Hellraisers Journal – Thursday November 14, 1918
“One of Them” by Elizabeth Hasanovitz, Union Garment Worker
“One of Them” describes lingering remnants of the old sweat-shop in the every-day shop vernacular.
From The Ladies’ Garment Worker of October 1918:
The Garment Worker offers a review of a new book by Elizabeth Hasanovitz, member of Ladies’ Waist and Dressmakers’ Union, Local No. 25.
“One of Them”
By Elizabeth Hasanovitz,
Just Published by Houghton Mifflin Company, Price $2.00
[Book Review by Aaron Rosebury]
From The Liberator of November 1918.
This book is described by the publishers as “The pilgrimage of a Russian girl to the Land of Freedom and her life in the garment factories of New York; an unforgettable picture of an unconquerable soul.” But to us who live, move and have our being in the very union referred to in its pages the book is not only the individual experience of one unconquerable soul. It typifies thousands of souls who united in soul and effort to conquer sweat-shop conditions and modern shop slavery and finally succeeded in effecting a great industrial change.
Don’t worry, Fellow Worker,
all we’re going to need
from now on is guts.
-Frank Little
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday November 13, 1918
Legal Defense of Industrial Workers of the World Sabotaged
From The Liberator of November 1918:
IN the midst of our rejoicing over the second disagreement in the Masses case, comes news of continued persecution of the I. W. W. Not content with its power to arrest and hold in prison for months under outrageous bail, workingmen known to be penniless, agents of the Department of Justice, aided by Post Office officials, deliberately prevent the friends of these men from collecting the funds which are absolutely necessary to ensure them a fair hearing. This discrimination against men “presumed to be innocent” was notorious in the Chicago case. We learn from the Civil Liberties Bureau that the same methods are being employed to weaken the defense in the remaining I. W. W. cases. And we know from our own experience that letters to I. W. W. branches are returned as “unmailable” under the supreme power exercised by Mr. Burleson under the second Espionage Act. Words cannot be found to express the indignation that any real Democrat must feel at this continued reign of terror.
We print below a memorandum recently sent to the President by the National Civil Liberties Bureau.
I. Interference by Agents of the Department of Justice
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday November 12, 1918
Max Eastman on the Federal Trial of Eugene Debs at Cleveland
From The Liberator of November 1918:
-Note: Comrade Debs was convicted of violating the Espionage Act in Federal Court in Cleveland on September 12, 1918.
The Trial of Eugene Debs
By Max Eastman
AT a Russian Socialist convention held in Stockholm in 1907 it was estimated that the delegates-140 of them-had spent, collectively, one hundred and thirty-eight years, three months and fifteen days in prison. They had been in exile one hundred and forty-eight years, six months and fifteen days. The length of time the convention as a whole had been active in Socialist propaganda was 942 years.
“It follows,” says Trotsky in a preface to one of his books, “that the time spent in prison and exile is about one-third of the time a Social-Democrat is active.” Reading that preface on my way west to attend the trial of Eugene Debs, I was struck by Trotsky’s unconscious assertion that the time spent in prison is part of the time that a Socialist is “active.” It is often the time that his influence is most active. And though the government may succeed in accelerating the immediate war program by imprisoning Debs, they will also accelerate the effect of his life-long service to the social revolution.
Whatever else he may be, Debs is the spiritual chief and hero of American Socialism, and I find myself in a very real perplexity in trying to report his trial on a charge of obstructing the war program. I believe that the postal authorities will recognize the necessity I am under, as a Socialist editor, of giving this news to the readers of the LIBERATOR. And, of course, I cannot write the news without some special appreciation of his life and character and the elevation of his motives. Yet, on the other hand, I recognize the necessity that the postal authorities are under of keeping out of circulation anything designed to obstruct the war program of the government. Therefore I assure the reader in advance, not only that I shall not quote or refer to anything that Debs said about the war, but that I shall not in any indirect way imply any such quotation or reference; or any discussion of what he said. As a Socialist, bidding a kind of temporary hail and farewell to a companion who is dear to the hearts and minds of millions of Americans-whether pro-war or anti-I write the news of his trial for Socialists.
