Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Professor Karen Blair, who was the first to teach me the craft of researching history. It was under Dr. Blair’s guidance that I first discovered Louise Olivereau.

Professor Robert Burke has been a crucial source of assistance and encouragement to me on this thesis; his enthusiasm for my work has never wavered. Dr. Burke pushed me towards excellence, and for this I am deeply grateful.

All historians are indebted to the work of librarians and archivists, and those whom I depended upon were consistently thorough in their assistance. I wish also to express my appreciation for the comments and ideas that came from my fellow graduate students. My association with my seminar colleagues will always serve me well.

Finally, I wish to thank Tari Eastman for her friendship, her generosity, and her keen editor’s eye. To my own community of family and friends: thank you.

This work is dedicated to opponents of war everywhere, throughout time.

Chapter 1: Pre-War Seattle: Progressives, Radicals And Preparedness

In the first decade of this century, Seattle appeared to be a pioneer’s dream realized. Just a dozen years after the devastating 1889 fire, Seattle was a thriving, industrious city indeed, a metropolis. With shipping and lumber as its prime commercial assets, Seattle heartily filled the role of outfitter (and receiver) during the Alaska gold rush of 1897. The quest for Klondike gold helped to line the pockets of Seattle merchants. The iron foundries and machine shops which appeared in Seattle by the early 1890s enabled shipbuilders to construct steel-hulled ships for the Alaska-bound argonauts and for the Spanish- American War in 1898.

The rush for Alaska gold also spawned a rush to Seattle; the city’s 1900 population of 80,000 ballooned to 237,000 by 1910. A portion of this increase can be attributed to the annexations of such adjoining communities as West Seattle and Ballard in 1907; in 1910 the voters of Georgetown and Laurelhurst responded favorably to Seattle’s beckoning to join the city limits.

During the ten years of this dramatic growth in population, Seattleites also saw a flurry of public works projects. Street improvements, sewer additions and large scale alterations of the city’s geographic characteristics, such as the regrade of Denny Hill in 1907 through 1908, all heralded Seattle’s arrival at city status.

No longer the struggling mill town vying for trade with better established Pacific coast cities such as Portland or San Francisco, Seattle by 1910 had come into her own as a center of commerce and industry. The railroads had played a large part in this development, and in 1915 a Seattle booster crowed that Seattle “is the point where the transcontinental railways meet the ships of the world in the commerce of the Pacific Ocean.” This focus on transoceanic trade was a theme at the 1909 Alaska Yukon and Pacific (AYP) Exposition, a lavish production hosted on the grounds of the University of Washington which lasted 108 days and attracted almost four million visitors. While celebrating the commercial link between Seattle and Alaska, the Exposition also played up the prospects of trade with the Orient. Boosterism abounded during the AYP, and further evidence of this civic pride could be found in the citizens’ enthusiasm for public parks, or in the recently completed downtown library, a classical structure erected with the aid of a generous donation from Andrew Carnegie.

Seattle citizens were also proud of their city-owned water supply, the source being the Cedar River which flowed from the foothills of the Cascade mountains. In 1902 the city council presented a bond issue to the public which would establish municipal ownership of the electrical supply, a $590,000 proposal which the voters endorsed. The city lighting plant went into operation in 1905, and city officials soon boasted that Seattle’s street lighting system supplied over 700 miles of lights. By city charter amendment, lighting and water became two separate city departments in 1910. Citizen boosters in 1915 proclaimed Seattle the “healthiest city in the world,” attributing the city’s low death rate to “an unlimited supply of water of chemical purity.”

Municipal ownership of utilities was one of the staple ingredients in the progressive movement, and by the early years of this century Seattle residents exhibited progressive tendencies.

In 1911 the citizenry would use another device brought about by the progressive reform--the recall. The target for recall was Hiram Gill, an attorney and former city council president who won the mayoral election of 1910. An easygoing man whose clients included the saloonkeepers and brothel owners of the Skid Road district, Gill made the unfortunate move of appointing Charles Wappenstein chief of police. Soon after his swearing in, Wappenstein set up a system with brothel owners in Skid Road whereby he would receive ten dollars a month for each woman working in the bordellos. This arrangement would net “Wappy” (as he was known all over town) about $1,000 each month. The deal was, of course, that the police would then leave the red-light houses alone. Gill also had close friends who owned shares in the Skid Road district businesses, men who gained a good deal by being so close to the mayor. The people had known that Gill favored an “open town” at the time of his election, but what resulted was a bit too “open” for them. By 1911 a recall campaign successfully ousted Gill from office. Three years later he would run again and seeing the error of his previous ways he would proclaim himself a reform candidate, running on a “closed town” platform. His 1914 victory was overwhelming; Seattle citizens again gave him the mayoral seat in 1916.

The Hiram Gill recall episode proved to the citizens that progressive reforms worked that they could exercise some control over the machinations of city politics. The newspapers undoubtedly influenced public opinion on civic issues, and by 1910 Seattle readers had plenty of local newspapers from which to choose. Having a remarkably low illiteracy rate, Seattleites could inform themselves on local, regional and national news with at least four English-language and five foreign-language daily newspapers.

The foreign-language press found an audience among the large number of immigrants arriving in Seattle; by 1910 twenty-five percent of the city’s population consisted of people born outside of this country. Often taking unskilled or migratory jobs in the Seattle area, the immigrant population was usually the hardest hit when economic downturns prompted a reduction in employment. When Seattle’s turn of the century prosperity stagnated from 1910 through 1915 (paralleling the national economic slump of 1912 through 1914), the result was a sharp rise in unemployment, and the immigrants without trade skills were the first to lose their jobs.

The nature of Northwest industries such as logging, mining and shipping attracted rootless, unskilled workers.

Because the American Federation of Labor (AFL) organized along craft and skilled trade lines, the migratory laborers often saw themselves as the disinherited within the labor union realm. These men were thus attracted to the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), an organization calling for one big union based on industry, instead of on skilled trades.

Founded in 1905 in Chicago, the IWW operated on the premise that “the working class and the employing class have nothing in common.” Calling for the abolition of the wage system and the eventual overthrow of capitalism, the IWW declared that “by organizing industrially we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old.” With such inflammatory rhetoric, the IWW quickly became an anathema to both the employers and the AFL, “Wobblies”--as they were called in the West by supporter and enemy alike--were often depicted as violent agitators, an undeserving portrayal considering that violence was usually directed at the organization, not generated by it. Indeed, the IWW songs and rhetoric alluded to violence, which alarmed many people; however, the organization did not advocate violent measures in strikes or organizing. As a striking Wobbly on the Mesabi Range in northern Minnesota said in 1916, “we don’t want to fight anybody, what we want is more pork chops.”

Organizing in logging camps and the harvest fields, the IWW stressed solidarity and education, believing that “an idea is the most dynamic thing in the world. The power to transmit ideas is the power to change the world.” IWW literature usually bore the motto “Education Organization Emancipation.” The Wobblies believed that this tripartite evolution was a logical progression towards changing the existing industrial order under which they saw the worker struggling. The growth of the IWW reflects the extent to which the AFL ignored the needs of the unskilled worker. Rootless, often unmarried, and many of them recent immigrants, industrial laborers found a voice in the IWW.

The IWW also attracted such young men as Harvey O’Connor, who, after graduating from Tacoma High School in 1914, went to work in a logging camp. He soon joined the 16 Lumber Workers’ Industrial Local 500, the IWW local in western Washington, which represented many of the men who worked in the dense forests, felling Douglas firs for ten hours each day. After meeting Walker C. Smith, editor of the IWW-owned Industrial Worker, O’Connor tried his hand at journalism between logging jobs. By 1917 he was writing for the Socialist Daily Call in Seattle.

Most of those who joined the IWW were wage workers who sought better working conditions; however, others were attracted to the organization because of an ideological appeal. Louise Olivereau was one of those who embraced the ideals that the IWW espoused. Although never a member, she did work in the Seattle IWW office, and she perhaps is an example that predates the expression of “fellow traveler.” After attending college in Illinois, Olivereau wandered west, living a transient life and supporting herself by taking jobs as a stenographer. She read widely on political theory, embracing socialism in 1909 and later moving even further left toward the tenets of anarchism. Believing that the IWW represented the nearest example of anarcho- syndicalism, Olivereau was undoubtedly influenced by Jack Whyte, an IWW organizer who was shot and killed in Tonapah, Nevada, in 1915. Olivereau referred to Whyte as the “Dearest Rebel” in her prison correspondence Of 1917 through 1920, and, if their relationship was not a love affair, it was at least a deep friendship. Whyte was known for his organizing role in the free speech fights in Fresno and San Diego in 1912, and he was on a lecture tour for the IWW in Nevada when he was shot by a professional gambler. Whyte died six weeks later in a San Francisco hospital; his fellow IWW members had arranged for his removal to that city in order that he might get better medical treatment.

The loss of Jack Whyte deeply affected Olivereau, who was living in Portland at the time. Due to the absence of evidence, it is difficult to determine when or how Olivereau came to know Whyte. Those were migratory years for her; she lived in Salt Lake City, worked in a Northwest lumber camp as a cook, and briefly settled in Portland. While living in Portland, Olivereau came to know Minnie Parkhurst, who also had spent the previous few years moving around the Northwest with her husband, Ed Rimer. Parkhurst and Rimer settled in Seattle around 1914, and Olivereau wrote Parkhurst often from Portland. The two women shared a love of poetry and drama, a penchant for hiking in the mountains and swimming in lakes, and a keen interest in radical politics. When Olivereau moved to Seattle in late 1915, she and Parkhurst were already fast friends, and they spent much of their free time together.

