The accompanying slide show can be viewed here.
I want to tell you about seven remarkable people. Each made a lasting contribution to the freedom of expression.
1. Socrates The trial and death of Socrates in 399 B.C. is often cited as one of the most potent stories illustrating freedom of expression. Recall that Socrates was an argumentative old stonemason/philosopher who questioned everybody and everything and generally made a pest of himself. When Spartan armies surrounded Athens (and it was well known that Socrates admired authoritarian Sparta and derided democratic Athens), Athenians looked around for scapegoats and found Socrates. He was arrested and found guilty of “corrupting the youth” and introducing the worship of strange and alien gods. At his trial, at least according to Plato, Socrates rejected the help of a lawyer and set about to defend himself. This is part of what he said: “...if you kill me, you will not easily find a successor to me, who...am a sort of gadfly, given to the state by God; and the state is a great and noble steed who is tardy in his motions owing to his very size, and requires to be stirred into life. I am that gadfly which God has attached to the state, and all day long and in all places am always fastening upon you, arousing and persuading and reproaching you. You will not easily find another like me, and therefore I would advise you to spare me. Of course the jury didn’t spare him, but voted the death penalty. Socrates downed a goblet of poisonous hemlock and passed into history as perhaps our first free-speech martyr.
2. Jesus of Nazareth Four centuries later, the shadowy figure of Jesus of Nazareth, an itinerant preacher, a carpenter's son and said to be born of a virgin, offers a powerful lesson in the courage of speech in the face of certain oppression. Gathering disciples, preaching against the powerful men of his time, Jesus the Jew spoke a simple truth, and was crucified, for his message posed a threat to the Roman state.
Yet his death did not silence his message, and his cult grew into one of the most dominant religions on earth. Aside from the religious implications, ponder for a moment the words and the ideas that emanated from this simple man, and the fact that the harshest of political regimes could not kill the message that he brought. So powerful did Christianity become that within just a few generations it had become the state religion of the late Roman empire.
By the late Middle Ages, the Church, specifically the Catholic Church, had long been the dominant power in Europe. To speak against the church was blasphemy, punishable in the powerful ecclesiastical churches. The Protestant Reformation, however, broke the stranglehold of Rome, establishing an alternate "truth," and the invention of the printing press helped spread that challenge far wider and faster than the "media" prior to that.
3. John Lilburne In the mid-16th century, Henry VIII began to see the possibilities in controlling this new medium called printing (see any similarities between that and the advent of broadcasting?) He had already named himself head of the Church of England. So he took over the licensing system and for the next 150 years in England, owning a printing press and publishing a book needed the approval of the crown.
One licenser of the press expressed the common sentiment: "A Publick Mercury should never have My Vote; because I think it makes the Multitude too familiar with the Actions, and Counsels of their Superiors; too Pragmaticall and Censrious and gives them, not only an Itch, but a kind of Colourable Right and License, to be Meddling with Government." Hand in hand with the development of licensing was the expansion of sedition laws. Sedition was the crime of stirring the people toward rebellion, but it encompassed the mere act of criticizing--or even merely imagining the death--of the king or criticizing the government or its laws.
Actually, sedition was first made a crime in England back in 1275, but didn’t really hit its stride until the effects of the printing press began to kick in. Henry VIII had a lot to do with this, too. He established the Court of the Star Chamber in 1542 and the judges of the court began an active prosecution--persecution really--of those who published seditious opinions, publications which included “lewd and naughty matters” (naughty referred to political no-no’s, not sex), “unsemely words” and “evil opinions.” Their victims were tried without a jury and torture was used to exact confessions. That’s why the expression “a star-chamber proceeding” has come to mean any unfair or arbitrary trial or hearing.
One of the more famous victims was a poor chap named John Twyn, a printer, who died a rather grisly death--hanged, emasculated, disemboweled, beheaded and quartered--for having committed the seditious crime of printing someone else’s book which suggested that the king is accountable to the people and that people may take up arms and even kill the monarch who refuses to follow this notion of accountability.
