Such a group of men one is proud to be associated with
-workers, clean hearted, clear eyed;
all fighting for the principles so plainly set forth in
the Preamble of the Industrial Workers of the World.
-Big Bill Haywood
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hellraisers Journal, Tuesday May 7, 1918
Big Bill Haywood on Conditions in the Cook County Jail
From The Liberator of May 1918:
On the Inside
By William D. Haywood
CLANG! clang! a bell rang out, big iron doors slid back, the auto patrol wheeled up to the rear entrance of the Cook County Jail; and here we are.
We are in the wing of the “old jail,” a room about 60 by 60 with a double row of cells four tiers high; our cells face the alley to the west. Cells are six by eight, about eight feet high with ceiling slightly sloping to the rear.
This cell is parlor, bedroom, dining room and lavatory all in one. Decorations black and white-that is, the interior is painted solid black on two walls, black half way on the other two walls. The ceiling is mottled white. Wash bowl, toilet, water-pipe, small bench, a narrow iron bunk, flat springs, corn husk mattress, sheet and pillow case of rough material, blanket, tin cups and spoons, constitute the fittings of our temporary homes where we spend twenty hours out of every twenty-four, involuntary parasites, doing no more service to society than the swell guys who loll around clubs or attend the functions at fashionable resorts.
The reveille of this detention camp is the sharp voice of the “runner,” “Cups out! Cups out!”
It is the beginning of a new day. The light, streams through the grated. door and falls in a checkered pattern across the cell floor.
One stretches his body on the narrow cot and awakens to the fact that he is still in jail, accepting the situation philosophically, wondering, some of us perhaps, what manner of independence and freedom it was that our Forefathers fought for in this country.
A prison cell is the heritage we gain for the blood and lives our forefathers gave; they fought for religious freedom and left us with minds free from superstitious cant and dogma; they waged war for political justice; they carried on the struggle against chattel-slavery-these were the titanic battles that were fought, bringing us to the threshold of the greatest of all wars-the class war-in which we are enlisted as workers, against all kinds of exploiters.
Abolish the wage system, is our battle cry. With an idea that is imperishable, Organization and Education as our weapons, we are invulnerable.
With thoughts of this kind imprisonment becomes a period of improvement. It may be remarked that members of the Industrial Workers of the World have had many opportunities to take advantage of these enforced vacations.
Many thousands of members of the I. W. W. have in the past few years wakened in cells similar to this, to the reveille of “Cups out! Cups out!” until the jails have become recognized as a temporary home-a detention camp of the Master Class-where we are confined or interned as it were, not as criminals, but as victims prisoners of the class war. Over 400 members of the I. W. W. are in jail in different parts of this country at present.
So we roll out, wash and dress to snatches of I. W. W. songs from other cells, make the beds, sweep out and are ready for “breakfast.” The cell doors are unlocked by the guard at 9.30; we have the range of the narrow corridor until 11.30; dinner at 12 [noon]; out again at 1.30 until 3.30. In the Wing of the “old” jail these hours are spent in diverse ways. Here there are none but members of the I. W. W. Every day there is a physical culture class-breathing and exercise-to help keep the boys in good health in spite of the dismal damp and cold of the jail. The afternoons are devoted to discussion, gossip and song. Business meetings are held at regular intervals and a big entertainment is held each Sunday with recitations, dramatic sketches and songs. There are 48 men confined in this part of the jail.
In the “big tank,” or main portion of the “old jail,” there are about 58 members incarcerated. These men are locked up and must exercise with about five hundred criminals of all walks of crime.
It is on this side that all executions take place. There are three black holes on the corner wall into which the beams of the gallows are adjusted. When the gallows are not in use an old piano takes their place and this grewsome spot is sanctified each Sunday by sermons and religious hymns. It was in this corner that the martyrs of the eight hour movement of ’87 danced upon the air, and that Parsons [Spies], over thirty years ago, delivered his unforgetable prophecy: “The day will come when our silence will be more eloquent than the voices you strangle to-day.”
Cook County Jail, November 11, 1887
Of course it is impossible for the I. W. W. men on this side of the jail to hold business meetings and entertainments as they do in the “wing,” but, nevertheless, the spirit of all is characterized by the cheery bouyancy and unbreakable determination of the One Big Union.
The class-war prisoners have a prison library that is remarkable in many respects. It contains many of the finest works on Sociology, Economics, History and poetry that are obtainable, as well as novels by the best modern novelists. A new book is always welcomed with great enthusiasm. These books were nearly all donated by members or sympathizers on the outside. One is safe in saying that more books have been read in this gloomy old institution since the I. W. W. boys have been held there than were ever read in the place before.
