CALIFORNIA: After Tar & Feather

"Vigilante" first became a popular U. S. word in the 1850's when California's citizenry undertook to discipline the more irrepressible of those who went West for gold, gambling and glamor. Instead of dying out with the establishment of law & order, Vigilantism in California remains a potent and honored means of squelching those suspected of Communism. Typical was the treatment accorded last August to Silva M. A. ("Jack") Green, sign painter. and Sol Nitzberg. chicken raiser. Reds who promoted an apple-pickers' strike in Sonoma County. One night a band of unknowns seized Green and Nitzberg, clipped their hair, stripped them to the waist, doused them in crankcase oil, feathered them, paraded them through the streets of Santa Rosa, made them kiss a U. S. flag, booted them out of town.

To many a California landholder this action seemed just and proper. The Sonoma County Grand Jury refused to indict. The District Attorney declined to act. Last week, however, Sonoma County learned to its astonishment that State's Attorney Ulysses Sigel Webb had had informations filed against 23 prominent citizens, including President Arthur Meese and Secretary Frederick Cairns of the Healdsburg Chamber of Commerce, City Editor Julian Mayar of the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat. All were charged with kidnapping, assault with a deadly weapon, assault to commit bodily injury on Green and Nitzberg. The defendants, later reduced to 21. all represented by one law firm, had their $500 bail paid at once by sympathetic friends.