by Kornbluh, Joyce L. , Rosemont, Franklin, Thompson, Fred, Gross, Daniel
But in Louisville
(Kentucky) the profiteers
Went free
Because the Lever act
Could not be applied
To THEM.
But there was nothing
(In the same paper)
About any arrest
Of any profiteers,
Exploiters of Labor
(Same family)
Who are the cause
Of all the chaos,
Strikes and suffering.
And there was nothing
At all in favor
About the One Big Union,
For all the workers,
Which will cure
Their ills.
But it is true
There is a scarcity
Of newsprint paper
And space is scarce,
And the workers are
Too tired anyhow
To read it.
21
Fierce Wetter s article, “The Men I Left at Leavenworth” appeared in Survey (October 1922) and reflects the growing interest of the national magazines in the issue of amnesty for prisoners convicted under the wartime Espionage Law.
THE MEN I LEFT AT LEAVENWORTH
By PIERCE C. WETTER
The other day I was riding in a street car in New York behind two well dressed men deep in their daily papers. Their comments on some of the dispatches about the railroad strike reminded me more of James Whitcomb Riley’s refrain: “The goblins’11 get yer if yer don’t look out” than anything I had heard for a long time.
“I tell you, those I.W.W. fellows …” one of them rumbled.
“It doesn’t say it’s proved yet they were around …” the other suggested timidly.
“Huh! Doesn’t need to!” the first shook his head ominously. “Nowadays a man takes his life in his hand wherever he goes. I believe in giving that kind of vermin a wide berth. I never saw one of them and I never want to!”
The next instant there was some sort of mix-up with a truck on the track and we all got a violent jolt. The speaker, who had risen in his seat to get off at the next corner, became rather badly tangled with some passengers across the aisle. I helped to disentangle them and he was at once all smiles and amiability—”Almost like one of our college football rushes,” he grinned, in the easy fellowship an earlier generation is apt to accord its successors on the same campus.
I should have liked to watch his face when I told him that I am a sincerely convinced, indelible I.W.W.; that I had just been released from Leavenworth prison on expiration of a five-year sentence under the 1918 Chicago indictment; and that I am now working with all the strength and ability I possess in the interest of my fifty-two fellow-workers, fellow-prisoners, still in Leavenworth, some with twenty-year sentences.
But “We’re late for that appointment,” his companion reminded him, and I missed my chance.
He will doubtless go on indefinitely repeating his “bogey-man” stuff about people whom he admits he has never seen and knows nothing of except by hearsay. I wonder how many people who read this have done exactly the same thing? And how long they are going to keep on doing it?
That is why, when I.W.W.’s are on trial, whether in courts or in newspapers, practically “everything goes.” But in all such movements, persecution only serves as propaganda, and weeds out the worthless material—those who “can’t stand the gaff” and go back on their principles—and shows the grain of the men who cannot be bribed or bought, who have the courage to stand by their convictions at whatever cost.
There are fifty-two such men in Leavenworth today. Over two-thirds of them are American-born. They have been there since 1918, and most of them have ten- or twenty-year sentences. I know these men; and I want everyone else to know them. They are of the stuff that makes history, the sort of stuff that went to the making of our country in the beginning, and that is needed just as much right now, perhaps more, to keep our country true to its big ideals.
I am not going to try to give fifty-two full biographies (though I wish I could, for every one of them is a story in itself—an almost unbelievable story!) but just a suggestion or a characteristic here and there of a few of the men. They are all very human, the same hopes and desires, the same flesh and blood we are all made of—fathers, husbands, brothers—it means as much to every one of them to stay there in prison year on year under those hideously monotonous, unsanitary, galling conditions, as it would to any of you who read these words. Try for one moment to realize what these things mean. Try honestly. And then try to understand what it means in terms of character for these men to stay there rather than to compromise.
Not long ago the Rev. Richard W. Hogue, known doubtless to many Graphic readers as the inter national secretary of the Church League for Industrial Democracy, made a visit to Leavenworth, and James P. Thompson was one of the men with whom he talked.
California Defense Bulletin, January 20, 1919.
“How can we, how can any decent, self-respecting man,” Thompson said to him, “buy his release at the cost of his manhood, by promising to refrain ever after from expressing his convictions and standing by his principles? It would be degrading and dishonest for us to accept parole’ on the terms on which it has been offered us. We will go out of here as men, when we do go, not as criminals’ purchasing liberty’ with the barter of our convictions and our consciences. When we leave this place it will be with our heads up….”
