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

During the Harding Administration, when Attorney General Dougherty desired to interrogate Debs he sent for him to be brought to Washington. Debs refused to travel under guard and he was allowed to come up from Atlanta by himself and return to the prison in the same manner. Rumor had it that he had had a long talk with the President. Today’s political prisoners in transit are chained like animals.

Many prominent people, including Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor, were allowed to see Debs. A Socialist Party convention committee was permitted to notify him of his nomination as their candidate for President in 1920, and he was allowed to give out an acceptance statement to the press. Silenced in prison, he received 920,000 votes. I was allowed to see a whole group of IWW prisoners with a lawyer in the warden’s office at Leavenworth prison. We were seeking some information that we hoped would be helpful to Sacco and Vanzetti. The second day I was permitted to see Vincent St. John alone in the office. Ella Reeve Bloor, as field organizer for the Workers Defense Union, visited prisons all over the country. Today, only members of families are allowed as visitors. I was able to consult with Eugene Dennis in 1952, on an order from a Federal Judge, on legal defense problems only. It created a sensation in the prison because it is so out of the ordinary today.

Women Who Opposed World War I

When congress adopted a resolution on April 6, 1917, which authorized President Wilson to declare war, over 50 members of Congress Voted against it. Among them were Senator La Follette, Socialist Congressman Meyer London, and the first and only woman member of Congress at that time—Jeanette Rankin of Montana. Whatever her subsequent political shortcomings may have been, progressive women were very proud of her at that time. The Espionage Act, passed in July 1917, had many women among its targets. Mob violence, too, was meted out to woman victims. The records of the Civil Liberties

There were at least nine women who served terms of varying length under the Federal Wartime Emergency laws. They were brave women who suffered greatly—arrests, imprisonment without bail or release on exorbitant bail, long and bitterly fought trials, public prejudice, imprisonment in vile places, and for some, finally, deportation. One of the most obscure cases was that of a very young and beautiful anarchist girl, Ella Antolini, who had been sentenced in New England for alleged activities against the war. Other women politicals found her in Jefferson City, Missouri, in the women’s state prison, and due to their efforts she was released after serving about two years.

In the twenties there were no federal penitentiaries for women, so the women political prisoners were farmed out to women’s state prisons scattered around the country. Three were sent to Jefferson City —Kate Richards O’Hare for five years, Emma Goldman for two years, and Mollie Steimer for 15 years. Emma Goldman’s sentence was less because she was not charged under the Espionage Act, as were the others. She was charged with obstructing the draft in speaking under the auspices of the No Conscription League. The meeting at Hunts Point Palace in the Bronx drew an overflow of several thousand sympathizers.

Kate Richards O’Hare, as I have described, was a prominent and extremely effective Socialist speaker. She was arrested in North Dakota, on July 29, 1917, for a speech which she had already delivered all over the country in 70 places. She had been indicted by a Federal Grand Jury on complaints originating in Bowman, North Dakota, for alleged violation of the Espionage Act. This was a small town where a bitter political feud was in progress between the Non-Partisan League (farmers) and the two entrenched old parties. In a state whose population was 80 per cent farmers, the jury was 80 per cent businessmen, all bitter opponents of farm organizations. There were several bankers on the jury.

Louise Olivereau was a librarian and Socialist in Seattle, also an IWW sympathizer. She was sentenced to ten years for “interference with the draft,” for printing a small leaflet advising young men of their legal rights in relation to claiming exemption. She was sent to Colorado Springs State Prison. She served two years. Another western woman, Mrs. Flora Foreman, was a schoolteacher and a Socialist in Oregon. Her house was burned down by so-called “patriotic” neighbors. She was tubercular and went South to visit relatives in Texas. She was arrested there and held in communicado all the summer of 1918 in the county jail at Amarillo, Texas, for lack of $10,000 bail. The excessive heat, bad food and solitary confinement nearly drove her insane. She had said in a private conversation that she “did not belong to the Red Cross, had not contributed to it, and they could tell the little schoolteacher in Washington that, if they liked.” She was found guilty under the Espionage Act, sentenced to five years in the Women’s Prison at McAllister, Oklahoma. She was released at the end of two years by Presidential order and was a physical wreck. One of the jury said later that they did not really believe all the accusations, “but she is one of those ‘radical Socialists,’ so we just thought we ought to lock her up until after the war!”

