Another fantastic piece from Arturo Giovannitti, arrested in the 1917 sweep that picked up hundreds of leading radicals and labor organizers. Facing Judge Landis in a Chicago court with virtually the entire top layer of the I.W.W., Giovannitti places us in the room with them below. Somewhat to his disappointment, charges against him would be dismissed.

‘Selecting the Perfect Jury’ by Arturo Giovannitti from The Liberator. Vol. 1 No. 5. July, 1918.

OF all the radical organizations in the country, the I.W.W. seems to me the luckiest. Unlike other opposition bodies that must continually distill their brains to find something to do in order to survive, the I.W.W. has never had, and perhaps never will have, to worry about its job. Whenever a war, or an earthquake, or any cataclysm takes place and the I.W.W. returns to the tenderer feelings of charity and piety, and begins to be alarmed by the terrible doubt that perhaps there is something good and decent about the management of the universe–somebody steps in, yanks it off its brotherly embrace of the “common cause” and tells it persuasively that everything is truly and positively rotten –thereby throwing it back into its old corner to fight savagely against everything and everybody.

Sometimes it is a chief of police who, being terrorized by the idea that the I.W.W. might join the army in a body, stops their agitation for a 17-hour workday for all children below 5 and all adults above 93. Sometimes it is the Post Office that stops their papers for openly advocating treason in the form of a raise in wages, and thus returns it to the pleasanter pursuit of raising hell. Some other times patriotic and law-abiding citizens drive hundreds of its members into the desert for being caught in flagrant possession of Liberty Bonds while on strike. And some other times when it is disturbingly quiet, and therefore under strong suspicion of having been converted to the cause of Allied democracy, a bunch of Christian gentlemen dispatch one of their best leaders to plead that cause by lynching one of its favorite organizers with a rope.

This time, just when the German drive into Russia had about conclusively and definitely convinced all radicals that the Kaiser must be kicked off the earth, and the I.W.W. was on the verge of disbanding under the old name to reconstitute itself into a patriotic legion and fight for God and Country, Mr. Gregory promptly intervened and saved it from self-destruction by bringing the whole bunch to the dock.

And thus, while every other revolutionary organization is up in the air worrying itself into a state of comatose at the thought of its uselessness outside of the battlefield, the I.W.W. through a special dispensation of the Department of Justice, finds itself again in the old field and can go serenely along the old accustomed paths of opposition, without losing a little of its self-respect.

Where does this extraordinarily lucky misfortune of the I.W.W. come from?

The answer is very simple. It is not the creed of the organization, it is not its action, it is not even its reputation–it is just the mystic power of its cryptic name, the dreadful abracadabra of the three letters that compose it, and which now twelve men good and true are called upon to battle against and exorcize. One wonders truly what would become of this trial if the I.W.W. had spelled its name with an innocuous X and two meek, law-abiding Qs!

***

This is what I was thinking on April 1st, the only international date still observed in universal reverence to the fundamentals of human nature, when I entered the spacious courtroom of Judge Landis in the Federal Building in Chicago.

As I took my seat among the defendants that were out on bail (for I also was a defendant and, alas for my board-and-room bill! a misguided friend had got me out on bail), a strange feeling suddenly crept through me. I tried to analyze my emotions and felt terribly perplexed at the absolute lack of them. Be it said humbly and meekly, without boastfulness or irreverence, I felt neither awed nor impressed. Worse still, I felt a disquieting unappreciation of my own importance. What was I doing there, and what, indeed, was everybody else doing? Everything looked so unreal and so out of place, just because everybody was so familiar. I felt miserably at home.

Here was Bill Haywood, there was George Andreytchine; over there Charles Ashleigh, Vincent Saint John, Jack Law, Ralph Chaplin, Francis Miller, and then–Wobblies to the right of them, Wobblies to the left of them, Wobblies as far as the eye could see. Why, it did not look like a trial at all, it looked like a convention.

There was nothing staid and solemn and dignified about the whole affair–nothing exciting or mysterious–not even the hope or dread of a sudden revelation, and, alas! not even romance–the only girl indicted with the bunch having been hurriedly rushed out of the case.

How different it would have been if instead of 115 ordinary looking men there had been five or six German spies, Standard Oil magnates, or Reno divorceables–anything or anybody but I.W.W.s, these incorrigible saboteurs of all proprieties, these upsetters of all etiquettes, these spoilers of all rituals!

