-Caveat Lector- An excerpt from: The Ohio Gang Charles L. Mee, Jr.�1981 M. Evans and Company, Inc. 216 East 49th Street New York, New York 10017 ISBN 0-87131-340-5 218 pps � out-of-print/one edition --[12]-- XXXIV. The People Crushed HARDING, WHO HAD tried to remain aloof, stepped in at last. He asked Lewis to have the workers return to work, temporarily, on the basis of the current wage scale, and then to promise to agree to the recommendations of a presidential commission that Harding would appoint to determine a fair settlement. The proposal was doubly rigged against the miners: eight of the eleven members of the commission would be owners or Harding-appointed representatives of the "general public" (who could be expected to be opposed to the miners), and in any case, the commission would return to the old method of determining settlements district by district, destroying the national union by dividing it. Lewis declined. "I want to convey to you in this message," Harding telegraphed to the governors of twenty-eight coal-mining states, "the assurance of the prompt and full support of the federal government whenever and wherever you find your own agencies of law and order inadequate to meet the situation." The president's message was somewhat vague, but the governors-and the miners-all interpreted it the same way: if the owners wanted to reopen their mines, whether with strikebreakers or any other kind of laborers, they would have federal troops to back them. With rumors of a shooting war, all sides pulled back for a brief respite. In the very midst of the coal strike, the Railroad Labor Board, which had been constituted in 1920 to hear arguments and determine wage and work-rule settlements for railroad workers, ordered a $48 million (13 percent) wage cut for 400,000 maintenance-of-way railroad workers. The board followed this order eight days later with another decision: to cut the pay of 400,000 railroad shopmen by $60 million. Ten days after that the board ordered $26.5 million cut from the payrolls of 325,000 clerks and signalmen. The railroad shopmen walked out. "The Red agents of the Soviet Government," said Harry Daugherty, "who had bored into the organization of our coal miners . . . worked day and night, by inflammatory circulars and fanatical speakers, to precipitate a clash of arms." Their goal was nothing less than to "tie up every artery of commerce in America," to destroy the "foundations of the Republic," to "overthrow our government and substitute a Soviet Regime." Daugherty knew his duty. He went to the president and told him "that the coal strike would have to be broken, or we must surrender to the gentlemen in Moscow who were directing it." Daugherty, uninterested in economics or the study of historical phenomena in general, himself a schemer and conniver who always had dozens of small and large plots and conspiracies and counterplots and deals and string pullings going at the same time, could only assume that everyone else did, too, and that, somewhere in the world, there was a great and greatly malevolent, master plotter who was trying to do him in. Whether Harding was entirely convinced by Daugherty seems doubtful, although, once again, he found Daugherty's counterplottings useful. "I've a war map on the wall of my office," Daugherty told Harding, "in which pins are stuck daily marking the spot where a train has been wrecked, a bridge dynamited, a riot has broken out, a worker been kidnapped, another assaulted, a murder committed. Hundreds of cases are covered up. Men are maimed and killed and the crimes concealed. "I have records piled high in black and white, from eye-witnesses whose words are beyond question. Of known murders by the strikers. A thousand and five hundred cases of felonious assault with intent to kill. Sixty-five accounts of kidnapping accompanied by brutal assault, eight cases of tar and feathers.... "The real import of this movement is not on the surface. You must look deeper to find it. We are face to face with a determined conspiracy to overturn the government itself." The Soviets, said Daugherty, planned to seize control of the labor unions first and convert them into "fighting units." These would then be fused into a single whole. The leaders of this conspiracy could be found easily enough: they were leaders of the "Liberal" groups and of the "Civil Liberties," "Parlor Bolshevik," and "Intelligentsia" groups. "The class struggle," Daugherty continued, "which so long appeared in forms unrecognizable to millions of workers, develops now into open combat, civil war." "It looks like it, doesn't it?" the president muttered- whether in agreement or fatigue at the harangue is not clear. "Looks like it!" Daugherty shouted. "It is civil war. And it's so widespread and serious we don't dare allow the facts to be known! The Labor Lobby in Washington that attempts a stranglehold on legislation is no longer conservative. It is controlled by the Red borers in its ranks." Harding had no reply to this. "We can't afford," Daugherty went on, or claimed he did, lecturing the president right into the carpet, "to proclaim a condition of civil war at this time, though we are actually in it. The reckless young of the rising generation, who have caught the spirit of anarchy from the war conditions, have begun to question all