OHS digital no.OHS digital bb 007 OREGON VOICES 8 24 “READ YOU MUTT!” The Life and Times of Tom Burns, the Most Arrested Man in Portland
by Peter Sleeth
TOM BURNS BURST onto the Port- of Liverpool to his death in Southeast land scene in 1905, out of curiosity, Portland, Burns lived a life devoted and stayed, he said, for the weather.1 A to improving the lives of the working loner and iconoclast, Burns found his class. way into virtually every major orga- Historians frequently mention nized social movement in his time. Burns’s involvement in Portland’s In his eighty-one years, from England labor movement, but his life has never to Oregon, Burns lived the life of a been explored in detail. From his free-wheeling radical, a colorful street- friendships with lawyer and author corner exhorter whose concern for the C.E.S. Wood to his alliance with femi- working stiff animated his life. His nist and anarchist Dr. Marie Equi, his story is full of contradictions. Burns name runs through the currents of noted having been a friend to famous the city’s labor history. Newspapers communist John Reed prior to the of the day — as well as Burns himself Russian Revolution, but he despised — called him The Most Arrested Man the Communist Party.2 Although in Portland, the Mayor of Burnside, he described himself as a Socialist, and Burns of Burnside. His watch and was what we could call a secular shop on the 200 block of W. Burnside Reporter Fred Lockley dropped by Tom Burns’s book shop on a winter’s night in humanist today, Burns was also briefly was a focal point for radical meetings 1914: “The air was blue with tobacco smoke and vibrant with the earnest voices of involved in a publishing venture with that included luminaries of Portland’s several men discussing the conspiracies of capital” (Oregon Journal, February 22, the former Grand Dragon of the literary, political, and labor landscape. 1914). His storefront at SW Fourth and Ankeny illustrated Burns’s twin desires to Oregon Ku Klux Klan. Burns con- I first heard of Burns at the din- repair both watches and the world. The diminutive Burns stands to the left. sidered himself a man with a simple, ner table, growing up in Multnomah lifelong mission: “My whole idea is County, east of the city. He had been that everybody should have enough a friend to my grandfather and my befriended Dana Sleeth, a Progressive manhood included many nights before anybody has too much.”3 From father, and in my family, he was leg- Era journalist, and then my father amidst the intellectual anarchy of his birth in the Dickensian tenements end: A liberal and watchmaker who Marshall Sleeth, whose journey to Burns’s basement hideout beneath
OHQ vol. 112, no. 1 © 2011 Oregon Historical Society Sleeth, Life and Times of Tom Burns 8
8 2 invective that could shock and dismay working men and women. He believed even his friends: Local Communists the only way to escape wage slavery were “penus-pulling political was through education. His compact polecats,” for example, and Christian shop was a warren stuffed with clocks, preachers were “peddling Jesus junk watch-making tools, and propaganda. 5 007 bb OHS digital no. and Bible bunk.” Even Portland itself Yet it was his cellar, more than 2,000 was not safe from his pen’s vitriol. In square feet of basement, that held the a 1913 screed — an attempt to sup- shop’s treasure. There, hobos, radicals, port my grandfather, who was in the and preachers packed in shoulder-to- midst of an editorial crusade and legal shoulder to argue, talk, and hide in a battle — Burns wrote that his adopted safe house for the mad, the brilliant, city “is among the Rottenest of the and the inflamed. Rotten of American cities. . . . Where, houses of Prostitution, (in Violation BURNS’S JOURNEY as a Portland of all Law,) run wide open, night and radical and never-give-an-inch ora- day, that’s Portland; Ladd and Tilton tor started nearly 5,000 miles east of town.” He continued on in the five- the city, in England. After Nathaniel page, sometimes-rhyming document Hawthorne became U.S. Consul in to insult everyone by name from local Liverpool, England, in 1853, he found business leaders to the governor before himself in the slums of the otherwise declaring that state legislators “are prosperous port: Tom Burns supported his family with his Portland watch repair business until his Saloon Bum Lickspittles and Big Mitt death at age eighty-one, although his social activism almost always took precedence Almost every day, I take walks about Liv- artists, [who] are Raping the Treasury over his time pieces. Burns was part of what historian Robert Johnston called “The erpool; preferring the darker and dingier Radical Middle Class” that helped shape Portland’s vibrant political life. His role as of the State for their Boss, the Southern streets, inhabited by the poorer classes. The 6 scenes there are very picturesque in their a business owner may have made his politics more tolerable to Portland’s elites. Pacific [Railroad].” “Read, You Mutt!” was the only way; at every two or three steps, a gin-shop; also . . . [fil]thy in clothes and person, ragged, permanent saying affixed to his watch- pale, often afflicted with humors; women, shop window, where on any given day, nursing their babies at dirty bosoms; men his now largely forgotten watch shop. a police target. His crusades — and Portlanders could learn of his most haggard, drunken, care-worn, hopeless, but By the 1960s, my father had become a there were hundreds — ranged from recent crusades in an ever-changing with a kind of patience, as if all this were the conservative Richard Nixon Republi- aiding striking workers to advocat- mix of articles, self-drawn cartoons, rule of their life. . . . I never walk through can, yet he still beamed with admira- ing for public control of utilities.4 He and political flyers. He aimed a second these streets without feeling as if I should catch some disease.7 tion whenever he heard the name Tom became a small-business owner with admonition at the men who filled the Burns. his watch shop as well as a family man, bars and brothels surrounding his By the time Thomas Joseph Burns Here is what the record tells us of forcefully weaving himself into the time shop on Portland’s skid road — was born to an Irish father and Welsh the man. fabric of the city. By the end of his life, “Empty Your Pocketbook into Your mother in those very slums on July When Burns arrived in Portland he was a Portland institution, having Brain” — and Burns backed up the 28, 1876, things had hardly improved.8 at age twenty-eight, he was a watch- dished out his earnest, if sometimes encouragement to read with a lend- Immigrants had poured into the city maker by trade and a Socialist by call- peculiar, form of arguments in hun- ing library of more than 6,000 books, throughout the nineteenth century, ing. His fiery rhetoric and aggressive dreds of street speeches, pamphlets, certainly one of the largest personal seeking the dock jobs and factory work street speaking quickly transformed and newspapers he self-published, book collections in the city at the created by the Industrial Revolution. him from an unknown newcomer to with an acidic, sometimes crude, time. All were available for free to They lived in squalid conditions. The
OHQ vol. 112, no. 1 Sleeth, Life and Times of Tom Burns 1881 British census shows Thomas and Tom Burns was fourteen years old and Mountains rising quickly to the west. Mississippi River. The Easterners alone Ellen Burns living with four children, listed as an “assistant,” or apprentice, “Traffic was congested and noisy,’’ nearly matched the city’s 149,200 full- including their four-year-old son most likely with Russell & Co. Ltd., a wrote Laurence Pratt, in his memoir, time residents.18 The exhibition was a Thomas. The father listed himself as large watch-making firm in the city. “I Remember Portland, 1899–1915”: wonder, built on the extensive wetlands employed at the “Alkali Works,” or He had wanted to become a school of Guilds Lake, surrounded by lush Iron-shod horses clattered along at a good chemical plants, as did all of his neigh- teacher, but his father had differ- speed with light wagons and buggies. . . . forests, bordered by the Willamette bors.9 The plants were poisonous, ent ideas. He was one of now seven Two, four, or six Percheron horses, big as River and Portland, a place rich in choking places, filled with employees children in his Irish Catholic family, elephants, clanged eight to twenty-four symbols of the promise of a city in the who had little voice in the conditions his father listing himself as a “general ringing shoes on the cobblestones, aided and wilds. The affair put Portland in the at work or home. “We lived in the laborer.”13 abetted by the clash of iron- or steel-rimmed national spotlight, and most agreed it wheels. . . . Along Third and Fifth Avenues, tenement district,” Burns would later In May 1893, at age seventeen, Burns up Washington and Morrison Streets almost was a wonderful success. Burns refused tell a newspaper reporter. “I saw plenty stowed away on the ship Luconia and bumper to bumper the [street] cars ran with to even take a peek. The organizers had of misery and vice as a boy. When I came to New York, then journeyed to the grind and roar of wheels and the constant excluded union labor, and he was not was 7 or 8 years old I was earning my London three months later. For the clang, clang of warning gongs pounded by about to visit a scab shop.19 keep as a newsboy. In those days many next four years, he worked as a watch the motorman’s foot as he approached each People poured into the city dur- 16 of the workingman’s children died maker and spent his free time preach- cross street. ing the first decade of the twentieth before they were a year old because of ing Socialism. By 1898, he saw “the To see the Willamette River was century, many of them immigrants unsanitary surroundings. It was more hopelessness of making any impres- near impossible from street level, as like Burns, searching for the next best from ignorance and indifference than sion on the ignorance and indifference warehouses and wharves packed the place in the booming American West. willfulness on the part of the authori- of London’s slumdwellers” and sailed east side of Front Street. Downtown Between 1891 and 1900, Portland was ties yet the children died like flies.”10 for Australia. After another four years centered on Sixth Avenue and Mor- the third fastest growing city in the Nineteenth-century Liverpool of street speaking and watch work, rison Street. North of W. Burnside nation, and from 1903 to 1907, the proved a fertile breeding ground for he spent time in Indonesia, China, was Slab Town, or the North End, a population jumped by 80 percent. Burns’s life-to-be as a Portland-based and the Philippines before sailing warren of bars, brothels, and opium Politically, it was evolving just as rap- radical. By his own account, at the age for America in 1904. Working on the dens, many of the properties discreetly idly. Growing populist and progressive of eight, he was handing out political United States transport Thomas, shov- owned by Portland’s business elite.17 movements pushed for greater control. literature on the streets, “one step eling coal for the boilers, Burns arrived If it was no nineteenth-century Liv- In 1902, the State Legislature instituted ahead of the cops and out of reach at San Francisco in July 1904.14 erpool, the North End had this much the initiative and referendum system, of the deacons,” and he later claimed: Burns, true to his peripatetic in common with Burns’s birthplace: but a Republican party machine “Revolt was born in my blood and nature, stayed on the move. A slight, Here was where the fringe of society continued its overwhelming control bred in my bones.”11 His father fought gray-eyed Englishman with a walrus gathered — the hungry, the alienated, of business and politics in the state for improved sanitation in the slums, moustache, he arrived in Portland in and the unemployed. Burns gravitated and city of Portland. There was no then ended up in jail for his public April 1905 and quickly melded with the to the Burnside dividing line. There, right for women to vote, a guaranteed speaking — a behavior pattern his lower end of W. Burnside Street, the he set up shop as a small-business eight-hour workday was nonexistent, namesake son would later perfect in toughest part of a wide-open town, a owner and local radical — “Burns of and the labor union movement was Portland. “My father claimed,” Burns place social revolutionaries mixed pre- Burnside,” as the Oregonian would nascent. For the working classes, long said, “there was no need for working- cariously in a racial and philosophical later describe him, had arrived. hours, short pay, and poor working men to be crowded like hogs in foul, melting pot with Chinese immigrants, The city sang with more vibrance conditions predominated. A de facto ill-smelling, disease-breeding tene- prostitutes, loggers, and sailors.15 than ever in the summer of 1905, class system existed, one Burns would ments. In the district where we lived when the Lewis & Clark Exhibition have surely recognized.20 there were from 10 to 12 people living PORTLAND WAS a low-slung city. A was in progress, drawing through its Still, during the spring of 1905, in a small room, sleeping on straw on skyscraper would be just twelve stories, gates more than 2.5 million people, Portland was beginning to shift in the floor.”12 By the 1891 English census, dwarfed by the 1,100-foot Tualatin including 135,000 from east of the astounding, if tentative, ways. A liberal
OHQ vol. 112, no. 1 Sleeth, Life and Times of Tom Burns campaigns.21 Revolt on a number of exhorters were the internet bloggers [Carl] Gritzmacher. the charge a fake one, fronts rumbled in the city. The Thirty- of the day. Newspapers were owned blocking the sidewalk. Ninth Annual National American by powerful, typically conservative, Col. C.E.S. Wood, attorney for Burns, proved the charge absolutely false by produc- Woman Suffrage Association Conven- business interests. The Oregonian, ing five members of the Socialist party who tion, featuring Susan B. Anthony, was principle among them, was run by its kept the sidewalk open all during the meet- held in Portland in 1905. Burns spoke long-time editor and power broker ing. Col. Wood also proved that the other three corners of 4th and Washington were OHS Research Library, mss 1101 Library, OHS Research at the convention, although the text Harvey Scott. Street activists, whether of his speech has not survived.22 Also their messages were religious, political, occupied by: 1. Salvation Army; 2, a fake Pet- rified Mummy show; 3, Tramp Evangelists, during the summer of 1905, Burns or philosophical, drew large crowds who had the sidewalks completely blocked.26 sat in as chairman of a committee hungry for entertainment and alter- that organized the local branch of the native sources of information. Burns The day before Burns’s trial, he wrote a Wobblies (Industrial Workers of the targeted downtown proper for his letter to the Lane, demanding to know World or IWW), whose fierce fight for soap-box advocacy, hoping to reach Lane’s position on free speech and workers’ rights would paralyze West a cross section of the people with his informing the mayor that, as Secretary Coast industries several times during message of saving the working man of the Oregon Socialist Party, he and the following fifteen years.23 and woman. By crossing Burnside into his attorney were ready to fight all the The Socialist movement was gain- the heart of Portland, Burns imme- way to the U.S. Supreme Court. diately drew the attention of police, ing steam as the working class sought If the freedom of speech in Portland, (not to although in person, he hardly seemed political allies, and by June, Burns talk of the screeching of wind instruments was named Secretary of the Oregon a threat. Given to wearing slacks and & the banging of drums & other vehicles of Almost always at odds with the Socialist Party and began leading suits, rather than working mens’ cloth- torture) is granted to the Salvation Army and mainstream media of the day (he nightly street meetings.24 These must ing, he was slender, with a thick matt others; why not the 3rd and soon to be the particularly despised the Oregonian), have been cacophonous events, with of dark brown hair and a soft touch of 1st political party, have the privelege [sic] of speech? Awaiting your reply.27 Burns became a publisher in his Burns on a soapbox on one corner, Liverpool remaining in his voice. Yet own