Hellraisers Journal – Thursday November 10, 1921 William Blizzard Joins Keeney and Mooney in Kanawha County Jail
From The Charleston Daily Mail of November 8, 1921:
WILLIAM BLIZZARD SEIZED TODAY,
IS PLACED IN PRISON ——-
INDICTED OFFICIAL OF MINERS’ UNION
LOCKED UP BY SHERIFF WALKER ————— Officer Tipped off to His Return Makes
Hurried Visit to Home Near City ——- FOUND IN FRONT ROOM IN
CONVERSATION WITH WIFE ——- Fugitive Given Time to Dress and
Then Is Brought to Kanawha Jail ——- INSURRECTION CHARGED ——- Indictment Result of Alleged Participation
in Miners’ Uprising ——-
William Blizzard, a sub-district president of the United Mine Workers, was arrested by Sheriff Walker at 11 a. m. today to answer an indictment charging insurrection and conspiracy with the miners’ march to Logan county last August. He was arrested at his home at St. Albans, where he had returned late last night, Sheriff Walker stated.
The indictment which was returned jointly against C. F. Keeney, Fred Mooney, , William Petry and William Blizzard, all officials of the miners’ union, charges conspiracy for the purpose of inflicting punishment and bodily injury on James Munsey, John Gore, John Casigo and other person in Logan county. Keeney and Mooney were brought to the county jail here last week, while Petry is still a fugitive from justice.
Information reaching Sheriff Walker about 10:30 this morning resulted in his arming himself with a capias and going immediately to Blizzard’s home. He was found with his wife and a man named Scott holding a conversation in a front room of the house. Told that he was wanted on an indictment, Walker stated, Blizzard asked time to dress and was brought to the jail…..
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday November 9, 1921 Walter T. Nef Writes from Leavenworth Penitentiary
From Then Messenger of November 1921:
MISCARRIAGEOFJUSTICE
[by Walter T. Nef] (Continued)
OnJuly16, 1916,Ilefttheofficein Philadelphia andwenttoworkasalongshoremanandworked mostofthetimeonammunitionandpowder, general cargoforMurphy,Cook&Co.,andsometimes on lumber,towhichIcanget manymemberstotestify. TherehavebeennoexplosionsonthedocksofPhiladelphiaoronanyshipsoutofthatportandall the ammunitionwasloadedbymembersoftheI.W.W.andtherewerenoguardsonthedocks.The head foreman, called “Billboro,” cantestifytomy work asalongshoreman. BesidestherearemanymemberswhocantestifytomypositioninregardtoGermany andthewar.
AsIstatedbeforeHonorableJudgeK.M.Landis before sentencewaspassed, Iknowofnoconspiracy andiftherehadbeenaconspiracyagainstthegovernmentthenexplosionsandobstructions would havetakenplace. Buttherewerenone. We had lotsofmembersonthePanamaLine, whichis under governmentcontrol, andtherewasnotrouble. Besidesthememberslikedtoworkonthoseboatsand notimewaslostonanytrips. TheBulletinstestify tothis,Ithink. TheBulletinswerepublished in “Solidarity,” Ithink, and“Solidarity”wasintroducedasevidence.
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday November 8, 1911
Kansas City, Missouri – Twenty-Four Fellow Workers Released from Leeds Farm
From The Kansas City Times of November 6, 1911:
THE I. W. W. SAY GOOD-BY. ——— A Few of the Street Speakers Who
Remain Here Have Gone to Work.
Most of the twenty-four members of the Industrial Workers of the World who were paroled last Wednesday from the Leeds Farm have left the city for warmer climes. A few have obtained work in the city and say they will remain here until another free speech fight calls them away.
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday November 5, 1921 Keeney and Mooney Locked Up in Kanawha County Jail
From The Washington Post of November 3, 1921:
MINE LEADERS FREED, REARRESTED; JAILED ———————- Keeney and Mooney, Held in Mingo Case, Now Face Logan Charges.
Charleston, W. Va., Nov. 4. (By the Associated Press).-President C. F. Keeney and Secretary Fred Mooney, of District 17, United Mine Workers of America, were brought here today from Williamson, W. Va., where they were earlier released from the county jail on $10,000 bail each. Later they were taken to the Kanawha county jail on charges connected with the march of armed men last August from Marmet to Madison.
Keeney and Mooney were indicted several months ago in connection with the industrial strife in Mingo county and have been in jail at Williamson since that time.