Minnie Parkhurst had been living in Boise when she married Ed Rimer in 1912. Although she took his last name when they were wed, she later returned to her birth name because, as she said, “I wish to be responsible only for myself.” Rimer was a pressman by trade who agreed with his wife’s radical politics. Soon after the marriage, Parkhurst ran for a city commissioner position on the “IWW-Socialist” ticket. Her platform demands included the abolition of the city contract system; a minimum of three dollars per each eight-hour day for all city workers; municipal banking; and the establishment of a city yard that would sell wood, coal and ice to citizens at cost. Her campaign for the city seat was unsuccessful. The tenuous coalition between the IWW and the socialists in Boise snapped over the results of a May Day rally which police and the press labeled a “riot,” and in which Parkhurst was arrested for carrying a red flag.

Parkhurst reportedly had left the IWW hall with a red flag under her arm and headed for Columbia Park, where the rally was scheduled to begin. Just down the block from the hall, a police officer grabbed Parkhurst and lifted her off of her feet as she struggled to free herself. Ed Rimer, who had followed Parkhurst out of the hall, rushed up to the grappling pair and took a swing at the officer. As a result, Parkhurst was arrested for carrying a red flag in the streets, and Rimer for “interfering with an officer.” The meeting at Columbia Park went on as planned, but not without fistfights erupting in the crowd. The following morning, Parkhurst received a ten dollar fine and a suspended sentence of 60 days. The judge dropped the charges against Rimer because, as the judge told the court, Rimer had reacted to the policeman “handling the lady so roughly” and “he thought the policeman was hurting his wife.” The judge also noted that the two were still on their honeymoon.

The incident cost Ed Rimer his job, and it resulted in the local Socialist Party barring all IWW members from party membership. A.R. Ketchum, organizer for the Socialist Party in Boise, blamed the May Day ruckus on the IWW, saying that Parkhurst should have carried the U.S. flag along with the red flag. The Boise press had used the terms “IWW” and “Socialist” interchangeably, and Ketchum made a point of emphasizing the distinction between the two groups.

Parkhurst and Rimer left Boise after that incident, and it is unclear as to whether they went immediately to Seattle. However, by 1914 they had settled in Seattle on lower Queen Anne hill. Rimer got a job as a pressman, and Parkhurst joined a local theater group and worked for the Neo-Malthusian League, an organization concerned about population growth and the availability of birth control information. Although the couple made friends among the Seattle socialist and IWW circles, Parkhurst would often make derisive remarks about “socialist politicians.”

Radical politics came comparatively late to one woman who would later become well-known in Seattle--Anna Louise Strong. From a well-educated, “proper” family, Strong arrived in Seattle in 1908, after completing a Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of Chicago. She came to join her widowed father, Sidney Strong, a respected, progressive-minded minister with a small congregation. Anna Louise Strong felt a lack of direction for her life at the time, and so her father helped her organize a program called “Know Your City.” The undertaking included walking tours of the city and public lectures, and it was such a success that other Western cities adopted the program. At this time Strong also helped her father with his writing, oversaw the running of his house, and accompanied him to Japan in 1909.

Upon her return from Japan, Strong grew restless and decided to go to New York, where she took a position with the Russell Sage Foundation, a social welfare organization.

She was then offered a job with the National Child Labor Committee, where she organized Child Welfare exhibits, a task which combined her Christian social beliefs with the progressive-based principle of social work. Soon she was in charge of the exhibit program, taking it to such cities as St. Louis and Kansas City, and later to Dublin, Ireland.

During this period, Strong witnessed the poverty which existed in American cities, and she began to search for a political answer to the inequities she saw. Her job had expanded her world, much more so than her travels abroad or her higher education ever did. She found herself attracted to socialism, but she was rebuffed by a Socialist Party member in Kansas City when she admitted that she didn’t know what “class struggle” was. Still, this awakening excited Strong, and she cabled her father from Kansas City:

“Exhibit very complete....(M)uch more radical than the others but the executive committee will stand for it thanks for telegram please come by the way I’m turning socialist better come and see about it.”

By 1916 Strong felt her work with the Child Welfare Exhibit Program was complete, and after a series of disappointing relationships with men (including Roger Baldwin, to whom she was engaged), she decided to return to Seattle. She needed a new environment; she was not convinced that Seattle was the right place for her, but her father was there and the two had always had an especially close relationship.

Within just a few months after her arrival in Seattle, Strong won a seat on the Seattle School Board. Progressives in the city liked the well-educated minister’s daughter, and she told citizens that their school board needed “a woman’s point of view.” Strong became acquainted with the IWW while covering the trial of Thomas H. Tracy, a defendant in the “Everett Massacre” case, for the New York Evening Post in early 1917. In November 1916 the Seattle boat Verona arrived at the Everett waterfront carrying over 200 IWW members intent on supporting the shingleweaver’s strike in that city. As the boat docked, the sheriff and 200 of his “deputies” were waiting on the shore. Shots rang out--the scene left five Wobblies and two vigilantes dead, with 50 more wounded. Seventy-four IWW members were arrested and charged with murder. Strong’s coverage of the trial enabled her to talk at length with IWW organizers, and she found herself sympathetic to their cause. At this time she also became active in the anti-preparedness movement, establishing the Seattle chapter of the American Union Against Militarism. With her activity against preparedness, and her increasing association with local socialists and Wobblies, the progressive school board member began to look more and more like a radical.

Originally called the Anti-Preparedness Committee, the American Union Against Militarism had begun in New York City; by the summer of 1916 the Union had chapters throughout the nation. The military preparedness movement began in this country in 1915, a year after the outbreak of the Great War in Europe. Bloody warfare reigned in Europe, and the United States’ poorly-trained and ill-equipped army drew notice from businessmen, conservative congressmen and military enthusiasts such as Theodore Roosevelt. With Mexico in the throes of revolution, and the European nations torn asunder by battle, the preparedness movement can be seen as a defensive, even isolationist development. Much more an urban than a rural trend, preparedness called for America’s arming against post-war uncertainties.

Within six months after the sinking of the Lusitania in May, 1915, preparedness had become a national theme, permeating magazines, motion pictures, and popular music.

Newly formed defense societies and the commercial press spearheaded the movement, and Roosevelt became its standard- bearer. Preparedness contributed to the growing rift in public opinion over the European war; its proponents were so steeped in patriotism that those in opposition to armaments buildup immediately became suspect. Pacifists found their loyalty challenged when they voiced their protests.

Opposition to preparedness fell into four often overlapping groups: farmers, organized labor, German-Americans, and socialists. Opponents of war saw a military buildup as a step leading to war, not a move in its prevention. Radicals suspected the motives of the movement because its most vociferous supporters were members of the business class; to the radicals, militarism was capitalism in its grossest form. Preparedness had increased almost to the degree of mania when Nebraska Senator George Norris said, “there seems to be a preparedness germ or an epidemic that has swept the country. Nearly everyone has it.”

The question of America’s role in relation to the European war was the primary reason for William Jennings Bryan’s resignation from his position as Secretary of State in June, 1915. Bryan gave up his post because of the Lusitania incident--and Wilson’s heavy-handed warning to Germany which followed. Believing that mediation was the only policy for the U.S. to pursue in European affairs, Bryan had suggested to Wilson that a ban be imposed on travel to Europe for all U.S. citizens. Bryan wanted no part in war; Wilson was intent on the U.S. playing a role in the peace making process. The two could not reach a compromise in this classic conflict of isolationism versus internationalism. Bryan resigned in order to maintain his ideals, since he had also developed a distate for the constant compromise he had faced as Secretary of State.

After stepping down, he continued to urge for mediation between the Allies and Germany.

Bryan’s dramatic leave taking represented the minority anti-war sentiment which was growing in this country by the middle of 1915. Pacifists and German-Americans both tried to claim Bryan as one of their own, but he remained aloof and unaligned. The press portrayed him as an ardent pacifist, which was a false depiction, according to historian Kendrick Clements. Bryan maintained that his primary concern was national interest, and not pacifism. He spoke against preparedness, saying that the country needn’t worry about its international power, because, as the Europeans were “killing off soldiers and burning money,” America’s strength was “increasing RELATIVELY as other nations exhaust themselves.” Bryan also indicated that he suspected a profit motive behind the preparedness movement, because of the movement’s most ardent supporters the armaments manufacturers.

The military preparedness movement can be seen as an outgrowth of the progressive tendency for order, systemization and efficiency. The anxiety engendered by the collapse of European (and Mexican) stability prompted the general public to look to the federal government for a solution to the question of U.S. security. This too was illustrative of progressivism the propensity towards giving the government a paternal role in caring for the well-being of the nation. However, what resulted was a patriotism at fever-pitch, a distrust of pacifism, and an opportunity to root out radical Americans who would erode the status quo. In an atmosphere of growing nationalism, groups such as the IWW and the socialists became perfect targets for national intolerance. Because of the preparedness movement, when war did come to the U.S., and the time came to rally public sentiment to pro-war (and pro-American) action, it was that much easier to do so--the people were prepared.

Chapter 2: The People Do Not Want This War: Anti-War Radical Culture And Community

“What I am opposed to is not the feeling of the pacifists, but their stupidity. My heart is with them, but my mind has a contempt for them. I want peace, but I know how to get it and they do not.”

-- President Woodrow Wilson to the American Federation of Labor. 12 March 1917

“The American people did not and do not want this war. They have not been consulted about the war and have had no part in declaring war. They have been plunged into this war by the trickery and treachery of the ruling class of the country through its representatives and National Congress, its demagogic other servile agitators, its subsidized press, and instruments of public expression.”

-- American Socialist, 21 April 1917

The United States’ entry into the First World War sharpened the division of public opinion which had already existed in the prewar days of preparedness. This polarization of public sentiment had become apparent in 1916, when the Wilson administration joined the preparedness campaign, despite its diplomatic stance of neutrality.

Conservative businessmen formed the National Security League, bankrolled by Eastern commercial interests, while progressive-backed groups such as the American Union Against Militarism and the Women’s Peace Party emerged. Public discussion concerning American neutrality filled the nation’s newspapers at the same time that anti-German propaganda increased in the press. Pro-German comment, such as that turned out by the Hearst newspapers, abruptly stopped.

