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Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday July 1, 1919
Kansas Class-War Prisoners Re-indicted Yet Once Again
From the Kansas City Workers’ World of June 27, 1919:
LIVES USED AS PAWNS
—–POLITICIANS IMPRISON WORKERS IN GAME FOR OIL TRUST
FAVORS AND POLITICAL PREFERMENT
—–WHO IS KEEPING THESE MEN FROM TRIAL?
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Men Held for Nineteen Months, Charge Oil Trust
Is Real Prosecutor.
WICHITA, June 24.-Thirty-three men are still in prison, starting on their twentieth month, although on June 6th an order was filed in the District Court quashing all counts of the second indictment against them. Within a few hours of the filing of that order, District Attorney Robertson had gathered another Grand Jury and re-indicted the men on the same charges with which he has been unable to bring them to trial for twenty months.
Political Capital from Men’s Lives.
The men in prison charge that the Oil Trust is the real prosecutor in the case. This is substantiated by political gossip around Wichita, which runs to the effect that Robertson did not even draw up the indictments, that they were the work of the attorneys for certain oil companies. The political gossips are, however, most interested in Robertson’s candidacy for Governor on the Democratic ticket. They seem to take it as a matter of course that Robertson is connected with the Oil Trust.
When Robertson’s name was mentioned for Governor here recently, it immediately created a storm. He has few friends in this district, and now many prominent democrats are saying that Wichita indictments are purely for political capital, that he is keeping these men in prison in order to have a peg to hang publicity on to keep his name in the papers. They point out that while he has been very busy indeed giving interviews to the papers, trying to create sentiment against the men whom he has had locked up for nearly two years, he has not had time to draw an indictment against them under which a court would try them.
Why Will Not Indictments Hold?
Opinions vary as to why the indictments will not hold. The first opinion given is usually that Robertson knows so little about law that he doesn’t know how to draw them. But this view, credible at first thought, will not hold in view of the alleged fact that Robertson probably did not draw them, but that they were drawn up by the Oil attorneys. Which leaves but one explanation: there is not even sufficient evidence on which to bring them to trial.
Meanwhile Men Go Insane and Die.
In the meanwhile, the men who are the pawns in this game for political power and industrial privilege, are lying in the filthy county jails over the state, one of them has already died, two are insane, four are in advanced stages of tuberculosis, and all have had their health more or less broken.
Apparently there is no hope for these men until a political upheaval has changed the complexion of the Federal Government. Robertson boasts that he will continue to re-indict these men so long as he holds office. They have had no trial, and have no prospect of getting one soon. If they are finally released, what is left of them, there will be no redress whatever for them. They will have suffered more than if they had been convicted of a crime, without ever having a day in court. Such is the spectacle presented in the Courts of the United States, District of Kansas, Second Division. It is one of the best expressions of the Class-War Kansas has yet seen.
WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THIS CASE?
Do you believe that men should have a fair trial? Do you believe that they should not be punished before they are found guilty? Do you believe is justice and law, even for those with whom you disagree?
If you do, if the Democratic traditions of America mean anything to you, protest against the acts which are disgracing the Government in Kansas. Write to Arthur Capper, Senator, Washington, D. C., and request a Senatorial investigation. Write to Attorney General Palmer, Washington, D. C., and ask that these men be brought to trial or immediately released. Let us give these men what small measure of justice is yet possible. DON’T DELAY. WRITE TODAY!
[Photograph and emphasis added.]
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SOURCE
The Workers’ World
(Kansas City, Missouri)
-June 27, 1919
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/workersworld/WW13.pdf
IMAGE
WWIR IWW Remember the Boys in Jail, OH Sc p3, Aug 21, 1918
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/ohio-socialist/030-aug-21-1918.pdf
See also:
Tag: Wichita IWW Class War Prisoners
https://weneverforget.org/tag/wichita-iww-class-war-prisoners/
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The Industrial Workers of the World –
Lyrics by Laura Payne Emerson
-from Industrial Pioneer of March 1921
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=sY9ZAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.RA1-PA12
Performed by Twin Cities Labor Chorus