alongside the next car in a broad circle, more than a hundred feet across.  These cars of the younger members of the Chamber of Commerce and the Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Association were well behaved—­they were accustomed to sliding precisely into place according to orders of a megaphone man, when receptions were being given, or when the younger members and their wives and fiancees, clad in soft silks and satins, came rolling up to their dinner-parties and dances.

The cars came and came, until there was just room enough for the last one to slide in.  Then at a shouted command, “Number one!” a group of men stepped out of one of the cars, dragging a handcuffed prisoner.  It was Michael Dubin, the young Jewish tailor who had spent fifteen days in jail with Peter.  Michael was a student and dreamer, and not used to scenes of violence; also, he belonged to a race which expresses its emotions, and consequently is offensive to 100% Americans.  He screamed and moaned while the masked men un-handcuffed him, and took off his coat and tore his shirt in the back.  They dragged him to a tree in the center of the ring, a somewhat smaller tree, just right for his wrists to meet around and be handcuffed again.  There he stood in the blinding glare of thirty or forty cars, writhing and moaning, while one of the black-masked men stripped off his coat and got ready for action.  He produced a long black-snake whip, and stood poised for a moment; then in a booming voice the man with the megaphone shouted, “Go!” and the whip whistled thru the air and was laid across the back of Michael, and tore into the flesh so that the blood leaped into sight.  There was a scream of anguish, and the victim began to twist and turn and kick about as if in his death-throes.  Again the whip whistled, and again you heard the thud as it tore into the flesh, and another red stripe leaped to view.

Now the younger members of the Chamber of Commerce and the Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Association were in excellent condition for this evening’s labor.  They were not pale and thin, underfed and overworked, as were their prisoners; they were sleek and rosy, and ashine with health.  It was as if long years ago their fathers had foreseen the Red menace, and the steps that would have to be taken to preserve 100% Americanism; the fathers had imported a game which consisted of knocking little white balls around a field with various styles and sizes of clubs.  They had built magnificent club-houses out here in the suburbs, and had many hundreds of acres of ground laid out for this game, and would leave their occupations of merchanting and manufacturing early in the afternoon, in order to repair to these fields and keep their muscles in condition.  They would hold tournaments, and vie with one another, and tell over the stories of the mighty strokes which they had made with their clubs, and of the hundreds of strokes they had made in a single afternoon.  So the man with the black-snake whip was “fit,” and didn’t need to stop for breath.  Stroke after stroke he laid on, with a splendid rhythmic motion; he kept it up easily, on and on.  Had he forgotten?