There are no limits to which
powers of privilege will not go
to keep the workers in slavery.
-Mother Jones
Hellraisers Journal, Wednesday April 10, 1907
From Ada County Jail, Idaho: Big Bill Haywood Makes a Statement
The following statement by Big Bill Haywood is being widely published and republished by newspapers large and small across the nation:
The President says that I am an “undesirable citizen,” the inference being that, as such, I should be put out of the way. His influence is all-powerful, and his statement, coming as it does on the eve of my trial for life, will work me irreparable injury and do more to prevent a fair trial than everything that has been said and done against me in the past.
From The Brooklyn Daily Eagle of April 8, 1907:
The Roosevelt-Harriman Controversy
and Organized Labor.
Replying to the letter of Edward H. Harriman, which probably the whole world has read by this time, the President said, if correctly reported:
It shows the cynicism and deep-seated corruption which make the man uttering such sentiments, and boasting, no matter how falsely, of his power to perform such crimes, at least as undesirable a citizen as Eugene V. Debs or Moyer or Haywood.
This sentiment furnished the topic of conversation among labor men generally throughout the city during the past few days. In fact, it has been condemned by organized labor in every section of the country. Joseph R. Buchanan, of Big Six, thus expressed himself:
Of course, every one understood that the President’s words were intended as a reflection upon the citizenship qualities of Moyer and Haywood, as well as upon those of Mr. Harriman, and as he has the reputation of always hitting as hard as he can, it is assumed that he could think of none who were such “bad citizens” as the officials of the Western Federation of Miners.
Organized labor of New York has held many meetings of protest against the unjust and unlawful treatment of Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone by the officials of Colorado and Idaho, and has contributed thousands of dollars to the fund raised by union labor all over the United States to defray the expenses of their defense. That they have committed any crime or broken any law of the land has still to be proven.
Haywood, who is awaiting trial at Boise, Idaho, has this to say:
The President says that I am an “undesirable citizen,” the inference being that, as such, I should be put out of the way. His influence is all-powerful, and his statement, coming as it does on the eve of my trial for life, will work me irreparable injury and do more to prevent a fair trial than everything that has been said and done against me in the past.
In this connection it might be said that a great many unionists cannot be made to understand why it is lawful to hale suspects from before a court of foreign jurisdiction to be tried in the state where the crime was committed, they being organized workingmen, and unlawful to exert the same power to hale ex-Governor Taylor before the court jurisdiction of Kentucky in the assassination case of Goebel vs. Taylor et al….
[Photograph added.]
SOURCE
The Brooklyn Daily Eagle
(New York, New York)
-Apr 8, 1907
https://www.newspapers.com/image/54632164/
IMAGES
Haywood, Wilshire’s Magazine, 1906
http://moses.law.umn.edu/darrow/documents/Wilshire_Mag.pdf
Joseph R Buchanan, Labor Agitator, ab/ 1903
https://archive.org/stream/storyalaboragit02buchgoog#page/n8/mode/1up
See also:
Hellraisers Journal, Friday April 5, 1907
From the Montana News: Haywood Trial to Begin May 9th
-As he faces the gallows, President Declares Haywood to be “UNDESIRABLE CITIZEN”
https://weneverforget.org/hellraisers-journal-as-he-faces-the-gallows-president-declares-haywood-to-be-undesirable-citizen/
Tag: Haywood-Moyer-Pettibone Case
https://weneverforget.org/tag/haywood-moyer-pettibone-case/
For more on Joseph R Buchanan:
The Story of a Labor Agitator, Joseph R. Buchanan
-by Joseph Ray Buchanan
Outlook Company, 1903
https://books.google.com/books?id=u1cpAAAAYAAJ
Note: I believe the Joseph R Buchanan of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle article is Joseph Ray Buchanan. The “Big Six” mentioned here is likely Typographical Union No. 6 of New York City.
See: “Big Six”
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=u1cpAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&source=gbs_atb&pg=GBS.PA102
Encyclopedia of New Jersey
-by Maxine N. Lurie, Marc Mappen
Rutgers University Press, 2004
https://books.google.com/books?id=_r9Ni6_u0JEC
(search with: buchanan joseph ray)
Note: from 1904-1915 he was labor editor for the New York Evening Journal.
“William S. Taylor: A Killing in Kentucky”
-by Dirk Langeveld
http://downfalldictionary.blogspot.com/2016/11/william-s-taylor-killing-in-kentucky.html
Bill Haywood’s Book
The Autobiography of William D. Haywood
-by Big Bill Haywood
International Publishers, 1929
https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000859708
On “Undesirable Citizens”
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?q1=undesirable;id=mdp.39015050276461;view=image;seq=204
Theodore Roosevelt, then president of the United States, got into the game by declaring that we were “undesirable citizens.” I answered this statement briefly, calling to the president’s attention the fact that the laws of the country stated that we were to be considered innocent until proven guilty; that a man in his position should be the last to judge us until the case was decided in court. My statement had a wide circulation. Many people, and probably all the workers, agreed to what I had said.
I often thought over this charge of Roosevelt’s, and on the public platform I have compared myself to this man who in his book about the battle of San Juan Hill openly declared that he had shot a fleeing Spaniard in the back, adding: “It was not until the next day that learned that my act was not unique, as a lieutenant had also killed another Spaniard in the same way.”