Biography
Earl C. Steward, also recorded as Earl Stewart, was an Oregon Communist and candidate for secretary of state. A Multnomah County grand jury indicted him with Dirk De Jonge, Edward Denny and Don Cluster on September 29, 1934, under Oregon's criminal-syndicalism law. Police arrested him again on October 17 for disorderly conduct after he refused to leave a soapbox at a street meeting that was blocking traffic. He was released on $50 bail.
The Daily Worker reported that his Oregon criminal-syndicalism trial had been postponed from March 4 to April 15, 1935. April 15 was the announced future trial date, not proof that a trial occurred that day. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1935/v12-n049-Nat-feb-26-1935-DW-LOC.pdf#page=2
The Capital Journal, October 18, 1934, page 1 gives Earl C. Steward’s age as 34. If accurate at publication, that suggests a birth year of 1899 or 1900, not a confirmed birthday. The birth-date field remains unfilled. The report dates the arrest to the preceding night and says he was released on $50 bail, without establishing the exact discharge day.
A Portland dispatch dated April 16 reports that Steward’s criminal-syndicalism trial, described as the fifth in the series of Oregon prosecutions, had been postponed from April 15 to May 15. It confirms a pending trial, not a conviction or a new prison sentence. The accompanying report lists Pugh’s five-year, De Jonge’s seven-year and Denny’s two-year sentences as under appeal and describes Don Cluster’s sentence as suspended.
The October 25 Portland dispatch in the October 26 Daily Worker, page 3, reports Steward's arrest while addressing a Communist election street meeting at Fourth and Alder. He was charged with disorderly conduct and blocking traffic, freed in less than an hour on $50 bail, and the next morning's hearing was continued indefinitely. This corroborates the existing October 17 street-meeting episode, without a second arrest inferred or a fractional-hour stay rounded into a prison day.
Named as facing two criminal-syndicalism counts in Oregon during the election campaign. Exposure is not an imposed sentence or another arrest.
