By Tuck X331980. April 30, 2026.
Bellingham police raided the IWW’s Lumber Workers Industrial Union Local 337 hall on November 13, 1919. Four Wobs- 26-year-old Lafayete Ady, Phillip Borchnak, and Jim Wilson, were arrested and charged under the State’s new Criminal Syndicalism law (commonly known as ‘crim syn’). These laws were used to stifle dissent and organized opposition to capitalism, and remained on the books in many states until the Supreme Court ruled against them in 1969’s Brandenburg v. Ohio. (hmmm, how would today’s SCOTUS rule?) The bill, specifically intended to criminalize membership in the IWW, was introduced in 1917 by Senator E. J. Cleary of Bellingham. Though it passed the legislature, Governor Lister vetoed it as an a infringement of free speech. The veto was overridden and the law was passed on January 13, 1919. The rabidly conservative Bellingham Herald gushed with praise- the paper editorialized often on the ‘evils’ of the ‘un-American’ ‘Bolsheviki’ of the IWW . The text of the law as published in the January 21 1919 Herald follows the article on the veto override.
And the Herald’s editorial of January 14, 1919:
The city prosecutors dilly dallied until the following November to do anything with the new law. The union hall of the IWW’s Lumber Workers Industrial Union Local 337 was raided on November 13. Three Wobblies were arrested and charged with criminal syndicalism, the first time the law was used in the state. We will let the Herald tell the story because the IWW’s own press had been shut down as a result of the Centralia Tragedy of November 11- just two days before the raid on the Bellingham union hall.
So Fellow Workers Lafayette Ady (the Local Secretary), Jim Wilson and Phillip Bochnak were locked up in the city jail until they could be brought to trial, where they faced fines of up to $5000 [around $200,000 in 2026; in 1919 this was a lifetime’s of earnings] and up to 10 years in prison. Bond was set at $1500 each. Fearing for his bad health in prison, Bochnak pleaded guilty on November 19. He was fined $2000 and to the county ‘poor farm’ to pay off his fine at $3 a day- or about 2 years. This was the first conviction under the crim syn statute in the state.
On November 20, the home of a fourth IWW, Henry Larson, was raided. He was arrested and charged under the crim syn law. FW Larson appears to have been a member since the earliest days of the union. In 1909 he was listed in Industrial Worker as the original Secretary of Local 337, chartered in 1909, and he had reportedly been at the 1886 Haymarket 8-hour-day protests in Chicago.
The prosecuting attorneys were Loomis Baldrey and Frank Radley. The State Attorney General L. L. Thompson, a staunch opponent of the IWW and radicalism of any stripe, attended the entire trial and exercised his right to assist the prosecution. Local attorneys refused to defend the men. The judge, Ed E. Hardin, appointed two local attorneys, Charles B. Sampley and A. C. Durham. Understandably mistrustful, Fellow Worker Larson said ‘no thanks’ and tried to represent himself, claiming he had once practiced law in Illinois. The judge denied him this right. It proved difficult to empanel a jury- many potential jurors were dismissed by motions of both the prosecution and the defense.
The trial got underway on December 9, 1919. However, on Dec 12 a juror showed a newspaper article reporting a Spokane judge’s injunction against membership in the IWW in Spokane, the principal point in the prosecutions case against the Bellingham Wobs. This was strictly forbidden, and the judge was forced to declare a mistrial.
A new jury was seated on the 16th, the prosecution rested on the 17th. The defense called no witnesses. During Prosecutor Baldery’s concluding argument he claimed that IWW’s taught ‘free love‘. In his closing statement, Sampley argued this was irrelevant and an attempt to prejudice the jury, and that there was nothing to indicate a belief in ‘free love’ in the mass of IWW literature taken from the hall and Larson’s home during the raids; this literature was the principal evidence entered by the prosecution. The judge concurred.The case went to the jury on December 18th. They returned with a verdict after 4 1/2 hours-
The IWW’s press had a brief notice. This trial, with such welcome results, was small potatoes compared to the many other prosecutions the union faced stemming from trials all around the nation, from Federal conspiracy and subversion trials of hundreds of members, to the uproar resulting from the tragedy at Centralia on Armistice Day.
Both the Bellingham Herald and the IWW’s own Industrial Worker editorialized on the acquittal, taking radically different views.
What happened to these men? FWs Ady, Larson, and Wilson were released. Poor FW Bochnak must have kicked himself, as he spent the next two years in the county poor farm working off his fine. So far, I haven’t dug up much about any of them except Lafayette Ady, who continued as an IWW delegate. He was arrested many times in Bellingham for selling IWW literature without a permit, and was fined and spent time in jail or on the county ‘work crew’. He was a thorn in the side of the city government, advocating at city and county council meetings for workers rights and better conditions for workers sentenced to the work crew. He joined the Communist party at some point and filed to run as a Communist for the 2nd US Congressional District, but I can’t find any election results mentioning him. He was the Communist candidate for Bellingham mayor in 1931, but all the Communist candidates for city positions were ruled ineligible due to giving ‘improper notice’ of his filing. He died in 1978 in Everett.
Industrial Workers of the World Whatcom-Skagit Branch 