Hellraisers Journal – Monday October 10, 1910 Fresno, California – Frank Little Preferred Dark Cell to Forced Labor
From the Spokane Industrial Worker of October 8, 1910:
FIRST ROUND GOES TO I. W. W.
Fresno, Cal., Sept. 27, 1910.
Editor Industrial Worker,
Was released from jail Sunday. Served 25 days, 15 days in solitary confinement on bread and water, 10 days in the black hole. September 17 the officials surrendered and turned me out in the corridor with the other prisoners and fed me the same. It was a complete victory. Am going to Coalinga oil fields tomorrow. Think we can get a local there. The tank builders are out on strike (A. F. of L.), but the sentiment is strong for industrial unionism.
Yours for action, F. H. Little.
Have received notice to vacate hall. Are trying to run us out of town. Will have a hard time to get another.
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LITTLE SAYS HE PREFERRED DARK CELL.
Frank Little, organizer of the Industrial Workers of the World, has been released from the city jail after serving a sentence of 25 days for disturbing the peace. While in jail he was kept in solitary confinement because he refused to work in the court house yard with other prisoners.
Little lost none of his faithfulness to the I. W. W. cause while in prison and will renew at once his agitations. He will go to Coalinga tomorrow to hold meetings.
Little said today that he had two reasons for refusing to work while in jail. First, he said the man who will work while a prisoner is just the same as one who will “scab” during a strike. He believe the park work should be done by paid workmen.
Secondly, he said he believed that the park authorities would compel him to work harder than the others and might antagonize him to the extent that he would lose his temper and do something to bring a heavier sentence upon himself.
Little declare that the prison fare was unfit for man to eat. He said he intended to send a booklet to every voter in the county informing him of this, and that ultimately he would compel the sheriff to feed the prisoners better. Little registered several other complaints, which, however, he admitted that he had no means of proving were true.
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday October 9, 1900 Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania – Mother Jones Interviewed by Olivia Howard Dunbar
From the New York Evening World of September 25, 1900:
EVENING WORLD WOMAN INTERVIEWS “MOTHER JONES.” —————
Strikers Friend Tells Some Plain Truths About the Great Struggle Between the Miners and Operators. ——-
NO. IX. OF THE SERIES. BY OLIVIA HOWARD DUNBAR.
MOTHER JONES, THE STRIKERS’ FRIEND
(Special to The Evening World.)
MAHANOY CITY, Pa., Sept. 25.-“Please tell all the readers of The Evening World for me that we have succeeded in crippling the operators, that the situation is most encouraging, and that we expect an early victory.”
This was the message that “Mother” Jones intrusted to me to-day, and she smiled hopefully as she said it. Ceaselessly vigilant, she had come to Mahanoy City to dull any possible echo of the carnival of strife and slaughter that has resounded so menacingly through Shenandoah.
The situation was tense when she arrived, but there had been no outbreak. Outwardly the little city was unruffled. Early in the morning I had found a group of swarthy, eager-eyed Hungarian women applauding an effigy of a non-union workman that had been bound to an electric-light pole on Eighth street.
Their voices were shrill, their gestures violent. The suggestive spectacle had aroused all their fury against the class that they consider selfishly retards the movement that means life or death to them.
Hellraisers Journal – Monday October 8, 1900 Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania – “There Is Only One Mother Jones”
From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch of September 23, 1900:
WILKESBARRE, Pa., Sept. 20.
Special Correspondence of the Sunday Post-Dispatch.
THERE is only one Mother Jones. Her field is all her own.
Clara Barton has her work of mercy, Susan B. Anthony has her equal suffrage. Mother Jones has her “boys”-the great, patient army that sweats and strives and suffers wherever there is labor to be done.
It is a big brood she mothers-a big, toilsome, troublesome brood, scattered all over the face of the land, delving in the earth and under the earth, swarming in mills and factories and sweatshops. There is seldom a time when some part of it is not on the ragged edge of hunger and in need of a mother’s help.
