No one really knows the exact reason why members of the Industrial Workers of the World labor union became known as “Wobblies.”
The union’s own website alone offers up four possible explanations. What is known about the IWW, founded in Chicago in 1905, is that it has always been controversial for its unabashedly socialist leanings. Its opponents in the early 1900s simplified matters by calling IWW members Communists.
So when the union began growing in influence among San Pedro dockworkers following the official establishment of Los Angeles Harbor in 1909, the businessmen who owned the shipping companies there grew increasingly alarmed.
The IWW favored the “closed shop” labor concept, under which companies were forced to hire workers who were union members. The business owners fought for “open shops,” where they could hire whomever they wanted without having to deal with the unions.
The IWW reached its peak membership during the World War I era. After the war, a wave of anti-Communist sentiment swept the country, fueled by fears of a Communist takeover similar to the Bolshevik revolution in Russia in 1917.
This resulted in often violent crackdowns on radical organizations — and the IWW became a major target. Law enforcement authorities based their actions on the Criminal Syndicalism Act of 1919, a state law barring the use of criminal acts to effect political or social change. (The vague law remained on the books until its repeal in 1968.)
I’ve written before about the May 13, 1923, demonstration at Liberty Hill in San Pedro, where thousands of striking dockworkers and demonstrators assembled. Two days later, Upton Sinclair, author of the muckraking book “The Jungle,” read from the Bill of Rights to assembled protesters and promptly was arrested.
Sinclair was responding to LAPD raids on the Wobblies on March 14, during which as many as a thousand IWW members were arrested, herded into Red Cars and taken to temporary stockades in Griffith Park.
The Los Angeles Police Department enlisted the usually violent help of vigilante forces, such as strike-breaking expert John “Black Jack” Jerome and the newly resurgent Ku Klux Klan to help end the strike. Louis D. Oaks, the LAPD chief at the time of the 1923 strike, was a KKK member.
Unease and occasional violence continued for the next several months. It would culminate in a raid that went a long way toward diminishing the IWW’s influence in San Pedro.
On March 1, 1924, the Ku Klux Klan staged a silent march through San Pedro that included the IWW meeting hall at 12th and Center streets among its destinations. Its purpose was intimidation, with as many as 2,000 klansmen participating. A March 17 LAPD raid followed, during which several IWW leaders were arrested under the criminal syndicalism law.
But the most violent raid was still to come. It occurred on June 14, 1924, when Ku Klux Klan members descended on an IWW gathering at its union hall.
The event wasn’t a meeting, but a benefit entertainment program honoring two union members who had been killed in a recent railroad accident. About 300 people attended, including families and children of IWW members.
During the event, approximately 150 KKK members arrived via automobiles at the hall and immediately began attacking those in attendance with guns, clubs, blackjacks, pipes and brass knuckles. Several children were scalded by hot water from a coffee urn.
Among those burned were sisters May and Lilly Sundstedt. May’s burns were serious enough for her to be hospitalized. Their mother, Elizabeth, was less fortunate. She was beaten and clubbed during the attack and died from her injuries six weeks later on Aug. 1.
Nine-year-old Alex Kruglis attempted to flee from the violence at the hall, but was chased down by a raider who then threw a pot of hot grease onto his legs. He also had to be hospitalized, but survived.
Several union leaders were kidnapped and driven to Santa Ana Canyon in Orange County, where six of them were tarred and feathered.
The union hall itself was destroyed, and the IWW’s influence in San Pedro was lessened dramatically.
Though it seemed to have worked, voices of outrage over the lawless raid began to grow, including that of Sinclair. Justifying the raid became increasingly difficult, and port business owners tried to distance themselves from it, perhaps realizing that they had let the violence get out of hand.
The LAPD responded by replacing Chief Oaks with former Berkeley Chief August Vollmer, a more moderate leader who was charged with reforming the department.
No record of prosecution for the death of Elizabeth Sunstedt could be found in contemporary news reports. Arrests were made in the tar-and-feathers incident and a grand jury reviewed the case, but again, no records of prosecution could be found. A damages suit brought by the owners of the property where the destroyed hall was located was thrown out of court in January 1926.
The IWW survived it all, including its near extinction during the second wave of anti-Communist sentiment that swept the country during the 1950s. It currently has more than 12,000 members, down from its peak membership of nearly 60,000 in 1923.
Sources: Daily Breeze archives. Endangered Dreams: The Great Depression in California, by Kevin Starr, Oxford University Press, 1997. “Industrial Workers of the World Photograph Collection: 1923-1924,” University Library, University of Washington website. Industrial Workers of the World website. Los Angeles Times archives. Port of Los Angeles: Conflict, Commerce and the Fight for Control, by Geraldine Knatz, Angel City Press and Huntington-USC Institute on California & the West, 2019. San Pedro News Pilot archives.