Abolish the wage system, is our battle cry.
With an idea that is imperishable,
Organization and Education as our weapons,
we are invulnerable.
-Big Bill Haywood
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Hellraisers Journal, Thursday August 15, 1918
Chicago, Illinois – Haywood Takes the Stand, Part II
Report from Harrison George:
Asked if he did any violence in the Cripple Creek strike days [1903-1904], Haywood said he had not, but had received some upon his body, the marks of which remain today.
The Western Federation of Miners had issued a poster bearing a U. S. flag on every stripe of which was an inscription: “Habeas Corpus denied in Colorado”; “Free Speech denied in Colorado,” etc. Under the flag was a photograph of John [Henry] Maki, a union miner, chained to a telegraph pole in the snow by militiamen. Over the flag was the caption: “Is Colorado in America?” Charles H. Moyer, president of the Western Federation of Miners, was arrested at Telluride by militia for “desecrating the flag,” and kept in the bull-pen for one hundred and ten days. Haywood was in Denver, under arrest, but paying a deputy $5 a day to remain out “looking for $300 bail.”
“Couldn’t you get $300 bail?” asked Vanderveer.
“Sure,” was the reply, “but as long as I paid that deputy $5 a day while looking for bail, I would not have to go to Telluride where the militia ruled.”
Moyer, guarded by militia, was brought to Denver under habeas corpus and Haywood met him at the depot. As they started to shake hands, Captain Buckley Wells, a mine owner who had violated an agreement with the union and had been rewarded by a militia commission of the troops he called in, came up and pulled Haywood and Moyer apart.
Haywood said:
I turned and struck him. I did not see his uniform, but only saw his eyes. I struck him and the militiamen struck me, one at a time and several at once, rifle barrels and rifle butts. I was pretty badly battered up and forced between two cars. A rifle was aimed point blank at me, but was knocked upwards by an officer. Under arrest, I was taken to a hotel. Hehe, the “Kingly Kid,” a gunman proper, in uniform, ordered me to sit down. I was getting pretty mad and refused to sit down. So the battle began again. I was finally backed against the wall and the “Kingly Kid’ drove the muzzle of a rifle into my lower breast bone and I went down and out. The union men of Denver sent notice to the militia that they would never let soldiers take me out of that city. I guess they thought the miners meant it, as I was not removed.
“Do you think there is a class war, Mr. Haywood?” asked Vanderveer with a significant smile.
Haywood told how, after ex-Governor Steunenberg was killed in Idaho by some sort of a bomb, Pettibone, Moyer and himself were kidnapped in Denver, taken by militia and sheriff of both Colorado and Idaho to a Special train, running at the record-breaking speed of seventy miles an hour, to Idaho, where they were lodged in cells of Murderers’ Row at the state penitentiary, under charges of complicity in the murder of the ex-governor. The state asked a change of venue from Canyon to Ada County, but Haywood was acquitted by the jury in spite of Harry Orchard.
“Who is this Harry Orchard?” asked Nebeker on cross-examination.
“He is the man,” replied Haywood, “who said he murdered Steunenberg, and is serving a life sentence at the Idaho state penitentiary.”
Questioned by Vanderveer, Haywood told of the ovations given him throughout the United States and Europe made on a tour after his acquittal. Sixty-six thousand heard him speak at Riverview Park, Chicago. He had spoken at another Chicago park and Vanderveer asked, “How many were in the audience?” “Well,” grinned “Big Bill,” “45,000 paid admission and then they tore the fence down.” The largest crowd he spoke to was at London Tower while touring England. He received $50 a night for lecturing from the International Socialist Review, averaging about $1,000 a month. Ridpath’s Lecture Bureau had offered him $300 a week and other high offers were made him. As official of the Western Federation of Miners he received $150 per month; from the I. W. W. the highest wage paid him was $28 a week he said.
