Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living.
-Mother Jones
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James Robert Gossard-25, IWW Martyr
James Gossard was one of the members of the Industrial Workers of the World who were rounded up, in the fall of 1917, on the oil fields of Butler County, Kansas, and held under terrible conditions in the jails of Kansas while awaiting trial in federal court. Fellow Worker Gossard survived for about one year under these brutal conditions before dying of influenza and pneumonia on October 30, 1918, at Newton, Kansas, in the Harvey County Jail.
The story of his long ordeal is here told through newspaper and magazine accounts of the day.
From The Towanda News (Kansas) of December 20, 1917:
Arrest Four More I. W. W.-Four more I. W. W. were picked up by federal authorities in the Butler county oil fields and brought to the Sedgwick county jail [in Wichita]. They were James Gossard, John Gresbach, Morris Hunt and John Vagtch. There now are twenty-nine I. W. W. in the Sedgwick county jail.
From The Survey of September 6, 1919:
The Sedgwick County Jail Described by Winthrop Lane
The Sedgwick county jail is the worst place for incarcerating human beings that I have ever been in. Built forty years ago, it has undergone additions from time to time, so that to day it is not the compact structure that many jails are but has many wings and cages. There are cells for approximately 100 prisoners. It is filthy with the accumulated filth of decades. No longer would it be possible to give the jail a decent cleaning. The metal floors are periodically “laraped” with black jack, a greasy substance the chief effect of which is to fill the corners with a coagulated mass of dust and floor sweepings, hardened by the glue-like action of the black-jack. The toilets throughout are covered with dirt. Many of them are encrusted with excreta and a few actually stink. The men declare that they do not dare to sit down on them, because of the vermin. [Drawing added. For more on Sedgwick County Jail and worse of it, see below at “See also”.]
From The Pittsburg Daily Headlight (Kansas) of March 15, 1918:
INDICTED I. W. W.’S AT WICHITA.
—–
Thirty-five Are on Roll Grand Jury Made.
—–Wichita, March 15.-Indictments were returned here this morning by a federal grand jury against 35 alleged members of the Industrial Workers of the World. With only one exception, the indicted men are now under arrest and some of them already have been interned for the duration of the war. Others will probably be tried at the session of the federal court in this city next September. The indictments are under two acts, one the espionage act, under which eight are charged with disloyalty, insubordination and interfering with the war; the other charges them with interfering with the production of oil and other products which are necessary to the prosecution of the war. The men indicted are:
[35 names are listed with “James Gossard” near the end of the list.]
From the Newton Evening Kansan-Republican of October 23, 1918:
Uncle Sam is again paying board on a bunch of I. W. W. prisoners sent here [to Newton, Kansas] at the adjournment of the recent term of federal court. The [Harvey] county jail now holds seven of these men instead of eleven which were here before the last term of court, however. The men who are here now are different ones than were assigned to this county before.
From the Newton Evening Kansan-Republican of October 30, 1918:
FEDERAL PRISONER PNEUMONIA VICTIM
—–
James Gossard, I. W. W., at Least
Passed Last Days In Good Hands
—–James Gossard, aged about 25, whose home is at Urbana, Ill., died at the county jail this morning about 5 o’clock, and he was turned over to the Duff undertaking firm, pending instructions from the federal authorities.
And herein lies a human interest story of unusual setting.
Gossard was a federal prisoner, being held here at the expense of the government, pending trial in court as an I. W. W. disturber, having been arrested in the raids of the Butler county oil fields. When the recent term of federal court was adjourned and seven of these men were sent here for safe keeping, five of them were ill with colds. Gossard was not sick then. The five recovered under treatment of Dr. Bennett, government physician. Then Gossard became ill with influenza and pneumonia set in. Sheriff Smith and wife forgot that he was one of the despised I. W. W. gang. He was given the best bed in the jail building, and placed to himself on the second floor. Dr. Bennett visited him several times daily, and nothing that could be done to relieve him was withheld. His fellow prisoners nursed him with the greatest care and devotion, taking turns at watching at his bedside and giving the medicines.
“You don’t need to bother about doctoring me,” he said. “I feel just like my time had come, and I am certain I am going to die.”
He made good on his hunch. His relatives live at Urbana, and the disposition of his body is up to them and Uncle Sam.
———-
From the Newton Evening Kansan-Republican of November 1, 1918:
The body of James Gossard was shipped this morning on No. 10 to Urbana, Ill., to the young man’s mother. Gossard was the I. W. W. prisoner who died at the county jail. A letter to A. J. Duff from I. W. W. headquarters at Chicago, relative to disposition of the body, was written on a letterhead on which appeared a picture a man peering through the bars of a prison.
