100%: the Story of a Patriot

by Upton Sinclair

  There was one veteran, a fellow by the name of Sydney, who objectedto this program. He was publishing a paper, the "Veteran's Friend,"and began to use the paper to protest against his comrades acting aswhat he called "scabs." The secretary of the Merchants' andManufacturers' Association sent for him and gave him a straighttalking to, but he went right ahead with his campaign, and soGuffey's office was assigned the task of shutting him up. Peter,while he could not take an active part in the job, was the one whoguided it behind the scenes. They proceeded to plant spies inSydney's office, and they had so many that it was really a joke;they used to laugh and say that they trod on one another's toes.Sydney was poor, and had not enough money to run his paper, so heaccepted any volunteer labor that came along. And Guffey sent himplenty of volunteers--no less than seven operatives--one keepingSydney's books, another helping with his mailing, two more helpingto raise funds among the labor unions, others dropping in every dayor two to advise him. Nevertheless Sydney went right ahead with hisprogram of denouncing the Merchants' and Manufacturers' Association,and denouncing the government for its failure to provide farms andjobs for the veterans.

  One of Guffey's "under cover operatives"--that was the technicalterm for the Peter Gudges and Joe Angells--was a man by the name ofJonas. This Jonas called himself a "philosophic anarchist," andposed as the reddest Red in American City; it was his habit to riseup in radical meetings and question the speaker, and try to tempthim to justify violence and insurrection and "mass-action." If herepudiated these ideas, then Jonas would denounce him as a"mollycoddle," a "pink tea Socialist," a "labor faker." Other peoplein the audience would applaud, and so Guffey's men would find outwho were the real Red sympathizers.

  Peter had long suspected Jonas, and now he was sent to meet him inRoom 427 of the American House, and together they framed up a job onSydney. Jonas wrote a letter, supposed to come from a German"comrade," giving the names of some papers in Europe to which theeditor should send sample copies of his magazine. This letter wasmailed to Sydney, and next morning Jonas wandered into the office,and Sydney showed him the letter, and Jonas told him that these werelabor papers, and the editors would no doubt be interested to knowof the feelings of American soldiers since the war. Sydney sat downto write a letter, and Jonas stood by his side and told him what towrite: "To my erstwhile enemies in arms I send fraternal greetings,and welcome you as brothers in the new co-operative commonwealthwhich is to be"--and so on, the usual Internationalist patter, whichall these agitators were spouting day and night, and which ran offthe ends of their pens automatically. Sydney mailed these letters,and the sample copies of the magazine, and Guffey's office tippedoff the postoffice authorities, who held up the letters. Thebook-keeper, one of Guffey's operatives, went to the Federalattorney and made affidavit that Sydney had been carrying on aconspiracy with the enemy in war-time, and a warrant was issued, andthe offices of the magazine were raided, the subscription-listsconfiscated, and everything in the rooms dumped out into the middleof the floor.

  So there was a little job all Peter's own; except that Jonas, thescoundrel, claimed it for his, and tried to deprive Peter of thecredit! So Peter was glad when the Federal authorities looked thecase over and said it was a bum job, and they wouldn't monkey withit. However, the evidence was turned over to District-attorneyBurchard, who wasn't quite so fastidious, and his agents madeanother raid, and smashed up the office again, and threw thereturned soldier into jail. The judge fixed the bail at fifteenthousand dollars, and the American City "Times" published the storywith scare-headlines all the way across the front page--how theeditor of the "Veteran's Friend" had been caught conspiring with theenemy, and here was a photographic copy of his treasonable letter,and a copy of the letter of the mysterious German conspirator withwhom he had been in relations! They spent more than a year tryingthat editor, and although he was out on bail, Guffey saw to it thathe could not get a job anywhere in American City; his paper wassmashed and his family near to starvation.

