…the big witness slipped a sizzler across the suave commissioner when the commissioner brought up what he said was the I. W. W. idea in making poor goods as a form of sabotage. Haywood said,”that’s a complaint we have against the capitalist system.”Weinstock then contended that Haywood’s doctrine would make a nation of thieves and liars, because of his advocacy of no contracts with bosses and nonrecognition of promises made under duress.

[Said Haywood:]That’s what you have now…That is what the capitalist class practices every day.

[Emphasis added.

From the International Socialist Review of June 1915:

SAYS LABOR WILL WIPE OUT CAPITAL
—–

Haywood Declares I. W.W. Would Not
Stop at Revolution.
—–
PICTURES ERA OF FREEDOM
—–
DECLARES NOTHING WILL HALT
CLASS STRUGGLE.
—–
Only Implacable War Ending With Great General Strike and Confiscation
of Means of Production Could Bring Workers to Ideal-
No Identity of Interest Between Labor and Men Like Rockefeller and Morgan,
Who Contribute Nothing to Production.

(From the Baltimore American)Washington, May 12. — A revolution that would wipe out America’s present industrial and political system and establish an ideal era of freedom was described to the federal commission on industrial relations as the ultimate object of the Industrial Workers of the World, by William D. Haywood, its secretary and treasurer.

A world in which labor, organized into a vast compact union, should control all the means of production and in which there should be no such thing as “capital” was held up by Haywood as his land of promise. He declared that only implacable war between labor and capital, ending with a great general strike and confiscation of the means of production, could bring the workers to that ideal existence.

For Revolution, He Says[He told the commission:]

This is a class struggle that must go on…There can be no identity of interest between the workers, who have only their labor power, and such men as Rockefeller and Morgan and their stockholders, who contribute nothing to production. The struggle will go on despite everything this commission can do or can recommend to congress. The battle is inevitable. Labor must fight for what capital now controls, the means of production, tools, machinery and all of those things which should be controlled by labor alone.

I have had a dream of a new society some time in which there will be no struggle between capital and labor, in which every man will have free access to the land and the means of production and livelihood. There will be no government, no states, as we know them now. Congress will be made up not of lawyers and preachers, but of experts from all branches of industry, come together for the good of all the people.

Commissioner Weinstock questioned Haywood as to what methods would be employed to bring about this change.

[Said the witness:]I believe in any kind of tactics…I don’t care if it means revolution. That’s all.

Would Tear Down New YorkIn reply to other questions Haywood said the I. W. W. differed with the trade unionists because it believed in the organization of a single great union instead of craft unions. Its ultimate purpose, he said, differed little from socialism.

[He added:]I might say it is socialism with its working clothes on.

In the new era, Haywood said there would be no great cities.”What is to become of New York, Chicago and the other great cities?” asked Commissioner Weinstock.

[Replied the witness:]There would be no idle brokers, lawyers and financiers to occupy such cities.

“But what would you do with New York?”

Tear it down, or leave it as a monument to the foolishness of this age.

Haywood sketched the stormy incidents of his past life, telling of strikes in which he had participated, from the early troubles in Colorado and Utah to the recent outbreaks at Lawrence and Paterson. He continued his testimony the next day.

(From the New York Call)William D. Haywood, secretary-treasurer of the Industrial Workers of the World, was on the witness stand nearly all of the afternoon.

Hastily Haywood sketched his life, beginning work in the mines at 9 and running down through a career of turbulence and strife to fifteen years ago, when he ceased working in the mines; then down to the present as an agitator. In this Haywood laid the background for an exposition of the purposes of his organization, carefully, though seemingly without forethought, building the basis for his position on the developments of his former industrial observations.

It was a dramatic story that “Big Bill” told—a story of strike after strike, hundreds thrown into jail, workers charged upon by soldiers, men and women beaten, court orders binding the workers and constant revolt against exploitation.

At the end of the recital he said:

This outlines the main strikes of the organizations I have been connected with, and, I think, clearly portrays that there is a class struggle and that the workers are on one side, with the capitalists on the other; that the worker has nothing but his labor power and that the capitalists have all of the forces of government and of law; that he can have the police for the asking, that he can have the militia and the regular army.There are workers who have come to the conclusion that there is only one way to win. We don’t agree with the statement that has been reiterated here that there is an identity of interest between employe and employer.

No Identity of Interest.“We say there can be no identity of interest between the worker who produces all, and Rockefeller and Morgan, who, neither by brain or muscle, contribute to the productivity of the industries that they own. We say the struggle will go on in spite of anything this commission can do. It’s for the things now owned and controlled by capital. We say these things should be owned and controlled by the workers alone.

Personally I don’t think this can be done by political action. The wage working class is in the minority. They are not educated to the game of politics. While they are the only valuable units in society, their efforts must be confined to the shops where they work. I have dreams of a new society, in which there will be no battle between worker and capital, but where every man will have access to the land and to the machinery of production.There will be no political divisions as we know them now, and no congress of lawyers. There will be experts and the machine will be made the slave of man instead of a use of machinery that now makes the man the slave. I think this can be done by direct action-that is, by organizing the forces of labor.

Haywood went on to explain direct action.

[He said:]We propose by strength of numbers to declare ownership.

After this came a prolonged tilt with Commissioner Weinstock, in which the Pacific coast capitalist sought to break down Haywood’s presentment as something that Americans would never stand for. While, of course, the real point is the tactics involved, rather than the picture of the ultimate painted by Haywood, Weinstock gathered together writings of I. W. W.’s and others presenting the collection as the program of Haywood’s organization. Haywood neatly put “one over” on Weinstock by informing him that the first quotation made by the commissioner was the chorus of the national song of France, while the second was from a speech made in this city by Abraham Lincoln at a time when speculators were trying to force up food prices. Lincoln’s advice was to break open the storehouses and take the food, according to the quotation.

Haywood Puts One OverAgain the big witness slipped a sizzler across the suave commissioner when the commissioner brought up what he said was the I. W. W. idea in making poor goods as a form of sabotage. Haywood said,”that’s a complaint we have against the capitalist system.”

He denied that he wanted the workers to do that. He wanted them to refuse to do it, as they do now, for the sake of the owner’s profits. Whereupon Weinstock said, “Well, we’ll cut out that part about inferior goods,” much to the amusement of the audience.

Weinstock then contended that Haywood’s doctrine would make a nation of thieves and liars, because of his advocacy of no contracts with bosses and nonrecognition of promises made under duress.

[Said Haywood:]That’s what you have now…That is what the capitalist class practices every day.

In every one of these highly amusing clashes on the broad question of right or wrong, such as relates to those cited here, Haywood had Weinstock fighting for wind.Haywood said that his organization now has 15,000 members.

[Emphasis added.]

Profits Above the Law by Art Young:

The International Socialist Review, Volume 15
ed by Algie Martin Simons, Charles H. Kerr
C.H. Kerr, July 1914-June 1915
http://books.google.com/…
ISR June 1915
https://books.google.com/…
“[Haywood] Says Labor Will Wipe Out Capital”
(Also source for images within article.)
https://books.google.com/…IMAGES
International Socialist Review of June 1915
https://books.google.com/…
Graphic from International Socialist Review
https://books.google.com/…
Profits! by Art Young from Solidarity of June 7, 1913
https://books.google.com/…
International Socialist Review, June 1915
https://books.google.com/…
IWW Sabo-Tabby
http://www.iww.org/…
Sabotage by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, April 1915
http://babel.hathitrust.org/…

See also:

The International Socialist Review, Volume 13
-ed by Algie Martin Simons, Charles H. Kerr
Charles H. Kerr & Company, July 1912-June 1913
https://books.google.com/…
“The Rip in the Silk Industry”
by William D Haywood
from the ISR of May 1913
https://books.google.com/…

Note: Sadly, there are many pages missing from Volume 13, but Haywood’s entire article, “The Rip in the Silk Industry,” can be read in “Rebel Voice.” I highly recommend this book and consider it one of the best sources ever put together on the history and working class culture of the Industrial Workers of the World.

Rebel Voices: An IWW Anthology
-ed by Joyce L. Kornbluh
Charles H. Kerr Publishing Company, 1988
https://books.google.com/…
Chapter 7: Paterson 1913
https://books.google.com/…

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Wobblies singing Solidarity Forever

All the world that’s owned by idle drones.
Is ours and ours alone.
We have laid the wide foundations,
Built it skyward stone by stone.
It is ours and not to slave in,
but to master and to own,
While the Union make us strong.
-Ralph Chaplin

““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““`

Women and Children of Mexico Starving So Soldiers
of Rival Armies Can Have Food.
—–

VILLA VICTORY OVER OBREGON MAY MEAN BETTER CONDITIONS IN
WAR-IMPOVERISHED LAND, WHERE MONEY IS NOW
OF LITTLE VALUE AND FOOD IS SCARCE

STARVING MEXICAN WOMEN AND CHILDREN BEGGING FOR FOOD
AT THE DOORS OF ONE OF THE ARMY FOOD SUPPLY DEPOTS IN VERA CRUZ
WHERE THEY ARE GIVEN BARELY ENOUGH TO KEEP LIFE AND SOUL TOGETHER.

By David Bruce.Chihuahua, Mexico, June 3.-War has made conditions in Europe “terrible.”

War has made conditions in Mexico “pitiful.”

There are wounded men, and wounded boys; wounded women and wounded babies; some maimed for life.

And there are thousands upon thousands of people starving. There is hunger north and south, and east and west.

Even here in the north women and little children pack the doors of the buildings that have been turned into commissaries for the troops-and plead for a handful of corn or beans.

They are mourning wives and sisters and sweethearts; mourning mothers who have lost flesh of their flesh. They are left alone, there is nobody to do for them, nobody who cares. There is nothing they can do to help themselves. They have no money-they have nothing. Yet they must eat-somehow. It is pitiful.

And it is the same elsewhere in Mexico. The soldiers are fed-they are the ones who get it no matter how or in what way. The strong eat-because they can get food. But the wounded men and the women and children, they go hungry and in rags.

Money has gone down in value-down almost to nothing. So that those who have managed to hoard a few pesos or to scrape together a few centavos can buy little with them. Prices have gone up-and money has dropped.

In the north and to the west as far even as El Paso fighting has impoverished the country.

The peon and his family eat when Providence sends a meal their way and consider themselves lucky. Many are absolutely homeless. They sleep where they happen to find themselves.

In the south conditions are no better. There the armies of Villa and Obregon are massed for a mighty battle.

Everything is for the soldiers. Food, clothing, horses and whatever money they can lay their hands upon. Both armies are in desperate need. Nobody is spared; nobody protests.

If Villa comes off victorious then perhaps, for a while in the general rejoicing there will be better times, but if he is beaten again things will be worse.

SOURCE
The Wichita Beacon
(Wichita, Kansas)
-June 4, 1915
(Also source for image.)
http://www.newspapers.com/…

““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““`

The true identity of David Bruce:David Bruce was the pen name adopted by the pro-union newspaper man, Don MacGregor. MacGregor can be remembered as the reporter who described the arrival of the evicted strikers into the Ludlow Tent Colony. MacGregor later, during the Colorado Coalfield War, threw down his pen and picked up a gun and became the leader of the miners in the Battle of the Hogback.

Don MacGregor soon thereafter left Colorado, and, under indictment in that state, adopted the pen name David Bruce. In an article from The Ogden Standard, we find J. H. Locke’s description of the death of “David Bruce” and the subsequent revelation of his true identity:

Pershing’s Camp at Front, April 10 [1916] by Aeroplane to Columbus, N. M., April 11.-The cheapness in which the Villistas hold human life was brought out pointedly here today by J. H. Locke, an American of Minaca who escaped from that city the night of March 28, when Herman Blankenburg, a German, and David Bruce, an American, were killed by the bandits. Locke described to General Pershing the utter recklessness with which these two were slain.Letters found on Bruce indicated that he had adopted a pen name in Mexico while trying to sell magazine stories, and that his friends expected him to write something about Villa. The letters gave his right name as Don McGregor [MacGregor]. He was from Minneapolis, Chicago and Denver….

How “David Bruce” was sent to Chihuahua, Chihuahua, Mexico:

From Indiana’s Fort Wayne Weekly Sentinel of April 1, 1915:

(Editor’s note-Is Mexico a country devastated, a nation full of starvation, misery and murder? Is it in a condition which demands American intervention? Are Roosevelt and certain newspapers and interests right in urging that our army step in and stop the revolution? These are important questions and demand more than off-hand answers. They demand replies backed by real first-hand evidence. For that reason the Sentinel and a number of associated newspapers sent David Bruce, a trained newspaper man, to Mexico. He was selected because he would go absolutely uninfluenced. His home is in the northeastern part of the United States. He was never in Mexico, and knows no Mexicans. Neither does he know any people who have money invested in Mexico. The following is his first story from Mexico. Let him tell what he saw.)

The article was sent in by Bruce from Chihuahua, Chihuahua, Mexico,
and was titled and subtitled:

Life in Mexico Today-The Truth Told About Conditions As They Are in Villa’s Territory
—–

Mexican Peon Will Never Work for 20 Cents a Day Again-
For the First Time He Wears Shoes and Eats Three Square Meals a Day-
Villa’s Capital Quiet, Busy, Enjoying Life.
—–

SOURCES

The Ogden Standard
(Ogden City, Utah)
-April 11, 1916
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/…

Fort Wayne Weekly Sentinel
(Fort Wayne, Indiana)
-Apr 1, 1915
http://www.newspapers.com/…

IMAGE
Armed Miners Colorado Coalfield War
http://www.du.edu/…

““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““`
La Adelita – Revolución Mexicana

Toca el clarín de campaña la guerra
Sale el valiente guerrero a pelear
Correrán los arroyos de sangre
Que gobierne un tirano jamás.

Y si acaso yo muera en campaña
Y mi cadaver en la tierra va a quedar
Adelita por Dios te lo ruego
Que tus ojos no vayan a llorar
-Jose de Jesus Martinez, Alonoso

Popurri Mexicano en guitarra (Revolución Mexicana)

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Sure, boy, and they’re all for you.
Everyone of them loves you.

The Lawson Protest Meeting was preceded by a parade of thousands of men, women and children accompanied by a band. Proudly held aloft were the American Flag and the Flag of Ludlow. The Greek Flag was carried in honor of Louie Tikas, martyred leader of the Ludlow Tent Colony, who was murdered during the Ludlow Massacre.The following is a first-hand description of the parade preceding the meeting:

Before the meeting, seven thousand men, women and children paraded through Denver’s business section. They marched with set faces through densely packed streets. A fife and drum corps, with a hug American flag in the center, led the way. Two hundred women, dressed in white represented the Justice League.Fifty children, also in white, carried a monster banner bearing the words.