Instinctively one felt that, in spite of the tragic possibilities of the case, the boys’ mental equilibrium had not been altered in the least; they were no more concerned about this trial than they had ever been about anything of normal importance in their lives, sickness, or recreation, or house moving. They were there quietly and simply as they might have been in any other place where the common affairs of men are discussed and settled. The lure of the sunshine outside the courtroom was strong upon all of them, but the call to duty was stronger.

Temporarily at least, this magnificent vagabondia, forever on the quest of the dream, has been caught in the meshes of the great American snare of all the joys and beauties of life, “business before pleasure.”

When in the course of the rollcall, after a few polite “Here, sir’s!” and a few formal “Present’s,” Reddy Doran thundered in a stentorian voice “On the job!”, the keynote of the whole ceremony was finally sounded and the entire show was explained. Indeed, the I.W.W. was on the job, on the biggest and hardest job it had ever undertaken.

***

As soon as the examination of the prospective jurors began, the real importance of this trial became apparent. The examination, the purpose of which was solely to discover twelve fair and impartial men, regardless of whether they had any acquaintance with the law, soon became a test of the mentality, the intelligence and the education of the average American people. After a few questions had been asked, the veniremen themselves realized this, and grew nervous and uneasy, some looked as wretched as if they themselves were on trial.

The prosecuting attorney was chiefly concerned about their loyalty, their family tree and their pocketbook. He asked them all sorts of impertinent questions–what business they were in, how much property they owned, what banks they dealt with, whether they ever owned a dachshund, were fond of sauerkraut, and related questions of equal moment. It seemed from what he asked that the prerequisite of the ideal juryman is to be a substantial citizen, a shrewd investor, and an arrant ignoramus of the great social problems of today.

Chief Counsel for the defence was George Vanderveer, a keen-eyed, sharp-featured man always on the qui vive. He was very courteous, almost suave–a strange incongruity for one who has the reputation of a legal bulldog. It made me smile to hear such a hawk chirp and twitter like a starling for fear of disturbing the mental placidity of the squirming and perspiring jurors. It reminded me of the amazement I felt the first time I saw a formidable looking bagpipe and suddenly heard issuing from it a gentle lamentation instead of some extraordinary bellowings.

The questions Vanderveer asked the jurors would make a good examination paper for the average student of economics to flunk through. He was less concerned about their bias against Socialist movements than about their true knowledge of them. As I followed him attentively hour after hour and realized how ferociously erudite he was, I thanked my good luck that I shall never be called to serve on such a jury. My respect for lawyers has considerably increased since I heard Vanderveer–also my determination to keep away from them.

Naturally most of the veniremen had never heard of socialism, Karl Marx, surplus value, the minimum wage, the instinct of acquisition and the fallacies of bimetalism–but the few who had, were promptly challenged by the prosecution. One of them, a young man of thirty, had all the qualifications for a lord chief executioner of the I.W.W.; he employed labor, he belonged to the middle class, he was an old fashioned democrat–better still he had studied political economy, and best of all he had studied it in Germany, where political economy shoots strikers and puts anti-militarists in the penitentiary.

The defense passed him on his single statement that he believed in the right of workingmen to organize–but the prosecution challenged him peremptorily for no other apparent reason than that he was not ignorant enough of the subject he was to pass judgment upon.

However, after six days of grilling and arguing, it was obvious that the rest of the unexamined veniremen who sat in the back of the room were becoming interested. They no longer wore the hunted look of a hunch-backed, lame and one-armed volunteer who is about to appear naked before the examining board. They had caught strange and disturbing phrases on the wing as they fluttered around the big room. Mr. Vanderveer had managed to inform them that there was such a thing as a labor question involving a class struggle and a fundamental change of the social fabric and that the most important interests of the most regular human

beings are involved in it. They were getting educated–worse still they were beginning to enjoy the prelude before the curtain went up.

The prosecution had used three challenges out of six, and it was clear that it had to use the other three the same way. The defence had only used one out of its ten challenges. It looked bad for the forces of light and justice, for obviously the jury was learning something that no impartial jury ought to know. It had delved somewhat deeper than a judicial mind ought, into the profundities of socialism, syndicalism, industrial unionism and all such other isms, whose chief idea is that no man ought to mind only his own affairs and leave well enough alone. Intelligent people, people with even a faint understanding of the question at issue were not wanted. This was not to be a debating society, an academy of savants leisurely and serenely discussing ideas (even though ideas and not facts were on trial)–it must be an old-fashioned legal brawl between two sets of barn-storming lawyers, with twelve dozing men deciding for the one that howled the loudest and knew the least about the subject.

