[In Lawrence] they were striking
to maintain the human race
in that part of the country—and all over—
because the interest of wage workers
the world over is bound together.
-Vincent St. John
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hellraisers Journal, Tuesday August 13, 1918
Chicago, Illinois – I.W.W. Trial, The Saint Takes the Stand
The Saint Speaks on the Workers’ Right to Life
On August 6th, Defendant Vincent St. John, former General Secretary-Treasurer of Industrial Workers of World, took the stand. Harrison George offers the following report:
From the beginning of the trial the prosecution harped upon that sentence in St. John’s “History and Structure of the I. W. W.,” which says: “The question of ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ does not concern us.”
Q. Why did you put those words in quotation marks?[Answer:] For the reason that in every struggle the wage earners have made during my experience, no matter what they have done, the exponents of the employing class, the press, platform, politicians of all degrees and stripes, have always told them that no matter what they were after, that it was not ‘right’; something they did was ‘wrong.’ The only time a strike is ‘right’ with them is when you have no chance to win it; when they want you to strike; when they want to wipe out whatever vestige of organization you have, then the strike is ‘right,’ that is, a good time to strike.
The Lawrence strike was not entirely a question of getting better wages for those mill operatives, but it was a question that involved the very life and death not only of the men, women and children who were on strike, but also of unborn generations of these same operatives. The death rate in that section among children is 400 out of every 1,000 before they are 1 year of age.
When they were striking in Lawrence they were striking not only for an immediate proposition, but they were striking to save the lives of those 400 unborn children, if you please. They were striking to maintain the human race in that part of the country—and all over—because the interest of wage workers the world over is bound together.
[Photograph and emphasis added.]
Report on the Chicago I. W. W. Trial from Harrison George:
Trial Notes: Saturday August 3, 1918
James Elliott, defendant, and previous secretary at Fresno, California, occupied the stand on August 3, and was followed by defendant Pietro Nigra, an Italian organizer for the I. W. W., who is also a member of the U. M. W. of A. Nigra, when arrested in the previous September, had been placed in a cell against his protest with an insane man who had attacked him and broken some facial bones which later, in the absence of medical attention, rotted away toward his brain and nearly caused his death before the defense could force Nigra’s liberation and give him surgical care.
While the next witness, Dan Krieh, a Bisbee miner, was on the stand, Nebeker, wishing to head off further exposes of Copper Trust brutality, said the government would admit the fact of deportation, thus heading off the proof of it by the defense.
Joseph A. Oates, defendant, told of the mine conditions in Arizona and how the W. F. of M. and the I. W. W. had struck simultaneously on the 1st of July, 1917. About the only thing Oates was guilty of was being a secretary for ten days at Miami, Arizona, before being arrested.
Ragnar Johanson, a defendant, told a story of his life and his life’s work. Born in Sweden, he had joined the union of the Building Trades there when a boy of 13 years. On coming to America, he had transferred to the Painters’ Union, of which he is still a member. He had joined the I. W. W. in 1916, and had been lecturing and organizing for it ever since—and that was only three days after he had landed on the shores of America.
Johanson had been in Butte with Frank Little during the strike there, but had left for the lumber district just previous to Little’s murder. He and Little had planned to change fields with each other and it was only by chance, a chance which Johansen regretted in a letter written to Haywood at the time, that Frank H. Little and not Johansen was the object of Copper Trust murder. Like Frank Little, Johansen had received a “3-7-77” warning, but had left Butte and been so guarded by his friends that the murderers could not carry out their threats. Upon the subject of violence Johanson said in a newspaper article published in the strike zone in 1917:
The I. W. W. is consistent with strength, not weakness; and violence in industrial disputes is a sign of weakness. Therefore, the I. W. W. cannot countenance violence in strikes.
[Emphasis added.]
Trial Notes: Monday August 5, 1918
The first witness to take the stand on Monday, August 5, was Francis P. Miller, defendant and member of the General Executive Board.
[For testimony of Francis Miller, see Hellraisers Journal of August 6, 1918.]
The next witness was Attorney E. F. Blaine of Seattle, for the last two years chairman of Washington State Public Service Commission. He testified that in 1917 Governor Lister had ordered him and sixteen investigators under him to examine into conditions surrounding migratory labor and other Sup- posed causes of the strike in the lumber camps of Eastern Washington. All construction camps were foul and vermin-infested, he said, and many of the lumber camps no better. There was no trouble in the Yakima Valley except that caused by the furore raised by the local press and incited by Oregon troops who were brought in at the request of the Fruit Growers’ Association.