“The Children Demand Justice for John Lawson.”

Then came the garment workers. A platoon of police opened the way through the streets. There were no automobiles or carriages. Everyone walked except the marshal, Benjamin F. Perry of the machinist’s union, who was mounted.

At the head of the second division marched a 25-piece band follow by the tattered Ludlow flag which was carried by a stalwart Greek miner. Beside the flag bearer marched another swarthy miner, carrying a Greek flag in honor of the murdered Tikas. The railroad orders, miners and several hundred sympathetic citizens marched behind the two flags. In the third division, led by another band marched the hosts of the Denver Trades and Labor Assembly. Union banners, interspersed with American flags, gave color to the parade. The fourth division consisted of members of the Building Trades Council-hundreds of carpenters, painters, bricklayers and other skilled workers. As the parade swept down 17th Street, coal company officials watched silently from the Denver Club. The union line did not hurl taunts, but as each group swung by, the cheer went up, “Hurrah for John Lawson.”

John Lawson, Mother Jones,
Attorney Horace Hawkins
“““““

At the corner of Lawrence and 17th streets, each division sent a mighty shout of approval up to a window in the German-American Trust Bldg., where two valiant warriors, John R. Lawson, and old Mother Jones, stood, arm in arm, looking down into the street.”Sure, boy, and they’re all for you.” Mother Jones beamed. “Everyone of them loves you.”

The parade moved on to City Auditorium. It had originally been planned to hold the mass meeting at the state Capitol, but governor Carlson had banned it at the last minute.

The meeting was opened by Mrs. Lee Champion, president of the Justice League:

We have several speakers here, but first I want to present a charming young lady who has a few words to say to . Miss Fern Lawson.

Miss Lawson, a dark-haired beauty, dressed in white, rose to speak. Fern Lawson is no stranger to the dangers that come with standing for justice. As a little girl she was thrown from her bed when the family home in New Castle was dynamited along with the homes of several other union leaders. Her father was then shot and nearly killed by the coal operator who had been suspected of ordering the bombings. Such was her early experience as the daughter of a coal miner and a stalwart union man.Now a young lady, 15 years old, she bravely rose to thank the thousands present for their support of her father and the other indicted miners:

It is not the liberty of my father alone that is in danger, it is the liberty of every man, woman and child which is in danger. I thank you for my mother and myself for what you have done for my father and for us.

Many present had tears in their eyes as Fern finished speaking.Mrs. Champion then spoke, attacking the state government, the coal operators and the newspapers:

Hundreds of indictments have been brought against miners. The operators go free though 23 persons, many of them women and children, were murdered at Ludlow. The Rocky Mountain News now asks you to forget that women and children were driven like rats into a trap and then murdered. It says the state has tried to make amends. that is an absolute untruth. Nor can the state make amends except by bringing to the bar of justice those who live by the corporations, those who are responsible for that reeking, putrid cesspool which exists in southern Colorado. When the bankers, whom Bowers says he whipped into line, learn to consider all the people-when it becomes impossible for a governor to hire out the militia-when those responsible for the murders at Ludlow have been brought to justice-when all these things have happened, then, and only then, will the state have made amends.

Mrs. Champion informed the audience that the position of Professor Brewster at the University of Colorado, was being threatened by the authorities of the School of Law who were attempting to oust the Professor because he had taken up the strikers’ cause.  She declared that the Denver school system was under the jurisdiction of a school board made up of relatives of Colorado Fuel & Iron Co. officials, and that the C. F. & I. had spread vicious lies against everyone and anyone who opposed the domination of the Rockefeller Interests  over state and local affairs.

John Lawson with Louie Tikas at Ludlow
“““““

Professor Brewster, was introduced and stated, in part:

I have to be careful when I stand for justice or I will offend someone at the University of Colorado. I spent weeks independently investigating the strike. It was then that I first knew the man I am now proud to call my friend, John R. Lawson. If I were to tell you the wrongs done by the militia alone it would take hours. Militiamen in uniform robbed strikers of the few possessions they had. I do not blame every militiaman. There were fine men in the militia. But I want you to notice one thing. Did you ever hear of the recent legislature, which wanted to pay coal companies for property destroyed, suggesting the state pay back to the miners the money which the militiamen stole from them?

He did not mention the name, of Judge Hillyer, but everyone present knew who he was referring to when he spoke of Lawson’s trial:

No reputable lawyer would sit in a case in which one of the parties had previously retained him. Do you suppose any man employed by the miners would have the indecency to sit as judge in a case in which an operator was to be tried? I am a lawyer. I don’t intend to abuse any court. But I can’t conceal my contempt for a man who will accept an appointment for special purposes to try special cases.

Also speaking at the protest meeting were Congressman Frank Buchanan of Illinois and Clint C. Houston, president of the Denver Trades and Labor Assembly. They urged union men to stand together in their common cause for justice.Hellraisers is quite sure that Denver’s “Lawson Protest Meeting” will not be the last such protest meeting held by the union men and women across the nation.

Below the fold we offer the full text of the speech made by Professor Brewster.

The Speech of Professor James H. Brewster, delivered June 5th, at Denver:

I wish to direct your attention briefly to what some great men of the world have said about justice: Hamilton, in explaining the federal constitution, said: “Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained or until liberty be lost in its pursuit.” We all know what justice means. When we feel the sunshine when we feel the heat, or the cold, do we have to stop to define them? The desire for justice has always been in the human heart. It is a familiar term, just like the terms of heat, cold, sunshine and dark.In Magna Charta, the fundamental constitution of Anglo-Americans, it is averred: “To no one will we deny justice; to no one will we delay it.” This has been understood always as a universal guarantee of impartial justice to high and low. Cicero says; “Nothing can be honorable where there is no justice.” But long before the time of Cicero, far back in the beginning, almost, of historic days, justice was the first consideration. Six hundred years before Christ, the Israelites were doing (some of them) very much the same things that people have done ever since that time.

There were false priests and false prophets, who, upon a temporary adjustment of troublesome airs, said: “Peace, peace where there is no peace,” and the prophet Jeremiah rebuked those people. They pointed to their “temples of the Lord”-temples of Jehovah-as evidence of prosperity. He asked what it was, as we are asking now, that makes a state or a nation prosperous. See what Jeremiah, the great prophet of Israel, said: “Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, Amend your ways and your doings, and I will cause you to dwell in this place. Trust ye not in lying words, saying: “The Temple of Jehovah, the Temple of Jehovah, the Temple of Jehovah, are these.

For if ye thoroughly mend your ways and your doings; if ye thoroughly execute justice between man and his neighbor; if ye oppress not the sojourner, the fatherless and the widow, and shed not innocent blood in this place, neither walk after other Gods to your own heart, then will I cause you to dwell in this place, in the land that I gave to your fathers, from of old, even for evermore.”

Notice the first thing: in amending their ways; they were to “executive justice between a man and his neighbor.” And six hundred years after Jeremiah there came a man who has exerted such an influence upon the world the civilized world takes its name from him-Christendom. Many people believe him to be verily the Son of God, but whether all believe that or not, nearly everyone recognizes the wisdom, the justice, the love that he taught, and nearly everyone believes that if we had a little more now of the Christ-like in our lives, there would be none of the trouble that has now existed in Colorado for thirty years past.

See what Christ said: “Woe unto you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye tithe, mint and anise and cumin and have left undone the weightier matters of the law, justice, and mercy, and faith.” The weightier matters of the law, and first of all comes justice!

Now, allusions to the sayings of the great men of the world might be multiplied to show that justice is everything. Why, then, should we be asking for justice in the state of Colorado? Why shouldn’t we assume that that inestimable thing, the basis of civil society, should be ours without the asking? The truth of the matter is that justice has been denied in Colorado to many people. I do not care to rake up the past. I don’t wish to; but I must refer to some matters in the past in order to make certain things perfectly clear and incontrovertible. Others have opened up the sores, and it may be just as well to keep them open until the poison and pus of injustice have run from those sores, and until the balm of justice, truth, mercy, and love have cured those sores and left no scar.

What, then, are some of the injustices? I am not going to rehearse the early ones, fifteen, twenty, ten years ago. Many of you know them. They are matters of public record. I recall more recent events, which we ought not to forget, and which we must not let certain other people forget: What was, for instance, the battle of Forbes: You know about the battle of Forbes, It was the week before John Nimmo was killed, for the killing of whom John Lawson is sentenced to spend his life in the penitentiary. The battle of Forbes; I will come to that again presently.

Have you heard, by the way, that the attorney general of this state has had indicted any of the mine guards who used the machine gun over the tent colony of Forbes and killed a man, and put nine bullets in the legs of a boy, who is still crippled and always will be? Has the attorney general investigated that case and informed against any of those men? Mack Powell was killed on October 9 1913. The mine guards then told Mrs. Powell, not knowing who she was, and while her husbands body was still warm, “They got none of us, but we got one of Green’s cowboys,” and the only one of Green’s cowboys that was got was Mack Powell. The mine guards told Mrs. Powell they shot him.

The Death Special,
used in the attack upon the Forbes Tent Colony.

Have you heard at all that any of the legislators who wished to pay for some property destroyed that belonged to the mine companies-destroyed after “Ludlow”-have you heard that they ever suggested the return of the money taken from man after man by officers of law in the garb of the state militia? Have you heard that even suggested? Has it ever been done? The evidence was clear, not only before the congressional committee, but long before that-before the committee investigating the militia-the evidence was perfectly clear that man after man had been robbed by men wearing the uniform of the state, who were down in Las Animas and Huerfano counties for the preservation of “law and order.” Is that justice?

Forbes Tent Colony Destroyed

Was it justice, when, last summer, Sheriff Grisham chose a grand jury to investigate the troubles that had occurred the previous year and to bring in indictments against the guilty parties-was it justice, I say, when Grisham appointed [to?] that grand jury, Wilson? Wilson admitted before the congressional committee that he guided the mine guards- some of them from Texas-to Forbes on October 17. Wilson was there during the murderous onslaught against that little tent colony. Wilson was put by Sheriff Grisham on that grand jury. Is that justice?But to come to something nearer that has aroused the people. Witness what is going on in the southern coal fields of this state under the name of law. Let us recall a certain important historical fact. About two hundred and twenty-five years ago, a cruel, revengeful, deceitful despot sat upon the throne of England-James. He sent a special judge into the western counties of England to try the people who had protested and risen against his tyranny, and the name of Judge Jeffreys, and the “Bloody Assizes” that resulted from that sending of the special judge have been blots upon the pages of the history of England ever since.

Three hundred men were executed as a result of the sending of that special judge to try these men who spoke against tyranny and oppression. Shall history repeat it self in Colorado and in the United States? If so, we might as well remember that three years after the “Bloody Assizes,” King James left England forever in disgrace.

Now, many of you are immediately interested in the special case of John Lawson; and I must say that it is extremely difficult for me to speak with composure and restraint upon that subject, because I know John Lawson well, as some of you here do. I knew him very well for months, night and day. I was with him. I saw him under all sorts of circumstances, with every condition of men. He told me confidentially some of his most secret thoughts, his hopes and aspirations, and I know, as you know, that he is absolutely free from any taint of murder. Murder, or thought of murder never entered into his heart.

You know very well that many people considered him too fair, to the other side, too humane, too just; but I will tell you he was not, on the whole. He had a far seeing vision which would have led us all out of trouble if he had had the whole say. I have known many fine men in this country, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and I have known them well, but I have seldom seen, if I have ever seen, a finer man in character than John Lawson. But he is convicted of murder in the first degree and sentenced to life imprisonment at hard labor! Is that justice, especially when you consider upon what testimony he was convicted?

No one ever charged him in the case with having fired a shot, and all he was really guilty of was being a member of the international board of United Mine Workers of America; and he was convicted upon the testimony of such men as Linderfelt and that despicable spy and traitor, Snyder.

That testimony convicted John Lawson. It will never stand.

[Photographs and emphasis added.]

SOURCES

Out of the Depths
The Story of John R. Lawson, a Labor Leader
-by Barron B. Beshoar
(1st ed 1942)
CO, 1980

The Labor World
(Duluth, Minnesota)
-Jun 26, 1915
http://www.newspapers.com/…

IMAGES
U. S. Flag and Ludlow Flag
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/…
John Lawson, Mother Jones, Attorney Horace Hawkins
http://ludlowsymposium.wordpress.com/…
John Lawson with Olive and Fern
from Day Book of April 23, 1915, Last Edition
http://www.newspapers.com/…
John R Lawson with Louie Tikas during the strike.
http://ludlowsymposium.wordpress.com/…
James H Brewster, Professor of Law, Colorado
https://archive.org/…
The Death Special
https://www.du.edu/…
Forbes Tent Colony Destroyed March 1914
http://margolis.faculty.asu.edu/…

See also:

“Hellraisers Journal: Constitutional Rights Were Abolished
by Colorado Troops in the Strike Zone” by JayRaye
(Testimony of Professor Brewster before CIR)
http://www.dailykos.com/…

Militarism in Colorado: report of the committee appointed at the suggestion of the Governor of Colorado to investigate the conduct of the Colorado National Guard during the coal strike of 1913-1914.
Colorado State Federation of Labor, 1914″Are the track, the tipple and the tank more precious than the lives and liberties of men? If so, let us no longer pretend that this is a country for free men; let us openly announce that the dictator’s will is our law, and let us blow the constitution to shreds at the mouth of the mine owner’s machine gun.”

Image:
https://www.facebook.com/…

To read:
pdf!http://more.ppld.org:8080/…

Hellraisers + Brewster:
http://www.dailykos.com/…

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Coal Miner’s Daughter-Loretta Lynn

Well, I was born’d a coal miner’s daughter,
In a cabin, on a hill in Butcher Holler,
We were poor, but we had love,
That’s the one thing that daddy made sure of,
He shoveled coal t’ make a poor man’s dollar.
-Loretta Lynn

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PRESS ATTEMPT TO GAG FRANK WALSH FALLS FLAT

Frank P Walsh, Chairman
Commission on Industrial Relations
“““““

An audience that filled seats and standing room of the Stock Exchange restaurant last night joined with Frank P. Walsh in a laugh at an editorial in Victor Lawson’s Daily News. Walsh told how as chairman of the U. S. industrial relations commission he spoke in St. James church. The Daily News said Walsh is too aggressive, “mistook his duties,” is “not judicious.”

[Said Walsh:]At the end of this editorial was the amazing assertion that instead of acting as an investigator I am carrying on a crusade against poverty.

