Hellraisers Journal: From the Appeal to Reason: Despairing Unemployed Trudge the Streets Seeking New Masters

Quote Panic, ISR, Nov 1907
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Hellraisers Journal, Monday May 4, 1908
Cities Across the Nation: Despairing Men Search for New Masters

From the Appeal to Reason of May 2, 1908:

Slaves Looking for Masters.
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In every city of the country there are to be found many sad and despairing men, trudging from place to place, or standing in small groups in earnest conversation. These men are not tramps, hoboes or loafers, but the involuntary idle; men, honest and industrious workingmen, who have lost their jobs and now wander and wonder where and when employment is to be found.

These men are of the wealth producers of the nation, but under the existing competitive system the markets of the world have been overstocked and orders countermanded, and as the employers of labor could no longer employ them with profit, the mill, shop and factory were closed down to await more favorable market conditions, while the unfortunate employes have been set adrift.

But what of those dependent upon the idle workers for food, raiment and shelter? Ah, me, that is not a matter of concern to the employers. When times become extremely severe and threaten revolt, the wife or daughter of the employer, “out of pity for the poor,” will attend a “charity” ball gowned in five thousand dollars worth of silks and diamonds, presenting a ten dollar ticket of admission. Beyond this the employers have little or no interest in their slaves.

When the shop and factory again need labor power, when it can again be employed with profit to the employers-the owners of the machine, the gigantic tool of production-they well know it will be found at the gate knocking and pleading for permission to enter…..

From The Carpenter of March 1907:

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SOURCES

Appeal to Reason
(Girard, Kansas)
-May 2, 1908
https://www.newspapers.com/image/67587290
Inset
https://www.newspapers.com/image/67587294

The Carpenter
(Indianapolis, Indiana)
-March 1907
“The Ninety and Nine” by Rose Elizabeth Smith
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=jX6BAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&hl=en&pg=GBS.RA2-PA1

The Carpenter, March 1907

I.W.W. Songs
To Fan the Flames of Discontent
Joe Hill Memorial Edition
9th Edition of Little Red Songbook
IWW Publishing Bureau
Cleveland, March 1916
(Scroll down to page 19.)
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Songs_of_the_Workers_(9th_edition)

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