SHGAPE Blog

By Andrew Varsanyi

February 24, 2025

On June 22, 1918, an organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) named Walker Smith was arrested at his home in Seattle. As a publisher of radical pamphlets and an organizer of protests and strikes, Smith was a frequent guest of authorities in the city. His famous 1913 pamphlet titled Sabotage recommended the use of sabotage by IWW members and caused quite a stir when published. This time, Smith was not alone; two Scottish sisters, Janet and Margaret Roy, were arrested with him, and unlike Smith and the many others he consorted with, they were not American citizens. Over the next year, the sisters and their lawyers fought a creative and complex fight against their deportation and were ultimately returned to Scotland in 1919. As foreigners, the sisters’ experience in the American legal system, the newspaper coverage devoted to them, and their attempts to thwart the immigration laws that targeted them provide an example of how American immigration law and practice sought to ideologically sort and control new arrivals to the United States.^[1]

Founded in Chicago in 1905, the IWW was more militant than many other labor unions of the time. Its members, the Wobblies, as they were popularly known, publicly objected to America’s entry in the First World War and organized workers across the United States in opposition.^[2] Their demands prompted several factions in the American state to target the Wobblies. Perceived as messengers of foreign socialism, business and government united in opposition to them. The anarchist assassination of President McKinley in 1901 was still fresh when Congress passed the 1903 Immigration Act. Meant to limit the entry of potentially radical European immigrants like Leon Czogosz, the anarchist who had assassinated the president (who, it is worth noting, was actually an American), the Immigration Act barred anyone involved in “unlawful assaulting or killing” along with anyone “who disbelieves in or who is opposed to all organized government, or who is a member of or affiliated with any organization entertaining and teaching such disbelief.”^[3]

The Act was expanded after America’s entry into the First World War. The concerns of conservative forces in the Wilson government multiplied when America’s entry further radicalized the Wobblies—the IWW was the only labor group to actively protest the war. Out of concern over foreign and domestic dissension, the Wilson administration passed the 1917 Espionage Act, dramatically increasing the federal government’s legal powers to control speech, crackdown on protests, and search the mail. As historian Robert Tyler observes, the federal government targeted the Wobblies directly in an update to the earlier immigration act: “officials scratched their heads and wracked their brains for ‘legal’ techniques to use in the suppression of the I.W.W., the 1918 Immigration Act, passed in February over President Wilson’s veto, presented itself to them as an adventitious weapon to use in the fight.”^[4]

The 1918 Immigration Act contained provisions allowing the United States to deport those who “at any time after entry shall be found advocating or teaching the unlawful destruction of property or advocating or teaching anarchy or the overthrow by force or violence of the Government of the United States.”^[5] The Act was intended to provide the government wide-ranging discretion in its standards for who constituted an anarchist. The terms “teaching” or “advocating” were not explicitly defined, and, in practice, the Act had a broad scope, as Janet and Margaret Roy, two Scottish sisters, found out in 1918.

The Roys emigrated to the United States in 1916. Both appear to have been committed Wobblies who were caught up in the surveillance state created by the Espionage and Immigration Acts. Before their arrest, they traveled from the East Coast and spent some time in Chicago on their way west.^[6] As the Seattle Star noted after their arrest, the women had apparently helped fellow Wobblies in some capacity, perhaps acting as messengers or organizers during their travels across the United States.^[7] Following their arrest at Walker Smith’s home, they both stood accused of anarchism and faced deportation under the 1918 Immigration Act. After six months in detention, they filed writs of habeas corpus to challenge their confinement and deportation in the court to Judge Jeremiah Neterer on January 21, 1919.

In parallel petitions filed through their lawyer, Ralph S. Pierce, the Roy sisters claimed they were being held contrary to the Fifth Amendment and that their detainment was “arbitrary and wholly void” as it was not based on any direct evidence against them. In short, they claimed that membership in the IWW, which they admitted when they were first arrested, was insufficient to prove they were anarchists under the law.^[8] They claimed that they had “not taught IWW propaganda” and had not, in any way, called for actions against the United States government.^[9] They also argued that admitting their membership in the IWW at their initial hearing was insufficient to incriminate them. The sisters also claimed that they had not been allowed to see the evidence against them, as Immigration Commissioner Henry M. White refused their demand for a transcript of the evidence used in their case.

