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Hellraisers Journal – Friday January 24, 1919
Seattle, Washington – Seattle Workers Threaten General Strike
From The Seattle Star of January 22, 1919:
From The Butte Daily Bulletin of January 23, 1919:
Author: Janet Raye
Hellraisers Journal: U. S. Supreme Court Legalizes the Bullpen & Preventative Arrest in Case of Moyer v Peabody
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Hellraisers Journal – Saturday January 23, 1909
Washington, District of Columbia – U. S. Supreme Court Rules Against Moyer
From the Socialist Montana News of January 21, 1909:
Highest Court in the Land
Legalizes Bull Pen.
—–Washington, Jan. 18.-The supreme court of the United States today decided against President Moyer, of the Western Federation of Miners, in the damage suit brought by him against former Governor Peabody, of Colorado, on account of Moyer’s imprisonment on the governor’s orders because of his alleged connection with riots at Telluride, Col., in 1904.
In the course of his opinion Justice Holmes said:
Right to Call Troops.
We must assume that the governor had a right under the state constitution and laws to call out troops, as was held by the supreme court of the state. The constitution is supplemented by an act providing that when an invasion of or insurrection in the state is made or threatened, the governor shall order the national guard to repel or suppress the same.
That means that he will make the ordinary use of the soldiers to that end; that he my kill persons who resist, and of course that he my use the milder methods of seizing the bodies of those whom he considers to stand in the way of restoration of peace. Such arrests are not necessarily for punishment, but are by way of precaution to prevent the exercise of hostile power; so long as each arrests are made in good faith and in the honest belief that they are needed in order to hold the insurrection off, the governor is the final judge and cannot be subjected to an action after he is out of office on the ground that he had no reasonable ground for his belief.
Individuals Must Yield.
When it comes to a decision by the head of the state upon a matter involving its life, the ordinary rights of individuals must yield to what he deems the necessities of the movement. Public danger warrants the substitution of executive process for judicial process.
[Newsclip added.]
Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts & Doings of Mother Jones for December 1918, Part III-Found in California Organizing Oil Field Workers
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Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday January 22, 1919
Mother Jones News for December 1918, Part III
-Mother Found in Taft, California, Organizing Oil Field Workers
Following her audience with the Governor of California on behalf of Tom Mooney, Mother Jones spoke in and around the San Francisco area urging working men and woman to take action to free Mooney and all other political and class-war prisoners. Mother then traveled to Taft, near Bakersfield, at the request of the oil field workers there with the intention of organizing them into the United Mine Workers of America.
We next find her in the pages of the The Kalamazoo Gazette as the author of a “Message to Women in Industry.” Here she states that the organization of women into “men’s” unions will strengthen organized labor for both working women as well as for working men:
Women ought to join men’s unions-not organize separate unions of their own. The battle against unpatriotic greed, the struggle for a free America, is no sex matter.
An infusion of women into men’s unions works for good to both men and women. Man has studied the disease longer than woman; he has a broader vision of society’s problems. Woman is less indifferent to suffering than man. She will contribute energy and inspire to action.
A woman will not see the hair torn from the scalp of a ten-year-old girl by unprotected cog-wheels, without wanting to do something about it.
Note: the photograph above is from The Buffalo Enquirer of December 26, 1918.
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Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts & Doings of Mother Jones for December 1918, Part II-Found in San Francisco on Behalf of Tom Mooney
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Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday January 21, 1919
Mother Jones News for December 1918, Part II
-Mother Found in San Francisco on Behalf of Tom Mooney
From the San Francisco Examiner of December 12, 1918:
‘Mother’ Jones to Aid Mooney
in His Fight for Liberty
—–Labor Leader Represents 500,000 Workers
in Appeal for Man’s Release.
—–
“Mother” (Mary) Jones, labor leader, arrived in San Francisco last night from Chicago to urge a new trial for Thomas J. Mooney, serving a life sentence for the Preparedness Day bomb murders.
Armed with credentials from the Illinois State Federation of Labor and the Chicago Federation of Labor and a letter from Governor Lowden of Illinois, “Mother” Jones said her first errand will be to obtain an audience with Governor William D. Stephens, who recently commuted Mooney’s death sentence.
“Mother” Jones declared her dissatisfaction with the imprisonment of Mooney, who, she said, was innocent and so held by the great mass of the labor organizations that had sent her here. She said:
I believe this is an issue that goes to the very heart of the judicial system, not only of California, but of the entire nation. That is what I shall try to present to Governor Stephens.
The organizations that sent me to San Francisco number many hundreds of thousands of workers and behind them are 500,000 more, the mineworkers, who are with me on this mission.
