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Hellraisers Journal – Monday January 31, 1910
Spokane, Washington – Free Speech Fighters Suffer Sweating, Hunger and Cold
From The Progressive Woman of January 1910:
RUSSIAN METHODS IN SPOKANE.
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Every once in a while things happen in the United States that seem for the world like Russia. The “bull-pen” episode in Colorado a few years ago was one of these. The present fight for free speech out in Spokane is another. The authorities out there took it upon themselves to deny the right of free speech to the Socialists, and the Socialist labor organization, the Industrial Workers of the World, with its official organ, The Industrial Worker, and its headquarters in Spokane, is bearing the brunt of this fight.
As fast as men are thrown into jail for attempting to hold their usual street meetings others come to take their places. In fact, the comrades are pouring in from every section of the country to help in this fight.
And it is a serious business. Young men, without funds, but anxious to help, take advantage of every possible means of reaching Spokane, even to “riding the rods” through the long dreary cold of the north west. One splendid young comrade from Chicago was killed while making his way in this manner; another was hurt in a wreck. Others suffered agonies from hunger and the cold. But none have turned back.
As for the treatment they receive after reaching the scene of battle, it, too, is enough to frighten the faint-hearted, and cause him to pause in his work for humanity. Yet it is said that never a comrade has flunked, or turned traitor to the great cause. The following from the Seattle Socialist almost out-Russias Russia:
Recently there was a wholesale sweating of prisoners in the hot cell. They were mostly men from Chicago, who turned out en mass for arrest the day after the arrest of Miss Flynn and others at the Hall meeting. So angry were the police with them for their method of showing their contempt for the police that they decided to give them a lesson. As a result 29 men were packed into the hot cell and sweated from 12 o’clock noon until 10 p. m. So close were the men packed that they were unable to take their coats off even though they were being stifled by the heat.
This cell, known in police circles as “The Dungeon,” is air tight when the sheet-iron door is closed, and is heated by steam. It has no ventilation whatsoever except when the door is opened, so perhaps the condition of the air in this second “black hole,” after 20 or 30 men have been confined in it for several hours, may be safely termed indescribable. The door would be kept shut until the cries of the men warned the guards that it must be opened or they would be stifled. So hot is this cell that in a very short time one’s clothes are wet with perspiration. After the required period is served in this torture chamber the prisoners, in their weakened condition, are taken to cells which are exposed to cold drafts, and there they freeze until their clothes become dry and their bodies more or less accustomed to the great change in temperature.
Needless to say, this has terrible effect on some of the men, and when they are fit cases for the hospital, the police turn them adrift. One of the Chicago boys passed through this ordeal, and after two days’ stay in the jail he is a physical wreck. The sudden change of temperature acted upon his bowels in such a way as to produce a blood flux, which so weakened him that he could hardly walk, though a strong man when he went in. Broken in health and almost in a dying condition, he was released an made to shift for himself.
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, a young speaks and writer for the I. W. W. organization was accosted on the street one morning by an officer, carried off to the police station and condemned to 90 days in jail on the charge of criminal conspiracy. Her arrest has caused a great deal of excitement, not only among her fellow worker but also among the fair-minded women Spokane.
Fearing that the strain may become to much for the men comrades to bear alone, Mrs Bulah [Beulah] Hyde is calling through the Seattle Socialist [Workingman’s Paper] for women volunteers to help in the speech-making—and to go jail, if necessary.
There is the fear in the northwest that if the Socialists give in to the Spokane authorities, and forfeit their rights to speaking on the streets that it will be a blow to free speech everywhere, and in order to put a quietus at once upon such an outrage, they are making this bold and most strenuous fight in Spokane.
[Emphasis and paragraph breaks added.]
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SOURCES & IMAGE
Quote EGF, Heaven n Hell, ISR p617, Jan 1910
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=MVhIAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PA617
The Progressive Woman
(Girard, Kansas)
-Mar 1909 to May 1911
(note: some issues missing)
https://books.google.com/books?id=Zo1EAQAAIAAJ
-Vol II No. XXXII, January 1910
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=Zo1EAQAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PA16-IA113
Russian Methods in Spokane
-with photo of EGF
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=Zo1EAQAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PA16-IA114
See also:
Tag: Spokane Free Speech Fight of 1909-1910
https://weneverforget.org/tag/spokane-free-speech-fight-of-1909-1910/
Tag: James Kelly Cole
https://weneverforget.org/tag/james-kelly-cole/
“The Sweat-Box”
From
Seattle Socialist Workingman’s Paper
-Dec 11, 1909
Also on page 3: “A Revolutionary Woman”
-Letter to Beulah Hyde from Eleanor Herman who is ready to go to jail in Spokane.
And on page 4: “Another Word to The Women” by Beulah Hyde
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/thesocialist-seattle/091211-seattlesocialist-v10w451.pdf
“Judge Mann Interviewed
-Racy Report by Beulah Hyde-Judge Makes Rash Statements In Answer to Hard Questions by Women” -with Eleanor M. Herman
From
Seattle Socialist Workingman’s Paper
-Jan 15, 1910
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/thesocialist-seattle/100115-seattlesocialist-v10w456.pdf
Tag: Seattle Socialist Workingman’s Paper
https://weneverforget.org/tag/seattle-socialist-workingmans-paper/
Re: Seattle Socialist-The Workingman’s Paper
-per Tim Davenport
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/thesocialist-seattle/
-per Gordon Black
http://depts.washington.edu/labhist/laborpress/Seattle_Socialist.htm
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The Rebel Girl – Bucky Halker/Cathy Richardson
Lyrics by Joe Hill