That is the time for Mother Jones. She has been called the stormy petrel of industry. Her appearance is a signal for those who grow rich by grinding the faces of the poor to “go slow,” and if they disregard the warning so much the worse for them and the better for organized labor.
For Mother Jones is the most successful organizer and sustainer of strikes in the country. That is why she is at Wilkes-barre now. That is why the miners expect to win. That is why the mine owners accompany her name with anathemas.
How does she do it? By the greatest of all powers-the power of love. She love her “boys”-be they Polish or Bohemian or Irish or American-and she teaches them to love her. The combination is irresistible. The ranks of the toilers stand firm at her bidding and the strategy dictated by her woman’s intuition does the rest.
Hellraisers Journal – Thursday October 7, 1920 Mingo County, West Virginia – Mine Owners’ Gunthugs Maintain “Law and Order”
From The Butte Daily Bulletin of September 29, 1920:
West Virginia Mine Owners Take Steps to Get More U. S. Regulars —————
By PAUL HANNA. (Staff Writer, the Federated Press.)
Washington, Sept. 29.-West Virginia mine owners have acted quickly to overcome the complaint of Mingo county miners against the anti-labor conduct of federal troops in that district.
The detailed charges against federal troops made by Fred Mooney, district president [secretary-treasurer] of the United Mine Workers was printed in Federated Press newspapers on the morning of Sept. 24. That same afternoon the following “news” dispatch was sent out from Charleston, W. Va., and widely printed in the capitalist press:
A reign of terror and lawlessness still prevails in the Williamson and Pocahontas coal fields, according to reports sifting through from various sources and reaching here today.
Hellraisers Journal – Thursday October 6, 1910 Fresno, California – Spokane Fellow Workers on Way to Free Speech Fight
From the Spokane Industrial Worker of October 1, 1910:
SPOKANE MEMBERS BOUND FOR FRESNO.
A letter from one of the Spokane bunches of free speech agitators states that they expect to be in Portland part of the current week. All who are bound for Fresno should call at the I. W. W. headquarters along the road and inquire as to where the different forces are. It is suggested that there be no Fourth of July fireworks, but that everything be done quietly and as unostentatiously as possible. This, of course, until all is ready for action. There is nothing to be gained by the spread-eagle style. Saw wood until all is ready for action.
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From The Fresno Morning Republican of October 4, 1910:
I. W. W. AGITOR IN WRONG AT COALINGA ——- Little Makes Speech at Socialist Meeting… ——-
COALINGA, Oct. 3.— F. H. Little, the I. W. W. member, who recently served a jail sentence in Fresno for disturbing the peace, made a speech in Coalinga, Friday evening, on Front street, and made an address at a Socialist meeting at the city hall here Sunday afternoon. The authorities have intervened against his speeches on the streets, and Little says he has wired Seattle for other members of the organization to come to Coalinga. Little has made the statement that he will speak on the street here again and in that case, it is expected that he will at once be placed under arrest, for ignoring the altitude of the authorities…
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday October 5, 1920 Bogalusa, Louisiana – Widows of Four Murdered Trade Unionists Demand Justice
From the Duluth Labor World of October 2, 1920:
WIDOWS OF FOUR DEAD UNION MEN DEMAND JUSTICE ——- Murderers of Timber Workers, Although Known, Have Not Been Arrested. ——-
The New York Times November 23, 1919
BOGALUSA, La., Sept. 30.-Widows of four trade unionists who were murdered by a mob last November have asked Governor Parker to order the state attorney general to prosecute the murderers.
The petition states that the men were slain “without just cause or excuse by employes of the Great Southern Lumber company,” and that two grand juries have considered the killings without taking action, and that the district attorney has admitted under oath that he did not summon a state witness but did summon witnesses for the defendants, including the defendants themselves.
