Hellraisers Journal: Elizabeth Gurley Flynn for the Spokane Industrial Worker: “Call to Action…Free Speech Fight Is On”

Quote Who Edits God Knows, Spk FSF, IW p2, Nov 10, 1909 ———-

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday November 11, 1909
Spokane, Washington – “Call to Action…Free Speech Fight Is On”

From the Spokane Industrial Worker of November 10, 1909:

CALL TO ACTION BY GURLEY FLYNN
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The free speech fight is on in Spokane. Over 100 men are in jail. More are going every hour. Some are sentenced to 30 days, others to 30 days and $100 fine and costs.

Five I. W. W. men are charged with criminal conspiracy. They are Wilson, Thompson, Foote, Filigno and Cousins. Five women are awaiting trial. Foote was taken out of the lawyer’s office, the others from the I. W. W. hall. Our office has been raided and ransacked by Chief Sullivan and his gang, and this paper is now being made up in secret.

This fight is serious. It must be won. Remember, “an injury to one is an injury to all.” We must never give up. We have just begun to fight. The men in jail have refused to work on the rock pile. They are starving rather than eat the dry bread flung to them. These men are brave, loyal supporters of a great cause. They are heroes in the battle of labor.

Can you afford to be a coward?

Don’t be a quitter. Don’t “sympathize” with free speech.

Go to jail for it!

Sympathy won’t stop the police from striking our women.

Sympathy won’t stop the police putting old men and young boys in the sweat-box.

Sympathy won’t choke the lies down the throats of the miserable capitalist press, now doing its worst to alienate public feeling.

Sympathy won’t pile up expenses on the city government till the taxpayers cry “quits.”

Sympathy won’t prevent our five fellow workers from being railroaded to the penitentiary for five years.

Sympathy won’t win this fight.

Only going to jail by the hundreds will do that.

If you have a family, if you are too far away to come at once-dig up money.

You locals that owe the “Industrial Worker” for bundles, it is your imperative duty to pay up now. Then if there is still coin in the treasury send that for a contribution.

Remember that printers’ bills go on just the same. Order more bundles of this edition and help advertise Spokane, where the constitution is dead.

The “Boosters’ Club” will be “de-light-ed.”

Send donations to help defend the so-called “conspirators.” Now is the opportune time.

It’s now or never, boys!

Get busy! Hurry up!

And you lumberjacks, construction gangs, harvest hands, etc., that can’t afford a family, quit your job and get yourselves on the line. Are you going to let women go to jail while you stay out?

You’ve got nothing to lose but your chains. You have free speech and the chance for a real, bona fide labor organization as gain.

We won in Missoula-we can win it, Spokane. Might makes right.

The sooner you get in the sooner our men will be out of that hell-hole called a jail.

We don’t want you for riot or violence. We need you to defend your organization’s rights to free speech and free press.

Are you game?

When do you start?

I’m going!

ELIZABETH GURLEY FLYNN.
Missoula, Mont.

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One hundred and twenty-five men in jail Saturday night [November 6th]; three women also. Ninety-three men on bread and water.

Don’t be a traitor to your class.

Your turn’s next.

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STORY OF THE FIGHT IN SPOKANE
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The fight is on! The wage-workers of Spokane have locked horns with the ruling class……

The immediate cause of the present struggle was two ordinances passed by the city council, the first prohibited, absolutely, all forms of street speaking. The second was identical with the exception that “regularly organized religious bodies” were empowered to use the streets for speaking.

On October 25, Fellow Worker J. P. Thompson, organizer for the Spokane locals, was arrested for violating the first ordinance and trial set for November 2d. The defense stating that it was immaterial to them under which ordinance the defendant was prosecuted, as thy were both unconstitutional, agreed to transfer the case to the status of the second ordinance, having the clause exempting religious bodies from prosecution…..

The learned (?) lackey of the parasites [Judge Mann] declared the second ordinance “unconstitutional” on the ground that it was too “broad” and absolutely prohibitive. And yet the same conceited oddity has since upheld the first ordinance, which is just as broad (in fact, broader, as it also covers religious bodies) and just as prohibitive…..

[Spokane Free Speech Fight Begins in Earnest]

In the meantime, realizing that the legal (?) proceedings were but farcial formalities, and that the workers had nothing to hope for in the capitalist’s court, a mass meeting was held at the I. W. W. hall, and it was decided to carry the war into the enemy’s country, and fight the battle for free speech, regardless of the action taken by the capitalistic puppets at the court room.

Therefore, immediately following the decision freeing organizer Thompson but putting into effect the old ordinance, the fight was on. The streets were densely crowded, heavy squads of blue-coated clubbers in military formation were patroling the avenues, and the city had assumed a martial appearance. The entire police force was on duty with every man (?) they could muster and the crowds were thickly sprinkled with “fly bulls.”

