Remember, this is the only
American working-class movement which sings.
Tremble then at the I. W. W.,
for a singing movement is not to be beaten.
-Jack Reed
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hellraisers Journal, Thursday September 5, 1918
Chicago, Illinois – “Take care, most arrogant master-class…”
From The Liberator of September 1918:
Part IV of John Reed’s coverage of Chicago I. W. W. trial with drawings by Art Young-
The Social Revolution In Court
By Art Young And John Reed—–
—–Day after day, all summer, witness after witness from the firing-line of the Class Struggle has taken the stand, and helped to shape the great labor epic; strike-leaders, gunmen, rank and file workers, agitators, deputies, police, stool-pigeons, Secret Service operatives.
I heard Frank Rogers, a youth grown black and bitter, with eyes full of vengeance, tell briefly and drily of the Speculator mine fire, and how hundreds of men burned to death because the company would not put doors in the bulk-heads. He spoke of the assassination of Frank Little, who was hung by “vigilantes” in Montana, and how the miners of Butte swore to remember…. (In the General Headquarters of the I. W. W. there is a death mask of Frank Little, blind, disdainful, set in a savage sneer.)
Oklahoma, the tar-and-feathering of the workers at Tulsa; Everett, and the five graves of Sheriff McRae’s victims on the hill behind Seattle… all this has come out, day by day, shocking story on story. I sat for the better part of two days listening to A. S. Embree telling over again the astounding narrative of the Arizona deportations; and as I listened, looked at photographs of the miners being marched across the arid country, between rows of men who carried rifles in the hollow of their arms, and wore white handkerchiefs about their wrists.
