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NO ONE IS ILLEGAL
 NO ONE IS ILLEGAL
Fighting Racism and State Violence on the U.S.–Mexico
Border
________________

Justin Akers Chacón

Mike Davis

________________

Photographs by Julián Cardona

Updated Edition
© 2018 by Justin Akers Chacón and Mike Davis
Photographs © 2018 Julián Cardona

First published in 2006 by Haymarket Books in Chicago.

This edition published in 2018 by
Haymarket Books
P.O. Box 180165
Chicago, IL 60618
773-583-7884
www.haymarketbooks.org
info@haymarketbooks.org

ISBN: 978-1-60846-590-3

Trade distribution:
In the US, Consortium Book Sales and Distribution, www.cbsd.com
In Canada, Publishers Group Canada, www.pgcbooks.ca
In the UK, Turnaround Publisher Services, www.turnaround-uk.com
All other countries, IPS International, IPS_Intlsales@ingramcontent.com

This book was published with the generous support of Lannan Foundation and Wallace
Global Fund.

Cover image of a freeway sign near the U.S.-Mexico border in San Diego, California.
Photo © Joe Klein/Zuma Press.
Cover design by Amy Balkin.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available.

 Contents

Preface to the 2018 Edition: Trump and the Failure of Neoliberal

Immigration Reform

Preface

Part I: “What Is a Vigilante Man?” White Violence in Calfornia

History Mike Davis
Introduction
1. Pinkertons, Klansmen, and Vigilantes
2. White Savages
3. The Yellow Peril
4. “Swat a Jap”
5. The Anti-Filipino Riots
6. The IWW versus the KKK
7. In Dubious Battle
8. Thank the Vigilantes
9. The Zoot Suit Wars
10. Beating the UFW
11. The Last Vigilantes?

Part II: Mexico: Caught in the Web of U.S. Empire Justin Akers
Chacón
Introduction
12. Conquest Sets the Stage
13. Neoliberalism Consumes the “Mexican Miracle”
 14. From the Maquiladoras to NAFTA: Profiting from Borders

Part III: Mexican Workers: The “Other” American Working Class

15. Mexican Workers to the Rescue
16. Segregated Workers: Class Struggle in the Fields
17. The Bracero Program: A Twentieth-Century Caste System
18. Poverty in the Fields: Legacy of the Bracero Program
19. Immigrant Workers Continue to Build America

Part IV: The War on Immigrants

20. Immigration Policy as a Means to Control Labor
21. The Race and Class Construction of Immigration Restrictions
22. Constructing the “Illegal” Mexican Worker: Racism and Mexican
Labor
23. Immigration Double Standards
24. Militarizing the Border: Death Warrant for Migrant Workers
25. Inventing an Invisible Enemy: September 11 and the War on
Immigrants
26. The Bipartisan Segregationists of Labor
27. The Right Wing Calls the Shots
28. Terrorists on the Border: The Minutemen Stalk Their Prey

Part V: ¡Queremos un Mundo Sin Fronteras!

29. Human Rights Activists Confront the Far Right
30. Unions and Immigrant Workers
31. Making Borders History
32. A New Civil Rights Movement
33. Mass Mobilization Defeats Sensenbrenner-King (HR 4437)
34. State Repression of Immigrant Workers
35. The Immigrant Rights Movement at the Polls
36. The Arizona Laboratory and SB 1070
 37. S. 744: The Degeneration of “Comprehensive Immigration Reform”
38. Immigrant Rights at a Crossroads

Notes

Index
 Preface to the 2018 Edition
Trump and the Failure of Neoliberal
Immigration Reform

