Hellraisers Journal: Latest News from Spokane Free Speech Fight by Fellow Worker Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Part II

Quote EGF, Compliment IWW, IW p1, Nov 17, 1909 ———-

Hellraisers Journal – Friday March 4, 1910
Spokane, Washington – Gurley Flynn Reports from Free Speech Fight, Part II

From the International Socialist Review of March 1910:

Latest News from Spokane
—–

ELIZABETH GURLEY FLYNN.
—–

[Part II of II.]

Since the release of the majority charged with disorderly conduct, suits have been entered amounting to $120,000 against Chief of Police Sullivan, Captain of Detectives Burns, Captain Miles and Officers Shannon, Warner, Nelson and Jelsett. These suits are based upon the treatment the men received in the sweat box and the Franklin School. Every man injured will certainly cost the city of Spokane thousands of dollars before the fight is settled. The tax payers seem to have no sense of justice or humanity, consequently an appeal to their pocket-books as a last resort will be the most effective. The I. W. W. have already been forced to spend hundreds of dollars from the defense fund caring for sick and disabled members as they were discharged from custody. At the present time one man, George Prosser, is ill at the Kearney Sanitarium, two others, Ed. Collins and M. Johnson, are confined in local hotels with extreme cases of rheumatism, and Frank Reed is in the Washington Sanitarium ill with erysipelas.

This little fellow [Frank Reed] who, by the way is one of Uncle Sam’s ex-soldiers, went through the hunger strike at Fort Wright and but a few days after his release was re-arrested charged with criminal conspiracy and desecrating the flag. When he was taken ill he was allowed to remain for 48 hours without medical treatment and in a terrible delirium. County Physician Webb excused this ill-treatment by saying that Reed had been left in charge of a trustee, in other words-a fellow prisoner. He was put under the care of a special nurse and during the first 48 hours he was in an extremely critical condition. The cost to the I. W. W. for the first two days alone amounted to $166.00. This is not reported in any mercenary sense for dollars are of course not to be considered in the balance with the life of a revolutionist, but the extreme character of his suffering and the costly treatment that it required is a severe reproach to the standard of civilization attained in the Spokane County jail.

Governor M. E. Hay has put himself on record with the following statement: “The I. W. W’s do not seem to be able to understand the idea of our form of government. A large percentage of them are non-residents, many of them foreigners, and no small percentage absolutely illiterate. They desire no laws that interfere with their way of thinking. If we were all of that opinion we would soon have no law but anarchy and that is the law of might.”

There are laws in the State of Washington forbidding cigarette smoking, forbidding tipping, demanding open screens before saloons; forbidding playing cards, forbidding the exercise of ones “God given and inherent right” to free speech, but it certainly is the last straw to have the Governor criticise those who “desire no laws that interfere with their way of thinking.” Not only are we deprived of free speech, free press, free assembly, but it seems we must now submit a schedule of our thoughts for official approval, and this is “Free America.”

The Chamber of Commerce of Spokane have appointed a military committee to devise schemes for getting recruits for the militia, and have decided to give as a premium military brushes and gold watches to all militia men who bring in a substantial number of recruits. The inevitable result will be a strong well-armed force of ignorant, brutal men, practically under the control of the Chamber of Commerce, to be used in defence of their “economic” interests in further I. W. W. demonstrations. These, in conjunction with the negro soldiers at Fort Wright, are certainly typical of the “Slugging committee of the capitalist class.” The workers will feed them, clothe them, house them—to be murdered by them when they fight for their rights.

In view of the recent developments the contention of the officials that the I. W. W. can “have a hall” becomes not only an absurdity, but an insult. The Socialist Party Local has rented the Oliver Hall for six years, but on January 17th, after a talk by myself on “Industrial Unionism,” they were notified that they could no longer secure the hall. Application was made by both the Socialist and the I. W. W. to a number of owners of halls as well as to theatrical managers, exorbitant rents were offered, but the same curt refusal was general everywhere. But one hall is open to the I. W. W. to-day. The police notified the Turner society that they would have to quit renting their hall for free speech meetings, and the latter body (ignorant foreigners, the Chief would probably call them) voted to rent their hall to us whenever it was not otherwise engaged and demanded that the police take legal action if it were objectionable to them.

The Turner Society is certainly to be congratulated. They are the only people in Spokane who have the courage to take a stand against a popular prejudice in favor of the right. The I. W. W. are holding splendid lecture meetings every Wednesday and Sunday nights at this hall. Organizer James P. Thompson has been released on $2,000 bond and he is now doing the speaking, although in a very weak condition, having lost 25 pounds as a result of 90 days in jail.

One of the most noticeable features of the entire fight is the splendid liberality of the rank and file of the American Federation of Labor. Local after local upon receiving an appeal for financial assistance have emptied their treasury to us, expressing the regret that they did not have more to offer.

I addressed the convention of the Shingle Weavers at Marysville, Washington, on January 3rd, and they passed a strong resolution of endorsement, and also a motion donating $100.00 to the defense. A recent trip through British Columbia netted splendid financial results from the locals of the W. F. of M., this in spite of President Moyer’s recent attack upon the free speech fight and the I. W. W.’s, wherein he characterized “the so-called I. W. W. as an absolute failure,” and prophesied that they would be a “thing of the past in less than 12 months from to-day.” He prophesied that the Butte Miner’s Union would be carried down to destruction in this crash if it continued to assist the I. W. W., but the threat did not seem to have greatly worried either the miners of Butte or B. C. They probably believe that a man who would have been throttled on the scaffold by the capitalist class had it not been for the organized labor throughout the United States is certainly not one to criticise a revolutionary and militant labor organization.

The trial of myself and fellow worker Filigno commenced Wednesday, February 9th, and at date of this writing the jury has been finally completed. A change of venue was requested on a basis of intense prejudice created by the Spokesman-Review and the Evening Chronicle, but the motion was denied by Judge Kennan. One hundred and twenty-six names were produced in court as signers to a protest against a change of venue, one of whom was the Reverend Dr. Hindley. Yet one prospective juror after another admitted intense prejudice on the basis of increased taxation or newspaper articles and had to be excused by the court. The further progress of the trial and the ultimate decision will be reported in next month’s issue of the Review. Here’s to the ultimate victory of the toilers.

[Emphasis and paragraph breaks added.]