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Hellraisers Journal – Sunday March 13, 1921
Leavenworth Federal Prison – Letter from Fellow Worker John L. Murphy
From the Appeal to Reason of March 12, 1921:
The White Terror at Work
Recently I [Upton Sinclair] published a novel [100%-A Story of a Patriot] dealing with the activities of spies and secret agents of big business. Our gracious Postoffice Department does not permit me to mention the name of this novel, otherwise this contribution will be considered as an advertisement. But here is a letter which has just come to me, and which you might take to be a chapter out of the aforesaid unnameable novel. Read it, and see how very proud of your country it makes you. I do not know the writer of this letter, but the accent of truth is in every word of his story, and it what I have learned of hundreds of other cases, makes me quite ready to believe what he tells. If you know any 100 per cent American patriots in your neighborhood, take them this letter and try to get them to read it.
[Letter from John L. Murphy, No. 13586]
Leavenworth, Kans., Feb. 13, 1921.
Mr. Upton Sinclair, Pasadena, Cal.
Dear Comrade:Below I am sending you the facts of my case.
I was born in Boston the boasted, cradle of Liberty. I am a working man, not a leech. In 1918 while working at Olympia, Wash., I wrote a letter to Chris Luber at Sacramento, Cal. He was an I. W. W. He was in jail at the time of my writing. This I did not know at the time. In fact he had been in jail almost two months before I wrote my first letter. My letter was the ordinary kind exchanged among workers—working conditions, etc. This letter was not delivered to Luber. The Department of Justice got it. They answered it and forged Luber’s name to it. This letter was indeed very bitter against the government. I thought my friend Luber had gone “bugs.” How was I to know that the Department of Justice agent was writing to me? They had his name forged to the letter, and I did not know he was in jail at the time. They wound up by asking me to “Pull off” something violent, just anything would do.
