Page:The Brass Check (Sinclair 1919).djvu/197

 rowdy newspapers have their way. We remained in New York for a couple of weeks to straighten our affairs; and on the very day we had planned to leave for the country, the telephone rang, and my wife answered, and a voice said: "This is the 100th St. Police Station. Do you know a man named Arthur Caron?"

Yes, my wife knew Arthur Caron. "What about him?" she asked, and the voice answered: "We found your name in a notebook in his pocket. Will you come to the station and identify his body?"

There had been, it appeared, an explosion in a tenement-house on Third Avenue. At first the police thought it was a gas-explosion, but soon the truth became known; Arthur Caron and two or three of his friends had been making bombs with the intention of blowing up the Rockefellers. There had been a premature explosion, which had blown out several stories of the tenement, and killed the three lads.

It was interesting to observe the conduct of the New York newspapers during this affair. It made, of course, a tremendous excitement. Bombs are news; they are heard all the way around the world. But the outrages which have caused the bombs are not news, and no one ever refers to them. No one makes clear that these outrages will continue to cause bombs, so long as the human soul remains what it is.

Now the New York newspapers knew perfectly well that our Broadway demonstration, our "Free Silence League," as they had dubbed it, had been a peaceable demonstration. They knew that at the opening meeting, at which the plan was discussed, I had declared that I desired the co-operation only of those who would pledge their word to me personally that they would offer no resistance, no matter what was done to them; that they would not even speak a word, nor argue with anyone, they would do nothing but walk up and down. At our first meeting Frederick Sumner Boyd, an I. W. W. leader, repudiated my ideas, and called upon the meeting to organize itself to raise money and send arms to the coal-strikers. I replied that if any wished to organize such a group, it was his right, but I had called this meeting for the purpose of organizing one kind of demonstration, and I thought that those who wished to organize some other kind of demonstration should utilize one of the other rooms of the Liberal Club; whereupon