The
Espionage Act was passed by Congress in 1917 after the United States
entered the First World War. It prescribed a
$10,000 fine and 20 years' imprisonment for interfering with the recruiting
of troops or the disclosure of information dealing with national defence.
Additional penalties were included for the refusal to perform military
duty. Over
the next few months around 900 went to prison under the Espionage
Act.
Criticised as unconstitutional, the act resulted in the imprisonment
of many of the anti-war movement. This included the arrest of left-wing
political figures such as Eugene V. Debs,
Bill Haywood, Philip
Randolph, Victor Berger, John
Reed, Max Eastman, and Emma
Goldman. Debs was sentenced to ten years for a speech in Canton,
Ohio, on 16th June, 1918, attacking the Espionage Act.
On 23rd August six members of the Frayhayt, a group of Jewish
anarchists based in New York were arrested.
Charged under the Espionage Act, the group were accused of publishing
articles in the Der Shturm that
undermined the American war effort. This included criticizing the
United States government for invading Russia
after the Bolshevik government signed the Brest-Litovsk
Treaty.
One of the group, Jacob Schwartz, was so badly beaten by the police
when he was arrested that he died soon afterwards. Mollie
Steimer was found guilty and sentenced to fifteen years imprisonment.
Three of the men, Samuel Lipman, Hyman Lachowsky and Jacob Abrahams
received twenty years.
Over 450 conscientious objectors were imprisoned as a result of this
legislation including Rose Pastor Stokes
who was sentenced to ten years in prison for saying, in a letter to
the Kansas City Star, that "no
government which is for the profiteers can also be for the people,
and I am for the people while the government is for the profiteers."
Soon afterwards Kate Richards O'Hare was
sentenced to five years for making an anti-war speech in North Dakota.
The socialist journal, The Masses
was prosecuted in 1918 under the Espionage Act. It was claimed by
the authorities that articles by Floyd Dell
and Max Eastman and cartoons by Art
Young, Boardman Robinson and H.
J. Glintenkamp had undermined the war effort. The legal action
that followed forced the journal to cease publication.
During
the Red Scare (1919-20) A.
Mitchell Palmer, the attorney general and his special assistant,
John Edgar Hoover, used the Espionage
Act and the Sedition Act to launch a
campaign against radicals and left-wing organizations. Under these
two laws 1500 people were arrested for disloyalty.
(1)
Eugene Debs, When I Shall Fight, Appeal
to Reason
(11th September, 1915)
I am not opposed to all war, nor am I opposed to fighting under
all circumstances, and any declaration to the contrary would disqualify
me as a revolutionist. When I say I am opposed to war I mean ruling
class war, for the ruling class is the only class that makes war.
It matters not to me whether this war be offensive or defensive, or
what other lying excuse may be invented for it, I am opposed to it,
and I would be shot for treason before I would enter such a war.
Capitalists wars for capitalist conquest and capitalist plunder must
be fought by the capitalists themselves so far as I am concerned,
and upon that question there can be no compromise and no misunderstanding
as to my position. I have no country to fight for; my country is the
earth; I am a citizen of the world. I would not violate my principles
for God, much less for a crazy kaiser, a savage czar, a degenerate
king, or a gang of pot-bellied parasites.
I am opposed to every war but one; I am for the war with heart and
soul, and that is the world-wide war of social revolution. In that
war I am prepared to fight in any way the ruling class may make necessary,
even to the barricades.
There is where I stand and where I believe the Socialist Party stands,
or ought to stand, on the question of war.
(2)
Trial judge sentencing Kate Richards O'Hare
to prison for five years for making an anti-war speech in North Dakota
(July, 1917)
This is a nation of free speech; but this is a time for sacrifice,
when mothers are sacrificing their sons. Is it too much to ask that
for the time being men shall suppress any desire which they may have
to utter words which may tend to weaken the spirit, or destroy the
faith or confidence of the people?