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SOURCES
Source for full name and age:
FindaGrave
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/75819170/james-robert-gossard
James Robert Gossard
BIRTH 23 Oct 1893
Fisher, Champaign County, Illinois, USA
DEATH 30 Oct 1918 (aged 25)
Newton, Harvey County, Kansas, USA
BURIAL
Willowbrook Cemetery
Fisher, Champaign County, Illinois, USA
Note: Fellow Worker Gossard was survived by:
Father-Marion, Mother-Eva, 3 younger sisters-Bessie, Osie and Edna; younger brother-Ford, and elder brother-Richard.
Hellraisers Journal, Wednesday November 21, 1917
Butler County, Kansas – I. W. W. Oil Workers Seized by Feds
Federal Agents Move Against IWWs in Kansas Oil Fields, Fifty Arrested in Butler County
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday November 24, 1918
IWW Member Dies Behind the Bars of a Kansas Jail
re October 30, 1918-Harvey County Jail, Newton, Kansas-Fellow Worker James Gossard Dies of Influenza and Pneumonia
The Towanda News
(Towanda, Butler County, Kansas)
-Dec 20, 1917
https://www.newspapers.com/image/484247408
Survey of Sept 6, 1919
“Uncle Sam: Jailer” -by Winthrop D. Lane
-p806 begins article
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=xmc6AQAAMAAJ&hl=en&pg=GBS.PA806
The Pittsburg Daily Headlight
(Pittsburg, Kansas)
-Mar 15, 1918
https://www.newspapers.com/image/95947640/
Evening Kansan-Republican
(Newton, Harvey County, Kansas)
-Oct 23, 1918
https://www.newspapers.com/image/96196662/
-Oct 30, 1918
https://www.newspapers.com/image/96196762/
-Nov 1, 1918
https://www.newspapers.com/image/96196802/
IMAGE
IWW Emblem wiki
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Workers_of_the_World
WWIR, In Here For You, Ralph Chaplin, Sol Aug 4, Sept 1, 1917
-p323
https://libcom.org/files/rebel-voices-2_0.pdf
See also:
American Political Prisoners
Prosecutions Under the Espionage and Sedition Acts
-by Stephen Martin Kohn
Greenwood Publishing Group, 1994
-p185-6 & 189(12)
https://books.google.com/books?id=-_xHbn9dtaAC
History of the Labor Movement in the United States, Volume 8
-Postwar Struggles, 1918-1920
-by Philip S. Foner
International Publishers Co, 1987
-p211 re Wichita Group of IWW Federal Prisoners
https://books.google.com/books?id=UMBWNCXcR8wC&
Truth about IWW Prisoners
-by ACLU Apr 1922
-re Gossard on p23
http://debs.indstate.edu/a505t7_1922.pdf
Survey of Sept 6, 1919
“Uncle Sam: Jailer” -by Winthrop D. Lane
-p806 begins article
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=xmc6AQAAMAAJ&hl=en&pg=GBS.PA806
-p811 begins description of Sedgwick county jail at Wichita
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=xmc6AQAAMAAJ&hl=en&pg=GBS.PA811
-p834 re Gossard
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=xmc6AQAAMAAJ&hl=en&pg=GBS.PA834
Winthrop D. Lane Describes the Sedgwick County Jail
After some trouble gaining admittance to the Sedgwick County Jail, Mr. Lane was finally escorted upstairs to the “government tier,” where:
I was immediately surrounded by all ten of the I. W. W. members then confined there. I remained in the jail for several hours.
The Sedgwick county jail is the worst place for incarcerating human beings that I have ever been in. Built forty years ago, it has undergone additions from time to time, so that to day it is not the compact structure that many jails are but has many wings and cages. There are cells for approximately 100 prisoners. It is filthy with the accumulated filth of decades. No longer would it be possible to give the jail a decent cleaning. The metal floors are periodically “laraped” with black jack, a greasy substance the chief effect of which is to fill the corners with a coagulated mass of dust and floor sweepings, hardened by the glue-like action of the black-jack. The toilets throughout are covered with dirt. Many of them are encrusted with excreta and a few actually stink. The men declare that they do not dare to sit down on them, because of the vermin.
The age of the jail has produced crevices and openings in the brick walls through which rain and, in winter, melting snow pour in. Water-marks in several places on the walls attest this; last January a small flood from this cause was so serious as to be reported in the local press. Rats issue through these holes and through the crevices in the steel flooring. At evening, when the prisoners have quieted down, these rats come forth in great numbers. It is not uncommon for a prisoner to be awakened by a rat running over his bed or even across his face.
