100%: the Story of a Patriot

by Upton Sinclair

  Of course the country went wild, and the Guffeys and McGivneys andGudges all over the United States realized that their chance hadcome. Peter instructed the secretary of the I. W. W. local ofAmerican City to call a meeting for that evening, to adopt aresolution declaring the press stories from Centralia to be lies. Atthe same time another of Guffey's men, an ex-army officer stillwearing his, uniform, caused a meeting of the American Legion to besummoned; he made a furious address to the boys, and at nine o'clockthat night some two-score of them set out, armed with bigmonkey-wrenches from their automobiles, and raided the I. W. W.headquarters, and battered the members over the head with themonkey-wrenches, causing several to leap from the window and breaktheir legs. Next morning the incident was reported in the AmericanCity "Times" with shouts of glee, and District-attorney Burchardissued a public statement to the effect that no effort would be madeto punish the soldier boys; the "wobblies" had wanted "directaction," and they had got it, and it would be assumed that they weresatisfied.

  Then the members of the American Legion, encouraged by thisapplause, and instigated by Guffey's ex-army officer, proceeded toinvade and wreck every radical meeting-place in the city. Theysmashed the "Clarion" office and the Socialist Party headquartersagain, and confiscated more tons of literature. They wrecked acouple of book-stores, and then, breaking up into small groups, theyinspected all the news-stands in the city, and wherever they foundRed magazines like the Nation or the New Republic, they tore up thecopies and threatened the agents with arrest. They invaded the roomsof a literary society called the Ruskin Club, frequented mostly byamiable old ladies, and sent some of these elderly dames intohysterics. They discovered the "Russian Peoples' Club," which hadhitherto been overlooked because it was an educational organization.But of course no Russian could be trusted these days--all of themwere Bolsheviks, or on the way to becoming Bolsheviks, which was thesame thing; so Guffey organized a raid on this building, and sometwo hundred Russians were clubbed and thrown downstairs or out ofwindows, and an elderly teacher of mathematics had his skullcracked, and a teacher of music had some teeth knocked out.

  There were several million young Americans who had been put intomilitary uniform, and had guns put into their hands, and been putthru target practice and bayonet drill, and then had not seen anyfighting. These fellows were, as the phrase has it, "spoiling for afight;" and here was their chance. It was just as much fun as trenchwarfare, and had the advantage of not being dangerous. When theraiding parties came back, there were no missing members, and nocasualties to be telegraphed to heartbroken parents. Some fool womengot together and tried to organize a procession to protest againstthe blockade of Russia; the raiders fell upon these women, andwrecked their banners, and tore their clothing to bits, and thepolice hustled what was left of them off to jail. It happened that awell-known "sporting man," that is to say a race-track frequenter,came along wearing a red necktie, and the raiders, taking him for aBolshevik, fell upon him and pretty nearly mauled the life out ofhim. After that there was protest from people who thought it unwiseto break too many laws while defending law and order, so thedistrict attorney's office arranged to take on the young soldierboys as deputy sheriffs, and give them all badges, legal and proper.

  Section 81

  Peter Gudge often went along on these hunting parties. Peter,curiously enough, discovered in himself the same "complex" as thebalked soldier boys. Peter had been reading war news for five years,but had missed the fighting; and now he discovered that he liked tofight. What had kept him from liking to fight in the past was thedanger of getting hurt; but now that there was no such danger, hecould enjoy it. In past times people had called him a coward, and hehad heard it so often that he had come to believe it; but now herealized that it was not true, he was just as brave as anybody elsein the crowd.

