Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday March 3, 1909
Mexico City -John Murray Meets with Mexican Revolutionaries
John Murray recently returned from Mexico and has written an article about that experience for this month’s edition of the International Socialist Review. Below we offer the conclusion of that article in which Mr. Murray meets with a group of Mexican Revolutionaries.
Mexico’s Peon-Slaves Preparing for Revolution
BY JOHN MURRAY
[Part IIII]
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We turned into the mouth of a narrow street, cobbled from wall to wall. Herbierto knocked at a door. A window swung open above our heads and a voice called out, “Is that the doctor?”
“It is,” answered Senora Moreno. “Is the child still sick?”
“Yes, come in quickly,” replied the watcher, closing the window.
“A sick child?” I questioned, as the door opened and we stumbled through the dark passageway.
“No,” meaningly answered Herbierto. “A sick country, with the revolution as the only medicine.”
And the woman added: “That was the pass word.”
Around an oblong table in the room we entered sat two dozen men, as dissimilar in their appearance as their native land is varied, Mexico is half desert and half tropics and breeds its people small, light-skinned and still-tongued, or swarthy, heavy-boned and voluble, as unlike each other as sand and sage brush are to mountain torrents and black jungle-land.
“A friend from Los Angeles,” explained Herbierto to the group watching me in surprised silence, but as he read my credentials from Magon their faces changed and when the signature was reached, a slim, black-eyed boy warmly grasped my hand, asking the question which seems to echo through Mexico:
“How is Ricardo?”
I gave them greetings from their imprisoned leader. He was their hero, their master-mind, whose years of unflinching struggle against the crushing powers of the Dictator had kept hope in Mexico alive; and in return I heard the news of the revolutionary movement.
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday March 2, 1909
At Mexico City – John Murray Learns Details of Rio Blanco Massacre
John Murray recently returned from Mexico and has written an article about that experience for this month’s edition of the International Socialist Review. Below we offer part two of that article in which Mr. Murray arrives in Mexico City and hears the story of the Rio Blanco Massacre.
Mexico’s Peon-Slaves Preparing for Revolution
BY JOHN MURRAY
[Part II]
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Black clouds gathered against the mountains and as the City of Mexico was reached the deluge broke.
A sandal-footed, brass-tagged “cargador” seized my bags and carried them from the Pullman’s steps to a blue-flagged coach.
I kept my face glued to the carriage window and asked myself this question: “Mexico, Mexico, Mexico is—what?” The answer seemed to rise from the passing throng of bent-backed, human burden bearers, “Mexico is a land of cargadores.”
With leather thongs passed across their foreheads and around their heads, cargadores carrying as much as three hundred pounds, trotted by without a stumble. And in the steps of these men followed the women and children likewise loaded.
In no other country in the world does the human back so stagger under a dead weight as here in Mexico.
Arriving at the hotel in front of the Alameda, I went immediately to my room, locked the door and got out my list of addresses in cipher. It was a wearisome task to figure them out, one by one, but I dared not run the risk of being taken by the police and having them find names of Mexican revolutionists given me by the Junta in Los Angeles—that would mean prison for all. One person in Mexico in particular had been recommended to me by Magon. I would see him first.
Hellraisers Journal – Monday March 1, 1909
From Juarez to Mexico City – John Murray Talks with an American Cane-Grower
John Murray recently returned from Mexico and has written an article about that experience for this month’s edition of the International Socialist Review. Below we offer part one of that article in which Mr. Murray travels from Ciudad Juarez to Mexico City and speaks with an American cane-grower along the way.
Mexico’s Peon-Slaves Preparing for Revolution
BY JOHN MURRAY
[Part I]
—–
The third uprising of the Liberal Party failed but another is preparing in Mexico that will not be so easily snuffed out by President Diaz and his “partners,” so asserts the writer of this article, John Murray, who saw Mexico a few months ago in the fever-heat of revolt. With credentials from the revolutionary leaders he traveled from one Liberal Party group to another and was shown by them the underside of Mexico-the Mexico that President Diaz hides from view and guards with guns in hourly fear that it may rise and end his dictatorship.—Editor.
HE warm clasp of Tom’s hand tempted me to talk—in a moment, and my loose tongue let slip enough to give hint of my errand to Mexico. Now Tom Hart was the last man that I should have supposed would show the white feather—a bear hunter, mind you, and grizzlies at that.
