Biography
Alexander Howat was the long-time president of the Kansas district of the United Mine Workers who was jailed for leading outlaw strikes in defiance of the Kansas Industrial Court, the state's compulsory anti-strike arbitration law. While he was in jail John L. Lewis moved to depose and expel him from the union; he became a symbol of the fight against anti-strike legislation.
The March 11, 1924 Daily Worker dates the six-month sentences of Howat and August Dorchy in the Cherokee County coal-strike prosecution to July 27, 1921. Its March 10 Washington dispatch reports that the U.S. Supreme Court vacated Dorchy’s conviction. It does not say that this decision also vacated Howat’s conviction or that either man physically left jail on the decision day. The existing separate Cherokee and Crawford County custody episodes remain distinct. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1924/v01-n361-mar-11-1924-DW-LOC.pdf#page=1
1920s custody review: Two documented jail episodes are recorded separately. Howat entered Cherokee County jail on September 30, 1921 and left on appeal bond February 6, 1922. He later began a separate sentence in Crawford County jail on April 28, 1922 and was paroled January 20, 1923. No arrest dates are inferred from these jail-entry dates, and no continuous imprisonment is claimed across the gap. Earlier 1920 custody and later proceedings over the remainder of the Cherokee County sentence remain to be resolved.
Sources: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Bulletin 322, page 33; Fort Worth Press, February 7, 1922, page 7; Ranger Daily Times, April 29, 1922, page 2; Voice of Labor, January 26, 1923, page 1, report dated January 20.
Howat addressed the Pittsburgh Progressive Miners convention on March 4, 1923 after his final release from Kansas jails under the Industrial Court law. This establishes freedom by the speaking date without assigning that day as the actual release.
The Girard dispatch explicitly dated January 20 reports Howat physically released on parole that day by newly elected county judge Daniel H. Wooley. It distinguishes this Crawford County contempt sentence from the earlier Cherokee County case. Five union colleagues were also freed; no exact complete duration is inferred for them.
