But all this had changed. To his amazement, he found that criticism of the Government, any doubt of a war enterprise, any reluctance to accept at full face value any request of the Government, was met in Sabinsport with a fierce declaration that it was all German propaganda.
"What has happened?" he asked Reuben Cowder. "What turned the town in this direction? When I went away, the easiest thing in the world was to get a hearing for a criticism, sympathy for a sneer. What has done it?"
"Well," said Cowder, "Sabinsport discovered that it was being 'worked.' You know I have always suspected that that was true. You remember how we talked, back in 1915 at the time of Labor's National Peace Council, how I told you that no such organization could thrive in Sabinsport when there was plenty of work without outside feeding. And you know how for a year or so after that went to pieces, pro-German talk was not very popular. After we went into the War it revived. The town was alive with distrust, and I was sure, just as I was about Labor's Peace Party, that there was somebody feeding it. You take the negroes; why, they almost came to the point of revolt here against the war. Nancy had a cook out at the farm that came home from one Sunday afternoon meeting to tell her that she 'wan't goin' to save food any more; that all the United States wanted it for was to make slaves of the negroes again, that if Germany came over here, she would keep them free.' There was a regular campaign here against the Liberty Loan and thrift stamps. And when the women took their registration for service, the idea was spread around among all the more ignorant people that the women were being registered in order to be taken to France to cook and work for the soldiers.
"Now, things like that don't start out of the air, and I set out to find out where it came from. I got a clever fellow here that I have had before when trouble was brewing in the wire mill, to sort of sound out things, you know. Well, he had not been here long before he came to me and said, 'Mr. Cowder, Uncle Sam has told me to get off this job, wanted me to tell you that you need not worry, that they were looking after it.' They must have been confounded smart, these Secret Service people, for I've never yet been able to find out who they were, except one, nor what they did. But this is what happened.