A Chicago View of Kearneyism

The press of the country is discussing California Communism quite generally, and as might be expected, the accounts of Kearneyism which find their way abroad lose nothing in the process of transmission. Exaggeration and sensationalism lend their aid to magnify and make the picture more lurid, and though the actual facts are bad enough, the distortion of them which is becoming common produces results calculated to react very injuriously upon the reputation of this State. The Chicago Tribune publishes a letter from California on this subject, and accompanies it with an editorial article in which some curious statements are made. Thus we find it asserted that Kearneyism “has carried on its operations with so high a hand, fulminated its threats so openly, and increased so rapidly, that the press, the Courts, and authorities of San Francisco have been living under a reign of terrorism. The press has been afraid to denounce the scoundrels lest the offices might be mobbed. The authorities have not dared to break up the incendiary meetings or arrest the leaders. The Courts have been paralyzed, and the officers of the law have hidden themselves away whenever the Kearneyites have made their appearance.” It is further stated that at a recent meeting “Kearney advocated the lynching of a State Senator who had dared to denounce the ruffianism of the so-called ‘Workingmen’s Party’ of California. He not only urged his dupes to exterminate the Chinese, but to drive the Americans out also, and, if any resistance were made, to fire the city. Under his instructions the members of his party have armed themselves, and are seen upon the streets with pistols and shotguns. The people of the city are terrorized. The authorities not only do not break up these incendiary meetings, but they are afraid to make any preparations to resist the violence that is threatened. Almost the result is that business men are seriously talking of closing up and removing elsewhere, and insurance companies are raising their rates in anticipation of a fire that will involve widespread destruction.”

It will be noted that while there is some exaggeration in this, a substratum of fact for almost every statement notoriously exists, and that the situation is of a kind to render very difficult a very broad separation of the false from the true. It is conspicuously apparent that Kearneyism has been permitted to do with impunity almost everything that a victorious mob of Communists could do. It has been allowed to spend months in open preparation for a programme of violence which meantime it has preached undisguisedly. It has been allowed to threaten San Francisco with the fate of Moscow. It has been allowed to fulminate open menaces against the lives of citizens. It has been allowed to defy all authority, and to educate the dangerous classes to a contempt for law and order. If, under the circumstances, the world reaches the conclusion that San Francisco is suffering under a reign of terror, we think the supposition not merely natural but justifiable. It is also evident that the continuance of such a state of things must lead to the most serious consequences—i.e., that law-abiding men will refuse to live in a city which affords so little protection to its inhabitants, and will close out their business and go away. This is one of the obvious effects of Kearneyism which a very large number of people are only just now realizing home—to the San Francisco people with disagreeable force.