The Murder of Frank H Little (1879 – August 1, 1917)

 

Today in Labour history, 1st August 1917, labour organiser and an executive board member of the radical Industrial Workers of the World, the Biracial  half-Cherokee  Frank Henry Little was in the middle of the night  dragged from his hotel room in Butte, Montana, by 6 masked men beaten, tied to the bumper of a car, dragged to the outskirts of town, beaten and tortured him some more before they hanged him from a railroad trestle. When his battered corpse was cut down a few hours later, the police found a note written in red crayon pinned to his underwear: “Others Take Notice. First and Last Warning.”

Frank Little apparently was born in Illinois in 1878, but moved to Missouri, then Ingalls, Oklahoma, the area around Yale, near Stillwater, as a child. His father was a doctor. He had two  brothers and two sisters. Both brothers attended college at Stillwater  

In 1900: Little had become a “hard rock” metal miner and an Arizona member of the Western Federation of Miners (WFM)  and in 1903: Little had been hired by WFM to organize the copper camps of the Clifton Morenci Metcalf area  The Western Federation of Miners was the main force launching the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).which  Little joined  in 1906.

The I.W.W. was founded in 1905 by Eugene V. Debs, William "Big Bill" Haywood, and others who believed that workers should be organized into a single industrial union because individual trade unions were likely to be pitted against each other during disputes with the employers. The I.W.W. was founded on the belief that the working class and the employing class have nothing in common and that the historic mission of the working class is to abolish capitalism and replace it with an economic system based upon human need rather than private profit, so that the benefits of the good life could be extended beyond the privileged few.

Little had only rolled into Montana’s copper mining hub two weeks before helping to organise a miner's strike against the Anaconda Copper Company.  A roving agitator he especially gained fame as a leader in the free speech fights at Missoula, Fresno, and Spokane, and went on to organize the lumberjacks, metal miners, oil field workers and harvest bindle stiffs all over the West and Southwestern states. If local authorities denied the IWWers the right to speak in public or to congregate under the protection of the Bill of Rights, the union people would go to jail rather than give up. In fact, using the tactic now known as nonviolent resistance, Little led them into jail over and over again. He was almost always the first one arrested and the last one freed. Free speech in America owes a great deal to Frank Little.

 Little Pioneered Non-Violent Struggle  long before  Gandhi or Martin Luther  King.In addition to innumerable jail sentences, Little also suffered mob violence at least twice before the final fatal episode. He was kidnapped by businessmen and knocked unconscious after being held for several days.

Y.ears later he was held again. With a rope around his neck for emphasis, Little was told to desist from labor organizing and to name any union men in the area. He did neither and was eventually rescued.

Little's  hatred of exploitation and oppression and of all those who profited by it in one way or another was irreconcilable. He was always for the revolt, for the struggle, for the fight. Wherever he went he “stirred up trouble” and organized the workers to rebel. Bosses, policemen, stoolpigeons, jailers, priests and preachers—these were the constant targets of his bitter tongue. He was a blood brother to all insurgents, “to every rebel and revolutionist the world over.”

Little was also known for his incendiary anti-war speeches that rankled many of the townspeople. America had entered the Great War just four months earlier, and Little’s convictions were controversial even amongst his peers. Although most IWW members, or Wobblies, were ideologically opposed to a war that was viewed as nothing more than yet another example of capitalist gain at the expense of the workers, few dared to be as boldly outspoken as Little. Even IWW founder “Big Bill” Haywood argued that the Wobblies should silence their views for the sake of the organisation’s progress. And so Frank Little found himself on the radical fringe of an already radical-fringe organisation. “Better to go out in a blaze of glory than to give in,” he would say. “Either we’re for this capitalist slaughterfest or we’re against it. I’m ready to face a firing squad rather than compromise!” 

 Little's speeches against the Anaconda Company, the draft and World War I were supported by many Butte miners but engendered fear among Company executives and others. Although the Company and local officials pushed for Little's arrest for "treasonable utterances," U.S. district attorney Burton K. Wheeler found insufficient evidence to indict.

But in its  determination to quash anti-war dissidents, the United States government singled out and targeted  the IWW – going so far as to spread rumours that the organisation was subsidised by Germany – and Frank Little’s murder was to have devastating consequences for the bourgeoning radical labour movement.  Little  would be a signal martyr to America’s nascent Red Scare.

 Frank Little’s last speech, for which he paid with his life, was directed against the capitalist war. In that speech he set up his own doctrines against those of the warmongers. His philosophy, compressed into a single sentence, was picked up and carried all over the country on the telegraph wires with the news of his assassination. “I stand for the solidarity of labor.”

Days after the lynching, Montana authorities declared martial law against anti-war opponents, associates of Little’s were arrested and accused of ‘espionage’, and both the miners’ strike and union were crushed. Beyond Montana, Little’s death was a harbinger of a string of blatantly undemocratic federal laws, specifically the Espionage and Sedition Acts which outlawed any form of dissent. Moreover, the government used the IWW’s association with anti-war opposition to initiate a subjugating campaign of repression against the labour movement, culminating in the 1920 Palmer Raids  which effectively destroyed the IWW’s momentum and power for the next thirty years. 

Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer spearheaded efforts to round up anarchists, communists, and other political radicals and then deport them when possible. World War I and the 1917 Russian Revolution inflamed American fears of the spread of radicalism and immigration from Europe, contributing to the first “red scare” in the United States. As state and local governments purged radicals from public service and cracked down on left-wing labor organizing, Palmer undertook the most visible campaign against radical organizations, often immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe. Between November 1919 and January 1920, Palmer’s agents deported nearly 250 people, including notable anarchist Emma Goldman, and arrested nearly 10,000 people in seventy cities.

 Little's  killers were never brought to justice.

 Years later, writer Dashiell Hammett  would recall his early days as a Pinkerton detective agency operative and recount how a mine company representative offered him $5,000 to kill Little. Hammett says he quit the business that night.

An estimated 10,000 workers lined the route of Frank Little's funeral procession, which was followed by 3,500 more persons. in what was the largest funeral in Montana history.And in the aftermath would see federal troops bought in to quash labor unrest in Butte, and in the  month following Little's murder  the IWW's offices were raided and the organization and its members were hounded into near obscurity. There is no reasonable estimate of the number of unionists deported, jailed, blacklisted, or killed. Even Frank Little’s close relatives were afraid to talk about him. His personal effects, his writings, the death mask made from his face, and the movie made at his gigantic funeral are lost to history. The only remaining trace of the great Frank Little is his tombtone  in Mountain View Cemetery. Butte which is still well cared for by local activists. His grave marker reads : Slain By Capitalist Interests For Organizing And Inspiring His Fellow Men."

Even though Frank Little was executed on this day , his ideas will live on as long as people remember him.We must continue to stand on the shoulders of working class giants, and remember that an injury to one is an injury to all.

Travis Wilkinson's  2002 documentary film An Injury to One tells the story of Frank Little and his lynching in Butte, Montana.