Читать книгу The Goslings: A Study of the American Schools онлайн

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Now, I shall not take up space in detailing what happened to our little group. Suffice it to say, we repaired to the harbor, a dozen ladies and gentlemen, with two lawyers; and in an interview with Chief of Police Oaks we were informed that if we attempted to read the Constitution of the United States on Liberty Hill we would be arrested and jailed without bail. Four of us, Prince Hopkins, Hugh Hardyman, Hunter Kimbrough, and the writer, did attempt to read the Constitution. I personally read Article One of the first amendment, and was then placed under arrest. Kimbrough started to read the Declaration of Independence. Hopkins remarked, “We have not come here to incite to violence.” Hardyman remarked, “This is a most delightful climate.” For these words they were arrested—all four of us for “suspicion of criminal syndicalism.”[A] We were held “incommunicado” for eighteen hours, and an effort was then made to rush us into court a few minutes before closing time, and have us committed and spirited away again, so that we could be given the “third degree”; but this plot was balked, owing to the fact that a confidant of Chief Oaks betrayed it to my wife, and our lawyers got to the court and demanded and obtained bail. A week later we went again to the harbor and held our mass meeting, and said to ten or fifteen thousand people everything that we had to say. Next day the police turned loose all but twenty-eight of the six hundred men they had arrested; and some three weeks later a police judge threw out the case against us four. So ended our little adventure in “criminal syndicalism.”

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