Since the earth belongs to the capitalist class,
why should a grand jury concern itself
in such a small matter as
helping itself to the state of Idaho?
-Eugene Victor Debs
Hellraisers Journal, Wednesday May 15, 1907
From the Appeal to Reason: Eugene V. Debs Responds to The Statesman
On April 20th (see below), The Idaho Daily Statesman published an editorial in which it referred to the Appeal as the “Appeal to Treason” and insisted that the Socialists of the Appeal were actually “anarchists…wolves of society.” In the the May 11th edition of the Appeal, Comrade Debs asks, “Who Are the Wolves?” The first part of the response was published in yesterday’s Hellraisers; we conclude today with Part II:
WHO ARE THE WOLVES?
—–
An Inquiry Into Some of the Charges Made Against
the Appeal to Reason by the
Criminal Idaho Statesman.
—–BY EUGENE V. DEBS.
—–“The Wolves Are Coming.”
Now to return to the question, why does the Statesman so violently denounce the Appeal all at once, and quote a column and a half from its pages, a thing it has never done before? The answer is very easy. It wants to use the Appeal as a bogey man with which to scare the grand jury from its trail.
Do you people of Idaho catch on?
One of the trails the grand jury is on is said to lead straight to the Idaho Statesman, and another one may lead from the Statesman to the penitentiary.
Only in a desperate situation would the Statesman reproduce the Appeal’s damaging report, based upon its own special correspondent’s investigation.
The Statesman wants the grand jury to let go; in fact, pleads with it to relax its grasp.
It shouts frantically: “The wolves are coming, and if you don’t let go they’ll get us all”!
Several thousand of the “wolves,” “anarchists” and “traitors,” as the Statesman calls them, supporting the Appeal in this fight, live at useful work in and about Idaho. Does the Statesman know of a single one of them who is seeking to stop the grand jury investigation? Or is in the least disturbed on account of it?
If the Statesman and its crowd were absolutely innocent; if they were honest men and upright citizens instead of “law and order” masqueraders, would they be in such a panic about the grand jury?
Are grand juries in the habit of indicting innocent rich men?
Is it not a fact that they are far more apt not to indict guilty ones?
As between the Statesman’s crowd and the Appeal’s supporters, who are the “wolves”? The “traitors”?
Never, so far as we know, has there been such an astounding revelation in circumstantially sufficient to convict the Statesman and the whole Gooding administration, both of which simply express the predatory “interests” that are gnawing at the vitals of the state and corrupting all the springs and streams of its political and social life.
To the People of Idaho.
Think of it, you people of Idaho! Here you see your leading paper, the chief exponent of the “interests” that have throttled your state, pleading that a grand jury cease its investigation for fear that certain persons it is not investigating may be punished.
It is not Borah and Cobb and Chapman and other “honorable men” the Statesman has any fear about. Oh, no! It is not afraid that these “desirable citizens” will be indicted and sent to the penitentiary, but its concern is wholly about the “wolves” and “traitors” that may swoop down on the state and prevent Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone from being hanged.
Take note, you good people of Idaho, that this incident throws a clear side light on the character of the men who instigated the kidnaping of Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone, as well as the motive behind the lawless and inhuman outrages perpetrated on these men.
Why They Are Dangerous.
Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone are dangerous to the “interests” that steal the nations’ public lands and timber reserves, buy up its legislatures, bid in its United States senatorships and corrupt the voters on election day.
Such men must be kidnaped and hanged and the organs of the “interests,” such as the Statesman, must make the people believe that they are “anarchists” and “murderers.” That is the way it has been done in the past, and years later the people found out that they hanged the wrong men.
Long after it was too late they realized that they were deceived and that the men they should have hanged were the “honorable men” and that those they should have honored and loved were the ones denounced as “anarchists” and “traitors.”
That is what the Statesman is trying its best to have you people of Idaho do in the case of Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone. It wants them hanged because they could not be bought. If they were corruptible they should all have their “pile” and be “respectable” in the eyes of capitalist society.
The Statesman will not succeed, but if it did your sons and daughters and grandsons and granddaughters would blush for the crime you committed for a thousand years to come.
Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone are as much heroes as any who have ever stood in the past against the enemies of mankind and for the freedom and happiness of their fellow-man.
