Jay Fox (August 20, 1870 – March 8, 1961) was an American journalist, trade unionist, and political activist. The political trajectory of his life ran through anarchism, syndicalism, and communism, and he played a significant role in each of these political movements.
Fox is best remembered as a leading figure in a radical collective located in Home, Washington, near Tacoma, where he was editor of one of the leading English-language anarchist newspapers of the day, The Agitator. He became embroiled in legal difficulties related to the 1910 Los Angeles Times bombing and after 1913 made his home in Chicago, Illinois, where he was a close political associate of future Communist Party leader William Z. Foster.
Biography Early life
Jay Fox was born in New Jersey of Irish Catholic parents who had just immigrated to America. The family soon moved to Chicago, where he grew up in poor, immigrant neighborhoods near the stock yards. Quitting school at an early age he went to work growing cabbage for the stockyards, and later at Malleable Iron Works in fall 1885. He joined the Knights of Labor in 1886 and was present at the famous strikes for the eight-hour day on May 1 and 3 of that year, as well as at the Haymarket Square incident.Carr, Mary M. "Jay Fox: Anarchist of Home." Columbia Magazine. 4.1 (Spring 1990): 3-4.
Later, in 1893, while working for Illinois Central Railroad, he was a charter member of the first local of the American Railway Union and delegate at its first convention in June 1894. After the virtual collapse of that movement following the Pullman Strike, he seems to have campaigned in several eastern US cities for William Jennings Bryan and visited England after his loss in the presidential election of 1896.Carr, p. 4.
Returning to Chicago by November 1897, he became associated with the group around the periodical Free Society that included Emma Goldman. He apparently conspired with her to attempt to break Alexander Berkman out of jail by tunneling into the prison, without success.William Z. Foster More Pages from a Workers Life New York: American Institute for Marxist Studies 1979 p. 12 After the assassination of President McKinley he was arrested and thrown into jail with all the other associates of the periodical, but released soon thereafter. Fox continued his writing and speech making career in New York and Chicago for the next few years, marrying Esther Abramowitz sometime in the middle of the decade.Carr, pp. 4-5.
After the Free Society moved to New York and then folded in 1904, the Chicago anarchists began to gather funds for the creation of a new anarchist paper. But a rift soon developed between Lucy Parsons and Jay Fox. Parsons still wanted to publish the paper in Chicago, whereas Fox wanted to adopt the already existing Demonstrator which was in difficult financial straits. Fox took the money already raised and sent it to Home without Parsons permission—essentially purchasing it—and promised to come to the colony to edit it personally. However health problems prevented him from coming to the colony until 1908, by which time Demonstrator had already folded. Even without Fox's personal supervision, however, the focus of Demonstrator began to shift away from the colony and more towards an anarcho-communist viewpoint focusing on the militant labor movement and the Industrial Workers of the World. This focus seems to have contrasted with the individualist anarchist views of most of the colony members.Carr, p.5.Charles Pierce LeWarne, Utopias on Puget Sound, 1885-1915. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1975; pp. 206-207.
Knights of Labor and the Haymarket Riots
Labor unions were used to unite workers in fighting for better treatment and working conditions for themselves. The members of the unions were tired of the way things were and decided to do something about it. They began organizing meetings and started to plan strikes and picket lines at their factories. One of the largest of these groups was the Knights of Labor (KOL). Fox became a member of this union in 1886 when he was sixteen years old. Upon joining the KOL, Fox agreed to participate in the strike because factory workers wanted the workday brought to consist of a set number of eight hours. People were tired of working the almost half day shifts for small amounts of pay which had become the standard of the time.
Fox and other protesters lined up in front of Malleable Iron Works, where Fox worked, and others at McCormick Reaper Works where things got violent. Fox experienced the violence of the McCormick workers where he wandered for a time to see the protestors throwing stones and then the arrival of the police who began shooting people in the crowd; some were injured and even killed. Fox described it as "a reign of terror," where police "brutally attacked workers' meetings with clubs and pistols." People later gathered at Haymarket square, among these people was Fox. The rioters met here to discuss what had happened at the previous strike and the police brutality that had occurred. During this gathering a pipe bomb was thrown into the audience, which caused chaos and added to the number of dead.Fox, Jay. "I was at Haymarket" by Jay Fox, Our World [supplement to People's World] April 27, 1951. Folder 12 MASC.
