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136

The Nation

of mens natura l des ire to live a life above and beyond the

had no poetry, no pictures, no sta tues, no songs; if we h

mere business of existence; if as nations we had been bred

lived less as poets and lovers of light, and more as lov

only to the .use of tools and facts, and not to the use of

of self and seekers after advanta ge-there would have b

ideas and to the contemplation of ideals if our interpreta- no culture to apply,

no

conversion of outraged Belgium a

tion of history and human action in general had been eco- Serb ia and the Lusitania into the unconquerable sword

nomic and practical instead of ideal and heroic; if we had the spir it tha t wrought our deliverance.

Jai l ing Radica

By FREDERICK R. BARKLEY

N

January 2 Ar thur L. Barkey, chief agent of th e De-

partment of Justice in Detroit, eceived an order from

Attorney General Palmer nstructing Mr. Barkey, accord-

ing o his

own

statement, o aid theheadquarters of a

group of interdictedorganizations,principally th e Gom-

munistparty,as long as hey continue to meet, in a

supreme effort to break the back of radicalism in Detroit.

As

a result, eight hundred men were imprisoned for from

three o six days n a dark, windowless, narrow corridor

running around th e big central areaway of t he ciiys anti-

quated Federal Building hey slept on the bare stone floor

a t night, in the heavy hea t tha t welled sickeningly up to

the low roof, jus t over thei r heads hey were shoved and

jostledaboutby heavy-handed policemen; theywere for-

bjdden even the chance to perform a makeshift shave; they

were compelled to stand in long lines for access to the soli-

tary drinking fountain andhe one toilet; they were denied

all food fo r twenty hours, and after that were fedon what

the ir families brought in and they were refused all com-

munication with elativesorwithattorneys.Theseeight

hundred men, so closely packed that they had to step over

one anothers bodies to move about at

all,

included in their

number citizens and aliens, college gradua tes and laborers,

skilled mechanics making

$15

a day an d boys not yet out

of short trousers. They were seized without warran t while

attending dances and classes

in

physical geography and simi-

lar subjects hey were herded behind bar s with no exami-

nationand no chance to nqui reorexplain; heywere

labeled in the newspapers as Reds, Bolsheviks, Anarchists,

Terrorists, and were left there far the jeering gaze of th e

credulous, befoozled public.

What

was the crime of theeighthundred?Thecrime

was hat hese menwereattending a dance or studying

physical geography and other sciences in a hall known as

theHouse of the Masses, theheadquarters

of

the Com-

munis t party in Detroit . And back of t ha t was the crime

of the Communist party-which has abou t one member fo r

every thousand men in the country-in declaring, in stock

phrases, fo r proletarian revolution, the overthrow of capi-

talism, and the establishment

o

a

dictatorship of t he prole-

ta ri at and destruction of the bourgeois state.

SO the Departmentof Justice held in

this

dark, foul cage

a young American-born college instructor who had come

down from the university during the holidays to teach this

revolutionary class in physical geography SO tha t he could

bettersupport

his

wifeand child. Threedaysand hree

nights hey held him.They held a 17-year-old boy,who

had been caught while at the House of the Masses t o see

man about a job. They held from four to a dozen men who

had simply been having a drink of near-beer in a cafe on

the first f loor of the building. They held at least one man

who had simply stopped ou t of curiosity.

They held 22 men taken f rom ano ther hall near by, a

IabeLIed in the reports as the headquarte rs of the W.

We did not leave them-a scrap of paper with which to

business, one paper quoted Mr. Barkey as saying. Eig

een days late r, three of thcse twenty-two, who, of cour

were finally released, appeared before Mayor Couzens w

an appeal fo r aid. They were officers of the Workingme

Sick Benefit and Educational Society, they said, and wi

2

sick members on their ists, hey were unable to pa

benefits because th e Department of Justice had taken the

membership and sick lists. They feared some of the me

bers might be facing dea th for ack of t he money due the

We have tried to get the members together, said one

them,*but they are so afra id of being arrested that the

wontcome

t

a meeting. And the Department of Jus t

wont give

u s

the lists. The Mayor promised do wh

he could. The headquarters of the

I. W.

W. were actual

several blocks farther

down

the treet.The twenty-t

members of the Workingmens Sick Benefit and Educ

tional Society wereplaying checkers when the aid w

made, they told the Mayor.

