Month: January 2020

Hellraisers Journal: Russian Methods Prevail in Spokane Free Speech Fight, Report from The Progressive Woman

Janet RayeElizabeth Gurley Flynn
Share

Quote EGF, Heaven n Hell, ISR p617, Jan 1910———-

Hellraisers Journal – Monday January 31, 1910
Spokane, Washington – Free Speech Fighters Suffer Sweating, Hunger and Cold

From The Progressive Woman of January 1910:

RUSSIAN METHODS IN SPOKANE.
—–

EGF ed, Prog Wmn p2, Jan 1910—–

Every once in a while things happen in the United States that seem for the world like Russia. The “bull-pen” episode in Colorado a few years ago was one of these. The present fight for free speech out in Spokane is another. The authorities out there took it upon themselves to deny the right of free speech to the Socialists, and the Socialist labor organization, the Industrial Workers of the World, with its official organ, The Industrial Worker, and its headquarters in Spokane, is bearing the brunt of this fight.

As fast as men are thrown into jail for attempting to hold their usual street meetings others come to take their places. In fact, the comrades are pouring in from every section of the country to help in this fight.

And it is a serious business. Young men, without funds, but anxious to help, take advantage of every possible means of reaching Spokane, even to “riding the rods” through the long dreary cold of the north west. One splendid young comrade from Chicago was killed while making his way in this manner; another was hurt in a wreck. Others suffered agonies from hunger and the cold. But none have turned back.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Russian Methods Prevail in Spokane Free Speech Fight, Report from The Progressive Woman” →

Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones Speaks to Mine Workers “We haven’t taken any backwater yet and we don’t intend to.”

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
Share

Quote Mother Jones, Last Great Battle, UMWC p420, Jan 26, 1910———-

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday January 30, 1910
Indianpolis, Indiana – Mother Jones Speaks at Mine Workers’ Convention

From Stenographic Report of Convention by Mary Burke East:

[Eighth Day-Wednesday, January 26th, Morning Session]

Mother Jones, Ipl Str p3, Jan 25, 1910 copy

President [Thomas L.] Lewis—We have with us this morning a person who has visited our convention for a number of years, and who is probably known to a great number of the delegates present. To those who have worked in the non-union districts Mother Jones needs no introduction. To those who have attended our conventions for a number of years she needs no introduction. To the new delegates who are here I may say she has done a great deal of work for this organization, especially during strike periods. I take pleasure in presenting to you Mother Jones.

[Mother Jones]-Mr. President and Fellow Workers—The struggle of the workers down the ages has been that of blood; it has been that of hunger. Today the struggle is reaching its final crisis. The forces are lined up against us. Today we are waiting for the last great battle of man with man, and when this battle is over humanity will be free, there will be no robber class and no working class. I heard a speaker who represented the steel industry portray the conditions of the workers in his organization. It is well to consider where we stand today. We are up against a condition unknown to the industrial bodies of this nation in its past history. Go over to China and you will find 20,000 men working in one mill alone, and for his work each one receives 7 cents a day. You can see they have almost crushed out the organization of steel workers, and they are reaching out to crush other organizations. Therefore it is necessary for us to unite our forces. I agree with the Vice-President of this organization and with the president of Illinois that the time is here when the steel workers, the mine workers and the railroad men must join hands and say to the pirates of the human race that they can no longer rob us and murder us.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones Speaks to Mine Workers “We haven’t taken any backwater yet and we don’t intend to.”” →

Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones Speaks to Her Boys at Indianapolis Convention of United Mine Workers of America

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
Share

Quote Mother Jones, Last Great Battle, UMWC p420, Jan 26, 1910———-

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday January 29, 1910
Indianpolis, Indiana – Mother Jones Speaks to Her Boys

From The Indianapolis News of January 26, 1910:

UNIONS OF MINERS TO WORK TOGETHER
—–
U. M. W. of A. Adopts Report of
Joint Committee Advocating It.
——

[…..]

Mother Jones, Ipl Str p3, Jan 25, 1910 copy
Indianapolis Star of January 25, 1910

The adoption of the report of the joint committee representing the United Mine Workers of America and the Western Federation of Miners, that had, in accordance with previous action by the convention, drawn up an agreement for a closer connection between the two organizations, was one of the important matters at this morning’s session of the United Mine Workers of America, in annual meeting in Tomlinson hall. The report, among other advised the co-operation of the organizers of the two unions in organizing the non-union coal miners and metal miners in every section of the American continent. The recommendations of the joint committee must next be referred to the Western Federation of Miners……

Mother Jones Speaks.