  The truth was that Peter had not had a happy time in his youth, hehad never learned, like the younger members of the Chamber ofCommerce and the Merchants' and Manufacturers' Association, to knocka little white ball about a field with various shapes and sizes ofclubs. Peter was like a business man who has missed his boyhood, andthen in later years finds the need of recreation, and takes up someform of sport by the orders of his physician. It became Peter's,form of sport to stick an automatic revolver in his hip-pocket, andtake a blackjack in his hand, and rush into a room where thirty orforty Russians or "Sheenies" of all ages and lengths of beard werestruggling to learn the intricacies of English spelling. Peter wouldgive a yell, and see this crowd leap and scurry hither and thither,and chase them about and take a whack at a head wherever he saw one,and jump into a crowd who were bunched together like sheep, tryingto hide their heads, and pound them over the exposed parts of theiranatomy until they scattered into the open again. He liked to get alot of them started downstairs and send them tumbling heels overhead; or if he could get them going out a window, that was moreexhilarating yet, and he would yell and whoop at them. He learnedsome of their cries--outlandish gibberish it was--and he would cursethem in their own language. He had a streak of the monkey in him,and as he got to know these people better he would imitate theirantics and their gestures of horror, and set a whole room full ofthe "bulls" laughing to split their sides. There was a famous"movie" comedian with big feet, and Peter would imitate this man,and waddle up to some wretched sweat-shop worker and boot him in thetrousers' seat, or step on his toes, or maybe spit in his eye. So hebecame extremely popular among the "bulls," and they would insist onhis going everywhere with them.

  Later on, when the government set to work to break up the CommunistParty and the Communist Labor Party, Peter's popularity and prestigeincreased still more. For now, instead of just raiding and smashing,the police and detectives would round up the prisoners andarrest them by hundreds, and carry them off and put them thru"examinations." And Peter was always needed for this; his specialknowledge made him indispensable, and he became practically the bossof the proceedings. It had been arranged thru "Shorty" Gunton andthe other "under cover" men that the meetings of the Communist andCommunist Labor parties should be held on the same night; and allover the country this same thing was done, and next morning theworld was electrified by the news that all these meetings had beenraided at the same hour, and thousands of Reds placed under arrest.In American City the Federal government had hired a suite of about adozen rooms adjoining the offices of Guffey, and all night and nextmorning batches of prisoners were brought in, until there were aboutfour hundred in all. They were crowded into these rooms with barelyspace to sit down; of course there was an awful uproar, moaning andscreaming of people who had been battered, and a smell that beat themonkey cage at the zoological gardens.

  The prisoners were kept penned up in this place for several weeks,and all the time more were being brought in; there were so many thatthe women had to be stored in the toilets. Many of the prisonersfell ill, or pretended to fall ill, and several of them went insane,or pretended to go insane, and several of them died, or pretended todie. And of course the parlor Reds and sympathizers were busyoutside making a terrible fuss about it. They had no more papers,and could not hold any more meetings, and when they tried tocirculate literature the post-office authorities tied them up; butstill somehow they managed to get publicity, and Peter's "undercover" men would report to him who was doing this work, and Peterwould arrange to have more raids and more batches of prisonersbrought in. In one of the "bomb-plots" which had been unveiled inthe East they had discovered some pink paper, used either forprinting leaflets, or for wrapping explosives, one could not besure. Anyhow, the secret agencies with which Guffey was connectedhad distributed samples of this paper over the country, and any timethe police wanted to finish some poor devil, they would find thisdeadly "pink paper" in his possession, and the newspapers wouldbrand him as one of the group of conspirators who were sendinginfernal machines thru the mails.

  Section 82

  Peter was so busy these days that he missed several nights' sleep,and hardly even stopped to eat. He had his own private ro
om, wherethe prisoners were brought for examination, and he had half a dozenmen under his orders to do the "strong arm" work. It was his task toextract from these prisoners admissions which would justify theirbeing sent to prison if they were citizens, or being deported ifthey were aliens. There was of course seldom any way to distinguishbetween citizens and aliens; you just had to take a chance on it,proceeding on the certainty that all were dangerous. Many years ago,when Peter had been working for Pericles Priam, they had spentseveral months in a boarding house, and you could tell when therewas going to be beef-steak for dinner, because you heard the cookpounding it with the potato-masher to "tender it up;" and Peterlearned this phrase, and now used the process upon his alien Reds.When they came into the room, Peter's men would fall upon them andbeat them and cuff them, knocking them about from one fist toanother. If they were stubborn and would not "come across," Peterwould take them in hand himself, remembering how successful Guffeyhad been in getting things out of him by the twisting of wrists andthe bending back of fingers.