With the declaration of war on 6 April 1917, and the military mobilization to defeat Germany, came distinctly drawn lines of proand anti-war sentiment. This division widened when, in May 1917, the Selective Service Act became law. The drafting of young men fueled the rage of those opposed to the war entry, and their protests increased in those early summer weeks. Supporters of the war viewed the pacifists as disloyal, pro-German sympathizers who would undermine the security of their great nation. The country had contracted “war fever,” and one symptom was a fervent patriotism, a “jingoism” which frustrated and often horrified the nation’s pacifists.

This jingoism translated into government action which struck at the heart of constitutional liberties. By June, 1917, Congress passed a law which became commonly known as the Espionage Act. Ostensibly instituted to curtail domestic activity of German spies, the Act instead became a government tool of repression used against American dissenters. With sweeping generalities, the law prohibited any criticism of the war or military action, and it outlawed any attempt to “cause insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny or refusal of duty in the military or naval forces of the United States.” Violators were met with severe fines and lengthy prison sentences. With the passage of the Espionage Act came the abrogation of the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights, one of the pillars of American democracy.

Wilson’s “contempt” for the pacifists had been translated into a legal dragnet, and domestic dissenters became regarded as enemies of their own country.

Those opposing the war were of all political stripes, and yet because pacifism was largely regarded as un-American, it was equated with radicalism during the First World War. Radicalism had threatened the American status quo in the years preceding the U.S. declaration of war, with violent labor strikes and the increase in membership of the Socialist Party. To the left of the Socialists stood the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), calling for industrial unionism, abolition of the wage system, and class war. Such groups demanding drastic social changes frightened the majority of American citizens, and the war heightened their alarm.

A radical xenophobia emerged, and extremists who advocated revolutionary measures were seen as a foreign threat on the domestic landscape. Most Americans believed that radicalism was an imported notion; it did not germinate in the soil of American democracy. Native radicalism went unacknowledged; instead most believed that the agitators were backed by German forces, or that the IWW was financed by “Kaiser gold.”

By late 1917, conservative spokesmen tagged proponents of organized labor “Bolsheviks.” This anti-radical outlook became integrated with anti-German hysteria in the American mind. Although the “red scare” has often been attributed to the year 1919, the examination of wartime anti-radical hysteria calls for a readjustment of that assertion. The American red scare began before the post-war turmoil of 1919; its origins are chronicled in the domestic tumult of 1917.

Even though pacifists were regarded as radicals by many citizens during the war, these two groups did not view their goals as the same. True pacifists do not denounce selective wars; they are against all wars.

While the IWW opposed the European war as a “capitalist war,” that organization was not opposed to the prospect of a class war. “Do not confound us with the pacifists,” wrote anarchist Alexander Berkman in June of 1917:

“we believe in fighting. Aye, we have been fighting all our lives fighting injustice, oppression and tyranny....we are not pacifists. But we want to know what we are fighting for, and we refuse to fight for the enemies and the exploiters of humanity.”

To use “pacifist” and “radical” interchangeably thus misrepresents each group. The phrase “anti-war radical” seems to best fit those people examined here. Many radicals would proclaim themselves pacifists; however, most opposed the war on different grounds than a pure pacifist conscience.

The experience of Seattle anti-war radicals vividly illustrates the intolerance directed “by the majority of Americans toward opponents of the war. During the summer of 1917 tensions mounted in Seattle, due to the wartime stress and the Northwest lumber strike which had virtually halted the industry and resulted in the dispatch of federal troops to the lumber camps. Seattle’s labor movement was growing in strength, but so, too, was the public animosity toward the IWW. The summertime lumber strike caused a dramatic influx of Wobblies to Seattle, and citizens were frightened of the angry, itinerant workers who argued for class war on the streets of the city. Commercial daily newspapers such as the Seattle Times took vehement anti-radical editorial stances. Public anti-war speeches were often disrupted by soldiers and sailors whose presence in Seattle had grown with the war mobilization efforts. Veterans of the Spanish- American War founded the Minute Men of Seattle, a vigilante group intent on quashing local radical activities. This “patriotic league,” with an estimated membership of 2,500 during 1917 through 1919, communicated frequently with federal agents.

Prominent Seattleites wrote President Wilson of the radical menace in their city. In January, 1918, Wilson wrote Attorney General Thomas Gregory that “it is thoroughly worth our while to consider what, if anything, should and can be done about the influences preceding from Seattle.” Wilson told Gregory that if the reports of seditious activity in Seattle were true, “they state a very grave situation.” The federal eye was on Seattle, and local arrests stemming from violations of the Espionage Act increased as the war dragged on.

Faced with government repression and local civic intolerance, those people expressing minority views against the war felt an increasing need for a sense of community.

Before the war, Seattle radicals had experienced a factionalism of ideology and motivation, but the persecution they witnessed in mid-1917 spurred a unification of effort and ideas. They were all opposed to the war--this was a view on which they could finally agree. Because they were sharply aware that their beliefs were in the minority, they felt the need for some kind of affinity and sustenance all the more acutely.

Just as Seattle radicals opposed to the war felt that they could find strength in unity, those people against U.S. participation in the European war across the country put aside their differences for the sake of a common cause. One organization which brought together Americans opposed to the war was the People’s Council of America for Peace and Democracy, founded by journalist Louis P. Lochner, a member of Henry Ford’s ill-fated “peace ship” expedition to Europe in 1915. This loosely-knit group established local branches in most major American cities, and it appealed to people holding various political views. The People’s Council held open-air meetings across the country during the summer of 1917, where speakers demanded the repeal of the Selective Service Act and of the Espionage Act.

However, the primary aim of the People’s Council was a negotiated peace with Germany, and “Peace by Negotiation--- Now” became its slogan. As a result, those citizens who called for the total defeat of Germany labeled the peace organization as pro-German. By the fall of 1917, the national executive committee of the People’s Council had several socialist members, and the organization itself, originally founded to appeal to all Americans who were against the war, became associated with radicals.

The Seattle branch of the People’s Council had several socialist members as well, and during the summer of 1917 the local group held several outdoor meetings on a vacant lot near the downtown business district. During one of these meetings, where the speakers’ topic was “Is Conscription Constitutional?” a group of angry soldiers attempted to disrupt the speech. In a banner headline the socialist Seattle Daily Call reported “5,000 CITIZENS INSULTED.” The newspaper attributed the calming of the crowd to socialist orator Kate Sadler, while “bluecoats of the right metal (sic)” ushered the young soldiers away from the crowd.

In his memoirs, Harvey O’Connor recounted another meeting of the People’s Council held outdoors, after the Labor Temple had sponsored an all-day session featuring guest speakers from across the country. The evening rally featured Sadler, Louise Olivereau and Harry Ault, among others. O’Connor remembered that

“While Kate Sadler was speaking, the police thought they heard her refer to Wilson as a “traitor.” After her speech, they nabbed her and led her away from the platform. The astonished crowd, seeing what was happening to Seattle’s best-loved radical orator, closed in and rescued her. The police sought safety in flight and Kate returned to the rostrum in triumph. The next day the police showed up at her home where she found herself badly outnumbered and suffered another of her innumerable arrests.”

Arrests of anti-war radicals and labor agitators increased dramatically that summer, and the International Workers’ Defense League organized community functions to raise funds for political prisoners. The Defense League sponsored picnics with featured speakers, evening socials where homemade goods were raffled off, and monthly meetings where members learned of the latest arrests in the region. Picnics hosted by the Defense League became so popular that, after the war, members founded the People’s Park Association with the aim of raising money to purchase a park so that, according to Minnie Parkhurst, “there would always be a place for everybody to hold picnics.”

Along with fundraising social activities within the Seattle radical community came an apparent interest in culture and education. According to O’Connor, a group of young Seattle radicals organized a cultural club which presented lectures on art, literature, history and politics, a group which grew when word of it reached the University of Washington campus. Radical UW students became welcome at Anna Falkoff’s home near the campus, where the Russian-born anarchist encouraged the students to share their ideas on politics and education. O’Connor claimed that he received his introduction to radical politics and to hard liquor at Falkoff’s home. Louise Olivereau hosted a small study group at her Wallingford home, where she spent evenings leading discussions on poetry, philosophy and the theater. Raymer’s Old Bookstore, downtown on First Avenue, carried books on radical philosophy. O’Connor recalled Charles Raymer as “the atheist, in his cavernous, musty old bookstore preaching municipal socialism but selling the Masses and the Liberator by the hundreds every month...” Anti-war radicals in Seattle had found an outlet for both their politics and their cultural interests in these lectures, study groups and bookstores. Moreover, these pursuits served to affirm the growing sense of community among a diverse group who had previously found few mutual interests. As O’Connor remembered it, prior to wartime “[O]n the raw frontier of the Pacific Northwest there was little enough of cultural life in the radical movement...”

Cultural and social gatherings among the radical ranks increased during wartime in Seattle; however, the concern for political prisoners and the raising of funds for their legal defense--remained the primary rallying point for these people. Although the foremost concern was for local cases stemming from wartime sedition laws, the Defense League also offered its support to nationally known causes such as the tom Mooney case in San Francisco. After a bomb explosion during a “Preparedness Day” parade killed ten people in that city in July 1916, Thomas Mooney and Warren Billings were arrested and convicted of the crime.

Sentenced to hang and then granted a commutation to life imprisonment, Mooney became a nationwide cause celebre for radicals and trade unionists alike, until California governor Culbert Olson pardoned Mooney in 1939.

When Mooney was sentenced to death in the spring of 1917, the Seattle Defense League called for a ten-minute work stoppage of all Pacific coast workers, a proposal endorsed by the Seattle Central Labor Council. In a letter to Emma Goldman, Minnie Parkhurst reported that the first of May general strike protesting Mooney’s death sentence was a success, and that “while it was only ten minutes, it was ‘effective in that it made the masters sit up and take notice. Many of the workers quit for the whole day.” Seattle radicals maintained a great interest in the Mooney case, organizing such fundraising efforts as selling “Mooney tags” at meetings and picnics and forwarding donations to Mooney’s defense fund in San Francisco.