When presidential candidate Donald Trump cast aspersions on Mexicans in

the United States as “criminals,” “drug dealers,” and “rapists,” it was not
just the noxious ranting of a self-entitled bigot. Renewed attention to Trump
and his newfound anti-Latino and anti-immigrant posturing illustrates more
than just another perversion of an electoral system long corrupted by
wealthy opportunists. Rather, Trump’s rhetoric was a political calculation to
gain traction for an otherwise an incoherent and uninspiring campaign.1
Latching onto Mexican and immigrant bashing to leverage support from a
shrinking yet well-funded and well-organized base of white conservatives
was a strategy designed to recharge the fetid Trump brand, which had
become little more than a caricature in popular culture. Latino race-baiting
and immigrant-bashing has become a ritualized practice on the conservative
circuit and a political get-rich-quick scheme for opportunists seeking
traction in the polls through inflammatory incitement. In this, Trump is not
a departure but rather a continuation of the politics of his predecessors, both
Republican and Democrat.
Trump’s antics also reveal more than just the bankruptcy of immigration
politics in the U.S., in which the racialized dehumanization of Latino
migrants and immigrant workers as “illegals” is normalized in media and
political discourse. Rather, it is the latest exhumation of the “Brown Scare,”
a deeply rooted strain of racism directed toward people of Mexican and
Central American origin that has been resuscitated and reimagined in the
era of what George Bush declared a generational “war on terrorism.” As
part of the current phase of U.S. imperialism in the Middle East,
immigration has been reframed as a national security threat, conflating
refugees and economic migrants with the peril of terrorist activity.
 The political dividends of racial scapegoating and fear-mongering were
illustrated by the 2016 presidential victory of Donald Trump, who, in his
first hundred days in office, made it the priority of his administration to
target Muslim and Mexican peoples. One of the first acts of the Trump
administration was to issue an executive order that explicitly restricted the
entry of Muslim travelers from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and
Yemen to the United States, imposing a three-month ban on those seeking
to apply for a visa. It also placed a similar four-month comprehensive ban
on refugees, by suspending the already woefully inadequate United States
Refugee Admissions Program. The rationale for the targeted exclusions
was, according to the order, “Each of these countries is a state sponsor of
terrorism, has been significantly compromised by terrorist organizations, or
contains active conflict zones.”2
What the order failed to mention is that the U.S. government has
already been targeting these predominantly Muslim nations through aerial
bombings, proxy war, drone attacks, and other forms of clandestine warfare
over the past several years. While claiming that the order was intended to
“protect … citizens from terrorist attacks, including those committed by
foreign nationals,” it failed to mention that no citizens from these countries
have committed any acts of terrorism on U.S. soil. Rather, this is part of a
long tradition in the United States of using immigration policy as another
type of weapon in the empire’s arsenal.
In practice, the administration’s mounting attack on Muslims is not a
departure but rather an intensification of the ideological war on people who
have been in the crosshairs of U.S. imperialism over the last two decades.
Characterizing Yemeni refugees as potential terrorists legitimizes the U.S.
government’s ongoing drone assassinations in that country and reinforces
support for a bloody invasion and sustained war and bombing campaign
against the Yemeni population by the U.S.-allied and armed Saudi Arabian
government.
Trump’s attempted bans on people from countries such as Syria and Iraq
reveal the depths of hypocrisy in U.S. politics, as refugees from these
countries are fleeing U.S.-led wars in their countries. In 2015 and 2016,
according to the Council on Foreign Relations, the U.S. dropped over forty-
seven thousand bombs on Syria and Iraq alone, killing untold thousands. On
March 17, 2017, for example, a U.S.-led airstrike killed over two hundred
people huddled in a bomb shelter in a residential district in Mosul, Iraq,
after U.S. and British jets bombed the city, allegedly targeting ISIS
positions.3 Claiming Syrian and Iraqi refugees are therefore a “threat to
U.S. national security” is the ultimate irony, as millions of Syrians and
Iraqis have been displaced as a result of U.S. policies in their countries.
A second front in this attack targets undocumented Mexican and Central
American immigrants within the United States. Again, the executive order
falsely characterizes this population as a threat, claiming, “Aliens who
illegally enter the United States without inspection or admission present a
significant threat to national security and public safety…. Among those who
illegally enter are those who seek to harm Americans through acts of terror
or criminal conduct. Continued illegal immigration presents a clear and
present danger to the interests of the United States.” Researchers have long
dispelled the notion of the “criminal immigrant,” including researchers that
collect crime data for police departments and the FBI, but that is not the
point.
The same executive order rhetorically affirms the continuation of the
trajectory of immigration politics and policy from Reagan to Clinton, and
from Bush to Obama: increased militarization of border enforcement and
the further expansion of the existing six-hundred-mile wall; augmentation
of enforcement personnel and their authority; police participation in
immigration enforcement; and expansion of the country’s detention and
deportation capacities. While Congress must approve the funding for
Trump’s increased expenditures for the Department of Homeland Security
(it approved $65 billion in 2016), the proposals are based on existing policy
statutes that enable such increases. Presidents from both parties have made
use of this statute to ratchet up enforcement over the last generation.
Another act of the Trump administration has been to implement a series
of rule changes known as “guidance memos,” that are currently being
implemented by the DHS under executive authority. The memos give a
broader mandate for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents
to arrest, detain, and deport undocumented people, as well as authorizing
them to act on their own impulses and target people more generally in the
course of conducting their “duties” without restriction or checks. Anyone
who cannot prove two-year consistent residence can be put into the
“expedited removal” process, regardless of criminal record.
It should be noted that the union representing the Border Patrol (along
with the National Fraternal Order of Police) officially endorsed the
candidacy of Donald Trump, showing the alignment of thinking with the
twenty-thousand-member armed border force. In other words, this order is
designed to allow more impunity to the federal border police, an agency
already accused of widespread human rights abuses. In effect, the Trump
administration is unleashing and encouraging the immigration police to go
on the offensive and unleash a more far-reaching reign of terror on
undocumented immigrants, which will undoubtedly increase and intensify
state violence and abuse.
The Arizona-based human rights organization No More Deaths, for
instance, produced a comprehensive report that documents thirty thousand
incidents where human rights abuses occurred between fall of 2008 and
spring of 2011.4 Since 2010, according to the Southern Border
Communities Coalition, forty-six people have been killed on the border.5
Another study conducted by the Kino Border Initiative, a binational
organization promoting humane immigration policies, found that about “40
percent of Mexican migrants deported from the United States said Border
Patrol agents violated their human rights, and two-thirds said their families
were returned to Mexico separately.”6 These daily abuses were committed
during a period when the border police had minimal restrictions on their
rules of engagement.
ICE agents operating within the interior are no different, although their
patterns of arrest have been more selective and targeted. Even though the
claim is to catch and deport “criminals,” the initial results show a different
reality. Guadalupe Garcia de Rayos, an Arizona-based worker and mother
of two, who was detained and deported after an annually required “check-
in” with ICE. She had previously been arrested for using false documents to
work during a workplace raid in 2008 under the regime of notoriously racist
Sheriff Joe Arpaio, charged with “identity theft,” and spent one year in
prison.7
In the era of Trump, this has the potential to be even more political, as
illustrated by the fact that another early detainee in the interior of the
country was DREAM activist Daniela Vargas. A twenty-two-year-old
DACA college student, Vargas was arrested moments after speaking
publicly at an immigrant rights rally in Jackson, Mississippi, and transferred
to a detention center in Jena, Louisiana.8 Another DREAM activist, Claudia
Rueda, was detained at her Los Angeles home after publicly participating in
protests against recently conducted immigration raids that included the
arrest of her mother.9
Enrique Balcazar, Zully Palacios, and Alex Carillo-Sanchez, community
and labor organizers with Migrant Justice, a workers’ rights organization in
Vermont, were also arrested in late March. Since they had no deportation
orders, criminal records, or any other factor that would have brought them
to the attention of ICE, this shows that they were surveyed, arrested, and
detained by regional agents for no other reason than for their immigrant
rights advocacy.10 Other activists around the country have also been
conspicuously targeted.
Not only are the armed enforcers of Trump’s immigration orders
animated by their new license to target immigrants, but the Far Right is also
emboldened. For example, racists in the well-funded, right-wing
information production industry are jubilant. The fake think tank Center for
Immigration Studies, an overtly anti-immigrant organization that produces
bogus research to justify exclusion and receives access to practically every
mainstream media outlet, rejoiced at the new rules. Director of the group,
Mark Krikorian, claimed that “the message is: The immigration law is back
in business.”11 After declining in the first few years of the Obama
administration, when it was believed that immigration reform would pass
through a Democratic “supermajority” in Congress, the membership levels
and total number of anti-immigrant hate groups are once again on the rise.
The political attack on immigrants has also increased the confidence of
racist hate groups and individuals to commit acts of violence and terrorism.
Encouraged by the rhetoric of Trump and the ratcheting up of state
repression, the Far Right has increased its activities. The Southern Poverty
Law Center documented 867 incidents of hate crimes in the first ten days of
the Trump administration alone, and further attacks have targeted a broad
spectrum of people including immigrants, African-Americans, Jewish
people, South and Central Asians, and others.12 For instance, in late
February, a racist gunman in Kansas walked into a bar near Kansas City and
opened fire on two Indian men killing Srinivas Kuchibhotla while yelling,
“Get out of my country!”13 This is the violence of the anti-immigrant and
anti-Muslim policies at the center of U.S. politics in its most unfiltered,
toxic form.
 Through his attorney general, former Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, an
unreconstructed southern segregationist, Trump is currently tangled up in
the courts trying to block federal grant money from going to police in cities
where “sanctuary” provisions are on the books. In his current budget
proposal, which has stalled in Congress, Trump has allocated $1.6 billion to
begin extending the physical wall, currently at around six hundred miles of
the two thousand boundary. Amid the tragic flooding of Hurricane Harvey,
Trump took the opportunity to publicly threaten a federal budget shut down
if the U.S. Congress didn’t allocate funding for his wall.14
He also used his executive authority to pardon Joe Arpaio, an extremely
racist and anti-immigrant sheriff based in the state of Arizona. By pardoning
Arpaio, who had been facing prison time related to the unconstitutionality
of his heavy-handed tactics of repression within Latino communities,
Trump is signaling to his boiled-down, hard-right base and the Nazis who
admire him that his tenure in office will be to reestablish racism and
xenophobia as part of the mainstream of U.S. politics.
The function of racism as a means to specifically target and repress
immigrant workers coincides with the extension of free-market capitalism.
As corporations displace workers in their home countries, they become an
even more exploitable commodity through their disempowerment as
undocumented immigrants, who are purposely denied legal authorization
and citizenship rights based on their nationality and social class. Once in the
country, state repression keeps them segregated and isolated.

