Freepost: In March 1914, socialist mobs invaded churches all over New York City

A case study in low-level leftist terrorism

3/30/24 - In light of the invasion of Easter Mass services at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City by far left protestors tonight, I’ve decided to make this article available for free to everyone.

Note, this is the second article in an ongoing series covering the first Red Scare. You can find the first article, on the infamous Sacco and Vanzetti case, here. If you enjoy the free content on this Substack, please consider becoming a paid subscriber to support my work.

As this series on the first Red Scare progresses, you’ll see a lot of mention of the socialist International Workers of the World (IWW) labor union and its members, nicknamed the “Wobblies.” Oftentimes, people were pretty nasty to the Wobblies. They were beaten up. Their meeting halls were ransacked and raided. In small cities across the country, IWW members were regularly run out of town by police and vigilantes. Some were even tarred and feathered.

When you look at the IWW’s stated goals: an end to war, food for the poor, better working conditions, and fair pay, it can seem hard to understand the hostility they received. As is the case today with liberal activist groups, the IWW was a lot more than their stated goals.

This article will detail a short and forgotten series of “protests” conducted by the IWW in New York City that illustrates why exactly Americans of the time period hated IWW members so much and didn’t want to live around them. The main reason was that the IWW used constant low-level violence, threats, and intentionally obnoxious behavior to make life generally unlivable for everyone else in order to get whatever it was they wanted, whether that was higher pay or letting murderers out of jail.

Frank Tannenbaum had a background common among IWW organizers of the period. He was born in Austria in 1893 to poor Jewish parents. At a young age he and his family had immigrated to the United States, where they started a small farm. He never finished high school and ran away from home at 15 to work a series of menial jobs. He ended up in New York City, which had a large transient immigrant population, and became involved in radical politics through a waiters’ union. By the age of 21, he was a popular and successful organizer for the IWW.

Tannenbaum was one of many IWW organizers active around the period. In 1913, the United States entered into a protracted recession. Unemployment was rampant, which made conditions in the enormous recent immigrant community (over 15 million would come to the US between 1900 to 1915) that much more desperate.

These new immigrants also had greater difficulty assimilating than previous waves. Not only were they more numerous, but many of them came from Eastern and Southern Europe as opposed to the Central and Northern Europeans typical of previous generations of immigrants. Few spoke English and there was an enormous culture clash with the WASP core population that had shaped American history and norms since the country’s inception. Immigrant communities became so large, concentrated, and insular that in many places there was no need to assimilate, further contributing to antisocial political radicalization.

Around this period, communists were still developing the confrontational tactics that they would successfully employ later in American history. For instance, on March 3, 1914, the IWW launched an “Unemployed Army” of veterans¹ to march on Washington DC demanding economic relief from the recession. Although this effort ended in failure, eventually the communists would perfect the model with the 1932 Bonus Army March.

During the Bonus March, communists facilitated the arrival of more than 20,000 veterans and 20,000 other followers in Washington, DC to demand the early payment of bonuses awarded for WWI service. They created huge homeless encampments on government property and public land across the city. When Congress refused to hand out money under duress, the communists organized large illegal marches that shut down the city. This crisis lasted for months, until the government attempted a limited eviction from a Treasury Department building occupied by the marchers. When thousands of marchers attacked the police officers carrying out the eviction, troops under the command of General Douglas MacArthur cleared all the encampments.

Although only two marchers had been shot by police in self defense during the start of the riot, and no one had been killed by the troops, communists and their sympathizers in the media claimed the US military had attacked peacefully protesting veterans unprovoked.

The ensuing controversy led to the victory of NY Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt over President Herbert Hoover, who was known to take a hard line against radicals, in the 1932 Presidential Election. FDR was greatly favored by the communists, and during his administration communists and other far leftists enjoyed unprecedented government influence and support.

Tannenbaum’s protests, although more primitive, employed the same basic model. Tannenbaum gathered hundreds of unemployed people and IWW members and would have them storm churches around the New York City area. He called them the “Army of the Unemployed.” Once they all arrived inside a church, often at odd hours, the priests and church employees were confronted with demands for food, money, and shelter.