The evidence used to demonstrate that the Roys were assigned to infiltrate or damage the United States was decidedly flimsy. Local and national newspapers extensively covered the sisters’ cases and reported that they had been arrested after “[f]ederal officers watched their movements” and that they were suspected of being “I.W.W. members and were supposed to be bringing messages to the Coast [sic].”^[10] They were clearly members of the IWW, but beyond that no evidence of their intentions to, in the words of the Immigration Act “advocate or teach the unlawful destruction of property or the overthrow by force or violence of the Government of the United States” can be found in the records. The suspicions reflected in the government’s case demonstrate the paranoia regarding foreign actors and espionage that built from the assassination of President McKinley through the First World War.

The sisters and their lawyers complicated the case through several legal (or extra-legal) machinations, including attempts to marry American men to stay in the country and benefit from legal protections afforded the foreign spouses of American citizens. Whether for love, for politics, or otherwise, Janet married Valentine McKay on January 21, 1919, while the sisters were out on bond.^[11] Under the headline “Use Cupid to Beat Federal Laws,” The Seattle Star reported that Margaret was also “attempting” to marry, but that her try at matrimony had “landed her in the immigration station with her lover outside the door.”^[12] The womens’ basic rights were conditioned by carceral and immigration authorities; in Margaret’s case, her bond was revoked and she was returned to prison for merely attempting marriage. While the Roy sisters understood that marriage to an American citizen could grant them protections against deportation, they likely also understood that American women marrying non-citizen men would just as quickly lose their citizenship under the marital expatriation regime, which overlapped the 1917 Immigration Act from 1905 through 1922. More than likely the Roys’ tactic was one intended to further delay the legal systems’ processing of their cases rather than in the hope of freeing them outright.

The first stage of the sisters’ application for habeas relief was successful. Not only did Judge Neterer agree that they had a right to know why they were being held, he also granted their lawyer’s additional request that they be given access to the evidence against them. In his response, John Sargent, the U.S. Commissioner for Immigration, claimed that Janet Roy “was examined and had a hearing before the United States Immigration Inspector” and that it was found “she was an alien of inadmissible class in that she was a person who believed in or advocated the overthrow of the United States … or who disbelieves in or was opposed to organized government, and that she was likely to become a public charge.”^[13] By 1919, the Roys’ immigration proceedings had shifted from judicial to administrative authority. Sargent successfully argued that the sisters’ citizenship status allowed for his office rather than the courts to control the process; the sisters were imprisoned under the immigration laws, so they could be detained even if they were not charged with a crime. This is another reason the women may have sought marital citizenship; it may have provided a way to broaden their rights under the law should they have been prosecuted under criminal law rather than immigration law.^[14]

Circumstances outside of the courtroom complicated the matter still further. The Seattle General Strike paralyzed the city and likely impacted everyone involved with the case, including Judge Neterer. In the first major workers’ action to be termed a “general strike” in American history, workers from across Seattle’s economy joined striking shipyard workers in a show of solidarity. By its second day, February 7, 1919, the mayor threatened martial law as streetcars were stopped, services withheld, and life ground to a halt for Seattle’s 315,000 residents.^[15] Although the workers were not victorious and the shipyard workers ultimately returned to work, Seattle’s business and government elite were shaken. Against this backdrop of disruption and fear, Judge Neterer deliberated on the fates of the two accused Wobblies.

Neterer delivered his decision on March 3, 1919. He denied both writs and remanded the sisters to the custody of U.S. Immigration. Neterer ruled that the Roys did receive “a fair hearing before the officers of the United States Immigration Service” and that their “warrant of deportation of said petitioner”^[16] should be upheld. The sisters were never formally accused of acting on behalf of the IWW’s goals, but their membership alone was enough to classify them as anarchists under the Immigration Act. Guilt by association was a sufficient logic by which to deport the women.