They also were indicted in this county and in Logan county in connection with the armed march. The indictments in Kanawha allege conspiracy and insurrection under the “red men’s act.” Prosecuting Attorney Burdett today set Novemer 28 as the tentative date for their trial.
Williamson, W. Va., Nov. 4.-C. F. Keeney and Fred Mooney, indicted in Mingo county in connection with the killing of two men during the recent disorders, were released from county jail here early today on $10,000 bond each. As soon as the bonds were executed deputies from Kanawha arrested them on charges in connection with the march of armed men from that county through Boone county in August. After the Kanawha capiases had been served, Keeney and Mooney were started for Charleston.
When the Kanawha deputies appeared late last night, accompanied by attorneys for the union leaders, they found only a clerk in the sheriff’s office. Sheriff A. C,. Pinson and Maj. Tom B. Davis, assistant adjutant general, Gov. Morgan’s personal representative in the martial law district, were in Logan, W. Va.
The attorneys produced an opinion by the Sate attorney general, holding that Logan warrants for the arrest of Keeney and Mooney, issued October 15 in connection with the armed march, were null and void because they had not been served within the stipulated time.
The sheriff’s clerk then communicated with Sheriff Pinson, Maj. Davis and Logan county officials by telephone and finally, with the sanction of the sheriff, the major, and the Logan authorities, the Kanawha warrants were served.
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday November 4, 1911 Big Bill Haywood Lectures on Class Struggle Around the World
From the International Socialist Review of November 1911:
William D. Haywood
PAGES TORN FROM “THE CLASS STRUGGLE” AND OTHER HAYWOOD LECTURES
You will all remember with me the 22d of Jan., 1905. It is recorded in history as Bloody Sunday. On that day there occurred a terrible massacre in St Petersburg, Russia. It seems that the people of that country had been ground down to such terrible conditions that they could no longer stand it. Families were living in single roomed huts or hovels, sleeping on the bare floor. Bedding and clothing were scant. They ate out of a common bowl. Their only food
was a coarse mush. To improve theses conditions they determined to appeal to their Little White Father. They called the Czar of Russia their Little Father. But these peasants thad never learned to write. So it must needs be a living petition.
The word went forth and thousands upon thousands of them gathered in the city of St. Petersburg. They marched toward the winter palace and as they marched they carried aloft the holy Cross of Christ. They bore upon their breasts their sacred icons. They were singing religious hymns. They were a religious people. They came within a hundred feet or less of the palace gates when a volley rang forth from the guns in the hands of the Czar’s ‘s soldiers. Hundreds upon hundreds of these peaceful supplicants fell dead in the snow, their warm red blood mingling with and melting the white mantle that covers Darkest Russia at that season of the year. And when you heard the echo of that volley you heard the echo of the world wide class struggle.
When you heard the echo of the volley that killed the Russian peasants at St. Petersburg you heard the shrieks and groans of the Russian girls exiled from home who were burned to death in that terrible factory fire in New York City last winter. The same people, the same conditions, the same anguish the same struggle everywhere.
* * *
Across the sea from Russia in Finland our comrades are protesting because the constitution of their country has been abrogated by the authorities of Russia. They are protesting because the youth of that land are compelled to serve as soldiers in the Czar’s army or to pay a tribute in gold. Their protest is a voice in the class struggle!
* * *
It has only been a few years ago since the unions of this country were sending money to assist the workers of Sweden who were involved in a great general strike. I visited Sweden while across the water and while there met many who took part in that great struggle. The workers who were on strike were not asking for an increase in wages or a reduction in hours. They had ceased to work in sympathy with thousands of their members who had been locked out because they dared to organize. They were opposed by the employers’ association who were backed up by the capitalists of the continent and the world. The Swedish workers were beaten to their knees. Women and children were compelled to subsist on black bread and water but they were not vanquished. As I was leving Stockholm they said to me:
“Comrade Haywood when you return to America, tell the workers of your country that we will be fighting with them in the vanguard until the working class of the world are victorious!”
They are doing their part in the class struggle!
* * *
From Sweden I went to the Latin countries and while there learned something of the conditions in Spain. It seems that certain French capitalists had made investments in the gold mines of the Riff Country. It is well known that the capitalist class does not confine its operations within the borderlines of any nation. The capitalist goes to any locality where he can make profit out of the sweat, blood and tears of the workers. The capitalist has no country, no flag, no patriotism, no honor and no god but Gold. His emblem is the dollar mark. His ensign is the black flag of commercial piracy. His symbol is the skull and cross bones of little children that are ground up in the mill. And the pass word of Capitalism is graft.
