Guide to the Industrial Workers of the World Seattle Joint Branches Records
1905-1950

Historical Note

The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) was a radical labor organization in the United States that was most active between the turn of the century and the 1930s. The Wobblies, as they were known, believed there must be radical changes in American capitalism to improve the oppressive conditions that workers faced. Many IWW members believed in socialist or communist ideology and some advocated whatever means necessary to effect change, including sabotage and violence.

The Seattle chapter of the IWW was founded in 1905 and contributed to the city’s reputation as a hotbed of labor radicalism. The local office showed a keen interest in labor- and Wobbly-related activities across the nation, but most of its activities focused on organizing labor within the state. Beginning in 1907, the Seattle IWW undertook a campaign to organize Washington’s lumber workers. Wobblies believed that the poor treatment and low wages in the industry would make lumberjacks and mill workers receptive to leftist ideas. However, the employers in mill towns and lumber camps fought these attempts vigorously by screening out Wobbly workers and sympathizers, using detectives, and directing vigilante groups. For the most part, the timber companies’ efforts to drive out the Wobblies in the early 1910s were successful, but World War I and the accompanying economic boom in the lumber industry strengthened the hand of unions.

Everett had been one of the few mill towns where labor radicalism remained strong in spite of the business community’s concerted efforts to drive it out. Wobblies in Everett, joined by members of the Seattle IWW, continued to deliver radical rhetoric and face vigilante beatings and arrests. After brutal beatings of forty Wobblies whom deputies had taken out of jail and turned over to a group of vigilantes, Seattle Wobbly leaders rallied 250 supporters to sail to Everett on November 5, 1916. Upon their arrival the agitators confronted a force of almost 200 newly-deputized citizens. After a heated confrontation involving gunfire, five agitators and one deputy were killed, over thirty men were wounded, and an unknown number of Wobbly sympathizers fell overboard to their deaths before the boat cast loose and returned to Seattle.

Although most of the Seattle community and its mayor condemned the Everett Massacre, the agitators who returned to Seattle were arrested and faced murder indictments. However, none of the agitators were convicted and the Massacre became a rallying symbol for the IWW and brought the organization sympathy from many outsiders.

1919 was one of the most eventful and promising years for the local IWW because of the Seattle General Strike. Sixty-five thousand of the city’s workers, from hotel maids to garbage collectors, announced they would not work until the federal government and local shipyard owners granted wage increases to workers in the city’s shipyards, which had boomed during the war. This walkout virtually shut down Seattle from February 4th to the February 9th. Although the more conservative American Federation of Labor was mainly responsible for the strike, the Seattle IWW nonetheless participated and saw the strike as an omen of more worker solidarity and radicalism to come.

Instead of fulfilling radical dreams, the decade following the Seattle General strike proved disastrous for the IWW With the war ended, the federal government shut down its shipyards, taking away much of the strength of Seattle’s economy, which in turn made it more difficult to organize labor.

The conservatism and anti-communism of the 1920s proved even more harmful to the IWW, as the events in Centralia in 1919 would show. On November 11th the American Legionnaires planned to destroy the local IWW office at the end of the Armistice Day parade. Alert to the Legionnaires’ plans, the Wobblies armed themselves to protect their headquarters. After a bloody gunfight, the Legionnaires took over the IWW meeting hall and pursued the fleeing Wobblies, castrating and lynching one of them. Unlike the public sympathy that followed the Everett massacre, the Wobblies received little public support after the Legionnaires’ raid in Centralia. No Legionnaire served prison time for the murder or the destruction of the meeting hall.

The repression of the IWW in the 1920s came not only from vigilantes. In 1920 the Washington State Supreme Court upheld the state’s criminal-syndicalism law, which made it illegal to advocate crime, sabotage, and violence as a means of accomplishing political or industrial reform. Criminal syndicalism laws made it much easier to prosecute Wobblies and forced them to conduct many of their activities underground. IWW members in Washington and many other states faced prosecution for various offenses and often lost their cases, despite the fact that the American Civil Liberties Union often lent them legal support. During the Red Scare of the 1920s, federal and local authorities were able to raid the Seattle IWW office with impunity, destroying many of their records and files.

