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The purpose of the previous chapter was to explain to you the series of events whereby it came about that Upton Sinclair, muckraker and enemy of society, was in the office of the president of the Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Association of Los Angeles, at ten o’clock on the morning of Monday, May 7th, 1923.

My brother-in-law, Hunter Kimbrough, and myself had come without appointment; at the same time two gentlemen came in who had an appointment—so a polite clerk explained. I had not presented my card, and no one there knew either Kimbrough or myself; we were invited to sit down, and did so, while the other gentlemen were escorted into the inner office. We made no effort to listen to what went on, but we had to hear it, because the door of the inner office was left ajar, and the talk was carried on in tones which caused the clerks in the outer office to drop their work and look at one another and grin.

“Who is that?” asked the young lady stenographer.

“That’s Mr. Hammond,” was the answer of the chief clerk. “He owns a couple of hundred thousand acres of timber land, and he’s got about twenty ships tied up at the harbor.”

“Oh,” said the young lady stenographer, “then he’s got a right to pound on the table.”

He exercised his right, and pounded, and cursed so freely that the young lady was moved to get up and close the office door; but still we heard the uproar. The substance of it was that the San Pedro strike, which had been on for about two weeks, must be smashed without another day’s delay. Mr. Rice argued and expostulated; they were doing their best. Finally he promised there would be “a meeting” that afternoon, and arrangements would be made. That you may understand clearly, I explain that Mr. Andrew B. Hammond, president of the Hammond Lumber Company, is one of the big “open shop” despots of San Francisco, a bigger man even than Mr. Rice; and he had come down on the night train to lay down the law to the timid crowd at Los Angeles and insist that his ships be moved. Wishing to make sure there was no mistake in identity, I engaged the head clerk in conversation, asking him how long he thought “those irate ship-owners” would stay in there. He rose to the bait and discussed the “irate ship-owners,” assuring me that they would not need to stay much longer; the Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Association was not going to have any trouble in opening up the harbor. Subsequently, as part of the preparing of this manuscript, I wrote to Mr. Hammond, asking if he cared to deny that he was in Mr. Rice’s office at the hour specified. He did not reply.

Come now to San Pedro, where three thousand men are fighting to get their babies a chance to grow up into full-sized human beings. They have won their strike, they have won it strictly under the law; they have kept order rigidly—having even smashed the boot-leggers, to the great dismay of the police! Here again I do not have to ask you to take my word for it: Police Captain Plummer, in command at the harbor, stated to my brother-in-law, Hunter Kimbrough, in the presence of several witnesses, that he had no fault to find with the I. W. W., they were fine fellows, and had kept order through the strike. Also he stated in the presence of witnesses: “I smashed that strike.” Before an investigating committee of the clergymen of Los Angeles he stated: “Yes, I said that, and I’ll say it again.” Officer Wyckoff—who arrested us—stated to Hunter Kimbrough, in the presence of two ladies, whose signed statements I have, that “Black Jack” Jerome, the strike-breaker, had brought in hundreds of gunmen, heavily armed; Captain Plummer had disarmed them, but someone saw to it that they received another supply of arms.

Mr. Hammond and his Shipyard Owners’ Association and his horde of gunmen having failed to provoke violence, or to move the ships, Mr. Rice must act; and how is he to act? For ten or twenty years he and his Black Hand have been preparing for precisely such an emergency; they have been buying both political machines, and controlling the nominations of all candidates, so that now they have their own governor, their own legislators, their own mayor, their own city council, their own chief of police, and their own judges. They control the governmental machine from top to bottom; and they give the orders, let this strike be smashed.

The man who put through the job is Asa Keyes, then deputy district attorney, since promoted to be district attorney as reward for his efficiency. “The mayor is not handling this situation,” said Chief of Police Oaks to me. “The man we’re getting our orders from is Asa Keyes, and if you want to speak at the harbor, see him.” Keyes is the man who has been enforcing the “suspicion of criminal syndicalism” law; he pays an army of secret agents and provocateurs, and a year or two ago he stated to two different informants of mine: “I have spent between four and five thousand dollars, trying to ‘get’ Kate Crane Gartz and Upton Sinclair. If ever I become chief, I will spend ten times that amount to ‘get’ them.”

