Spokane's Free Speech Fight, 1909

By Dale Raugust

In 1908 Stevens Street in Spokane was lined with employment agencies that charged a dollar to the many transient workers who were looking for work in the mining, logging or construction industries. The employers kept the worker for a day or two and then fired him, forcing him to go back to the employment agencies and pay another dollar for another job. This was repeated over and over. One company, Somers Lumber Company, hired 3,000 workers that summer to maintain a workforce of 50. Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, also known as the Wobblies), organizer James Walsh arrived in Spokane in 1908 to address this issue. At first the Wobblies tried to work within the system but when the Spokane City Council refused to revoke the licenses of 19 employment agencies the Wobblies began a public speaking campaign to inform the public of the abuses. Late in the year the Spokane City Council passed an ordinance banning public speaking on the streets. The IWW continued to cooperate with the police, holding meetings indoors; but when the City Council passed an exception allowing the Salvation Army to speak on the streets, the Wobblies objected and started one of the most significant actions of civil disobedience in American history, an action that would spread to 26 other cities across the nation. The Wobblies sent out a call for supporters to come to Spokane and they arrived by the hundreds. On November 2, 1909, a crate was overturned and one by one the Wobblies got onto the “soapbox” and spoke against the employment agency abuses. One by one they were arrested until over 500 were carted off to jail.
In December, 1909, 19 year old organizer Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union and a woman of extraordinary speaking skills; arrived in Spokane to join the fight for social justice. Flynn was pregnant and at first the Wobblies organizers allowed her to speak only indoors. When the IWW office was raided and everyone arrested Flynn took over as publisher of the local worker’s newspaper, The Industrial Worker. Even after the speaking ban was declared unconstitutional the arrests continued, only now the speakers were arrested for disorderly conduct. There were so many arrests that the city could not afford to feed the men in jail so the men would be arrested in the afternoon or evening, held overnight and released before breakfast so that they did not have to be fed. The next day after a hearty meal provided by union organizers they got back on the soapbox and were again arrested. Flynn continued to speak at rallies and indoors until she was arrested while walking to the meeting hall and charged with “conspiracy to incite men to violate the law”. Her arrest made headlines throughout the nation. The Spokesman-Review described her as a “frail, slender girl, pretty and graceful, with a resonant voice and a fiery eloquence that attracted huge crowds.” Flynn was held in jail overnight and then released.
Upon her release she wrote of the police brutality she witnessed while in jail and the deplorable conditions of the jail. She declared that there were two prostitutes kept in the women’s quarters with her. During the night the jailers took the women downstairs one at a time, rape them, and then return them to the jail. The men also suffered from police brutality. A Spokesmen-Review reporter wrote that the men were confined 28 to a seven foot by eight foot cell, so tightly that “It took four cops to close the cell door. This was called the ‘sweat box’. The steam was turned on until the men nearly suffocated and were overcome with exhaustion. Then they were placed in ice cold cells and ‘third degreed’ in this weakened state. When the jail became overcrowded an abandoned unheated schoolhouse, Franklin School, was used as a jail.” The army also offered the use of Fort George Wright. A diary kept by a prisoner, James Stark, described how the men were covered with blood with teeth knocked out, eyes blackened, bones broken, and clothes torn. Three prisoners died. When Flynn wrote of the abuses in The Industrial Worker, city police went door to door and confiscated as many copies of the paper as they could, but it was too late, the word had gotten out and the news went national.
Flynn and half a dozen men were scheduled to go to trial on the conspiracy charge but right before the trial the charges were dropped against all but Flynn and one man, Charley Filigno. The trial before Judge Mann lasted for two weeks and made headlines throughout the nation. Flynn insisted on making her own closing argument. She acknowledged her guilt but appealed to the emotions of the men on the jury describing for them in vivid detail the working and living conditions of the transient workers as well as the incidents of police brutality and the condition of the jail... She was acquitted while Filigno was convicted. The prosecutor was furious. As the jury foreman told the prosecutor: “She ain’t a criminal, Fred, an’ you know it! If you think this jury, or any jury, is goin’ to send that pretty Irish girl to jail merely for being big hearted and idealistic, to mix with all those crooks down at the pen, you’ve got another guess comin’.” Flynn was surprised that she was acquitted. She later wrote in her autobiography that: “By this time I was obviously pregnant and even the fast-fading Western chivalry undoubtedly came into play.”
The city of Spokane had had enough. The arrests was costing the city $1,000 a week and a lot of bad publicity. All the charges were dropped and the licenses of 19 employment agencies were revoked. Many attorneys helped the arrested men, mostly pro bono. Flynn was defended by a young Spokane attorney, Fred Moore.