1912 - Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), assisted by SPC, conducted successful fight for free speech in Vancouver. R.P. Pettipiece, former Alberta newspaperman and now prominent BC labour radical, arrested. IWW called for a general strike and threatened to unleash "the worker's weapon - sabotage."
1912 -- Edmonton sewer ditch diggers, organized by IWW, went on strike for fair wages. (see blogsite Forgotten Edmonton)
James Rowan was prominint in IWW efforts in Edmonton in 1914.
Edmonton Capital reported that he and H. McDonald had a heavy talk to Commissioner Booth. (Edmonton had city commissioners back then.)
For two hours Rowan and McDonald spoke to the Commissioner on need for better support for the unemployed and better wages for city workers. Booth, according to the journalist covering the meeting, said soldiers would not be needed to maintain law and order; that police would arrest all troublemakers. (Edmonton Capital. May 15, 1914, p. 17)
Hardly a reassuring reponse from City Hall.
Shortly after this, Rowan had many troubles. (see below)
Currently there is a branch of the IWW operating in Edmonton.
(see IWW's online presence)
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Here are some Canadian Wobblies who were killed due to their work
(taken from IWWs killed
Aug 28 1907 Cobalt (Ontario) -- IWW member killed when scabs overloaded a charge at the mine
1911 Dec. 23 Nelson BC -- John LeTual and Caleb A. Barton murdered while organizing for IWW
1912 - Victoria BC -- IWW member Gust Gustafs drowned. foul play suspected
1913 May 1 -- Tete Jaune Cache unidentified IWW member working on the railway murdered
1914 July 1 Lac La Biche, Alberta -- Socialist and Wobblie Hiram Johnson killed in brutal knife and axe attack. He had written that his neighbours abhorred his politics. His murder was pegged on James Rowan and W.E. Barrett, IWW organizers active in Edmonton, who discovered his body. Their legal defence emptied the Edmonton IWW of energy. The charges were eventually dropped, and the two men were instead sentenced to six months hard labour for the crime of vagrancy.
James Rowan went on to write The IWW in the lumber industry.
Edmonton Capital advertized meeting held to raise funds in ther defence. A. Budden, Joe Knight, Alf Farmilo all spoke at the meeting. held on "College Avenue, overlooking McDougall Hill." (Edm. Capital, Aug. 14, 1914, p. 10)
(Budden and Knight were prominent local members of the Socialist Party of Canada.)
Alf Budden was author of The Slave of the Farm: Being Letters From Alf. Budden to a Fellow Farm Slave and Comrade in Revolt. Vancouver: Socialist Party of Canada, Dominion Executive Committee, 1918.
When the two were sentenced to six months in prision for vagrancy, a criminologist explained the why of it in the Edmonton Capital (July 23, 1914, p. 4):
"The justice of the capitalist class during the present epoch is that best adapted to terrorize the proletariant into abject submission. The unjust brutal sentence of six months imprisonment passed upon Rowan bears, stamped indelibly upon it, the frank and candid intentions of the ruling classes to carry out their system of intimidation. That they are destined to failure is shown by the ever-increasing solidarity of the workers, with the emphasized intention of resisting to the utmost these injuries to their class by the aid of a thinly-veiled pretence of protecting society with the help of justice." (Luke Alderson Smith)
1914 Aug 20 Vancouver BC -- Clarke Wallace Connell died from absess on the brain from police beating
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