Month: July 2022

Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones Speaks to Special Convention of the United Mine Workers of America, Part II

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Hellraisers Journal – Monday July 21, 1902
Indianapolis, Indiana – Mother Jones Speaks to Miners’ Convention, Part II

From the Minutes of U. M. W. A. Special Convention, Called to Consider the Anthracite Strike, Indianapolis, Indiana, July 17-19, 1902:

Mother Jones Addresses Convention
Saturday Morning, July 19, 1902

[Part II of II]

Mother Jones , Phl Inq p24, June 22, 1902

Let me warn you right here and now that any fellow who is not willing to go up against all these forces [company gunthugs, injunctions, U. S. Marshals, courts and jails] had better stay out of West Virginia; don’t go over there, for we don’t want you unless you are willing. We want fighters, although we are conducting our business on peaceful lines and according to the Constitution of the United States.

I have wondered many times recently what Patrick Henry would say, Patrick Henry who said, “Give me liberty or give me death,” and who also said, “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty,” if he could witness the things that are done in West Virginia in this day and age, in a state that is supposed to be under the Constitution of the United States? I say with him, “Give me liberty or give me death, for for liberty I shall die, even if they riddle my body with bullets after I am dead.”

My friends, you must emancipate the miners of West Virginia; they should be the barometer for you in the future. You have a task; go bravely home and take it up like men. Each one of you should constitute himself a missionary, each one should do his duty as a miner and as a member of this organization. Do your duty also as citizens of the United States, do your duty as men who feel a responsibility upon you, and remember, friends, that it is better to die an uncrowned free man than a crowned slave. You and I must protest against this injustice to the American people that we are suffering under in West Virginia and in Pennsylvania, and in other fields.

In West Virginia the attorney for the company in his argument said, when my case was up, “In strikes of the past we got the deputies, the marshals and the Federal troops out, and still the strikers won the strikes; but the moment the court came out with an injunction, then the strikers were whipped.” He said further that the injunction was the barricade behind which the operators can stand.

There is an acknowledgement that we have no show; that the injunction is used for the benefit of the ruling classes. Now remember when your candidates get up and tell you what good friends they are to the laboring class, you ask them to sit right down and take an oath that the first thing they will do when they get to Congress is to introduce a bill entitled, “No government by injunction.”

Now I want to say a word about the West Virginia comrades. A great deal has been said for and against them. Perhaps no one there knows them better than I do. No one has mingled with them more than I have, and no one has heard more of their tales of sorrow and their tales of hope. I have sat with them on the sides of the mountains and the banks of the rivers and listened to their tales.

One night a comrade from Illinois [John H. Walker] was going with me up the mountain side. I said, “John, I believe it is going to be very dark tonight,” and he said he thought it was, for only the stars were shining to guide us. When we got to the top of the mountain, besides the stars in the sky we saw other little stars, the miners’ lamps, coming from all sides of the mountains. The miners were coming there to attend a meeting in a schoolhouse where we had promised to meet them, and I said to John, “There comes the star of hope, the star of the future, the star that the astronomer will tell nothing about in his great works for the future ages; but that is the star that is lighting up the ages yet to come; there is the star of the true miner laying the foundation for a higher civilization, and that star will shine when all other stars will grow dim.”

We held a meeting there that night, and a braver band does not live on the face of this earth today than that band of men up there on the mountain top that night. And in their behalf I stand pleading with you here today. They have their faults, I admit, but no state ever produced nobler, truer, better men under the appalling circumstances and conditions under which they work. It matters not whether a miner is robbed in Illinois or in Virginia, in Indiana or in the anthracite region; they are all ours, and we must fight the battle for all of them. I think we will come out victorious in this fight, but it will only be for a while. Both sides will line up for the final conflict, and you must be ready for the fray. We have no time to lose.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones Speaks to Special Convention of the United Mine Workers of America, Part II” →

Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones Speaks to Special Convention of the United Mine Workers of America, Part I

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones, Told the Court in WV to Stay, Ipl July 19, 1902, UMWC p86—————

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday July 20, 1902
Indianapolis, Indiana – Mother Jones Speaks to Miners’ Convention, Part I

From the Minutes of U. M. W. A. Special Convention, Called to Consider the Anthracite Strike, Indianapolis, Indiana, July 17-19, 1902:

Mother Jones Addresses Convention
Saturday Morning, July 19, 1902

[Part I of II]

Mother Jones , Phl Inq p24, June 22, 1902

President Mitchell: The first order of business, under a motion made at the last session yesterday, is an address by Mother Jones. The work of Mother Jones in the interests of the miners, the sacrifices she has made in their behalf, are so well known to the miners of the United States as to require no repetition from me. I therefore take great great pleasure in introducing to you our friend, Mother Jones.

