California (1927), the United States Supreme Court upheld the conviction of socialite and activist Charlotte Anita Whitney under the California Criminal Syndicalism Act.
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Several Supreme Court rulings later limited the applicability of criminal syndicalism laws in Idaho, and criminal syndicalism laws in Idaho became a dead issue.Sims, p. 527.
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The Supreme Court ruled in 1969 that Ohio's criminal syndicalism law used to prosecute Brandenburg was unconstitutional.
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Prosecutions under Criminal syndicalism laws ensued. The California Criminal Syndicalism Act of 1919 alone, only five years after its enactment, was responsible for over 500 arrests and 164 convictions. This act was upheld by the United States Supreme Court on May 16, 1927 in the Whitney v. California case.
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1, 3. Whitney was arrested on November 28, 1919 and was charged with "criminal syndicalism" in violation of the California Criminal Syndicalism Act. A pre-trial hearing was held in the case on January 6, 1920, less than a week after the US Department of Justice's mass crackdown on alien radicals known as the "Palmer Raids," and the case went to trial in Oakland on January 27, in the Alameda County Superior Court.Whitten, Criminal Syndicalism and the Law in California, pp. 43-44.
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Between the years 1918 and 1919 Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, and fourteen other states passed criminal syndicalism laws and between 1917 and 1923 thirteen states enacted sedition laws. Those states without Criminal Syndicalism laws or sedition laws during this period are noted to have had some similar already existing statutes against incitement and rebellion. The degree of the consequences range from state to state. Criminal Syndicalism laws called for maximum fines of $10,000 and a maximum 25-year prison sentence.
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State government legislation has been made to address criminal syndicalism according to their own definitions. States enacted criminal laws, the first of which was enacted in Idaho in 1917, or sedition law (operating basically in the same way as criminal syndicalism laws). During World War I and post-World War I, more than half the states passed these anti-radical statutes, most of which still remain in effect today. By 1935, there were a number of 33 states with remaining criminal syndicalism laws or sedition laws.
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"City Authorities Put Into Effect Oregon Criminal Syndicalism Law," Oregon Sunday Journal, vol. 16, no. 46 (Feb. 9, 1919), pp.
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Organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union believe laws on criminal syndicalism were aimed to punish doctrines or memberships in unions.
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Fresno and Riverside agricultural strikes took place in 1917, months preceding the California criminal syndicalism bill's first introduction.Whitten, p. 14. The first attempt of inducting the criminal syndicalism bill into the California law took place in 1917. The bill was a copy of the Idaho statute. Legislators found the term “sabotage” in the bill ambiguous and did not pass the bill.
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Idaho legislation defines it as, “the doctrine which advocates crime, sabotage, violence, or other unlawful methods of terrorism as a means of accomplishing industrial or political reform”. Key terms in criminal syndicalism statutes had vague definitions.White, p. 652. Criminal syndicalism became a matter of public attention during and after the World War I period, and has been used to stymie the efforts of radical labor movements.
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The power of law against criminal syndicalism began to falter by the 1930s as the courts began to overturn convictions as either being no true threat to the US or by declaring the laws to be too vague or broad. One such example was the court's overturning of the conviction of Dirk DeJonge due to protesting the police brutality in the longshoreman's strike, as violating Oregon's criminal syndicalism law.
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Vigilante activity spread beyond Salinas itself, moving to surrounding agricultural areas in a series of riots on September 10–11.Salinas Index- Journal, 10, 11 September 1934. The police forces had remained neutral until growers ordered them to act against the FLU members for violating the Criminal syndicalism laws that prohibited the advocating of any change to economic or political systems.Woodrow C. Whitten, Criminal Syndicalism and the Law in California (Philadelphia, 1969).
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The defense by the IWW's General Defense Committee in the case of Fiske v. Kansas resulted in a critically important 1924 Supreme Court ruling which led to the decline of criminal syndicalism laws as a factor in legislative anti-union initiatives. In 1924, Kansas' state criminal syndicalism law was challenged by a Supreme Court ruling in the case of Fiske v. Kansas, which would become critically important in the future of legal battles over freedom of speech, and which was an early case supported by the American Civil Liberties Union.
