Lloyd and Fellow Reds Get Prison

1920

ALL TWENTY ARE CONVICTED OF REVOLT PLOT.

Penitentiary and Fines Meted Out to Millionaire Agitator and Comrades.

William Bross Lloyd and his nineteen fellow advocates of a "dictatorship of the proletariat" were found guilty of sedition in Chicago by a jury in Judge Oscar Hebel's court.

All were sentenced to imprisonment. Some received jail sentences. Others — including Lloyd — were sentenced to the penitentiary, some for one year and others for an indeterminate sentence of from one to five years.

In addition to prison terms, Lloyd and two others were fined $2,000 and two were fined $1,000 each.

The reading of the verdict found the defendants not unprepared. They had expected conviction, and when the first verdict was read finding Lloyd guilty, all made brave attempts to smile. Some succeeded. As each in his turn heard his fate, a look of nervousness appeared, hut soon thoughts of "martyrdom" apparently drove away the glooms. During the polling of the jury they seemed unconcerned.

The defendants and the penalties inflicted follow:

Prison Sentences and $2,000 Fine.

William Bross Lloyd, Winnetka millionaire, sergeant-at-arms in Communist Labor party convention, organizer, backer and leading spirit in the "movement."

Ludwig Lore, New York, editor of Class Struggle; helped draft constitution.

Arthur Proctor, Chicago, owner of Clarion book store, meeting place of radicals; member of county committee.

Prison Sentence and $1,000 Fine.

Max Deddacht, San Francisco, Cal.; member of the National executive and platform committee.

Jack Carney, Duluth, Minn.; member of National executive committee, editor and publisher of Truth.

Indeterminate Prison Sentences.

L. E. Katterfield, Dighton, Kan.; brains of organization, national organizer, practically prepared party's platform.

Edgar Owens, Moline, Ill.; State secretary; helped draft constitution.

L. K. England, Moline, Ill.; member of State committee.

Niels Kjar, Chicago; member of National executive committee and Cook County propaganda committee.

One Year in Penitentiary.

Samuel F. Hankin.

Morris A. Stollar, Chicago; member of county executive committee.

James A. Meissinger, Chicago; member county executive committee.

Charles Krumbein, Chicago; member of county executive committee.

Samuel Ash, Chicago, lawyer; one of organizers.

One Year in the County Jail.

Perry Shipman, Rock Island, Ill.; member of State committee.

Dr. Oscar J. Brown, De Kalb, Ill.; organizer, delegate to National convention and member of platform committee.

Edwin Firth, Indianapolis, Ind.; national delegate and organizer.

Dr. Karl F. Sandberg, Chicago; organizer and delegate to national convention.

Niels J. Christensen, delegate to national convention and member international relations committee.

John Vogel.

Plea of Prosecutor.

In his closing address Frank Comeford, special prosecutor, told the jurors that their verdict would answer the question in the first line of "The Star Spangled Banner."

"The people are waiting for your verdict," he said. "At another time the People waited to see if the flag of the United States had come down. They will wait tonight to see if you, the jury, hauls down the Stars and Stripes.

"If you find these defendants innocent in view of the uncontradicted testimony, then tear down the picture of Washington from this courtroom and put up the picture of Lenin; go to Springfield and tumble over the monument to Lincoln and in its place put Trotsky in marble; haul down the American flag from this courthouse and hoist the red flag; blot out from the memories of our children the National anthems and teach them to sing the 'Red International;' scrap our Constitution; clean Arlington of its headstone and build a new National cemetery; remove the dust of the anarchists from Waldheim and the dust of Czolgoscz from Buffalo; gather the dust of Benedict Arnold and build a new National cemetery."

The trial of Lloyd and his associates began May 10. Fifty-two court days were occupied in the selection of a jury.

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Aug. 7, 1920, p. 2.

Ask Woman Lawyer Act As Prosecutor

1916

BARNES MURDER CASE STIRS SUFFRAGISTS.

Truth and Justice Are Sought When Woman Is Tried for Killing Husband.

When State's Attorney Hoyne returns to Chicago he will find a petition from representative women in Chicago requesting that he appoint a special woman prosecutor to try Mrs. Iva Williams Barnes for the killing of her husband.

This proposition, which Mr. Hoyne and his secretary, Edward Fleming, are said to have considered even before the women took up the question of the petition, might break the chain of "not guilty" verdicts that since 1907 has freed nearly twenty Chicago women accused of murder.

The late State's Attorney Wayman said it was impossible to convict a woman of murder in Cook County. Mr. Hoyne has secured but one conviction of a woman, and that was contested. There is a feeling that a subtle sympathy extends to a woman who is being prosecuted by a man. There is also a belief that with a woman prosecutor there would be more nearly an even attempt at justice.

So keenly is the situation felt, the delegates to the National Suffrage convention at Atlantic City, N. J., discussed the question in their recent session. Mrs. Catherine Waugh McCulloch, president of the Woman's Bar Association of Chicago, said there would be no difficulty in appointing a woman to prosecute Mrs. Barnes. Mrs. McCulloch is regarded highly in the legal profession.

She Would Seek Truth.

"It would be a woman prosecutor's duty to investigate the case thoroly and make every effort to establish the truth. I am anxious to know more of the facts in the case. If I got real interested, I might volunteer my services, tho I don't do criminal work," Mrs. McCulloch is quoted as saying.

"As president of the Woman's Bar Association, I should like to see a woman prosecutor, as well as a woman in the office of the city attorney and the corporation counsel. I have no doubt that if a woman is appointed in this case she will do the work conscientiously and efficiently.