(3)
Eugene Debs, speech in Canton, Ohio (16th
June 1918)
The other day they sentenced Kate Richards O'Hare to the penitentiary
for five years. Think of sentencing a woman to the penitentiary simply
for talking. The United States, under plutocratic rule, is the only
country that would send a woman to prison for five years for exercising
the right of free speech. If this be treason, let them make the most
of it.
Let me review a bit of history in connection with this case. I have
known Kate Richards O'Hare intimately for twenty years. I am familiar
with her public record. Personally I know her as if she were my own
sister. All who know Mrs. O'Hare know her to be a woman of unquestioned
integrity. And they also know that she is a woman of unimpeachable
loyalty to the Socialist movement. When she went out into North Dakota
to make her speech, followed by plain-clothes men in the service of
the government intent upon effecting her arrest and securing her prosecution
and conviction - when she went out there, it was with the full knowledge
on her part that sooner or later these detectives would accomplish
their purpose. She made her speech, and that speech was deliberately
misrepresented for the purpose of securing her conviction. The only
testimony against her was that of a hired witness. And when the farmers,
the men and women who were in the audience she addressed - when they
went to Bismarck where the trial was held to testify in her favor,
to swear that she had not used the language she was charged with having
used, the judge refused to allow them to go upon the stand. This would
seem incredible to me if I had not had some experience of my own with
federal courts.
Rose Pastor
Stokes! And when I mention her name I take off my hat. Here we have
another heroic and inspiring comrade. She had her millions of dollars
at command. Did her wealth restrain her an instant? On the contrary
her supreme devotion to the cause outweighed all considerations of
a financial or social nature. She went out boldly to plead the cause
of the working class and they rewarded her high courage with a ten
years' sentence to the penitentiary. Think of it! Ten years! What
atrocious crime had she committed? What frightful things had she said?
Let me answer candidly. She said nothing more than I have said here
this afternoon. I want to admit - I want to admit without reservation
that if Rose Pastor Stokes is guilty of crime, so am I. If she is
guilty for the brave part she has taken in this testing time of human
souls I would not be cowardly enough to plead my innocence. And if
she ought to be sent to the penitentiary for ten years, so ought I
without a doubt.
What did
Rose Pastor Stokes say? Why, she said that a government could not
at the same time serve both the profiteers and the victims of the
profiteers. Is it not true? Certainly it is and no one can successfully
dispute it. Roosevelt said a thousand times more in the very same
paper, the Kansas City Star. Roosevelt said vauntingly the
other day that he would be heard if he went to jail. He knows very
well that he is taking no risk of going to jail. He is shrewdly laying
his wires for the Republican nomination in 1920 and he is an adept
in making the appeal of the demagogue.
Rose Pastor
Stokes never uttered a word she did not have a legal, constitutional
right to utter. But her message to the people, the message that stirred
their thoughts and opened their eyes - that must be suppressed; her
voice must be silenced. And so she was promptly subjected to a mock
trial and sentenced to the penitentiary for ten years. Her conviction
was a foregone conclusion. The trial of a Socialist in a capitalist
court is at best a farcical affair. What ghost of a chance had she
in a court with a packed jury and a corporation tool on the bench?
Not the least in the world. And so she goes to the penitentiary for
ten years if they carry out their brutal and disgraceful graceful
program. For my part I do not think they will. In fact I feel sure
they will not. If the war were over tomorrow the prison doors would
open to our people. They simply mean to silence the voice of protest
during the war.
(4)
The Masses (September, 1917)
The Post Office was represented by Assistant District Attorney Barnes.
He explained that the Department construed the Espionage Act as giving
it power to exclude from the mails anything which might interfere
with the successful conduct of the war.
