For one pivotal month, the eyes of the nation were fixed on the upstart city on Spokane Falls, where

[TexasTowelie]

For one pivotal month, the eyes of the nation were fixed on the upstart city on Spokane Falls, where labor and capital went to war


Though it may be hard to imagine today, Spokane was once a hotbed of labor radicalism. And for a month — November of 1909 — all eyes of the nation were trained on the city for outlawing speaking in public. Hundreds of men and women who came to the city to challenge the seemingly un-American policy were thrown in jail.

Well before 1909, the West had ceased being the land of opportunity advertised in railroad circulars; the fertile farmland and hillsides filled with gold had long since been locked up by big business. The thousands of immigrants, then, were left to working whatever wages were available. Thus the tension between labor and capital — a tension as old as the idea of private ownership — came out West.

In the early 1890s, there were individual unions representing specialized industries. But it became more and more clear to union leaders that the workers willing to work for the lowest wages not only had a natural, common bond but were also in need of a union more than any profession.

The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) was hatched in Chicago at a 1905 founding convention. Later, the members became universally known as Wobblies. The chairman of that convention was William D. Haywood, known as Big Bill; he was also a key figure in the Western Federation of Miners. Two years after the formation of the Wobblies, Haywood was accused of hiring an assassin to kill former Idaho Gov. Frank Steunenberg, who had been murdered at his Caldwell, Idaho, home in late 1905. Haywood was defended by Clarence Darrow and acquitted in a widely publicized Boise trial. The whole episode — from the labor unrest in the Coeur d'Alene mining district that started it all to socialist radicals on the streets of New York City — was retold in the book Big Trouble by Anthony Lukas.

Read more: https://www.inlander.com/spokane/for-one-pivotal-month-the-eyes-of-the-nation-were-fixed-on-the-upstart-city-on-spokane-falls-where-labor-and-capital-went-to-war/Content?oid=20842606
(Spokane Inlander)

[abqtommy]

1. Thanks for this. I've lived in Spokane as boy and man and this is a very useful addition to my

perspective.