Mrs. Mary Jones: Mr. Chairman and Fellow Delegates: I have been wondering whether this great gathering of wealth producers thoroughly comprehended the importance of their mission here today; whether they were really clear as to what their real mission was.

I realize, my friends, that the eyes of the people of the United States, from one end to the other, are watching you; but you have again given a lesson to the world and a lesson to the statesmen that a general uprising is the last thing you called for; that you will resort to all peaceful, conservative methods before you rise and enter the final protest. I realize, my friends, what your mission is; but I am one of those who, taking all the conditions into consideration, had I been here would have voted for a gigantic protest. I wanted the powers that be to understand who the miners were; to understand that when they laid down their picks they tied up all other industries, and then the operators would learn what an important factor the miner is toward his support. But, my friends, I believe you have taken the wisest action, that action which the world at large will commend, and which I now commend, believing it is right. I think, my friends, when you go home from this convention it is not the promise you have made here that will be the important thing, but the carrying out of that promise, the doing of your duty in the matter, the fulfillment of your duty as man to man, that is of the greatest importance.

These fights must be won if it costs the whole country to win them. These fights against the oppressor and the capitalists, the ruling classes, must be won if it takes us all to do it. The President said I had made sacrifices. In that I disagree with him, though I do not usually do that, for I hold him very dear. None of us make sacrifices when we do our duty to humanity, and when we neglect that duty to humanity we deserve the greatest condemnation.

There is before you one question, my friends, and you must keep that question before your eyes this fall when you send representatives to the legislative halls. Your instructions to these representatives must be: “Down forever with government by injunction in the American nation.” This generation may sleep its slumber quietly, not feeling its mighty duty and responsibility, and may quietly surrender their liberties. And it looks very much as though they were doing so. These liberties are the liberties for which our forefathers fought and bled. Things are happening today that would have aroused our Revolutionary fathers in their graves. People sleep quietly, but it is the sleep of the slave chained closely to his master. If this generation surrenders its liberties, then the work of our forefathers, which we will lose by doing this, will not be resurrected for two generations to come. Then perhaps the people will wake up and say to their feudal lords “We protest,” and they will inaugurate one of those revolutions that sometimes come when the slave feels there is no hope, and then proceed to tear society to pieces.

My friends, it is solidarity of labor we want. We do not want to find fault with each other, but to solidify our forces and say to each other: “We must be together; our masters are joined together and we must do the same thing.”

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones Speaks to Special Convention of the United Mine Workers of America, Part I” →

Hellraisers Journal: Company Gunthugs Shoot Down Members of Brotherhood of Timber Workers at Grabow, Louisiana

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote BBH re Capitalist Class, Lbr Arg p4, Mar 23, 1911—————

Hellraisers Journal – Friday July 19, 1912
Grabow, Louisiana – Company Gunthugs Shoot Down Members of B. T. W.

From the Spokane Industrial Worker of July 18, 1912:

Kirby’s Thugs Shed Workers’ Blood

Grabow Massacre, Four Shot Dead, WDC Tx p2, July 8, 1912
The Washington Times
July 8, 1912

Not content with maiming and mangling the peons in their slave camps in the lumber district the Southern Lumber Operators’ Association has turned loose their gunmen to take the lives of those who dare to struggle for better conditions.

As a sequel to the degenerate actions of Kirby’s thugs there are three men lying dead in Grabow, La., and 20 others are wounded. Some of the latter are not expected to live.

Among those placed under arrest as the result of the battle between the scabs and the B T. W. men are A. L. Emerson, president of the Brotherhood of Timber Workers, and J. T. Galloway, president of the Galloway Lumber Co.

The dead are A. T. Vincent, scab; Roy Martin, Cates Hall, and two unidentified men, unionists; the fatal wounded being Ed Brown and J. Tooley, union men, and Bud Hickman, farmer.

The union men were from De Ridder and nearby points. They had gathered under direction of Emerson to hold demonstration in front of the non-union mills. The objective point was Grabow, where the Galloway plant is located.

Following a series of meetings, one of which was held at Carson, amid the jeers of the company thugs and the continual din created by hoodlums hired by the Kirby interests, the band of union men marched to the Galloway mills.