As an official, I found that the I. W. W. were not destroying property, and although the civil powers were in peace and operating these troops brought in without declaration of martial law seized jails and used them as “bull pens” for I. W. W. men who were thrown in without charges and never tried, but held.
Blaine had interviewed hundreds of these men in jails and bull pens and said they spoke to him openly, frankly and without hesitation of their program as union men to better conditions as workers and to gain industrial freedom. He and others accompanying him could not but feel their manliness and sincerity and could not escape the conclusion that they were being unjustly treated.
[Emphasis added.]
Trial Notes: August 6, 1918
On the morning of August 6, Vincent St. John took the stand. He said he was 42 years old, born in Newport, Kentucky, and had been a miner in the West and Southwest for twenty-three years, beginning in the Bisbee mines. Since 1895 he was a union man and was the first president of the Local Telluride and president of the District Council of the W. F. of M. for the San Juan district in Colorado in 1903, at the time of the bitterly fought strikes under the Peabody regime. Also, St. John had taken active part in organizing Goldfield, Nevada, when eight hours was a day’s work for every worker in Goldfield from chambermaid to miner.
This was his first connection with the I. W. W. The last was in 1915, when he left the office of General Secretary-Treasurer, which he had held for five years, to work on his own mining property at Jicarilla, New Mexico, where he had been arrested on the Chicago indictment.
St. John told of the Cripple Creek strike and of how the militia was brought in after two detectives had loosened a rail on a railroad, as was proven, and charged it to strikers’ violence.
Vanderveer: After the militia had been brought into the Cripple Creek District, do you know of any arrests and deportation of the miners?
A. They arrested the Executive Committee of the Cripple Creek District, held them in custody in spite of the orders of the District Court to release them, and finally rounded up some 700 union miners, loaded them in box cars and shipped them to different points.
Q. An attempt was made to secure writs of habeas corpus for the Executive Committee. Do you know the history of that?
A. The writ was made out before Judge Seeds of Cripple Creek. And they brought the bodies of the petitioners into court under military guard; the buildings surrounding the court were loaded with soldiers on the roofs, and machine guns were trained on the courtroom. Judge Seeds was unable to get any action at all. The only submission the militia made to the court was that they took off their hats when court opened. Judge Seeds heard the petition and ordered the release from custody of this Executive Committee, but the militiamen took them back to the bull pen.Of the changes in the I. W. W., Vanderveer asked: “When the I. W. W. was organized, was there a political clause in its Preamble?”
A. There was a sentence in the Preamble referring to the political field.
Q. Tell the jury how the Preamble came to be amended in respect to that matter.
A. There were possibly two main causes. First, among the elements composing the organization were adherents of different political parties, some of them claiming to be revolutionary or to have a revolutionary end in view. They interpreted this clause to mean that nobody was eligible or had any business being a member of the I. W. W. unless he swallowed their particular brand of political belief. The second reason was that the experience of the organization and the membership was that they had no business setting up any doctrines, promulgating any ideas outside the field which the organization was formed to operate in, that is, the industrial field; that was a matter of political action; that was a matter which could be safely left to the membership to decide for themselves. If they knew their interest inside of the industry they could be trusted to follow that interest in any other line of activity in which they decided to take part.From the beginning of the trial the prosecution harped upon that sentence in St. John’s “History and Structure of the I. W. W.,” which says: “The question of ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ does not concern us.”
Q. Why did you put those words in quotation marks?[The Saint Speaks on the Workers’ Right to Life]
For the reason that in every struggle the wage earners have made during my experience, no matter what they have done, the exponents of the employing class, the press, platform, politicians of all degrees and stripes, have always told them that no matter what they were after, that it was not ‘right’; something they did was ‘wrong.’ The only time a strike is ‘right’ with them is when you have no chance to win it; when they want you to strike; when they want to wipe out whatever vestige of organization you have, then the strike is ‘right,’ that is, a good time to strike.
The Lawrence strike was not entirely a question of getting better wages for those mill operatives, but it was a question that involved the very life and death not only of the men, women and children who were on strike, but also of unborn generations of these same operatives. The death rate in that section among children is 400 out of every 1,000 before they are 1 year of age.
