Born in Ireland around 1879 and naturalized in Massachusetts in 1907, James Rowan was secretary-treasurer of Lumber Workers Industrial Union Local 500 based in Spokane, Washington. He had joined the I.W.W. in 1912. and was badly beaten by thugs in the 1916 Everett free speech fight. He was arrested in September, 1917 and convicted at the mass Chicago I.W.W. trial in Chicago where he was sentenced to twenty years and $20,000 in fines. His many reprimands while in Leavenworth included being ‘loafing and having conversations in the shop,’ ‘conversing during breakfast,’ ‘wasting food,’ ‘disobeying order,’ ‘abuse of writing privileges.’ On his release he was again active in the I.W.W. leading the ‘Emergency Committee’ faction in the ugly mid-1920s feud. Arrested again shortly after his December, 1923 release for having a loaded revolver during a confrontation at a Centralia solidarity gathering. Rowan a leader in the mid-20s faction fight and expelled from the I.W.W. in 1925.

‘Judge Revokes Citizenship of I.W.W. Leader’ from The Daily Worker. Vol. 3 No. 35. February 21, 1926.

Decision Will Help in Deporting Radicals

SPOKANE, Wash., Feb. 19. Federal Judge J. Stanley Webster has entered a decree revoking the citizenship of James Rowan, long a prominent I.W.W. leader, on the grounds that he Is not desirable as a citizen.

This decision sets a precedent In the disposition of sabotage cases. It will enable federal judges to cause the deportation of workers convicted under syndicalism laws though naturalized years previously. All the government attorney has to do is to prove to the judge’s satisfaction that the convicted worker’s idea of government is anti-capitalist.

Suit to deprive Rowan of his naturalization right has been pending in the federal court of this district ever since his release from Leavenworth penitentiary in 1923. He was originally convicted, along with Haywood and other prominent leaders of the I.W.W. in 1917 in the famous “Chicago Case.” He was pardoned by President Harding after serving five years of a sentence of 20 years. Rowan was active here during the world war as a labor agitator. During that time he served as secretary of the I.W.W. local No. 500.

Detrimental to Government.

In asking for the revocation of his citizenship, United States District Attorney Garvin charges that since coming to this country as a young man Rowan had “continually conducted and allied himself with factions and institutions detrimental to the United States government.”

As under a capitalist dictatorship like that which rules this country today any attempt to strengthen the workers as a class is detrimental to the interests of the ruling class, this decision gives the government a new weapon in Its fight to suppress all revolutionary labor activity.

Garvin will now place the case before Secretary of Labor Davis, who has its final disposition. Rowan is staying in Portland.

The Daily Worker began in 1924 and was published in New York City by the Communist Party US and its predecessor organizations. Among the most long-lasting and important left publications in US history, it had a circulation of 35,000 at its peak. The Daily Worker came from The Ohio Socialist, published by the Left Wing-dominated Socialist Party of Ohio in Cleveland from 1917 to November 1919, when it became became The Toiler, paper of the Communist Labor Party. In December 1921 the above-ground Workers Party of America merged the Toiler with the paper Workers Council to found The Worker, which became The Daily Worker beginning January 13, 1924.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1926/1926-ny/v03-n035-Chi-feb-21-1926-DW-LOC.pdf