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White, p. 658. The Idaho criminal syndicalism bill served as a prototype for many other similar bills passed in various state legislatures in the following four years.Goldstein, Robert Justin. Political Repression in Modern America from 1870 to 1976.
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Strikes and IWW activities in key wartime industries increased. The California public invoked a patriotic sentiment and saw IWW as an enemy.Whitten, p. 15. In January 1919, Senator William Kehoe made the second introduction of the criminal syndicalism bill in California.
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Whitney was charged with five counts of having violated the state's Criminal Syndicalism law by her membership in the Communist Labor Party. Since Whitney freely admitted her status as a charter member of the CLP, the burden of the prosecution was in attempting to demonstrate the association of the organization with the syndicalist Industrial Workers of the World and the Communist International, based in Moscow, organizations held to be illegal under California law. Once having established the criminal nature of the CLP, prosecutors argued that they would then establish the guilt of the defendant.Whitten, Criminal Syndicalism and the Law in California, pg. 44.
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During the 1960's, a leader of the Klu Klux Klan named Clarence Brandenburg gave a speech at a Klan rally. He was later prosecuted under Ohio's criminal syndicalism law and was found guilty. The State relied on film from the rally which showed abhorrent messages denigrating black people and Jews as well as several articles including firearms and ammunition to make their case against Brandenburg. Brandenburg's prosecution and conviction demonstrated willingness by the state of Ohio to use the criminal syndicalism law to target any movement they perceived as radical or violent and not just socialist movements.
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In Whitney v. California (1927) Warren prosecuted a woman under the California Criminal Syndicalism Act for attending a communist meeting in Oakland.David Skover and Ronald Collins, A Curious Concurrence: Justice Brandeis' Vote in Whitney v. California, 2005 Supreme Court Review 333 (2005).
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Waldron joined the Workers (Communist) Party in 1926.Joseph R. Starobin, American Communism in Crisis, 1943-1957. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972; p. 13. In 1929, Waldron fled to the Soviet Union to avoid criminal charges for his political activities under the California Criminal Syndicalism Act.
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Liberties then > swept away have never been recovered. The Post Office refuses the mails to > printed matter expressing unpopular views. Criminal syndicalism and criminal > anarchy statutes have outlawed meetings of members of minority > organizations. > Thus the rights of free speech, free press and free assemblage disappear.
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Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969), where the Court replaced the "bad tendency" test with "imminent lawless action" test. Since the Ohio Criminal Syndicalism law criminalized speech that did not incite imminent lawless action, the Ohio law violated the Freedom of Speech clause of the First Amendment.
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Eight were subsequently convicted of "criminal syndicalism." ;1931 (United States) :U.S. Congress passes the Davis–Bacon Act. ;1931 (United States) :Scottsboro Boys arrested in Alabama. ;4 May 1931 (United States) :Harlan County Miners' Strike began in Harlan County, Kentucky when gun-toting vigilantes attacked striking miners.
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Kubli's bill moved speedily through the legislative process and was signed into law on February 3, 1919, with an emergency provision attached putting the law into immediate effect."City Authorities Put Into Effect Oregon Criminal Syndicalism Law," Oregon Sunday Journal, vol. 16, no. 46 (February 9, 1919), pp.
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After relocating to San Francisco with Karl sometime in the early 1930s, Yoneda continued her activities in the civil rights, labor, and union movements, and also joined the Communist Party and worked for the ILD as a district secretary. Yoneda's work with the ILD included supporting striking agricultural workers and visiting prisoners such as Tom Mooney and others who had been arrested under the Criminal Syndicalism laws. Yoneda herself was arrested in Dolores Park, San Francisco, for participating in a rally against the Criminal Syndicalism laws in March 1935. Yoneda became known as the “Red Angel” for her work in defending union members and labor demonstrators in the San Francisco waterfront and General Strike of 1934.
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On January 14, 1919, a criminal syndicalism statute authored by conservative legislator Kaspar K. Kubli was introduced as House Bill 1 at the opening of the 1919 session of the legislature."Measure Insures State Positions for War Heroes," Oregon Journal [Portland] vol. 17, no. 208 (January 14, 1919), pg. 4.
