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In 1910, at the age of 18, David A. Evpak, a Ukranian immigrant,
arrived in the United States. Although it is not known if Evpak
came directly from Russia to Lowell, by 1916 he was listed in the
city directory. His occupation was noted as shoemaker at the
Goodyear Shoe rep. A Swedish-American, Ernest Lundgren,
owned Goodyear Shoe in Lowell and operated two shops in the city,
the main store on 122 Central Street, and a branch shop on
Appleton Street, where David Evpak worked. Evpak rented a room in
a tenement on Cushing Street, which extended through a poor and
working-class area adjacent to an industrial district.
 After
a year at Goodyear Shoe, Evpak opened his own cobbler shop at 11
Post Office Square. He named it “United Shoe Repairing Shop.”
Apparently the business prospered, for Evpak’s shop soon “doubled
its force to take care of its rapidly increasing shoe repairing
business.” A local newspaper noted, “Here a customer is assured of
prompt work neatly done by modern machinery with best selected
stock at reasonable prices and a guarantee of satisfaction.”
Evpak operated his business in a small one-story shop. From city
maps of this period, United Shoe Repairing was located in a block
that extended along an alleyway, across from the city’s central
post office. This was likely a very favorable location as it
received a large volume of pedestrian traffic and was almost on
the corner of Central Street, one of the city’s busiest commercial
thoroughfares. Given the size of the shop, however, Evpak was
probably able to employ at most two or three workers, two of whom
were Onufrio Kulbach and Stephen Agnatovech, fellow Russian
émigrés. About three years after Evpak settled in the
United States, he married a Ukranian émigré Daisy Blaken, who came
to America as a young woman in 1913. After their marriage, the
Evpaks lived in the “Acre” neighborhood at 62 LaGrange Street.
This was largely a working-class community that was home to
Greeks, Irish, French Canadians, and a smattering of other
European immigrants. Many wage earners rented rooms in the
numerous two and three-story, wood-frame tenements that lined the
neighborhood’s streets. The Evpaks rented their residence on
LaGrange Street, but by late 1919 they had saved enough money to
buy land on Gibson Street in the more suburban Highlands
neighborhood and were planning to build a house. Evpak’s
arrival in Lowell coincided with the growth of leftwing politics
in Lowell. The influx of Russians, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, and
Poles boosted the vitality of the city’s small, but vigorous
socialist movement. As a result of the 1912 textile strike, which
brought the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) to Lowell, the
Socialist Party gained additional support among other immigrant
groups and Socialist Hall on Middle Street in the downtown became
the center of left-wing political activity. The socialist
movement in Lowell in the 1910s built upon the work of an earlier
generation of political organizers. While the city’s first
socialist meeting occurred in the 1880s, it was not until the late
1890s that a formal party emerged in Lowell. Unlike Haverhill’s
socialist organization, which boasted several hundred party
members and worked to elect a Socialist mayor, Lowell’s Socialist
Party remained quite small. Party leaders included skilled workers
and trolleymen, as well as shopkeepers, property holders, and even
an inventor. Their social and economic standing in the community
reflected the middle-class status of party leaders and activists
in Massachusetts. Although most of the city’s trade union leaders
eschewed socialist politics, a few actively participated in the
Socialist party and some, like street railway worker William E.
Sproul, ran for alderman and state representative. Though
never very large, the city’s Socialist Party grew to such an
extent that by 1902, for the first time in Lowell’s history, it
fielded a slate of candidates for mayor and aldermen. The mayoral
candidate received just over 600 of the nearly 13,500 total votes
cast. Again in 1903 and 1904, Lowell’s socialists put up a slate
of candidates, but again few voters cast ballots for these men.
Eugene Debs’ visit to Lowell and his appeal to working men on the
eve of the elections in 1909 boosted the prestige of the city’s
Socialist Party. Most of the working-class districts, however,
continued to support Democrats. Despite the steady stream of
meetings, local campaigns, and the occasional presence of
nationally known Socialist politicians and lecturers, Lowell’s
Socialist candidates never received more than four percent of the
total vote. It was the Eastern European and Russian
immigrants who infused the city with a more radical Socialist
program. As the decade of the 1910s came to a close, some of
Lowell’s socialists joined with the nascent Communist party.
