The Spokane free-speech fight of 1909–1910 was the classic IWW "fill the jails" campaign. The city had banned street-corner meetings to protect the "job sharks" — employment agencies that cheated migratory workers — from the Wobblies’ organizing. The IWW responded by summoning members from across the region to speak in defiance of the ordinance.
Hundreds were arrested and packed into overcrowded, brutal jails; several died from the conditions. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, then only nineteen, became a central figure — arrested while addressing a crowd and later exposing the mistreatment of prisoners. The sheer numbers and the public scandal forced the city to back down, restore street-speaking rights, and revoke the licenses of the worst employment agencies. Spokane became the model for the free-speech fights that spread across the West.