But probably the most famous of the Star Chamber's victims was John Lilburne, the head of a reformation sect called the Levellers. Lilburne's first brush with the law was an accusation that he shipped seditious books into England from Holland in 1637. He was committed to prison by the Star Chamber, after two of his confederates accused him in order to save themselves. All that was needed to complete his conviction was his own confession. Lilburne denied the charge and also refused to answer questions, which were in his opinion not germane to his innocence or guilt.
After several appearances before the Star Chamber, in which he repeatedly refused to answer interrogatories under oath, Lilburne was found guilty of contempt. "'I was condemned," wrote Lilburne, "because I would not accuse myself." The court sentenced [him] to a five-hundred pound fine, punishment in the pillory, and imprisonment until [he] conformed by taking the oath. In addition, Lilburne was to be whipped through the streets on the way from Fleet prison to the pillory.
When the sentence was carried out on April 18, 1638, Lilburne attained an immediate notoriety. Whipped over 200 times on the two-mile walk to the pillory, his spirited defiance made him nearly famous overnight. Lilburne even harangued the "multitudes" from the pillory, arguing that Star Chamber oath was expressly against both the Petition of Right and law of God, "for that law requires no man to accuse himself...." He suffered further punishment for his behavior and ultimately ended up spending nearly three years in jail "for the sake of conscience because he would not accuse himself." He was placed in solitary confinement for four months and then in the worst part of the prison, but he could not be silenced, writing some nine pamphlets during the time he spent in prison.
Lilburne claimed the freedom to speak the truth as he saw it, as might command itself "to every man's conscience in the sight of God". Having been in the pillory once, he expected to be there again; then "by the might and strength of my God, I will, come life, come death, speak my mind freely and courageously." One author sums up Lilburne: "Such men as Lilburne who make civil disobedience a way of life are admirable but quite impossible. He was far too demanding and uncompromising, never yielding an inch of his ideals. He was obstreperous, fearless, indomitable, and cantankerous, one of the most flinty, contentious men who ever lived. As one of his contemporaries said, if John Lilburne were the last man in the world, John would fight with Lilburne, and Lilburne would fight with John."
England's licensing system wasn't repealed until 1702 in the reign of William & Mary. In that same year, the first daily newspaper in the American colonies started up, The Daily Courant. Publisher Samuel Buckley advised his readers he would "give the freshest advice from all quarters, and deliver facts as they come related without inclining to either one side or the other." Buckley promised that "he thinks himself obliged not to launch out of his province, to amuse people with any comments and reflections of his own, but leave every reader to make such remarks for himself as he is capable of."
The chief oppressors in colonial America were not so much the colonial courts as the elected assemblies, who firmly believed that freedom of speech was a special privilege for them, but not for the masses. They prosecuted hundreds of people for criticizing their own proceedings--including Benjamin Franklin’s big brother James in 1722, publisher of the New England Courant for suggesting that the government was being less than vigorous in acting against pirates--and it was their abuse of power that led the Founding Fathers to make sure that the powers of the Legislature were restricted by the Constitution.
4. John Peter Zenger In 1735, John Peter Zenger was just another printer who put out a newspaper--really a one-page broadsheet--called the New York Weekly Journal. And in it, he published some sharp criticisms written by someone else of the governor, a despotic and despised man named Bill Cosby--well, William Cosby actually. Cosby was outraged, had Zenger thrown into jail for seditious libel and Zenger sat there for 8 months awaiting trial. Zenger’s paper missed only one issue and then reappeared with a notice from Zenger that the paper would continue to be edited “thro the Hole of the Door of the Prison.”
At the trial, Zenger was represented by Andrew Hamilton of Philadelphia, a highly respected lawyer who had retired but was so moved by Zenger’s plight that he decided to go back into court for Zenger’s sake--without a fee, by the way. Now, all that had to be “proved” by a jury in a seditious libel trial in those days was that the libel, that is the criticism of the governor, had been published. Then it would be up to the judge to decide whether it was seditious libel--that is whether it tended to stir people toward rebellion.
Hamilton startled the court by admitting that his client had published the offending material. “ I cannot think it proper to deny the Publication of a Complaint which I think is the right of every free born subject to make.” Then he began to argue--contrary to the law of the time--that the offending words were true. Truth was not recognized as a defense in cases of seditious libel--in fact just the opposite, if the words were true, they were thought to make a libel that much worse. But Hamilton, sensing he had a sympathetic jury in his hands, more or less ignored the Chief Justice pounding his gavel.
