The socialist sun is rising.
It is our only hope.
-Ida Crouch-Hazlett
Hellraisers Journal, Saturday April 6, 1907
Boise, Idaho – “How the Prisoners Use Their Time”
From the Montana News of April 4, 1907:
In Boise Prison
—–How Prisoners Use their Time-
An Interview With Moyer and Haywood in Jail
The guard turned the key, the iron doors clanked on their hinges and I stood in the midst of a ground floor room in the Ada county jail, shaking hands with Haywood. Golden sunshine flooded the apartment, the windows out upon the beautiful grassy sward of the courthouse lawn, the room was large and comfortable, even to a rocking chair, which was hospitably tendered me, books and writing materials were on the table, and I-well, I was relieved.
“Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage.”
Those were my first words. Haywood smiled when I said them.
“Yes,” he replied, “I could have repeated them for you.”
The Ada county court-house stands in the midst of a beautiful square, in certainly one of the most exquisite mountain towns a tourist ever sees. It reminds one of the Colorado Spring. It has beautiful, level streets, a well-built business portion and a general air of “prosperity” and comfort. The snow-capped mountains lie around it, but do not encroach upon the town. The Boise river slips through a broad valley like a stream of molten silver. The little city has a population of about 15,000, and no one can tell you what supports them. It is not a mining town, it is not an agricultural town. It is not even on the main line of the railroad. But here is a bustling city, beautiful homes, and the state capital.
Next to the court-house is the red brick capital building-small but neat, and tastefully painted. The grounds are well-kept and decorated, and adorned with large healthy trees that are one of the chief beauties of the town.
A feature that adds to the interest of the place, and indeed is one of the principal subjects of comment by visitors, is the unusual, unique, esthetic and attractive style of architecture. This is conspicuously evident in all kinds of buildings, dwellings, business blocks, churches, theaters. There is a perfect riot of individualism in oddly-placed windows, quaint door-ways, Grecian pillars, Roman arches and small Gothic spires, small and dainty stone residences, cobblestone structures, a la Fra Elbertus.
Whether some one genius of an architect has preferred to stay in this comparative obscurity and let his fancy roam at its own sweet will or whether the efflorescence of this primal art is a pure accident of western adventurous spirits freed from the stupid conventions of more settled communities, I had no means of ascertaining.
Dungeons Bells.
Neither could Haywood answer my inquiries. He said his opportunities for observing Boise had been somewhat limited.
The Ada county jail occupies the main floor of the court-house. It is all above ground. The large room where I talked with Haywood is used as a sitting room by day for our men. Pettibone was sick the morning I called and Moyer was taking his exercise. Haywood was sitting at the table writing. A work on the criminal law lay beside him. I have noted before that he is using his enforced idleness in the study of law, looking toward a legal career.
Each of the men has a cell where they sleep at night.
Haywood talked with me about an hour. I asked him if he got nervous and worried, and experienced the mental anxiety and real suffering, which one might naturally expect to be the fate of men whose necks are being played for in so intense and tragic a game.
He smiled bright-heartedly and he answered, “Do I show any outward evidences of it?”
I assured him that he certainly did not.
He then went on to say that the work of the Western Federation was moving forward just as well as if he were not there in prison; and that the fact of his being there made it go better. The exigencies of the class struggle had placed him where he was, and he was fully prepared to bear whatever inconvenience might be involved in the fight.
My own mind was set at rest by his fearless declaration. Those of us whose fate is cast with that unfortunate class that has yet to achieve freedom and historic opportunity know that ere that ideal is attained by the sons of men, many of us must look to face the iron heel of the oppressor, with life and liberty in jeopardy. Still, even with the certain knowledge of the path wither this struggle of the slaves of toil leads, it is not every mind that is built on such heroic lines, that it can face the actual experience of martyrdom with equanimity.
Haywood and his class are a product of the system that the capitalist rule has imposed upon the world.
Haywood and men like him, and women too, will hew their way to liberty as the swift years roll by. That liberty means that Work shall bring blessings and pleasure in its train; it shall bring culture, art, beauty and wholesome leisure. It shall bring home and health, and merry children, and glad living for all. No other goal can be the social goal. And for this we are willing to face the fight, the dungeon, the torture, and the giblet if necessary.
These men, our brothers of organized labor and the socialist cause, are facing them now.
