.sins themselves. Nor are the powerful punished when they collect a great army of criminals, drunkards, and hoodlums and make them officials of the United States to insult and bully decent citizens. Nor does there seem to be any punishment inflicted upon those who manage to transform the Government itself into a s.h.i.+eld to protect toughs and criminals in their a.s.saults upon men and property, when those a.s.saults are in the interest of capital. Moreover, what could be more humiliating in a republic than the fact that a governor who has leased to his friends the military forces of an entire state should end his term of office unimpeached?

These various phases of the cla.s.s conflict reveal a distressing state of industrial and political anarchy, and there can be no question that, if continued, it has in it the power of making many McNamaras, if not Bakounins. It will be fortunate, indeed, if there do not arise new Johann Mosts, and if the United States escapes the general use in time of that terrible, secretive, and deadly weapon of sabotage. Sabotage is the arm of the slave or the coward, who dares neither to speak his views nor to fight an open fight. As someone has said, it may merely mean the kicking of the master's dog. Yet no one is so cruel as the weak and the cowardly. And should it ever come about that millions and millions of men have all other avenues closed to them, there is still left to them sabotage, a.s.sa.s.sination, and civil war. These can neither be outlawed nor even effectively guarded against if there are individuals enough who are disposed to wield them. And it is not by any means idle speculation that a country which can sit calmly by and face such evils as are perpetrated by this vast commerce in violence, by this cla.s.s use of the State, and by such monstrous outrages as were committed in Homestead, in Chicago, and in Colorado, will find one day its composure interrupted by a working cla.s.s that has suffered more than human endurance can stand.

The fact is that society--the big body of us--is now menaced by two sets of anarchists. There are those among the poor and the weak who preach arson, dynamite, and sabotage. They are the products of conditions such as existed in Colorado--as Bakounin was the product of the conditions in Russia. These, after all, are relatively few, and their power is almost nothing. They are listened to now, but not heeded, because there yet exist among the people faith in the ultimate victory of peaceable means and the hope that men and not property will one day rule the State. The other set of anarchists are those powerful, influential terrorists who talk hypocritically of their devotion to the State, the law, the Const.i.tution, and the courts, but who, when the slightest obstacle stands in the path of their greed, seize from their corrupt tools the reins of government, in order to rule society with the black-jack and the ”bull pen.” The idealist anarchist and even the more practical syndicalist, preaching openly and frankly that there is nothing left to the poor but war, are, after all, few in number and weak in action. Yet how many to-day despair of peaceable methods when they see all these outrages committed by mercenaries, protected and abetted by the official State, in the interest of the most sordid anarchism!

As a matter of fact, the socialist is to-day almost alone, among those watching intently this industrial strife, in keeping buoyant his abiding faith in the ultimate victory of the people. He has fought successfully against Bakounin. He is overcoming the newest anarchists, and he is already measuring swords with the oldest anarchists. He is confident as to the issue. He has more than dreams; he knows, and has all the comfort of that knowledge, that anarchy in government like anarchy in production is reaching the end of its rope. Outlawry for profit, as well as production for profit, are soon to be things of the past. The socialist feels himself a part of the growing power that is soon to rule society.

He is conscious of being an agent of a world-wide movement that is ma.s.sing into an irresistible human force millions upon millions of the disinherited. He has unbounded faith that through that ma.s.s power industry will be socialized and the State democratized. No longer will its use be merely to serve and promote private enterprise in foul tenements, in sweatshops, and in all the products that are necessary to life and to death. All these vast commercial enterprises that exist not to serve society but to enrich the rich--including even this sordid traffic in thuggery and in murder--are soon to pa.s.s into history as part of a terrible, culminating epoch in commercial, financial, and political anarchy. The socialist, who sees the root of all anti-social individualism in the predominance of private material interests over communal material interests, knows that the hour is arriving when the social instincts and the life interests of practically all the people will be arrayed against anarchy in all its forms. Commerce in violence, like commerce in the necessaries of life, is but a part of a social regime that is disappearing, and, while most others in society seem to see only phases of this gigantic conflict between capital and labor, and, while most others look upon it as something irremediable, the socialist, standing amidst millions upon millions of his comrades, is even now beginning to see visions of victory.

FOOTNOTE:

[AF] The Supreme Court sustained the action of the military authorities, Chief Justice William H. Gabbert, a.s.sociate justice John Campbell, concurring, a.s.sociate Justice Robert W. Steele dissenting. The dissenting opinion of Justice Steele deserves a wider reading than it has received, and no doubt it will rank among the most important statements that have been made against the anarchy of the powerful and the tyranny of cla.s.s government. See Report, U. S. Bureau of Labor, 1905, p. 243.

CHAPTER XII

VISIONS OF VICTORY

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