Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday March 2, 1921 Salsedo Dead in New York City; Sacco and Vanzetti in Danger in Massachusetts
From the New York Liberator of March 1921:
One Dead-Two in Danger
By Robert Minor
-by Art Shields -cover design by Robert Minor
OUT of a window high in an office building in Park Row, a man’s body took the long drop to the street below. Early morning newspaper distributors and a policeman smoothed back the black hair on the head that rolled loosely. There were the fine forehead of olive skin, the black eyes and aquiline nose of an Italian.
The body had fallen from a window that gaped open in the half-dark of dawn, fourteen stories above. Investigation of the fourteenth floor showed that this was a window of a secret prison kept by the agents of the United States Department of Justice.
Do you remember “Palmer’s Revolution?” It was dated for May 1st, 1920. The Italian workman’s plunge to death on May 3rd from Palmer’s secret prison was its only casualty.
The secret jail, hidden away in an office building in the heart of the business district, was the headquarters for “Palmer’s Revolution.” In that resort, away from the restraints of regular prisons, Palmer’s agents handled “reds.” Andrea Salsedo was one of the working men that was being handled there. There was another man in the prison, Roberto Elia, a friend of the dead man. Elia had seen that Salsedo’s head and face were a mass of bruises. Salsedo had been taken out each day three times, he said, to be questioned and to be beaten so as to make him give the answers that were wanted. Elia said that he heard Salsedo’s screams while he was being tortured, and saw the agents examine Salsedo’s eyes and finger nails to learn whether the beating was going so far as to endanger life. When Elia went to sleep at night, the agents pointed to the open window, saying: “Don’t forget this is the fourteenth floor.”
In the morning Elia was told that Salsedo had “jumped out of the window.” The newspaper men and city policemen and strangers came, asking questions. The pile of shapeless flesh in the pool of blood below the window of the secret prison was embarrassing to Palmer and to Flynn of the Secret Service. Even the capitalist press stirred a little with the tang of the mystery. Did the man jump and kill himself, or was he thrown from the window? Was he thrown out alive? Or was a dead body dropped from the window to conceal the manner in which death had taken place?
The newspapers were shut off at last. The body was quickly buried without any coroner’s inquest. Roberto Elia was the only one who knew anything-except Palmer’s men. He was quickly deported to Italy, where he disappeared from sight. Then the Italian population of various American industrial districts began to make trouble. Agitators began to make protest meetings.
Hellraisers Journal – Friday March 1, 1901 Mother Jones Remembers “Civilization in Southern Mills” of 1896
From the International Socialist Review of March 1901:
Civilization in Southern Mills
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The miners and railroad boys of Birmingham, Ala., entertained me one evening some months ago with a graphic description of the conditions among the slaves of the Southern cotton mills. While I imagined that these must be something of a modern Siberia, I concluded that the boys were overdrawing the picture and made up my mind to see for myself the conditions described. Accordingly I got a job and mingled with the workers in the mill and in their homes. I found that children of six and seven years of age were dragged out of bed at half-past 4 in the morning when the task-master’s whistle blew. They eat their scanty meal of black coffee and corn bread mixed with cottonseed oil in place of butter, and then off trots the whole army of serfs, big and little. By 5:30 they are all behind the factory walls, where amid the whir of machinery they grind their young lives out for fourteen long hours each day. As one looks on this brood of helpless human souls one could almost hear their voices cry out, “Be still a moment, O you iron wheels or capitalistic greed, and let us hear each other’s voices, and let us feel for a moment that this is not all of life.”
We stopped at 12 for a scanty lunch and a half-hour’s rest. At 12:30 we were at it again with never a stop until 7. Then a dreary march home, where we swallowed our scanty supper, talked for a few minutes of our misery and then dropped down upon a pallet of straw, to lie until the whistle should once more awaken us, summoning babes and all alike to another round of toil and misery.
I have seen mothers take their babes and slap cold water in their face to wake the poor little things. I have watched them all day long tending the dangerous machinery. I have seen their helpless limbs torn off, and then when they were disabled and of no more use to their master, thrown out to die. I must give the company credit for having hired a Sunday school teacher to tell the little things that “Jesus put it into the heart of Mr. – to build that factory so they would have work with which to earn a little money to enable them to put a nickel in the box for the poor little heathen Chinese babies.”