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On February 19, 1917, the criminal syndicalism bill was introduced into the Idaho state legislature.Sims, p. 512. Businesses which stood to lose the most at the hands of the IWW, including lumber and mining interests, lobbied for the statute's enactment. In March 1917, the Idaho state government enacted the statute.
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No verdict was rendered on the case for over two full years, when the decision of the trial court was affirmed.Whitten, Criminal Syndicalism and the Law in California, pg. 49. On June 5, 1922, a petition for a rehearing of the evidence in the case was made before the California Supreme Court.
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1, 6. Authorities made immediate use of the new law, arresting the State Secretary of the Socialist Party of Oregon and five others for selling copies of The Western Socialist on the streets of Portland and for "distributing handbills without a license" less than one week after the criminal syndicalism law took effect.
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Cantor, "Labor Defender ... Equal Justice," pg. 255. The ILD also worked to defend against various government attempts to pass criminal syndicalism legislation in the 1930s, which suppressed workers' right to organize and to strike. The economic crisis of the Great Depression and high unemployment increased pressure on workers to accept whatever management would give.
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During the 1910s, the public was hostile towards leftist ideologies and deemed social radicalism un-American. Government officials on the state and federal level ordered arrests, imprisonments and killings of people who challenged industrial capitalism or made militant demands under the pre-existing economic structure.White, p. 650. By the year 1933, over 700 convictions of criminal syndicalism were made.
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Urbana: University of Illinois Press (2001): 128. Initially, the rhetoric behind criminal syndicalism laws appealed strictly to business interests. After the United States entered the World War I, then Governor of Idaho Moses Alexander instilled nationalist rhetoric into the public discourse of the law while referring to the IWW's opposition against United States’ participation in the war.Sims, p. 514.
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1st edition. University of California, 1955. Pg. 181 Concerned with dwindling numbers in California the IWW’s general executive board in Chicago requested all remaining Wobblies on the West Coast to head down to San Pedro to help contest the open shop on the docks and the constitutional limits of California’s criminal syndicalism law.Perry, Louis B., and Richard S. Perry.
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Whitten, Criminal Syndicalism and the Law in California, pp. 51-52. The appeals process was still not at an end, however. In December 1925, Whitney's legal team succeeded in overcoming the jurisdictional technicalities that had sabotaged its previous effort, and it won a petition for a rehearing before the Supreme Court. The case was argued again on March 15, 1926.
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Efforts to keep Wobblies from dock employment were not successful. Although there were large amounts of IWW members under the new California criminal syndicalism law, there was still high levels of unrest on the San Pedro docks. There was a series of mini strikes in the early months of 1923 that kept several ships from sailing on time.Stimson, Grace Heilman.
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Brandenburg was charged with advocating violence under Ohio's criminal syndicalism statute for his participation in the rally and for the speech he made. In relevant part, the statute – enacted in 1919 during the First Red Scare – proscribed "advocat[ing]...the duty, necessity, or propriety of crime, sabotage, violence, or unlawful methods of terrorism as a means of accomplishing industrial or political reform" and "voluntarily assembl[ing] with any society, group or assemblage of persons formed to teach or advocate the doctrines of criminal syndicalism." Convicted in the Court of Common Pleas of Hamilton County, Brandenburg was fined $1,000 and sentenced to one to ten years in prison. On appeal, the Ohio First District Court of Appeal affirmed Brandenburg's conviction, rejecting his claim that the statute violated his First Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment right to freedom of speech.
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Charlotte Anita Whitney, a member of a distinguished California family, was convicted under the 1919 California Criminal Syndicalism Act for allegedly helping to establish the Communist Labor Party of America, a group charged by the state with teaching the violent overthrow of government. Whitney denied that it had been the intention of her or other organizers for the party to become an instrument of violence.