  Section 78

  Peter had now been working faithfully for six or eight months, andall that time he religiously carried out his promise to Guffey anddid not wink at a woman. But that is an unnatural life for a man,and Peter was lonely, his dreams were haunted by the faces of NellDoolin and Rosie Stern, and even of little Jennie Todd. One dayanother face came back to him, the face of Miss Frisbie, the littlemanicurist who had spurned him because he was a Red. Now suddenlyPeter realized that he was no longer a Red! On the contrary, he wasa hero, his picture had been published in the American City "Times,"and no doubt Miss Frisbie had seen it. Miss Frisbie was a good girl,a straight girl, and surely all right for him to know!

  So Peter went to the manicure parlor, and sure enough, there was thelittle golden-haired lady; and sure enough, she had read all abouthim, she had been dreaming that some day she might meet himagain--and so Peter invited her to go to a picture show. On the wayhome they became very chummy, and before a week went by it was as ifthey had been friends for life. When Peter asked Miss Frisbie if hemight kiss her, she answered coyly that he might, but after he hadkissed her a few times she explained to him that she was aself-supporting woman, alone and defenseless in the world, and shehad nobody to speak for her but herself; she must tell him that shehad always been a respectable woman, and that she wanted him to knowthat before he kissed her any more. And Peter thought it over anddecided that he had sowed his full share of wild oats in this life;he was ready to settle down, and the next time he saw Miss Frisbiehe told her so, and before the evening was by they were engaged.

  Then Peter went to see Guffey, and seated himself on the edge of thechair alongside Guffey's desk, and twisted his hat in his hands, andflushed very red, and began to stammer out his confession. Heexpected to be received with a gale of ridicule; he was immenselyrelieved when Guffey said that if Peter had really found a good girland wanted to marry her, he, Guffey, was for it. There was nothinglike the influence of a good woman, and Guffey much preferred hisoperatives should be married men, living a settled and respectablelife. They could be trusted then, and sometimes when a womanoperative was needed, they had a partner ready to hand. If Peter hadgot married long ago, he might have had a good sum of money in thebank by now.

  Peter ventured to point out that twenty dollars a week was notexactly a marrying salary, in the face of the present high cost ofliving. Guffey answered that that was true, and he would raise Peterto thirty dollars right away--only first he demanded the right totalk to Peter's fiancee, and judge for himself whether shewas worthy. Peter was delighted, and Miss Frisbie had a private andconfidential interview with Peter's boss. But afterwards Peterwasn't quite so delighted, for he realized what Guffey had done.Peter's future wife had been told all about Peter's weakness, andhow Peter's boss looked to her to take care of her husband and makehim walk the chalkline. So a week after Peter had entered the holybonds of matrimony, when he and Mrs. Gudge had their first littlefamily tiff, Peter suddenly discovered who was going to be top dogin that family. He was shown his place once for all, and he tookit,--alongside that husband who described his domestic arrangementsby saying that he and his wife got along beautifully together, theyhad come to an arrangement by which he was to have his way on allmajor issues, and she was to have her way on all minor issues, andso far no major issues had arisen.

  But really it was a very good thing; for Gladys Frisbie Gudge was anexcellent manager, and set to work making herself a nest as busilyas any female beaver. She still hung on to her manicurist job, forshe had figured it out that the Red movement must be just aboutdestroyed by now, and pretty soon Peter might find himself withoutwork. In the evenings she took to house-hunting, and during her noonhour, without consulting Peter she selected the furniture and thewall-paper, and pretty nearly bought out the stock of afive-and-ten-cent store to equip the beaver's nest.

  Gladys Frisbie Gudge was a diligent reader of the fashion magazines,and kept herself right up to the minute with the styles; also shehad got herself a book on etiquette, and lea
rned it by heart fromcover to cover, and now she took Peter in hand and taught it to him.Why must he always be a "Jimmie Higgins" of the "Whites?" Whyshould he not acquire the vocabulary of an educated man, the artsand graces of the well-to-do? Gladys knew that it is thesesubtleties which determine your salary in the long run; so everySunday morning she would dress him up with a new brown derby and anew pair of brown kid gloves, and take him to the Church of theDivine Compassion, and they would listen to the patriotic sermon ofthe Rev. de Willoughby Stotterbridge, and Gladys would bow her headin prayer, and out of the corner of her eye would get points oncostumes from the lady in the next pew. And afterwards they wouldjoin the Sunday parade, and Gladys would point out to Peter themarks of what she called "gentility." In the evenings they would gowalking, and she would stop in front of the big shop-windows, ortake him into the hotel lobbies where the rich could be seen free ofcharge. Peter would be hungry, and would want to go to a cheaprestaurant and fill himself up with honest grub; but Gladys, who hadthe appetite of a bird, would insist on marching him into thedining-room of the Hotel de Soto and making a meal upon a cup ofbroth and some bread and butter--just in order that they might gazeupon a scene of elegance and see bow "genteel" people ate theirfood.