I had thought every decent-minded man and woman is in a crusade against poverty. I don’t see how any clean-hearted men and women can live in this world of today and not feel like crusading against poverty.

When I saw the Daily News rebuking me for carrying on a crusade against poverty, I was reminded of the old colored woman who shouted hallelujahs in a quiet, fashionable church.

Ushers asked her what was wrong. She answered: “I’se got religion.” Then they told her to hush, saying: “This is no place to get religion.”

The Daily News should understand that when I got my commission from the government I did not feel that I was gagged thereby. Furthermore, I refuse to be gagged by any editorials which protest about my making a crusade against poverty.

I believe in publicity. The very terms of the act under which our commission was created provide there shall be public hearings. We have examined 1,000 witnesses at public hearings.

We found the responsibility for the Colorado coal strike went back to one source. Since 1903, the time of the last strike, information in detail of every movement of importance in Colorado has been transmitted to the Rockefellers at 26 Broadway. Letters subpoenaed show that the day after Christmas in 1913, when thousands of miners had taken to the canyons, when men had been shot off their horses, when Sheriff Jeff Farr had under him 350 armed men, some of them ex-convicts and murderers, John D. Rockefeller, Sr., felt “unusual satisfaction” in the situation. His son wrote of this “unusual satisfaction” to Supt. L. M. Bowkers [Bowers].

Congressman Fowler said the commission has done good work in uncovering “transactions in high places.” He said:

I feel well paid for the vote I cast that this work should go on.

The Chicago Single Tax club organized the meeting.[Photograph and emphasis added.]

From The Day Book of June 7, 1915:

LEGISLATORS HOLD UP ALL LABOR MEASURES.

A list of the senators and representatives who are “double-crossing” labor will probably be made public within a few weeks by the Chicago Federation of Labor.For weeks a legislative committee has lobbied for the passage of labor bills. Yesterday they reported to the federation what had been done. The whole afternoon was taken up with the discussion of the report. Members of the committee told how, when an important bill was called for a reading, senators and representatives would leave their seats.

“It wasn’t the active opposition we have had to fight so much as the refusal of the legislators to vote,” says the report. “At times the number of vacant seats was high as 72.”

For weeks the legislative committees of labor organizations have been following the bills through committees, subcommittees, first, second and third readings and all of the other sidetracks used to defeat progressive measures. So far not one of these bills has been signed by the governor. The majority of them have been so cut and amended that the men who have introduced them cannot recognize them. The committee is considering holding a meeting after the present session of the legislature to discuss the attitude of certain legislators toward the bills which they had promised to support.

The committee also urged the delegates to support the anti-injunction bill which is now before the senate.

Following Victor Olander, secretary of the Ill. Federation of Labor, Andrew Furuseth, president of the Seamen’s union, spoke for the bill.

“It is the most important so far introduced,” he said. “Upon it hangs the life of organized labor. It takes away from the judges the power to issue injunctions against personal rights. Labor is not a commodity or an article of commerce and when a judge issues an injunction such as that which was issued against the Waitresses’ union he is going beyond his jurisdiction. The bill must be passed.”

Among the resolutions was one introduced by Sec’y Nockels upholding and endorsing Frank Walsh, head of U. S. industrial relations commission, against the attacks made by the press and the National Manufacturers’ ass’n. The resolution also thanks Walsh for the publicity which he has given the Rockefellers in their connection with the Colorado labor war.

Following a communication from the Colorado State Federation of Labor telling how John R. Lawson was convicted by a jury picked from people loitering around the courtroom, a resolution was passed giving the executive board of the federation the power to call a mass meeting to protest against the conviction of Lawson. Chairman Walsh will be invited to be the principal speaker….

SOURCE

The Day Book
(Chicago, Illinois)
-Jun 5, 1915
http://www.newspapers.com/…
-Jun 7, 1915
http://www.newspapers.com/…IMAGES
Frank P. Walsh from Harpers Weekly
of Sept 27, 1913
http://books.google.com/…
Chicago Federation of Labor Emblem
http://en.wikipedia.org/…

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Our Own Road by Daniel Clingman – A Song For Solidarity with CTU

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Frank P. Walsh, chairman commission on industrial relations, in Chicago. Says commission is through work. Fixing up report.[Photograph added.]

From The Topeka Daily Capital of June 4, 1915:

PREPARING THE REPORT OF THE INDUSTRIAL COMMISSION.

Original Members of the Commission on Industrial Relations
James O’Connell, Frederick Delano, John R Commons, A B Garretson, Mrs. J. Borden Harriman,
S. Thurston Ballard, Frank P Walsh, Harris Weinstock, John B Lennon

The Industrial Relations Commission is preparing its report, after many months of inquiry into industrial relations, notably in the Colorado case, though the Commission has investigated conditions generally and Colorado will by no means make up its entire report. What Chairman Walsh’s conclusions will be the public already knows. He believes that capitalists of the Rockefeller class are enemies of the human race, and that when labor fights such overlords by every method of the strike it makes “the same old fight for liberty and democracy against an enemy as powerful and menacing as any ever faced by our Revolutionary forefathers”.But what remedied Mr. Walsh has to offer, if any, does not yet appear. Whether the other members of this commission, or a majority, agree with Mr. Walsh is an interesting question that their report will answer, for there has been strong pressure upon the commission to break away from the chairman, who has been bitterly and widely criticised for his antagonistic attitude towards the Rockefellers and for making up his mind, so far as they and their sort of capitalists are concerned, before the evidence was in. The other members of the commission have given no inkling of their sympathies.

Mr. Walsh’s attitude and his vigorous prosecution of the investigation have advertised this commission as no other special commission was ever before brought to public attention, and its report, it is safe to say, will be more closely read and will be regarded more as a matter of news by the news associations when it appears than has been the case heretofore with industrial commissions, of which there have been several in this country.

Six Members of Commission on Industrial Relations at Shoreham Hotel, May 1915
John B Lennon, Frank P Walsh, James O’ Connell, Harris Weinstock, R H Aishton, A B Garretson
Note: missing from photograph are S. Thurston Ballard, Mrs. J Bordon Harriman, John R Commons.
Mr. Aishton, fifth from left, replaced Mr. Delano this past January.

—–[Photographs added.]

From The Day Book of June 8, 1915:

WOULDN’T JOHN D., JR., LIKE TO KNOW
HOW HE’LL VOTE

Prof. John R. Commons of the United States commission on industrial relations may cast the deciding vote that will place the responsibility for the Colorado strike either on the Colorado Fuel & Iron Co.-the Rockefeller interests-or upon the miners.There are nine members of the commission and it is said that their report on the strike hangs on the Wisconsin university professor.

The Day Book
(Chicago, Illinois)
-June 4, 1915
http://www.newspapers.com/…
-June 8, 1915
(Also source for image of John R Commons)
http://www.newspapers.com/…

The Topeka Daily Capital
(Topeka, Kansas)
-June 4, 1915
http://www.newspapers.com/…

IMAGES
Frank P. Walsh from Harpers Weekly
of Sept 27, 1913,
http://books.google.com/…
Commission on Industrial Relations, 1913
http://www.loc.gov/…
Six Members (3 not shown)
of the Commission on Industrial Relations, 1915
http://www.loc.gov/…

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The Commission on Industrial Relations was made up of nine members who were appointed in 1913 by President Wilson. Three members were appointed to represent the public, three to represent labor, and three to represent the employers.From the Everett (Washington) Labor Journal of February 16, 1917:

VALUABLE VOLUMES OF TESTIMONY
—–
(By Dante Barton)There has just been issued from the Government Printing Office in Washington the completed volumes of the Testimony submitted to congress by the United [States?] Commission on Industrial Relations of which Frank P. Walsh was chairman.

One of the first of the important industrial acts of the Wilson administration was the appointment by President Wilson of this Industrial Relations Commission with the following membership selected by him. Frank P. Walsh of Missouri, Chairman; John R. Commons of Wisconsin and Mrs. J. Borden Harriman of New York, representing the general public; John B. Lennon of Illinois, James O’ Connell of Washington, D. C. and Austin B. Garretson of Iowa, representing organized labor; and Frederick A. Delano of Illinois; Harris Weinstock of California and S. Thurston Ballard of Kentucky, representing employers. Upon the resignation of Mr. Delano, to accept a place on the Federal Reserve board, the President named Richard H. Aishton, of Illinois, who finished out the term….

[Emphasis added.]

From The Washington Post of January 7, 1915:

JOB FOR R. H. AISHTON
—–
Railroad Man Nominated to Fill Delano’s Place
—–Richard H. Aishton, a Chicago railroad official, was nominated yesterday by President Wilson to succeed Frederic A. Delano, as a member of the industrial relations commission. Mr. Delano was appointed to the Federal reserve board.

SOURCES Washington » Everett » The Labor Journal
-Feb 16, 1917
http://www.newspapers.com/…

District of Columbia » Washington » The Washington Post
-Jan 7, 1915
http://www.newspapers.com/…

IMAGE

Commission on Industrial Relations,
from the International Socialist Review of June 1915
https://books.google.com/…

See also:

Industrial relations: final report and testimony
United States. Commission on Industrial Relations
-ed by Francis Patrick Walsh, Basil Maxwell Manly
D.C. Gov. Print. Office, 1916

Volume 1: 1-1024
https://books.google.com/…

Volume 2: 1025-2050
https://books.google.com/…

Volume 3: 2051-3032
https://books.google.com/…

Volume 4: 3033-4096
https://books.google.com/…

Volume 5: 4097-5086
https://books.google.com/…

Volume 6: 5087-6000
https://books.google.com/…

Volume 7: 6001-6998
https://books.google.com/…

Volume 8: 6999-8014
https://books.google.com/…

Volume 9: 8015-9056
https://books.google.com/…

Volume 10: 9057-10,066
https://books.google.com/…

Volume 11: 10,067-11,260
11,225-Idex of Subjects
11,227-Index of Witnesses
https://books.google.com/…

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The Workers Song – Dropkick Murphys

We’re the first ones to starve
The first ones to die
The first ones in line
For that pie-in-the-sky
And always the last
When the cream is shared out
For the worker is working
When the fat cat’s about
-Ed Pickford

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Under Sentence to be Shot.Salt Lake City, Utah, May 28.-The appeal in the case of Joseph Hillstrom who is under sentence to be executed by shooting, came up for hearing in the state supreme court today. Hillstrom was convicted and sentenced to death for the alleged murder of J. G. Morrison and J. Arlin Morrison [this is incorrect, Joe was never tried nor convicted for the murder of J. Arlin Morrison]. The double killing occurred during a hold-up of a grocery store of which the victims were the proprietors.

—–

Representing Joe Hill before the Utah Supreme Court was Judge Orrin N. Hilton who expressed optimism that the conviction and death sentence of his client would be overturned.

The life of Fellow Worker Joe Hill now hangs in the balance of Utah Justice.From the Chicago Day Book of May 28, 1915:

…Mass meeting to be held at I. W. W. headquarters 644 W. 12th, Saturday evening to protest against execution of Joe Hill, Salt Lake City, sentenced to be shot…

The Evening Kansan-Republican
(Newton, Kansas)
-May 28, 1915
http://www.newspapers.com/…

The Day Book
(Chicago, Illinois)
-May 28, 1915
http://www.newspapers.com/…

IMAGES

Orrin N Hilton
http://darrow.law.umn.edu/…
Joe Hill
http://www.freedomarchives.org/…

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                                                                                                       S. L. Cy,
June 6, 1915.
Sam Murray
Friend and Fellow Worker:
Your welcome letter received, and am glad to note that you are still sticking to your “little cabin in the hills.” I would like to get a little of that close to nature stuff myself for a couple of months in order to regain a little vitality, and a little flesh on my rotting bones. My case was argued on the 28th of May, and according to Judge Hilton, the results were satisfactory. He says he is sure of securing a reversal, and if so there hardly will be another trial, for the simple reason that there won’t be anything to try, if I can get a lawyer that will defend me.

With best wishes to all the rebels, Yours for the OBU,

Joe Hill.

P. S. I’ve just found out that the Superior Court judges are getting ready to go on their vacation until next fall, so I guess there won’t be anything decided on my case for some time. But “everything comes to him who waits” they say, and that’s the only consolation I got now.–Joe.

Brev Till Sam Murray – Joe Hill – Mats Paulson

                                                                                                      Salt Lake City,
Feb. 13, 1915.
Sam Murray
Friend and Fellow worker;Should have answered your letter before, but have been busy working on a song named “The Rebel Girl” (Words and Music), which I hope will help line up the women workers in the OBU, and I hope you will excuse me.

I see you made a big thing out that Tipperary song [$50 had been raised in San Francisco selling song cards at 5 cents each]. In fact, a whole lot more than I ever expected, I don’t suppose that it would sell very well outside of Frisco, though by the way I got a letter from Swasey in NY and he told me that “Casey Jones” made quite a hit in London and “Casey Jones,” he was an Angelino you know, and I never expected that he would leave Los Angeles at all.

The other day we got ten bucks from a company of soldiers stationed on the Mexican line. How is that old top? Maybe they are remembering some of the cigars in glass bottles that they smoked at the expense of the “Tierra e Libertad” bunch.

Don’t know much about my case. The Sup. Court will “sit on” it sometime in the sweet bye and bye and that’s all I know about it.

Give my best to the bunch. — Joe Hill

SOURCE

The Letters of Joe Hill
-ed by Philip S Foner
Oak Publications, 1965
https://books.google.com/…IMAGE
Joe Hill
http://en.wikipedia.org/…

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Soppkö i Reinfeldts Sverige 2012

Bill Brown was just a working man like others of his kind.
He lost his job and tramped the streets when work was hard to find.
The landlord put him on the stem, the bankers kept his dough,
And Bill heard everybody sing, no matter where he’d go:

CHORUS:
It’s a long way down to the soupline,
It’s a long way to go.
It’s a long way down to the soupline,
And the soup is thin I know.
Good bye, good old pork chops,
Farewell, beefsteak rare;
It’s a long way down to the soupline,
But my soup is there.

So Bill and sixteen million men responded to the call
To force the hours of labor down and thus make jobs for all.
They picketed the industries and won the four-hour day
And organized a General Strike so men don’t have to say:

The workers own the factories now, where jobs were once destroyed
By big machines that filled the world with hungry unemployed.
They all own homes, they’re living well, they’re happy, free and strong,
But millionaires wear overalls and sing this little song:
-Joe Hill

Link to explanation of video, translated from Swedish into English
http://translate.google.com/…

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“The great achievement of this congress,” said Miss Addams thoughtfully, “is to my mind the getting together of these women from all parts of Europe, when their men-folks are shooting each other from opposite trenches. When in every warring country there is such a wonderful awakening of national consciousness flowing from heart to heart, it is a supreme effort of heroism to rise to the feeling of internationalism, with out losing patriotism.”

