Hellraisers Journal: Monday April 13, 1908
New York, New York – Robert Hunter Blamed for Bombing
The unemployed, and those who stand up for them, are to blame for a bomb thrown by a murderous criminal unconnected with them, this according to the Police Force of New York City. The actual crime of the protesting unemployed men, women and children was, apparently, their failure to starve silently and in an orderly manner.
From the Appeal to Reason of April 11, 1908:
Robert Hunter.
—–
In his address to the public following the breaking up of the meeting of the unemployed in Union Square, New York, Police Commissioner Bingham assumed an insolent and pompous attitude toward the working class. He served notice that the was going to deal with such meetings hereafter with an “iron hand.” We have heard such talk before. There is nothing in it.
Bingham goes on to defend the police. Of course. The police acted under his orders. Thousands of eye-witnesses declare that the police acted with unspeakable brutality in riding rough shod over the people and clubbing them without mercy. Hundreds who were unable to escape from the crowd bear the marks of the outrageous and unprovoked assaults of the police hirelings. Of course the police were not to blame, and of course Bingham comes to their rescue and defends them. The police were the mere tools in the hands of such politicians as Bingham.
Among other things, Bingham took occasion to misrepresent Comrade Robert Hunter and place him in a false light before the people. We happen to personally know Comrade Hunter and to have known him from his childhood. There is no gentler, kindlier, more considerate soul. Nor at the same time one more courageous. His heart throbbed in sympathy with the thousands of the unemployed. With all the passion of his noble nature he yearned to serve them, to comfort them. And so he was to speak to them on that fateful day when the blue-coated Cossacks swooped down upon the hungry hordes and scattered them with as little mercy as if they had been so many tarantulas. Robert Hunter did not speak. He had no chance to speak. But he was blamed for the trouble because he sympathized with the unfortunates; because he did not have a heart of stone.
Of course the brutal Bingham, the vulgar capitalist politician, could not understand Robert Hunter any more than a hyena could understand an arch-angel. Bingham looked upon Hunter as a vicious intruder. Had he not sympathized with the unemployed, had he followed Bingham’s example and allowed them to starve, there would have been no trouble. The difference between Bingham and Hunter is that Hunter has a heart. This, of course, makes him vicious and dangerous in the eyes of this cheap political satrap.
In condemning Hunter this mercenary of capitalism, clothed with a little brief authority, declared that if Hunter did not want the police to handle him he must “behave himself,” and that if he did not behave himself he would be “sorry for it.” The cowardly threat here made would shame any official with a spark of dignity and would disgrace any but Bingham. But it accords perfectly with Bingham’s brutality. He has no more sympathy with the victims of the system of which he is the official mercenary than if they were spiders instead of human beings. He not only wants them put down, but wants them to remain down. They have no place in his economy except in the potters-field.
As for Robert Hunter, he would not know how to misbehave himself. He is a man. Every inch of him, from his crown to his footsoles, attests his genuine manhood.
The light of sympathy for his fallen fellows beams from his eyes and the nobility of his nature is expressed in every feature of his manly countenance. In every essential of decency and dignity, of manners and manhood, he is the opposite of Bingham, the brutal bully of the New York police.
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[Photograph added.]
From The Indianapolis Star of February 21, 1908:
TALK ABOUT AUTHORS.
[…..]
Robert Hunter, the author of “Poverty,” has recently returned from a year and a half abroad, where he has been studying the growing labor and Socialist movements. In a volume entitled “The Socialists at Work,” which is to appear this spring, he gives, it is said, a picturesque description of the men, the congresses, the organizations and the propaganda which go to make up the agitation.
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From The Chicago Daily Tribune of March 30, 1908:
———-
DENY BOMB PLOT; ACCUSE OFFICIALS
[…..]
New York, March 29.-Special-Anarchists, socialists, and leaders of the unemployed were ready and anxious to go to police headquarters today in an effort to show that their organizations or followers had nothing to do with the bomb outrage in Union Square yesterday…
Robert Hunter was told over the telephone at his home near Stamford tonight that there was a disposition on the part of the authorities to hold him responsible for the events yesterday.
