On Appeal: Sacco and Vanzetti

The Red Scare by Paul Burnett, 2L

Shortly after the end of World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, the Red Scare took hold in the United States.  A nationwide fear of communists, socialists, anarchists, and other dissidents suddenly grabbed the American psyche in 1919 following a series of anarchist bombings.  The nation was gripped in fear.  Innocent people were jailed for expressing their views, civil liberties were ignored, and many Americans feared that a Bolshevik-style revolution was at hand. Then, in the early 1920s, the fear seemed to dissipate just as quickly as it had begun, and the Red Scare was over.

During World War I, a fervent patriotism was prevalent in the country, spurred by propagandist George Creel, chairman of the United States Committee on Public Information.  While American boys were fighting the "Huns" abroad, many Americans fought them at home.  Anyone who wasn't as patriotic as possible--conscientious objectors, draft dodgers, "slackers," German-Americans, immigrants, Communists--was suspect.  It was out of this patriotism that the Red Scare took hold.

At the time the World War I Armistice was executed in 1918, approximately nine million people worked in war industries, while another four million were serving in the armed forces.  Once the war was over, these people were left without jobs, and war industries were left without contracts.  Economic difficulties and worker unrest increased.

Two main Union/Socialist groups stood out at the time--the International Workers of the World (the I.W.W. or Wobblies) centered in the northwest portion of the country and led by "Big" Bill Haywood, and the Socialist party led by Eugene Debs.  Both groups were well know objectors to WWI, and to the minds of many Americans therefore, unpatriotic.  This led them open to attack.  Any activity even loosely associated with them was suspicious.

One of the first major strikes after the end of the war was the Seattle shipyard strike of 1919 which, erroneously, was attributed to the Wobblies.  On January 21, 35,000 shipyard workers in Seattle struck.  A general strike resulted when 60,000 workers in the Seattle area struck on February 6.  Despite the absence of any violence or arrests, the strikers were immediately labeled as “Reds” and charges that they were trying to incite revolution were leveled against them.  Hysteria struck the city as department stores, grocery stores, and pharmacies were flooded by frightened customers trying to ensure that they would be able to survive a prolonged strike.  The Seattle strike suddenly became national news, with newspaper headlines across the country telling of Seattle's impending doom and potential loss to the Reds and urging for the strike to be put down. Seattle mayor Ole Hansen, who had long hated the Wobblies and took the strike as a personal affront to him, took the offensive against the strikers.   He guaranteed the city's safety by announcing that 1500 of the city's policemen, and an equal number of federal troops were at his disposal to help break the strike and keep the peace.  On February 10, realizing the strike could not succeed and could even damage the labor movement in Seattle, orders were given to end the strike.  Mayor Hansen took credit for the termination of the strike, proclaimed a victory for Americanism, quit his job, and became a national expert and lecturer on anti-communism.