Hellraisers Journal, Sunday December 31, 1916
From the American Socialist: Grab-It-All’s Very Good Year
From the Appeal to Reason of December 31, 1916:
Yours for the Revolution,
-Mother Jones
Hellraisers Journal, Sunday December 30, 1906
From the Appeal to Reason: A Drawing by J. A Mitchell
Pray for the dead and fight
like hell for the living.
-Mother Jones
Hellraisers Journal, Friday December 29, 1916
Anthracite Coalfields, Pennsylvania – 333 Miners Killed in 9 Months
From the December 28th edition of the Northwest Worker:
333 MINERS MEET DEATH
IN 9 MONTHS
—–PENNSYLVANIA REPORT SHOWS THAT
THE WAGE AVERAGE OF VICTIMS
WAS ONLY $13.80 A WEEK.
—–
HARRISBURG, Pa.-working for an average weekly wage of only $13.80, 333 anthracite coal miners in this State were killed and 6,958 disabled for periods greater than two weeks during the first nine months of 1916. These are official figures of the State Department of Labor and Industry.
There were 233 married men among those killed, and they left 481 fatherless children behind. If it were not for the workmen’s compensation act these men’s families would be left to starve, for, in the vast majority of cases, the miners had not been able to save a cent of their wages. As it is 181 of the fatal cases have been adjusted, the payments to be about $2,505 for each man killed, or a total of $453,499.80 for all cases.
I stood by a city prison,
In the twilight’s deepening gloom,
Where men and women languished
In a loathsome, living tomb.
They were singing! And their voices
Seemed to weave a wreath of light,
As the words came clear with meaning:
“Workers of the World, unite!”
-Laura Payne Emerson
Hellraisers Journal, Thursday December 28, 1916
Everett, Washington – Free Speech Prisoners Arraigned
Saturday, December 23, 1916
FREE SPEECH PRISONERS ARRAIGNED.
The arraignment of the 74 men charged with murder by the Prosecution of Snohomish County, Wash., took place on Wednesday, Dec. 20th. All morning was taken up in the reading of the information. These men were passengers on the “Verona” on Sunday, Nov. 5th,-Bloody Sunday, as it is more often termed,-and were part of a number of workingmen belonging to the Industrial Workers of the World, the Longshoremen, the Seamen and other organizations, who were going from Seattle to Everett in order to hold an afternoon street meeting to maintain their constitutional rights of Free Speech.
Hellraisers Journal, Wednesday December 27, 1916
From the Appeal to Reason: Newly Released, Quinlan Describes Prison Life
Unspeakable Horrors of New Jersey’s
Bastile Exposed by Quinlan
—–“Political Prisoner”, Recently Liberated After Serving Unjust Sentence, Tells Appeal Readers of Atrocities Practiced on Helpless Victims of Social System-Quinlan’s Remarkable Training as Labor Agitator Combined With His Terrible Experience in Penitentiary Brings Forth This Unprecedented Story of “Crimes Against Criminals.”
—–
BY PATRICK L. QUINLAN
My experience in New Jersey’s penitentiary compels me to say that I am not prepared to accept in full the statement so often made that our public institutions reflect the spirit, the mind of the people. If it were entirely true that institutions were the mirror of a people, then the state of New Jersey and its two and a half million inhabitants would occupy the largest place in Dante’s Inferno of lost souls. One would be compelled to conclude that the people of New Jersey were fiendish in their cruelty, diabolical in their oppression, medieval in their conception of their duties toward the inmates of their state prison, located within the shadow of their capitol at Trenton. But they are not, I am sure, more cruel, not more oppressive, nor more medieval than the people of other states; they are, only, perhaps, more indifferent and, I hope they will pardon me, more ignorant. Their social soul, their public conscience, is not formed to harmonize with the spirit of the times, nor is it developed to work sympathetically with its progressive sister states.
If New Jersey’s penitentiary reflected the people of the state, then we would be prepared to disagree with Edmund Burke’s famous dictum that one cannot indict a whole people, and proceed to charge the two and a half million people of the state of New Jersey with murder, robbery and graft.
Pictures the Bastile.
With this brief apology for the citizens of New Jersey, I will, in the following lines, give the readers of this paper an unexaggerated picture of New Jersey’s bastile, with the hope that the same good results will be accomplished for its unfortunate inmates as were done for the victims of Fort Leavenworth federal prison.
