We have no fight with capital.
All we want is the full equivalent for
the things which we produce.
Capital can take the rest.
-Big Bill Haywood
Hellraisers Journal, Monday March 2, 1908
Brooklyn, New York – Haywood Speaks at Congress Hall
From The Brooklyn Daily Eagle of February 28, 1908:
W. D. HAYWOOD SPEAKS.
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Discusses Goldfield Strike and Labor and Capital,
and Finds Fault With the President.
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A meeting of the Socialist party of the Twenty-third Assembly District was held last night [Thursday February 27th] at Congress Hall, Vermont and Atlantic avenues. William D. Haywood of the Western Federation of Miners was introduced as the main speaker of the evening by Chairman Barnet Wolff of the local organization. In his opening remarks Mr. Haywood said that on account of having had to do so much talking up to this time he was so hoarse he would be unable to enter into a lengthy discourse on the principles of Socialism, but would try and favor the audience with as much information as to the present condition of the laboring classes as possible.
In speaking of the miners strike at Goldfield he said that the present situation was brought about in the beginning by the mine owners who were “tenderfeet,” who followed the “pioneers,” the laboring classes, to Goldfield, and gobbled up all the mines, and when the miners were in their power sought to reduce the wages of the workingman and practically starve them into submission or drive them to desperation.
The owners, Mr. Haywood said, also issued a script [scrip] payment, which they would not guarantee, and this, among others, was a cause of the present condition there.
