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Ours is an “open shop” city; that is, the business men and merchants are forbidden to employ union workers, and if they disregard this rule they are blacklisted, their credit is cut off, and they are driven into bankruptcy. When a new man comes into town and sets up in business he is politely interviewed and invited to join the gang; at the same time he is given his orders, and if he disobeys, he moves on to some other part of the world, or down into the ranks of the wage-slaves. So perfect is the system of the Black Hand, so all-seeing is its spy service, that the Young Women’s Christian Association could not prepare and mail out a circular letter asking for funds without every merchant in the city having on his desk by the same mail a letter from the Better America Federation president, warning him that the Young Women’s Christian Association is supporting the eight-hour day for women, the minimum wage law for women, and other immoral propositions.

We have a “criminal syndicalism law” in California; the public is told by the Black Hand and its newspapers that this law is to punish men who advocate the overthrow of government by force and violence. Under this law eighty men are now coughing out their lungs in the jute mill at San Quentin prison, under sentence of from two to twenty-eight years. As I write, one of these men collapses under the strain and refuses to work longer in the jute mill, and seventy others are being tortured in “solitary” because they “strike” in sympathy with this comrade. No one of these men has ever had proven against him, or even charged against him, any act of force or violence or any destruction of property. They were convicted because the Black Hand of California pays three hundred and fifty dollars a month to several hired witnesses, who travel about from place to place testifying before juries that ten years ago, when they belonged to the I. W. W., they, the witnesses, personally burned down barns. Because of this testimony men who have recently joined the organization, and have never burned down barns nor advocated burning down barns, are sentenced to the jute mill.