Free speech fights is the term used to describe a number of conflicts in the early twentieth century, particularly those relating to the efforts of the
Industrial Workers of the WorldThe Industrial Workers of the World is an international union currently headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA. At its peak in 1923 the organization claimed some 100,000 members in good standing, and could marshal the support of perhaps 300,000 workers. Its membership declined dramatically after a...
(the "IWW", or "Wobblies") to organize workers and publicly speak about labor issues. Wobblies, Single Taxers, and other radicals of the time were actively engaged in organizing workers and others, and their efforts were often met with violent repression by local government and business authorities. The most notorious of these conflicts was the "
San Diego Free Speech FightThe San Diego Free Speech Fight in San Diego, California in 1912 1913 was one of the most famous of the "free speech fights", class conflicts over the free speech rights of labor unions.-Introduction:...
", which brought the IWW to the greater notice of the American public and was notable for the intensity of violence by anti-labor vigilantes directed at IWW; this violence included the kidnapping and
tarring and featheringTarring and feathering is a physical punishment, used to enforce formal justice in feudal Europe and informal justice in Europe and its colonies in the early modern period, as well as the early American frontier, mostly as a type of mob vengeance .-Description:In a typical tar-and-feathers attack,...
of
Ben ReitmanBen Lewis Reitman was an American anarchist and physician to the poor . He is best remembered today as radical Emma Goldman's lover.Reitman was a flamboyant, eccentric character...
, a physician and
Emma GoldmanEmma Goldman was an anarchist known for her political activism, writing and speeches. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the twentieth century.Born in Kovno in the Russian Empire , Goldman emigrated to the...
's lover.
More generally, the term
free speech fight may also be applied to any incident in which a group is involved in a conflict over its speech. For instance, the
Free Speech MovementThe Free Speech Movement was a student protest which took place during the 1964–1965 academic year on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley under the informal leadership of students Mario Savio, Brian Turner, Bettina Apthecker, Steve Weissman, Art Goldberg, Jackie Goldberg, and...
, which began with a conflict on the
Berkeley CampusThe University of California, Berkeley is a public research university located in Berkeley, California, United States. The oldest of the ten major campuses affiliated with the University of California, Berkeley offers some 300 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in a wide range of disciplines...
in
CaliforniaCalifornia is the most populous state in the United States, and the third largest by area. California is the second most populous sub-national entity in the Americas, behind only São Paulo, Brazil...
in the 1960s, may be termed a "free speech fight".
"Free speech fights" and the IWW
The IWW engaged in free speech fights during the period from approximately 1907 to 1916. The
Wobblies, as the IWW members were called, relied upon
free speechFreedom of speech is the freedom to speak without censorship or limitation. The synonymous term freedom of expression is sometimes used to indicate not only freedom of verbal speech but any act of seeking, receiving and imparting information or ideas, regardless of the medium used...
, which in the United States was guaranteed by the
First AmendmentThe First Amendment to the United States Constitution is part of the Bill of Rights. The amendment prohibits the Congress from making laws "respecting an establishment of religion", prohibiting the free exercise of religion, infringing on the freedom of speech and infringing on the freedom of the...
, to enable them to communicate the concept of One Big Union to other workers. In communities where the authorities saw their interests in avoiding the development of unions, the practice of
soapboxThis article is about a raised platform. For other uses, see Soapbox . For the Wikipedia policy, see Wikipedia:NOTSOAPBOX.A soapbox is a raised platform on which one stands to make an impromptu speech, often about a political subject....
ing was frequently restricted by ordinance or by police harassment. The IWW employed the tactics of flooding the area of a free speech fight with
footloose rebels who would challenge the authorities by flouting the ordinance, intentionally getting arrested in great numbers. With the jails full and a seemingly endless stream of union activists arriving by boxcar and highway, the local communities frequently rescinded their prohibitions on free speech, or came to some other accommodation.
History of the IWW's free speech fights
In
A History of American Labor, Joseph G. Rayback has written,
[The Industrial Workers of the World] made its first impression upon the nation through its involvement in the "free speech" fight begun in Spokane, WashingtonSpokane is a city located in the Northwestern United States in the state of Washington. It is the largest city and county seat of Spokane County, as well as the metropolitan center of the Inland Northwest region...
, employment center for the casual labor elements of the Pacific Northwest. The fight developed late in 1908 when the I.W.W. launched an extensive speaking campaign with the slogan "Don't Buy Jobs" in the streets around the Spokane employment agencies which had become skilled in the art of swindling men who applied for jobs.[Rayback, p. 244.]
The "job sharks" were so closely tied to the crew boss on many job sites that there would be "one gang coming, one gang working and one gang going." The faster the turnover, the greater the fees that could be generated. From time to time the men would ignore the IWW and seek revenge after an employment shark took someone's last dollar for a job that didn't exist. The
Spokesman-Review of January 18, 1909 reported,
[Thompson and Murfin, p. 47.]
