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Hellraisers Journal, Sunday January 7, 1917
From The Masses: Thoughts on War from Becker and Untermeyer
“Now will you enlist?” by Maurice Becker
Category: Hellraisers Journal
Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: Harrison George Claims Victory on the Mesabi
You ought to be out raising hell.
This is the fighting age.
Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
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Hellraisers Journal, Saturday January 6, 1917
From the Mesabi Range, Minnesota, Comes News of Plea Agreement
The International Socialist Review of January 1917:
Victory on the Mesaba Range
By HARRISON GEORGE
We were all ready to go to press when the following telegram came in. We feel sure all REVIEW readers will be interested in the brief sketches that follow:
Virginia, Minn., Dec. 15, 1916.
Tresca, Scarlett, Schmidt, Mrs. Masonovitch, Orlandich, [F]reed, Phil Masonovitch, Nikich, Cernogorovich year sentence each. All cases against Gilday, Greeni, others dismissed. Full statement will follow. Funds needed here meet honor bound obligations. All committees rush balance funds on hand here. All together for freedom Everett and all class war prisoners.
Ettor, Gilday, Flynn.
CARLO TRESCA, who was born in Sulmona, Italy, in 1879. Entering the labor movement at an early age, he became editor of a Socialist paper in his native town when he was only twenty years old. By 1904 he had shown his worth by being many times sent to prison on political charges. In 1903 he was elected secretary of the largest labor organization of Italy, the Syndicate of Firemen and Railroad Engineers. In 1904, however, he was given choice of eighteen months penal servitude or ten years exile for political offenses, and, choosing exile, he landed in America in August, 1904. As organizer and editor he continued his fight for labor, now being editor of an Italian paper in New York, LL’Avenire [L’Avvenire]. Jailed for months on different occasions, he was attacked by an assassin, who is said to have been an emissary of the Italian consul in Pittsburgh and his throat badly slashed. In the last six years Tresca has taken part in all big strikes of the I. W. W., which involved Italian workers. Lawrence, Little Falls and Paterson are only a few of the many strikes where thousands cheered when Tresca stood before them. Now he is on trial for murder. The witness against him has said that when a certain remark was made by another speaker, Tresca smiled and said, “Good, good!” For a smile and one short word, twice uttered, Tresca has been charged with murder!
Hellraisers Journal: Elizabeth Gurley Flynn for The Masses: “The Minnesota Trials”
It is a privilege and a duty even by sacrifice
to advance our priceless cause.
-John R Lawson
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Hellraisers Journal, Friday January 5, 1917
From The Masses: FW Flynn on Behalf of Minnesota Defendants
The following article was obviously written for The Masses by Fellow Worker Flynn, I. W. W. organizer, before the plea agreement was reached in the cases of the strikers and organizers charged with first degree murder in connection with the strike of iron miners up on the Mesabi Range of northern Minnesota. The article is nevertheless valuable for the information given regarding the defenses campaign along with a short history regarding “criminal conspiracy” as related to labor struggles, past and present. Tomorrow’s Hellraisers will present an article from this month’s edition of the International Socialist Review, written by Harrison George, which claims the plea agreement as a victory for the strikers and for the cause of labor in general.
From The Masses of January 1917:
The Minnesota Trials
Many of our friends fail to appreciate the magnitude of the Minnesota strike, involving 15,000 miners and the United States Steel Corporation, and are beguiling themselves into belief that the murder cases pending are not serious.
Mrs. Masonovitch [Masonovich], the woman prisoner, wife of one of the strikers, is a particularly pathetic and appealing figure, a young and beautiful Montenegrin woman, mother of five children, one a nursing baby. She speaks little English, does not understand the proceedings, looks frightened and bewildered and clings frantically to her children. If the parents should be convicted these little ones would be practically orphans. The older ones, twelve and eight, bright, nice boys, tell very clearly what happened on July 3, the night of the tragedy, how the deputies came to arrest their father, how one struck their mother and threw her to the floor, how the fight then started in which Mr. Myron was killed, and how Nick Dillon, the notorious gunman, shot and killed Thos. Ladvalla [Tomi Ladvalla-WE NEVER FORGET], a bystander. If the episode was not connected with a strike, it would be comparatively easy to clear these poor people.
Hellraisers Journal: Miss Flynn, 16, Plans Rejuvenation of World. Not an “out-and-out woman suffrage socialist.”
It is glorious to be arrested
in a good cause.
-Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, age 16
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Hellraisers Journal, Friday January 4, 1907
From Her Flat in the Bronx: An Interview with Miss Flynn
From New York Evening World of August 24, 1906:
LIFE’S BIG THINGS ALONE INTEREST
GIRL SOCIALIST
—–Miss Elizabeth Flynn at Sixteen
Plans Rejuvenation of World.
—–
STILL IN HIGH SCHOOL.
—–
Is Leading Spirit of Unity Club
and Laughs at Her Arrest.
—–
NO WOMAN SUFFRAGIST.
—–
Says She Fully Realizes the Size of
the Task, but Will Devote
Life to It
—–The youngest girl socialist in America is undoubtedly Miss Elizabeth Flynn, who was arrested for preaching socialism in the streets and discharged yesterday, and who to-night will address an open-air meeting on Main street, Orange. Although she is only sixteen years of age, Miss Flynn has become the leader of a club of Socialists, the title of which is Unity and the purpose of which is to bring about a lull in the fighting that has so far marked the progress of the socialist party.
Miss Flynn, who lives at No. 795 East One Hundred and Thirty-fourth street, talked freely to-day with an Evening World reporter,. She announced her plan to devote her life to the socialistic cause, saying that she believes it is much better for a woman to give her time to the conversion of mankind to a great economic improvement than to be a mother of children.
Hellraisers Journal: An Interview with Elizabeth Gurley Flynn on First Speech: “Women Under Socialism.”
The barter and sale that goes on to-day
in the name of love
is highly obnoxious to me.
-Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, age 15
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Hellraisers Journal, Thursday January 3, 1907
From the New York Sun: Interview with Miss Elizabeth Flynn
From The Sun of April 8, 1906:
A GIRL STIRS UP SOCIALISTS.
—–COMRADE ELIZABETH FLYNN
A LEADER AT 15.
—–“The Daughter of the Reds.” They Call Her, and Maybe They’ll Elect Her President Yet-Not Yet Out of School, She Captures Meetings With Her Oratory Has Radical Theories and Doesn’t Care for Love, Clothes or Matinees.
Within the last few weeks there has appeared at various social reform meetings a young girl-she is said to be only 15-with the high, broad forehead and the dream filled, far gazing eyes of the idealist; a skin of almost infantile pinkness and whiteness and a mass of flyaway black hair, tied loosely in schoolgirl fashion at the back of her neck who has electrified the audiences by joining in the debate with a certainty of manner, an eloquence of expression and a lucidity of thought that have surprised experienced speakers and even professional radicals.
Her speeches have been the more impressive because she is good to look upon. Added to the charm of her youth and her unusual gifts in line and color harmonies her face is bright and expressive. Her deep blue eyes are of unusual size and purity of color. The delicate, sensitive mouth has a queer little quivering twist of the upper lip. The nostrils of the clear cut, high bridged nose are thin and vibrant. The chin is small, pointed, delicately modelled.
She has always been simply dressed in the regulation schoolgirl shirtwaist and short skirt. Her attire shows a certain inattention to details that betrays a lack of interest in the whole subject of clothes. She is the average height of girls of 15, slender and girlishly immature.
Hellraisers Journal: Miss Elizabeth Flynn-“The Daughter of the Reds!”-Socialist Schoolgirl Orator Creates Sensation in 1906
Prison bars do not frighten when
one has truth and right
deep in the heart.
-Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
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Hellraisers Journal, Wednesday January 2, 1907
New York, New York – Miss Elizabeth Flynn, “Daughter of the Reds”
The story of the amazing schoolgirl orator, arrested last August for street speaking beneath the Red Flag, was published in newspapers across the nation in the days folowing her arrest and for months thereafter. The following article was published in several newspapers from New Jersey to Kansas and even down south in Louisiana.
From Pennsylvania’s Cameron County Press of October 25, 1906:
From the New York Evening World of August 23, 1906:
Hellraisers Journal: Elizabeth Gurley Flynn Speaks in New York City: “Girl Socialist Amazes Hearers.”
Prison bars do not frighten when
one has truth and right
deep in the heart.
-Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
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Hellraisers Journal, Tuesday January 1, 1907
New York, New York – Miss Flynn Lectures on Socialism
From the New York Sun of December 31, 1906:
HYPATIA INSTEAD OF HOPP.
—–Bread and Butter, Not Sentiment, Is the Universal Solvent of the Industrial Problem, in the Opinion of the Young Eyed Cherub-But Mr. Hopp Hangs On.
Sandwiched between sentiments by Julius Hopp on what the real drama ought to be an audience that half filled the orchestra of the Berkeley Lyceum Theatre yesterday afternoon listened to a lecture by Miss Elizabeth Flynn, aged 17 schoolgirl Socialist.
Mis Flynn is pretty, is not addicted to laughter and is self-possessed, as one might expect a girl to be who nonchalantly submitted to arrest for carttail talking without a license. Her remarks were on lines familiar to most Socialists, but she declared that they were unfamiliar to most capitalistic editors, who appeared to have room enough in their heads for only one idea at a time.
She said that she was a materialistic Socialist and advocated socialism purely on scientific grounds. It was a problem of bread and butter and not of sentimentalism. Mr. Stokes could not feel about the subject as the workingman could because he was not in the workingmen’s class.
The idea of the Socialist was the cooperative commonwealth. That could be attained only through a process of evolution that had first caused the destruction of slave labor and later the disappearance of the feudal system. The next step in the evolutionary plan would be the vanishing of the capitalistic system. All methods of production that capitalism had used would be used by the working folk in more enlightened fashion for the benefit of all. Production, transportation and distribution would all be done by the people themselves.
Hellraisers Journal: Mr. Grab-It-All has a very good year while the Ninety and Nine work and die in want and hunger and cold.
There are no limits to which
powers of privilege will not go
to keep the workers in slavery.
-Mother Jones
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Hellraisers Journal, Sunday December 31, 1916
From the American Socialist: Grab-It-All’s Very Good Year
From the Appeal to Reason of December 31, 1916:
Hellraisers Journal: Up from the Depths by J. A. Mitchell and Words to to the Wise from the Appeal to Reason
Yours for the Revolution,
-Mother Jones
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Hellraisers Journal, Sunday December 30, 1906
From the Appeal to Reason: A Drawing by J. A Mitchell
Hellraisers Journal: Pennsylvania Report Shows Grim Record of Death on the Job for Anthracite Coal Miners
Pray for the dead and fight
like hell for the living.
-Mother Jones
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Hellraisers Journal, Friday December 29, 1916
Anthracite Coalfields, Pennsylvania – 333 Miners Killed in 9 Months
From the December 28th edition of the Northwest Worker:
333 MINERS MEET DEATH
IN 9 MONTHS
—–PENNSYLVANIA REPORT SHOWS THAT
THE WAGE AVERAGE OF VICTIMS
WAS ONLY $13.80 A WEEK.
—–
HARRISBURG, Pa.-working for an average weekly wage of only $13.80, 333 anthracite coal miners in this State were killed and 6,958 disabled for periods greater than two weeks during the first nine months of 1916. These are official figures of the State Department of Labor and Industry.
There were 233 married men among those killed, and they left 481 fatherless children behind. If it were not for the workmen’s compensation act these men’s families would be left to starve, for, in the vast majority of cases, the miners had not been able to save a cent of their wages. As it is 181 of the fatal cases have been adjusted, the payments to be about $2,505 for each man killed, or a total of $453,499.80 for all cases.
