‘Allison Out of Prison, His Spirit Unbroken’ by Carroll Binder from the Butte Daily Bulletin. Vol. 2 No. 298. August 6, 1920.

Conscientious, Objector Is More Determined Than Ever to Fight for Real Freedom.

Chicago, Aug. 6. Brent Dow Allison, conscientious objector released from Fort Leavenworth federal penitentiary July 30, after more than two years imprisonment, gave an exclusive interview today to the Federated Press. Reporters and photographers from the local capitalist. papers have been pestering the Allisons at their home in Ravine, a Chicago suburb, since Friday, but Allison refuses to be interviewed by them. He evidences the suffering he has undergone during his long imprisonment, but contrary to reports recently circulated his health is by no means permanently injured. His spirit is unbroken by the ordeal, and those who knew him before the war find his personality strengthened by his prison experiences.

“I feel,” said Allison, “that the conscientious objectors have simply paid the price our ‘liberal’ government has seen fit to impose for the offense of telling the truth as they see it about the war. The outcome of the war in my opinion justified the stand we took. No one recognizes more than do I, the heroism of my friends and all the men of my generation who saw their duty otherwise and did it.

“The nation can never repay the men who served overseas for what they have suffered. I am heartily in favor of a bonus for ex-service men as a slight token of appreciation for their, sacrifices. I feel, however, that the future peace of the world rests upon the intelligence and the growing power of labor. The only thing that [sic] the increasing influence of organized labor in international relations.

“The blockade of Hungary by the workers of other nations as a protest against the repudiation of civil liberty by the Horthy regime is most significant. It is the first time in history that organized labor has dictated an international policy and it strikes me as being of infinite good.

“If organized labor in America insisted upon it. Soviet Russia would be recognized in a month. Thomas Jefferson was the first statesman to recognize the first French republic in 1793. It is a cause of chagrin to all Americans that we should be the last to recognize the government which the Russian people have set up as a result of the revolution of 1917. America and England and Russia between them, acting co-operatively, could maintain the peace of the world.

“I feel that if political prisoners are ever to be recognized in America and ever to be treated decently it will be as a result of the efforts of organized labor.”

Allison declined to talk at this time about his treatment in Leavenworth other than to say that it had been very difficult in the last few weeks. Just before his release, which came as a complete surprise, he was incarcerated in a dungeon for 50 hours because he was suspected of smuggling out of prison an article appearing in the July number of Pearson’s telling the truth about Leavenworth and which roused the ire of the deputy warden. Allison had nothing to do with the writing of the article, he says. He spoke also of the general atmosphere of would-be terrorization attempted by the prison authorities- the latest manifestation of which is the placing of a machine gun and an armed guard on a wall so as to overlook the shed where the political prisoners are confined.

Allison mentioned as political prisoners still at Leavenworth who ought to be released from “the heartless tyranny” of a military prison, Hulett A. Wells, former president of the Seattle Central Labor council, who was convicted under the espionage act of opposing conscription before the conscription act was phased: George Yaeger, of Kansas, conscientious objector sent from Camp Funston, who has been held in permanent isolation for more than a year under orders of the deputy warden because of falsely alleged participation in a noisy demonstration in the dining room occasioned by poor food; the three Browder brothers and their three colleagues; the Kansas City socialists convicted of conspiring to defeat the operation of the draft, and the Magon brothers, Mexican radicals from Los Angeles also convicted under the espionage act. Allison said he was glad to know that the last of the I.W.W.’s would be released on bail.

“An intensive campaign of publicity should be waged in behalf of the men still in Leavenworth and the other political prisoners at Fort Douglas and at Alcatraz and of Debs and Mollie Steimer,” said Allison.

“Special efforts should be made during the next three months while the presidential campaign is on. Right here I want to thank all those who stood by me and the rest of the political prisoners when it was not easy to do so. Many unknown friends sent me gifts and letters which it was impossible to acknowledge because of the restriction on letters.”

Asked about reports in the capitalist press as to a change in his attitude toward prison discipline, Allison said “contrary to those charges I have never refused to conform with the prison discipline and to perform to the best of my ability all of the labor to which I was assigned, including laundry work, shoveling coal and snow and breaking limestone for months. All of my ‘good time’ was still coming to me when my sentence was commuted.”

He also pointed out that he was never offered the non-combatant service proposed in Wilson’s executive order of March, 1918, and that he never had a chance to “disobey an offer,” because from the very first he was classed as a deserter by a member of his local draft board. Local papers have published many wild accounts about Allison’s alleged misconduct and rehashed garbled statements of his views in an obvious attempt to “revive war-time prejudice against him. The Evening Post said “a belief was expressed in certain quarters that Brent Allison was ‘keeping under cover.’ For fear of violence.’ Many persons bear a strong animosity against him because of the publicity given his actions prior to his arrest.”

Allison expects to spend the summer at his home in Ravinia recuperating from the effects of the prolonged undernourishment which affects the health of all political prisoners at Leavenworth. He says he will do all he can in behalf of the men still behind the bars. He will devote himself to literary work. A volume of poems written in prison will probably be published in the fall.

The Butte Daily Bulletin began in 1917 in reaction to the labor wars in Montana, the Speculator Mine fire killing 168 miners; IWW organizing, and the murder of IWW organizer Frank Little in Butte. Future Communist leader and IWW organizer William F. Dunne and R. Bruce Smith, president of the Butte Typographical Union published the paper as an outgrowth of a strike bulletin with the masthead reading, “We Preach the Class Struggle in the Interests of the Workers as a Class.” It became daily in August 1918 and in September 1818 officers raided their offices and arrested Dunne and Smith on sedition charges. An extremely combative revolutionary paper, while unaligned, it supported the struggles of the Left Wing in the SP, reflecting the large radical Irish working class of Butte also supported Ireland’s and the Bolshevik revolution, as well as the continued campaigns of the IWW locally and national as well as the issues in Butte. It ran until May 31, 1921.

PDF of full issue: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045085/1920-08-06/ed-1/seq-1/