Northwest radicals were able to follow the defense of Mooney through the pages of nationally circulated radical magazines such as the Blast, the Masses and the Liberator.

The sharing of common ideas by means of the press served to maintain a certain cohesion that those who held minority anti-war views desperately needed during wartime.

Convictions were strengthened and renewed when similar ideas could be circulated and shared. National publications illustrated the idea that those opposing the war in one place were not operating alone, but instead were part of a larger group that shared the same anti-war sentiment.

Alexander Berkman’s Blast combined that anti-war sentiment with an anti-capitalist fury. In 1915 Berkman left New York for San Francisco to aid his friends Matthew Schmidt and David Caplan, who had been convicted of the 1910 bombing of the Los Angeles Times building, a dynamiting which killed twenty and injured seventeen. Berkman felt that a nationwide campaign would bring the release of Caplan and Schmidt, and so the Blast first appeared in early 1916 with the subheading, “A Revolutionary Labor Paper.” Berkman was editing the eight-page weekly during the summer of 1916, when the preparedness parade explosion brought on the arrests of tom Mooney and Warren Billings. Berkman mobilized a campaign to exonerate the two men, and the pages of the Blast became his forum in that effort.

Richard Drinnon wrote that “a sense of absolute emergency pervades almost every column” of the Blast, and with the talent and incisive commentary of cartoonist Robert Minor, the rage that the Blast expressed still springs from its pages. The Blast fought for imprisoned radicals with such ferocity that, as Drinnon wrote, the pages “seem to have blown out of the eye of a social hurricane.” This intensity is captured in a stunning graphic by Minor which appeared a month after postal authorities had informed Berkman that his publication was “not a newspaper or other periodical by the law of 1879.” The illustration shows a brawny-shouldered “U.S. government” stabbing a maiden “Free Press” in the throat, with the caption, “YOU AND I CANNOT LIVE IN THE SAME LAND.” Berkman’s accompanying editorial railed against press suppression and reprinted the postal department letter.

The Blast did endure for another year, and in the summer of 1917 Berkman published the final issue before returning to New York, where he was arrested for writing articles against conscription. In that last issue was a piece by Berkman headed, “War Dictionary,” an acrimonious denunciation of the war and of Wilson, including such “definitions:” CONGRESS The valet of Woodrow the First CENSORSHIP--The rape of Free Speech CIVILIZATION--In God We Trusts LIBERTY LOAN--The bread line of the Unborn LOYAL CITIZEN--Deaf, dumb and blind KAISER A President’s ambition SEDITION The proof of Tyranny TRENCHES Digging your own Grave VICTORY--Ten Million Dead

For Berkman, war was the “propaganda of Democracy,” and his Blast gave vent to his wrath against the war and the Wilson administration. His audience seems to have been of a very limited size; the lack of circulation figures for the Blast leads to the conclusion that this publication never achieved a very wide readership. The magazine with a much larger national audience, and one that appealed to anti-war radicals, was the Masses, and later its offspring the Liberator.

The Masses, published in New York from 1911 to 1917, was a lively magazine which focused on art, literature, socialism, and cooperatives. “Our appeal will be to the mass, both socialist and non-socialist, with entertainment, education and the livelier kinds of propaganda,” the December 1912 issue proclaimed. Morris Hillquit called the Masses “the Vanity Fair of the labor press,” and its staff did emphasize the importance of synthesizing art and politics, calling it a “meeting ground for revolutionary labor and the radical intelligentsia.” While Berkman aimed his Blast at radical workers, Masses editor Max Eastman spoke to radical intellectuals. When the August 1917 issue was deemed unmailable by the Postmaster of New York, the Masses, as Eastman later wrote, died an “unnatural death.”

By early 1918 Eastman and his sister Crystal had founded a new magazine, the Liberator, which also combined art and politics. Published from 1918 to 1924, the Liberator reflected the early American communist movement, and the staff of this magazine found a solution to the crisis of world capitalism in the fledgling ideology of Soviet communism. Richard Fitzgerald wrote that “the Masses was a cultural product indigenous to the spirit of socialism and bohemian revolt prior to World War One: the Liberator was the inheritor of the tradition and the final gasp of that ethos.” A notable feature of both magazines was the trenchant art work of Art Young, John Sloan, and Robert Minor among others. The humorous and often emotional “cartoons” were actually fine artistic works, utilizing a style which still carries a forceful impact today.

As publications aiming at a nationwide audience, these magazines all depended on second-class mailing privileges for their circulation. However, when the Espionage Act was enacted in June 1917, a controversial provision of the law prohibited the use of the U.S. mails for the circulation of messages criticizing the war effort or discouraging military enlistment. The Postmaster General was empowered to declare material unmailable if it expressed opposition to the war, and postal employees were encouraged to turn over any suspicious matter to their supervisors.

Postmaster General Albert Burleson took his job very seriously, and by August 1917 at least fifteen major publications were declared “nonmailable.” These included the Masses, Mother Earth, the International Socialist Review, the Appeal to Reason, American Socialist, the Milwaukee Leader, Nation, and the New York Call. The Post Office Department would deem a certain offensive issue unmailable, and then inform the publication’s staff that, because the issue was not mailable, it was not a continuous publication and therefore was ineligible for second-class mailing privileges. Several of the above publications fell under this curious Post Office Department reasoning, and many ceased publication by the winter of 1917.

Emma Goldman tried to circumvent the prohibition of her Mother Earth magazine by producing a smaller version called Mother Earth Bulletin, but within months the Post Office Department deemed that publication unmailable also.

As the grip of government-sponsored suppression tightened, most anti-war publications belabored the point that, while the U.S. had gone to fight in Europe to “keep the world safe for democracy,” American democracy was trying to withstand the staggering blows delivered by the federal wartime laws. This inconsistency was often emphasized by the three Seattle newspapers which held anti-war views: the labor-owned Union Record; the socialist Seattle Daily Call; and the IWW-sponsored Industrial Worker. The front page of the 31 July 1917 issue of the Daily Call carried an editorial cartoon depicting an “American Autocrat” gagging a man labeled the “labor press,” with the caption, “IN ORDER TO BRING DEMOCRACY ABROAD MUST WE SUBMIT TO TYRANTS AT HOME.” Of these three newspapers, the Daily Call took the most acrimonious stance against the war. Until its demise in the spring of 1918, this socialist publication hammered away at the relationship between American capitalists and the war effort. Staff members included Harvey O’Connor and Anna Louise Strong.

The Industrial Worker, published first in Spokane and then Seattle, became a victim of wartime intolerance in the spring of 1918, when its editors could no longer find printhouses willing to print the paper. As the official journal of the Western IWW locals, the Industrial Worker faced the federal assaults directed at the IWW as a whole.

The weekly publications appeared at irregular intervals after the federal raids on IWW offices in September 1917, and after seizures and suppression on both the state and federal levels later that year, the Industrial Worker ceased publication altogether.

In light of the hazards involved in publishing unpopular opinions during the war, the most enduring of these local publications was the Union Record. Established as a weekly in 1900 and owned by the Seattle Central Labor Council, the Union Record began publishing daily editions in April 1918. The Daily Call faced bankruptcy that spring, and after a conference between the two papers’ editors, it was agreed that if another “working class daily” was launched in Seattle, the Call would agree to fold.

The Union Record was more restrained in its criticism of the war than the Daily Call had been, but it did appeal to both the radical workers and trade-unionists. In 1918 the paper claimed to have a circulation of 112,000--a tremendous increase from the 1916 circulation of 12,000. 45 One consistent feature of anti-war opinion in the Union Record of 1918 was the satirical verse written by Anna Louise Strong, under the pseudonym “Anise.

The Union Record did experience federal suppression in November 1919, when federal agents raided the newspaper office and charged the staff with conspiracy to violate the Espionage Act. The raid stemmed from an editorial by Harry Ault entitled, “Don’t Shoot in the Dark,” denouncing the Centralia shooting between the IWW and American Legionnaires. Publishing rights were suspended for six days until charges against the staffers were dropped, a decision which Ault called “one of the first signs of returning sanity from wartime hysteria.“

But during January 1918 that “wartime hysteria” had been all too prevalent in Seattle, when a group of people-- the majority of them sailors--mobbed the Piggot Printing Plant. The Piggot concern printed the Daily Call and the Industrial Worker. During the vigilante raid, employees of the plant were forced to lie on the floor while the mob stuck iron bars into the running presses. Type forms for several publications were smashed, and type cabinets were overturned. The police finally broke up the mob action, but not until an estimated $15,000 damage had been done. Many Seattle citizens viewed this incident with disgust and anger, especially since the majority of the “hoodlums” were sailors in the United States Navy. On Monday, January 7, the local branch of the People’s Council sent telegrams to President Wilson and Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels, denouncing the lawlessness of the sailors, and requesting action of some sort to prevent further outbreaks of mob violence. And on that Monday morning the Daily Call-- boasting that the incident had not held up the week’s issue ran a poem by “Gale,” another pseudonym used by Anna Louise Strong:

The Battle of the Print Shop

Oh the boys were out on a Saturday night,

Our sailor boys! Our sailor boys?

Roaming the city to see the sight

And make their share of the noise,

When up there stepped two brawny men

And said: “Do you want the chance

To have some fun and swat the Hun,

Before you go to France?”

//

They made reply with a loud Aye! Aye!

And hurried along the street

Until they came to a printing shop

Where a bridge and a sidewalk meet.

Hist! All is still! They look within

Where plainly may be seen

Six strange suspicious printers,

And a linotype machine.

//

“Ha! Ha! Prepare to follow me,”

Their leader muttered low; “Within these haunts they print the Call,

That dares to tell the truth to all.

We’ll smash it with a blow.

Rise up! Protect Democracy!

This is the country of the free

The Call The Call must go.”

We know not what dime novels

Inspired each sailor heart,

But brains aren’t right on Saturday night

And they were young and trained to fight;

And keen to do their part.

//

Charge Chester, charge! On Stanley, on!

