Page:The Autobiography of a Catholic Anarchist.djvu/127

CHAPTER 6. LIFE AT HARD LABOR—THE HOPI 114 My signs the next Monday read:

I gave out CWs and did not have much trouble. The usual calls to go back to Russia and the inquiry of how much the Communists were paying me for my picketing occurred. Many people who had seen me before stopped and asked questions.

During these years several dozen people had refused to pay part or all of their income tax. Ernest Bromley, near Cincinnati, Ohio correlated the publicity on this subject and published the names of those refusing to pay taxes. Most of these were well-meaning Quakers or pacifists who kept their money in banks and had it taken by the tax man. Not being real radicals that was about the best they could do. Others refused once and then decided it was too much trouble to continue the effort. Others earned less than the $600 and so did not have to pay any tax.

Later in the spring Peter Maurin, the founder of the CW, died. I had met him a few times in Milwaukee, but had not seen him since I had been in the southwest. He is the other great man, besides Alexander Berkman whom I have known personally. He was that rare combination; a hard worker and a brilliant thinker and writer. He was the most "detached" person I have known. He did not at all care for material things but woe to the person who tried to trifle with ideas around him; he would put across his "point" no matter what happened.

The same week my old friend Larry Heaney died. He was at that time on a farm west of St. Louis with Marty Paul. In the old days of the Milwaukee CW there was a drunk by the name of "One Round Baker" who had been a prize fighter of sorts. He delighted in picking out a new cop and spitting on his shoes and before the cop could strike him he would knock the cop down. He always was locked up in jail but he delighted in the sport of knocking down cops. He would come in the CW House and loudly shout that he would knock down any priest. Larry would take him quietly by the arm and walk him around the block and he would be pacified. No one else could tame him.