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Title: Poison the Women Gently Author: Anonymous Date: December, 1925 Language: en Topics: IWW, labor, repression, teargas, United States Notes: From Industrial Pioneer, an illustrated labor magazine Chicago: Industrial Workers of the World, December, 1925, pages 8–10
Major General Amos A. Fries, the U.S. army’s official poisoner, or as he
is more politely entitled by those who believe in poisoning strikers and
radicals, “Chief of the Chemical Warfare Service,” writes to the public
press of New York City to say, “If possible, consideration should be
given to women and children (when gassing them with poison gas) so as to
cause them no undue injury. Isn’t that sensible, humane, and even
gallant? Would you teach a policeman to use the same vicious blow with a
club on the head of a child or a woman as he would on a desperate armed
man? Again, we think there is but one answer to the question.”
General Fries was defending himself against a certain amount of rather
shocked criticism, evoked among a certain section of the bourgeois
press, because of statements in his book of instructions to subordinate
poisoners, officers and gentlemen of the U.S. Army, as to the best way
to protect the profits of coal mine owners, factory owners, etc., by
dispersing with clouds of deadly (or perhaps merely injurious) gasses,
any mass picketing, or by the same means breaking up meetings held in
rooms on the third stories of buildings, which previous information
might have led the officer in charge of the protection of profits in
that locality to believe were for the purpose of calling strikes, etc.
Some naive liberals someway got the idea that it was barbarous and
inhumane to gas crowds of women and children, especially miners’ wives,
and offspring, most probably, with the sort of poison clouds that rotted
out the lungs of the soldiers in France.
They quoted from the general’s text book on “Provisional Instructions
for the Control of Mobs by Chemical Warfare,” that statement about, if
possible, not inflicting undue injury on women and children. They
commented adversely upon it, and the general came right back at them;
the general declares absolutely that it is “sensible, humane, and even
gallant” to shoot the kids full of poison gas, just as sensible, humane
and gallant as it is for a cop to slightly fracture their skulls,
instead of trying to “tear their damn cans off,” as is the custom when
subduing male strikers — and, of course, nothing could be more gallant
in the treatment of women and children than that.
In this article to the public, General Fries tells how:
“An officer of the Chemical Warfare Service, with tear gases, was sent
to the Mingo mine fields some four years ago. It is to the credit of the
War Department that he was sent there. Had any force been necessary,
tear gases would have been used and any dangerous situations arising
from excited, armed men’ would have been avoided without bloodshed or
destruction of property. How can the words “barbarous” and “uncivilized”
be applied to such materials? If preserving law and order by the mildest
means ever known to man is to be considered barbarous, then how can
civilization endure?”
Ah, how indeed? Remember Engels’ conclusion, based on long study of
various ruling class utterances, that every ruling class, throughout
history, has identified its interests with those of the whole world, has
considered itself synonymous with culture, civilization, learning, and
all things desirable. Each of them was certain that if it passed, the
torch of progress, or of civilization or whatever they considered
desirable, would be extinguished. It is a natural sort of a feeling,
however false history has proved to be — in the case of General Fries,
the official poisoner for American capitalism, we can understand how he,
regarding as he does the proper development of the gentle art of gassing
men for profit, should look with grave distrust on any group of men or
any proposition, which proposes to stop him. Indeed at the close of his
newspaper article he tells in the plainest of words what he regards as
progress:
“I am quoting facts, not fancies. I am giving the truth and not
propaganda. Our records are open to any man who will examine them. If he
be honest he cannot but decide with us that the world needs gas more
than any other one thing to preserve law and order with the least damage
possible to human beings or to property.”
Probably his underlings are in substantial accord with him, and none of
them, despite an occasional reference to “defending our beloved country
from foreign aggression” have any doubt at all about whom they are going
to gas. Another hearty believer in poison for women and children, one
Henry Fry, a major in the Chemical Warfare Reserves, rushes into print,
with a letter to a newspaper in New York, in which he says exactly what
poison gas is good for. Remember in reading his explanation, that the
bourgeoisie do not distinguish one sort of radical from another, and
when he says “Communist” he is as likely as not to mean “I.W.W.” Here
are the concluding remarks from his little speech:
“With Communism seeking a foothold in America, both by its direct
agencies and through the use of various side-line activities, the
American people would be foolish to discard a weapon that may be badly
needed against the Red menace.
“In instructing his officers how to use war gas for riot duty, General
Fries is merely carrying out a routine detail of his office as Chief of
the Chemical Warfare Service. Criticism of his instructions because he
happens to be a gas officer are misleading. Every department has its own
riot tactics, including the Regular Army, National Guard and, here at
home, the New York Police Department. The New York police force has its
gas section, which is instructed in the use of gas as, a riot weapon.
