As to the first charge, it can only be remarked that suppression of what authorities think is subversive and seditious almost invariable has the same effect as would an effort to smother an active volcano. The ideas get expressed anyhow—and more bitterly, with the added circumstance that those who try to do the smothering are burnt. Of course, it is not easy to determine at just what point language becomes directly provocative to violence. This limit of possible official tolerance is far less often reached than would be indicated by the actual conduct of local officials in these circumstances. "It cannot be considered as provocative of immediate disorder," says Police Commissioner Arthur Woods, of New York, "if speakers criticize, no matter how vehemently, the existing order of things, or if they recommend, no matter how enthusiastically, a change which they believe would improve things."[513] When George Creel was police commissioner in Denver he took a similar position and worked on the theory that all ideas could be safely given a hearing. He is reported to have given the following answer to an I. W. W. committee which applied to him for a "soap-box permit": "Go ahead, boys; speak as much as you like; only there's just one favor I'm going to ask. I wish you wouldn't spout directly under the army headquarters. They're not important, but they're childish, and they'll make me lots of bother if you do."[514] The result: nothing more happened than happens when the mine operators say that the leaders of the United Mine Workers ought to be taken out and shot. There was free speech but no fight.
After the experience of Spokane, Fresno, and San Diego some members of the organization at least recognized that no matter how absolute their right to pitch into established institutions from every angle, the sober necessities of a successful propaganda for revolutionary industrial unionism demanded more concentration upon that subject. In September, 1913, Ewald Koetgen, a member of the General Executive Board, made this suggestion to the delegates at the eighth convention:
If you confine yourself strictly to the propaganda of industrial unionism, and then they prohibit you from using the street corner, you have a much stronger case. Many ... attack everybody, the police, the city officials, religion, politics, and everything else. They speak about everything under the sun and these pretexts are used in order to keep them off the street, whereas, in a good many cities, the organizer could go and speak on industrial unionism, and be left there a whole lot longer....[515]
In the fall of 1909 there were no less than three important free-speech campaigns conducted by the I. W. W. These were staged at Missoula, Montana; Spokane, Washington; and New Castle, Pennsylvania. In 1910 small "fights" were conducted in the spring and summer in Wenatchee and Walla Walla, Washington, and during the fall a much more important one at Fresno, California. This latter struggle continued until March, 1911. From this time until the end of the year 1913 hardly a mouth elapsed that did not witness a more or less important free-speech controversy between the Wobblies and the municipal authorities in some part of the United States. In the five-year period, 1909-1913, there were at least twenty free-speech campaigns of importance, continuing under definite I. W. W. direction for periods ranging from a few days to more than six months. The most important of these disturbances was that at San Diego, which broke out about February 1, 1912, and continued until late the following summer. Since 1913 free speech has been a less important issue with the I. W. W., and there have been comparatively few such disturbances.
Paterson, New Jersey, Aberdeen, South Dakota, Old Forge, Pennsylvania, and Everett, Washington, are almost the only cases of any great importance. The most serious of these was the Everett free-speech controversy which culminated in the fatal tragedy of November 6, 1916.
The attitude of the residents of the cities where free-speech fights have been staged was naturally bitterly hostile. This was most strikingly noticeable in business and commercial circles and was of course reflected in the daily press. In San Diego during the free-speech fight the local papers, almost without exception, kept up a running fire of editorial abuse of the I. W. W.s. "Hanging is none too good for them," said the Tribune; "they would be much better dead, for they are absolutely useless in the human economy; they are the waste material of creation and should be drained off into the sewer of oblivion there to rot in cold obstruction like any other excrement."[516] In the face of such a tirade it is interesting to read the report of the Special Commissioner sent by Governor Hiram Johnson to investigate the disturbances in San Diego. Commissioner Weinstock took pains to follow up the stories of the brutality and cruelty of the self-constituted citizens' committee of Vigilantes not only to the I. W. W.s but also to any who were outspoken enough to defend them or who were alleged to have aided and abetted them. Mr. Weinstock says that he "is frank to confess that when he became satisfied of the truth of the stories ... it was hard for him to believe that he was not sojourning in Russia, conducting his investigation there instead of in this alleged 'land of the free and home of the brave.'"[517]
The organization made no attempt to hold a convention in 1909, but in May, 1910, the fifth convention met in Chicago. On the first day there were twenty-two delegates present, representing forty-two local unions in the following states: California, Colorado, Montana, Rhode Island, Minnesota, Ohio, Illinois, Oregon, Washington, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Indiana, and in British Columbia. Judging from the very fragmentary records available there was little business of any importance transacted at this meeting. The delegates adopted a resolution to "reaffirm the original [Industrial Union] Manifesto of 1905,..."[518] and dispersed.
In September, 1911, fifteen months later, a somewhat more successful convention was held. This sixth annual meeting of the I. W. W. was in point of size almost as insignificant as the preceding one, thirty-one delegates from eleven states being present. In addition to the regular delegates there were present three "fraternal delegates" from the Brotherhood of Timber Workers. Twenty-one locals were represented in addition to the locals included in the Textile Workers National Industrial Union of the I. W. W.—the only "national industrial union at that time included in the organization."[519] The convention was harmonious, and there is, therefore, the less to chronicle. "Most of the delegates were young men full of the fire and enthusiasm of youth. 'Intellectuals' were conspicuous by their absence."[520] We are told that very few changes were made in the organic law of the organization. Proposals were made, however, by the score. In the appendix to the Minutes is a list containing seventy resolutions which were presented on the floor of the convention.[521] The question of politics was scarcely touched upon. An anti-parliamentary resolution was voted down without discussion. The bulk of the delegates were undoubtedly non-parliamentarians, that is to say, indifferent about politics and legislative action. An official report of the convention in the Industrial Worker says that the report of General Organizer Trautmann, which it declared would be published later in Solidarity,