Rebel Voices

by Kornbluh, Joyce L. , Rosemont, Franklin, Thompson, Fred, Gross, Daniel

  Miss Goldman’s anarchist companion, Dr. Ben Reitman, was tarred and feathered by San Diego vigilantes who stuffed filth in his ears and nose, tore off his clothes and burned the letters I.W.W. into his back with a lighted cigarette.

  In response to demands from several California organizations to investigate the charges of vigilante activity, Governor Hiram Johnson sent businessman Colonel Harris Weinstock to San Diego. City officials refused to cooperate with the investigation. Nevertheless, based on hearings held in April, Weinstock reported: “Local commercial bodies have encouraged and applauded the acts of these so-called vigilantes.”12 Testimony revealed “needless brutality on the part of police officers.” Many I.W.W. members and sympathizers “had been taken out of the city … and there subjected to an inhuman beating by a body of men part of whom were police officers, part constables, and part private citizens.”13

  Weinstock called attention to the “passive resistance” of the protesters and the lack of violence or drunkenness among the I.W.W. members. Governor Johnson issued a statement supporting Weinstock’s report and sent the California district attorney to San Diego to enforce the law. No prosecutions of the vigilantes were made.

  Gradually, the free speech prisoners were released from jail. A smallpox epidemic hit the city prison in June, and some of the men were given short sentences in the county jail. Others were released on parole. Throughout the summer of 1912 there was a drop in violence directed at the I.W.W. members, and by September 1912 the I.W.W. held its first undisturbed rally since the beginning of the San Diego campaign. It was a meeting to protest the imprisonment of I.W.W. leaders Joe Ettor and Arturo Giovannitti jailed in Lawrence, Massachusetts, during an I.W.W. strike of textile workers 3000 miles away.

  A decade of free speech fights came to a dramatic climax in the tragedy of November 5, 1916, in Everett, Washington, where the I.W.W. had been agitating along with striking sawmill workers of the Shingle Weavers Union. When the I.W.W. organizers opened a hall in Everett, a port city on Puget Sound, the city’s sheriff and local police responded with savage opposition. I.W.W. soapboxers were arrested, beaten, and deported from town, many with broken limbs and internal injuries.

  On October 30, forty-one Wobblies, mostly young loggers and lumberjacks, arrived by boat from Seattle I.W.W. headquarters, intending to lend support for the free speech crusade. Sheriff McRae and his deputies rounded them up at the Everett docks, drove them to a park on the outskirts of town, and forced them to run the gauntlet between rows of deputies who beat them with spiked bats. Everett citizens were shocked at the amount of dried blood found on the grass the following morning. A public protest rally addressed by Wobbly organizer Jim Thompson attracted 2000 sympathetic townspeople who felt that Sheriff McRae had gone too far.

  On November 5, 1916, a delegation of 250 singing Wobblies left Seattle for Everett on a regular passenger boat, the “Verona.” An additional group of I.W.W. members, plus other passengers, boarded a second boat, the “Calista,” which also sailed regularly between the two cities. As the “Verona” approached the Everett docks with the Wobbly passengers singing “Hold the Fort,” shooting broke out from Pier Two, where Sheriff McRae and some 200 armed vigilantes had been tipped off to the boat’s arrival by Pinkerton agents in Seattle. Shooting continued for about ten minutes. At least five I.W.W. members were killed and thirty-one were wounded; it was said that additional bodies were later found washed up on a nearby beach. The toll for the Everett vigilantes: nineteen wounded and two dead.

  The “Verona,” sailing back to Seattle, warned the second ship to return. At the Seattle docks, nearly all the Wobblies on both boats were arrested. Seventy-four were charged with the murders of the Everett vigilantes and secretly removed at night from Seattle to the Everett county jail.

  The two-month trial which began in March 1917 focused on the inflammatory propaganda of the I.W.W. as well as on Tom Tracy, the first of the defendants, who was charged with firing the first shot from the “Verona.” The I.W.W. defense lawyer demanded a reenactment on the Everett docks of the November 5 tragedy. This demonstrated that it was impossible to identify any passenger from the shore and, furthermore, that the Everett vigilantes, milling around the piers, were likely to have been in each other’s line of fire. The court acquitted Tracy and released the seventy-three other defendants.