“The Bolshevist, the Communist and the radicals generally — ranging from
light crimson down to delicate pink — would like to see chemical warfare
eliminated, but it is here to stay and the day may come when it will
prove to be the salvation of the United States.”
Then when we turn to the book itself, the instructions for proper and
efficient gassing, which started the stench, we see that though the word
“mob” is used throughout, the obvious implication is that except in the
case of armed mobs, practically revolutionary armies, the word “mob”
means any aggregation of working men, mass picketing, or gathered in a
meeting near the company property for the purpose of hearing speakers,
perhaps, or maybe assembled in, a hall, in a building — for provision is
made for throwing gas through third story windows.
Chemical Warfare Service officers are taught in the poison gas book, on
page 6, that there are three types of “mobs”:
“(a) A more or less well-disciplined organization of men in numbers from
500 up to a few thousand, fairly well armed and having some semblance of
discipline.
“(b) Small organizations of men with a few arms, poorly organized and
with very little discipline.”
The women and children come in the next “mob”:
“(c) Mobs that will be composed not only of men, but of women, boys and
sometimes small children, unorganized but excited and irresponsible.”
“The gas cloud,” runs the book, under the heading “Mob Psychology in
Gas,” “being heavier than air, will generally cling near the surface of
the ground, ‘ordinarily rising not over 30 feet. It will fill cellars,
hallways, mine shafts and extend in every direction in which a breeze is
blowing.
“A mob understands that the fire of machine guns or rifles cannot reach
around the corners of a building or through a street barricade, but with
gas the mob understands that when a cloud is turned loose this cloud
will cover all areas....
“The first appearance of the faint white smoke of a gas cloud will cause
a stampede even in the most determined mob....If possible, consideration
should be given to women and children, so as to cause them no undue
injury.”
“Ordinarily,” says the book, “the members of a mob will not run into the
cloud, but will run with the cloud in an endeavor to escape being
encircled. Members who attempt to enter houses, cellars, side alleyways,
will only find that the gas has preceded them.”
“Probably the quickest way to appreciate the power which the presence of
gas has upon a body of men is to picture the fear which a human being
has of having his breathing interfered with by smothering or choking and
the instinctive dread this same human being has of losing his vision. A
sneezing or vomiting war gas will interfere with breathing and a tear
gas will practically close the eyes of a man....The cloud is invisible,
and though it usually can be detected by its odor this detection often
comes too late to prevent the gas taking effect.”
“Their efforts to escape,” so the book tells officers, “will exceed
those made by a mob to escape from the flow of machine-gun bullets.
Instead of stopping when corners are turned, the members of the mob will
continue to run, carrying with them on their skin and in their clothing
sufficient gas to make them believe they are still within the atmosphere
of gas or that the cloud may overtake them again at any time.
“Barricaded groups of men in buildings may not be frightened by a gas
cloud until the actual odor and effect are on them. A cloud caused by a
grenade shot into a third-story window will slowly enter the halls, roll
down the stairs and gas the lower two floors. In case of special drafts
the grenades shot into the windows of the lower two floors will prevent
any room escaping the gas itself. Under such circumstances the occupants
will abandon the house by the nearest available exit. Certain
individuals will complain of the effects of a tear-gas cloud. It is
impossible to injure seriously anyone with tear gas in field
concentrations.”
It is impossible to permanently blind or kill anyone with tear gas used
in field concentrations — that is, such concentrations as would prevail
from a few bombs thrown in the open — but throwing grenades into a
closed building is different, and young officers are especially informed
during the course of their instruction that they can kill all the men
they want with tear gas, to say nothing of the more powerful Lewisite or
mustard gas, if they increase the concentration, by using it in greater
quantity, or by using it in a confined space. Besides the tear gas,
phosphorus may be employed to create a thick white suffocating smoke,
and to stick to the hide of any unlucky one who happens to be spattered
with it, and there burn to the bone. One gas, “bromobenzylcyanide,” can
be turned loose in a street, and will make that street impassable for a
solid week, or will make any valley or plain in the open country
impassable for three days. Gas can be sprinkled on the crowd, it can be
shot at the crowd in rifle grenades or from Stokes mortars, it can be
taken out to windward of the crowd and turned loose out of cylinders, to
form a cloud and drift down on them, it may be burned out of “candles,”
and it may be poured out of airplanes.
It is used always, all the time for the preservation of profits, and to
make effective picketing difficult. It has already been used against the
I.W.W., and without doubt it will be used again. It behooves us to
seriously think of possibilities for circumventing this new weapon of
the capitalist class. Meanwhile, we will tell the world, in the very
words of the poison gas experts, that the army, and their branch of it
especially, exists for the purpose of crushing strikes, breaking up
meetings of workers, and maintaining the system of slavery which they
call “civilization.”