By Hank Nuwer
Today’s column addresses the attitudes of the American public and U.S. newspapers toward the limits of free speech before, during, and after wartime just over a century ago, 1916-1922.
There is a reason I took an interest in researching this column. I’m writing a chapter about labor trade unionist Eugene V. Debs for a scholarly biography of Kurt Vonnegut. The labor agitator became a hero to the future novelist.
Agitators like Eugene V. Debs reserved much of their venom for the U.S. government, which sided with capitalists over workers. He also denounced, as unjust in his view, American participation in war, leading to his two arrests under the Sedition Act of 1918.
Debs received a 10-year sentence in federal prison in Atlanta for his speeches against the war movement.
The Department of Justice recommended to Wilson that Debs be released on February 12, 1921, but an obdurate Wilson refused to agree.
Many editorial writers cheered Wilson’s decision keep Debs in prison. Dozens said clemency would make a mockery of the law (which soon was dissolved by Congress, anyway).
Debs had the support of many union workers. He received nearly one million votes for president while incarcerated in a federal prison in Atlanta. (President Warren G. Harding did commute Debs’ sentence).
The Sedition Act was Wilson’s shield against criticism, making it illegal for a U.S. citizen to “willfully utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the United States government.”
Here in Alaska, there also were scattered arrests for sedition.
Martin Kennelly, editor of the I.W.W.-affiliated daily Industrial Worker in Nome, and his predecessor Bruce Rogers, were convicted of publishing seditious statements in the paper’s editorials.
In June of 1918, a longtime Fairbanks chief of police officer named Frank C. Wiseman charged an opinionated miner named Charles C. Pyne with violation under Chapter 60 of the Session Laws of Alaska.
This offense occurred five months before World War One ended on November 11, 1918, and an “armistice” was declared between the U.S. (and its Allies) and Germany.
Charles C. Pyne was a solid citizen who served as a jury foreman, but he occasionally “let ‘er rip” in letters to the editor.
On June 15, 1918, at a Fairbanks hotel, Pryne spoke out against the draft of young men in the presence of Chief Wiseman. Wiseman, who also patrolled saloons to arrest men for profanity in public, listened and had enough evidence.
“The conscription act is a slur on the republic,” Pyne said. “The conscription act is a joke. The rich man doesn’t have to go and the poor man does. To me personally it makes no difference if the allies or Germans win the war. The United States has three men paid to lecture about the war and to lie to fool the public.”
Pyne faced a possible sentence of 10 years when convicted. A “lenient” district court gave him a one-year sentence for his derogatory remarks against the U.S. at time of war.
It’s been a little over a century since President Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat, succeeded in repressing lawful free speech during wartime. American mainstream newspapers then supported the federal law for sedition violations.
Wilson finally, in peacetime, gave clemency to most convicted of sedition (Debs the main exception).
Under Wilson, at least 2,000 Americans were arrested under the 1918 Sedition Act.
When I was in parochial grade school, the nuns taught me that Wilson was nearly as important as Lincoln and Washington. He enacted banking reforms, transformed America from isolationism into an international policeman, and mobilized the U.S. to help defeat Germany in World War One.
But, as I later read as an adult, Wilson sent troops to invade and occupy Haiti and the Dominican Republic, supported segregation in government offices, and acted too little and too late to halt despicable riots based on race. He also refused to order American ships to avoid war areas prior to U.S. involvement in the war, leading to a loss of many American lives.
Princeton in 1920 removed its former president’s name from its School of Public and International Affairs over Wilson’s “racist thinking and policies.”
Thus, many historians view Wilson as a flawed president, his good deeds and better policies notwithstanding.
Historians couldn’t have said anything disparaging Wilson in 1918—even though what they said was true.
They’d have been in jail with Alaskans Charles C. Pryne and Nome editors Rogers and Kennelly.
Hank Nuwer is a UAF adjunct professor and community theater actor in Fairbanks. He’s now in rehearsal for concurrent roles in Fairbanks Drama Association’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and in UAF’s Strike!