  The Tracy trial was won in the courts but lost in the press. Wobbly propaganda, submitted as evidence by the prosecution, produced community shivers, newspaper headlines, and still another public picture of I.W.W. members as furtive bomb-throwing anarchists. The news of the trial swept the fear of internal violence onto the doorsteps of many American communities and presented an image of a domestic enemy attacking American values of industrial peace and property. A decade of vigorous, uncompromising I.W.W. free speech activity ended as America entered the war to battle kaiserism in Europe and radicalism in its own backyard.

  1

  John Panzner (1883– ), a retired automobile worker, wrote these memoirs for the Writer’s Group Journal (September 1959), issued by the West Side U.A.W. Retired Workers’ Center in De-troit. Panzner, a sheet-metal worker who joined the I.W.W. in San Francisco in 1905, was a national organizer for the I.W.W., active in recruiting Northwest lumberjacks, and a strike leader of the Minnesota miners in the Mesabi Range in 1916. Following his 1923. release from Leavenworth Penitentiary, where he served a five-year sentence with other I.W.W. defendants convicted of violating the Federal Espionage Law, Panzner returned to his birthplace, Detroit. He joined the U.A.W. in 1933, was secretary-treasurer of the Hupp Local, and retired in 1952 from the Chevrolet plant and U.A.W. Local 235.

  THE SPOKANE FREE SPEECH FIGHT–1909

  By JOHN PANZNER

  Before telling you the story of the Spokane free speech fight, I must say a few words about the situation in the west at that time. West of the Mississippi River, there were about two million migratory workers, sometimes called hobos. They harvested the wheat, corn, hay and picked the fruit and even planted most of the crops. They built railroads, dams, powerhouses. They did the logging in the woods.

  The employers were ruthless. The conditions on the job were bad. You had to bring your own blankets, sleep in tents or bunk houses and many of them were full of lice and bed bugs. Cock roaches were in the cook houses and kitchens. Most of the men did not stay long on the job, and when the jobs were finished, thousands were laid off. So you see there always was a big unemployed army, floating from job to job or looking for a job, or waiting for a new job to open up. They had no families. Most of them did not belong to any church. They did not stay long enough in any town so that they could register and vote. They were considered outcasts in the community. Only when labor was badly needed were they welcomed.

  The AFL trade unions were strong in the big cities like San Francisco, but no attempts were made to organize these nomads. The only exceptions were the small mining camps where the Western Federation of Miners were well organized. They had higher wages, better living conditions, and more freedom or civil rights because they had been organized long enough and had the power. So the IWW tried to organize these migratory workers into industrial unions instead of trade unions. Because they had low wages, we had to charge low dues. The human material was good, but the odds were against us. When you slept and ate on the company property, you had no civil rights.

  In Spokane, Washington, we had a hall and four local unions. There was a street full of employment offices where the employment shark would sell you a job for a dollar. The lumberjacks, construction workers and agricultural workers would come to town and spend their money in the red light districts, saloons, restaurants and lodging houses. When they got broke or nearly broke, they would try to get another job.

  It was hard and dangerous to go on company property to get new members. The easiest way to get new members was by holding street meetings. Some time in 1908, the city government stopped all street meetings. The case was taken to court by the local u
nions, but the judge pigeon-holed the case, so in the fall of 1909, the local unions planned to win free speech by direct action.

  The plan was to call for volunteers to speak on the streets in violation of the city ordinance. If we were arrested, we would go to jail until all of the jails were full. A joint meeting of the four locals was held and a committee of ten was selected from the floor of the meeting. These ten went into the office of the secretary and picked a committee of five to be the fighting committee. They in turn each picked one alternate to take their place in case of arrest. The alternates were to appoint other alternates. All names were to be kept secret. Every five or ten volunteers would go on the streets and speak. When they were arrested, they would go before the judge, plead guilty and go to prison.