The officers held one youngman who was gett ingh

dinner in the cooperative res tau ran t run by th e Worke

Educational Society, which controls the House of t

Masses. He qui t he Communist pa rty because he did

believe in force, hi s sist er said. But the rest aura nt ha

bett er meals a t cheap prices than any place around ther

and he always ate there. Theyve had him ten days now

The raiders held altogether, it would appear from tabu

tions of releases made fro m tim e to time, more than 3

Americancitizens,oraliens who could prove conclusive

in the Departments secret examinations, th at they had n

even a cursory interest in radicalism. For from three

six

days hey held these men and boys in his emporary

prison, and then began to trans fer them to precinct pol

stati ons and to the bull pen in the Municipal Buildin

All this time there was a state approaching chaos in th

officesof the Department of Justice. No lis t of those h

was available. Fran tic wives and hildren aunted t

lower halls in heFederal Building,hoping to catch

glimpse of th eir men through the narrow apertu res of t

top-floor corridor ailing.Theconstabulary believe th

the prisonerswerebeing ncited by a number of w

dressed women, who came up to the fou rth floor and wav

handkerchiefs an d sca rfs to them, said one newspaper

reporting heeffo rts of these elatives o earn f heir

men-folk were mong the prisoners. The women of

were well dressed, for thei r husbands were skilled workm

earning substantialwages in many cases.

As

the men were ransferred o heprecinctstations,

policemen sent these frightenedwomen out to these stati

when calls the men wanted, which were permitt ed af

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Jan.

31

-19201 The Nation 137

the

first

fewdays, ailed tobring a response. Fo r days

they beseiged the precinctstations, bullied by the police

and efused permission to see their men or learnwhere

they were. In many cases,

it

was more han .a desi,re ,to

converse that led these women

on

their ruitless search.

They needed dood a t home. Thei r children were suffering

from lack

of

bread. Their men had cash in many instances;

most

of

them had bank deposits also; but under ,the order

.holding them ilzcommunic do it was impossible for their

wives to get either .the cash

or

orders on the bank for th e

money ,they needed ,tostave .off ,hunger. Dozens of the

women qxv,ere ent to thepublic welfare xom.mission by thei r

attorneyg. .One .attorney tells ,of

a

woman fainting in -his

office.

On

being xevived, shesaidshe hadeatennothing

f o r

$hree Taken

.to

a nearby restaurant, she fainted

again the smell of 3dod.

Among these amilieswere he wives andchildren of

American citizens, who-mofficialsof the Department of

Just ice .admitted they .had no right

t o

arrest.

Do

-you

know .many citizens youve got up .there?

Mr.

Barkey

was asked by a ,reporter on the third day aft er ,the first

xaid.

No

no, he replied nervously, %ut don$ say .any-

thing about citizens being held. We havent any xight to

ar rest citizens, you know,

so

dont say anything about that.

When one newspaper eported Mr. BarkeyS to h is .effect,

and told the ,conditions under which th e men were being

held, another journal reported his reply as follows: The

public (should bear

in

mind that this is not a picnic, and

the Department of Just ice snot providing ettees fo r

criminals [350

of

whom were later released for l-aclcof

evidence]. Theyhave to sleep on t h e floor. Thatsright.

But a stone :bed

in

the post office proljably isnt any harder

than a board bed in he jail.Themajori ty of them-are

gettingbetter han heir five-sleep-in-a-bed homes, and

they have more food than hey an at. Relatives and

friends have brought i n whole boiled hams, boxes of

oranges, andother delicacies.

I

At -the Municipal Building, where some .of th e men were

taken aft er six days in the corridor prison, the same abomi-

nable conditions were reestablished. From 130 to

34

men

were herded into the police bull pen, a room built to hold

petty offenders

f o r

no t more than three

o r

four hours,

a

one-window cellar room, twenty-four by ,th irty fee t in size,

with no place to rest but wooden benches and

a

stone floor.

