Dozens of I.W.W. prisoners destroy the Yakima jail they are placed in after 24 hours without food. And that was the beginning of the fight…

‘Yakima Citizens “Receive” I.W.W.’ by Richard E. Brazier from Solidarity. Vol. 7 No. 353. October 14, 1916.

Outcome: City Jail Demolished, and Another Has to be Found, As a Train Crew Refuses to Haul the Boys Out of Town at the Request of the “Citizen Mob.”

Spokane, Wash., Oct. 4. The situation out here now is very promising for the One Big Union, and its enemies seem to realize that, because they are redoubling their efforts to crush the I.W.W.

At the present moment in the West, between Spokane and Seattle, we are engaged in three different fights. In North Yakima the police closed our hall after it had been open only four hours, and we could not rent another hall, owing to the police threatening the property owners with dire results if they rented to us. Therefore, seeing no hall could be obtained, the boys decided to use the streets as a public forum to tell the world at large their grievances. This they did, and the strong arm of the law, In the person of the named McCurdy, a typical Knight of Columbus chief of police, came down upon the boys with all the brutality that the average policeman generally uses. Something like 30 to 60 of our members were arrested, and put in an old wooden jail filthy and lousy beyond description. The men there were not fed for 24 hours. This kind of treatment naturally aggravated the boys somewhat and they proceeded to voice their protest by doing a piece of work that the board of health should have done years Tago, namely, tear down that death-trap and hot-bed of disease they call a jail in North Yakima.

Everybody admits the boys did a good job of it. They cleaned the “guts out of that can’.” While this house clearing Job was going on, the law abiding citizens of Yakima formed a pick handle brigade 150 strong, and marched to the jail. There they were joined by the fire department (who are becoming quite an adjunct to our masters, as not only are they being used to put out the fires that occasionally rage among the masters’ property, but the additional job has been found for them, of drowning the fires of discontent that rage in the hearts of the workers; but they only add fuel to the flames.)

In this pick handle brigade were such pillars of society as so-called ministers of Christ, bankers, lawyers and the smaller fry of petty bourgeois who always cling to the big fellow’s like lice to the backs of curs. This bunch of despicable cowards, this “broadcloth mob,” these “Nob Hill anarchists,” after the hose had been played upon the boys by the fire department, broke into the jail, took the boys out, marched them to the railroad tracks, loaded them into a couple of iced refrigerator cars, locked them in, and then ordered the train crew to take them out of town.

To the everlasting credit of the train crew; let it be said, they refused point blank to have anything to do with such barbarity. In fact, the train crew got quite profane in their expressions to the pick handle bunch, and told the chief of police (who with the other minions of the law was playing a leading part in this parade of the Abominable Order of Bludgeon Wielders) to “go to hell” off the railroad’s property, and where in the blankety blank did they get the authority to tell them what to do. The engineer of the “goat” was very lurid in his expressions of what he would do to them if they did not clear the tracks, and let him proceed with his work; he very forcibly told them he would grease the tracks with their dirty carcasses, and proceeded to show his intentions were good by tearing down the track at full speed in an attempt to fulfill his threat of “greasing the tracks” with the bodies of pick handle barbarians. It is rumored that all existing records for speed and agility were broken by these fat bankers, corn-fed preachers and the other rotund members of the pick handle brigade, in an attempt to escape the wrath of the indignant engineer.

On top of this refusal of the train crew to handle the cars in which the boys were locked up, came a wire from the railroad general office at Seattle saying they would refuse to haul the cars away from Yakima. Then the boys were released from the cars, and taken to the county jail, the city jail having been demolished; and there at last reports the boys still are.

However, the mass of Yakima citizens were indignant at the brutal tactics of their representative business men and their satellites, and the former soon began to exert pressure upon the city authorities. In this demonstration against the pick handle brigade and their methods, all real liberty-loving men and women joined the socialists, the Trades and Labor Council, even one prominent banker and also a preacher, and others. All this led to a conference with the city fathers, where the whole thing was discussed pro and con with the result that we were allowed to re-open the hall and continue the work of organization.

The boys are still in jail and the fight is now centering around our efforts to get them out. Unless this is done speedily, we shall resume hostilities. Good results are now coming in from Yakima and the promise is for greater things yet.

Latest news is that Wenatchee is also on the war path against the I.W.W. The stationary delegate has been arrested along with another fellow worker on a charge of vagrancy, and given ten days in jail. As the stationary is working on a regular weekly salary, it is evident that the charge of vagrancy is a trumped-up one. We are awaiting full details, but whatever the details may be, Wenatchee can be assured that we will give them the fight of their lives.

Everywhere the sentiment for the I.W.W. is increasing as a result of these outrages, and we in Spokane are doing great business now. What is it Marx says somewhere, “that the ruling class never learn anything by the past experiences of other ruling classes.” Behold Yakima, Everett and Wenatchee, and agree with Marx.

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/1916/v7-w353-oct-14-1916-solidarity.pdf