There Emerson commenced to address the non-union men, asking them to be men rather  than peons and to stand up for their class. The beating of tin cans and other noises created by company hirelings drowned out his voice. Suddenly an oath was heard high above all other noises and a shot pierced the body of a union man standing just beside Emerson. The shot came from the company office, it is alleged.

This was a signal for action and the scabs and thugs of the Lumber Trust had access to the guns and ammunition stored close at hand and the shooting became general.

After a battle lasting over ten minutes Emerson and the union men were forced to beak for cover. They gained the woods and made their way to their homes.

It is said that more than a score of arrests have been made upon the charge of murder. The militia has been called out, despite the protests of many persons. Especially strong in denouncing the calling of the troops are Wm. D. Haywood and Covington Hall., who were in New Orleans on business for the B. T. W. at the time of the outrage. It is thought that the presence of troops will add to the tenseness of the situation.

The feeling against Kirby’s hired murderers is growing and its echo is heard in Eastern Texas. In Oakdale, La., the company gunmen shot at H. G. Creel, leading writer for the National Rip-Saw. Creel has been instrumental in exposing Kirby’s blacklist and also is spreading broadcast the story of the shameful conditions in the Southern lumber camps. Along with the leaders of the B. T. W. there is a price upon his head, it is alleged, offered by the Lumber Trust.

The brotherhood was organized about 16 months ago and just recently decided to affiliate with the I. W. W. Organizers from the ranks of the Industrial Workers were sent into the district and were getting results. W. D. Reed, well known Colorado speaker, was also in the Southern lumber district, in the interest of the lumber workers.

The Southern Sawmill Operators’ Association has its headquarters at St. Louis, from which point it has been directing a bitter warfare against the B. T. W. The weapons used have been the boycott of B. T. W. sympathizers, the blacklist of B T. W. men, the mysterious shooting of active union men, the lockout of 5,000 men from their plants, and now open warfare on the B. T. W. and I. W. W. organizers at the hands of hired murderers, while the instigators of these cowardly deeds skulk in their palatial offices.

The B. T. W. is built of the same kind of men as the I. W. W. and against the spirit of revolution that springs alike in their breasts the guns of Kirby’s thugs are powerless.

Instead of breaking up the B. T. W. these damnable actions will awaken the spark of manhood in those who have been mere onlookers and the result will be ONE BIG UNION of toilers which will soon have control of the forests and the mills now being despoiled by Kirby and his breed of degenerate coyotes.

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[Newsclip and emphasis added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: “Socialism and the Negro” by Hubert Harrison, Part II

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Hubert Harrison, The Voice re St Louis Horror, July 4, 1917—————

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday July 18, 1912
“Socialism and the Negro” by Hubert Harrison, Part II

From the International Socialist Review of July 1912:

Hubert Harrison, ISR p65, July 1912

[Part II of II]

The Duty of The Socialist Party.

I think that we might embrace the opportunity of taking the matter up at the coming national convention. The time is ripe for taking a stand against the extensive disfranchisement of the Negro in violation of the plain provisions of the national constitution. In view of the fact that the last three amendments to the constitution contain the clause, “Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation,” the party will not be guilty of proposing anything worse than asking the government to enforce its own “law and order.” If the Negroes, or any other section of the working class in America, is to be deprived of the ballot, how can they participate with us in the class struggle? How can we pretend to be a political party if we fail to see the significance of this fact?

Besides, the recent dirty diatribes against the Negro in a Texas paper, which is still on our national list of Socialist papers; the experiences of Mrs. Theresa Malkiel in Tennessee, where she was prevented by certain people from addressing a meeting of Negroes on the subject of Socialism, and certain other exhibitions of the thing called Southernism, constitute the challenge of caste. Can we ignore this challenge? I think not. We could hardly afford to have the taint of “trimming” on the garments of the Socialist party. It is dangerous-doubly dangerous now, when the temper of the times is against such “trimming.” Besides it would be futile. If it is not met now it must be met later when it shall have grown stronger. Now, when we can cope with it, we have the issue squarely presented: Southernism or Socialism-which? Is it to be the white half of the working class against the black half, or all the working class? Can we hope to triumph over capitalism with one-half of the working class against us? Let us settle these questions now-for settled they must be.

