Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. Duluth, Minnesota 1908 4- ir + £ jL 5K«a p&ftt'Ss ILL sw*UH»

Foster had showed such exceptional organizational ability and skill in negotiations in the Spokane free speech fight that it attracted the attention of Vincent St. John. In 1910, with $100 for expenses and the Saint’s blessing, Foster went to Europe to study the syndicalist movement. In August 1911, St. John notified him to go to Budapest, Hungary, to represent the IWW at an international trade union gathering. There he challenged the credentials of Vice-President Duncan of the AFL as not representing the American working class and precipitated a two day debate before he was voted down. That night he was arrested for sleeping in a moving van. The French delegates secured his release. Having no funds, he decided to return for the IWW convention in September 1911.

His report created a stirring debate at the convention and in the organization throughout the country. As a result of his survey of the trade union movement in Germany and France, Foster had come to the conclusion that the IWW was making a basic error in trying to build rival or “dual” unions to those already existing. He proposed that we send all our members who were eligible for membership in these unions back to the organizations to “bore from within” for class-conscious industrial union ideas and tactics, and to help the IWW organize the unorganized. He argued that it was a mistake to pull out all the most militant, active workers and leave the control of strong unions to reactionary leadership. He proposed as a start that the IWW dissolve its dual unions in mining, building, metal, printing

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and railroads and go to work inside the unions already existing in these industries.

I was at the 1911 convention and heard Foster make his report. But he failed to convince the leadership of the IWW, although he won over some delegates, including Jack Johnstone and Frank Little. Foster made a hobo trip of 6,000 miles that winter, visiting all the important IWW centers of the West. He froze his hands and feet and narrowly escaped death under the wheels. Local Syndicalist Leagues were set up, whose members went into AFL unions. Foster left the IWW in February 1912. He was working as a railroader at that time, and joined the Brotherhood of Railroad Car Men. Among those who went with Foster in his new venture were Jack Johnstone, Jay Fox, Joe Manley, Sam Hammersmark, my ex-husband J. A. Jones, Mrs. Lucy Parsons and Tom Mooney. The league had hard sledding because “dual unionism” was so deeply embedded in the Left-wing movement and the IWW was at the very peak of its growth at that time, in 1912 and 1913, with Lawrence, Paterson, Akron and other strikes placing it in the forefront of the class struggle. We were “dizzy with success” and had no time for sober estimates or criticisms. Vincent St. John was disappointed in the loss of Foster and he expressed his pride and satisfaction when he became nationally known after he organized the stockyard workers of Chicago in 1918 and led the steel workers of the United States in a great strike in 1919. “A good organizer—worth a hundred soap-boxers!” Saint said of Bill.

Foster’s campaign against dual unionism was aided by Tom Mann of England, who came over on a speaking trip in 1913. It was arranged originally by a Pittsburgh Left-wing Socialist paper, Justice. But they were unable to make a success of it outside their own area and it was taken over by the Syndicalist League and some of the IWW locals. The Socialist Party would do nothing—Mann was far too much of a Syndicalist for them. He was then nearly 60, a leader of the left- wing labor movement in England for many years. He was one of the organizers of the Dockers Union there, a leader of their big strike in 1889, and an active Socialist. He was an orator and agitator of great power. Fiery words poured from him in a torrent, as from a volcano. He was lively and gay-hearted and won his audiences completely from the start.

He told how he had come here at the age of 27, in 1883, as a member of the Amalgamated Engineers Union to “sample the New World

He took issue with the leaders of the IWW on “dual unionism,” but many of us helped arrange his meetings just the same. He was particularly pleased with one arranged in Salt Lake City by Sam Scarlett, who was at one time a fellow member of the Amalgamated Engineers and hailed from Glasgow. In New York City we arranged to take him to Paterson to address the silk workers. We boarded an Erie train at about 7:30 p.m. “Isn’t that very late?” he said. As it meandered along, stopping at every station, he said anxiously: “Aren’t we going a long way?” He was sure nobody would be there, “way out in the country, in the middle of the night!” But there were at least 5,000 people, gathered tightly-packed in our lot, their faces lit up with gas flares.

