<i>Frank Little and the IWW: The Blood That Stained an American Family</i> by Jane Little Botkin

The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) formed in 1905 to give voice to revolutionary syndicalism and, above all else, to organize the supposedly unorganizable. The IWW maintained a loose organizational hierarchy between the national offices in Chicago and locals spread across the United States. It soon had branches in Canada, Mexico, and many far-flung places around the world. This structure elevated individual local organizers from a remarkable range of ethnic and racial diversity. In the western United States, Frank Little rose to prominence as one of the most important regional organizers. Jane Little Botkin tells Frank Little’s story by digging into IWW collections, local archives, and a collection of family documents and remembrances that are beyond the reach of other historians because she is one of Little’s descendants. The book is both a family history and an important regional study of the IWW divided into three parts covering Little’s early life in Oklahoma, his entry into labor organizing and the IWW, and the World War I period that saw him lynched in Butte, Montana, in 1917.The book’s first contribution is to clear up over a century of confusion about Frank Little’s heritage. Frank Little personally cultivated the untruth that he was a “halfbreed” Indian. The only supporting evidence for his Native American ancestry comes from a relative who claimed that Frank’s mother Almira was “‘one-half Indian, a Cherokee’ and ashamed of her Indian blood, and that she chose not to enroll despite her children’s urging” (26). Many Anglos have imagined Native ancestry, which forces caution when evaluating Little’s claims. Botkin clearly documents that the Little family experienced Oklahoma as white settlers, living illegally for over four years in what was then Indian Territory before the federal government opened the so-called Unassigned Lands to white appropriation in 1889. Frank grew up in Oklahoma and attended a Quaker school—though his family was not Quaker—alongside Anglo and Native American children. Casting Little’s origin myth aside, he seemed to draw from his early years to thrive while immersed in racially diverse western towns organizing for the IWW.In the following chapters the author traces the course of Frank Little’s life after he left home, giving us a remarkably detailed view of many of the most significant regional labor struggles in this period as well as the spaces in between. Botkin’s research uncovered the years Frank and his older brother Fred spent engaged in mining, first in Colorado, then in California and Arizona. By taking an individual and his family as her subject, rather than constructing a narrative around notable events, Botkin reveals, for example, life and work in Cripple Creek, Colorado, between its two major labor conflicts in 1893–94 and 1903. Fred moved to the remote Colorado mining town after the first strike and met his soon-to-be-wife Emma. Fred and Emma went on to play important and largely neglected roles in the IWW, intellectually influencing Frank in his formative years.Frank joined the Western Federation of Miners (WFM) after he followed Fred to California, then spent about year in Bisbee, Arizona, beginning in 1903. He also became a socialist, and spoke in other Arizona mining towns—places like Miami, Globe, Douglass, Clifton-Morenci, and Jerome—before the founding of the IWW. Unfortunately, Botkin’s study mostly follows the older historiography of the IWW in the US West in depicting the IWW as a white organization dominated by miners. An important exception is her discussion of Little and Fernando Velarde organizing for the WFM and IWW in Clifton in 1906. Velarde was one of the region’s most prominent Mexican organizers during these years, working tirelessly for other organizations including the Partido Liberal Mexicano (PLM). The pair organized over two hundred predominantly Mexican workers during this trip. Botkin argued that WFM leadership chose Frank for the assignment because he was open to organizing nonwhite workers, though he never learned Spanish. This ties into recent work by Devra Weber on Mexican IWW organizing. Now other scholars can use Botkin’s work to further connect Little with the rich multilingual IWW sources and organizers that are mostly missing from her study.Another significant contribution of Botkin’s research is to expand our understanding of the arc of the IWW free-speech fight in Fresno. She credits Frank’s brother Fred with organizing Fresno IWW Local 66, which chartered in October 1909, the year before the fight erupted. Both Fred and his wife Emma tried to reach a broad audience in their organizing, which included writing letters to the Fresno Morning Republican. In one letter in 1909 Emma condemned wage slavery and argued broadly for the IWW’s vision of working-class emancipation. At this point Frank was confined to jail in Spokane, Washington, for his participation in the free-speech fight there. Once released, he traveled, like most Wobblies, in an empty box car to Fresno. A few of the new details Botkin uncovered are the political differences between Fred and Frank over the IWW fallout with the Socialist Party and WFM. This gives us a rare individual and local glimpse into a reorganization usually considered at the level of national leadership. Fred acted as a moderating voice in Fresno in 1910 before the free-speech fight broke out in earnest. Then marital trouble between Fred and Emma affected Fred’s participation, leading to his eventual defection from the IWW in October during the fight. Frank took over leadership of Local 66 when Fred stepped aside. In these chapters, the author combines family and local history to remarkable effect.Most readers will pick up this book knowing how it will end. A mob kidnapped and murdered Little shortly after he arrived in Butte, Montana, to continue his life’s work labor organizing. The details Botkin uncovers before this night elevate Frank Little’s years of dedicated organizing over his untimely end. The author gives context to his martyrdom, in what was one of the signal events of the violent repression of the Left during the World War I era. The book is too long for undergraduate courses, but would be an solid addition to period graduate courses and courses on methodology with its blending of biography and social history. It also deserves a popular readership.

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