From The Survey of June 5, 1915:

The Women at the Hague

By Mary Chamberlain
OF THE STAFF OF THE SURVEY

The four of us sat over coffee in the cafe of the Hotel Central in The Hague.Soldiers in peaked caps, loitering with their sweethearts, passed the window; bicyclists zigzagged dangerously through the crowd; and once in a while, the last bit of Dutch picturesqueness—the wooden shoes, flaring white head-dress and gold hair-pins of a peasant woman, kept us aware that this black-coated orthodox stream of passers-by was not the ebb and flow of Broadway. Inside, the vermilion trimmings and gold braid of smart uniforms gave color to the stodgy gathering of Dutch folk, and a jolly American rag-time, though bereft of the American café dance-floor, lightened the heavy menu of fish and meats and compotes.

The International Congress of Women was over. The four of us were journalists—tired with taking notes, seeking interviews, hurrying to meetings, straining our ears to foreign languages. We were in danger of losing sight of the spirit of the congress in our zeal to “get a story” from some delegate, in our efforts to straighten out names and numbers and speeches. Now for the first time we were trying to touch this spirit and to clear our vision by an exchange of impressions.

“It was bourgeois,” said the Socialist, “a gathering of sentimentalists. The real people who want the war stopped are the working people and they would have nothing to do with this congress. To me it seemed barren and cold. Why, I’ve heard a little East Side striker rouse a meeting to a pitch of enthusiasm that was never touched by those clubwomen and suffrages leaders.”

“Self-control, you mean, not lack of feeling,” objected the short-story writer, felt a great swell of emotion under the reserve of those women from warring nations. Constraint was necessary or it would have burst on the meeting like a shower of shrapnel.”

“And as for the delegates from neutral countries,” added the newspaper woman, “I’m sure the minds of many or those women were poisoned for the first time with the fear of war. For the first time I believe that hundreds of Dutch women in that audience realized that war would mean the flowers of Holland soaked with the blood of the recruits drilling there in front of the Dierentium where the congress met.”

From the press-table of the congress back to America, to England, to Germany, to Scandinavia, I knew criticisms had gone as diverse as these. With them had gone others less honest, less intelligent, more partisan. The newspapers of the countries from which the delegates came denounced the congress as “pro-German,” as traitorous, as hysterical, as base and silly. Some people claimed an influence for the congress far wider than it can attain for years, others decried it as futile.Bewildered by this wrangle and confusion. I left my friends in the café and went to Jane Addams to ask her opinion of the congress. For three days Miss Addams had, as president, steered the business of the congress through a sea of resolutions, amendments and suggestions given her in French, German, English and Dutch. She was thoroughly acquainted with the hitches and obstacles that clog every international conference and had been most closely in touch with the members of the congress.

“The great achievement of this congress,” said Miss Addams thoughtfully, “is to my mind the getting together of these women from all parts of Europe, when their men-folks are shooting each other from opposite trenches. When in every warring country there is such a wonderful awakening of national consciousness flowing from heart to heart, it is a supreme effort of heroism to rise to the feeling of internationalism, with out losing patriotism.”

With a rush of tenderness and sympathy I remembered some of the women who sat beside Miss Addams on the form at the congress—frail little Miss Courtney and Chrystal Macmillan, British to the fiber yet offering a hearty second to many resolutions proposed by, German delegates; Lida Gustava Heymann, whose honest straightforward ways made one smile at the insinuation of a congress packed with German spies; valiant Eugenie Hamer, who pushed through from Belgium with five companions; warm-hearted Rosika Schwimmer from Hungary; and Frau Leopoldine Kulka of Austria, with her quiet blue eyes and patient face.Nearly everyone of those women who sat there side by side so dignified and courteous, had brothers, husbands or friends facing each other in maddened fury or even now mown down by each other’s bullets. It was a great test of courage for these women to risk the bitterness of their families, the ridicule of their friends and the censure of their governments to come to this international woman’s congress. In the midst of the war tumult which is making all Europe shake. it meant a far sweep of imagination to realize that the feelings of mothers, sisters and wives are the same in all countries and it took the finest generosity for these women to associate themselves in a discussion of means to restore international good will.

The congress that bore this fruit was planned with doubt and misgivings. When the International Alliance for Women Suffrage held its last congress at Budapest in June, 1913, it was decided to hold the next convention at Berlin in June, 1915. Meanwhile the war broke out, kindling its hatred between nations and burning away all thought of an international suffrage gathering. However, a few broadminded women still held fast to their ideals in the midst of these rough realities. Among them, the Dutch National Committee for International Interests, a subdivision of the Alliance for Women Suffrage, ventured to lift up its voice. It proposed that the congress which it was impossible to hold at Berlin should be convoked instead in the Netherlands.

The twenty-six separate countries affiliated with the international alliance were approached, but the answers received were on the whole discouraging. The idea itself met with general favor but it was considered advisable to refrain from holding official assemblies. Therefore, the only chance of success lay in separately consulting the prominent women of the different countries, both belligerent and neutral.

This consultation took place with the result that a meeting was held on February 12-13 in Amsterdam, attended by a number of British, German, Dutch and Belgian women. Here the plans for the International Congress of Women were laid, the preliminary program was drawn, invitations were sent out, committees appointed and the emphasis of the congress turned from political equality to peace.

The next difficulty in the path of the congress confronted, not the central committee at The Hague but those who desired to take part in the conference. It was one thing for these women to accept the invitation to the congress; it was another for them to reach Holland.

Of 180 British women accepting the invitation to the congress, two only arrived—Kathleen Courtney and Chrystal Macmillan, English suffragists and members of the International Committee on Resolutions, who reached The Hague a week before the congress opened. The other 178 were first pared down to 24 by the secretary for Foreign Affair, who advised the Home Ofiice to limit the issuance of passports.

Reginald McKenna, British secretary of State for Home Affairs, has explained this action by stating that his colleague in the Department for Foreign Affairs believed that so large a number of English women in a city near to the scene of war and infested with the enemy’s spies would constitute a danger for the country. Therefore 24 delegates were sorted out, representing the most important organizations and seeming most prudent in giving out information. In doing this Mr. McKenna, was careful to make it understood that these delegates had received no official character.

The reason for the non-appearance of these twenty-four picked delegates is not quite so clear and must be explained as the “fortunes of war.” When a member of parliament who objected to the participation of English women in the congress, asked Mr. McKenna if any of the twenty-four had actually reached The Hague, the secretary replied: “No, indeed. You know that all communication between England and Holland was interrupted after the delegates received their passports.”

But while these twenty-four women were waiting at Folkstone for any sort of boat to convey them to Holland, Miss Courtney and Miss Macmillan were making up in quality of membership what England lacked in quantity. It was the hard work and perseverance of these two women that made one almost forget the small proportion of delegates from this allied nation in the membership of the congress. One Canadian delegate, Laura Hughes of Toronto, crossed the Atlantic to represent the colonies.

The action of the British government in suspending traffic between England and Holland was also responsible for nearly cutting off the American contingent from the congress. For four days the steamship Noordam, loaded with ammunition for the Dutch government in the hold, and with forty-two peace delegates to the Dutch capital in the first cabin, lay at anchor off Diel.The delegates sent telegrams to the American ambassador at London and the American consul at Dover; they held meetings to devise ways and means to investigate the halt; finally, they settled down to face the fact that they were as nothing compared to the transference of troops to France or the movements of 5 the British fleet. Then just as mysteriously as she had been delayed, the Noordam was ordered to proceed, and we reached Rotterdam without meeting mines or further mishaps, the very day the congress opened.

Much has been said by the press and critics of the congress of the “Germanizing” of this peace meeting. The thirty German delegates and the fifteen Austrians and Hungarians present have been Called the “Kaiser’s cat’s-paws,” German spies and many other names. It has been suggested that the German and Austro-Hungarian governments were only too glad to be represented at a Peace meeting; it has even been hinted that the expenses of the congress were met by German government funds. Strangely enough, the newspapers of a Country from which a large number of delegates were excluded by government this orders,—Great Britain—were loudest in proclaiming that the congress was steamrollered by the Germans!

As a matter of fact, the way of the German, Austrian and Hungarian delegates was not altogether paved with ease and cordiality. Although they finally received their passports without trouble, they were at first suspected by their governments and at all times they have been the butt of ridicule and calumny of the press and the general public. The union of German women, for example, has almost unanimously denounced the participation of German women in the congress.

All the delegates openly declared that they did not represent the sentiment of the majority of women in their father lands, but only small, radical groups. Among them are women whose names are well known to the International Suffrage Alliance and in social work.

Anita Augspurg and Lida G. Heymann of Munich, are founders of the suffrage movement in Germany; Helene Stocker and Fraulein Rotten of Berlin are, respectively, president of the League for the Protection of Mothers, and an officer of the League for the Care of Prisoners; Rosika Schwimmer of Hungary, represented the Association of Agricultural Woman Laborers, a suffrage organization of peasant women; Vilma G. Gucklich and Paula Pogany, are the president and secretary of the Hungarian Feminist Alliance; Anna Zipernowsky is a member of the Hungarian Peace Association; Leopoldine Kulka and Olga Misar came as delegates of the Austrian Women’s Union (suffrage); Bertha Frolich, as delegate of the Society of Temperance women; and Darynska Golinska came from Austrian Poland with a memorial, from the suffering Polish women demanding the rebuilding of an independent Poland as an “indispensable reservation” in a lasting peace.

Likewise Rosa Genoni of Milan, lecturer, writer, and the sole delegate from Italy, did not claim to represent the widespread feeling of her country-women. “The other women in Italy,” said Madame Genoni, “were frightened to cross Germany to Holland, for they fear in Italy that war may break out any minute. Alas! in Italy they do not think only of peace. Everybody desires it perhaps, but first of all they think of national interest. Even the peace associations in Italy are drawn into the mesh of war.”

SOURCE
The Survey, Volume 34
Survey Associates, 1915
https://books.google.com/…
The Survey of June 5, 1915
https://books.google.com/…
“The Women at the Hague” by Mary Chamberlain
(Source, also, for all images within article.)
https://books.google.com/…

IMAGE
International Congress of Women. The Hague,
Speakers Table, April 28 to May 1, 1915.
https://archive.org/…

See also:
Report of the International Congress of Women:
Hague-The Netherlands, April 28th to May 1st, 1915
Printed by the Women’s Peace Party
https://archive.org/…

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The Cruel War – Peter, Paul & Mary

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Dr Aletta Jacobs
““`

In the June 5th edition of The Survey, staff writer, Mary Chamberlain, reported on the International Congress of Women which met at The Hague from April 28th to May 1st. More than 1,200 delegates from European nations, the United States and Canada met and dedicated themselves to the cause of peace. The delegates included women from the both the belligerent and neutral countries.The International Congress of Women was organized by Dr. Aletta Jacobs of the Netherlands who gave a welcoming speech on the first evening of the congress in which she told the assembled delegates:

With mourning hearts we stand united here. We grieve for many brave young men who have lost their lives on the battlefield before attaining their full manhood; we mourn with the poor mothers bereft of their sons; with the thousands of young widows and fatherless children, and we feel that we can no longer endure in this twentieth century of civilization that governments should tolerate brute force as the only soutane of international disputes.

Yesterday Hellraisers published Part I of the report by Mary Chamberlain, today we offer Part II for the conclusion of the article.

From The Survey of June 5, 1915:

[continued]

The Women at the Hague
—–

By Mary Chamberlain
OF THE STAFF OF THE SURVEY

From the Scandinavian countries came large delegations to the congress, representing in most instances the committees formed in these northern nations for the international congress. Among them stood out such names as Anna Lindhagen of Sweden, inspector of children’s institutions and one of the seven women members of the town council of Stockholm; and Thora Daugaard of Denmark, representing 15,000 suffragists.No Russian or French woman attended the congress. Whereas the European press overlooked much that was of real and lasting importance in the congress, few papers failed to publish in full the manifesto of the Conseil National des Femmes Francaises and L’Union pour le Suffrage des Femmes, organizations representing more than 150,000 French women. The manifesto is addressed “to the women of neutral and allied countries.” It is a touching document courteously declining for French women a share in the congress and proudly declaring that “in order that future generations may reap the fruit of this magnificent display of self-sacrifice and death, French women will bear the conflict as long as it will be necessary. At this time united with those who battle and die, they do not know how to talk of peace.”

The manifesto further proposes that French women can talk of peace only when justice has been triumphantly vindicated by the heroic defenders of the French nation.

In spite of this manifesto many letters were received from individual French women telling their desire to reach the congress and of the impossibility of traveling so far. Among them was a telegram of sympathy from Jules Siegfried, president of the Conseil National des Femmes Francaises, and a letter signed by Mme. Duchéne, chairman of the Section du Travail du Conseil National and by some fifteen working women, which offered to “the women of other nations good wishes and assurance that we are ready to work with them more ardently than ever to prepare the ‘peace of tomorrow.‘ ”

Russian women sent a letter expressing much the same sentiment as did the French manifesto, but the very feeling which kept these French and Russian women from the congress drove five valiant little Belgian women across the border into Holland from devastated Belgium. Eugene Hamer and Mlle. Sarton, vice-president and treasurer of L’Alliance Belge des Femmes pour la Paix par l’Education, decided that no peace congress attended by German and Austrian delegates should pass resolutions without a hearing before Belgian women. They determined not to vote but to protest against any measure, such as the calling of an armistice, which they deemed unjust to their country.

With three companions they obtained permission from the German authorities to go. They went by automobile to Esschen, where they were searched to the skin; thence they walked for two hours to Rosendahl across the Dutch border, and from there they traveled to The Hague by train. Then, when Mlle. Hamer and her friends at last reached the congress, it was Dr. Augspurg of Munich who welcomed them to a seat on the platform.

So, over seas and mountains, pushing aside dangers and obstacles, more than three hundred women “got together” with the Dutch delegates and visitors who crowded the meetings night after night. However any might criticize the proceedings of the congress, none could fail to admire the magnificent spirit of these women who dared clasp hands with women from an enemy country. Even if this international congress wields little influence, it was, as Miss Addams said, a lasting achievement in thus uniting from every corner of Europe different sympathies and beliefs in one great yearning for peace.