Although Tannenbaum and the other organizers claimed they were appealing to the priests’ Christian charity, it was a transparent shakedown. The IWW would either be given what it wanted or it would create a scene. There was always the implied threat that the men would simply destroy the churches they occupied.

Indeed, Tannenbaum regularly advocated for violence as during this terror campaign. He said² to a large crowd of IWW members before one church was stormed:

Everything in this city was created by our hands or the hands of our brothers and sisters. We have a right to share in every house and in every man’s loaf of bread. What’s more, we are going to make the city give it to us or give it to us by force.

What we are getting here tonight is not charity. And, men, do not beg for what you want; take it. It is ours; it belongs to us; if the city won’t give it to us we will take it. We are only getting back a share of what is ours. Everything in this world belongs to us, and we’re going to take it.

The mob hit Labor Temple (Presbyterian) on February 28, First Presbyterian Church on March 1, and St. Mark’s Church on March 2. Large crowds of unemployed also appeared at Plymouth Church that same day.

One of the priests offered to hire some of the unemployed men to shovel snow. Once separated from the main group, the unemployed men complained to the priest that they had been forced to pay the IWW organizers in order to get these jobs, and were required to pay a large percentage of their wages even afterwards. The workmen, the priest claimed, said they had no idea what the Tannenbaum’s demands even were before they joined the mob. They had simply been told by IWW organizers that they were being given a free place to stay.³ Although some of the priests eventually acquiesced to the mob’s demands, they requested that police arrest the organizers or at the very least follow the mob around to ensure the public’s safety.

On March 3, a mob of 200 men led by Tannenbaum marched on St. Alphonsus Catholic Church. They shut down all traffic along their route. However, police were shadowing them by they time they arrived at their destination. Undercover detectives infiltrated the crowd to make sure no more violence occurred. A smaller group entered the church led by Tannenbaum, who demanded to speak to the head priest.

The priest, concerned for the many worshipers in his church, confronted the group. Tannenbaum announced that his men were going to be spending the night there. When the priest said that they couldn’t do that, Tannenbaum replied “Do you call this living up to the teachings of Jesus Christ?” and then demanded money. The priest again refused.

Jane Est, an outspoken women’s suffrage activist accompanying the mob, began screaming at the priest. She said “So this is what you call living up to your principles? This wouldn’t be the first time a church was invaded. They have been entered this way in France, England, and Italy, and now they’re being entered in New York. You’ve got to take us in.”⁴

At a later trial, her remarks were clarified. An undercover detective who had infiltrated a rally preceding the church invasion stated that, during the rally, Est had shouted that blood was shed during the French Revolution when churches were entered. Tannenbaum had replied “Yes, that is what will happen here.”⁵

The priest held firm, and Tannenbaum turned to leave. However, as soon as he got outside, he gave the signal to the rest of the group to storm into the church. The two hundred men broke down a locked door to gain quicker entry and shoved down two women who got in their way.⁶ Priests begged the invaders to leave, but they refused. They wanted to send a message that if their demands weren’t complied with, they were perfectly happy to use force.

As this was happening, the church was quietly surrounded by more than 100 police officers, including auxiliary police from 6 different precincts. They blocked the exits to the church, and then swooped in to arrest Tannenbaum. Everyone who entered the church illegally was also arrested. As the socialists were led out, they were jeered at by a growing crowd of locals angry that a church in their neighborhood had been mobbed in this way. The crowd had to be held back by police to prevent them from attacking the prisoners as they were ferried off to nearby jails.

Police discovered numerous concealed knives and billy clubs among Tannenbaum’s Army. One of the men, apparently an organizer, was found carrying $751 in cash.⁷ It was the equivalent of $22,319 in 2023 dollars. This was not some organic protest of unemployed people, it was an organized and armed mob shaking churches down with the threat of violence.