Continuing to address the jury, he said: I labor under the weight of many years, and am borne down with great infirmities of body; yet old and weak as I am, I should think it my duty, if required, to go to the utmost part of the land where my service could be of any use in assisting to quench the flame of prosecutions by the Government to deprive a People of the right of..complaining of the arbitrary attempts of men in power. Men who injure and oppress the people under their administration; provoke them to cry out and complain; and then make that very complaint the foundation for new oppressions and prosecutions.
In other words, Hamilton was arguing that a defendant who was able to prove the truth of a charge of seditious libel should be acquitted on the basis that the public had the right to know the truth about its government. And then he plays to the jury, telling them that what they decide here “is not of small or private concern...No! It may in its consequence affect every freeman that lives under a British government on the main of America. It is the best cause. It is the case of liberty!”
And, despite the fulminations of the Chief Justice, the jury assumed the powers Hamilton said it had and found Zenger not guilty. Upon which, a contemporary chronicler wrote, “there were three huzzas in the Hall, which was crowded with people.” It was a popular victory, especially in New York, considering how unpopular Governor Cosby was, but news of Zenger’s victory traveled. The revolutionary thought that Hamilton had so boldly expressed, that truth is a defense to seditious libel and that the jury had the right to decide both the facts and the law, wasn’t picked up overnight, but the real message that came through was that the press and the public had the right--the inborn, human or natural right--to criticize public officials. And Zenger’s trial, many scholars believe, was the first milepost of the road that led 40 years later to the Revolution.
5. James Madison Now why is it that freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of assembly--the bundle of rights in the First Amendment--weren’t included right in the Constitution. Was the Bill of Rights--which was adopted 200 years ago last December 15--some sort of afterthought? Basically, it was an ideological disagreement, not whether freedom of speech is worth protecting, but whether it should be legislated.
Alexander Hamilton, who might be regarded as the ultimate libertarian in this respect, said you can’t legislate freedom of speech. If the people want it, they will have it. In effect, he was arguing that natural rights...of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.. were beyond the scope of the federal Constitution and thus of the federal government. But James Madison and Thomas Jefferson argued that rights dependent solely on the majority opinion could be snuffed out when the opinion changed. Good point. Well, Hamilton won that round and the Constitution was adopted and sent out for ratification.
Why was it sent out for ratification knowing that the anti-Federalists would clamor for a Bill of Rights? Some delegates assumed that states would give sufficient protection to individual rights. Others didn't want the federal government to interfere. Others were hot and tired and wanted to go home. The debate started anew over the absence of a Bill of Rights. Opponents like Noah Webster argued that one might as well include a provision “that everybody shall, in good weather, hunt on his own land,,,and that Congres shall never restrain any inhabitant of America from eating and drinking...or prevent his lying on his left side on a long winter’s night, or even on his back, when he is fatigued by lying on his right.”
Not funny, Madison argued. Remember, freedom of the press is not guaranteed in the British constitution and look at all the abuses under the King. The greatest danger to liberty, he said, is in the body of the people, operating by the majority against the minority. Even if only one person, the minority must have his or her liberty--freedom of speech--protected, Madison argued, and his argument prevailed. It should be noted, however, that the First Amendment is a somewhat watered-down version of what Virginia had proposed, which was that “the liberty of Conscience and of the press cannot be restrained by any authority of the United States. Not just Congress, as in the 1st Amendment, but the courts and the President and the executive branch. Even after the Bill of Rights was passed, there probably was no consensus as to what the First Amendment meant.
According to historian Leonard Levy, in Legacy of Suppression, the generation which adopted the Constitution and the Bill of Rights did not believe in a broad scope for freedom of expression, especially in the area of politics..."Libertarian theory to the ratification of the First Amendment substantially accepted the right of the state to suppress seditious libel...the security of the state against libelous advocacy or attack was always regarded as outweighing any social interest in open expression."
