The hypocritical Socialists at one moment plead for universal peace, the desire of nations, and at the next for cla.s.s hatred. They are trying to ruin our domestic peace and to expose us to the ravages of lawlessness and crime. By fostering contempt for soldiers and other guardians of the peace, they not only make it harder for them to fulfil their duties, but prevent many from joining the army and navy for the defense of our country against foreign and domestic foes.
Our country at present is well able to defend itself against foreign attacks, but if our domestic enemies continue to sow the seeds of discord and cla.s.s hatred among our fellow citizens, it will surely fall, for no nation that is divided against itself can stand.
From the very fact that "The Call" of February 10, 1912, dared to publish the following article, showing the intense hatred of its author for the Stars and Stripes, our national emblem, the reader can judge for himself whether the thousands of unoffended subscribers have the faintest spark of patriotism in their hearts:
""At least honor the flag!" they cry in desperation. "Honor the flag which stands for freedom, equality and fraternity!"
"What flag? The American flag? The Stars and Stripes? The flag which floats over every h.e.l.lhole of mine and mill and prison? The flag which floats over station house and barracks whence issue police and soldiers to batter down and murder workers exercising their const.i.tutional rights of free speech and free a.s.semblage?
Honor the flag which you, our masters, have changed from a flag of liberty into a symbol of the cruelest exploitation and vilest oppression of the new civilization?
"If I had been Samuel Gompers when he was reproached by the capitalists for placing his foot on the American flag, I should have answered: "Yes, I trampled on it, and, more than that, I spit upon your flag, not mine; I loathe the Stars and Stripes, once the symbol of liberty for all, but now the stripes represent the b.l.o.o.d.y stripes left by your lash on the back of the worker, and the stars, the bullet and bayonet wounds in his breast. To h.e.l.l with your flag!...
"Down with the Stars and Stripes! Run up the red flag of humanity."
Not alone do the members of the rank and file of the Socialist Party attack the Star Spangled Banner, but even its foremost leaders are guilty of the same offense. "The Comrade," July, 1904, furnishes us with an attack made upon our country"s flag by no less a personage than Eugene V. Debs:
"Have you a drop of blood in your veins? Has your manhood rotted into cowardice? Wake up and take your place in the cla.s.s struggle. For the desecration of the flag your leader is in jail. What flag? The flag of the capitalist cla.s.s--the flag that floats over the bull pens of Colorado. The wholesome truths he stamped upon its stripes are your shame and your masters" crime. Rally to the red flag of international Socialism, the symbol of the proletarian revolt."
CHAPTER XVI
THE CONSPIRACY AGAINST OUR COUNTRY
This chapter is the center of our book, the hub where all the spokes of evidence focus and unite, clearly revealing the unity, power and purpose of the Wheel of Revolution which now is rolling through the minds and wills of American radicals. To make this complex plot simple, it has been a.n.a.lyzed into its parts in the other chapters of "The Red Conspiracy," so that each element may be weighed by itself. In the present chapter the results of this a.n.a.lysis are gathered up again, to show how all the parts fit into one mechanism; and, with the whole thus seen as one contrivance, the working of each part being understood, the plan and purpose of the entire invention stands out as clear as day.
But if this chapter is the center of our explanation of "The Red Conspiracy," the center of the thing itself lies elsewhere. The Great Red Wheel of Proletarian Revolution is an International Wheel, and both the hub which unites it and the turning power which moves it are centered in the old Russian town of Moscow.
Frequently in preceding chapters the reader has been impressed by the fact that the "Reds" are guilty of conspiracy against all governments, including that of the United States of America. In the present chapter we shall discuss this matter of conspiracy much more in detail and a.s.semble the proofs in such order and strength that no reasonable man can deny the existence of the widespread plot now fast undermining the pillars of our country.
