Biography
Clyde Smith was a Farmers' League member charged with criminal syndicalism at White Cloud, Michigan during the 1933 farm revolt. The farm revolt of 1933 — the Farmers' Holiday Association and the Communist-led United Farmers' League fighting mortgage foreclosures with penny auctions and picket lines — brought waves of arrests across the Midwest, many under state criminal-syndicalism laws.
The Daily Worker of May 13, 1933, page 2, reports an International Labor Defense campaign against Michigan's criminal-syndicalism law centered on George Casper and Clyde Smith, farmers arrested for seeking to prevent a foreclosure at White Cloud. Thousands of repeal petitions had been distributed statewide. A separate item on the formation of the Farmers National Defense Bureau says the two faced possible twenty-year terms; this describes exposure to a potential sentence, not a sentence already imposed.
The October 9, 1934 Daily Worker reports that the criminal-syndicalism charges against him in the White Cloud foreclosure-defense prosecution were dropped. It separately describes John Rose’s conviction and successful appeal. The charge dismissal supplies no exact individual physical-release date. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1934/v11-n242-NAT-oct-09-1934-DW-LOC.pdf#page=3
Rob Hall’s December 1933 Labor Defender account identifies Smith as secretary of the Michigan Farmers League and says his criminal-syndicalism charge in the White Cloud foreclosure protest was reduced to unlawful assembly after farmer protests. The later dismissal already documented remains a separate development; this account supplies no individual physical release day. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/labordefender/1933/v09n11-dec-1933-lab-def.pdf#page=16
The farm report says White Cloud, Michigan defendants Clyde Smith and George Casper had been released on $1,000 bail each after nearly six weeks in jail following a foreclosure protest meeting. This establishes an earlier bail interruption; it cannot be reconciled into one continuous interval with a later February 1934 report of six months held without further evidence. No exact bail day or actual total is invented.
The June 1933 Labor Defender reports that Clyde Smith and George Casper were released on $1,000 bail each after nearly six weeks in jail over the White Cloud foreclosure protest. Its duration differs from the February 1934 annual review’s six-month account already retained in this case. These source accounts are preserved separately; no exact release day or revised custody total is inferred. Labor Defender, June 1933, original PDF page 14.
