July 3, 1922.
Dear Miss Addams:
I find your letter of the 28th on getting back from Providence. It does not seem to me the Mr. Richberg is incapacitated by the action of a member of his firm -- but I agree with him that the article would require personal investigations and interviews with various individuals. Merely the comment of a man applying his general philosophy to the outstanding events brought out in the newspapers is not what we have in mind; ↑but↓ something more incisive and exploratory as the basis for giving our readers an understanding of what underlies the situation.
Of course a person could spend six months with powers of subpoena and still not get to the bottom of it. That's outside our reach. Yet there is a middle ground between the thorough investigation and an article of opinion: and in view of the national significance of the Chicago situation we should be glad to put a $100 or double that sum into the hands of whomsoever you selected in order to warrant their putting sufficient time and work into the manuscript to make it a real appraisal.
Mr. Hooker is out of reach, I take it. The only thing I happen to know is that ↑about↓ Lawrence Houghteling has the ↑to↓ deal with an incident in the Seamen's Strike years ago. He would have had to be liberalized tremendously by the intervening years to make him fit the character of a [nonpartisan] observer. Professor Marien ↑Merriam↓ would be splendid as would Mr. Richberg himself. I must leave it to you.
In the meanwhile comes this letter from Mr. Ralph Winstead, which I must of course, ask you to regard as fully confidential. The article he refers to was one he wrote from a logging camp in the Northwest as a spokesman for the I.W.W. [page 2]
It appeared in the Survey of July, 1920, and was called -- Enter a Logger -- an I.W.W. Reply to the 4 L'S.
The Chicago building strike situation strikes me as too tense a situation for him to function in. Unquestionably someone would dig up his past to the discredit of the article and the discomfiture of the author. On the other hand he would prove a very valuable source for whomsoever undertook the article for us and this letter might be entrusted to them in confidence. Perhaps you would be interested in meeting Mr. Winstead. He is apparently a man of rare parts; his interpretation of the psychology of the lumber camps by a man in the bunkhouse was racy and smacked of the forests and of the hard thinking of isolated men. I notice Mr. Winstead has an article in a recent number of the Labor Age. If you seem him, won't you talk with him also about his proposal for a series of stories about the kangaroo courts and let us know what you think of it for the Survey. I have written him as enclosed.
I deeply regret that you felt you must withdraw your name at Providence. I now understand how you felt about it; but there were a host of your friends who wanted to bank up solidly for you.
Sincerely,
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