Smash forward undismayed!

Not all the type in all the forms

Shall make our hearts afraid.

//

Now when the smoke of battle

Above the wreckage cleared

Two murdered linotype machines

And one dead press appeared;

And many Red Cross pamphlets

Lay slaughtered on the floor,

And Ole Hanson’s mayor cards

Were slain to rise no more.

//

‘Twas thus our Jackies won the day

And captured Piggot’s shop;

They smashed the windows, desks and door

Before they had to stop;

They made a mess upon the floor,

Of forms and type and printer’s ink,

But the Seattle Daily Call

They didn’t touch at all.

For sailor boys are trained to fight

They are not trained to think.

//

The days are done in Washington,

Of boozing to excess,

And only Huns delight we know

In sprees of “frightfulness.”

//

We recommend this substitute

That’s furnished by the war,

It doesn’t hurt your conscience

Like the jags there were before.

For all the actions idiotic,

Destructive or despotic,

May be hallowed by the flag,

And just being patriotic

Is the latest form of jag.

The poem expressed an anger which many Seattle radicals must have felt during the war years. “Gale” conveyed the collective feelings that civic bigotry was justified when it was carried out under the guise of patriotism; that radicals were equated with “Huns” on the homefront; and that, in their minds at least, the Daily Call and other anti-war publications dared to “tell the truth to all.” As evidence of a common opinion which existed among Seattle’s wartime radicals, the poem conveys a true flavor of that era.

During 1917 and 1918 the radicals felt the “contempt” of Wilson and of others who attempted to silence them, and they reacted by forming a collective identity, a community.

The sharing of ideas, art and literature, and the raising of funds for those imprisoned as a direct result of wartime legislation sustained this small group of people throughout the duration of the war. The resentment which grew from their wartime experience would prove to be an impetus in early 1919, when that joint cooperation they had founded would be called upon again, with the plan for a general strike. But by the middle of 1917, when the legal terms of the Espionage Act were being applied in full force by federal agents and the courts, the radical community saw several of its members jailed for expressing opposition to the war. The intolerance towards anti-war radicals during this time can be seen in the case study of Louise Olivereau, a Seattle woman who suffered the wrath of the wartime legal system and of inflamed public opinion.

Chapter 3: A Woman Acting Alone: Louise Olivereau And The First World War

During the summer of 1917, Louise Olivereau was a stenographer for the secretary of the Lumber Workers, a division of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) in downtown Seattle. A college-educated woman, Olivereau tutored English at night to supplement her weekly income of eighteen dollars. A woman well-versed in literature, she often lectured to local women’s groups on the plays of Henrik Ibsen. As a politically astute woman, she became increasingly concerned about America’s entry into the European war. Her abhorrence of war and the action she took to protest American troops being sent overseas would bring her into a federal courtroom in November, 1917.

Three days after the U.S. declaration of war, Louise Olivereau marked her thirty-third birthday. Born in Douglas, Wyoming, and the daughter of French immigrants, she went east after high school to attend college at what is now Illinois State University in Bloomington, Illinois. After college she travelled west and lived in Salt Lake City and Portland. During 1911 through 1912 Olivereau worked as an assistant to William Thurston Brown, a socialist writer and educator, at the Portland Modern School. The American Modern School movement grew out of the education theories of Francisco Ferrer, a Spanish anarchist. The Portland and New York Modern Schools were the first of these experimental schools founded in the United States. The basic tenet of this anarchist education movement was that children would be more responsive to learning in an unstructured, loving environment, in contrast to the discipline of the traditional classroom. The Modern School in Portland held day classes for children, and evening and weekend “study groups” for adults. Olivereau often headed these study groups. The school closed in 1912, and W.T. Brown moved on to establish Modern Schools in other American cities.

Olivereau moved to Seattle in 1915, where she had a good friend, Minnie Parkhurst. The two women had long been interested in the activities of the Socialist party; however, the declaration of war brought about a serious split in that political party, with several members voicing support for President Wilson and the war. Olivereau later wrote that she had become a Socialist in 1909, but by the spring of 1917 she considered herself a philosophical anarchist, embracing the belief that individuals could function better without the constraint of any government. She followed the writings of Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, and however naive her political philosophy may have been at the time, the war and conscription imposed by the government strengthened her belief that the right of the individual must transcend any law. Parkhurst too had become disillusioned with the Socialist party, and she referred to local Socialists as “politicians,” a slur against the party faction often referred to as “ballot-box Socialists.” The two women attended rallies against the war during the summer of 1917.

One rally Olivereau did not attend that summer was planned by the Seattle Chamber of Commerce in honor of the return of a diplomatic mission to Vladivostok sponsored by the U.S. government and led by Elihu Root, an emissary for the Wilson Administration. On 4 August Seattleites greeted the ship at the waterfront, and a luncheon and rally followed. At the rally Root spoke of the dangers the country faced in the war with Germany. He said, “don’t argue about the cause of war, or whether we should or should not have entered it.” If the U.S. was to lose the war, he added, the Germans would surely take over. Root’s speech received front page coverage in the three commercial daily newspapers.

After reading accounts of the speech, Olivereau became incensed at the idea that one should not question the reasons for entering the war. She decided to act against Root’s message in the most effective method she felt was available to her. She wrote and mimeographed a circular to young men who were to be inducted into the military, and by doing so she took the step that would eventually bring her ideology and abhorrence of war into a court of law. During the first week of August the Times and the Star listed the names of men called up for service. From these listings Olivereau chose the names of men to whom she would mail her anti-war message.

The circular began, “Fellow Conscript,” and the text which followed was a rebuttal of Root’s speech using quotations from Thoreau, Mark Twain and Thomas Jefferson.

The leaflet argued that citizens must discuss questions concerning war, and urged the reader to think carefully about his responsibilities in fighting the war. “We do not counsel resisttance,” Olivereau wrote, “we counsel but one thing--obedience to your own conscience...we do not ask you to resist the draft IF YOU BELIEVE THE DRAFT IS RIGHT.”

On the subject of the draft and conscientious objectors she wrote, (T)he emotional appeal made by millions of posters, by screeching headlines, by patriotic magazine articles, moving pictures and music, have all failed to raise an adequate army by voluntary enlistment. What does this mean? THE PEOPLE OF THIS COUNTRY DO NOT WANT THIS WAR. YOU ARE BUT ONE OF MILLIONS WHO ARE AT HEART CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTORS.

After urging the reader to act on his own convictions, the leaflet ended with, “AND WHAT ARE THESE ABSTRACT SENTIMENTS OF LIBERTY, FREEDOM, JUSTICE AND INDEPENDENCE WORTH TO US IF WE MUST BE SLAVES TO PRESERVE THEM FOR OUR MASTERS?”

She spent about forty dollars on paper and postage for her lone task, and she mailed the circulars on three different occasions in August, using mailboxes in various Seattle neighborhoods. Using the mails for circulation of messages against the war was specifically prohibited by the Espionage Act, and Olivereau was probably aware of the consequences her actions might bring.

On 5 September, federal agents raided the downtown IWW hall. This action followed the Department of Justice’s plan to investigate IWW activities, in order to find a connection between the IWW and “German propaganda.” Raids on IWW halls across the country were scheduled for the same hour. The Star reported that no arrests were made during the Seattle raid, but that all correspondence, journals and pamphlets were confiscated. The government agents were thorough in their expropriation: a framed map of the state of Washington was among the material seized.; Arriving at the IWW-office the next day, Olivereau found that her desk had also been cleaned out in the raid.

Among the material confiscated were ten copies of the book, The Backwash of War, and several hundred copies of a pamphlet entitled “Shambles.” Olivereau ordered this anti-war literature from New York City, and because the material had just arrived a few days before the raid, she had not had a chance to read it. On 7 September she decided to call on Howard P. Wright, special agent for the Department of Justice in Seattle, to request the return of her books. She later said at her trial that the material was “entirely my private property, having no connection whatever with any organization,” referring to the IWW. Olivereau never did elaborate on what she had expected from her visit to Wright’s office, but when she arrived, Wright showed her one of the circulars and asked her if it had been typed and mimeographed at the IWW office on First Avenue.

Olivereau replied that, as far as she knew, the only matters produced at the office were those pertaining to the business of the IWW. Wright suggested that they go to the District Attorney’s office to retrieve her books.

At District Attorney Clay Allen’s office, Olivereau was introduced to C.M. Perkins, Seattle’s postal inspector.

Perkins brought out a bundle of the circulars and began to read from one of them. He asked her if she had written the circular, and she said no, she had not. Perkins went on to read a letter Olivereau had written in August to a man named Leech in Bellingham, asking him if he would be interested in distributing her circulars in that area. When Perkins put the letter down, Olivereau admitted she had written and mailed the circulars. The men questioned her extensively about her job and the production of the circulars.

Olivereau maintained that she did not write and mimeograph the circulars at the IWW office. The men told her they had been aware of the mailings some weeks before the raid. Later, during her trial, Olivereau would tell the jury to draw their own conclusions about why the authorities did not arrest her until after the raid. Apparently they had wanted to confirm a connection between the circulars and the IWW, and Clay Allen told the Star after Olivereau’s arrest that “we had been on her trail for some weeks.”

During the interrogation concerning her financial and political backing, Olivereau insisted that she had acted alone. When asked about being financed by “German money,” she replied that if she had had any considerable sum to work with German or otherwise--she would have been able to do more than just distribute her own written message. Her interrogators apparently had difficulty believing that Olivereau would spend her own time and money on the circulars. When they asked her what kinds of results she had expected from the mailings, Olivereau replied that if only five men reconsidered their stand on the war because of her message, then she would consider her work a success.

Upon that reply Clay Allen said, “I don’t know whether this woman is a harmless sentimentalist or a dangerous person.”