Men who had been in every big prison in the United States told me in language that was emphatic as well as picturesque, that Trenton’s “Big House” was the worst prison in the country, and the study of prison reports and the literature of penology convince me that the convicts told the truth. Personally, I cannot imagine anything worse except the contract prison camps of the south and the Siberian dungeons, where the victims of the Russian autocracy are buried alive.
Hellraisers Journal, Tuesday December 26, 1916
New York City – Carlo Tresca Welcomed Home at Mass Meeting
From the New York Sun of December 25, 1916:
TRESCA WELCOMED BCK.
—–
I. W. W. Leader Kissed on Both
Cheeks at Public Meeting.
Nearly a thousand anarchists and Industrial Workers of the World expressed in a variety of ways yesterday their happiness at the return to New York of their fiery leader, Carlo Tresca, who has been on trial* in Minnesota as a result of his activities in the Mesaba iron range strike.
A meeting of welcome was held in Manhattan Lyceum, 66 East Fourth street. In his exuberance William Shatoff kissed the protesting Carlo first on one cheek and then on the other, while the crowd yelled its appreciation of the scene Shatoff afterward made a speech, but as it was in Russian it will not be reported. Hundreds of his compatriots gathered around Carlo and kept him busy shaking hands for half an hour. Then the meeting began. Tresca said the Minnesota iron miners were ready for another strike “when the gong rings.”
[*Note-Tresca did not stand trial, but was released as part of a plea agreement.]
Hellraisers Journal, Monday December 25, 1916
Merry Christmas to All From The Duluth Labor World
Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Merry Christmas from The Duluth Labor World”
Hellraisers Journal, Saturday December 23, 1916
Mesabi Range, Minnesota – Plea Agreement & Vindication Meeting
Today’s Duluth Labor World discusses the issues of Justice surrounding the plea agreement reached last week which led to the release of I. W. W. organizers Tresca, Scarlett, and Schmidt:
OTHER DEFENDANTS DRAW
INDEFINITE TERMS
———-
Tresca, Scarlett and Schmidt are freed. Last Friday they were let out of the dingy, over-crowded St. Louis county jail and given their liberty.
Months ago The Labor World made the prediction that the cases against these men would never come to trial; that as soon as the trouble on the ranges blew over these men would be let go. Our prediction was correct, although we have no inclination to claim the virtues of a prophet.
I loved the people on the Range…
the blond children of the Finnish workers,
with their rosy cheeks…
the dark-eyed Italian children,
trying to be friends.
-Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
Hellraisers Journal, Friday December 22, 1916
Mesabi Range – Three Strikers to Be Sent to Prison
From the Bemidji Daily Pioneer of December 16, 1916, we learn the sad news that three strikers will be sent to the state penitentiary in Stillwater as a result of plea deal reached in Duluth:
THREE SENT TO “PEN” FOR
KILLING SHERIFF*
—–[*Note: the so-called “sheriff” in the title of this article was actually a deputized company gunthug who committed an illegal and violent raid upon the Masonovich home.]
Duluth, Dec. 16.-Three of the eight persons indicted for the murder of Deputy Sheriff Thomas James C. Myron during the strike trouble at Biwabik on July 3 last appeared before Judge Cant in district court here and pleaded guilty to charges of manslaughter in the first degree. They were each sentenced to terms of not more than 20 years in the state penitentiary at Stillwater.
The prisoners who pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the first degree were:
Philip Masonovich, 35; Joe Cernagorcevich, 37, and Joe Nickich, 22.
The murder charge against two others, one a woman, was dismissed and the defendants were given their freedom.
In the three remaining cases which are those pending against the Industrial Workers of the World organizers Carlo Tresca, Sam Scarlet [Scarlett], and Joe Schmidt, continuances were ordered. These three were given their freedom in the mean time.
In justice to the other boys accused,
I feel that I should share their lot
as well as the accusation.
-FW J. H. Beyer
Hellraisers Journal, Thursday December 21, 1916
Seattle, Washington – Forgotten Prisoner Turns Himself In
One of the 74 members of the Industrial Workers of the World, now accused of first degree murder for the crime of being among those who did not perish in the Everett Massacre, was mistakenly turned loose when his fellow workers were transferred from the Seattle jail to the Everett bastile. After announcing that he was available for arrest in Seattle and waiting patiently for the authorities to provide him with transportation to the city of death, he has now paid his own expenses to Everett and presented himself for arrest there. The Snohomish County authorities have granted his request to join his fellow workers behind bars but have refused to refund his travel expenses to Everett. (See more on this story below.)
From the Everett Labor Journal of December 15th we learn of attempts by the Commercial Club to suppress the Northwest Worker, organ of the Socialist Party of Snohomish County:
