Tin Jesus and the Two Detectives by K. King

In October of 1924, delegates of the Industrial Workers of the World gathered in a desperate but doomed attempt to stop their organization from splitting. Earlier that year, two factions, the “Fisher/Doyle faction” and the “Rowanite faction” had each set up their own General Executive Boards, much to the alarm and frustration of the membership. One side got control of the money, and one side, after a down and dirty street fight, got the headquarters. This was one of the worst moments in IWW history. What had gone wrong?

The causes of the 1924 split1 have been discussed many times over. The union was struggling with ideological differences, a dispute among recently released prisoners, government repression, debates over affiliation with the Communist International, private detective agencies, and more.

Rather than taking a broad view, this article will look at just three of the people involved in the split: Fred W. Bowerman, M. Raddock, and James Rowan. What kind of people were they, what might have motivated them, and what else did they do?

The 1924 General Convention of the Industrial Workers of the World, made a thorough investigation of both sides, and a verbatim account of this investigation survives. Wobblies didn’t mince words. On the floor of convention, Arthur Linn–of the Fisher/Doyle faction–gave his opinions about the Rowanites:

“About the first part of March I was notified by the chairman of the board that there would be a meeting of the newly installed GEB, which lasted for a period of seventeen days. Nothing very constructive was accomplished by this session, as most of the time was taken up in wrangling over personalities… There were some individuals around headquarters who, as far as I can see, have never done anything in the organization but cause dissension and disruption wherever they have been in the organization, and at the present time were trying to disrupt the general headquarters. These individuals are M. Raddock, Fred Bowerman and John Grady, and they were just awaiting the cooperation of some Tin Jesus who had the backing of the membership in the field. When James Rowan arrived in Chicago with a chip on his shoulder over the Leavenworth controversy he naturally fell in with this tribe.”2

Clearly Linn had some strong feelings about these characters, but at the same time, he was on the other side of the faction, so he can’t simply be taken at his word. However, there was plenty of other evidence to back him up.

Bowerman and Raddock
Fred W. Bowerman was the General Organizing Chairman for Industrial Union 440, representing metal and mine workers. His job was to help workers in the industry organize, but instead, he was spending down its treasury for shady purposes. By the time of convention, IU 440 was broke and in debt to General Headquarters by $5,725.21. By today’s money, that’s about $100,000. As the audit discovered, he was writing his own receipts and hiding some of his salary under other categories3. This trouble had been going on since at least 1922, when mine workers complained that he was having all monies sent to him and not distributing them4. As the auditors also found, he had falsified his union card to make it look like he joined years earlier than anyone could remember him5.

The story with M. Raddock, secretary for Industrial Union 440 and John Grady, General Organizing Chairman for Industrial Union 520 (Marine Transport Workers) was about the same. Grady had been writing checks without receipts, and in July when it became known that General Headquarters would be taking over the funds for 520, drained the funds.

Bowerman and Raddock in particular were really generous people – generous with the funds of their Industrial Unions, that is. The whole time their treasuries were draining, they were taking men on shady-sounding trips from Chicago to South Bend. Two fellow workers came forward at Convention to describe these trips. Here’s one account:

“Sometime during the month of February, I was asked by Raddock to go to South Bend . . . We were told to come up to the Main Office of I.U. 440. There were several other fellow workers in the bunch. When we were up in the office Raddock told us to leave our cards, valuables and any other identification in the office, and when we came back from the trip we could get them from him again. We left about three o’clock in the afternoon in Fellow Worker Willits’ machine. There were five of us in the machine. Raddock, Bowerman and Anderson went down by train.

We went to make a certain delinquent delegate come across with his supplies. Also to pay for any that he was short. On the way down we were treated with smokes and eats quite frequently as it was nice and cold. All this was paid out of organization funds. When we got down there the other three were holding a meeting.

After the meeting we proceeded to this fellow’s house, but he was not at home. All that they got was a few supplies and a tool box. This was, to my opinion, a very expensive trip. On the way home Raddock came back in the machine. Anderson and another fellow worker went by train. All the meals, cigars, trainfare, and repairs for the machine were paid out of I.U. 440 funds.