Hurling rocks and chunks of ice through the windows of the Red Cross Employment Agency, 224 Stevens St., several members of a noisy mob of between 2,000 and 3,000 idle men were about to attempt to wreck the place about 6 o'clock last evening, when James H. Walsh, organizer of the IWW, mounted a chair and pacified the multitude. In the opinion of the police had it not been for the intervention of Walsh, a riot would surely have followed, as the rabble was worked up to such a pitch that its members would have readily attempted violence. Walsh discouraged violence and summoned all members of the IWW to their hall at the rear of 312 Front Ave. The police dispersed the rest... At the hall Walsh warned the crowd against an outbreak. "There were a lot of hired PinkertonsThe Pinkerton National Detective Agency, usually shortened to the Pinkertons, was a private U.S. security guard and detective agency established by Allan Pinkerton in 1850. Pinkerton had become famous when he foiled a plot to assassinate president-elect Abraham Lincoln, who later hired Pinkerton...
in that crowd," he said. "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."[Thompson and Murfin, pp. 47-48.]
For the rest of the summer, IWW street meetings brought more and more
working stiffsWobbly lingo is a collection of technical language, jargon, and historic slang used by the Industrial Workers of the World, known as the Wobblies, for more than a century.-Origin and usage:...
into the IWW.
[Thompson and Murfin, p. 48.]
The agencies promptly countered by pressuring the city council to pass an ordinance forbidding street speaking. The I.W.W. obeyed the regulation for nearly a year, until Spokane religious groups, which habitually used the streets, secured a new regulation exempting them from the street-speaking ordinance. Angered by the discrimination on behalf of "the Christers," the Spokane I.W.W. renewed its campaign.
The newspaper of the IWW, the
Industrial WorkerThe Industrial Worker, "the voice of revolutionary industrial unionism," is the newspaper of the Industrial Workers of the World , a radical labor union. It is currently released eleven times a year, printed and edited by union labor, and is frequently distributed at radical bookstores,...
, published the following on October 28: "Wanted—Men to Fill the Jails of Spokane." Then the IWW sent out a notice to all locations, "Nov. 2, FREE SPEECH DAY—IWW locals will be notified by wire how many men to send if any... Meetings will be orderly and no irregularities of any kind will be tolerated."
In one day 150 men were arrested and crowded into jails that could hardly accommodate them. Reinforcements promptly arrived from the surrounding territory.
The Spokane City Council arranged for rock-pile work for the prisoners.
At the end of twenty days four hundred men had been jailed.
Overflowing prisoners were lodged in the Franklin School, and the War Department made Fort Wright available for more. Eight editors in succession got out a copy of the
Industrial Worker, and then took their turn soapboxing, and went to jail. The IWW's "rebel girl,"
Elizabeth Gurley FlynnElizabeth Gurley Flynn was a labor leader, activist, and feminist who played a leading role in the Industrial Workers of the World . Flynn was a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union and a visible proponent of women's rights, birth control, and women's suffrage...
, who was fresh out of high school, delayed her arrest by chaining herself to a lamppost. She later charged that the police were using the women's section of the jail as a brothel, with police soliciting customers. When that story was printed in the
Industrial Worker on December 10, the police attempted to destroy all copies. Public sympathy began to favor the strikers. When the prison guards would march the overflowing prisoners through the streets to bathing facilities, crowds would shower the men with apples, oranges, and
Bull DurhamThe American Tobacco Company was founded in 1890 by J. B. Duke as a merger between a number of U.S. tobacco manufacturers including Allen and Ginter and Goodwin & Company...
.
[Thompson and Murfin, p. 49.]
The effort brought results: the W.F.M.The Western Federation of Miners was a radical labor union that gained a reputation for militancy in the mines of the western United States and British Columbia. Its efforts to organize both hard rock miners and smelter workers brought it into sharp conflicts – and often pitched battles...
declared a boycott of all goods coming from Spokane, and taxpayers began to protest against the cost of feeding, housing, and policing the prisoners. When Vincent St. JohnVincent Saint John was an American labor leader and a prominent Wobbly. He was born in Newport, Kentucky and was the only son of New York native Silas St. John and Irish immigrant Marian "Mary" Cecilia Magee. He had a sister two years younger named Helen.The family moved frequently, Silas going...
publicly appealed to all Wobblies to come to Spokane to renew the struggle, city officials capitulated.
The victory for the free speech fight came on March 4. The licenses of 19 of the employment agencies were revoked.
The I.W.W. was granted freedom of assembly, freedom of the press, and the right to distribute its literature.