The prosecution felt (and if it did not openly say so, it acted on this feeling) that to know anything about the I.W.W. was to sympathize with it, and perhaps it was right. It would have challenged old John D. himself, if that palladium of all our liberties and morals had been studying the literature of the I.W.W. and socialism. Imagine how it could proceed with a panel that had never heard of such things before, and had now found a thing or two about them, not from the testimony of detectives and spies, but from the very lips of the defending attorney, with the gracious permission of Judge Landis.

And so at the right moment some talesman declared, upon being questioned, that someone had asked him over the telephone whether he was going to vote the socialist ticket at the election of that week. That–triumphantly declared the prosecution was proof conclusive and absolute that the I.W.W. had been tampering with the jury. Whereupon it was moved that the whole panel be dismissed. Out with them!

And out they went into the snowstorm that was raging, these two hundred men of law and order who had come in from the sunshine.

The second panel is being examined as I write these impressions. I have read that Judge Landis, overruling an objection of the Government attorney, has declared his intention of allowing the defence to introduce all kinds of evidence purporting to prove the industrial conditions that have created and are fostering the I.W.W. If so, for the first time in the history of America, and so far as I know, of the world, the whole industrial system is going to be investigated and twelve men are going to pass judgment not on a few men but on the whole of organized society.

However bewildering such a thing is, I believe it will actually take place. Anything is liable to take place in America, especially if it is left to Judge Landis.

I liked him from the first, in spite of my congenital bias against judges; and were I not afraid of appearing irreverent, I should say he is a fine fellow. But perhaps he won’t mind, for he wears no gown and does not stand still like an ikon on that ridiculous long bench that looks more like a bargain counter than the sacred shrine of the law. When he comes in and the audience gets up, he makes a non-committal sweep of the hand which seems to say:

“It isn’t my fault, you know; it’s the custom; but you must not take it too seriously.”

And when the court crier begins his daily “Hear ye! Hear ye!, etc.” like the cocorico of Chantecleer, and then whittles it down to a mere whisper, so that you don’t get the final flourish at all–you can’t help thinking that it’s the amused look of the judge that has queered him.

Yes I like him well, but my liking is purely of the surface–it has to do only with an admiring contemplation of the aesthetics and exteriorities of the law. As a matter of fact I believe him to be a dangerous man–one of those very few men (thank God), who still really believe in the law. I am always afraid of just judges. Mr. Landis is one of them, and there lies the danger. He appears to me to be one of those who want the law applied literally–who believe that no man ought to be hanged with a halter if the statutes provide for a hempen rope. This also implies a certain amount of sympathy during a trial, if not even a bit of mercy at the end, for mercy is exclusively a juridic virtue. But of that I do not feel sure. I fear that if a verdict is returned, Judge Landis will go the limit. He will turn loose on the I.W.W. and where he has not been unfair, he will be severe. got this impression the first day of the trial, when I rose to tell him that my name had not been called.

“What’s your name?” he thundered in a fine basso-cantabile voice. I told him meekly, trying to make it sound as un-German as my fierce Italian “R” would allow me. He consulted with the prosecutor for a few seconds, then veered around, levelled a terribly accusing finger at the helpless target of the most stupid smile I ever attempted, and bellowed with a withering wrath that sounded like the crack of doom: “You have been dismissed. So far as YOU are concerned, this case is over. You GO!”

And in spite of my appealing look against this arrant miscarriage of justice, I had to withdraw and meditate outside on this costly April fool joke that Uncle Sam had played on me, for I had borrowed the money to go all the way from New York twice to find this out.

And then some people still whisper that the war has deprived Uncle Sam of his sense of humor!

The Liberator was published monthly from 1918, first established by Max Eastman and his sister Crystal Eastman continuing The Masses, was shut down by the US Government during World War One. Like The Masses, The Liberator contained some of the best radical journalism of its, or any, day. It combined political coverage with the arts, culture, and a commitment to revolutionary politics. Increasingly, The Liberator oriented to the Communist movement and by late 1922 was a de facto publication of the Party. In 1924, The Liberator merged with Labor Herald and Soviet Russia Pictorial into Workers Monthly. An essential magazine of the US left.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/culture/pubs/liberator/1918/05/v1n05-jul-1918-liberator-hr.pdf