Extract from a letter written by a student of Washington University, St. Louis, now visiting in Santa Monica, California: “The St. Louis papers had only short accounts, which said that Upton Sinclair and several other I. W. W. had been arrested on a charge of Syndicalism. And my friends out here tell me that a raid was made when Upton Sinclair, after having submitted a most innocuous abstract of his speech to the authorities, exhorted a strikers’ meeting to break loose, smash all windows in sight, and dump the street-cars off the tracks. He also attacked the integrity and honor of the chief of police.” ----- CHAPTER IV THE EMPIRE OF THE BLACK HAND Let us now survey the situation in Southern California as I settle down to the writing of this book. The storm has blown over for the moment. Twenty-eight of the strikers—the best of their leaders—have been shipped off to the jute mill for from two to twenty-eight years. The others are back in the slave-market, bidding against one another for the lives of themselves and their families. Those who were active in the strike are black-listed; even though they own homes at the harbor, they cannot find employment, but must sell out and move on. And meantime, the men who robbed them are enjoying the “swag.” Mr. Andrew B. Hammond has gone back to San Francisco, to the comforts of the Bohemian Club, and the Pacific Union Club, and the Commercial Club, and the San Francisco Golf Club; while Mr. I. H. Rice continues to run the political and business affairs of Los Angeles. Some lovers of fair play have organized a branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, to teach the people of this community the elementary idea that the Constitution applies to the poor as well as to the rich. True to our program of the open forum, we call upon Mr. Rice and courteously invite him to set forth his ideas of constitutional rights to one of our audiences. Mr. Rice declines the invitation, and so does Mr. Harry Haldeman, president of the Better America Federation, and so does Mr. Marco Hellman, the banker, and So does Captain John D. Fredericks, congressman-elect of the Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Association and the Chamber of Commerce—it is reported that they put up twelve thousand dollars additional salary for him, because so important a man could not afford to go to Congress otherwise!