Synopsis
Ralph Hosea Chaplin (1887-1961) became a labor activist, when at the age of seven, he saw a worker shot dead during the Pullman strike in Chicago, Illinois. He had moved with his family from Ames County, Kansas to Chicago in 1893. During a time in Mexico he was influenced by hearing of the execution squads established by Porfirio Diaz, and became a supporter of Emiliano Zapata. For two years he worked in the strike committee with Mother Jones for the bloody Kanawha County, West Virginia strike of coal miners in 1912-13. Chaplin then became active in the Industrial Workers of the World and became editor of its eastern U. S. publication Solidarity. In 1917 he and some 100 other Wobblies were rounded up, convicted, and jailed under the Espionage Act for conspiring to hinder the draft and encourage desertion. He served four years of a 20-year sentence for this. He became active in the cause of preventing Communist infiltration in American unions. Eventually Chaplin settled in Tacoma, Washington, where he edited the local labor publication.
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Product Description
Chaplin, together with a number of fellow prisoners who were sentenced at the same time, was accused of taking part in a conspiracy with intent to obstruct the prosecution of the war. To be sure the Government did not produce a single witness to show that the war had been obstructed by their activities; but it was argued that the agitation which they had carried on by means of speeches, articles, pamphlets, meetings and organizing campaigns, would quite naturally hamper the country in its war work. On the face of their indictments these men were accused of interfering with the conduct of the war; in reality they were sent to jail because they held and expressed certain beliefs.
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