In
Labor's Untold Story, Boyer and Morais observed,
The courts became so clogged they could handle little else but free speech cases. The fight for free speech became largely a question of endurance between the lungs and heads of the Wobblies and the stamina of the police. In MissoulaMissoula is a city in and the county seat of Missoula County, Montana, United States. The population was 57,053 at the 2000 census and the population of the Missoula Metropolitan Statistical Area was 95,802, making it the second-largest city and metropolitan area in Montana. It is the largest...
and Spokane as in most of the other towns where free speech fights were waged, any citizen could address any assemblage on any street on any subject at any time by the end of 1912.[Boyer and Morais, p.174.]
The IWW members won a free speech fight in Missoula when, on October 8, 1909, the city council decided to let the union members speak anywhere in the community, so long as they did not impede traffic.
Other free speech fights of the IWW
The IWW followed with other free speech fights in
Kansas City, MissouriKansas City is the largest city in the U.S. state of Missouri. It encompasses in parts of Jackson, Clay, Cass, and Platte counties. It is one of two county seats of Jackson County, the other being Independence, just to the city's east...
; in
Aberdeen, WashingtonAberdeen is a city in Grays Harbor County, Washington, United States, founded by Samuel Benn in 1884. Aberdeen was officially incorporated on May 12, 1890. The city is the economic center of Grays Harbor County, bordering the cities of Hoquiam and Cosmopolis...
; and in
Fresno, CaliforniaFresno is a city in California, USA, the county seat of Fresno County. As of February 27, 2009, the population was estimated at 500,017, making it the fifth largest city in California and the 36th largest in the nation...
. In
San Diego, CaliforniaSan Diego , named after Saint Didacus , is the second-largest city in California and the ninth largest city in the United States, located along the Pacific Ocean on the west coast of the United States. The US Census Bureau estimates the city's population at 1,279,329 as of 2008...
, there was a
particularly brutal free speech fightThe San Diego Free Speech Fight in San Diego, California in 1912 1913 was one of the most famous of the "free speech fights", class conflicts over the free speech rights of labor unions.-Introduction:...
between the IWW and its allies, and large groups of vigilantes supported by the authorities.
Tar and feathersTarring and feathering is a physical punishment, used to enforce formal justice in feudal Europe and informal justice in Europe and its colonies in the early modern period, as well as the early American frontier, mostly as a type of mob vengeance .-Description:In a typical tar-and-feathers attack,...
, beatings, clubbings, and forcible deportations were used in addition to incarceration. The San Diego free speech fight was unique in that the IWW did not have a specific organizing campaign at stake. The IWW won all of these free speech fights.
Other locations of free speech fights by the IWW included
Duluth, MinnesotaDuluth is a port city in the U.S. state of Minnesota and the county seat of St. Louis County. The fourth largest city in Minnesota, Duluth had a total population of 86,918 in the 2000 census and 84,397 according to July 1, 2007 census estimates. The Duluth MSA had a population of 275,486 in 2000...
; New Castle, and New Bedford.
In early 1913, IWW members in
Denver, ColoradoThe City and County of Denver is the capital and the most populous city of the state of Colorado, in the United States. Denver is a consolidated city-county located in the South Platte River Valley on the High Plains just east of the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains...
fought a lengthy free speech fight. Denver authorities had refused to allow the Wobblies to speak on street corners, so union members filled the jails for months. The union won the right to speak to workers, and within a year had formed two Denver branches.
[Brundage, pp.161-62.]
The IWW's provocative free speech message
The IWW message was particularly unpopular with the business community. IWW members believed that the capitalist system was corrupt, could not be reformed, and could only be resisted until a better society could be built for all working people. James Walsh's streetcorner speeches were therefore frequently disrupted, particularly by the local Volunteers of America and Salvation Army Bands.
Walsh recruited volunteers to put together a small band, equipped with "a big booming bass drum," in order to get the IWW's message to listeners. The group practiced patriotic and religious tunes of the period, but the Wobblies wrote new words to the songs.
[Blecha, 2006.]
"To grab the crowd’s attention," the IWW band often "hid in a doorway while one member dressed in a bowler hat and carrying a briefcase and umbrella, yelled to the crowd, ‘Help! I’ve been robbed!’ The crowd rushed over only to hear, ‘I've been robbed by the capitalist system! Fellow workers ...’ He then launched into a short speech, and the makeshift band stepped out of the doorway and played their songs."
[Blecha, 2006, citing Linda Allen, Washington Songs and Lore (Spokane: Melior Publications 1988), p. 18.]
Further Reading
- John Duda (editor), "Wanted! Men to Fill the Jails of Spokane: Fighting for Free Speech with the Hobo Agitators of the I.W.W. " (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 2009) ISBN 978-0882862705