Myron Sprague

Released
Gender:Male
Race:White
Era:1910s
Inmate Number:#13581
State:California
Time Imprisoned:
5 Years 8 Months 21 Days
Support
Labor Organizing Anti-War Civil Liberties Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)
Myron Sprague

Biography

Myron Sprague was a laborer and a delegate of Local 573 of the Industrial Workers of the World's Construction Workers Industrial Union, at Stockton, California. Arrested during the federal suppression of the Sacramento IWW organization, he was convicted in the Sacramento mass trial and sentenced in January 1919 to ten years in federal prison. He was held from at least April 1918 and served at Leavenworth Penitentiary as inmate 13581 until his release on December 22, 1923. The Industrial Worker of May 1923 gives his birthday as May 22; no birth year is recorded.

The National Archives confirms the inmate number, and the Department of Justice collection at Cornell holds a separate thirteen-page clemency and prison-conduct file for him.

Case

United States Penitentiary, Leavenworth
Charges: Federal conspiracy prosecution under the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918 — the mass IWW trial at Sacramento.
Sentenced: January 1919
Incarcerated: April 1918
Released: Dec 22, 1923
Sentence: Ten years, on conviction in the mass IWW trial at Sacramento. Held from at least April 1918 until release on December 22, 1923. Leavenworth inmate 13581. The custody is anchored at April 1918 and held at month precision, that being the earliest month he can be placed in custody. He may have been taken earlier, in the Sacramento raids of December 1917; if so this understates the imprisonment by about four months. The row previously carried the December 1923 release with no start date at all, so the profile published no imprisonment figure whatever.
Convicted: Yes
Institution State: Kansas

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