# Oregon Historical Quarterly/Volume 55/I.W.W. in the Pacific N.W.: Rebels in the Woods

I. W. W. in the Pacific N. W.:
Rebels of the Woods
ROBERT L. TYLER
FOR OVER a decade the Industrial Workers of the World preached its gospel of the "One Big Union" and the "General Strike" from corner soap boxes, sang its irreverent songs, badgered police, and fought pitched battles with vigilantes. With vaunting ambition it planned to incorporate all workers, but in practice it attracted mostly the seasonal laborers of Western orchards and farms, logging camps, and mines. The story of the I.W.W. is part of the history of labor in the post frontier West, and many scenes of the drama are set in the Pacific Northwest.
Founded in 1905 by a heterogeneous group of radicals who hoped to put the conservative American Federation of Labor out of business, the I.W.W. soon became not the threatening rival of the A.F.L. its founders intended, but a small fraternity of itinerant rebels and hoboes. These workers were attracted to the I.W.W. because it supplied a home and a meaning for their aimless lives. Structurally, the I.W.W. appealed to them because it made no political demands upon them, because it charged low initial fees and dues, because it allowed seasonal workers to transfer from one constituent union to another without red tape or new fees. It appealed psychologically because it satisfied social needs and because it seemed to be an organization really their own, not something created for them by middle-class socialists, welfare workers, or the Salvation Army.
Whatever its practical accomplishments or its lasting effects upon the American labor movement, the I.W.W. is remembered for its "personality," something that has continued to captivate poets, novelists and journalists. Zealous, individualistic, and free from ordinary social constraints, Wobblies1 acted with humor or fanaticism, from idealistic motives or from malice, but always 1. The origin of this name for I.W.W. members is variously described. The most popular version attributes it to a Chinese restaurant owner in Alberta, Canada, who catered to an I.W.W. clientele and who responded to criticism by saying "Eye Likee Eye Wobbly Wobbly." Stewart Holbrook. "Wobbly Talk," American Mercury, VII (January, 1926), 62.
with a raggedy dash. They were activists official program was merely an over-s Marxism. They acted primarily out of battle to the "master class," and made ha out their program in subtle detail. Being their attitudes, theories, and practices d preached sabotage, or "direct action," i charged with destruction of property by they explained, with apparent sinceri meant nothing more criminal than s playing pranks on the boss. They pract and made the red I.W.W. membership to ride the freight trains. The national h this practice, explaining that the work organized voluntarily. They waxed ind of their treatment in jails but at the sam tional notions of justice to preach the tarian" morality. The I.W.W. probably revealed its char songs, for it was famed as a singing o song book-affectionately called the "lit through numerous editions, and the cu twenty-eighth.2 Almost everyone is fam Preacher and the Slave," composed by Joe Hill, convicted and executed for m Long haired preachers come out every Try to tell you what's wrong and what But when asked how 'bout something They will answer with voices so sweet Chorus You will eat, bye and bye, In that glorious land above the sky; Work and pray, live on hay, You'll get pie in the sky when you die. Ralph Chaplin, the I.W.W.'s most accomplished poet, wrote one song, "Solidarity," sung to the tune of "John Brown's Body," that is still sung at union meetings and on picket lines: When the Union's inspiration through the workers' blood shall run, There can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun. 2. I.W.W. Songs to Fan the Flames of Discontent (Chicago, I.W.W., 1945).
Yet what force on earth is weaker than the fee of one? But the union makes us strong! Chorus Solidarity forever! Solidarity forever! Solidarity forever! For the Union makes us strong. Wobblies sang many of their songs to the tunes of familiar hymns, a practice that undoubtedly contributed to their unsavory reputation. As hoboes they learned most of the popular hymns at street missions and from their contact with the Salvation Army. Indeed, as street corner evangelists in their own right they often had to outshout the competing Salvation Army. The song, "Dump the Bosses Off Your Back," they sung to the tune of "Take It to the Lord in Prayer." Are you poor, forlorn and hungry? Are there lots of things you lack? Is your life made up of misery? Then dump the bosses off your back. Another Wobbly "hymn" was sung to the tune of "Onward, Christian Soldiers." It expressed Wobblies' antimilitarism, and it made wry fun out of the presumed hypocrisy of church goers during the first World War: Onward, Christian soldiers, rip and tear and smitel Let the gentle Jesus bless your dynamite.
Many I.W.W. songs echoed a note of bitter humor. Wobblies felt cynical about "liberal" or "American" ideals because, as hoboes, they ran into these ideals as put in practice by jailers, deputy sheriffs, vigilantes, and angry burghers. T-Bone Slim, a popular Wobbly song writer and journalist, suggested this cynicism in a humorous song called "The Popular Wobbly," sung to the tune of "They Go Wild, Simply Wild Over Me!" I'm as mild manner'd man as can be And I've never done them harm that I can see, Still on me they put a ban and they throw me in the can. They go wild, simply wild over me. This organization of singing, footloose rebels did not spring into being overnight. It evolved out of the ambitious organization of 1905 through a process of schism and internal dissention.
In 1906 most of the sober and practical i the Socialist Party withdrew after the national convention ousted the presid "overalls brigade" of hoboes from the tured the national convention and bar his doctrinaire socialist followers. The the I.W.W.'s constitution to make it cle would thereafter have no truck with any ticians. At this convention in 1908 the W I.W.W. and began to impress their cu not merely tinker with the constitution slightly; they possessed the organizatio thing more and less than an ordinary lab The full meaning that the I.W.W. had best be seen in the I.W.W. halls.4 These w halls where meetings were held and re surrogate homes for wandering Wobbl tion depots, mess halls, free dormitories, The I.W.W. usually established them i of towns and cities, near the railroad saloons. On the windows Wobblies pas I.W.W. and perhaps the current issu papers. A visitor entering a hall would top desks, some chairs and spittoons, with fifty to a hundred books. Wobbli intellectuals who knew the books in t "wintered" in towns with good public lib also smell the ambiguous odor of a m the stove, see blanket rolls, or "bindles for beds, or hear some musical Wobb piano. The evolution of the I.W.W. into such a close fraternity of migratory workers made for a certain strength and cohesive 3. The evolution of the I.W.W. organization is treated in detail in the early and standard history of the body. Paul F. Brissenden, The I.W.W.: A Study of American Syndicalism ("Studies in History, Economics and Public Law," Vol. LXXXIII, No. 193, New York, Columbia University Press, 1919), 136. 4. Photographs or descriptions of I.W.W. halls appear in the I.W.W.'s press and literature: Lumber Workers' Bulletin, November 1, 1922, 2; In dustrial Worker, June 30, 1917, 1; International Socialist Review, XIII (Octo ber, 1912), 375; Ralph Chaplin, The Centralia Conspiracy (Chicago, I.W.W. Defense Committee, 1924), 24-26.
ness, but in the long run it was the undoing of After the first world war social changes in A character of migratory labor in general. The au logging camps, wheat ranches, orchards, and touch with towns and cities and made it po family men, "home guards," as the Wobblies ca up the jobs.5 Even in the truly migratory la began to be replaced by whole families trave The I.W.W. had become so self-consciously a stiffs" that it could not keep up with the times. The organization was also weakened in a less its unplanned exclusiveness. Though it pr Union" it became in practice a special little un between fact and ideal was a dilemma that t faced squarely. In America unions have always h practical benefits and collective bargaining to r but if Wobblies tried to make the I.W.W. "business" union, they stood accused of bein and disloyal to their ideals. If they continued t revolutionary "bindle stiffs" they only succeed I.W.W. smaller and more exclusive and the d Union" a chimera. For activists such as the W tion was not hard thinking but more action. If build the union or even bring the revolutio still be justified as education for the worki Thus, the I.W.W.'s almost legendary exploits w toms of its weakness, and its tactics were large its failure. An obvious example was its meth the "job delegate system." Any Wobbly could organizer while pursuing the irregular jobs of a They supplied themselves with membership c and literature and, like colporteurs, carried them on the job. The delegates recruited m dues, kept records and established an I.W wherever they happened to be working. The mize the effectiveness of the I.W.W., spreadi sistently into camps and work gangs remote fr organizing methods of unions and making t minority an almost ubiquitous irritant out of its size. 5. N. S. Hayner, "Taming the Lumber Jack," American Sociological Review, X (April, 1945).
