CHAPTER IV
THE STORY OF NEWARK
Big Division of Northern New Jersey—Hot-Bed of Spydom
and Anarchy—Cases from the Files—Guarding the Gate
to the Sea.
Northern New Jersey was recognized as one of the riskiest regions of the United States. Time out of mind, American readers have noted, with the short-lived American anger, the many newspaper tales of Paterson and anarchy, of New Jersey and New Thought, of socialistic ranters hailing from this or that semi-foreign community, in one of the oldest states in the American union, whose battlefields in our first war for freedom are spread on many glorious pages of our country's history. The battlefields of Jersey are different now, and are not so glorious. Still, a few men, as patriotic as those in Revolutionary days, have done their best during this war to keep their country safe. The work of the Northern New Jersey Division, which has been in charge of Mr. W. D. McDermid, as State Inspector, is reassuring.
It is proper to point out that the Northern New Jersey Division, being one of the first of the A. P. L. to be organized, operated on lines different from those of almost any other territory. Its district covers one-half of the state, including the vitally important Port of Embarkation. Under a single central office, it combined over one hundred municipalities, most of which would ordinarily have had a separate headquarters organization, but which for local reasons had all been consolidated in one division.
There was abundance to do, and there were plenty to be watched. There could, for example, be furnished several hundred instances of sabotage in this manufacturing district of Northern New Jersey—sabotage either detected in advance, or thoroughly investigated afterwards. This
