ere not Socialists opposed the draft, but the Party itself was the true focal point of this opposition. Accordingly, these people became targets for attack by American nationalists and the American government. Heinous acts such as the burning of Socialist documents and the lynching of its members were commonplace. While all this was taking place, an American Communist Party was emerging from the ashes of the former Socialist strongholds which were all along the eastern seaboard of the US. There, Russian immigrants identified with the Bolshevik revolution in Mother Russia because of their similar lives of poverty and squalor. These conditions of dispair were in part due to the exclusion of immigrants from unions and their not being permitted to vote. These people held strong anti-government/anti-capitalist views, often advocating the immediate overthrow of capitalism. Indeed, they were asking for trouble. And they would get it. As dangerous as these people appeared to be at the time, they were in fact only one-thousandth of one percent of the voting American public. Even the two parties who made up this minute percentage of voters were riddled with corruption and dissent. After the war formally ended in 1918, all the groups which opposed the war came under fire. They were seen as destructive to the peace and security of the American nation. The focus of the attacks was no longer on the conscientious objectors, for many of them were already jailed during the war, and were still in jail at the time; it had switched over to the Socialists and the Wobblies, for they, unlike the conscientious objectors, were a still viable target. One way that these people were targeted was by use of the Espionage Act of 1918. This act penalized anyone who obstructed the operation of the armed forces, was insubordinate, or displayed disloyalty within the forces. Because of the law's vauge language, the...