I.W.W. tactics were guerilla tactics dict bership. Its strikes, with one or two exc and usually unsuccessful. Indeed, it f on ordinary union activities than on str the police, gun battles with vigilantes, before the I.W.W. had fallen into t migratory members and before it ha personality, Wobblies led a major strike mill workers in Portland. The strike Wobblies drifted away to other jobs a turned to work. But it was an unusual s least when compared to subsequent e closing down almost all mills in Portlan from violence. The Wobbly leaders e to shout "scabl" at non-striking work lowed, however, the I.W.W. figured in few of which had much to do with labor union. The I.W.W. made the most spectacul members in its famous "free speech fight Wobblies converged upon a tow street meetings. They deliberately streets, invited arrest, crowded eagerly these curious battles zestfully and wit explaining them as necessary defenses o Constitution to free speech. But in t tried to interpret them as important r of educating the workers in the grim r gle" and the folly of relying upon co musty pieces of parchment by slave-h the past." The I.W.W. established the pattern of free speech fighting as early as 1909 in Spokane, Washington.6 For the next decade Wobblies made them the most institutionalized tactic in their bag of tricks. Beginning in the summer of 1909 Wobblies pro tested a Spokane ordinance forbidding street meetings. Local employment agencies had lobbied for the law to quiet I.W.Wf 6. For the story of the Spokane free speech fight see the Portland Ore gonian, November 3, 1909, to December 2, 1909; the Spokane Spokesman Review, November 2, 1909, to March 10, 1910; and articles by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and Fred W. Heslewood in December, 1909, January, February, March, April, 1910, issues of the International Socialist Review.
attacks upon their alleged sharp practices. Lat the city council passed a special ordinance e vation Army from the restriction, and irate to make a major issue out of both laws by delib them. The Spokane I.W.W. sent calls to Wob as South Dakota, and by the scores they conver in empty freight cars. The mayor promptly mise: he would release all Wobblies already ja would agree to abide by the decision of a hig a test case over the ordinances. The Wobblies promise. The police then advised the I.W.W. ings off the street in a public park. Again the In October and November the police arrest Wobblies, putting many in the city jail and t unused school building. Wobblies proved unc ers. They refused to work or cut their own fir punished with a bread and water diet, they strike and "built battleships," making deafen jail and school. The I.W.W. also brought dam the city and many individual officials to the su 000. Wobblies, of course, took the fight to the a bewildering number of flanks, on the streets, literature, on the job, in jail, even in the co police responded with brutality toward the pri many Spokane citizens to the side of the W zens did not appreciate so many free boarder taxes. In the spring of 1910 the city officials surrendered. The I.W.W. had threatened to resume full scale invasions after the brief winter's lull, and the officials agreed to drop all charges against Wobblies, release all those still in jail, and permit unre stricted street speaking. All they asked in return from the I.W.W. was the dropping of the many damage suits against the city. Thus the I.W.W. won an intoxicating victory at the cost of much suffering and three deaths from starvation, chilling, and the brutality of guards, a victory in a somewhat unnecessary struggle that neither built up its union nor appreciably hastened the revolution. After the victory at Spokane a cocky I.W.W. began to use the free speech fight everywhere, but never with such unequivocal success, cities and towns learned from experience and began to
prepare themselves better for Wobbly in ing up Wobblies-precisely what the organized small armies of vigilantes o Wobblies out. In Aberdeen, Washingto fight lasted only a few days because saloons, patrolled the streets and outl deported all suspicious transients. But the I.W.W. was still nominally a small membership and its predilectio tation. Whenever circumstances seem called strikes for higher wages, bette cessation of discrimination against W wildcat strikes it is often difficult to of the I.W.W. Certainly Wobblies inte ary agitation and working class "educa efforts to improve immediate working the strikes often resembled free speech riots in their hullabaloo and propagand violent and usually short and unsuccessf In 1912 Wobblies assumed leadership workers in Aberdeen and Hoquiam. Th as a means of getting back into Aberdee been deported and barred only a few talion of deputized businessmen revived back to their jobs, and the Wobblies few days of demonstrations and riots. The I.W.W. led similar minor strik Portland, Oregon City, Marshfield, and ton and Oregon. Typical of them all was construction workers on a grade out December, 1912. Wobblies dropped th a body back to Eugene. Other Wobbli every morning and evening to meet t railroad yards and returned. Amid scene to persuade non-striking workers to j nings they paraded on lower Willamette of Eugene, carrying placards and sing restaurant on the street because it supp eggs to pelt the Wobbly marchers. The to jail for assaulting a back-sliding Wob work. From the jail he argued the caus
ing lightly his assault charge. The man assault been a low creature and "scab," and such perso minded," merely "walking around to save fune The I.W.W. built its reputation upon actions than free speech fights or sudden strikes. Indeed continual harrassment of the "master class," an could concentrate sufficient members or when unusually strong opposition did a strike or fr ensue. Seattle, Spokane, and Portland, for exam almost continual "I.W.W. troubles" for a decade experiencing few major disturbances. During a Po in Seattle in 1914 Wobblies tussled with sailors an were on leave to help celebrate the city's holi men took exception to some anti-militarist Wobbly street orator. They protested; the aud the melee that followed several servicemen suffe wounds. The following night soldiers and sailo in force to mix vengeance with celebration. T the I.W.W. and Socialist Party halls to the app ment of police and spectators and roamed the str Wobblies. They entered and almost wrecked a stre they took for some kind of a radical headquart one sailor stopped the vandalage when he d reading, "God is Love," and waving it aloft, he we're in the wrong placel"8 The Potlatch riots supplied Wobbly orators wi many later street meetings. The I.W.W. and th cooperated in sending a special agent to Wash for indemnities from the federal government eventually received $1,600 for the damage don and soldiers. The money hardly assuaged Wobb more than a week the I.W.W. conducted noisy demonstrations on the down town streets and th a full dress free speech fight when disgusted merchants secured a court injunction forbiddin After a few arrests for contempt of court, the c subsided. Routine I.W.W. agitation in Portland never reached the dra matic pitch of a free speech fight, but did lead to a series of 7. Eugene Guard, December 13, 1912, 8. 8. Seattle Post-Intelligencer, July 19, 1913, 1, 2.
skirmishes ending in arrests, demonstration tion by the city council, and more than a f Veterans of the Spanish-American War early Wobblies because Wobblies liked to use public park as a speakers' platform. Whe needed to cope with the "radical menace War veterans were eager to volunteer. During the winter of 1913 Wobblies there were easier ways of finding food than or singing for their supper in street mis tered restaurants in small groups of two or meals, then casually notified the managem not pay the check. Placidly picking their te the police. At one restaurant the Wobblies the mayor would pay for the meals. As the into the police wagon before a crowd of the manager solemnly explained that he intention of paying. During the same w organizations of the unemployed that form land. In Oregon a band of one hundred m lamette Valley seeking jobs. This "Idle papers termed it-accepted food and shelte nervous civic organizations, sang songs and and then moved on to the next town. With without any violent episodes, the Army then broke apart.9 At Everett, Washington, in 1916, the I.W bitter harvest from its decade of sowing re by their fearsome reputation, Wobblies d to speak on the downtown streets, their ing with each arrest and beating they suf Snohomish County deputies. The strugg climax at the city dock with a gun battle half a dozen men and wounded many conflict in Everett repeated the pattern speech fights, its crescendo of violence, i timing, marked it as a culmination to W before the first World War. It summed up history all I.W.W. forensics under the gas l towns, all of its picaresque militancy, all 9. Eugene Register, January 20, 1914, 1, 4.