In Minnesota, Elizabeth Ford, co-editor of a Socialist Labor Party paper in Fairhault was sentenced to one year and a $500 fine for “discussing enlistment.” In Philadelphia another Socialist woman, Dr. Elizabeth Baer, served 90 days in prison for a leaflet against conscription which began: “Long live the Constitution of the United States.” Dr. Baer neither wrote nor distributed the leaflet but was held responsible for it as a Socialist Party official. The arguments advanced were those of Champ Clark, the Speaker of the House, when he opposed


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the passage of the Draft Act. Dr. Baer lost her license to practice medicine and was virtually driven out of Philadelphia.

On the Pacific coast, in Portland, my friend Dr. Marie D. Equi, was arrested in June 1918 after a speech in the IWW hall. She was tried in December under the Espionage Act, after the Armistice was signed. Her speech dealt with defense of the IWW prisoners and conditions in the lumber camps. Two operatives of Army Intelligence admitted they were coached, did not recall her exact words, but finally wrote down several lines and “agreed to stick to it.” The prosecutor appealed to the jury: “The red flag is floating over Russia, Germany, and a great part of Europe. Unless you put this woman in jail, I tell you it will float over the world!” She was sentenced to three years and a $500 fine. On her way out of the courtroom, she was called a foul name by a Department of Justice detective named Byron, who struck her and a woman spectator who interfered. His action was severely condemned by a resolution of the Oregon State Federation of Labor, who called for his removal. She served ten months in San Quentin Prison.

Mollie Steimer and Emma Goldman were deported to Russia. Many of these women, if not all, are now dead. But in a great crisis they stood staunch and true in defense of peace and democracy.

"Life Behind Bars”

For many years I have been in contact with labor prisoners within the stone walls that do “a prison make.” My first was a visit to a poor, desperate shoe worker, Buccafori, who had killed an attacking foreman in self-defense during a Brooklyn strike and who was sentenced to 15 years in Sing Sing Prison. From that long-ago day in 1911 to the last visit I have made to a prison—to Atlanta Penitentiary in the summer of 1952, when I saw tall, smiling Eugene Dennis walk as serenely as if he were at home down a prison corridor to greet me—my heart has been enlisted in the cause of their freedom. Many of my best friends, great Americans I have loved and admired, have been in prison. It has truthfully been said: “All roads to human liberty pass through prison!” Of those who have gone to prison for their political and labor views and activities, only an infinitesimal percentage wilted under the pressure and eventually became stool pigeons and informers —like Paul Crouch and Ben Gitlow—both of whom I visited in prison. All the others remain staunch and true in their principles and loy

But it is wishful thinking and an evasion of reality to think for a moment that prison does not affect the political prisoner. It is designed, not to assert but to destroy human dignity. The health of all the political prisoners in the twenties was adversely affected by the confinement, crowded living conditions, food, types of work, lack of opportunity for mental life, etc. “Every day is like a year—a year whose days are long!” a poet wrote in prison. Men died in prison, like the great Mexican patriot, Magon. Others, like Tony Martinez and William Wejh, contracted tuberculosis and were released just in time to die. J. B. McNamara died in prison. Tom Mooney’s robust health and sturdy frame wore out, so that he lived only a few years after his release, and spent a large part of those years in a hospital. The lives of many IWW young men were shortened and they died in their prime —as did Doree, St. John, Doran—and many others. So great was the fear of the administration that Debs, who was frail and sickly at his advanced age, would die in prison that he was kept in the hospital ward at Atlanta Penitentiary during his stay there.

Poor food, lack of food and lack of variety, were the burning grievances in both the civil and military federal prisons. Shortages were caused by graft and selling prison food supplies outside. Coming away from Leavenworth on the old-fashioned street car I saw that guards going off duty were loaded down. Each had several loaves of sweetsmelling, freshly-baked bread. One wondered if the prisoners fared as well! Riots occurred in federal prisons over food, as for instance when the men were fed parsnips day in and day out at Leavenworth. What can be a tasty dish outside became anathema to these prisoners. I heard four of them say: “No, thank you!” when offered parsnips by my mother at a Thanksgiving dinner after they were freed. She was much surprised until one explained why they could not bear to look at parsnips. She said: “I understand,” and took them away.