Mr. Rice, Mr. Keyes, Chief Oaks, and Captain Plummer attended the “meeting” which Mr. Rice promised to Mr. Hammond. “I have attended several conferences of the Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Association,” said the naive Captain Plummer to Hunter Kimbrough, in the presence of witnesses. “Mr. Rice was present and Mr. Marco Hellman, and others.” Marco Hellman, the biggest banker of Los Angeles, we shall hear of again before long.

In the early days of the strike a Presbyterian clergyman and Harvard graduate was arrested while addressing the strikers, the charge being “blocking traffic.” Police Magistrate Sheldon, in sentencing him to jail, said: “Why don’t you hire a hall, or speak upon private property? Then you will not be molested.” The strikers thought this was good advice; they found a piece of vacant land, whose lessor was willing for it to be used for mass meetings, and on this land, known as “Liberty Hill,” the strikers held numerous meetings. At one of these meetings a group of them raised the flags of fifteen nations, with the American flag at the top, and the flag of Russia included. There were Russians among the strikers, and presumably they thought their country had a right to be represented.

This incident took place five days after the meeting between Messrs. Rice and Hammond, and it afforded the pretext for which the police were waiting. “You’ve lost your constitutional rights now!” shouted Captain Plummer, and he arrested twenty-eight men for the crime of raising the red flag. Again and again, in negotiations with the police officials, and with Mayor George E. Cryer, we were told that this act of raising the red flag afforded complete justification for the abrogation of all civil liberties at the harbor. It seems therefore worth notingnoting what happened some three weeks later, when these men were arraigned in court upon the charge. Police Magistrate Crawford declared that in his opinion everyone who displayed a red flag should be sent to prison, but unfortunately the Supreme Court of California had declared the red flag ordinance of the city of Los Angeles unconstitutional!

In the three days that followed, the police arrested a total of six hundred men; they arrested hundreds for attempting to speak on Liberty Hill; they arrested hundreds for singing and cheering on the street. Any slightest sign of sympathy with the strike or with other arrested men was enough to cause a man to be tapped on the shoulder by the police and told to report at the police station. Crowds of men were surrounded on the street, loaded into trucks, carted off to the police station, and packed away in cells. George Chalmers Richmond, Episcopal clergyman from Philadelphia, was arrested when walking along the street, having in mind the criminal intention of addressing the strikers when he reached the place of meeting. A restaurant proprietor was dragged out from behind his counter and thrown into jail, upon the charge of helping to prolong the strike—that is, he had fed the strikers and their children. In describing these incidents, the Los Angeles “Times” stated that the police announced their intention “to arrest all idle men at the harbor.”

The city of Los Angeles boasts of being the fastest growing city in the world, but its jails have not grown at all in the last thirty years. To describe them as death-traps would not be using reckless language, but merely quoting from reports of one public body after another which has investigated and denounced them. The jails were already crowded; and here were six hundred more men suddenly thrust into them! Some of the “tanks,” built to hold twenty or thirty men, were required to hold a hundred, and it was literally impossible for all the men to sit down at once. All the jails were swarming with vermin, there was no bedding obtainable, and the food was atrocious. These things not being enough, wanton cruelty and torture was added. In one of the “tanks,” because the men persisted in singing, the jailers sealed up all the ventilation and turned on the steam heat for two hours. Ninety-five men were in this hole, and many of them swooned. Other men were chained up by the thighs, so that they could not quite sit down. We have the affidavits of several men to the fact that Chief of Police Oaks personally reviled the prisoners, calling them liars and degenerates; and when one of the men spoke up and said this was not true, Oaks called him out from the “tank,” and in the presence of many witnesses struck him in the face and knocked him down again and again, pounding him until the chief was exhausted.