Opening Borders for Capital Accumulation

Commonly referred to as the “neoliberal turn,” the last thirty years has
witnessed a substantial increase in U.S.-led free trade agreements.15 From
the North American Free Trade Agreement to the Dominican Republic and
Central American Free Trade Agreement, to the recently proposed Trans-
Pacific Partnership Alliance, bipartisan administrations have made the
aggressive push for pro-corporate free trade regimes a centerpiece of the
epoch. At the heart of these agreements in relation to Mexico and Central
America has been the dismantling of economic developmentalist policies,
the rewriting of trade rules that dismantle tariffs and favor multinational
corporations over smaller producers, the privatization of state industry, and
the requirement of “labor flexibility” so as to decrease labor costs.16
A recent outcome in the ongoing fallout from these policies is the mass
displacement of Haitian workers, thousands of whom began to leave the
country and relocate to Mexico and the United States after the U.S.-
imposed trade policies significantly reduced wages in the country’s export
sector. There has also been mass out-migration from Puerto Rico to the
United States following the devastation of Hurricane Maria. The scale of
destruction was exacerbated by the country’s infrastructural
underdevelopment and a deep economic crisis created by a massive national
debt and deep austerity cuts in the social budget tied to neoliberal
policies.17
The components of trade agreements were perfected by corporations
and applied within the United States through successive administrations
before being exported to Mexico and Central America under the aegis of
International Monetary Fund debt-restructuring diktats. This international
arrangement has also benefitted capitalists in Mexico, who have become
enriched through the plunder of newly privatized industries or through
direct partnership (and corrupt dealings) with their North American
counterparts.18
In the U.S., labor flexibility has been a primary strategy employed by
the capitalist class since the 1970s. The overarching goal has been to
increase worker productivity while suppressing working-class living
standards as a means to increase the rate of exploitation of labor.19 For
workers in the U.S., corporate mobility enabled through free trade policies
have been used to close and relocate production across borders in what are
called “runaway shops,” or threaten to do so in order to leverage wages
downwards as a condition for staying put. Central to this strategy is union
busting. Employers have relied on a number of strategies to weaken or
break unions as part of this process, and they have been successful. For
instance, the rate of unionization in 2014 sank to 11.1 percent of the
workforce, the lowest it has been in a hundred years; it plummeted even
further to 10.7 percent in 2016.20 As the need for capital accumulation
moves more aggressively to the forefront of policy-making priorities, new
forms of labor control have evolved and are being generalized and codified.
Another front of this capitalist-class offensive has been the manipulation of
immigration policy to fill the ranks of a vast and politically disempowered
workforce.
Global economic integration along neoliberal lines, where corporations
write the rules of trade, investment, and regulation in their own interest, has
destabilized laboring classes internationally. As a predictable result, labor
itself has become internationalized. In 2015, an estimated 244 million
people were living in a country as migrants, and that number is set to
increase.21 If that were itself the population of a country, it would be the
fifth largest in the world, roughly more populous than each of the world’s
remaining 189 countries. In the United States in 2015, an estimated 26.3
million foreign-born persons were part the U.S. labor force, constituting
almost 17 percent of the national workforce.22
Displaced workers that cannot be absorbed within their own national
economies as a result of corporate-led trade policies have been compelled to
cross boundaries into foreign labor markets where they can find work. This
has altered workforce demographics internationally, from Qatar to the
Dominican Republic to Japan. Exporting free trade policies south has been
destructive for Mexico and Central America’s laboring classes, dislodging
millions of small agricultural producers and urban workers made redundant
through skewed competition, privatization of state industry, and the
downsizing of the welfare state. Migration has flowed in reverse through
these same channels, as workers follow the profit streams that translate into
disproportionate job creation north of the border. Once ensconced in U.S.
labor markets, undocumented workers are regulated not by a liberal “free
market,” but by immigration enforcement and employers themselves. In
economic terms, the new Brown Scare serves the larger aim of disciplining
immigrant workers and providing an updated means for labor control.

Immigration Policy as Labor Control

Free trade–induced destabilization has produced a substantial wave of
migration from Mexico and Central America. Upward of ten million people
have moved to the United States since 1990, one of the largest population
transfers in human history.23 Since this migration has been composed
primarily of working migrants, it has led to a substantial shift in the
character of the U.S. workforce. This has been used to the advantage of
capital, as Democratic and Republican administrations alike have whittled
down the pathways to citizenship for this latest generation of immigrants
while simultaneously increasing enforcement penalties.
This has gradually transformed migration from an economic act into a
criminal one, at the same time that immigration has increased as a result of
U.S.-led policy and as immigrants have been fully integrated into the
economy. While their labor is tacitly embraced as both necessary and
productive, the criminalization of their presence and denial of citizenship
erodes their capacity to participate in activities to improve their wages and
working conditions. By keeping a growing segment of the workforce
noncitizen and vulnerable to persecution, capitalists can leverage down
wages, more easily fire those who attempt to organize or speak out, and
foster or exploit racial tensions as a means to divide and segment their
workforces to preempt collective bargaining. The use of these tactics can
weaken workplace organization as a means to extract higher rates of surplus
value from all workers.
This helps explain the exponential rise of the immigration enforcement
apparatus and the public spectacle of immigrant repression despite a
corresponding decrease in crime committed by immigrants.24 A substantial
rise in deportation has not been an episodic or measured response to an
existential threat, but a systematic and institutionalized means to police a
whole population and fortify the delineation between citizen and noncitizen.
This explains why deportation has become a permanent and normalized
feature of the immigration enforcement apparatus, irrespective of other
variable factors such as the rate of immigration, crime, or the state of the
economy. It also illustrates continuity regardless of which party is in power.
During the administration of Ronald Reagan 168,364 people were deported;
another 141,326 people were removed under George H. W. Bush. After
even harsher restrictions were passed under Democrat Bill Clinton, 869,676
people were deported during his tenure, followed by two million more
under George W. Bush.25 After eight years of the Obama administration, the
number of deportations reached over three million, even as the number of
attempted crossings declined consistently following the onset of the Great
Recession in 2007.26 Systematized deportation has targeted mostly workers
without criminal charges or allegations, a practice continued under Trump,
revealing its role as a form of labor policing under capitalism rather than
“law enforcement” or the acts of a rogue president playing to a racist
constituency.27
The most conservative and reactionary elements inside the Republican
Party have driven the discourse of immigrant exclusion, including
mobilized far-right sectors of the middle class and some sections of the
capitalist class.28 The most vociferous opponents of immigrant integration
also profit immensely off the exploitation of immigrants, either
individually, or as an industry.29 At the same time, there has been pushback
from other corporate sectors against the more extreme anti-immigrant
policy proposals that threaten their access to labor.30 In general there is
substantial political distance on the issue between the far-right wing that has
cohered behind Trump and more moderate and liberal elements in both the
Republican and Democratic Parties, but despite these differences, the anti-
immigrant framework and discourse established by the right wing has led
even the most liberal of Democrats to downscale their scope of reform to
allow for a threshold that now accepts work authorization over citizenship.
For example, the Obama administration’s executive order to allow for
temporary work permits but not citizenship for undocumented childhood
arrivals (via Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA) and the
undocumented parents of U.S.-born citizen children (via Deferred Action
for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents, or DAPA)
illustrates the narrowing terrain of discourse among those who once
proclaimed in favor of “a path to citizenship.”31
The precariousness and limited scope of protections for these categories
of undocumented workers enacted under Obama were revealed in the way
that the right was able to block and dismantle even these threadbare
gestures. Opposition to DAPA by twenty-six Republican state
administrations prompted a right-wing federal judge in south Texas to issue
an injunction against the order, effectively killing it. Furthermore, the
Trump administration, represented by the deeply reactionary Attorney
General Jeff Sessions, rescinded the executive order that established
DACA, moving the status of an estimated eight hundred thousand young
workers shielded from removal back into the category of “deportable.”32
The significant surplus value extracted from an immigrant workforce
with limited or no rights and protections has encouraged a gradual evolution
in thinking about the value of immigration policy as one of labor
procurement and control.33 The vast majority of super-exploited immigrants
work in agriculture, landscaping, housecleaning, as caretakers of children
and the elderly, in construction, and in restaurants. The scope of immigrant
labor has also broadened into a variety of other industries and occupations,
from meat-processing plants in more rural regions to service and retail
workers in urban areas, from teachers and manufacturing workers to tech
workers in Silicon Valley. The profitability of immigrant labor has led
corporate interest groups as well as philanthropic organizations linked to
billionaire investors to close ranks around the issue and form lobbying
campaigns to drive policy through the corridors of Washington, D.C.34
This has catalyzed the evolution of “immigration reform” from
legislation that includes citizenship, such as the 1986 Immigration Reform
and Control Act (IRCA), to legislation that is singularly designed to
produce captive and more easily controlled labor with only a narrow
pathway to citizenship. The most recent “comprehensive immigration
reform” proposal, referred to as the Border Security, Economic Opportunity,
and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013 (S. 744), requires that
prospective citizens work for ten years before they can enter the application
process and pay taxes, while they are excluded from government services
and could be “disqualified” if they lose their job or slip into poverty—and
at the same time it dramatically ramps up spending on stricter punishments
and border militarization. This latest manifestation of “reform” reveals how
successful corporations have been at redefining discourse and promoting
their interests through the Democratic and Republican parties. It also charts
the degeneration of discourse as the notion of the criminal immigrant now
finds broad acceptance amongst policy-makers and commentators.