The visitor was met by San Francisco and Oakland members of the International Workers’ Defense League at the Ferry building. She went to the Hotel Clark. “Mother” Jones will address some of the labor bodies during her stay in California.
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[Photograph added.]
Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts & Doings of Mother Jones for December 1918, Part I-Found Speaking at Convention of Illinois Federation of Labor
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Hellraisers Journal – Monday January 20, 1919
Mother Jones News for December 1918, Part I
-Mother Found Speaking before Illinois Federation of Labor Convention
On Wednesday December 4, 1918, Mother Jones was introduced at the Convention by John H. Walker, President of the Illinois State Federation of Labor. She stood before the delegates gathered together in Bloomington for the 36th Annual Convention of the Illinois F. of L. and gave a long and spirited address in which she said, in part:
Your President is not a member of the high class burglars’ association—he wouldn’t welcome me here if he was.
Mr. Chairman and Fellow Workers, we are passing through the greatest change the world’s history has ever undertaken to bring man through. The world is making over, it is making into a new world, and it is up to the workers to say how that world will be shaped for the future destiny of the race. If we are indifferent to the change that is coming the future generations will pay the penalty.
I want to make a statement to you. I don’t live in your club rooms, I don’t belong to your parasitical type of woman, I am not a Sunday School teacher, I don’t work for Jesus—He don’t need me. I want to open the eyes of the workers…..
You and your organizations are up against a stone wall, and the most insidious machine that was ever organized in the human history is organized to break you. Are you going to let them do it? Or will you rise like men and tell them you are at the threshold of a new civilization, the map of the world is changing and you are going to change, too? You went abroad and cleaned up the kaiser, now let us clean up the kaisers at home!….
You know what the women did in New York. I went there to talk to the women. The women came to hear me. The commissioner of police sent a woman there who did not belong to my class. I spotted her immediately. She was one of Mrs. Belmont’s little lapdogs and when I began to talk she said I must be careful. She said she was the president of a number of organizations. One of them was a school decorating organization. I got the women worked up anyhow and they went out and cleaned up the scabs. The cops ran and the women with babies in their arms took the clubs and beat the cops. They were not Sunday School women, they were fighters. If the men had the fight in them those women had we would have won the battle in New York…..
Tom Mooney has been sentenced by order of the capitalists, the chamber of crooks, of California, to life imprisonment. I know Mooney, I know his wife, I know his mother. He has been a good fighter. He may have made a great noise at times, just as I have, but I know he had no more hand in the crime he is charged with, nor did any other working man, than I had, and I was a thousand miles away from San Francisco at that time. I am going to tour the nation and arouse the people to the injustice of that trial…..
Hellraisers Journal: Sacramento IWW Found Guilty in Federal Court as Troops Welcomed Home to Find Nation Voted Dry
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Hellraisers Journal – Sunday January 19, 1919
Sacramento, California – Fellow Workers Convicted at Federal Trial
From the San Francisco Examiner of January 17, 1919:
Hellraisers Journal: National Labor Convention for Mooney: Debs Invited, W. F. Dunn of Butte Speaks for Radicals
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Hellraisers Journal – Saturday January 18, 1919
Chicago, Illinois – National Labor Convention for Mooney Hears from Radicals
From The Butte Daily Bulletin of January 16, 1919:
—–
(Special Dispatch to The Bulletin.)
Chicago, Jan. 16.-At this morning’s session of the Mooney Labor Congress Ed Nolan scored the capitalist press on its criticism of the invitation of Debs and its attempt to give a sense of dissension among the delegates. Debs’ name was again greeted with tumultuous applause. It was moved that the Nonpartisan league be given the floor. The motion was defeated. Dunn of Butte moved to give the Detroit delegate the floor. The Detroit leader clearly outlined the program before the convention as follows:
No political begging, a general strike to free Tom Mooney and also to take a stand to free political prisoners and recognize Russia; reorganize the American Federation of Labor on an industrial basis.
The radicals are satisfied with the moves so far.
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Hellraisers Journal: National Labor Convention at Chicago Plans Country-Wide General Strike on Behalf of Mooney
Hellraisers Journal – Friday January 17, 1919:
Chicago, Illinois – National Labor Convention Convenes on Behalf of Mooney
From The Seattle Star of January 14, 1919:
CHICAGO, Jan. 14.-Nation-wide strikes and boycotts will be the weapons used by labor to secure the release of Thomas J. Mooney, according to Edward B. Nolan, San Francisco, secretary of the International Workers’ Defense league who made the keynote speech at the opening session of the labor congress in the Mooney case here today.