Hellraisers Journal – Monday February 28, 1921 Mother Jones News Round-Up for January 1921, Part II: -Found Speaking in Mexico City at Pan-American Labor Congress
Translated from Mexico City’s El Universal of January 10, 1921:
Mother Jones Arrives in Mexico City
Upon arriving at Buena Vista station in Mexico City [on the morning of January 9th], Mother Jones was met by 2,000 workers among whom were a large feminine contingent from the factories: El Recuerdo, El Buen Tono, Tabacelera, Cigarrera, La Estrella, Departmentos Fabules, and from the Trade Union of Waitresses, etc., all of whom carried, as did the male element, the banners of their respective groups…..
Mother Jones was the object of singular interest. With ninety years on her shoulders, she is one of the most indefatigable fighters for working-class organization in the United States.
Amidst a veritable shower of flowers, Mother Jones was brought in an auto from the platform of the station to the Glorieta Cuauhtémoc, where another contingent of trade union workers were awaiting her. They applauded her and threw fragrant sprays of roses. In the Glorieta, a demonstration was organized to honor Mother Jones, and was followed by a parade to the Hotel St. Francis where several Mexican workers spoke, and the guest of honor answered. She did so in virile and intrepid language, saying , in short, that when she first visited Mexico [in 1911], she never believed the workers’ movement in this country would have reached its present numbers and effectiveness; that she had been struggling in the field of ideas and action for years and years, a a struggle which would end only with her death; that she had dedicated her existence to seeking the economic, moral, and cultural development of the working class. She ended with a tribute to the Mexican workers affirming that only on the day when a single language and a single nation would exist on earth, would human happiness have been achieved.
Mother Jones is an elderly lady whose appearance is as modest as it its admirable, a woman with a very friendly behavior.
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday February 27, 1921 Mother Jones News Round-Up for January 1921, Part I: –Found Traveling from West Virginia to Mexico City with Fred Mooney
From The Sacramento Bee of January 4, 1921:
LEAVES FOR MEXICO.
CHARLESTON (W. Va.), January 4.-Fred Mooney, Secretary of District No. 17, United Mine workers of America, left to-day for Mexico City to attend the Pan-American Labor Conference next week. Mooney was accompanied by “Mother Jones.”
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday February 26, 1921 Mother Jones News Round-Up for December 1920: –Found in Washington, D. C., Pleading for Release of Debs
From Virginia’s Richmond Times-Dispatch of December 15, 1920:
DEBS MUST SERVE TERM, SAYS PRESIDENT WILSON ———- Socialist Leader Not Included in Christmas Pardons in List From White House. —–
THREE RECEIVE CLEMENCY ———- Executive’s Refusal Is Blow to Aspirations of Liberals, Who Have Been Working to That End. “Mother Jones” Visits Capital.
(By United News.]
WASHINGTON, Dec. 24.-Two men convicted of murder and one man convicted of selling drugs unlawfully, received Christmas pardons today from President Wilson. Eugene V. Debs, choice of a million citizens for President in the recent election, did not. His ten-year term, under conviction of violating the espionage act, still stands, subject only to abbreviation through good behavior….
The President’s refusal to extend mercy to Debs is a blow in the face for Socialists and liberals all over the country. The Socialist party, as such, has not interceded in his behalf, but individual members of the party have been campaigning consistently ever since the signing of the peace treaty eighteen months ago to obtain Debs’ release. The Bureau of Civil liberties has been the center of activity of others working for pardon for him.
Mother Jones, aged friend of the miners, spent some time in Washington last week working in Debs’ behalf….
It became known recently that Attorney-General Palmer, who has been considered opposed to clemency for Debs, actually had recommended to the President that the grant the pardon. Partly because this fact was rumored among those working for Debs’ release and because of the frequent revival of the report that the President planned to grant the pardon at Christmas time, the general feeling In this city had been that the Socialist leader would be a free man Christmas Day. The statement that this would not be the case, made Thursday by the United News, was a profound shock, and many still clung to hope until the issuance of the pardon list by the Attorney-General’s office Friday revealed only the three names given above.
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday February 25, 1911 Big Bill Haywood to Make Tour of Socialist Locals for the Review
From the International Socialist Review of February 1911:
INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW LECTURE BUREAU
FREE TO LOCALS
Our object in planning the Review Lecture Bureau is to increase the circulation of the INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW, to supply lecturers who are representative of revolutionary socialism—men and women who will drive home the things the REVIEW is trying to say to the working class, and to put some money into the local’s treasury [locals of the Socialist Party of America].
We have been fortunate in securing William D. Haywood to fill dates for us. Comrade Haywood has returned from his tour of Europe filled with enthusiasm for the growing solidarity of labor he has found in every country. No American has ever spoken to the enormous crowds in Europe that greeted Haywood every where he went. Stokers, dockers, boiler makers, thousands upon thousands of miners and other working men and women heard him and refused to go home when his meetings closed. “More, more”! was the cry that greeted Haywood wherever he spoke.
We have a plan whereby it will be possible for every Local in the country to have a Haywood date, without any expense to the Local. The comrades guarantee to take 500 admission tickets at 25 cents each. Each card is good for a three month subscription to the INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW, wherein Haywood hopes to repeat, drive home and clinch the arguments he makes in his lectures. This is the perfect propaganda. No man or woman ever grew sleepy at a Haywood lecture or forgot what Haywood said. They will get these things in permanent form in copies of the REVIEW.
The 500 tickets sold at 25 cents each, will be $125 of which we will pay $25 on hall rent, furnish posters, dodgers, and pay all of Haywood’s expenses. We will send FREE 200 copies of the current number of the REVIEW to be sold at the meeting for the benefit of the Local. The Local keeps the collection and literature sales. The Local takes half of all tickets sold over 500. Remember each admission ticket is good for a three-months’ subscription to the REVIEW. There is no better way to arouse the workingmen and women in your city than to get them to hear Haywood speak and to send copies of the REVIEW into their homes every month.
We are filling dates for Haywood in the central states at this time. Take up this matter with your local and write for a date NOW if you want to plan a lecture for February, March, or April. We will send on the cards, to be paid for on date of lecture.
Hellraisers Journal – Friday February 24, 1911 Fresno, California – Latest News from the Free Speech Fight
From the Spokane Industrial Worker of February 23, 1911:
THE LATEST FROM FRESNO. ———- City Would Like to Holler “Enough” -More Men Are Needed to Board With the County. ———-
Fresno Morning Republican February 2, 1911
The fight for Free Speech is still going on in Fresno. The men are all “stickers” and are determined to stick until they win. We have held two street meetings, Sunday, February 5 and 12. We had large crowds at both meetings, and the public sentiment is changing in our favor.
The city officials would like to quit, but they hate to lay down under fire. The city has enough, but hates to holler “quit.” Now that the fight has lasted as long as it has, they will never want to tackle the I. W. W. again. It is now up to the members to get to Fresno in strong enough numbers to FORCE the officials to “lay down.”
This has been a clean fight on our side and has been carried on by “Direct Action.” We want no compromise. Nothing but the unconditional surrender on the part of the city, and the release of all prisoners will go with us. I think after this fight is over we will have no more Free Speech fights for awhile. The officials of other cities will think twice before they tackle us.
I have been out of jail since February 1, when I was acquitted by a jury of farmers in four minutes on a charge of vagrancy. I have done some outside work since my release. Some of the boys will have jury trials on Friday. I will plead their cases, then speak on the streets and go to jail. Am getting homesick for my beans and raisins. Can’t stay out much longer. Wake up, boys. Come to Fresno and help whip the BOSS as he should be whipped. Meet us in the Fresno jail.
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———-Upon arriving at Buena Vista station in Mexico City [on the morning of January 9th], Mother Jones was met by 2,000 workers among whom were a large feminine contingent from the factories: El Recuerdo, El Buen Tono, Tabacelera, Cigarrera, La Estrella, Departmentos Fabules, and from the Trade Union of Waitresses, etc., all of whom carried, as did the male element, the banners of their respective groups…..
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