The "Reds" under one name or another have in the long run proven to be far more than evolutionists in the various countries of Europe. Actual rebellions have shown them to be revolutionists by violence in the strictest sense of the word in Russia, Germany, Bavaria, Hungary and even on one of the islands of far distant j.a.pan. Their activities in England, France, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Holland, Bulgaria and many another foreign land bid fair to give us still further proofs in the near future that the "Reds" do not intend to wait for success by the ballot, but that, as soon as they consider themselves a sufficiently strong and united minority, they will throw off their masks, use rifles in place of hypocritical words, and work behind barricades instead of behind closed meeting doors. The Italian Socialists were about to begin their rebellion when, quite recently, the word came from the Moscow headquarters of the International conspirators to wait for a more opportune moment.
It seems quite incredible that the "Reds" of our own country, whether they be I. W. W."s, Communists, members of the Communist Labor Party, or Socialists, should be merely evolutionists, harmless parliamentarians, when their brethren abroad, with whom they so much sympathize, and upon whom they look as the saviors of the world and the highest types of advanced civilization, are either avowedly attempting to overthrow their governments or else have already done so, and in not a single instance by means of the ballot. There is an old saying to the effect that we are known by the company we keep. Since the American "Reds" keep company with foreign rebels, it is not to be presumed that the latter are demons and the former saints.
Few specific proofs need be given in this chapter to show that the I. W.
W."s are guilty of conspiracy against the United States Government, for a great part of them, especially those most active, belong either to the Communist, Communist Labor or the Socialist Party, and an abundance of proofs will be given that these latter organizations are far from being harmless and innocent political parties.
Moreover, the I. W. W."s, in their revolutionary "Preamble" and by the many utterances of their leaders, are openly committed to a conspiracy of violence against our Government. Relative to the I. W. W. and its underhand activities, the reader will remember the words of Arturo Giovannitti, quoted in a previous chapter, from the Socialist Labor Party paper, "Weekly People," New York, February 10, 1912. That writer, with all his experience as a leader of the "Wobblies," certainly knew their plans, and makes this astounding admission relative to the part that the I. W. W. is expected to take in bringing about the Marxian rebellion:
"The future of Socialism lies only in the general strike, not merely a quiet political strike, but one that once started should go fatally to its end, i.e., armed insurrection, and the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions.... The task of revolution is not to construct the new society, but to demolish the old one, therefore, its first aim should be at the complete destruction of the existing state, so as to render it absolutely powerless to react and re-establish itself.... The I. W. W. must develop itself as the new legislature and the new executive body of the land, undermine the existing one, and gradually absorb the functions of the state until it can entirely substantiate it through the only means it has, the revolution."
During the year 1919 a very excellent example of how the One Big Union tried to develop a strike into a rebellion was given in Winnipeg, Canada. Some time previously we had in our own country an example in the great strike at Seattle, Washington.
Cases of sabotage, murder and arson are but minor activities of the I.
W. W., and mere circ.u.mstances to aid in bringing about the contemplated rebellion.
Government raids in recent years, and the seizure of hundreds of tons of inflammatory literature, from which extensive quotations were made in the daily press, have furnished us with ample proofs that the I. W. W."s are national conspirators.
The reader will remember the vivid picture of the contemplated rebellion in the mind of the "Wobbly" who wrote in "The Rebel Worker," April 15, 1919:
"The United States is in the grip of a b.l.o.o.d.y revolution! Thousands of workers are slaughtered by machine guns in New York City!
Washington is on fire! Industry is at a standstill and thousands of workers are starving! The government is using the most brutal and repressive measures to put down the revolution! Disorganization, crime, chaos, rape, murder and arson are the order of the day--the inevitable results of social revolution!"
The I. W. W."s are certainly conspirators, and seek the overthrow of our Government by industrial violence, and we were told by "The Evolution of Industrial Democracy," page 40, that "Government, as now understood, will disappear--there being no servile cla.s.s to be held in subjection--but in its place will be an administration of affairs."
The spirit of armed rebellion against our Government was foremost in the minds of the Left Wing members of the Socialist Party who afterwards formed the Communist and the Communist Labor Parties. We shall recall some of the words of Louis C. Fraina during the great struggle between the Rights and Lefts:
"All propaganda, all electoral and parliamentary activity are insufficient for the overthrow of Capitalism, impotent when the ultimate test of the cla.s.s struggle turns into a test of power. The power for the social revolution issues out of the actual struggles of the proletariat, out of its strikes, its industrial unions and ma.s.s action."--"The Revolutionary Age," July 12, 1919.
