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Criminal Syndicalism Laws and the Industrial Workers of the World, 1917-1927 University of Colorado Law School Colorado Law Scholarly Commons Articles Colorado Law Faculty Scholarship 2006 The Crime of Economic Radicalism: Criminal Syndicalism Laws and the Industrial Workers of the World, 1917-1927 Ahmed A. White University of Colorado Law School Follow this and additional works at: https://scholar.law.colorado.edu/articles Part of the Courts Commons, Criminal Law Commons, Labor and Employment Law Commons, Law and Politics Commons, Legal History Commons, and the Legislation Commons Citation Information Ahmed A. White, The Crime of Economic Radicalism: Criminal Syndicalism Laws and the Industrial Workers of the World, 1917-1927, 85 OR. L. REV. 649 (2006), available at https://scholar.law.colorado.edu/ articles/383. Copyright Statement Copyright protected. Use of materials from this collection beyond the exceptions provided for in the Fair Use and Educational Use clauses of the U.S. Copyright Law may violate federal law. Permission to publish or reproduce is required. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Colorado Law Faculty Scholarship at Colorado Law Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Articles by an authorized administrator of Colorado Law Scholarly Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. +(,121/,1( Citation: 85 Or. L. Rev. 649 2006 Provided by: William A. Wise Law Library Content downloaded/printed from HeinOnline Tue Mar 28 16:14:35 2017 -- Your use of this HeinOnline PDF indicates your acceptance of HeinOnline's Terms and Conditions of the license agreement available at http://heinonline.org/HOL/License -- The search text of this PDF is generated from uncorrected OCR text. -- To obtain permission to use this article beyond the scope of your HeinOnline license, please use: Copyright Information AHMED A. WHITE* The Crime of Economic Radicalism: Criminal Syndicalism Laws and the Industrial Workers of the World, 1917-1927 CONTENTS I. The IWW's Radical Challenge to Industrial Capitalism and the Landscape of Repression in the Early Twentieth Century ........................... 658 A. Industrialization, Labor, and the Origins of the IW W ........................................... 660 B. The Ideology and Practice of Radical Industrial Unionism ............. .... .... 678 C. The Politics of Repression ..................... 685 II. The Enactment of Criminal Syndicalism Laws ..... 700 A. The Process and the Politics of Enactment .... 700 B. The Form and Structure of Criminal Syndicalism Statutes ........................... 704 III. The Enforcement of Criminal Syndicalism Laws... 710 A . California ...................................... 711 B. The Pacific Northwest ......................... 726 C. The Plains and Midwest ....................... 734 IV. Criminal Syndicalism Laws in the Appellate C ourts ............................................. 739 * Associate Professor of Law, University of Colorado-Boulder School of Law. I am most grateful for the many helpful comments and suggestions I received in presenting drafts of this Article to the faculty of the Rogers College of Law at the University of Arizona and Hofstra University School of Law, as well as to my col- leagues here at the University of Colorado. I am particularly indebted to Professors Pierre Schlag and Laura Spitz in this regard. I am likewise grateful to the faculty and staff of the William A. Wise Law Library at the University of Colorado School of Law for their efforts in securing access to sources used in the development of this Article. Eloise S. Bonde and Stefanie Sommers provided me with immensely help- ful research assistance. [6491 OREGON LAW REVIEW [Vol. 85, 649 A. The State Courts ............................... 740 B. The United States Supreme Court ............. 747 V. The Impact of Criminal Syndicalism Laws on the IW W ............................................... 752 VI. Criminal Syndicalism Enforcement in the Later Twentieth Century ................................. 758 C onclusion ................................................ 