One of Jay Fox’s many run-ins with the law was this 1911 free speech fight. The Agitator began as a project of the Home Colony, a Washington state radical and anarchist intentional community established in the 1890s. As part of a fierce internal debate on the free-spirited community’s clothing optional policy after it resulted in several arrests, Agitator editor Jay Fox publicly intervened with an article ‘The Nudes and the Prudes” on July 1, 1911. Several weeks later Fox would be arrested for the article on the grounds that it advocated law-breaking. Fox would be convicted, but fight on in appeals. Below is Fox’s comment on his arrest and the offending article.

‘Arrest of the Editor: The Nudes and the Prudes’ by Jay Fox from The Agitator. Vol. 1 No. 21. September 15, 1911.

ARREST OF THE EDITOR.

“Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech or of the press.”–United States Constitution.

“Every person may freely speak, write and publish on every subject, being responsible for the abuse of that right.”–Constitution, State of Washington.

On Wednesday, August 23d, I was arrested by a deputy sheriff on a warrant charging me with “publishing matter tending to create disrespect for the law.”

Read that quotation again, men of America, and answer me this: How far are we removed from Russian despotism, from the arbitrary rule of the Czar, whose word must not be questioned aloud?

In the manner of my arrest the prosecuting attorney’s office made a pretty little grandstand play that will rebound to our mutual benefit, for I am sure I needed the advertising as badly as they.

Instead of sending a man out on the regular boat, they sent a launch in the dark to nab the desperado ere he eluded their clutches. For, they explained to the newspapers, for the benefit of the timid citizens and voters, he had gotten word of their intentions and was preparing to skip the country.

The astute prosecutors evidently forgot, in giving out the interview, that they had notified me three weeks ago, in the newspapers, of their proposed coupe. If they regarded me such a desperate criminal and cowardly agitator, why did they rush into print!

The answer is obvious. We needed the advertising, and the county could well afford to furnish a special launch for the purpose.

Nothing is more absurd than that I would leave my family and home, friends and work on the threat of prosecution for my writings in The Agitator. Every radical editor is subject to such prosecution, for the powers that be are very sensitive to criticism, and will endeavor on every opportunity to throttle the voice of truth. And where the opportunity does not exist, it will create one. The laws have been strained to fit, and where they will not strain they are made to order.

The article entitled “The Nude and the Prudes,” which appeared in No. 16 of The Agitator, is the one cited as constituting the alleged offense against the laws of the State of Washington.

If the capitalist class could smother the voice of criticism, it would be secure for a long time in its position on the back of labor.

It dare not meet us on the open field, voice to voice, pen to pen. For the workers it has no voice but the voice of musketry, no pen but the bull pen. But the voice of labor will not be silenced.

They may jail the agitators, but agitators will rise to take their places, ten where there was one.

They may crush this little paper, they may send me to jail. What of it? Will that impede the onward march of the awakened workers towards their goal of industrial freedom? I am but a drop in the ocean of progress that is sweeping on, with ever increasing force, to the emancipation of the working class.

To show the spirit of which I speak I will mention the fact that I have received already several offers of assistance from able hands in getting out The Agitator should I be sentenced to a term of imprisonment.

It is the paper that is in the way. What am I, separated from The Agitator?

The Agitator is an organization. It is a union of brains, and that is the most dangerous form of organization in the present stage of social evolution.

This will not always be so. The union of hands and brains together will eventually rejuvenate the world. But today the free presa is the most vital element in the education and organization of the working class. It is our medium of thot exchange, and we cannot grow without it.

The capitalists know well the power of the press. With so much importance do they regard it that there is not a paper in the country that dare tell the truth where the truth conflicts with the interests of capital.

Another instance of the splendid spirit of solidarity–the spirit that is going to unite the working class in one organization the world over–was shown by the big protest meeting held by the I.W.W. without previous notice, on the first day of my arrest.

On Sunday evening, the day after my release on $1,000 bail, I addressed a big meeting in the I.W.W. Hall on the subject of “Militaryism,” where the hearty support of the members was pledged in this struggle for a free press.

If our writers and speakers cannot criticise decisions of the courts and point out the absurdities on the statute books without being imprisoned, all progress must come to a stand-still, for it is only as the mistakes of the past are discovered and remedied that progress is made.

But those who benefit by the system are very well satisfied to let it stand as it is: A system that keeps them in power and idleness and luxury, undreamt of by even the kings of the past, is quite good enough for the landlords, and the lords of commerce, and the lords of the law, and the lords of the fourteen-inch guns, and the lords of the sky who anoint the other lords and declare them the necessary fulfillment of the will of the divine lord on high.

THE NUDE AND THE PRUDES

Clothing was made to protect the body, not to hide it. The mind that associates impurity with the human body is itself impure. To the humanitarian, the idealist, the human body is divine, “the dwelling place of the soul,” as the old poets sang.

To the coarse, half civilized barbarian, steeped in a mixture of superstition and sensualism, the sight of a nude body suggests no higher thoughts, no nobler feelings than those which the sight of one animal of the lower order of creation produces in another.

The vulgar mind sees its own reflection in everything it views. Pollution cannot escape from pollution, and the polluted mind that sees its own reflection in the nude body of a fellow being, and arises in early morning to enjoy the vulgar feast, and then calls on the law to punish the innocent victims whose clean bodies aroused the savage instincts, is not fit company for civilized people, and should be avoided.

These reflections are based on an unfortunate occurrence that took place recently in Home.

Home is a community of free spirits, who came out into the woods to escape the polluted atmosphere of priest-ridden, conventional society. One of the liberties enjoyed by Homeites was the privilege to bathe in evening dress, or with merely the clothes nature gave them, just as they chose.

No one went rubbernecking to see which suit a person wore, who sought the purifying waters of the bay. Surely it was nobody’s business. All were sufficiently pure minded to see no vulgarity, no suggestion of anything vile or indecent in the thought or the sight of nature’s masterpiece uncovered.

But eventually a few prudes got into the community and proceeded in the brutal, unneighborly way of the outside world to suppress the people’s freedom. They had four persons arrested on the charge of “indecent exposure.” One woman, the mother of two small children, was sent to jail. The one man arrested will also serve a term in prison. And the perpetrators of this vile action wonder why they are being boycotted.

The well-merited indignation of the people has been aroused. Their liberty has been attacked. The first step in the way of subjecting the community to all the persecution of the outside has been taken. If this was let go with out resistance the progress of the prudes would be easy.

But the foolish people who came to live among us only because they found they could take advantage of our co-operation and buy goods cheaper here than elsewhere, have found they got into a hornet’s nest.

Two of the stores have refused to trade with them and the members avoid them in every way.

To be sure, not all have been brought to see the importance of the situation. But the propaganda of those who do, will go on, and the matter of avoiding these enemies in our midst will be pushed to the end.

The lines will be drawn and those who profess to believe in freedom will be put to the test of practice.

There is no possible grounds on which a libertarian can escape taking part in this effort to protect the freedom of Home. There is no half way. Those who refuse to aid the defense is aiding the other side. For those who want liberty and will not fight for it are parasites and do not deserve freedom. Those who are indifferent to the invasion, who can see an innocent woman torn from the side of her children and packed off to jail and are not moved to action, can not be counted among the rebels of authority. Their place is with the enemy.

The boycott will be pushed until these invaders will come to see the brutal mistake of their action, and so inform the people.

This subject will receive further consideration in future numbers.

J. F.

The Syndicalist began as The Agitator, based in the Washington state anarchist community of Home. With writers like Earl Ford, JW Johnstone, and William Z Foster it was inspired by the revolutionary syndicalism of the French CGT, they felt they were political competitors to the IWW and in early 1912, Foster and others created the Syndicalist Militant Minority Leagues in Chicago with chapters soon forming in Kansas City, Omaha, Minneapolis, St. Louis, Denver, Seattle, Tacoma, Vancouver, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. They renamed The Agitator The Syndicalist as the paper of the Syndicalist League of North America with Jay Fox as editor. The group then focused on the AFL. The Syndicalist ceased publication in September 1913 with some going on to form the International Trade Union Educational League in January 1915. While only briefly an organization, the SLNA had a host of future important leaders of the Communist movement. Like Foster, Tom Mooney and Earl Browder who were also members.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/agitator/v1n20-sep-01-1911-agitator.pdf

PDF of issue 2: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/agitator/v1n16-jul-01-1911-agitator.pdf