Hellraisers Journal, Tuesday February 19, 1907
From the Appeal to Reason: Kidnaping Anniversary Edition

This week’s edition of the Appeal to Reason commemorates February 17, 1906, the one-year anniversary of the state-sponsored kidnaping of the valiant leaders of the Western Federation of Miners, under the banner:

Labor Is Forging The Thunderbolt
for the Conspiracy!

Eugene V. Debs is the special editor of the first page of this edition, and raises his voice on behalf of our imprisoned comrades:

THESE are the three comrades whose kidnaping under the most extraordinary circumstances ever recorded we are celebrating with a special edition of three million copies and with fresh consecration to the holy cause of emancipation for which they have offered up their liberty and jeopardized their lives.

Verily, “it is an ill wind that blows no good,” and “God moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform.”

At first glance the kidnaping of our comrades by the chief magistrate of a state sworn to execute the law against kidnapers, and who, if not a perjurer is a felon, and if not a felon a perjurer would seem to be a monstrous crime without a feature to redeem it from execration. But not so. What else, or what less than this would have served to arouse the working class of the whole nation like an alarm blast from the trumpet of an avenging deity?

What else could have lashed the stagnant waters of organized labor into foaming billows, tossing high their spray of life and discontent?

In all the history of labor there is no event to equal it. A year ago the names of Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone were known to but a few thousands in the Western states; today they are hailed and honored by millions, who applaud their fidelity and honor their fortitude.

And thus are heroes snatched from the common multitude.

The governor of Idaho is to our comrades as was Caiaphas, the high priest, to the lowly Christ and his devoted disciples. The high priest had place and pomp and power; the working man of Galilee had not where to lay his head. But the cause of Christ conquered the Caesars and countless millions love and venerate his name, while the proud and imperious ruler is forgotten, or remembered only with execration and contempt.

Governor Gooding, likes Dives of old, who had Lazarus at his mercy, may yet lift up his eyes in hell.

Some men are born to suffer and to serve, to become the tempered instruments of Providence in the cause of humanity, and of these are our fellow-workers in the Ada county jail.

We, who know them, are not more surprised to see them in jail than we are to see the Nazarene agitator on the cross. We know perfectly well why they are in jail, and we know, too, that if they were not there the thirty pieces would again hear testimony to the betrayal of a holy cause.

The iron bars are the checkered emblems of our comrades devotion and incorruptibility, and time will turn their prison cell into a monument of glory.

We know these fellow-workers who have been lifted higher for their faithfulness, and we love and honor them as comrades true in the service of humanity.

Not only do we love and honor them, but we, for whom they have freely offered up their all, propose to rally round them like a living wall and shield them, as is our sacred duty, from all harm.

No man who knows these men believes them guilty of a crime. They are capable of anything save that. Look into their open faces and deep down into their souls and you will find no trace of crime there.

Look again into the faces and down into the hearts of McPartland [McParland], Orchard, Gooding and their masters, and there you will find lodged the crimes for which Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone are now in jail.

The mills of the gods will grind out the truth, though hidden in the evil mind and dead conscience of vice masked as virtue.

The conspiracy is not for the hour or the day. It is the fruit of wage-slavery, and as it had its cause so it will have its consequence.

Meantime we keep step with the progress of our cause and at elbow-touch with our leaders. The jail is but an incident in the transformation-the training school provided for us by our masters for their own overthrow.

Rally round our leaders, comrades, for as we have needed them in the past and they have never failed, so will they need us now and we shall not fail them.

———-

The First Anniversary

A GRUESOME anniversary we are commemorating today!

The legally authorized commission of a monstrous crime.

The kidnaping in the dead of night by two governors and a pack of Pinkerton bloodhounds of three honest, unoffending workingmen, their secret and swift abduction a thousand miles from home and their incarceration in the separate, solitary cells of a state penitentiary.

All this without a whisper of warning.
Without a hint of what it was for;
Or a ghost of a chance to protest,
Or to ask a question, or consult a lawyer, or make a defense,
-or even send word, a farewell word, to wife and child.
Not a sound! Not a sign!
Swift and violent deportation by an armed private mob
-dazed and alone in the black solitude of a penitentiary cell.

That is the introduction to the story of the crime committed at Denver, Colo., February 17th, 1906, one year ago, a crime that will mark distinctly the beginning of the end of wage slavery as certainly as October 16th, 1859, at Harper’s Ferry, marked the beginning of the end of Chattel slavery……

Millions Up In Arms

DOWN with the kidnapers!

That’s the slogan and refrain,
From the golden Gate to Maine.

The plot is exposed. The kidnapers are on the defensive. They will soon be on the run.

Form the Atlantic seaboard to the Pacific slope, from every state and territory, from hundreds of labor unions and thousands of other sources, come the pledges of support, financial and otherwise, to our kidnaped fellow-workers.

Never in all our history has there been such a spontaneous, wide-spread and determined uprising of the working class.

The mails are loaded with letters from everywhere, volunteering service and support in any capacity in which they may be required.

If the kidnapers still flatter themselves that workingmen are dumb driven cattle and will forever submit to slaughter to furnish porterhouse for their owners, they will be disillusioned at no distant day.

Three millions of organized workers are aroused and determined to avenge their manhood and repel the lawless and brutal attack upon their class.

They know that the kidnaping conspiracy has but the one malign object-to destroy the Western Federation of Miners by murdering its leaders.

They know, too, that the conspirators had no ground upon which to proceed lawfully and that in their desperation they resorted to the infamous crime of kidnaping.

They know, moreover, that the attack upon the Western Federation of Miners is an attack upon the whole American labor movement.

It is Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone today; it will be the turn of others tomorrow and still others the next day.

Kidnaping and the gallows for any labor leader who has the intelligence and moral stamina to stand his ground and serve his class!

Discharge and the blacklist for the rank and file!

Organized labor put to rout!

The Miner and Smelter Trust in the saddle, Standard Oil on the throne and the working class Russianized!

That is the program.

Down with the kidnapers and conspirators!…..

As of Thursday February 7th at 6 p. m.:

SOURCE & IMAGES
Appeal to Reason
(Girard, Kansas)
-Feb 16, 1907
https://www.newspapers.com/image/67586811/