Tonopah daily bonanza. [volume] (Tonopah, Nev.) 1906-1929, 1922-10-17
COMMUNISTS Go
TO prison AS A
result OF RAID
Charged With Violating Michi-
gan's Anti-SyndiCaliSm Law
Several Months Ago

ST. JOSEPH Mich, Oct. 17.-(By
Associated Press s.)-Twenty-one al
legged communists, arrested as a re-
suit of raid on meeting held in
the sand hills 20 miles south of here
last August, will be arraigned here
tomorrow, charged with violating the
Michigan ant-syndicalism law.
Among the prisoners are W. 2.
Foster, leader of the 1919 steel strike;
Charles Ruthenberg, executive secre-
tary of the workers party, legal
branch Of the underground communist
organization in this country, and
William F. Dunn, workers prty candi-
date for governor of New York Fos-
ter has denied he attended the
meeting,
Barrels of communist literature,
documents and manuscripts will be
produced in court by o. L. Smith,
assistant attorney general of Michi-
gan, who Is in charge OF the prose
cution.
When Sheriff Bridgeman, his depu-
ties and federal agents swooped down
on the meeting in the early hours of
Aug % all of the paraphernaia of
the alleged national communist con-
vention had disappeared, but a coun-
try boy who saw some men burylng
several barrels in the woods led the
raiders to the spot, and four type
writers, a duplicating machine, a half
dozen leather brief cases, between 70
and so portfolios Of papers, piles of
printed matter and stationery and
other alleged communist property
were recovered.
Federal agents, specialists in rad
ical matters, have been working for
weeks at the Jail here classifying
the documents and questioning II Of
the prisoners who were unable to
raise the 10000 bonds required.
The communist party OF America,
according to It's program and consti-
tuition, dozens Of copies of which
were seized. is an Underground
illegal organization" officially repre-
senting the Russian sov!ets in this
country, and formed for the purpose
of systematically and persistently
propagating the idea of the inevita.
bility of and necessity for violent
revolution"
by the use of force" the program
says, the proletariat will destroy the
machinery of the bourgeois state and
establish proletarian dictatorship
based on soviet power"
Under the sub-head of Mass Ac-
ton the program says:
THE revolutionary epoch upon
which the world has now entered
forces the proletariat to resort to
militant methods-mass action, lead,
ing to direct collision with the bour-
geois state. Mass action eliminates
in armed insurrection and civil war
Mass action is the proletarian revolt
against the oppression OF the CAPT
talist class. 1t develops from spon-
taneous activities of the workers
massed in large industries Among
its initial manifestations are mass
strikes and mass denomination"
While Che federal agents have de
clined to make public the entire list
of 70 or so delegates who attended
the secret conference in the woods,
it has been reported that one of the
delegates was an emssary from Mos
cow who had arrived in the United
States only few days before the
convention.
Sixteen men were arrested in the
midnight raid. Foster and two others
were extradited from Chicago and
two more were arrested in New York.
The defendants, with the exception
Of Foster, will be represented by
Sybrant Wesselius OF Grand Rapids.
Foster has retained Clarence Darrow,
we!.known labor attorney, to defend
him.