by Kornbluh, Joyce L. , Rosemont, Franklin, Thompson, Fred, Gross, Daniel
For supper we had stew or beans. If there was ever any meat in the stew, no one to my knowledge ever discovered it. It consisted of carrots, turnips and spuds on two occasions. We did the same thing with the stew as we did with the mush. Then one night they served us with sour beans, that is beans that had been cooked and had spoiled. We did not discover this until most of them had been eaten up. During the night we were all seized with cramps and diarrhea. That night all of the buckets and the toilet were in constant use. All thru the next day, the jailer received such a thorough and constant cussing that they left us locked in our cells until the next morning, thereby laying keel for another “Batttleship.”
Solidarity, April 21, 1917.
Taking Some Liberty
Some one found that there was about 3/4 of an inch slack in the locking mechanism. Now here is a lesson in organized or concerted action. Each four men in each of five cells on the two sides of the corridor all threw their weight against this slack, gaining a little each time, until nine of the ten doors upstairs were forced open far enough for us to get into the corridor. Then we took blankets, rolled them into a rope, and sprung the angle irons on one side of the door until they were never able to lock them while I was there.
Down stairs where the 33 others were kept, they had a bath tub. There was only a cold water tap to the tub. The water was heated by first filling the tub and then turning on the steam thru the pipe that ran down into the filled tub.
They were not able to get as many doors opened in the lower tank at first as we did in the upper tank, but those that got into the lower corridor somehow unscrewed this pipe and pried the doors to the locking system open. These doors were just above the cell doors. Then they unscrewed the bolts on the horizontal locking levers and by prying, twisting and bending, pulled the levers out of their place and onto the floor. This allowed those still in the cells to open the cell doors and come into the corridor.
You are probably asking what were the jailers doing all this time? Well the first thing that they did was to grab all the guns and run into the street. We were all locked into the corridors, but they were not sure whether we intended to stay there or not, and were not going to be present to say good-bye if we decided to leave. They didn’t come back until they called the sheriff.
Time for Beef
Meanwhile some one discovered a barrel of corn beef out in the passage way, and tore a strip from a blanket and bent a nail into a hook. The hook was tied to the strip of blanket and thrown so it would catch on the rim of the barrel. The barrel was upset and the corn beef was drawn into the cell and part of it sent via the blanket strip and bent nail to the upper tank. Our sink had a steam pipe to heat water also, so when the sheriff and deputies came into their jail, we were steam cooking corned beef in the sink. The sheriff felt very badly about the damage to his brand new jail. So did the taxpayers. It cost over $800 to repair it.
This was the act by which we notified the sheriff who was actually in control. It was explained to him that if better food and treatment were not immediately forthcoming, he could expect not only a re-occurrence of what had just been done, but a more thorough job next time.
As one of the Irish put it: “Well tear your damned jail down brick by brick and camp by bonfire till ye build another, then tear it down too until ye learn how to feed and treat us.” That night we had our first meal that was fit to eat. Next morning we were served with corn flakes with white instead of blue milk and bacon, and coffee that we could drink without holding our nose.
Who Runs This Jail?
They allowed us to have a phonograph after this and I was elected to take it to the lower tank when some one wanted music, and play the records for them. I also played the records in the upper tank. One day I was called to play the phonograph in the lower tank. I called the jailer. He let me take the phonograph and records down the stairs, but said that I would not be allowed to go in. I called for the committee for that week in the lower tank and told them what the jailer said. This forced things right out in the open. The jailer was asked, but not gently, “Who in the hell do you think is running this jail? Now you open that door and let him come in with that phonograph, or send down to Sumner Iron Works for some more boilermakers. If he don’t come in you are going to need them.” The door was opened and I went in and stayed until everybody had heard all the records they wished to hear. After that it was understood by the jailers that they could either be as decent as their jobs permitted or call the boilermakers.
There were two round steel posts running from the floor of the lower tank thru the ceiling of the lower tank and the floor and up to the ceiling of the upper tank. We used to sing and march in step around these posts. I don’t think the jailers or sheriff ever realized what that was doing to their steel jail. I wonder if they knew that soldiers marching across a bridge are always told to break step.
Page Ripley
As I have been reading what I have just written I find a couple of errors. We were not 74 to start with. One of our number who had been wounded on the boat Verona did not join us until he was brought from the hospital. Another found that he was named in the information. He went first to the chief of police in Seattle, and then to the sheriff of King County. Each telephoned to the Snohomish county authorities, and got the old run around. This man accused of first-degree murder had to pay his own fare to Everett to be arrested by the ones who accused him! Page Mr. Ripley.
During all of this time we were not neglecting our education. This was just after the tenth convention of the I.W.W. and changes in the constitution were to be voted upon. The old constitution and the proposed changes were discussed article by article and section by section as it stood, and as it would be after the changes were made. We called meetings with a new chairman each time. This taught parliamentary procedure to all of us. We exchanged our experiences in the class struggle, in free speech fights, in the harvest fields and on the jobs generally. We read and studied the organization literature when it became available. We sang our songs and the popular songs of the day, especially the verse from “Don McRae”:
“Oh Don McRae you’ve had your day;
Make way for freedom’s host
For labor’s sun is rising soon
Will shine from coast to coast,
And when at last, the working class
Shall make the masters yield
May your portion of the victory be
A grave in Potter’s Field.”