When I slipped into the court-room at Cleveland a pretty young man in a pressed suit and a bow tie was reading Debs’ speech at Canton to the jury. He was manifestly embarrassed to find so much eloquence in his mouth. Debs was never younger, more spirited, more full of love and irony, than he was in that speech of June 16th.
You ought to be out raising hell.
This is the fighting age.
Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday November 10, 1908
Chicago, Illinois – 5,000 Children Go to School Hungry
From The Socialist Woman of November 1908:
American School Children Starving
Chicago Tribune of October 5, 1908
When we are talking of the number of men who are tramping the country looking for work—hungry, broken-spirited, abject creatures, who once thought themselves men, as good as any of their kind—let us not forget the women, and the little children of these men.
Last winter in Chicago after the first flurry of the panic, I had occasion to visit a number of the “homes” of those who had been thrown out of work. In every case the men were out, hunting feverishly for the chance to make even a little money by any kind of hard labor. And in every case my heart ached and my soul grew sick when I thought of the future of the women and children of those families.
“It is awful when the children cry for food, and we cant give it to them,” said one woman who had never before known what it was to be down and out. Another mother, about thirty, and strong and handsome, had to sit by and watch her seven-year-old daughter burning with fever, and without the care of a doctor because she had lost her job in a department store, and there was no money even to buy food. She had applied for work at all the large stores again and again. She had tried everywhere—and was told that they might need her during the holidays. But the holidays were weeks away. Already she had moved into a questionable quarter because rent was cheap. And unless that mother got work within two weeks, there was but one resource left her, if she would save herself and her child from death through starvation. And that was the sale of her body.
It was for a charitable institution I was working—and I knew that those institutions were crowded to their utmost with destitute cases.
Such, indeed, was the condition of the poor in Chicago last winter, that the superintendent of compulsory education, W. Lester Bodine, took up the case of hungry school children, followed his investigations for six months, and finally ascertained that there are 5,000 starving children, and 10,000 that are underfed, in the schools of the city.
Hellraisers Journal – Monday November 9, 1908
-Mother Jones News Round-Up for October 1908
Found in Kansas: “working with her sleeves rolled up…”
Other than a brief appearance in St. Louis, Missouri, at a campaign event for Eugene Debs, Mother Jones was found, during the month of October, mostly in the Girard area of Kansas campaigning for the Socialist candidates of the Third District. The Kansas Edition of the Appeal described her activities there as “working with her sleeves rolled up.”
From the Appeal to Reason of October 31, 1908:
[…..]
MOTHER JONES MEETINGS.
Mother Jones is in the third district. She is working with her sleeves rolled up and is going after the democrats and republicans in her usual way showing them both to be the tools of an exploiting class. At Galena the opera house was full and a good spirit prevailed; but the meeting at Scammon was great. Mother was in her element, having a hall crowded to the doors with miners, and you may be sure that she delivered the right kind of goods and the democrats that thought that the party for which he works, stands for labor, was disillusioned by the recital of the terrible conditions in democratic Alabama. Mother is to spend the time in the mining and industrial centers until after election and expects to see Ben Wilson come in under the wire a winner.
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday November 8, 1908
Tour of Red Special Ends in Home Town of Eugene Debs
From The Indianapolis News of November 3, 1908:
TERRE HAUTE WELCOMES
“GENE” DEBS BACK HOME
—–
BIG DEMONSTRATION FOR THE SOCIALIST CANDIDATE.
—–
REGARDS TO BRYAN AND TAFT
—–
(Special to The Indianpolis News.)
TERRE HAUTE, Ind., November 3.-“Gene” Debs came home last evening in his “Red Special,” and had a welcome surpassing in enthusiasm any political demonstration seen in Terre Haute in many years. His train was three hours late, owing to a breakdown at Cayuga, but the crowd waited for him, cheering for “Gene.” when he appeared on the stage at the Colosseum 3,000 persons, who had each paid 10 cents admission, packed the place, and as great a crowd outside listened to other speakers. At the Armory another big audience waited for him until after 10 o’clock. Besides paying the admission at the Colosseum there was a liberal contribution when collectors, some of whom were women, wearing red sashes, went down the aisles.
