Chapter 41
Section 81 of 100%. The Story of a Patriot by Upton Sinclair. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Section 81. Peter Gudge often went along on these hunting parties. Peter, curiously enough, discovered in himself the same complex as the Bawked Soldier Boys. Peter had been reading war news for five years, but had missed the fighting, and now he discovered that he liked to fight. What had kept him from liking to fight in the past was the danger of getting hurt, but now that there was no such danger, he could enjoy it.
In past times, people had called him a coward, and he had heard it so often that he had come to believe it. But now he realized that it was not true. He was just as brave as anybody else in the crowd. The truth was that Peter had not had a happy time in his youth. He had never learned, like the younger members of the Chamber of Commerce and the Merchants and Manufacturers Association, to knock a little white ball about a field with various shapes and sizes of clubs. Peter was like a businessman who had missed his boyhood, and then in later years finds the need of recreation, and takes up some form of sport by the orders of his physician. It became Peter's form of sport to stick an automatic revolver in his hip pocket, and take a blackjack in his hand, and rush into a room where thirty or forty Russians, or sheenies, of all ages and kinds of beard, were struggling to learn the intricacies of English spelling.
Peter would give a yell, and see this crowd leap and scurry hither and thither, and chase them about and take a whack-it ahead wherever he saw one, and jump into a crowd who were bunched together like sheep, trying to hide their heads, and pound them over the exposed parts of their anatomy until they scattered into the open again. He liked to get a lot of them started downstairs, and send them tumbling, heels overhead, or if he could get them going out a window, that was more exhilarating yet, and he would yell and whoop at them. He learned some of their cries, outlandish gibberish it was, and he would curse them in their own language. He had a streak of the monkey in him, and as he got to know these people better, he would imitate their antics and their gestures of horror, and set a whole room full of the bulls laughing to split their sides. There was a famous movie comedian with big feet, and Peter would imitate this man, and waddle up to some wretched sweatshop worker, and boot him in the trouser's seat, or step on his toes, or maybe spit in his eye. So, he became extremely popular among the bulls, and they would insist on his going everywhere with them. Later on, when the government set to work to break up the Communist Party and the Communist Labour Party, Peter's popularity and prestige increased still more.
For now, instead of just raiding and smashing, the police and detectives would round up the prisoners and arrest them by hundreds, and carry them off and put them through examinations. And Peter was always needed for this. His special knowledge made him indispensable, and he became practically the boss of the proceedings. It had been arranged through Shorty Gunton and the other undercover men that the meetings of the Communist and Communist Labour Parties should be held on the same night, and all over the country this same thing was done, and next morning the world was electrified by the news that all these meetings had been raided at the same hour, and thousands of Reds placed under arrest. In American City, the federal government had hired a suite of about a dozen rooms adjoining the offices of Guffy, and all night and next morning batches of prisoners were brought in, until there were about 400 in all. They were crowded into these rooms with barely space to sit down. Of course, there was an awful uproar, moaning and screaming of people who had been battered, and a smell that beat the monkey cage at the zoological gardens. The prisoners were kept penned up in this place for several weeks, and all the time more were being brought in. There were so many that the women had to be stored in the toilets. Many of the prisoners fell ill, or pretended to fall ill, and several of them went insane, or pretended to go insane, and several of them died, or pretended to die.
And of course, the parlor Reds and sympathizers were busy outside, making a terrible fuss about it. They had no more papers, and could not hold any more meetings, and when they tried to circulate literature, the post office authorities tied them up. But still, somehow, they managed to get publicity, and Peter's under-cover men would report to him who was doing this work, and Peter would arrange to have more raids, and more batches of prisoners brought in. In one of the bomb plots, which had been unveiled in the East, they had discovered some pink paper, used either for printing leaflets, or for wrapping explosives. One could not be sure. Anyhow, the secret agencies with which Guffey was connected had distributed samples of this paper over the country, and any time the police wanted to finish some poor devil, they would find this deadly pink paper in his possession. And the newspapers would brand him as one of the group of conspirators who were sending infernal machines through the mails. Section 82 Peter was so busy these days that he missed several nights' sleep, and hardly even stopped to eat. He had his own private room, where the prisoners were brought for examination, and he had half a dozen men under his orders to do the strong-arm work. It was his task to extract from these prisoners admissions which would justify their being sent to prison, if they were citizens, or being deported if they were aliens.
