The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, July 7, 1919, Page 4

~ - My Story—By a Spy for the Interests No. 1—The Industrial Period—The Lumber Camps of Oregon and the“Oklsgl,loma Oil Fields—How Detective Agencies Make Business—The League “Job BY RALPH A. MOORE PYING has been my life job. From the time I entered the services of a railroad company several years ago until now, I have been engaged in making other people believe I was what I was not, that I sympathized with them while I was drawing them out, helping them when I was planning to expose them. For the greater part of this time I have been in the employ of the great business interests who wanted things done they themselves wouldn’t do, and who did not care _how those things were done so long as they were done. I was a normal boy on a great Nebraska farm when I first found my life ambition. Like thousands of other youngsters of my age on other farms and in the cities, I longed to be a detective. I had read a great many detective stories, and was eager to leave the farm to see some of the adventures of which I was reading. Finally, I left the farm and started off for Omaha. Next to my desire to be- come a detective, my greatest am- bition was to travel and see the world. Omaha was the largest city I had ever seen, and before I knew it I had spent practically all of the money I had when I reached the city. It was up to me to look out for a job, but I wasn’t ready to go back’ to the farm, or even to stay in the city at an ordinary job. The navy solved both my difficulties, and be- fore I was a day older I had enlisted and was on my way to a training station in San Francisco. ) After the regular course of train- ing there I was assigned to the U. S, S. St. Louis and started on a cruise of the South seas, visiting the Fiji islands, Samoa and all those other places in the South Pacific I had al- ways wanted to see. A short time later I was trans- ferred to the New Orleans. I had become by this time a master-at- arms, which corresponds to a police- man on shore. The New Orleans went to Shanghai and stayed many months in these Far East waters, visiting Manchuria, Russia, Japan, the Straits Settlements, the Philip-~ pines and the Southern islands. I got my discharge in Shanghai, set up in business there and went broke i1 a month. I started toward home, but in Japan I became interested in a new commercial paper. Then sud- denly, when I was out of Tokio, where: the paper was published, my partner sold out the business, sailed for England with the money and left me all but stranded in Japan. I did manage, however, to get back to Seattle. ! As soon as I landed in the Wash- ington city I went about immediately to realize the other of my two great ambitions, Having traveled to the far corners of the world, I still wanted. to become a detective. I applied to Jack Warnick, -chief special agent for the Milwaukee railroad. He gave me a job inspecting box cars in the freight yards. My duty was to look into box cars and freight packages that had been broken into and to try, if possible, to catch the thieves. GUARDED RAILWAY WHARVES DURING 90-DAY STRIKE Then-came the longshoremen’s strike. Each of the large railroads there had great wharves, where the trains unloaded their cargoes into the boats for shipment across the Pacific. The men in a previ- ous strike had won an increase in pay, but they were demanding an additional advance which the roads refused to meet. As the first defensive move the railroads prepared to guard the piers. The Mil- waukee road had two wharves, and I was sent out in charge of 24 men to guard one of them. All the men carried sawed-off shotguns. The strike lasted for 90 days, and nearly every day there was a fight o All it Produces” Above is a facsimile of the I. W. W. membershi writer of the accompanying story, * carried this card while working among the I. W. But the opponents of the League, knowing t while working for the interests, saw a u between the strikebreakers that had been imported by the roads and the strikers. Of course, we had to defend these men. At the end of these 90 days the strike was broken and the men were reduced to the pay they had received before the first strike. When that strike was settled I left the railroad to aid in breaking a laundry drivers’ strike. This lasted only two weeks, and then I was out on my own again. I went to the Thiel Detective agency in Seattle and asked for a job. After undergoing a severe examination, I was finally hired by the manager, whose name was Schulz. Schulz told me that he had work to do in Stillwater, Wash. I was sent there with orders to report to Mr. McDon- ald, superintendent of the Cherry Valley Lumber company. When I arrived in Stillwater, McDonald told me that he had had considerable trouble with the ~ I. W. W. and he wanted me to find out who in the camp were members. He gave me a job with the steel gang, in order to quiet any suspicion that the men might have. I left the camp after having spent two days there. If I had stayed there any longer, I believe I, too, would have joined the I. W. I THE “RED CARD” o ' ‘[nt.?d“x Entitled to ™ . i 'lnitfa(ed by 