But as I talked with Miss Addams, another thought came into my mind. Was it not, I asked her, a higher test of courage than “getting together” when the trenches were bleeding with wounded comrades, to “stick together” until out of their common suffering these women evolved a charter of common aspiration? Someone in the café had spoken of a mutual distrust that seemed to constrain the delegates. Now, talking with Miss Addams, I realized how this mistrust had gradually melted. Like my Socialist friend, I missed the flare of passion which kindles a meeting held to score a specific wrong; I revolted some times at dodging realities and floating in a cloud of theories; I, too, missed the vigorous robust solidarity of a congress bound together by the sense of the inter-dependence of labor. But more and more I was feeling that strong, sober solidarity based on universal mourning.”Everybody talks about victory,” said Rosika Schwimmer in one of her stirring speeches, “but we women know that every victory means the death of thousands of sons of other mothers.”

It was grief and sympathy that welded us together.

At the first session of the congress, without a dissenting voice a motion was carried making the basis of membership in the congress the acceptance of two resolutions—that women shall be granted equal political rights with men and that future international disputes shall be subject to conciliation and arbitration.

With the meeting-ground of the congress thus defined, the way was left open for debate and discussion on any other resolution to be considered. But so great was the unity of feeling that day after day of conferences slid by with no or little friction. Indeed, the monotony of perfect accord caused us at the press table to snatch and overemphasize the faintest spark of sensationalism—the harangue, for instance, of the militant suffragette who vowed that for every woman in England wishing to attend the peace congress 1,000 wished to fight; or the excitement of a Belgian lady who thought that the phrase “backward nations” referred to Belgium.

Many resolutions were passed unanimously such as those protesting against women’s sufferings in war, demanding democratic control of foreign policy, urging that the education of children be directed toward peace and that women be represented in the conference of powers after the war. Even the radical resolutions introduced by the American contingent went through without protest. Among these were resolutions calling for open seas and free trade routes, for the acceptance of the principle that investments in a foreign country be made at the risk of the investor, for mediation without armistice and for the establishment of a permanent international conference which shall deal with practical proposals for future international co-operation and shall appoint a permanent council of conciliation for the settlement of differences arising from social and economic causes.

From the German delegates came a resolution of even greater import which repudiates the right of conquest. This resolution affirms that there shall be no transference of territory without the consent of the residents and urges that autonomy and a democratic parliament shall not be refused to any people.

When the resolution came up for vote advocating universal disarmament and urging all countries to take over the manufacture of arms and munitions of war and to control international traffic in the same, a stir was created by a United States who delegate moved an amendment that “traffic in arms from neutral countries be prohibited.” Miss Addams ruled the amendment out of order as bearing upon present conditions, but added that she herself as an American citizen favored it.

Aside from the delay and slight confusion caused by tedious translation, there was but one hitch in the proceedings of the congress. It came after Madame Schwimmer’s appeal for women‘ to “call a thunderous halt tomorrow that shall overthrow the thunder of the trenches.” By a rising vote the conference had voted to accept without debate this resolution urging the governments of the world to put an end to bloodshed and to begin peace negotiations. Then Mlle. Hamer, burning with the spirit of the French manifesto, pleaded for a peace based on justice “which would return to Belgium her liberty, independence, richness and prosperity.” Unanimously the congress voted to insert in this most important of resolutions:

“The congress demands that the peace which follows shall be permanent and therefore based on principles of justice.”

Thus “arbitration” bridged the one division of feeling in the congress which threatened a serious split.

What will come of it all?

That is what the world of practical people, who demand immediate results, is asking.

When I questioned my Socialist friend, she scoffed at little bitterly, “A lot of talk that will blow away with the delegates.” But the newspaper woman reflected that it would leave its stamp on the woman movement in every country, and the magazine writer declared that its end was already attained in dispelling the idea of implacable hatred between women of warring countries.

The one immediate step of the congress was to delegate envoys, women from both neutral and, belligerent nations, to carry the message expressed in the congress resolutions to combatants and non-combatant countries. Already Jane Addams, Aletta H. Jacobs, chairman of the executive committee of the congress, and Rosa Genoni of Italy, have been received by the court of Holland, have presented the resolutions to the prime minister of England and have come back to the continent in a tour which includes the capitals of Germany, Belgium, France and Austria. They will later be joined by Kathleen Courtney of England and Anita Augspurg of Germany, and will visit the neutral countries of Switzerland, Spain and United States. The entrance of Italy into the war will prevent these delegates visiting Rome as planned.

Meanwhile another group has been appointed to go to Denmark, Sweden Norway, and Russia.

To students of diplomacy and to the “practical” people of the world the expeditions will seem, like the congress itself, the action of visionaries. They will laugh at a “parcel of women” bearing resolutions to prime ministers who are vexed with the burdens of war. They will sneer at its futility and assail its temerity. But to others, and especially to us who attended the congress, the mission of these women will mean that the spirit of the congress will not be girded by the canals of Holland but will reach across trenches smoking with war.

SOURCESThe Survey, Volume 34
Survey Associates, 1915
https://books.google.com/…
The Survey of June 5, 1915
https://books.google.com/…
“The Women at the Hague” by Mary Chamberlain
(Source, also, for all images within article.)
https://books.google.com/…

Report of the International Congress of Women:
Hague-The Netherlands,
April 28th to May 1st, 1915
Printed by the Women’s Peace Party
https://archive.org/…
Officers of the Congress and
The Resolutions can be viewed here:
https://archive.org/…

IMAGES
International Congress of Women. The Hague,
Great Hall of the Dierentium,
April 28 to May 1, 1915.
https://archive.org/…
Aletta Jacobs
http://spartacus-educational.com/…
Report Title Page
https://archive.org/…

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Where Have All the Flowers Gone – Peter, Paul & Mary

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The newspaper describes the whirlwind trip she made, so typical of the indefatigable Mother Jones:

Albia.Mrs. Mary Jones, commonly known as “Mother Jones” was in Albia Monday [June 14th], coming here by appointment with J. P. White, international president of the United Mine Workers. The meeting was for the purpose of arranging a schedule of protest meetings that are to be held in the large centers, beginning within a short time. These meetings are held protesting against the action that was taken by the state officials as the out-growth of the labor trouble in Colorado last year. Mother Jones is truly a remarkable woman. She is past 80 years of age, but has the vitality of the ordinary woman at 50 years. Mrs. Jones made the trip here from Colorado, arriving here on No. 6 and leaving the same evening on No. 9 for the return trip to Colorado, a trip that would tax the vitality of almost any young woman. Only a very few knew Mother Jones was in town until she had departed.

SOURCE
Evening Times-Republican
(Marshalltown, Iowa)
-June 15, 1915
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/…

IMAGE
Mother Jones on Cover of United Mine Workers Journal
of Jan 21, 1915, Repaired by JtC (Thank you, Johnny)
http://books.google.com/…

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                                                                                                          Denver, Colo.
10 June 1915
My dear Mary:

I want to drop you a line or two to say that I have not forgotten you, now will I ever forget you, I meet so few like you, in all my [?]. You were married some time before I heard of it. I think Mr. West of the Industrial Relations Commission was the first who told me. I want to extend my congratulations to you and express my hopes for happy years for you and your companion in life. May the bitterness that surrounds us forever disappear from your life and the sunshine surround your home and loved ones in every hour of your future history.
I expected, dear Mary to go west. Was to start tomorrow, but I am called on to go east to hold meetings of protest against the horrible, unjust decisions of the court in dealing with our people. I hope though, that later in the Summer I will be able to go west and see you and a few more friends I have there.
Give my regards to Tiedemore [Tveitmoe?] when you see him. He is one good, brave, soul, that I have admiration for.
I wish you would gather a few copies of Everyman and send him to me. I saw Mr. Darrow at Washington, at the hearing. He always speaks of you warmly, but I never have much time when I go through Chicago.
I close, Mary, not finally, because I shall write to you again and let me assure you of my devotion to you and wherever I can be of service to [?], let me know.
I am always yours until death closes my eyes.
Warmest wishes to your devoted companion in life.
[?] Sincerely
Mother Jones[Image added.]

More on Mary Field Parton:

Mary Field Parton, with husband and daughter, 1923

Mary Field Parton, [mother of Margaret Parton], was born in 1878 in Cincinnati and raised in Detroit by a strict Protestant father. Later, Mary revolted against her upbringing and attended the University of Michigan. She taught school in Ovid, Michigan for two years and after being influenced by Eugene Debs during a lecture, moved to Chicago where she worked in one of Jane Addams’ settlement houses. She began working as a labor reporter around 1908 when she became acquainted with Clarence Darrow. According to Margaret Parton, they had a brief affair and remained life-long friends. The letters between Darrow and Mary Field which are mentioned in Journey Through a Lighted Room are in the Newberry Library in Chicago. Mary Field covered many labor trials, including the McNamara trial in Los Angeles. In 1913 she married Lemuel Parton and in 1915 Margaret was born. Mary continued to write; between the 1920’s and 1940’s she wrote fiction and many magazine articles. Her books include a biography of Mother Jones (1928?) [this is incorrect, she edited the Autobiography of Mother Jones (1925)] and Your Washington (1938). Mary Field Parton died in 1969.

SOURCES

The Correspondence of Mother Jones
-ed by Edward M Steel
U of Pittsburgh Press, 1985

Guide to the Margaret Parton papers 1885-1981
http://nwda.orbiscascade.org/…

IMAGE
Mother Jones Autobiography, 1925
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/…
Mary Field Parton, husband Lemuel Parton, daughter Magaret, 1923
https://books.google.com/…

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The Spirit of Mother Jones – Andy Irvine

Mother Jones, the Miners’ Angel must be treated with respect
She’s an old fashioned lady, and you never would suspect
That this gown and this bonnet would fill a rich man full of dread
“She’s the most dangerous woman in America,” they said.
-Andy Irvine

See Also:
Spirit of Mother Jones Festival July 2014

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JOHN D., JR., IS FOUND GUILTY OF MURDER IN
LETTERS SENT HIM BY NOTED WRITERS

John D. Rockefeller, Jr., whose father is one of the chief owners of Chicago street car lines, is held “guilty of murder in the first degree” and indicted ” before the bar of humanity” in a letter signed by thirty magazine writers, cartoonists and social justice agitators.The letter which was delivered to young Rockefeller yesterday is signed by two former Chicagoans, Floyd Dell, former editor of the Evening Post literary review, and Prof. Chas. Zueblin, former lecturer in the economics department of the University of Chicago.

Among others who deliberately point to Rockefeller, Jr., as a murderer are Hutchins Hapgood, labor editor of the New York Globe, brother of Norman Hapgood, editor of Harper’s Weekly, and Daniel Kiefer, a Cincinnati business man and single taxer, chief backer of The Public, a weekly single tax magazine published in Chicago.

Harvey J. O’Higgins, who made William J. Burns famous through a series of stories in McClure’s Magazine, also signs his name to the positive declaration that John D. Rockefeller, Jr., is a murderer in the first degree.

They point to John R. Lawson starting in life as a pitboy in the mines at the age of 8, becoming a labor organizer and winning “the confidence and love of his own people.”

We know him to be no murderer, but a man of unselfish soul. He has been tried and convicted before a judge and a jury in a purchased state. We, the undersigned men and women, having watched the course of events and made up our minds concerning them, declare our conviction that the guilt lies elsewhere.We hold you, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., guilty of murder in the first degree and we here indict you before the bar humanity.

Realizing that there are fanatical and violent persons who might consider it proper that you should pay with your life for such crimes, we wish to add that we do not believe in capital punishment for any crime, however atrocious. We should not even wish to punish you as you seek to punish Lawson with confinement in a prison hell for life.

Algernon Sidney Crapsey, Louis Untermeyer, Art Young, Ryan Walker, Will Levington Comfort, Paul Kennaday, Donald Lowrie, Upton Sinclair, W. D. P. Bliss, George Strerling, Leonard D. Abbott and Clement Wood are other signers

—–

The Text of the Letter

AN OPEN LETTER TO JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER, JR.
—–

JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER, Jr., 26 Broadway, New York City:     Sir—A year ago when the strike of the Colorado miners was at its crisis, the Colorado protest committee addressed to you a series of communications, pointing out what had been done under your authority in that state. We implored you in the name of humanity to change the policy of the Colorado Fuel & Iron Co., the destruction of the unions of the miners. We declared that if this policy were persisted in, if the strike were crushed with out compromise, we would hold you personally responsible before the civilized world. We declared that we would not permit you without protest to enjoy the financial profit of such a series of public crimes.

Since these letters were printed and published, not merely has the strike been crushed without compromise, but another crime has been added to the list: the conviction for murder and the sentence to life imprisonment of John R. Lawson, member of the executive board of the United Mine Workers, whose offense was that of the leader of the miners in their resistance to your company. And yet other wrongs are upon your program; for 82 other miners’ officials and miners are under indictment, and are to be railroaded to prison by the corporation controlled courts and juries of Colorado. We feel, therefore, that the time has come for enlightened people who have taken the trouble to follow this situation closely, to speak their opinion concerning your course of action.

In April of last year you appeared before an investigation committee of Congress and assumed, under oath, responsibility for the policy of the Colorado coal companies. Soon afterwards came the Ludlow massacre, and for the first time the truth about the strike situation was forced into the press. You then endeavored to evade the responsibility you had admitted, and in a statement to the President of the United States, and in your testimony before the United States Commission on Industrial Relations, you professed ignorance as to what had been done, and lack of power to prevent it. But since then we have been given the opportunity to read your correspondence with the president of the Colorado Fuel & Iron Co., and we know, beyond possibility of doubt, that you directed the policy of the companies, and are personally responsible for all they did. It is true that the situation in Colorado is the result of a long series of acts of cruelty committed before you came into control, but these acts you have made your own, and the policy of oppression and violence has been adopted whole-heartedly and completely by you.

This policy bases itself upon a high ethical principle—the rights of the independent free laborer. But under the conditions of large scale capitalist industry prevailing in the Colorado mines, this claim is a bitter mockery to the workers who are its victims, and an insult to the intelligence of social students. The miners in Colorado live in towns owned outright and managed autocratically. They live in company houses, they worship in company churches, they trade in company stores with company money. They have no redress for any grievances through political methods, be cause the mayor of the town is a company clerk, the Justice of the Peace a company boss, the Sheriff a company superintendent. For 30 years you and your associates have banished American institutions from the coal counties of Colorado, and have reduced the mining population to utter slavery. You kill 12 times as many men in accidents as are killed in similar mines in Austria; your control of Justice is such that in most cases there has not been even a coroner’s inquest—there has not been a cent of damages paid in some districts for ten years.