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Whitten, Criminal Syndicalism and the Law in California, pg. 51. Some 14 months later, on May 16, 1927, Whitney's conviction was unanimously upheld by the Supreme Court in Whitney v. California, 274 U.S. 357 (1927). The ruling featured a landmark concurring opinion by Justice Louis Brandeis that only a "clear and present danger" would be sufficient for the legislative restriction of the right of free speech.
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Some argued that criminal syndicalism laws violated the United States Constitution. In Whitney v. California, 274 U.S. 357 (1927), the Supreme Court held that California's law suppressing speech advocating criminal acts against the state did not violate the right to freedom of speech as enumerated in the First Amendment, since it encouraged a bad tendency in listeners. However, that holding Whitney was overturned in Brandenburg v.
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Kaspar K. "Kap" Kubli, Jr. (April 21, 1869 – December 22, 1943) was an American politician in the state of Oregon. Closely associated with the Ku Klux Klan, Kubli, A member of the Republican party, was elected Speaker of the Oregon House of Representatives in 1923. Among Kubli's legislative achievements during five terms of office was authorship and passage of the Oregon Criminal Syndicalism Act in 1919.
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Kubli was very effective in gaining passage of the legislation he authored. After his first three sessions as a legislator in Salem, he had introduced a total of 28 measures, including a landmark criminal syndicalism bill, winning passage of 20 of these and seeing substitutes passed for 4 others.Oregon Voter: Magazine of Citizenship for Busy Men and Women, vol. 29, no. 7 (May 13, 1922), pg. 26.
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In 1919–20, several states enacted "criminal syndicalism" laws outlawing advocacy of violence in effecting and securing social change. The restrictions included free speech limitations. Passage of these laws, in turn, provoked aggressive police investigation of the accused persons, their jailing, and deportation for being suspected of being either communist or left-wing. Regardless of ideological gradation, the Red Scare did not distinguish between communism, anarchism, socialism, or social democracy.
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Whitten, Criminal Syndicalism and the Law in California, pg. 50. On October 19, the appeal was summarily dismissed, on technical grounds. An effort was then made to obtain a pardon from California Governor Friend Richardson, and an "Anita Whitney Committee" was established to push Governor Richardson in that direction. This effort was met with the refusal of the governor to offer executive clemency to the convicted communist activist.
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After learning of the different radical movements that existed, and through many aspects of the United States government which he did not agree with, such as censorship, poor working conditions, war propaganda, and lynchings, Steelink decided to become a member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and served as a typist for the union. As a member of the IWW, he wrote a weekly column for the Industrial Worker, a paper belonging to the IWW, under the pseudonym of Ennaes Ellae. At the end of World War I, many states passed laws in order to contain the growing radicalism among workers, which led to California passing the Criminal Syndicalism Act in 1919, in an effort to make sure that trade unions did not take over manufacturing plants. Once the law was passed, Steelink, due to his major involvement with the IWW, and 151 other members of the Industrial Workers of the World, were tried on charges of criminal syndicalism, convicted and sentenced to prison.
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1, No. 4, August, 1923. Upton Sinclair, for example, was involved with the free speech fight that grew out of a strike in San Pedro in 1923, and the August, 1923 issue of the Industrial Pioneer covers these events. Due to Sinclair’s advocacy for free speech, the editor of the Industrial Pioneer wrote to Sinclair, and Sinclair wrote an article on "Civil Liberties in Los Angeles," which criticized arrests for "criminal syndicalism."Zanger, Martin.
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Citing reasons of expense, Judge James G. Quinn swore in an alternate juror and demanded for Whitney's assistant counsel, J.E. Pemberton, to proceed with the case. A parade of 20 prosecution witnesses were presented on the stand, reading into the record hundreds of pages of IWW songs and literature, Comintern manifestos, and giving testimony about red flags in evidence at CLP headquarters.Whitten, Criminal Syndicalism and the Law in California, pg. 46. The defense called only single witness, Whitney herself.
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From 1931 to 1935, Darcy headed the CPUSA's California district (including Nevada and Arizona), then the Party's second largest district. He helped organize agricultural workers and helped fight California's criminal syndicalism law. Darcy became involved with strategies to organize San Francisco longshoreman. In the early 1930s the Communist Party had pursued the strategy of infiltrating existing unions to elect rank and file workers to take control from what the CPUSA thought of as corrupt and conservative union officials.