As women, the sisters were subjected to different and, sometimes, more onerous treatment than men were in the same situation. Janet’s earlier marriage to an American citizen was not enough to prove citizenship, the judge said.^[17] They were shipped east to await deportation back to Scotland. Reporting back to the newspapers in America on their time in Ellis Island awaiting transit to Scotland, the women reported “hell-hole” conditions. Their return home was even delayed due to their sex; they were to be sent back in the general steerage of a cattle steamer headed for Liverpool, but the captain of the cattle ship refused to house the ladies for the trip back as he could not provide separate accommodations for the women. In addition to being denied the coverture of marriage still used by men to control women, the women had to wait, in custody, for nearly seven months before they were transported home.^[18] They were finally deported on July 22, 1919.^[19]

The Roy sisters were not alone in being deported. Ultimately, more than 500 prosecutions were undertaken by the U.S. government against various movements, including fairly ordinary union activity.^[20] Perhaps most famous was the deportation of Emma Goldman, the anarchist anti-war advocate who was also removed under the 1917 Immigration Act. Hundreds of IWW members were prosecuted, and many were deported between 1917 and 1920. In Seattle in January 1918, the Immigration office “arrested a hundred aliens… It offered its services helpfully to employers who came asking for the arrest of particular Wobblies, or merely troublesome aliens on their payrolls.”^[21] The Immigration Services’ role in squashing the IWW and parts of the labor movement of the Pacific Northwest before and during the General Strike is an important story in the long history of anti-union government actions.^[22] Anti-union actions by both industry and government pushed the IWW to undertake general strike action in February 1919. The strike likely played at least some role in the Roy sisters’ legal entanglements. Happening between the initial petitions and the judge’s decisions, the strike impacted virtually all Seattle residents and was one of the largest workers’ mobilizations in American history; it was definitely in the minds of the judges and lawyers who argued and decided the sisters’ fates.

The case did not quite end with the deportations, however. On the same day as the ruling ending the Roys’ claims and beginning the deportation process, Judge Neterer authorized a request from Commissioner Henry M. White to remove the evidence the government had produced from the case record. The case file also contains a letter, signed February 28, 1919, by Roy’s lawyer, which agrees to the file removal. This is notable as it hints at some compelling evidence against the women that may have been kept secret. Perhaps somewhere in declassified government records, there is more to this case, maybe even some evidence of some smoking gun that proved the women sought to damage American national security, although it is difficult to imagine what they might have been planning.

The 1917 Immigration Act marks an important chapter in American civil rights history. The curtailment of the basic human rights of many would-be immigrants continues to the present day. Whether deserved or not, the sisters’ deportation reminds us of times when America saw threats in ideas and did not wait for a person to actually take any actions to imprison or deport them. Although anarchism was already shrinking in support and importance by the 1920s, immigration rules that excluded immigrants on ideological grounds were only gradually eliminated. By the time of the Immigration Act of 1990, much more tolerant language was finally included.^[23] The Roy sisters are also a good reminder of the intersection of administrative and judicial immigration review processes that remain a concern today.

The American myth is replete with stories of persecuted heterodox thinkers from around the world finding new acceptance and freedom in the United States. Due process and the right to confront accusers must still be granted to those wishing to make America their home, even when their ideas do not conform to those held by the majority in the new country. In the case of the Roys and the IWW, those radical ideas were at least somewhat American—after all, the IWW was founded in Chicago, not Glasgow or Moscow. If America’s idealized promise as a haven for immigrants is to be kept, especially in a political environment increasingly hostile to immigrants, due process and basic rights must remain central to the controls at America’s ports and borders.

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[1] The Seattle Star, Seattle, Washington, June 24, 1918, p. 10.

[2] There are several strong histories of the I.W.W. available and worthy of attention. Cole, Peter. Wobblies on the Waterfront: Interracial Unionism in Progressive-Era Philadelphia. The Working Class in American History. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007.; Dubofsky, Melvyn. We Shall Be All: A History of the Industrial Workers of the World. 2nd ed. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988.; Tyler, Robert L. Rebels of the Woods: The I.W.W. in the Pacific Northwest. Eugene, OR: University of Oregon, 1967. For a more general labor history of the period, Fink, Leon. Long Gilded Age: American Capitalism and the Lessons of a New World Order. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc., 2015. remains a classic.

