‘Jack Whyte Assassinated’ from Solidarity. Vol. 6 No. 266. February 13, 1915.

Well Known I.W.W. Agitator Meets Death at Hands of Miserable Tool of Nevada “Desert Rats.”

Oakland, Calif., Feb. 3. Jack Whyte died yesterday, Feb. 2, 1915, at McNutt Hospital, San Francisco, aged 40 years.

He left San Diego last October and went to Tonopah, Nevada, where he helped, the local boys and the flying squadron win the fight for free speech then in progress. He continued the work of organizing and lecturing, and the idea of solidarity and one big union was growing fast among the workers.

This got the goat of those desert rats, the mine owners and employers of Nevada. Something must be done at once. Already John Pancner had been sent to the pen for 18 months, for shooting a member or a gang they had sent to get him in the I.W.W. hall. The organization was still growing.

The labor skinners now resorted to one of their antiquated tactics; a newspaper plant was dynamited. The I.W.W. was publicly charged with the act. The next move the rats to prepare the public mind and justify themselves was a. campaign of arson. The opera house and 23 dwellings were burned down.

Whyte, McGuckin and Boris Thomason were arrested, and charged with arson. The last named was a young Russian, unfamiliar with the language and customs of the United States. He was held incommunicado and in three days railroaded on a forged confession to the pen for 21 years. No friends were permitted to see him from the time of his arrest until the prison doors closed behind him. Whyte was released at the preliminary hearing. McGuckin, held in $5,000 bonds, was not indicted by the grand jury.

Whyte and McGuckin, their work now completed, bought tickets for San Francisco. Before departure on Dec. 22, they were taking supper at the home of Mrs. Minnie Abbott who was active in the movement there.

The door was broken in by a gambler named Robert L. Stegall, and Whyte, wholly unarmed, was shot down.

His spinal column was severed; paralysis resulted. The local boys and comrades furnished money to take him to San Francisco. There Olaf Tweitmoe and Anton Jahanssen of the Building Trades Council in San Francisco provided at their expense the best medical and hospital service. His weakened condition prevented an operation and death was painless.

Whyte’s only concern during the long weeks between the shooting and his death was for the revolutionary movement of the advancing proletariat. He talked of nothing else. No sighs, no tears, and no regrets. When the official desert rats called upon him to swear to a complaint against his assassin, he declined, saying:

“I have fought you and your laws for 22 years, and want none of them now.”

What more he said to them wouldn’t look well here.

The standing of his assassin with the desert rats is best shown by the fact that he was released immediately on $500 cash bonds, as compared with the $2,500 bond in the case of John Pancner, who inflicted only a flesh wound on one of a gang who sought to kill him, and the $5,000 bond for McGuckin who was merely held on suspicion. Assassin Stegall was exonerated by the grand jury on Jan. 28, 1915.

This should convince skeptical that it is now time for workers in their organizations, conduct their own trials and pass their own verdicts.

Jack Whyte will be well remembered for his part in the free speech fights of Fresno and San Diego. In the latter he was honored by an extra six months in jail for his eloquent and clear speech to the trial judge, entitled, “To Hell With Your Courts.” His funeral occurred Thursday, Feb. 4. He was buried in Cypress Lawn Cemetery, PRESS COMMITTEE.

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/1915/v06-w266-feb-13-1915-solidarity.pdf