Biography
Grover H. Perry, an experienced organizer for the IWW and secretary-treasurer of the Metal Mine Workers Industrial Union in Salt Lake City, Utah, was convicted at the mass IWW trial in Chicago, sentenced to twelve years in prison and fined $20,000. He served in the Chicago House of Corrections from January 1 to September 6, 1918, and in Leavenworth Penitentiary from September 7, 1918, to September 13, 1919. He had a wife and a child. In April 1917, just after the United States' entry into the war, Perry, an outspoken critic of U.S. involvement in the war, wrote an essay entitled "Why I Am a Patriot": Patriotism to me means making this earth better to live upon, the bettering of conditions of men and women who toil and the setting free from toil all together the little children who now have to serve for gold. Patriotism as I see it does not mean murder, it does not mean rapine. It does not mean pillage and destruction, yet war means all of these things. The ordinary conception of patriotism is to shoulder a gun and shoot some other "patriot" of some other country for no other reason at all except that you have been ordered to do so. My sense of patriotism revolts at such slaughter and such deeds. At Leavenworth Perry was diagnosed with pulmonary tuberculosis and confined in the prison hospital. The prison physician described Perry's condition as "not promising." After being released on bond on September 13, 1919, Perry jumped bail andbecamea fugitive from the law.
