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 Boyd and about half the audience withdrew. All this had been fully reported in the New York papers, and was known to everyone.
Also it was known to the Rockefellers that at the headquarters of our Colorado Committee I personally obtained the pledge of every man and woman, before I allowed them to join us, that they would conform to the rule laid down. I say this was known to the Rockefellers, because they had spies among us; I knew perfectly well who those spies were, and allowed one of them to think he was my friend. From first to last I had nothing to hide, and for that reason I had nothing to fear, and this was as well known to the newspapers as it was to the police who were probing the explosion. Except for the first telephone call, which had come from a desk-sergeant who knew nothing about the matter whatever, the police did not trouble us, nor even question us; yet day by day, while that sensation was before the public, the whole effort of the New York newspapers was concentrated upon making it appear that Upton Sinclair was in some way connected with the bomb-plot. Day after day there would be circumstantial accounts of how the police and the coroner and other officials were preparing to summon my wife and myself, and to subject us to a “rigid examination” concerning Arthur Caron and the other victims of the explosion. We would call up the police and the coroner and other officials, and inform them that we were perfectly willing to be questioned, but that we knew nothing but what we had told the public; to which the police and the coroner and the other officials would reply: “We have no wish to question you; that’s just newspaper talk.” All officials understand what “newspaper talk” means; but the public doesn’t understand, and so what the public carried away from this affair was the general impression that my wife and I were dangerous characters. We were too cunning to get caught, of course; but we incited obscure and half-educated young people to make bombs and set them off, and then we washed our hands of them and left them to their fate.