The prisoners have various methods of combating the rats. One is to hang loops of greased string from the base of the steel lattice work and cell doors. These loops dangle about an inch from the ground and are so constructed that when the head of a rat enters the loop, the string tightens and the rat is caught. Six rats constitute a good night’s catch by this device. Another method is to attach a short hose to the steam pipe of a radiator, to insert the other end of the hose through a crack in the floor and to “steam” the rats out, killing them as they issue forth. One prisoner made an elaborate trap out of a small wooden box, using bread for bait, and caught two large rats alive by this method. The prisoners say that a former night jailer used to go down into the basement at night and shoot rats with a small target rifle for practice. Many so hit crawled under the flooring and died, but the prisoners were not allowed to remove their dead bodies.
The food had been very poor just before my visit, but a change in the sheriff had brought about a slight improvement. The new jailer, too, served food in new granite pans instead of the rusty tin ones used before. The men were spending most of their allowance from the I. W. W. organization for food, the amounts cited on page 808 referring to this jail.
The organization was also supplying money for other purposes. Nearly all of the men complained of trouble with their teeth. A local dentist had fitted one of them with a set of false teeth and had done elaborate bridge-work for a second. For this they had paid him $88.50. When I asked the dentist whether the government, in whose care these men had been for over a year, had not met a part of this expense, he replied: “The government would not pay for dental treatment unless the men were actually in pain.” An osteopath had given chiropractic treatment to two of their number, one of these being Shuren. This had cost $2 a treatment, or $48 in all. In taking care of four of their number, therefore, they had thus expended a total of $136.50.
Most of the conditions that I have so far described are product of ignorance and callousness. The men responsible for them, and the communities that permit them, are for the most part simply bereft of any understanding of what it is that they are doing. There remains to be described a device for confining men that exhibits both ingenuity and perverted purpose. It combines the efficiency of modern invention with the insensibility of the thirteenth century. Yet it is defended by people who are no doubt quite humane in their private lives.
[The Revolving Cage]
This is the revolving cage or “rotary tank,” as the prisoners call it, in the Sedgwick county jail. The reader can form a mental picture of this cage by imagining an ordinary cylindrical bird-cage, revolving about a vertical rod down its center. Imagine, further, the bird cage divided into upper and lower halves. Each half is cut vertically into segments, V shaped. The wide part of the segment is at the circumference and the small part at the axis. The cells are these V-shaped compartments. Placed in a row, they would look like this: VVVVVVV. Actually, of course, they are in a circle, with the points of the v’s coming together at the axis.
There are ten cells in each tier. The mouth of the cell is not entirely open. Instead, a series of metal plates partly enclose the cage, so arranged that only about half of each cell mouth is open.
The cage revolves inside a stationary steel lattice frame. This frame is two or three inches from the tank; it forms, therefore, a wall around the entire contrivance. There are two doors in this wall, one on each tier. The cage is made of heavy metal; the floors, roof and plates are solid metal sheets. In weight the cage is said to be thirty or thirty-five tons. Each cell is eight feet six inches long and six or seven feet high; at the mouth it is six feet six inches wide, tapering to twenty-two inches. The open portion of each mouth is three feet four inches wide.
This cage was the wonder of the county when it was built. Regarded as proof against escape, it seems to have justified that hope, for I learned of no escapes from it. Originally it revolved by water power. At that time it was kept in motion day and night; a slow, continuous revolution gave the men inside no rest. Incidentally it prevented them from working through the steel frame outside the cage, for they were never in one place long enough to make any headway.
The machinery for keeping it in motion broke down or the water power dried up. Today the tank is operated by levers, which in turn are worked by human hands. Prisoners in the cage are allowed to come out once a week for a bath. To bring them out, the cage is revolved so that the mouth of each cell, in turn, comes opposite the door in the steel frame. The occupant then steps out upon a platform the other side of the steel frame.
This is the ostensible method of bringing them out. Actually a labor-saving element is introduced. To bring the cage to a stop for each prisoner would obviously require nine or ten startings and stoppings of the cage. Its great weight makes this an arduous task. The method used, therefore, is to give notice that the tank is to be revolved, which enables each prisoner to be in readiness at the mouth of his cell, and then to turn the cage in one continuous revolution; each man, as his cell comes opposite the door in the steel frame, jumps upon the platform and quickly makes way for the man in the next cell, who is right at his heels. He must make his exit not only through the three feet four inches of space in the mouth of his cell, but also through the door of the steel frame, which is of about the same width. A tardy jump or a misstep might be serious.