And when these slaves revolt, you decree the destruction of their last hope of redress, their union; and you decree it in the name of liberty! In the name of liberty you send in thousands of desperadoes and ex-convicts, called company detectives and mine guards, to terrorize helpless women and children. When these women and children appeal to the authorities and the State Militia is summoned, you enlist these desperadoes and ex-convicts in the militia; you clothe them in the uniform of the State, arm them with the weapons of the State, put the American flag over their heads and the money of the Colorado Fuel & Iron Co. into their pockets, and turn them loose with machine guns and torches to destroy a tent city inhabited by women and children. And when you are branded with this infamy before the civilized world, your published defense is that only one child was shot, that all the rest were suffocated by smoke in the underground refuge to which they had been drive.

And when miners, goaded to madness by the murder of their wives and babes, take up arms in defense of their homes, you use the machinery of the law, which you have owned and managed for 30 years, to sentence to a prison hell for life a man whose offense was—not that he killed any one—not that he had arms in his hands—but that he was the miners’ leader, the moral and intellectual power which kept alive their resistance to your tyranny!

Colorado Justice
“““““

John R. Lawson entered your mines as a pit-boy at the age of eight. He has educated himself, he has won the confidence and love of his own people. The American public was given an opportunity to judge him when he appeared before the Commission on Industrial Relations, a day or two after you yourself had testified. We know him to be no murderer, but a man of sterling character and unselfish soul. He has been tried and convicted before a judge and jury in a purchased state. We, the undersigned men and women, having watched the course of events and made up our minds concerning them, declare our mature conviction that the guilt lies elsewhere. We hold you, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., guilty of murder in the first degree, and we here indict you before the bar of humanity.

Realizing that there are fanatical and violent persons who might consider it proper that you should pay with your life for such crimes, we wish to add that we do not believe in capital punishment for any crime, however atrocious. We should not even wish to punish you as you seek to punish Lawson, with confinement in a prison hell for life. It is for profits that your crimes were committed, and it is by depriving you of profits that they must be punished—and at the same time prevented for all future time. At a meeting of 700 people, men and women of all classes, held last June upon the estate of Mrs. Charles J. Gould, in your home village of Tarrytown-on-the-Hudson, your own neighbors unanimously voted that your management of the Colorado mines has been such as to prove you unworthy of the responsibility, and that it was the sentiment of the meeting that the United States government shall confiscate these properties. This is the sentence we suggest for you; we call upon the voters of our country to carry it into effect—and we venture to express the opinion that it will not be many years before the call is heeded and the sentence carried out, to the last share of stock and the last penny of dividends.

Now We Will Talk by R. K. Chamberlain, from The Masses of March 1915
“““““

Leonard D. Abbott,
Jessie Ashley,
W. D. P. Bliss,
Will Levington Comfort,
Sada Cowan,
Algernon Sidney Crapsey,
Floyd Dell,
George Allen England,
Herman Epstein,
Hutchins Hapgood,
Paul Kenneday,
William Balfour Ker,
Daniel Kiefer,
Sinclair Lewis
Donald Lowrie,
John G. Neihardt,
Harvey J. O’Higgins,
Frank Shea,
Mary Craig Sinclair,
Upton Sinclair,
George Sterling,
Louis Untermeyer,
Allan Updegraff,
Maude Davis Walker,
Ryan Walker,
Joshua Wanhope,
James P. Warbasse,
Clement Wood,
Art Young,
Charles Zeublin[Photograph and drawins added.]

SOURCESThe Day Book
(Chicago, Illinois)
-June 18, 1915
(Also source for image within article.)
http://www.newspapers.com/…

The Painter and Decorator, Volume 29
Brotherhood of Painters, Decorators and Paperhangers of America, 1915
https://books.google.com/…
P&D Journal of July 1915
https://books.google.com/…
The Letter
https://books.google.com/…

IMAGES
John D Rockefeller Jr 1915
http://en.academic.ru/…
The Masses, JDR Jr Caught Red-Handed,
John Sloan, July 1914
http://dlib.nyu.edu/…
The Masses June 1914 Ludlow Pancoast
http://dlib.nyu.edu/…
Detail from drawing by K R Chamberlain.
The Masses. November 1914.
http://dlib.nyu.edu/…
The Masses June 1914 Rockefeller Groping for the Light
http://dlib.nyu.edu/…
The Murder of little Frankie Snyder during Ludlow Massacre.
A soldier referred to the boy’s body as “That Damn Thing”
http://john-adcock.blogspot.com/…
Colorado Mine Owner Instructs Judge re grand jury investigation.
By K R Chamberlain. The Masses. November 1914.
http://dlib.nyu.edu/…
The Masses Cover of June 1914
http://dlib.nyu.edu/…
Now We Will Talk by R. K. Chamberlain, from The Masses of March 1915
http://dlib.nyu.edu/…
Ludlow Massacre, Crucified
http://john-adcock.blogspot.com/…

See also:

“Hellraisers Journal [of April 7 1914]: Rockefeller Declares Open-Shop a “Great Principle,” Is Ready to Sacrifice Lives”  by JayRaye
http://www.dailykos.com/…

“Hellraisers Journal [of April 18, 1914]: Rockefeller Stands Ready to Sacrifice Wealth & Lives to Protect “Free” Labor” by JayRaye
http://www.dailykos.com/…

“WE NEVER FORGET April 20, 1914 The Ludlow Massacre” by JayRaye
http://www.dailykos.com/…

DK Search: John D Rockefeller Jr + Ludlow Massacre +JayRaye
http://www.dailykos.com/…

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They’ll Never Keep Us Down-Hazel Dickens

Well we’ve been shot and we’ve been jailed, Lord, it’s a sin
Women and little children stood right by the men
But we got that union contract that keeps the worker free
And they’ll never shoot that union out of me

They’ll never shoot that union out of me, oh no
They’ll never shoot that union out of me
Got a contract in our hand signed by the blood of honest men
And they’ll never shoot that union out of me
-Hazel Dickens

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SOICALST WRITERS BLAME ROCKEFELLER
——
Find Him “Guilty of Murder” and “Indict” Him
Before the “Bar of Humanity.”
—–
LUDLOW TROULBE REVIEWED
—–
Thirty-one Signers Allege Capitalist Procured
Conviction of John R. Lawson.
——In a long letter on the Colorado situation signed by thirty-one men and women, including novelists, short-story writers, and poets, who compose the Colorado Protest Committee. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., is held personally responsible for the labor troubles in that State. The climax of the letter is reached in this statement:

“We hold you, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., guilty of murder in the first degree, and we here indict you before the bar of humanity.”

The letter was made public yesterday. The committee refers to previous letters to the younger Mr. Rockefeller asking him to alter the policy of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company for the sake of humanity. The new manifesto charges him with obtaining the conviction for murder and sentence to life imprisonment of John R. Lawson, “whose offense was that he was the leader of the miners in their resistance to your company.”…..

SOURCE
The New York Times
(New York, New York)
-June 17, 1915
http://query.nytimes.com/…

IMAGE
“Well Pa, we’ve got John Lawson out of the way.”
by Maurice Becker for The Masses of June 1915
http://dlib.nyu.edu/…

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AN OPEN LETTER TO JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER, JR.
—–JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER, Jr., 26 Broadway, New York City:

The entire Costa Family perished in the Ludlow Massacre
(except for the baby who died of illness).
“““““

Sir—A year ago when the strike of the Colorado miners was at its crisis, the Colorado protest committee addressed to you a series of communications, pointing out what had been done under your authority in that state. We implored you in the name of humanity to change the policy of the Colorado Fuel & Iron Co., the destruction of the unions of the miners. We declared that if this policy were persisted in, if the strike were crushed with out compromise, we would hold you personally responsible before the civilized world. We declared that we would not permit you without protest to enjoy the financial profit of such a series of public crimes.      Since these letters were printed and published, not merely has the strike been crushed without compromise, but another crime has been added to the list: the conviction for murder and the sentence to life imprisonment of John R. Lawson, member of the executive board of the United Mine Workers, whose offense was that of the leader of the miners in their resistance to your company. And yet other wrongs are upon your program; for 82 other miners’ officials and miners are under indictment, and are to be railroaded to prison by the corporation controlled courts and juries of Colorado. We feel, therefore, that the time has come for enlightened people who have taken the trouble to follow this situation closely, to speak their opinion concerning your course of action.

In April of last year you appeared before an investigation committee of Congress and assumed, under oath, responsibility for the policy of the Colorado coal companies. Soon afterwards came the Ludlow massacre, and for the first time the truth about the strike situation was forced into the press. You then endeavored to evade the responsibility you had admitted, and in a statement to the President of the United States, and in your testimony before the United States Commission on Industrial Relations, you professed ignorance as to what had been done, and lack of power to prevent it. But since then we have been given the opportunity to read your correspondence with the president of the Colorado Fuel & Iron Co., and we know, beyond possibility of doubt, that you directed the policy of the companies, and are personally responsible for all they did. It is true that the situation in Colorado is the result of a long series of acts of cruelty committed before you came into control, but these acts you have made your own, and the policy of oppression and violence has been adopted whole-heartedly and completely by you.

This policy bases itself upon a high ethical principle—the rights of the independent free laborer. But under the conditions of large scale capitalist industry prevailing in the Colorado mines, this claim is a bitter mockery to the workers who are its victims, and an insult to the intelligence of social students. The miners in Colorado live in towns owned outright and managed autocratically. They live in company houses, they worship in company churches, they trade in company stores with company money. They have no redress for any grievances through political methods, be cause the mayor of the town is a company clerk, the Justice of the Peace a company boss, the Sheriff a company superintendent. For 30 years you and your associates have banished American institutions from the coal counties of Colorado, and have reduced the mining population to utter slavery. You kill 12 times as many men in accidents as are killed in similar mines in Austria; your control of Justice is such that in most cases there has not been even a coroner’s inquest—there has not been a cent of damages paid in some districts for ten years.

And when these slaves revolt, you decree the destruction of their last hope of redress, their union; and you decree it in the name of liberty! In the name of liberty you send in thousands of desperadoes and ex-convicts, called company detectives and mine guards, to terrorize helpless women and children. When these women and children appeal to the authorities and the State Militia is summoned, you enlist these desperadoes and ex-convicts in the militia; you clothe them in the uniform of the State, arm them with the weapons of the State, put the American flag over their heads and the money of the Colorado Fuel & Iron Co. into their pockets, and turn them loose with machine guns and torches to destroy a tent city inhabited by women and children. And when you are branded with this infamy before the civilized world, your published defense is that only one child was shot, that all the rest were suffocated by smoke in the underground refuge to which they had been drive.

And when miners, goaded to madness by the murder of their wives and babes, take up arms in defense of their homes, you use the machinery of the law, which you have owned and managed for 30 years, to sentence to a prison hell for life a man whose offense was—not that he killed any one—not that he had arms in his hands—but that he was the miners’ leader, the moral and intellectual power which kept alive their resistance to your tyranny!

John R. Lawson entered your mines as a pit-boy at the age of eight. He has educated himself, he has won the confidence and love of his own people. The American public was given an opportunity to judge him when he appeared before the Commission on Industrial Relations, a day or two after you yourself had testified. We know him to be no murderer, but a man of sterling character and unselfish soul. He has been tried and convicted before a judge and jury in a purchased state. We, the undersigned men and women, having watched the course of events and made up our minds concerning them, declare our mature conviction that the guilt lies elsewhere. We hold you, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., guilty of murder in the first degree, and we here indict you before the bar of humanity.

Realizing that there are fanatical and violent persons who might consider it proper that you should pay with your life for such crimes, we wish to add that we do not believe in capital punishment for any crime, however atrocious. We should not even wish to punish you as you seek to punish Lawson, with confinement in a prison hell for life. It is for profits that your crimes were committed, and it is by depriving you of profits that they must be punished—and at the same time prevented for all future time. At a meeting of 700 people, men and women of all classes, held last June upon the estate of Mrs. Charles J. Gould, in your home village of Tarrytown-on-the-Hudson, your own neighbors unanimously voted that your management of the Colorado mines has been such as to prove you unworthy of the responsibility, and that it was the sentiment of the meeting that the United States government shall confiscate these properties. This is the sentence we suggest for you; we call upon the voters of our country to carry it into effect—and we venture to express the opinion that it will not be many years before the call is heeded and the sentence carried out, to the last share of stock and the last penny of dividends.

Leonard D. Abbott,
Jessie Ashley,
W. D. P. Bliss,
Will Levington Comfort,
Sada Cowan,
Algernon Sidney Crapsey,
Floyd Dell,
George Allen England,
Herman Epstein,
Hutchins Hapgood,
Paul Kenneday,
William Balfour Ker,
Daniel Kiefer,
Sinclair Lewis
Donald Lowrie,
John G. Neihardt,
Harvey J. O’Higgins,
Frank Shea,
Mary Craig Sinclair,
Upton Sinclair,
George Sterling,
Louis Untermeyer,
Allan Updegraff,
Maude Davis Walker,
Ryan Walker,
Joshua Wanhope,
James P. Warbasse,
Clement Wood,
Art Young,
Charles Zeublin

[Photograph and drawins added.]

Notes:

Paul Kenneday-I am not absolutely certain that this is the same Paul Kenneday. His association with Floyd Dell, shown at link above, is strong circumstantial evidence. There is also this letter from WEB DuBois to the wife of Paul Kenneday:
http://credo.library.umass.edu/…

Unable to find information on Herman Epstein or Frank Shea. If anyone has information on these two men, please share it with us.

SOURCE
The Painter and Decorator, Volume 29
Brotherhood of Painters, Decorators and Paperhangers of America, 1915
https://books.google.com/…
P&D Journal of July 1915
https://books.google.com/…
The Letter
https://books.google.com/…

IMAGES

The Death Special
https://www.du.edu/…

Ludlow Massacre, Costa family,
UMWJ, Italian, Apr 15, 1915
http://books.google.com/…

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Mary Elaine Petrucci speaks at Ludlow Memorial

Song of Mary Petrucci at Ludlow – Tom Breiding

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The idea which I desire most to impress upon the American people is that in Mexico no definite and lasting peace can ever be attained unless that peace is based upon justice and the welfare of the majority of Mexicans which the constitutionalist government has seriously determined to establish. Never before has there been attained any other than an ephemeral and artificial peace resulting in restless ambitions and violent oppression. Another idea that I would impress upon the American people and especially upon those of enterprise is that the revolution not only will not injure the interests of America but that the system of equality and legal efficiency that the revolution will implant will be more advantageous and will afford a wider field for foreign investment than the system of privilege and concessions that has existed heretofore. FINALLY, I BELIEVE THAT THE REALIZATION OF THE IDEALS WHICH INSPIRED THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT ONLY BENEFIT THE MEXICAN NATION BUT WILL CONSTITUTE AN IMPORTANT TRIUMPH FOR CIVILIZATION.

