the charge that Socialists generally were guilty of law
violations, he exclaimed: 'Go down to the penitentiaries and get
the histories of the birds there and you won't find any Socialists.

"'We are quite willing to say that if 2,000 Socialists had been
arrested during the war, we are guilty.'"

It is difficult to follow this logic. After telling us that we wouldn't
"find any Socialists" in the penitentiaries, did Stedman suddenly
bethink himself of the scores convicted, and then, on the spur of the
moment, fix 2,000 as the number of "arrests" necessary to wring from
Socialists the confession, "We are guilty"? From a Socialist work,
Trachtenberg's Labor Year Book, 1919-1920, page 92, we quote the
following figures for Stedman's edification:

"The total number of prosecutions for violation of the Espionage
Act from June 15, 1917, to July 1, 1918, were 988. Of these, 197
pleaded guilty and were sent to prison, 166 others were convicted
(a large number appealing), and 497 cases were pending for trial
July 1st, while 128 had been acquitted or dismissed up to that
time. The act has been enforced _with increasing vigor since that
date_, but no official figures subsequent thereto are available."

According to Trachtenberg, pages 93 and 94, the above cases do not
include about 450 cases of "conspiracy to obstruct draft" under the
Penal Code and Draft Act, 30 prosecutions for threats against the
President, others under the treason statutes, and prosecutions under
state statutes and city ordinances, in "number," says Trachtenberg,
"doubtless _greatly in excess_ of the federal prosecutions," including
"in New York City alone scores of cases." A flock of 27 Socialists was
convicted at Sioux Falls, S.D. (Trachtenberg, page 92), and at Chicago a
herd of 166 I. W. W.'s, first cousins to the Socialists; while these
first cousins were also indicted in various places in batches of 47, 38,
27, 28, etc. (Ibid.) Nor do any of the foregoing figures include the
"arrests" of _two or three thousand "Communists" who were members of
Stedman's party prior to September, 1919_.

In short, even accepting Stedman's extraordinary dictum that "2,000
Socialists ... arrested" is the minimum necessary to force Socialists to
confess themselves "guilty," that test is more than met by the arrests
already known.

Martin Conboy, in summing up for the State in the proceedings before the
New York Assem