Most of the court’s venom was reserved for Ruthenberg’s as-applied argument. Excerpting lengthy passages from the Workers’ Party program and resolutions adopted at the Bridgman convention, borrowing pieces from Jay Lovestone’s testimony, and much more, the court painted as colorful a portrait as possible of Ruthenberg’s syndicalist status:
Defendant was acting under orders from Moscow. He was pledged to obey such orders and, under this record, it taxes credulity too far to believe he was endeavoring to bring Communist doctrines and tactics within the law. . . . [His purpose] was to further the ends of the underground or illegal party, and that purpose and such ends center upon the destruction of republican or parliamentary form of government by direct action and criminal force.[93]
And what of “clear and present danger”? This, too, was dismissed with fervor:
The Communists say they are but prophets of disorder, violence and destruction eventually to come. In the sweet bye and bye, they say, resistance to their schedule will lead to the shedding of blood but the guilt will rest upon those who fight to maintain government under the Constitution of the United States. But they are militant prophets, to say the least, with present activities toward fulfillment of what they prophesy. Prophecy of violence to come does not mantle present militant organization and criminal activities to hurry its advent.
Quaint Old Thomas Fuller, 275 years ago, hit off defendant’s plea of present innocent advocacy of eventual force and violence when he said: “It is dangerous to gather flowers that grow on the banks of the pit of hell, for fear of falling in; yea, they which play with the devil’s rattles will be brought by degrees to wield his sword; and from making of sport, they come to doing of mischief.”[94]
On January 5, 1925, Ruthenberg was sentenced to serve between three and ten years in the Jackson state prison. He served only twenty days of his term before he was released. His attorneys had petitioned Justice Louis Brandeis for a writ of error enabling them to seek review in the United States Supreme Court of the Michigan court’s judgment in People v. Ruthenberg. Brandeis granted the writ of error on January 19, ordering that the writ would operate as a supersedeas upon providing a bond for $7,500. (Earlier, Justice James C. McReynolds had refused to grant Ruthenberg such a writ.) The bail bond was delivered and approved on January 26, and Ruthenberg was once again at liberty – and just in time to deliver an address at the first annual Lenin memorial meeting in Madison Square Garden.[95]
