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Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday February 6, 1912
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire: “God Did It” by Phillips Russell
From the International Socialist Review of February 1912:
A NEW YORK jury composed of capitalistic cockroaches has absolved Harris & Blanck of the murder of 147 young workers in the Triangle shirtwaist factory fire of March 25, 1911.
Harris & Blanck, the two bosses, were tried only for the death of one girl worker, according to the crooked ways of capitalist courts, and since “it couldn’t be proved” that they were responsible for this one girl’s death, they were freed.
A member of the jury afterward expressed himself as follows:
“I can’t see that anyone was responsible for the loss of life, and it seems to me that it must have been AN ACT OF GOD.”
Poor God! The capitalists have got him just where they have the working class-cornered! They tell us He can do all things. But there is one thing God can’t do, it seems-He can’t answer back. Else the moment this pitiful squirt uttered these words He would have rent the sky open, would have hurled His scepter aside, thrown off His robe, stepped down from His awful throne, taken this petty capitalist croaker by the throat, and rammed his statement back down him again.
Hasn’t God any manhood at all? How long will He continue to allow Himself to be made the goat for capitalist crimes? Or is His eternal silence a confession of guilt? If so, then it is time we were knowing. Is it God who has been up to the deviltry of all these years? Is it God who traps the worker in blazing factory or buries him in tomblike mine, without providing him with even one means of escape? Is it God who sends the sailor abroad in a rotten hulk of a ship and drowns him before he can leap from his foul bunk? Is it God who hurls the iron worker from his lofty perch a thousand feet to the stones below and mangles the brakeman and the machine hand into an unrecognizable mass, telling the weeping wives and children that He is very sorry but the dead men were guilty of contributory negligence? Is it God who takes into His tender care all that the worker produces and hands him back just enough to live on?
The capitalists say so. Their priests and preachers, their professors and editors, their teachers and other kept men, say so.
But we have begun to suspect. We have begun to see that the capitalists have created God in their own image. And He is running up a terrible account which some day He will have to settle with the working class of the world.
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[Emphasis added.]
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SOURCES & IMAGES
Quote William Shepherd, Triangle Fire, Shirtwaist Strikers of a Year Ago, Mlk Jr, Mar 27, 1911, Cornell
https://trianglefire.ilr.cornell.edu/primary/testimonials/ootss_WilliamShepherd.html
International Socialist Review
(Chicago, Illinois)
-Feb 1912
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/isr/v12n08-feb-1912-ISR.riaz-ocr.pdf
See also:
Tag: Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire
https://weneverforget.org/tag/triangle-shirtwaist-factory-fire/
Tag: Triangle Fire Blanck and Harris Trial
https://weneverforget.org/tag/triangle-fire-blanck-and-harris-trial/
Mine Disasters 1911
https://usminedisasters.miningquiz.com/Mine_Disasters/search_all_year.asp?ACC_YEAR=1911
See especially:
Price-Pancoast Coal Company, Price-Pancoast Mine Fire
Throop, Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania
April 7, 1911; No. Killed – 73
https://usminedisasters.miningquiz.com/saxsewell/price-pancoast.htm
Pratt Consolidated Coal Company, Banner Mine Explosion
Littleton, Jefferson County, Alabama
April 8, 1911; No. Killed – 128
https://usminedisasters.miningquiz.com/saxsewell/banner_explosion.htm
Knoxville Iron Company, Cross Mountain Mine Explosion
Briceville, Anderson County, Tennessee
December 9, 1911; No. Killed – 84
https://usminedisasters.miningquiz.com/saxsewell/cross_mountain.htm
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The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire Song – Mike Stout