Hellraisers Journal – Monday January 27, 1919
Leavenworth Penitentiary – Fellow Workers Arrive from Sacramento
From The Leavenworth Times of January 26, 1919:
MORE I. W. W. PRISONERS HERE
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Special Car Load of Them Brought in
From California Yesterday
-Names and Sentences.
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Silent Defenders
Another big batch of I. W. W. prisoners was landed in the Federal penitentiary yesterday. They were brought in from California in a special car in charge of six deputy United States marshals. They got into the prison at 3:30 in the afternoon.
These were all white men and they were a tough looking bunch. There were sharp and well dressed looking prisoners in the ninety-one that were brought over from Chicago with Haywood last fall, but the California gang seems to be run down hobos.
They will be dressed in Monday and put to work Tuesday. Like the other I. W. W. prisoners they will be divided up among the working gangs of the penitentiary.
The names with the sentences of the new I. W. W. prisoners follow:
Ten years-Mortimer Downing, chairman of the “silent defense” trial committee; Frederick Edmond, Chris Luber, Philip McLaughlin, John Graves, J. Tort, James Quinlan, Ed Quigley, George O’Connell, Roy Connors, John Potthast, Henry Hammer, Peter Bernardina, Myron Sprague, Edward Anderson, Caesar Tabib, Godfrey Ebel, William Hood, Vincent Santelli, George Voetter.
Five years-Edward Carey, John L, Murphy, Harbert Stredwick.
Four years-Robert Feehan, James Mulrooney, James Price.
Three years-Joseph Carroll, Otto Elsner.
Two years-Joseph Harper, Harry Latour, Frank Moran, F. Reilly, Elmer Anderson, Felix Cedno.
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[Photograph and emphasis added.]
Mortimer Downing Speaks
Sacramento, California -January 17, 1919
Before sentence was passed upon the Silent Defenders, Mortimer Downing made the following statement to the court:
We have kept silence throughout the trial; now we speak out. We do not ask for mercy, but we do intend to bring out some of the facts that have been hushed in this trial to show the mesh of error and perjury that makes up the “evidence” against us, and-to get a few things off our chests. ”
You have heard of “direct action” and “violence” coupled throughout the trial by Prosecutor Duncan. You will never find an instance where the two ideas are coupled in the literature of the Industrial Workers of the World. “Direct action” has been persistently twisted out of its evident meaning and made include ideas to which it is not remotely related.
Worker Will Tell Boss
Shall I tell you what “direct action” really means? Every employer claims the right to administer his business as he sees fit. He changes hours, wages, conditions of labor as he pleases. But the workman is taught that when he wants to make any such change he must go to court.
The I. W. W. has taught and will continue to teach that the worker on the job shall tell the boss when and where he shall work, how long, for what wages and under what conditions. It will continue to teach that gradually the worker will get more and more power until finally he will take over the industries.
We intend to go ahead with the One Big Union. We intend to bring the workers, all the workers, into one big union, and we don’t seek a statute to authorize it, either. We know that no body of men, not workers, would ever make such a statute. We know that at a convention of bourgeois “revolutionists” held in France on Sept. 28, 1792, attended by all the great figures of the French revolution, and even our own Thomas Paine, a law was passed that made it illegal for working men to organize. In the face of opposition like that the worker has gone ahead and won what he has won.
Dealing with Men.
We intend to go on farther to go ahead frankly, openly, forcibly.
When counsel was talking about “direct action” and “violence”, he left out one very important incident narrated in Vincent St. John’s book. That was the incident of McKee’s Rocks….You are not playing with children. You are dealing with men now who thoroughly understand conditions as they are.
Now for some of the facts about this case:
The prosecution has slated in court that all the defendants are members of the I. W. W. That is not true. W. H. Faust has not been a member for three and a half years. He was prospecting out here in the hills and was arrested on the testimony of people who a year ago had jumped his claim. Felix Cedno is not a member. And furthermore he never in his life wrote a letter in English for the reason that he cannot write a word of English.
