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 CHAPTER II

THE WEB

Methods of Work—Getting the Evidence—The Organization in Detail—The Multifold Activities of the League.

It is to Mr. A. M. Briggs of Chicago that credit should go for the initial idea of the American Protective League. The first flash came many months before the declaration of war, although, for reasons outlined, it long was obvious that we must eventually go to war.

The Department of Justice in Chicago was in a terribly congested condition, and long had been, for the neutrality cases were piling up.

"I could get ten times as much done if I had men and money to work with," said Hinton G. Clabaugh, Superintendent of the Bureau of Investigation. "There are thousands of men who are enemies of this country and ought to be behind bars, but it takes a spy to catch a spy, and I've got a dozen spies to catch a hundred thousand spies right here in Chicago. They have motor cars against my street cars. They're supplied with all the money they want; my own funds are limited. We're not at war. All this is civil work. We simply haven't ways and means to meet this emergency."

"I can get ten or twenty good, quiet men with cars who'll work for nothing," said Mr. Briggs one day. "They'll take either their business time or their leisure time, or both, and join forces with you. I know we're not at war, but we're all Americans together."

In that chance conversation—only we ought not to call it chance at all, but a thing foreordained—began the greatest society the world ever saw,—an army of men equipped with money, brains, loyalty, which grew into one of the main legions of our defense. That army to-day probably