The murders, were the [result?] of attempts by the lumber company to destroy trade unionism. After failing to divide the workers on racial lines a lynching party started for the home of an estimable negro [Sol Dacus] who was influential among his fellows. The negro hid in the swamps and escaped. The mob then came to the headquarters of the trade unionists and demanded the negro. They were told that the man was not there, and they were invited to search the building. The lynchers replied with a volley from shotguns and revolvers, killing several workers .
[Note: four trade unionists were murdered by the mob: L. E. (Lum) Williams, President of Bogalusa Trades Council, and Carpenters Thomas Gaines, J. P. Bouchillon, and S. J. (Stanley) O’Rourke.]
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday October 4, 1910 Irwin Coal Field, Pennsylvania – Report from Strikers’ “Starvation Camp”
From the Duluth Labor World of October 1, 1910:
Keystone State Awakens to Hunger-Driven Peonage Practiced Within Its Confines
PITTSBURG, Pa., Sept. 30—Thousands of Pittsburg women, influential club women as well as the wives of storekeepers and mechanics, are signing a petition to Governor Edwin S. Steuart asking that he intervene and compel the coal companies to arbitrate the strike in the Erwin [Irwin] and Greensburg coal fields.
Piloted by the “Angel of the Camp,” Miss Emmeline Pitt, committees from various women’s clubs have visited the frail tents in which are huddled the thousands of miners’ wives and children, and, after hearing the stories of eviction and brutality committed by the deputies, have gone back to their organizations burning with indignation against the coal barons and determined to force action from the state authorities.
[Asserts Francis Feehan, president of district No. 5:]
The operators could settle this strike, settle it and give the miners all that they demand and then operate their mines at 20 per cent less than it is costing them now. It’s the strike-breakers that cost. They’re paying them $2.50 and $3 a day with rations—and that’s more than the skilled union miners ask.
Experienced miners say that the United Coal company is paying at the rate of $3 a ton to have its coal mined, while the market price is just half that amount.
Three things the striking miners want: 1. Recognition of the union. 2. Check-weighmen on the tipples. 3. Payment of the Pittsburg Scale.
And these three things the miners will win, coal barons or no coal barons, for the entire power of the United Mine Workers of America is gathering behind them.
————
GAUNT MOTHERS, THEIR BABES STARVING, HERE ——-
Special Correspondence of Labor World.
NEW ALEXANDRA, Pa., Sept. 30.—Three hundred puny babies, thinly clad and underfed by half-starved mothers who have nothing to give, live beneath canvas roofs and within canvas walls these chilly days and shivery nights in the Erwin coal regions of western Pennsylvania.
A thousand other little children, barefoot and almost barebacked, “live” on bread and water in that starvation camp among the foothills of the Alleghenies.
Hellraisers Journal – Monday October 3, 1910 Los Angeles, California – Mexican Revolutionaries to Start Newspaper
From the International Socialist Review of October 1910:
A. I. Villarreal
To fight Diaz. A. I. Villarreal writes us that the Mexican refugees-recently liberated from prison, are about to start a newspaper as “a vehicle of our agitation, as a hub of the fighting organization that we propose to build.” Comrade Villarreal advises us that the Mexican comrades desire very earnestly to start with a circulation of 10,000 subscriptions. The paper will be printed in Spanish, at Los Angeles. Subscription rates will be $2.00 a year; $1.10 for six months.
A. I. Villarreal. Address 420 W. 4th. St., Los Angeles, Calif.
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday October 2, 1910 “Mexico Replies to the Appeal to Reason” by C. M. Brooks
From the International Socialist Review of October 1910:
HE exposures of the horrible conditions in Mexico by John Kenneth Turner, in the Appeal to Reason, are arousing a spirit of inquiry all over the United States that is going to prove increasingly embarrassing to the government on this side of the border line. Famous captains of industry who have invested heavily in Mexican industries are becoming alarmed. It is interesting to note the sudden bursts of enthusiasm experienced by some of the radical magazines and newspapers on matters Mexican these days. Evidently somebody’s palm has been crossed, or somebody’s pocket-book has been touched or somebody’s skin has been threatened. One grows curious to see just how far the epidemic will spread.
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