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.
