Liberalism: Power, Economic Crisis, Reform, War 103in fact, Reds in America. The Communist Party, probably exaggerating,
claimed about 50,000 members while the more moderate Socialists said they
had about 40,000 in their movement—all in a population of over 106 million.
And, in fact, some anarchist groups had taken credit for a series of about 45
bombings directed at government officials in April and June 1919, with two
people killed, a New York City night watchman and one of the anarchists
delivering a bomb. To Palmer and the government, radical political parties
and bombings were proof of a much larger “conspiracy” to bring Communism
to the United States by an alliance of Bolsheviks and Germans [who were on
different ends of the political spectrum] and so they went after anyone who
might be a Red in their minds.
To a significant extent, the attack on Reds was really a campaign against
labor, as radical workers and organizations were attacked harshly in the Great
War era. In 1914, Utah officials arrested, convicted, and executed the famed
IWW singer Joe Hill on chargers of murder that were likely contrived. Two
men in Salt Lake City had been shot and killed, and 12 persons were arrested
before Hill. But his reputation as a Wobblie troubadour with a huge following
made him a target, and so the officials took care of him. In Hill’s last testa-
ment, he asked to be cremated and have his ashes sent to every to every state
but Utah. A year later, 20 or so strikers stopped a train suspected of carrying
scabs into a Chemical plant in New Jersey when factory guards shot and killed
2 of them. In late 1916, the Wobblies were targeted for a violent reaction by
the state again. In Everett, Washington, the sheriff and deputies rounded up and
beat with pistols and clubs 41 IWW members who were there to support a
strike of shingle workers. Wobblies returned a week later by boat, but were
met at the dock by the sheriff and a group of vigilantes, who opened fire. At
the end of the “Everett Massacre,” perhaps 12 union men were dead and almost
30 injured, while 2 vigilantes were killed and another 20 wounded. In the
battle for loyalty and labor rights, state violence was common and accepted.
Another Wobblie, Frank Little, suffered a similar fate in July 1917. He was
in Butte, Montana helping the IWW organize a strike against the Anaconda
Copper Company when masked men broke into his room at night, kidnapped
him and lynched him from a nearby railroad bridge. Dashiell Hammett, who
would go on to become a famous novelist of detective tales, especially The
Maltese Falcon, was a Pinkerton at the time and was offered $5000 to kill Little;
he resigned immediately.