From the Appeal to Reason of June 19, 1915:

General Carranza, Through the Appeal,
Pleads Cause of Mexican Revolution

First Chief of Constitutionalist Government Grants An Exclusive Interview to John Kenneth Turner, Appeal Correspondent Now in Mexico-Entire Interview, Covering This Page, Was Cabled to the Appeal So As to Give the American People the First and Complete Statement of the Conditions South of the Rio Grande-Appeal Presents Turner’s Questions and Carranza’s Answers to Show That American Intervention in Mexico Would be a Crime Against Civilization-War With Mexico Would Benefit Capitalists

—–BY JOHN KENNETH TURNER
By Special Cable (via Galveston) to the Appeal to Reason

Venustiano Carranza
“““““

VERA CRUZ, MEXICO, June 12.-I have just obtained from Venustiano Carranza, executive head of the apparently victorious constitutionalist party, and exclusive interview far more definite and comprehensive than any he has ever before given to any person or publication.After a preliminary conversation I presented to General Carranza a series of twenty-one questions. THE BOLD REPLIES ARE MOST REMARKABLE IN VIEW OF THE THREATENING NOTE that had just been sent to Mexico at the behest of rich Americans who fear revocation of their illegal privileges by the new government.

Free land for the millions; the absolute wiping out of every semblance of peonage and debt slavery, abolition of the pernicious system of concessions; the ruthless crushing of private monopolies, whether in the hands of Mexicans or foreigners; universal suffrage including feudal suffrage, and radical labor legislation including a legal maximum workday and minimum wage are some of the immediate reforms that are promised by the Carranza constitutionalists. It must be remembered that when Carranza speaks of enforcing the Mexican constitution he refers to a document that has been characterized as the best formulation of constitutional democracy yet adopted by any country. It must also be remembered that this constitution has never been enforced and that an absolute bureaucracy has been the system of the past.

Without any further comment I present herewith my twenty-one questions with the verbatim answers of General Carranza:

[Note: Hereafter, Hellraisers has eliminated the questions posed by Turner, and has chosen from the twenty-one questions and answers, a few of Carranza’s answers that we find most interesting, as space allows us.]

WILL IMPROVE ECONOMIC CONDITIONS.

The betterment of the majority. During previous epochs and despite the liberal laws of Mexico there has existed a privileged class comprised of scarcely over a million people devoted to the exploitation of fourteen millions who have lived in the most grievous oppression. The colonial economic system was based upon the slavery of the native race and this system remained in effect until General Diaz fled the country. To abolish the said system, improve economic conditions, spread education and effectively equalize before he law the fourteen millions who formerly lived a life inferior to that of beasts of burden-THIS IS THE AIM OF THE REVOLUTION.

OPPOSED TO LABOR FOR DEBT.

The complete abolishment of labor as a means of paying debts is one of the conquests already realized by the revolution-a conquest that has won us our most numerous and stubborn enemies. The constitution of the republic provides that no one may be imprisoned because of debts of a civil character and that no one may be obliged to render a personal service without just compensation and his full consent, but the privileged class has already violated these provisions substituting for imprisonment in public jails forcible retention at farm labor and imposing upon the peon against his will the most heart-breaking toil in payment for debts, real or pretended, which often were carried over to the children of the debtors. Farm owners and employers in general have always found in the public authorities a most effective bulwark in maintaining this inhuman system of exploitation. The constitutionalist government has forever abolished this system and has given the slaves their complete liberty.

FREEDOM TO LABOR UNIONS.

The liberty of the wage working class to organize and to strike is recognized by our constitution which declares that nobody may be prevented from associating peacefully for any legal purpose. If it is legal for capital to associate I do not find any reason why it should be illegal for labor to organize. More over, if one man is permitted to abandon his work there is no ground for preventing many men to abandon their work. I believe, however, that strikes will disappear as soon as the working class find in the government the protection that it deserves.[Emphasis added.]

FOR UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE.

I am in favor of universal suffrage without any more restrictions than those absolutely necessary to make effective the vote of every citizen.

FAVORS RESTRICTED WOMAN’S SUFFRAGE.

I am a partisan to woman’s suffrage in those localities where women have conquered by their education the right to enter political life in Mexico. The peculiar previous conditions of woman, her temperament, her character, which have consecrated her to the home and the education of the family, have prevented her from manifesting a desire to exercise the vote. Nevertheless, some women of high character are beginning to take part in public events. It is a sign of an awakening sense of political affairs among the women.

ZAPATISM MAY SUPPORT CONSTITUTIONALISTS.

The Zapatista problems can be considered as already solved by the constitutionalist government by virtue of the reforms that have already been implanted and those that will be implanted, in accordance with the program of the revolution This program is more liberal and more radical than that of the armed groups known as Zapatistas and only the error of some of the chieftains who victimize the others in favor of reaction, explains the fact that some of them are still fighting us. You may rest assured that the Zapatism will very soon become an ally and a supporter of the constitutionalist government.

WILL ESTABLISH DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT.

The transformation of the military government which has been necessary for the maintenance of the actual fighting to a democratic government and also the time when this will be effected have already been provided for in the decree that I issued here in the city of Vera Cruz December 12, as follows:

Article 4.-At the triumph of the revolution when the supreme chieftainship is installed in the city of Mexico and after the election of municipal councils in the majority of the cities of the republic have been held, the first chief of the revolution, charged with executive power, will call an election for the congress of the union, fixing in the call the dates and terms within which said election shall be held.Article 5.-After the installation of the congress of the union the first chief shall give an account before it on the use he has made of the powers invested in him by the present decree and especially he shall report upon the reforms put into effect during the fight, to the end that the congress may ratify them or amend or amplify them and invest them with the character of constitutional provisions.

Article 6.-The congress of the union shall issue a call for the election of a president of the republic and shall deliver to the person elected the executive powers.

WILL NOT PROTECT FOREIGNER’S LOOT.

The constitutionalists’ revolution respects all rights of property acquired in conformity with the law. Our constitution establishes in article 28 that there shall be no monopoly of any kind. As a protection of legal concessions, these monopolies and privileges found in the hands of foreigners cannot subsist. The constitutionalist government will require exact compliance with the law and, therefore, all concessions given by previous administrations can subsist only insofar as they involve legally acquired rights. They will be nullified if they contain privileges or monopolies condemned by the constitution.

CARRANZA TO AMERICAN PEOPLE.

The idea which I desire most to impress upon the American people is that in Mexico no definite and lasting peace can ever be attained unless that peace is based upon justice and the welfare of the majority of Mexicans which the constitutionalist government has seriously determined to establish. Never before has there been attained any other than an ephemeral and artificial peace resulting in restless ambitions and violent oppression. Another idea that I would impress upon the American people and especially upon those of enterprise is that the revolution not only will not injure the interests of America but that the system of equality and legal efficiency that the revolution will implant will be more advantageous and will afford a wider field for foreign investment than the system of privilege and concessions that has existed heretofore. FINALLY, I BELIEVE THAT THE REALIZATION OF THE IDEALS WHICH INSPIRED THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT ONLY BENEFIT THE MEXICAN NATION BUT WILL CONSTITUTE AN IMPORTANT TRIUMPH FOR CIVILIZATION.

[Photographs added.]

SOURCE
Appeal to Reason
(Girard, Kansas)
-June 19, 1915
(Also source for text blocks within article.)
http://www.newspapers.com/…

IMAGES
John Kenneth Turner
http://www.findagrave.com/…
Venustiano Carranza
https://en.wikipedia.org/…
Emiliano Zapata
https://en.wikipedia.org/…

See also:

Barbarous Mexico
-by John Kenneth Turner
Charles H. Kerr & Co, 1910
https://archive.org/…

Other books by Turner
https://www.google.com/…

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Juana Gallo songs of the Mexican Revolution

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AID REED AND ROBINSON.
—–
Envoy to Seek Release of American
Correspondents in Russia.
Special to The New York Times.WASHINGTON, June 21.-The State Department today forwarded to Ambassador Marye, at Petrograd, complete information for the identification of John Reed, an American war correspondent, and Boardman Robinson, an American illustrator, who are under arrest by the Russian military authorities at Kholmin, Russia.

Ambassador Marye, notified the State Department that Reed and Robinson had been arrested because they were found within the Russian military lines, and he asked for information to enable them to identify themselves so they might be released. Reed was recently a war correspondent in Mexico, following the army of General Villa before the revolutionists became involved in the split that followed Carranza’s occupation of Mexico City. Robinson is well known in New York City, where he has been employed by newspapers and magazines.

—–[Photograph added.]

From the Metropolitan of May 1915:

The following photograph of John Reed, Fannie Hurst, and Boardman Robinson is from the Metropolitan, from which magazine we expect to find several first-hand reports of the war in Eastern Europe in the coming months.

Two of the Metropolitan’s writers and our artist, Mr. Robinson, taken in Washington Square just before leaving for the war. This is John Reed’s second trip to the front. In the picture he is wearing a British Officer’s field overcoat which he brought back from Northern France. In the autumn Mr. Reed saw the fighting in France and Germany and has already described it in the Metropolitan. He and Boardman Robinson are now with the Italian Army, and are making a rapid tour from Italy to Servia, to Constantinople, back with the Russians to Hungary, from there to Moscow and Petrograd and thence to England by way of Archangel.He and Mr. Robinson will work together, Mr. Reed doing the writing, Mr. Robinson making sketches of the war. Most of drawings of the war heretofore were made up in London or New York by artists who have never seen the actual men in the field. Boardman Robinson is one of the ablest young artists of our times. With Reed and Robinson in the field the Metropolitan will be able to give readers the most striking and truthful pictures of the war yet published. Fannie Hurst, with whose keen, realistic stories the readers of the Metropolitan are familiar, goes to Italy and France in order to get material for fiction stories relating to the war.

[Paragraph break added.]

SOURCES

The New York Times
(New York, New York)
-June 22, 1915
http://query.nytimes.com/…

Metropolitan
(New York, New York)
-May 1915
Photograph of Reed, Hurst, & Robinson,
with description.
http://babel.hathitrust.org/…

IMAGES
John Reed, Chicago Daily Tribune,
of July 4, 1915
http://www.newspapers.com/…
Metropolitan Magazine of July 1914,
John Reed in Corona Typewriter Ad
http://www.conradfirst.net/…
Cover: “The War in Eastern Europe,” 1918 Copy
https://archive.org/…

See also:

The War in Eastern Europe
-by John Reed, illustrated by Boardman Robinson
C. Scribner’s Sons, 1916
https://books.google.com/…
To read free ebook:
https://books.google.com/…
“Arrest A La Russe”
https://books.google.com/…
“Prison Life in Cholm”
https://books.google.com/…
“Further Adventures in Captivity”
https://books.google.com/…
Note: sadly there seem to be several
pages missing from free ebook, however,
the first link above leads to options to purchase
a copy of the book or find library copy.

Insurgent Mexico
-by John Reed
NY, 1914
https://archive.org/…

DK Search: John Reed + JayRaye
http://www.dailykos.com/…

John Reed: His Life and Work
https://www.marxists.org/…

Writings of John Reed:
https://www.marxists.org/…

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The Workers Song – Dropkick Murphys

But when the sky darkens
And the prospect is war
Who’s given a gun
And then pushed to the fore
And expected to die
For the land of our birth
When we’ve never owned
One handful of earth?
-Ed Pickford

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The announced plan of the I. W. W. organization for infecting the harvest hands with this microbe is simple. One or more of its members will endeavor to secure jobs on every crew and incite the other members to join in the demand for higher wages, shorter hours and better food, or practice sabotage.

The Herald

fails to mention that the I. W. W. has recently founded a new branch of the One Big Union to put into effect this plan of infecting the harvest workers with the union spirit. This was accomplished at a conference of harvest workers held in Kansas City this past April, and there, the Agricultural Workers Organization became a real breeding ground for union infestation. We hope the “new microbe” will spread far and wide.Most of the ire of the Herald is focused upon Miss Elizabeth Gurley Flynn who has been making a tour of the western states for the past few months. Readers of Hellraisers will remember that she stopped on her way out to California to visit with Fellow Worker Joe Hill in the Salt Lake County Jail. From there she went to Los Angeles, San Francisco, and up the coast to Portland, Oregon.

The Herald focuses specifically on the word “sabotage,” which is the title of a pamphlet which was written by Gurley Flynn, and published in April by the I. W. W. Particularly horrifying to the Herald is the thought that workers might not work at the pace which employers would like to enforce, but might work at a rate justified by the wages paid to them. Of the sabotage done to the lives of the workers by the wages and conditions of labor imposed upon them, the Herald has not one word to say.

From the Pullman Herald of June 25, 1915:

A NEW MICROBE
—–

A new microbe threatens to invade the grain fields of the Pacific Northwest this fall. It is a microbe which preys on human beings and is called sabotage.”Sabotage” according to the Standard dictionary, means “any poor work or other damage done by dissatisfied workmen; the act of producing it; plant wrecking.”

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, international organizer of the I. W. W., explains the effects of this microbe as follows:

Sabotage is a strike on the job. It means a general slackening up, a withdrawal of product. Where a man has to work 12 hours instead of eight it means perhaps reducing the output to what eight hours would accomplish. Where men are getting only a dollar a day it means doing only a dollar’s worth of work.It means also withdrawing efficiency, doing a poorer quality of work. In the Patterson silk mills they practiced sabotage in such a way that the product was actually improved. The manufacturers have a system of adding zinc and other adulterants to the silk in the process of dying, so as to turn out several pounds of dyed silk for every pound that goes into the vats. The workers simply cut the amount of adulterants so that in some cases the silk was coming out absolutely pure. This, of course, cut down the employers’ profits immensely, but it did the consumer an actual benefit.

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, 1913, during the Paterson Silk Strike
with Pat Quinlan, Carlo Tresca, Adolph Lessig, and Big Bill Haywood.
“““““

Over on the Coast in one of the canneries the workers practice sabotage by mixing the labels, putting the second-class label on the first-class product and first-class label on the second-class product.The purpose of sabotage is coercion of the employer to meet the demands of the union, which is the same as the purpose of the strike. It is a strike carried on by a different method, a strike in a small way without the disadvantages of the strike. Whenever workmen turn out a less or poorer product because of dissatisfaction with the conditions, that is sabotage.

