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Hellraisers Journal – Friday November 5, 1909
Spokane, Washington – “Free Speech Fight Is On”
From the Spokane Industrial Worker of November 3, 1909:
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[From page 1:]
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FREE SPEECH FIGHT IS ON IN SPOKANE
—–With the end of the trial of James P. Thompson held in the Municipal court of Spokane Tuesday morning, November 2, the fight for free speech or the right to speak on the streets has started in earnest by the members of the union here in the city and many others that have arrived from all over the northwest.
Meetings were started in different parts of the city at about 1 o’clock in the afternoon and kept up till 5 o’clock in the evening; as one speaker was pulled off the box by the police another would take the stand for the purpose of being arrested. All told there were about 100 men arrested on Monday, including James Wilson, James P. Thompson, C. L. Filigno, A. C. Cousins, who were arrested on a warrant charged with criminal conspiracy. Also Mrs. Fernette was taken for street speaking, and Mrs. Arquette and Miss Huxtable were arrested in the raid made on the hall at 3 o’clock Monday afternoon.
No more high-handed piece of outlawry under guise of authority has ever been perpetrated in the country; while the street speaking was in progress and the members in the hall were preparing to send another delegation on the street, the room was suddenly invaded by a gang of deputies, who proceeded to arrest Thompson, Cousins, Mrs. Arquett and Miss Huxtable. They returned later and got C. L. Filigno, secretary of the Central Executive Committee, and they picked Wilson up on the street.
Tuesday night a monster mass-meeting was held in the hall and was addressed by members of the union, at which volunteers offered themselves for the street for Wednesday.
No violence or overt acts have been reported, more than that one of the local papers says that the officer struck Mrs. Fernett while leading her to the city lock-up. Every precaution is being taken against any disturbance, and the men are orderly, disciplined and determined to take their place on the street as fast as they are needed.
Even the capitalist papers have been unable to make up a “story.” With the exception of that of a police spy by the name of Martin J. Burns, who faked up a story that he had been promised a week’s board if he would help fight the police by the officers of the organization. He said further that the union had one thousand guns in the hall. The police searched the hall but failed to find anything, and it will be up to them to cook up some more evidence.
At the mass-meeting of the members in the hall Tuesday night, every man was searched for concealed weapons, which resulted in the finding of arms only on plain clothes men and the cops.
It is hard to say how many police and deputies there are on the streets, but they are everywhere, ordering people to move on and otherwise dishing out kindness. The deputies appear to be recruited from professional thugs and petty criminals. It is also reported that one of the prominent employment sharks, Ed Miller, of the notorious Peerless Employment Agency, and who has been tried and convicted of various criminal charges, is a deputy.
While going up the street with one of the members of the union the writer overheard the famous bull, Bill Shannon, make the remark to a bystander that he was trying to start something. There is little doubt but what the famous one will make good his threat, but he will have to take the “something” out by beating up peaceable men and women, who will not allow themselves to resist any police brutality.
More men are needed, and it is expected of the workers all over the Northwest that they will voluntarily come to Spokane and take part in the greatest demonstration against the power of capitalist oppression since the Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone case. The new criminal code in Washington asserts that two or more men conspiring to induce other men to break the “law” shall be guilty of criminal conspiracy, and it is up to the union to have the men offer to go to jail on their own accord when the facts of the case is known.
Let no man shirk his duty. The I. W. W., being a voluntary organization, democratically controlled, all actions flow from the understanding of the membership, and when they act together it is for the mutual protection demanding such action. History is being written in Spokane, and the cause of freedom marches onward step by step with every man’s arrest. Let us be true to ourselves and we will also be true to our class. Workers everywhere-the principles of working class SOLIDARITY calls you to action. If you can not come, send donations. Arrange monster protest meetings and raise the necessary money as well as the solid support of the working class in filling the lousy, filthy jail in Spokane to overflowing and we will force the hand of the dogs of Capitalism here and now.
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SPOKANE POLICE ARE INHUMAN MONSTERS
—–Fred Niederhauser, reporter for the Spokane Evening Chronicle, visited the jail Tuesday night and there he saw Wilson, Thompson, Filigno, Cousins and as many other members of the union as they could force in crowded into a dark cell. The men had only standing room and were stripping themselves to the skin so as to be able to stand the terrific heat of the miserable hole. No toilet facilities were possible and men were forced to trample in their own excreta. Following is the statement made by the reporter:
I do not make this statement to give my attitude in the present street speaking controversy, or to hinder the police who are endeavoring to enforce the city law as it has been interpreted by the police judge.