After music by the Lianelly Royal Welsh choir, which was applauded with a warmth that showed thorough appreciation. President [Thomas L.] Lewis introduced Mother Jones, who misses no convention of the miners. Mother Jones arraigned capital and set forth the claims of labor to better treatment. She referred to the anthracite strike and the Colorado strike.

She spoke of the financeering ability of the woman that attends to the purchasing for a large family and said such a woman does not get the credit she deserves. She criticised the National Civic Federation and said she would rather die in jail than to die eating a meal with the civic federation.

She said she was going to Milwaukee to organise the girls in the breweries and then she was going to St. Louis and then she was going to the anthracite field to “start another war if you don’t move up.”

She said she was in favor of the destruction of jails and turning them into school houses, and making the jailers “do an honest day’s work.”

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones Speaks to Her Boys at Indianapolis Convention of United Mine Workers of America” →

Hellraisers Journal: Ed Boyce, President of Western Federation of Miners, Pays His Respects to General Merriam

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
Share

Quote Ed Boyce re Manly Blood per Gaboury 1967———-

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday January 28, 1900
President Boyce on Gen. Merriam: “pusillanimous tool…of the mine operators…”

From the Kansas City Labor Record of January 25, 1900:

THE WARDNER TROUBLE
—–
General Merriam Censured for his Persecution
of Union Miners. Not a Union Man
Allowed to Work.
—–

New ID Bullpen of 1899, Miners Bunks, Hutton p56, 1900—–

In the initial issue of the Miners Magazine President Boyce pays his respects to General Merriam in the following caustic manner:

The following interview with General Merriam by a reporter of the Rocky Mountain News was published in that paper Dec. 13th:

You can say for me,” said the general yesterday to a News man, “that the more Congress investigates the Coeur d’Alene troubles the better it will please me. I am pleased to know that such a movement is on foot.

“The constitution speaks for itself,” continued General Merriam. “Martial law was proclaimed by Governor Stuenenberg May 3d last. Three days after I was ordered to the scene. Arrests were made by the stale authorities, but I do not care to discuss the question. The records speak for themselves.”

Had this pusillanimous tool in the hands of the mine operators, clothed in the uniform of a general bearing the U. S. brand, been animated with no other desire than to do his duty when he reached the Coeur d’Alenes, there would be no need of a congressional investigation.

Did he not arrest every man in the country at the suggestion of the mine operators without cause or provocation and confine them in a filthy barn unfit for habitation, with instructions to shoot any man who showed his head, and denied them the right to consult with counsel?

Did he not examine and approve over his signature one of the most infamous proclamations that ever emanated from the brain of man, which denied every man the right to seek employment in the mines of Shoshone county unless he denounced organized labor and obtained a permit from Dr. France, the Bunker Hill and Sullivan company doctor, noted for his extreme prejudice against organized labor?

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Ed Boyce, President of Western Federation of Miners, Pays His Respects to General Merriam” →

Hellraisers Journal: Centralia IWW Defendants Forced to Stand Trial in Montesano Where Lynching Is Threatened

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
Share

Quote Wesley Everest, Died for my class. Chaplin Part 15———-

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday January 27, 1920
Montesano, Washington – Centralia I. W. W. Defendants Threatened

From The Butte Daily Bulletin of January 26, 1920:

Centralia, Montesano Trial Armed Camp BDB p1, Jan 26, 1920———-

CENTRALIA I. W W. FORCED TO TRIAL IN TOWN
WHERE LYNCHING IS THREATENED
—–

(Special United Press Wire.)

Montesano, Wash, Jan. 26.-An attempt by George Vanderveer, chief counsel for the defense, to introduce articles and editorials printed in a Gray’s Harbor newspaper during November and December, as the basis of his request for a change of venue for the I. W. W. defendants accused of the Centralia Armistice day killings, met defeat when the trial began this morning. Judge Wilson ruled that only new matter arising since his previous ruling denying a change of venue can be considered now.

The accused were freshly shaven when they entered the courtroom this morning. For the most part their faces were expressionless.

Montesano, lying in a valley between wooded hills, doesn’t seem unduly excited. There is, however, a rather grim determination to mete out “justice” apparent in the faces of the citizens who thronged the corridors of the courthouse.