He was so impressed he outdid himself that night. Never had I heard such a flow of fast-spoken, picturesque and colorful oratory, charged with tremendous fervor and fighting spirit. It was a hot night and after he finished some English weavers took him away with them, promising to bring him to the railroad station to make an eleven-thirty train back. They came rushing him along at the very last minute, bubbling with reminiscences of where they knew him and had heard him speak before. We asked: “What did you do, Tom?” and he said cheerily, “They took me for warm ale. There’s nothing like it after a speech.” He was a living example of joy in struggle and proved that a light heart makes the road shorter and the load easier. He lived to be over 80— oratorical, exuberant and vital—a great agitator to the end.

It is idle to speculate on what might have happened if the IWW had followed what now impresses me as the correct advice of these two top labor organizers. Possibly a permanent industrial union movement could have been built a quarter of a century earlier than the CIO. But our incurable “infantile Leftism” blinded us to its wisdom at that time.

While the two great IWW textile strikes were taking place in Lawrence and Paterson, and we were involved in the aftermath defense of strike leaders in both places, the IWW was busy elsewhere. In 1912 there was a textile strike in Little Falls, New York, where two strike leaders, Legere and Boccini, were imprisoned and a very capable little woman IWW organizer—Matilda Robbins—gave leadership which brought the strike to a successful conclusion.

There was a strike also in 1912 in Grabow, Louisiana, against the Long Bell Lumber Company. This was an abominable company town, where Negro and white workers worked for “scrip” money issued by the company, which owned all the houses and the stores. The whole town was enclosed, like a stockade, behind a high wooden fence. The strike spread to other camps and revealed conditions of virtual peonage in the turpentine and lumber camps of that state. The IWW launched its campaign in Grabow in 1911, when Bill Haywood spoke at a convention of the IWW Lumber Workers at the Alexandria Opera House. He insisted that segregation of Negro and white be ignored in IWW gatherings, law or no law, which was accepted willingly by all. Negro and white workers sat together wherever they pleased, in all parts of the hall, at the mass meeting and at their convention. This company finally “ran away” to Vancouver, Washington, but they found to their sorrow the IWW was there before them.

Also during the Lawrence strike, a long and brutal free speech fight took place in San Diego, California. Following the usual pattern, an anti-free speech ordinance was passed. On February 8,1912,41 participants in a street meeting were arrested, including two lawyers who were there as observers for a Free Speech League. Within a month over 200 were in jail, under horrible conditions. This continued until June when smallpox finally emptied the jail. The San Diego Tribune advocated taking the IWW prisoners out and shooting or hanging them. The hose was turned against meetings with such force that speakers were knocked off their feet. Self-appointed vigilantes took men out of prison and assaulted them with guns and clubs, sometimes torturing them indescribably. One old man, Michael Hoey, died from assaults in prison and another, Joe Micholash, was killed outside the IWW hall.

A Memorial Day parade was held unmolested, at the same time we held one in distant Lawrence for our dead strikers. Finally, protests to


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Governor Johnson mounted throughout the state. He sent Commissioner Harris Weinstock to investigate conditions in San Diego. His report was a stinging condemnation of the authorities and vigilantes. The governor ordered the State’s attorney-general to “afford redress to any who have suffered wrong and to mete out equal and exact justice to all.” But nothing much came of his visit. Finally, a weak face-saving compromise was made by the police that “each case (or meeting) would hereafter be decided separately.” The IWW continued to be molested although others were finally allowed to speak.

