Hellraisers Journal, Sunday October 29, 1916
From the American Socialist: Ryan Walker on the Socialist Club
Hellraisers Journal, Saturday October 28, 1916
From the Everett Labor Journal: Criminal Strikebreakers
EX-CONVICTS PREFERRED AS STRIKEBREAKERS
—–
“God save my dollars.”
The following relating to strike-breaking methods in New York will show to what lengths open shop advocates will go to accomplish their ends:
Dante Barton, of the Industrial Relations Committee, in a statement just issued, points out the record of the strike-breaking firm of Bergoff Bros. & Waddell, which is supplying the traction trust with strike-breakers. The statement follows:
Bergoff Bros. & Waddell, who have supplied the thousands of strikebreakers now being housed in car houses and shop buildings by the Interboro, is today the largest and most notorious strike-breaking agency in the United States. It is an amalgamation of Bergoff Bros. and the old firm of Waddell-Mahone.
Almost exactly a year ago this firm was investigated by the United States Commission on Industrial Relations, in connection with an investigation of the strike at the Bayonne refinery of the Standard Oil Company. The investigation was conducted by George P. West and C. L. Chenery, agents of the commission.
In a statement issued recently by the now unofficial Committee on Industrial Relations, Mr. West said:
Waddell, the most experienced member of this firm, admitted to Mr. Chenery and me that he had no prejudice against ex-convicts, but on the contrary, finds many of them particularly valuable for the work in hand.
Hellraisers Journal, Saturday October 27, 1906
From the Duluth Labor World: Beware the Pinkerton
SPIES IN LABOR UNION
BONE OF CONTENTION
—–
John F. Tobin Tells How One is Discovered
in Boot and Shoe Workers.
—–
Becomes Active in Strike and Proves to be
Employed as Pinkerton Detective.
—–
In his report made at the convention of the Boot and Shoe Workers’ union recently held at Milwaukee, National President J. F. Tobin had this to say of spies in unions:
In many of our unions, and particularly in the large shoe centers, it is a well known fact that we have members who betray the union, giving out information both truthful and untruthful, which is conveyed to employers, sometimes by one method and again by others.
During my membership in a local union in Rochester, N. Y., in 1890, while the Cox strike was in progress, a stranger came to the city well recommended, and was very active in our meetings, very friendly with everybody and very liberal with his money, and contributed to the funds of the union altogether out of proportion with his small earnings while occasionally employed in one of the factories.
After being in the union quite a number of weeks he became a candidate for delegate to the joint shoe council in the semi-annual election and made an active canvass for election. About this time it was discovered that he was a Pinkerton detective, and upon this information being passed around among the members at the meeting he was elected outside sentinel, from which he took the hint and immediately left the city.
During the last big strike in Haverhill a man giving his name as Ed Loughlin was a avery active and prominent member of the union for some time, and was then discovered to be a Pinkerton detective, when he suddenly disappeared.
But when the sky darkens
And the prospect is war
Who’s given a gun
And then pushed to the fore
And expected to die
For the land of our birth
When we’ve never owned
One handful of earth?
-Ed Pickford
Hellraisers Journal, Thursday October 26, 1916
The Northwest Worker on “Political Saviors”
POLITICAL SAVIORS WHO WILL
“KEEP US OUT OF WAR”
—–
Wilson kept us out of war. Therefore, if re-elected, he will continue to keep us out of war. How, we ask, can any intelligent person assume that there is the slightest basis for such reasoning? We can imagine a person attributing supernatural powers to Wilson accepting it, but he certainly would not be an intelligent person, or let us say, he accepted it as a matter of faith, and not of reason.
If Wilson should be re-elected, and the country does not go to war, that faith would naturally be strengthened among his supporters. But, if, under the same circumstances, the country did go to war, there would be nothing easier than for his supporters to claim that it was forced on him; that he was not able to keep the country out of war, despite their belief that he could. That belief would be conveniently forgotten, and they would hate to be reproached with ever entertaining it.
Hellraisers Journal, Wednesday October 25, 1916
Terre Haute, Indiana – Mr. Debs from Fifth Congressional District
From the Logansport Pharos-Reporter of October 24th:
DEBS, SOCIALIST LEADER, NOW RUNS FOR CONGRESS
—–
TERRE HAUTE, Ind., Oct. 25.-Eugene Debs, twice Socialist party candidate for president, may become the first Socialist congressman from Indiana. He is a candidate from the Fifth Indiana district against Ralph Moss, Democrat and one of the authors of the rural credits bill, and Everett Sanders, Republican attorney of this city.