right, churning out a stream of while a mix of bands and religious he was seemingly fearless in charging Burns, not yet a permanent resident newspapers, pamphlets, and flyers on groups shouted from opposing cor- police lines or confronting intellectual of Portland, was already creating the the many causes he championed. He was ners. On June 16, he wrote a letter to or pedagogic bullies. reputation that would follow him particularly offended by Christianity Jack London, perhaps the most famous Following his first arrest, for “refus- through life. and street evangelists from the Salvation ing to move on” while preaching Army. writer of the day and a fellow Social- ist. Burns invited London to come to Socialism during a street meeting at BY HIS OWN account, Burns estab- Portland during the crowded days of the corner of SW Fourth Avenue and lished his watch shop when he arrived the exposition to speak “in the interest Washington Street on July 8, 1905, in Portland in 1905, yet he hardly sat local physician named Harry Lane was of our common cause . . . Socialism is Burns appeared before Judge George still. In 1906, he travelled to Boise, running for mayor. Lane held then- just booming here right now.” London Cameron on July 11, represented by Idaho, to aid in the defense of IWW radical views that would both hobble deferred, but he authorized the Ore- the city’s iconic attorney, soldier, and leader Bill Haywood and two other his time in office and bring new life to gon socialists to sell his picture along writer, C.E.S. Wood. While official union leaders who had been charged courtroom transcripts of the trial liberal causes in Portland. He believed with an essay entitled “Scab.” Burns, in with the murder of Idaho’s gover- have long since disappeared (if there the city should grow in harmony with full political bloom, addressed London nor.28 From at least 1907 through 1908, ever were any), in 1934, Burns’s own its natural environment, offering a live- as “Comrade” and signed off in two he maintained a watch and jewelry newspaper FAX printed this account able place for rich and poor alike. He letters, “Yrs for the revolution.”25 business in San Francisco, where he of the trial: also believed in racial egalitarianism In 1905, when neither radio nor married Rita Lapp after taking out a and launched vigorous anti-corruption television was available, street corner He was pinched on orders of Police Chief marriage license in February 1907 and
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8 when a T.J. Burns had taken was written with the type of invective on the working-class side of the city. a room at 112 Fourth Street, for which Burns would become well Canneries were a primary source of in the North End.30 The 1910 known for in the decades to come. His employment for women workers in U.S. Federal Census and city chaotic charges probably made little the Pacific Northwest, and by the early directory did not find him dent in most people’s minds, as they twentieth century, Progressive reform-
007 bb OHS digital no. at all, but the 1910 U.S. Cen- were so densely packed and obscure ers had targeted work conditions there. sus shows Burns’s wife and it made the flyer almost impossible to While they succeeded in eliminating daughter staying with her follow. A sample reads like this: the most gruesome features — child parents in Minnesota. In the labor and long hours — the reforms Roosevelts Square Deal — Protected by the 1911 Portland City Directory, tended to keep wages low, bringing tremendous power of the presidency and 34 a T.J. Burns is living across assisted by the venal, guttersnipe, lickspittle, continued labor strife. the river on Union Avenue mental prostitutes of the subsidized press From the outset of the strike, work- in the Albina neighborhood. a-la-Oregonian; you attacked among oth- ers drew support from the Wobblies, Radical politics were boil- ers such noble characters as Thomas Paine, Socialists, and other leftists in Port- ing in the state by 1912. In [former progressive] Governor [John Peter] land’s burgeoning radical community. that year’s election, Eugene Altgeld and Eugene .V. Debs. Like the Politi- Dr. Marie Equi, a 1903 graduate of cally Drunken Myopic Epileptical Raving V. Debs, the Socialist Party Maniac that you are and although Mentally, the University of Oregon Medical candidate for President, Morally, Physically, and Intellectually you are School and a blossoming labor activ- would receive more than not fit to clean any of their Toilets.32 ist, joined Burns and dozens more on 900,000 votes nationwide, the picket line. The strike accelerated Arrested that day for distributing the with a total of 13,343 from into a free speech fight by July, when flyer, Burns had earlier mailed a copy Oregon.31 Theodore Roo- Portland Mayor H.R. Albee banned sevelt was estranged from to his wife in Minnesota: street speaking — Burns’s calling card. the Republican Party and My Darling Rita, Over the next month, Burns would be running as a Progressive In a few minutes I am starting out in arrested, beaten by the police, and sen- Burns favored wearing suits over workingman’s Party candidate for Presi- charge of 20 or 30 comrades and we are tenced to forty days on the rock pile.35 clothing in his street-speaking days during dent, drawing huge crowds going to distribute 5,000 copies of this leaflet The June 1913 strike put the spotlight at different places where Roosevelt is going Portland’s Progressive Era. From 1905 on, he wherever he went. Almost on the labor radicals who flocked to would show up on downtown street corners, to talk during the Day. I send you Printer’s certainly, Burns believed the the women’s defense, and Burns found stepping up on a soap box due to his height of proof and typewriter copy of manuscript only five feet, five inches. When city officials quit attention Roosevelt drew from which this leaflet was printed — some himself in one or another of the city’s arresting him for his street speaking, he quit his was detracting from Debs’s day they might bring Bessie or you some newspapers almost daily. money. When you read in papers of insults public orations, because, he said, why do it if it is candidacy. In the first day’s coverage, on June offered to Roosevelt in this city you can smile not against the law? Roosevelt’s presidential 29, 1913, the working-class paper and say — well — I have originals of what campaign was in full swing caused the trouble.33 Portland News noted that “socialist when he came to Portland speaker” Burns — speaking down- witnessed the birth of his only child, on September 11, and the city was The silence in the next day’s newspa- town on his favorite Washington Elizabeth “Bessie’’ Burns, on December waiting for him with multiple gather- pers must have flattened Burns. Street perch — had raised $12.75 for 18, 1907.29 ings on both sides of the river. Burns Media attention did come the fol- the strikers. Two days later, the News San Francisco city directories in planned to distribute a pamphlet lowing year, when he pressed to the aid reported Burns had “roundly roasted” both 1907 and 1908 list Burns, and (perhaps written with others) that of women cannery workers who went Multnomah County Sheriff Thomas Portland city directories do not show accused the former president of lying, out on strike on June 27, 1913, at East Word when Word refused to arrest a likely address for him until 1909, cheating, and betraying the nation. It Belmont Avenue and Eighth Street, a gun-toting cannery official on the