Four cartoons and four pieces of text in the August issue were specified
as violations of the law. The cartoons were Boardman Robinson's Making
the World Safe for Democracy, H. J. Glintenkamp's Liberty Bell
and the conscription cartoons, and one by Art Young on Congress and
Big Business. The conscription cartoon was considered by the Department
"the worst thing in the magazine". The text objected to
was A Question, an editorial by Max Eastman; A Tribute,
a poem by Josephine Bell; a paragraph in an article on Conscientious
Objectors; and an editorial, Friends of American Freedom.
(5)
Floyd Dell, Homecoming (1933)
The Masses harassed by the post-office authorities, was
suppressed in October, 1917, by the Government, and its editors were
indicted, myself among them, under the so-called Espionage Act, which
was being used not against German spies but against American Socialists,
Pacifists, and anti-war radicals. Sentences of twenty years were being
served out to all who dared say this was not a war to end war, or
that the Allied loans would never be paid. But the courts would probably
not get around to us until next year; and we immediately made plans
to start another magazine, The Liberator, and tell more truth;
we would stand on the pre-war Wilsonian program, and call for a negotiated
peace.
(6)
Article by Philip Randolph in
The Messenger that led to him being charged under the Espionage
Act (July, 1918)
At a recent convention of the National Association for the Advancement
of Colored People (NAACP), a member of the Administration's Department
of Intelligence was present. When Mr. Julian Carter of Harrisburg
was complaining of the racial prejudice which American white troops
had carried into France, the administration representative rose and
warned the audience that the Negroes were under suspicion of having
been affected by German propaganda.
In keeping with the ultra-patriotism of the oldline type of Negro
leaders the NAACP failed to grasp its opportunity. It might have informed
the Administration representatives that the discontent among Negroes
was not produced by propaganda, nor can it be removed by propaganda.
The causes are deep and dark - though obvious to all who care to use
their mental eyes. Peonage, disfranchisement, Jim-Crowism, segregation,
rank civil discrimination, injustice of legislatures, courts and administrators
- these are the propaganda of discontent among Negroes.
The only legitimate connection between this unrest and Germanism is
the extensive government advertisement that we are fighting "to
make the world safe for democracy", to carry democracy to Germany;
that we are conscripting the Negro into the military and industrial
establishments to achieve this end for white democracy four thousand
miles away, while the Negro at home, through bearing the burden in
every way, is denied economic, political, educational and civil democracy.
(7)
Philip Randolph and Chandler
Owen , co-editors of the Messenger, were both charged with
breaking the Espionage Act in August, 1918. Randolph later wrote about
his trial.
The judge was astonished when he saw us and read what we had written
in the Messenger. Chandler and I were twenty-nine at the time,
but we looked much younger. The judge said, why, we were nothing but
boys. He couldn't believe we were old enough, or, being black, smart
enough, to write that red-hot stuff in the Messenger. There
was no doubt, he said, that the the white socialists were using us,
that they had written the stuff for us.
He turned to us: "You really wrote this magazine? We assured
him that we had. "What do you know about socialism? he said.
We told him we were students of Marx and fervent believers in the
socialization of social property. "Don't you know," he said,
"that you are opposing your own government and that you are subject
to imprisonment for treason?" We told him we believed in the
principle of human justice and that our right to express our conscience
was above the law.
(8)
Kate Richards O'Hare, Appeal
to Reason (24th July,
1920)
We Socialists knew the relation of profits to war and we insisted
on telling the truth about it. We talked war and profits, war and
profits, war and profits until the administration was compelled, in
sheer self-defense to attempt to squelch us. First the administration
violated the constitutional provision for free press and by the stroke
of a pen destroyed the greater portion of the Socialist press. But
we could still talk if we could not publish newspapers, and we did
talk and talk and talk. And the best method the limited intelligence
of the administration could devise for squelching talking Socialists
was to send them to prison.
