Unsafe for Democracy E studies in american E thought and culture Series Editor Paul S. Boyer Margaret Fuller: Transatlantic Crossings in a Revolutionary Age Edited by Charles Capper and Cristina Giorcelli Observing America: The Commentary of British Visitors to the United States, 1890–1950 Robert P. Frankel Picturing Indians: Photographic Encounters and Tourist Fantasies in H. H. Bennett’s Wisconsin Dells Steven D. Hoelscher Cosmopolitanism and Solidarity: Studies in Ethnoracial, Religious, and Professional Affiliation in the United States David A. Hollinger Seaway to the Future: American Social Visions and the Construction of the Panama Canal Alexander Missal Unsafe for Democracy: World War I and the U.S. Justice Department’s Covert Campaign to Suppress Dissent William H. Thomas Jr. Unsafe for Democracy World War I and the U.S. Justice Department’s Covert Campaign to Suppress Dissent William H. Thomas Jr. the university of wisconsin press This book was published with the support of the Evjue Foundation, Inc., the charitable arm of The Capital Times, and the Anonymous Fund of the College of Letters and Science at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. The University of Wisconsin Press 1930 Monroe Street, 3rd Floor Madison, Wisconsin 53711-2059 www.wisc.edu/wisconsinpress/ 3 Henrietta Street London WC2E 8LU, England Copyright © 2008 The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any format or by any means, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or conveyed via the Internet or a Web site without written permission of the University of Wisconsin Press, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles and reviews. 13542 Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Thomas, William H., Jr. Unsafe for democracy : World War I and the U.S. Justice Department’s covert campaign to suppress dissent / William H. Thomas, Jr. p. cm.—(Studies in American thought and culture) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-299-22890-3 (cloth: alk. paper) 1. World War, 1914–1918—Protest movements—United States. 2. Peace movements—Government policy—United States. 3. United States Bureau of Investigation. 4. Freedom of speech—United States. I. Title. II. Series. D639.P77T56 2008 940.3´1—dc22 2008011973 To my grandparents The world must be made safe for democracy. from President Woodrow Wilson’s 2 April 1917 speech to Congress requesting a declaration of war against Germany Contents Illustrations viii Acknowledgments ix Author’s Note xi Prologue 3 1 Setting the Stage 9 2 Methods and Ideology 31 3 Policing the Clergy 68 4 Policing the Left 89 5 Policing Wisconsin 110 6 Vigilantism 146 Epilogue 172 Appendix: Biographical Information of Justice Department Investigators in Wisconsin 179 Notes 183 Bibliography 223 Index 239 vii Illustrations The Reverend Wilhelm Schumann 15 Advertisement from the Committee on Public Information 23 Alexander Bruce Bielaski 26 Thomas Watt Gregory 29 Lillian Burkhart Goldsmith 53 Willard N. Parker 122 Jessica Colvin 125 Bishop Joseph M. Koudelka 128 Victor Berger poster 144 Life cartoon 150 Life cartoon 152 Cass County Democrat front page 165 Rockwell City Gazette editorial cartoon 174 viii Acknowledgments Many years ago, Ellis Hawley read my proposal for research in Jus- tice Department records from the First World War, and his advice steered me toward this project. Allen Steinberg skillfully helped me convert this initial blueprint into a completed dissertation at the Univer- sity of Iowa. This work has also benefited greatly from the generosity and expertise of Kenneth Cmiel, Shelton Stromquist, Herbert Hoven- kamp, Linda K. Kerber, T. Dwight Bozeman, Anuj Desai, Athan Theo- haris, and Michael Pfeifer, all of whom read the work in progress, in whole or in part, and offered their thoughtful recommendations. Colin Gordon provided me with judicious evaluations of my chapters, and Arthur McEvoy helped me sharpen and refine my arguments. I wish to thank my editors at the University of Wisconsin Press, Gwen Walker, Adam Mehring, and Paul Boyer, for their enthusiastic support and their expert guidance, which have made this a better book. I am also indebted to my copyeditor, Mary Sutherland, for her meticulous review of the manuscript. Librarians and archivists at a number of institutions provided gen- erous assistance: the State Historical Society of Iowa, the University of Iowa Libraries, the Ann Arbor District Library, the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan, the Marnie and John Burke Me- morial Library at Spring Hill College, the Baltimore County Historical Society, the Archives and Rare Books Division of the University of Cin- cinnati, the John B. Sears Law Library at the University of Buffalo, the Wisconsin Historical Society, the University of Wisconsin Libraries, the University of Wisconsin Archives, the Max Kade Institute of the Uni- versity of Wisconsin, the Georgetown University Library,the Moorland- Spingarn Research Center at Howard University,the