Ralph Chaplin: Labor Activisim

Ralph Chaplin mugshot, c. 1918. Source http://www.museumsyndicate.com/item.php?item=80207Author

Ralph Chaplin was an editor, author, poet, painter, songwriter, radical labor leader, organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), and fighter for freedom of speech. He counted among his friends many of the liberal leaders of America in the early years of the 20th Century. This included Scott Nearing, Roger Baldwin, founder of the American Civil Liberties Union, Carl Sandburg, and Eugene Debs. But, what does labor activism and Lombard have in common?  At first glance, they don’t seem to be related to each other.

During this time Labor activists were often labeled as Bolsheviks or Communists and often depicted as radical people creating unrest. They also were frequently associated with certain cities in the Midwest like Chicago or Milwaukee where large numbers of immigrants lived and worked in brutal conditions. Lombard didn’t have large factories that would attract the attention of union organizers. It was a pretty quiet place, comprised of people with a variety of ethnic backgrounds, where everyone went about their routines.

After being arrested in 1917, under charges of the Federal Espionage Act because he spoke up for the working man and for immigrants who were being sent to Europe to fight for the United States in WWI. Chaplin was sentenced to 20 years in prison at Fort Leavenworth Military Prison in Kansas. While in prison, Chaplin wrote a book of poetry called Bars and Shadows. He was temporally released from prison in 1921, he and his wife Edith came to Lombard and bought the house at 215 E. Grove Street.

Ralph Chaplin, Garden on Grove Street, nd.

Bain News Service, Publisher. E.V. Debs, portrait bust , nd. https://www.loc.gov/item/2014680881/.

When Chaplin returned to prison, before President Harding commuted his sentence in 1923, the knowledge of his rural home sustained him. The Chaplin family had many visitors to their home and each visitor would bring a rock, one even came from the Kremlin. As mentioned earlier Eugene Debs, was a friend to Chaplin, who at the time was living at the sanitarium in Elmhurst, and he would come out and speak to friends under a tree that would become known as “Debs Elm”.

In 1928, inspired by the beauty of Lombard, Chaplin published a poem in the Lombard Spectator called “Lilac Time in Lombard” which became part of the first Lilac Festival. Chaplin even served as the first chairman, giving ideas to the crowning of a queen for the celebration. His brother-in-law, Charles Medin, was the artist for the series of Lilac Time posters that were used to advertise the festival.

Chaplin and his family left Lombard in the late 1930s, moving to Tacoma, Washington, where Ralph worked as editor of a labor publication and as the curator for the Washinton State Historical Society. In 1948, Chaplin wrote his autobiography, Wobbly: The Rough-and-Tumble Story of An American Radical.

Chaplin would become known for two items of art for the IWW that still are represented today, one being the Black Cat (Sabo-Tabby) and the other a song, Solidarity Forever which was first sung at a hunger march in front of Hull House in Chicago.

According to Ralph Chaplin, "My 'Sab Cat' was supposed to symbolize the 'slow down' as a means of 'striking on the job'," although others in the IWW used the symbol much more broadly.