  Section 79

  And just as ardently as Gladys Frisbie Gudge adored the rich, soardently did she object to the poor. If you pinned her down to it,she would admit that there had to be poor; there could not begentility, except on the basis of a large class of ungentility. Thepoor were all right in their place; what Gladys objected to wastheir presuming to try to get out of their place, or to criticisetheir betters. She had a word by which she summed up everything thatshe despised in the world, and that word was "common;" she used itto describe the sort of people she declined to meet, and she used itin correcting Peter's manners and his taste in hats. To be "common"was to be damned; and when Gladys saw people who were indubitablyand inescapably "common," presuming to set themselves up and formstandards of their own, she took it as a personal affront, shebecame vindictive and implacable towards them. Each and every one ofthem became to her a personal enemy, an enemy to something far moreprecious than her person, an enemy to the thing she aspired tobecome, to her ideal.

  Peter had once been like that himself, but now he was socomfortable, he had a tendency to become lazy and easy-going. It waswell, therefore, that he had Gladys to jack him up, and keep him onhis job. Gladys at first did not meet any Reds face to face, sheknew them only by the stories that Peter brought home to her whenhis day's work was done. But each new group that he was houndingbecame to Gladys an assemblage of incarnate fiends, and while shesat polishing the finger-nails of stout society ladies who were toosleepy to talk, Gladys' busy mind would be working over schemes tofoil these fiends.

  Sometimes her ideas were quite wonderful. She had a woman'sintuition, the knowledge of human foibles, all the intricatesubtleties of the emotional life; she would bring to Peter a programfor the undoing of some young radical, as complete as if she hadknown the man or woman all her life. Peter took her ideas toMcGivney, and then to Guffey, and the result was that her talentswere recognized, and by the lever of a generous salary she was priedloose from the manicure parlor. Guffey sent her to make theacquaintance of the servants in the household of a certain rich manwho was continually making contributions to the Direct PrimaryAssociation and other semi-Red organizations, and who was believedto have a scandal in his private life. So successful was Gladys atthis job that presently Guffey set her at the still more delicatetask of visiting rich ladies, and impressing upon them theseriousness of the Red peril, and persuading them to meet thecontinually increasing expenses of Guffey's office.

  Just now was a busy time in the anti-Red campaign. For nearly twoyears, ever since the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, there had beengradually developing a split in the Socialist movement, and the"under-cover" operatives of the Traction Trust, as well as those ofthe district attorney's office and of the Federal government, hadbeen working diligently to widen this split and develop dissensionsin the organization. There were some Socialists who believed inpolitics, and were prepared to devote their lives to the slow andtedious job of building up a party. There were others who wereimpatient, looking for a short cut, a general strike or a massinsurrection of the workers which would put an end to the slavery ofcapitalism. The whole game of politics was rotten, these wouldargue; a politician could find more ways to fool the workers in aminute than the workers could thwart in a year. They pointed to theGerman Socialists, those betrayers of internationalism. There werepeople who called themselves Socialists right here in American Citywho wanted to draw the movement into the same kind of trap!

  This debate was not conducted in the realm of abstractions; the twowings of the movement would attack one another with bitterness. The"politicians" would denounce the "impossibilists," calling them"anarchists;" and the other side, thus goaded, would accuse theirenemies of being in the hire of the government. Peter would supplyMcGivney with bits of scandal which the "under cover" men wouldstart going among the "left-wingers;" and in the course of the longwrangles in the local these accusations would come out. HerbertAshton would mention them with his biting sarcasm, or "Shorty"Gunton would shout them in one of his tirades--"hurling them intohis opponents teeth," as he phrased it.

