Wobbly Soapbox Site
Stevens and Spokane Falls Blvd.
by nicki sabalu


It's not one bit of a secret that Spokane was quite a different place in 1909. Trains resided all throughout the place we now know as Riverfront Park, billowing steam into the air as they wheezed in and out of town. Spokane Falls Boulevard, then known as Front Street, spat up dust and dirt when anyone traveled upon it. A fire may have devastated the city-center in 1889, but twenty years later, the city was re-asserting its industrial might.

Workers traveled to Spokane from all around the country, often stowing away on trains, for jobs gathering lumber and working on construction crews. Stevens Street, still at the heart of downtown, was home to dozens of employment agencies. Workers often had to pay for employment – a dollar a job. In return, the agencies would hire them for lumber and construction companies, then routinely dismiss them within the span of a week. If they wanted another job, they could pay again. For this very reason, the agencies became known as employment sharks.

When news of these practices traveled East to organizers of a relatively new union – the Industrial Workers of the World – they opened a community hall were they held regular meetings and published a newspaper. They propped themselves onto upside-down crates in front of the agencies, and addressed anyone who would listen.

Before long, the city passed an ordinance prohibiting folks from speaking on the streets, which some city officials admitted was to discourage the wobblies (as members of the union were known).

At first, the wobblies cooperated by holding speeches within the union hall. But that Summer, when the city created an exemption that allowed the Salvation Army to speak and collect donations, the wobblies began to organize mass actions of civil-disobedience. In October, a headline in their newspaper read: "Wanted: Men to Fill the Jails of Spokane."

Workers from around the region obliged, making their way by train and foot to join the masses gathered near Stevens and Front Street. It was a free speech battle to the likes of which North America had never known.

One person would step upon a crate, addressing the crowd by shouting, ''Friends and Fellow Workers!'' – and before they could continue, they would be arrested, only to have another comrade step upon the crate and follow suit. A hundred-and-three people were arrested on the first day, with over twelve-hundred workers detained by the end of the free speech battle the following March.

And the jail indeed filled; so much that a dilapidated schoolhouse was converted to a temporary detention facility. When that schoolhouse, too, flooded with wobblies, the U.S. Army permitted the city to transport detainees to Fort George Wright.

Many wobblies were sentenced to work on rock-piles, and when they refused, they were served a diet of bread and water. The daily cost of holding prisoners wore public support darn near threadbare, and as outcry over the cost of detainment grew, the city agreed to release the prisoners. In March of 1910, the ordinance was repealed and charges were dropped. Nineteen of the employment agencies had their licenses revoked. The success of the Spokane Free Speech Battle inspired workers to organize similar acts of civil disobedience in cities throughout the Northwest. Some were undoubtedly more successful than others.

And now, near the spot where voices radiated from crates many years ago, carousel music is carried by the wind, a suction goat made of steel devours crumpled wrappers, and geese ask for bread crumbs. Like our bodies grow new skin, our city grows new layers of history. Which stories will be remembered?


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