Thompson has been called the “rough-necked Isaiah of the American proletariat.” Over six feet tall, with clear-cut features, deep-set eyes and level brows, he is not altogether unlike the common conception of ancient prophets, especially when he thunders—”The very people who are abusing the I.W.W. today, would, if they had lived in the days of our forefathers, have been licking the boots of King George. They would have said of the boys fighting barefooted in the snow at Valley Forge, ‘Look at them! They haven’t shoes to their feet, and they are talking about liberty!’ The people who are knocking the I.W.W. are the same type as those who dragged William Lloyd Garrison through the streets of Boston with a rope round his neck; who killed Lovejoy and threw his printing press into the Mississippi River.” He is fond of quoting Woodrow Wilsons The New Freedom where it is developed in detail how the industrial interests of America control the whole machinery of government: of quoting Supreme Court Justice Brandeis as saying that “America has a hereditary aristocracy of wealth which is foreign to American ideals and menacing the nation as a democracy,” and ex-President Taft: “We must keep law and justice a little closer together in order to justify the law,” and Judge Cullen: “There is danger, real danger, that the people will see with one sweeping glance how we lawyers in the pay of predatory wealth corrupt law at its fountainhead; that the furies may then break loose and all hell will ride on their wings.”
After some three years on the Leavenworth “rock pile,” during which time he studied mechanics in all his spare hours, especially with reference to motors, Thompson now has charge of the prison garage, and also teaches in the prison night school.
Practically all these fifty-two men have taken up some definite study or course of reading and are fitting themselves for various kinds of work and social service. They have in a sense, insofar as such a place will permit, dominated their surroundings and made their own world. Several have enrolled in the University of Wisconsin extension courses in electricity, medicine, and so on, many of them teach in the prison school, many are writers—Ralph Chaplin’s poems, for instance, are too well known perhaps to need much comment here.
Then there is Mortimer Downing, nearly sixty years old, a newspaper man, well educated, widely travelled, with friends among people of influence all over the world. Not long ago he was offered a post in the prison printing-plant, a position for which he is eminently well fitted, and one not requiring hard or very monotonous labor. But he refused it and remained as “runner” for the “rock-pile gang” (a tedious post, involving exposure and considerable exertion,
the “rock pile” being the official Gehenna of the prison) because in this way he could keep in closer touch with this group of fifty-two (all I.W.W.’s, as he is) and continue to be of sendee to them individually. A practical example of the fine sense of fellowship and solidarity that characterizes all I.W.W.’s worthy the name.
G. J. Bourg is a construction worker, imperturbable, indomitable. One of his chief distinctions with us is the grit with which he used to keep doggedly on with his organizing—harvest fields, lumber camps, everywhere—no matter how many times he was “beaten up” by “Vigilantes” and “Citizens’Committees.” He would crawl into camp and stay long enough to get “fit,” and out he would go again. He does not seem to know what fear means. George O’Connell is another construction worker—white haired, slow of speech, gentle voiced, his infrequent smile is a reward in itself; he is another hard student and has made himself proficient in electricity. And Alexander Cournos, who was assistant “weather man” out in South Dakota—short, slender, keen-eyed, wiry—would rather calculate than eat or sleep.
Amnesty leaflet issued by the I.W.W. General Defense Committee about 1922.
Sam Scarlett (whose very name conjures visions of the time of Robin Hood) claims he is a “citizen of industry” and has no other nationality.
“Where is your home?” he was asked by the prosecution during the Chicago trial.
“Cook County Jail.”
“Before that?”
“County Jail, Cleveland, Ohio.”
“And before that?”
“City Jail, Akron, Ohio.”
“Are you a citizen?”
“No.”
“That’s enough.”
Industrial Pioneer, June 1925.
Scarlett was a champion soccer football player for some years and is also a skilled machinist and electrician and one of our best speakers and organizers. Robert Connellan, a man of almost sixty, is a chemist, a graduate of the University of California, and a musician (playing in the prison orchestra). We know him best as never too tired to explain something to some of us younger fellows, to explain carefully, in detail, no matter how tedious the matter may be. He is one of the famous “Silent Defense” men who survived those awful days in the vile Sacramento jail—an ordeal intended to break their spirit but which instead shattered their health but confirmed them in their principles.
One Saturday afternoon there was a movie show at the penitentiary, and for no reason whatever we I.W.W.’s were singled out (and particularly the long-sentence men, contrary to the custom in all prisons) to shovel coal while the rest went to the show. Of course we refused, and equally of course we were all put in The Hole. We missed the show, but we made a stand against the policy of domineering injustice that officials had inaugurated against us. For the first three years we were in prison, we were kept steadily on the “rock pile”—a deputy warden, since transferred, told us he had orders “from Washington” “not to give us any easy time” but to “break our spirit,” and he was going to give us “good reason to know that he was running that prison.”
Two of our men—Caesar Tabib and Edward Quigley—are suffering from tuberculosis aggravated if not contracted in the Sacramento jail where they spent a year before they were brought to trial. Because of their physical condition, these two men were prevailed on by the rest of us to make application for release, for “clemency,” but their application was coldly refused by the Department of Justice. Apparently they are not yet near enough to death to make it “safe” to release them.
Another of our number, William Weyh, was kept on the “rock pile” last December until the exposure resulted in severe illness, hemorrhages—twelve in a single day. He was so emaciated as to be scarcely recognizable. It was at this point that a prison official said to him: “I don’t believe you have another ten hours to live if you stay in this place. Drop your I.W.W. affiliations, and you can go out of here as soon as you please.” Weyh’s answer was: “No. I’ll die first.” We had been urging him to make application for release and he at last consented, and the authorities agreed, apparently preferring that he should die outside the walls. He stipulated, however, in writing, that “I have not wavered in my adherence to the I.W.W. and its principles.”