The prison fare, never too plentiful, has, on account of war conservation, almost reached the point of starvation. Only one piece of coarse prison bread is now served with each “mea1.” In the morning the menu consists of a dry piece of “punk” [bad bologna] and a cupful of a libelous decoction of “coffee,” at noon, stew, fish or sausage-usually of a quality that is fairly nauseating. For supper, “coffee” and dry bread again with an occasional cupful of suspicious “soup.”
Aside from the poor food and ventilation, overcrowding is the chief cause of discomfort and illness. Three, and sometimes four, men are locked up twenty hours out of every twenty-four in a cell about as large as the average bathroom in a city dwelling. Sunlight seldom filters through the grimy, gray, and iron-barred window panes-nothing but the sickly glare of electric lights, day and night.
In spite of the brave efforts the men are making against this unwholesome environment, the poor food, foul air and the prison chill have made awful inroads upon their health.
One young Russian fellow-worker, Jancharick, who entered the jail in rugged health, was taken out to a hospital-spitting blood-and just in time to die. Nigra, an Italian miner who was terribly beaten up in the Springfield, Ill., jail, before being brought to Chicago, is, in a hospital suffering the tortures of hell because of lack of proper treatment for his wounds while in the Cook County jail. Miller, a textile worker and member of the General Executive Board, was forced to undergo an operation because of an ulcerous growth, probably caused by the foul air and rotten food. Kimball, an Arizona miner and one of those deported from Bisbee last July, has been released on bail after a great deal of effort. He is now a physical wreck-“spitting up his lungs” as his fellow workers say; a mere shadow of his former self. MacDonald, Ashleigh and Lossieff are each either on the sick bed or near it, and many other fellow- workers have lost vitality that can never be regained.
Then there is the case of Henry Meyers. His incarceration cost him his reason. Day by day he became more secretive and morose. With furtive glance he sulked about among the hundreds of prisoners in the “bull pen.” One of them had told him that he would be hung. Beneath the weight of worry and fear his sensitive artist mind gave way. Like a frightened animal he ran wild around the galleries until captured by the guards. He is now in the madhouse at Kankakee-his reason has fled.
It was he who painted the well known picture of Joe Hill. He made the death masks of our martyred members who were murdered on the “Verona,” that fateful Sunday morning in November, 1916. It was his deft fingers that shaped the clay that forms the face of fearless Frank Little that hangs upon the wall of the Chicago Recruiting Union.
This young fellow worker I do not believe ever committed a crime. He united his strength with others to improve conditions of all. Now his mind has lapsed; he is dead to the life he knew; his strong body is as useless as a burned-out cinder. This is but another indictment of the frightful system under which we are living. And this is only one of the stories that could be written of this frightful place. Be it recorded now that we are pledged to a new method of living-a new society, where injustice will not be known, where jails and prisons such as this will be things of the past, and where a human being will enjoy a friendly communal interest from the cradle to the grave.
The 106 class-war prisoners in the Cook County jail are of many different nationalities and from nearly all industries. They are strong, rugged, open-air types, taken right off the job and thrown into prison. They have undergone and are undergoing hardships and suffering, but in spite of all they manage to make the gloomy walls ring with rebel songs. They have been in jail, some of them for eight and, nine months, most of them for six, months, but their spirits are as dauntless as ever. During the long winter months they have been walking round and round the narrow corridors in the very shadow of the gallows. Always round and round, like angle worms in the bottom of a tin can, go the prisoners in the Cook County jail. But the members of the I. W. W. keep hope and courage alive in spite of all.
Such a group of men one is proud to be associated with-workers, clean hearted, clear eyed; all fighting for the principles so plainly set forth in the Preamble of the Industrial Workers of the World, which proclaims the only kind of Democracy worth going to jail to advocate-and this Preamble, the chief count in the indictment against us-is still nailed to the masthead!
See also:
“Rebel Songs”-Examples of the day:
Little Red Songbook of April 1918-
I.W.W. Songs to Fan the flames of Discontent
-General Defense Edition https://digital.wolfsonian.org/WOLF045327/00001
Note: I could find nothing at all regarding “young Russian fellow-worker, Jancharick.” Also searched with more common spelling “Hancharick.” Name not included in any of the lists that I have of IWW Cook County Jail prisoners. Any class-war prisoner who dies in prison, or soon thereafter due to illness in prison, is considered a Labor Martyr by the Labor Martyrs Project, and therefore research will continue on FW Jancharick/Hancharick.
Note: Kimball, most likely A. D. Kimball, but not absolutely sure, more research need.
Note: likewise “Henry Meyers/Myers” does not turn up on any of my lists of IWW prisoners from the WWI Repression. There was a well-known painting of Joe Hill by M. Baer published in the April 1918 LRSB:
