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Hellraisers Journal – Saturday January 1, 1910
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn Reports from Spokane Free Speech Fight
From the International Socialist Review of January 1910:
The Shame of Spokane
—–By Elizabeth Gurley Flynn.
—–[Part I of II.]
N December 3rd Prosecuting Attorney Pugh thundered, in his attack upon the Industrial Workers of the World: “Let them feel the mailed fist of the law,” amply justifying our definition of government as “the slugging committee of the capitalist class.” This threat was presumably made in a full appreciation of what a roaring farce “constitution,” “justice,” “rights” constitute in Spokane—city of the Washington Water Power Company and the employment sharks.
Since last writing for the Review we certainly have individually and collectively felt the mailed fist. Workingmen may come into this fight with respect for and faith in American institutions, but they will come out with every vestige ruthlessly destroyed by official acts and judicial decision. Free speech, free press, free assembly and the right of foreigners to avail themselves of the “benefits of our glorious government” (whatever that is) are non-existent in this western town. Outrage upon outrage has been heaped upon us—men, women and children—until the depths of indignation are reached and words fail to adequately express our intense feeling.
Every day men have gone upon the streets in numbers ranging from six to twenty-five and thirty, have said “Fellow workers” and have been railroaded for thirty days with a hundred dollars fine and costs. Ordered to work on the rock pile, and refusing, they have been given only bread and water in meagre rations. Bread and water for a hundred and thirty days means slow starvation, means legal murder, yet even on Thanksgiving day, the only exception made to the rule was to give smaller portions of more sour bread. The good, christian Chief of Police Sullivan sneeringly remarked, when asked if the turkey and cranberry dinner applied to all: “The I. W. W. will find the water faucet in good order.” As a result of this diet the boys have become physical wrecks and are suffering with the scurvy and other foul diseases.
Once a week a day is appointed as “bath day” by the authorities, and the boys are brought from the Franklin School into the city jail in the interest of cleanliness. The newspapers have repeatedly informed the public that the I. W. W. men object to baths, and many a reader has turned away in horror, I suppose, from the dirty hoboes. The gentle and beneficent bath has been described as follows by a man who endured it: “First they strip your clothes off by force, then turn a stream of hot water over your head and shoulders scalding and blinding you at once, and then a stream of ice cold water.” This alternating process would probably be enjoyed as much by the critical editor of the Spokesman-Review as it is by the I. W. W. boys.
As the prisoners were being taken from the school to the jail the I. W. W., Socialists and sympathetic onlookers lined up along the streets and threw sandwiches, fruit and tobacco into the wagon. Officer Bill Shannon, in charge, took a fiendish delight in kicking this food away from the starving rebels. With face and form like an African gorilla, showing no sign of either human compassion or intelligence, he held back the weakened men that they might not catch the fruit thrown. When one man got a sandwich and held on with hands and teeth, strengthened by desperation, Shannon grabbed him by the throat and choked him till he dropped the food.
Mrs. Frenette with others lined up near the school and sang “The Red Flag” to encourage the prisoners. She was arrested and tried for disorderly conduct, the Chief of Police and six other officers testifying against her. They swore that she acted as if she were drunk, that she had carried on in a disorderly manner on the streets since this trouble started, and one said she acted like “a lewd woman.” Testimony showing that she had stood on a private porch and had taken part in an orderly meeting was of no avail. She was requested to recite “The Red Flag” and did so with such dramatic force that the Judge was horrified at its treasonable and unpatriotic sentiment. She was sentenced to thirty days, one hundred dollars fine and costs, and Judge Mann recommended to the Prosecuting Attorney that a further charge of participating in an unlawful assemblage—a state charge—be filed against her. She was held for two days in the foul city jail, supplied with only the coarsest and most unpalatable foods and subjected to rigorous cross examination every little while. Bonds were put up by two local Socialists and she was released in a weak and starving condition.
Between three and four hundred men have now been sentenced for speaking on the street. At first the court room in which they were tried was open to the public, and spectators to the number of two hundred could be accommodated. But they didn’t show a proper amount of respect for the official lights. One afternoon Attorney Crane was conducting his own case, wherein he was charged with disorderly conduct—speaking from his office window. In cross examining Chief of Police Sullivan he unexpectedly asked: “How much had you been drinking on the day of my arrest?” An irresistible burst of laughter swept over the entire court room, including the Judge and the Chief, but the excuse had now been found and the court room was ordered cleared. A partition was erected over night and the court is now so small that only a bare handful may be admitted. All the other public courts in Spokane that I have yet attended are of like character and the public are practically debarred from these “star chamber” proceedings. For additional precaution a bailiff is placed at the doorway, and I have seen him admit well-dressed lawyers and detectives while refusing to admit the wife of one of the men in jail, gruffly stating: “There are no seats.”
The Spokane Chamber of Commerce, after a vituperative address by Mayor Pratt, passed resolutions unanimously denouncing the I. W. W. City Comptroller Fairley has announced that the free-speech fight is taking a thousand dollars a week out of the city treasury. We can well understand the reason for our condemnation. The I. W. W. has unanimously denounced the Chamber of Commerce. We are lined up on different sides of the class war, and the feeling of opposition is mutual.
Members, presumed by the police to be influential, have been arrested as they quietly walked along the street and thrown in jail, sometimes for several days before a charge was filed. For the protection of some of these, writs of habeas corpus were demanded of Judge Hinkle. He refused absolutely at first, stating that he did not care to have his court tied up with a lot of labor cases. This flagrant abuse of an old Anglo-Saxon right caused a roar of protest in the public press and throughout the labor organizations. The Judge, after a few hours of serious “thought,” recanted and gave two writs, one dealing with a vagrancy case, the other with a disorderly conduct case as tests. The reason for his reversal can probably be found in the fact that fees of four dollars apiece were demanded before the City Clerk would file the papers. This practically means if you have money you can protect yourself before the law; if you have not, you can stay in jail till you rot. Prominent lawyers in the city gave their opinion that such a hold-up was without precedent.
[Paragraph breaks and emphasis added.]
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SOURCES & IMAGES
Quote EGF, Compliment IWW, IW p1, Nov 17, 1909
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/industrialworker/iw/v1n35-nov-17-1909-IW.pdf
The International Socialist Review, Volume 10
(Chicago, Illinois)
-July 1909-June 1910
C. H. Kerr & Company, 1910
https://books.google.com/books?id=MVhIAAAAYAAJ
ISR Jan 1910
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=MVhIAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PA577
Page 610-“The Shame of Spokane” by EGF
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=MVhIAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PA610
Page 577-ISR Jan 1910
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=MVhIAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PA577
Note: Sadly, I could not discern the name nor description of the 4th Fellow Worker pictured above. Any help in identifying this FW would be greatly appreciated.
See also:
Tag: Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
https://weneverforget.org/tag/elizabeth-gurley-flynn/
Tag: Spokane Free Speech Fight of 1909-1910
https://weneverforget.org/tag/spokane-free-speech-fight-of-1909-1910/
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Workingmen Unite! – Bucky Halker
Lyrics by E. S. Nelson
http://www.hobonickels.org/iwwsongs.htm#39