  It was about in November of 1909, that Walter T. Nef and I jumped a freight train in Portland, Oregon, and we got there in time for the meeting. I was put on the fighting committee.

  It must have been the month of November, 1909 when Nef and I arrived in Spokane, because the struggle went on all winter. At one time, we had the city jail, the county jail, the Franklin School House full, and a United States’ fort had eighty-five prisoners in it. The rank and file who spoke on the streets got thirty days for violation of the city ordinance, the leaders got six months in the county jail under the state conspiracy law.

  We made no effort to keep out of jail. Our aim was to fill the jails, so when the judge would ask us if we were on the committee, we would gladly admit it. The police closed our hall and confiscated our weekly newspaper, the Industrial Worker.

  While awaiting for our trial in the city jail, the state prisoners were put in one row of cells on one side of the cell block, and the city prisoners, who were convicted for speaking on the streets, were across the hallway on the other side of the cell block. They were starting to serve their thirty day sentences, but they refused to go out and work on the rock pile, so they were put on “bread and water” and kept locked in their cells.

  We, who were the leaders awaiting trial were being fed “steak and fried potatoes” and other such foods, so we the leaders went on a “hunger strike.” It took a lot of will power, but when they brought our food, we threw it out through the bars on the floor of the hallway. There were steaks, potatoes, bread, coffee and tin plates and cups all over the floor.

  After eight days of the hunger strike, the outside committee sent word that we must stop the hunger strike because some of us were getting sick. A few die-hards held out for thirteen days.

  As soon as we were tried under the state conspiracy law, we were given six months each and sent to the county jail. One of the characters in the free speech fight was a young man who came there as a reporter for a Seattle weekly paper, the official organ of the United Wage Workers Party of the state of Washington. This was a splinter group that had left the Socialist Party. His name was William Z. Foster. He joined the IWW, spoke on the street and was sentenced to thirty days in jail. He served his term in the Franklin School House on bread and water. A German society offered the IWW the use of the German Turner Hall and defied the police to close up the hall.

  Our committee sent to Chicago to the general headquarters for an out-state speaker for a meeting in the Turner Hall. They sent a beautiful Irish girl. Her name was Elizabeth Gurly Flynn. She had just married a guy by the name of Jones, the head of the Dill Pickle Club in Chicago.

  Private invitations were sent out for the meeting in the Turner Hall, thus making it a private meeting and not public. They did not raid the meeting, but arrested our speaker after the meeting. The Women’s Club of Spokane was aroused. They raised $5,000 for bail and got her out. Her case never came to trial. Public opinion began to turn. The newspapers claimed that one of our members was clubbed to death in his cell by the police. The powerful German Society and the Women’s Club were on our side.

  After we had been in the county jail about four months, the city government made an offer which was a big victory for us. We were to be allowed four street corners for meetings. All the police department asked was that we give them notice when and where the meetings were to be held.

  The mayor released all of the city prisoners at once, but we were in the county jail and had to wait a few days until the governor’s pardon arrived. Everything seem peaceful in Spokane after the free speech fight was over, but when I got back to Portland, Oregon, the headlines in the papers said that the Chief of Police Sullivan had been slain by someone with a shotgun on the porch of his home.

  The papers tried to blame the IWW, but to our surprise, Judge Mann who had sentenced us, defended the IWW and said he knew they did not do it, that the chief had many enemies. The murder was never solved. Thus ends the story of one of the many free speech fights in the United States.

  2

  This account of the march on Fresno, California, made by I.W.W. members from the Pacific Northwest who were determined to take part in the Fresno free speech campaign, was printed in Solidarity (April 8, 1911). Nothing is known about its author, E. M. Clyde.

  THE MARCH ON FRESNO

  Graphic Account of the Free Speech Invasion From the North

  Solidarity:

  Acting under instructions of a committee composed of the following members of the “Fresno Relief Brigade”—Fred Meyer of L. U. 178, Tom Pearson of 434, C. F. Miller of 432, E. M. Clyde of 432, C. W. Mison a non-member, I herewith submit a report covering the most essential features of the celebrated “march on Fresno.”

