"There are fifty-two political prisoners held in jail today serving sentences of from ten to twenty years society for an alleged expression of opinion," said Mr. James Manning, I. W. W. leader, who has recently been released after a five-year sentence in Leavenworth Priston, addressing the Liberal Club yesterday afternoon.

Speaking for over 45 minutes, Mr. Manning outlined his personal experiences in prison at Seattle, in the Cook County Jail at Chicago, and at Fort Leavenworth, and made a strong plea for the freedom of the men still in prison. In 1917 he said he was organizing the I. W. W. in the lumber camps of Washington, where the living and working conditions were so bad that the luber men joined the organization in great numbers. The work of the I. W. w. was so contrary to the industrial interests of the west that they concocted a list of about 160 suspected leaders who were at once arrested. Mr. Manning was taken into custody in Seattle and confined in a little cell, absolutely devoid of furniture, although no charge had been brought up against him. After three months he was taken to Chicago, where he remained for twelve more months in the Cook County Jail. Finally the trial was held, but according to Mr. Manning, the conditions that obtained in the court-room were such as to render an impartial decision by the jury impossible. A band was hired to play patriotic airs outside the court-house, squads of soldiers were marched about in the court-room, and witnesses for the defense were arrested, beaten up, and told to got out of the city.

Convicted under Espionage Act

The prisoners were convicted under the Espionage Act and were given sentence ranging from ten days to twenty years. In addition Judge Landis fined Mr. Manning $30,000, although the latter had just been obliged to borrow 25 cents for a package of cigarettes.

Under Dreadful Conditions

The speaker stated that on one day, supposed to be a holiday, the I. W. W. gang was ordered to unload some coal. When they refused point blank to work while the other prisoners were enjoying a moving picture they were placed in isolation, put on bread and water, and strung up by the hands for fourteen days for eight hours a day. On the eight day they were beaten with baseball bats by some prisoners who had been given long sentences for murder and other crimes, and who beat the men with the hope of getting a commutation or a parole. One of these men, a negro serving a life sentence for murder, received a commuted sentence, according to the speaker, and three months later held up and killed a man in Indianapolis.

"It was not extraordinary that this man committed another murder," said Mr. Manning. "It would have been very extraordinary if he had not. Would it not have been more practical to use different methods in such an institution? These conditions are not the fault of President Harding, or of the United States Senate, they are the fault of the American people."