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Beware the Bloody Bolsheviki!
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| Title | Beware the Bloody Bolsheviki! |
| Author | Dever, Lem A. |
| Date of Publication | 1919 |
| Notes | This broadside, entitled "Beware the Bloody Bolsheviki!", was written by Yakima journalist Lem A. Dever on September 24, 1919. In it, he relates the problems he encountered after taking a job with the Yakima Valley Daily American in August of 1919. He claims that he, along with Frank W. Cameron and J. A. Grahame, had to fight against "the Reds" on the newspaper's staff, whose agenda was to promote "radical unionism, red socialism, the Non-Partisan League, the Triple Alliance, and other undesirable and dangerous vagaries of the foreign and revolutionary elements of America." The goal, Dever asserts, is to make Yakima "an auxiliary of the notorious Bolshevist center at Seattle". Dever explains his criticisms of the paper's editor, C. A. Smith, and asserts that he and other staff members were not discharged from employment, but rather quit "in disgust". The event that precipitates this mass departure is an editorial written by Smith on September 11, which attacks General Pershing.
Dever denounces the Daily American as "un-American in purpose", and claims to have used "the psychological methods of the reporter" to get Smith to reveal that his newspaper plant in Montana had been dynamited, which Dever takes as evidence of Smith's radicalism. Dever goes on to make other accusations about Smith, including witness tampering and fraud. He closes by asking all businessmen and good citizens not to support the newspaper any longer. This is followed by a short statement of support for Dever, which is signed by five former employees of the Daily American who quit at the same time. |
| Contextual Notes | E. B. "Harry" Ault (1883-1961) was a journalist and a prominent member of the socialist and labor movements in Washington state. In 1898, when Ault was in his teens, his family relocated from Kentucky to Washington state, where they joined the Equality Colony, a socialist commune located near Edison in Skagit County. Ault became editor of the colony's newspaper, "Industrial Freedom", later that year. Ault lived at Equality Colony for two years, after which he left for Seattle in 1900 to found a newspaper called "The Young Socialist". Ault had become involved in Eugene Debs' Social Democratic Party, and would join the new Socialist Party in 1901.
After a decade of prominent involvement in the Socialist Party, particularly working for the newspaper "The Socialist" and its publisher, Hermon Titus, Ault left the socialists for the more "mainstream" labor movement, working as the secretary of the Central Labor Council of Seattle from 1909 to 1913. In 1912, he took over the editorship of the council's newspaper, the Seattle Union Record, which he edited until the paper's termination in 1928. In connection with his work as editor, he collected and saved many documents relating to the growth and activism of the labor movement in the Pacific Northwest. He then worked as a commercial printer, until re-entering active involvement in politics in 1936, when he ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination for Congress from the 1st Congressional District -- a race he lost to Warren G. Magnuson. Ault was appointed a deputy U.S. Marshal for Tacoma, Washington in 1938, a position he held until his retirement 15 years later.
Lem A. Dever was a journalist and publicist who was born in Pulaski, Tennessee. After his work for the Yakima Valley Daily American in 1919, Dever moved to Oregon, where he became an active member of the Ku Klux Klan, serving for a time as the Oregon Klan's publicity agent, as well as acting as the editor of the Western American, the Oregon Klan's official newspaper. After a falling out with Frank Gifford, a prominent Oregon Klansman, in December 1924, Dever turned on the KKK and published a pamphlet entitled "Masks Off! Confessions of an Imperial Klansman". |
| Subjects (LCTGM) | Broadsides |
| Subjects (LCSH) | Dever, Lem A.; Communism; Newspaper editors--Washington (State)--Yakima; Yakima valley daily American |
| Geographic Coverage | United States--Washington (State)--Yakima |
| Digital ID Number | PNW00940 |
| Ordering Information | To order a reproduction or inquire about permissions contact: photos@u.washington.edu. |
| Digital Collection | Pacific Northwest Historical Documents
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| Repository | University of Washington Libraries. Special Collections Division. |
| Repository Collection | Harry E. B. Ault papers, Accession No. 0213-001, Box 5/22 |
| Object Type | Broadside
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| Physical Description | 1 leaf; 30 x 21 cm. |
| Digital Reproduction Information | Scanned from original text or image at 150 dpi saved in TIFF format, resized and enhanced using Adobe Photoshop, and imported as JPEG2000 using Contentdm software's JPEG2000 Extension. 2011. |
| Restrictions | For information on permissions for use and reproductions please visit UW Libraries Special Collections Reproduction & Use page: http://content.lib.washington.edu/sc-use.html |
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