100 years ago: Wobblies and lumber bosses at loggerheads in Idaho

Idaho lumber camp operators told the Idaho state council of defense that they needed nothing short of federal troops to quell the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, or Wobblies).

In a meeting in Coeur d’Alene, the lumbermen told the council that logging camps were closed and the mills could no longer operate because of Wobbly strikes.

“They declared that there was no question of hours or wages involved, but that the IWW simply held to a program that would ultimately destroy property rights and abolish the wage system,” said the paper. “… Men who wanted to work, they said, were intimidated and that no local authority could cope with the situation.”

The council called in Jack Lambert, the Wobbly organizer in Coeur d’Alene, “who spoke for an hour and fully set forth the IWW side of the case” – although The Spokesman-Review did not specify exactly what that case was. The council also tried to get James Rowan, the Spokane organizer for the Wobblies, to speak to them, but he “sent back word that he was too busy to come.”

Also from the Wobbly beat: Hay farmers in Ellensburg were on high alert after they heard alarming reports from a remote school in the Denmark district. The principal of School No. 12 in that area reported that the school’s phone line had been cut. When he went to a nearby residence for help, “a man entered the house and attacked his 12-year-old daughter,” who ran “screaming from the house with her baby sister in her arms.” Four men were seen around the house, and a man was seen looking in the window.

The school principal had been “prominent in organizing a home guard” among farmers against the Wobblies.

The hay farmers of Ellensburg were holding a meeting when the news of the trouble in the Denmark district arrived, and 30 farmers “rushed to automobiles and started for the scene of the trouble.” No further word was forthcoming.