Aside from the drama of Frank Little’s abduction and escape, the 1913 strike of largely Finnish workers on Duluth’s massive iron ore docks was a pivotal one for the U.S. left. The strike cause a split among the large Finnish Socialist Federation, with radicals led by activists like Leo Lauki embracing the industrial unionism of the I.W.W. These Finnish revolutionaries, largely based in the Upper Great Lakes, would become a bedrock community of the Communist Party, offering nearly half of its the adherents in the early 1920s. Frank Little and James Cannon played a leading role in developing that early relationship.

‘Frank Little Kidnapped, Rescued by Strikers’ by James P. Cannon from Solidarity. Vol. 4 No. 32. August 16, 1913.

F.H. Little Found Thirty-Five Miles From Duluth Where Thugs Had Taken Him. Strike of Seamen & Dockmen in Fine Shape

Duluth, Minn., Aug. 10. G.E.B. member, F.H. Little, who was kidnapped by thugs of the steel trust last Wednesday night, was rescued at daybreak this morning by a party of strikers and newspaper reporters from an abandoned farmhouse 35 miles from here where he had been held prisoner since his disappearance.

Haggard and unshaven, he made a dramatic appearance at the Armory this afternoon just as a monster protest meeting against the brutality of the company police was opening. The audience of three thousand people went wild with enthusiasm as he was escorted to the platform.

The protest meeting was a great event. Reaction against the attitude of the city government and company thugs is growing strong and the feeling among the newspapers is that the masters have overplayed their hand in attempting to check the revolt of the workers by kidnaping and slugging organizers of the I.W.W.

The magic letters are on everybody’s lips in Duluth and Superior and there is no doubt that we have driven home the entering wedge to a powerful organization on the lakes and iron ranges.

The strikers are standing solid. All nationalities bound together with a solidarity that marks all strikes which have the application of the proverb philosophy of the I.W.W. A Finnish speaker has been sent to the Mesaba iron range to hold protest meetings, collect money and feel out the sentiment for organization there.

Indications are that the ore dock strike will be settled in a few days as the steel trust is scared stiff at the threat of a strike in the iron mines and in the other harbors and are offering concessions already. The One Big Union has gained a foothold in this district that will be hard to shake, and the frantic opposition of the newspapers has increased the confidence of the workers.

The News-Tribune printed interviews with a dozen leading bankers and employers in which they stated their emphatic disapproval of the I.W.W. The next day the same paper announced that one of them had gone to Detroit in a special train. Can you beat that for propaganda?

An effective Polish speaker has sprung from the ranks of the strikers. It is already planned by the Finnish organization to send him up on the range with a Finnish organizer when the strike here is over. Little will probably go with them to lay out a plan of organization in all the mining towns.

Doree came up from Minneapolis yesterday and will stick for a while to strengthen the organizing force. CANNON

Duluth, Minn., Aug. 9. A strike on the ore docks is on at this point and the I.W.W. has struck the towns of Duluth and Superior like a cyclone. All shipments of ore are tied up and the paralyzing of this connecting link between the mines and the steel mills has caused the masters to resort to desperate measures.

F.H. Little, who had been con- ducting the strike at Superior, mysteriously disappeared two days ago with strong evidence that he was either kidnapped or slugged and put out of the way. A meeting of strikers, being held near the Duluth docks, was broken up tonight by fifty steel trust police who have been imported from the Mesaba iron range with the aid of a horde of city police and deputy sheriffs. Leo Laukee, the Finnish speaker, and J.P. Cannon were beaten up when they attempted to speak. The mayor and chief of police have announced that no meetings of the I.W.W. will be permitted and that all the agitators will be jailed or driven out of town. So it looks like some more thug rule under the folds of old glory! The I.W.W. is in the fight to stick and to win.

The trouble started a week ago when three men were killed at the Superior docks through the criminal negligence of the company. The workers demanded that safer working conditions be provided and that they be allowed to place a man at each end of the docks to give proper signals for the transmission of trains. This was refused and the men walked out in a solid body to the number of 600.

This direct action of the workers gave the situation a different aspect and the company promptly backed down from their stand and agreed. (ripped page, rest of short paragraph missing).

Just about that time the I.W.W. got on the job. Most of the strikers are Finnish socialists and revolutionists.

F.H. Little had no trouble in getting the right of way with them. The entrance of the fighting union threw a scare into the company. They came across with an offer of fifteen cents increase on the day. This concession was responded to with a call for a general strike on all the ore docks. Two days of agitation brought out all the 600 workers on the Duluth docks and Two Harbors has promised to come out tomorrow. This will cripple all shipments of ore and will throw out the iron miners on the range if it lasts for any length of time.

The strikers are showing magnificent solidarity. The Finns especially act with military discipline, and they stick to a man. That they are destined to play an important part in the American labor movement no one can doubt who is acquainted with their Finnish organizations and their history. They are much better informed than is generally known on the socialist movement and the class struggle. Their political tendencies are born of the conditions in their native land and will probably disappear with their adjustment to industrial conditions in America.

They constitute a large percentage of the Calumet mine strikers and the iron miners on the Mesaba range. If the I.W.W. makes good with them here it will have a big influence with all of them as they have a good communication through the medium of several daily papers in the Finnish language and the socialist organization.

The papers here and in Superior are undoubtedly on the exchange list of the Seattle and Akron Times and the Paterson Call. The front pages are taken up with accounts of the “murderous I.W.W.” Big headlines about the strike have, crowded out all mention of “our” diplomatic relations with Mexico. Editorial slime is in abundance and one of them came out with a cartoon this morning. They are trying to start trouble and will probably succeed.

The strike has already exemplified some of the tactics of the union, which is organized to win. A carload of intended scabs from Minneapolis Wednesday morning had enough I.W.W. men in the bunch to influence the whole bunch to desert. The same experience with another bunch from Chicago and one from Minneapolis again this morning has made the company’s boast that they will get strike breakers look cheap to the workers.

A delegation of thirty of “our leading citizens,” composed of the cockroaches and his honor, the Mayor of Superior, came to the meeting yesterday in an effort to induce the strikers to return to work. They left their automobiles two blocks away to avoid the open class contrast. They got such a bawling out before the strikers that they beat it in a hurry–muttering execrations against the I.W.W. agitators who are putting our city on the hum by stirring up the slaves to fight for more of the good things of life.

I expect to be boarding at the city jail by tomorrow, so I am getting this off in a hurry. Long live the revolution!

The most widely read of I.W.W. newspapers, Solidarity was published by the Industrial Workers of the World from 1909 until 1917. First produced in New Castle, Pennsylvania, and born during the McKees Rocks strike, Solidarity later moved to Cleveland, Ohio until 1917 then spent its last months in Chicago. With a circulation of around 12,000 and a readership many times that, Solidarity was instrumental in defining the Wobbly world-view at the height of their influence in the working class. It was edited over its life by A.M. Stirton, H.A. Goff, Ben H. Williams, Ralph Chaplin who also provided much of the paper’s color, and others. Like nearly all the left press it fell victim to federal repression in 1917.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/solidarity-iww/1913/v04n32-w188-aug-16-1913-solidarity.pdf