OHQ vol. 112, no. 1 Sleeth, Life and Times of Tom Burns picket line. “The girls were working ers refused to disperse, knocking them A jury of six found Burns guilty, sen- suffering. In March 1914, R.W. Dur- in the cannery for 4 cents an hour — to the ground and causing some to be tencing him to forty days on the rock schmidt, a partner in his radical book 40 cents a 10-hour day. I went on the trampled as the crowd tried to run in pile. He spent five days in jail, and shop and watch repair business, filed picket line and was getting arrested all panic. Burns and other strike leaders his appeal led to a dismissal of the a lawsuit against Burns. Durschmidt the time,” he told Oregon Journal col- worked to subdue the crowd. Accord- charges — in 1919.40 By contrast, in alleged that the shop at what is now umnist Dick Fagan in 1953. “Old Col. ing to an account in the International late July 1913, the city decided not to the corner of SW Fourth Avenue and C.E.S. Wood would bail me out. C.H. Socialist Review by Burns and others, take to trial twenty-one other activists Ankeny Street was being mishandled Chapman, once president of the Uni- he convinced some armed strike sup- arrested during the free speech war.41 by Burns and that Durschmidt was versity of Oregon, helped out too.”36 porters to put away their weapons.38 Because of these and similar actions being cheated out of money. The Gov. Oswald West showed up on The atmosphere grew more intense in coming years, Burns earned the lawsuit demanded the business be the picket line on July 11, using a tar in the city after Mayor Albee banned local newspaper moniker “The Most liquidated and the proceeds refunded barrel as a stage and trading verbal street speaking. Burns mounted his Arrested Man in Portland” between to Durschmidt. Burns denied the alle- slams with Wobbly leaders and Burns, soapbox at SW Sixth and Washington 1905 and 1920, although it is impossible gations, but the case dragged on for until Burns told the governor the strik- on July 15, in violation of the mayor’s to tally the number of arrests, due to two years. A court-appointed receiver ers would shut down the cannery. “You order, and began lambasting the incomplete police and court records quickly adjudged that the contents of have the right of peaceable gathering. governor, the mayor, and the police from the period.42 Burns said “scores,” the store were “of little value, and not You have the right of free speech. But chief. Word had him arrested, along while police and newspaper accounts enough to justify anyone in giving when you try to close any plant of with others who took his place. “I only offered testimony to many arrests, any time to the same.” The case was anybody’s there’ll be hell to pay,” the was beaten in the face and kicked,” (Burns changed his tune in 1946, when dismissed without cost to either man governor yelled back at Burns, “and Burns said. “I was slugged in the federal authorities questioned his in 1917.46 I won’t quit until it is settled.”37 At kidneys a dozen times while being immigration status; Burns told them Just before the lawsuit emerged, in 39 ten o’clock the next morning, during taken to jail.” That night, crammed he had been arrested only once since February 1914, Oregon Journal writer a meeting called by the governor at in the county jail downtown, Burns being in the country.)43 It was appar- Fred Lockley visited the Ankeny shop City Hall, the clash between Burns and his fellow prisoners sang Wobbly ently the practice to arrest street-level and described it like this: and West intensified. The Oregon protest songs, breaking jail discipline provocateurs like Burns, hold them for in a standard IWW protest technique. Directly north of the Multnomah hotel is a Journal reported the confrontation a time, and then release them without moss covered house. In the old days it was on the front page of its July 12 edition The city attorney formally charged a trial or any follow up. The idea was a more or less pretentious residence. Now Burns with violating “An Ordinance under the headline strike agitator to defuse the situation without clog- in the midst of the business district it looks concerning offences and disorderly strangely out of place. It has been converted arouses ire of governor west: ging the courts, as activists would conduct,” and the court paper stated into a store and on the awning you may read frequently demand full trials rather Burns, a labor agitator, charged the Industrial that Burns: the sign “Read, you Mutt.” On the window welfare commission [sic] with dishonesty, than accept simple fines.44 is a sign, “Radical Literature, Read, Think, and the governor, leaping upon the mahog- did willfully and unlawfully use and direct An example of Burns’s mindset Act.” Within is a watchmaker’s bench on one any table, used in more peaceful moments to and towards certain public officials and in matters of police confrontation side of the aisle while on the other is a stand for the meetings of the city commission, citizwns [sic] profane, obscene and abusive came out of a 1914 interview with the covered with Socialist and other literature. advanced on Burns, shaking his finger under language as follows, to wit: “scurvy rats”, The works of Owen, Marx and others are his nose and declaring to the agitator that he “cawardly skunks” [sic][“]cowardly, white Oregon Journal. The laws against street to be seen on the bookshelves. Sitting at the must retract his words, that the commission livered curs” and other language of like speaking had been lifted by then, tak- bench with the inwards of a watch scattered is honest, that its work is honest and that it is nature, and did willfully and unlawfully ing the meaning out of his protests. on the table before him is Tom Burns, watch trying to get the best results for the working conduct himself in a violent riotous and Said Burns: “Who wants to go on the repairer and would-be world repairer. Many women and minors. disorderly manner as follows: In continuing street to talk if there is no prohibition a watch slows down and runs badly because “I’m not scared,” answered Burns. to make a public speech on one of the streets 45 it gets dust in its works. Tom Burns thinks of the city after being refused permission to against it.” modern society needs to be taken to pieces, The same afternoon, six mounted do so by the police, and after being ordered If Burns’s political — and jailhouse cleaned, some of the worn-out parts replaced police charged the line after the strik- to discontinue such speech. — life was vibrant, his business life was and others readjusted and put together again
OHQ vol. 112, no. 1 Sleeth, Life and Times of Tom Burns City of Portland Archives, A2009-009.711 like the watches hanging on the rack before W. Burnside Street and emerged as a him. Tom Burns is a volcanic and vitriolic middle-class, small-business owner little Irishman. as well as a political activist, of a type Lockley continued, quoting his state- that was instrumental in the political ment to Burns: evolution of the city and the state. Historian Robert D. Johnston argues “I want an interview. I want you to tell me that era’s middle class “created one of why you are such a trouble maker. I want you to tell me what is your object in life. What America’s most democratic political you really live for.” traditions, a populism that has often represented a radical challenge to the Burns then replied: authority of economic, political, and 49 “What do I really live for? I’ll tell you what cultural elites.” I live for. All that I live for, all that I fight Burns’s street speaking continued for, all that I ever hope to attain is to make unabated, but now, rather than for conditions better so that my baby and the Socialism alone, he championed many babies of those of my class shall have a better causes, especially the Free Thought chance to live cleaner truer better lives than I have lived.”47 philosophies of Col. Robert G. Inger- soll.50 After Burns’s death, Stewart Hol- Over the following few years, as he brook, a nationally known journalist Burns of Burnside occupied his most well-known time shop at 221 W. Burnside from operated a watch and jewelers shop at and historian, gave this portrait: shortly after World War I until his death in 1957. In this 1928 photograph of the different locations in the city, Burns corner of NW Third and Burnside — the only known photo of the time shop — it is Tom usually described himself as a Socialist. grew increasingly disillusioned with located on the far right under the “Jeweler” sign. Below the shop was a 2,000 square- The label is not quite accurate. He was more the Socialist Party, which he believed the eclectic, widely read in matters of single foot basement, where Burns welcomed radicals and writers, hobos and friends. had been ruined by the Communists tax, birth control, Koreshanity, syndicalism, during and after World War I. Com- philosophical anarchism, and many other munists would remain his lifelong deplorable movements right down the line enemy, although what exactly turned to the mirage of Technocracy. When I first knew him, in 