The Bomb Thoughts Are Met with Police Bludgeons.”He Was Almost Beside Himself with Excitement and Anger

was suffering from concussion of the brain, and would notbe able to get about again for months. The dreadful affair seemed to have excited Spies’ courage and strengthened his resolution. “Shameful, shameful,” he kept on saying. “For the first time in America orderly meetings on vacant lots are dispersed by force. The Bomb Thoughts are met with police bludgeons.”He was almost beside himself with excitement and anger. On my way out I stopped in the outer office to say a word or Frank Harris two to the cashier, and as I went into the outside waiting-room I met Raben. “What!” I cried, “you here in Chicago?” He told me he had been in Chicago some time. “Come out,” I went on, “and let me give you a German meal like the one you gave me in New York. Do you remember? There’s a lot to talk about.” “There is,” he said. “You people in Chicago are making his- tory. I have been sent by ‘The New York Herald’ to write up these strikes of yours.” His air of triumph was amusing. His connection with the well-known paper increased his self- importance. As we went out together I noticed with some satisfaction that my accent in American was now better than his. I spoke like an American, whereas any one could see that he was a German. Elsie had done me a lot of good. Besides, my reading of the English writers and the articles I had already written in English had given me a larger vocabulary and a greater control of English than he could pretend to. We were soon seated in a restaurant at a good meal, and I learned to my astonishment that Raben had been ten days or a fortnight in Chicago. “I heard of you,” he said, “and expected to run across you any day.” “But have you been about?” I asked. “It is curious I have not 1908 seen you.” The fact, of course, being that I had been out with 80 eigners are trying to make an eight-hour day, and we are not going to have it. I will write a little ‘par’ myself, just saying that Bonfield was needlessly energetic.” “Well,” I said, “if you won’t take this strike stuff of mine, perhaps you will keep me on still about the fires and anything of that “Yes, yes,” he said. “You do it very well. You go to every fire, and our American reporters get too cunning. They write up accounts without having been there. Yes, I’ll take the fire stuff all right; but you keep off this strike business. It’s going tobe bad weather for some of those Poles and Germans, I can see- mighty bad weather.” The editor was right; it was bad weather for the foreign workmen all through that savage winter and spring, for the editor of the “Tribune,” like all the other American editors, put in no part of the truth. He forgot even to say in his leading article that Bonfield was needlessly energetic, as he had promised. What he did say was that the thirty-five foreigners in the hospital would perhaps serve as a warning to the rest that any attack on the police would be vigorously repressed. Hard weather, indeed, and worse to come for the foreign workmen! I was no longer employed to go to the strikes. I saw them, and hundreds of American eyewitnesses are still living who can prove that the police went on from brutality to brutality. Every month their actions became more indefensible, till at length they did not even summon the crowds to disperse, but used their clubs at once, indiscriminately upon strikers and lookers-on and casual passerby, like madmen. But I am getting ahead of my story. After that talk with the editor of the “Tribune,” I went to see Spies. He was de- lighted to have my description of the police attack for his paper; introduced me to Fielden, the Englishman, who had already given him a rough account of it; and who told us that Fischer was lying ill at home. He had had a terrible blow, it appeared. The whole side of his face had been crushed in;he 79 down. It was a butchery. My blood was boiling; but I had no weapon, and could do nothing. I was standing just at the corner of the street and the vacant lot, when a policeman near me ran after a boy. The boy could not have been more than thirteen or fourteen years of age. He got almost to my side, and then Contents as the policeman caught up to him and lifted his club, I think I shouted in horror. But some one passed me like a flash, and before the policeman’s club had fallen, indeed, while he was in An Introduction by John Dos Passos 5 the very act of striking, he was struck himself, under the jaw, and with such speed and force that I gasped with amazement at Foreword to the First American Edition (1909) 16 the way he went down, his club whirling in the air a dozen feet Afterword to the Second American Edition (1920) 18 away. The next moment his assailant turned and strode pastme down the street. It was the man whose gaze had made such an Chapter I 27 impression on me a short time before at Parson’s meeting on the lakeshore. Chapter II 57 A moment later I called after him, but, in the meantime, sev- eral of the strikers had rushed between us, and when I followed Chapter III 75 him he had disappeared. I wrote the account of the police attack, as I have told it here, Chapter IV 90 and took it to the office of the Tribune; but before going Itook Chapter V 110 care to get together some facts to corroborate my statements. Thirty-five strikers had been taken to the hospital, all ofthem Chapter VI 120 severely wounded, two of them dangerously; while not one policeman was injured sufficiently to come under the doctor’s Chapter VII 133 hands. When the editor had read my article, he put it down frown- Chapter VIII 148 ing. “It may be as you say, Schnaubelt,” he said; “the admit- tances to the hospital make your story look probable. But you Chapter IX 165 are up against America in this matter, and I am not going to Chapter X 182 take sides against my own people. ‘Yankee Doodle’ is our tune every time, and don’t you forget it!” he added assertively. Chapter XI 195 “I have taken no side,” I explained; “I am telling simply what I saw.” Chapter XII 210 “That’s the worst of it,” he admitted. “Damn it. I believeit is the truth; but, anyway, I can’t and won’t publish it. You for- Chapter XIII 216 78 3 Chapter XIV 226 there! break up!” was the cry, and the strikers began to obey with sullen murmurs of discontent. At first it looked as if high-handed authority would triumph once more; but there came a fateful pause, and at once the police seemed to lose their tempers. I pressed into the crowd to see what was going on. Bonfield was talking to one of the speakers, a man whom I afterwards knew, called Fielden, an Englishman, a middle-aged, dark-bearded man, the essence of good-nature, but stolidly determined. He kept repeating now — “We are not interfering with anybody. Who are we interfering with? We are harming nobody.” Bonfield had his club in his hand. He suddenly seemedto lose self-control. Perhaps he was pressed against by the crowd. I can’t tell. But of a sudden he struck Fielden in the stomach with his club, and knocked him backwards off the cart, which was serving as a sort of extemporized platform. At once a man thrust himself forward in front of Bonfield, shouting some gib- berish that I could hardly distinguish, and using wild gestures. It was Fischer, the Communist reporter. He was evidently beside himself with angry excitement, and his German-English jargon was wholly unintelligible to the police. Bonfield looked at him for a minute, and thrust him back with his left hand. As Fischer pressed forward again, gesticulating, Bonfield thrust him back again, and then clubbed him savagely on the head. Fischer fell senseless, and that was, as it were, the signal for the row to begin. In one moment the police were lost, pulled down, and trampled under foot by the surging crowd of men. Immediately I turned and began to push through the crowd to get out in order to see what would take place. The police on the outskirts had already drawn their clubs, and were using them on every one. The crowd began to ravel away at its edges before the fierce attack. I struggled out of it somehow, and gottothe pavement, and from there I saw the police bludgeoning every one they could. Most of the crowd were already running away. While trying to escape men and women were brutally struck 4 77 which later I saw marked a new departure. There was a strike on the East Side. It was in December or January, bitter winter weather, fifteen or twenty degrees below zero. Snow was falling slowly, the afternoon closing in. The operatives insome machine shops had come out, and were holding a meeting on An Introduction by John Dos a vacant lot near the factory.

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