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In May 1928 the union sent out letters to all the growers asking for wage increases. They also requested an improvement in working conditions: ice for drinking water, picking sacks, lumber to build out-houses and legal compensation to injured workers. The strike leaders were arrested and sent to prison for violations of the state Criminal Syndicalism Law. The growers responded by employing vigilante strikebreakers, the Associated Farmers, which used threats and terror against the workers to prevent them from unionizing.
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Whitney's defense attorney, Thomas H. O'Connor, was unable to obtain a continuance in the case on the grounds that his daughter had fallen ill with influenza in the ongoing 1918 flu pandemic. O'Connor was himself stricken on the second day of the trial and was unable to continue the trial after the third. He would die of the illness a little over a week later, as did a woman on the original jury.Whitten, Criminal Syndicalism and the Law in California, pp. 44-45.
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The per curiam majority opinion overturned the Ohio Criminal Syndicalism statute, overruled Whitney v. California, and articulated a new test – the "imminent lawless action" test – for judging what was then referred to as "seditious speech" under the First Amendment: In Schenck v. United States the Court had adopted a "clear and present danger" test that Whitney v. California subsequently expanded to a "bad tendency" test: if speech has a "tendency" to cause sedition or lawlessness, it may constitutionally be prohibited.
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The appellees argued that a tax exemption is a privilege and so its denial did not infringe on free speech. The lower California courts did not agree and recognize that conditions imposed on privileges provided by the state had to be reasonable. However, the Supreme Court of California construed the constitutional amendment to deny the tax exemption only to claimants who may be criminally punished under the California Criminal Syndicalism Act (California Statute 1919, c. 188) or the Federal Smith Act (18 U.S.C. 2385).
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Nicolaas Steelink (October 5, 1890 - April 21, 1989) was a Dutch American labor activist who was a member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), an international industrial union, and an important figure in the creation of the California Soccer League, which resulted in his induction into the United States Soccer Hall of Fame. During his time as a member of the IWW, due to his involvement with the union and radical ideals, he was convicted of criminal syndicalism and sentenced to prison in 1920.
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In addition to the federal laws and responding to the worries of the local opinion, several states enacted anti-communist statutes. By 1952, several states had enacted statutes against criminal anarchy, criminal syndicalism, and sedition; banned from public employment or even from receiving public aid, communists and "subversives"; asked for loyalty oaths from public servants, and severely restricted or even banned the Communist Party. In addition, six states had equivalents to the HUAC. The California Senate Factfinding Subcommittee on Un-American Activities and the Florida Legislative Investigation Committee were established by their respective legislatures.
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Winitsky was a participant in the party's trade union mass organization, the Trade Union Educational League, headed by William Z. Foster. Winitsky was a delegate to the ill-fated August 1922 convention of the underground CPA in Bridgman, Michigan — a gathering raided by state and federal law enforcement authorities. For attending this gathering Winitsky was indicted under Michigan's "Criminal Syndicalism" statutes, although he was never brought to trial on this charge. Winitsky worked as a manager of the Communist Party's Yiddish-language daily, Morgen Freiheit from 1922 to 1923.
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In an unrelated threat, labor radicals also threatened to destroy both the California State Capitol and the Governor's Mansion if a $50,000 ransom was not met. Stephens responded to threats from labor radicals, and to subversion worries during World War I, with the California Criminal Syndicalism Act, targeting radical labor unionists and their advocacy of violent confrontation with state authorities. Despite numerous threats on his life and state property, Stephens refused to pardon Thomas Mooney for the remainder of his administration. Mooney was eventually pardoned by labor-sympathetic Democratic governor Culbert Olson in 1939.
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It also recalled one individual that had been forced to the stand by the prosecution, San Francisco communist leader Max Bedacht. The defense attempted to show, through its testimony, that the Communist Labor Party was opposed to the use of terrorism, violence, or force to institute changes to the American system of government. Closing arguments were made on February 20, 1920, with the defense making the argument that the prosecution had failed to prove Whitney guilty of having committed a single illegal act.Whitten, Criminal Syndicalism and the Law in California, pg. 47.
