The indefatigable wobbly Albert V. Roe, known for riding his bike on agitating tours from town to town, reports on his attempt to ‘organize the slaves’ of Galveston, Texas as the twenty-five days in jail he received for his troubles. Not long after this was written, Roe would travel all the way to Hawaii, where helped in reviving the I.W.W. and where he would perish in a Honolulu jail from ‘heart trouble’, on April 14, 1914.

‘Out of Jail, Again’ by Albert V. Roe from the Industrial Worker. Vol. 3 No. 42. January 11, 1912.

I am out of the “can” again and again on the job. It has got to be a regular thing and I don’t suppose it will surprise any one to hear that I have been in jail again. On December 1, I got a bundle of “Workers” and “Solidarity’s” in Galveston, Texas, and at once got busy to let the natives know that the I.W.W. was on the job. I was handicapped from the start, as that was the day that the McNamaras had pulled off their stunt in Los Angeles, and as soon as I said anything about unions, the natives went up in the air, condemning all unions and union methods. I don’t blame them either, as they had never heard of the I.W.W. I was kept busy all day explaining the difference between the Gompers-McNamara brand of anti-unionism and the ONE BIG UNION, the most of the patriotic, contented slaves had never heard of the I.W.W. and didn’t care to hear anything about it, as they said, “We are doing very well as it is,” and the only way I could get them to read the “Worker” and “Solidarity” was to give them a copy.

I hustled around all day, selling t few papers and giving away a good many more. That night I met Fellow Worker Ham, who is a veteran of the Franklin school in Spokane. On Sunday morning I was again on the street selling papers when a “fly bull” stopped me and asked me if I had a license to sell papers. I said “no,” and that I had never heard of any one being required to get a license to sell papers. He “pinched” me and I was given a ride in the band wagon down to interview the chief of the slugging committee. The chief asked me what my business was. I told him I was agitating and selling literature for the I.W.W. “Well,” he says, “we don’t allow any Socialist agitators in this town and you can’t hold meetings in this town either I hadn’t said anything about holding meetings and I asked him if the Salvation Army was allowed to hold meetings on the streets, and when he said they were, I asked him if the I.W.W. didn’t have as much right to hold meetings on the streets as they did. He said “No,” and if I or any one else tried to hold meetings on the streets they would be arrested, and he ordered me locked up for agitating and selling papers. I asked him if I would have been arrested if I had been selling a capitalist paper and he refused to answer me.

The next morning I was taken before the dispenser of “justice” and charged with “disturbing the peace.” The judge nearly fell dead when I pleaded not guilty and he handed be “ten and costs,” which meant that I would eat macaroni at the expense of the city for the next 25 days. I was held until the 22nd then I was put in solitary confinement, with nothing to eat, not even macaroni. The next morning about 2 a.m. I was taken out of the cell, thrown into the wagon with the brass trimmings and taken down to the Santa Fee station. To make a good job of it they took my own money that I needed to eat on and bought a ticket to Virginia Point. I was put on board the train and an officer went along with me to see that I reached my destination all right and when I was ditched at the blind siding called Virginia Point I was told that they would try and run Galveston without my assistance. From what I can see the only way to do any agitating in Galveston for the present at least, is to get on the job and as I can’t connect with a job there I will have to pass it up. The colored people have got control of most of the work in Galveston and as they have been given a pretty raw deal by both the unorganized whites and the craft unions, it won’t take very much work to get them to come into the union that recognize no race, creed or color. In fact, when I was arrested I had a date to meet a bunch of the colored men who wanted to learn about the new union. If some of the fellow workers would go to Galveston and get a job there they could do some good work toward getting a local started.

There is one of the “Ham track” Mich, bunch of knockers in Galveston. He is holding street meetings in contradiction to the chiefs statements to me. He distributes leaflets knocking the eight hour proposition, in fact knocking everything that the I.W.W. stands for and he claims that he is organizing for the “only real” I.W.W., but I was unable to find a single person that he had got to join his (as he claimed) the GIGANTIC ORGANIZATION. He is allowed to hold his street meetings whenever he wants to, unmolested by the “czar” of Galveston, but Socialists and labor, agitators will be put in jail if they try to hold street meetings. And so I guess the disciple of De Leon, hailing from “Ham track” is neither a Socialist or a labor agitator, but merely a common labor fakir and judging from what results he has got in Galveston, he isn’t doing much harm.

ALBERT V. ROE.

The Industrial Union Bulletin, and the Industrial Worker were newspapers published by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) from 1907 until 1913. First printed in Joliet, Illinois, IUB incorporated The Voice of Labor, the newspaper of the American Labor Union which had joined the IWW, and another IWW affiliate, International Metal Worker.The Trautmann-DeLeon faction issued its weekly from March 1907. Soon after, De Leon would be expelled and Trautmann would continue IUB until March 1909. It was edited by A. S. Edwards. 1909, production moved to Spokane, Washington and became The Industrial Worker, “the voice of revolutionary industrial unionism.”

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/industrialworker/iw/v3n42-w146-jan-11-1912-IW.pdf