[3] Sec. 38, An Act to regulate the immigration of aliens into the United States. “U.S. Statutes at Large, Volume 32 (1902-1903), 57th Congress.,” image, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA, 1221, accessed May 16, 2024, https://www.loc.gov/item/llsl-v32/.

[4] Robert L. Tyler, Rebels of the Woods: The I.W.W. in the Pacific Northwest (Eugene, OR: University of Oregon, 1967), 141.

[5] “H.R. 12402 An Act To Exclude and Expel from the United States Aliens Who Are Members of Anarchistic and Similar Classes,” Pub. L. No. HR 12402, Pub. L. 65-221 U.S. Law (1918), https://govtrackus.s3.amazonaws.com/legislink/pdf/stat/40/STATUTE-40-Pg1012.pdf.

[6] The Seattle Star, June 24, 1918, p. 10.

[7] The sisters were named as possible organizers in press coverage like that in The Seattle Star, Seattle, Washington, 24 June, 1918, p. 10.

[8] Katrina Jagodinsky, Cory Young, Andrew Varsanyi, Laura Weakly, Karin Dalziel, William Dewey, Erin Chambers, Greg Tunink. “In the Matter of the Application of Margaret Roy, for a writ of habeas corpus.” Petitioning for Freedom: Habeas Corpus in the American West, 1812-1924, University of Nebraska–Lincoln. Accessed February 14, 2025. https://petitioningforfreedom.unl.edu/cases/item/hc.case.wa.0203. Petitioning for Freedom is a growing database of nearly 2,000 petitions, many of which would be of interest to historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era.

[9] Ibid.

[10] The Seattle Star 22 Jan 1919, Page 5.

[11] The sisters were released on bond in August of 1918. Seattle Union Record, Seattle, Washington, August 13, 1918, p. 10.

[12] The Seattle Star, 22 Jan 1919, p. 5,

[13] Jagodinsky et al. “In the Matter of the Application of Margaret Roy, for a writ of habeas corpus.” Petitioning for Freedom, https://petitioningforfreedom.unl.edu/cases/item/hc.case.wa.0203

[14] For more on the structure and administrative processes for non-citizens, see: Lucy E. Salyer, Laws Harsh as Tigers: Chinese Immigrants and the Shaping of Modern Immigration Law, Studies in Legal History (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995).

[15] For more see “Seattle General Strike,” accessed April 21, 2023, https://depts.washington.edu/labhist/strike/.

[16] Jagodinsky et al. “In the Matter of the Application of Margaret Roy, for a writ of habeas corpus.” Petitioning for Freedom, https://petitioningforfreedom.unl.edu/cases/item/hc.case.wa.0203

[17] Seattle Union Record, Seattle, Washington, February 15 1919, p. 4.

[18] Seattle Union Record, Seattle, Washington, July 29, 1919, p. 13.

[19] United States Congress House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, I.W.W. Deportation Cases: Hearings Before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, House of Representatives, April 27 to 30, 1920 (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1920), 64.

[20] For more see: “IWW Arrests and Persecution 1906-1920,” accessed March 15, 2023, https://depts.washington.edu/iww/persecution.shtml.

[21] Tyler, Rebels of the Woods: The I.W.W. in the Pacific Northwest, 142.

[22] Though somewhat dated Tyler, Rebels of the Woods is an excellent source here. For more on labor in the Pacific Northwest, the Seattle General Strike and the I.W.W. see Friedheim, Robert L., and James N. Gregory. The Seattle General Strike. Centennial edition. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2018.

Loomis, Erik. Empire of Timber: Labor Unions and the Pacific Northwest Forests. Studies in Environment and History. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2016.

[23] “[An alien] shall not be excludable or subject to restrictions or conditions on entry into the United States […] because of the alien’s past, current, or expected beliefs, statements, or associations, if such beliefs, statements, or associations would be lawful within the United States” Sec. 601 “Text of S. 358 (101st): Immigration Act of 1990 (Passed Congress Version),” GovTrack.us, accessed May 16, 2024, https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/101/s358/text.