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Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969), was a landmark decision of the US Supreme Court interpreting the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.. The Court held that the government cannot punish inflammatory speech unless that speech is "directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action."Criminal Law - Cases and Materials, 7th ed. 2012, Wolters Kluwer Law & Business; John Kaplan (law professor), Robert Weisberg, Guyora Binder, , Specifically, the Court struck down Ohio's criminal syndicalism statute, because that statute broadly prohibited the mere advocacy of violence.
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Hall was also charged with criminal syndicalism. Strikers held as Kidnappers, The Milwaukee Journal, July 7, 1938 Iowa Judge Homer Fuller was brought in for the trial of these and other union leaders, including UE President James B. Carey, who had been arrested for violating Judge Bechly's injunctions. Three CIO men will face court, The Spartanburg Journal, July 8, 1938 Judge Fuller offered to dismiss charges if the union leaders would agree to end the strike. With no agreement, the union leaders were convicted and sentenced on July 13.
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He also supported exclusion of women from juries and efforts to restore the full power of the judicial injunction against strikes. He was hailed in 1922 by the conservative magazine Oregon Voter as an "exceptionally vigorous debater and floor leader" who was "fearless and uncompromising" in his voting behavior. He was considered a "red blooded protagonist" of conservative Republican politics. Kubli was the author of Oregon's criminal syndicalism statute, introducing the bill House Bill 1 on January 14 at the opening of the 1919 session of the legislature.
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One of the Act's best-known convictions was of Charlotte Anita Whitney in 1920, which led to the Act being upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States in Whitney v. California (1927). In April 1930, meetings of the Agricultural Workers' Industrial League (AWIL) across Imperial Valley but centered around El Centro were raided by the Imperial County Sheriff. Of the hundreds arrested, 16 were charged by the Imperial County Grand Jury with violations of the Criminal Syndicalism Act, and 8 were convicted on and received sentences ranging from deportation to 42 years in prison.
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The prosecution, on the other hand, argued at length that the Communist Labor Party was nothing more than "a political adjunct of the IWW" and called upon the jury "to uphold the sacred tenets of Americanism and to place, with its verdict, the seal of disapproval on the activities of the Communist Labor Party and its blood brother, the IWW." The jury deliberated six hours before finding Whitney guilty of the first count: having organized and joined an organization formed for the purpose of advocating criminal syndicalism. It disagreed on the other four counts. A motion for bail was denied.
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Charlotte Anita Whitney (July 7, 1867 – February 4, 1955), best known as "Anita Whitney," was an American women's rights activist, political activist, suffragist, and early Communist Labor Party of America and Communist Party USA organizer in California. She is best remembered as the defendant in a landmark 1920 California criminal syndicalism trial, Whitney v. California, which featured a landmark U.S. Supreme Court concurring opinion by Justice Louis Brandeis that only a "clear and present danger" would be sufficient for the legislative restriction of the right of free speech. This standard would ultimately be employed against the Communists again during the Second Red Scare of the 1950s.
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On February 24, 1920, the other four counts, which caused a deadlock in the jury, were dismissed. Whitney was given an indeterminate sentence of from 1 to 14 years in prison at San Quentin Penitentiary. The appeals process was begun. After 11 days imprisonment, Whitney was permitted to post $10,000 bail pending appeal only after three physicians gave testimony that continued incarceration would present a danger to her health.Whitten, Criminal Syndicalism and the Law in California, pg. 48. The first appeal was filed on February 28 in the District Court of Appeal in the First Appellate District, San Francisco, citing 16 grounds for appeal and points of error.
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Headed by Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., the survey commission investigated lands across the state suitable for state protection and developed plans for their future financing. A year later in a voter initiative supported by Young, state voters approved the creation of California State Park system. In late June 1927, Young personally intervened for Charlotte Anita Whitney, a member of the Communist Party of the United States, who had been convicted under the 1919 Criminal Syndicalism Act passed under Governor William Stephens. In 1919, Whitney had been arrested in Oakland after defying civic authorities in making a speech in behalf of John McHugh, a member of the Industrial Workers of the World.
