Jay Fox

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.

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

Move to Chicago

Fox decided to leave Home Colony in favor of a new start in Chicago, where syndicalist leader William Z. Foster had moved in order to establish a new organization called the Syndicalist League of North America. Fox brought with him his publication The Agitator, previously produced at Home Colony, and renamed it The Syndicalist, making it the official organ of the new organization. The organization's total membership never exceeded 2,000 members¹, although it did manage to establish local groups in Kansas City, St. Louis, San Diego, Omaha, and in Chicago. The group attracted several important activists to its ranks, including Samuel Hammersmark and Foster's future son-in-law, Joseph Manley. In February 1913 the state supreme court denied a rehearing and the case was appealed the United States Supreme Court. The high court handed down its ruling upholding the original judgment on May 13, 1915. By the time Fox had returned from Chicago and was a vice-president of the International Union of Timber Workers. Appeals from his lawyer and by an official of the union convinced Gov. Ernest Lister to pardon Fox on September 11, 1915, twelve days before the sentence would have ended.

Further reading

Mary M. Carr, "Jay Fox: Anarchist of Home," Columbia Magazine, vol. 4, no. 1 (Spring 1990), pp. 3–10. Charles Pierce LeWarne, Utopias on Puget Sound, 1885–1915. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1975. Greg Hall, Writing Labor's Emancipation: The Anarchist Life and Times of Jay Fox (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2022) Pacific Northwest Labor History Association Records, 1971-1995, At the Labor Archives of Washington, University of Washington Libraries Special Collections.

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