and also all of the ugly, self-righteous brutality burghers.10 The I.W.W. did not introduce class conflict into Everett. The somewhat feudal organization of the community perhaps made it inevitable, and the Shingle Weavers' Union, a militant A.F.L. union, had already aroused the passions of both the workers and the local aristocracy. Everett, a port city on Puget Sound about thirty miles north of Seattle, boasted a population of 35,000 in 1916, and its life depended almost completely upon its lumber and shingle mills. Lumbermen controlled most of the economic resources of the city, its stores, banks, and real estate; and lumbermen, of course, comprised the local aristocracy. When the Shingle Weavers called a strike in the spring of 1916 to force the Everett shingle mill owners to raise wages, the town rapidly became an armed camp. Wobblies appeared in Everett in August, 1916, as the Shingle Weavers' strike entered its last bitter stages of defeat. Everett businessmen, angry at the Shingle Weavers and hostile toward the I.W.W. on principle, accused the defeated A.F.L. union of inviting the I.W.W. into Everett for revenge. But Wobblies had needed no formal invitation. Everett had appeared to them as an ideal place to angle for new members and to churn up more "educative" class conflicts. Individual Wobblies were easily sent packing by the sheriff, but they returned in greater numbers. In August the I.W.W. sponsored a speech by one of its major national organizers, James Thompson. Since they were unable to rent a hall for the affair they held it on the street at the corner of Hewitt and Wetmore. A major riot broke out as fifteen policemen broke through the crowd and began to arrest speakers and spectators. When Thompson was pulled down from the soap box, other Wobblies and sympathizers stepped up to carry on the meeting. One excited woman rushed to the soap box and began to recite the Declaration of Independence, and she was quickly pulled down. Exasperated by the flow of eager replacements, the police formed a cordon by holding hands and thus captured all the 10. The Seattle Union Record, June 3, 1916, to April 21, 1917, and the I.W.W. booklet, Walker C. Smith, The Everett Massacre (Chicago, I.W.W., n.d.), give the most detailed accounts of the Everett conflict. W. V. Woehlke, "The I.W.W. and the Golden Rule," Sunset, XXXVIII (February, 1917), gives much the same facts but from a different bias.
suspected Wobblies near the speakers' st the prisoners through the streets to Wobbly, James Rowan, managed to sl parade and rush back to the corner. H before anyone noticed he had escaped In spite of rising tempers on both side became dormant. The I.W.W. prematu on an easy victory. "Everett Fight an announced. Subsequent I.W.W. histor the lull with less self-congratulation. had come to Everett to investigate the and the Everett authorities and busine best behavior. During the respite, how the Everett Commercial Club joined f formidable army of deputies to guard and to patrol the railroad yards and t When the mediator had left the con greater violence. Citizens in Everett sides. The force of deputies, of course, d and as in all previous free speech f considerable body of public support. O by a deputy during one of the riots telephoned the chief of police to lodge chief of police refused to accept respon that the Cominercial Club and the sh had taken over the town. Some merch display signs in their windows notifying that they did not belong to the Comm and other respectable citizens organize to question the sheriff and extract a easy. On October 30 the I.W.W. made a major effort to break the blockade. Forty-one Wobblies, just off the harvest fields of the Pacific Northwest, tried to get into Everett by taking a regular passenger boat from Seattle. Deputies with identifying white handkerchiefs around their necks met the boat at the Everett city dock, sifted the forty-one Wobblies from among the other passengers, and then, over the horrified protests of the passengers, began to beat them murderously with revolver butts and clubs. In the excitement they clouted many innocent passengers and even laid upon some of their own men. The deputies then
loaded their battered prisoners into trucks and drove them through the gathering dusk to Bev wooded area on the road to Seattle. There the into two lines and forced the Wobblies, one b gauntlet. In a cold, penetrating rain they again with revolver butts and clubs and fired after th through the lines to try to escape. Everett seethed with excitement and indignati morning. Clergymen and other citizens major town meeting, and one clergyman the I.W.W. to take part in the meeting. urging and indeed promptly took charge decided to hold the mass meeting in the met wen The of t Ever Sunday, November 5. They notified all I.W.W. b circulars for distribution in Everett, and eve reporters to accompany them to Everett. Th Commercial Club also made preparations. At Commercial Club the assembled deputies wer were regaled with speeches on the sanctity o and the "I.W.W. menace," and were told to r for instructions when they heard the mill whi The Seattle I.W.W. decided to make the journ boat. On Sunday, November 5, three hundred paraded through the streets of Seattle to the w they boarded a regular passenger boat, the Ver of them had to wait a half an hour for the nex the Calista. At one o'clock in the afternoon the Everett summoned the deputies to the Comm heard that angry Wobblies were on their w Beverly Park beatings, so they fortified thems and marched to the city dock to wait for the V of other citizens also trooped to the water fr Wobblies' arrival. Roped away from the dock, th points on other docks and on the hill overlooki As the Verona neared the dock, the Wobbl deck, singing their rebel songs and cheering fo the docks and on the hill. The bowline had before the sheriff, standing on the dock, raise the uproar. "Who is your leader?" he shouted. "We're all leaders!" the Wobblies chorused.
"You can't land herel" "The hell we can't!" the Wobblies shou around the gangplank. A shot punctuated the tense momen volleys crackled through the air. Wobblies and others rushed in panic toward the she threatening to capsize it. Some quick th into the cabin and forced the engineer the Verona away from the dock. The bo Verona churned back into the harbor melancholy return to Seattle the defeat Calista and warned their comrades not to p The I.W.W. counted five dead and claim also died, unidentified and unmissed hob the harbor when shot. Rumors circulate that bodies had been washed up on the counted two dead and many other depu The I.W.W. insisted steadfastly that th of the killing, even of their own two vi only charged the Wobblies with the mu deputies, and it was generally assumed tha been killed by his own comrades in t excitement. Seventy-four Wobblies were selected by the Seattle police and a Pinkerton private detective as the most guilty and charged with murder. The first of the defendants came to trial in Seattle in March, 1917, and two months later was acquitted. The state then reluctantly released the other seventy-three prisoners. During the trial of the first defendant, Thomas Tracy, the state had little hard evidence of murder but did spend much time and public money to blacken the I.W.W. as an organization. They presented I.W.W. literature and propaganda as evidence of the depravity of the organization, examined witnesses who claimed Everett had witnessed an amazing increase in the number of suspected cases of arson during the I.W.W. troubles, and examined other witnesses who pictured I.W.W. street speakers as rioters and exhorters to violence. Only a few witnesses boldly identified Tracy as the Wobbly who had fired the first shot. The defense attorneys put a brighter interpretation on the motives of the I.W.W. and examined witnesses to refute all the charges and innuendoes of the prosecution. The defense also
moved more positively to attack the Everett Commer the sheriff, and even the prosecution at the trial. On lawyer tried to interrogate one of the prosecuting at asking him whether he had been retained by the state o Everett mill owners. The court, however, sustained an to those questions. The defense easily and conclusivel the case against Tracy. The lawyers demonstrated durin and a visit to the Everett city dock that, given the p the witnesses and the established position of the Ver witnesses could not have seen Tracy in the cabin wind a revolver. Reports of the trial soon found their way into the middle pages of the newspapers, even the papers of the Pacific North west. Despite Wobblies' regular "mass meetings" in Seattle and Everett, despite the efforts of a conscientious defense committee, the long trial remained an anti-climax to the few wild moments on the Everett city dock. As the defense and prosecution delineated their respective villains for the jury, the ruthless, aggressive business tycoon with the cigar in his mouth and the dollar signs on his vest and the furtive, cruel bomb thrower with beard and dirty hands, public attention wandered. But later, after it had assimilated the shock of the war with Germany and committed itself with crusading zeal to America's war effort, the public returned to the Wobbly portrait drawn by the prosecution in the Tracy trial and by other like-minded artists. The Everett conflict thus summed up a decade of I.W.W. agitation and helped to fix the image of the Wobbly as an internal enemy inside an embattled American society. After a decade of dogged agitation that had never more than exasperated the "master class," the I.W.W. suddenly acquired unusual power, finding itself leading a major strike in 1917 that paralyzed the lumber industry of the Pacific Northwest and that brought the United States government hurrying anxiously to the scene. Unfortunately for the I.W.W., however, the new power coincided with the nation's entry into the first World War, and the fears and enthusiasms of the war stimulated vigilantes, local governments, and the federal government to check the brief offensive in the Pacific Northwest woods and then to smash the I.W.W. throughout the country. Wobblies' propaganda and agitation alone did not bring the strike, but as the liberals of the period tried to explain to the
intemperate public, I.W.W. provocati ditions had brought the trouble. Co industry were sufficiently bad to hav even if the I.XW.W. had not been on han them.11 Part of the trouble stemmed fr of employers. Most of them espoused philosophy and were adamant against forms of trade unionism. Many employ from the bottom rungs of the economic shared more of a common culture with they or the workers recognized. But the proved a difficult barrier to understa might himself at one time have worke a mill or with a crew in the woods, an the same language" as his workers, he hard struggle for success, making universal rules of the game. As one e have lived in the woods, worked in th the ground, eaten rough fare, blistered m hours a day-and worked out of it into should any husky man make such a 'h ditions?"12 A few employers accepted so welfare of workers in their camps colleagues of an impending storm of l to call upon the Y.M.C.A. to improve that a Y.M.C.A. secretary fully suppl boxing gloves could have salvaged mor camps. Even those employers recognizin did not believe that labor unions and col be the best means of improving condi out the whole industry. Efforts by work by organizing were impertinent tamper factors upsetting a sacrosanct "free mar 11. For the background and story of the 191 The I.W.W. in the Lumber Industry (Seattle, Union No. 500, I.W.W., n.d.) ; Rexford G. Woods," Survey, XLIX (July 3, 1920), 473; Re tion Commission (Washington, D. C, 1918) ; t 15, 1917, to February 28, 1918; the Industrial W ber 13, 1917. 12. Requoted from Elsie Eaton Newton, "Th Survey, XXXVIII (September 15, 1917), 522.