They are not the first; they will not be the last.
Labor Awake.
Haywood went on to talk of the conditions of organizations among the working class at present. He spoke of the wonderful advance along industrial lines in cities like Portland where even the wharfmen have been organized into the Industrial Workers of the World, and where the whole city is practically at the mercy of the working class. He spoke of the conflict in the ranks of organized labor at Goldfield, but gave it as the result of the mine owners, the employing class, spreading dissention among the workers in order to divide them and keep them from forming a coalition that would mean disaster to the capitalist rule.
He seemed particularly pleased that the Montana News was making such a strenuous stand for constructive organization in the socialist movement.
“It is what we have got to have,” he said.
Through a hitch somewhere the News has not been received regularly at the jail, and he had not been aware before that it was owned and published by the Socialist Party of the state, the only one such in the United States, and he said that he was more than ever interested in it because of that. As I told him of its ten thousand readers, of Local Butte taking 3,000 copies for distribution to get an immediate and accurate account of the defense side throughout the trial, of its well-equipped plant, motor, press, type, stock, and a linotype about to be installed, all owned by the socialists of Montana, he seemed delighted, and said that was the way to go about it.
He asked particularly if the Mill and Smeltermen’s Union of Butte were taking bundles of the News; said that was such a fine militant organization, and was so persistent in spreading education and economic literature, that they took advantage of every opportunity to inform and develop the intelligence of the workers.
Developing Its Plans.
When I told him of the policy the News had taken as an organ of the Socialist Party, not to participate in any of the dissentions among the unions, but to stand for organization on political and economic lines wherever it was helpful, and continually point the workers to their class interests, and that in union alone there is strength, he said we were undeniably right. Labor in its economic interests was in a formative state in America at present-an experimental state, as it were, and no one could tell exactly the direction its evolution would take. But the socialist movement knew its goal, and that goal at least must not be confused by counter issues.
The Baby’s Curl.
At this point he took a suit case from under the table, and handed me from it a large photo of his wife and two daughters. It was the one which has been widely circulated through the papers, of the invalid wife propped up in a chair, with a young daughter on either side. Pointing to the younger, Henrietta, he said, “That’s the very nicest baby in the country.”
He then laid across my hand a soft, clinging auburn curl, tied with a dainty fleck of ribbon started to speak, but chocked and turned away. It was the first hint of the terrible suppressed undercurrent that must be there, I ever saw him show.
As I looked at the soft bright tendrils of the helpless tragedy of that baby life, and of all babies lives that find their awakening within the working class, passed quickly through my mind. Was this one to be darkened forever by the memory of a dangling rope and broken neck of her father?
Her artless question-“Are they going to hang my father?”-is now world-famous.
Haywood said, “They are making a great ado about the kidnapping of the Marvin boy from New Jersey. The papers throughout the country have proclaimed the heinousness of the crime. The president has made a special pronouncement on the subject, and stated that the crime of kidnapping must be visited with the severest punishment. The governor of the state has offered every aid to ferret out the criminals. Now, what I would like to know is, which is the worst, to kidnap children from their parents, or parents from their children? The children are left in a worse position without parents to care for them than parents are, robbed of their loved ones.”
As this was one of the inexplicable anomalies of our beautiful Christian, capitalist civilization, there was nothing to be said on it.
Constantly Guarded.
The guard, big Ras Bemur [Beemer], had been present during the interview. He has been confined with the men also for over a year and these guards are on very friendly terms with their noted prisoners. It is pleasant to be on agreeable terms with one’s companions. But when you know that your kind and considerate associate carries an ugly weapon to kill you with instantly and unhesitatingly the moment you did not abide by orders, the pleasure of the companionship must be considerably mitigated. But “Ras” is only a part of the machine. Let us be thankful that he is a good part.
I rose to go promising to send some books and papers. As I passed out of the doors I glanced behind, and the real horror of the situation seemed most overwhelming when I saw Haywood looking out at me behind those checkered bars. It is an outrage that men in pursuance of their legitimate and avowed duty, arrested merely on a conspiracy charge, should be locked up like felons in this way for over a year. It is an insult to humanity and the working class, and particularly atrocious when merely a class interest is at stake.
