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2 Methods and Ideology
- University of Wisconsin Press
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2 f Methods and Ideology For more than half a century after the end of the First World War, the bulk of the records of the Justice Department’s Bureau of Investigation was closed to researchers. Not until 1976 did the FBI release to the National Archives “The Investigative Case Files of the Bureau of Investigation, 1908–1922,” a collection of hundreds of reels of micro- film, much of which is composed of war-related reports and memoranda from the years 1917 and 1918.1 In the years since their unveiling to the public, however, relatively few researchers have tapped this resource to examine the Justice Department’s wartime activities, and as a result, historians have only a limited understanding of the nature and scale of that department’s crusade against antiwar sentiment. These files reveal that prosecutions were only the visible tip of a massive iceberg of federal suppression of dissent. Only a small proportion of the Justice Department ’s investigations ever resulted in an indictment or trial. Far more typically, investigators admonished those they suspected of disloyalty to be more patriotic or told them to remain silent about the war. These reports , too, indicate the methods used by undercover investigators and by informants—techniques that paved the way for the department’s assault on subversion in subsequent decades. These files, too, reveal that the Justice Department’s investigators mirrored contemporary society’s views of immigrants, African Americans , and women. Sometimes, investigators treated ethnicity as an arbiter of loyalty. Detectives had similar concerns about the patriotism of African Americans and sometimes regarded criticism of Jim Crow as 31 tantamount to sedition. Women who came under investigation were typically viewed through the lens of traditional gender roles. The department worried that female critics of the war were tainting their children’s minds with disloyalty. Female dissenters compounded their transgression by asserting their views in an unfeminine and aggressive fashion. In 1917 and 1918, many Americans feared that the country was rife with subversion. “Every German or Austrian in the United States, unless known by years of association to be absolutely loyal, should be treated as a potential spy,” declared the Providence Journal of Rhode Island in 1917. “Keep your eyes and ears open,” the newspaper implored, “Whenever any suspicious act or disloyal word comes to your notice communicate at once with the Bureau of Investigation of the Department of Justice.” America, the Journal warned, was endangered by foreigners in its midst: “We are at war with the most merciless and inhuman nation in the world. Hundreds of thousands of its people in this country want to see America humiliated and beaten to her knees, and they are doing, and will do, everything in their power to bring this about. Take nothing for granted. Energy and alertness in this direction may save the life of your son, your husband or your brother.” The Journal’s entreaty was reprinted in newspapers in Connecticut, Pennsylvania , Florida, Missouri, North Dakota, and New Mexico. A similar announcement from Justice Department official George C. Kelleher in the Lowell Sun of Massachusetts in June 1918 asserted, “It is your patriotic duty to report disloyal acts, seditious utterances and any information relative to attempts to hinder the United States in the prosecution of the war, to the United States Department of Justice, Bureau of Investigation , 45 Milk Street, Boston, or Federal Building, Concord, N.H.”2 Allegations of disloyalty flooded the Justice Department. As the attorney general’s Annual Report for 1918 observed, “every day hundreds of articles or passages from newspapers, pamphlets, books, or other printed matter, transcripts of speeches, reports of private conversations, etc., have been reported to officials of the department for decision as to whether or not the matter justified prosecution under the espionage act.”3 The demands of wartime swamped the department, which, in addition to suppressing antiwar dissent, was charged with monitoring alien enemies and with handling allegations of sabotage and draft evasion .4 The special agent in charge in Portland, Oregon, noted in a letter to the head of the Bureau of Investigation in the fall of 1918: “I have eight agents and employees here. On Saturday last the filing clerk made 32 Methods and Ideology f [18.117.153.38] Project MUSE (2024-04-17 21:42 GMT) 60 files and the same on Monday. These agents cannot keep abreast of the work. For the last few days they have been called as witnesses in Court and...