"contribution" of the boys should really turn out to be a successful general strike and overturn, who would be better able to grasp the power than an astute leader like Hillquit?
This book was written before the Judiciary Committee of the New York Assembly began its inquiry, in January, 1920, into the fitness of five Socialist Assemblymen to act as law-makers, and since then has only received the addition of some important facts and testimony. It is remarkable, therefore, that all the evidence independently sifted in that investigation overwhelmingly points to the same conclusions arrived at in this volume.
On January 21, 1920, at the second day's hearing at Albany, as reported in the "New York Times" of January 22, John B. Stanchfield and Martin
W. Littleton, of counsel for the Judiciary Committee, stated the fundamental nature of the charges brought against the five suspended Socialists--charges based, as is well known, on the results of raids and investigations of radicalism by the New York State Legislative Committee, Senator Lusk, Chairman. Said Mr. Stanchfield:
"When the Chairman read from the statement yesterday that the charge against these men was disloyalty, and that they had affiliated themselves with a party whose platform and program call for an overthrow of this Government by violence, he added that we will prove this beyond the shadow of a doubt. "We are not upon this investigation engaged in a discussion of the philosophy of Socialism or its economics. We are engaged in an investigation of its tactics, its methods, its practical program, and these tactics, these methods, and that program called for the overturn of the power of this State and its annihilation, its utter and complete annihilation."
Mr. Littleton said: