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Hellraisers Journal – Saturday May 4, 1912
“The Shame of San Diego” by Hartwell S. Shippey, Part II
From the International Socialist Review of May 1912:
The Shame of San Diego
by HARTWELL S. SHIPPEY
[Part II of II]
Up to and preceding March 14, the fight was the conventional free speech fight; but on that date (Sunday) the police took the initiative and ceased booking their prisoners, though the original captives who are charged with criminal conspiracy and jail breaking are still reposing behind the bars. (The “jail breaking” consisted of supposed smashing of jail windows by prisoners who were denied food and water and were compelled to drink from the toilet.) At a meeting held in front of the city jail, outside of the proscribed district, the fire department was called upon and three fire engines played powerful streams of water upon the speakers, knocking down Mrs. Emerson, Miss McKamey, Mrs. Wightman, a religious speaker, but a courageous and high-minded woman, Miss Ruth Wightman, 44 years of age, and overturning a baby carriage, the baby being swept into the gutter by the heavy stream of water.
Mrs. Ray Holden, an innocent by stander, was clubbed over the abdomen by a guardian of the “peace,” being unconscious for two hours following. When her husband called at the police station to investigate, he was locked up and a charge of sending in false fire-alarms was preferred against him.
Egged on by the violent and incendiary press, the local real estate dealers and other capitalists and members of the M. and M. formed themselves into vigilance committees and mob law was instituted. With the connivance and open aid of the police, bands of semi-disguised ruffians, appeared nightly at the police station, from whence, at the dead of night automobile loads of prisoners, industrial unionists, trades unionists in good standing, Socialists, and some with no affiliation, were carried from twenty to thirty miles into the hills and there beaten, clubbed, kicked while helpless on the ground and left with bloody heads and bruised bodies and with threats of death should they return. But return they did, to make affidavits of their persecutions.
[Martyr Michael Hoey]
March 28 died Michael Hoey, the first martyr of the San Diego battle. An old man, was Michael, but in perfect health, having walked 140 miles to the seat of war from Imperial Valley in the space of 5½ days. Kicked in the stomach and groin by a policeman, Hoey complained continually of pain in the swelling on his side but was laughed at by the official physician, Dr. Magee, until Hoey was removed from the jail and taken to Agnew Hospital by the Free Speech League, remaining there until his death. He was cared for by Dr. Leon De Ville, a Socialist, and a devoted soldier of the revolution.
[The Funeral of Michael Hoey]
The following Saturday, March 29, sorrowing fellow-battlers of Michael Hoey’s gathered on a vacant lot where, under the pitying smile of sunny California’s blue sky, they paid their last respects to the fallen hero of labor’s struggle. Waving sadly over his bier was the red flag, the emblem of brotherhood for which Michael Hoey had offered up his life. Not an insignia of violence and hatred, as conceived in the maggot-eaten brains of hired murderers and prostituted “journalists,” but a token of peace and love. And then-ah, well is this article entitled “The Shame of San Diego”-then Harvey Sheppard, a minion of armed and brutal violence, invaded the sanctity of their victim’s funeral and wrested the banner of brotherhood from the hands of the unresisting workingman who bore it, and placed the bearer under arrest! As I write all this I am seized with a feeling that the readers will deem that my story is an exaggeration. But the official organ of the trades-unionists, the Labor Leader, and the Weekly Herald, an independent, profit-making sheet, will fully verify my tale.
Vincent St. John, secretary-treasurer of the I. W. W., has published a reward of five thousand dollars for the conviction of those who were the cause of Hoey’s death.
[The Kidnapping of Editor Sauer]
While writing this article in Fred Moore’s office, at 10:30 p. m., came a voice over the telephone:
“For God’s sake come to 1222 A street! Come at once!”
We recognized the voice of Bert Laflin, erstwhile lieutenant under General Mosby of the Mexican insurrecto army, and at present employed by the San Diego Herald.
Attorney Moore, Wood Hubbard, who happened to be in the office, and the writer started down the seven flights of stairs and on the run for the address. As we approached the house, we were halted by a policeman who held us up, searched us, and escorted us to the police station, where we learned that the vigilantes had kidnapped A. R. Sauer, editor of the Herald, and had carried him from his home out into the night, a pistol shot being fired as he was forced into the automobile. The Herald, though in no sense a revolutionary organ, being an admirer of Roosevelt and Madero, has yet stood staunchly against the fiendish brutality of the police and has lauded the struggles of the free speech army. Sauer is a fine type of courageous manhood, who, though he lost nearly every line of his advertising, stood forth clear and clean for Man against the M. and M. He is sixty-five years old, and his loyal and loving wife and daughters are weeping in their home for the horrible fate that may be the portion of their husband and father. There is positive identification, however, of the automobile and its owner and driver, and Sheriff Jennings, who is decidedly favorable to our side, is out in the night with a posse, determined to bring to punishment the perpetrators of this dastardly deed.
The Building Trades Council and Federated Trades and Labor Council (A. F. of L.) of San Diego, Los Angeles and Oakland, and the Building Trades Council of San Francisco, have officially put themselves on record as endorsing the battle being fought at San Diego. Today, speaking to a special correspondent of the San Francisco Bulletin, sent here to report the struggle, a prominent official of the A. F. of L. said:
It looks as though a general strike is the only remedy.
Olaf A. Tveitmoe denounced the outrages perpetrated upon union men, and proposed a resolution demanding that Governor Johnson take steps toward preventing the vigilantes from further sacrificing human life, which was adopted by the meeting. For months, Tveitmoe has planned to parade a monster army of fifty thousand Frisco unemployed for the sake of eastern publicity, and to prove that jobs are NOT plentiful in California. This army is now being recruited and will be marched to San Diego, unless martial law is instituted, in which case the fight is won.
Meanwhile the workers are shaking the sleep of San Diego, while, in all probability, aided and encouraged by the National officers of the I. W. W. and the trades unions of the coast, at least 25,000 men are now wending their way to southern California and to San Diego. From an apparently insignificant attempt of a small city of 50,000 inhabitants to strangle free speech the struggle is becoming wider in its scope. Tramping thousands are on their way to San Diego and to a victory that shall give a new lesson to the coast of the undying loyalty and the ever-growing solidarity of labor.
[Emphasis added.]
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SOURCES & IMAGES
Quote re San Diego FSF Fire Hose Emerson, LA TX p11, Mar 11, 1912
https://www.newspapers.com/clip/98281757/mar-11-1912-la-times-san-diego-mar/
International Socialist Review
(Chicago, Illinois)
-May 1912, page 718
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/isr/v12n11-may-1912-gog-Corn.pdf
See also:
Hellraisers Journal – Friday May 3, 1912
“The Shame of San Diego” by Hartwell S. Shippey, Part I
For more on Editor Abraham R. Sauer:
“The Evangelist and the Muckraker”
(includes photo)
First published as:
“Caustic newsman mocked famed evangelist
Herald publisher faced obscenity charge in 1926”
-by Richard Crawford
San Diego Union-Tribune, Aug 6, 2009.
http://www.sandiegoyesterday.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Aimee1.pdf
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We’re Bound for San Diego – Proles
See lyrics: Industrial Worker p2, May 1, 1912.
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/industrialworker/iw/v4n06-w162-may-01-1912-IW.pdf