1923, he was still devoting wide and in Europe.52 The Truth Seeker most in his mind at the moment. It was here, him against them is an unsolved mys- considerable energy to Freethought, which 48 Journal began publishing in 1873, and among odd clocks and curious watches, that tery. Also missing from the record is he dated from the influence of Bradlaugh the continues today, espousing the free he displayed handwritten cards attacking his what Burns was doing as an activist Englishman and Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll. enemies. These were many and, I assure you, He liked to quote The Truthseeker as street thought philosophy advocated by just prior to and during World War I, most damnable enemies indeed.53 a key time for radicals, who typically evangels quoted Scripture, and distributed Ingersoll, among many others. whole bales of Ingersoll’s pamphlets.51 opposed American involvement in Sometime after 1918 and before When my grandfather died, the news- the war. The 1920 U.S. Federal Census A Union cavalry officer in the Civil War, 1923, Burns moved into the shop at paper story ran high in the window, shows him living in Portland with his Ingersoll became the most renowned 221 W. Burnside that he would occupy with Burns’s scrawled notation, ref- wife Rita and daughter Bessie. orator in the nation in the late nine- until his death in 1957. The shop itself erencing Dana’s nom de guerre as a Had Tom Burns simply left Port- teenth century, famed for putting was small, maybe 500 square feet, with columnist: “hill billy is dead!”54 land after 1920, or quit his radical to memory his three-hour speeches. a picture window fronting Burnside Burns’s picture-window rants had ways, he would be little remembered. From the delivery of his friend Walt that became Burns’s front page. Hol- at least one long-term effect. Howard Firmly in middle age now, he had a Whitman’s eulogy to lectures on the brook described it: Morgan was among a cadre of politi- wife and teenage daughter to care virtues of agnosticism, civil rights, and Tom’s big shop window was, for us who came cal activists who would revitalize the for and a business to maintain. He woman suffrage, Ingersoll’s speeches to know him well, a sort of vane pointing to Oregon Democratic Party after World started anew with a time shop on were reprinted and distributed nation- whatever controversial subject was upper- War II. During the late 1920s, as a teen-
OHQ vol. 112, no. 1 Sleeth, Life and Times of Tom Burns aged resident of Albina, he walked to the homeless, and a table for debate. I met some surprising characters in what, ington County.64 Yet, politically, the the Multnomah Athletic Club on the The debates were at times seemingly after all, was supposed to be a den of radicals. Klan accomplished little of lasting west side of the city to train in com- endless, all-night events, including Around the table I remember seeing Lem substance, and its state-wide power Dever, the big K.K.K. [Ku Klux Klan] fellow petitive swimming. He recalled: bottles of illegal liquor throughout from Tennessee, Fred Gifford, the K.K.K. quickly waned. Dever renounced the Prohibition.58 Although Burns was a Klan, as well as his old comrade Gif- In very short order I found the Burnside big shot local, and the sinister-appearing but genial Norbet Sero, a huge man of Sioux bridge to be the most interesting by far. It moderate drinker at most, he thought ford, in a pamphlet he published in descent who was said to be a sort of body- 65 led to all the colorful features of the famous Prohibition a foolish experiment that 1924. guard for Klan officials. I do not recall what Skidroad . . . and always the curious and restricted individual liberty, destroyed By 1933, both Dever and Gifford the discussion was, but it seemed friendly sometimes wonderful displays in the win- 59 local businesses, and increased crime. enough. When later I asked Tom what he, were working to start their own fra- dows of Tom Burns’ watch shop. I never During the Great Depression, an avowed radical, had to do with the Klan, ternal groups in Portland, largely shed failed to stop, or at least walk very slowly, Burns let hobos sleep in the basement, he muttered something to the effect that “the taking it all in. (at least publicly) of the racial and reli- a practice he extended from an earlier Oregon Klan is a very liberal Klan.” I never 66 Mr. Burns was obviously a man with a gious bigotry that infused the Klan. heard a more confusing statement. I still severe pedagogic itch. His windows were full welcome to writers and speakers who Neither was successful, likely because don’t know what Tom meant.62 of oddities and curiosities almost guaranteed might be down on their luck. Only a both men were more concerned with to stop the passerby and give him a chuckle. bare electric light bulb hung above The encounter likely occurred in 1923 making a living through their new But along with the chuckle the passerby the table, the thousands of books on or 1924, when Gifford and Dever were organizations than rallying the masses would absorb, or be reminded of, some fact, homemade shelves just visible at the still top dogs in the Oregon Klan.63 insight or principle essential to a civilized to a cause. Fraternal organizations like edge of the umbrella of light in the understanding of the world he was living in.55 Their presence in Burns’s basement the Ku Klux Klan and others survived basement’s perpetual night. Visitors could be read as a simple testament by the generosity of dues-paying In time, Morgan gathered the courage would be startled at times when a to his open mind; however, a decade members, whose donations then went to step inside, meet the then-legendary sleeping form would rise up out of the later, he would work closely with them to pay the salaries of their leaders. Mayor of W. Burnside, view his lending dark and silently stride past the oil- in the most bizarre partnership of his Under the banner of a new group library of thousands of books, and even cloth covered forum table and clamber long career. called the “American Vigilantes,” Gif- 56 60 borrow a few titles. He was always up the stairs to the lavatory. The Klan had arrived in Oregon in ford, Dever, and Sero partnered with treated courteously, Morgan recalled, The basement was a refuge of 1921, with Gifford as the Grand Dragon Burns in a campaign to aid strik- but Burns’s rapt attention went to the sorts, a place where all opinions were and Dever as the bombastic propagan- ing dock workers during the 1934 workingmen who frequented the shop. welcome, as long as they could be dist. Dever was a
Nevertheless, Morgan credited a good defended in debate with Burns and writer to challenge OHS Research Library, mss 1101 part of his political evolution to those anyone else present. It was a well-set Burns in the art of encounters: “Burns’ itch had rubbed table. A complete list of visitors would invective, and he off on me to encourage me to look be impossible to assemble, as Burns freely went after further . . . [and ever since] I have been wisely kept no ledger, but Wobblies the Klan’s enemies. an unrepentant liberal.”57 and radicals like Big Jim Thompson, No complete mem- Burns’s shop was something like an Elmer Smith, and Mrs. Tom Mooney bership rolls exist iceberg, in that its true glory and sub- all made appearances, as did politicians for the Oregon stance lay not in what was visible from including Washington’s U.S. Senator Klan, but estimates the street, but in what existed below Homer T. Bone. Journalists included put its number at the Oregonian’s Ben Hur Lampman.61 15,000 to 35,000, eye level. His rent included the exclu- Burns chose the area around W. Burnside Street for his Even to Holbrook, the kind of man including quite sive use of the entire basement of the headquarters when he arrived in 1905. At the time, what who could stumble into in the cellar Wax Building, more than 2,000 square possibly the Mayor is today’s Old Town was the city’s Tenderloin district. feet that Burns filled with thousands of the watch shop could be a stunner: of Portland and the Burnside was a dividing line between the haves and have of books, piles of magazines, bunks for As Tom moved from one crusade to another, sheriff of Wash- nots of Portland, a perfect spot for a radical social activist.
