An early free speech fight involving joint action by the I.W.W. and Socialist Party led by wobbly organizer A.M. Stirtron, a former leader of the Party in the state, headquartered in Hancock and editor of The Wage Slave, who had rejected electoralism and recently joined the I.W.W.

‘Detroit Free Speech Fight’ from Solidarity. Vol. 1 No. 44. October 15, 1910.

For the past week Fellow Worker A.M. Stirton has been making a nightly pilgrimage to jail every evening in Detroit in defense of the right of free speech.

The circumstances are usual. On Wednesday of last week Stirton held a meeting in Columbo Hall, at which it was decided to hold a street meeting on the following evening. Someone suggested that it would be well to ask a permit of the police, and so, “to fulfill all righteousness” and guard against any possible disturbance, a fellow worker, A.C. Christ, was dispatched to police headquarters for that purpose. He was gruffly received: informed that nothing “socialistic” would be tolerated on the streets of Detroit at the present time “because Mayor Breitmeyer wouldn’t stand for it,” and told to go about his business.

This aroused the fighting blood of Stirton and, as it happened that the S.P. local met in joint session that very evening, he went before them and made them an offer that as he had been forbidden the streets on the grounds that his talk was “socialistic” they should back him in his fight, and he would defy the police.

Accordingly on Saturday evening Fellow Worker Stirton mounted the box and to a crowd of about 1,000 and began to expound the principles of industrial unionism, when some 50 or more of the police charged the crowd and took him to the station. In the melee Fellow Worker Stirton received a severe blow on the back of the neck, which the cops credit to some unknown citizen, but which Stirton is much inclined to think was delivered by one of the blue coats themselves. No excuse can be offered for their outrage, as no resistance, whatever was attempted. Later in the evening Fellow Worker Cole was arrested for “talking back” to a police officer.

Since then the same program has been enacted night after night, and Stirton has been joined by upwards of 20 proletarians, most of them (but not all) members of the S.P., many of them members of the I.W.W., and one a member of the Wage Workers’ Party of the State of Washington, who happened to be in Detroit. Every night a bunch of proletarians go to jail for simply saying “Fellow working-men.”

The fellow workers referred to were not left in jail more than three or four hours, however, when they were released through the influence of certain well-meaning but short-sighted residents of Detroit, chief of whom was Conrad Pfeiffer, the well-known brewer and “friend of labor.” Stirton growled horribly, indeed he had refused bail, but when he was told to “get to hell out of this” there was nothing left to him but to move on.

One man (and later in the evening a woman) was dragged out of an automobile for simply rising in their seats and endeavoring to make an announcement.

Stirton writes us that he has been very careful all through not to confound the S.P. with the I.W.W. or to enter into any alliances which might prove entangling even constructively with any political parties.

He also writes us that in his opinion this fight must be kept up, as it has an immediate and direct bearing on the right of the I.W.W. to use the streets for propaganda in the immediate future.

Meanwhile every evening Fellow Worker Stirton, accompanied by 6 to 9 other revolutionists, make their nightly pilgrimage from the street corners to the station house. Meanwhile revolutionary fervor, though probably for the present somewhat confused and muddled, is gaining in intensity, and Stirton writes us that he expects great doings in Detroit and throughout Michigan, generally, this coming winter. Already two local unions have been organized in Detroit since Stirton’s first appearance in Detroit after his New Castle imprisonment, and a movement is on foot to engage him throughout the winter in southern Michigan and northern Ohio.

A letter from J.W. Stirton, Oct. 9, adds: “The agitation here is great and of the proper color. Fine outlook for I.W.W. organization both here and in Pontiac, and my brother expects to be back in both places this winter and perfect that which he has started. He will go on to Grand Rapids and Boyne City just as soon as he gets through here for the present.”

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/1909-1910/v01n44-oct-15-1910-Solidarity.pdf