The Great Depression of the 1930s brought an end to the Red Scare and improved the fortunes of the IWW somewhat, but the organization was not as strong as it had been earlier in the century. A major campaign that the IWW undertook in Washington was the organization of agricultural workers in the Yakima Valley. However, local farmers managed to counter agitators’ efforts through vigilante efforts and with the cooperation of the local prosecuting attorney. However, Seattle attorney Mark Litchman managed to defend the agitators successfully through bargaining. World War II, and especially the anti-communism of the postwar era, made it particularly difficult for the IWW to function effectively. The Seattle IWW office closed in 1965.

Scope and Content

Reference files of the Seattle Office. Primarily court papers and publicity materials.

Also includes some of the following: speeches and writings, reports, incoming correspondence (1924-35), minutes, financial records of the Butte, Montana office, legal publications (mainly printed appeal briefs in criminal syndicalism cases, plus four volumes of briefs and testimony from California vs. Richard Ford (1917-31), periodicals (IWW and other), leaflets, scrapbooks, and other materials (mostly clippings) relating to the Centralia Tragedy, Everett Massacre, the Seattle General Strike, Landwehl, et al. vs. Equity Printing Company et al. (1924-25), the Colorado Mine Strike (1924-28), and the Sacco-Vanzetti defense campaign. The accession spans 1905 to 1950, bulk 1916-1939. Most of the files consist of reference materials that the office gathered, rather than the office’s working files.

The accession contains court papers, appeal briefs, letters, pamphlets, clippings, and leaflets. Legal publications comprise a large portion of the records. Many of the these relate to prosecutions under criminal syndication laws and a large portion of these are from within the state. Many of the materials in the accession relate to IWW activities outside of Seattle. Also, many of the papers relate to the court battles that IWW members found themselves in, in Washington and elsewhere. A large portion of these relate to prosecutions under criminal syndicalism laws. Items from the national IWW and other local chapters include minutes and reports from IWW conventions, financial records from other locals, information related to IWW campaigns in other parts of the country, and a large collection of publications from the national organization. There are also items related to the major IWW events in Washington, including the Everett Massacre, the Seattle General Strike, the Centralia events, and the Yakima Valley legal battles.

Restrictions on Use

Creator's literary rights not transferred to the University of Washington Libraries.

Restrictions on Access

Open to all users.

Related Material

There are also IWW materials at the Washington State Historical Society, Everett Public Library, Everett Community College, and in the Labadie Collection at the University of Michigan.

Separated Material

More than a hundred photographs were transferred to the Industrial Workers of the World Photograph Collection 922, many of which are related to the Everett Massacre.

Acquisition Info

IWW Seattle Office, May 18, 1965.

Bibliography

Chaplin, Ralph The Centralia Conspiracy (Chicago: 1920, 1973).

Clark, Norman Mill Town: A Social History of Everett, Washington (Seattle : University of Washington Press, 1970).

Copeland, Tom The Centralia Tragedy of 1919: Elmer Smith and the Wobblies (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1993).

Daniel, Cletus E. “Wobblies on the Farm: the IWW in the Yakima Valley,” Pacific Northwest Quarterly 65 (1974): 166-175.

Dubofsky, Melvyn We Shall Be All: A History of the Industrial Workers of the World (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1969).

Friedheim, Robert L. The Seattle General Strike (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1964).

Kornbluh, Joyceed., Rebel Voices: an IWW Anthology (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1964).

Lampman, Ben Hur Centralia, Tragedy and Trial (Centralia: 1920).

Schwantes, Carlos Radical Heritage: Labor, Socialism, and Reform in Washington and British Columbia, 1885-1917 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1979).

Tyler, Robert L. Rebels of the Woods: the IWW in the Pacific Northwest (Eugene: University of Oregon Books, 1967).

Williams, William J. “Bloody Sunday Revisited,” Pacific Northwest Quarterly 71(1980): 50-62.

Inventory