"I should like also to see the jury made up half of women and the other half men. Every fundamental law says we shall be tried by a jury of our peers. A woman who is being tried by a jury of men is not being tried by her peers. If the woman on trial is cute and handsome and of the adventuress type the jurymen are apt to be unusually lenient." While there is a possibility that a woman may be chosen to prosecute Mrs. Barnes, it should be stated that several women lawyers have volunteered to defend the confessed slayer When she is brought to trial.

"Human Gadfly" Blamed.

A human gadfly, gossiping and meddling, is blamed as the agent that inoculated Barnes with the poison of jealousy that ended with his death.

The gadfly is a woman. Her name is being withheld. She was a neighbor of the Barnes' household at 356 East Fifty-eighth street. She is bring sought as a witness by the police and agents of the coroner.

Mrs. Barnes occupies a cell in the county jail. Her moods change from bursts of the most violent anger toward these whom she blames for her predicament and of love for the memory of the man she admits she slew. The removal of her husband's body to Warners, N. Y., for burial she resented deeply. She pleaded for the right to bury the body, where she may rest beside it.

In the meantime Ellis A. Barnes, brother of the victim, employed Attorney Joseph Burres and the Turner Detective Agency to assist the prosecution of Mrs. Barnes for the murder of her husband. Detectives were sent to Mishawaka, Ind., Mrs. Barnes' former home. Inquiry will be made into her former marriage, upon which subject she has been silent until now.

A fortune, estimated from $20,000 to $40,000, left by James R. Barnes, will provide the defense fund for his slayer. Under the law the widow, Mrs. Iva Williams Barnes is entitled to at least one-third of the estate.

Wife Confesses Her Act.

A confession was wrung from Mrs. Barnes in the Hyde Park police station, where she was held before being taken to the county jail. She had been subjected to a severe cross-examination from 9 o'clock Tuesday to 2:30 o'clock the next morning, and she had but four hours' sleep.

"Yes, I shot him," she finally admitted.

Her narrative, given as she wept hysterically, sets forth the claim that her husband, who was suing her for divorce and whom she loved deeply, had scoffed at a reconciliation, had berated, cursed and then attempted to choke her.

In desperation and in fear of physical injury, she said, she drew a revolver concealed in a pocket of her coat and opened fire. They were walking in a public park. After the first shot, she told the police, she remembers only that she intended to carry the revolver away, but instead threw it near the prostrate form of her dead husband.

Attorney Guenther, for Mrs. Barnes, made a statement in which he pictured her as a hard-working, long-suffering and much-abused wife. She went to meet her husband on the night of his death, Mr. Guenther said, in the full expectation that it meant a reconciliation. She was happy, he said, because she loved her husband.

"He was twice her age," continued the attorney. "She followed his commands as a child minds a parent, never questioning but what he was always right. Barnes leaves a fortune of about $40,000. Every dollar he owned his wife helped earn for him. When they were married he didn't have a shoe-string.

"Barnes had an income of $7,500 before his death. He received $383 a month. Yet he made his wife live in a $37 flat, do all her own housework, her washing, mending, ironing, scrubbing, darning.

"He wanted to get rid of her. After her trouble with a bartender, Barnes refused to listen to the true story of her innocence and filed suit for divorce."

Tells of Parrot Episode.

Mrs. Barnes told of the "parrot" episode that had wrecked her life. After the man Shellheimer (the bartender) had caught the parrot for her, a few weeks ago, she said, she started home, for she expected her husband any moment. Shellheimer asked permission to go up into her apartment to wash his hands. Her reply, she said, was "You certainly may not," and not "you may." But he went anyhow.

It was only a short time before her husband came up the front stairs and passed on into the kitchen. The bartender was there in his shirt sleeves. He ran to the front door and escaped. Mrs. Barnes said the bartender attempted to attack her. Her husband disbelieved her story, and ceased to live with her. He told a friend that the bartender came from his wife's bedroom in his shirt sleeves.

"My husband blackened my eyes with his blows and pushed me down the stairs after the man," she said. "I grabbed his hat, and he kept calling me to give him his hat, not to break it, and in my agony even then I thought, 'See, he cares more for his hat than for me!' as he didn't seem to notice how badly I was bruised and broken. I have the scar on my shoulder yet where he struck me. The wound was three inches long.

"Then, when he started choking me, my head was thrown on one side and one of my hands was free. I reached down and pulled off my slipper and struck him with the heel on the head and made a large open wound.

"Jim was a coward, altho I loved him, and I am not going to tell of other abuses I had. I am trying to forget them now."

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Sept. 16, 1916, p. 4.

Can't Stop a Woman From Changing Mind

1920

Girl's Damage Suit is On, Then Off, Now On Again

SAN FRANCISCO, California — As no one, not even a judge of the Superior Court, has the authority to question a woman's unalienable right to change her mind, no exception can be taken to Miss Helen Woodbury's indecision.

Recently Miss Woodbury, who is a stenographer, filed a $5,000 damage action against Mrs. Caroline Leebold alleging that Mrs. Leebold had enticed her to her apartment and then beaten her.

A few days later Miss Woodbury filed notice she wanted to dismiss the action. Now she has filed notice saying she wants to prosecute her damage suit.


Neighbors' Noses Scent Raisin Still

MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota — Led by the suspicions of neighbors and unusual odors, Michael Johannes, city detective, and police operatives raided the home of T. O. Bailys, where they said they secured a still, two barrels of raisin whisky and eight barrels of raisin mash. The still and liquor were found on the second floor of the house, police said.

In the same room, according to the officers, was a quantity of apples, oranges and prunes, cut up and ready for use in the manufacture of a new various of liquor.