So nice to have "admirers." Not so nice to have stalkers, especially when they are trying to dox people. I like the user name - Ralph Chaplin. Ironically, Chaplin wrote "Solidarity For Ever."
Ralph Chaplin was an editor, author, poet, painter, songwriter, radical labor leader, organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), and fighter for freedom of speech. He counted among his friends many of the liberal leaders of America in the early years of the 20th Century. This included Scott Nearing, Roger Baldwin, founder of the American Civil Liberties Union, Carl Sandburg, and Eugene Debs. But, what does labor activism and Lombard have in common? At first glance, they don’t seem to be related to each other.
During this time Labor activists were often labeled as Bolsheviks or Communists and often depicted as radical people creating unrest. They also were frequently associated with certain cities in the Midwest like Chicago or Milwaukee where large numbers of immigrants lived and worked in brutal conditions. Lombard didn’t have large factories that would attract the attention of union organizers. It was a pretty quiet place, comprised of people with a variety of ethnic backgrounds, where everyone went about their routines.
After being arrested in 1917, under charges of the Federal Espionage Act because he spoke up for the working man and for immigrants who were being sent to Europe to fight for the United States in WWI. Chaplin was sentenced to 20 years in prison at Fort Leavenworth Military Prison in Kansas. While in prison, Chaplin wrote a book of poetry called Bars and Shadows. He was temporally released from prison in 1921, he and his wife Edith came to Lombard and bought the house at 215 E. Grove Street.
https://www.lombardhistory.org/blog/2021/12/18/ralph-chaplin-labor-activisim
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