“Look here, Bud,” he spoke with a down-drop of his eyes that was new to me, “don’t be so foolish as to rub the President’s hair the wrong way. You don’t know Mexico—it’s prison or death down here. You’re fooled if you think for a moment that this is the United States. Why, I have seen a bunch of rurales ride into a village before sun-up, where things were not going to suit the Diaz government, and call out the whole population, line ’em up and shoot down every tenth man. No trials. Nothing. That’s Mexico. And don’t you go for to stand on your dignity as an American citizen, thinking that you’re safer than a native to speak your mind free. I’ve seen Americans—yes, and there’s three of ’em right now in the prison of San Juan de Ulua—who might just as well be Esquimaux for all the protection that their nationality gives ’em. For God’s sake, old man”—Tom’s pleading startled me, for if he were possessed of such a crushing fear of Diaz what chance had I to escape contagion?—”don’t do anything to offend the Mexican government.”
“It’s too late, Tom, I’m into it now—up to my neck. You never held back when we were after the big-footed grizzly that killed our cattle in the pines back of the Loma Pelon ranch. The game I am after now is news—the true story of Mexico’s sandaled-footed burden-bearers and their nearness to revolt.”
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday February 28, 1909
Spokane, Washington – I. W. W. Takes on Employment Sharks
From The Industrial Union Bulletin of February 20, 1909:
“STORM CENTER OF THE WEST”
The I. W. W. storm center for the West just now appears to be Spokane, Washington. The very great activity of the fellow workers of that city is noticeable at General Headquarters in frequent orders and remittances for due stamps, membership books, buttons and other supplies, as well as Bulletins and other literature. Their fight against the employment bureau sharks continues unabated, and with growing sentiment against those institutions.
Fellow worker James Wilson, secretary of the Central Committee of the Spokane locals, writes on Dec. 19: “Over 100 members have joined here this last week,” and again on Dec. 23, he says: “I can tell you in all sobriety that we are convinced that the success of the I. W. W. in this part of the country will be amazing from now on, and I flatter myself that I am not visionary.”
J. J. Stark writes Dec. 23 in behalf of Local 222: “We are going to move into a larger hall about the first of the year, where the rent will be $125 per month, while formerly we only paid $30. However I think that the increasing membership will warrant the move. Walsh is still with us and is doing great work. He has just received a telegram from Whitehead to come on the first train to Seattle, and will leave at once. It appears that there is something doing among the loggers, and they need his services for a time.”
Hellraisers Journal – Thursday February 27, 1919
Terre Haute, Indiana – Eugene V. Debs on Deportations of Working Men
From The Butte Daily Bulletin of February 21, 1919:
Debs Brands Plot to Deport
Radicals “Crime of Crimes”
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Recalls Lincoln’s Birthday. Says Rail Splitter Was
Murdered by the Ruling Class, that Same Power That
Today Is Shipping Men Overseas Like Cattle Because
They Are Protesting Against Wage Slavery.
—–
By EUGENE V. DEBS.
Terre Haute, Ind., Feb. 12.-This is Lincoln’s birthday. It is a day rich with memory and dark with tragedy. Lincoln was and is the sweetest product of American soil. Like the Nazarene, he loved the poor, sympathized with the lowly, and was hated, vilified and finally murdered by the ruling class of his time.
The birthday of the immortal rail splitter is being celebrated in part by deportation from the land he loved of the men of honest toil, who, like himself, hated the money power and believed in government of and by and for the people. This is one of the beautiful ironies of capitalism. Its vaunted love of freedom is but the velvet cloak which conceals its iron-fisted despotism.
These men are charged by the ruling class and its prostitute press with being enemies of the government. Precisely the same charge that is being brought against these men today under capitalist despotism was brought against Abraham Lincoln by the slave power of his day. Lincoln was murdered by same power that is now tearing our brothers from their families and friends and shipping them over the wide seas like cattle for the crime of protesting against wage slavery and aspiring to walk the earth free men.
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday February 26, 1919
The New Appeal Book Department Publishes Oscar Wilde’s “Reading Jail”
From The New Appeal of February 22, 1919:
Greatest Prison Poem Ever Written
Oscar Wilde’s “The Ballad of Reading Jail” Has Just
Been Published by The New Appeal Book Department
“The Ballad of Reading Jail” [first published in 1898] will live as long as the English language. It is the greatest prison poem ever penned. This soul-stirring masterpiece of literature is the most overwhelming argument ever aimed against the terrible evil of capital punishment.