Though strikers in 1917 came to emphasize th the eight hour day, working conditions in gener duced the most durable source of dissatisfaction. tions, of course, had to move to their source of sup Douglas fir forests of western Washington and Ore pine wildernesses of Idaho and Montana. In a United States where town life was only a generat moved from the frontier, the life in isolated loggin primitive indeed. The typical camp lay at the end spur or dirt road leading down through desolate to a small town in the valley. In Idaho or Mont might not even boast a road or railroad conne civilization but rely instead upon a wild mountain which logs floated and up which the camp's sup half-dozen or more rough shacks served as bunk crews. Outside the huddled ring of shacks stood office, the company store, the "cookie" shack; with and the garbage cans, swarming with flies, close dozen men-oftentimes more-slept in each bunk congestion. Loggers worked hard in all kinds of oftentimes returned to camp wet, cold, and dirty. the camps in 1917 had no facilities for bathing o or even drying clothes, and the men ate a leaden su starches and grease while sitting in wet clothes. they might gather in the yard in sullen groups to ness to drift up from the valley before squeezing i houses. Inside these shacks, as one investigator note steamy odors . . . would asphyxiate the uninitiat might talk of binges, prostitutes, the foreman, Wobbly "job delegate" in their midst. 13 The origins of the 1917 strike support the liberals "conditions"-not the I.W.W. alone-set off the labor troubles. Though a newly reorganized I.W. Lumber Workers' Industrial Union No. 500, calle July 1, 1917, the actual mass walk-outs began at lea before the date set by the I.W.W. The epidemic middle of June near Sand Point, Idaho. There, se loggers, unaffiliated with the I.W.W. or any other off their jobs in a "sort of instinctive protest" ove 13. Tugwell, op. cit., 473.
tions. This sudden strike, like a spark to a set off similar protests all over the Pacific blies quickly scuttled their plans for a st a new strike call for June 20, and began of the runaway strike. Because Wobbly quently the natural leaders in the camps an or worse, the I.W.W. was the only instr strikers accepted its proferred leadership. Within two weeks the strikers had close operations east of the Cascade Range. Picke and either persuaded or intimidated tho luctant to join the strike. Employers cl remote camps to avoid trouble or becau disappeared. But it was not till the mid I.W.W. showed any interest in extending t Sound area, where most of the important l Wobblies even remained aloof as a new A national Union of Timber Workers, plan lumber mills of Washington. They susp to discredit the I.W.W. or to lure it out pitious time. On July 9 Wobblies passed th mill workers: "Don't fall for the bunk." the situation and noted the real enthusiasm mill workers, they quickly revised their days before the A.F.L. strike was to begin, and camps of western Washington pass "The strike's on." As co-belligerents if n unions, I.W.W. and A.F.L., closed down logging and milling operations in western Oregon, at that time a secondary lumbe fered only briefly from the strike. Probab even profited from the strike, for they in larger Washington companies could no l made the gesture of extending its strike in and Wobbly strikers did hamper logging o along the Columbia River and for about of the mills in Portland and Astoria. John General Executive Board visited Portland after studying conditions, advised Portla to work.
However surprised and pleased Wobblies may their graduation from soap box agitation, they w to feel the pride of power for long. As the lu creaked to a dead stop, state and local authorities government acted, making patriotic appeals to th ing to make the operators concede the eight launching a firm campaign against the I.W.W. the state governors was not purely patriotic. course, urgently needed lumber for the war effo Sitka spruce for airplanes, and the governors g operators to see lucrative government contract "Southern Pine" lumber region. Governor Ernest Lister of Washington embar icy of supporting the legitimate demands of the forcibly suppressing the I.W.W. He publicly expr thy with the demand for the eight hour day and ers to grant it. He even defended the I.W.W. the more hysterical charges hurled at it. Only te Wobblies, he stated at a Methodist conference hopelessly "bad men," and the unrest of the lu was not their creation. The State Council of Defen to the governor, also tried to take a moderate po ing talks between the A.F.L. strikers and the Henry Suzzallo, President of the University of chairman of the council, tried as best he could dispute and for his trouble won the enmity of in ington lumbermen who wanted no semblance given the strikers. The I.W.W., considered an ization, did not share in the futile negotiation Governor Lister set out to check the I.W.W. embarked on his more constructive policy. Early proposed a state-wide organization of vigilant League" with branches in every county. He eve names of prominent men in each county to lea inary organization of the league. With federal officials he cooperated in arresting Wobblies b many towns police and soldiers stopped men search for incriminating "red cards." They ev checks of regularly scheduled passenger trains in Military Police during war looking for soldiers National Guard troops stationed in Washington
eral offensive with a raid upon the I.W.W The military held thirty prisoners incom investigators questioned them for po Espionage Act or for simple draft evas July the police and military had arrested in North Yakima alone. Stockades were th Wenatchee, Cle Elum, Ellensburg, and questioned the legality of their arrests, a pose some practical problems in admin often refused to pay the expenses; the cil of Defense disclaimed financial resp authorities had no funds for that purpo complained that they had to pay from their "illegal" imprisonment. But in th themselves in well-habituated roles. Th ships," went on hunger strikes, refused to gusto they had displayed in free speech f grim. Many days they lolled in the sun gation ditches. The authorities of other states affected the initiative of Governor Lister. In f regional; the governors of Washington, and planned their strategies in confer Alexander of Idaho toured his state, ma the striker, and cooperated with federal Wobblies and putting them in stock familiar and almost institutionalized fea Idaho. Governor James Withycombe o vigorously though he had less trouble Adjutant-General, with the governor's san battalion of Spanish-American War vete insurrection. But the battalion, poised for little to do during the strike. The region-wide efforts to suppress t on August 19 with the declaration of m the closing there of the I.W.W. hall, an seven Wobbly leaders. The action came ing ultimatum published by the Spokan on August 14. Rowan, its author, deman lease of all "class war" prisoners and ca all industries" to force compliance. The
bravado; the bludgeoned I.W.W. was strained to strike going let alone extend it to other indus mand aroused considerable anxiety. Authoriti selves for the shock, and in such an atmospher of martial law seemed a necessary precaution. The I.W.W. carried out its threat, but the " fell flat. Hardly any construction or agricultura the call. Martial law in Spokane, however, cont the obvious failure of the general strike. Gu Major Clement Wilkins patrolled the streets a tary orders silencing the Wobblies. Wilkins, how the Volunteers of America to use the streets, meeting in which the superintendent of the V trial Department" was preaching to sullen Wo a bitter Wobbly jabbing a knife into the tires of Stopping in the middle of a hymn the angry charged after the Wobbly and captured him hundred and fifty Wobblies converged upon their comrade before the soldiers arrived on the In September Wobblies returned to work, a their formal strike. Explaining that they were " to the job," they continued to harry their empl strict lumber production. Camp-hardened "bin to act on the job like inexperienced farm boy following foremen's orders to ludicrous, work-s or standing idle when minor decisions of th quired. All Wobblies acted as if the eight-hour been won. They quit work every day after their elapsed. Exasperated foremen and employers blies for continually quitting early. Unconcerned Wobblies moved to other jobs and repeated I.W.W. claimed many advantages for these tac of course, could no longer arrest strikers and every worker had ostensibly returned to wor longer had to think of ways of dealing with "sc the strikers "worked." The I.W.W. also rid its responsibility because "much against their wi were forced to run the commissary departme Considering the temperament of the typical tactics must have been more psychologically relative impunity Wobblies could attack the "
personal and concrete way. They could in the person of the foreman-grow apopl Besides using soldiers to arrest Wobbli ment tried to take constructive steps to e lumber production. The President's Med War Labor Board, and other mediators r government tried futilely to negotiate an the federal mediators always encounter the absence of any representative labor ployers might be persuaded to negotiate a shop" individualism of most operators wh between the A.F.L. and the I.W.W. "Th vacuum created by the operators," the Commission commented. In the absence of any labor union wit would negotiate, the government agents s least for the period of the crisis. The res a curious patriotic, "Company" union n of Loggers and Lumbermen, or simply invention of a few prominent lumberm Disque, an army officer sent to the Pa Spruce Production Division of the W faced the opposition of the A.F.L. and picions of die-hard employers, and sent h the logging camps to organize the new end of the war he had restored lumber of the tension in the industry, had establ and made an advance in improving some tions. The Loyal Legion was established after the armistice and persisted in at l into the 1930s and the period of the W Act. It took a strong-willed worker-perhap to another industrial job-to resist the bla organizers. Despite opposition from the almost every worker and employer in t Loyal Legion during the war. The I.W.W confined eventually to a futile journalis 14. B. P. Disque, "How We Found a Cure fo Industry of the Pacific Northwest," System, 379-384.