Debs began with a feeling acknowledgment of the personal note in his welcome, referring to the fact that he was born in and always had lived in Terre Haute, where, if any one had ever said an unkind word about him, he never heard of it.
Refers to Rockefeller.
[He said:]
All great movements in their incipiency are unpopular and are led by “undesirable citizens.”
[T]he reference to the designation of him by President Roosevelt causing laughter and applause. He said the two old parties stand for the same system, which has reached the climax of its existence. He declared that Rockefeller “was not born yesterday”; that he knew better than any one else how unpopular he is and the effect of his interview for Taft. The interview, he said, was the shrewdest move in the campaign. He knew that he had exhausted the usefulness of the Republican party to him, and desires Bryan.
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday November 7, 1908
1908 Campaign Ends with Taft Elected and Debs Victorious
From the Appeal to Reason of November 7, 1908:
Debs Victorious
Taft Elected
Debs Re-visits Woodstock Jail
FROM THE RED SPECIAL
—–
Debs Re-visits Woodstock Jail in
Last Days of Long Journey
-Vote should Be at Least a Million.
—–
Madison, Wis., Oct. 30.-We are now on the homeward lap, and when this is read by the Appeal readers the “Red Special” will have passed into history. This morning our first stop out of Chicago was at Woodstock, Ill. On arrival there the “Red Special” crew, and the assembled citizens marched to the Woodstock jail headed by the the “Red Special” band. On arrival at the court house, Harry Parker, manager of the train, called the meeting to order and made a few happy introductory remarks. Comrade Debs then addressed the people, recalling the time when he came to Woodstock as a prisoner, the intense feeling that then prevailed against him and how that had changed until now the people were as friendly and sympathetic as they were then hostile and hateful.
Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living.
-Mother Jones
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The IWW Martyrs of the Sacramento County Jail
Between October 22nd and November 2nd, 1918, five Fellow Workers, members of the Industrial Workers of the World, died of influenza while awaiting trial on Federal Espionage charges.
FW Ed Burns-died October 22nd
FW James Nolan-died October 28th
FW R. J. Blaine-died October 28th
FW H. C. Evans-died October 31st
FW Frank Travis-November 2nd
“The Silent Defense,” IWW Pamphlet, describes jail condition:
Fifty-three were arrested in and around the Sacramento hall [December 1917]. These men were thrown into a [county] jail cell, 21×21 feet. All of them could not lie down at once. It was winter. One cotton blanket was given each. Their food was about two ounces of mush in the morning, less than two ounces of bread. and at night three fetid little smelts and less than two ounces of potatoes, with “coffee” twice a day. In the cold they shivered. Day by day they starved. By relays they slept at night; the bedlam of a city drunk tank soothed their slumbers wooed in frost and starvation. Everyone of these men had money when arrested. They sent out and bought food for themselves. This is a general privilege in the Sacramento jails. This food was placed before their cells just outside the prisoner’s reach. It rotted there. They slaved and starved. Once or twice some of the “harness bulls” of Sacramento slipped their lunches to the ravenous wretches.
You have to act as if it were possible
to radically transform the world.
And you have to do it all the time.
-Angela Davis
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday November 5, 1918
“An army of women is entering [all] branches of industry.”
From The Crisis of November 1918:
THE COLORED WOMAN IN INDUSTRY
Mary E. Jackson
JUST as colored men are going into the Army, so colored women are being recruited into industry. Thousands and thousands of eager boys have gone to France; we all know about them. Few of us realize that at the same time an army of women is entering mills, factories and all other branches of industry.
I undertook an industrial survey of these women for the National Board of the Young Women’s Christian Association. I investigated the increasing numbers employed, the kinds of work, wages, working conditions, what has been done, and what more can be done to raise the efficiency of the workers. At the same time I began in each city the organization of industrial women into clubs.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