Among the last of the IWWs to be arrested was Jack Whyte, who was sentenced to six months and a $300 fine for conspiracy to violate the unconstitutional free speech ordinance. He made a remarkable speech to the judge which is today a part of labor and legal history. He said, in part, as follows:

I was in Seattle in 1943, to speak on May Day. At the meeting I received a pathetic little note, as follows:

I hastened to the hospital and found an old man, partly paralyzed and crippled, weak and hardly able to speak, but still full of fighting spirit. “Keep it up, Gurley. Give ’em hell!” he said to me in parting. He died shortly thereafter. He was one of labor’s forgotten heroes— Richard Ford. It was hard to believe this was the once handsome, blackhaired youth who had so boldly led 2,000 men, women and children in a strike 30 years before—in August 1913. It was on the Durst hop ranch, the largest in the state, outside of Marysville, California.

The story of what happened on that hot day, with the temperature up to 120, is told in Harper’s Magazine, April 4, 1914, in “The Marysville Strike,” by Inez Haynes Gilmore. She tells the all-too-familiar story of frame-up against two volunteer labor organizers which resulted in life-imprisonment for Richard Ford and Herman Suhr. At the Durst ranch a few tents and wooden shanties were provided for housing; there were only eight toilets, and no drinking water, which had to be bought from a concessionaire. Irrigation ditches were used for garbage dumps. Women were expected to carry heavy bundles of hops to the wagons. Migratory workers, more than were needed, were lured by advertisements in cities, mining camps and farm areas as far away as


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Oregon and Nevada. There were Mexican, Chinese, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Italian, Swedish and other national groups, 27 in all. Ford and Suhr became the leaders in presenting demands to Durst, who struck Ford across the face with his gloves. The workers then held a meeting at a dance pavilion and after someone sang “Mr. Block” (one of Joe Hill’s songs), Ford reported to the striking workers. He held a child in his arms and said: “We are fighting for these children!” At that moment a group of deputy sheriffs appeared on the scene, accompanied by Prosecuting Attorney Manville from Marysville.

They ordered the meeting dispersed and advanced on Ford with drawn guns. When a Swedish girl intervened, the deputy aimed at her. He was shot dead by a Puerto Rican worker, who also killed Manville, and was himself killed by the deputies. An English boy carrying a bucket of water was killed. Ford and Suhr, who had wired a San Francisco paper to send a reporter there, were arrested, tried for murder and convicted, although neither had a gun. Mrs. Gilmore says: “Manville wanted to teach the IWW to stay away from Yuba County.” The IWW put a boycott on the hop fields, and threw a picket line around them. Millions of dollars worth of hops rotted on the ground in 1914. Richard Ford was released by the parole board in October 1925, he was re-arrested at the door of Folsom Prison on a second murder charge. The warrant was issued by Manville’s son, then district attorney in Marysville. Ford was tried in January 1926, and was acquitted; Suhr was paroled shortly afterward—with 14 years taken out of their lives for protesting against intolerable conditions of labor.

In 1913, a tense struggle developed over the right of Mexican and American workers to join the Mexican revolution. American troops patrolled the border to prevent Mexicans from escaping as political refugees or getting any aid from here. Hundreds were turned back to Mexico and certain persecution or death. Charles H. Kerr Company had published a book, Barbarous Mexico by John Kenneth Turner, an American newspaper man. In the guise of an American investor he had been able to see the appalling treatment of the Mexican workers, who were virtually slaves—starved, beaten and murdered with impunity. From 1906 to 1914, he estimated that 150,000 Mexicans had perished in struggle—“by bullet, sword or bayonet.” The brutal regime of Diaz had finally ended, to be replaced (after the assassination of Ma-

In the South the famous Zapata was leading the revolution and expropriating the big landed estates. The Mexican Liberal Party, led by Ricardo Flores Magon and his brother, advocated the expropriation of all wealth and the expulsion of foreign exploiters, such as Standard Oil. These two men were heroic fighters. Out of twelve years’ intermittent residence in the United States, Ricardo spent six years in American jails, charged with violating the neutrality law, publishing a paper, etc. He and his brother, Enrique, were sent to Leavenworth during World War I under the Espionage Act—forerunner of today’s Smith Act. Ricardo died in Leavenworth in the early 1920s. His public funeral in Mexico was attended by 250,000 people. Many American IWWs and Socialists, in the tradition of Lafayette and Kosciusko, crossed the border to join the Mexican revolution.