Retributive Justice.
Mysteriously, but inexorably, operates the law of retributive justice. The Statesman is no longer the bloodhound. The Statesman itself is now being tracked, and to throw off its pursuers it yells “anarchy” and “the wolf is coming.”
Listen to the wail of the Statesman, the lament that, succeeding its ferocity, exposes its cowardice and makes it contemptible:
Elsewhere in this issue the Statesman republishes a story from the Appeal to Treason relative to the work of the United States grand jury here. It is republished for the purpose of advising the public how nicely the activities of certain federal officials are serving the purposes of the defense in the Moyer-Haywood-Pettibone cases.
It is a deplorable condition. Since the arrest of these men, charged with the awful murder of our former governor, the anarchist press in all parts of the country has been diligent in attacking those connected with the prosecution….. Now everything connected with the timber cases is to be magnified and falsified for the purpose of the anarchists, being used to blacken the names of men connected with the prosecution and such others as may be objectionable to these wolves of society….. every effort will be made to prejudice the minds of the people in this country in the hope that a fair-minded jury cannot be secured…
The indictment of an honored man connected with the prosecution in the capacity of attorney was a great morsel for these people, and they propose to play upon it until the case is closed.
In view of the character of the people who are leading the country-wide agitation that has for its object the prejudicing of the prosecution in this case, nothing could have been done that would have been more satisfactory to them. Had they been in control of the machinery of justice and used it for their purposes they could not have brought forth a result that would have been more pleasing to them.
[Emphasis added.]
What Do You Think of It?
What do the people of Idaho think of that?
Let them read it over and grasp its true meaning, its full import.
The Statesman charges first that the Appeal to Reason and its supporters are “wolves,” “anarchists” and “traitors,” and in the next breath it charges that the “machinery of justice” is being operated in the interest of these same “wolves,” “anarchists’ and traitors.” Therefore the federal grand jury that indicted Borah and others in Idaho also consists of “wolves,” “anarchists” and “traitors,” and the “machinery of justice” is in control of the same degenerate tribe. This, according to the Idaho Statesman. Ye gods!
Now comes the biggest joke of all. The stupidity of it is only equaled by the desperation that inspired it. The miners, the Statesman solemnly tells us, are behind the Borah prosecution, have obtained control of the federal court and have instigated this awful persecution of an honored man. Borah is as white as lamb’s wool, but the wicked miners have seized the federal government and are using its grand jury as a tar mop to blacken the prosecutor’s immaculate whiteness, so that he cannot hang Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone.
But why, if the miners have control of the “machinery of justice” in Idaho, they don’t release Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone and send them home to their wives, as they would surely do the very first thing, the sapient Statesman entirely overlooks, and we are left to wonder at the stupidity of the miners, who, having “control of the machinery” that opens jail doors, know nothing about it and are chasing over all the country looking for that very machinery.
Did asininity ever exhibit such ears!
What an opinion the Statesman must have of the people of Idaho to seek to palm off such insufferable rot on them! It would be an insult to a feeble-minded asylum.
Kidnapers and Crime.
Kidnapers of human beings are capable of any crime and when they find themselves trapped and about to be exposed, their innate cowardice is revealed and they lie, sometimes, as in this case, so stupidly as to lay themselves wide open, and this is one of the mysterious processes of retributive justice in exposing malefactors.
The Statesman is the organ of the kidnapers and the “interests” behind them, and the very fact that they had to commit the crime of kidnaping to get the victims in their clutches is in itself sufficient proof of their innocence and of their own overwhelming guilt.
To be denounced as “traitors” and “anarchists” by such malign conspirators is the only possible compliment they could pay an honest man. The very breath of their nostrils is contagion and their smile of approval moral death.
These are the “wolves of society” and the miscalled Statesman is but one of the fangs of the pack.
Political Charnel House.
They made a political charnel house of Colorado; bought up a legislature commanded by a popular majority of forty-six thousand votes to enact an eight-hour law and sent forth its members with the prices of their treason in their wretched faces; financed another legislature and seated one of their own pack in the United States senate.
Can the Statesman name a single “wolf,” “anarchist” or “traitor” fighting beneath the Appeal’s flag that had anything to do with these monstrous crimes? Can the Statesman say as much for itself?
