In the winter of 1914, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) chose Sioux City as the site of one of its many free speech fights. The goal was to organize both industrial and agricultural farm laborers into one big union to pressure management for better wages and shorter hours. Some community leaders—notably the enlightened Pastor and future Populist Republican Mayor Wallace Mertin Short—strongly defended the rights of the workers to exercise free speech, while not endorsing or condoning the radical and often violent tactics of the IWW. As in all of the IWW free speech fights of that era, once word of such a demonstration went out over the "bush telegraph," thousands upon thousands of unemployed men made their way into the city by foot or on freight cars. The center of activity was in the 800 block of Fourth Street, where Sioux City Police on horseback, assisted by Iowa National Guardsmen, engaged in skirmishing. Hundreds of unemployed laborers were arrested until, jails full, city fathers bodily expelled them aboard freight cars, which delivered them to isolated locations outside the city.