Biography
James Rowan, the secretary-treasurer of the Lumber Workers Industrial Union, Local 500, from Spokane, Washington, was convicted at the mass IWW trial in Chicago, sentenced to twenty years in prison and fined $20,000. He served in the Cook County Jail and Leavenworth Penitentiary from August 1917 to September 1919 and from April 1921 to December 22, 1923. The Department of Justice deemed Rowan "the most dangerous man in the entire IWW movement" for having been the "guiding spirit" of the lumber workers general strike in the Northwest.
Case
United States Penitentiary, Leavenworth