The Poverty of Immigration Politics and the

Preventable Rise of Trump
While capital and labor have internationalized on starkly unequal terms,
immigrant advocates and organized labor have adjusted to the neoliberal
capitalist framework that has prioritized enforcement and profitability over
citizenship. The coded phrase “comprehensive immigration reform” refers
to a perpetual increase in enforcement and restriction and an elusive and
highly qualified form of residency that ensures the perpetuation of
exploitable noncitizen labor. The complicity of both Republicans and
Democrats in enabling this rightward trajectory of corporate leadership on
the issue has emboldened the Far Right seeking to appropriate the issue.
These factors permitted the rise of Trumpism, which has erased the
momentum for immigration reform coming out the mass marches of 2006
and the election of a Democratic majority in 2008, setting it back in reverse.
The Obama administration’s abandonment of legalization, and the
subsequent continuation and expansion of Bush-era repression, shattered
the hopes and expectations. The candidacy of Hillary Clinton in 2016,
promising a continuation of Obama era “tough on immigration” policy
without even a rhetorical commitment to legalization, further demoralized
millions of people who voted for Obama in 2008, and who stayed away
from the polls on election day. This helped pave the way for Trump.
In the absence of an alternative strategy, organized labor and
nongovernmental organizations have followed the same path, prioritizing
lobbying campaigns to contend with corporations for influence inside the
architecture of the Democratic Party. If they can help turn several million
undocumented workers into citizens, it is reasoned, they can recruit these
workers at the end of the reform pipeline. This has been the strategy since
the passage of IRCA in 1986, which created the first model of
“comprehensive reform” that traded short-term legalization for long-term
militarization of enforcement and the criminalization of today’s immigrants.
Despite the earlier legalization, the “comprehensive” strategy has failed to
produce significant results for a path to citizenship, as corporate entities
have consolidated their power and interests within both parties.
Organized labor has proven incapable of leveraging its influence within
capitalist political economy by using the same tools and copying the
methods of the capitalist class. It cannot exceed or even match corporate
funding (in all of its various guises), and it cannot convince corporate-
structured and corporate-funded political parties that immigrant legalization
and union organization are in their best interests at a time when U.S.
capitalism is restructuring for profitability based on squeezing labor at
home and abroad. Furthermore, labor unions cannot readily organize
millions of workers rendered vulnerable to arrest and deportation, who are
subject to the whims of employers empowered to fire them at will or report
them to immigration authorities in order to break up organizing drives.
 Unions and immigration rights advocates will need to reject the anti-
worker logic of border militarization and immigration criminalization, and
actively pursue the organization of all workers in the U.S. regardless of
their immigration status if they are to curb the decline of their power and
influence, and reposition organized labor for growth in years to come.
Extending the fight for citizenship rights across capitalist borders will also
strengthen efforts to oppose destructive neoliberal free trade agreements
like NAFTA and the pending Trans-Pacific Partnership Alliance.
At the crossroads of the immigrant rights and labor rights struggles,
there are two fundamental directions for the future of labor. The continued
strategy of aligning with the Democratic Party, which seeks to maintain
immigrant labor as a subordinated and segregated segment of the working
class, will guarantee another decade of increased state repression and labor
degradation and will affirm the further growth and intensified violence of
the racist, reactionary, and fascist right. Or, as with the rise of the CIO in
1938, the labor movement could be refounded by uniting with and
supporting immigrant workers as part of rebuilding a militant revival
capable of overturning the regime of immigrant repression.
The potential for this was shown in the mass strikes, marches, and
school walkouts of 2006. In the first few months of the Trump presidency,
we also saw the potential for a revival of an immigrant rights movement
with large protests at airports across the country against the Muslim travel
ban, with participants taking up the slogan “No Ban, No Wall, Sanctuary for
All!” from San Diego to New York City. On May Day, 2017, immigrant
workers and their union and community supporters once again marched on
International Workers’ Day, showing the potential to rebuild a working-
class resistance to the policies of Trump with immigrants at the forefront.
Now more than ever it has become apparent that the full legalization
and integration of the immigrant working class is a precondition for the
reversal of the decline of organized labor itself. In the age of Trump, the
issue of immigration is also intertwined with all other rights and affects all
of us. How broad, interconnected, and resilient we can build social
movements, grounded in genuine solidarity with all immigrants and rooted
in our workplaces, campuses, and communities, will determine the course
of events for all of us in the years to come.
 Preface

“You’ve kicked a sleeping giant.” Perhaps no other sign from the million-
strong march for immigrant rights that shook Los Angeles on March 25
conveys a more precise summation of events unfolding across the country.
Or as an activist speaking at a border rally commented, “they weren’t
sleeping, they were working!” At the time of this writing, a new civil rights
movement for immigrants, involving literally millions of people in cities
throughout the United States, is now entering its third month.
With a sudden gale force, the debate over immigration politics,
historically the domain of big business and the Far Right, has been blown
wide open, its contents scattering into the daily discussions of ordinary
people. Largely self-organized and self-mobilized, the new movement has
drawn out the most affected communities, who are far ahead of the existing
organizations that have historically claimed leadership in the immigrant
communities.
This new movement, led by immigrant workers and Latino students, but
pushing the whole working class forward, is now beating on the walls of
Congress and demanding equality. Homemade signs at protests from San
Diego to the Brooklyn Bridge, reading, “We are not criminals” and
“Amnistía sí” (Amnesty yes), reveal the depths of indignation, the
willingness to come out of the shadows, and the desire to be seen and heard.
In true mass character, all generations are being hit by the ripple effect of
such a large-scale movement. A sixth-grader protesting with one hundred
thousand others on April 9 in San Diego expressed the mood succinctly:
“At school the rich teach us about their democracy. Here, we show them
ours.”1 In a matter of weeks, the movement has shifted from a defensive to
an offensive posture, and promises to redefine the landscape of American
history, with immigrant workers narrating the story.
 The groundswell was brought to the surface in reaction to passage in the
House of the draconian HR 4437 (also known as the Sensenbrenner Bill),
that, if passed by the Senate, would make felons of immigrants as well as
those who help them. This movement has forced the proponents of the bill,
who had been able to set the tone for the debate over so-called immigration
reform, onto the defensive. It has redrawn the parameters of the debate,
which had previously been restricted to criminalization on one side, and
partial legalization combined with a guest-worker program on the other.
The movement has cast a spotlight on the struggle of ordinary workers and
their families to be treated equally, and with dignity as human beings.
Like the great struggles of working people in years past, this movement
will face many challenges, twists, turns, defeats, and victories. It contains
the seeds that make another world possible: one based on working people
gaining control over their daily lives, and giving new definition to the term
democracy.
This book will attempt to lay out the historical and contemporary
dimensions of the immigrant rights struggle, focusing primarily on the U.S.-
Mexico border and the experience of the working people that cross the
border (or have been crossed by it). In the section by Mike Davis, the
origins and evolution of the anti-immigrant movement are examined,
shedding light on its political, racial, and class origins. I then provide a
broader look at the formation of immigration policy in the context of the
struggle between capital and labor.
Giving a voice to the experience of immigrant workers is greatly aided
by the fact that they themselves are making history as of this writing. It is
my hope that this book can serve as a resource and help give confidence to
the generation of activists taking initiative in the streets, campuses, and
workplaces of the new America. I also hope it provokes a wider discussion
and debate about what kind of world we want and need as working people,
un pueblo mundial sin fronteras.
Justin Akers Chacón
San Diego, California
May 15, 2006
 Part I

“WHAT IS A VIGILANTE MAN?”

