Following a prison term for opposition to World War I, Wells reemerged as a labor and political activist, eventually founding the Unemployed Citizens' League of Seattle[2][3] in 1931.

Hulet Martell Wells was born May 4, 1878, near the small town of La Conner, located about 60 miles north of Seattle in what was then the Washington Territory of the United States.

[4] The couple took advantage of the Homestead Act of 1862, establishing a land claim in rural Skagit County, Washington, and constructing a cabin there, where their first son was soon born.

[8] Unemployment swept Canada in 1897 and that winter Hulet Wells was unable to find a job and was forced to return to the old family homestead in La Conner, Washington.

[9] The following spring he joined his father as part of the Klondike Gold Rush, heading to the Yukon Territory with a team of horses hauling living essentials for the pair.

[9] The elder Wells returned to the family farm that fall, but Hulet would remain in the Klondike for two years, failing as a miner and taking on a series of odd jobs sufficient to buy food and subsidize his gambling debts.

[10] As 1899 drew to a close, with another frigid winter on the way and his personal finances dissipated, Hulet Wells decided to return to the Pacific Northwest, booking passage on a steamer for Seattle.

[15] He found it compelling and soon began obtaining and reading various other socialist publications, thereby embarking on a lifetime path of radical political and trade union activity.

[19] During the campaign Wells and his fellow Socialists opposed a development project strongly favored by Blethen, contributing to the plan's controversy and helping lead it to rejection by the Seattle Port Commission.

"[21] Despite the patently false nature of its reports, The Times continued to print allegations against Wells, who as a former mayoral candidate was the public face of the socialist movement.

[22] Wells found the trial so farcically biased that he penned a satirical play based on the proceedings entitled The Colonel and His Friends, a work published as a pamphlet.

[26] Swept into a frenzy by the hysterical reporting, on the evening of July 18, 1913, a mob of about 200 men, including members of the military and drunken revelers, ransacked local headquarters of the IWW and Socialist Party, smashing doors, window office equipment, and a wagon, and throwing books, documents, and newspapers in the street, where they were burned.

[25] The day after the so-called "Potlach Riot," Col. Bleven of The Times proudly endorsed the activities of the rioter, declaring "Anarchy, the grizzly hydra-headed serpent which Seattle has been force to nourish in its midst...was plucked from the city ad wiped out in a blaze of patriotism last night.