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WCF-backed politicians constituted fully one third of the seats in the 1937 Washington House, a voting bloc that enabled the passage of a bevy of bills addressing longtime progressive concerns, including repeal of the state's California Criminal Syndicalism Act, passage of a pure food and drug act, establishment of a minimum wage for state employees, establishment of a graduated income tax, and other measures. The Communist Party showed a pattern of impressive growth in Washington state during these last years of the 1930s. From a membership of 1,137 in 1936, total CPUSA membership in the state grew to 5,016 by the end of 1938 and continued to increase in the first months of 1939.
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A Kansas statute defined "criminal syndicalism" as "the doctrine which advocates crime, physical violence, arson, destruction of property, sabotage, or other unlawful acts or methods, as a means of accomplishing or effecting industrial or political ends, or as a means of effecting industrial or political revolution, or for profit . . ." The law was applied by a state court and was charged if the accused in some fashion held these views and formed a group of followers with a similar intent. Fiske was tried and convicted of violating this act, and the judgement was upheld in the Supreme Court of Kansas. He then appealed to the Federal Supreme Court where his case was heard.
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In total, 2,000 Wobblies (IWW members) were arrested between 1917 and 1918 for "anarchism" or "anti-war efforts". Weeks after the trial of the 46 IWW members, the California Criminal Syndicalism Act was signed into law, making it a felony, punishable by 1 to 14 years in prison, to advocate "violence or sabotage" as a means of bringing about "a change in industrial ownership or control, or affecting any political change." The statute was used to broadly intimidate political opponents from speaking out and was ruled unconstitutional almost 50 years later. This harsh crackdown on labor and the months long anti-union campaigning by the Chamber of Commerce and Downtown Association led many progressives to voice their suspicion.
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In 1971 its office was attacked by an organization calling itself the Minutemen, and IWW member Ricardo Gonzalves was indicted for criminal syndicalism along with two members of the Brown Berets. These ties to anti-authoritarian and radical artistic and literary currents would link the IWW even more heavily to the 60s counterculture, exemplified by the publication in Chicago in the 1960s of Rebel Worker by the surrealists Franklin and Penelope Rosemont. One edition was published in London with Charles Radcliffe, who went on to become involved with the Situationist International. By the 1980s, the Rebel Worker was being published as an official organ again, from the IWW's headquarters in Chicago, and the New York area was publishing a newsletter as well.
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The new organization was to be known as International Labor Defense (ILD) and Cannon was appointed as its chief organizer. Cannon was sent on the road to build support for the fledgling ILD, making use of his extensive network of personal contacts with present and former members of the IWW (so-called "Wobblies"). Cannon and Haywood in Moscow had drawn up an initial list of 106 "class war prisoners" needing legal and financial support, mostly convicted Wobblies jailed under various state criminal syndicalism charges. the next month, the list had 128 names, including such high-profile cases as those of anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, purported Preparedness Day bombers Tom Mooney and Warren Billings, and John B. McNamara, who had confessed to the Los Angeles Times Bombing.
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The convention, called by the CPA as its annual gathering for the election of officers and making of internal decisions, was attended by a delegate who was secretly an employee of the Bureau of Investigation, who informed his superiors of the date and general location of the gathering. The convention was raided by local and federal law enforcement authorities on August 22, 1922, and a number of participants and a large quantity of documents seized in an operation which garnered national headlines. Two 1923 test trials of the Michigan criminal syndicalism law resulted from the arrests, with trade union leader William Z. Foster freed by a "hung jury," while Communist Party leader C. E. Ruthenberg was convicted. Ruthenberg ultimately died of peritonitis in 1927, just after his appeals were exhausted and just before sentence was enforced.
