Comrades, the red blood in you
must now prove itself.
I pledge myself to you
in this fight to its finish.
-Eugene Victor Debs
Hellraisers Journal, Friday April 13, 1917
From the International Socialist Review: Debs Fights for Life of Tom Mooney
TOM MOONEY SENTENCED TO DEATH
An Appeal to the Organized Workers of America!
By EUGENE V. DEBS
A TELEGRAM just received from San Francisco announces the sentence of Tom Mooney. He is to hang by the neck until he is dead. The day set for his murder is May 17th. The capitalist jury and judge have done their foul work, and it is now up to us to do ours.
Tom Mooney is an absolutely innocent man and his conviction an infamous crime. We, the workers of America, are duty bound to challenge the verdict of the capitalists’ jury and set aside the sentence of the capitalist judge. We constitute a court, a jury and a judge of our own.
We sat thru this case from the hour the vile conspiracy was concocted and we knew beyond doubt that Mooney was framed and that he is to be murdered for no other reason than that the corporation criminals, the big capitalist thieves and their official highbinders could not buy him, or silence his agitation.
More than twenty reputable witnesses not only testified to Mooney’s innocence but proved it beyond even the shadow of a doubt. His alibi was without a flaw. He was miles away from the bomb when it exploded in the preparedness parade. He had absolutely no connection with and no knowledge of the affair. Bourke Cockran, the eminent New York lawyer who defended him, is positively convinced of this and so is every other man or woman who attended the trial and is not in the pay or under the influence of the United Railroads, the Manufacturers’ Association, and other red-handed bandits who have for years been plundering San Francisco and have now set themselves up as the autocratic rulers of the Pacific coast.
You know the record of the Manufacturers’ Association. You remember the Mulhall story and the trail of this slimy serpent in the investigation at Washington. If the law had been enforced every one of these criminal conspirators would now be keeping the lock-step in penitentiary.
You know, too, the rotten record of the United Railroads, every page of which drips with corruption and reeks with stenches that cry to heaven. You also know the attitude of the Chamber of Commerce of San Francisco, that gang of pot-bellied exploiters and thieves and their mangy spaniels. It is these sweet-scented elements that constitute the despotic power that rules San Francisco with a rod of steel, these private interests organized for loot, rapine and plunder, as conscienceless a gang of pirates as ever sandbagged an honest man or picked the pocket of a blind orphan.
And it is this gang that issued its declaration of war against organized labor and in cold blood set to work thru its sleuths, hirelings and prostitutes, male and female, of high and low degree, to drive every union man and woman and every Socialist from the Pacific coast.
This is the real cause, the true inwardness of Tom Mooney’s conviction. He would not lay down like a cur at the command of the blear-eyed, bloated bandits. He stood up like a man and defied them. In every protest of the workers Mooney’s voice was heard; in every strike he was at the front and his influence was felt. He was true in every throb of his heart to the organized workers in their battle against annihilation. He lost sight of self entirely. He was the kind of a man when the crisis came we should have a thousand of instead of one, and if we had, those broadcloth, bediamonded, greasy desperadoes who are now trying to assassinate him under the cover of law would have seen ignominious finish long ago.
The arrest of Mooney in connection with the bomb explosion was an outrage, his trial from first to last a farce, and his conviction and sentence a crime so flagrant, so cruel, so shocking that the working class of the whole nation should and must rise in revolt against it. The plundering plutocrats thirsting to lap Tom Mooney’s honest blood must be thwarted. These hyenas shall not break his neck and gloat over his dead body. Their infamous court and its filthy hirelings have brought him bound and gagged to the gallows, but they shall not chortle over his ghastly murder.
Comrades and fellow-workers of America, I appeal to you! If ever my voice was heard I want it to be heard now. If ever I was engaged in an act of duty to justice and service to the working class I am engaged in that act now in pleading with you to help save as honest a workingman and as true a unionist as ever stood under the banner of the labor movement.
I know Tom Mooney and I know him well. For weeks he was with us on the Red Special. We ate and slept together. Everyone on the train loved him. To me he was a younger brother. He is innocent. I swear it. His murder would be a foul and indelible blot upon our movement and an everlasting disgrace to ourselves.
We can save him. We have got to save him. Let us get to work and lose no time. From now on my pen and my voice are at his service. My duty is clear and so is that of every other union man and Socialist in America.
