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Hellraisers Journal – Saturday April 13, 1912
San Francisco, California – Joe Hill Speaks on Conditions in San Diego Jail
From the Spokane Industrial Worker of April 11, 1912:
FREE SPEECH DOINGS IN CALIFORNIA
(By Caroline Nelson).
The free speech protest in Building Trades hall Last Sunday [March 31] was a great success; $175 were collected to carry on the fight in San Diego.
Austin Lewis delivered one of his masterly addresses. He showed that street speaking of the I. W. W.’s was an absolute necessity. Without street speaking the migratory worker could not be reached, because he would not go to any hall. Without street speaking there would have been no organization among the lumber workers and section laborers, and therefore no strikes or fights for better conditions. In street speaking pamphlets, circulars and propaganda sheets are given out and find their way to camps where they do their work.
The last speaker was a released speaker from San Diego, Fellow Worker Hill. He explained that he had just come from the hospitality of the M. & M. [Merchants and Manufacturers Association] in San Diego, that owing to that hospitality he was physically unable to make any lengthy speech. He looked as though he had just risen from a sick bed. His face was pale and pinched. Dressed in overalls he bespoke the low standard of living that our modern civilization imposes upon our most intelligent workers; for he spoke more intelligently and eloquently than many a widely heralded upper class jaw smith, who has had nothing to do all his life but to wag his tongue and to look up references. He nailed the widely circulated lie that the upper class have bought out all the workers who have any intelligence, and that every intelligent man can get work.
Fellow Worker told how they practiced sabotage in San Diego in the jail in the form of building battle ships, as they called it, by hammering on the iron doors. The court was located on the second story over the jail and terrible noise made by the hungry prisoners prevented them from holding a session in the upper region. They sent word down to the prisoners to be quiet or they couldn’t hold court. The prisoners’ replied that it was their intention that no court should be held until they were fed.
Hill brought down the house when he proposed that the army of fifty thousand unemployed of San Francisco move on the San Diego, to free the men now in jail there which the M. & M. intend to railroad to the pen. The San Diego jail and bull pen are full now. They are running up the expenses of the tax-payers fearfully and an army of invaders would scare them stiff, and prevent the sending of the ten men now on trial to the penitentiary. But unless something was done quickly these men would be sent over the road; for there is nothing our ruling class doesn’t dare when it comes to strike terror to the hearts of the workers. They violate every law on the statute books, and trample in the dust every human right that is supposed to be sacred. They hold no law sacred except when it protects them in their piracy.
If the workers in San Diego in their fight for free speech lose, they will lose all along the line on the Pacific slope. That city has been deliberately chosen by the Merchants and Manufacturers Association to fight the I. W. W. on account of its isolation. It can only be reached overland by a stretch of desert land and only one railroad. If the workers lose in San Diego the next point of attack will be Los Angeles and then San Francisco. It is therefore the center of battle just now, and all our strength must be centered there. If the San Diego authorities found that an army of fifty thousand were on the way, they’d release everyone in jail and in the bull pen. Therefore our slogan should be:
On to San Diego.
Edward Morgan was billed to speak at that meeting, but he was delayed on the road, and didn’t arrive until the next day. He than appeared and spoke to the unemployed in their open air meeting. He told them how the Coxey army was fed on its way to Washington. How in all the little towns the farmers and merchants got together the best food to give them, upon the proposition that they move on. He knew that the California farmers and merchants of the little town would do the same thing. He reminded them that when fifty workers started from the north, during the Fresno fight, they were given food at every place, and at one place a train was placed at their disposal. The actors at one place even gave them tickets to a show. And what was more to the point, the Fresno authorities gave in when they found the workers moving in on them, and threw the town open for free speech.
When Edward Morgan asked everyone in the crowd to raise his hand who wanted to march on San Diego, all hands went up of the five hundred of more. Monster meetings are being arranged for, and without doubt Morgan will move south in a short time with an army that every citizen including the chiefs of police will be glad to help in its move on order. There are no jail in California big enough to hold it, and no taxpayers generous enough to feed it for any length of time.
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[Emphasis added.]
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SOURCES & IMAGES
Quote Joe Hill, General Strike, Workers Awaken, LRSB Oct 1919
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=vTlRAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PA6
Industrial Worker
(Spokane, Washington)
-Apr 11, 1912, pages 2+4
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/industrialworker/iw/v4n03-w159-apr-11-1912-IW.pdf
See also:
Apr 2, 1912, LA Times
“Reds to Invade San Diego”
-March 31 Meeting: California Free Speech League at Building Trades Temple
https://www.newspapers.com/clip/99665198/apr-2-1912-la-times-reds-to-invade/
International Socialist Review
(Chicago, Illinois)
-Apr 1912, page 649
“The Fight for Free Speech at San Diego”
-by Vincent St. John
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/isr/v12n10-apr-1912-ISR-gog-Corn.pdf
Mother Earth Bulletin
-ed by Emma Goldman
Greenwood Reprint Corporation, 1912
-April 1912
(search: “california free speech league”)
https://books.google.com/books?id=fmkpAQAAIAAJ
Free Speech for Radicals
-by Theodore Schroeder
Free Speech League, 1916
(search: “california free speech league”)
https://books.google.com/books?id=V3ooAAAAYAAJ
The Man Who Never Died
The Life, Times, and Legacy of Joe Hill, American Labor Icon
-by William M. Adler
Bloomsbury Publishing USA, Aug 30, 2011
(search: “california free speech league”)
https://books.google.com/books?id=nCwHDiXYMRMC
Tag: San Diego Free Speech Fight of 1912
https://weneverforget.org/tag/san-diego-free-speech-fight-of-1912/
Coxey’s Army
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coxey%27s_Army
Tag: Fresno Free Speech Fight of 1910-1911
https://weneverforget.org/tag/fresno-free-speech-fight-of-1910-1911/
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Workers of the World Awaken – Ariana Eakle
Lyrics by Joe Hill