Whether harmless or dangerous, for some reason Olivereau was at least accommodating to the men that afternoon. Wright asked her if she had more circulars at home, and Olivereau invited the men to accompany her to her home on Second Avenue Northeast. She and the three men took the Wallingford streetcar to her house, where she showed them the remaining cache of pamphlets. After the house was searched and more questions were asked, Olivereau was arrested for violation of the Espionage Act. She was taken to the Pierce County jail in Tacoma, where most federal prisoners were housed at the time, because, according to Harvey O’Connor, “the King County jail in Seattle was apparently too close to the Wobbly (IWW) hall.” Bail was set at $7500.

The arrest made the front pages of most Seattle newspapers the following day. Both the Times and the Post- Intelligencer carried lengthy articles detailing the crime.

The socialist Daily Call wrote, “she declared that she ‘expected to pay the price,’ and was happy having done as her convictions directed.” From her jail cell in Tacoma Olivereau corresponded with Minnie Parkhurst. Her spirits were buoyant at this time, and she wrote:

“I never expected to feel this way in jail--I guess it’s the way I have heard men say it is about getting drunk--it all depends on how you feel when you start. Now I felt fine when I started and I still feel that way.”

At her arraignment on 12 November, she entered a plea of not guilty and waived the assistance of a court-appointed attorney.

The trial of the United States versus Louise Olivereau was slated for 28 November 1917. On that day Olivereau again refused counsel, choosing instead to represent herself in court. She told the Daily Call that she had no money for an attorney, “and besides, he would worry more over getting me a light sentence than over the preservation of ideals I care for more than for my own liberty.” When asked outside the courthouse what her reasons for sending the circulars were, she replied, “to make men think, because that is the first and chief duty they owe to their country and the world.”

The courtroom was almost full on that Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving. Most of the day was spent choosing the twelve jurors. Presiding over the court was Federal District Judge Jeremiah Neterer, with Ben Moore acting as prosecuting attorney. The charges against Olivereau were read: distribution of 2,000 to 2,500 circulars which urged or caused persons to “fail, neglect, and refuse to enlist or be recruited in military and naval service of the United States.” In all, there were nine counts of violating the Espionage Act three counts for each of the August mailings.

Olivereau began her questioning with a request that she might ask one question of all twelve men. The judge granted this request, and she asked the men if they might possibly have formed prejudiced of preconceived notions about her, because the newspapers had referred to her as an anarchist “who respects right rather than law.” She told the prospective jurors that the essence of her question was to determine from the start whether anyone was prejudiced against a declared anarchist. Juror number six exclaimed, “I certainly have a prejudice against a declared anarchist.” According to the trial transcript, Olivereau told the judge that juror number six should withdraw, and the man rose from the jury box. The judge told the man to be seated, and he told the court that anarchism was not an issue in the case. Prosecutor Moore rose and asked Olivereau whether she meant that she had been declared an anarchist by the newspapers, or whether she wished to admit that she was an anarchist. When she replied, “Both,” the prospective jurors all rose to leave the jury box. Judge Neterer quickly told them to resume their seats, and the men did. Although this unusual occurrence was not noted in the court transcript, the Post-Intelligencer reported the incident in its trial account, and Olivereau would later refer to it in a letter to Minnie Parkhurst.

During the selection of the jury, Olivereau asked each man three questions: whether he believed in freedom of speech and of the press in wartime as in peace; if he thought an individual had a right to criticize the government and its laws; and if he understood the difference between explaining a situation, expressing a personal opinion and advocating a line of action. When her questions concerned political ideology or the understanding of anarchism, the judge interrupted Olivereau, declaring that those topics were not issues in the case.

Judge Neterer occasionally exhibited a certain resentment that Olivereau did not have an attorney, and he often dismissed her questions as “immaterial” or “not an issue here.” When she asked one man if he believed that conscription was a democratic measure, the judge quickly told Olivereau that the inquiry was not a proper one. She answered that she was compelled to ask such a question in order to “get at the real state of these gentlemen’s minds.”

The judge replied, “that is why I suggested that you should be represented by counsel because they would know.” Olivereau returned to one of her three usual questions.

When the jury was finally chosen, it included a retired banker, a real estate broker, a wealthy hardware merchant, and a man who had seven sons, all of whom were serving in the army. The Daily Call commented bitterly on the jury as “among the most reactionary of the hangers-on of the Chamber of Commerce.” Following the swearing in of the jurors, Prosecutor Moore outlined the Espionage Act. On the witness stand Postal Inspector Perkins described how he had first become aware of the circulars. A clerk at the University Post Office had found a half-opened circular on his sorting table and had turned it over to his supervisor. The letter to the man Leech in Bellingham had been delivered to the wrong Leech: that man promptly turned it over to the postmaster in his city.

That first day in court was covered by most Seattle newspapers. In what seemed an absurd label for a Seattle stenographer, Olivereau was described as “one of the most widely known anarchistic leaders in the United States” by the Seattle Times. The Times also noted that Dr. Anna Louise Strong had sat by Olivereau in the courtroom, and that “at noon recess they locked arms and left the courtroom together.” Anna Louise Strong had been elected to the Seattle School board in 1916, but her popularity among the middle class diminished as her political leanings towards the local socialists became more apparent. She too had spoken against the war, and her appearance at the Olivereau trial added force to the recall movement which had begun against her. Strong later wrote:

“My own fault revived the recall. I had ‘befriended’ an anarchist...she asked me to sit beside her in court... so that she might have a friendly word to relieve the soul-crushing atmosphere of American justice... I was neither prepared nor unprepared for the eight-column headlines which greeted the fact that the woman school director, already under attack for recall, had befriended an anarchist.”

The alarm in the community was so great that Strong issued a statement to the Times a week after the trial. Strong justified her support for Olivereau by calling her “courageously true,” and emphasized that “Louise Olivereau meant no harm to any living soul.” But the school director supported a woman whom the Times called “an enemy of the government” in the pages of that same issue. The move to recall Strong from her school board position was successful.

The day after Thanksgiving the courtroom was packed with people who had read of the “declared anarchist” serving as her own lawyer in a sedition trial. The trial resumed with witnesses for the prosecution. Young men were called forward to testify about their receipt of the circular.

Olivereau asked each man if the circular had changed his attitude about serving in the military. Each said no, it had not. In presenting her case, Olivereau explained to the jury why she chose to represent herself. “I am by principle a direct actionist,” she told the men, “if there are points of procedure on which I err, his Honor will doubtless set me straight before any serious damage of any sort is done.” When she attempted to state motives for mailing the circulars, Moore rose to object and Judge Neterer sustained that objection, telling Olivereau that “the law does not make motive any excuse...motive does not enter into the matter.”

In Prosecutor Moore’s closing speech he told the jury that their duties were simplified. He stressed the point that Olivereau had attempted to cause disloyalty, and that the attempt was just as severe a violation as actually causing disloyalty. Acts such as Olivereau’s distribution of anti-draft circulars would “sow the seeds of mutiny and disloyalty to law and order, the evil fruit of such disregards which we know would be similar to those terrible acts now transpiring in Russia.” Moore emphasized that this case was an important one because it was a government concern “if the minds of the public were to be poisoned by a lot of maudlin sophistry and misplaced phrases.” He appealed to the men to act for “the very life of the nation,” claiming that people like Olivereau “strike at the very foundation of the Government and outrage the feelings of true Americans...”

Olivereau began her closing oratory by saying that the prosecution had not established that she had advocated forcible resistance to the draft law in writing and mailing the circulars. The suggestions of violence and force in the writings were not her words, but instead those of Elihu Root, whose speech was “largely quoted and which was perfectly mailable... and urged men to violent, unconsidered and unthought-out action.” The rest of the material in the circulars could be found in any public library, she said. She picked up a manuscript she had prepared and read to the jury her philosophy as an anarchist.

“Anarchism is the working philosophy of those who desire to bring about a condition of society in which force and violence will have no place.... I am convinced that violence breeds violence, war breeds hatreds and fears and,revengeful desires which lead to other wars....”

She said that constitutional freedoms including free speech have “always been limited to ‘freedom within the law,’ which is not freedom at all.” She declared that patriotic duty involved placing the good of the country above obedience to its laws, and she went on to give her views on organized labor, conscientious objection, and Wilson’s war policy. In proclaiming the love she had for her country--“the Brotherland”--she pointed out that the autocracy of the U.S. government was comparable to “the militaristic system of Germany we are fighting.” Her speech lasted for over an hour using this forum to proclaim her beliefs was one reason she had chosen to represent herself in court. The Post-Intelligencer reported that “her voice is deep, clear and her words are chosen for effect.”

When Olivereau had finished speaking, Ben Moore rose again to remind the jury that philosophy was not a concern in the case, and Judge Neterer then had his chance to speak to the twelve men. His words had a familiar ring; they were reminiscent of Elihu Root’s speech which had motivated Olivereau to protest. He told the jury that

“the time for a discussion of the merits of the war is past. There are only two sides to the war. One side is in favor of the United States; the other side is in favor of the enemies of this country.”

Neterer instructed the jury that Olivereau had not obstructed recruiting and enlistment by the distribution of the circulars; therefore he dropped three of the counts against her.

The trial was over; it took the jury less than thirty minutes to find Olivereau guilty of the remaining six counts. Three counts were for “attempting to cause insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny and refusal of duty in the military,” and three for “unlawfully using the mails and postal service of the United States for transmission of unmailable matter.” Sentencing was scheduled for Monday, 3 December.

The newspapers reacted according to the community viewpoints they represented. The Daily Call was alone in its angry account that dwelled on the absence of first amendment rights in the case. Convicting Olivereau was an act which would have made “the German Kaiser jump with glee.” The Industrial Worker simply remarked on an “ungrudging admiration for the brave stand she has made in defense of the principles which she holds dear.” The Times and the Post-Intelligencer both ran front page articles headed “Woman Anarchist Convicted,” and both papers stressed the “intimacy” between Olivereau and Anna Louise Strong.

If the newspaper coverage of the trial was inflammatory, Olivereau too was inflammatory in her manner.

Twice during the trial she said she had no use for government, an obviously dangerous remark to make in a court of law during wartime, especially during a sedition trial.