  On the evening of Feb. 13, 1911, 47 men left Seattle bound for Fresno to assist the fellow workers who were contesting for the right to speak upon the street of that city. We were joined by others along the way, so on leaving Portland on the 15th we numbered 112, two having left us here to go by boat. About 20 of this number were members of the Socialist Party, and a very few were members of no organization.

  We came from Seattle to Portland in different groups and some encountered considerable difficulty in getting over the road so we concluded that in the future we would remain in one body.

  We organized ourselves and elected an executive committee with supervisory powers, a secretary-treasurer to receive and disburse all money, a committee on trains whose duty was to learn the most suitable trains to ride, running time, etc. Their usefulness suddenly ceased at Ashland, Ore., however.

  We had our cook with assistants; we had a well organized police system with Joe Risik of L. U. 92 as chief, but the most important department of all was no doubt our hospital corps which we organized at Hornbrook, Calif. S. Mortimer of L. U. 380 made a most efficient Chief Medical Director, as he has spent many years in hospital service, and the success of the trip was due in a great measure to the able manner in which he cared for the sick and disabled. He at all times carried a medicine chest supplied with the ordinary remedial agents such as bandages, liniments, caustics, antiseptics, sterilizers, etc. The doctor was the busiest man of the entire party and the attention given the sick was equal or even superior to that received in many hospitals. The hospital also included 10 men who brought up the rear to see that no one should be left unaided should they become exhausted.

  At Ashland, Oregon, Feb. 17th, the S. P. railroad refusing to permit us to ride further, we began our memorable march which ended at Chico, Calif., March 7th.

  The distance covered on foot was 244 miles. On passing over the Siskiyou mountains we reached an elevation of 4,000 feet and broke a trail through 3 feet of snow over the State road into Hornbrook. On this trip one of our party (the operator) had his feet so badly frozen that it became necessary to send him to the hospital.

  Getting over this hill we encountered no more snow until we reached Weed. At Steinman in the Siskiyous and at Weed we were compelled to spend the night by campfires on the side hill where the ground was covered with snow. Sleep, or even rest, was impossible.

  At Sisson the elevation is 3,554 feet, and the snow was deeper than at any other place. Here we were picked up by the May Roberts Theatrical Co., an
d our fares were paid into Dunsmuir, 14 miles, where we attended the show in a body and were supplied with coffee and sandwiches at the expense of Miss Roberts. She had our pictures taken with her troupe and the R. R. and city police in the group. Later when we met her in Redding she donated $15 to our “jungle” fund.

  The police force of the Southern Pacific railroad consists of 120 men which they had scattered along in the towns through which we passed, but as we made them no trouble many of them became quite friendly with us, but they always found that the more questions they asked the less they knew about us.

  On March 5 we arrived in Chico where we received the first official notice that the fight had been won. On the 7th we disbanded, as our presence was no longer needed in Fresno.

  Yes, we made slow progress during the trip. The pace was set by the rear guard who were determined that no one should be deserted along the way. Some of our number could easily have made 40 or 50 miles a day while it was difficult for others to make 20 and 25 miles.

  We held meetings in all the towns along the way and gained the sympathy and assistance of the citizens, who donated money, clothing and food.

  We laid great stress upon the eight hour day and made it a feature of the trip. Red Bluff, Calif., was the only town along the line to show a spirit of hostility. At Redding our hostess was Mrs. Clineschmidt, of the Temple Hotel, who fed all of us while there (5 meals) and furnished many with beds for the two nights.

  I will not dwell upon the suffering, hardship and exposure endured, but will simply say that but few of our number were prepared for a trip of this kind. Some were lightly dressed, others nearly barefooted.

  Industrial Worker, April 2, 1910.

  Many feet were blistered and bleeding. Over the hills we were hungry, tired and sleepy. Once over the hills it was constantly raining, through which we traveled the last 100 miles.