The immediate years after the First World War were ones of intense reaction against Black communities, radicals, and workers’ organizations. Whipped up by the press, fueled by racism and conspiracy theories, mass mob violence and midnight murder were daily occurrences in the first Black/Red Scare that has since been institutionalized. John Sandgren on the long, hot Red Summer of 1919 that has never quite stopped.

‘Sowing the Wind and Reaping the Whirlwind’ by John Sandgren from One Big Union Monthly. Vol. 2 No. 7. July, 1920.

The morning paper brings the news that the city of Duluth, Minn., is in control of a mob of 5,000, who have subdued the police by force, broken into the jail and taken out and lynched three Negroes, alleging that they were guilty of attacking a white girl of seventeen. It is the old, old story.

This event comes right close upon the attack by an unruly mob of mostly ex-soldiers upon the Negroes of Waukegan, Ill., only a couple of weeks ago. That time nobody was killed, but the occasion for the riot was correspondingly insignificant: a couple of small Negro children are supposed to have thrown rocks at the glass windshield of an officer’s automobile and broken it.

These two serious riots of the year should be seen against the background of the past as well as of the happenings in the South.

In the South the pot of Negro hunting and lynching keeps boiling right along, but the disquieting fact is that these collisions between the races are moving northward rapidly instead of decreasing. Only last year we had the terrible race riots in Washington, D.C., where a great number of lives were lost and many persons wounded: the still more

serious race riot in Chicago, which cost several times as many lives, and finally we had the disgraceful outburst in Omaha, Neb., where events were very similar to those in Duluth of yesterday. In Omaha, as in Duluth, a mob of about 5,000 people gathered about the City Hall, fought and conquered the police, had twice the noose round the mayor’s neck, wrecked and burned the magnificent City Hall and took out a Negro accused of attacking a white woman and hanged him.

The three accompanying photographs tell part of the story.

One remarkable thing about these riots is that in most cases those responsible for them are trying to blame them on the I.W.W.

In Chicago the unspeakably foul capitalist press time and time again sought to fasten the responsibility for the bloody riots and the burning of houses on I.W.W.’s, who are supposed to have blackened their faces to look like Negroes! Of course, the police and others who studied the situation knew better. It seemed that the Chicago press was lending its aid to those who wished the wrath of the rioters turned on the I.W.W. Maybe they though it would lead to the killing of some I. W. W. men. It was evident that there were provocateurs at work with a purpose.

Then came Omaha. The capitalist press reported that General Wood, the now beaten presidential candidate, had officially declared that he thought there was red activity behind the riot. The provocateurs were at work again, trying to turn the fury of the mob on the I.W.W. and at the same time trying to get rid of the blame for the nasty deeds.

Then came Waukegan. The Chicago Daily News came out and insinuated in the news columns that there was a mysterious influence at the back of the riots, presumably the I.W.W. There were some civilian people leading the soldiers on to deeds of violence, and these civilians were Wobblies, according to the Daily News insinuations. The criminal provocateurs were at work again.

We have not heard from Duluth yet, but we shall not be a bit surprised to see this race riot also blamed on the I.W.W.

While reading proof of the above we get “The Herald-Examiner” of Chicago of July 21, one of the Hearst papers. In glaring head lines it accuses the I.W.W. of being the inciters of a Chicago riot on Sunday, July 20th, in which two men were killed and eight more or less severely wounded while trying to arrest some members of a Negro religious sect that had run amuck. The paper says that these religious fanatics were burning the American flag, but seeing that the paper comes with the lie that the I.W.W. is behind it, one cannot believe what the paper says. On another page the paper publishes a photo of a mixed crowd of Negroes and whites and states that they are “a posse hunting the guilty I.W.W.”

This is, of course, nothing but a dastardly attempt of this honorless paper to incite the ignorant mob against the I.W.W.

It is journalistic work of this kind that keeps the flame of rioting alive.

What is the significance of it all?