organization. Because it specifically forbade strik tion met with Wobblies' contempt. Even though circumstances to join it, Wobblies sneeringly said Legion left the workers only a "gift of gab" weapon. Perhaps a feeling of historic injustic I.W.W.'s attitude as well. The public heaped p Disque for bringing the eight-hour day and fo logging camps, and Wobblies liked to consider agents of these reforms. News of the 1917 lumber strike and rumors tage and subversion corroborated a general imp I.W.W. was a sinister internal enemy in Amer cause the war made such "internal enemies" espec and because the lumber strike had unveiled an ful enemy, the American people through thei governments, through their federal government without benefit of any law, launched a concer assault upon the organization. Economic inter standing grudges against the I.W.W. often of the general patriotic fervor. Though often quently over-severe even when legal, the assault was not completely unintelligible. The I.W.W. war on idealistic and doctrinaire grounds and ties above patriotic loyalties. Many Wobblies wer and some, like the members in Rockford, Illi public demonstrations against conscription. But i blies tended to ignore the war rather than oppos certed manner. Organized anti-militarist action p too much of political action, something Wob to political action groups like the Socialist Party. Though the I.W.W. as an organization tried war rather than organize against it, the Ame sidered Wobblies the arch-enemies among radical ing them for their past deeds and suspecting them with the Kaiser himself. The United States Departm however, could never verify a persistent rumor received substantial financial aid from the Germ The popular association of radicalism with Ge quite as egregiously ridiculous as it might seem The international socialist movement was dom German Social Democratic Party; socialism in i
tific" form had been brought to Americ Milwaukee, Wisconsin, an enclave of s predominately German community. S charged that Bismarck had fostered t movement as a means of preparing th quest. As the most militant and anno radical movemnent, the I.W.W. becam war-time, patriotic attack upon all radic The federal government led the legal a under the new 1917 Espionage Act, t masse in Chicago, Wichita, and Sacr scores to five or ten years in the penite arrested hundreds of other Wobblies not readily be made for espionage or effort. These Wobblies sat in jail for m while federal investigators questioned th of other laws. Alien Wobblies could s hearings, and other Wobblies might b Many alien Wobblies waited in jail for ings before Immigration Commissioners, Labor deliberated on a final disposi Everett, Washington, some Wobblies l ish County jail for almost two years, spending money and wearing their clo bly was eventually taken to Ellis Isla land, his motherland that he had not se He landed in England in rags, penniless, if the Wobbly were innocent of Espiona draft papers were in order, and if he w be passed down to local authorities an meanor charge. Many states passed special "criminal specifically at the I.W.W., making the a by force, violence, or destruction of 15. The legal assault upon radical dissent dur after has been treated voluminously in many documents. For the best summary see Zechari (New York, 1928). 16. Elbridge Foster Dowell, A History of Cri in the United States (Baltimore, 1939) ; also H Syndicalism Laws and the Suppression of Ra Authorities," unpublished Master's thesis, De versity of Oregon, 1933.
Washington, Oregon, and particularly Californi suffered many trials and convictions under these l Spokane, passed a special Criminal Syndicalism o gave police courts a special weapon to use aga defendants. Actually, the federal government and the states a Wobblies than they prosecuted and prosecuted m they succeeded in convicting. But the wholesal imprisonments disorganized the I.W.W. almost as e if every arrest had ended in a conviction. The I with some of its old dash and bravado during th in court. In the Chicago trial for violations of Act many of the defendants, with the permission o saw Mountain Landis, stretched out on the cour napped. In the Sacramento trial the Wobbly defe complete disdain for the court by conducting a "sil refusing to retain counsel and making no effort to selves. Some Wobblies, passed down from feder municipal courts, acted as though they resented of their "martyrdoms." In Portland, one Wobbly f to harangue the court, proclaiming himself a "m country," and shouting, "To hell with the United can't use that kind of language here," the judge passed sentence.17 The American public did not always express itself courts. The I.W.W. suffered many vigilante assau war. Frank Little, a prominent organizer for th lynched in Butte, Montana. In Arizona, vigila twelve hundred suspected Wobblies near Bisbee into box cars, and deported them without food or desert. In Tulsa, Oklahoma, a mob calling itself t Liberty" took seventeen Wobblies from police c whipped and tarred-and-feathered them "in th women and children of Belgium." In Seattle a group named the "Minute Men" raided and demolished shop where the I.W.W. newspaper was printed. I Oregon, vigilantes plucked a foolhardy Wobbly from the streets and took him out of town to terr threats of lynching. In Aberdeen, Washington, a 17. Portland Oregonian, August 8, 1917, 7.
several Wobblies, took them out of town, an No region in the United States escaped at extra-legal assaults upon Wobblies, and th such assaults can probably never be made.18 The Centralia Armistice Day riot of 1 "close-up" in a motion picture of some con revealed in agonized detail the desperat I.W.W. and all the ugly passions of incensed epitomized in one local instance the nation-w the public and the "reds," and it also climax of the I.W.W. in the Pacific Northwest. I fury from which neither the I.W.W. n further.19 The I.W.W. opened its first hall in Centralia during the height of the war fever. Viewed as little better than German spies, the I.W.W. insulted the patriotic sensibilities of many Centralians and seemed to threaten the economic interests of others. During a Red Cross parade in 1918 the marchers rushed into the hall, smashed the doors and windows, dumped the furniture in the street, and man-handled the few Wobblies they captured inside. The raiders lifted the Wobblies by their ears into trucks and drove them out of town to beat them and warn them not to return. For the next year some Centralians remained vigilant even though they had expelled the Wobblies and demolished their hall. A blind newspaper vendor who sold the I.W.W. newspaper along with his more respectable wares was picked off the street, driven out of town, and dumped in a ditch with the warning not to return. Businessmen in June, 1919, met at the Chamber of Commerce to listen to speeches on the "red menace" and to form a Citizens' Protective League. When the I.W.W. returned to town, renting a hall in the Roderick Hotel building on Tower Avenue, the Citizens' Protective League called a meeting to 18. See the many pamphlets published by the old National Civil Liberties Bureau (later renamed the American Civil Liberties Union), particularly the resume' published in 1919, War-Time Prosecutions and Mob Violence. 19. For the story of the Centralia affair from three "sides" see: Ralph Chaplin, The Centralia Conspiracy (Chicago, I.W.W. Defense Committee, 1924) ; Ben Hur Lampman, Centralia?Tragedy and Trial (Tacoma and Centralia, American Legion Posts, n.d.) ; The Centralia Case (New York, Department of Research and Education, Federal Council of Churches, et al., 1930). The Portland Oregonian carried an excellent and detailed day by day account of the trial in early 1920.