There was, of course, seldom any way to distinguish between citizens and aliens. You just had to take a chance on it, proceeding on the certainty that all were dangerous. Many years ago, when Peter had been working for Pericles Priam, they had spent several months in a boarding house, and you could tell when there was going to be a beefsteak for dinner, because you heard the cook pounding it with a potato masher to tender it up. And Peter learned this phrase, and now used the process upon his alien reds. When they came into the room, Peter's men would fall upon them and beat them and cuff them, knocking them about from one fist to another. If they were stubborn and would not come across, Peter would take them in hand himself, remembering how successful Guffy had been in getting things out of him by the twisting of wrists and the bending back of fingers. It was amazing how clever and subtle some of these fellows were. They were just lousy foreign laborers, but they spent all their spare time reading. You would find large collections of books in their rooms when you made your raids, and they knew exactly what you wanted, and would parry your questions. Peter would say, You're an anarchist, aren't you? And the answer would be, I'm not an anarchist in the sense of the word you mean. As if there could be two meanings of the word anarchist, Peter would say, You believe in violence, do you not? And then the fellow would become impertinent.
It is you who believe in violence. Look at my face that you have smashed. Or Peter would say, You don't like this government, do you? And the answer would be, I always liked it until it treated me so badly. All kinds of evasions like that. And there would be a stenographer taking it down. And unless Peter could get something into the record that was a confession, it would not be possible to deport that red. So Peter would fall upon him and tender him up, until he would answer what he was told to answer. Or maybe Peter would prepare an interview as he wanted it to be. And the detectives would grab the man's hand and make him sign it. Or maybe Peter would just sign it himself. These were harsh methods, but there was no way to help it. The Reds were so cunning. They were secretly undermining the government. And was the government to lie down and admit its helplessness? The answer of 100% Americanism was thundered from every wood and temple hill in the country. Also from every newspaper office. The answer was no. 100% Americanism would find a way to preserve itself from the sophistries of European Bolshevism. 100% Americanism had worked out its formula. If they don't like this country, let them go back where they come from. But of course, knowing in their hearts that America was the best country in the world, they didn't want to go back. And it was necessary to make them go. Peter was there for that purpose, and his devoted wife was by his side, egging him on with her feminine implacability. Gladys had always been accustomed to refer to these people as cattle. And now, when she smelled them herded together in these office rooms for several weeks, she knew that she was right, and that no fate could be too stern for them.
Presently, with Peter's help, she discovered another bomb plot, this time against the attorney general of the country, who was directing these wholesale raids. They grabbed four Italian anarchists in American city, and kept them apart in special rooms. And for a couple of months, Peter labored with them to get what he wanted out of them. Just as Peter thought he had succeeded, his efforts were balked by one of them jumping out of the window. The room being on the 14th story, this Italian anarchist was no longer available as a witness against himself. The incident set the parlor Bolsheviks all over the country to raging, and caused David Andrews to get some kind of court injunction, and make a lot of inconvenience to Guffey's office. However, the work went on. The Reds were gradually sorted out, and some who proved not to be Reds were let go again, and others were loaded onto special Red trains, and taken to the nearest ports. Some of them went in grim silence, others went with furious cursing, and yet others with wailing and shrieking, and many of them had families, and they had the nerve to demand that the government should undertake to ship their families also, or else to take care of their families for them. The government, naturally, admitted no such responsibility. The Reds had no end of money for printing seditious literature, so let them use it to take care of their own.
In these various raids and examinations, Peter, of course, met a great many of the Reds whom he had once known as friends and intimates. Peter had been wont to imagine himself meeting them, and to tremble at the bare idea. But now he found that he rather enjoyed it. He was entirely delivered from that fear of them, which had formerly spoiled his appetite and disturbed his sleep. He had learned that the Reds were poor creatures who did not fight back. They had no weapons, and many of them did not even have muscles. There was really nothing to them but talk. And Peter knew that he had the power of organized society behind him, the police and the courts and the jails, if necessary the army, with its machine guns and airplanes and poison gas. Not merely was it safe to pound these people, to tread on their toes and spit in their eyes. It was safe also to frame up anything on them, because the newspapers would always back you up, and the public would, of course, believe whatever it read in its newspapers. No, Peter was no longer afraid of the Reds. He made up his mind that he was not even afraid of Mack, the most dangerous Red of them all. Mack was safely put away in jail for twenty years, and although his case had been appealed, the court had refused to grant a stay of sentence or to let him out on bail. As it happened, Peter got a glimpse into Mack's soul in jail, and knew that even that proud, grim spirit was breaking. Mack in jail had written a letter to one of his fellow Reds in American City, and the post office authorities had intercepted the letter, and Guffey had shown it to Peter.
Right to us, Mack had pleaded, for God's sake, right to us. The worst horror of being in jail is that you are forgotten. Do at least let us know that somebody is thinking about us. So Peter knew that he was the victor, he was top dog, and when he met these Reds whom he had been so afraid of, he took pleasure in letting them feel the weight of his authority, and sometimes of his fist. It was amusing to see the various ways in which they behaved toward him. Some would try to plead with him, for the sake of old times. Some would cringe and whine to him. Some would try to reason with him, to touch his conscience. But mostly, they would be haughty. They would glare at him with hate, or put a sneer of contempt on their faces. So Peter would set his bulls to work to improve their manners, and a little thumb bending and wrist twisting would soon do the work. Section 81 and 82.