OHQ vol. 112, no. 1 Sleeth, Life and Times of Tom Burns little more than hired thugs and strike nership from late 1933 to mid 1934, or circulation directors — Gifford breakers. On June 17, the four activists jointly publishing Burns’s longest until 1936 and Sero until 1944.76 began a campaign to recall Portland running newspaper, FAX. In a 1934 Without Burns’s own words on Mayor Joseph K. Carson, presumably letter appealing for advertising and the subject, whatever attracted him for the use of the special police. The subscriptions, Burns referred to FAX to this unusual trio of men remains recall effort lasted only a few weeks, as the “Official Journal of America’s shrouded. We do know that Burns 67
OHS Research Library, mss 1101 Library, OHS Research and it failed. On June 19, Burns read Anti-Nazi Federation.” As Adolf Hitler was an illegal immigrant and virulent a demand from the American Vigi- rose in Germany during the 1930s, opponent of the Christian faith, mak- lantes at the Portland City Council, Burns’s focus turned to publiciz- ing him wholly ineligible for member- asking the body to require a $10,000 ing the growing threat of domestic ship in the Klan.77 Burns’s adherence bond from each special policeman, and international fascism. He was to the humanism encapsulated in the a requirement that would all but an early opponent of Hitler’s hate philosophies of Ingersoll would have kill their use in the strike. Burns speech, focusing his attention on an precluded any of the bigotry inherent made a plea for the bonds, which he American fascist movement known in Klan dogma that Gifford repre- argued would protect the strikers from as the “Silver Shirts.” He told potential sented. Burns simply may have found “thugs.” This, too, went nowhere.68 contributors: “We have halted tem- convenient, temporary company Finally, on June 25, Dever wrote to Gov. porarily, with clinical publicity, the amidst zealots who briefly were fight- Julius Meier, objecting to a rumored mass-organization of the Silver Shirts ing the same enemies. move of Oregon State Police to replace in the Northwest, but they are merely In addition to FAX, which ran from city police in Portland while they marking time and will advance, unless 1934 into the 1940s and typically had as worked the strike.69 we can get sufficient expense money a lead headline a tribute to President According to Dever, Burns only to continue our publication and far- Franklin Roosevelt, Burns published reluctantly went along with this pro- reaching investigation work.”72 Silver several newspapers over the course test, as Burns believed Meier would do Shirts in the Pacific Northwest were of his life. The Red Rag appeared the right thing and refuse to unleash briefly led by Luther I. Powell, who briefly in 1915, followed by The Har- the newly formed state police (Burns had been one of the early organiz- poon, published intermittently from often corresponded with Meier and ers of the Oregon Klan and was an the late 1920s through 1933. He also had objected to the formation of the occasional opponent of Gifford and co-authored at least one issue of The state police in 1931, arguing they could Dever.73 After several months of viru- American Citizen, a newspaper started Fax was Burns’s longest running be used as “Cossacks,” presumably lent attacks on the Silver Shirt move- by Dever. Filled with bold print, capital newspaper, begun in 1934. Early to against organized labor).70 An expla- ment in the pages of FAX, Dever split letters, and long diatribes on every- recognize the evil of Adolph Hitler’s nation for Burns’s participation in the with Burns sometime in 1934. Burns thing from local politics to national regime, Burns, in his newspaper, went American Vigilantes is his continuing objected to some of the people Dever finances, Burns’s newspapers always after not only the dictator himself but hatred of communists, who were pres- asked for money, although who or took on his iconoclastic personality domestic fascists as well. ent in the leadership of the Portland why is unclear.74 Dever continued as with puckish, vituperative, and fre- longshoreman’s union; Burns may a pamphleteer on his own, and one quently libelous attacks on whomever have been trying to aid the longshore- edition of his American People in 1945 he found wanting on a particular issue. longshoreman’s strike, which all but men while avoiding working directly included, oddly, a long, front-page He ran a regular column of his own locked up West Coast ports for nearly with the union.71 tribute to Burns’s forty-year history as in FAX, appropriately entitled “Acid three months. Strikers in Portland The work of the American Vigi- a Portland radical.75 Gifford and Sero Drops.” greatly resented freshly deputized lantes subsided quickly, but Dever remained intermittently on the mast- Burns frequently overshot his mark, “special police,” who they considered and Burns sustained a writing part- head of FAX, listed as officer managers according to Holbrook, and his copy
OHQ vol. 112, no. 1 Sleeth, Life and Times of Tom Burns OHS Research Library, mss 1101 could be difficult to read. Often, Burns Burns, philosopher, humanitarian, student, found himself defending his syntax thinker, liberal, lecturer, debater, a friend of from friends and enemies alike, as in high school students, enjoying the confidence of nationally-known editors, politicians, this 1934 selection: scientists, thinkers, and last, but not least, a A few friends have protested about my Chau- watchmaker, a jeweler, a collector of valuable 80 cerian English (strong language) and they are watches and clocks, is very much alive. real friends too. But, when I ask if they have In addition to these roles, selling been reading the mental masturbations of “the Pervert Maniac, Adolf Hitler, and his used books, and publishing, Burns Gangsters,” my friends say no . . . [yet after became a frequent visitor to Portland reading Hitler’s writings] . . . they will look City Council meetings. In 1936, for upon my clinical criticisms as milder than the example, he championed a resolution sweet, loving lullabies a doting mother sings by his friend Councilman Ralph Clyde while rocking her first born to sleep . . .78 to censure the City of Los Angeles for After reading one of Burns’s 1934 attempts to exclude poverty stricken articles ridiculing Hitler, Dr. Henry immigrants at the state border. News- J. Berkowitz, of Portland’s Congrega- paper editors found themselves with tion Beth Israel, wrote to Burns that regular correspondence from Burns, he found the piece both interest- whose letters occasionally made it ing and amusing, but added: “If I into print.81 have any criticism to offer, it is the Burns frequently challenged to extremity to which you have gone to public debate virtually anyone with heap up insults . . . I agree with you whom he disagreed — from politicians The nationally acclaimed evangelist “Billy” Sunday frequently drew Burns’s that ridicule is an effective device in to business elites to religious figures. ire, and no more so than when Sunday insulted Col. Robert G. Ingersoll, a polemics, but some restraint should Few ever took him up, but he kept popular nineteenth-century humanist. No records exist to show that Sunday ever be exercised.”79 asking. Nationally renowned preacher accepted Burns’s challenge to debate. The Oregonian refused to print, as a paid Restraint seemed foreign to Burns’s Billy Sunday — as famous in his day as advertisement, Burns’s challenge to Sunday. blood, although by the late 1930s, most Billy Graham in the late twentieth cen- of his work had left the streets and tury — often came to Portland after moved into more traditional venues. purchasing some land in Hood River. An Oregonian reporter visited Burns On at least two of those visits, Burns trolled by the people; and Roosevelt’s Portland newspaper columnist, dis- in 1931 and found him greatly changed. threw down the gauntlet, challenging New Deal reforms had changed the missing the local Communist party Claude M. Bristol had witnessed the Sunday to a public debate on the mer- social structure of the nation. To be members as “dues collectors, phonys, 82 wild Burns and wanted to