In 1917, the Bolshevik Revolution took place in Russia. Leftist rebels led by Vladmir Lenin successfully took control in a coup d’état that set the stage for the rise of Russian communism. This created fear in the United States that a similar revolution could occur, fed particularly by the organization of labor unions and several worker strikes, along with a series of anarchist bombings that hinted at the real potential for a communist uprising. The US government spread fear and propaganda against “Reds” and identified communists as un-American and unpatriotic. During the Great Depression, which started with the 1929 stock market crash, the Communist Party grew in the United States as people became more and more desperate. The communists worked to organize labor unions and stage worker strikes, although corruption seeped in as organized crime families infiltrated unions and used them to make money through financial racketeering, a situation that the play hints at with the corrupt Fatt as a rich union leader who uses his gunman to persuade the workers to do his bidding.

Fear of communism led to a compromising of the First Amendment with the 1918 Sedition Act, which allowed the US government to deport, imprison, or fine anyone who was seen as a threat or who published any “false, scandalous, or malicious writing” against the United States.