g, fearless leaders of labor. One was
president and the other was secretary of the Western
Federation of Miners. The ex-governor of Idaho had been
mysteriously murdered. The crime, at the time, was openly
charged to the mine owners by the socialists and miners.
Nevertheless, in violation of the national and state
constitutions, and by means of conspiracy on the parts of
the governors of Idaho and Colorado, Moyer and Haywood were
kidnapped, thrown into jail, and charged with the murder.
It was this instance that provoked from Eugene V. Debs,
national leader of the American socialists at the time, the
following words: "The labor leaders that cannot be bribed
nor bullied, must be ambushed and murdered. The only crime
of Moyer and Haywood is that they have been unswervingly
true to the working class. The capitalists have stolen our
country, debauched our politics, defiled our judiciary, and
ridden over us rough-shod, and now they propose to murder
those who will not abjectly surrender to their brutal
dominion. The governors of Colorado and Idaho are but
executing the mandates of their masters, the Plutocracy.
The issue is the Workers versus the Plutocracy. If they
strike the first violent blow, we will strike the last."

CHAPTER XVIII

IN THE SHADOW OF SONOMA

Of myself, during this period, there is not much to say. For six months
I was kept in prison, though charged with no crime. I was a suspect--a
word of fear that all revolutionists were soon to come to know. But
our own nascent secret service was beginning to work. By the end of
my second month in prison, one of the jailers made himself known as
a revolutionist in touch with the organization. Several weeks later,
Joseph Parkhurst, the prison doctor who had just been appointed, proved
himself to be a member of one of the Fighting Groups.

Thus, throughout the organization of the Oligarchy, our own
organization, weblike and spidery, was insinuating itself. And so I
was kept in touch with all that was happening in the world without. And
furthermore, every one of our imprisoned leaders was in contact with
brave comrades who masqueraded in the livery of the Iron Heel. Though
Ernest lay in prison three thousand miles away, on the Pacific Coast, I
was in unbroken communication with him, and our letters passed regularly
back and forth.

The leaders, in p