2 use was will be told in a later issue of the Leader. W. as a protest against conditions in that camp. - “Graybacks” infested the bunkhouses, the food was terrible, and the foremen were slave drivers. The men were forced to work at top speed in any - weather and under the worst possible conditions. I took a stage back to Seattle, ready to throw up my job rather than to keep on with that task, When I told Schulz why I had returned he merely laughed and told me to stick around a day or two. Soon he gave me another assignment and here I learned another interesting fact about the attitude of the business interests to the law. The job I had was to help guard a ship that was taking laborers to the Alaska canning factories. When I got aboard the ship I found it like the ships of which I had read, the ships that contracted for shanghaied hands, or like the “blackbirding” ships of the Southern Pacific. - Every last mother’s son aboard that ship was a Chinaman, doped into unconsciousness. I learned then how the canning factories in Alas- ka were getting their help. These companies contracted with a “boss Chinaman,” usually the keeper of an opium joint, for a specified number A A 0 T A AP A 5 i e : M;.“B;.}?_.},‘EUmon No. S e % o1 i L Branch No._ i Industry SE S ¥4 o : ; G % ceupstion lo Mbney should be feceived with | £ Lea - , _out’ acknowledgment in this book‘f" p card issued to Ralph A. Moore, under the name of Robert Randall. W. in the Oklahoma cil fields, hat he came by the card : se for it. What that of laborers. It was up to the “boss Chinaman” to deliver the laborers and he did it. Load after load of unconsicous Chinese were brought to the ship in automobiles, lugged aboard like a sack of meal and dumped into the hold. When these kidnaped wretches recovered con- sciousness they tried desperately to get back to shore, tried to fight the guards, but they hadn’t a chance. We were armed with guns and when an attempt was made by any of them to gain the deck, we brandished the revolvers in their faces and forced them back into the hold. TOOK OUT MEMBERSHIP IN I. W. W. TO GET FACTS I worked at other jobs in Washington for several months longer. For a large part of that time I was in lumber camps, investigating I. W. W. trouble. I had by this time gained a membership in the I. W. W. under an assumed name and was able to get in the confidence of the men against whom I was working. It was about this time that the I. W. W. became active in Oklahoma. These activities culminated in the blowing up of the home of a wealthy oil man named Pew. Be- l cause of my work among the I. W. W. in the Washington lumber camps I was chosen for work in Oklahoma, and I was sent immediately with ox- ders to report to Harry Jackson, field agent for the Thiel agency at Tulsa. Jackson told me that my principal job would be to find out who was re- sponsible for the blowing up of the Pew residence. Having been a mem- ber of the I. W. W. in Washington, and having with me my “red card,” I had no difficulty in getting into the confidence of the I. W. W. leaders to whom I introduced myself. I bought a suit of well-worn clothes and went immediately to the Tulsa I. W. W. headquarters. I first took up with a man by the name of Woodward, who is now serving a 15-year sentence at Fort Leavenworth. We became good pals, ward and I had landed in the Tulsa city jail. Woodward, an I. W. W. organizer, had incurred the enmity of the Tulsa police, and one night seven officers came to our room in a cheap lodging house where several I. W. W. men were living, in search named Bucklett and myself were in the room together when the police came. : N Neither Woodward nor I said any- thing, but Bucklett protested against arrest. At that the three of us were dragged from the lodging house into the street. We were then-led up an alley, and for three blocks the police used their clubs on us unmercifully. We reached the lockup more dead than alive. I begged to be permitted to use the telephone, but the officers refused and herded us into a room where we were put through a _severe grilling. They demanded that we tell who blew up the Pew residence. All of us pro- tested our innocence, and I, at least, was sincere. Unable to obtain a confession or a clue of any kind we were released. But our bodies ached and our heads were sore for days afterwards from the beating we had received. And our case was typi- cal of hundreds of other cases in Oklahoma during that period. I do not know how much of the terror in Okla- homa was due to the I. W. W., but I do know that more than a little of it was manufactured by the interests to discredit and raise popular sentiment against the I. W. W. and by private detective Moore - agencies to create business for themselves., I know of one instance to illustrate this. The Thiel Detective agency called the man- ager of the largest hotel in Tulsa and in- formed him that he had evidence that there would be an attempt to blow up the hotel dur- Ing a convention of oil men there. A’ number, of Thiel men were immediately employed. to and before the week was out Wood- of Woodward. He and another man + ) @ rg ’\ ’vl o Il & ,.t. leg | w il s ¥ 3