  "Shorty" Gunton was a tramp printer, a wandering agitator who wasall for direct action, and didn't care a hang who knew it."Violence?" he would say. "How many thousand years shall we submitto the violence of capitalist governments, and never have the rightto reply?" And then again he would say, "Violence? Yes, of coursewe must repudiate violence--until we get enough of it!" Peter hadlistened to "Shorty's" railings at the "compromisers" and the"political traders," and had thought him one of the most dangerousmen in American City. But later on, after the episode of Joe Angellhad opened Peter's eyes, he decided that "Shorty" must also be asecret agent like himself.

  Peter was never told definitely, but he picked up a fact here andthere, and fitted them together, and before long his suspicion hadbecome certainty. The "left wing" Socialists split off from theparty, and called a convention of their own, and this convention inturn split up, one part forming the Communist Party, and anotherpart forming the Communist Labor Party. While these two conventionswere in session, McGivney came to Peter, and said that the Federalgovernment had a man on the platform committee of the CommunistParty, and they wanted to write in some phrases that would makemembership in that party in itself a crime, so that everybody whoheld a membership card could be sent to prison without furtherevidence. These phrases must be in the orthodox Communist lingo, andthis was where Peter's specialized knowledge was needed.

  So Peter wrote the phrases, and a couple of days later he read inthe newspapers an account of the convention proceedings. Theplatform committee had reported, and "Shorty" Gunton had submitted aminority report, and had made a fiery speech in the convention, withthe result that his minority report was carried by a narrow margin.This minority report contained all the phrases that Peter hadwritten. A couple of months later, when the government had its caseready, and the wholesale raids upon the Communists took place,"Shorty" Gunton was arrested, but a few days later he made adramatic escape by sawing his way thru the roof of the jail!

  Section 80

  The I. W. W. had bobbed up again in American City, and had venturedto open another headquarters. Peter did not dare go to the placehimself, but he coached a couple of young fellows whom McGivneybrought to him, teaching them the Red lingo, and how to worm theirway into the movement. Before long one of them was secretary of thelocal; and Peter, directing their activities, received reports twicea week of everything the "wobblies" were planning and doing. Peterand Gladys were figuring out another bomb conspiracy to directattention to these dangerous men, when one day Peter picked up themorning paper and discovered that a kind Providence had deliveredthe enemy into his hands.

  Up in the lumber country of the far Northwest, in a little towncalled Centralia, the "
wobblies" had had their headquarters raidedand smashed, just as in American City. They had got themselvesanother meeting-place, and again the members of the Chamber ofCommerce and the Merchants' and Manufacturers' Association had helda secret meeting and resolved to wipe them out. The "wobblies" hadappealed to the authorities for protection, and when protection wasrefused, they had printed a leaflet appealing to the public. But thebusiness men went ahead with their plans. They arranged for a paradeof returned soldiers on the anniversary of Armistice Day, and theydiverted this parade out of its path so that it would pass in frontof the I. W. W. headquarters. Some of the more ardent memberscarried ropes, symbolic of what they meant to do; and they broughtthe parade to a halt in front of the headquarters, and set up a yelland started to rush the hall. They battered in the door, and hadpushed their way half thru it when the "wobblies" opened fire frominside, killing several of the paraders.

  Then, of course, the mob flew into a frenzy of fury. They beat themen in the hall, some of them into insensibility; they flung theminto jail, and battered and tortured them, and took one of them outof jail and carried him away in an automobile, and after they hadmutilated him as Shawn Grady had been mutilated, they hanged himfrom a bridge. Of course they saw to it that the newspaper storieswhich went out from Centralia that night were the right kind ofstories; and next morning all America read how a group of "wobblies"had armed themselves with rifles, and concealed themselves on theroof of the I. W. W. headquarters, and deliberately and in coldblood had opened fire upon a peaceful parade of unarmed warveterans.