When they were striking in Lawrence they were striking not only for an immediate proposition, but they were striking to save the lives of those 400 unborn children, if you please. They were striking to maintain the human race in that part of the country—and all over—because the interest of wage workers the world over is bound together.
When one section of workers goes ahead, it makes it possible for some other section to forge ahead also. So we say that in a case of that kind, regardless of what public sentiment is, regardless of what the press and other exponents of the ruling element in society may say that it is not right to strike, it is not right to picket, that it is intimidation, or anything else, we are not concerned in it. The right of these men, women and children, the right of these unborn children is superior to any rights that any other element or interest may have in the question.
Following are some high spots from St. John’s testimony on cross-examination:
Nebeker: Suppose that the I. W. W. could really accomplish this great thing that you have in mind by open revolution, open warfare against the government; now just supposing that you accomplished that in that way, and that would be the most direct and immediate way of doing it, would it be your conception that that would be justified?
A. If I had any such idea as that I would have been out organizing a military organization instead of an industrial one.
Nebeker: If the end could be hastened by the use of violence by the organization of violence, then violence would be justified; is that the idea?
A. That is the idea, but it won’t do it,that is all.
Q. You entertain the same views about it, or you did at the time you were indicted, that you set forth in this book, “History-Structure”?
A. The indictment has not changed my views a particle.Vanderveer, inquiring if St. John thought the “working class and the employing class have nothing in common,” advanced beyond the question of class.
Q. Do you believe that society as a whole, having regard for the interests of all the people, have anything in common with the employers of industry as now organized?Nebeker: I object to this.
Vanderveer: We are perfectly willing to go a whole lot further than counsel says is “wrong.”
Landis: Just a moment. We will not accomplish anything at this stage of the trial to establish that society as a whole is having its battles fought by these defendants. It is too late in the contest.
[Emphasis added.]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
SOURCE
The I.W.W. Trial
Story of the Greatest Trial in Labor’s History
by one of the Defendants
-by Harrison George
—-with introduction by A. S. Embree.
IWW, Chicago, 1919
https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100663067
Page 172: Sat Aug 3, 1918
(see bottom of page, James Elliott)
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=umn.31951d01368761a;page=root;seq=174
Page 174: Mon Aug 5, 1918
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=umn.31951d01368761a;page=root;view=image;size=100;seq=176
Page 176: Tues Aug 6, 1918
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=umn.31951d01368761a;page=root;view=image;size=100;seq=178
Note:
First ad I can find for this book:
Butte Daily Bulletin -page 3
-Mar 5, 1919
https://www.newspapers.com/image/176048912/
IMAGE
Vincent St John, Gen Sec-Tre IWW, Reuther, about 1906
https://reuther.wayne.edu/node/13663
see also New Castle PA Hld p1 Aug 11, 1906:
https://www.newspapers.com/image/97054793/
See also:
“I never met a man I admired more”: Vincent St. John (1876-1929)
-by Juan Conatz
https://libcom.org/library/%E2%80%9Ci-never-met-man-i-admired-more%E2%80%9D-vincent-st-john-1876-1929
General Secretary-Treasurers of the IWW
https://www.iww.org/headquarters/oldgst
The IWW – its History, Structure and Methods
By Vincent St. John
Edited, with Forward and Epilogue, by Mark Damron, 2001
Originally Published by IWW PUBLISHING BUREAU in CHICAGO, 1917
https://www.iww.org/about/official/StJohn
(2) The Original I. W. W. Preamble
https://www.iww.org/about/official/StJohn/2
(4) I.W.W. Preamble
https://www.iww.org/about/official/StJohn/4
For more on Lawrence Textile Strike:
The Trial of a New Society
-by Justus Ebert
IWW, Cleveland, 1913
https://archive.org/stream/trialofnewsociet00eber#page/n3
For more on Cripple Creek Strike:
The Cripple Creek Strike:
a History of Industrial Wars in Colorado, 1903-4-5
By Emma Florence Langdon
(this edition, with appendix, would be 1908)
http://www.rebelgraphics.org/wfmhall/langdon00.html
Also see Rastall’s account:
http://www.rebelgraphics.org/wfmhall/rastall00.html
Hellraisers Journal, Tuesday August 6, 1918
Chicago IWW Trial: Fellow Worker Francis Miller on Early Death in the Textile Mills of New England
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