discuss ways of coping with the new "I.W.W. pr businessmen reviewed the Red Cross parade of the p and called upon the chief of police for expert advic however, disappointed them by stating that the right to remain in town and that he could do nothi it. The commander of the local American Legion gested, perhaps to revive dashed spirits, that no jur convict men for raiding the hall once again. At this the meeting the Citizens' Protective League appoi secret committee to formulate tactics, later defend by citing the conspiratorial organization of the I.W On November 7, 1919, the planning committee American Legion post made public the scheduled forth-coming Armistice Day parade. The parade w I.W.W. hall twice, once on its way up Tower Stree its way back into town. Wobblies saw in this pr prima facie evidence of another planned raid upo and they immediately publicized their suspicions addressed to the people of Centralia. They also v Smith, a young Centralia lawyer, to get legal ad advised them that they had a legal right to defe and property against attack. Mrs. J. C. McAllister the proprietor of the Roderick Hotel in which t rented space, called upon the chief of police to defend her property. The chief told her that the po guarantee protection if the Legionnaires really inte the hall in force. The Armistice Day parade began about two o afternoon with Centralia Legionnaires in the fi Other Legionnaires from neighboring towns brough The parade swung up Tower Street past the I.W block beyond, at Third Street, the marchers tur march back down Tower Street to the center of tow the turn, however, the platoons became bedrag Centralia Legionnaires at the head of the para Second Street to allow the marchers behind to c dress up their ranks. The maneuver placed most of Legionnaires directly opposite the I.W.W. hall n section. As the parade prepared to move off again the Centralia platoon broke ranks and dashed fo the hall. Almost as one man the rest of the Cen
naires followed. They kicked in the door, s and pushed eagerly to get into the hall. flew open, expectant Wobblies stationed the street in another building, and on the a few hundred yards away opened fire wit Arthur McElfresh, one of the first Leg dropped across the threshold with a bu Warren Grimm, the new commander of post and the leader of the parade, doub the street as a fatal bullet pierced his stom stumbled onto the pavement, fatally w Legionnaires dropped out of the mob wit Reviving quickly from their initial shoc naires broke into the hall and dragged o Wobbly, however, escaped through a back the streets toward the Skookumchuck Rive the river bank by his pursuers but only af young Legionnaire. The mob dragged Everest, back into town, venting some kicking his teeth out and beating him with That evening a small group of men took cell and drove him to a railroad trestle ove There they hanged him and riddled his dan bullets. I.W.W. literature subsequently claim the lynchers had emasculated Everest wi the drive from the jail to the river. All western Washington fermented with r combed the countryside hunting for W towns the police raided and closed th Wobblies implicated in the Armistice Day s lived in terror in the Centralia jail. For n mobs gathered outside, shouting, cursing and rifles through the barred windows. T belatedly, retrieved the sodden corpse of W foot-long neck and placed it in the jail in f prisoners. The law enforcement machinery of the state geared itself to suppress the now vividly recognized "red menace." Attorney General Thompson advised the county prosecutors to rush I.W.W. cases under the Washington Criminal Syndicalism law through the courts, to try defendants en masse to save taxpayers'
money and to insure more convictions and to k on jury panels to see that only "courageous and p would be chosen. The press reflected the shock and rage that swe state, and no newspaper made much of an effo riot at all objectively. The Seattle Union Recor the Seattle Central Labor Council, printed the opinion, a statement that there might be two sid and that fair-minded readtrs should wait for mo editorial position it suffered a raid by federa search of evidence of sedition. The first real evid that two interpretations of the riot were possibl coroner's inquest over the death of the Legionn Bickford, one of the Armistice Day marchers, tes Legionnaires had charged the hall before th opened fire. Another marcher corroborated t Several days later Legionnaires in Centralia forcib dutiful Associated Press correspondent who h news of the inquest and Dr. Bickford's testimony. The state decided to tr) the Wobbly prisoners crime of murdering Warreni 0. Grimm, and afte had subsided, a grand jury indicted eleven Wo after the trial the I.W.W. complained bitterly th private interests had used all possible means, f insure convictions. For example, the prosecutio first judge appointed to hear the case because o neutrality. This was accomplished, according to t retaining as one of the prosecutors a brother o then petitioning the governor for a new judge. T Judge George Abel, had granted the I.W.W. a to Montesano and was on the point of granti Olympia or Tacoma when the governor appoint M. Wilson of Olympia to replace him. Judge W denied the plea for a second change of venue. The trial opened in a tense and expectant atm naires in uniform crowded the streets of Mon I.W.W. identified other Legion partisans-"pool ro -by their cast-off army clothing. All during the Legionnaires sat grimly in the court room, and t improvised a mess hall in the basement of the cit to their needs. The Legion also paid its membe
day to stay in Montesano and appear in day. The Legion admitted its intentions jurors, as the indignant I.W.W. charged spectators who might themselves have inte jury. Late in February the Legionnaires States soldiers who bivouaced on the c prosecution had asked for these troops w court, explaining that the jurors needed to I.W.W. raid on the town. George Vander attorney, could not get Judge Wilson to or The defendants tried to present eviden plea of self defense and justifiable homi effectively frustrated these efforts wit the bench. All evidence of a plot in I.W.W. and all evidence that the Leg attacked the hall before being fired u order because it did not clearly implica the particular Legionnaire for whose were being tried. Finally, in his charg Wilson made a verdict of guilty mandatory the I.W.W. could not plead self defense the aggression of the American Legion. being stationed in a hotel across the street Seminary Hill several hundred yards aw facts, Judge Wilson reasoned, they could fending their lives and property when their property. Wilson sentenced seven def to forty years in prison for second degree had been released during the trial, two w was adjudged insane. For the next decade Wobblies, radicals, futilely for amnesty for the seven prisone tentiary. By 1930 church groups joined amnesty, and as the movement became mo the anti-radical feeling of the war perio prisoners were released. One, Ray Becker sisted upon complete vindication, studyin pare his own pleas for writs of habeas finally released, almost against his will, by commuting his sentence to eighteen years
The riot had come as a kind of crisis in the fev hysteria, and by the time the prisoners were rel fever was a distant memory. The I.W.W. for whi fered their "martyrdoms" was little more than If they reflected at all on their careers they pro the savagery and fury on the streets of Centr the life of the I.W.W. as much as it had sudde course of their own private lives. When the hobo faction captured the I.W.W. national convention it saddled the organization w problem. The individualistic and contentious w never decide whether the I.W.W. was to be a f union or a revolutionary cadre leading the wor revolution. Most Wobblies, however, never recog goals, revolution and unionism, as contradictory. busy with their hell-raising to notice that they much of a permanent union nor even advancin appreciably. Only once in the Pacific Northwest, lumber strike, did the revolutionary I.W.W. al fective labor union; and this success, cited thereaf as a vindication of their program, proved flee accidental. The very effectiveness of the strike, while the United States girded for war, stim patriotic and pseudo-patriotic attack upon the from which the organization never recovered. Th stop to the Wobbly activism that had previously actual weakness and confusion of the I.W.W. T a turning point. The persecution then weaken directly by putting many Wobblies in jail or in h indirectly by changing their tempers. It mad cautious and less bumptious, more doctrinaire an than they had been at the height of their notorie One historian considered the inroads of the n movement a major cause of the I.W.W.'s declin The Communists did indeed gain prestige and their identification with the successful Bolshe Russia, a glamour that the Wobblies found har radicals. Many Wobblies even joined the Commun like Bill Haywood, went to Russia to live. Wh finally rejected its opportunity to join the in munist movement, many Wobblies who up to
been both Wobblies and Communists munists only.20 In coping with Communist rivalry t marked inability to adapt, a "hardening of war-time persecution had helped to indu to Communism by purifying and dogmatiz program, by sanctifying its opposition obvious that most radicals chose Commu I.W.W. because of Communism's apparent p At first the I.W.W. applauded the Russ greeting it as the dawn of a new era an national correspondence committee to m Russians. The new Communist Internati sent urgent invitations to the I.W.W., a their press whether or not they should mally. As the months passed, however, ma toward Moscow, resenting the Cominter program and its suggestions that they sho Bolsheviks. Many Wobblies also grew contemptuous of American Com munists, considering them only the pre-war socialist "politicos" in a newer garb. In a formal referendum the I.W.W. voted down a motion to join the Cornintern, and thereafter the rift between Communists and Wobblies widened, the Communists calling the Wobblies "social fascists" and the Wobblies calling the Com munists "comicals." By the 1930s the I.W.W. had developed an implacable hatred for the Communists, accusing them of mur dering or imprisoning Wobblies in Russia and of "liquidating" fellow anarcho-syndicalists in the Loyalist militias during the Spanish Civil War. The ordeal of the war made the I.W.W. noticeably less mili tant and more cautious than it had been previously. During the famous Seattle general strike of February, 1919, the I.W.W. be haved with unusual circumspection whether it was really the ringleader, as people believed at the time, or merely a bystander. When the United States Shipping Board refused a wage increase to the Seattle A.F.L. Metal Trades Council, a raise that the Council had already negotiated with the local ship builders, the entire organized labor force of Seattle called a sympathy strike 20. For the I.W.W.'s final verdict on Communism see Chicago Replies to Moscow (Chicago, I.W.W., 1945).
