“String him up!  String him up!” One man came running with a rope, shouting, “Hang him!”

The master of ceremonies tried to protest thru his megaphone, but the instrument was knocked out of his hands, and he was hauled to one side, and presently there was a man climbing up the pine tree and hanging the rope over a limb.  You could not see Grady for the jostling throng about him, but suddenly there was a yell from the crowd, and you saw him quite plainly—­he shot high up into the air, with the rope about his neck and his feet kicking wildly.  Underneath, men danced about and yelled and waved their hats in the air, and one man leaped up and caught one of the kicking feet and hung onto it.

Then, above all the din, a voice was heard thru the megaphone, “Let him down a bit!  Let me get at him!” And those who held the rope gave way, and the body came down toward the ground, still kicking, and a man took out a clasp-knife, and cut the clothing away from the body, and cut off something from the body; there was another yell from the crowd, and the men in the automobiles slapped their knees and shrieked with satisfaction.  Those in the car with Peter whispered that it was Ogden, son of the president of the Chamber of Commerce; and all over town next day and for weeks thereafter men would nudge one another, and whisper about what Bob Ogden had done to the body of Shawn Grady, secretary of the “damned wobblies.”  And every one who nudged and whispered about it felt certain that by this means the Red Terror had been forever suppressed, and 100% Americanism vindicated, and a peaceful solution of the problem of capital and labor made certain.

Strange as it might seem, there was one member of the I. W. W. who agreed with them.  One of the victims of that night had learned his lesson!  When Tom Duggan was able to sit up again, which was six weeks later, he wrote an article about his experience, which was published in an I. W. W. paper, and afterwards in pamphlet form was read by many hundreds of thousands of workingmen.  In it the poet said: 

“The preamble of the I. W. W. opens with the statement that the employing class and the working class have nothing in common; but on this occasion I learned that the preamble is mistaken.  On this occasion I saw one thing in common between the employing class and the working class, and that thing was a black-snake whip.  The butt end of the whip was in the hands of the employing class, and the lash of the whip was on the backs of the working class, and thus to all eternity was symbolized the truth about the relationship of the classes!”

Section 61