In my case it was a frightful strain on the "brains of the administration"
to find some plausible excuse for sending me to prison. With the best
sleuthing the Department of Justice could do it was compelled to admit
that I had violated no law; I was of American blood for many generations;
my family had always been properly patriotic and had participated
in every war the United States had ever waged; my public utterances
and private life proved that I was not pro-German and was most emphatically
pro-American; I was entirely "nice" and "respectable"
and "ladylike" and I had managed to amble along to comfortable
middle age with the same husband and children I started with. In fact
I had but one vice - I did insist on telling the truth about war and
politics. And war and profits was the one subject the Democratic administration
dared not permit me to discuss.
So many people have marveled that I should have traveled all over
the country telling the truth, as I saw it, about war and profits
unmolested, until I landed in a little, unknown town in the north-west,
and there to have been "framed", arrested, tried, convicted
and sent to prison. But there is really nothing marvelous about it,
I was simply more dangerous to the capitalists, the war profiteers
and the Democratic Party in the northwest than in any other section
of the United States.
(9)
In July, 1920, the journal, Appeal
to Reason , reported on
Kate Richards O'Hare visiting
Eugene Debs in prison.
In a visit full of dramatic incidents, Kate Richards O'Hare
visited Eugene V. Debs in the Federal penitentiary in Atlanta on 2nd
July, to carry to him the love of Socialists everywhere.
Kate O'Hare was ushered into the prison; the two comrades met and
embraced; Kate Richards O'Hare recently freed from the Federal prison
and Eugene V. Debs in prison garb with nine years of prison life before
him, with both his hands still upon her shoulders, said, "How
happy I am to see you free, Kate."
"Your coming here is like a new sunlight to me. Tell me about
your prison experiences," said Debs. She answered, "Gene,
I am not thinking of myself, but of little Mollie Steimer who now
occupies my cell at Jefferson City and of her appalling sentence of
fifteen years. She is a nineteen-year-old little girl, smaller in
stature than my Kathleen, whose sole crime is her love for the oppressed.
Then Kate opened her leather card-case and showed Debs her family
group picture which she had carried with her during the fourteen months
of prison life. The sight of that picture had afforded her much consolation
through the hours of dreaded prison silence and monotony.
(10)
Emma Goldman, Living My Life (1931)
The Espionage Act resulted in filling the civil and military prisons
of the country with men sentenced to incredibly long terms; Bill Haywood
received twenty years, his hundred and ten International Workers of
the World co-defendants from one to ten, Eugene V. Debs ten years,
Kate Richards O'Hare five. These were but a few among the hundreds
railroaded to living death. Then came the arrest of a group of our
young comrades in New York, comprising Mollie Steimer, Jacob Abrams,
Samuel Lipman, Hyman Lachowsky and Jacob Schwartz. Their offence consisted
in circulating a printed protest against American intervention in
Russia.
(11)
Howard
Zinn,
A People's History of the United States (1980)
In early September 1917, Department of Justice agents made
simultaneous raids on forty-eight IWW meeting halls across the country,
seizing correspondence and literature that would become courtroom
evidence. Later that
month, 165 IWW leaders were arrested for conspiring
to hinder the draft, encourage desertion, and intimidate others in
connection with labor
disputes. One hundred and one went on trial in
April 1918; it lasted five months, the longest criminal trial in American
history up to that time.
The judge sentenced Haywood
and fourteen others to twenty years in prison; thirty-three were given
ten years, the rest shorter sentences. They were fined a total of
$2,500,000. The IWW was shattered. Haywood jumped bail and fled to
revolutionary Russia, where he remained until his death ten years
later.
(12)
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., statement
on the Espionage Act (1919)
I think that resistance to the United States means some forcible act
of opposition to some proceeding of the United States in pursuance
of the war. I think the intent must be the specific intent that I
have described, and, for the reasons that I have given, I think that
no such intent was proved or existed in fact. I also think that there
is no hint at resistance
to the United States as I construe the phrase.