that halted the life of the city for three days.21 M proclaimed a state of emergency and issued tru the strikers; the strikers themselves grew weary officials of the international A.F.L. unions finally ure upon the Seattle locals to end the strike. W or any obvious significance the strike sudden ficially, the strike had no more sinister meaning indicate; yet the strike leaders, the I.W.W., Ma and the frightened public all agreed that the con revolutionary ends. The I.W.W. claimed that blies, or "two-card union men," controlled all of unions and that these Wobblies had secretly di as a revolutionary experiment. Mayor Hanson ins of self-congratulatory articles in a national magaz "soviet" or "Workers' Council" of Wobblies in Trades Council had planned the strike. The pr that Wobblies and radicals in control of the Se called the strike. Of course, both the I.W.W. an had differing reasons for emphasizing or exagger ism of the strike. The mayor wanted to make th bidding as possible in order to advertise himself possible "Chamber of Commerce hero," and th credit for a spectacular effort that had distu nation. But discounting the gaudiest exaggerat sides, Wobblies apparently did play a signific famous strike, despite their comparative inconsp the first time they hid their talents under a bus covered them when the excitement was over. The I.W.W. also revealed its caution and eb in its curious educational and research progra 1921 it embarked upon a program of educating the technical and managerial problems of industr engineers and technologists into their organiza paring itself "realistically" for the problems it it had expropriated the nation's industries.22 Com an organization as the I.W.W., that had won no 21. For the Seattle general strike see: the Seattle Post- the Seattle Union Record for January and February, 191 eral Strike (Seattle, History Committee of the General S n.d.). 22. Ralph Chaplin, Wobbly: The Rough-and-Tumble Story of an American Radical (Chicago, 1948).
box oratory, for "direct action," for prov policy marked a significant change in tact Significantly enough, Wobblies first tho while sitting in Chicago's Cook County j the Espionage Act. They whiled away th formal discussions in their cells, giving ea their practical work experience in fields, tories. Facetiously, they dubbed these d trial Congress" but also talked more ser piling their practical knowledge into a Encyclopedia." One of the prisoners, Ralph Chaplin, p of prison. While free on bond and touri speeches he made the acquaintance of Ho and eccentric engineer living in Greenw won fame a decade later as the inventor the course of an evening's conversation, C shocking but trenchant criticisms of the him that the I.W.W. needed a "research formation and to direct policy. Though not leave the apartment without some r He felt uneasy about Scott's obvious " remoteness from the proletariat. William D. Haywood and other impo members were unimpressed by Scott's them over by urging that a "high clas would add to the prestige of the I.W attack from so many quarters," an argum tial connections between the program a the war years. In 1920 the I.W.W. estab trial Research and put Howard Scott a months the I.W.W. press published an semi-technical articles on economics an phlets that tried to convince engineers tha in the class struggle. After 1921 the I.W.W est in the ambitious educational and resea most Wobblies had remained unaffecte fast to the purer and simpler doctrines o historian, however, thought that How fluenced the I.W.W. by analyzing and c anarcho-syndicalist doctrines. But whateve
the brief excursion into scholarship and resear loss of militancy and a desire to further the rev bringing down the police. After all, noboby we lynched for making economic studies. The wounded I.W.W. that survived the years 1920 seemed to lose all of its old dash, all of it provising guerilla tactics. It also "regressed," as would say. Wobblies began to cope with persecu by reverting to inappropriate tactics that had ferent conditions, succeeded. During the latter p the first part of 1923 the organization made e repeat the great 1917 lumber strike. Wobblies all try took up the hue and cry for a "general strik patterned after the 1917 strike but even bigg March, 1923, the Industrial Worker published veteran of the 1917 strike, an article full of t advice on tactics and methods learned from the 1 In his article the writer showed so much reveren time strike that the impending "general strike" s to redress real grievances than a ritual to recaptu of a golden age. The I.W.W. apparently could n had transpired since 1917 and that 1923 was not Not finding the worst conditions of 1917 to prot their 1923 strike anyway as a revivalistic vent subordinated economic demands to the deman of political prisoners. It threw in economic de an afterthought. "The blanket roll shall go! Ro shall be built instead of bunk houses crowded wi bed bug hatcheries." Where conditions had im the minimum standards of the I.W.W., Wobbl their demands more extreme. In one Oregon l which the "bindle" or blanket roll had long sin Wobblies demanded clean sheets three times a particular demand the management fumed indign that the request came from Wobblies who regula land flop houses where the linen was not changed The ambitious "general strike" of 1923 failed though the Wobblies applied the old tactics relig out the Pacific Northwest only a small fraction of 23. The planning and execution of the strike can be Industrial Worker from November, 1922, to October, 1923
left their jobs for more than a few days. San Pedro, California, caused some excitem few Wobbly lumberworkers were almo strike." In Portland, a few lonely pickets p and passed out handbills to sailors and suaded few workers to support the strike mesmerized themselves into thinking the cess. Had not they repeated as if from tactics that had established the eight h industry, abolished the worst condition made their naine a household word? Only once during the 1923 strike did of its old improvising genius. In the Gray in the strike, Wobblies distributed a cu "Notice to all bootleggers and gambling given notice to close up during the stri be taken against youl" They passed out sim towns, Seattle, Spokane, and Portland. volunteered their services to the Seatt easies. In lower Seattle they proceeded waiting for police cooperation. In Por tectors of the Eighteenth Amendment an barrassed public officials and provoked ances. One thousand hilarious Wobblies eted a well-known speakeasy that the p drink establishment." Police broke up arrested two women pickets. Scores of de around the patrol wagon trying desper while the police frantically tried to pus followed the police to the city hall and re to be arrested. The following day the m police realized that the I.W.W. had ma joke, and Mayor George L. Baker, in in that Wobbly "law enforcers" should pr plaints in an "orderly, American fashion" illegal liquor establishments. Police Chi town for several days to avoid the report new tactic was, it did not greatly aid the Wobblies chose to side with the law th considered revolutionary.
