the legally restricted district, and since there is a law against the use of slanderous language in public places, the I. W. W. should be arrested and punished by due process of law…. Much testimony is that there has been needless brutality on the part of police officers while meetings were being dispersed…. Kilcullen had been assaulted by a group of policemen and brutally handled…. He was not arrested, but picked up on the streets unconscious…. An armed body of men, under the orders of Harry Place, a constable … under the directions of District Attorney H.S. Utley … maintained a guard on the Northern boundary of the county, interfering with the passage of pedestrians and vehicles on the public highway.

Forty-three sworn affidavits were submitted that members of the I. W. W., their sympathizers and others, had been arrested, on the streets or at I. W. W. headquarters, and without being charged with a violation of the law, and many of them without being guilty of a violation of the law, had been taken out of the city by autos a distance of 22 miles, and there subjected to an inhuman brutal treatment by a body of men, part of whom were police officers, part constables, and part private citizens. Local commercial bodies have encouraged and applauded the acts of these so-called vigilantes. The Merchants' Association passed a resolution commending the authorities and citizens' committee on ridding the city of all lawless and undesirable people…. The “Evening Tribune” (April 6, 1912) declared in an editorial: “If the sword of our own law is turned against us, we claim the right, under the unwritten law, to resort to the law of nature.”

At a public inquiry Captain of Detectives Myers testified that although 200 arrests had been made, these had been solely for violating the street-speaking ordinance, no acts of violence had been committed that could be directly charged to the I. W. W., no I. W. W. arrests for drunkenness, nor resisting an officer.

For his bold utterances, A. R. Sauer, editor of “The San Diego Herald” was kidnapped, hurried out of town and a rope placed about his neck. The other end was