The judge had stressed that motive and ideology were not issues in the case, but for Louise Olivereau they were the only important issues.

On the morning of 3 December, she was sentenced to ten years at the Colorado State Penitentiary in Canon City, the nearest federal prison with facilities for women. At the sentencing Judge Neterer told Olivereau that she was “a woman of more than ordinary intelligence” and that he hoped she would change her views toward organized government. The judge added that every circular she had mailed constituted an offense punishable by imprisonment for five years, and on that basis he could send her to the penitentiary for 10,000 years.

That she would be found guilty was almost beyond debate, and Olivereau knew this from the start. Her supporters thought she was unwise in choosing to represent herself, and Strong later wrote that she could not dissuade Olivereau from her decision, and so “she rushed on jail as a moth on a flame.” Portland attorney Charles Erskine Scott Wood, a man sympathetic to radical causes and anti-war sentiment, followed Olivereau’s case with interest. In early 1918 he wrote to Minnie Parkhurst:

“The war must go on and all who speak against it must be shut up, legally or illegally. I greatly admired Miss Olivereau’s presentation of her case to the jury. That is to say I admired it as an essay: fine, clear, logical. As an appeal to the jury it was well calculated to bring in a verdict of guilty.”

Olivereau spent twenty-eight months in prison at Canon City. The letters she and Parkhurst exchanged during that time change the picture of Louise Olivereau, at least the portrait sketched from the trial proceedings. The strident approach seems to have given way to a warmer, gentler side which emerged during her prison sentence. Her letters are calm and thoughtful, carefully written in order to say as much as she could on the one-page prison stationery she was allowed for each letter. Of course, she had plenty of time to think and write in prison.

The letters portray Parkhurst as a hard-working fundraiser; she worked fourteen hours a day writing to various labor and pacifist organizations around the country, describing the trial and asking for funds to publish the courtroom proceedings. In early December, the same week Olivereau was taken to prison in Colorado, Parkhurst began her efforts for an appeal. For two months Olivereau hoped her stay in prison would be brief, but any chance for appeal was impossible because of legal errors following the trial.

Olivereau did not file a demurrer at the close of her case, and Parkhurst was informed by C.E.S. Wood that, as he saw the case, an appeal was not possible.

With the chance for an appeal lost, Parkhurst turned her efforts towards publishing a pamphlet describing Olivereau’s crime, with excerpts from the trial transcript and her closing speech. Parkhurst placed a call for funds in the Daily Call, the Liberator magazine, and the Mother Earth Bulletin. The advertisement said that Parkhurst was writing a “pamphlet-record of the trial of a woman found guilty of thinking.”

In late December Emma Goldman, editor and founder of the Mother Earth Bulletin featured a story on the Olivereau case titled “Woman Martyr.” In the article Goldman quoted Parkhurst: “I am trying to get the court transcript of Louise’s case it is mighty good stuff.” Goldman urged her readers to send money to Parkhurst. In the next three issues of Goldman’s newsletter the case was briefly described, and the March 1918 edition carried a reprint of a letter Olivereau had written to Goldman from prison.

In just a few months Parkhurst had raised over $300, and she spent her evenings copying the trial transcript and responding to inquiries about Olivereau. Parkhurst worried about being skillful enough to write an introduction to the pamphlet, and she often asked Olivereau what she might prefer. Olivereau suggested that she ask Strong to write the introduction, but Parkhurst replied that Strong had declined the offer: “after all, Anna Louise Strong has political aspirations,” Parkhurst wrote. She wanted Goldman or Alexander Berkman to do the introduction, but both were about to enter federal prison to serve sentences stemming from their own anti-war speeches and articles, actions which were in violation of the Espionage Act.

Parkhurst decided to go ahead and write it herself.

However, local printing houses were hesitant to print Parkhurst’s manuscript when they learned it concerned the sedition trial of Olivereau, the woman anarchist. The Piggott printing plant had been raided and smashed in January, 1918, and other local printing houses began to turn down any work which involved anti-war material. Parkhurst angrily wrote Olivereau of her thwarted efforts in getting the pamphlet printed, and the two women agreed that publishing attempts should be postponed until the local climate had cooled down. The pamphlet was finally published more than a year after Olivereau had entered prison, and notices heralding its completion read, “Child Born After Being Carried Eighteen Months!”

Olivereau grew frustrated as she read of Parkhurst’s efforts on her behalf. Upon the new year of 1918, she wrote Parkhurst that she wished she “could do my own work,” and that she approved of everything Parkhurst was doing. Often in her letters she would extend thanks to the “faithful few” who remembered her with letters and small donations. She spent her days in prison teaching a small shorthand class and tutoring other women prisoners in English grammar. The prisoners were allowed a small garden plot, and she often wrote that her afternoons outdoors eased the confines of prison life. In the evenings she kept herself busy with “fancy work,” sewing small articles of clothing which she would send to Parkhurst to be raffled off, the funds from which would go to the pamphlet project, or for items Olivereau might need in prison. She did not mix with the other prisoners very often during the evening social hour, but she told Parkhurst that the inmates were “either,.... “friendly or neutral, and so there is no unpleasantness there.”

Olivereau fed her appetite for news with the Denver Post and the Christian Science Monitor and later on she received the Post-Intelligencer and the Seattle Union Record. But her efforts to exchange ideas on current events with Parkhurst were halted by the prison censors. She often reminded Parkhurst that she was forbidden to discuss other Espionage Act cases, or controversial issues such as the Russian revolution or labor strikes. In one early letter Parkhurst wrote, “do you get to read the daily papers? If you do I guess you have seen that the international horizon looks brighter.” This reference to the “international horizon” was probably an allusion to the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, and Parkhurst knew that she could not carry her comment any further. Pieces of Parkhurst’s letters appear to have been cut, and occasional lines from Olivereau’s letters are blacked out. Censorship was the worst aspect of prison life, Olivereau wrote, and she told Parkhurst that “prisonitis” was the only disease from which she suffered.

While at the onset of her imprisonment Olivereau conveyed a positive outlook, as the months dragged on the tone of her letters changed. Parkhurst’s regular letters became a lifeline for Olivereau, especially after she received a letter from her sister, Jennie Pollard, in their hometown of Douglas, Wyoming, in which her sister asked her to stop writing to her. Apparently Pollard felt that Olivereau’s incarceration was too much of an embarassment for the family still remaining in the small town. Perhaps the lowest point of her stay in Colorado came when she received an unexpected visit from an old friend and fellow Seattle activist, Kate Sadler. After the brief visit she wrote to Parkhurst:

“It was dear of them to come, but Minnie, if you love me, don’t urge others to come. It’s torture to spend a few minutes with friends under an officer’s eye, and afterward all the things you want to say, and could have said, fill your days and haunt your nights.”

Although the isolation of her prison experience fed her struggle with “prisonitis,” even at her lowest point Louise Olivereau clung to the belief that what she had done in writing and mailing the anti-war circulars was true to her convictions and sense of personal duty. She had no regrets for her actions; as she told Parkhurst in a letter from prison:

“the flat monotony and lack of any big interest or motive of any kind is hard to bear but I’m not complaining, because of course I knew what the price was before I incurred the debt.”

Chapter 4: “this after-the-war period”: Post-War Turmoil And The Prelude To The 1919 Seattle General Strike

“I wish you could have seen the Peace celebration that took place in Seattle last Monday when the news of the Armistice was recieved. In fact it started from the University in the night. Everybody forgot about the flu ban, which was officially lifted the next day. There was never such a celebration in Seattle before. It was such a joyous, hilarious thing to look at and laugh at. I watched awhile, mixed with the crowd a little just to see if I could get out again and then came home...”

-- Minnie Parkhurst to Louise Olivereau 17 November 1918

Every Sunday Minnie Parkhurst wrote her friend Louise Olivereau, who was serving a sentence stemming from an Espionage Act conviction in the federal penitentiary at Canon City, Colorado. After more than four years of fighting and 37 million casualties, the ghastly European war ended at 11:00 a.m. on 11 November, 1918. On the following day, Seattle officials lifted the six-week ban on gathering in public places implemented due to the virulence of the Spanish influenza epidemic, which had raged across the country that autumn. The joy and hilarity that Parkhurst witnessed at the peace celebration would be short-lived, however, when the anxiety and frustration engendered by the wartime experience would emerge on the homefront. 1919 brought a year of labor unrest, public anti-radical hysteria and repression, and high unemployment matched by escalated living costs. The American people faced the disillusionment and cynicism brought about by the war in Europe; and so, when considering these symptoms of post-war malaise, we can include 1919 with the war years of 1917 through 1918.

The United States mobilized over four million men for military action during its nineteen months of fighting the Central Powers, and 364,000 Americans were either killed, wounded, imprisoned by the enemy, or reported missing in action. On the homefront, industry mobilized to meet the needs of the war effort, and the Wilson Administration established the War Industries Board, in order to keep the manufacturing of war materiel flowing smoothly. The American Federation of Labor (AF.L) membership exceeded three million by late 1918, and wages had risen 20 percent over 1914 figures. However, the domestic average of prices also rose steadily, resulting in 1919 in a 124 percent rise over price figures of 1913. American citizens accepted the rise in living costs as a part of wartime; however, as inflation continued to soar and unemployment increased in early 1919, alarm and frustration over the cost of living escalated as well.

Within weeks after the Armistice the government cancelled thousands of contracts worth four billion dollars in still undelivered goods, and the War Industries Board ceased its supervisory function. Job dismissals in war-related industries reached three million by February 1919, just as soldiers returning from Europe by the thousands were anxious to get back to work. The demise of the War Labor Board pleased many employers; they saw the chance to eliminate unions and return to an “open shop” policy of employment. 1919 saw 2,665 strikes involving over four million employees, as organized workers sought to maintain the gains they had achieved during the war.

“Do you see the Christian Science Monitor? I am glad to see the stand taken by Walsh--for this after-the-war period is going to be one of more or less difficult adjustment on the labor field.”