WHITE VIOLENCE IN CALIFORNIA
HISTORY

Mike Davis
Victoria Cintra (in the car), Gulf Coast Coordinator for the Mississippi Immigrants Rights
Alliance (MIRA), advises undocumented workers in Hangar 216 of the Naval Construction
Battalion Center in Gulfport, Mississippi. Some of the 270 workers, including 30 women,
contracted by a private company accused its owner of imposing subhuman working
conditions at the New Orleans Naval Base. They lived in tents with no water or electricity,
food was scarce, they were overworked and underpaid. They were evacuated to Gulfport
when Hurricane Rita struck. September 2005.
 Introduction

California’s golden fields have too often been irrigated with the blood of its
laborers. A notorious case in point was the great strike that spread like
wildfire through the San Joaquin Valley in the fall of 1933. Protesting
starvation wages that failed to fill their children’s empty bellies, twelve
thousand defiant, mainly Mexican cotton-pickers walked off the job under
the leadership of the leftwing Cannery and Agricultural Workers Industrial
Union. Moving between farms in caravans of cars and trucks, mass pickets
soon shut down the harvest over a three-hundred-square-mile area. The
growers quickly trucked in strikebreakers from Los Angeles, but most of
the scabs either deserted to the union or were scared away by the fierce,
hunger-driven militancy of the strikers.
The growers, cotton ginners, and chamber of commerce types then
resorted to a classic tactic: arming themselves as vigilance groups to impose
a reign of terror upon the cotton counties. These Farmers’ Protective
Leagues broke up the strikers’ meetings, drove them out of their
encampments and burnt their tents, beat them on the picket lines, stopped
and harassed them on the roads, and threatened any merchant who extended
credit to the strikers or any small farmer who refused to hire strikebreakers.
When strikers complained to authorities, the local sheriffs promptly
deputized the vigilantes. “We protect our farmers here in Kern County,”
explained one deputy sheriff. “They are our best people…. They keep the
county going…. But the Mexicans are trash. They have no standard of
living. We herd them like pigs.”1
In spite of beatings, arrests, and evictions, however, the solidarity of the
strikers remained unbreakable through early October, with the growers
facing the loss of their entire crop. The San Francisco Examiner warned
that the whole valley was “a smouldering volcano” ready to erupt.
Concerned state officials offered a fact-finding commission, which the
union readily accepted, but the vigilantes responded with murder. At a rally
in Pixley on the tenth of October, union leader Pat Chambers was
addressing strikers and their families when ten carloads of shotgun-wielding
vigilantes abruptly arrived on the scene. Chambers, a battle-scarred veteran
of California’s harvest wars, sensed imminent danger and dispersed the
rally, urging the strikers to take shelter in the red-brick union headquarters
across the highway. Historian Cletus Daniel describes the carnage that
followed:
As the group made its way toward the building one of the growers following it
discharged a rifle. When a striker approached the grower and pushed the barrel of
his gun downward another armed grower rushed forward and clubbed him to the
ground. While he still lay on the ground the grower shot him to death. Immediately
the rest of the growers opened fire on the fleeing strikers and their families. Amid
the screams of those that lay wounded on the ground, growers continued to fire
into the union hall until their ammunition was finally exhausted.2

The vigilantes killed two men, one of them the local representative of
the Mexican consul-general, and seriously wounded at least eight other
strikers, including a fifty-year-old woman. As a San Francisco reporter
noted, the wild fusillade also shredded the American flags draped over the
union headquarters. Almost simultaneously in Arvin, sixty miles south,
another band of farmer-vigilantes opened fire on picketers, killing one and
injuring several. Although the workers defiantly returned to their picket
lines, the growers threatened to drive their families out of the huge strike
camp near Corcoran. Faced with yet more violence of unknown scope, the
strikers reluctantly yielded to state and federal pressure and accepted a
wage increase in lieu of recognition of their union.
The following year, while public attention was riveted upon the epic
San Francisco general strike, vigilante growers and local sheriffs tore up the
constitution across rural California, and imposed what New Dealers as well
as Communists would denounce as “farm fascism.” One of the darkest
spots was the Imperial Valley—the West’s closest social and racial analogue
to Mississippi—where successive lettuce, pea, and melon strikes during the
course of 1933–34 were broken by a total terror that included mass arrests,
anti-picketing ordinances, evictions, beatings, kidnappings, deportations,
and the near lynching of the strikers’ lawyers. While urban workers led by
the new Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) unions were
successfully overthrowing the open shop in San Francisco and Los Angeles,
California’s agricultural workers—whether their names were Maria Morales
or Tom Joad—were being terrorized by bigoted deputies and raging mobs.
The bitter memory of these brutal events would be woven into John
Steinbeck’s novels In Dubious Battle and Grapes of Wrath, as well as
recalled in Woody Guthrie’s haunting “Vigilante Man”:
Oh, why does a vigilante man
Why does a vigilante man
Carry that sawed-off shotgun in his hand?
Would he shoot his brother and
Sister down?

But this “vigilante man” was not merely a sinister figure of the
Depression decade: as I will argue in this capsule history, he has cast a
permanent shadow over California from the 1850s onwards. Indeed,
vigilantism—ethno-racial and class violence (or threat of violence) cloaked
in a pseudo-populist appeal to higher laws and sovereignties—has played a
far larger role in the state’s history than is generally recognized. A broad
rainbow of minority groups, including Native Americans, Irish, Chinese,
Punjabis, Japanese, Filipinos, Okies, African-Americans, and (persistently
in each generation) Mexicans, as well as radicals and trade-unionists of
various denominations, have been victims of vigilante repression.
Organized private violence, usually in tandem with local law enforcement,
has shaped the racial-caste system of California agriculture, defeated radical
labor movements like the IWW, and kept the New Deal out of the state’s
farm counties. It has also spurred innumerable reactionary laws and
reinforced both legal and de facto segregation. Moreover, the vigilante is no
curio of a bad past, but a pathological type currently undergoing dramatic
post-millennial revival as many Anglo-Californians panic in the face of
demographic decline and the perceived erosion of their racial privileges.
Today’s armed and combat-camouflaged “Minutemen” in their various
factions, who instigate confrontations on the border, or (in their civilian
garb) harass day laborers in front of suburban Home Depots, are the latest
incarnations of an old character. Their infantile strutting and posing may
contrast rather comically to the authentic fascist menace of the Associated
Farmers and other Depression-era groups, but it would be foolish to
discount their impact. Just as the grower vigilantes of the 1930s succeeded
in militarizing rural California against the labor movement, the Minutemen
have helped to radicalize debate about immigration and race within the
Republican Party, contributing to the full-fledged nativist backlash against
the Bush administration’s proposal for a new Bracero Program. Candidates
in Republican primaries in Southern California now vie with one another
for endorsement by the Minutemen leaders. These armed and media-savvy
neo-vigilantes, by threatening to enforce the borders themselves, also spur
the increasingly successful campaign to turn local law enforcement into
immigration police. And as true dialecticians will concede, what begins as
farce sometimes grows into something much uglier and more dangerous.
 Chapter One
Pinkertons, Klansmen, and Vigilantes

Americans appear responsible for developing vigilantism, the consummate expression

of conservative violence.
—Robert Ingalls1

Before looking at the career of vigilantism in California history, it is first

useful to map its location within the larger history of American class and
racial violence. The eminent labor historian Philip Taft once opined that the
United States had the “bloodiest and most violent labor history of any
industrial nation in the world.” Setting European civil wars and revolutions
aside, Taft is probably correct: American workers have faced chronic state
and employer violence against which they have frequently responded in
kind. Robert Goldstein, in his encyclopedic study of political repression in
the United States, estimates that at least seven hundred strikers and
demonstrators were killed by police or troops between 1870 and 1937.2 In
contrast to the more politically centralized societies of Western Europe, the
worst violence (like the Ludlow and Republic Steel massacres) usually
came from local police and militias. But what truly demarcates the United
States is not so much the scale or frequency of state repression, but rather
the extraordinary centrality of institutionalized private violence in the
reproduction of the racial and social order. No European society tolerated
such a large, nearly permanent sphere of repressive activity and summary
justice by non-state actors.3 But then again, no European society shared the
recent U.S. experience of genocidal frontier violence—often organized by
posses and informal groups—against Native Americans, or the widespread
participation of poorer Southern whites in the policing of slavery.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
The Project Gutenberg eBook of As a thief in the
night
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States
and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the
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you are located before using this eBook.