Meetings at Socialist Hall were attended largely by Poles,
Lithuanians, Russians, and a handful of French Canadians, Greeks,
and Ukrainians. Few of these men and women were naturalized
citizens. While a number of radical socialists and communists
worked in the textile industry, the most were employed in Lowell’s
leather tanneries or were involved like Evpak in the shoe business
or other small enterprises. As historian Dexter Arnold has
pointed out, opposition to foreign-born “reds” arose in the
Merrimack Valley’s textile cities in the late 1910s, reflecting a
growing fear nationwide of a “red revolution” in America. These
fears intensified in the fall of 1919 in the wake of May Day
riots, a series of bombings targeted at government officials by
unknown “anarchists,” massive labor unrest and IWW actions on the
West Coast, the nationally conducted steel strike, and the Boston
police strike. In Lowell, state officials, newspaper editors,
textile mill officials, and clergy campaigned fervently against
bolshevism, labor strikes, and anarchism. “Hoodlums and radicals!”
thundered Reverend Chauncey J. Hawkins at the city’s First
Congregational Church. “Shall they rule America? No! But they are
challenging and the life of America and they must be suppressed.”
In an address before members of the First Baptist Church,
Massachusetts Labor Commissioner Edwin T. Mulready waved copies of
the Communist party platform and the declaration of rights of
Massachusetts and proclaimed, “As oil and water cannot mix, so
bolshevism and good Americanism cannot mix, nor even continue in
the same country, for the one lives only through the destruction
of the other.” As a means for promoting “Americanism” the state
increased funding for Americanization classes, a series of which
were held in public schools around Lowell, as well as in the
city’s Massachusetts Mills. Large posters commanding workers to
“Learn English” were placed in the Massachusetts, Merrimack, and
Lawrence mills. As state elections approached in November
1919, many native-born Lowellians, along with a number of the
city’s prominent naturalized citizens, joined the campaign against
the left. In the minds of many, bolshevists, anarchists, trade
unionists, and alien immigrants were indistinguishable and all
posed a grave threat to American society. Commenting on the
upcoming election in Massachusetts, the Reverend C. E. Fisher of
Lowell’s First Universalist Church declared, “God save America if
Calvin Coolidge is defeated next Tuesday.” His sermon titled, “The
Red Flag or the Stars and Stripes—Which?” called for patriotic
Americans to rally around Coolidge and “be true to law, order,
righteousness, and justice.” As for those people “who do not like
America,” Fisher suggested, “why don’t they go to Russia, where
beautiful conditions prevail.” He added, “I should not invite them
[to go], I should compel them. Until we can do that we are going
to have trouble.” The Reverend Fisher’s call for deporting
those “men coming here who come simply to cause unrest” was a
strategy that the United States Justice Department and state law
enforcement officials were beginning to implement in late 1919. In
New York City, federal and local law enforcement officials carried
out a sweep of suspected radicals and arrested 37 men, including
“Big Jim” Larkin head of the Irish Transport Workers. In
Massachusetts, investigations into the activities of suspected
“Reds” netted the Socialist Party’s candidate for lieutenant
governor, Marion E. Sproul of Lowell, wife of William Sproul. Two
weeks after the election state police arrived in Lowell looking
for more “Reds.” Working with Lowell’s police superintendent and
local officers, the state arrested two Polish brothers, Constanty
and Felix Dobrowolski, who owned a grocery on Lakeview Avenue in
the Centreville neighborhood, and charged them with violating the
anti-anarchy law for displaying in their store window a poster of
a murdered female labor organizer with the words “Rise and avenge
her.” In December, as part of the continuing statewide
“anti-Red” campaign, Lowell police sought those responsible for
distributing communist leaflets throughout the city. Sergeant
Samuel J. Bigelow, along with patrolmen Michael Winn and Patrick
B. Clark posed as “radical characters” and infiltrated meetings at
Socialist Hall. Their investigation culminated in the arrest of a
young Lithuanian immigrant, Fabian Piekarski, who worked as a
weaver at the Merrimack Mills. Like the Dobrowolski brothers,
Piekarski was charged with violating the anti-anarchy law.
Piekarski’s crime was selling “radical literature and books
written in the Russian language during a meeting of Poles at
Socialist Hall” on Middle Street. Police also found on Piekarski a
card showing he was a member of the Socialist Party. At his
hearing before Judge Thomas J. Enright in Lowell’s Police Court,
Piekarski through his counsel Dennis J. Murphy pled not guilty.
Judge Enright set bail at $5,000, an amount that Piekarski, who
made about $20 per week at the textile mill, was unable to secure.
He was then committed to the city jail. The rounding up of
Piekarski and another factory worker, Mike Belida, who lived in
North Chelmsford and who was also charged with distributing
revolutionary “propaganda,” preceded a much larger federally led
raid. That raid was directed by Attorney General Mitchell Palmer
and encompassed 33 cities nationwide, including several in New
England. Launched in early January 1920, the “Palmer” raids were
carried out by federal agents, as well as state officials and
local police. In Lowell, city police organized into special units
and on Friday evening, January 2, they raided Socialist Hall and
numerous homes of suspected reds throughout the city. About 30 men
and women, all of foreign birth, were hauled into the police
station and questioned for nearly three hours. According to one
report, the detainees were asked about their political
affiliations and their involvement with radical groups, but
“little could be learned from the majority of the men and they
denied [any] revolutionary intentions.” Of the 30 “radicals”
rounded up in the raid, five were transferred to a federal
facility at Deer Island in Boston Harbor, while the rest were
released.
Among
the five alleged radicals arrested and sent to Deer Island was
David Evpak, whose shoe repair shop was located around the corner
from Socialist Hall. Evpak’s case, similar to the other Lowell
suspects held at Deer Island, remains a mystery. On the afternoon
of the raid, an FBI agent named Henderson met with Police
Superintendent Welch, presented him with about 30 warrants, and
outlined the plan for arresting the suspects. Apparently an
informant or a federal infiltrator had fingered Evpak during a
meeting at Socialist Hall for his name appeared on a list of
“radicals” who were “either directly or indirectly identified with
the Communist party.” That evening police officers surrounded the
building and several quietly entered the hall. Inside they found
25 people in attendance. An officer ordered everyone to stay put.
The police then rummaged through the hall and collected scores of
documents. Officers searched each person, after which they
escorted them to the police station. Other suspects were arrested
in their homes and brought to the station for questioning. One
exchange between an officer and detainee, as reported in a local
newspaper, captured the murkiness of the state’s accusations, as
well as the confused responses of the accused “radicals.” “You
belong to the Communist party and you previously was [sic] a
radical Socialist,” proclaimed one policeman. “No, no not me,” the
accused retorted. “Oh yes you are and we know it. You are not
fooling us any [sic].” Among the other four Lowell men who
were similarly accused of being “reds” and were taken to Deer
Island was Stephen Agnatovech, whom Evpak employed in his cobbler
shop. Agnatovech had come to this country from Moscow in 1908 and
settled in Lowell by 1909, working as a shoemaker from the first.
He married Bronislawa (later Blanch) Apolia in 1909 and lived on
Lakeview Avenue and nearby, an area changing from Irish to Polish
at the time. By 1911 he was working at Lundgren’s Goodyear Shoe
Repairing Company, where he met Evpak. Unlike Evpak who was living
in a working-class area, however, in 1912 Agnatovech was living in
an affluent neighborhood, Christian Hill, which overlooked the
city’s downtown on the opposite side of the Merrimack River.
The other men arrested and shipped to Deer Island lived in
working-class neighborhoods. This included Benjamin Chaluda, a
36-year-old Lithuanian immigrant who worked as a comber in a
woolen mill, Joseph Lescarbeau, a 79-year-old French Canadian who
had immigrated to the United States in 1900 and worked as a
textile operative and laborer, and William Matchas, who was
apparently a Swedish immigrant and had no fixed address at the
time of his arrest. Two days after the “Red” raid, Lowell
police arrested another suspect, Onufrio Kulbach, another of
Evpak’s cobblers. A Lithuanian who came from Russia to the United
States in 1912, Kulbach and his wife Helen, a Polish émigré,
boarded with a large Polish family on Abbott Street, which was
located in a working-class neighborhood of Irish, Polish, and
Portuguese residents. Officers searched Kulbach’s home and found a
large amount of radical literature. Like Evpak, Kulbach was sent
to prison on Deer Island for further questioning. Another man,
John Zarowski, also a Lithuanian immigrant, was arrested in a
bowling alley, allegedly drunk and loudly proclaiming he was a
bolshevist and that the Communist Party was “justified” in its
actions. Police brought Zarowski before Judge Enright who ordered
him held in the city jail. At a second hearing, the following
morning, Zarowski professed his allegiance to the United States,
stating, “I like this country and I want to live here all the
time.” After Zarowski promised to demonstrate his “liking for the
country in his actions and speech,” the judge put him on probation
for six months. The arrests of suspected communists in the
city continued into mid-January. Two more men were picked up on
federal warrants and sent to Deer Island. One was Joseph Nadworny,
secretary of the Polish Communists of Lowell. The investigation
into his background and his subsequent apprehension reveals the
tragic and farcical dimensions of the Palmer raids of 1920.