The popular conception among scholars, lawyers, judges and learned people in general of Liberty of the press, as it was known, adhered to the definition by Sir William Blackstone, a very influential British legal scholar: "Liberty of the Press, is indeed essential to the nature of a free state, but this consists in laying no previous restraint upon publications, and not in freedom from censure from criminal matter when published. Every freeman has an undoubted right to lay what sentiments he pleases before the public; to forbid this is to destroy the freedom of the press; but if he publishes what is improper, mischievous or illegal, he must take the consequences of his own temerity. To punish as the law does any dangerous or offensive writings, which, when published, shall on a fair and impartial trial, be adjudged of a pernicious tendency, is necessary for the preservation of peace and good order..."
This definition of free speech and the test that Blackstone proposed, called the bad tendency test, was to haunt American free speech into the first quarter of the 20th Century.
6. Matthew Lyon Just seven years after the First Amendment was ratified on Dec. 15, 1791,the First Amendment all but died in the political battle between the Federalists, led by President John Adams, and the Anti-Federalists or Republicans led by Thomas Jefferson. The government (the Federalists) did not hesitate in cracking down on threats to their power. They passed a series of four acts between 1798 and 1800 which severely restricted immigrants, who seemed to favor Thomas Jefferson’s brand of politics, and severely restricted the ability of those already in this country to criticize the government. The act punished by fine and imprisonment, anyone who uttered, wrote or published “any false, scandalous and malicious speech against the government of the United States” including the President and the Congress. Fines were up to $2,000 and imprisonment for up to 2 years for each offense. However, a la Zenger, a defendant could plead the truth of the libel. At least 25 arrests were made and 10 convictions secured within 10 years, primarily of anti- Federalist editors.
One of first victims was Rep. Matthew Lyon of Vermont. Born in County Wicklow, Ireland, in 1749, Lyon came to America as an indentured servant at age 14 in 1764, and by hard work and thrift soon earned his freedom. All-American success story. During the Revolution, Matthew Lyon fought with Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys and helped capture Fort Ticonderoga. After Independence, he became wealthy through his discovery that paper could be manufactured from wood pulp. Lyon started putting out a newspaper in Vermont, denouncing President John Adams for alleged monarchist pretentions and conduct. He was elected to Congress. In answer to attack by nearby Federalist paper, Lyon said that John Adams’ administration had “entirely forgotten the public welfare in an unbounded thirst for ridiculous pomp, foolish adulation and selfish avarice.”
The first person arrested for violating the Sedition Act, Lyon was tried by a jury. Lyon was convicted, fined $1,060.96, and sentenced to four months in jail. He was paraded through town of Vergennes, Vermont and thrown into a 12x16 common cell “the common receptacle of horse-thieves, money-makers, runaway negroes or any kind of felons.” The cell had no heat; Lyon remained there from Oct. through February.
As a result of his conviction and imprisonment, Matthew Lyon became a political martyr and a national hero to many, and he easily won re-election to Congress from his Vermont district, despite being unable to campaign as he was incarcerated at the time. After serving out his sentence in Vermont, Lyon made his way by carriage to Washington, D.C., to take his seat in the House of Representatives. Thousands of citizens lined his route from Vermont to Washington to give him a hero's welcome and cheer him on his way. The overwhelming defeat of John Adams in the presidential election of 1800 was due in no small part to the furor that resulted from the arrest and conviction of Matthew Lyon. Ironically, it was Matthew Lyon who cast the deciding vote in the House of Representatives that elected his hero, Thomas Jefferson, as the nation's third President. (The presidential election was thrown into the House after the Electoral College deadlocked between Jefferson and Aaron Burr.) When the Sedition Act came up for renewal in 1801, the House overwhelmingly voted to allow the unpopular law to expire. The Acts expired on the day of his inauguration, March 3, 1801 and Jefferson pardoned everyone who had been convicted and Congress eventually paid back their fines.
