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Show i HIGH POSITION FOR UTAH CITIZEN $ U. S. Salt AMONG more Lake citizens of Democratic persuasion none has prominently! into the public eye within the period of the war than Frank L. Nebeker, who has just been appointed assistant attorney general of the United States to take charge of. the governments land cases. Mr. Nebeker is leaving for Washington in a few days to assume his arduous duties which will include the handling of the oil land cases involving many millions of dollars. The Citizen congratulates Mr. Nebeker and also Attorney General Palmer on the appointment. The honor comes to Mr. Nebeker as one of the sequels to the celebrated I. W. W. cases which he prosecuted so successfully in Chicago. By obtaining evidence in the face of baffling obstacles he was able to send more than 100 I. W. W. criminals to federal prisons and thus virtually annihilate for the period of 'the war an organization which was striving to oevrthrow the United States government. Speaking to The Citizen, immediately after his latest federal $ appointment, Mr. Nebeker pointed out the menace which still exists in the I. W. W. organization. They are planning the destruction of the political institutions of this country, he said. They maintain that political institutions are simply agencies of economic forces and that by gaining control of the economic forces of the country they will be able to bring about the downfall of the government. With this end in view they are organizing in every industry and are using their peculiar methods of sapping the foundations of all industry. By means of sabotage, which they refer to also as guerrilla warfare they seek to weaken the employer and force him to give up his business in discouragement or disgust. They hope to paralyze industry and precipitate chaos. Their plan is much like that of the Bolsheviki. Indeed, many of the American I. W. W. were in Russia agitating before the revolution. In Chicago, at their headquarters, we captured a quantity of Russian type used for spreading propaganda mi the Russian language. The organization was controlled by capable leaders at the time the government made its great raid on their various headquarters at 2 oclock on the afternoon of Sept. 5, 1917. This was a staggering blow because it crippled them in their main activities. The leaders were under arrest, their literature had been seized and their organization was wrecked. At that time they were engaged in a number of enterprises calculated to handicap our government in the conduct of the war. Had they been free from interference a little longer the consequences would have been irreparable. Frank L. Nebeker, who proved such an able antagonist of this traitorous body, is a Utahn in every sense of the word. lie was born at Laketown, Rich county, on May 15, 1870. Until lie was seventeen years of age he remained at the ranch and then became a student at LoBrigham Young college. He married Miss Lillian Martineau of gan while serving as an instructor at the college. In 1893 he entered the Cornell university law school, where he took his degree in two years. In 1894 he was selected by the president of the university to be the representative of the institution at a great celebra tion of Washingtons birthday in Chicago. Under the auspices of the Union League club the day was observed in all of the public schools of the city and the foremost speakers from the leading universities of the country addressed the students. Mr. Nebeker delivered the address at the Lafayette school. In June, 1895, he returned to Utah and in the autumn of that year was elected county attorney of Cache county. He was in 1897. He prosecuted the case against the horse thief, Coughlin, who, with a companion named George, was cornered by a posse near Evanston and who, during the progress of the fight, killed Deputy Sheriff Dawes. Coughlin was convicted of murder and executed. In 1900 Mr. Nebeker became. district attorney of Cache and Rich counties and convicted Abe Majors, who had killed Captain Brown of Ogden in a fight between a posse and the two Majors brothers. Mr. Nebeker retired as district attorney in 1904 and engaged in the general practice of law as a member of the firm of Nebeker, Hart & Nebeker of Logan. In 1909 he became assistant general attorney of the Oregon Short Line. It was in 1912 that he joined the Salt Lake firm of Howatt, Marshall, MacMillan and Nebeker. The war gave him his greatest opportunity to display his skill in the law. He was invited by United States Attorney General Gregory to take charge of the I. W. W. cases as special assistant. With the aid of eight attorneys Mr. Nebeker went through tons of documentary evidence and collated the data used at the trial. Under his able direction the case grew day by day. The evidence was pieced together laboriously with unerring legal discernment. The result was the conviction of more than 100 I. W. W. leaders who had plotted to overthrow the United States government. The clerk of Judge Landis court, in which the seditionists were tried, declared that it was the best prepared case ever presented to that tribunal. Chicago was the head center of the I. W. W. activity. At the societys headquarters there were editorial rooms, a club, store rooms, and ofprinting presses for the papers Solidarity and Defense, fices for the national leaders. The organization radiated from a suWilliam pervisory board of six members, chief among whom was Another Haywood who had the title of general secretary treasurer. member was Frank Little, the agitator, who was lynched at Butte. convicted Haywood and all his associates on the advisory board were except Wriertola, a Finn, who escaped arrest. Uncrowned King of the W obblies was a name which Mr. Nebeker in the applied to Ilaywood during the trial and it became popular one of the humorous press. Another name of less royal dignity was developments of the trial. was one, Among the books seized at the Chicago headquarters not yet bound, written by Haywood. In it he told of a peculiar act of sabotage which he recommended for general use. The chambermaids of the New York hotels, having failed to win a strike, went into certain tenement districts and gathered bedbugs in bottles. hotels and caused astonishing scattered the pests in all the first-clarc-elect- ed . ) ss |