things you and I hold sacred and worthwhile." "Well," said Harding at last, having suffered Daugherty's full course on The Menace, "what is your answer to this?" "Direct, drastic, firm action by the United States Government. Can it live and move and assert its power? Have we a government?" "I believe," Daugherty remembered-or imagined- Harding's reply, "we have." pps. 181-184 ===== XXXV. An Absent-Minded Elimination of Free Speech, Assembly, And So Forth WHATEVER HIS CONVERSATION with Daugherty may have been, Harding did decide to go ahead with a dramatic speech to Congress, where he spoke to a packed joint session of House and Senate. This gave him a superb opportunity to appear decisive, forceful, a firm leader, and altogether presidential. "We must assert," Harding declared, "the doctrine that in this Republic the first obligation and the first allegiance of every citizen, high and low, is to his government.... And to hold that government to be the just and unchallenged sponsor for public welfare and the liberty, security, and rights of all its citizens. "No matter what clouds may gather, no matter what storms may ensue, no matter what hardships may attend, or what sacrifices may be necessary, government by law must and will be sustained." Daugherty was dispatched on the night train to Chicago, where he appeared before Judge James Wilkerson, who had been appointed Justice of the Northern Illinois District Court by Harding, on Daugherty's recommendation. Wilkerson issued the injunction that Daugherty had drafted: it affirmed the open shop and the right to work and forbade union members from interfering with strikebreakers' coming in to take over their jobs. More than that, however, it enjoined union members from the exercise of all sorts of their constitutional rights. They were not to be allowed to "loiter" near railroad offices or yards; they were not to "congregate" near railroad shops or terminals; they were not to picket; they were not even to speak to anyone to persuade them not to work; they were not allowed "in letters, circulars, telegrams, telephones, or word of mouth, or through interviews in the papers, [to] encourage or direct anyone to leave or enter the service of the railroad companies." The injunction stunned the strikers and broke the strike within forty-eight hours. The mine workers, already chilled by Harding's apparent promise to call out federal troops, found their way back to the negotiating table, too, and agreed to a settlement worked out by a friend of Andrew Mellon's�the "Cleveland formula," similar to Harding's old proposal. When Daugherty returned triumphantly to Washington, he discovered that his injunction had stunned his fellow cabinet members, too. None of the members of the cabinet objected to the intention or the outcome of the injunction, not Hoover or Hughes or Mellon or Davis or any of the others, but almost all of them were appalled at its heavy-handedness. Hughes and Hoover went on record that the injunction was "outrageous in law as well as morals." Hoover pointed out to Daugherty that the injunction was a mistake because it virtually eliminated civil liberties. Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., who had been made an assistant secretary of the navy and was sitting in for the absent Denby, pointed out that the injunction was too broad and that, furthermore, it was politically imprudent- because congressional elections were coming up, an observation that gave pause to all the men sitting around the table. Harding turned to Daugherty and told him to withdraw those parts of the injunction that infringed on civil liberties. Daugherty left the cabinet meeting with his feelings badly bruised. Far from getting the congratulations, indeed the adulation, he thought he deserved for having saved the Republic, he had been roundly abused. At that moment, Daugherty understood, a Communist conspiracy was out to get him. pps. 188-185 ===== XXXVI. A Little of the Old Soft Soap POLITICS IS COMPOSED almost as much of symbolic acts, or appear-ances, as it is of actual policies. Sometimes a symbolic act will prepare the public for the policy to follow; sometimes the symbolic act will announce the beginning of the policy; sometimes it will boost a policy along. Often, however, a symbolic act is most useful when it flatly contradicts an actual policy-helping to confuse and draw the sting from the opposition. To speak one way and act another will allow a politician to stand on both sides of an issue. Eugene V. Debs, the grand old man of American socialism, had been sent to the Atlanta penitentiary in 1918 for "actively and purposely" obstructing the draft. While he was in jail, he had been nominated, as he had so often been in the past, to run for president in 1920 on the Socialist ticket�and he had gotten almost a million votes. Although Debs was understood, first, to be a Socialist and an antiwar critic of the government, he had come, also, to be regarded more generally as a champion of outsiders of other sorts. "An aftereffect of the Great War," said Mark Sullivan, "had been irritation on the part of some labor groups which, fostered by a few radical leaders, seemed pointed towards serious social unrest. These leaders were making skillful use of Debs's incarceration. Debs, they declared, was the victim of persecution