Speakers poured from the I. W. W. hall onto the streets, but few said more than ten words before the heavy hand of the American Cossacks descended on their shoulder.

“Fill the jails,” was the cry, and for once in their lives the fat lackeys in brass buttons, reeked with the seat of toil and earned their money, for over 150 men were jailed in two hours. The cops were kept hopping from one part of the city to another.

[Arresting the “Leaders”]

Chief of Police Sullivan, a long, lean, rank, fishy-eyed individual, whose personality can best be likened to that of a gila monster, and who is alike despised by all men and women, and by even the fat-jowled men that serve under him, conceived the brilliant idea of arresting the “leaders” of the organization and thus breaking up the movement. He reasoned well, but he failed to take stock of the number of the “leaders”-there being about 10,000 around Spokane. In fact, he has since found that there are as many “leaders” as there are members, and each “leader” has a following of just one-himself.

But not being aware of this at the time, the police suddenly raided the I. W. W. hall and arrested J. P. Thompson, James Wilson, editor of the “Industrial Worker,” A. C. Cousins, and later C. L. Filingo, secretary of the local. Later a charge of criminal conspiracy was trumped up against them.

[Spokane Cossacks]

Wednesday morning the fight opened bright and early, and some thirty had succeeded in being arrested when it was noticed that the Cossacks were looking tired and peevish, having been on duty 36 hours, and were feeling ugly.

One cop was heard to remark, with deep disgust written all over his physiognomy, “Hell! We got the leaders, but damned if it don’t look like they are all leaders.”

Up to this time there had been little disorder, but the brute in the Cossacks, which is ever near the surface, now came out with the sweat of exertion, and they initiated a program of push and haul, and in many instances, kick and slug, one of the women fellow workers being struck by a guardian of law and order and the public good.

At the lock-up the whole force was wild, and evidently the cops received orders to avoid arresting speakers whenever possible.

Speakers were shoved for blocks, speaking continually, until at last the police would be forced to make the arrest.

This state of affairs has continued up to the present writing, volunteers pouring in every day from the camps and cities from McKees Rocks, Penn., to ‘Frisco. Thousands are on their way, but the police of stations along the way are trying to block the arrival of re-enforcements by “sloughing” the workers as they pass through, for of course they travel a la “side door Pullman” and when forced to it on the “guts of a rattle.” But in spite of this evidence of solidarity in the ranks of the bourgeoisie, recruits are pouring in at every hour of the day and night. Hundreds of dollars worth of provisions have been received, two cook stoves are running continually, and the I. W. W. is prepared to make this fight one round.

[Hell-Holes of Spokane]

And now, as to the treatment of the prisoners. The writer spent the first four days in the Bastile and speaks from experience. The prisoners were and are crowded into narrow steel boxes about 6×8 from 10 to 28 being squeezed into each cell. Many stand all day and night, the rest lying on top each other on the steel floor.

Those whom the Cossacks consider “leaders” were confined in a torture chamber with the only a narrow grating at one end, and that was at times closed by shutting a steel door. There were no toilet facilities, and the prisoners stand in their own offal.

This all in Free (sic) America. The first night one fellow-worker fainted with suffocation and narrowly escaped death before the turnkey came and removed him.

On Thursday [November 4] the thirty or so who were convicted were taken out of their cells and lined up by what appeared to be the whole police force. The captain commenced with, “Boys, you are sentenced to 30 days on the rock-pile,” when the cover of Hell was raised and in the deafening, ear-splitting sound that boomed forth, the Spokane Cossacks sneaked away. The jailors seemed to be in fear of the deadly gang of ruffian “reds” who were willing to go unresistingly to prison and suffer Black Hole torture and starvation for the sake of their class and humanity at large. The turnkey pleaded with the prisoners to be “good” prisoners and before Bedlam again broke loose, he would hear , “Quit your jobs, be a man and join the I. W. W.”

[Singing Jailbirds]

All day and most of the night can be heard the clear voices singing the “Red Flag,” “Marseilles,” etc. Then, “Hush,” “Order, Order.” Silence fails and ‘way up from somewhere comes the voices of three women. A pin could be heard to drop until the women fellow-workers and fellow-jail-birds have finished, when up goes such a yell of triumphant enthusiasm that must fill the hired thugs upstairs with dismal forebodings for the near future.

Spokane has the honor of having the first “Hunger Strike” pulled off in America. When the sentenced fellow-workers refused to crack rock they were put on bread and water. The next day the bread and water, as well as the more substantial meals offered to the untried prisoners, were thrown in the jailors’ faces, and as “an injury to one is an injury to all,” ALL refused to eat unless All should have decent food, and to our knowledge have not eaten since. (This was written the following Monday.) As this is being written comes news of the arrival of two large bodies of recruits, and of sixty who have broken into jail since 10 a. m. Telegrams telling of recruits and financial assistance are pouring in and our fight has already assumed national importance.

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[Photograph of Gurley Flynn and emphasis added.]