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Hellraisers Journal – Friday February 25, 1910
Spokane, Washington – Facts of Free Speech Fight from J. C. Knust
From the Seattle Socialist Workingman’s Paper of February 19, 1910:
FACTS SUPPRESSED in SPOKANE
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By J. C. Knust, of Spokane
EDITOR’S NOTE.-Here we give yet another dose of FACTS to the sick Spokane authorities. It is killing testimony, and until the record is disowned officially it will damn Spokane in the eyes of the whole world.
The second round in the fight against the Working class is now being fought by the city authorities of Spokane, backed by the employment agencies and other expressions of corporate rule.
Spokane is the natural and the principal distributing point of labor and its supplies to the great Northwestern lumber regions, agricultural districts and mining camps.
Spokane, being a comparatively young city, is necessarily under heavy expense, and, like many young cities in the past, through their spasmodic growth, has given undue power to certain official individuals, who sometimes make, either wilfully or maliciously, grievous mistakes in the use of such power in order to serve private interests.
In order that the reader may get a fairer and more clear conception of the immediate cause of this fight of the workers to maintain their rights, it will be necessary to begin at the beginning.
Every year thousands of men are sent out by the employment agencies to all parts of the country, through faked advertisements, to work which does not exist. For many years these licensed thieves have reaped in this way a rich harvest. Men would come here, buy a job and ship out. Some would find work for only a week where they expected to find steady employment. Others found no work at all.
Investigation proved often that employers, foremen and agents were dividing spoils, their fee being anywhere from $1 to $15 for jobs. After a few days work these men would be discharged and another crew would be sent to fill their places, thus keeping three crews-one going, one coming and one working. [Perpetual motion!]
Can you suggest anything for these men to do but to organize to do away with such thievery? No redress was to be had from the courts, the city attorney saying, “Nothing can be done,” showing plainly that there is plenty of “law,” but it is not for the benefit of the masses.
These conditions grew to be intolerable. One office alone in this benighted town boasts proudly of having sent out in one year 85,000 men. Think of it! Out of that number there were less than 1 per cent. who actually found remunerative employment. And again consider that there are many of these slave markets here, and all doing a thriving business.
Then these men grew desperate; something had to be done. So about two years ago they began to organize themselves into one union known as “The Industrial Workers of the World,” one object being to educate its members to buy no more jobs, but compel employers to come to a union headquarters for their men, where no fee would be charged.
In six months they were four thousand strong and growing fast.Then the agencies began to get busy. I. W. W. meetings were held daily on the streets in front of these slave markets and then came a change.
One day the morning paper contained an article saying the I. W. W. could hold no more meetings on and after a certain date. It seems that the city fathers had their ears to the ground and were quick to protect these thieves, for be it remembered, they ar paying a “license” for this privilege of robbery. Then the workers decided to make a test case in this matter to see whether or not our “constitutional rights” were a joke. And having little faith in our so-called “law and order,” they decided to fill the jails to overflowing.
March 2nd, 1909, J. H. Walsh was arrested for speaking on the street, and the next day over fifty more of our fellow-workers were arrested for the same cause. Then the administration of the city began to sweat blood and to wonder where is the end of this string of “impertinent undesirables.” They raised the white flag and a consultation with the workers was asked. We agreed to the following: All prisoners were to be liberated and a promise given that a test case would be rushed through to the Supreme Court of the United States. To this day it has never been heard from.
For several months of this summer the Salvation Army held its street meetings regularly unmolested. The workers became disgusted with the workings of a law which showed such discrimination, and on November 2nd, through their official sheet, “The Industrial Worker,” informed the city authorities again of their desire to use the public streets for their propaganda; and that unless the objectionable ordinance was changed they would again, on the above-mentioned date, begin filling the Spokane city jail in defiance of that ordinance.
So began the famous Free Speech fight in Spokane. And at 12:20 o’clock on that day men and women went on the street, spoke or made an attempt to speak, and were quickly marched away to a filthy jail into which and honest farmer would not put his pig. One man was arrested for attempting to read the Declaration of Independence. But workers’ lives are cheap in this town-and by 4 p.m. over 135 had been arrested, including many sympathizers.
The police became frantic, although no resistance was offered to them, and began using their clubs and fists freely. Late in the afternoon the editor and assistant editor of the Union paper, the secretary, organizers, and any one else conspicuously connected with the Union, were arrested as leaders. The editor was captured on the street and others in the hall. Next morning the “Spokesman-Review” came out with glaring headlines announcing that the backbone of the I. W. W. was broken, as all the “leaders” were in jail.
November 3rd about seventy-five more “leaders” went to jail peacefully, as usual, the writer of this article being among that number. Following is the story of my arrest and experiences:
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[Photograph and emphasis added.]
[Knust’s Affidavit will be published in tomorrow’s Hellraisers Journal.]
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SOURCES
Quote re IWW Spk FSF n Solidarity, IW p1, Nov 3, 1909
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/industrialworker/iw/v1n33-nov-03-1909-IW.pdf
The Workingman’s Paper
(Seattle, Washington)
-Feb 19, 1910
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/thesocialist-seattle/100219-seattlesocialist-v10w460.pdf
IMAGE
IWW Spk FSF, Dont Buy Jobs, IW p4, Feb 19, 1910
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/industrialworker/iw/v1n48-feb-19-1910-IW.pdf
See also:
Tag: Spokane Free Speech Fight of 1909-1910
https://weneverforget.org/tag/spokane-free-speech-fight-of-1909-1910/
Tag: J. C. Knust
https://weneverforget.org/tag/j-c-knust/
Always on Strike: Frank Little and the Western Wobblies
-by Arnold Stead
Haymarket Books, Dec 15, 2014
[search: spokane “dont buy jobs” “perpetual motion”]
https://books.google.com/books?id=zTjvBwAAQBAJ
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Mr. Block – Utah Phillips
Lyrics by Joe Hill