When we reached Chicago the next morning we were told to come up to the office in the afternoon and get a check for one day’s work.

I know that these trips were made more than once by Raddock, and every time they took several with them. Now I think that this is no way to spend the money for the organization, when this same could have been done without this expense. And in this way they wasted money more than once. I know of several fellow workers that were taken along on different trips to South Bend, and were always treated the same way.”6

It’s hard to say why the Wobblies were told to leave behind their red cards, ID, and valuables. Were they expecting to get arrested? Robbed? The real purpose of the trips is a mystery. And why did one of the fellow workers end up separated from the rest on the way home?

In fact, delegates at the convention accused both Bowerman and Raddock of being private detectives, paid by the Burns and Thiel Detective Agencies. They gave strong evidence of association with known agents. It also turned out that Bowerman, while on the GEB, had voted against the expulsion of two known Burns Detective agents from the organization and also voted to stop publishing an exposé of the agency in the union’s paper.

Labor espionage was a common and well-known occurrence at the time. Corporations and the U.S. government paid detectives to infiltrate, spy, break up strikes by force, raid union halls, provoke violence, and occupy union officer positions. It is not too far a stretch to suppose that private detective agents had ended up in the highest executive positions of the IWW, only to help tear the union down.

Or the two might have just been swindlers happy to drag the organization into chaos for their own personal gain. It amounts to the same thing, really. After the split, both Bowerman and Raddock ended up being expelled by their industrial union for embezzlement7. Bowerman went on to steal cars and rob banks from the 1930s to the 1950s8, when he was killed in a famous heist9, later dramatized in the movie “The Great Bank Robbery.” It’s possible that Bowerman was not a detective himself, but simply a crook who depended on the Bureau of Investigation to encourage the law to look the other way–a common practice.10

James Rowan
As for James Rowan, their “Tin Jesus,” he was a charismatic figure who took leadership roles in railroad strikes, lumber strikes, free speech fights, and more. In the Everett free speech fights of 1916, he orated on street corners until he was arrested, and as soon as he was let out of jail he started up again. In August of 1917, while in Spokane, Rowan threatened a strike of the nation’s industries. The government responded with a declaration of martial law, and unionizing in the area was squelched11. When Rowan was sentenced to 20 years in Leavenworth prison, he joined the group of prisoners known as “die-hards,” who rejected any attempts to secure individual commutation (shortening) of sentences and accused those who took them as “yellow bellies” who crawled out, leaving their fellow workers behind.

For the role he played in the controversy over commutation, he gained folk hero status. He used that status to become the face of the “decentralization” movement, and he put his name to the “Emergency Program” that split the organization in two, both sides weaker than before.

Although Rowan is often named as the leader of the split, Arthur Linn’s suggestion that he was a tool is an intriguing alternative. Infiltration happens often in activist organizations. It often involves a charismatic leader, a dispute of some sort within the organization, and financial mismanagement. By the time people have figured out what’s up, the damage has been done.

Lessons learned
What lessons can be learned from the damage these three people did to the Industrial Workers in the World? The question of espionage aside, incidents of self-aggrandizement and grifting come up often in the union movement and need to be dealt with – or, better yet, prevented altogether. What could be done differently?

1. Watch the finances!

In this case, the fraudulent accounting had probably been going on for a while in IUs 440 and 520, with nobody stopping it. Maybe the General Secretary-Treasurers had been letting dodgy practices slide. The organizational debate over centralization/decentralization would have provided cover for misuse of funds.

That’s why it’s important for all levels of a union, from the bottom to the top, to keep close watch on finances. Nobody likes to look at a treasurer’s report, but it’s got to be done. It is easier to prevent misuse than to hold officers accountable afterward.

2. Manage organizational disputes

Three disputes had been building in the organization for years: the debate over communism, the centralization/decentralization debate, and the conditional clemency debate. Of the three, the debate over individual commutation burned the hottest. One of the early signs of the split happened in March of 1924, when the General Defense Committee met and couldn’t get anything done because of “mutual hatred.” The “die-hards” sent bulletins all over the IWW denouncing the “yellow bellies.”