We played games together and pranks upon each other. Oh, yes we were human beings. There were differences of opinion and a little quarreling, no one of course was allowed to strike another. These were all of a personal nature, but, let any issue arise between any one of us and the jailers, then we were at once united and all personal differences forgotten.
An amusing thought comes to me here. One of us whenever he quarreled, and he quarreled frequently, used to put the name of the one he quarreled with in a note book. He was going to fight with each as soon as we were released. I hope he kept that book as my name was in it. What a laugh we could have together, and how glad he would be to meet those same guys now!
Back to Seattle
The trial was set for March 5, 1917. As all the judges in Snohomish county had shown prejudice, the defense had obtained a change of venue to King county. In February I was transferred to the King county jail at Seattle. I was to be a witness in the trial. There were twenty-five in all who came as witnesses to Seattle. A week or so after we left Everett the jailers must have thought that because the number of prisoners left there was smaller, the spirit had changed. An argument came up between the Wobblies and the jailers. The jailers brought in the fire hose and wet down the jail. The Wobs mopped up the water with Snohomish county mattresses. Even if the jailers won, they lost.
Before we left Everett, we were taken before the judge to plead. Some of those who could raise beards, spent weeks trimming their beards so that the shape would match the one grown by the judge who was to hea
r us plead. These of course pushed their way into the front row where the resemblance could not be missed. The judge missed the sarcasm and seemed to be flattered that his whiskers were a source of derision.
I am not trying to keep this article in chronological order as I am writing entirely from memory and without notes, so if I should remember something which I think should be inserted, but happened previously to something already mentioned, I can do so without rewriting the whole article.
No Kangaroo
When we arrived at the King county jail in Seattle, we were scattered through several tanks. The first thing done by the other prisoners was to call the Kangaroo court to order. Believing in the freedom of speech and assembly even by prisoners in jail, we listened to the whole proceedings. When they had finished they were told firmly and with emphasis, that we as members of the I.W.W. would neither be governed by its rules nor be a party to it. We explained to them that we had a committee system and that so far as the I.W.W. members were concerned we intended to continue it. Seeing our determined stand the kangaroo court waived any claim of authority so far as we were concerned. As in all kangaroo courts, the kangaroo judge and sheriff were inflicting fines and manual jobs on all incoming prisoners. These fines were supposed to be equally distributed among the prisoners, but generally the larger portions were kept by the judge and the sheriff. It was not long until the other prisoners saw the difference between governing themselves and being dictated to by a clique.
In Seattle some of the various religious bodies would visit the jail. All through Sunday morning we would have to listen to wheezy portable organs, and off key voices of men and women in the last stages of galloping decrepitude. Then they would tell us about sin, and its terrible results and consequences. In fact they knew so much about sin, that we were sure they were experts in all its branches.
Memorial services held at Mt. Pleasant Cemetery for the Everett victims May 1, 1917.
After the noisy ones left, the mental healers came in. Their theme was that everything we heard, saw, felt, smelt or tasted was myth. The jail and its inhabitants as far as I could gather were just conditions of the mind along with everything else. I wonder if any of them have ever been on the wrong end of a policeman’s club. Hungry as jail grub kept us, this did not improve our appetite, so we began to hold services of our own. Mostly the same tunes, but oh the difference in words! There was as much difference in the manner of singing, as there was in the words. Our singing taught defiance, not obedience to our masters.
Well the religionists and the jailers protested. We were asked if we would not give to them the same rights we demanded for ourselves. The obvious reply was that we didn’t lock them up and make them listen to us. I am not sure what the reason was but soon after this most of us were placed in one tank, where we could set up our committee system again.
Making Trials Cost
We had all demanded separate trials, and under the laws of the state of Washington we were entitled to separate trials. The state chose for its first victim Thomas H. Tracy, who had been Secretary of the Everett Local of the I.W.W. The outcome is history. One of the 74, a little less noble than Judas tried to help send his fellow workers to prison. His appearance and entrance was like the hero in a ten cent melodrama. When asked if he had seen any one armed on the Verona, he pointed his finger at arm’s length and pointed not to Tracy but to another of the 74 and said, “There is the man.” After examination of scores of prosecution witnesses and their cross examination by the defense, no one was sure who had killed the deputy we were accused of killing. Those of us who discussed it in jail were convinced that he had stopped a bullet fired by his own side.