But I do want to say that the herding of men as I saw them herded in the Spokane city jail last night, is monstrous.
If those men had murdered my own mother, I would not see them put to the slow torture to which I saw them being subjected at six o’clock last night. If a resident of Spokane should place any of his dumb beasts in the condition which I saw the men, arrested for street speaking, at the local city jail last night, he would be promptly arrested by the humane officer.
If the jail had been full, and there had been no more room, there would have been some excuse for crowding the men in a cell, with not the least possible chance for ventilation. There were many empty cells in the jail. The condition of the men in one of the cells, which I observed last night, beggars description. To describe it would insult decent people.
FRED NIEDERHAUSER.
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JUDGE MANN DECLARES THE NEW ORDINANCE UNCONSTITUTIONALAND RELEASES THOMPSON, BUT DECLARES THE OLD
ORDINANCE STILL IN EFFECT WHICH FORBIDS
STREET SPEAKING OF ANY NATURE.Following is a clipping from the Spokane Press of Nov. 2nd:
Declaring the revised city ordinance, relative to street speaking, unconstitutional, in that it is prohibitive, instead of merely regulative, Judge S. A. Mann of the police court dismissed the case against James P. Thompson, a member of the Industrial Workers of the World, this morning. His decision placed the old ordinance, over which the Industrial Workers of the World and police were at war a year ago, into effect again, and the revolutionists immediately began preparations to violate that ordinance, to bring another test case before the courts.
The ordinance which has again been made effective by the decided invalidity of the new one, is identical to the new one with the exception of one clause. That clause was inserted after the trouble with the I. W. W.’s, and the subsequent abolition of street speaking by the police, apparently, for the special benefit of the Salvation Army and other religious organizations. It gave the mayor, the arbitrary power to permit regularly organized religious bodies to hold meetings on the street. Likewise it extended to him the power to refuse permits to other organizations and to suppress their meetings should they attempt to hold them.
Says City Is Doing Wrong.
Attorney Fred H. Moore, counsel for James Thompson, who was arrested for speaking on the street last week, declared this morning that the city had no right to discriminate against certain bodies, as had been done by the new ordinance. He contended that it carried a blanket prohibition and made not the slightest pretense at regulation.
“It gives a special right to the mayor to give a special permit to a special organization to hold special meetings and the police department furnishes special police to give them special protection with the result that there is a special taxation to give these special bodies a special right above all others.” He said:
“If the Industrial Workers of the World or any other political or secret organization has no right to go upon the streets to speak because it causes certain parts of the streets in certain parts of the city to be blockaded, then President Taft and Wiliam Jennings Bryan should have been arrested and prosecuted for collecting a crowd that blockaded the streets.”
In passing upon the case, Judge Mann said: “According to the constitution of the United States, which is the supreme law of the land, no man shall be prohibited from openly speaking or publishing his views. The only restriction that is placed on each individual speaker or publisher of views is that he must stand responsible for the results of such speaking or publication.”
Immediately after this case was over and the verdict known the men began to test the old ordinance by speaking on the street as fast as the police could arrest them. The first man that the writer saw being escorted to the lockup was W. Th. Nef of Portland. Nef is a man over six feet tall and strong enough to twist the average policeman in two, but he was walking quietly along smiling as though he was on his way to dinner. Others went along just the same and appeared prepared to go the limit.
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[From page 2
-Editors James Wilson, A. E. Cousins, E. J. Foote:]
[Emphasis added.]
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SOURCE & IMAGES
Industrial Worker
(Spokane, Washington)
-Nov 3, 1909
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/industrialworker/iw/v1n33-nov-03-1909-IW.pdf
See also:
Tag: Spokane Free Speech Fight of 1909-1910
https://weneverforget.org/tag/spokane-free-speech-fight-of-1909-1910/
The I. W. W.
Its First Fifty years, 1905-1955
-by Fred Thompson
IWW, 1955
(search: “eight editors”)
https://books.google.com/books?id=YXdYAAAAMAAJ
Note: my copy is “First Seventy Years” co-authored by Patrick Murfin. Sadly, Thompson’s work is not well sourced, but I will do my best to keep track of the different editors as they come forward and are arrested.
Page 49 states:
In succession, eight editors of the local Industrial Worker got out an issue and went to jail.
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The Preacher and the Slave – John Shreve and Stephan Gatti
Lyrics by Joe Hill