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Hellraisers Journal – Thursday December 22, 1910
Fresno, California – Mob Destroys I. W. W. Camp as Police Stand By
From the Spokane Industrial Worker of December 15, 1910:
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Again we have been taught another lesson in LAW AND ORDER. On Dec. 7, F. H. Little, secretary of the I. W. W. local in Fresno was tried in that city on a charge of DISTURBING THE PEACE. Disturbing the peace meant to use his constitutional rights to address an audience of workers or whoever wished to stop and listen to him expound the teachings of the I. W. W. At the trial of Little it was discovered (after men had been tortured in the cells of the Fresno jail for breaking LAWS) that there was no LAW in Fresno denying a man FREEDOM OF SPEECH. Fellow Worker Little was acquitted and it was then up to the authorities to release all the prisoners from the dungeons, where they had been tortured with the fire hose and other barbarous methods. The following dispatch to the Spokesman-Review from Fresno proves our statement:
The Industrial Workers of the World have won their fight for “free speech” in Fresno and are speaking throughout the city advocating the principles of their organization, while the police, helpless to interfere, are merely watching to see that none of the agitators incite rioting.
The victory was due to the discovery today that the ordinances of the city do not prohibit speaking on the streets without a permit. Police officials say that probably the 49 I. W. W. speakers now in the county jail will be liberated tomorrow.
Several of the prominent merchants here have advocated the organization of a citizens’ committee to force the industrialists out of the city, but no one has been willing to take the initiative.
The headquarters of the organization, just outside of the city limits, was the scene of jollification this evening , over the acquittal of F. H. Little, secretary of the organization, on a charge of disturbing the peace.
When the authorities could find no legal way to stop FREEDOM OF SPEECH they began to throw out hints to the Citizen’s Alliance and other thugs to go at it themselves and clean out the I. W. W. men with violence. The following dispatch to the Spokesman-Review on the 9th again bears out our statement that the respectable mob was invited to do bodily harm to our members, and probably murder in cold blood:
Following an order given by the chief of police to all patrolmen to allow members of the I. W. W. to speak unmolested on the streets of Fresno, and a statement that the citizens might do as they wished, a large mob gathered in this city tonight about 7 o’clock, attacked and severely beat a number of industrial workers, who sought to speak, and then marched to the I. W. W. camp, outside the city limits, and burned a big tent in which the members lived, together with all the supplies kept there.
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