D.  Ruthenberg’s Ruin

     While Anita Whitney’s criminal syndicalism case was still under consideration in the California Court of Appeal, Charles Ruthenberg’s criminal anarchy case was just beginning in the New York State trial court system, where he faced charges for his activities as national secretary of the Communist Party of America.  The prosecution relied heavily upon Ruthenberg’s publication of the Left Wing Manifesto that appeared in The Revolutionary Age on July 5, 1919.  Ruthenberg’s defense “was to present frankly and fully his reasons for thinking and acting as he did,”^[73] ensuring that the state did not mischaracterize his views as incitement for violence.  The jury convicted him, and he was sentenced to five to ten years of hard labor at the Sing Sing state penitentiary.  Eighteen months later, the New York Court of Appeals reversed Ruthenberg’s conviction on a technical statutory ground.^[74]

     Forty days later, Ruthenberg found himself once again on the wrong side of the bars – this time in St. Joseph, Berrien County, Michigan.  The central executive committee of the Communist Party of America had called a national delegate convention for late August of 1922.  In advance of the convention, the seventy-five delegates began gathering on Tuesday, August 15 at an isolated summer resort in Bridgman, near St. Joseph; Ruthenberg aimed to reconcile differences among various factions to ensure united support at the convention for the newly formed Workers’ Party.  A veil of secrecy covered the event: the delegates met in a sand-dune amphitheater surrounded by woods; every individual was given an alias and a numbered portfolio for documents; all portfolios were collected and stored at night in two barrels that were sunken in the ground and covered with sand and natural debris; and all outside contact was forbidden.^[75] 

     Delegates from the Comintern of Moscow, the Red Trade International of Moscow, and the Hungarian federation were there; but so was a mole, a delegate clandestinely working for the Bureau of Investigation in the U.S. Department of Justice.  From August 15 to 22, the delegates debated and voted – until federal agents, tipped off to the event, were spotted near the meeting place.  Suspecting an incipient police raid, the foreign delegates quickly exited and many others hurried off.  Deputy U.S. marshals appeared on the morning of August 22 to arrest the assembly.^[76]