Title: As a thief in the night

Author: R. Austin Freeman

Release date: January 22, 2024 [eBook #72782]

Language: English

Original publication: New York, NY: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1928

Credits: Brian Raiter

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AS A THIEF

IN THE NIGHT ***
AS A THIEF IN THE NIGHT

by

R. AUSTIN FREEMAN
 Contents
I. The Invalid
II. Barbara Monkhouse Comes Home
III. A Shock for the Mourners
IV. “How, When and Where—”
V. Madeline’s Ordeal
VI. The Verdict
VII. The Search Warrant
VIII. Thorndyke Speaks Bluntly
IX. Superintendent Miller is Puzzled
X. A Greek Gift
XI. The Rivals
XII. Thorndyke Challenges the Evidence
XIII. Rupert Makes Some Discoveries
XIV. Rupert Confides in Thorndyke
XV. A Pursuit and a Discovery
XVI. Barbara’s Message
XVII. Thorndyke Retraces the Trail
XVIII. The Final Proof
 Chapter I.
The Invalid
Looking back on events by the light of experience I perceive
clearly that the thunder-cloud which burst on me and on those who
were dear to me had not gathered unseen. It is true that it had rolled
up swiftly; that the premonitory mutterings, now so distinct but then
so faint and insignificant, gave but a brief warning. But that was of
little consequence, since whatever warnings there were passed
unheeded, as warnings commonly do, being susceptible of
interpretation only by means of the subsequent events which they
foreshadowed.
The opening scene of the tragedy—if I had but realized it—was
the arrival of the Reverend Amos Monkhouse from his far-away
Yorkshire parish at the house of his brother Harold. I happened to be
there at the time; and though it was not my concern, since Harold
had a secretary, I received the clergyman when he was announced.
We knew one another well enough by name though we had never
met, and it was with some interest and curiosity that I looked at the
keen-faced, sturdy, energetic-looking parson and contrasted him with
his physically frail and rather characterless brother. He looked at me,
too, curiously and with a certain appearance of surprise, which did
not diminish when I told him who I was.
“Ha!” said he, “yes. Mr. Mayfield. I am glad to have the
opportunity of making your acquaintance. I have heard a good deal
about you from Harold and Barbara. Now I can fit you with a visible
personality. By the way, the maid tells me that Barbara is not at
home.”
“No, she is away on her travels in Kent.”
“In Kent!” he repeated, raising his eyebrows.
 “Yes, on one of her political expeditions; organizing some sort of
women’s emancipation movement. I daresay you have heard about
it.”
He nodded a little impatiently. “Yes. Then I assume that Harold is
not so ill as I had supposed?”
I was inclined to be evasive; for, to be quite candid, I had thought
more than once that Barbara might properly have given a little less
attention to her political hobbies and a little more to her sick
husband. So I replied cautiously:
“I really don’t quite know what his condition is. You see, when a
man has chronically bad health, one rather loses count. Harold has
his ups and downs, but he always looks pretty poorly. Just now, I
should say he is rather below his average.”
“Ha! Well, perhaps I had better go up and have a look at him. The
maid has told him that I am here. I wonder if you would be so kind as
to show me the way to his room. I have not been in this house
before.”
I conducted him up to the door of the bedroom and then returned
to the library to wait for him and hear what he thought of the invalid.
And now that the question had been raised, I was not without a
certain uneasiness. What I had said was true enough. When a man
is always ailing one gets to take his ill-health for granted and to
assume that it will go on without any significant change. One repeats
the old saying of “the creaking gate” and perhaps makes unduly light
of habitual illness. Might it be that Harold was being a little
neglected? He had certainly looked bad enough when I had called
on him that morning. Was it possible that he was really seriously ill?
Perhaps in actual danger?
I had just asked myself this question when the door was opened
abruptly and the clergyman strode into the room. Something in his
expression—a mingling, as it seemed, of anger and alarm—rather
startled me; nevertheless I asked him calmly enough how he found
his brother. He stared at me, almost menacingly, for a second or two;
then slowly and with harsh emphasis he replied: “I am shocked at
the change in him. I am horrified. Why, good God, Sir! the man is
dying!”
 “I think that can hardly be,” I objected. “The doctor saw him this
morning and did not hint at anything of the sort. He thought he was
not very well but he made no suggestion as to there being any
danger.”
“How long has the doctor been attending him?”
“For something like twenty years, I believe; so by this time he
ought to understand the patient’s—”
“Tut-tut,” the parson interrupted, impatiently, “what did you say
yourself but a few minutes ago? One loses count of the chronic
invalid. He exhausts our attention until, at last, we fail to observe the
obvious. What is wanted is a fresh eye. Can you give me the
doctor’s address? Because, if you can, I will call on him and arrange
a consultation. I told Harold that I wanted a second opinion and he
made no objection; in fact he seemed rather relieved. If we get a
really first-class physician, we may save him yet.”
“I think you are taking an unduly gloomy view of Harold’s
condition,” said I. “At any rate, I hope so. But I entirely agree with
you as to the advisability of having further advice. I know where Dr.
Dimsdale lives so if you like I will walk round with you.”
He accepted my offer gladly and we set forth at once, walking
briskly along the streets, each of us wrapped in thought and neither
speaking for some time. Presently I ventured to remark:
“Strictly, I suppose, we ought to have consulted Barbara before
seeking another opinion.”
“I don’t see why,” he replied. “Harold is a responsible person and
has given his free consent. If Barbara is so little concerned about
him as to go away from home—and for such a trumpery reason, too
—I don’t see that we need consider her. Still, as a matter of common
civility, I might as well send her a line. What is her present address?”
“Do you know,” I said, shamefacedly, “I am afraid I can’t tell you
exactly where she is at the moment. Her permanent address, when
she is away on these expeditions, is the head-quarters of the
Women’s Friendship League at Maidstone.”
He stopped for a moment and glowered at me with an expression
of sheer amazement. “Do you mean to tell me,” he exclaimed, “that
she has gone away, leaving her husband in this condition, and that
she is not even within reach of a telegram?”
 “I have no doubt that a telegram or letter would be forwarded to
her.”
He emitted an angry snort and then demanded:
“How long has she been away?”
“About a fortnight,” I admitted, reluctantly.
“A fortnight!” he repeated in angry astonishment. “And all that
time beyond reach of communication! Why the man might have been
dead and buried and she none the wiser!”
“He was much better when she went away,” I said, anxious to
make the best of what I felt to be a rather bad case. “In fact, he
seemed to be getting on quite nicely. It is only during the last few
days that he has got this set-back. Of course, Barbara is kept
informed as to his condition. Madeline sends her a letter every few
days.”
“But, my dear Mr. Mayfield,” he expostulated, “just consider the
state of affairs in this amazing household. I came to see my brother,
expecting—from the brief letter that I had from him—to find him
seriously ill. And I do find him seriously ill; dangerously ill, I should
say. And what sort of care is being taken of him? His wife is away
from home, amusing herself with her platform fooleries, and has left
no practicable address. His secretary, or whatever you call him,
Wallingford, is not at home. Madeline is, of course, occupied in her
work at the school. Actually, the only person in the house besides
the servants is yourself—a friend of the family but not a member of
the household at all. You must admit that it is a most astonishing and
scandalous state of affairs.”
I was saved from the necessity of answering this rather awkward
question by our arrival at Dr. Dimsdale’s house; and, as it fortunately
happened that the doctor was at home and disengaged, we were
shown almost at once into his consulting room.
I knew Dr. Dimsdale quite well and rather liked him though I was
not deeply impressed by his abilities. However, his professional skill
was really no concern of mine, and his social qualities were
unexceptionable. In appearance and manner he had always seemed
to me the very type of a high-class general practitioner, and so he