761 L ong before the arrival of the current "war on terrorism" re- newed concerns about the collateral repression of secular, leftist radicals, and long before even the infamous persecution of communists and other leftists in the 1940s and 1950s, federal and state governments in this country embarked on an intensive cam- paign aimed specifically at stifling the politics of economic radi- calism. During the course of this campaign, which reached its apogee in the 1910s and 1920s, men and women who dared to challenge the increasing hegemony of industrial capitalism in American society, change the social order that accompanied this development, or make militant demands within the existing eco- nomic framework, faced arrest, imprisonment, and even death at the hands of federal, state, and local government officials for whom radicalism of this sort was un-American and thoroughly unacceptable.1 This campaign to thwart the politics of economic radicalism reached all representatives of the American left: socialists and anarchists, communists, feminists, and even liberals who strayed too far from establishment norms. But the campaign was focused on one organization above all others: the Industrial Workers of the World, or IWW. Formed in Chicago in 1905, the IWW in the 1910s and 1920s represented the most prominent organ of leftist radicalism in American life. From its inception, the IWW dedi- cated itself to the causes of industrial unionism, economic social- ism, and radical social equality, which it advanced with militant rhetoric and confrontational tactics.2 The organization sought no less than the outright abolition of capitalism as a social system.3 For prosecuting such views, the IWW and its membership paid an enormous price. This repression took many forms. In some instances it in- 1See infra Part III. 2See infra Part I.B. 3See infra text accompanying notes 122-33. 2006] The Crime of Economic Radicalism volved authorities' manipulation of laws of general relevance. Such was the case, for example, with the large scale and totally unfounded prosecution of IWW members for conspiracy to inter- fere with the war effort. In 1918, over 100 members, including most of the union's top leadership and a handful of supporters and ex-members, were convicted of these charges and, in most cases, sentenced to substantial terms of imprisonment. Hundreds of other members and affiliates were subjected to deportation and other forms of immigration-related harassment because of their links to the organization. A less intensive, though more pervasive, pattern of legal repression occurred with the use dur- ing this period of vagrancy laws, "tramp acts," and other rela- tively minor laws against IWW members and organizers. During the first few decades of the organization's existence, IWW mem- bers were arrested and charged by the tens of thousands with these crimes in countless incidents scattered throughout the country.4 Such charges were used time and again to run mem- bers out of town, initiate beatings and other indignities, and pre- empt organizing and strike efforts. In still other instances, the repression of the IWW during this period went beyond legal arti- fice and selective prosecution to entail patently extralegal prac- tices: official lawlessness as well as official complicity in private acts of antiradical vigilantism.5 Countless members were beaten and on occasion even killed by American Legionnaires, Ku Klux Klansmen, private detectives, and other self-nominated protec- tors of "true" Americanism.6 The IWW obviously failed to realize its audacious project of economic equality and social justice. Few today who are not union organizers or labor academics know much about the or- ganization, if they know of it at all. Such has been the IWW's decline. By the arrival of the New Deal, it had already surren- dered its lead role in leftist politics to the Communist Party and other groups, and had largely faded from the forefront of labor organizing.7 By most accounts, the reasons for this are diverse: 4 See infra Part I.C. 5 See infra text accompanying notes 170-73. 6 See infra text accompanying notes 156-60. 7 On the IWW's decline, see MELVYN DUBOFSKY, WE SHALL BE ALL: A His- TORY OF THE INDUSTRIAL WORKERS OF THE WORLD 255-66 (Joseph A. McCartin ed., abr. ed. 2000). The rising influence of the Communist Party in the 1930s is addressed most thoroughly in FRASER M. OTIANELLI, THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE UNITED STATES: FROM THE DEPRESSION TO WORLD WAR II (1991). OREGON LAW REVIEW [Vol. 85, 649 the union's organizational shortcomings, ideological inadequa- cies, and flawed strategies; changes in economic and social struc- ture; and, of course, the role of relentless official repression of the kinds just described.8 Scholars of the IWW have done much to draw out the role of these factors in undermining the IWW and reshaping the landscape of economic radicalism in twentieth- century America; they have done a good job in uncovering the important role of government and law in this process.9 In a very important respect, however, accounts of the role of government repression in influencing the fate of the IWW re- main incomplete. Legal scholars and professional historians alike have largely ignored what is perhaps the most explicit, straightforward, and altogether remarkable effort in modern America to use the power of the state, backed by law, to stamp out a radical organization. In the late 1910s and early 1920s, al- most half of American
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