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Hellraisers Journal – Friday March 4, 1910
Spokane, Washington – Gurley Flynn Reports from Free Speech Fight, Part II
From the International Socialist Review of March 1910:
Latest News from Spokane
—–ELIZABETH GURLEY FLYNN.
—–[Part II of II.]
Since the release of the majority charged with disorderly conduct, suits have been entered amounting to $120,000 against Chief of Police Sullivan, Captain of Detectives Burns, Captain Miles and Officers Shannon, Warner, Nelson and Jelsett. These suits are based upon the treatment the men received in the sweat box and the Franklin School. Every man injured will certainly cost the city of Spokane thousands of dollars before the fight is settled. The tax payers seem to have no sense of justice or humanity, consequently an appeal to their pocket-books as a last resort will be the most effective. The I. W. W. have already been forced to spend hundreds of dollars from the defense fund caring for sick and disabled members as they were discharged from custody. At the present time one man, George Prosser, is ill at the Kearney Sanitarium, two others, Ed. Collins and M. Johnson, are confined in local hotels with extreme cases of rheumatism, and Frank Reed is in the Washington Sanitarium ill with erysipelas.
This little fellow [Frank Reed] who, by the way is one of Uncle Sam’s ex-soldiers, went through the hunger strike at Fort Wright and but a few days after his release was re-arrested charged with criminal conspiracy and desecrating the flag. When he was taken ill he was allowed to remain for 48 hours without medical treatment and in a terrible delirium. County Physician Webb excused this ill-treatment by saying that Reed had been left in charge of a trustee, in other words-a fellow prisoner. He was put under the care of a special nurse and during the first 48 hours he was in an extremely critical condition. The cost to the I. W. W. for the first two days alone amounted to $166.00. This is not reported in any mercenary sense for dollars are of course not to be considered in the balance with the life of a revolutionist, but the extreme character of his suffering and the costly treatment that it required is a severe reproach to the standard of civilization attained in the Spokane County jail.