Tannenbaum was charged with inciting a riot and unlawful entry. Most charges against the other members of the mob were dropped immediately. Tannenbaum was soon bailed out of jail despite the extremely high bond set and provided with free lawyers by the IWW. The day after his arrest, anarchists, socialists, and liberals from all over the country raised more than $30,000 (over $900,000 in today’s dollars) for his defense.⁸ Prominent IWW officials would attend every day of his trial.⁹

Large meetings were held by IWW members where they claimed that the arrest was over a free speech issue. This was echoed by prominent intellectuals and journalists. Leading “muckraker” Lincoln Steffans, who would later become famous for visiting Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution and claiming “I have seen the future, and it works,”¹⁰ stated that the storming of churches invoked a core constitutional right:

We have feelings we’d like to express which would incite a riot. The problem of the unemployed is at the foundation of our economic system. If you can make the American people consider the problem of poverty through this movement you’ll be solving one of the greatest problems in the history of man. Free speech is guaranteed to every citizen by the Constitution, and it is a healthy sign to see you men who have come here from foreign countries fighting for the preservation of that right.¹¹

Steffans eventually married Ella Winter, a socialist activist for migrant farm workers who wrote a book praising the Soviet system under Stalin in 1933. Steffans would later be funded directly through the California Writer’s Project, a New Deal program. Winter would serve as a secretary to US Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter.

The judge handling Tannenbaum and the rioters’ case received a bomb threat, but was unmoved. A few years later, anarchists would plant a bomb in his courtroom. The judge narrowly escaped death. Although Tannenbaum was eventually convicted of both charges, the maximum sentence the judge could hand down was just 1 year in jail and a $500 fine. Tannenbaum was reportedly excited to receive this punishment.¹² He gave speech before the court where he bitterly criticized the judge and the jury.

In jail Tannenbaum continued his activism. He organized a strike of prisoners who worked in a factory attached to the jail. The machinery was sabotaged.¹³ Although he was briefly thrown in solitary confinement, he was not otherwise punished. The light sentence had only emboldened him and other radicals.

Tannenbaum persisted with his support for the labor movement after his release. However, he didn’t stay an organizer. His behavior was eventually legitimized by the government itself. Wealthy backers funded Tannenbaum’s education at Columbia University. His stint in prison for terrorizing small churches led to him starting a career as a criminologist.

He taught a course on the subject at Cornell University and was given a job at the National Committee on Prisons and Prison Labor. He eventually developed a theory called the “Dramatization of Evil,” a precursor to the very influential “labeling” concept in criminology, which claimed that labeling someone as a criminal (by stigmatizing their behavior) in turn pushes them towards crime. This theory was used to justify lighter sentences and non-jail interventions for convicted criminals.

Tannenbaum’s interests drifted to Latin America. He became an influential historian of regional trade unions and dissident communist political parties. After FDR took power, Tannenbaum was tapped to help created the short-lived Farm Security Administration (FSA). The FSA ran a small but successful propaganda program that produced enormous numbers of photographs of blighted farms. Critics claimed the agency also encouraged farm collectivization.

FDR’s policy at the time was to decrease agricultural production in an effort to raise food prices. Eventually a conservative Congress totally rewrote the legislation Tannenbaum assisted with to force the FSA and successor programs to provide low interest loans so that farmers could own their own land.

There are a few things to take away from the church incidents. The first is that they illustrate why the public hated the IWW so much. It wasn’t mere bigotry. These guys were terrorists. If you lived near them, you risked being forced into a hostage negotiation through their bizarre and antisocial behavior. This behavior was made more obnoxious by the fact that organizers targeting American churches for a supposed failure to live up to their principles were foreigners who weren’t even Christian. They resented American norms and hated the American general public.

Also notable is just how shameless everyone involved in this process was. It was obvious that this was not just a group of hungry men peacefully protesting, as IWW supporters loudly and indignantly claimed afterwards. In fact, it was a well-funded intimidation campaign, in which many of the participants were armed. That’s what Bolshevism is: the lowest elements of society intimidate peaceful law-abiding people into acquiescing to a series of increasingly unreasonable demands.

