be
continued until free speech is established in San Diego if it takes
twenty thousand members and twenty years to do so." The national
membership of the I.W.W. had been drafted as an invading army, to be
a constant irritation to the city until it surrendered. The police
asserted that "there are bodies of men leaving all parts of the country
for San Diego" for the purpose of defying the city authorities and
overwhelming its municipal machinery. A committee of vigilantes armed
with "revolvers, knives, night-sticks, black jacks, and black snakes,"
supported by the local press and commercial bodies, undertook to run the
unwelcome guests out of town. That this was not done gently is clearly
disclosed by subsequent official evidence. Culprits were loaded into
auto trucks at night, taken to the county line, made to kiss the flag,
sing the national anthem, run the gauntlet between rows of vigilantes
provided with cudgels and, after thus proving their patriotism under
duress, were told never to return.

"There is an unwritten law," one of the local papers at this time
remarked, "that permits a citizen to avenge his outraged honor. There is
an unwritten law that permits a community to defend itself by any means
in its power, lawful or unlawful, against any evil which the operation
of the written law is inadequate to oppose or must oppose by slow,
tedious, and unnecessarily expensive proceeding." So this municipal
homeopathy of curing lawlessness with lawlessness received public
sanction.

With the declaration of war against Germany in April, 1917, hostility
to the I.W.W. on the part of the American public was intensified. The
members of the organization opposed war. Their leaflet "War and the
Workers," bore this legend:

GENERAL SHERMAN SAID
"WAR IS HELL"

DON'T GO TO HELL
IN ORDER TO GIVE A BUNCH OF
PIRATICAL
PLUTOCRATIC
PARASITES
A BIGGER SLICE OF HEAVEN.

Soon rumors abounded that German money was being used to aid the I.W.W.
in their plots. In Oklahoma, Texas, Illinois, Kansas, and other States,
members of the organization were arrested for failure to comply with
the draft law. The governors of Oregon, Washington, Montana, Idaho, and
Nevada met to plan laws for suppressing the I.W.W. Similar legislation
was urged upon Congress. Senator Thomas, in a report to the Senate,
accused the I.W.W. of cooperating with German agents in the copper mines
and harve