The Moors objected to their lands being exploited by capitalists, so the French bankers called upon the King of Spain to protect them in their vested interests. The king of Spain being one of the ruling class and a capitalist himself, called upon the young men of his country to go to war and he called upon the people of Spain to furnish the sinews of war. At this period, the Socialists combining with the labor unions of Spain declared a campaign against war. The Socialists of all countries are opposed to war and when we get just a little stronger in Spain, just a little stronger in the United States, just a little stronger in the nations of the world, the time will forever have passed when one workingman will shoot down another workingman in the interest of the capitalist class. And so declared the workers of Spain.
The building trades of Barcelona declared a general strike against war. At that time there lived in Spain a great educationalist. One of the formost men of letters in the world. Like all humanitatians, he was opposed to war. He wrote, he spoke, he contributed a little money toward the general strike. And because of this, he was arrested as a revolutionist. They called him an anarchist. He was thrown into prison. His trial was a travesty upon justice. He had no lawyer. He was allowed no witness. He neither heard nor saw the witnesses that testified against him. In site of these conditions, he was convicted and sentenced to be executed. As this brave man stood at the open ditch that was to be his grave, he looked the twelve that were to take his life square in the eye and said:
“Long live the modern school,”
When the volley rang out that sounded the death knell of Francisco Ferrer, it sounded the death knell of Capitalism in Spain.
Hellraisers Journal – Friday November 3, 1911 “Switched off the Main Line” by Phillips Russell
From the International Socialist Review of November 1911:
ON the last of September, the long delayed strike of the System Federation among the shopmen of the Harriman lines took place, extending from the middle west to the Gulf in the south and taking in all that territory westward to the Pacific ocean.
The System Federation comprises the shopmen of ten different organizations. the principal ones being the International Association of Machinists, Brotherhood of Railway Carmen, Brotherhood of Boilermakers, Brotherhood of Blacksmiths and Helpers, International Association of Sheet Metal Workers, the steamfitters, clerks, painters, engine hostlers and members of the Federal Labor Union. The first five mentioned are the leading organizations involved. The international presidents of these unions, having had many conferences with Vice-President Kruttschnitt of the Harriman lines, finally called the strike on three lines, these lines being the Illinois Central, the Southern Pacific and the Union Pacific lines.
The union officials claimed that 25,000 men came out. The railroad heads asserted there were only a few thousand at most.
In this strike there are just two questions with which the men in the ranks need concern themselves, and these are-hours and wages. The matter of recognition early in the fight was made the most of, but of all the issues involved, this was the most insignificant. However, the Federation heads insisted on making recognition the leading demand and pushing the first two fundamentals into the background.
Of all the questions at issue, that pertaining to the hours of labor is supreme. Men on strike can afford to make the matter of wages a secondary issue. It is the hours that count, for it cannot be too often repeated that shorter hours in variably mean higher wages.
Several thousand unorganized workers followed the union men out, and having been given the impression that the revolt was for an eight hour day and better conditions, they were eager for the fight.
But on learning that the question of hours and conditions was not going to figure in the struggle, and on hearing the incessant chant of the Federation heads that they asked only recognition for the Federation, the unorganized men soon lost interest and began to drift back into the shops.
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday November 1, 1921 Winthrop D. Lane on West Virginia’s Coal Field War, Part III
From The Survey of October 1921:
[Part III of III.]
What, meanwhile, has the state government been doing to bring peace and order to a situation so intense as this? For four months it has been maintaining martial law in Mingo County, for one thing. This is the third time within a year that some form of military control has been proclaimed in that strike-swept area; on the other two occasions federal troops were called in. Today the state is using its own forces, a rifle company of the national guard, which is now being reorganized. When a “three-days battle” occurred along a ten-mile front in Mingo County on May 12, 13 and 14, during which shots were exchanged by union and non-union elements, the tent colonies were fired into and damage was done to the property of coal companies, local authorities appealed to Governor E. F. Morgan to assist them. Governor Morgan, accordingly, proclaimed that a state of “war, insurrection and riot” existed in Mingo County, and directed Major Thomas B. Davis, acting adjutant-general, to proceed there and with the aid of the state constabulary and deputy sheriffs to place the region under martial law.
The legality of this procedure was assailed by the United Mine Workers of America when its members were arrested under the martial law proclamation. The state Supreme Court of Appeals held the edict invalid. The reason given by the court was that the proclamation could only be enforced by the occupancy of the zone covered by a military force, and that the state constabulary and deputy sheriffs were not a military force.
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