The San Diego free speech fight in San Diego, California, in 1912 was one of the most famous class conflicts over the free speech rights of labor unions. Starting out as one of several direct actions known as free speech fights carried out across North America by the Industrial Workers of the World, the catalyst of the San Diego free speech fight was the passing of Ordinance No. 4623 that banned all kinds of speech in an area that included "soapbox row" downtown. Clashes with the police in the area led to riots, multiple deaths including the deaths of police officers, vigilantism, and the retaliatory kidnapping and torture of notable socialists, including Emma Goldman's manager Ben Reitman. As a direct result of the aftermath of this fight, the neighborhood of Stingaree was razed to the ground and San Diego's Chinatown was obliterated.
Background
By the beginning of the 20th century, growing confrontations between the working class and their employers caused suspicion and animosity both within, and against the workers. Striking workers had taken militant action which culminated in the Haymarket riot in Chicago; the Great Southwest Railroad Strike of 1886 was crushed, destroying the Knights of Labor, coincident with the birth of the conservative American Federation of Labor. In the Western United States, the Western Federation of Miners (WFM) inherited the mantle of militant unionism, challenging capital in strikes from Cripple Creek to Canada. Many communities sought to limit the spread of union philosophy by revoking rights granted by the United States Constitution, particularly the freedom of speech granted by the First Amendment.
Industrial Workers of the World
In 1905, the WFM and other unions, together with socialist, and anarchist groups met in Chicago to form the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) in what came to be called the "First Continental Congress of the working class." The immediate purpose of the IWW was to unite all working people into one worldwide union, regardless of race, creed, sex, skill, or national origin. The ultimate goal was abolition of the wage system, replacing wage labour with worker cooperatives.
The Wobblies, as IWW members were called, frequently engaged in creative tactics, including soapboxing and free speech fights . The IWW orators spoke to workers about bosses, corruption, exploitation, and the unfairness of capitalism. Championing such a direct challenge to capital, members of the IWW faced persecution and prejudice in North America and throughout the world. In many American cities, IWW members found their right to public speech interfered with by local ordinances, police harassment and vigilante violence.
In 1910, the IWW attempted to organize Mexican workers of the San Diego Consolidated Gas and Electric Company. A successful strike led to the formation of a public service union, which was disbanded when many of the Mexican workers left to participate in the Mexican Revolution.
Germania Hall incident On November 10, 1910, Local 13 of the IWW held a meeting to celebrate the martyrs of the Chicago Haymarket riot. The police closed down the Wobbly meeting place, Germania Hall, before the event could take place. In response, the IWW took their grievances to the streets and began their soapbox free speech campaign. Afterwards, Wobblies who spoke "on the soapbox" were jailed, "fingerprinted, photographed in jail and then released."G. Miller pp.215-16.
In response to the Germania Hall incident, the IWW shifted their efforts to a form of soapbox oratory in order to win over a diverse spectrum of the working class, focusing on gaining converts through their speeches. The fifty members of the IWW refocused their efforts to Heller's Corner at the corner of 5th and E Streets, in the center of the Stingaree. The Stingaree contained a mélange of ethnic groups: ranging from whites, white immigrant, blacks, Mexicans, and Chinese, most of which were members of the working class. The Stingaree and Heller's Corner were symbolic hubs for the San Diegan prejudices against different races and lower classes. The Stingaree was home to everything different and unknown that went against the "mission" ideal in San Diego, including: saloons, shops, cheap hotels, gambling houses, opium dens and prostitutes. The square block at the corner of Fifth and E Streets was home to more than just debauchery, as it also was the central location for a variety of "soapbox orators" including the Salvation Army, Socialists, Holy Rollers, and the Single Taxers. The situation was relatively peaceful and there were no violent run-ins with the police, until after the Germania Hall incident.G. Miller p.188.
Jail conditions and civil disobedience The increase in arrests led to the rapid filling of the San Diego jails, causing overcrowding and the rapid decline of prison conditions, increasing Wobbly anger toward law enforcement. The reports about jail conditions were conflicting, but the general trend seems to show that the Wobblies and other pro-free speech detainees were treated badly. The jails filled up so quickly that the police used their sobering rooms or drunk tanks for housing inmates. These tanks had no beds and the arrested were forced to sleep on vermin infested concrete floors. Moreover, police brutality and aggression were rampant, while beatings and other abuses were relatively common throughout the ordeal. Sixty-three-year-old Michael Hoy died on March 28 after the police beat him and withheld medical attention.
These events coincided with the plan of the Free Speech League to "glut the jails and then to demand individual jury trials which would clog the courts and bring the legal machinery to a standstill."Shanks 29. This especially appealed to the IWW, so much so that they called for 20,000 Wobblies to converge on San Diego in order to bring the system to a halt. There were 50 members of local 13 in 1912, but roughly 5,000 Wobblies came to San Diego to participate in the free speech fight. District Attorney Utley tried to offer a compromise to the Wobblies, promising to free the men originally arrested for conspiracy if the IWW ceased its public speaking in the restricted zone. The IWW declined the offer on principle even through its attorney, E.E. Kirk, recommended that they accept the compromise. The arrests continued. The IWW then protested against the detainment and the prison conditions in front of the city jail. Five thousand protesters turned out, and the police indiscriminately blasted people, including women and children, with fire hoses.
Ordinance prohibiting free speech In October 1912, publisher Harrison Gray Otis, owner of the Los Angeles Times and a leader in the anti-union Merchants and Manufacturers Association, was invited to speak at the U.S. Grant Hotel where he was the first to suggest an ordinance forbidding street meetings.Castanien, p27 On December 8, a petition signed by eighty-five prominent citizens and property owners who had hoped to prohibit "street speaking" in a seven-square block zone centered around 5th and E was presented to the San Diego Common Council. This was followed by a recommendation from a Grand Jury to ban street speaking in the city entirely.
The Wobblies, Single Taxers, and Socialists had signed a 250-person counter-petition.
There was a period of uncertainty, during which the council delayed its decision. The council may have simply been searching for affirmation from the general public in order to avoid widespread conflict and dismay throughout the city. Some council members "believed that a referendum would show that the majority of San Diegans favored speaking anywhere at anytime."G. Miller p.218.
On January 6, 1912, the Socialists and Single Taxers were holding a soapbox event on the streets when an off-duty constable and real estate man, R. J. Walsh drove his car into a crowd at the closed-off Soapbox Row. With his horn blaring, he attempted to disrupt the orators. His car was mobbed and its tires were slashed. Walsh reported the incident to the police who broke up the meeting.
On January 8, 1912, the San Diego Common Council passed Ordinance No. 4623, which called for a restricted zone of 49-square blocks in the middle of San Diego, encompassing all of "Soapbox Row" because the meetings blocked traffic and that necessitated an ordinance for "the immediate preservation of the public peace, health, and safety and one of emergency."G. Miller p.216. The initial punishment for violating the ordinance was a $25 to $100 fine and/or thirty days' imprisonment. An emergency clause called for the immediate cessation of public free speech rights, sidestepping the customary twenty-day implementation wait period.
The Wobblies' attorney questioend that the violence on January 6 was the council's pretext for issuing the ordinance, but city councilmember John L. Sehon claimed that the language had been written well before the incident and they had "always in favor of" the ordinance.
Vigilantes On February 8, 1912, the day the ordinance took effect, 5000 citizens marched in support of the California Free Speech League. Forty-one protesters were arrested. By February 10, forty-four more were arrested and charged with violating a more restricted ordinance that included zones outside the 49 block restricted zone. Also on February 10, a small article in the San Diego Union called for the formation of a "horsewhip vigilante committee" to deal with the "invasion" of Wobblies.
The increase in arrests left Police Chief Keno Wilson with a dilemma; he wanted to punish the protesters, but simultaneously faced overcrowded jails and stockades. After local newspapers began editorializing vociferously against the protesters and their tactics, groups of vigilantes began transporting arrested Wobblies and free speakers to the county line. The vigilantes began patrolling trains that were inbound from the north, and would grab Wobblies and invited speakers before they could get to the city. The vigilantes then proceeded to "reeducate" the speakers on patriotism as this brutal first hand account notes: They were drunk and hollering and cursing the rest of the night. In the morning they took us out four or five at a time and marched us up the track to the county line ... where were forced to kiss the flag and then run a gauntlet of 106 men, every one of which was striking at us as hard as they could with their pick ax handles. They broke one man's leg, and everyone was beaten black and blue, and was bleeding from a dozen wounds.G. Miller 225. These incidents occurred quite frequently, but there was no significant outcry from the middle class citizens of San Diego.
The San Diego Board of Supervisors authorized mounted police to patrol the Orange County border to prevent Wobblies from entering the fray. On March 4, the San Diego Police deputized 500 men to fight the wobblies. An editorial in the Evening Tribune claimed "hanging is none too good" for the Wobblies. "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.”
On March 10, a protest formed outside of the jail, Chief Wilson ordered firefighters to turn a hose on the crowd.Castanien, p30 They also arrested people attempting to sell newspapers including the San Francisco Bulletin, San Diego Herald and the Labor Leader.
On March 18, the Union reported that 1000 vigilantes organized by local businessmen were cooperating with the police.
On April 5, sixty-five year old editor of the Herald Abraham R. Sauer — who published articles supportive of the free speech fight and critical of the police — was kidnapped, hung by the neck and allowed to live in exchange for a promise of silence.Castanien, p31