Lyon went on to a distinguished and fascinating career. He moved to Kentucky and was elected a Congressman from there as well. He became the leader of the Jeffersonian Republicans (the forerunner of the modern Democratic party) and was the first to propose that presidential candidates be nominated by national conventions. In 1812, when war broke out with Great Britain, Lyon expended most of his fortune building gunboats and transports for the war effort at his Eddyville shipyard. He did so on speculation, without first securing government contracts. The boats were destroyed in a single storm prior to their engagement against the British, and Lyon, never reimbursed for their cost, was financially ruined. He ran for Congress from the new Territory of Missouri, but he was defeated by fewer than a hundred votes. In 1820, at age 70, Lyon was appointed United States factor (or agent) for the Cherokee Nation in the Territory of Arkansas by President James Monroe. Later that year, he ran for Congress from the Arkansas Territory but lost by 61 votes. On August 1, 1822, shortly after completing an exhausting 3,000 mile, five-month round-trip journey by flatboat from Arkansas to New Orleans to sell furs, pelts, and Indian commodities, Matthew Lyon died of a fever in Spadra Bluff, Ark., at the age of 73.
In 1840, Congress voted to posthumously exonerate Matthew Lyon for his 1798 conviction under the Sedition Act and to return Lyon's fine of $1,060.96 (with interest) to his heirs. The A&S Acts hat Lyon ran afoul of demonstrated the tenuous health of the First Amendment at the time, but ironically the vigorous debate over their constitutionality led to strengthening of the First Amendment because it provoked American libertarians to formulate a broad definition of the meaning of the scope of freedom of expression for the first time. Under the pressure of the Sedition Act (which had ironically been passed on the 4th of July) the writers of the Jeffersonian party were driven to originate so broad a theory of freedom of expression that the concept of seditious libel, which had hung around so stubbornly, was at long last repudiated. Congress was not to pass another sedition law for 117 years.
Free speech in the 19th century Many 19th century Americans continued to reject the essence of the 1st amendment--that freedom of expression must exist, as Oliver Wendell Holmes later stated, “not ...only for those who agree with us, but freedom for the thought we hate.”
Of course, 19th Century America was dominated by the debate over slavery and in the south the most hateful of all ideas was abolition. Every state in the South except for Kentucky passed laws controlling and limiting speech, press and discussion of slavery . For example, an 1849 Virginia Code mandated a year’s prison and a fine of up to $500 for anyone who “by speaking or writing maintains that owners have no right of property in slaves.” And many southern postmasters suppressed the circulation of abolitionist literature.
Blacks themselves, of course, were severely repressed, because of deliberate restrictions on literacy and education and discriminatory laws and intimidation for those few who did manage to become literate. As one speaker in the Virginia House of Delegates put it in 1832: “We have, as far as possible, closed every avenue by which light can enter...[the Negro mind]. If we could extinguish the capacitry to see the light, our work would be completed; they would then be on a level with the beasts of the fields, and we should be safe.”
Under the slave code, rebelling or planning was punishable by death; slaves could not leave their plantations without written passes; could not assemble for social events such as dances without the presence of a white man; black preachers could not even preach a sermon to their fellow blacks without the presence of a white man, could not be taught how to read and write (except in Md, Tenn. and Ky.) and were kept away from free blacks.
In South Carolina, 3rd conviction for possession of abolitionist literature carried the death penalty.
Women, by the way, weren’t easily able to enjoy free speech, either, since they had neither the vote, nor educational opportunities for the most part. Abigail Adams warned her husband, in the spring of 1776: [In future lawmaking], do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands. Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in whci we have no voice or representation.”
Abigail would doubtless have been shocked to know that women did not get the vote for another 144 years, in 1920, under the 19th Amendment. And that no American college would admit women until 1833, when Oberlin did so (and even here, women at first weren’t allowed to speak in class!)
7. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn In September 1909, a young woman, still in her teens actually, stands on a wooden sidewalk at the corner of Higgins and Main in Missoula, Montana. Described by many as beautiful with long, dark hair and flashing eyes, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn is drawing a crowd as she speaks forcefully about a subject that those gathered around her are all too well aware of: the dishonest practices of employment agencies that cater to the hundreds of migratory workers that flow through Missoula, which is by now a grown-up trading post, a commercial center for the lumber and mining industries that dominate the economy.