Who Are the Wolves?
We challenge the Statesman to put its finger on a single “Appeal to Treason” “anarchist” who had any part in the political crimes that have disgraced Montana, Colorado and Idaho, crimes which seem unbelievable and in the presence of which honest men stand aghast.
These crimes were committed, all of them, without exception, by the crowd with which the Statesman trains, backed by the “interests” from which it receives its substance.
Who are the “wolves”?
We have another proposition: No “Appeal to Treason” supporter, not one of the Statesman’s “anarchists,” ever bought a vote or bribed a public official. Can the Statesman and its pack truthfully say the same?
Not one ever kidnaped a human being, or was ever charged with stealing public lands or with timber thefts.
Not one ever made a false affidavit charging certain men with being in one state when he knew they were in another.
Not one ever said “To hell with the constitution.”
Not one ever shrieked “To hell with habeas corpus, we’ll give ’em post mortems.”
Not one has ever been convicted of crime and not one has ever trembled because a grand jury was in session.
Not one ever committed deliberate perjury to send a fellow-man to the gallows.
The Statesman and those for whom it shouts “anarchy” are guilty of each and every one of these indictments, and in its heart, if it has one, it knows they are guilty.
The Statesman has flung down the gauntlet in the name of the trusts and the Appeal has picked it up in the name of the people.
The fight is on and there will be no compromise. Not until the vicious system of which these crimes are but the excrescences is wiped out, root and branch, and the people come to their own, will there be peace.
The powers of the plutocracy are all behind the Statesman, but the powers of righteousness are all behind the Appeal, and however the fortunes of battle may waver, the final outcome is as certain as the sunrise.
A Challenge.
In closing, the writer of these lines challenges the publisher of the Statesman, or Senator Borah, as he or they may prefer, to meet him in discussion of this question. He will be in Boise soon and will meet either of the gentlemen named in discussion of the question, “Who Are the Wolves?” before the people of Idaho.
The Statesman has raised the cry of “wolves” to divert attention from the raids of its own pack. We charge that they are the wolves and are willing to submit to the judgment of their own people.
[Photograph added.]
From The Idaho Daily Statesman of April 20, 1907:
SERVING THEIR PURPOSE.
—–Elsewhere in this issue The Statesman republishes a story from the Appeal to Treason relative to the work of the United States grand jury here. It is republished for the purpose of advising the public how nicely the activities of certain federal officials here are serving the purposes of the defense in the Moyer-Haywood-Pettibone cases.
It is a deplorable condition, since the arrest of these men charged with the awful murder of our former governor, the anarchist press in all parts of the country has been diligent in attacking those connected with the prosecution, seizing upon any circumstances for their purposes and inventing stories of the most outrageous character. Now everything connected with the timber cases is to be magnified and falsified for the purpose of the anarchists, being used to blacken the names of men connected with the prosecution and such others as may be objectionable to these wolves of society. The Appeal to Treason, loaded with the most villainous stuff that the human mind can conceive, is being circulated widely for this purpose, and every effort will be made to prejudice the minds of people in this county in the hope that a fair-minded jury cannot be secured….
[Emphasis added.]
SOURCES
Appeal to Reason
(Girard, Kansas)
-May 11, 1907
https://www.newspapers.com/image/67586863/
The Idaho Daily Statesman
(Boise, Idaho)
-Arp 20, 1907, page 10
https://www.genealogybank.com/
See also:
Hellraisers Journal, Tuesday May 14, 1907
From the Appeal to Reason: Eugene V. Debs Responds to The Statesman
-“Who Are the Wolves?” Part I
https://weneverforget.org/hellraisers-journal-eugene-debs-answers-charges-of-idaho-statesman-who-are-the-wolves-part-i/
For a brief description of Borah and Timber Fraud:
http://moses.law.umn.edu/darrow/photo.php?pid=467
The Coeur D’Alene Press
(Coeur D’Alene, Idaho)
-Apr 20, 1907
(Also source for image of headline.)
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn88056096/1907-04-20/ed-1/seq-1/
Calvin Cobb = Owner and manager of The Idaho Daily Statesman.
L. G. Chapman = manager of the Barber Lumber company.
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