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Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: “Socialism and the Negro” by Hubert Harrison, Part I

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Hubert Harrison, The Voice re St Louis Horror, July 4, 1917—————

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday July 17, 1912
“Socialism and the Negro” by Hubert Harrison, Part I

From the International Socialist Review of July 1912:

Hubert Harrison, ISR p65, July 1912

[Part I of II]

1. Economic Status Of The Negro

The ten million Negroes of America form a group that is more essentially proletarian than any other American group. In the first place the ancestors of this group were brought here with the very definite understanding that they were to be ruthlessly exploited. And they were not allowed any choice in the matter. Since they were brought here as chattels their social status was fixed by that fact. In every case that we know of where a group has lived by exploiting another group, it has despised that group which it has put under subjection. And the degree of contempt has always been in direct proportion to the degree of exploitation.

Inasmuch, then, as the Negro was at one period the most thoroughly exploited of the American proletariat, he was the most thoroughly despised. That group which exploited and despised him, being the most powerful section of the ruling class, was able to diffuse its own necessary contempt of the Negro first among the other sections of the ruling class, and afterwards among all other classes of Americans. For the ruling class has always determined what the social ideals and moral ideas of society should be; and this explains how race prejudice was disseminated until all Americans are supposed to be saturated with it. Race prejudice, then, is the fruit of economic subjection and a fixed inferior economic status. It is the reflex of a social caste system. That caste system in America today is what we roughly refer to as the Race Problem, and it is thus seen that the Negro problem is essentially an economic problem with its roots in slavery past and present.

Notwithstanding the fact that it is usually kept out of public discussion, the bread-and-butter side of this problem is easily the most important. The Negro worker gets less for his work-thanks to exclusion from the craft unions-than any other worker; he works longer hours as a rule and under worse conditions than any other worker; and his rent in any large city is much higher than that which the white worker pays for the same tenement. In short, the exploitation of the Negro worker is keener than that of any group of white workers in America. Now, the mission of the Socialist Party is to free the working class from exploitation, and since the Negro is the most ruthlessly exploited working class group in America, the duty of the party to champion his cause is as clear as day. This is the crucial test of Socialism’s sincerity and therein lies the value of this point of view-Socialism and the Negro.

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Hellraisers Journal: From the United Mine Workers Journal: Miners’ Strike Non-Union Coke Region at Connellsville, Pennsylvania

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones, Un-Christ-Like Greed, IN DlyT Ipls p1, July 15, 1920—————

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday July 16, 1922
The Miners’ Strike in the Non-Union Coke Regions of Connellsville, Pennsylvania

From the United Mine Workers Journal of July 15, 1922:

Connellsville Coal Strike, UMWJ Cv, Tent Home, July 15, 1922

Tent home of an evicted miner at Tower Hill, No. 2,
in the Connellsville Coke Region, Pennsylvania

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Miners’ Union Has Brought the Light of Freedom
to the Non-Union Coke Region around Connellsville

By VAN A. BITTNER, Personal Representative of President John L. Lewis
———-

July finds the 40,000 miners in the coke region of Pennsylvania more determined than ever to win the great industrial struggle in which they are engaged against the might coke corporations headed by Frick and Rainey. It is, indeed, the most stupendous struggle that has ever taken place in any non-union coal field in this country and is only over-shadowed by the gigantic national strike of the coal miners of America. After thirty years of industrial slavery, without a single attempt being made to free themselves from the yoke of bondage, these miners and their families have awakened to a realization of their hopes and dreams of engaging with the organized miners of America in their battle for industrial freedom. They have implicit faith in the United Mine Workers of America and are in this fight to do or die.

The real spirit of unionism is found here. These men and their families are not asking for any relief. They realize the fact that the men who made the United Mine workers of America did so by sacrificing their very lives for the principles upon which our great union stands, and these men are willing to and are going forward, realizing it is the opportunity of a lifetime and they are making the best of it…..

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Hellraisers Journal: From the Buffalo New Age: Letter from Inmate at Atlanta Prison, Sent by Underground to Eugene Debs 

Janet RayeEugene Victor Debs
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Quote EVD No Bitterness on Release fr Prison Deb Mag Jan 1922 p3—————

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday July 15, 1922
Eugene Debs Shares Letter from Inmate at Atlanta Penitentiary

From the Buffalo New Age of July 6, 1922

From Atlanta Prison:
A Letter from a Prisoner
with a Warning
by Eugene V. Debs
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EVD Leaves Prison crp Dec 25, Waves Hat, Stt Str p1, Dec 31, 1921
Eugene Debs Leaving
Atlanta Penitentiary
Christmas Day 1921

I have received a letter from a prisoner in the United States penitentiary in Atlanta that makes interesting and profitable reading. The name of the writer for the present at least must remain unknown. The letter would never have been permitted to go out of the prison in the regular way. Not a word of criticism of the prison, of anyone connected with its management is allowed to pass the censor. No matter what practices may prevail or what outrages may be perpetrated, no report thereof is permitted to pass the walls. The general public, which supports the prison, is not allowed to know what goes on there except as it may please the officers in charge to let the people known what a fine place it is and what a privilege to be locked up there.

