of thousands of dollars in property. They did this to terrorize their own country in its day of peril. They were not worth the name of men. You can not make citizens out of such creatures. Fear is all they understand.
Their literature was a continuous blasphemy. Cursing the name of the Savior was nothing to their writers. They put lime in men's shoes and burned their feet to the bone. They had a special sort of club they used in attacking "scabs." It had short, sharp nails driven along it, painted the color of the club so they could not easily be seen. The victim would catch at the club to wrest it from his assailant. It was then jerked through his hands, often tearing out the sinews, always scarring and often maiming him forever. Always they were cowards. To injure and not destroy was part of their religion. "Strike while you work" meant to disable a machine for a while and so to stop work for the crew or for the whole plant. "Feed the kitty more cream" meant to use more emery on bearings, to do more dirt in factories, to wreck and mar and mutilate more cunningly and covertly—and to escape by feigning the innocent laboring man. If they were not all Huns, they had the foul Hun imagination, and also the methods of the Hun.
By December of 1918, the trial of a half hundred more alleged I. W. W. men was progressing at Sacramento, California. The attempt of the prosecution there was to show a nation-wide plot against the Government of the United States. And again, A. P. L. had the evidence ready, ticketed and tabulated, for A. P. L. covers all of the United States and not merely one part. On January 16, 1919, forty-six of the defendants were convicted.
If we have 100,000 I. W. W. members such as these yet among us, and internment camps full of Germans and pro-Germans, would there not seem need for a house cleaning? It is time now for a new American point of view. We are not going to allow America to be used as it has been by these men. Fear at least they shall understand.