Most of the men whom Flynn is addressing fit this description, by Carleton Parker, writing in The Atlantic Monthly (in 1923): "a neglected and lonely hobo worker, usually undernourished and in need of medical care, a byproduct of the neglected childhood of industrial America." Quite a few may have been native Americans. Many had been lured westward by promises of higher wages and permanent employment, but what they found so often when they got to mining and lumber camps was that they were soon laid off, often because of collusion between lumber camp bosses and employment agencies. For them, the Promised Land, according to Robert Bruere, writing in Harper's Magazine (in July, 1918) had become "a kidnapper, a gospeler of false promises, and indifferent and cruel stepmother..."
Here's a brief description of the lumber camps (by a famous Wobbly of the time, James Rowan): "The camps were relics of barbarism--more like cattle pens than habitations of civilized men in the 20th century. The bunk houses were dirty, unsanitary and overcrowded, the men being packed [two to a double bunk], built in two tiers...The men had to furnish their own blankets. No provision was made for ventilation...The only place to dry clothing was around the stove in the bunkhouse and the steam and odor from these wet clothes added to the impurities of the stagnant air. The lighting was so poor it was almost impossible to read. There were no baths in the camps, neither were there any facilities for washing clothes...Garbage was usually dumped just outside the cook house door. In hot weather these garbage piles rotted and stank and formed an ideal breeding place for swarms of flies...
Flynn had been sent out to Missoula from Chicago by the Industrial Workers of the World, which at that point is four years old. The IWW had been founded in Chicago on a steamy summer day in 1905. Later nicknamed the Wobblies, the I.W.W.'s hatred of capitalism is embodied in their famous preamble, "The working class and the employing class (rich vs. poor) have nothing in common." The Wobblies are particularly appealing to the thousands upon thousands of migratory workers in the West, the victims of industrial capitalism, because its message appeared to embody "the beliefs, dreams, hopes and visions that promised to them an escape from the futility of their lives."
The I.W.W.--part union, part political party, part ideological movement--comes into existence in response to the political and social climate of the time. Since the 1880's, America has seen growing strife as industrializing America produces not only goods but also mass misery for many workers trapped in terrible conditions and making miserable wages. In May of 1886 in Chicago, a workers' protest rally in Haymarket Square turns violent when a bomb goes off. Eight officers die, eight men are brought to trial and sentenced to death; four are executed.
In Montana, the war of the copper kings erupts, making it possible for labor in Butte to organize and gain power. In Germany, King William II ascends to the throne, first cousin to both Czar Nicholas of Russia and King George V of England. He becomes better known as Kaiser Wilhelm In 1899, copper king Marcus Daly sells out to Standard Oil, resulting in the formation of the Amalgamated and later the Anaconda Copper Mining Company, which is to strengthen its hold on the state as the pre-eminent economic force and as the owner, a few years later, of many of the newspapers in Montana. In September 1901, President Wm. McKinley is assassinated in Buffalo by a self-avowed anarchist, Leo Czolgosz, heightening fears of political radicals and magnifying their real strength. Czolgosz, probably insane, is executed less than 2 months after the assassination.
The Wobblies' radical, in-your-face, stance antagonizes everyone, even socialists. The IWW is thrown into greater notoriety by the murder of former Idaho Gov. Frank Steunenberg on Dec. 30, 1905, and the subsequent arrest of IWW head Big Bill Haywood and two other Wobbly leaders. Since they wanted to avoid lengthy extradition proceedings, the authorities send some company goons to kidnap the men in Colorado and whisk them to Idaho on a special train. Eventually, in 1907, Haywood and Co., defended by Clarence Darrow, are acquitted of conspiracy to murder while the man who planted the bomb, Harry Orchard, goes to jail. But the national publicity fixes the IWW in the public's eye as a radical, bomb-throwing organization. [By the way, there is an excellent book on this trial and the events surrounding it, by the late Anthony Lukas called “Big Trouble,” which I recommend highly.]
In Montana, Wobblies are active in many parts, Butte, Bonner, Eureka and Whitefish, with membership among miners, "timber beasts," (the loggers) "river pigs" (the lumberjacks who rode the logs down the river) and "bindlestiffs or migratory workers.
So, back to Missoula, 1909. Flynn and her husband have opened an IWW hall in the basement of the leading theater on Higgins--the Harnois theatre. Their main goal is to recruit migratory workers at street-corner meetings. Their chief target is the employment agencies that fleeced workers by charging them exorbitant fees for jobs that either didn’t exist or from which the workers were fired after collecting their first wages. The agencies and the employers persuade the city council, the ever-wise Missoula city council, to pass an ordinance prohibiting street-speaking. Flynn hits on a brilliant non-violent tactic intended to gain attention to their cause.