The defense witnesses who were held in jail found out that the longer the trial lasted, the more it would cost Snohomish county. So we agreed that when we were under cross examination by the prosecution to make our answers delay the proceedings as much as possible. The prosecution helped us unintentionally by trying to discredit us as persons. They had no hope of destroying the force of our testimony. Once a witness was asked during cross examination where he had come from, when he came to Seattle. He mentioned Yakima where he had stayed one day, Spokane, several towns in Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa and Nebraska. It all contributed to the delay. Then he was asked how he came into Omaha. “Rode in.” “On what?” “On a train.” “What kind of a train?” “Railroad train.” “What kind of railroad train?” “Steam train.” “Was it a passenger train or a freight train?” Here the defense lawyer got in an objection which was sustained. The prosecutor had learned so much geography that he must have forgotten what he wanted the jury to find out in the first place, so he excused the witness.
No Fugitives
While the trial was going on some of the prisoners in Everett were taken for a walk for exercise. On one of these occasions the deputy who was escorting them started to walk away from them. He was called back and told by the prisoners to return them to the jail as they did not know the way.
In Seattle when any of the I.W.W. prisoner witnesses were taken out of the jail for glasses, dentistry or other treatment, the deputies escorting them more than once left them in various offices in which they were being fitted or treated, knowing that none would try to escape. Why should we? Hadn’t we been chosen as witnesses? We hardly thought of ourselves as individuals and gauged our actions by the value they would be to the defense, the organization and the working class. We did not feel this as those who profess religious conviction by some sort of sudden revelation, but by the association with one another and the realization that the group and the thing that the group stood for were far more important than the individual.
Acquittal
The trial finally came to an end on May 5, 1917, with the acquittal of Thomas H. Tracy. The Lumber Barons and shingle manufacturers of the Pacific Northwest had had their Roman Holiday. They had also had a belly full of murder trials. Snohomish county was broke. The I.W.W. was stronger in membership and strength on the job. It had built up a prestige with which to carry on the lumber strike of 1917.
All names except those of the writer or Thomas H. Tracy have been omitted, not with any intention to slight them. Most of them need no mention for they for years at least were useful and active in the Class Struggle.
This is a story of a group. I have not forgotten the fellow worker who would rather be returned back to a prison from which he had escaped than be used by the prosecution; nor have I forgotten the lump in my throat when we tried to sing “Solidarity” for him in token of goodbye
Chapter 5
Joe Hill: Wobbly Bard
Tomorrow I expect to take a trip to the planet Mars and, if so, will immediately commence to organize the Mars canal workers into the I.W.W. and we will sing the good old songs so loud that the learned star-gazers on earth will once for all get positive proof that the planet Mars really is inhabited. … I have nothing to say for myself only that I have always tried to make this earth a little better for the great producing class, and I can pass off into the great unknown with the pleasure of knowing that I never in my life double-crossed a man, woman or child.
JOE HULL to editor Ben Williams Solidarity (October 9, 1915).
On November 19, 1915, Joe Hill, a thirty-three year old Wobbly writer, was killed by a five-man firing squad in the prison yard of the Utah State Penitentiary. Circumstantial evidence supported the allegation that he had shot and killed a Salt Lake City grocer on January 10, 1914. His guilt is still a matter of dispute.
Before he was finally executed, the Joe Hill case had involved President Wilson, the acting secretary of state, the Swedish ambassador to the United States, Samuel Gompers, the daughter of the president of the Mormon Church, and thousands of persons around the world who staged protest demonstrations and sent letters appealing for his release.
Hill had been a member of the I.W.W. for probably only three years before he was arrested for murder in Salt Lake City. He, more than any other one writer, had made the
I.W.W. a singing movement. He was the author of dozens of Wobbly songs which were printed on song cards and published in the Industrial Worker, Solidarity, and in the little red songbook. They had tough, humorous, skeptical words which raked American morality over the coals.
Joe Hill’s songs swept across the country; they were sung in jails, jungles, picket lines, demonstrations. I.W.W. sailors carried them to other countries. Wobblies knew their words as well as they knew the first sentence to the I.W.W. Preamble.
Yet, little is known about Joe Hill before he joined the I.W.W. about 1910, since he drifted from job to job like most single migrants. He chose to be reticent about the facts of his life, and when a friend wrote to him in prison asking for some biographical data, Hill scoffingly replied that he was a “citizen of the world,” and his birthplace was “the planet, Earth.”1
In fact, Joe Hill was a Swede, born Joel Emmanuel Haaglund, who came to the United States about 1901 at the age of nineteen. It was claimed that he learned English at the YMCA in his hometown and as a seaman on freighters running between Sweden and England. By 1910, he was an I.W.W. member, active around the port of San Pedro, California, and in the next three years took part in the San Pedro dock workers’ strike, the San Diego free speech campaign, and an abortive revolution in Tia Juana, which aimed to make Lower California into a commune.
The date of Hill’s arrival in Utah is unknown. It is estimated that he was there about a month before grocer Morrison’s murder. His supporters claimed that he was “framed” by the Copper Trust and the Mormon Church because he helped organize workers at the United Construction Company at Bingham, Utah, who won a strike in 1913. He may have come in answer to the call from Utah’s I.W.W. Local 69 to stage a free speech fight. He was unemployed at the time of his arrest and rooming with his friend, Otto Applequist, at the home of some Wobblies, the Eselius brothers, in Murray, a suburb of Salt Lake City.