by the same profit-greedy men who had maneuvered America into the war and made labor do the fighting while they amassed riches." Debs became, in spite of himself, the hero of the left, and of labor. When Harding took office, he was besieged with letters and petitions seeking Debs's release from jail. Another of America's Socialist leaders, Norman Thomas, who had worked for a time as a newsboy for Harding's Marion newspaper, wrote to Harding to urge the release of all "political" prisoners, as Woodrow Wilson had dubbed them, of whom there were three classes: those who had personally tried to avoid the draft, for whatever reason; those who had spoken out against the war as a matter of principle; and those who, such as members of the international Workers of the World, advocated the overthrow of the wartime government. Of all those jailed during the war, 13,735 had already been released. Only several hundred, including Debs, remained in jail. In Britain, Italy, and Belgium, all such prisoners had long since been released. Only the United States still held such "political" prisoners. Although the American Legion opposed the pardoning of any of these prisoners, the World War Veterans favored a general amnesty. It was pointed out that of all the seventy-six Wobblies in jail, none had actually committed a violent act. "They had received a total of eight hundred years of jail time," as Andrew Sinclair has written, "for speaking against the government and the war." George Bernard Shaw joined the chorus for their release, along with H. G. Wells, Upton Sinclair, and Henri Barbusse. Still, Harding waited, letting the pressure build even more. In Daugherty's view, none of the prisoners ought ever to be released. The crimes of the Wobblies, said Daugherty, "were more horrible than outright murder." If any of them had to be pardoned, then they ought to be made to take a loyalty oath in which they acknowledged their crime, expressed contrition, and promised to behave themselves in the future. Daugherty said, however, that Debs should not take such an oath. "He is such an habitual violator of the laws of this country and has such a chronic disregard for his country and is so ignorant of his obligation to society that he might go upon his honor, if he has any." Harding instructed Daugherty to bring Debs up from Atlanta and have a chat with him�perhaps to see whether he still seemed like a dangerous man. Debs was put on a train, without escort, and sent up to Daugherty's office. Jess Smith met him at Union Station and drove him over to see Daugherty. Debs and the attorney general sat and talked all day. Daugherty had to duck out for a lunch date (Debs asked to have some fresh fruit brought in for him), but he returned after lunch and talked through the afternoon. He found Debs a straightforward man�"woefully wrong," but "sincere, gentle, and tender. . . . He unfolded frankly his ideas on government, his ideas on religion, his own case, the cause of Socialism with which he was identified, his beliefs and disbeliefs. A more eloquent and fascinating recital I never heard fall from the lips of any man.... I found him a charming personality, with a deep love for his fellow man.... He did not flinch at anything. He looked every fact squarely in the face. He made no apologies.... Daugherty always admired a man who did not apologize for himself, and so he eased up on his opposition to a pardon for Debs. Jess took Debs back to the train station, and along the way as they got to talking about prison life, Debs mentioned that one thing he particularly missed was toothpicks. Jess stopped the car, dashed into a store, and brought out a big bundle of quill toothpicks to the grateful Debs. At last, when the campaign for Debs had reached its peak, Harding told Daugherty that he was going to pardon Debs. Daugherty, overcoming his distaste for the proposal, suggested the end of the year, 1921. Harding said no, he wanted to release Debs on Christmas Eve so that Debs could spend Christmas Day with his wife. Daugherty said such an act would desecrate Christmas. Nonetheless, Harding released Debs on Christmas Eve, 1921, and asked him to come up to Washington and stop by the White House the day after Christmas. When Debs appeared at the door of Harding's office, the president bounced out of his chair. "Well," Harding said happily, "I have heard so damned much about you, Mr. Debs, that I am now very glad to meet you personally." Harding, like Daugherty, always found that he had some sympathy for the outsider, if he could put aside other considerations for a moment. Debs and Harding had a jolly conversation, and Debs, on his way out, told reporters that "Mr. Harding appears to me to be a kind gentleman, one whom I believe possesses humane impulses." Harding, standing up for Debs�and against six hundred thousand miners, four hundred thousand railroad shopmen, and millions of other workers, farmers, renters, and buyers-came out slightly better than even. pps. 189-193 --[cont]-- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, Omnia Bona Bonis, All My Relations. Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End Kris DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance�not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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