Elaborate precautions have been taken by the authorities to prevent any trouble during the trial. Twenty-four deputy sheriffs are constantly patrolling the streets. Sheriff Barten announced he had deputized 100 members of the American Legion at Centralia, 300 at Hoquiam and 100 at Elma, who will be called if trouble arises.

The hundreds of witnesses who will be called during the trial will be fed in a huge dining room established at the city hall.

The defense’s application for a change of venue was denied by Judge Wilson at the end of the morning session. The court held that the showing of the defense was insufficient to cause the trial to be shifted from Montesano and that the law does not permit a second change of venue in a case of this kind.

All doubt that self-defense will be the keynote of the defense was swept away by Attorney Vanderveer in his argument on a motion for a change of venue.

[He declared:]

That the legionaires attacked the I. W. W. hall will not even be disputed before we finish this trial. Even from the prosecution’s own witnesses we will prove the attack was made before a shot was fired.

—–

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Centralia IWW Defendants Forced to Stand Trial in Montesano Where Lynching Is Threatened” →

Hellraisers Journal: “Shirt Waist Girls’ Strike the Greatest Struggle of Women In History of Labor” by R. Love, Part II

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
Share

Rose Schneiderman Quote, Stand Together to Resist———-

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday January 26, 1910
New York, New York – How the Shirt Waist Girls’ Strike Began

From the Duluth Labor World of January 22, 1910:

NYC Uprising Greatest Girls Strike, LW p7, Jan 22, 1910—–

By ROBERTUS LOVE.

[Part II of II.]

How General Strike Began.

The general strike was not declared until Nov. 22, when at a great mass meeting in the hall of Cooper Union, where Abraham Lincoln made his first speech in the east, President Gompers of the American Federation of Labor delivered an address on the shirt waist workers’ situation. A Jewish girl [Clara Lemlich], representing many thousands of her nationality who work in the waist shops, advanced to the front of the platform and delivered in Yiddish an appeal to those of her race to strike immediately. More than 2,000 right hands went up in response. The sentiment for an immediate and wholesale strike spread to the Italian and American shirt waist makers, and the “walk out” of seven-eighths of those employed in that industry was the result.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: “Shirt Waist Girls’ Strike the Greatest Struggle of Women In History of Labor” by R. Love, Part II” →

Hellraisers Journal: “Shirt Waist Girls’ Strike the Greatest Struggle of Women In History of Labor” by R. Love, Part I

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
Share

Rose Schneiderman Quote, Stand Together to Resist———-

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday January 25, 1910
New York, New York – Shirt Waist Girls’ Strike Making History

From the Duluth Labor World of January 22, 1910:

NYC Uprising Greatest Girls Strike, LW p7, Jan 22, 1910—–

By ROBERTUS LOVE.

[Part I of II.]

IN the history of the world no such scenes have been witnessed as those which nearly two months past have characterized the strike of the shirt waist makers in the city of New York. Nearly 35,000 girls and women, members of the Ladies’ Shirt Waist Makers’ union, were engaged at first in this greatest strike of women workers ever known. For the first time since industrial conditions became such that women have been compelled to go out from home and support themselves and dependent relatives nearly all the workers in a great industry in one of the foremost cities of the world have engaged in a struggle with their employers, refusing to return to work until certain demands which they consider just shall be complied with by the bosses.

Conspicuous and significant features of the shirt waist girls’ strike have been the entrance into the struggle of many women of great wealth and high social position and of others whose collegiate culture may be calculated by the unthinking to lift them so far above the plane of the working girl that a feeling of sympathy for her is scarcely expected of them.

Yet these college bred women not only have declared their sympathy for the strikers, but many have gone on active service as watchers and pickets to aid them in inducing nonunion girls not to take their places.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: “Shirt Waist Girls’ Strike the Greatest Struggle of Women In History of Labor” by R. Love, Part I” →

Hellraisers Journal: William Z. Foster, Reporter for Workingman’s Paper, Locked Behind the Bars of Spokane City Jail

Janet RayeFree Speech Fights
Share

Quote EGF, Compliment IWW, IW p1, Nov 17, 1909———-

Hellraisers Journal – Monday January 24, 1910
Spokane, Washington -Foster Locked Up for Covering Free Speech Fight

From the Seattle Workingman’s Paper of January 22, 1910:

Wkgmns Paper HdLn re WZF in Jail, p1, Jan 22, 1910———-
IWW Spk FSF, From WZF in Jail, Wkgmns Paper p1, Jan 22, 1910—–

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: William Z. Foster, Reporter for Workingman’s Paper, Locked Behind the Bars of Spokane City Jail” →

Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts & Doings of Mother Jones for 1899, Part II: Found Standing with Striking Coal Miners of Arnot, Pennsylvania

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
Share

Quote Mother Jones, Powers of Privilege ed, Ab Chp III———-

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday January 23, 1900
Mother Jones News Round-Up for the Year 1899
-Part II: Found with Striking Coal Miners of Arnot, Pennsylvania

From the Philadelphia Times of October 9, 1899:

Mother Jones, Arnot Strike, Elmira NY Dly Gz p5, Oct 7, 1899
Elmira Gazette of October 7, 1899


MINERS EVICTED
FROM THEIR HOMES
—–
Blossburg Miners Are Facing
Starvation by Reason
of Their Strike.
—–


WILL NOT YIELD A POINT
—–

Special Telegram to The Times.

Arnot, October 8.

The strike situation hereabouts is becoming serious, and the sufferings of the miners will be severe if an agreement is not soon reached with the Blossburg Coal Company. During the past week the company has discharged its superintendent, ordered the mules sold and made preparations to close down the mines permanently.

Although the strikers have been out sixteen weeks, and are facing certain starvation, they are as determined as ever not to “cave in” to the company, as they term it. The action of the miners in deciding to return to work, and then changing their minds after hearing the harangues of Mrs. Mary Jones, a woman labor agitator of Pittsburg, has apparently aroused the ire or the officials of the company.

Evicted Their Tenants.

As soon as the intention of the miners to remain out became known the company took steps to evict the men who occupied houses belonging to the company for non-payment Thus far thirty-six families have been forced from the houses which they have occupied for years. The evictions were effected by Sheriff Johnston and a force of deputies from Wellsboro. There was no show of force. Those who had no place to go were taken in by neighbors who own their own houses, and are therefore out of reach of the company’s eviction process.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts & Doings of Mother Jones for 1899, Part II: Found Standing with Striking Coal Miners of Arnot, Pennsylvania” →

Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts & Doings of Mother Jones for 1899, Part I: Found in Girard, Kansas, Visiting with J. A. Wayland of the Appeal to Reason

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
Share

Quote Mother Jones, Powers of Privilege ed, Ab Chp III———-

Hellraisers Journal – Monday January 22, 1900
Mother Jones News Round-Up for the Year 1899
-Part I: Found in Girard, Kansas, and Cleveland, Ohio

From the Western World (Girard, Kansas) of January 5, 1899:

Mother Jones ed, St L Rpb p2, Feb 5, 1898

Mother Jones is a guest of the Wayland household this week. And she is a distinguished guest, too. No woman in America or in any other country has more genuine admirers among the toiling classes than Mother Jones. She is known to every laborer in the world who cares to ascertain who is a loyal true, friend to him. In all the great strikes of the past, when suffering has run riot, Mother Jones has been one of the first to appear on the scene and render such service as was in her power. As a lecturer she has no superior, being thoroughly posted in everything bearing upon the economical conditions of the age, and she is welcomed by the thousands everywhere. That she is one of the most popular workers in the fight for a better condition on earth, need not be said.

———-

[Photograph added.]

From the Western World of February 23, 1899:

Mother Jones delivered an address from her wagon, which was drawn up on the north side of the square, last Saturday afternoon. A large crowd was in town, and many seemed greatly interested in her eloquent and forcible argument for socialism.

———-

From The Independent News (Girard, Kansas) of February 23, 1899:

Mother Jones, a Socialist teacher, made a two hours speech on the north side of the square Saturday afternoon. Mother Jones is well known over nearly all parts of the country where there are large number of laborers. She starts for Cleveland this week and from there goes into the mining country of Pittsburg, Pa.

From the Western World of March 9, 1899:

Mother Jones, the noted Socialist lecturess, who has been spending the winter with the family of J. A. Wayland, left Saturday for Chicago, to visit for a time before commencing her summer lecture tour.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts & Doings of Mother Jones for 1899, Part I: Found in Girard, Kansas, Visiting with J. A. Wayland of the Appeal to Reason” →