Keep the Wretches in Order: America's Biggest Mass Trial, the Rise of the Justice Department, and the Fall of the IWW

by Dean Strang, Nancy Gertner (Foreword by)

Overview

Before World War I, the government reaction to labor dissent had been local, ad hoc, and quasi-military. Sheriffs, mayors, or governors would deputize strikebreakers or call out the state militia, usually at the bidding of employers. When the United States entered the conflict in 1917, government and industry feared that strikes would endanger war production; a more coordinated, national strategy would be necessary. To prevent stoppages, the Department of Justice embarked on a sweeping new effort-replacing gunmen with lawyers. The department systematically targeted the nation's most radical and innovative union, the Industrial Workers of the World, also known as the Wobblies, resulting in the largest mass trial in U.S. history.
In the first legal history of this federal trial, Dean Strang shows how the case laid the groundwork for a fundamentally different strategy to stifle radical threats, and had a major role in shaping the modern Justice Department. As the trial unfolded, it became an exercise of raw force, raising serious questions about its legitimacy and revealing the fragility of a criminal justice system under great external pressure.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780299323349
Publisher:	University of Wisconsin Press
Publication date:	11/10/2020
Edition description:	1
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Dean A. Strang is a criminal defense lawyer in Madison, Wisconsin, and an adjunct professor at the University of Virginia School of Law. He is the author of Worse than the Devil: Anarchists, Clarence Darrow, and Justice in a Time of Terror.

Table of Contents

Foreword Nancy Gertner ix

Preface xvii

Acknowledgments xxi

Part I

1 The Railroad Trestle 3

2 One Big, and Different, Union 10

3 Big Bill 19

4 Ed 27

5 Qui Pro Domina Justitia Sequitur? 34

6 Something Must Be Done 41

7 The Color of Law 50

8 Five Tons 56

9 The Copper Trust Lawyer 66

10 True Bill 73

Part II

11 Twelve Good Men and True 89

12 Van and the Squire 98

13 A Gathering 109

14 This Un-American Institution 115

15 Polly-Foxing 123

16 If Christ Came to Chicago 134

17 Lives 142

18 Argument 152

19 The First Final Chapter 157

20 Have You Anything to Say? 164

Part III

21 The Train 187

22 Doing Time 193

23 Reaching for the Rich 198

24 The Other Three 205

25 The Seventh Circuit 211

26 Consequences 227

27 Bucky 233

28 All Rise 237

29 A Justice Department Emerges 243

30 Endings 250

Notes 261

Index 307

Editorial Reviews

"Dean Strang tells a great story of America's struggle with fear and injustice a century ago while asking us to consider, 'What is the story of ourselves that we write today?' American workers still fight what the Wobblies fought in 1918, as the Justice Department during WWI overreached in ways similar to our current 'war on terror.' Dean is a great attorney and a gifted writer, borrowing lessons from the past to help guide our future."--Alec Baldwin

"Strang humanizes this shameful chapter in our nation's history. With empathy and verve, he tells the story of abuse of executive power, a partial and wacky federal judge (and autocratic first baseball commissioner), and many ruined lives of working men and women."--Brad Snyder, author of The House of Truth: A Washington Political Salon and the Foundations of American Liberalism

From the Publisher

★ 06/01/2019

The rise and fall of the International Workers of the World (IWW) was the major predecessor to the subsequent rise of U.S. labor unions in the early part of the 20th century. It is a fascinating and little-noted chapter in American history. Criminal defense lawyer Strang (Univ. of Virginia Sch. of Law; Worse Than the Devil) is well qualified to tell the judicial story of the "Wobblies," as members of the IWW were known. The author relates this history in brief chapters that illustrate Alex de Tocqueville's prescient warning about the "tyranny of the majority" in the American brand of democracy. The Wobblies confronted President Woodrow Wilson, who used the newly formed Department of Justice to punish harshly the organization for challenging his authority. This episode set the stage for the witch hunt by Sen. Joseph McCarthy during the early years of the Cold War. VERDICT This title excels at showing the danger of American justice during wartime. For those who enjoyed Nat Hentoff's The First Freedom and Peter Iron's Courage of their Convictions, it's a must-read, appealing to American historians, political scientists, and anyone interested in labor and the judicial process.—William D. Pederson, Louisiana State Univ., Shreveport

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