Controlling space, controlling scale: Migratory labour, free speech, and regional development in the American West

Using the Industrial Workers of the World's Denver, Colorado free speech struggle of 1913 as a starting point, this paper explores the relationship between the production of public space and the production of scale in the American West. Drawing on evidence from both union and local newspapers, the paper shows how the struggle to shape and control labor and capital mobility was simultaneously engaged in particular public spaces (and the right to use those spaces) and across vast reaches of the region. The paper shows that these struggles were decisive the determining the nature of regional development in the West.