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Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday March 9, 1910
Spokane, Washington – Free Speech Fight Ends in Victory for I. W. W.
From the Seattle Socialist Workingman’s Paper of March 5, 1910:
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SOURCES & IMAGES
Quote EGF, re Spk FSF, ISR p618, Jan 1910
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=MVhIAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PA618
The Workingman’s Paper
(Seattle, Washington)
-Mar 5, 1910
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/thesocialist-seattle/100305-seattlesocialist-v10w462.pdf
See also:
Tag: Spokane Free Speech Fight of 1909-1910
https://weneverforget.org/tag/spokane-free-speech-fight-of-1909-1910/
From Robert Ross to Industrial Relations Commission:
-This letter was sent to the CIR, in the care of Vincent St. John.
Sept. 19 1914
To the Industrial Relations Commission.
Dear Sirs:I have been informed that a committee has sent out a call for information as to treatment of members of the Free Speech Fights and as to the arrests and trials. I happened to be working in the city of Spokane, Wash. at the time of the trouble and not being a member of I. W. W. my sympathy was with them. I have always been rebellious against the master class from the treatment which I have received my share of and as an American I thought it my duty to cast my lot with my fellow workmen and hold what our forefathers granted us years ago, which any American working man would do if he was not kept ignorant of the truth. So I went out on the street and all I got to say was fellow workers. There were twenty or thirty men standing on the street. I was arrested by a man standing by who happened to be a special police. I found out after that he was a carpenter, a member of the A. F. of L.
I was taken down to the police station, searched and thrown in what they call a sweat box. I did not measure the place but I would guess it to be about 8×10 feet square. There were 27 men inside and I made 28. When the door was shut it was air tight, with but one exception. There was a hole about four inches in our side of the cell. There was steam pipe about four inches running through the cell with steam on in full blast. We were kept in there 15 hours with the door shut. We had to take our clothes off it was so hot. There were a lot of men who could not stand the heat and had to be carried out after 15 hours. We were then taken to cell No. 13, with windows all open without any bedding at all. They then came and took our shoes away from us, which made it all the worse for us. It was very cold.
The next day I was brought before the would-be court for trial. The officer who made the arrest swore on the stand that I had the streets blocked and that traffic could not pass. Judge Mann asked me if I had anything to say. I got upon the stand and told the court that I did go out on the street, but I did not. That was all his honor would let me say and I got 30 and 100.
I have seen men brought in with blood flowing from their face and head, some with broken bones and some who had been kicked and beaten all over. Although I was never struck by anyone all the time I was in jail, they had what was called the club party. They worked in the dark so as you could not see who they were.
They first gave each man 1/3 of a small five cent loaf of bread, then they cut it down to 1/4 and finally they got it down to one loaf of bread for five men two times a day.
On one occasion they marched us down from the [Franklin] school house where they had moved us, when the city jail could not hold any more, with the pretense of giving us a bath. They took us down to the city jail and made us strip off our clothes and walk under a cold shower bath but would not give us time to wash. This was in November and it is very cold in Spokane at that time of the year, so when we started back to the school house they marched us in the center of the street and on the sidewalks people had gathered with all kinds of tobacco, fruit, bread and everything in the line of eatables, but the police held them back and would not let them get near us so that the people began to throw tobacco, fruit and everything they had brought. Those who were lucky to get some of those things found themselves unlucky, for no sooner had they caught them when the police knocked them out of their hands. In one case one man had just caught an apple and had started to take a bite when the police struck at the apple and hit the poor fellow on the nose and broke it. This is only one instance of which there are many more.
In the school house they would wake us up at all hours of the night and chase us from one room to another. There is no use of me trying to give a full detail of what I saw with my own eyes.for it would take a long time to write what I saw. This is the truth as I saw it, so help me God. There would no use of me telling a lie because there are six or seven hundred men who could testify as to what I have written, which is only a part of what took place in Spokane.
Yours truly,
[Signed] ROBERT ROSS
Fellow Workers and Friends
I.W.W. Free Speech Fights as Told by Participants
by Philip S Foner
Greenwood Press, Jan 1, 1981
(search: “robert ross” )
https://books.google.com/books?id=y4yxAAAAIAAJ
From:
“Letters, Etc., Addressed to Vincent St. John, by Various Writers,”
See:
U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations, 1912-1915
Unpublished Records of the Division of Research and Investigation:
Reports, Staff Studies, and Background Research Materials.
https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001077052
https://books.google.com/books?id=2J0WAQAAMAAJ
Choice: Publication of the Association of College and Research Libraries,
a Division of the American Library Association, Volume 23, Issues 1-6
Association of College and Research Libraries., 1985
(search: “unpublished records”)
https://books.google.com/books?id=IP48AQAAIAAJ
Hellraisers Journal, Wednesday January 31, 1917
Published! 10,000 Copies of Eleven-Volume Sets of Testimony Submitted to Congress by Commission on Industrial Relations
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There Is Power in a Union – Utah Phillips