The debate over communism, meanwhile, provided cover for the Rowan faction. They justified their actions and deflected blame by pointing to “communist liquidators” planted to destroy the organization. Accusations over who might be a communist and who might be a private detective simply drowned out the facts.

Some of the onlookers underestimated the organizational controversies by dismissing them as “squabbles.” They underestimated the seriousness of the controversy, and they missed out on the bad actors of the organization. This isn’t the first time people have made this mistake, and it won’t be the last.

Others reacted with the extreme measure of throwing the Rowan faction out of Headquarters, instead of going through the organization’s grievance or recall procedures. This action gave Rowan’s faction the opportunity to send circulars claiming they had been thrown out by gunmen and gangsters12, and just enough moral high ground to suspend the constitution and establish the “Emergency Program.” This kind of mistake is also common. People usually “know” the other side is in the wrong, and in that case it was true, but unless the rest of the organization knows what’s going on, dramatic action just looks bad.

The delegates to convention suspended all the officers of the General Executive Board, from both factions, and that was a good choice even if one was “right” and one was “wrong.” The delegates brought both factions together as best they could, and they sent out a questionnaire to all the branches asking whether or not the convention had their support, clearly demonstrating that they would accept the democratic voice of the workers. Among all the fighting there was a contingent of people who refused to take one side or another, insisted on fully investigating the facts, and in so doing kept the organization together as well as possible.

3. Watch out for the charismatic leaders

Rowan became known as “Jesus of the Lumberjacks.” He was a hero and a whole lot of Wobblies in the Pacific Northwest backed him to the full and supported him afterward. But by splitting the organization, he betrayed them all.

The beloved leaders, who win the hearts and minds of the people, are in truth no better or worse than the rest of us. Power corrupts, and so does money and fame.

4. Keep on building

Despite the best efforts of corporations, the U.S. government, and private detective agencies, the IWW did not die. Although the split weakened the IWW greatly, but the delegates to the 1924 convention worked together to keep the IWW afloat. They corresponded with and took orders from their respective branches, and they kept organizing.

The people who pick up the pieces and keep on going, the ones who mend the rifts and watch the books, seldom get recognition, but they are the heroes of this story.

Footnotes

Cameron Molyneux, “Industrial Suicide: Understanding the 1924 Split of the Industrial Workers of the World”, https://depts.washington.edu/iww/1924_split.shtml
↩︎
Minutes of the Sixteenth Constitutional General Convention of the Industrial Workers of the World, https://archive.org/details/minutes-of-the-sixteenth-constitutional-general-convention-1924, p. 125 ↩︎
July 1924 General Office Bulletin, https://archive.org/details/1924-july-gob, pp 7-9 ↩︎
Extracts from the Verbatim Report of the 16th General Convention of the Industrial Workers of the World, https://archive.org/details/extracts-from-the-verbatim-report-of-the-16th-general-convention-1924, p. 183 ↩︎
Extracts, p. 35 ↩︎
Extracts, pp 73-74 ↩︎
“What is Rank and File Rule?” IWW, 1925, p. 4 ↩︎
Wikipedia gives general details of his life but includes few details from before 1930. Based on the 1920 Census Record, which finds him in jail as part of an IWW roundup, he is the same man. Source: Fourteenth Census of the United States, 1920. (NARA microfilm publication T625, 2076 rolls). Records of the Bureau of the Census, Record Group 29. National Archives, Washington, D.C ↩︎
“Bank Robber Bowerman Dies of Bullet Wound,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 2 1953, Sat, pg. 1 ↩︎
Drabble, John, “From Pinkerton to G-Man: The Transition from Private to State Political Repression, 1873-1956,” Journal of American Studies of Turkey 20 (2004), p. 70 ↩︎
1917: IWW Offices Raided & Martial Law Declared”, Robert Lambeth, Spokane Historical Record, https://spokanehistorical.org/items/show/291 ↩︎
“Are We Gangsters and Gunmen?”, General Office Bulletin for July, 1924 ↩︎