Riots also occurred over mean and hard jobs handed out to men unfit to do them. Race riots were fomented by the guards, a horrible pitting of race against race, which would be much more difficult today. In Fort Leavenworth, vicious Southerners were encouraged to attack the comparatively few helpless Negroes. They broke arms, knocked out teeth, and left their victims beaten unconscious. In Leavenworth civil prison, on the other hand, a group of Negro prisoners were armed

The writer, E. J. Coshen, was held in solitary confinement from November 25, 1919 to May 28, 1920, forty-one days of which he was on a bread and water diet. He was strung up by the wrists to the bars of the inner door of the dungeon. He was denied reading, writing and smoking, and held strictly incommunicado. “All of the time I was in isolation,” he said, “six months and a few days—the electric light in the dungeon into which I had been cast, continued day and night to flood the otherwise dark and damp inclosure with its rays—no rest for the eyes, the object being that the light bring about a nervous collapse. My eyes—as is my stomach to food and my lungs to fresh air—are fast reaccustoming themselves to humans and to the rays of the sun.”

Many years later, during World War II—a different kind of war, a just war against fascism—I was speaking at a Communist Party mass meeting in a Pacific Coast city. Two tall, handsome blond girls in war workers’ outfits came up to speak to me before they left for work in a nearby shipyard. They were the daughters of this same man. They said he was now old and not too well, but very spirited and he sent his love “to Gurley.”

In January 1919 the 3,700 men at Fort Leavenworth went on strike on account of the food shortage and the poor quality. They folded their arms and refused to work. Their demands were presented to the commandant by two conscientious objectors, one a newspaperman from Chicago. The commandant agreed to go to Washington to present their demands, especially their amnesty demands that all sentences be reduced to peacetime levels. He agreed to improve the food, to reduce the number of men in each cell, to increase letter-writing privileges, enlarge the visiting hours, the right to walk and play in the prison yard, and to exterminate the bedbugs. (This was before the days of DDT.) Men were released from “the hole.” The commandant did go to Washington and material reduction of sentences, as well as a large number of releases, were the result, not only for conscientious objectors but for many ordinary military prisoners who were there for small offenses in the army.

Pathetic stories of conscientious objectors had to do with religious sects, such as the Mennonites, some of whom were sentenced to 20


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years for their uncompromising opposition to warfare. When they refused to wear uniforms they were manacled to bars so high they could barely touch the ground. They slept on a cold concrete floor without blankets. Two, Joseph and Michael Hofer, died as a result of the inhuman treatment they suffered in Leavenworth. The Mennonite colony to which they belonged in South Dakota left in a body for Canada after the imprisonment and death of these young men. The bodies had been returned home dressed in the uniforms which they had Rejected in life. This caused considerable protest, especially in religious circles, even among those where “Thou shalt not kill!” was not taken as literally as by the simple Mennonite people.

The Palmer Raids

In October 1918 Congress passed the Deportation Act. It is the gran- daddy of all present repressive legislation—the Smith Act, the Mc- Carran Act and the McCarran-Walter Act. It provided for the deportation of aliens who are anarchists or who do not believe in organized government, and of aliens who believe in or advocate the overthrow by force and violence of the U. S. Government, or who are members of any organization which so advocates. At that time, as now, we had an attorney general who saw “reds” in schools, at dances, in plays, in unions, under the bed—just everywhere. (In those days all reds were called “Bolsheviks.”) He is dead now. His name was A. Mitchell Palmer. Let us hope no red roses grow near his grave to disturb his slumber. He would be entirely forgotten except for one thing—a shameful happening in American history is named after him, the Palmer Raids.

He had a young assistant, a roundfaced, bullnecked, eager beaver by the name of J. Edgar Hoover, who not only suffered from the same disease as his superior, but became violently afflicted with it for life.