Such was the situation on May 15th. The “Times” for that morning announced that the city council had appropriated money to build a stockade, in which to hold the strike prisoners, and all the remaining strikers at the harbor were to be thrown into this pen. I was about to begin the writing of this book, but I found it impossible to keep my peace of mind in a “bull-pen” civilization, and decided to do what I could to remind the authorities of Southern California that there is still supposed to be a Constitution in this country.

With seven friends I went to interview the mayor that afternoon. The interview lasted an hour, and developed curious notions upon the part of the chief executive of a large city concerning the meaning of civil rights. According to Mayor Cryer, all the arrests which had been made night after night on Liberty Hill, and the complete abrogation of the rights of freedom of speech and of assemblage, were justified by the fact that somebody unknown had violated the unconstitutional ordinance of the city of Los Angeles against the displaying of a red flag. The wholesale arrests of hundreds of men upon the street day after day were justified by the fact that on one occasion some rowdy unknown had shouted: “Here comes Captain Plummer, that fat prostitute.” I said: “Mr. Mayor, according to your way of reasoning, if some one were to upset a peanut stand on Broadway and steal the peanuts, you would feel justified in arresting everybody in sight and closing the thoroughfare to traffic for a month.”

Our mayor is a politician, and cautious. He would not say that it was the duty of the police to smash the harbor strike, neither would he say that a group of American citizens had the right to proceed to Liberty Hill and there read the Constitution of their country and explain to all who might care to hear them the meaning of the Bill of Rights. His proposition was that we should go to the harbor and ask permission of Captain Plummer, and if Plummer refused, the mayor would “review” his decision. To this we answered that the essence of the situation was time; the strikers were being robbed of their rights every hour, and civil liberties were not subject to review by either a police captain or a mayor. The upshot of the hour’s argument was that Mayor Cryer made the specific promise that he would telephone to Captain Plummer and instruct him that we were to be “protected in our constitutional rights, and not molested so long as we did not incite to violence.” Let it be added that at his next interview the mayor denied that he had made this promise.

Now, I shall not take up space in detailing what happened to our little group. Suffice it to say, we repaired to the harbor, a dozen ladies and gentlemen, with two lawyers; and in an interview with Chief of Police Oaks we were informed that if we attempted to read the Constitution of the United States on Liberty Hill we would be arrested and jailed without bail. Four of us, Prince Hopkins, Hugh Hardyman, Hunter Kimbrough, and the writer, did attempt to read the Constitution. I personally read Article One of the first amendment, and was then placed under arrest. Kimbrough started to read the Declaration of Independence. Hopkins remarked, “We have not come here to incite to violence.” Hardyman remarked, “This is a most delightful climate.” For these words they were arrested—all four of us for “suspicion of criminal syndicalism.”^[A] We were held “incommunicado” for eighteen hours, and an effort was then made to rush us into court a few minutes before closing time, and have us committed and spirited away again, so that we could be given the “third degree”; but this plot was balked, owing to the fact that a confidant of Chief Oaks betrayed it to my wife, and our lawyers got to the court and demanded and obtained bail. A week later we went again to the harbor and held our mass meeting, and said to ten or fifteen thousand people everything that we had to say. Next day the police turned loose all but twenty-eight of the six hundred men they had arrested; and some three weeks later a police judge threw out the case against us four. So ended our little adventure in “criminal syndicalism.”

A. Extract from a letter written by a student of Washington University, St. Louis, now visiting in Santa Monica, California: “The St. Louis papers had only short accounts, which said that Upton Sinclair and several other I. W. W. had been arrested on a charge of Syndicalism. And my friends out here tell me that a raid was made when Upton Sinclair, after having submitted a most innocuous abstract of his speech to the authorities, exhorted a strikers’ meeting to break loose, smash all windows in sight, and dump the street-cars off the tracks. He also attacked the integrity and honor of the chief of police.”