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On two occasions, local vigilante committees seized prisoners as they were released, took them miles into the country, and beat them; once, the vigilantes tarred and feathered their victims and put linoleum cement in their shoes before freeing them. The prisoners were charged with criminal syndicalism, later changed to vagrancy. At the trial on December 17, 1933, twelve men eventually pleaded guilty to vagrancy and agreed not to take civil action against the county, while non- resident Wobblies promised to leave the county for at least one year; in return, Yakima authorities dropped all other charges. The Yakima repression "utterly smashed" the strike and agricultural unionism in the Valley, but the wooden stockade remained on the county courthouse grounds until 1943 as a "silent reminder to future malcontents that the spirit of 1933 remained alive in the region".
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Communist Labor Party against state criminal syndicalism charges, 1920 U'Ren associated himself with many initiative efforts, including banning free railroad passes, establishing popular election of U.S. Senators, and creating the first presidential primary in the United States. Two of the more significant early initiatives he sponsored were a 1906 constitutional amendment extending initiative and referendum powers to local jurisdictions, and a 1908 amendment that gave voters power to recall elected officials. In 1912, he proposed an amendment to the Oregon Constitution to essentially weigh each legislator's vote on proposed bills according to the number of votes he received in the last election; this measure failed by a large margin. In 1908 U'Ren led the successful effort to amendArticle II Section 16 of Oregon Constitution the Oregon state constitution to accommodate proportional representation that would provide voters with first, second and third choices on the ballot.
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1, 6. Initially intended as a legal cudgel to be used against the syndicalist Industrial Workers of the World, the new law made it a felony to advocate in word or writing any doctrine involving "crime, sabotage, violence or any other unlawful methods of terrorism as a means of accomplishing industrial or political reform." Anyone editing, printing, or circulating a newspaper or pamphlet advocating such doctrines or assisting in formation of an organization or society in support of such activities was to be subject to the law, which called for penalties of up to 10 years in prison and potential fines of up to $5,000. Authorities made immediate use of the new law, arresting Harlin Talbert, State Secretary of the Socialist Party of Oregon, and five others for selling copies of The Western Socialist on the streets of Portland and for "distributing handbills without a license" less than one week after the criminal syndicalism law took effect.
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Katterfeld was one of five people elected to the governing Central Executive Committee of the CLPBranko Lazitch and Milorad M. Drachkovitch, Biographical Dictionary of the Comintern: , pg. 212. and served as Organization Director from 1919. Katterfeld remained one of the top leaders of the CLP and its organizational successors, the United Communist Party of America and the unified Communist Party of America (CPA) into the middle 1920s. Katterfeld was a defendant in the July 1920 trial of the Communist Labor Party, at which Clarence Darrow served as chief attorney. Katterfeld was found guilty of violating the state's criminal syndicalism law and sentenced to 1 to 5 years in the state penitentiary and fined $2,000. Freed pending appeal, Katterfeld did not immediately serve time on this sentence, instead serving as Executive Secretary of the unified Communist Party of America, using the pseudonym "John Carr," from July 27 through October 15, 1921, and which time the Central Executive Committee of the CPA dispatched him to Moscow as the representative of the CPA to the Executive Committee of the Communist International. Katterfeld occupied this position from November 1921 through March 1922. He was elected by the 1st Expanded Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International to the Presidium of ECCI on March 2, 1922.
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During the period of repression of leading Communists in New York conducted by the Lusk Committee, Wolfe fled to California. In 1920 he became a member of the San Francisco Cooks' Union. He also edited a left wing trade union paper called Labor Unity from 1920 to 1922. Wolfe was a delegate to the ill-fated August 1922 convention of the underground CPA held in Bridgman, Michigan, for which he was indicted under Michigan's "criminal syndicalism" law. In 1923, Wolfe departed for Mexico, where he became active in the trade union movement there. He became a member of the Executive Committee of the Communist Party of Mexico and was a delegate of that organization to the 5th World Congress of the Communist International, held in Moscow in 1924. Wolfe was also a leading member the Red International of Labor Unions (Profintern) from 1924 to 1928, sitting on that body's Executive Committee. Wolfe was ultimately deported from Mexico to the United States in July 1925 for activities related to a strike of Mexican railway workers. Upon his return to America, Wolfe took over as head of the Party's New York Workers School, located at 26 Union Square and offering 70 courses in the social sciences to some 1500 students.
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