In 1913 a group of 14 Mexican workers, accompanied by one American IWW lumber worker, Charles Cline, secretly left Carizo Springs, Texas, to cross the border. The Mexicans were members of the Magon party. They were followed by Texas deputies who shot at them from the hills, killing an old man, Lemas. The workers captured two of the deputies and signed an agreement to release them at the border. One deputy, Ortiz, a Mexican renegade, attacked his guard, Guarra, in the night. Guarra killed him and fled and was never found. Later the little band was surrounded by vigilantes who kicked a wounded man, Ricon, till he died. His body was carried through the streets, jeered at and spit upon. A banner, Terra y Libertad (Land and Liberty), was in his hands.

The prisoners were marched to jail, chained together by their necks. Buck, the captured deputy, was on the Grand Jury and the principal witness against them. He also produced a moving picture called Border Bandits, giving his version of the affair. All those on trial were found guilty and sentenced to 25 years to life. Nationwide meetings of protest were held, one in Union Square, New York City, in June 1914. The Standard Oil Company was deeply implicated in Mexican politics. Especially after the burning of the strikers’ tent colony and the deaths of women and children in Trinidad, Colorado, in a hard-fought struggle against a mining company owned by the Rockefeller interests which controlled Standard Oil, feeling ran doubly high against it in this country.

In August 1926, after thirteen years in a Texas prison, Charles


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Cline and his companions were given a full pardon by Governor “Ma” Ferguson, who said: “The record shows that there never was any designated plan to kill anybody and the killing of the deputy sheriff was merely an incident of a war period. In a war area in our state.” She said further, it was no crime to overthrow the Mexican government any more than it was for those who defended the Alamo in 1836, in the war with Mexico. Charles Cline spoke at the second Convention of the International Labor Defense in Chicago in September 1926, toured later under its auspices for Sacco and Vanzetti, and exhibited a small replica of an electric chair he had made while in prison.

Unemployment Demonstrations

The winter of 1913-1914 was along one. It snowed continuously and was bitter cold. Unemployment had struck America. There were growing breadlines, homeless men were sleeping in doorways and cellars, families were in dire distress. New York City had set up a Mayor’s Committee on Unemployment. Bill Haywood was in New York that winter, far from well, but able to consult with the local IWW members. He had interested a group of liberals of all shades of opinion to set up a Labor Defense Conference. Lincoln Steffens, Mary Heaton Vorse and her reporter husband, Joe O’Brien, Amos Pinchot, John Fitch, Heber Blankenhorn and Paul Kennedy were among them.

Meanwhile, a group of 200 unemployed hungry men had been gathered together by a thin, emaciated young member of the IWW, Frank Tannenbaum, who led them to St. Alphonsus’ Catholic Church on lower West Street the night of March 4, 1914. He asked the priest in charge if these weary and homeless men who had no place to lay their heads might find shelter there and sleep in the house of the Lord. Father Schneider refused, saying that it would be a sacrilege. While Tannenbaum was talking to the priest, some of the unemployed men entered the church and sat down in the back pews. The police were called, reporters and photographers flocked there and all of the men were arrested. Tannenbaum was charged with inciting to riot and bail was set at $7,500. Justus Sheffield acted as their attorney, hired by the newly organized Defense Conference. One frail youth was sentenced to 60 days, four men to 30 days, three men to 15 days—the others were released.

Frank Tannenbaum, as their leader, was dealt with most severely. He was sentenced to a year on Blackwell’s Island and a $500 fine, with