  It was amazing how clever and subtle some of these fellows were.They were just lousy foreign laborers, but they spent all theirspare time reading; you would find large collections of books intheir rooms when you made your raids, and they knew exactly what youwanted, and would parry your questions. Peter would say: "You're anAnarchist, aren't you?" And the answer would be: "I'm not anAnarchist in the sense of the word you mean"--as if there could betwo meanings of the word "Anarchist!" Peter would say, "You believein violence, do you not?" And then the fellow would becomeimpertinent: "It is you who believe in violence, look at my facethat you have smashed." Or Peter would say, "You don't like thisgovernment, do you?" And the answer would be, "I always liked ituntil it treated me so badly"--all kinds of evasions like that, andthere would be a stenographer taking it down, and unless Peter couldget something into the record that was a confession, it would not bepossible to deport that Red. So Peter would fall upon him and"tender him up" until he would answer what he was told to answer; ormaybe Peter would prepare an interview as he wanted it to be, andthe detectives would grab the man's hand and make him sign it; ormaybe Peter would just sign it himself.

  These were harsh methods, but there was no way to help it, the Redswere so cunning. They were secretly undermining the government, andwas the government to lie down and admit its helplessness? Theanswer of 100% Americanism was thundered from every wood and templedhill in the country; also from every newspaper office. The answerwas "No!" 100% Americanism would find a way to preserve itself fromthe sophistries of European Bolshevism; 100% Americanism had workedout its formula: "If they don't like this country, let them go backwhere they come from." But of course, knowing in their hearts thatAmerica was the best country in the world, they didn't want to goback, and it was necessary to make them go.

  Peter was there for that purpose, and his devoted wife was by hisside, egging him on with her feminine implacability. Gladys hadalways been accustomed to refer to these people as "cattle," andnow, when she smelled them herded together in these office rooms forseveral weeks, she knew that she was right, and that no fate couldbe too stern for them. Presently with Peter's help she discoveredanother bomb-plot, this time against the Attorney-General of thecountry, who was directing these wholesale raids. They grabbed fourItalian Anarchists in American City, and kept them apart in specialrooms, and for a couple of months Peter labored with them to getwhat he wanted out of them. Just as Peter thought he had succeeded,his efforts were balked by one of them jumping out of the window.The room being on the fourteenth story, this Italian Anarchist wasno longer available as a witness against himself. The incident setthe parlor Bolsheviks all over the country to raging, and causedDavid Andrews to get some kind of court injunction, and make a lotof inconvenience to Guffey's office.

  However, the work went on; the Reds were gradually sorted out, andsome who proved not to be Reds were let go again, and others wereloaded onto special Red trains and taken to the nearest ports. Someof them went in grim silence, others went with furious cursings, andyet others with wailings and shriekings; for many of them hadfamilies, and they had the nerve to demand that the governmentshould undertake to ship their families also, or else to take careof their families for them! The government, naturally, admitted nosuch responsibility. The Reds had no end of money for printingseditious literature, so let them use it to take care of their own!

  In these various raids and examinations Peter of course met a greatmany of the Reds whom he had once known as friends and intimates.Peter had been wont to imagine himself meeting them, and to trembleat the bare idea; but now he found that he rather enjoyed it. He wasentirely delivered from that fear of them, which had formerlyspoiled his appetite and disturbed his sleep. He had learned thatthe Reds were poor creatures who did not fight back; they had noweapons, and many of them did not even have muscles; there wasreally nothing to them but talk. And Peter knew that he had thepower of organized society behind him, the police and the courts andthe jails, if necessary the army with its machine guns and airplanesand poison gas. Not merely was it safe to pound these people, totread on their toes and spit in their eyes; it was safe also toframe up anything on them, because the newspapers would always backyou up, and the public would of course believe whatever it read inits newspapers.

