Spokane's Free Speech Fight

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and the Labor Movement in Spokane Washington

Mar 30, 2009

The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) was organized in 1905 and soon became involved in Free Speech fights in several western cities, including Spokane, Washington

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.

The Free Speech Fight

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.

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn

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.” (Spokesman-Review, 12-5-09, 8:6, 9:3). Flynn was held in jail overnight and then released.

Police Brutality in Spokane Washington

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.

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. Flynn and the IWW went on to wage free speech fights in many other cities.

The copyright of the article Spokane's Free Speech Fight in American History is owned by Dale Raugust. Permission to republish Spokane's Free Speech Fight in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.