Another source of danger lies in the fact that there is nothing between the prisoner standing at the mouth of his cell and the stationary steel frame outside. If a hand or a leg should get caught in the frame while the tank is in motion, an injury would be almost sure to result. One prisoner showed me a scar on his ankle, which he said was left from the time, some months before, when he caught his foot in the frame in this fashion.
The cells in the cage are poorly lighted, only those in a favorable position with regard to the windows receiving enough light to read by. In the others it is so dark that I had to use matches to examine them closely. Each cell has a bed, slung to the wall in such a way that it can be raised and lowered at convenience. An open toilet at the small end gives off a noticeable odor. As I drew near one of these toilets and bent down to look at it, the smell of excreta was so strong that I drew back involuntarily; in the trough, underneath the seat, excreta were plainly visible. The flushing apparatus, I was told, was frequently out of order. This toilet is the constant companion, day and night, of the man confined in the cell. Ventilation, owing to the peculiar construction of the cage, is almost out of the question.
Fourteen members of the I. W. W. spent fifty consecutive days in this cage, according to statements of their own number. This is denied by the jail authorities, who admit, however, that three or four of the “ringleaders” among the I. W. W. prisoners were confined in it for several days. Whether the statement of the I. W. W.’s is true or not is not of much concern, since the cage has been regularly used for confining prisoners.
Last January [January 1919] the beds were removed from the cage and announcement was made that prisoners would no longer be confined there. This was the effect of an order by Judge Richard E. Bird, district judge of Wichita. The I. W. W.’s themselves were in no small part responsible for the discontinuance. This came about through state rather than federal intervention. Descriptions of the cage sent out by I. W. W.’s aroused inquiries from many people, among these the National Civil Liberties Bureau, which sent its inquiries to the Department of Justice.
On December 3 [December 1918] last, one of the assistant attorney generals, Mr. Ginham, wrote to the bureau, saying that an investigation of the jail had been made and “it is not believed that the situation is such as to call for any further action on the part of this department.” Seven days later another assistant attorney general, W. L. Frierson, wrote that, although the jail was not an “up-to-date institution,” yet it was “in fairly good sanitary condition.”
Little was to be expected, apparently, from the federal government. Meanwhile protests had reached Arthur Capper, then governor of Kansas. Governor Capper asked Judge Bird to make an investigation and a month later came the order for its discontinuance. Whether the discontinuance will be permanent, or whether the cage will again be resorted to after public interest has died down or under the stress of overcrowding, remains to be seen.
[Emphasis added.]
Insanity, Tuberculosis, and Death in Jails of Kansas
Let the reader now prepare himself for the greatest surprise of all. On June 6 [1919], after eighteen months and a half of confinement, the indictment against the members of the I. W. W. was quashed. They were not even compelled to come to trial. Their imprisonment had, therefore, apparently been wanton; they were guilty of no offense; and, presumably, they were entitled to their freedom.
But were they set free? Not so long as Mr. Robertson could hold them. Within twenty-four hours he had gathered together another grand jury and had reindicted the men on substantially the same charges as before. They continued to be held in jail, still awaiting the trial that had been nearly two years in taking place.
This trial is now set for the term of court that convenes September 22 [1919], The persistent efforts of their attorneys have at last won the acceptance of bonds for some of them, so that all but sixteen are out either on bonds or their own recognizance. These sixteen are still in jail; the government authorities have refused to accept Liberty bonds for the release of any of them. During the summer [of 1919] the men were scattered to new jails; at the present moment six are in Ottawa, nine in Leavenworth and one in Hutchinson.
What is the net effect, upon the men themselves, of their confinement?
Jack Caffray, who is in the jail at Ottawa, is at last admitted even by Mr. Robertson to be insane; he will be removed to a state hospital if room in one can be found for him. Stephen Shuren is an inmate of the state insane asylum at Osawattomie. James Gossard died in the Newton [Harvey County] jail, allegedly of influenza.
[Writes Miss Caroline Lowe:]
There is no question in my mind that Peter Higgins is afflicted with tuberculosis, although the state doctor reported differently. I think there is no question that Gresbach and Blumberg have tuberculosis also. All of the boys are greatly weakened. Francik was a physical giant when arrested and he is, as the result of his long confinement, a wreck today, and is at last released upon his own recognizance. Another one of the boys, whose name I shall not mention, was released upon his own recognizance as having contracted a bad case of syphilis due to the vile conditions in the Topeka jail. Harry McCarl, upon his release, after walking from Union Station to Twelfth street, which is not a great distance, almost collapsed from physical exhaustion.
This does not tell the story of shattered nerves and tortured minds. If the government had set out to make these men doubt its fair purpose, it could not have chosen a better way. If it wants to cure I. W. W.ism let it begin with its county jails.
[Emphasis added.]
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