A Young People's History of the United States (Enhanced Omnibus Edition) by Howard Zinn

Author:Howard Zinn [Zinn, Howard]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Random House Inc Clients
Published: 2009-06-01T04:00:00+00:00

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn addressing crowd, 1914.

Most Socialists, though, continued to oppose the war. Some paid a heavy price for expressing their opinions.

In Oklahoma, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) planned a march on Washington for people from across the country who objected to the draft. Before the march, union members were arrested. Four hunded and fifty people accused of rebellion were put in the state penitentiary. Across the country in Boston, eight thousand Socialists and unionists at an antiwar march were attacked by soldiers and sailors, acting on their officers’ orders.

Just before the United States declared war, the IWW newspaper had said, “Capitalists of America, we will fight against you, not for you!” Now the war gave the government its chance to destroy the radical union. In September 1917, Department of Justice agents raided forty-eight IWW meeting halls across the country, seizing letters and literature.

The following April, 101 leaders of the union went on trial for opposing the draft and encouraging soldiers to desert. One of them told the court:You ask me why the IWW is not patriotic to the United States. If you were a bum without a blanket; if you had left your wife and kids when you went west for a job, and had never located them since; if your job had never kept you long enough in a place to qualify you to vote; if every person who represented law and order and the nation beat you up . . . how in hell do you expect a man to be patriotic? This war is a business man’s war. . . .

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