Jacob Margolis: Pittsburgh lawyer, Anarcho-Syndicalist

         Chairman:  Just how would you describe yourself?

         Margolis:  First, syndicalist; I put the syndicalist first, because it is an important thing; syndicalist-anarchist would be my position.

Jacob Margolis, a Pittsburgh lawyer who represented the IWW during the 1919 Steel Strike, told Senator William Kenyon of Iowa that he was an anarchist during a Senate investigation of the Steel Strike.  When he returned home to Pittsburgh, he found that the Allegheny County Bar Association was moving to have him disbarred.  During the legal battle that followed, the ACBA was fed information from the FBI.  Margolis lost his license to practice law in 1920 following arguments before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, but was reinstated within the bar in 1928.  He spent most of the rest of his career as a writer and lecturer, retiring to Santa Barbara, California during the 1940s.

See The Steel Bar: Pittsburgh Lawyers and the Making of Modern America.

NOTE: Photo is not available for republication.