History Happenings: Wobblies

Striking workers have been much in the news of late, and some top-line takeaways from a Gallup poll published in late August revealed that support for unions in the United States is high.

But unions in the U.S — including one union, in particular — have not always enjoyed such levels of popularity.

Take, for example, the story of Henry Tonn, who was arrested in Marion in 1919. His crime? Attempting to cash a check from the Construction Workers’ Industrial Union No. 573.

As innocent as that sounds, the connection between that union and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) led to his arrest. He was charged with “criminal syndicalism” for his connections to the IWW — a radical, anti-capitalism labor movement — following a warrantless search of his hotel room.

Here is a snippet of a “Current Comment” column that appeared on the front page of the Friday, Dec. 5, 1919, edition of The Cedar Rapids Evening Gazette:

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“Henry Tonn is a will-o’-the-wisp who wears old, worn clothes but does not look or talk as though they suited him. He is a distributor of IWW literature, and it is charged that he also is an organizer. He was arrested in Marion after he had attempted to cash checks which identified him as a worker for Chicago headquarters of the ‘wobblies.’ In his room was found IWW literature in quantities.”

The Gazette writer was baffled by the notion that any lawyer would represent Tonn and an organization that “seeks the overthrow of the United States government.”

“The reasons behind the acceptance of such a client, bent on such a mission, by any lawyer are, to say the least, obscure,” the columnist suggested. (We might argue the reasons can be found in the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.)

World war a factor

The outrage of The Gazette columnist did not develop out of the ether. It was grounded in the then-recent history of the first world war.

“Two years ago men whose lives were far more precious to this country than is Tonn’s were bleeding to death on the fields of France in order that the bulwarks of their motherland might be kept intact,” the columnist continued. “… And here comes this man Tonn with his insidious literature, slipping around here and there, sticking the poisonous knife into those same bulwarks in whose defense those loyal boys died on the field of honor.

“Is it any wonder that from the four corners of this land there come cries for laws that will protect us against the IWW outfit, the ‘reds, ‘ the radical socialists — all the enemies from within? No, it is not.”

‘Fellow worker’

While Tonn was being held in the Linn County Jail awaiting trial, The New Solidarity, an IWW publication, offered readers an update on “Fellow Worker Tonn.”

“The prisoner is not in the least worried,” it reported. “He writes cheerfully that he is in good health and good spirits, that he has no concern except that the work of organizing the workers should go on. He seems to want only one thing for himself — that the organization papers should be sent to him regularly.”

The trial

Once the trial was underway, it was covered extensively in the local press. Reading that coverage now, it is evident that Tonn was a stand-in for a significant clash of ideologies that delved deeply into questions of what it means to be an American and the ways in which capitalism and notions of patriotism were — and perhaps still are — intertwined.

Case in point: The Hanford Post of the American Legion in Cedar Rapids passed a resolution commending the work of Linn County Attorney H.K. Lockwood in obtaining indictments against Tonn “(b)ecause it believes in the preservation of law and order as essential to the government of the United States (and) because it believes that those who advocate violence as a means of overthrowing the government should be subjected of vigorous prosecution and punishment.”

In the Feb. 27, 1920, edition of the Cedar Rapids Evening Gazette, a writer compared the life stories of Elmer A. Johnson, the prosecutor, and Tonn. The writer argued that because both men were born in lumber camps, a comparison of their individual stories offered a moral lesson about hard work and self-improvement versus being “a man without any standing.”

Though Tonn was convicted and sentenced to three years in prison in 1920, the Iowa Supreme Court ordered a new trial in 1923. That decision was based not on the warrantless search — the court tied itself in knots to ignore U.S. Supreme Court precedent on legal searches — but on the incorrect definition of “sabotage” the judge gave the jury.

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On Monday, April 28, 1924, the prosecutor dismissed the case against Tonn because Tonn already had served 25 months of his sentence.

That decision seems appropriate, but given the intensity of the local opposition to Tonn and everything he supposedly stood for, it strikes us as surprising. On the other hand, giving fuel to the idea that Tonn had been wrongfully convicted may have been unthinkable to those who had so vilified him in the past. The question of whether justice was, in the end, done is at least partially obscured by the red-hot passions of the historical moment.

Jessica Cline is a Leadership & Character Scholar at Wake Forest University. Her dad, Rob Cline, is not a scholar of any kind. They write this monthly column for The History Center. Comments: HistoricalClines@gmail.com

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