On the morning of the 10th of August it was learned that three of the Spanish seamen who had testified the Thursday previous had been arrested by agents of the Department of Justice after leaving the stand, apparently to intimidate and harass witnesses for the defense.
Resuming, Haywood told of his participation in the strikes at Lawrence, Patterson, Akron and else-where, and Vanderveer introduced a great many strike photographs over Nebeker’s objection. Haywood told how the defense had been hampered and interfered with. He exhibited a bunch of letters that had been opened while in the mails, held for months, and then delivered bearing a stamp, “officially sealed.”
He stated further: “I have at this time in the safe over at the office at least a dozen or more register receipts of letters mailed as early as last February and never delivered.”
Vanderveer: Do you recall a bunch of pamphlets which were gotten out by the Defense Committee and sent by the American Express Company to Butte?
A. I think there were 375 pounds, as I remember it.
Q. What happened to those?
A. They were not delivered; a receipt that I signed when the packages were returned, it said: “These packages were not delivered on account of orders issued by the government.”Haywood continued:
Early last September when raids were made all over the country on the I. W. W., it was determined to organize a Defense Committee. On the 28th of September many arrests were made, not only of the one hundred and sixty-six defendants who were charged in this indictment here, but I think it would be no exaggeration to say that a thousand other men in different towns throughout the country were thrown in jail. They were either charged with some crime or thrown in without any warrant at all. A Defense Committee was organized. Now, you understand that there is no “German gold’ received by this organization, and no means of providing the membership of the organization defense, a proper defense to which every man is entitled, except what comes in the way of donations, voluntary assessments, and what there may be left in the treasury.
This committee organized here in Chicago proceeded to get out bulletins, notices of different kinds to Socialist locals, to unions of the A. F. of L., to the radical press, and to the entire membership of the I. W. W. Now the report comes to us that there were three hundred sacks of mail held here in Chicago. Mail has also been interfered with at its points of destination, and the general result has been that the funds of the organization have been reduced to a minimum, so that at the present time there are scarcely sufficient funds to see this trial through. This has been accomplished before the law was passed that authorized the Postmaster General to inspect any mail that he saw fit.
The defense offices and the offices of the organization have been closed up, I think it is safe to say, in every town.
[Photographs, emphasis, and paragraph breaks added.]
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SOURCES
Quote, BBH on Abolish Wage System
Hellraisers Journal, Tuesday May 7, 1918
Big Bill Haywood on Conditions in the Cook County Jail
The I.W.W. Trial
Story of the Greatest Trial in Labor’s History
by one of the Defendants
-by Harrison George
—-with introduction by A. S. Embree.
IWW, Chicago, 1919
https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100663067
Pages 184-8: Haywood on the Stand, August 9 & 10, 1918
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=umn.31951d01368761a;view=2up;seq=186
Note:First ad I can find for this book:
Butte Daily Bulletin -page 3
-Mar 5, 1919
https://www.newspapers.com/image/176048912/
IMAGES
BBH ab 1918, fr Haywood at Chg IWW Trial, GEB
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=ucw.ark:/13960/t9q24s822;view=2up;seq=2
Maki, Is Colorado in America?
http://digital.denverlibrary.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/p15330coll22/id/84101/rec/3
See also:
Haywood at Chicago IWW Trial
Evidence and cross examination of William D. Haywood
in the case of the U.S.A. vs. Wm. D. Haywood, et al.
Chicago, General Defense Committee, 1918
https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/003309919
For more on Colorado Strikes of 1903-1904
+ more on Haywood-Moyer-Pettibone Case
The Cripple Creek Strike:
a History of Industrial Wars in Colorado, 1903-4-5
By Emma Florence Langdon
(this edition, with appendix, would be 1908)
http://www.rebelgraphics.org/wfmhall/langdon00.html
For more on IWW mentioned:
The I.W.W.
A Study of American Syndicalism
-by Paul F Brissenden
Columbia U, 1919
https://archive.org/stream/iwwstudyofameric00brisuoft#page/n7
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