Hulet M. Wells

Hulet Martell Wells (May 4, 1878 – February 15, 1970) was a Canadian-American socialist and president of the Seattle Central Labor Council, part of the American Federation of Labor. During the first decade of the 20th Century Wells was a leading participant in the free speech movement in Washington, running as the candidate of the Socialist Party of Washington for mayor of Seattle in 1912. Following a prison term for opposition to World War I, Wells reemerged as a labor and political activist, eventually founding the Unemployed Citizens' League of Seattle in 1931.

Biography

Early years Hulet Martell Wells was born May 4, 1878, near the small town of La Conner, located about 60 miles north of Seattle in what was then the Washington Territory of the United States. Wells' parents, Hiram and Alfreda Wells, hailed from Eastern Canada from which they emigrated in 1877, shortly after their marriage.

The Wells family were soon joined in Skagit County by relatives from the east, who joined in the farming of grain crops like oats and barley, as well as hay for silage. Young Hulet returned to the native country of his parents, where he assisted in clearing the newly acquired land to make it ready for the raising of hay. He was ultimately unable to receive even this pittance, with his employer pleading poverty. Wells later worked on a larger livestock and grain farm and as a section hand on the Canadian Pacific Railway. The following spring he joined his father as part of the Klondike Gold Rush, heading to the Yukon Territory with a team of horses hauling living essentials for the pair.

Return to Washington Hulet Wells' efforts to unionize Seattle postal workers led to his dismissal from the US Postal Service by Postmaster General Frank Harris Hitchcock.

As 1899 drew to a close, with another frigid winter on the way and his personal finances dissipated, Hulet Wells decided to return to the Pacific Northwest, booking passage on a steamer for Seattle. En route Wells developed a case of typhus, which forced his hospitalization in a ramshackle charity hospital upon his arrival in the booming town of about 80,000 people.

In the winter of 1902 his economic prospects improved (if not his physical conditions) when he obtained a job driving a team of horses to help grade city streets in Seattle in the winter rain. A return to the itinerant lifestyle followed but the seed was planted about the possibility of regular work in an urban setting. In 1904 Wells took the federal civil service examination, passing with high marks and soon gaining employment as a clerk at the Seattle post office.

Wells' postal job was difficult and poorly remunerated, with a workday ranging from 9 to 14 hours, six days a week, with poor pay and no benefits. Wells was dissatisfied with his job but felt compelled to remain, daunted by poor employment prospects elsewhere. Although he never entered legal practice, Wells next moved to attempt to organize postal workers, establishing a local union. Wells ultimately finished fourth in the race.

Wells' Spring 1912 mayoral campaign was ignored by the conservative Seattle Times, owned by Colonel Alden J. Blethen and the largest circulation newspaper in the city of Seattle. During the campaign Wells and his fellow Socialists opposed a development project strongly favored by Blethen, contributing to the plan's controversy and helping lead it to rejection by the Seattle Port Commission. Both the Times and the rival Seattle Post-Intelligencer printed provocative stories the next day alleging that the flag carried by the radicals in their march had been spat upon and trampled, with the Times going so far to allege that Wells had denounced Old Glory as a "dirty rag."

Despite the patently false nature of its reports, The Times continued to print allegations against Wells, who as a former mayoral candidate was the public face of the socialist movement. This prompted Wells to sue The Times for libel, alleging his character had been falsely besmirched.

In 1913 Wells was chosen as the state chairman of the Socialist Party of Washington, the state affiliate of the Socialist Party of America. Daniels reviewed a parade of 2,000 members of the American military and an additional 2,000 members of local fraternal orders in conjunction with his visit, which was orchestrated in hopes that Daniels would recommend additional funding for the regional Bremerton Navy Yard. On the other side of town a scuffle between several passersby and a suffragist making a soapbox speech was falsely reported as a mob attacking five innocent sailors and soldiers. Swept into a frenzy by the hysterical reporting, on the evening of July 18, 1913, a mob of about 200 men, including members of the military and drunken revelers, ransacked local headquarters of the IWW and Socialist Party, smashing doors, window office equipment, and a wagon, and throwing books, documents, and newspapers in the street, where they were burned. Wells barely escaped the clutches of the mob. In the aftermath of the riot, a scheduled staging of Wells' play at the Moore Theatre was cancelled by the management.

Wells was elected president of the Seattle Central Labor Council in 1915, serving in that capacity until 1916. Wells served his sentence at the McNeil Island Federal Penitentiary, located on McNeil Island in Pierce County, Washington. While in prison, he was tortured; street rallies erupted among the labor movement in Seattle as a response. In the early 1930s, he was an administrative assistant of Marion A. Zioncheck, a congressman representing Washington's 1st congressional district.

Death and legacy Hulet Wells died February 15, 1970. He was 91 years old at the time of his death.

Footnotes

Works A Wrong Without a Remedy. Seattle, WA: 1909. —Lost pamphlet. The Colonel and His Friends: A Suppressed Play: A Comedy in Three Acts. Prologue by Bruce Rogers. Seattle, WA: n.p., 1913. Wilson and the Issues of To-day: A Socialist Revision of George Creel's Famous Book. Seattle, WA: Socialist Party, 1918. I Wanted to Work. Unpublished manuscript. Housed in the Hulet M. Wells Papers, University of Washington Special Collections, box 2.