A history of the most violent of the Free Speech Fights. A combination of police brutality and vigilante terror was unleashed against the IWW and the workers of San Diego, including torture and murder.
This chapter from Carey McWilliams, California: The Great Exception (1949) tells the history of class war in San Francisco, when "all of labor [was] pitted against all of capital." The conditions were unique: "Nowhere in the world has there been a more favorable economic environment, nor more freedom for social and political experiments than in California." The result? Wobbly organizing and near-general strikes on the San Francisco waterfront in 1886, 1893, 1901, and 1916, setting the stage for the 1934 General Strike, followed by the Oakland General Strike in 1946.