Nadworny, a Russian Pole, had immigrated to the United States in
1909 and was living in Lowell by 1919. Initially employed at the
U.S. Cartridge Company, a large munitions manufacturer, Nadworny
then obtained a job as an edge trimmer at a shoe factory in
Lawrence. He lived with his wife Amelia, five-year-old son John,
and a 12-year old lodger, Olga Mazik, on High Street in a lower
middle-class and working class neighborhood. At the time of the
raids police officers visited Nadworny’s home expecting to uncover
radical literature, but instead found “a generous display of
American flags, and red, white, and blue displayed on all sides.”
Believing that authorities were mistaken they left Nadworny
undisturbed. Police superintendent Welch, however, was convinced
that Nadworny was a “red” and when he received word that a
“radical,” who had been arrested in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was
carrying a Nadworny-signed letter concerning financial support for
leftist activities, he ordered police to pick him up. Nadworny was
then sent to Deer Island. A number of prominent Lowellians,
fraternal organizations, and opinion shapers voiced their approval
of the Palmer raids and suppression of socialist dissent. Editors
of the city’s two major English-language newspapers applauded the
arrests of radical “aliens.” The Democratic paper, the Lowell Sun,
called the actions of the Justice Department “commendable” and
warned that aliens who “preach overthrow of government and
violence, or who indulge in inflammatory utterances against
American laws and institutions, will come immediately under the
surveillance of agents of the government and will be arrested
whenever their activities reach a point where they are regarded as
inimical to the public welfare.” “Several hundred malcontents of
the more vehement kind,” the Courier-Citizen observed, “were
seized without warning and have been brought to the question. By
no means all will be held we suppose—but the drag-net must have
got some very needful fish.” Among the charges hurled at
Evpak and other unnaturalized “aliens” who were arrested during
the raids was that they were anti-American bent on the “overthrow
of law and order.” An Americanization campaign, which included
state-sponsored English-language classes and civics courses aimed
at immigrants, had been underway in Lowell and in other
Massachusetts cities before the Palmer raids, but intensified in
the aftermath. Among the statewide leaders in the Americanization
effort was Lowell resident and probate judge John E. Leggat. As
members of the Massachusetts branch of the American Legion, Leggat
and a group of Legion delegates announced that they were going to
“help Americanize the alien and actively combat any Bolshevist or
other radical movement … in the state.” Much of this
Americanization effort, they believed, needed to be aimed at that
state’s public schools, especially the teaching of history.
Delegates recommended a substantial revision of the history
curriculum that would give far greater attention to American
history. One delegate went so far as to urge that European history
be stricken entirely from the public school curriculum. For
the families of suspected “radicals” arrested during the “Red”
raid in Lowell, the Americanization speeches and anti-alien
rhetoric likely added to confusion and anxiety they were
experiencing. Officials at Deer Island released little information
concerning the condition of those held in the prison. Only later
was it learned that prisoners had been taken to the immigration
office in Boston where, after questioning, they were forced to
march in chains the to dock, from which they were taken to the
Deer Island prison. As historian Robert Murray observed, the
conditions at Deer Island were “deplorable; heat was lacking,
sanitation was poor, and restrictions holding [the prisoners]
incommunicado were rigidly enforced.” One man committed suicide,
while another went insane. Two prisoners subsequently died of
pneumonia.
David Evpak’s incarceration at Deer Island was
one of the briefest of any prisoner. Despite an early report that
“New England’s radical crew” had met as a group and decided to
“accept deportation without legal battle,” Evpak and many others
obtained legal counsel to contest the accusations brought against
them. Evpak hired Lowell attorney Edward J. Tierny, who
represented him at a hearing before the federal deputy
commissioner of immigration, James Sullivan. According to one
report, Evpak testified that “America was a mighty good country to
live in” and that he wanted to live here and “bring up his family
as good American citizens.” Further, Evpak “denied any connection
with radical societies.” Sullivan declared that Evpak was “in no
way connected with radical activities” in Lowell and ordered his
release. After spending nearly a week on Deer Island, Evpak
returned to Lowell, accompanied by his attorney. As he got off the
train, he was overheard stating emphatically to Tierney, “It’s
certainly nice to be back in Lowell.” In public he made no comment
critical of the actions that had been taken against him, his
employees, or his fellow prisoners. In fact, Evpak said he had no
complaints about his confinement at Deer Island. He stated that
the men were “well treated” and, “while they didn’t, of course,
have the comforts of home, they were comfortably sheltered and
always got ‘three-squares” a day. Evpak also told a reporter that
he was going to apply “immediately” for citizenship. His
public statements aside, Evpak’s arrest was undoubtedly a
harrowing experience for him, his wife, and his fellow prisoners.
His employee Onufrio Kulbach was released a week after him, and
within a few weeks almost all of the captives were let go. Like
Evpak, none of the ex-prisoners spoke out publicly against the
government, the police actions, or violations of their civil
liberties. Many of those who were arrested from Lowell did not
remain city residents for long never returned to Lowell. Kulbach
stayed a few months, in time for the Federal Census conducted in
June, then moved to Wakefield, Mass., where he opened his own shop
under the name Oscar’s Shoe Repair. Others like Joseph Nadworny,
stayed for a year and then departed. As seen through the
experience of one individual, David Evpak, the Palmer raids were
not only emotionally wrenching to those swept up in it, but they
also led to financial hardship. While Evpak was incarcerated on
Deer Island, his creditors in Lowell placed attachments on his
real estate and personal property. It appears that he had to sell
the parcel of land he owned in the Highlands neighborhood and he,
Daisy Evpak, and their infant daughter, Anna, boarded in a
two-family house on Broadway. Eventually they purchased the
dwelling and they continued to live there until the early 1970s.
Like Evpak, Stephan Agnatovech stayed in Lowell but suffered
financially with the arrests. He moved from affluent Christian
Hill to 103 Tremont Street, a corner house with large mills on two
sides. After the arrest in early 1920, he obviously felt fearful
of the federal government when the census was taken a few months
later, reporting his name as Stanley Steves. He also reverted to
using Ignatowicz with given name Staniswof for the city directory.
By 1926, when he opened his own shop, he was comfortable enough to
again use the name Stephen Agnatovech. Evpak and his wife
became American citizens and continued to live and run their shoe
repair business in the Spindle City. He continued to operate
United Shoe Repairing at the Post Office Square location until
1963, when he moved a block away to the store on 138 Middlesex
Street. His business remained small and for a few years his son,
David A., Jr., worked with him. In 1972 he retired from his
cobbler shop. He and Daisy then moved to the Sacramento,
California area. Their adult children, David and Anna,
subsequently moved to the same part of California. David, Sr.,
died in November 1972 and his wife died September 1976. The
extent to which David Evpak was involved in radical politics in
Lowell in the late 1910s likely never will be known. It appears
that after his release from Deer Island he remained aloof from
politics altogether. The effect of the “Red” raids on the
Socialist Party and radical politics in Lowell is equally hard to
determine. While Socialist Hall closed down and never reopened,
radical left-wing groups periodically attempted to organize in
Lowell. In 1924, the IWW returned briefly to the Spindle City, but
their effort to interest textile workers in radical unionism
proved a failure. Ten years later, during the general textile
strike, the American Communist Party surfaced in Lowell. The
Communist textile organizer, Ann Burlak, known as the “Red Flame,”
campaigned energetically in the city. And yet she too found that,
in the Spindle City, the seeds of radical politics fell on barren
soil. The high-water mark of Socialist politics in Lowell that had
risen three decades earlier was never exceeded. Ironically, in the
predominately working-class city of Lowell, it was a small segment
of the artisanal and entrepreneurial classes that had led the way
in radical politics. |