While liberal lawyers and journalists were talking about American democracy when they referenced the case, in reality what they were defending was mob violence. The goal was humiliation and dominance, to get the victim to discredit himself by accepting unacceptable behavior. They all supported and covered for the mob. When you read about the IWW being persecuted by local officials or vigilantes, assume that actions similar to Tannenbaum’s preceded this.

It’s important to note that, as is the case today, there is functionally no difference between leftists groups. Suffragists, communists, socialists, anarchists, labor organizers, civil rights activists, and mainstream liberals: they are all working towards the same ultimate goal. I sometimes use the terms interchangeably because they are interchangeable. They would support each other in any situation no matter how obnoxious the behavior at hand was. Tannenbaum did something indefensible and immediately had a massive media and legal machine backing him up.

Finally, the incidents show why it’s critical for conservative prosecutors and judges to (figuratively) shoot to kill when they bring radicals to justice. Getting arrested and being sent to jail did not bother Tannenbaum. Why would it? He was one of the only people charged and his sentence was light. It benefited his career substantially. His radical activism led to him shaping public policy for decades to come.

If you fail to produce immediate and severe consequences for activists who terrorize the public without compunction, you will be seeing them again and again. Everyone in that crowd should have gone to jail for a long time. There are too many Tannenbaums out there and they need to be stopped before they can do real damage.

1. UNEMPLOYED ARMY STARTS.; Two Thousand Men Leave San Francisco for Washington. (1914, March 3), The New York Times, 3.

2. URGES WORKLESS ON TO ANARCHY; Leader of Church Invaders Advises His "Army" to Adopt Force. (1914, March 3), The New York Times, 3.

3. URGES WORKLESS ON TO ANARCHY; Leader of Church Invaders Advises His "Army" to Adopt Force. (1914, March 3), The New York Times, 3.

4. I.W.W. INVADERS SEIZED IN CHURCH; Police Raid Tannenbaum's 'Army,' Which Desecrates Catholic House of Worship. (1914, March 5), The New York Times, 2.

5. SAYS I.W.W. LEADER EXPECTED VIOLENCE; Tannenbaum Prophesied Bloodshed, Detective Says, at the Church Invader's Trial. (1914, March 25) The New York Times, 6

6. I.W.W. MOB FORCED CHURCH DOOR LOCK; Tannenbaum's Trial Brings Out Dramatic Descriptions of the "Army's" Invasion. (1914, March 26), The New York Times, 5.

7. I.W.W. INVADERS SEIZED IN CHURCH; Police Raid Tannenbaum's 'Army,' Which Desecrates Catholic House of Worship. (1914, March 5) The New York Times, 2.

8. I.W.W. SLURS MAYOR; CALLS HIM 'BELL HOP'; O'Carroll Bitterly Attacks City's Executive at Free Speech League's Protest Meeting. (1914, March 7) The New York Times, 1.

9. SAYS I.W.W. LEADER EXPECTED VIOLENCE; Tannenbaum Prophesied Bloodshed, Detective Says, at the Church Invader's Trial. (1914, March 25) The New York Times, 6

10. Hartshorn, Peter. I Have Seen the Future: A Life of Lincoln Steffens (Counterpoint, 2011), 315.

11. I.W.W. SLURS MAYOR; CALLS HIM 'BELL HOP'; O'Carroll Bitterly Attacks City's Executive at Free Speech League's Protest Meeting. (1914, March 7) The New York Times, 1.

12. TANNENBAUM GUILTY GETS A YEAR IN JAIL; I.W.W. Leader Must Pay $500 Fine Also for Invading Church with the Unemployed. (1914, March 28) The New York Times, 1.

13. TANNENBAUM,TAMED BY HUNGER, GIVES UP; I.W.W. Leader in Blackwell's Mutiny Sends for Warden and Promises to Obey. (1914, July 14) The New York Times, 5.