I didn’t start out to be probably the greatest landmark battle for free speech and free assembly in American
history. It grew out of the practical, if militant concerns of a labor
union trying to establish itself
in an all important local industry—the
lumber trade of the Pacific Northwest. But on November 2, 1909 the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) launched a Free Speech Fight in the streets
of Spokane, Washington. Before the first day was out 103 workers trying to mount a
literal wooden soap box on Stevens Street had been hauled off to jail.
Many were beaten or roughed up in the process.
The IWW was still
a new outfit, but it was rapidly
gaining a reputation for militancy and a willingness to organize unskilled laborers as well as skilled craftsmen and those employed in seasonal industries
with unstable work forces. The timber industry, in which the American Federation of Labor (AFL) had a small and ineffective
presence limited to mill men and
mechanics and which hired large gangs of workers off the streets of local
towns in the months between the snows, was an enticing target. Spokane was the center of the industry
in western Washington.
By 1908 the union had established a branch with its own meeting
hall, news stand, and canteen. Members were mostly conducting regular educational meetings, hoping to build
an organization. They had also
established a weekly newspaper, The
Industrial Worker which eventually became the union’s chief western journal and eventually
relocated to Chicago as the official organ of the whole organization.
It’s the same paper to which I contributed
and edited in the 1970’s.
Progress was steady and the local members were convinced
that given great dissatisfaction over the employment
agency system through which men were hired for the lumber camps or big railroad construction jobs. General
Secretary William D. “Big Bill” Haywood and the General Executive Board in Chicago decided to dispatch one of the
union’s top organizers to Spokane to help.
James H. Walsh was something of a firebrand
organizer, but an effective one. He had
been working in Seattle and other
lumber centers. He felt that the
leadership in Chicago had become too preoccupied
with eastern factory struggles
and were slipping toward “plain and
simple” unionism devoid of class
struggle and consciousness. That summer he led a group of 20 men, lumberjacks, construction workers, casual
laborers, to the IWW Convention
in Chicago. The Overalls Brigade, as they came to be known, traveled across country
riding the rails. Their arrival at the convention in rough work clothes and dusty from days
on the road grabbed everyone’s attention.
As did their demands for action in the West.
Some officials may have been a bit intimidated. The
Overalls Brigade literally drove Daniel
DeLeon and his Socialist Labor Party
faction to bolt the convention and set up a rival IWW in Detroit.
Haywood was impressed. He gave Walsh General Organizing Credentials and sent him to Spokane with a
promise of support.
When Walsh arrived in September, he found a riot on Stevens street. The job sharks, as the 31 employment
agencies that lined that strip were known, were up to their old tricks. They would charge a man a dollar for a hiring ticket to remote lumber or construction camps. They camps would only hire men referred by
the agencies. Corrupt foremen would keep men for a few days
then find an excuse to
fire them, making them beat their way back to town on their own. The agencies paid the foremen kickbacks for churning the labor
force. The system was thoroughly corrupt, and
everyone knew it.
On his first day in town Walsh found nearly 2000 men milling
on Stevens street. Rocks had been thrown through windows and some were gathering fuel and torches to burn
down the agencies. Walsh mounted a wagon and convinced
the near mob that violence would only lead to suppression. He must have been a hell of a speaker. He
invited the crowd to come to the IWW hall to discuss what to do or go
home.
All fall meetings at the hall were jammed as workers learned
the basics of unionism and plans were hatched to find a
way to end the agency system and replace it with an honest union hireling hall. But disturbances still occasionally flared
up on the street. Walsh suspected Pinkertons or other spies were acting
as provocateurs to open the door for
the kind of mass armed suppression
that was common in western labor struggles.
Walsh and other members regularly conducted street meetings.
More and more men were taking out Red
Cards and it was obvious that the union would soon conduct a major campaign. On January 17, 1909
the biggest mob yet, estimated at upwards of three thousand men, formed outside
the Red Cross Agency—no relation to
the venerable organization—one of
the worst of the job sharks. They had
already shattered the windows with chunks of ice when Walsh arrived around 6
PM. According to the local pro-business
daily, The Spokesman Review, Walsh once again calmed the crowd telling
them “There were a lot of hired Pinkertons in the crowd. All they wanted you fellows to do was to
start something and then they would have an excuse for shooting you down or
smashing your heads in…You can gain nothing by resorting to mob rule.”
