I.W.W. members accused of sedition for using “stickerettes,” 1917-1918

For the past few years, DJ Alperovitz, an I.W.W. uber-archivist who lives in the Pacific northwest, has very kindly been sending me old newspaper clippings documenting early examples of I.W.W. “stickerettes” or “silent agitators” from such newspapers as Solidarity and Industrial Worker. You can read my essay about the early history of stickerettes, for example, and see a timeline at the links provided here.

Up until now, I’ve been focused on finding the earliest examples of political stickers made in the USA. All roads have led to the I.W.W., though I’ve also found some stamps related to women’s suffrage from ~1913-1915. The I.W.W. stickerettes date back a little earlier, to at least 1906, however.

I’ve also been really interested in the stickers that were circulating in the months leading up to the raids on I.W.W. headquarters across the country on September 5, 1917, in what was called the “widest ranging search warrant in US history.” Joyce L. Kornbluh from Encyclopedia of the American Left, 2nd ed., summarized the events:

“Preceding and during World War I, the I.W.W. retained its anti-military stand and opposed U.S. involvement in the war. In contrast to the no-strike policy adopted by the A.F.L. after the United States entered the conflict actively, the I.W.W. continued to lead strikes. These wartime strikes gave employers and the government the opportunity to accuse the I.W.W. of treason. In September 1917, U.S. Justice Department agents raided I.W.W. offices throughout the nation with warrants branding the entire leadership—over two hundred men and women—as subversives. In the major trial in Chicago, nearly a hundred Wobblies [or “Wobs”], virtually the entire first and second tier of past and present leaders, were sentenced to federal prison terms of from ten to twenty years, with accompanying fines of $10,000-$20,000.” Those arrests included Ralph Chaplin, who designed many of the earliest stickerettes.

The Wobs were arrested in part for circulating stickerettes that promoted anti-war sentiments and/or sabotage, in violation of the recently passed Espionage Act of 1917, enacted in June of 1917, shortly after the US entered World War I in April of that year (see column 2 below).

For more on the I.W.W. arrests in 1917 and subsequent trial, visit Jeff Smith’s “IWW members tried in 1918 for ‘obstructing the war’,” (March 19, 2018).

Another instance of I.W.W. members being charged with sedition took place in Seattle in 1918.

DJ sent me a newspaper article from May 4, 1918, that describes how police in Seattle, WA, were investigating the possibly seditious use of stickerettes and/or that the message itself (to burn blankets) was seditious.

The article states, “Seattle, Wash. – I.W.W. stickers are being investigated by the police here. On the gummed labels which is [sic] now being put in circulation by members of the organization is a picture showing a logger pouring oil on a burning blanket and is labeled ‘May 1, 1918.’ A second sticker is headed: ‘No More Mediation Boards,’ and under the I.W.W. insignia carries the plea: ‘Organize in the Shipbuilders I. U. No. 325, I.W.W.’ Other stickers urging membership in the I.W.W. are also being circulated.

From the latest reports, the Special Agents have not been able to decide whether or not these stickers are seditious, or, whether or not burning lousy blankets can be construed to be seditious.

The future indictment will probably read, ‘that the defendants did willfully, feloniously and with malice aforethought, destroy oil to the amount of one pint and a roll of blankets, which is better known in everyday parlance as a bindle, together with a number of greybacks and lice, and, for the murder of each bug shall be added one charge thus making an average of 10,000 charges against each defendant.”

DJ wrote, “The clipping comes from May 1918 right in the middle of jury selection for the Big Trial and anti-IWW sentiment across the country was very high and hot. I don’t know the extent of fuel rationing during World War I, though I do know that to save fuel speed limits were reduced. ‘Destroying’ a pint of kerosene would have been seen by some as seditious. The murdering of bugs would be right out of Mr. Trump’s playbook.”

The I.W.W. had a lot of jargon and slang, and I didn’t know what a gray back was. DJ wrote, “gray backs, BC gray backs, cooties, crotch crickets, crum(s), pants rabbits, seam squirrels, shirt rabbit, walking dandruff – common working class/Hobo slang of the period for lice.”