Northeastern Uni- versity Libraries Archives and Special Collections Department, the ix x f Acknowledgments Rhode Island Historical Society, the John D. Rockefeller Library at Brown University, the Schlesinger Library of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, the Tulane University Library, the Texas/Dallas History and Archives Division of the Dallas Public Li- brary, and the Public Library of O’Fallon, Illinois. The archivists at the Diocese of Superior and at the Archdiocese of Milwaukee lent their ex- pertise and went to considerable lengths to find documents relating to the history of the Roman Catholic Church in Wisconsin during this era. The staff at the National Archives in Washington, D.C., and in College Park, Maryland, provided me with valuable guidance. Clara Rolen of the National Archives Great Plains Region branch in Kansas City, Scott M. Forsythe of the National Archives Great Lakes Region branch in Chicago, George P. Young of the National Archives Northeast Region branch in Waltham, Massachusetts, and Gregory Plunges and John Celardo of the National Archives Northeast Region branch in New York City tracked down valuable records for me. FBI historian John Fox as well as Debbie Lopes and Loren Shaver of the FBI’s Freedom of In- formation Act office also helped me locate important materials. The Paul L. Murphy Award from the American Society for Legal History enabled me to conduct research at the University of Buffalo and the University of Cincinnati. The J. Willard Hurst fellowship at the University of Wisconsin Law School’s Institute for Legal Studies pro- vided me with the opportunity to research in the holdings of the Wis- consin Historical Society and the University of Wisconsin Libraries, and also offered me the chance to draw on the insights and encouragement of Arthur McEvoy. At the University of Wisconsin, the translation skills of Gregor Mieder proved invaluable. Kurt Vorndran, Martin Murray, Douglas Baynton, and Katy Stav- reva kindly offered me places to stay when I came to Washington, D.C., to do research. Scott Grau and John and Bridgett Williams-Searle pro- vided intellectual and moral support time and again. Countless thanks go to my parents, Barbara Thomas and William Thomas Sr., who went to great lengths to help me out as I tried to juggle parenting, writing, and teaching simultaneously. My sisters Jenny and Sarah were always sources of encouragement. I am deeply grateful to Helen Patterson for her generosity and good humor. My wife, Martha Patterson, is a con- stant source of love and inspiration, and she offered a keen editorial eye. Finally, I would like to thank my sons, Mark Robert and Walter Clark, who demonstrated considerable patience with their father. Author’s Note In quoting from Justice Department documents, I have let stand the misspellings and grammatical errors that appeared in the original, but I have corrected minor punctuation and typographical mistakes. xi This page intentionally left blank Unsafe for Democracy This page intentionally left blank f Prologue After the first six months of the War, it would have been difficult for fifty persons to have met for any purpose, in any place, from a Church to a dance hall in any part of the United States, without at least one representative of the Government being present. I doubt if any country was ever so thoroughly and intelligently policed in the history of the world. Thomas Watt Gregory, speaking in August of 1919, several months after his retirement as attorney general hile the public efforts of the U.S. Department of Justice to repress W opposition to the First World War have received significant at- tention from historians, who have generally focused on the prosecutions of dissenters under the wartime sedition statutes, relatively little atten- tion has been paid to the Justice Department’s covert campaign to silence antiwar dissent.1 An examination of the records of the Justice Depart- ment’s Bureau of Investigation reveals that in 1917 and 1918 the depart- ment engaged in a massive and largely secret effort, unprecedented in American history, to suppress opposition to the war. In countless cases, department detectives paid cautionary visits on suspected opponents of the war, advising them to stop talking about the war or demanding that they support the war effort. Targets of the department’s investigations 3 4 f Prologue included pacifists, isolationists, Socialists, union organizers, clubwomen, ministers, German Americans, and African Americans. Homes, schools, workplaces, churches—all came under the scrutiny of the Justice Depart- ment, which also deployed undercover operatives in the hopes of elicit- ing unguarded comments by Americans regarding the war. Department detectives saw nothing wrong with trying to intimidate critics of the war into silence, and many investigators displayed an ex- pansive notion of what constituted disloyalty, in some cases treating rad- ical criticism of economic or racial inequalities as unpatriotic.