Debs is making a rapid-fire campaign. Contributions have come from Socialists in many parts of the United States and other countries. Many miners in the district are Socialists and Debs’ followers count heavily on his personality, which once carried him into the office of county clerk with more votes than all his opponents combined.
Hellraisers Journal, Tuesday October 24, 1916
From the American Socialist: Socialist on 1916 Ballots
Hellraisers Journal, Monday October 23, 1916
Bayonne, New Jersey – Strikers Return to Work Defeated
The arrival in Bayonne, on October 18th, of the Federal Mediators, John A. Moffitt and John A. Smythe from the Department of Labor, proved to be of no benefit to the strikers’ cause. The strike was broken by the defection of the American workers who abandoned their foreign-born fellow workers and returned to work on October 19th. The foreign-born workers, mostly Polish speaking, were forced to give up the fight for a living wage on Friday October 20th.
From the New York Call of October 21, 1916:
By the Gods, it shall not be!
The bloated, beastly Steel Trust pirates
shall not murder our innocent
comrades and fellow-workers!
-Eugene Victor Debs
Hellraisers Journal, Sunday October 22, 1916
Mesabi Range, Minnesota – Italy Takes Up Case of Carlo Tresca
From the Appeal to Reason of October 21, 1916:
Italy Takes Hand to Save Tresca
From Steel Trust
The SteelTrust wants to get rid of several striking workers (including Carlo Tresca and other leaders), because of their activities in the recent strike of the iron workers on the Mesabe Range in Minnesota. Of course, the Steel Trust has plenty of money and employs a sufficient number of thugs to have the work of “disposition” done in an efficient and effective manner. But since the Colorado incident [Ludlow Massacre], it is exceedingly unwise to do too much rough stuff at first hand, so the dirty work is left to the state. In other words, the Steel Trust is using the commonwealth of Minnesota to railroad Carlo Tresca, four strikers, one woman and two union leaders, to the gallows.
The Steel Trust decided to have these defendants charged with first-degree murder, so the legal machinery was set in motion, and the victims were thrown into cells. They will be tried in a section that is highly charged with bitterness against anyone who strives to improve the conditions of the toilers. They are the victims of a great injustice and the institutions of so-called free America are being used to aid in the conspiracy, rather than to protect the liberties of the people.
One would imagine that if this were a free country, Congress would do something to shelter these workers in chains, but, so far as is known, Republican and Democratic Congressmen hardly knew that there was a great strike in Minnesota. It remained for Italy to take a hand-Italy, with its king and its court, interfering with America, the land of the free hot air!
I have been on the firing line
of the industrial battle for years,
and when democratic bullets shot workingmen,
their blood watered the highways just the same
as when republican bullets shot them.
-Mother Jones
Hellraisers Journal, Sunday October 21, 1906
Oklahoma Territory – Mother Jones Travels and Speaks
From the Appeal to Reason of October 20, 1906:
MESSAGE FROM MOTHER JONES
—–
Dear Appeal:-I want to report conditions as I find them in the new states. I entered the territory at Wilburton. There the democratic nominee for United States Senator was holding a meeting. The committee called on me and asked that the meetings be held jointly, as mine was also billed. I wanted to hear how he presented the struggle of the toiling millions from a democratic standpoint. He showed the wrongs of the republican party, and the beauties of his own. I followed, and showed up that they were both wings of the vulture class and if that class did not have both those wings they could not exist twenty-four hours. I explained to the audience that I had been on the firing line of the industrial battle for years, and that democratic bullets shot workingmen, and their blood had watered the highways just the same as when republican bullets shot them. The result was that a Socialist local of seventy of eighty members was organized soon after.
“Tis a task to write this letter,
Painful news have I to tell,
On the second day of battle,
Sergeant Philip Hamlin fell.”
-Mrs. S.D. Tandy
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Hellraisers Journal, Saturday October 20, 1906
Minnesota First Volunteers Seek to Honor Departed Civil War Hero
From this week’s Duluth Labor World:
HONORING A DEPARTED HERO
The First Minnesota of the Civil War times will live in the annals of heroism as long as history records the battle of Gettysburg.
Among the foremost to do their full duty and more than their duty to their beloved country on that memorable day was Col. Colville [Colvill], the regimental commander, who was literally shot “full of holes,” but was finally nursed back to a longer life of marked usefulness and the respect of all men.
The Colonel went to his well earned reward one year ago and his surviving regimental comrades are agitating for the erection of a suitable monument to his memory. No better or more fitting monument to the departed has ever been proposed. May success crown the loving effort of the surviving brave.
