100 years ago in Spokane: Paper declares Wobblies ‘sedition’ at an end

The Spokane Daily Chronicle declared that the “days of I.W.W. (Wobbly) anarchy” were ended.

The day before, a federal grand jury indicted 160 Wobbly leaders across the nation with “sedition conspiracy” and arrested them. In Spokane, Wobbly leaders had already been held by federal authorities for weeks.

The Chronicle was wholeheartedly in favor of this crackdown.

“Week after week, I.W.W. speakers preached sabotage and anarchy on the streets of Spokane,” said an editorial. “They told how the apple crop might be destroyed. They outlined their plan to cripple the lumber industry. They threatened that the 1917 wheat harvest crop would not be permitted to be harvested. ‘Free speech’ was used as a license to throw mud at the flag and plant treason in the hearts of hundreds of men.”

Now, said the paper, “those days and those nights have passed.”

“Uncle Sam has decided that sedition and treason shall be known by their real names. The I.W.W. is today under indictment as a tool used directly by the kaiser’s agents. Its leaders … are today accused of black, dirty treason, before that tribunal known as public opinion.”

Also on this date

From Associated Press

1789: The U.S. War Department established a regular army with a strength of several hundred men.

1910: The National Urban League had its beginnings in New York as the Committee on Urban Conditions Among Negroes.