"Socialism will come not through the peaceful, democratic parliamentary conquest of the state, but through the determined and revolutionary ma.s.s action of a proletarian minority."--"The Revolutionary Age," July 12, 1919.
"Revolutionary Socialists hold, with the founders of Scientific Socialism, that there are two dominant cla.s.ses in society--the bourgeoisie and the proletariat; that between these two cla.s.ses a struggle must go on until the working cla.s.s, through the seizure of the instruments of production and distribution, the abolition of the capitalist state, and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, creates a Socialistic system. Revolutionary Socialists do not believe that they can be voted into power. They struggle for the conquest of power by the revolutionary proletariat."--"The Revolutionary Age," March 22, 1919.
"The Communist," of Chicago, April 1, 1919, it will be remembered, in speaking of November 7, 1919, the day on which the armistice was signed, said:
"On that day the seething proletariat ruled Chicago by sheer force of numbers. One thing alone was needed to give this ma.s.s expression ident.i.ty with the proletarian uprisings in Europe--one thing, the revolutionary idea."
After the formation of the Communist and Communist Labor parties, in September, 1919, both made great progress in winning recruits to the cause of armed rebellion. On January 2, 1920, government agents all over the country suddenly descended upon the conspirators and took thousands of them prisoners. Bombs, rifles and other weapons were captured by the department agents. In Newark 25 rifles and a large number of bombs were taken, many tons of violent literature were seized and innumerable quotations from it appeared in the daily press, showing beyond the shadow of a doubt the evil intentions of these "Reds" against the land that we love.
The Communist Party of America and the Communist Labor Party have the same purposes and aims as the Communist Party of Russia. They are joined with the latter in advocating and supporting the manifesto of the Third International, which openly urges an armed revolution to bring about the overthrow of the Government of the United States.
Both parties have conducted effective propaganda work through newspapers, books, pamphlets and other means. The Communist Party alone had twenty-five newspapers printed in several languages, actively supporting its cause. This number was being increased weekly, papers which were formerly Socialist Party organs going over to its support.
The alien editors of most of these papers were taken by the Department of Justice agents in the raids.
The Department of Justice naturally was most vitally interested in the promises of violence against the United States Government contained in the manifesto of the Communists of the Third International, which was held at Moscow, March 2 to 6, 1919. Among the pa.s.sages in the Moscow manifesto which most interested the Department of Justice were the following:
"Socialist criticism has sufficiently stigmatized the bourgeois world order. The task of the International Communist Party is now to overthrow this order and to erect in its place the structure of the Socialist world order. We urge the workingmen and women of all countries to unite under the Communist banner, the emblem under which the first victories have already been won.
"Proletarians of all lands! In the war against imperialistic barbarity, against monarchy, against the privileged cla.s.ses, against the bourgeois state and bourgeois property, against all forms and varieties of social and national oppression--unite!
"Under the standard of the Workingmen"s Councils under the banner of the Third International, in the revolutionary struggle for power and the dictatorship of the proletariat, proletarians of all countries--unite!"
The manifesto is signed by Lenine, Trotzky and other revolutionaries.
Several references are made to the United States, indicating this country as one of the objectives of the revolutionaries. Describing the methods to be used, the manifesto says:
"Civil war is forced upon the laboring cla.s.ses by their arch enemies. The working cla.s.s must answer blow for blow, if it will not renounce its own object and its own future, which is at the same time the future of all humanity.
"The Communist parties, far from conjuring up civil war, artificially, rather strive to shorten its duration as much as possible--in case it has become an iron necessity--to minimize the number of its victims, and above all to secure victory for the proletariat."
Under the caption, "The Way to Victory," the manifesto says:
"The revolutionary era compels the proletariat to make use of the means of battle which will concentrate its entire energies, namely, ma.s.s action, with its logical resultant, direct conflict with the governmental machinery in open combat. All other methods, such as revolutionary use of bourgeoisie parliamentarism, will be of only secondary significance."
The principles of the American Communist Party set forth in their seized records and made public by the Department of Justice, are:
"The Communist Party of America is the party of the working cla.s.s.