Louise Olivereau to Minnie Parkhurst, 14 November 1918

Post-war reconstruction became a public issue even before peace had been realized. At an All national meeting in Chicago in early November, Frank P. Walsh--co-chairman of the War Labor Board spoke on the role of organized labor during peacetime. “Autocracy has seen its day and passed away in government and in industry,” Walsh told the Chicago gathering. He supported the “unqualified right of workers to organize and deal collectively through such unions as they may choose,” and urged “democratic control of industry.” Walsh favored a shorter work day, complete equality of men and women in industry including equal pay for equal work, and he suggested that post-war reconstruction efforts involve representatives from workers in industry. Most employers did not share Walsh’s point of view regarding organized labor, and the post-war period would indeed be one of “more or less difficult adjustment.”

“Peace seems to be an accomplished fact at last....What of the movement to ask a general amnesty for politicals? Of course I’m hoping, but always remembering that ‘blessed are they who expect nothing,’ and not building anything on my hopes.”

Louise Olivereau to Minnie Parkhurst, 14 November 1918

On 30 November 1918, thousands of stickers suddenly appeared at Camp Lewis, Washington, saying “We demand the immediate release of all political prisoners.” The campaign for amnesty for political prisoners--including conscientious objectors jailed for refusal of military service and those persons convicted under the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918--had been launched during the war. Within a month after the Armistice, amnesty committees mobilized in various cities, the most vocal being the New York-based League for Amnesty of Political Prisoners. The League requested a general amnesty, which President Wilson rejected; he instead ordered that each case be reviewed separately. In February 1919, Attorney General Thomas Gregory sent a letter to all federal attorneys, stating that the Department of Justice did not recognize any class of persons as “political offenders” and that the department did not favor any “general amnesty.” Gregory requested that the federal attorneys send a “frank and informal expression of your views upon the justice of the verdict and sentence in each case of conviction under this section where the term of the sentence remains unexpired.”

Gregory wanted the attorneys to review unduly severe sentences, and cases with inadequate evidence for conviction, and he later recommended to Wilson that some sentences under the Espionage Act be commuted.

Public speakers in favor of the amnesty pointed out that European political prisoners had been freed, and that because the war was over, the prisoners should not be held under wartime legislation convictions. In January 1919, 112 conscientious objectors were released from Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, after Board of Inquiry members had reviewed the men’s records and concluded that the men were indeed “sincere objectors.” Persons convicted under the Espionage and Sedition Acts were not as fortunate, however, since Wilson refused to grant any pardons. It was not until Warren G. Harding entered office that several prisoners serving terms originating during the war years were released.

“New York seems to have difficulty adjusting to peace conditions. Am glad to see Mayor Hylan insists that soldiers and sailors have no more right to create riots than civilians.”

Louise Olivereau to Minnie Parkhurst, 2 December 1918

Wartime intolerance toward unpopular opinions did not cease when the European guns fell silent, in fact, a new wave of hysteria shook the nation following the war’s end.

In wartime the enemy was the Hun; during peace it was the Bolshevik. Many citizens believed that disgruntled organized workers were influenced by radicals, and returning soldiers sometimes aimed their wrath at politically radical groups. Upon arrival in New York City many soldiers found no jobs available to them. Just weeks after the victory in Europe, hundreds of soldiers, sailors and marines stormed a Socialist party meeting at Madison Square Garden. The Christian Science Monitor reported that several people in attendance “were severely beaten.” Police finally dispersed the mob of servicemen, and made no arrests. One police officer said he broke up the crowd of angry soldiers as gently as possible, because “their hearts were in the right place.” .

The following evening brought yet another scene of rioting soldiers, this time outside a lecture hall where the Woman’s International League, a peace organization, discussed Wilson’s peace plan. The League, “composed of a number of well-to-do women,” had their meeting disrupted by the angry servicemen when “one of the speakers praised Bolshevism.” After this second melee, New York Mayor John F. Hylan issued a statement to Secretary of War Newton D. Baker and Navy Secretary Josephus Daniels that said, in part, “it has now become necessary for me to issue orders to police to accord the same treatment to the men in uniform as to citizens when they become disorderly and incite riots.” A memo from the New York police commissioner to Mayor Hylan written after these disturbances advised that “demobilization [of troops] in this vicinity presents serious problems,” and that police would use measures “that are demanded in dealing with the lawless and riotous elements, whatever their character.”

The city of Seattle faced the problems of returning troops as well, although not to the violent degree which New York City suffered. An editorial in the Union Record in early January declared, “our nearness to Camp Lewis is apt to furnish us with some weighty unemployment troubles before the winter is over.” The editorial commented on the destitute soldiers and sailors wandering Seattle streets, discharged from military service with hardly enough money on which to subsist. One Seattle man “announced that he had been approached by fifteen soldiers in one night for bed and board,” the editorial said. The Union Record concluded with, “it looks as if that move for a six-hour day, or even a four-hour day, in order to pass the jobs around, may be needed in a hurry, right here in Seattle. And Seattle is certainly better organized to do the job than any other city in the land.”

Organized labor’s concern over unemployment among the newly-released servicemen was increased by the fact that many of those veterans were hired as strikebreakers during labor disputes. The Employers’ Association, an anti-union group of business owners, hired soldiers and sailors to work as strikebreakers, as in the case of the strike at the Pacific Car and Foundry Company in Renton. That strike lasted several weeks during January, and the Union Record featured an article concerning three ex-servicemen who had turned down offers to work as scabs in the Renton plant.

The three men visited the Metal Trades Council in Seattle with their stories of destitution--each said he was given about twelve dollars upon discharge, and that the desperation for jobs was so severe among veterans that many would do any kind of work, even under unfair conditions such as a strike situation.

Approximately one week later, the Metal Trades Council announced the founding of the Soldiers’, Sailors’ and Workingmen’s Council, which intended to draw veterans into the unions and admit them without an initiation fee. The Union Record, in its approval of the new council, exclaimed that “once again the Metal Trades Council has taken the bull by the horns.... surely nothing could be more likely to teach the soldier where his real interest lies.” However, not all of organized labor shared that enthusiasm. Founding the association was the first time that the AFL-affiliated Metal Trades Council had worked directly with the IWW, and many of the more conservative unionists felt that the Soldiers’, Sailors’ and Workingmen’s Council was much too similar to the councils of the Bolshevik Soviet. Indeed, the Metal Trades Council spokesmen said, they had fashioned it after the Russian example. Such councils for ex-servicemen also sprang up in Butte, Montana, and Portland, Oregon.

Although severely weakened by wartime raids and arrests, the IWW was still a thorn in the side of the Seattle authorities in early 1919. Mayor Ole Hanson had made a campaign promise to close every IWW hall in Seattle, and he aimed to keep that promise. Police arrested IWW members (Wobblies) and booked them on “open charges”-- meaning no specific charges at all. When Wobblies were arrested for selling IWW broadsheets on the streets, E.I. Chamberlain, the Seattle general secretary of the IWW, phoned Hanson at home on Christmas Eve to inquire about the mayor’s “attitude regarding the matter.” When Hanson told Chamberlain that he aimed to “stop the preaching of sedition and treason in Seattle,” Chamberlain angrily said, “All right then, do you want your jails filled with IWWs?” Mayor Hanson replied that “our jail is a little crowded, but we will surely find sufficient quarters for all lawbreakers. “ “Well, the battle is on, and we’ll show you!” The IWW secretary shouted before he hung up on the mayor. Hanson and his bodyguard immediately went to police headquarters and the Union Record reported that “there they waited throughout the evening in eager expectation while the whole force of police reserves were lined up ready to repel the attack that no one but themselves had ever dreamed of.”

There was no IWW attack on police headquarters on that Christmas Eve, but police arrested Chamberlain within hours after his phone conversation with Mayor Hanson. When he was booked for “threatening the mayor,” Chamberlain asked to see a warrant and was told that there was no need for one. The following day, police raided the IWW Defense Committee headquarters on Yesler Way, expropriating all of the organization’s records and materials. In an editorial headed “Our Worthy Chief,” the Union Record said:

“Again our worthy Chief Warren shows his rather crude conception of what he considers law and order by raiding the office of the IWW Defense Committee and confiscating everything in the place. We have no doubt the chief was greatly tried. Whenever we have anything to do with IWW’s we find them exceedingly trying ourselves. But so far we have succeeded in restraining our tempers, and in overcoming the temptation to smash things.”

The editorial denounced the “open charges” arrest policy of the police force, and closed with a request to Chief Warren for “some self control and even a little intelligence and also for a real faith in Democracy. And we know we are asking a good deal of a police chief when we suggest these things.”

The open charges policy had become a point of contention among Seattle’s organized labor, because Wobblies and other members of the radical labor element knew that Chief Warren’s men carried out the practice selectively.

One week after Chamberlain’s Christmas Eve arrest, the Metal Trades Council passed a resolution which called upon Mayor Hanson to curb the “abuse of power” by police. The Council demanded that the open charges tactic be stopped. “Men are being arrested by the city authorities for selling papers of which these authorities do not approve,” the resolution said, and that those arrests resulted in suppression of free speech and press and “ideas distasteful” to the authorities.

The animosity between the police and organized labor exploded into open hostility on a Sunday afternoon in mid- January. Police broke up a mass meeting sponsored by the Hope Lodge of Machinists and the Socialist party, where the topic was “hands off Russia.” Newspaper accounts claimed that the crowd which gathered in the rain at Fourth Avenue and Virginia Street was an orderly one, but apparently the police moved in to stop the meeting after a Russian speaker addressed the crowd as “Comrades.” When citizens began swinging their fists at police, the officers used their clubs in return. The Union Record reported that “several policemen used their clubs freely, a number of persons receiving wounds which bled profusely. The police did not escape unscathed, and Capt. Searing was considerably pummeled, returning to the police station with a bleeding nose.”

With banner headlines screaming, “POLICE BREAK UP ORDERLY MEETING” and “WORKERS CLUBBED,” the