“It is interesting to know the police feel that way toward me,” he replied, “but really I don’t see how they could hold me responsible. I didn’t organize the demonstration and was merely invited to be one of the speakers.
“I am going to New York some day this week and intend to get legal advice as to making a thorough investigation of th events that led up to the bomb throwing. I want to find out whether the people haven’t the right to peaceably assemble in the streets of the city.”
Hunter then went on to repeat his charges which he made last right against the police. He accused them of really causing the outbreak by their cruelty, displayed in riding down members of the crowds in the square and beating others….
Despite the disastrous effects of the attempted open air meeting for the unemployed, the socialists are arranging for a massmeeting to be held some day this week. At this meeting Eugene V. Debs. “Mother” Jones, the coal mine agitator, Robert Hunter, Joseph Wanhope of Wilshire’s Magazine, Benjamin Hanford, and others will speak….
SOURCES
Appeal to Reason
(Girard, Kansas)
-Apr 11, 1908
https://www.newspapers.com/image/67587260/
The Indianapolis Star
(Indianapolis, Indiana)
-Feb 21, 1908
https://www.newspapers.com/image/118592059/
The Chicago Daily Tribune
(Chicago, Illinois)
-Mar 30, 1908
https://www.newspapers.com/image/350250443
https://www.newspapers.com/image/350250454
IMAGE
Robert Hunter, Painting by Sergeant Kendall, The Critic, Jan 1905
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=inu.32000000676975;view=2up;seq=14
See also:
Robert Hunter-author
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hunter_(author)
Poverty
-by Robert Hunter
Macmillan, 1904
https://books.google.com/books?id=BiciAAAAMAAJ
The New York Times
(New York, New York)
-Mar 29, 1908, page 1
https://www.nytimes.com/1908/03/29/archives/bomb-kills-one-police-escape-goes-off-in-wouldbe-slayers-hand-as.html
BOMB KILLS ONE; POLICE ESCAPE…ANARCHIST CRANK
…PROUD OF DEED THAT FAILED…Made the Bomb Himself…An attempt of the Socialist Conference of the Unemployed, which has long been preparing a public demonstration, to hold a meeting in Union Square after a permit had been refused by the Park Commissioner and the police had prevented speechmaking, ended with a bomb explosion there at 3:30 o’clock yesterday afternoon…
NYT of Mar 29, 1908, page 3
& Source for translated quote from Jewish Daily Forward
https://www.nytimes.com/1908/03/29/archives/robert-hunter-talks-left-the-square-before-the-explosion-lays-that.html
ROBERT HUNTER TALKS.
Left the Square Before the Explosion
-Lays That to Police Brutality.NOROTON, Conn., March 28.-Robert Hunter, former head of the University Settlement, brother-in-law of J.G. Phelps Stokes and a recent convert to Socialism, who was found by THE TIMES correspondent at his country home here to-night, was impressed most by what he called the brutality of the police in Union Square…
NYT of April 4, 1908, page 7
https://www.nytimes.com/1908/04/04/archives/socialists-cheer-attack-on-police-robert-hunter-says-their-conduct.html
SOCIALISTS CHEER ATTACK ON POLICE
Robert Hunter Says Their Conduct After
Union Square Explosion Was Outrageous.
PEACEFUL MEN CLUBBED
Rights Our Forefathers Fought for
Lost at That Meeting, He Declares
-John Spargo Assails Newspapers.The rathskeller of Kalil’s restaurant on Park Place, near West Broadway, was crowded with Socialists last night, who cheered Robert Hunter, the ex-University Settlement head, when he berated the police for what he termed their outrageous and unlawful acts immediately following the bomb explosion in Union Square last Saturday.
It’s a Long Way to the Soup Line – John McCutcheon
Lyrics by Joe Hill