DOJ Agents Raid I.W.W. Offices Around the Country – Complete Suppression of I.W.W. Begins
Justice Department agents on this day raided offices and meeting halls of the Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W.) (known popularly as the Wobblies) around the country, beginning what became the almost-complete destruction of the radical labor union.
The agents seized publications, mailing lists, correspondence, and minutes of meetings. They seized five tons of material from the Chicago office alone.
Similar raids on this day were conducted against the Socialist Party and other anti-war and allegedly radical groups.
Based largely on the I.W.W. material seized on this day, the Justice Department indicted 166 I.W.W. leaders, charging them with obstructing the draft and encouraging desertion from the armed forces under the terms of the Espionage Act. One hundred and one were tried in Chicago in a trial that began in Chicago on April 1, 1918. All convicted and given sentences for up to twenty years.
The head of the I.W.W., “Big Bill” Haywood had been released on bail while his conviction was on appeal, and he skipped bail and fled to the Soviet Union where he lived for the rest of his life. He died in May 1928. Half of his ashes were buried in the Kremlin Wall in Moscow and the other half were sent to Chicago and buried near the Haymarket Martyr’s Monument.
Repression of the I.W.W. occurred all across the country. On July 12, 1917 about 2,000 vigilantes and law enforcement officers forcibly expelled 1,185 I.W.W. workers and supporters from Bisbee, Arizona, putting them in railroad cattle cars and leaving them in New Mexico, 200 miles away.
The I.W.W. was crushed by the massive repression of the war years and never again regained its original strength. It still survives, however, and maintains an office in Chicago.
Read the history of the I.W.W.: Melvyn Dubofsky, We Shall Be All: A History of the Industrial Workers of the World (1973)
Visit the I.W.W. website today here
Read more: Archie Green, Wobblies, Pile Butts, and Other Heroes (1993)
Read a short history of the I.W. W. here
And read: Bill Haywood, The Autobiography of Big Bill Haywood (1929)