There is not space here to go further down the list of these fifty-two men; they all have the same splendid spirit, the same high courage, the same sense of the crucial human value of solidarity.
Again and again I am asked by those who depend only upon newspapers for their information, why we refuse to ask for “clemency”; and last July, when a petition for general amnesty (that is, for unconditional release for all charged with the same “offence”) signed by some three hundred thousand names from all over the country, was presented to President Harding by a delegation of representative men and women, the President expressed “surprise” about this refusal on our part, and of course at the same time went through with that same ancient formula—”No one advocating the overthrow of the government by violence will be pardoned.” This phrase is continually used by officials, apparently in lieu of any reason they can give for our continued imprisonment.
The truth of the matter is, not one of these fifty-two men was ever even indicted on the preposterous charges brought against them in the press during war-time hysteria, such as the receipt of German gold, and being spies. They are in prison now solely for expression of opinion, and none of those opinions have anything to do with the overthrow of any government in any way—they are merely opinions against war. Note also that these men are confined under the Espionage Act only, though it is now no longer in force. In lieu of any legal reason for their continued incarceration, Attorney General Daugherty even felt obliged to resort to giving out false information in reply to inquiries made on this subject by the Federal Council of Churches (see March 11, 1922, issue Information Service Research Department, Commission on Church and Social Service, F.C.C.C.A., room 604, 105 East 22 Street, New York).
Now, to revert to the President’s “surprise” that we are unwilling to crawl out, I don’t for a moment doubt his genuineness. It is entirely likely that it really is very difficult for him to understand such a thing. Let me quote from the Open Letter since prepared by these fifty-two men and sent a month ago not only to the President, but also to all Cabinet officials, Congressmen, the Governors of the forty-eight states, and to a number of editors and others throughout the country. (I shall be very glad to send a copy to any one who will write me in care of the Survey.)
We are not criminals and are not in prison because we committed any crimes or conspired to commit them. From the beginning, justice has been denied us and the truth of our case withheld from the consideration of the public. … In the press, the I.W.W. is like the Mexican in the movie show; he is always the villain…. We are in prison now solely for exercising our constitutional right of free speech…. If it is a crime to exercise the right for which our fathers laid down their lives, we have no apology to make. … To make application for pardon would make hypocrites of us all…. We refuse to recant, and continue to refuse to beg for a pardon which in common justice should have been accorded to us long ago…. We are but a small group, insignificant in the universal scheme of things, but the ideas we are standing for are not insignificant. They are big and vital and dynamic and concern every man, woman and child in America. It matters little what happens to us, but if the American people lose the right of free speech, the loss to the whole world will be irreparable…. We believed before we were convicted and we believe now that the present economic order is wasteful, planless, chaotic and criminal…. We seek to replace it with a well-ordered and scientifically managed system—in which machinery will be the only slave … a civilization worthy of the intelligence of humanity…. Persecution is not new to us. Some day the truth of the incredible atrocities perpetrated upon our workers in this “Land of the Free” will become known to the world. Our imprisonment is only a single episode in the long history of brutality, … onslaughts of cruelt
y to be compared only with the burning of witches—exile and torture and deliberate murder have for years been our invariable lot. But ideals cannot be altered by force; human convictions cannot be caged with iron bars; human progress cannot be damned with a prison wall….
Captain Sidney Lanier, of the U. S. Military Intelligence Corps, with the facts of this case weighing heavily on his conscience, made a direct appeal to President Wilson: “I am of the opinion,” he declared, “that these men were convicted contrary to the law and the evidence, solely because they were leaders in an organization against which public sentiment was aroused, and the verdict rendered was in obedience to public hysteria.” His opinion is borne out by the fact that war-profiteers, German agents, and others convicted of direct assistance to Germany during the war have long since been released, and of the 946 convictions under the so-called Espionage Act (of persons not I.W.W.’s), all but five are now free.
Solidarity—the basic, ineradicable, human faith that an injury to one is an injury to all—is the spirit, the very essence of our organization. Compromise of any sort, for any purpose, is cheap enough; to compromise the principle of solidarity is essentially disloyal not only to the rest of the group, but to the whole vital cause for which we stand. “We were not convicted as individuals, but as a group. We were convicted of a ‘conspiracy’ of which we are all equally innocent or all equally guilty.”
These men in prison are bearing the brunt of intolerance and repression bred of the war and of the forces that bred the war. They are standing by their ideals at the cost, literally, of their lives in the full knowledge that for them individually there is everything to lose and nothing to gain, that no advantage can possibly accrue to them personally.
You who read these words: do none of you care whether justice is done? Do none of you care enough to make it your serious, personal concern to get the facts, all the facts, the whole truth, about this matter? And then add your influence to the forces already at work for the release of these men.