For now, instead of just raiding and smashing,
the police and detectives would round up the prisoners and arrest
them by hundreds, and carry them off and put them thru
"examinations." And Peter was always needed for this; his special
knowledge made him indispensable, and he became practically the boss
of the proceedings. It had been arranged thru "Shorty" Gunton and
the other "under cover" men that the meetings of the Communist and
Communist Labor parties should be held on the same night; and all
over the country this same thing was done, and next morning the
world was electrified by the news that all these meetings had been
raided at the same hour, and thousands of Reds placed under arrest.
In American City the Federal government had hired a suite of about a
dozen rooms adjoining the offices of Guffey, and all night and next
morning batches of prisoners were brought in, until there were about
four hundred in all. They were crowded into these rooms with barely
space to sit down; of course there was an awful uproar, moaning and
screaming of people who had been battered, and a smell that beat the
monkey cage at the zoological gardens.
The prisoners were kept penned up in this place for several weeks,
and all the time more were being brought in; there were so many that
the women had to be stored in the toilets.
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