impressed me once more as we were ushered into his sanctum. He
shook hands with me genially, and as I introduced the Reverend
Amos looked at him with a politely questioning expression. But the
clergyman lost no time in making clear the purpose of his visit; in fact
he came to the point with almost brutal abruptness.
“I have just seen my brother for the first time for several months
and I am profoundly shocked at his appearance. I expected to find
him ill, but I did not understand that he was so ill as I find him.”
“No,” Dr. Dimsdale agreed, gravely, “I suppose not. You have
caught him at a rather unfortunate time. He is certainly not so well to-
day.”
“Well!” exclaimed Amos. “To me he has the look of a dying man.
May I ask what, exactly, is the matter with him?”
The doctor heaved a patient sigh and put his fingertips together.
“The word ‘exactly,’ ” he replied, with a faint smile, “makes your
question a little difficult to answer. There are so many things the
matter with him. For the last twenty years, on and off, I have
attended him, and during the whole of that time his health has been
unsatisfactory—most unsatisfactory. His digestion has always been
defective, his circulation feeble, he has had functional trouble with
his heart, and throughout the winter months, more or less continuous
respiratory troubles—nasal and pulmonary catarrh and sometimes
rather severe bronchitis.”
The Reverend Amos nodded impatiently. “Quite so, quite so. But,
to come from the past to the present, what is the matter with him
now?”
“That,” the doctor replied suavely, “is what I was coming to. I
mentioned the antecedents to account for the consequents. The
complaints from which your brother has suffered in the past have
been what are called functional complaints. But functional disease—
if there really is such a thing—must, in the end, if it goes on long
enough, develop into organic disease. Its effects are cumulative.
Each slight illness leaves the bodily organs a little less fit.”
“Yes?”
“Well, that is, I fear, what is happening in your brother’s case. The
functional illnesses of the past are tending to take on an organic
character.”
“Ha!” snorted the Reverend Amos. “But what is his actual
condition now? To put it bluntly, supposing he were to die to-night,
what would you write on the death certificate?”
“Dear me!” said the doctor. “That is putting it very bluntly. I hope
the occasion will not arise.”
“Still, I suppose you don’t regard his death as an impossible
contingency?”
“Oh, by no means. Chronic illness confers no immortality, as I
have just been pointing out.”
“Then, supposing his death to occur, what would you state to be
the cause?”
Dr. Dimsdale’s habitual suavity showed a trace of diminution as
he replied: “You are asking a very unusual and hardly admissible
question, Mr. Monkhouse. However, I may say that if your brother
were to die to-night he would die from some definite cause, which
would be duly set forth in the certificate. As he is suffering from
chronic gastritis, chronic bronchial catarrh, functional disorder of the
heart and several other morbid conditions, these would be added as
contributory causes. But may I ask what is the object of these very
pointed questions?”
“My object,” replied Amos, “was to ascertain whether the
circumstances justified a consultation. It seems to me that they do. I
am extremely disturbed about my brother. Would you have any
objection to meeting a consultant?”
“But not in the least. On the contrary, I should be very glad to talk
over this rather indefinite case with an experienced physician who
would come to it with a fresh eye. Of course, the patient’s consent
would be necessary.”
“He has consented, and he agreed to the consultant whom I
proposed—Sir Robert Detling—if you concurred.”
“I do certainly. I could suggest no better man. Shall I arrange with
him or will you?”
“Perhaps I had better,” the parson replied, “as I know him fairly
well. We were of the same year at Cambridge. I shall go straight on
to him now and will let you know at once what arrangement he
proposes.”
“Excellent,” said the doctor, rising with all his suavity restored. “I
shall keep to-morrow as free as I can until I hear from you, and I
hope he will be able to manage it so soon. I shall be glad to hear
what he thinks of our patient, and I trust that the consultation may be
helpful in the way of treatment.”
He shook our hands heartily and conducted us to the street door,
whence he launched us safely into the street.
“That is a very suave gentleman,” Amos remarked as we turned
away. “Quite reasonable, too; but you see for yourself that he has no
real knowledge of the case. He couldn’t give the illness an intelligible
name.”
“It seemed to me that he gave it a good many names, and it may
well be that it is no more than he seems to think; a sort of collective
illness, the resultant of the various complaints that he mentioned.
However, we shall know more when Sir Robert has seen him; and
meanwhile, I wouldn’t worry too much about the apparent neglect.
Your brother, unlike most chronic invalids, doesn’t hanker for
attention. He has all he wants and he likes to be left alone with his
books. Shall you see him again to-day?”
“Assuredly. As soon as I have arranged matters with Detling I
shall let Dr. Dimsdale know what we have settled and I shall then go
back and spend the evening with my brother. Perhaps I shall see you
to-morrow?”
“No. I have to run down to Bury St. Edmunds to-morrow morning
and I shall probably be there three or four days. But I should very
much like to hear what happens at the consultation. Could you send
me a few lines? I shall be staying at the Angel.”
“I will certainly,” he replied, halting and raising his umbrella to
signal an approaching omnibus. “Just a short note to let you know
what Sir Robert has to tell us of poor Harold’s condition.”
He waved his hand, and stepping off the kerb, hopped on to the
foot-board of the omnibus as it slowed down, and vanished into the
interior. I stood for a few moments watching the receding vehicle,
half inclined to go back and take another look at the sick man; but
reflecting that his brother would be presently returning, I abandoned
the idea and made my way instead to the Underground Railway
station and there took a ticket for the Temple.
There is something markedly infectious in states of mind. Hitherto
I had given comparatively little attention to Harold Monkhouse. He
was a more or less chronic invalid, suffering now from one complaint
and now from another, and evidently a source of no particular
anxiety either to his friends or to his doctor. He was always pallid and
sickly-looking, and if, on this particular morning, he had seemed to
look more haggard and ghastly than usual, I had merely noted that
he was “not so well to-day.”
But the appearance on the scene of the Reverend Amos had put
a rather different complexion on the affair. His visit to his brother had
resulted in a severe shock, which he had passed on to me; and I had
to admit that our interview with Dr. Dimsdale had not been
reassuring. For the fact which had emerged from it was that the
doctor could not give the disease a name.
It was very disquieting. Supposing it should turn out that Harold
was suffering from some grave, even some mortal disease, which
ought to have been detected and dealt with months ago. How should
we all feel? How, in particular, would Barbara feel about the
easygoing way in which the illness had been allowed to drift on? It
was an uncomfortable thought; and though Harold Monkhouse was
really no concern of mine, excepting that he was Barbara’s husband,
it continued to haunt me as I sat in the rumbling train and as I walked
up from the Temple station to my chambers in Fig Tree Court.
 Chapter II.
Barbara Monkhouse Comes Home
In the intervals of my business at Bury St. Edmunds I gave more
than a passing thought to the man who was lying sick in the house in
the quiet square at Kensington. It was not that I had any very deep
feeling for him as a friend, though I liked him well enough. But the
idea had got into my mind that he had perhaps been treated with
something less than ordinary solicitude; that his illness had been
allowed to drift on when possibly some effective measures might
have been taken for his relief. And as it had never occurred to me to
make any suggestions on the matter or to interest myself particularly
in his condition, I was now inclined to regard myself as a party to the
neglect, if there had really been any culpable failure of attention. I
therefore awaited with some anxiety the letter which Amos had
promised to send.
It was not until the morning of my third day at Bury that it arrived;
and when I had opened and read it I found myself even less
reassured than I had expected.

