"Chicago Home of `Reds'" The Chicago Daily News, Chicago, Illinois, February 11, 1919

transcription/facsimile newspaper article

Chicago Home of "Reds"

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Butte and Seattle, Strikes Plotted

Here, Capt. Barry Declares.

Chicago may claim the dubious honor of being the hatching place and hotbed of America's "reds", according to Capt. Philip A. Barry, head of the federal bureau of investigation in Chicago. It was in Chicago that the Butte and Seattle strikes were plotted, Capt. Barry declared today, and daily there are meetings of dangerous elements behind closed doors and shuttered windows at which sinister plans to interfere with public matters are made.

"The heart and brains of America's anarchists, bolshevists and extremists, I.W.W. and destructive socialists center in Chicago," said Capt. Barry. "It was here that the leaders who were responsible for the strike in Seattle and the outbreak in the Butte mining trouble met, to mention only the most recent outbreaks of a still mild bolshevist movement in America."

"We know all this, but as the dangerous elements, warned by the conviction of the I.W.W. who were tried here and in Los Angeles, and the five socialists recently found guilty by Judge Landis' court, are obeying the laws of the country to the letter, we have not yet been forced to take drastic steps against them."

"Here in Chicago, we are prepared to meet any violent outbreak of bolshevism and to deport those who are responsible for it. The files of the bureau investigation contain an almost complete roster of "reds" not only in Chicago but in this district, and needless to say the department of justice is not asleep on the job. But it has not yet been necessary to deport any of Chicago's `reds' ".

"There is no cause for worry that Chicago will witness such an outbreak as Seattle", concluded Capt. Barry. " The government is watching twenty four hours a day, seven days a week."