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 of Tacoma from all responsibility in the event of a hunger strike, a light dawned on that stricken town. The I.W.W., who had refused to eat because they objected to being detained in the county, instead of in the city, jail, were accorded liberty to follow their desires. A threat which for years had sufficed to throw British and American prisons into consternation was suddenly found to be harmless to all but the threateners. What really agitated the citizens of Tacoma just then was, not so much whether demagogues would consent to eat the food provided for them, as whether honest men could afford food to eat.

A comic opera might be staged with Ellis Island as a mise en scène. The seventy-three "reds," detained on that asylum as undesirables, who sent an "ultimatum," modelled on the Berlin pattern, to the Congressional Committee, would have charmed Gilbert and 135