see what had its of Christianity. No evidence exists sure, poverty and the struggles of the or middle-aged homely women who become of the street fighter: that Sunday ever answered Burns. worker endured, and Burns’s advocacy couldn’t get a man.”83 After World War II, most of the And thereupon we renewed our acquain- continued, albeit mainly confined to In 1947, Burns, now seventy-one great American political and labor tance with Tom Burns, but a different Tom his shop window, letters to the editor, years old, was hit by a motorcycle while Burns of the days before the war. Still short issues of the first half of the twenti- and personal encounters at his watch crossing the street near his home in and stocky, a little fuller at the waist . . . eth century had gone the way Burns shop. As the red-baiting of the 1950s Southeast Portland, crippling him for While the fighting spirit of a game Irish- thought they should. Fascism had been neared, Burns’s enduring hatred of life. His workshop was closed from man remains, there’s a mellowness about defeated in Europe; workers had an the Communists seemed in tune with September 10, 1947, to July 1948, and Tom that enchants you, a vocabulary that eight-hour day enshrined in law; the amazes . . . Tom Burns, the militant Social- the times. “I know the rats well. They that year, his business generated just ist, the radical, no longer exists, but Tom dams on the Columbia River were con- wrecked the Socialist party,” he told a $925 in revenue.84 By 1953, Burns said,
OHQ vol. 112, no. 1 Sleeth, Life and Times of Tom Burns even his hero, Socialist leader Norman to — the state of poverty, with its NOTES Thomas, was quitting.85 He hobbled capital city of dead broke. After a about on a cane, continued catching court-ordered sale of his watch mak- a bus to work, and took some orders ing tools, his books (valued at only 1. Oregonian, October 21, 1951. 14. Oregon Journal, February 22, 1914; at his watch shop. He attached wheels $50 in his estate), and various bric 2. Tom Burns to William Ashley Sunday, Immigration files of Thomas J. Burns, U.S. to a kitchen chair to move around the a brac from his shop valued at $450, October 23, 1925, Thomas Joseph Burns Papers, Citizenship and Immigration Services, File 1891–1979, Mss 1101, box 1, folder 4, Oregon series: A File; file number: A-4897122. shop, while rarely visiting the base- and after paying the claims against his Historical Society Research Library, Portland 15. Burns notes his Portland arrival ment any more. His daughter Bessie estate, there was not enough money to [hereafter Burns Papers, OHS]. in many places, but most officially in a declared: “He was more at ease there pay the full balance of the $194 owed 3. Oregon Journal, May 6, 1977. document entitled “copy of Census Bureau than at home.”86 to the University of Oregon Medical 4. Burns’s long-running arguments Report, June 8, 1949,” Burns Papers, OHS, against private power monopolies and for box 1, folder 1. Peter Psihogios swept out the Wax School Outpatient Clinic. His remain- public control of utilities, ranging from 16. Laurence Pratt, I Remember Portland: Building from 1948 to the mid 1950s, ing personal papers and books were Columbia River dams to Portland streetcars 1899–1915 (Portland, Ore.: Binford & Mort, carefully cleaning the sidewalk in front scattered between friends, family, and were frequent topics in his many publications, 1965), 9. of Burns’s watch shop each day, and the archives of the Oregon Historical and in his support for Washington Senator 17. E. Kimbark MacColl, The Shaping of a Society and the University of Oregon Homer T. Bone, known as the father of public City: Business and Politics in Portland, Oregon he found Burns to be quiet, polite, power. Some examples include: Tom Burns’ 1885 to 1915 (Portland, Ore.: The Georgian and not much of a businessman. “His Library. He left no will, seemingly Harpoon, November 1932, authored by Tom Press, 1976), 404–408. business wasn’t a thriving business,” unconcerned with such mundane Burns, in Tom Burns Papers, Collection AX 18. Ibid., 261, 492. Psihogios said; “He didn’t put the household matters.90 108, box 1, folder 2, Special Collections and 19. Oregon Journal, August 23, 1953. That Burns died poor seems true University Archives, University of Oregon 20. MacColl, Shaping of a City, 225. efforts into his business.” Loggers Libraries [hereafter Burns Papers, UO]; 21. For more on Lane, see MacColl, would come into town, and they were to his character and his word. Even handwritten flyer, authored by Tom Burns, in Shaping of a City, 307–347; and Robert D. fascinated with the old watch maker. his old nemesis the mainstream media Burns Papers, UO, box 4, folder 1. Johnston, The Radical Middle Class: Populist At times, people would crowd the acknowledged the final truth of his life 5. Self-Defense Committee Bulletin¸ May Democracy and The Question of Capitalism in when the editors of the Oregon Journal 1, 1929, authored by Tom Burns, in Burns Progressive Era Portland, Oregon (Princeton, shop, although Psihogios saw little to Papers, UO, box 4, folder 1; Flyer, “Close N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2003 ), 29–45. sell except Burns’s services as a watch wrote a tribute to Burns: The Churches To Prevent Crime!”, authored 22. See the American People, October 1945, 4 repairman. “He was more intelligent Money to Tom Burns was exactly what it by Tom Burns, in Burns Papers, UO, box , newspaper authored by Lem Dever, Rennar folder 1. Collection, Mss 2918, Oregon Historical than most people thought him to be,” said in one of his many books — a medium 6. Sleeth Family Papers, (in process), Society Research Library, Portland [hereafter of exchange and a poor one at that. He pre- he said. “He had unique ideas.” Burns Lewis & Clark College, Watzek Library, Special OHS Research Library]. ferred ideas as a medium of exchange. . . . He seemed a thoughtful, gentle man, Psi- Collections [hereafter Sleeth Family Papers]. 23. See Oregonian, October 21, 1951. hogios noted, recalling that he let an believed with a strong idealism that “every- 7. Thomas Woodson, Nathaniel Burns also referenced his role in founding body should have enough before anybody old, homeless man sleep in the base- Hawthorne: The English Notebooks, 1853–1856 the Portland Wobblies in the Self-Defense has too much.” (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, Committee Bulletin¸ May 1, 1929, in Burns ment. Burns simply handed over a key Tom’s estate probably is very little in 1997), 18. Papers, UO, box 4, folder 1. to the man and let him come and go terms of money. But he left quite a legacy, 8. Standard certificate of death, Thomas 24. See correspondence from Thomas as he pleased.87 By March 1957, at age a challenge to many to think, and think in Joseph Burns, State of Oregon, Center for Burns to Portland Mayor Harry Lane, July 10, eighty-one, Burns was growing weak, terms of justice and humanity. And any way Health Statistics, state file no. 9729. 1905, and August 18, 1905, Socialist Party of you look at it, that is quite a bank account.91 9 1881 0256 01 1905 and the shop remained closed through . England Census, (Township Oregon Record Series - , , City of of Widnes, City of Liverpool, County of Portland Archives [hereafter Socialist Party the summer. Burns died at home, in his Burns kept no personal diary that Lancashire), 49. Series]. bed, on August 17.88 His heart stopped has been found, and I suspect one will 10. Oregon Journal, August 23, 1957. 25. Thomas Burns to Jack London, June 16, ticking, a newspaperman noted, like not be discovered. His life was lived in 11. Ibid.; Oregon Journal, May 8, 1977. 1905, and June 29, 1905, Jack London Papers, one of his many timepieces.89 12. Oregon Journal, August 23, 1957. call numbers JL 3465-3466, The Huntington the public eye, and his private thoughts 13. 1891 England Census, (Municipal Library, San Marino, California. In the end, Burns left this world that remained must have been very Borough of Bootle, County Borough of 26. FAX, April 14, 1934, Burns Papers, in the same state he had been born few. Restraint was not in his nature. Bootle), 9. OHS, newspaper collection.
