seems—that I went into this imagining that I would find a certain thrill in risks to be run—risks of my life, perhaps, or at least of imprisonment.
"Of course, I was even then familiar with the ridiculous record of law enforcement: yet I did not shake myself free, at first, of the idea that I was courting danger." He laughed shortly.
"A man with a pistol may do what he pleases at almost any time on almost any street. For years it has been so. A few men with bombs—not bombs in any real sense, either, but only home-made handgrenades, a half pint of nitroglycerin in six inches of steel pipe—can dictate to a whole trade or to a section of a city. They tell a citizen to change his methods in his shop or to close his shop, to go out of business and move away—and he closes his shop or is blown up. They tell him to pay—and he pays. Citizens so threatened dare scarcely speak even when surrounded by police and promised protection. That is the power of an occasional half pint of nitroglycerin tossed from the tail of an automobile."