The war-time ordeal of the I.W.W., its diminish and its rivalry with Communism, revived an merged trait of Wobblies, their liking for doc factionalism. Even in the relatively homogen emerged from the schisms of 1906 and 1908, fact disappeared. In 1913 a controversy between the g board and the more anarchical Wobblies had t rupt the organization, but during the troubles o Wobblies had managed to shelf their disagreem united front to the external enemy. After the w turned more and more to talk rather than act conflict revived, and in 1924 it split the alre I.W.W. into two camps.24 The charges and coun elaborated differences of opinion that arose schism now make little sense unless related to th the I.W.W. The heat of the debate came mostl compensatory feelings of being "right" even i important. As late as 1953 an aging Wobbly ex of mind that began to characterize the I.W.W. du "But what our union lacks in numbers is amp for in purity of thought." The quarrel came out into the open in the su Five members of the executive board requested a to discuss mounting conflicts within the I.W.W. the executive board, probably suspecting disrupt the request for a discussion, refused to call t meeting. The five petitioners thereupon called their own authority. When their rump session c jority ejected it from the headquarters with h five thoroughly outraged board members then their own and set themselves up as the "real the old executive board "the Communist liqui union-wrecking allies." Three different national convened in Chicago, one organized by the dis the majority on the executive board, and one cal committee of the membership. Two of the c merged, polled the membership to test its aut ousted the five rebellious board members. 24. The history of the schism is related in great detai ephemeral newspaper, the Industrial Unionist, from Maty, 1
Led by James Rowan of the Lumber Union, the five former I.W.W. executiv gency Program" to "save" the I.W.W. an followers into something resembling a Rowan began to publish the Industrial U page newspaper, in Portland to belabor t run a serial history of his reform movem all Wobblies to join his "Emergency Pro only lasted about a year, and the whole finally died in 1933 with perhaps Rowa member. The language of the 1924 arguments revealed that Wobblies were at least experiencing a kind of militancy in mere talk. Rowan's purists charged the executive board with fostering political machines, with temporizing with Communism, with harboring careerists-or "pie-card artists," in I.W.W. argot-and with cynically betraying I.W.W. principles. In turn the majority leaders charged Rowan and his followers with disruption, an archism, and selling out to the "master class." Against the back ground of I.W.W. idleness and weakness, the intense debate sounded like sound and fury signifying a substitute for action. Even in its lusty youth the I.W.W. had never succeeded in building durable unions among settled industrial workers, the "home guards," as the Wobblies called them, of the working class. It rather attracted transient workers with chronic grievances against society. At its height the I.W.W. could draw members from a considerable body of such foot-loose and aggressive tran sients. The raw exploitative industries of the American West, in particular, relied upon such floating workers. But after the war, economic and social changes diminished the size of this labor reservoir and altered the character of the transient labor in gen eral. As southerners migrated to the mills and logging camps of the Pacific Northwest, as the region's population grew, and as the automobile made logging camps less isolated from towns or cities or made them disappear entirely, more and more lumber work ers became "home guard" workers like the factory workers of the East. Agricultural expansion during the war brought farm machinery into more general use than ever before, making the large migration of hobo harvesters a thing of the past. Those migratory farm laborers still needed by agriculture travelled from job to job in autopnobiles with their wives and children. Though
still casuals, these new "jalopy tramps" were mo guards" in temperament than the young, unattache had once found a home in the I.W.W. The numb hoboes-not to be confused with sedentary and d or non-working "tramps"-declined.25 These socia I.W.W. could not check or alter, and the increasi the organization precluded its adapting its program to a new kind of worker. During the late 1920s tually disappeared from the American scene, a termined suppression, of its own evolving weak changes in American society. For the last thirty years the I.W.W. has survived relic from a younger and different America. The or settled into a mold of complacent senility, inactive with its youth, and defensive of every jot and t doctrines. The stubborn I.W.W. has become an an During the last thirty years of almost posthum the I.W.W. did try to awaken. In the depression ye joined the various organizations of the unemploy up in many cities. In Seattle they vied unsuccess Communists for control of the Unemployed Ci But even Americans seeking radical solutions to apparently forgot about the I.W.W., preferring Com even Technocracy, "Share the Wealth," or "Soci 1936 the I.W.W. conducted a local strike near Pie very briefly fought its way back into the press.26 T Idaho, answering a request of the Potlatch Forest C patched National Guard troops to the scene. Vio and the troops deported several hastily organized committees. The striking Wobblies won no bene strike, nor did they revive their moribund orga companies quietly replaced all suspected Wobblies w workers from the Midwest and South. The chai I.W.W. executive board, however, boasted that succeeded, that it had raised wages and impr standards, that it had also reactivated the I.W.W. 25. N. S. Hayner, op. cit.; Neis Anderson, Men on the M 1940); L. F. Shields, "The Problem of the Automobile Flo Labor Review, XXI (October, 1925), 699-701; Henry Hill Co Own Refugees, Our 4,000,000 Homeless Migrants (Princeto 26. "Wobblies in the Northwest," Nation, CXLV (November
Because the I.W.W. disdained the who unionism, or "business unionism," it did policies of the New Deal to protect the r tively. The NIRA labor provisions and la Relations Act, however, did tempt man change their organization into a bonafide the A.F.L. and new C.I.O. But in 1938 th Treasurer, W. H. Westman, reaffirmed t the I.W.W. forbidding all time contracts During the second World War the I.W.W and some observers, noting signs of activit of the West and along the waterfronts of and New Orleans, predicted a revival. In Cl the I.W.W. represented the sixteen hun American Stove Company. A year after Times reported a membership of twenty t ers, however, saw the war-time revival as I.W.W.'s 1946 convention with humor a middle-aged men and one woman met in a building on the north side of Chicago t nouncing the United States, Communism C.I.O., the A.F.L., and World Wars II an their chests, the Industrial Workers of th The threatened "revival" died quickly, a the process with revolutionary but sui pelled its vigorous Cleveland union at th pany and when the union's officers petitio to take the non-communist pledge of th that they could enjoy government pro Relations Board. Perhaps as a last straw, on Attorney-General Tom Clark's famou ganizations, and the Treasury Departme ruled that the I.W.W. would have to pay a In spite of its listing as subversive, its ta sixteen hundred metal workers in Clevelan of impotence, the I.W.W. still planned f one Wobbly writer revived in a new dre technicians and engineers and to sneak 27. Report of the Secretary-Treasurer, W. H. W Twenty-Third Constitutional General Convention, 28. "Again the Wobblies," Time, XLVII (April
behind science, research, and technology. The wr the popular cult of "science-fiction" seemed refres the fervent commitment to "free enterprise" th contemporary American opinion. Science-fiction ample, often envision futuristic or inter-planeta are "anti-capitalist." The writer suggested that th go into the science-fiction field itself or ally itsel The surviving I.W.W. halls are fit settings for a The hall in Seattle, for example, is a dusty room district near the railroad stations. Behind the dows Wobblies have arranged a display of pamph some of them I.W.W. classics published forty have also attached the current issue of the Indus the window with pieces of Scotch tape, one of th visible from the street that the year is 1953 and Inside the hall near the door stand two battered stacked high with piles of papers and newspapers bulb hangs from the ceiling over the desks. In hall several elderly men in work clothes play cri round table. Against the wall near the door sta the library of the Seattle I.W.W. branches. A few discernible, Marx's Capital, the Bureau of Corp gation and report on the lumber industry publis and 1914, Gustavus Myer's History of the Gre tunes, Darwin's Origin of Species, and, oddly Eliot's Collected Poems. Above the book case th hung three ancient photographs, portraits of the Wobbly "martyrs," Joe Hill, Frank Little, and Underneath the picture of Everest someone h his last words, spoken as the lynchers dragged Centralia jail, "Tell the boys I died for my cl pictures give a curious ikon-like impression. All the occupants of the hall, the men at the and the card players in the rear, are somewher age. At the height of the I.W.W.'s career the typ been under twenty-five. The Wobblies in the hal deferential, and they pause in their conversation the stacks of newspapers in quest of documentat Next door an independent cannery workers' headquarters, and the sidewalk is crowded with k 29. Industrial Worker, August 29, 1952, 3.
waiting for job placements. One old Wo praises them and contrasts their vigoro powerful and oligarchic Teamsters' Un Seattle union leader. When asked why t to incorporate the cannery workers' un for a moment, almost as if the idea had n to him, and then explains that the I.W. If workers have satisfactory unions, m-nili I.W.W. gives them its blessing and does When asked about the prospects for the offers friendly but somewhat evasive ans to hunt through the files for a missing reveal the facts on the Centralia riot or t Leaving the darkening hall, preserv museum display, one strolls uptown tow the automobile din, convinced that the vive its present membership. It has separa a legend which has now been drawn up and no longer relies upon an existing o tenance. Significantly enough, many pe anecdotes about the Wobblies are convi tion died years ago and would be disappoin live Wobblies are no longer the dashing r The history of the I.W.W. is rich in fol tails, but for many persons who might ac about the organization, the history also the story of the spurned and downtrod respect and dignity as something due that respect and dignity was not a gift b by strength. Though perhaps not true to it is this legend that survives, that ma conservatives a little sentimental about has enriched the traditions of the labor m