The Cold Millions: A Novel, стр. 70
“Keep the money for the fees you haven’t charged,” I said. “Leave me in here.”
“Elizabeth, you know I can’t do that,” Fred said. “Not in your condition.”
The small courtroom was packed with onlookers and reporters craning their necks to see me. “What do you say, Gurley?” one reporter yelled.
“I say the time has come for the working classes of Spokane to stand up to this thievery and brutality!” The reporters bent and wrote like I was the president. Then the jailers brought in Charlie, who was bearing it quite well, in fact, even looking somewhat relieved to be on this side of things instead of doing the impossible job of running that dying union all by himself.
The charges were read, and Mr. Pugh offered as preliminary evidence the seized copies of the Industrial Worker, quotes I had given reporters and lines from earlier speeches I’d made, and my plans for the second free speech action. All listed as parts of the conspiracy to break the law against speaking on the street.
“An illegal law,” I said, and Fred put his hand on my arm to quiet me.
Then Fred entered the pleas for Charlie and me—not guilty—and began arguing against the legality of the raid, “the unprecedented violation of not only the rights of these defendants but the rights of an entire community, Your Honor—”
“Enough, Mr. Moore,” the judge said, and rapped his gavel, “you’ll have plenty of time to bore this court later.”
When Fred explained that I planned to pay the bail, the prosecutor, Pugh, asked the judge to stipulate that my release be conditioned on my not speaking publicly or in any way further antagonizing police or city officials.
“If your plan is to shut me up, you’d better keep me in jail,” I said.
There was laughter, and again the gavel rapped. “Mrs. Jones, you will refrain from making speeches, and you will address this court with respect.”
“I will respect this court when it respects my rights.”
The judge pointed the gavel. “Mr. Moore.”
Fred’s hand landed on my arm again, and I went quiet for him. Then the judge remanded Charlie over to custody and said, “Against my better judgment, and with strict regulations on her behavior, Mrs. Jones is released until her trial date.”
“You should have left me in there,” I said to Fred.
“I can’t do that,” he said again.
There was a copy of the Chronicle on our defense table and I read the headline: OFFICERS SEIZE IWW LEADERS IN DARING RAID: ARRESTED INCLUDES WOMAN.
“Daring raid,” I said to Fred. “Includes woman? Who do they think was running the show?”
But if our goal had been to get back in the newspapers, it worked. The Chronicle, Press, Spokesman-Review—IWW stories were all over the front pages: FEMALE AGITATOR ARRESTED WITH OTHER WOBBLIES, and OFFICIALS RAID UNION HALL, and even a story about the newsboys being arrested: YOUTHFUL PRISONERS KEPT CROWDED IN A DELINQUENT ROOM ALL NIGHT.
“They’ve gone too far,” I said to Fred Moore. After a month of the cops painting us as foreign agitators, it didn’t look good for them to go after a bunch of poor Spokane newsboys and a pregnant red-cheeked Irish-American girl. “It’s too much.”
Outside the courthouse, a handful of reporters had gathered. I allowed Fred to help me from the building, thrust forward my pregnant belly, and made sure to shiver in the cold as Fred led me through a cluster of men with notebooks. He had warned me that I was not to comment to these reporters outside the courthouse, not to say anything that might aggravate the police and prosecutors.
“You do understand that I came to aggravate police and prosecutors,” I reminded him.
“She has no comment to make,” Fred said, helping me into a waiting coach.
I covered my mouth. I went weak-kneed. I did everything but pass out from the vapors. “Mr. Moore is correct, I will not speak about my case, out of respect for the judge’s orders,” I said, “but I cannot be silent about the plight of this city, and those poor newsboys, held and sweated all night in a crowded delinquent cell! Are the people of Spokane going to stand by while the police arrest children now?” I touched my belly as if to remind them another child lay here.
Fred eased me into the coach and climbed in with me. And like some prison Cinderella, I was spirited away. I asked Fred to take me to the union hall, but there was nothing left of it, boarded up and empty. In fact, said Fred, the city council had passed an ordinance banning the IWW from operating within city limits.
“Can they do that?”
He laughed bitterly. “We’re beyond the point of asking what they can do. It’s a question now of what they won’t do.”
Something else was bothering me. “Have you heard from Ryan?”
“No,” he said. “He wasn’t arrested. Why?”
“It’s nothing,” I said. But I kept picturing him leaving the union hall, in a hurry, just an hour before the raid. I did not like what I was thinking. I sat back in the coach and looked out the window at the reporters, at men in suits moving in and out of that fairy-tale courthouse. At the bustle of this burgeoning city. Cars and horses and streetcars, apartment buildings going up, a scurry of construction and destruction. Layers and layers. This place was a termites’ nest.
“What do you think of the name Oleksander?” I asked Fred.
He looked up. “Alexander? I think it’s nice.” He gave the driver the address of the boardinghouse where I was staying. “I’m taking you home to rest now,” he said.
“I don’t care where you take me,” I said, “as long as it has a typewriter.”
27
The night of the raid, Willard motored Rye back to Mrs. Ricci’s house. They drove past the union hall so Rye could see for himself, Willard craning his neck, too: doors and windows broken, glass and wooden