  No, Peter was no longer afraid of the Reds! He made up his mind thathe was not even afraid of Mac, the most dangerous Red of them all.Mac was safely put away in jail for twenty years, and although hiscase had been appealed, the court had refused to grant a stay ofsentence or to let him out on bail. As it happened, Peter got aglimpse into Mac's soul in jail, and knew that even that proud, grimspirit was breaking. Mac in jail had written a letter to one of hisfellow-Reds in American City, and the post-office authorities hadintercepted the letter, and Guffey had shown it to Peter. "Write tous!" Mac had pleaded. "For God's sake, write to us! The worst horrorof being in jail is that you are forgotten. Do at least let us knowthat somebody is thinking about us!"

  So Peter knew that he was the victor, he was "top dog." And when hemet these Reds whom he had been so afraid of, he took pleasure inletting them feel the weight of his authority, and sometimes of hisfist. It was amusing to see the various ways in which they behavedtoward him. Some would try to plead with him, for the sake of oldtimes; some would cringe and whine to him; some would try to reasonwith him, to touch his conscience. But mostly they would be haughty,they would glare at him with hate, or put a sneer of contempt ontheir faces. So Peter would set his "bulls" to work to improve theirmanners, and a little thumb-bending and wrist-twisting would soon dothe work.

  Section 83

  Among the first load to be brought in was Miriam Yankovich. Miriamhad joined the Communist Party, and she had been born in Russia, sothat was all there was to her case. Peter, knew, of course that itwas Miriam who had set Rosie Stern after him and brought about hisdownfall. Still, he could not help but be moved by her appearance.She looked haggard and old, and she had a cough, and her eyes werewild and crazy. Peter remembered her as proud and hot-tempered, butnow her pride was all gone--she flung herself on her knees beforehim, and caught hold of his coat, sobbing hysterically. It appearedthat she had a mother and five young brothers and sisters who weredependent upon her earnings; all her money had been consumed byhospital expenses, and now she was to be deported to Russia, andwhat would become of her loved ones?

  Peter answered, what could he do? She had violated the law, they hadher membership card in the Communist Party, and she had admittedthat she was alien born. He tried to draw away, but she clung tohim, and went on sobbing and pleading. At least she ought to have achance to talk with her old mother, to tell her what to do, where togo for help, how to communicate with Miriam in future. They weresending her away without allowing her to have a word with her lovedones, without even a chance to get her clothing!

  Peter, as we know, had always been soft-hearted towards women, sonow he was embarrassed. In the handling of these cattle he wascarrying out the order
s of his superiors; he had no power to grantfavors to any one, and he told Miriam this again and again. But shewould not listen to him. "Please, Peter, please! For God's sake,Peter! You know you were once a little in love with me, Peter--youtold me so--"

  Yes, that was true, but it hadn't done Peter much good. Miriam hadbeen interested in Mac--in Mac, that most dangerous devil, who hadgiven Peter so many anxious hours! She had brushed Peter to oneside, she had hardly been willing to listen to what he said; and nowshe was trying to use that love she had spurned!

  She had got hold of his hand, and he could not get it away from herwithout violence. "If you ever felt a spark of love for a woman,"she cried, "surely you cannot deny such a favor--such a littlefavor! Please, Peter, for the sake of old times!"

  Suddenly Peter started, and Miriam too. There came a voice from thedoorway. "So this is one of your lady friends, is it?" And therestood Gladys, staring, rigid with anger, her little hands clenched."So this is one of your Red sweethearts, one of your nationalizedwomen?" And she stamped her foot. "Get up, you hussy! Get up, youslut!" And as Miriam continued to kneel, motionless with surprise,Gladys rushed at her, and clutched two handfuls of her heavy blackhair, and pulled so that Miriam fell prone on the floor. "I'll teachyou, you free lover!" she screamed. "I'll teach you to make love tomy husband!" And she dragged Miriam about by that mop of black hair,kicking her and clawing her, until finally several of the bulls hadto interfere to save the girl's life.