Even though the IWW’s street meetings were a demonstrably a brake on violence, the City Council was easily persuaded
by the employment agencies and lumber interests to enact a local ordinance banning street meetings and protests. By in large, the union tried to obey. They scheduled almost daily meetings and
educational programs at the hall and conducted most of their organizing on the
street by selling copies of the Industrial
Worker and the popular red card printed with union songs—the ancestor of the famous Little Red Song Book.
In the summer workers not in the lumber and construction
camps largely left town to follow the crops
as fruit pickers or in the threshing crews that so that the union
hall easily accommodated most meetings.
But as migrants drifted back in town looking for work in the woods, it
became apparent that outdoor meeting would be needed again.
Still, Walsh was reluctant to challenge the city—until they
allowed the Salvation Army to
conduct street meeting despite the law.
When appealing to the city council for fair and equal treatment failed
the union decided it had to act.
In the October 23 issue of the Industrial Worker, which by then was widely circulated in the
Northwest, the union issued its famous call. “Wanted: Men to fill the jails of Spokane…Nov. 2 is
Free Speech Day—IWW local will be notified by wire how many men to send, if
any…Meetings will be orderly and no irregularities of any kind will be
permitted.”
So, what has been described as the first mass peaceful civil
disobedience in American history was
on. Hobos,
bindle stiffs, and footloose
Wobblies poured into town not waiting for direction from IWW locals.
The union set up its soap
box on Stevens street. One after
another, men mounted it and began to speak.
Most got no further than announcing “Fellow Workers…” before they were dragged away. The police, however, were so busy that one
shy worker took his turn and when no one was on hand to immediately arrest him
and too tongue-tied to give a speech simply bleated, “Where are the
cops?”
On day two there were plenty more men lined up to join their
first 103 comrades. And more every day
after that. Eventually more than 500
jammed the jail and second holding
facility in a school. Some men even refused to be released when their sentences
were up. The men were brutalized, under fed, subjected to horrific
sanitation conditions. Many showed
up in court still bleeding from wounds.
Not all the Wobblies were men. The original Rebel Girl, 16 year old Elizabeth
Gurley Flynn, already known as one of the union’s greatest speakers, chained
herself to a lamp post so that she
could actually get her speech in before she was arrested.
Eight consecutive members got the Industrial Worker out with full reports on the campaign. Each in turn was arrested. City authorities tried to seize and suppress
the December 10 issue of the paper which included Flynn’s scandalous charges that jailers were operation the women’s section of the jail as brothel
and police were pimping. The paper had to be temporarily moved to Seattle
to continue printing.
The national press began
to pay attention and sympathy for
the Free Speech fighters grew. Men still
in the camps boycotted Spokane business.
The city’s reputation was
being ruined and the cost of keeping so many in jail and paying
for extra police was bankrupting the city, just as the union new it
would.
On March 4, 1910 the city ran up the white flag—it revoked the ordinance and released
all the prisoners. In addition, the
worst 19 agencies lost their city
licenses. The union did not win a
hiring hall, but the system of direct
hires by the companies either in town or at the camps was established. That allowed the IWW to effectively organize on the job,
concentrating on tactics of direct
action and solidarity. Within a few years the union was strong
enough to enforce an 8 hour day in the camps by the expediency of simply
refusing to work longer or evacuate the camps if fired. When workers burned filthy bedding on one day across the region, employers were
forced to provide clean blankets, linens, and mattress pads. Food
improved. The desperate timber beasts of old were transformed
into clean and self-respecting working men.
The tactic of the Free Speech fight spread as other cities
attempted to squelch public meetings. A
big one in Fresno, California
erupted right on the heels of Spokane.
Over the next few years there would be dozens more, the largest in Seattle. The results were always the same.
Eventually, at least until the post-World War I Red Scare, cities mostly
gave up trying to restrict street meetings.
As for the union, it was glad to be able to refocus energy from
the Free Speech fights and constant campaigns
to support the class war
prisoners, to be able to concentrate more on job action.
The sites of many IWW events in the Pacific Northwest have been commemorated with official state or local historical markers but not in Spokane where attempts to erase the memory of the fight continue.
But the IWW in these fights won the admiration and loyalty
of a lot of workers, and the fear and hatred of the bosses.
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