There is nothing new in the idea or the practice of it. The Scotch have a name for it. A man who practices it is called “ca’canny.” It doesn’t mean destroying machines. A workman who would do that would be cutting off his nose to spite his face.

The organization of the farm hands is only a part of the general plan to organize all migratory workers under the I. W. W. The harvest fields are a convenient place to make a start.

Our point of view is the point of view of the worker. The conditions under which the harvest hands work are abominable. The hours are intolerable, the food is poor and the pay inadequate. If he has to sleep with the chickens and eat rotten food it doesn’t help the worker any to know that farmer may be in debt and struggling to make a living. But naturally the work of organization is likely to be started in the fields of the owners of the big bonanza ranches, where the condition of the workers is intolerable.

A definite scale of wages and definite conditions and hours have been prepared by the union organizers and they will be presented to employers when the men are organized. It was all decided upon at a meeting in Kansas City two months ago.

The announced plan of the I. W. W. organization for infecting the harvest hands with this microbe is simple. One or more of its members will endeavor to secure jobs on every crew and incite the other members to join in the demand for higher wages, shorter hours and better food, or practice sabotage.

Harvesting the Wheat Fields.

The potential evils of this microbe are self-evident and are adding a new worry to the many under which the farmers are laboring. The great majority of farmers have tried to treat their harvest hands squarely, to pay them fair wages and give them as good food and sleeping accommodations as circumstances will permit. They should now get together and co-operate in combatting the microbe of sabotage. The simplest method is to inoculate every harvest crew with an anti-sabotage vaccine. Let every farmer and thresherman see to it that he has one or more men in his crew upon whom he can absolutely depend and who will look out for his interests, and give them authority to discharge any hand who manifests any symptoms of sabotage in word or deed.

Blanket Bundles of the Harvest Workers.
“““““

There are plenty of men in this country who are willing to work in the harvest fields and who have no taint of sabotage in their systems; who, having accepted a job at an agreed wage, will do their best to make good, or, if they are dissatisfied, will quit instead of trying to do as little work as possible. The federal government is developing a plan to bring these men and harvest jobs together, by instituting employment bureaus throughout the Inland Empire, and special efforts will be made by these agencies to furnish honest and reliable help. They should be patronized and encouraged by the farmers.There is another safeguard against sabotage, which will appeal to some farmers, and that is to change their system of farming so that instead of having to employ a large crew of strange helpers for a few days, they can employ one or two or more reliable men the year round, or can provide themselves with harvesting machinery which will enable them to handle their crops without having to rely on transient labor.

The microbe of sabotage is worse than that of tuberculosis, for once infected with it, a man loses his ambition and self-respect and becomes a burden on and a menace to society. No farmer can afford to neglect to take every possible precaution to stamp out this microbe before it gains a foothold.

—–[Photographs added.]

From the International Socialist Review of April 1909:

Pullman Herald
(Pullman, Washington)
-June 25, 1915
http://www.newspapers.com/…

Searches: Newspapers.com
EGF in Chicago and Kansas in April 1915
http://www.newspapers.com/…
EGF in California and Oregon in May 1915
http://www.newspapers.com/…
EGF in Portland, OR, in June 1915
http://www.newspapers.com/…

IMAGES
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, formal portrait,
from Ft Scott (KS) newspaper of Apr 29, 1915
http://www.newspapers.com/…
Sabotage by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, April 1915
http://babel.hathitrust.org/…
IWW organizers at Paterson, New Jersey 1913
http://en.wikipedia.org/…

Harvesting the Wheat Fields
& Blanket Bundles of the workers
https://depts.washington.edu/…

Notes from link:

Organizing [of farm workers] began again after the Agricultural Workers Organization (AWO) was created in 1915. The IWW held an initial harvest workers’ conference in Kansas City, Missouri, on April 15, 1914 and soon launched the AWO as one of several industrial syndicates within the IWW. The AWO changed strategies and stirred a new burst of activism in the field. The goal was to shift away from the soap-boxing and revolutionary statements to which the IWW was prone. Instead, they concentrated on building a stable organization and improving actual work conditions for harvest workers….Unlike the more conservative AFL, the IWW reached out to the thousands of unskilled transients who worked in the seasonal industries in the West.  Without permanent homes, these men who rode the rails and tramped were known by many different names: harvest hands, bindle stiffs, hobos.  For a mere two dollars, any worker, regardless of skill level, vocation, or race could join the IWW. This cartoon from the Industrial Worker celebrates the “Blanket Stiffs.” [See above.] …

Here are some of the men that the IWW hoped to win to their cause, working in a Washington or Idaho wheat field. Below, their blanket bundles. [See above.]

The Blanket Stiff

https://books.google.com/…Blanket Stiff Cartoon from:
The International Socialist Review, Volume 9
-Algie Martin Simons, Charles H. Kerr
C.H. Kerr & Company, July 1908-June, 1909
https://books.google.com/…
ISR of April 1909
https://books.google.com/…

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I Ain’t Got No Home In This World Anymore – Woody Guthrie

Now as I look around, it’s mighty plain to see
This world is such a great and a funny place to be;
Oh, the gamblin’ man is rich an’ the workin’ man is poor,
And I ain’t got no home in this world anymore.
-Woody Guthrie

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The best paying occupation in the harvest country is “the harvesting of the harvester,” which is heavily indulged in by train crews, railroad “bulls,” gamblers and hold-up men.

However, this year there comes a new glimmer of hope to the thousands of “blanket stiffs,” with the formation, by the I. W. W., of the Agricultural Workers Organization. Doree reports:

It is the object of this organization to systematically organize the workers into One Big Union, making it possible to secure the much needed shorter workday and more wages, as well as to mutually protect the men from the wiles of those who harvest the harvester.The Agricultural Workers’ Organization expects to place a large number of delegates and organizers in the fields, all of whom will work directly under a field secretary. It is hoped this will accomplish what has never been done before, the systematization of organization and the strike during the harvest, as well as the work of general agitation.

From the International Socialist Review of June 1915:

GATHERING THE GRAIN

By E. F. DOREE

THE great, rich wheat belt runs from Northern Texas, through the states of Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, South and North Dakotas, into Canada, and not a few will point with pride to the fact that last year WE (?) had the largest wheat crop in the history of this country. But few are the people who know the conditions under which they work who gather in these gigantic crops. It is the object of this article to bring out some of these vital facts.

About the middle of June the real harvest commences in Northern Oklahoma and Southern Kansas. This section is known as the “headed wheat country,” that is to say, just the heads of grain are cut off and the straw is left standing in the fields, while in the “bundle country” the grain is cut close to the ground and bound into sheaves or bundles.

In the headed grain country the average wage paid is $2.50 and board per day, but in the very end of the season $3 is sometimes paid, the increase due to the drift northward of the harvest workers, who leave the farmers without sufficient help. This is not a chronic condition, as there are usually from two to five men to every job.

The board is average, although fresh meat is very scarce, salt meat being more popular with the farmer because it is cheaper. Most of the men sleep in barns, but it is not uncommon to have workers entering the sacred portals of the house. Bedding of some kind is furnished, although it is often nothing more than a buggy robe.

The exceedingly long work day is the worst feature of the harvesting so far as the worker is concerned. The men are expected to be in the fields at half past five or six o’clock in the morning until seven or half past seven o’clock at night, with from an hour to an hour and a half for dinner. It is a common slang expression of the workers that they have an “eight-hour work day”—eight in the morning and eight in the afternoon.

Most of the foreign-born farmers serve a light lunch in the fields about nine o’clock in the morning and four o’clock in the afternoon, but the American farmers who do are indeed rare.

In this section the workers are some times paid so much per hundred bushels, and the more they thresh the more they get. On this basis they generally make more than “goin’ wages,”* but they work themselves almost to death doing it. No worker, no matter how strong, can stand the pace long; the extremely hot weather in Kansas proves unendurable. Twenty- five men died from the heat in one day last year in a single county in Kansas.

The workers threshing “by the hundred” must pay their board while the machine is idle, due to breakdown, rain, etc.

About the time that the headed grain is reaped the bundle grain in Central and Northern Kansas and Southern Nebraska is ready for the floating army of harvesters.

Here the wages range from $2 to $2.50 and board per day. They have never gone over the $2.50 mark. Small wages are paid and accepted because thousands of workers are then drifting up from the headed wheat country and because of the general influx of men from all over the United States, who come to make their “winter’s stake.” This is about the poorest section of the entire harvest season for the worker. The following little story is told of the farmers of Central Nebraska:

What the farmers raise they sell. What they can’t sell they feed to the cattle. What the cattle won’t eat they feed to the hogs. What the hogs won’t eat they eat themselves, and what they can’t eat they feed to the hired hands.

In Nebraska proper the farms are smaller, as a rule, than elsewhere in the harvest country and grow more diversified crops. Almost every farmer has one or more “hired men,” and for that reason does not need so many extra men in the harvest, but in spite of this, the whole floating army marches up to get stung annually. Most of the “Army From No-where” cannot get jobs and have a pretty hungry time waiting for the harvest farther north to be ready.The farmers in South Dakota do not believe in “burning daylight,” so they start the worker to his task a little before daybreak and keep him at it till a little after dark. If the farmer in South Dakota had the power of Joshua, he would inaugurate the twenty-four-hour workday.

The wages here range from $2.25 to $2.50 and board per day, while in isolated districts better wages are some times paid. A small part of the workers are permitted to spend the night in the houses, but most of them sleep in the barns. Sometimes they have only the canopy of the heavens for a blanket.

As soon as the harvest strikes North Dakota wages rise to $2.75 or $3.50 and board per day, the length of the workday being determined by the amount of day light.

The improved wages are due to the fact that thousands of harvesters begin leaving the country because of the cold weather, and the fact that the farmers insist on the workers furnishing their own bedding. At the extreme end of the season wages often go up to as high as $4.00 and board, per day.

The board in North Dakota is the best in the harvest country, which is not say ing much.

In North and South Dakota no worker is sure of drawing his wages, even after earning them. Some farmers do not figure on paying their “help” at all and work the same game year after year. The new threshing machine outfits are the worst on this score, as the bosses very seldom own the machines themselves and, at the end of the season, often leave the country without paying either worker or machine owner.

This, however, is not the only method used by the farmers to beat the tender foot. In some cases the worker is told that he can make more money by taking a steady job at about $35.00 a month and staying three or four months, the farmer always assuring him that the work will last. The average tenderfoot eagerly grabs this proposition, only to find that thirty days later, or as soon as the heavy work is done, the farmer “can no longer use him.” There have been many instances where the worker has kicked at the procedure and been paid off by the farmer with a pickhandle.

The best paying occupation in the harvest country is “the harvesting of the harvester,” which is heavily indulged in by train crews, railroad “bulls,” gamblers and hold-up men.Gamblers are in evidence everywhere. No one has to gamble, yet it is almost needless to say that the card sharks make a good haul. Quite different is it, though, with the hold-up man, for before him the worker has to dig up and no argument goes. This “stick-up” game is not a small one, and hundreds of workers lose their “stake” annually at the point of a gun.

As is the rule with a migratory army, the harvesters move almost entirely by “freight,” and here is where the train crews get theirs. With them it is simply a matter of “shell up a dollar or hit the dirt.” Quite often union cards are recognized and no dollar charged, and the worker is permitted to ride unmolested.

It is safe to say that nine workers out of every ten leave the harvest fields as poor as when they entered them. Few, indeed, are those who clear $50.00 or more in the entire season.

These are, briefly, the conditions that have existed for many years, up to and including 1914, but the 1915 harvest is likely to be more interesting if the present indications materialize.

The last six months has seen the birth of two new organizations that will operate during the coming summer. The National Farm Labor Exchange, a subsidiary movement to the “jobless man to the manless job” movement, and the Agricultural Workers’ Organization of the Industrial Workers of the World.

The ostensible purpose of the National Farm Labor Exchange is to handle the men necessary for the harvest systematically, but its real purpose is to flood the country with unnecessary men, thus making it possible to reduce the wages, which the farmer really believes are too high. If the Exchange can have its way, there will be thousands of men brought into the harvest belt from the east, and particularly from the southeast. It is needless to say that these workers will be offered at least twice as much in wages as they will actually draw.

News has come in to the effect that the farmers are already organizing their “vigilance committees,” which are composed of farmers, business men, small town bums, college students and Y. M. C. A. scabs. The duty of the vigilance committee is to stop free speech, eliminate union agitation, and to drive out of the country all workers who demand more than ”goin’ wages.”

Arrayed against the organized farmers is the Agricultural Workers’ Organization, which is made up of members of the I. W. W. who work in the harvest fields. It is the object of this organization to systematically organize the workers into One Big Union, making it possible to secure the much needed shorter workday and more wages, as well as to mutually protect the men from the wiles of those who harvest the harvester.

The Agricultural Workers’ Organization expects to place a large number of delegates and organizers in the fields, all of whom will work directly under a field secretary. It is hoped this will accomplish what has never been done before, the systematization of organization and the strike during the harvest, as well as the work of general agitation.

Both of these organizations intend to function so that the workers in the fields will have to choose quickly between the two. If the farmers win the men to their cause, smaller wages will be paid and the general working conditions will become poorer; if the workers swing into the I. W. W. and stand together, then more wages will be paid for fewer hours of labor. Both sides can’t win. Moral: Join the I. W. W. and fight for better conditions.

Mr. Worker, don’t do this year what you did last, harvest the wheat in the summer and starve in breadlines in the winter.Let us close with a few “Don’ts.”

Don’t scab.

Don’t accept piece work.

Don’t work by the month during harvest.

Don’t travel a long distance to take in the harvest; it is not worth it.

Don’t believe everything that you read in the papers, because it is usually only the Durham.

Don’t fail to join the I. W. W. and help win this battle.

*”Goin” wages” is an expression used by the farmer in answer to the question, “What do you pay?” It really means the smallest wages paid in the country.

SOURCEThe International Socialist Review, Volume 15
ed by Algie Martin Simons, Charles H. Kerr
C.H. Kerr, July 1914-June 1915
http://books.google.com/…
ISR June 1915
https://books.google.com/…
“Gathering the Grain” by E. F. Doree
(Also source for images within article.)
https://books.google.com/…

IMAGE
E. F. Doree, organizer,
Industrial Workers of the World
http://www.audible.com.au/…

See also

For more on Edward Federick Doree:
https://books.google.com/…

Shall Freedom Die?
166 Union Men In Jail for Labor
IWW, about 1917
(Doree was one of the 166.)
https://en.wikisource.org/…

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We Have Fed You All For A Thousand Years – Ellie Bryan

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