On August 1, 1917, labor organizer Frank Little was taken forcibly from his boarding house in Butte, Montana, and was lynched from a railroad trestle.
In the summer of 1917, Frank had been helping to organize copper workers in a strike against the Anaconda Copper Company, but it was most likely his stand against World War I that so infuriated his assassins. He argued that all working men should refuse to join the army and fight on behalf of their capitalist oppressors. As he said in the last speech before his death, "I stand for the solidarity of labor." Frank understood that his stand against the war might get him killed, but even this prospect did not deter him. He was a true revolutionary.
Not much is known about the early life of Frank Little. He was born in 1879 and was active in the 1913 free speech campaigns in Missoula, Fresno, Spokane, Peoria, and elsewhere. Frank was also active in organizing lumberjacks, mineworkers and oilfield workers into labor unions. By 1916, Frank was a member of the Industrial Workers of the World General Executive Board.
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.
Frank Little is an American hero, not for the great things he accomplished in his lifetime, but because he remained true to his revolutionary principles until the day he died. Today, those of us lucky enough to be living in the United States and other western countries are living in a period of relatively stable economic prosperity. Some of us may even live our entire lives without ever belonging to a labor union or participating in a strike. It seems as though we have been living in a collective "comfort zone." Our thoughts are basically constructed for us by our educational institutions and by the mass media, so we have little information regarding the turbulent class struggle that was taking place a century ago. How many of us today even understand the conflict between capital and labor? How many of us think about why we are living the good life while three-fourths of humanity is living in poverty? And how many think about the possible consequences when the stock market finally collapses and the conflict between capital and labor intensifies in the developed countries?
Even those of us who have studied labor history and understand the conflict between capital and labor would be humbled to stand in the same room with a man like Frank Little. He lived in the trenches, teaching and organizing so that his fellow workers could one day enjoy the good life that only the bosses enjoyed. He was not an "armchair revolutionary" but a man who actively put his principles into action on a day to day basis, knowing that he could be jailed on some trumped-up charge or shot by a Pinkerton thug at any time. Even though Frank Little was executed by six masked men in the wee hours of August 1, 1917, his ideas will live on as long as people remember him. And in Butte, Montana, "we never forget...."
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Above: Frank Little being carried to his burial. Right: Tombstone in Mountain View Cemetary reads "Slain by capitalist interests for organizing and inspiring his fellow men." |
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Labor History: http://americanhistory.miningco.com/education/americanhistory/msub22.htm
Labor History: http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/5202/workerweb.htm
The Samual Gompers papers: http://www.history.umd.edu/Gompers/index.html
Mark Ross: "Look for me in Butte" http://www.lehnherr.com/butte/
Map of labor sites in Butte, Montana: View Map GIF
Film: "An Injury to One": http://frif.com/new2003/inj.html
James P Cannon compilation, Notebook of an Agitator pg 32-36. Pathfinder Press. Has an account of Frank Little in Duluth and a lot of praise of him.
Ralph Chaplin, Wobbly, the Rough and Tumble Story of an American Radical. Univ of Chicago Press. 1948. pg 167 Chicago Hunger Demo was 1/17/15. First singing of "Solidarity Forever" attacked by police
Melvyn Dubofsky, We Shall be All. A History of the Industrial
Workers of the World. University of Illinois Press, Urbana and
Chicago. 1969. This is the definitive history of IWW. Many references
to Frank Little. I don't have this but I need it: Industrial
Democracy (or was it solidarity?) July 28, 1917. Has 3 page article
by Frank Little. For interlibrary loan try RLIN CUBG86-53796.
Also the 3/24/17 Solidarity has comparison of war policies of
IWW and AFL.
Harrison George, "The IWW Trial. Story of the Greatest Trial in Labor's History by one of the Defendants." Arno Press & The New York Times 1969. Dallas Public Library 343.31 H427i. George took notes while he and 112 other defendants were tried for conspiracy by the United States Government. 166 leaders of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) had been indicted, but all of them weren't found in time for the trial to start. It is my understanding that the transcripts & other stuff are in some DoL archives in Ft Worth.
Arnon Gutfeld, "The murder of Frank Little; Radical labor agitation in Butte, Montana, 1917.
Lehman, Ted, Pamphlet in Fresno, California, library dated 25 May 1971 "The Constitution Guarantees Freedom of Speech--Rats! The Fresno Free Speech Fight" I think he was reporter for the Fresno Bee or Sacramento Bee. Tells about Fresno Free Speech fight (1913?) Pretty uncomplimentary about Fred Little, Frank's brother. Fred and Emma may have had two sons, and this is where the trail of Frank Little's writings and personal effects leaves off.
pamphlet by Priscilla Long, "Mother Jones, Woman Organizer," is published by South End Press in Boston
Henry E McGuckin "Memoirs of a Wobbly" $6.95 Charles H. Kerr Publishing Co 1740 West Greenleaf Av #7, Chicago Il 60626.
Patrick Renshaw, The Wobblies. The story of Syndicalism in the United States. Anchor Books. Doubleday & Company, Garden City, NY 1967.
Rogers, Walter & Elizabeth, John Donar: Common Man. Unlike Big Wheels Rolled in Texas, which I reviewed in the first section of this page, the couple's first collaboration is an easy read. I guess it's an autobiography of Walter Rogers using psydonym of John Donar. I'm not completely sure which is the pseudonym, but I have met one person who knew them, and he says Rogers was their actual name. Anyway, "John Donar" ran away from home in Pennsylvania when he was 12. He knocked around itinerant farm work and a few jails before landing in WWI. He served very honorably, but deserted when he was about to be forced to attack striking miners in Appalachia. He joined the IWW and spends the rest of the book, to 1940, as "10-day John;" in other words, a traveling IWW man whose average employment lasted only 10 days because he only took each job to organize the workers to begin with. He apparently led a really exciting life as an independent labor organizer and had some role in great struggles of the period. Just the parts about his life as a soldier in Europe are well worth the price of the book, if one can be found.
Irving Werstein, Pie in the Sky, An American Struggle. The
Wobblies and their Times. Delacorte Press, NY,1969. in OU library.
Donald E Winters Jr. The Soul of the Wobblies. The IWW, Religion,
and American Culture in the Progressive Era 1905-1917. Greenwood
Press, Westport, Cn 1985.