In this case, sentences
of twenty years imprisonment have been imposed for the publishing
of two leaflets that I believe the defendants had as much right to
publish as the government has to publish the Constitution of the United
States, now vainly invoked by them. Even if I am technically wrong
and enough can be squeezed from these poor and puny anonymities to
turn the color of legal litmus paper; I will add, even if what I think
the necessary intent were shown; the most nominal punishment seems
to me all that possibly could be inflicted, unless the defendants
are to be made to suffer, not for what the indictment alleges but
for the creed that they avow - a creed
that I believe to be the creed of ignorance
and immaturity when honestly held -
as I see no reason to doubt that it was held
here, but which, although made the subject
of examination at the trial, no one has
a right even to consider in dealing with the
charges before the Court.
Persecution for the expression
of opinions seems to me perfectly logical. If you have no doubt of
your premises or your power and want a certain result with all your
heart, you naturally express your wishes in law and sweep away all
opposition. To allow opposition by speech seems to indicate that you
think the speech impotent, as when a man says that he has squared
the circle, or that you do not care wholeheartedly for the result,
or that you doubt either your power or your premises. But when men
have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come
to believe
even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct
that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in
ideas - that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to
get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth
is the only ground upon which
their wishes safely can be carried out. That
at any rate is the theory of our Constitution.
It is an experiment, as
all life is an experiment.
Every year, if not every day, we have to
wager our salvation upon some prophecy based
upon imperfect knowledge. While that
experiment is part of our system, I think
that we should be eternally vigilant against
attempts to check the expression of opinions
that we loathe and believe to be fraught
with death, unless they so imminently threaten immediate interference
with the lawful and
pressing purposes of the law that
an immediate check is required to save the
country.
I wholly disagree with
the argument of the government that the First Amendment left the common
law as to seditious libel in force. History seems to me against the
notion. I had conceived that the United States through many years
had shown its repentance for the Sedition Act of 1798 by repaying
fines that it imposed. Only the emergency that makes it immediately
dangerous to leave the correction of evil counsels to time warrants
making any exception to the sweeping command, "Congress shall
make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech." Of course
I am speaking only of expressions of opinion and exhortations, which
were all that were uttered here, but I regret that I cannot put into
more impressive words my belief that in their conviction upon this
indictment the defendants were deprived of their rights under the
Constitution of the United States.
(13)
William
Borah, speech (1923)
Let us bear in mind, my friends, that these men are not in prison
at the present time by reason of any acts of violence to either person
or property. Whatever might have inhered in the case with reference
to these matters in the beginning has long since passed out of the
case, and these men are in prison today, separated from their families,
deprived of an opportunity of earning a livelihood, their health being
undermined for the sole and only reason that they expressed their
opinions concerning the war and the activities of the government in
the prosecution of the war. They are distinctly and unquestionably
political prisoners in the true sense of that term. They are not there
for the violation of ordinary criminal statutes or for deeds of violence
of any kind.
They are,
in other words, in prison some four years after the war for expressing
an opinion in regard to it. I was thinking today as I was reflecting
over this situation that six months before the time we declared war
some of the most prominent members of the government at that time
would have been guilty of the same offense for which these men are
now in prison. Six months before we entered the war it was considered
most objectionable in the United States to advocate going into the
war. Six months before the war began we were told that this great
World War had its roots in causes
which we did not understand and with which we were not concerned and
that we should keep out of it. It would seem that
the gravest offense upon the part of these men, so far as expressing
their views was concerned, is that they were late in catching up with
the procession. They did not or were unable to adjust their views
to the changed condition of affairs as readily as others.
Do not
misunderstand me. I am one of those who believe that when my country
is at war, engaged in deadly strife with an enemy, as a matter of
policy, we ought to surrender our individual views and get behind
the government if we can possibly do so. In such times we ought to
reconcile ourselves to our government's successful conduct of the
war. But while that is my belief, it is also my contention, grounded
in the deepest principles of free government, that if a man thinks
a war is unjust or improvident, or that it is being carried on in
a corrupt manner, it is his absolute right to say so. Indeed, if it
is a question of the method of carrying on the war and he believes
it is unwise or unjust, it is his duty to say so.
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