[Flynn’s account: pp. 24-27 of Fellow Workers and Friends.]
Free speech fights spread to the West Coast. Affected cities and towns rush to ban public speaking or public assembly. Editorial writers lash out at the Wobblies. The San Diego Union says: "They would be much better dead, for they are absolutely useless in the human economy; they are the waste material of creation and should be drained off into the sewer of oblivion there to rot in cold obstruction like any other excrement." But the Wobblies keep coming, rallying to their cause. Whenever a free-speech fight breaks out, the call goes out for reinforcements.
One of the treasures of Wobblies lore is this letter received in Spokane at the height of the battle there: Ione, Ore., Jan. 7th, 1910 Fellow Worker: A Demonstration was just held in Sheep Camp No. 1 there being three present, a herder and two dogs. The following resolutions were adopted: Resolved, That we send $10.00 for the free speech fight in Spokane. Yours for liberty, THOS. J. ANDERSON P.S. Stay with it. I’m coming--T.J.A.
Not only are the Wobblies jailed, sometimes as many as 24 men in a 6 by 8 cell, but they are tortured in jail, and hounded by vigilante committees composed of doctors and lawyers and bankers and forced to kiss the flag and run gauntlets of men holding wagon spokes. But the Wobblies are not about to be subdued inside the jails or the old schoolhouses or hospitals where they were incarcerated. “In jail we had one lively time,” one Wobbly recalled. “Rebel Red songs were sung almost continuously...We spoke for the benefit of the police, loud enough for them to hear. We burned the stuff called food. Then we sang some more.” Every Wobbly in jail demands a separate trial by jury in order to further clog the courts.
No wonder they aren't popular with judges. One judge in Minot, N.D., when asked, “Judge, can’t you do something to prevent the beating down of innocent men?” responds: "Prevent Hell. We’ll drive the goddamn sonsofbitches into the river and drown them. We’ll starve them. We’ll kill every damned man of them or drive them from the city!"
The Wobblies are not the only victims of harsh repression as they protest the cruel conditions of industrial America. On April 20, 1914, striking coal workers and their families at the Ludlow tent colony in Colorado are fired on in their tents by so-called private detectives and strikebreakers hired by John D. Rockefeller Jr. Twenty-six are killed by bullets and flames, including 13 women and children.
Still, it is the IWW as a group that is becoming the most hated and feared organization in America. Its first martyr is songwriter Joe Hill, who wrote such classic songs as The Preacher and the Slave and The Rebel Girl (in honor of Gurley Flynn). On Nov. 19, 1915, Hill is executed for murder in Salt Lake City. The free speech fights, as with the non-violent resistance of the Civil Rights era, sometimes precipitate violent reactions from those who are threatened.
In one of the most violent incidents, five (and perhaps as many as 11) Wobblies are killed by a posse in Everett, Washington in 1916 as a boatload of about 250 Wobblies from Seattle was preparing to land. Their purpose had merely been to gather peacefully and to protest the town's harsh treatment of Wobblies.
That incident, among other things, prompts a reassessment by the IWW of its theatrical tactics, its guerilla warfare against capitalism. The dominant forces in the IWW argue that straightforward labor organizing will do a great deal more to grow the organization and to bring needed dollars into its coffers. The most promising areas for organizing are in agriculture, lumber and copper mining. The Wobblies are aware that these are all vital areas if and when America goes to war, and it's betting the house that America's need for lumber, copper and foodstuffs will give the IWW the leverage it needs to improve wages and working conditions in these industries.
The war, which once seemed so remote when it started in 1914, is now looming over America. On May 7, 1915, German subs sink the Lusitania, resulting in the loss of 1,200 lives, including almost 200 Americans. The Lusitania is a British transport carrying munitions bought from the United States but the Allies deny that for years. Pressure grows on President Wilson to abandon his isolationist stance and enter the war. Isolationism becomes preparedness, which becomes armed neutrality. All that's needed is some small straw, some pretext...