Nobody hates a jail like a socialist, as only a socialist knows that they are monuments to the greed and power of property interests. They are relics of brutality and barbarism with no necessity or excuse for existence. Our men are locked up here because they interfere with the property rights of the mine owners, while these mine owners live by interfering with the property rights of the workers.
Moyer’s Constitutional.
I stepped out on the broad walk, and in an adjacent enclosure, with an ordinary lawn fence, Moyer was taking his morning walk of two hours in the fresh air. The wind was sharp, and he was walking briskly, with his overcoat on. No coercion was in sight except a guard sat at each end of the path. I was glad to see that he was accorded such human treatment. On asking permission to walk with him a few moments, which was cheerfully granted, we paced up and down the enclosure several times. It seemed to me that he looked better and more vigorous than I had seen him for a long while. On leaving he asked me to tell Mrs. Moyer to keep quiet in the hospital for a week or more till she was perfectly well.
Mrs. Moyer Improving.
Having intended to call and ask as to Mrs. Moyer’s condition, I walked over to St. Luke’s hospital. The matron told me I might go up and see the patient, and I availed myself of the opportunity. Mrs. Moyer is doing nicely, nothing serious the matter whatever; all she needs is rest and care. She said she was so glad the papers stated that she was ill from an operation, and not broken down from worry and anxiety. She said the nurses would tell her not to worry, when, as a matter of fact she was not worrying at all. Of course, she said, there was a certain uneasiness inseparable from the long suspense. But she went on to speak hopefully of how the trial would soon be over, and the boys would be free. “They haven’t a thing against them,” she said. “Their innocence will be proved without any trouble. We have nothing to worry about.”
Without wishing to cause her anxiety, I very lightly touched upon those innocent champions of the working man’s cause, who were so foully murdered by legal form in 1887, when Parsons came back from safety and gave himself up, feeling confident in the security of his innocence, but how innocence availed nothing when the disturbers of capitalist security were to be sacrificed.
“Oh, but,” she said, “the world is thirty years further along now. Labor is better organized, and cannot be oppressed so openly. We have nothing to fear.”
How devoutly I wished that her confidence might be justified. To those of us, however, who know the dark and bloody history of power’s crime and cruelty, there is nothing too monstrous to be unlooked for.
The Power Behind the Law.
In the afternoon Comrade Shoaf [correspondent for the Appeal to Reason] and myself wandered out where the real governors of the working class are-the fort at Boise. Boise Post is within a stone’s throw of the city, to the north. You step off the walks and through the gates of the barracks. The place is crowded with troops that are massed here at the present time. All the old buildings are full and they have brought in company after company until a large number of tents had to be brought into requisition. On either side of the flag staff heavy cannons are mounted, trained directly on the jail. A fifteen-barrel gatling gun stands near, ready for deadly action. We prowled around, sizing up these instruments of death.
Verily, Christian “Prosperity” has much of which to vaunt itself.
The socialist sun is rising. It is our only hope.
IDA CROUCH-HAZLETT.
[Photograph added.]
SOURCE
Montana News
“Owned and Published by the
Socialist Party of Montana”
(Helena, Montana)
-Apr 4, 1907
https://www.newspapers.com/image/77950235
IMAGE
HMP, Henrietta by Twining, AtR, Dec 15, 1906
https://www.newspapers.com/image/67586773/
See also:
Hellraisers Journal, Thursday December 20, 1906
From the Appeal to Reason: The Cry of Big Bill’s Little Daughter
Little Henrietta Haywood asks, “Will They Hang My Papa?”-by Luella Twining
https://weneverforget.org/hellraisers-journal-little-henrietta-haywood-asks-will-they-hang-my-papa-by-luella-twinning-for-appeal-to-reason/
For Lyrics to “Are They Going to Hang My Papa?”
Duluth Labor World of May 18, 1907
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn78000395/1907-05-18/ed-1/seq-4/
Roughneck
The Life and Times of Big Bill Haywood
– by Peter Carlson
(-page 118)
Norton, 1984
https://books.google.com/books?id=AsedGwAACAAJ
Note: Ras Beemer was actually an agent of Pinkerton Detective McParland, whose mission it was to try to work on Moyer so he could be persuaded to testify against Haywood.
Are They Going to Hang My Papa?
Performed by John Larsen and Michelle Groves
Lyrics by Owen Spendthrift, 1907
http://steunenberg.blogspot.com/2009_08_01_archive.html