A new outfit was created at this time by the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Investigation, then headed by William J. Flynn. It was a Radical Division run by this young, unknown but aspiring red-hunter, Mr. Hoover. It took over an established index system which they claimed numbered 200,000 cards, on all persons connected directly or remotely with the “ultra-radical movement.”

He stepped up and widened the index so that rumor has it when Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected Hoover had to quickly pull out cards on Eleanor Roosevelt, Frances Perkins, Harry Hopkins and oth


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er New Dealers, many of which probably went back into the card files during a Republican administration. Some day a real progressive people’s government will open up the archives and lay bare for public scrutiny this police-state, stool-pigeon work that has gone on so long in our country. Many surprised people will find themselves there. You can’t compile a list of hundreds of thousands that are just “Communists”—that’s clear. Later, they boasted that they had sent spying operatives into all organizations and gatherings of workers to collect data and to keep track of what men and women said and did, especially in strikes, in preparation for a series of “experimental raids” which took place on November 7, 1919, when the second anniversary of the Russian revolution was celebrated in many meetings.

These raids, conducted in cities, were especially directed against the Union of Russian Workers. Speakers, teachers, students, diners in restaurants, men playing pool, were herded to jail, with bandaged heads, black eyes and blood-spattered clothes. The New York Times called these injuries “souvenirs of the new attitude of aggressiveness which had been assumed by the Federal agents against Reds or suspected Reds.” Typewriters, pianos, desks, bookcases, files were smashed, as well. This was Mr. Palmer’s dress rehearsal.

The 1919 climax was the deportation of 249 persons who were loaded on the transport, Buford. They included Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman. The majority belonged to the Union of Russian workers. The Buford sailed just before Christmas 1919, under sealed orders to be opened at sea by the captain. Families were tom apart and wives and children left destitute. After this brutal and inhuman deed, Palmer and Hoover were ready for a really big job—what came to be known as the “Palmer Raids.”

On January 2, 1920 their master plan was carried out. Brutal raids were conducted, without warning or warrants, on meetings, headquarters and homes in about 70 cities from coast to coast. Some 10,000 men and women were reported arrested that night. About 700 were arrested in New York City. Some were dragged from their beds. Undercover agents had been instructed to arrange meetings of clubs on the night set “to facilitate making arrests.” As soon as a raid was made the agents were instructed to telegraph to J. Edgar Hoover, assistant to the attorney general, to give the number of arrests, to telephone about any special seizures, and to mail in detailed reports. Aliens were to be held for deportation, citizens were turned over to state

Before the deportation delirium let loose by Palmer ran its course and was finally stopped by the pressure of public opinion, over 500 so-called “aliens,” foreign-born workers, were tom from their homes and families and deported—some to certain death in their homelands. Louis F. Post, Assistant Secretary of the Department of Labor, cancelled 1,547 deportation warrants and made a principled stand against Palmer’s lawlessness, when impeachment proceedings were lodged against him. Nothing came of the proceedings.

There was tremendous protest against the Palmer raids. Francis Fisher Kane, U.S. Attorney of Philadelphia, resigned in protest. Federal Judge George W. Anderson spoke out strongly in Boston against the invasion of civil rights. A brochure entitled “Report on the Illegal Practices of the Department of Justice,” signed by 12 eminent lawyers, was issued in May 1920. It was addressed “To the American People.” Among those who signed were Professors Frankfurter, Pound, Freund and Chafee, Mr, Kane, Frank P. Walsh and Jackson H. Ralston, general counsel of the AFL. It was a scathing expose of how these raids flouted the Constitution and all legal procedure.

In 1924 when Attorney General Harlan F. Stone reorganized the Department of Justice, he criticized these raids and ruled that the FBI should not concern itself with political opinion. At that time, Hoover said to save his face and his job: “The activities of Communists and ultra-radicals have not up to the present time constituted a violation of federal law, and consequently the Department of Justice, theoretically, has no right to investigate such activities, as there has been no violation of law.” Thus he confessed the Palmer Raids were illegal in every respect.

As I have already indicated there was sharp cleavage in the ranks of the Socialist Party from its earliest days. The “left wing” was primarily