F. A. Lamar, Horst’s detective, swore he heard Freddie Esmond, Scott and McGowan say I was handling the picket line at Wheatland. I was in the Marysville jail during the whole period of the picket line, and the records will prove it. And isn’t it a strange thing that with Wheatland only a few miles away, not one witness was brought from there to testify? Couldn’t they get one witness in the whole place instead of going afield and bringing in a detective?
Now for Next Perjurer!
Now as to the other perjurers. Coutts! I hardly know what to say about that unfortunate creature. He is a product of the times. But Duncan himself admitted that Coutts might have lied. The attorney for the prosecution admits that during the trial his foremost witness may have lied on the stand! Can you expect us to come into court with any great respect for law that condones perjury?
The lid of that bean pot there is not sealed [pointing to the earthenware retort that Coutts said he made in the Oakland hall for the manufacture of phosphorus]. If phosphorus were made in that retort, the gas would have left nothing alive in the place. And the retort could not possibly have been made in the Oakland hall because strong heat is required in the making of such an earthen furnace and we had nothing there, not even a wood stove.
[George] O’Connell was in a hospital, as records will show, at the time Coutts had him at Westwood. Coutts himself was ordered out of camp because he stole goods from his fellow workers.
Dymond said I was pro-Ally and against the war! And he charges me with being against the war in 1916 when, if you remember, President Wilson was “to proud to fight”.
I am against war, just as I am utterly and absolutely against the wage system. But I would no more make my puny effort to hamper the execution of the war than I would refuse to comply with the requirements of the wage system as long as we have it with us. If I had been called, I would have answered the call, just as I go now and find myself a master under the wage system.
Never a Good War
There never was a good war nor a bad peace. But the war in Europe was an absolutely necessary and inevitable thing, a readjustment of outworn conditions. Germany was lapsing over into the present day of the feudal system and had to be eliminated. The Junker gang had no more conception of its place in society than if it had come down from the Middle Ages. War IS a survival of the bestial state.
Only one generous, kindly doctrine ever came into the world, only one that will put individual responsibility where it belongs. That is the doctrine that might is right.
In 1914 there were at all technical schools, colleges, universities and other higher educational institutions in this country, 266,000 persons. Out of 110,000,000 only 266,000 have a chance for real culture. Set against that the fact that in the same year there were in this country more than 500,000 public prostitutes, not counting the thousands of poor girls that are doubly exploited by their employers. That is what we have to show as the flower of our civilization, a civilization that could seize Freddie Esmond, a seriously sick man, and make him sleep on the jail floor without bedding for more than two months.
I am against this, against the civilization that produces such things. I hope to see the day when there shall be a different degree of sweetness and light in this country.
Oakland Tribune
(Oakland, California)
-Jan 17, 1919 Note: source for date (Jan 17th) of
sentencing and speech by Mortimer Downing. https://www.newspapers.com/image/82280945/
The Silent Defense Pamphlet
A Story of the Remarkable Trial of Members
of the Industrial Workers of the World
Held at Sacramento, California
IWW, Chicago,
-af/ Jan 1919-bf/ June 21, 1920
page 17-The Silent Defense by Jean Sterling
-covers trial
page 26-Ol’ Rags An’ Bottles by Special Correspondence
-covers trial
page 37-Jury Disregards Judge’s Instructions
-re verdict
page 43- A Defendant Speaks https://www.sos.wa.gov/legacy/images/publications/sl_silentdefense/sl_silentdefense.pdf
For more on places, people and events
mentioned in Downing’s speech: The Silent Defenders,
Courts and Capitalism in California
-by Harvey Duff
IWW, after Sept 6, 1919 Note: scroll down to ad
for “Uncle Sam, Jailer”
-by W. Lane, which appeared in Survey of Sept 6, 1919 http://debs.indstate.edu/d855s5_1920.pdf
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