“The Ballad of Reading Jail” was written while Oscar Wilde was in a prison cell. One of the prisoners, sentenced to hang, and finally executed, so moved Wilde to the depths that he was inspired to write this ballad.
This poetical classic is the first of The New Appeal’s Pocket Series. We have printed this poem on fine book paper and have bound it handsomely. It is printed in a convenient form so that you will be able to slip it into your pocket and read it on the street car during your lunch hour or during any spare moments when you will want something that will be of more use to you than the usual trash with which one whiles away his time. A poem like this is not read once or twice. Those who know this tremendous masterpiece have it within reach so that they may return to it time and time again. By publishing this long, readable poem in this simple, bulkless from we enable you to carry it with you without bulging your pockets.
Oscar Wilde was a genius. Whatever may be said about him, no one has ever questioned his mastery of the English language and his ability to express the deepest emotions in the simplest, most compelling, manner conceivable.
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday February 25, 1919
Ellis Island – FWs, Deported on “Red Special,” Held Incommunicado
From The Survey of February 22, 1919:
The Deportations
[Part II]
Who are the fifty-three men and one woman who reached New York city last week? It is difficult to tell, since they have been held incommunicado at Ellis Island since their ar rival on February 11 to noon of February 17, when this issue of the Survey went to press. All requests of friends, attorneys and representatives of the press to see them have been denied. A list giving their names, date of conviction and the reasons for deportation of each was, however, supplied to the press by Byron H. Uhl, acting commissioner of immigration at New York in the absence of Frederic C. Howe, who is in Europe.
According to this list, eleven have been found to be “members of or affiliated with an organization that advocates or teaches the unlawful destruction of property.” Eighteen were found actually “advocating or teaching the unlawful destruction of property.” Some of these are declared, also, to have been guilty of other offenses, such as advocating “the overthrow by force or violence of the government of the United States or of all forms of law.” Three are declared to be anarchists or to have taught anarchy. The remainder are charged with various offenses, most of them with being “likely to become public charges.” Several are said to be “morally unfit,” a few served prison terms before coming to this country, and one or two committed “crimes involving moral turpitude” within five years after entering.
Hellraisers Journal – Monday February 24, 1919
From Seattle to Ellis Island – The Red Special Deportation Train
From The Survey of February 22, 1919:
The Deportations
[Part I]
—–
FOR several days last week the eyes of newspaper readers were fixed upon a train under heavy guard that passed swiftly across the continent from Seattle. Persons who peered in at the windows (apparently no one was allowed to go aboard) remarked that most of the occupants looked foreign. Few were seen to smile. Apparently there was a commissariat on board, for “no food was taken aboard at Buffalo.” Reaching Hoboken, N. J., its occupants were hurried on board ferries and soon found themselves in the detention quarters of the United States Immigration Station, on Ellis Island, in New York harbor awaiting sailing to various corners of the earth.
The passengers on this curious journey have all been ordered to be deported from the United States. They constitute the vanguard of what is described as an “army of undesirable aliens” soon to leave our shores. For weeks the newspapers have been picturing the “great combing-out process” in which the Department of Labor and the Department of Justice are declared to be cooperating.
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday February 23, 1919
New York, New York – Chinese Fellow Workers Arrested and Deported
From the South Bend (Indiana) News of February 21, 1919:
RAID ON CHINESE I. W. W. MAY CAUSE DEPORTATIONS
[Detail]
I. W. W. Organizers: Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Harry Kelly, Jack Isaacson, Carlo Tresca, and Frank Levy —–
Thousands of Chinese in the United States may be deported as a result of the recent discovery in New York of an active Chinese branch of the I. W. W. Just as Chinese there prepared to sow discontent among their fellow countrymen by misrepresentation, intimidation and other means the police stepped in and obtained sufficient evidence to cause the deportation of four Chinese. In the round up of the Chinese I. W. W. fifteen prisoners were taken and eleven remained to be tried by the federal authorities. The Accompanying pictures shows some of the most prominent agitators.
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———-HE warm clasp of Tom’s hand tempted me to talk—in a moment, and my loose tongue let slip enough to give hint of my errand to Mexico. Now Tom Hart was the last man that I should have supposed would show the white feather—a bear hunter, mind you, and grizzlies at that.
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