Women, Wobblies, Respectability, and the Law in the Pacific Northwest, 1905-1924

Beyond the Rebel Girl: Women, Wobblies, Respectability, and the Law in the Pacific Northwest, 1905-1924 by Heather Mayer M.A., University of California, Riverside, 2006 B.A., Portland State University, 2003 Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of History Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Heather Mayer 2015 SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY Spring 2015 Approval Name: Heather Mayer Degree: Doctor of Philosophy (History) Title of Thesis: Beyond the Rebel Girl: Female Wobblies, Respectability, and the Law in the Pacific Northwest, 1905-1924. Examining Committee: Chair: Roxanne Panchasi Assoc. Professor Mark Leier Senior Supervisor Professor of History Karen Ferguson Supervisor Professor of Urban Studies/History Stephen Collis Internal/External Examiner Supervisor Professor of English Laurie Mercier External Examiner Professor, Department of History Washington State University- Vancouver Date Defended/Approved: February 20, 2015 ii Partial Copyright Licence iii ABSTRACT This thesis is a study of men and women associated with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) in the states of Oregon and Washington, from the time of the union’s founding in 1905, to the release of a large group of political prisoners in 1924. IWW membership in this region has long been characterized as single, male, itinerant laborers, usually working in lumber or agriculture, and historians have generally focused on the perspective of this group of men. There were, however, women and men with wives and children who were active members of the organization, especially in the cities of Portland, Spokane, Everett, and Seattle. IWW halls in these cities often functioned as community centers, with family friendly events and entertainment. Women were drawn to the IWW for its radical vision and inclusionary policies, but also for its birth control advocacy and emphasis on freedom of choice in marriage. The IWW also offered women an avenue for activism that did not focus primarily on the fight for suffrage. While female Wobblies (as members of the organization were known) were not against women having the right to vote, they believed that organization in the workplace was the only way to true emancipation. Local law enforcement and vigilante groups often targeted members of the IWW, and women were no exception. During legal proceedings women were questioned about their personal lives and moral values, regardless of their charge. Judges, prosecutors, sheriffs, and city officials challenged their status as respectable women because they were associated with the IWW. Female Wobblies responded by rejecting their characterization as non-respectable women, and by providing their own definition of respectability, which included standing up for ones fellow workers and fighting for what was right. During World War I and its aftermath, continual raids on Wobbly halls and massive arrests of members took a toll on the organization and the radical community in which it functioned, and many of the women in this study ceased to be active members. Keywords: Industrial Workers of the World; Pacific Northwest; Respectability; Labor; Women’s History iv Table of Contents: Approval Page……………………………………………………………………………………ii Partial Copyright Licence …...………………………………………………………………….iii Abstract …………………………………….…………………………………………………….iv Table of Contents ………………..……………………………………………………………...v Introduction………………...……………………………………………………………………..1 Chapter 1: IWW Origins in the Northwest and Women’s Role in the Spokane Free Speech Fight, 1905-1910.....................................................................................20 Chapter 2: Repression of Radicalism Through Morality Laws: Becky Beck and IWW Involvement in the Seattle Tailors’ Strike, 1912……………………………………43 Chapter 3: The Oregon Packing Company Strike, Prostitution, and the Battle over Female Self-Determination, 1913….……………….………………………………..55 Chapter 4: Gender, Marriage, and Wobbly Respectability on Trial in Everett, 1916……81 Chapter 5: Anarchism, Antiwar Activism, and the Case of Seattle Wobbly Louise Olivereau, 1917-1920………........………...........................................................102 Chapter 6: Birth Control, Antiwar Activism, and the Case of Portland Radical Marie Equi,1917-1920…..……..……………………………………………...…….……...119 Chapter 7: Repression, Arrests, and Defense Work of Female Wobblies During World War I and its Aftermath, 1917-1920………………………………………………..134 Conclusion: The Decline of the Family-Friendly Wobbly Community in the Pacific Northwest, 1920-1924……………………………….………………………...........145 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………….………..