OHQ vol. 112, no. 1 Sleeth, Life and Times of Tom Burns 27. Burns to Lane, July 10, 1905, Socialist during the Progressive Era, see Oregon Journal, journalist Dana Sleeth, from approximately 74. Lem Dever to Tom Burns, March 28, Party Series. July 30, 1913, and Adam Hodges, “Thinking 1931 to 1936. 1934, Burns Papers, UO, box 2, folder 2. 28. Tom Burns, “Prohibition Paralyzed Globally, Acting Locally: the Portland Soviet 59. Oregon Journal, August 23, 1957; Tom 75. George E. Rennar Papers, 1922–1959, Portland,” (Portland, 1916), 23. This thirty- and the Emergence of American Communism, Burns, “Prohibition Paralyzed Portland,” Mss 2918, Lem Dever file, OHS Research one-page pamphlet, written with Burns’s 1918–1920” Pacific Northwest Quarterly (Portland, 1916), Sleeth Family Papers. Library. acidic sarcasm, is an indictment of Oregon’s (Summer 2007), 117. 60. Oregonian, Oct. 13, 1957; Marshall 76. See irregularly issued copies of FAX early experiment with Prohibition. Sleeth 45. Oregon Journal, February 22, 1914. Sleeth in an interview with the author, his held at the OHS Research Library. Family Papers. 46. R.W. Durschmidt vs. Tom Burns, Reg. son. Marshall Sleeth was taken frequently to 77. Immigration files of Thomas J. Burns, 29. San Francisco Call, February 28, 1907; No. D-9502, (Circuit Court for the State of Burns’ basement by his father, the journalist U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, State of California, California Birth Index, Oregon, County of Multnomah, 1917). Dana Sleeth, from approximately 1931 to 1936. File series: A File; file number: A-4897122. 1905–1995, Department of Health Services, 47. Oregon Journal, February 22, 1914. 61. Holbrook, “Notes On An Old School Burns came to the attention of immigration Center for Health Statistics, Sacramento. 48. During an immigration investigation Radical,” 4; Homer T. Bone to Dana Sleeth, officials in the 1940s as an illegal alien; he was 30. San Francisco directories list Burns as into Burns’s citizenship in 1946, he told an December 29, 1931, Sleeth Family Papers; ruled illegal but not deportable. a watchmaker and jeweler at 1429 Ellis Street investigator he had been a Socialist until the Oregon Journal, August 23, 1953. 78. The American Citizen, January 23, in 1907, and at 1507 Ellis in 1908. Roosevelt Administration, and then became a 62. Holbrook, “Notes On An Old School 1934, Sleeth Family Papers (parentheses and 31. For 1912 Oregon election numbers, see Democrat in sympathy with the New Deal and Radical,” 5. boldface in the original). the online Oregon Blue Book, http://bluebook. other changes under Roosevelt. Immigration 63. On the Ku Klux Klan, see Eckard V. Toy, 79. Dr. Henry J. Berkowitz to Tom Burns, state.or.us/state/elections/elections08.htm; files of Thomas J. Burns, U.S. Citizenship and “The Ku Klux Klan in Oregon,” in Experiences January 9, 1934, Burns Papers, UO, box 2, and for national election data, see http:// Immigration Services, File series: A File; file In A Promised Land: Essays in Pacific Northwest folder 2. uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/national. number: A-4897122. History (Seattle: University of Washington 80. Oregonian, October 18, 1931. php?year=1912. 49. For a discussion on the role of the Press, 1986), 269–86. 81. See correspondence from Thomas 32. See typewritten manuscript for middle class and small business owners in 64. Johnston, Radical Middle Class, 243; Burns to Portland Mayor Joseph K. Carson, Theodore Roosevelt pamphlet in Burns Progressive Era Portland, see Johnston, The Lem Dever, The Confessions of an Imperial February 21, 1936, and attached resolution, Papers, UO, box 1, folder 22. Radical Middle Class. Klansman (Portland, 1924), 40. Dever later Record #AF/3881, City of Portland Archives. 33. Ibid. 50. Stewart Holbrook, “Notes On An Old noted in a 1934 letter to Gov. Julius Meier that Burns began his visits to the city council as early 34. See Greg Hall, “The Fruits of Her School Radical,” The Call Number vol. 20 the Washington County Sheriff also had been as 1913 and continued through the 1940s, as is Labor: Women, Children, and Progressive Era (Fall 1958), published by the Library of the a member of the Invisible Empire. documented in Burns papers found at the City Reformers in the Pacific Northwest Canning University of Oregon. 65. Ibid. of Portland Archives, the University of Oregon Industry,” Oregon Historical Quarterly 109:2 51. Ibid. 66. George E. Rennar Papers, 1922–1959, Libraries, and the OHS Research Library. (Summer 2008). 52. For a comprehensive review of Mss 2918, Lem Dever and Silver Shirt files, 82. Tom Burns to William Ashley Sunday, 35. See Adam J. Hodges, “The Industrial Ingersoll’s speeches, as well as his life, see the OHS Research Library. October 19, 1925 and October 23,1925, Burns Workers of the World and The Oregon Packing websites: http://www.robertgreeningersoll. 67. American Vigilantes documents in Papers, OHS, box 1, folder 4; Tom Burns to Company Strike of July 1913” (M.A. thesis, org/; and http://www.secularhumanism.org/ Burns Papers, UO, box 2, folder 2. William Ashley Sunday, August 16, 1927, Burns Portland State University, 1996), 69–95; index.php?section=ingersoll&page=bio. 68. Ibid. Papers, OHS, box 1, folder 25. 36. Oregon Journal, August 23, 1953. 53. Ibid. 69. Ibid. 83. Oregon Journal, May 8, 1977. 37. Ibid., July 11, 1913. 54. Copy of obituary of Dana Sleeth, The 70. Lem Dever to Gov. Julius L. Meyer, 84. Document entitled “copy of Census 38. International Socialist Review 14:3 News-Telegram, April 7, 1936, in Burns Papers, June 25, 1934, Burns Papers, UO, box 2, folder 2. Bureau Report, June 8, 1949,” Burns Papers, (September 13), 164. UO, box 4, folder 2. 71. E. Kimbark MacColl, The Growth of OHS, box 1, folder 1. 39. Portland News, July 21, 1913. 55. Howard Morgan, “Recollections of a City: Power and Politics in Portland, Oregon 85. Oregon Journal, August 23, 1953. 40. The City of Portland vs. Tom Burns, Tom Burns of Burnside,” in A Richer Harvest: 1915 to 1950, (Portland: The Georgian Press, 86. Oregonian, August 19, 1957. Reg. No. C-3365, (Circuit Court for the State An Anthology of Work in the Pacific Northwest, 1979), 472. 87. Peter Psihogios (co-owner of the Wax of Oregon, County of Multnomah, 1919). ed. Craig Wollner and W. Tracy Dillon 72. Tom Burns to potential financial Building) in discussions with the author, 41. Oregon Journal, July 30, 1913. (Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, supporters, February 2, 1934, Burns Papers, December 2009 and April 2010. 42. Oregonian, October 18, 1931. Burns was 1999), 156–60. UO, box 2, folder 3. 88. Standard certificate of death, Thomas deemed the “Most Arrested Man in Portland” 56. Oregonian, August 19, 1957, obituary 73. For a thorough discussion of the Klan Joseph Burns, State of Oregon, Center for or the Northwest repeatedly in newspaper of Tom Burns. Newspapermen, friends, and and Silver Shirt movements in Oregon, see Health Statistics, state file no. 9729. articles, and in his own writings. Burns himself frequently referred to Burns as Eckard V. Toy, “The Ku Klux Klan In Oregon,” 89. Oregon Journal, May 8, 1977. 43. Immigration files of Thomas J. Burns, the unofficial Mayor of W. Burnside. in Experiences In A Promised Land, 269–86; 90. In The Matter of the Estate of Thomas U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, 57. Ibid. and Karen E. Hoppes, “An Investigation of J. Burns, Estate No. 79389 (Circuit Court File series: A File; file number: A-4897122. 58. Marshall Sleeth, interview with the the Nazi-Fascist Spectrum in the Pacific for the State of Oregon for the County of 44. For examples of police treatment of author, his son. Marshall Sleeth was taken Northwest, 1924–1941” (M.A. thesis, Western Multnomah, 1957). radicals and the court system in Portland frequently to Burns’s basement by his father, Oregon State College, June 1983). 91. Oregon Journal, August 24, 1957.
OHQ vol. 112, no. 1 Sleeth, Life and Times of Tom Burns