First of all there is the most urgent need for funds. Everyone should contribute at least his mite. Send your contribution at once to Robert Minor, Room 210, Russ building, San Francisco, Cal. But this is not all. We must get busy at our union and local meetings. Publicity is extremely important. Protest meetings should be at once organized and proper action taken. We can stir the country from end to end before the San Francisco hangmen in evening dress can dislocate the neck of their framed-up victim.
Every labor union and every Socialist local must swing into line.
This is the hour for solidarity. Now is the time to stand up straight on our hind legs all over this country and say, IT SHALL NOT BE DONE!
We are patient and long suffering, but there is a limit. It has been reached. Let us show this country that labor is alive. Let its lightning strike just once and there will be a sudden halt in the murder program scheduled for May 17th.
Comrades, the red blood in you must now prove itself. I pledge myself to you in this fight to its finish.
[Photographs of Debs, and Tom and Rena Mooney added.]
SOURCE
The International Socialist Review, Volume 17
(Chicago, Illinois)
Charles H. Kerr & Company,
July 1916-June 1917
https://books.google.com/books?id=SVRIAAAAYAAJ
ISR April 1917
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=SVRIAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&source=gbs_atb&pg=GBS.PA581
“Tom Mooney Sentenced to Death” by Eugene V Debs
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=SVRIAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&source=gbs_atb&pg=GBS.PA613
IMAGES
Eugene Victor Debs, ISR, Oct 1916
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=SVRIAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&source=gbs_atb&pg=GBS.PA203
Tom and Rena Mooney, ISR, Dec 1916
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=SVRIAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&source=gbs_atb&pg=GBS.PA363
See also:
Tag: Tom Mooney
https://weneverforget.org/tag/tom-mooney/
For more on “the Mulhall story,” see:
Coopers International Journal, Volume 23
Coopers International Union of North America, 1913
https://books.google.com/books?id=xvVEAQAAMAAJ
Coopers Journal of August 1913
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=xvVEAQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&source=gbs_atb&pg=GBS.PA417
“National Manufacturers’ Association Is Charged With Corruption.”
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=xvVEAQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&source=gbs_atb&pg=GBS.PA419
For more on the “Red Special” of 1908:
“The Tour of the Red Special”
by Charles Lapworth
International Socialist Review of December 1908
https://archive.org/details/TheTourOfTheRedSpecial1908
For more on Robert Minor & Defense Campaign:
Hellraisers Journal, January 12, 1917
San Francisco, California – Frame-Up of Tom Mooney Examined
-Robert Minor, of International Workers’ Defense League, on the Mooney Frame-Up (ISR January 1917)
https://weneverforget.org/hellraisers-journal-robert-minor-of-international-workers-defense-league-on-the-mooney-frame-up/
My Sunny Tennessee – Peerless Quartet
Tune for:
“I Wanna Free Miss Liberty” by T-B-S
Lyrics taken from Little Red Songbook 19th edition, 1923
http://www.hobonickels.org/iwwsongs.htm#27
Per Big Red Songbook:
-TBS is, of course, T-Bone Slim.
-T-Bone sets his lyrics to “My Sunny Tennessee” by Tin Pan Ally Team: Bert Kalmar and Harry & Herman Ruby.
(search with: “miss liberty”)
https://books.google.com/books?id=QaXECwAAQBAJ
I WANNA FREE MISS LIBERTY
(Air: “Sunny Tennessee”)
By T-B-S.
While the moon was softly shining
On my cot, as I lay pining,
Thinking of the day-long passed away;
Came a drowsy feeling o’er me-
And Joe Hill stood there before me-
I seem’d to hear this joyous fighter say:
Chorus
I came to free Miss Liberty,
from the bonds of slavery;
From mock Democracy; from inequality;
I want to feel no Iron Heel shall
disgrace our peaceful shore;
That all the world may do away with war-
I love to dream the old, old dream,
that tomorrow I will find
Men of a kindred mind-who love
their fellow kind.
I long to make this plea,
say not that it cannot be,
I want to see the whole world free
from the chains of slavery.
II
Let us then be up and doing-
Greater Times and things are brewing
Oh, Organize!-The One Big Union Way:
“Workers of the world, awaken.”
“All the wealth you make is taken.”
“Break your chains.” I hear the spirit say:
III
Tighter are the class lines drawing-
Hunger at our vitals gnawing-
My reason sways and I long to pray?
Rises then again before us
Spectres of a Martyred chorus-
I seem to hear these sterling fighters say: