today we're going to talk about

the missoula free speech fight. so in the fall of, 1909, this woman pictured here, elizabeth gurley flynn, made her way to missoula to organize laborers. she was very young, 19 years old, as old, as some of you guys are, maybe even a little bit younger than some of you are. but she and several people were there to organize laborers, and specifically lumber workers in the missoula area. but the outcome of her visit there was not just a battle over rights and working conditions, but ultimately a battle over free speech. the rights to free speech, the right to speak freely in public, to assemble in public without

being harassed or arrested or jailed. so in this, we're going to we're going to get into the details of what actually happened in missoula. but i also want to start out a little more broadly talk about the context of this period and what's leading up to this battle, what's shaping it, and then in the aftermath, talk a little about what happened to some of these people that were involved in this free speech battle. what happened to some of the questions around, free speech and a little bit broadly the significance of this missoula is free speech battle. all right. so this is aeriod of intense rapid, massi for the united states. this from the late 19th to early 20th ctury. it's period when you have the rise of these industrial people like andre carnegie, john d rockefeller and others. it's when the united states goes from having some industry to

being the world leader in industrial output, producing much more than other countries. it's a period when industrialized is moving to making on a much larger scale, much bigger businesses, huge corporations, building things with new technology, developing ways to produce things more efficiently and more cheaply. and this produces a lot of changes in. the american society in this period. there are it produces a great amount of wealth, produces a lot of different technologies, new technologies that benefit people it raises standards living, but it also produces some problems or some issues there's a lot of poverty that despite a great deal of wealth in period, there's a tremendous amount inequality that comes out of this period. there are changes to working conditions. how long need to work, what hours they work, and a of more

hazardous conditions under which they work. and so there's lots of questions that come out about like corporate power, the power of corporations having the marketplace as well as in politics. but the biggest question question is what's called the labor question, the question of what rights or powers will laborers have in this new industrial society. this is a picture here of part andrew carnegie's steelworks. so the outcome of this is one the outcomes of this anyways of period of industrialization and some of its problems is great tensions, labor and class to the extent that some of these tensions lead to violence it's two outbreaks of violence that fact look a lot like literally war. this is a series of panels might on first blush look like some panels from the civil war or

something like that. but this is actually a strike at the homestead works, which is one of andrew carnegie steelworks in pennsylvania, where in after a strike and e attempt by employers to bring in nonunion laborers there was conflict there violence the state militia was sent in well as the company hiring pinkerton which were private a private police force to try to get over, you know the obstacles presented by striking workers. this is another here that gives you some sense of this. the early 1900s in the gold mines, gold fields of colo which shifted away from the sort of old, you know, gold pan going oue on his own to a much more industrial scale of mining. the strikers,orkers there also went on again, leading to ultimately a lot of ce. the sending in of the state

militia. and you can see them pictured technologiesively newnew technologies of this period, which is the machine gun. so a lot of this looks is very, very violent and looks really like warfare, literal class warfare. and we often have, i think a sense of the united states that it's a place where class tensions class are not as prominent as in other places. but in this period this period of the late 19th and early 20th century was a period there was intense violence around class and questions of labor. and the united states had some of the most violent labor conflict in the world in this period. now, there's lots of different questions among laborers about what how they're going to respond to this new era of industrialization and corporate power and so on. some unions like the american federation, labor, wt to push

for things like higher wages, workers, safer conditions, shorter hours, but that they don't have a longer range plan or a broader goal. they're not trying to change society more fundamentally, but other laborers and labor organizations are. they may also be pushing things like better wages, better working conditions, but they're also pushing for ultimately a fundamentally different system, a change to the system than industrial as it exists for many of them. they see the world like this where you have at the bottom who are producing the wealth. they're the ones doing the work, but it's the people above them ultimately the capitalts who are most benefiting from that and there are other people in between. they're like the military, as you can see, who are keeping the workers in their place. and the organization that is most with these ideas in this

period are the industrial workers of the world, radical union that wanted to overthrow capitalism and and it was the the major sort of competitor to the american federation labor, an organization that had a more narrow ideas about what it wanted for workers to so the industrial workers of the world this is their logo here and you can see on the right there one of their cartoons or comics that they created that gives you a sense of what they're interested t path the left is says a fair pay for a fr rk. that was the slogan of the american federation of labor afl, the industrial workers of the world path on the right, the abitn of the wage system and the basic idea behind the iww as ideas was that if they could

organize all workers, they could they could throw off the ruling capitalist class and workers would just manage the industries themselves and get all the wealth that they saw as being created for the workers and do away with this wage. labor system. yeah. so in the picture, the pyramid of the work system, what does it mean for a we eat for you like what is. that's a good question. i mean that is i'm not really sure what that that part of that means those are those look like middle or upper class people. i, i guess there they are. they people that are benefiting off of the backs of laborers. but i'm not sure why they're there it's phrases we eat for you. it's a good question. so the industrial workers, the world are interested in in organizing workers as all workers. all right. so one of the things that's different them in addition to their more radical whole take on society than the american federation of labor, is that

they're an union. and what that in this period is that you industrial union was was contrasted with the craft unions of the american federation of labor unions would be unions made up of skilled workers in an industrial unions would be a union of every worker that industry skilled unskilled. there probably weren't really any that were literally unskilled but there were different levels of skill right and so this is just part of a very detailed chart the iww created. but just shows you, you know, here under service and lumbering, all of, say, all workers and words in the forest, they divided them up by different industries. and that's how they would organize this broader union. but all of the workers in those industries woulde would be part of that union. and in addition to trying to organize all workers within a union skilled and unskilled, the iww wanted to organize all

workers regardless of things like gender or race or ethnicity. again, was not something that was true. the american federation of labor, who excluded most african-american ones, excluded a lot of women, excluded chinese and other workers, in addition to excluding unskilled. so the iww is interested in organizing all workers. it doesn't matter what race or, what race or whether you're a man or woman. and finally, they wanted organize workers on a global they're the industrial workers the world and ultimately want to organize labor laborers across national lines as well. now you can here the industrial worker this is map of actions iww actions from 1905 to 1920, which was kind of the golden age of the iww and. they're working all across the united states, but there's they

take a lot of actions in the northeast in some of the manufacturing industries there. but a lot of their work is located in the west and in many they come out of the west. the iwd ws founded in 1905 in chicago, but the main predecessor organization to them is a union called the western federation of miners. the western federation of miners. the impetus it comes out of another one of these really bloody battles that happens in. the mining industry in idaho and as a result of that, miners in the west decide that they need to organize on a much broader scale, build an organization, an umbrella organization for all miners in the west, and they meet in montana in 1893 to create the western federation of miners and then the western many members of the western of miners are the key people who, for the organization of an even bigger organization, the industrial of the world in chicago.

in 1905. so they come out of the west. but part of the reason that they have a lot of actions in the west and you see a lot in the pacific northwest in particular is that a lot of the people that they to organize and a lot of the people that are not organized by other unions are located in the west are workers like workers that work in mines, workers that work in agricultural industry and the lumber industry. these and many of these workers are these, quote unquote, unskilled workers that are not being organized by the american federation of labor. a lot of them work in jobs where they're very itinerant. they move around a lot to different. there's jobs that are essentially seasonal or they're boom and bust style jobs. so they emerge in one area and then that that, you know, that attempt exploit resources in an area ends and they move somewhere else. those type of workers are hard to organize and many unions don't bother trying to organize them. but the industrial workers, the world wants to organize them.

that's why they're there. they're you see a lot of their actions in the west. yeah. what does the darker red indicate? i think that those are areas where there were there multiple actions there. the actions include things like strikes campaigns, things like that. so i think that those are areas where there were more than one. yeah. this, by the way, is a there's a university of washington, a whole interactive digital history of the industrial workers of the world, where you look at things like these interactive maps, look at graphs, all sorts of things about the history of this of the iww over time. so it's a really cool resource. check out all. ri so we're going to talk about montana here, how this relates to montana. so montana is one othe one of these parts of the where the industrial workers of the world are very active.

and as i mentioned before, butte in montana was where the western federation of miners has created one of these key predecessors to the montana's in the late 19th century and early 20th century is dominated by the copper industry. the copper mines in have emerged in the late 19th century as some of the most profitable and in rich mines in terms of copper the world. and by this period, no other place on earth is producing copper than the copper mines. butte. but that mining again has to be done on an industrial scale copper is mixed in with all sorts of other materials. it's not as, you know, on a per rate basis as valuable as something like gold or silver so you got to mine a lot of it to be able to make a profit and you have to able to smelt that down and ideally not smelt it lo ways away from butte. it's kind of a ways from, you know, a lot of other industrial

nters, a lot of places that might make use of copper, but you don't want to ship copper or all the way across the country, you want to be able to smelt it down and purify it first. so the copper mines are in butte are here. you know, butte is a big urban industrial center in the west in this period. and just outside of butte, which is anaconda, a town that was actually just created entirely be a sltg center for the coer coming out of butte. and there's different owners of coines and copper in the butte and anaconda area. but the biggest of these that emerges in the early 19th, early 1900s is the aconda copper company, one of the very biggest corporations in the world. at the time. so these are huge industrial processing. these these mines that are being built and the smelter is being built to to to to smelt that. but they need among other things, they need want there's a really crucial material to make

these things operate and that is would you need a lot of wood to build all these mines in butte? these mines are supported. the mining tunnels the shafts are supported by, huge timbers. and there's the the mines in butte go thousands of feet deep. there's of miles of mines built in butte. so you can just this is a one miner working on one of these wooden timbers in the shaft. but you can just imagine thousands of miles. that takes a lot of wood right. so to do smelters, the use coal sometimes they also use a lot of wood. anthis picture on the left here might look at first glance like a field of hay bales, maybe. but if you look a little bit closer in the here, you see that's wood stacked up. this is a forest that's been liquidated and chopped down and stacked into piles for cordwood

to feed the smelter at anaconda. so need a tremendous amount of wood for this this industry in montana and where is that going to ce om it's going to come from western montana. that's whl these huge forests are located. and right in the of all those huge forests in western is missoula, which is also one of the places where a lot of travel routes come together, rivers come together. it's a natural place for building a really big mill. there's all of mills, lumber mills that are built in montana, in the wes period. but the biggest of these is the big blackfoot milling company built in bonner just outf missoula, itially owned independently and eventually boht in the early 1900s byhe anaconda copper company. because what is so important to their industry, so the workers in this industry, in the lumber and this lumber industry in western montana are the workers that elizabeth gurley flynn and

other members of the industrial workers of the world are going to come and organize in organizing them, because for a few reasons. one is that the work there is very hard. it's very dangerous. the conditions under which workers are very poor in a lot of ways. and just to give you, a sense of what this work looks like. you go out into the woods, got to get all this wood to a mill like the big blackfoot mill, right? so you go out into the woods, you're chopping down these trees, axes or hand saws. it's very difficult work. then have to skid those logs down and load them on a big wagon or sled that's drawn horses. you can see these are all from the blackfoot drainage, which is where most of that wood came from that went to the blackfoot big blackfoot milling company. so up around areas like seeley lake and clearwater junction. so they set it down there and then you would take those to riverside and wait often was

done in winter because it's easier to move logs that way. then would wait for the spring runoff when the rivers at their highest level and they're flowing really high and really fast and really cold also. and then you push those logs into the and float them down. and if a worker working on that you float down the river with them, you go down the river with and that's those are on the top there. workers who are shepherding those logs into the river and then are going to follow them down. so you can imagine going down the river with those those kinds of logs, those logs like that. and you might face thin like massive log jams is a logjam on the blackfoot river. just imagine being in the middle of something like that and having to deal with it with hand tools or maybe dynamite, which was one of the ways that they used to try to break up some of these logjams. incredibly and incredibly dangerous work. and ultimately that would those make it down? this is the blackfoot river here coming out of these mountains

and flowing down to the big blackfoot mill there where they would those logs would then be milled up, cut into smaller pieces, and millwork was itself as well in dangerous but mill workers were people who could, you know, they go to work at the mill and they probably lived somewhere around there. bonner or mill town or missoula. and they could go to the mill for their work every day and go back to their homes at night. but that wasn't true of the people worked out in the forest. the people that cut down logs or got them those logs, you know, to the river. they lived in lumber and those lumber camps were difficult places to live. not only is this work hard and the pay very little, but the conditions under which they live are pretty horrible. they often live in places, tents or shacks that are very poorly heated. they sleep on basically wooden boards with maybe a thin layer of hay. and that hay would be infested with lice and bedbugs and other

types of they'd be fed probably not enough food and much of their food that fed to them was just rotten food. so you can see is a strike bulletin. this is from a little bit later. this is from the 19 teens, but from western montana. and you can see says, you know, they're demanding things like an eight hour day and higher pay, but also things like blankets wholesome food, better sanitary conditions and also no discrimination against strikers. and the final phrase on there, an iury to one is an injury to all was one of the key mottos of the industrial workers of the world. so we know that this i don't know exactly when this is but we know that whenever this strike in of the iww who were involved in that in some way. so the iww, elizabeth gurley

fln and others that come to missoula are coming to org these lumbers that are working in these very dangerous and living under vor conditions. and this is roughly what would have looked liund at tire ware right now at the university of montana, and often inistae d there, you can see a bridge over clark fork. that'higgs street bridge. that's what it was then. the becks bridge. and then just across the there downtown. and that's where they are going to go. here's a map of downtown missla from. that time piod, you can see higgins going north and south, front street going east and west and at the top, main street going east and and at the very bottom is the higgins street bridge down there. now why would they go to to missoula, you know, a downtown.

to try to organize lumber. that's not where lumber workers are doing their work. right. to give you a sense, this this is that map, again, lumber would be going while the, you know, they may be bringing wood to a mill located in missoula or of the other towns there, maybe worngll over parts of western montana. but it's very difficult for labor organizers to go to all these lumber camps. right. they don't know. they are. they come and go. so and the same reason lumber workers don't always know where they are. they often come into a town like missoula to look for lumber work. so that's where these labor organizers are going to organize. lumber workers. but there's another reason as well. think i'll come back in a second. the way that, as i said, lumber workers don't. they're there. you know, again, this is one of those jobs where they move around seasonally. they may work in some area and then they all the are cut down there.

so they have to move somewhere else maybe to a totally different state to to look for work. so they would go a town like missoula or spokane and or one of these other cities located in the pacific northwest. and there was a system as it worked. was there there were employment agencies in those and those employment agencies would know where the work was. so as a worker, you would go to one of these employment agencies. and the way worked is you'd pay them some money and. they would give you a letter and you could go to wherever that lumber camp was. and give the the foreman of that camp your letter says you paid the employment agency and you would go to work there. so that's how it's supposed to work in theory, in practice, the way that it worked in many ways was much more exploited live. so there's another level in which these lumber workers are being exploited through this employment system. so is a comic from the industrial workers of world one of their publicandt

showit shows clips it the front bottom part of that in some money.employment agency he gets a lter. they also often had to pay somebody then to transport them out to these lumber camps. they pay a little bit more money. they go out to these lumber camps and they go they're put to work, but they might only work for a few days or a few weeks and then they might fired or the foreman might say, we don't have any more work. move on out of here. and so they would have to go back then go through this whole process again, find another employment agency, pay them again, go out to another spot. why did it work this way? because the employment agencies have an incentive to try to get more people through their doors. it doesn't benefit if these lumber workers are going out and in these camps for months or years on end. they want more people coming. the employment agency. so they would do is pay the foreman of one of these lumber

camps to fire or let go. some these workers, after a short period of time so that they'd have to come back and pay the agency again. so these workers would pay a of money up front, go out only, be able to work for a little bit and then have to do this process again, in some cases they didn't have money to pay upfront so they would make an agreement with the employment agency that the employment agency would garnish their for a little bit to pay for that that first, you know, payment so they would go out to these jobs for a couple of weeks. their wages would be and played paid to the employment agency, and then they might be let go and not make any money at all. so there was a lot of exploitation here. and this is the key thing that the industrial of the world were organizing around in this period in the pacific northwest. they started a campaign in 1908, the year before they go to missoula here called the don't buy jobs campaign against what they called the employment sharks.

these these employment agencies that they saw as being exploiting these workers. so that's what they're there in, missoula, to do. and they're in downtown missoula because. that's where the employment agencies are located. they want to protest outside of those employment agencies. and they want to connect with workers who are in downtown missoula, maybe going those agencies and help organize them for of this don't buy jobs campaign. so they go to missoula. they set up their base of operations right up there on main street in the basement of the carnoy theater, an opera house. so a nice spot for their headquarters. and then from there they can they can speak out on the street downtown. so to give you orient you a little bit here they go downtow of the key spots that they start speaking and organizing is where that circle is. there that's on the corner of higgins and front street. and this just magnify by some of

these buildings here right on that corner is the florence hotel, just across the street from that to the south is the hammd building across the street to the is the missoula mercantile and then to the southeast, the street is the the first national bank. so this is what that would look like in this period. and that little circle there is that corner of higgins and front street where they did a lot of their speaking. that's the florence building right behind that there, the hammond building, the south and across the street the missoula mercantile. you can see the m.c. and the first national bank in the foreground on the right there. this is this is right around time. this is what missoula would have looked like. then there would have been dirt roads. the roads weren't paved yet. there weren't street yet. there was probably some early automobiles. as you can see here, aot of horses still the sidewalks would have been paved, maybe wooden

sidewalks. and it's a it's town that is is growing quite rapidly but still pretty small. a lot of things are in very close proximity. there. so these are the three iww laborers that go to missoula in 19, in the fall of 19 or nine. and the left is elizabeth gurley flynn. i showed you a picture of and she's referred to as joan here because although she was only 19 years old, she had already made a name for herself as a fierce proponent of workers rights. so they often referred to her as the joan of arc. so this fierce woman warrior. and she was high demand as a speakern, labor rights to the right of her is is jack jones who was her husband. he was a he had been a miner. and then to becomen organizer for the industrial workers of the you know, on the right there

is frank little, another g who started out as a miner. and then became a professional organizer for the a.w. w frank little will become probably the most famous member of the industrial workers of the world. and i'll tell you more about why that is at the end of this presentation. john so, these these these guys set up their base of operations in the hanoi theater. they go d start streaking, speaking on street, they stand on a soapbox literally or a rrel and begin often as the iww would with their speeches with fellow workers and try to discuss with workers that are around there on the street there convince them to unionize and particularly to unionize with the iww and on and these workers i mean the iww i mean a lot of their organizing was done on the street. that's where a lot of the that

they wanted to organize ended up being so so they are very oriented towards the street so they do this for a few days but then the employment agencies are right here. there's one that's right in that florence hotel in the basement that on the first floor, that right where they are they're speaking and others that are right around there and earshot of them there are other businesses downtown that don't like these radical labor organizers there speaking and they put pressure on the city and ultimately the police come and arrest them arrest jones and little the two men of these three organizers. so jones and little are arrested and. they go to court the next day and. they argue before the judge that they're not doing anything wrong. they're just there speaking. they're arrested under an ordinance that basically a disturbing the peace ordinance. but they argue, look, there are other people out there on the street making as much or more

than we are, for example, the salvation army. this was another organization very different from the iww that was also out there on the street a lot, trying to connect with poor people or workers. the salvation army was out there to convert people to christianity or, convert them to, you know, their version of christianity or otherwise and try to urge to become more moral people and more christian people. and the salvation army made use of things like music and, they were shouting at other people out there as well. and that's happening in downtown missoula at the same time. so they say, why aren't you why aren't you arresting salvation army people? the judge his name is judge small says this is irrelevant. irrelevant. and he convicts them orders them to go to jail for 15 days and orders them to pay a fine. but he says, i'll suspend all that. you agree not to speak anymore.

this is the thing they really want. it's not so much want to punish them. they just want them to stop speaking out right? but jones and frank little refuse to do that. so they're to jail. and this is an iww cartoon that's illustrating some of these things here, right? they're talking about how they're on a they're on a soapbox here being arrested by the police, even though the salvation army is out there, they're not being arrested. and are a few other things about this cartoon. well, the in the top there, you can see a police officer being paid off and nexim ithe red light district. and this this area of missoula ere ey're at, i'll just go back to this map here for a second. this area right over here, back here on, west front street, you can't see it well enough from where you are, but there's a whole bunch of little buildings here. and what those buildings say on them is f b, this is a sanborn fire insurance map. so we know what that stands for

it stands for a female boarding house, which is a euphemism for houses of prostitution. that was the red light district right there, just a block away from where they're meeting. and basically, they're saying in this cartoon, there's, you know, all this other crime that's going on and the police are being off to not do anything about that. in other words, police are not there to enforce the laws really enforced. they're they're, you know, to interfere labor organizing and the bottom right there you can see the jail this is where they were sent to jail, missoula. the jail was in the basement of a building and the floor above that was whereity stables were. this is a tithe was still a lot of horses being used. the city had a lot of horses. it kept them in that area right about there. so were horses right above them in a floor between them that was not not very air tight. so a lot of horse urine

defecation that's going down right on to them. the idea of derby is also i put this song book up here. they were famous for these of songs. they use songs as an organizing ol and developed this book called the little red songbook to fanned the flames of discontent as this as it says on the cover, they're and one of their most famous songs that comes out just a few years after this is called the preacher and the slave are all sorts of called the long haired, red, long haired preacher. and the key line in it is work and pray. live on hay. you'll get pie in the sky when you die and it's a parody. the salvation workers, who they refer in this song as the starvation workers. but they're critiquing the idea of the salvation salvation army as offering workers, workers who are often quite poor, telling them, you know, worry about things like trying to get more and this on this earth material

earth, just be a good christian and you'll get your reward afterwards. and the industrial workers, the world are saying, no, you should write for, you know, what is rightfully yours. now. and the other as i said that one of the other titles that song is long haired preacher. and one of the reasons that it's called that is that workers that worked in industries like the lumber industry, as i mentioned, where they had live in places where there was a lot of things, lice and bedbugs would cut their hair really short as it would be less amenable to, getting infested by those things and was people who didn't have to work in those sorts of conditions, who had the luxury of having hair. so it's also a sort of critique of of these preachers in that way as well. all rht. so the jailing of jones and little leaves elizetgurley flynn basically on her own as the main organizer for the iww t outside. right.

she, as i said, is quite young. she's 19 and she's actually pregnant at this time, although it's not really if she knows that or not. but she's young, but nevertheless, a very a very good leader. and while they're in jail, she gathers workers locally to their place, speaking the street. so other people local people, lumber workers, agree to speak out as well. one of them is a guy named george appleby. he's a young lumber worker. and flynn writes later in her memoirs about this that he was really scared, public speaking. this was a guy who worked in a really, really dangerous job. but he was probably wasn't scared of a lot of things. but he was really scared public speaking, but nevertheless was willing to get up on a soapbox and speak a. he gets up on one of these boxes and says, starts to speak, says fellow workers.

and that's as far as he gets. he's yanked off there by, the police, and arrested and put in jail. there's another guy watching this, a guy named jay altucher from an office window nearby. and he's actually an engineer for the forest service. so he's he's not really a laborer. he's a more of the professional class of people. but he's watching this and decides to run. he runs he runs down from his office, goes the street, and he jumps on one of these soapboxes as well, starts speaking, says, ladies and gentlemen, i believe in free speech. and then he's yanked off to the soapbox as well and arrested. so at the same time that, flynn is is getting local people to start speaking. she sends out a telegram to, the industrial worker, which is the main publication of iww, it's published out of spokane nearby. and she this telegram, which this is part of it ghhere,

requesting to come to missoula, she asks every freeborn american to come to missoula and help. she says imabe necessary to fill the missoula jails, and it appears elizabeth gurley flynn had this tactic in mind a few days. this she had written in the industrial worker that we intend to fill the jails of this town to overflowing if they start arresting. and this is interesting because this is a sort of a new tactic in civil disobedience. this idea of of intentionally getting arrested and those arrests overwhelming a city with arrests in order to try to pressure them, change their ways. so she sends out this thing a very sort of, you know, really trying to prod people from other areas to come to missoula are you game. are you afraid? do you love the the police? have you been skinned or grafted? if go to missoula.

so that gets published in the in industrial worker. in the meantime these these four guys have now been arrested jones little and these two other people this lumber worker and st engineer aresed jail the that as i said the doesn't realt toeep them in jail it just wants them to stop speaking so it releases but they don't they don't leave they go right back out and start speaking on the street and as do others. and so are more arrests, more people sent to jail. and they start because it's now clear that they're not going to get any chance to say very much. and they want to make a point. they start just getting up on these soapboxes and just reading the declaration of independence or the constitution. and this is another cartoon, the industrial workers of the world and when it's showing is this judge again, who's who says isgainst the constitution to talk on the streets do you understand so making a about free speech and

behind him onef these employment agency people who who is giving him money. so the iww insinuating that these this judge being being paid off. so by this point these speeches and arrests are starting to create a real spectacle in the town. hundreds of people start to gather every day and then thousands of people start to gather. the mayor doesn't like this. he doesn't. this big spectacle. so he orders the fire chief to, go down there, bring the fire hose wagon and tell the people that are ghered around there to disperse, to get out there or there. he's going to, you know, use these the are these this hose on them. but they refuse to disperse. ando e fire chief blasts all these people that have gathed around with water. and this iby now, iss october 1st. right. so these guys have come here in

late september. th've been here for a little bit. now it's october 1st. it's i don't know exactly what the temperature was, but potentially this is the northern rocks,ot very warm. d they're blasting them with quite a bit of co water. there are more arrests that happen. these people speaking and getting arrested, but also inforce men start to arrive. elizabeth flynn's call for people to come to missoula starts paying off. people start coming in droves from spokane and, seattle and portland. there are more arrests. the jails start up more and more. flynn gives a speech to. hundreds of people in front of the hanoi theater and eventually she is arrested to the police for probably trying to put off arresting a woman because it has optics, but eventually they arrest her. she's defiant, says the iww will not be suppressed even ten men

are jailed every day day by this point, public opinion is really starting to turn against the city and the police. thousands of people. to come and gather despite the of fe hose on one of these days the mayor decides of the backlash ainst that that he's not going to that anymore and. a lot of people in town are starting to develop a lot of sympathy for these iww organizers and the workers there are giving them bread, giving them newspaper. elizabeth gurley flynn is released from jail quickly, but then another woman has gone there. edith frenette is is arrested. and when the arrest her and start taking her off to jail, 500 people trail behind the police. one person throws a rock. it's very nearly breaks out into a riot and newspapers from far start to carry stories about this in illinois a story that mentions that 2000 people in

missoula stormed the jail demanding the release of prisoners. there's a lot of coverage, the arrests and treatment of these arrestees by the police. mentioning these awful jail conditions that they're living under beatings that are suffered by them by by these people that are arrested. jack, one of these elizabeth gurley friends, one of these key organizers, is, in one case beaten to bloody unconscious pulp by. the sheriff, who uses a large brass to do that. and there are lots of other violence visited upon these organizers and this is this is from the montana, which is a socialist newspaper of helena. d perhaps not surprisingly, sympathetic to the iww but other newspaper has also expressed a start to express as well as our despite all these arrests and all this brutality that the iww continues its practice and, it

starts to pay off this filling up of the jails by the end of the first week in october, 70 people are imprisoned in the jails. and this is not a big city right. the city has to rent out a jail beneath the missoula hotel. you've ever been to the moe club downtown? that's the missoula hotel building. so right underneath there was where they created a new jail to start putting a lot of these people that were arrested, they have to build have it rent out a new court room to process all these people that are being arrested. and it's getting very expensive live for the city that the people that are arrested try to deliberately get arrested right before dinner. so the city has feed them and then they refuse to leave before they're fed breakfast in the morning. so the city is paying for lot of food for these people. one man whose arrest whose arrested then released to go see his wife, comes back and begs to be let back in to the to the delight of many missourians around there.

so people are these these people that are being arrested really trying to put pressure on the city and looming the horiz f the city is the city's big annu applehow apples are a big deal in missoula. really big deal. they mcintosh apples, which are produced down in the bitrroot valley south in missoula, our national known at this time they're they're famous and missoula has a big apple festival year and the city is facing this appears to be an interminable there's keeps being more and more coming to missoula willing to take part this free speech fight they're paying a lot for these people that are that are being imprisoned and now they're facing the disruption a major city event and they cave in. they decide that they're not going to do this anymore. the city council orders the city police to stop arresting these. and organizers who are out on

the street speaking. and so the the the iww, their first free speech fight and it's really the first of its kind in the 20th century this battle over free speech. so they have this free speech win. now that doesn't mean they they win the broader battle. and again, they came here originally to try to organize workers against their exploitation by these employment agencies and lumber owners and. that battle continues. this is a sign from striking the lumber industry in 1917. in montana, there was a big strike across a lot of the lumber industry in the pacific northwest in 1917, as well as in butte in the mines in butte. but this is out in mill town and just near bonner there says only real humans invited. so scabs and gunmen stay away. so they have a long way to go in there in their labor organizing

battles. but they also continue their speech fights. elizabeth gurley, flynn and frank go to spokane right after. this winning this battle in missoula and basically the same thing happens all over again in spokane, except on a larger scale. the spokane's bigger. the fight is drawn out longer, it's bloodier police stuff, frank little and other organizers into tiny cells. and then they blast steam heat into cells. they call it the sweat box. these men nearly suffocate. a lot of them pass out. and then they're done with that. they transfer them to freezing cold. and in november, this is november now. so many of them verge on hypothermia. this goes on for weeks. and the prisoners are you know they're given basically no food, they're brutally beaten and 16 of them end up seriously hospitalized and three of them

die. and then after spokane, there's numerous other free fights that that emerge in other cities across the west. this is one from san diego in 1912. you can see again the use of fire hoses on the crowd. and another here question, shortening the relationship between american ideals about free speech and what is actually happening and. many other cities have these as well. fresno and others in all their three free speech fights in the american west, this period led by the industrial of the world. all right. so i want to just talk a little about what happens to some of these key leaders of the free speech fight in missoula, because they're all involved subsequently in various other things related to free speech. elizabeth gurley flynn, as i mentioned, goes on to be

involved in other free speech fights like spokane. but she also becomes a founding member, the american civil liberties union, during these during and after these free speech fights in the 19 teens, there is a lot of emerging concern about, free speech. and that is only becomes more prominent during world war one, when there are various placed on free speech and outcome of that is an attempt to to build an organization that fight for free speech rights as well as other civil rights. and that's the american civil liberties union is founded in 1920. and elizabeth flynn again is a founding member of that. and she continues, through the rest of her life, basically to to devote it to radical politics, socialism and free speech. and this is a pamphlet that she wrote called the plot plot to gag america. it's about the smith act and some related acts. the smith act was anctrom

1940 which made it illegal to advocate, overthrow the american government or to be part of an organization, advocated something like that. so many socialist and communist organizations from this period were made illegal through this act and flynn organizes against right this pamphlet against that although she is then ultimately arrested under that very act and imprisoned imprisoned. jack jones elizabeth flynn's wife goes in a different direction, but also. one related to free speech. they split up at some point. i don't really know what what happens there but jack jones to chicago and founds this club called the dill pickle. and you can see the entrance to it here in a in an it says step high stoop low leave your dignity outside a big danger sign above it and basically this is a a club that's designed to

mixes radical politicsontrol, racial art and an open of things like human sexual ity. this is something that was very rare for its time, but the was was to create a place where could have a free discussion of a lot of these ideas that were seen as controversial or even, you know, borderline illegal, even discuss among things, discussions about things like homosexuality. frank little story also is intertwined. the story of free speech in america right across if you went across the river from where they were organizing in downtown missoula is the milwaukee railroad and if you followed that milwaukee railroad from missoula east out to butte on august 1st, 1917, you eventually across a railroad trestle and hanging from that trestle would be a person.

and that was frank little frank. little as i mentioned before, there was a big strike in the mines in butte in 1917 in the midst of world war is a very, very tense situation. i mean, strikes are always tense situations, but in the middle of the war was even more intense. copper was of the key military materials for use in the war. there was a lot of money be made off its production during the war so there was a lot at stake but many miners were very unhappy with their position in butte their union had not been by the anaconda copper company. there had been a massive mining accident in one of the in one of the mines there the worst hardrock mining accident in the history of the united states. and that catalog is the new movement for labor there and the industrial workers of the world sent frank little, one of their top organizers, to butte, be part of that organizing effort

to to sway some of these workers and forming unions, too to be connected with the iww and was there for about two weeks before one night six masked men broke into place that he was living, dragged him out of there, dragged him through butte behind an automobile, tell his kneecaps were drug off and then brought him to this railroad trestle where. they hanged him and he was killed. nobody was ever convicted. let alone, indicted for this murder. although many people suspected that the copper company had been and the night before, just that evening, before he was murdered, the one of the key people anonda company had called up the district attorney e state of m, a y named oor of the tennessee building

that was the headquarters of anaconda copper company in butte. called him up there and said, you have to arrest this guy, frank little. he is know speaking out against, you know, he's a radical trying to organize these laborers. he's speaking out against the and you need to arrest guy and burton wheeler said i there's no law to arrest him under what law would i arrest him? so he refuses to that. and it was just literally hours that frank little was dragged from his house and murdered. and in the aftermath of that and the aftermath of frank little's murder, allies of the anaconda copper company pushed for the creation of a state law that would make that sort of speech illegal. and in 1918, montana, a sedition act which made it illegal basically to criticize the government or criticize the war and just not long after that, the national government passed own sedition act, which was

basically a copy of montana's state sedition act, again making it illegal to to speak out against the war, criticize war or the government. one of the worst incursions of civil liberties and free speech in american history. and hundreds, thousands of people were arrested under those laws, lives ruined. and that sort of thing. so, so this these free speech fights inaugurated a series of discussions about free speech in america that did not existed on that level before, both from people who were concern about speech about you, what speech could be allowed, and people who were concerned about what limits would their would be on free speech these free speech fights start in 1909 in missoula. go on into the 19 teens. then there is the sedition act

passed other sorts of things that bring up questions of free speech well into the 1920s, when there is a number of supreme court cases. these laws that are created and of course, free speech remains an important topic in american history. after that the 20th century into the first century, right up to today, the second thing that's interesting about the missoula free speech site fight is these these new civil disobedience tactics that are originated in february sixth of 1961, 50 years or so later, members of the student nonviolent coordinating committee send volunteers to rock hill, south carolina, to sit at segregated lunch counter and arrested and the way that a lot of civil rights actions had worked before, this was when people were arrested. you would bail them out right away as soon as possible, right.

get them out of jail, get them back on the street so they can do more. but they they switched tactics at this point and they decide they refuse to be bailed out. they decide they're going to stay in jail. and this tactic, which known as jail, no bail, one of the major tactics of the civil rights movement of african-americans in the 1960s. now, the student nonviolent coordinating committee doesn't to have had any knowledge that this been used some 50 years before by the iww, they seem to have sort of reinvented this idea. but later in the sixties, part of you know, that the outcome of the ferment of the sixties was an increasing interest among historian of social movements. the past, including the industrial workers of the world and. there were books and articles published in the sixties and seventies, increasingly about the that recovered this history and showed, you know, that this the first time that that sort of

tactic had been used it wasn't called jail no bail, at the time. but it was basically that tactic that was originated in missoula with elizabeth gurley. flynn had then in missoula in, 1909. so these two key things, the emergence of this these battles over free speech rights and this this tactic of jail and no bail come out of missoula, montana, in 1909. all right. we'll stop there. you guys can ask questions if you have any. yeah, i know. history is a bunch of like what ifs, but do you think if the great north butte mining disaster didn't, frank little would have survived longer longer? maybe. i mean, he he went there that. yeah yeah and i don't know if that wouldn't have happened i mean it it may have been that he wouldn't have been sent there. that was a key catalyze moment in reinvigorating attempts at unionization in butte.

so it may have been that that that maybe they would have just continued as it had in butte which was where the butte miners basically didn't have a recognized union and he wouldn't have been sent there. so it could have changed in that way. yeah. yeah. where was the original they were sent to? in missoula. it was right down town. let's see if i can. i believe it was. it's right over here so i can like players that working up here. that's the fire department. and i think it was underneath that it was somewhere in that area so, so close around there, just like a block or two away. yeah. everything was very close together down there. yeah. yes. on the when flynn call that you had up there. it talked about it says something about missoula police sexual violence female organizing about a tactic that was pretty like why used a regular to your knowledge. yeah i thought that was interesting too i don't know

that i seen any other any discussions you know police sexually assaulting women as part this it certainly could have happened. it's also possible all that you know they were using their the women's protection of women a very important thing at this time even among you know, especially among middle class people. and so the implication that might be happening might have been a way to sort of get get more people on their. but i don't know if that if that actually did happen or not. yeah. they often tried to avoid avoid arresting women in the first place because just precisely because there was so much concern around women in this. but some of them insisted on being arrested. i other questions. yes. were they so obviously they won that free speech battle, were they an all successful in for

missoula breaking cycle with the employment companies and all that corruption were they all successful with that. yeah, a good question. i mean, i think that what happened that was that transportation and the lumber industry shifted from some of the more of these itinerant lumber camps, those became less prominent. one of the things that happens is there's more and more railroads built and it's easier to transport these these logs that way. and so that system that i mentioned breaks down a little bit, but i don't think came out of of i don't think unions were successful in breaking that that yes to this a big campus life for university life because this is like in the beginning or like the early years of campuses it yeah yeah. you know, i'm not sure to what extent connected with what was going on at the university. i mean my guess is that there were students like the rest of

them as a little community were going down there and watching what was maybe even participating in it. some extent you had forest service worker and there was a lot of between, you know, there's a forestry and so there could have been some connections there. but again, i haven't seen anything specific around that. any other questions? all right. thanks,

hi, everybody. afternoon. i'm john o'brien from the department of english and i'm happy to kick things off. today's lecture is part of english department lecture series known as the peters