We are absolutely certain that in neither crowd of rioters could be found an I.W.W. man or a socialist. In every city where these riots occur the participants are people outside of our ranks. There are the clubmen and other keen sports with murder in their hearts who enjoy hounding a Negro to death, the same as they would hunt and kill a ’possum, a fox or a coyote. It thrills their degenerate nerves and satisfies their vile passion. Whenever there is a call for that kind of action they pour out of their hiding places, these monsters. Of course, they do not want to publicly stand for their deed. They are ashamed of it, they fear the punishment and they add to their crime by trying to roll the crime over on some innocent people’s shoulders—people whom they hate.

By blaming it on the I.W.W. and thus inciting ignorant people against us, they feel that they have killed two birds with one stone: They had the ghastly “fun” of killing a Negro and blame it on the hated I.W.W.

(While this was being set in type one of our member dropped in from Duluth. He had watched the hanging from beginning to end and barely escaped the same fate, when he tried his best to stop it. We asked him, what the crowd consisted of. “Were they working men,” we asked. “No,” he said, “they were the bourgeois and their dependents. The lynchers poured out of the shops, offices, drugstores, barbershops, pool rooms and joints of the business district. It was not working men. It was the element that is hostile to workingmen.”)

The fact that these riots occur so frequently shows that we are living in a hair trigger society. Immediately below the surface, barely under control, there is a spiritual monster which dares not show itself in daylight. It is the free-masonry of bad men, and they number thousands and thousands in every city. Most of them wear good clothing, but many wear workingmen’s clothes. Making a random survey of the rioting mobs, we should say that they consist of the same elements that made themselves most conspicuous as “patriots” during war times. It is the pupils of the patriotic leagues and of Ole Hanson, the malodorous ex-mayor of Seattle, the hired thuggery of employers’ associations, the gunmen, the cowardly and murderous braggarts of the brothel-saloons and gambling halls, the scabs, and the self-styled 100 per cent American dupes of the profiteers, who are happy to see the two races fighting one another. The agents of the “National Security League” and other monopolists in patriotism have worked on the feelings of the rowdy elements until they are crazy for blood, like youngsters reading dime novels. The rioters are hyper-patriotic.

That same element which will on a moment’s notice set civil authority at naught and “take charge” of a city, that same element is one we have to count with in these revolutionary times. When capitalism can no longer stand on its legs, it instinctively falls back on this element of thugs and murderers and general law-breakers. And this element of bad men just as instinctively turns to the capitalist class. They are in spiritual relationship and feel as friends, though of different social standing. The capitalist is at heart a thief, a murderer, an all-around crook and an immoral, bloodthirsty degenerate, ready to do anything to defend his booty. The rioters and the capitalists as naturally fall in with one another in troublous times as two countrymen will fall in with one another if they meet in a foreign country.

As capitalism collapses, as production and distribution of one commodity after another breaks down and people begin to lack the necessities of life, these bad men come into prominence. These rioters are anti-social beasts who immediately resort to violence when hunger comes. They will naturally find one another as in these race riots and flock together and plunder and murder together. They have friends “higher up” who will gladly use them and protect them Recent events in Chicago show that a good many of the American Federation of Labor unions in Chicago are under control of such thuggery and “sports.” Through the murder of such labor union thugs as Enright and Coleman, other names, such as Tim Murphy and Carozzo, and a dozen more have become prominent enough to show that these bandits and gunmen are worming their way into powerful positions. It is openly hinted that they have friends in prominent political positions as well as wealthy protectors. The events of late years have favored them. These thugs and robbers and murderers have played the patriotic game to a charm and elbowed themselves into position and wealth by terrorist methods. The shipbuilding and aircraft profiteers and arch patriots, the war contract patriots, the intellectual prostitutes following the trail of gold that these bad men leave behind, all of them are prominent just now. Carrying concealed weapons is illegal in most states, but these bad men by mutual consent all carry arms. The peaceful citizenry has been disarmed, but this profiteer and riot thuggery is allowed to keep their guns, so as to better be able to terrorize the law-abiding. In case of a general outbreak the good people are defenseless, and the capitalists and the crooks are armed to the teeth.

These gunmen and patriotic braves are a silent force right under the surface. It takes only the rape of a white woman by a Negro or the allegation of stone throwing by black children as in Waukegan, in order to bring this element out in revolt against law and order. They are practicing for revolution—for a reactionary revolution.

