Hellraisers Journal – Monday December 15, 1919
Seattle, Washington – Union Record Editor and Staff Arrested
From The Nation of December 13, 1919:
A Newspaper Confiscated—And Returned
By ANNA LOUISE STRONG
[Part II of II.]
Spokane Spokesman-Review November 15, 1919
Meantime [as more facts came to light concerning the Centralia outrage] The Record had been seized. Two hours before the seizure the other competing newspapers knew of it, and proclaimed it on the streets. Reporters, camera men, and moving-picture men accompanied the deputies. The editor, and the president and secretary of the board of trustees, were arrested and later released on bail. The employees were cleared out of the building which was then searched. Much material was carted away. The seizure occurred while the presses were turning out the regular home edition, and their work was stopped. The staff was told, rather vaguely, that the place was closed. Later in the evening the proprietors again obtained possession of the plant, with the assurance that there was no intention of holding it. However, on the following day, when the main edition was on the press, the marshal again arrived, stated that the plant was indefinitely closed, and gave the employees half an hour to clear out. The first act of one of the deputies was to take down the telephone, call up a competing newspaper, and announce “We’ve shut her down tight.”
Throughout the day mounted policemen were in the streets of Seattle with the avowed intention of keeping down riots. There is little doubt that the authorities expected the union men, coming up from the shipyards, to “start something” on account of the suppression of their newspaper. The employees of The Record, meantime, made their way to the Labor Temple, where they were dismissed for the day by the editor, who stated: “This is a country of law. The law will prevail in the end, and we believe it is on our side.”
The following day it was announced that the seizure of the plant did not mean the suppression of the newspaper, which was free to publish “if it could” without machines, presses, list of carrier boys, or mailing list. All presses in Seattle were found to be closed to The Record except a small flat-bed press in a suburb; on this a four-page news paper was hastily printed. A duplicate mailing list was found, and the papers were taken to the post office “to save the mailing privileges.” They were first refused, then accepted, and later refused again by the local postmaster, who stated that he was acting under the orders of the United States Attorney and was “in doubt” about the mailability of the newspaper. Legal proceedings were at once begun by the newspaper, but were delayed by the Government, which declared itself not yet ready to “show cause” for seizure. Meantime, advertisers were approached and threatened with arrest unless they cancelled contracts. These threats had no foundation in law and proved ineffective in most cases.
The supply of paper was cut off, but by roundabout methods a fresh supply was secured. The man who sold the paper was at once arrested on an indefinite charge. The newsboys of the city, threatened by the other newspapers, refused to handle The Union Record, whereupon husky longshoremen took over the job and sold faster than the newspaper could be printed. Throughout these vicissitudes, The Record refused to be betrayed into any other attitude than that of confidence, tempered by humor. It handled the attitude of the other newspapers and of the United States Attorney with irony but without bitterness. It even quoted Scripture: “In quietness and confidence shall be your strength.”
Then, suddenly, it was discovered that the opposition had overplayed its hand. A full-page advertisement, appearing in The Post-Intelligencer and later in The Star, contained language of such sort against the labor unions and against the Administration for its too temperate and lawful handling of the “reds” that telegrams from unionists to Attorney General Palmer resulted in the refusal of the mails to the issues carrying the advertisement. Later the author of the advertisement was arrested for incitement to riot and murder. When this advertisement first appeared in the “P. I.,” the printers called a chapel meeting on the subject, which was attended by representatives of all the other crafts in the mechanical departments. The meeting was held at 10:30 o’clock in the evening, after the first two editions were on the streets, but before the regular home edition was printed. While it was in session the editor removed the advertisement. The meeting, however, appointed a committee to draw up a resolution, which was presented and adopted the following evening, and was printed on the front page. This resolution breaks all precedents in the relation between employees and the policy of a newspaper. I quote only part:
As members of the several trades unions employed in the production of your paper, we make the following representations:
We have been patient under misrepresentation, faithful in the face of slander, long-suffering under insult; we have upheld our agreements and produced your paper, even though in so doing we were braiding the rope with which you propose to hang us; day after day we have put in type, stereotyped, printed, and mailed calumny after calumny, lie after lie, insult after insult. We have even meekly witnessed your unfair and reprehensible campaign of falsehood and ruin result in the suppression of the last medium of honest expression for our cause in Seattle, not only denying our brothers the means of livelihood, but denying us a far greater boon—the American right of a free press.
There followed paragraphs relating to the advertisement, together with the statement that “there must be a limit to all things,” and the resolution concluded that
[I]f your editorial heads must remain blind to the thing they are bringing us to; if you have no more love for our common country than is manifested in your efforts to plunge it into anarchy; then as loyal American citizens—many of us ex-service men—we must, not because we are unionists, but because we are Americans, find means to protect ourselves from the stigma of having aided and abetted your campaign of destruction.
No one thing during the week seemed of greater significance than this, in its indication of the growing sense of the responsibility among workers for the work in which they take part and in its promise of soberness and thoughtfulness in the carrying of that responsibility under trying circumstances.
Two days later, after a postponed and somewhat lengthened hearing, the court decided that The Union Record was not lawfully held, and the plant was forthwith returned to its owners. Charges of sedition against its editors are still unsettled.* Meantime the building had been held out of use for a week, with a loss of well over a thousand dollars daily, and with all the disorganization of business which results in a big daily newspaper when its lists of carriers, advertisers, and employees, and all its equipment are suddenly seized, and its operations suspended, even though it be for only a brief time.
Two campaigns started during the seizure are, however, still going on. One is a campaign for a “Save and Sane Christmas”—to refrain from buying presents in the big stores of the city which help finance the campaign against labor; and to confine Christmas giving to laying in through the cooperatives and the “fair” stores supplies of clothing and food to tide over the unemployment threats of the winter. The other is the “day’s pay” campaign, to raise a quarter-million-dollar fund for “a bigger, better Union Record” A new building, new presses, a Saturday magazine, foreign correspondents, and a service which will help in starting a chain of labor papers across the country are in view. The labor movement of Seattle seems to be learning to turn attacks into opportunities.
*An Associated Press dispatch from Seattle, dated December 3, stated that E. B. Ault, editor of The Union Record; Anna Louise Strong, the writer of this article; Frank A. Rust, president of the board of directors; and George P. Listman, another member of the board of directors, had been indicted under the amended Espionage act—Editor of THE NATION.
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