Embree, A.S.

EMBREE, A. S. (1877–1957). A leading radical western organizer, A. S. Embree spanned the generations and movements from the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) to the Congress of Industrial Organizations. He also led the last of the major IWW strikes, far past the zenith of that organization’s influence.

Born in Newfoundland, Embree graduated from college in 1897 and joined the Western Federation of Miners in British Columbia in 1899. He came into the emergent IWW in 1905. A key leader in the 1917 copper strike, he was among twelve hundred unionists deported from Bisbee, Arizona, and later played an important role as IWW defense coordinator for the Espionage Act defendants. Convicted in Idaho on state criminal-syndicalism charges in 1921, Embree spent four years in prison. On his release, he began organizing southern Colorado miners, who for three days responded to the IWW appeal for strikes to support Sacco and Vanzetti. This militancy and cohesion prompted Embree and others to urge a statewide coal strike, which was successful in shutting down all three Colorado fields simultaneously.

Bitterly attacked by mine and public officials, miners responded with mass parades, auto caravans of singing miners, the formation of “Junior Wobblies” branches, and other creative actions. Repression escalated into the “Columbine Massacre,” with state police machine-gunning strikers, killing six and wounding dozens, yet miners stood firm and won major concessions. Few Wobblies had been recruited during the strike, and some IWW national leaders privately charged Embree with a plan to “take over” the locals for Communist labor organizations. In fact, Embree remained with the IWW until 1937, when he joined the Western Federation of Miners’ successor, the Mill, Mine, and Smelter Workers. He continued as a Mill, Mine organizer into the 1940s, and his daughter, Una, married one of the union’s most prominent (and Left-identified) figures, Maurice Travis.

Dillard, Gary. Embree Not Guilty of IWW Offenses in Bisbee. Amazon.com. Kindle ed., April 2015.

Gambs, John. The Decline of the IWW. New York: Columbia University Press, 1932.

McMahon, Ronald. “Rang-U-Tang: The IWW and the 1927 Colorado Coal Strike.” In At the Point of Production: The Local History of the IWW, edited by Joseph Conlin. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1982.

Solski, Mike, and John Smaller. Mine Mill: The History of the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers in Canada since 1895. Ottawa: Steel Rail Publishing, 1985.