Just at this writing a huge scandal has been uncovered at the United States penitentiary at Atlanta. A “dope ring,” headed by a prison physician and several guards, has been long operating there making dope fiends of young prisoners and supplying all who could pay for it at robber rates with the poisonous drug that would ruin them for life. And this is the benevolent United States government institution where drug addicts are sent to be reformed. And truly it is a fine bourgeois reformation they get at this walled-in inferno.

Underground Kite.

The letter, which follows, was sent out underground or it would never have left the prison. It is from a man who served a term of years in the navy and has been rewarded for his patriotism by a long prison sentence. There are several hundred inmates at Atlanta who were soldiers, marines, and sailors, some of them of many years standing, who for more or less trifling offenses were court-martialed by their “superiors” and sent to the penitentiary to contemplate the beauty of their reward for putting on a uniform and fighting to make their country “safe for democracy.” The writer of this letter is one of those victims and the letter speaks eloquently for itself. Here it is:

Through your many friends and comrades in prison here I have learned of your suffering for the noble cause of the human race. Your martyrdom will blaze the trail to the goal which the working class are destined to reach. With a few more such martyrs the cause will be won. Your undying devotion to your noble principles and your untiring efforts to secure liberty and justice for all, to make this country a fit place to live in, will be crowned with victory at last. From now on my life belongs to your cause.

Having thrown away 11 years in the navy, the lessons of experience have at last been a blessing to me. I have learned what our navy really stands for and that is not for the protection against invasion, but simply a school that teaches the doctrines of the rich.

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Hellraisers Journal: Birds Care for Their Young While Capitalists Feed Off Nation’s Young -Cartoon by Ryan Walker

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones Children Suffer PA Silk Mills, Cdale Ldr p6, Nov 30, 1900—————

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday July 14, 1912
American Children Born to Feed the Monster Capitalistism

From The Coming Nation of July 13, 1912
-Cartoon by Ryan Walker: Birds Care for Young; Capitalists Feed off the Young:

Child Labor, Ryan Walker, Children Feed Capitalist in Nest, Cmg Ntn Cv, July 13, 1912

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Hellraisers Journal: From the Spokane Industrial Worker: New Song Books Ready to Order with New Songs from FW Joe Hill

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Joe Hill, General Strike, Workers Awaken, LRSB p6, Oct 1919—————

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday July 13, 1912
New I. W. W. Song Books Will Be Off the Press Soon

From the Spokane Industrial Worker of July 11, 1912

Ad New LRSB, IW p3, July 11, 1912

New songs by Fellow Worker Joe Hill will include:

“Casey Jones, The Union Scab”
“Where the Frazer River Flows”
“Coffee ‘An”
“John Golden and the Lawrence Strike”

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Hellraisers Journal: Horrible Disaster at Rolling Mill Mine at Johnstown, Penn., Fatalities May Approach Two Hundred

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones, Pray for dead, ed, Ab Chp 6, 1925—————

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday July 12, 1902
Johnstown, Pennsylvania – Explosion of Gas Claims Many Lives at Rolling Mill Mine

From The Indianapolis Journal of July 11, 1902:

MnDs Johnstown PA Rolling Mill Mine July 10, Ipl Jr p1, July 11, 1902

JOHNSTOWN, Pa., July 10.-Two hundred miners entombed by an explosion in a mine whose main shaft opens within the limits of this city was news to check with terror the pedestrians on the streets here to-day.

At first the rumor said that all in the rolling mill mine of the Cambria Steel Company were dead or in danger, but later reports showed that the lower figure was correct and that 400 were safe.

The mine is one of the largest in the country and to-day 600 men were at work there. When the news of the disaster reached here it spread like wildfire and in less than a quarter of an hour the Point, an open space at the junction of Conemaugh and Stony creek, was crowded with women and children. Across from them, in the center of the green hillside, could be seen the dark opening of the mine. It looked as usual, but the women who looked across the waters saw a meaning there that they had not seen before. Some cried, some moaned and little children clasped skirts and cried in sympathy.….

———-

[Emphasis added.]

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