…152 v Introduction On a sunny July morning, four hundred men, women, and children gathered to eat breakfast at a fully unionized restaurant. After breakfast they congregated on the nearby dock, and were entertained by a twenty-piece band while waiting for their excursion boats. The boats took the festive group to a picnic area on the mouth of the Chehalis River on the Washington coast, where they were joined by about four hundred others. Upon arrival, they feasted on $200 worth of food, again served by unionized waitresses. There were games and prizes for children, and the day ended with songs and a lecture on industrial unionism.1 On another July afternoon, seven years prior, two men hopped off a freight train near Spokane, and started to look for work. The local farmers had no work to offer, and were not too disposed to charity, so the men stole a chicken from one of them. They then hiked to a hobo jungle and met up with several other men waiting for work on the harvest to begin that next week. They helped themselves to a few more chickens, and spent the next few days in the jungle, most likely singing songs and discussing industrial unionism.2 Both of these events happened during the period focused on in this study, and both featured members of the Industrial Workers of the World. But while scene two is the more familiar image of Wobblies in the region, scene one also portrays a very important part of Wobbly life and culture in the Northwest. This study seeks to round out the well- worn picture of Wobblies in the Pacific Northwest as young, single, male, itinerant workers. While those workers did form a large portion of the membership and were involved in important strikes in extractive industries such as the 1917 lumber strike, they are only part of the picture. In small towns across the Northwest and in the larger cities of Seattle, Portland, and Spokane, women played an integral role in Wobbly life. Not only single women, but families—husband and wife Wobbly teams—were often present during some of the biggest fights for free speech or in defense of jailed members. Yet in most histories of the IWW, discussion of women’s roles is usually limited to Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, the IWW’s well-known female national organizer, and the roles of rank and 1 Industrial Worker July 7, 1917. 2 Industrial Worker July 5, 1909 as cited in Greg Hall, Harvest Wobblies: The Industrial Workers of the World and Agricultural Workers in the American West (Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 2001), 46. 1 file women in the famous textile strikes of Patterson, New Jersey and Lawrence, Massachusetts. In fact women went on strike as part of and in support of the IWW, were arrested in its free speech fights, stood with the organization in speaking out against World War I, and were persecuted and prosecuted along with their male comrades. At the same time, the IWW engaged in women’s issues, such as birth control agitation, and advanced an economic argument regarding prostitution, seeing “fallen” women as part of the working class and victims of the capitalist system, rather than as morally deficient, and identifying their position with that of the migrant laborer. Focusing on lumber camps and male Wobblies not only ignores female Wobblies, but inhibits understanding how the IWW approached social issues and how it functioned as part of the radical community of the Pacific Northwest. Focusing on women changes how we see the IWW in a fundamental way. We see that its reach went far beyond lumber camps and hobo jungles, and that it was a valid avenue for radical working-class women to organize, educate, and agitate for social justice. I have two major goals in writing this thesis. The first is in the vein of classic women’s history: since they have been ignored for so long in the study of the IWW, especially in the Pacific Northwest, this study recovers the story of female Wobblies and Wobbly sympathizers. This study also examines the multiple and contradictory ways that male and female workers, whether self-proclaimed Wobblies or IWW sympathizers, dealt with the “Woman Question” of their day—whether or not women should vote, work outside of the home, have access to birth control, or be subject to special laws regarding work hours or conditions. My second focus is more in line with current gender history. Attitudes towards “appropriate” male and female behavior affected how women approached the union, how they were treated by male Wobblies, and how they were handled by judges and police officers. While “official” Wobbly ideology, as espoused by IWW newspapers, General Executive Board meetings, and annual membership meetings, did not offer much specific advice on the “woman question” other than noting the need to organize women, individuals within the union navigated the issues of sexuality, marriage, childcare, and domestic labor on a daily basis. While the free-footed Wobbly with no wife or kids to hold him back was held up by some as the ideal member who could hop a train to join the fight at a moment's notice, many Wobblies who were in relationships had to choose whether to get married, whether women would take part in the movement—and risk 2 arrest—alongside their husbands, whether to use birth control, and how to achieve the One Big Union ideal in daily life. The title of this study is intended to take us beyond Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, often referred to as the Rebel Girl, and the focus on her in discussions of women and the IWW.

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