We, the I.W.W. men, are organizing people industrially to enable them to take over and carry on production and distribution, so that the change from the new to the old may take place without violence and bloodshed. From the I.W.W., the socialists, and from the average worker, society has nothing to fear. The element which society has to fear is the same people who riot in Chicago, Omaha and Duluth, and those provocateurs higher up, who stand behind them and prod them, egg them on, encourage them and protect them.

We, the I.W.W., have everything to lose and nothing to gain by participating in riots. Anyhow, we have the mild spirit of humanitarians and shudder at these terrible, ghastly deeds, The intelligent Negroes know very well that they have no better friend than the I.W.W. and they are organizing together with us and fighting with us against the capitalist class, as witness the present strike on the docks of Philadelphia, where whites and blacks are united in friendship and solidarity for a common, beautiful aim.

The thing for us to do in these troublous times is to hurry and get our organs of local administration ready; that is, our city central councils. Seeing the ease with which the murderous mobs suspend the activities of the civil authorities and terrorize one community after another, it becomes incumbent upon the workers to take steps to protect themselves and society from a complete breakdown at the hands of these bloodthirsty mobs. Having made temporary revolutions with impunity in St. Louis, in Washington, in Chicago, in Omaha, in Waukegan, in Duluth, they are getting more daring, more courageous. Before we know it, this cut-throat element, with a General Wood at the top as the man on horseback, and Morgan, Rockefeller, Dupont, and the hundreds of other trust magnates as the financial backers, will take complete control. Under the guise of suppressing rowdyism, they will systematize it and enthrone it on the mangled carcass of so-called democracy.

With so many dangerous elements snooping round, knife in hand, ready to cut the throat of civilization and establish the autocratic rule of banditry, it is time for the useful working people to wake up. If the civil governments of today are too weak, too cowardly or too crooked to prevent these riots or to punish those who participate in them, it is time for the big mass of peaceable, law-abiding, useful citizens to create institutions which have their roots so deeply among the people that no criminal element dares to raise its head.

Only by changing from territorial representation to industrial representation will society be able to create an administration which will be able to function with the combined strength of all the citizens added together. The present administrations have little or no. backing. They are as a rule the product of the activities of utterly corrupt political machines, dominated by the same slum element that does the rioting. They can uphold their authority only by hiring men and arming them with clubs and guns. These gun-and-club men sometimes fail to function or are overpowered, and there is banditry supreme.

The I.W.W. form of local administration, of which there is as yet little to be seen in this country, is a city central council drawn from the shop, the place of work, from living life itself. It will consist of the trusted men and women of every occupation instead of as now of real estate sharks, brothel and saloon keepers, shyster lawyers and professional politicians and grafters of the lowest type. Our administration, springing directly from the people at work, can call upon the whole people for assistance at any moment, and would be able to completely suppress any criminal element.

The moral of it all is the same old one that we are repeating until we are wearing it out: Organize every shop as a branch of the industrial union of that industry. Organize every human occupation along industrial lines. Select your Central City Councils everywhere and get ready for the collapse of capitalism.

The strikes are the signs of the inability of the capitalists to supply mankind with what it needs. They signify the collapse of capitalism industrially. The riots are the signs of the inability of capitalism to protect the citizens from violence. They signify the collapse of capitalism politically.

Get ready for the big crash like sensible men. Let all the good elements in society, whether white, black, red or yellow, male or female, get together to down the capitalistic bands of robbers and murderers and other criminals and save society.

Let capitalism collapse, but let us save civilization.

One Big Union Monthly was a magazine published in Chicago by the General Executive Board of the Industrial Workers of the World from 1919 until 1938, with a break from February, 1921 until September, 1926 when Industrial Pioneer was produced. OBU was a large format, magazine publication with heavy use of images, cartoons and photos. OBU carried news, analysis, poetry, and art as well as I.W.W. local and national reports. OBU was also Mary E. Marcy’s writing platform after the suppression of International Socialist Review., she had joined the I.W.W. in 1918.

PDF of full issue: https://archive.org/download/sim_one-big-union-monthly_1920-07_2_7/sim_one-big-union-monthly_1920-07_2_7.pdf