So it is with the quality. Take the case of Frederic Sumner Boyd, in which we should all be deeply interested because it is evident Frederic Sumner Boyd is to be made "the goat" by the authorities in New Jersey. That is to say, they want blood, they want one victim. If they can't get anybody else they are determined they are going to get Boyd, in order to serve a two-fold purpose to cow the workers of Paterson, as they believe they can, and to put this thing, sabotage, into the statutes, to make it an illegal thing to advocate or to practice. Boyd said this: "If you go back to work and you find scabs working alongside of you, you should put a little bit of vinegar on the reed of the loom in order to prevent its operation." They have arrested him under the statute forbidding the advocacy of the destruction of property. He advised the dyers to go into the dye houses and to use certain chemicals in the dyeing of the silk that would tend to make that silk unweavable. That sounded very terrible in the newspapers and very terrible in the court of law. But what neither the newspapers nor the courts of law have taken any cognizance of is that these chemicals are being used already in the dyeing of the silk. It is not a new thing that Boyd is advocating, it is something that is being practiced in every dye house in the city of Paterson already, but it is being practiced for the employer and not for the worker.
Note:
The reference to the case of Friderick Sumner Boyd, which is found in several places in the text of the foreogoing pamphlet, requires additional explanation. The pamphlet was written more than two years ago, since which time some interesting developments have occured in Boyd's case. After being convicted on the charge of "advising the destruction of property" Boyd carried his case to the New Jersey Court of Errors and Appeals, where the liwer court was sustained. Boyd was then taken into custody, and sent to the state prison in Trenton a sentence of "from two to seven years." He immediately signed a petition for pardon in which he professes to have repudiated his former ideas, and to have renounced the advocacy of sabotage an all other subversive ideas. In view of Boyd's apparent cowardice in the presence of the pamphlet is about to go to press, we add this note for the sake of clearness.