Nolan asked the congress to set a definite date for the strikes.
[Declared Nolan:]
Legislation is not forthcoming for Mooney’s benefit. Labor must use its last resort, its powerful economic weapon-the strike and the boycott-to win Mooney his justice. The case has become the greatest question of the nation. We must use the final expression of labor and lay our cards on the table.
Hellraisers Journal: IWW Attorney Moore and Miss Caroline Lowe Report on Brutal Conditions at Leavenworth, Part II
Hellraisers Journal – Thursday January 16, 1919
Leavenworth Penitentiary – Report on Brutal Treatment of Prisoners, Part II
From The New Appeal of January 11, 1919:
[Part 2 of 2.]
Summing up the results of his inquiry, Mr. Moore [Attorney for the Industrial Workers of the World] says:
Extremely fragmentary as is the above, I believe that the following points may be considered as fully established:
1. That negro convicts armed with clubs were used under the direction of Mr. Fletcher [Deputy Warden] to beat up white men. That among those so beaten up were Stratton, Murphy and Floyd Ramp.
2. That many prisoners, whose physical condition was extremely bad, were placed on bread and water diet and deprived of their blankets and compelled to sleep on the cement floor at a time when this would seriously endanger their health.
3. That many prisoners were chained by their wrists to the sides of their cells and so compelled to stand for a period in excess of twenty-four hours.
Visits Husband in Cell.
In an affidavit, of which The New Appeal has been furnished a copy, Mrs. Floyd Ramp, wife of one of the solitary prisoners, states that she was allowed a brief visit with her husband on December 15, having come to Leavenworth in response to a report from friends that her husband had been seriously injured. Mrs. Ramp states that she was not permitted to question her husband regarding his injuries, but that his right eye was badly discolored and he was in an emaciated condition. Owing to the presence of the guard she could elicit no information of what had occurred beyond the most vague and unsatisfactory references. Ramp did say that Stratton was “pretty badly hurt.” Mrs. Ramp states “that Jack Phelan, who was released from the Leavenworth prison on December 18 because declared by the Appellate Court to have been illegally incarcerated on a charge of violating the Espionage Act, told her he had seen Floyd Ramp’s body and that it was a mass of bruises which led him to believe that he had been beaten, kicked and trampled upon.”
Hellraisers Journal: IWW Attorney Fred Moore and Miss Caroline Lowe Report on Brutal Conditions at Leavenworth
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday January 15, 1919
Leavenworth Penitentiary, Kansas – Brutal Treatment of Prisoners Reported
From The New Appeal of January 11, 1919:
[Part 1 of 2.]
In its issue of last week The New Appeal reproduced a report of conscientious objectors at Camp Funston, Kans., detailing the brutal treatment to which they were subjected at the command of certain officers, contrary to the express directions of the war department in Washington. This report was published primarily as a matter of record, the guilty officers having been dismissed from the service and the conditions complained of corrected.
We are now in the way of making a more important exposure-an exposure of brutalities committed upon Socialists, I. W. W.s. and others imprisoned in the Federal penitentiary at Fort Leavenworth, Kans., brutalities that we have reason to believe have not been brought to the notice of the higher authorities since the efforts of interested persons to investigate these brutalities have been baffled at every turn by prison officials. Enough evidence has been dragged into the light, however, to make it shamefully plain, to use the words of Mrs. Floyd Ramp, wife of a Socialist prisoner, “that things are occurring in this penitentiary which citizens of a democracy should not knowingly countenance.”
Could Not Question Prisoners.
On December 12, F. H. Moore, a Chicago attorney, went to Leavenworth to discuss certain legal steps with the group of prisoners sentenced under the Chicago indictment of the I. W. W. alleged anti-war agitators. He also desired to make personal inquiry of the treatment the prisoners were receiving, disquieting reports of which had reached him through “underground” channels. In company with Miss Caroline A. Lowe, who assisted in the defense of the prisoners at the trial, Mr. Moore called upon the warden. They were told by the warden that they could talk over legal matters connected with the case, but they were absolutely forbidden to question the prisoners as to conditions in the penitentiary.
Mr. Moore, in a somewhat lengthy communication sent to The New Appeal, repeatedly emphasizes this autocratic censorship of the warden. As they interviewed, separately, each one of twenty-two prisoners held in solitary confinement with unusual punishment, the deputy warden, who was present during the interviews, sternly suppressed every attempt to question the prisoners as to the manner in which they had been handled and as to their physical condition at the time. Nor were Mr. Moore and Miss Lowe, when they met and conferred with the majority of the prisoners in a body permitted to refer to the condition of their fellow prisoners who were “in solitary.”