These events known as the Haymarket Riots angered many people and gave a bad impression of the labor unions due to the violence that they had incurred. However, protests such as these helped to make an impression upon the industrial heads. It made them start to realize that they were going to have to make changes for the workers or suffer the consequences. The Haymarket Riots were one of the things that set the era of worker reform into motion to help millions of people improve their lives. Work to reform the eight-hour day paid off eventually and continues on today. This showed the people in charge that laborers were no longer willing to be treated so inhumanely and that they would do what needed to be done in order to change what they wanted.Fox, Jay. "History of the Eight-Hour Day" by Jay Fox, Chicago Labor News, September 15, 1916. Folder 11 MASC. Because of this push for the eight-hour day, doors were open for reform of other unfair treatments of laborers. It helped to work towards a more just labor system in general. Young Jay Fox had been a part of this at the age of sixteen; he had helped in a cause to make a difference. Not only this but he left behind writings that let future generations know what had happened in his account of the event "I Was At Haymarket." Through this writing he showed what was going on at the time, what people decided to do about the unfair treatment, and the injustice of the authorities handling the situation.
Home, Washington
Fox described Home as "a community of free spirits, who came out into the woods to escape the polluted atmosphere of priest-ridden, conventional society."Fox, Jay. "The nude and the prudes" by J. F.[Clipping from Home Agitator, 1910, which lead to Fox's arrest] Folder 8 MASC. Home, also known as the Mutual Home Colony Association or the Home Colony, was a perfect example of Fox's individualistic ideals. Fox supported freethinking and being yourself even if it clashed with mainstream society. Fox felt people should be free to express themselves in any way they wanted.
Home was set up in response to similar ideas from men before Fox. Three anarchists established the tiny town, located on the Key Peninsula in the middle of the Puget Sound, which became a focal point for like-minded individuals who were outcast by society.
In February 1896, George H. Allen, L.F. Odell, and Oliver A Verity left the small experimental commune of Glennis, with what was left of the failed town's treasury, and purchased a tract of land where Home was established.Lewarne, Charles P. Arizona and the West. 14. 1972. 158-160.
Soon the small multitudinous community grew as it attracted more and more settlers with the same ideals. By 1901, the permanent, as some came and went, population of the Home Colony had reached close to 100 and was attracting attention from their neighbors. In 1901, the printer of the local Home newsletter was fined for distributing an article deemed obscene by the Pierce County Superior Court. Later the same year, several Home colonists traveled to nearby Anderson Island and lectured about anarchy. The Tacoma Evening News denounced the lecture and many in Tacoma believed two of the Home colonists garnered government pensions. This caused a stir among people along the Puget Sound, as it was widely spread that the government was in a roundabout way supporting anarchy.
These events were lost in the wake of McKinley's assassination and the hatred that was aimed at anarchists and the Home colonists. Numerous articles proclaimed the indecency of anarchists and in turn the Home colonists. Religious leaders spoke out against the groups as well, saying they were wicked, sinful people. Outlaws, vipers, and damnable people were all used by local newspapers to describe the colonists of Home. James Ferdinand Morton, Jr., the colony's editor at the time, admitted opposition to President William McKinley's policies but that the colony mourned the death of the President, and saying the assassination was "useless". Morton wrote that Leon Czolgosz was not a true anarchist and therefore his actions did not reflect on the anarchist society. Morton wrote two letters to the Tacoma Ledger pleading for justice but both went unpublished.
After these tumultuous years, Home continued to grow where a free atmosphere and diverse thoughts and ideas appealed to people. Atheists, religious, free love practitioners, communists, socialists, and much more mingled together until after World War I. The Great War came and brought with it a pressure to conform and unite against an outside enemy. This, along with quarrelling among the colonists on the wellbeing of their community, brought an end to Home in the late 1910s.
While residing in the libertarian colony of Home, Fox headed up duties as editor and author of Home's surrogate newspaper, The Agitator. In this publication the views of the colony were made known through what Fox described as a position of "freedom first, last and all the time".Carr, Mary M. "Jay Fox: Anarchist of Home." Columbia Magazine. 4.1 (Spring 1990): 3-10. Date accessed Nov. 17, 2010. The Agitator presented readers a taste of Fox's renowned views on industrial unionism and the individual empowerment he felt that early 20th century society was lacking.
The Agitator
The very first issue of the publication dispersed on November 18, 1910 paid homage to those who had been sentenced to death as a result of their involvement in the Hay Market riots in Chicago around 23 years prior. In an article Fox wrote for this issue, entitled "The Chicago Martyrs", he shares his sentiment about the workers push for an eight-hour work day. He accounts that "The eight hour day did not become an actuality, but a victory of far more importance was achieved by that strike. The workers learned the rudiments of social action upon which future success must be founded."Gorgura, Heather. "The Agitator." 2001. (accessed 9/27/2010). Motivated by his reflection of these transgressions, Fox further elaborated on the happenings of the Haymarket riots by writing articles in later issues encouraging these types of measures to be taken in the future, in order to uphold an anarchist environment in Home.