“Dear Mayfield,” it ran. “The consultation took place this afternoon

and the result is, in my opinion, highly unsatisfactory. Sir Robert is, at
present, unable to say definitely what is the matter with Harold. He
states that he finds the case extremely obscure and reserves his
opinion until the blood-films and other specimens which he took,
have been examined and reported on by an expert pathologist. But
on one point he is perfectly clear. He regards Harold’s condition as
extremely grave—even critical—and he advised me to send a
telegram to Barbara insisting on her immediate return home. Which I
have done; and only hope it may reach her in the course of the day.
 That is all I have to tell you and I think you will agree that it is not
an encouraging report. Medical science must be in a very backward
state if two qualified practitioners—one of them an eminent physician
—cannot between them muster enough professional knowledge to
say what is the matter with a desperately sick man. However, I hope
that we shall have a diagnosis by the time you come back.
Yours sincerely,
Amos Monkhouse.”

I could not but agree, in the main, that my clerical friend’s rather
gloomy view was justified, though I thought that he was a trifle unfair
to the doctors, especially to Sir Robert. Probably a less scientific
practitioner, who would have given the condition some sort of name,
would have been more satisfying to the parson. Meanwhile, I allowed
myself to build on “the blood-films and other specimens” hopes of a
definite discovery which might point the way to some effective
treatment.
I despatched my business by the following evening and returned
to London by the night train, arriving at my chambers shortly before
midnight. With some eagerness I emptied the letter-cage in the hope
of finding a note from Amos or Barbara; but there was none,
although there were one or two letters from solicitors which required
to be dealt with at once. I read these through and considered their
contents while I was undressing, deciding to get up early and reply to
them so that I might have the forenoon free; and this resolution I
carried out so effectively that by ten o’clock in the morning I had
breakfasted, answered and posted the letters, and was on my way
westward in an Inner Circle train.
It was but a few minutes’ walk from South Kensington Station to
Hilborough Square and I covered the short distance more quickly
than usual. Turning into the square, I walked along the pavement on
the garden side, according to my habit, until I was nearly opposite
the house. Then I turned to cross the road and as I did so, looked up
at the house. And at the first glance I stopped short and stared in
dismay: for the blinds were lowered in all the windows. For a couple
of seconds I stood and gazed at this ominous spectacle; then I
hurried across the road and, instinctively avoiding the knocker, gave
a gentle pull at the bell.
The door was opened by the housemaid, who looked at me
somewhat strangely but admitted me without a word and shut the
door softly behind me. I glanced at her set face and asked in a low
voice:
“Why are all the blinds down, Mabel?”
“Didn’t you know, Sir?” she replied, almost in a whisper. “It’s the
master—Mr. Monkhouse. He passed away in the night. I found him
dead when I went in this morning to draw up the blinds and give him
his early tea.”
I gazed at the girl in consternation, and after a pause she
continued:
“It gave me an awful turn, Sir, for I didn’t see, at first, what had
happened. He was lying just as he usually did, and looked as if he
had gone to sleep, reading. He had a book in his hand, resting on
the counterpane, and I could see that his candle-lamp had burned
itself right out. I put his tea on the bedside table and spoke to him,
and when he didn’t answer I spoke again a little louder. And then I
noticed that he was perfectly still and looked even paler and more
yellow than usual and I began to feel nervous about him. So I
touched his hand; and it was as cold as stone and as stiff as a
wooden hand. Then I felt sure he must be dead and I ran away and
told Miss Norris.”
“Miss Norris!” I exclaimed.
“Yes, Sir. Mrs. Monkhouse only got home about an hour ago. She
was fearfully upset when she found she was too late. Miss Norris is
with her now, but I expect she’ll be awfully glad you’ve come. She
was asking where you were. Shall I tell her you are here?”
“If you please, Mabel,” I replied; and as the girl retired up the
stairs with a stealthy, funereal tread, I backed into the open doorway
of the dining room (avoiding the library, in case Wallingford should be
there) where I remained until Mabel returned with a message asking
me to go up.
I think I have seldom felt more uncomfortable than I did as I
walked slowly and softly up the stairs. The worst had happened—at
least, so I thought—and we all stood condemned; but Barbara most
of all. I tried to prepare some comforting, condolent phrases, but
could think of nothing but the unexplainable, inexcusable fact that
Barbara had of her own choice and for her own purposes, gone
away leaving a sick husband and had come back to find him dead.
As I entered the pleasant little boudoir—now gloomy enough,
with its lowered blinds—the two women rose from the settee on
which they had been sitting together, and Barbara came forward to
meet me, holding out both her hands.
“Rupert!” she exclaimed, “how good of you! But it is like you to be
here just when we have need of you.” She took both my hands and
continued, looking rather wildly into my face: “Isn’t it an awful thing?
Poor, poor Harold! So patient and uncomplaining! And I so
neglectful, so callous! I shall never, never forgive myself. I have been
a selfish, egotistical brute.”
“We are all to blame,” I said, since I could not honestly dispute
her self-accusations; “and Dr. Dimsdale not the least. Harold has
been the victim of his own patience. Does Amos know?”
“Yes,” answered Madeline, “I sent him a telegram at half-past
eight. I should have sent you one, too, but I didn’t know that you had
come back.”
There followed a slightly awkward silence during which I reflected
with some discomfort on the impending arrival of the dead man’s
brother, which might occur at any moment. It promised to be a
somewhat unpleasant incident, for Amos alone had gauged the
gravity of his brother’s condition, and he was an outspoken man. I
only hoped that he would not be too outspoken.
The almost embarrassing silence was broken by Barbara, who
asked in a low voice: “Will you go and see him, Rupert?” and added:
“You know the way and I expect you would rather go alone.”
I said “yes” as I judged that she did not wish to come with me,
and, walking out of the room, took my way along the corridor to the
well-remembered door, at which I halted for a moment, with an
unreasonable impulse to knock, and then entered. A solemn
dimness pervaded the room, with its lowered blinds, and an unusual
silence seemed to brood over it. But everything was clearly visible in
the faint, diffused light—the furniture, the pictures on the walls, the
bookshelves and the ghostly shape upon the bed, half-revealed
through the sheet which had been laid over it.
Softly, I drew back the sheet, and the vague shape became a
man; or rather, as it seemed, a waxen effigy, with something in its
aspect at once strange and familiar. The features were those of
Harold Monkhouse, but yet the face was not quite the face that I had
known. So it has always seemed to me with the dead. They have
their own distinctive character which belongs to no living man—the
physiognomy of death; impassive, expressionless, immovable; fixed
for ever, or at least, until the changes of the tomb shall obliterate
even its semblance of humanity.
I stepped back a pace and looked thoughtfully at the dead man
who had slipped so quietly out of the land of the living. There he lay,
stretched out in an easy, restful posture, just as I had often seen him;
the eyes half-closed and one long, thin arm lying on the
counterpane, the waxen hand lightly grasping the open volume;
looking—save for the stony immobility—as he might if he had fallen
asleep over his book. It was not surprising that the housemaid had
been deceived, for the surroundings all tended to support the
illusion. The bedside table with its pathetic little provisions for a sick
man’s needs: the hooded candle-lamp, drawn to the table-edge and
turned to light the book; the little decanter of brandy, the unused
tumbler, the water-bottle, the watch, still ticking in its upright case,
the candle-box, two or three spare volumes and the hand-bell for
night use; all spoke of illness and repose with never a hint of death.
There was nothing by which I could judge when he had died. I
touched his arm and found it rigid as an iron bar. So Mabel had
found it some hours earlier, whence I inferred that death had
occurred not much past midnight. But the doctors would be able to
form a better opinion, if it should seem necessary to form any
opinion at all. More to the point than the exact time of death was the
exact cause. I recalled the blunt question that Amos had put to Dr.
Dimsdale and the almost indignant tone in which the latter had put it
aside. That was less than a week ago; and now that question had to
be answered in unequivocal terms. I found myself wondering what
the politic and plausible Dimsdale would put on the death certificate
and whether he would seek Sir Robert Detling’s collaboration in the
execution of that document.
I was about to replace the sheet when my ear caught the
footsteps of some one approaching on tip-toe along the corridor. The
next moment the door opened softly and Amos stole into the room.
He passed me with a silent greeting and drew near the bed, beside
which he halted with his hand laid on the dead hand and his eyes
fixed gloomily on the yellowish-white, impassive face. He spoke no
word, nor did I presume to disturb this solemn meeting and farewell,
but silently slipped out into the corridor where I waited for him to
come out.
Two or three minutes passed, during which I heard him, once or
twice, moving softly about the room and judged that he was
examining the surroundings amidst which his brother had passed the
last few weeks of his life. Presently he came out, closing the door
noiselessly behind him, and joined me opposite the window. I looked
a little nervously into the stern, grief-stricken face, and as he did not
speak, I said, lamely enough:
“This is a grievous and terrible thing, Mr. Monkhouse.” He shook
his head gravely. “Grievous indeed; and the more so if one suspects,
as I do, that it need not have happened. However, he is gone and
recriminations will not bring him back.”
“No,” I agreed, profoundly relieved and a little surprised at his
tone; “whatever we may feel or think, reproaches and bitter words
will bring no remedy. Have you seen Barbara?”
“No; and I think I won’t—this morning. In a day or two, I hope I
shall be able to meet and speak to her as a Christian man should.
To-day I am not sure of myself. You will let me know what
arrangements are made about the funeral?”
I promised that I would, and walked with him to the head of the
stairs, and when I had watched him descend and heard the street
door close, I went back to Barbara’s little sitting-room.
I found her alone, and, when I entered she was standing before a
miniature that hung on the wall. She looked round as I entered and I
saw that she still looked rather dazed and strange. Her eyes were
red, as if she had been weeping but they were now tearless, and she
seemed calmer than when I had first seen her. I went to her side,