For

seven days these men were held here , sleeping on the

floor, fed largely by the contributions from relatives handed

through hesinglegrated door. Many of ,them were ill;

one was suffering from an infected -hand which had had no

treatment. Employees in th e afe of the building threatened

toquit f he men were not removed. These conditions

are intolerable in civilized city, Mayor Couzens told the

City Council, after asking

it

to demand that he Federal

authorities remove the men to aproper place of confine-

ment. To back up his request, he submi tted a report from

thesuperintendent of municipalbuildings and th e health

commissioner, repo rting hesituationas intolerableand

a menace to the health of the city. .Nothing was said of

the health of the imprisoned men. The conditions are no

worse than they were in the Federal Building, the health

commissioner said.

When the prisoners held in the bull pen were taken

there from the Federal Building, camera men were on hand

to film them.

Six

days :imprisonment without opportunity

to -shave, six nights *ofsleeping

in

,the ir clothing on stone

floor had prepared them well fo r th e enforced rSle of Bol-

shevik terroristswith which the public

is

regaled. And

these -films, like the photographs taken

at

the House of the

Masses, probably are doing their vicious work of rousing

hateand intoleranceall over thecountry today. At he

House of the Masses, some Revolutionary War flintlocks,

used inpresenting costume plays, were ound in

a

cup-

board. Stacked before a -great pile of books -thrown from

the institutions library and surmounted with framed pic-

tures

of

Lenin, Trotzky, ,and they made

a

-picture all

tao falsely convincing of he menace of Bolshevism.

Today, January 39 the 300 -men kleftof the 800 seized

ar e housed in an-.old acmy .fort here. In -addition,about

140

are out onbond. Warrant s far holding these 44 ar-

rived from Washington .on January 12, ten days after the

raids.These warrants,

the

chief immigrationnspector

explained, would block further efforts of -attorneys to gain

release f o r the ir clients hroughhabeascorpus proceed-

ings

For

there are a fewattorneys courageous enough

to take the cases of these persecuted people. One of them

i s

Walter A. Nelsan, a student of constitutional law and

sociology, and head of

a

corporation engaged i n supplying

milk to 180 Detroit stores a t two-cents under .the prevail-

ingrate.

I

would not defend one of these aliens f the

Government would open

its

gates and permit them .to leave

the country, Mr. Nelson said.But the Government re-

fuses hem passports to :leave and then arrests them for

stay ing here. Scores of these people came to memonths

ago ts help them get passporLts. couldnt get them. Now

the Government proposes to ship hem o some unknown

port, with what not possibilities of death awaiting them,

and

t o

leave their families behind t o starve. t is an out-

raging

of

everything th at America ever h as stood for.

This is the situation in Detroit today. Nearly

400

Inen,

citizens and aliens, are free again after being confined for

one to two weeks under conditions of horror, confinedbe-

cause their peaceful assemblage, guaranteed by the Con-

stitution, led the Department of J ustic e o suspect that

their beliefs, also protectedunder the Constitution,were

inimical to he peace and afety of

110,000,000

people.

Nearly

400

men are free after

taste

of Americanization

that bodes ill for any future Americanizers who do not

come backed by the clubs of the police and t he constabulary.

Nearly

400

men, and hundreds more women and children,

havehad the seeds of hatred sown in heir breasts, And

probably

400

others, no more guilty

of

a crime than these,

are wait ing exile to Europe to spread those same seeds

of

hatred here. Thousands more of the citys great foreign-

born population have had ter ror planted in thei r bosoms-

terror like that which makes it impossible f o r the leaders

of a sick benefit society to get its members together. And

ter ror and hate are close akin. As

f o r

those Detroiters

who

may sometime have read the American Constitution and the

Declaration of Independence.

o r

remembered the proud boast

that this was the land of freedom fo r exiles from autocratic

Europe, revulsion silent, but none the less deep-seated

and stern, has come. The Mayor, who speaks a s strongly

ashe can, represents the indignationand esolution of

others who speak not a t all now, bu t who mayspeak

at

the ballot bo2 at some not dis tant day. The pecple, sound

at heart and steadfast

for

the right when they

know

the

tru th, will some.day come to demand a n accounting f or th is

slaughter of Americanism to make a-pre sid ent ial candi-

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