infuriated crowd of men and women chased him to the ranch store, where
he was forced to barricade himself. The crowd was dangerous and struck
the first blow. The murderous temper which turned the crowd into a mob
is incompatible with social existence, let alone social progress. The
crowd at the moment of the shooting was a wild and lawless animal. But
to your investigator the important subject to analyze is not the guilt
or innocence of Ford or Suhr, as the direct stimulators of the mob in
action, but to name and standardize the early and equally important
contributors to a psychological situation which resulted in an unlawful
killing. If this is done, how can we omit either the filth of the
hop-ranch, the cheap gun-talk of the ordinary deputy sheriff, or the
unbridled, irresponsible speech of the soap-box orator?

"Without doubt the propaganda which the I.W.W. had actually adopted for
the California seasonal worker can be, in its fairly normal working out
in law, a criminal conspiracy, and under that charge, Ford and Suhr have
been found guilty of the Wheatland murder. But the important fact is,
that this propaganda will be carried out, whether unlawful or not. We
have talked hours with the I.W.W. leaders, and they are absolutely
conscious of their position in the eyes of the law. Their only comment
is that they are glad, if it must be a conspiracy, that it is a criminal
conspiracy. They have volunteered the beginning of a cure; it is to
clean up the housing and wage problem of the seasonal worker. The
shrewdest I.W.W. leader we found said: 'We can't agitate in the country
unless things are rotten enough to bring the crowd along.' They
evidently were in Wheatland."

He was high ace with the Wobbly for a while. They invited him to their
Jungles, they carved him presents in jail. I remember a talk he gave on
some phase of the California labor-problem one Sunday night, at the