Hellraisers Journal – Sunday November 25, 1900 Bruceville, Texas – Martin Irons Passes Away; Led Railway Strike of 1886
From Alabama’s Brewton Laborer’s Banner of November 24, 1900:
IRONS PASSES AWAY. ——- Years Ago He Was the Leader in a Great Strike. ——-
Martin Irons
Houston, Tex,, Nov. 18.-Martin. Irons, who was once leader of the union labor organizations and was director of the great Missouri Pacific strike in the eighties [Great Southwestern Railway Strike of 1886], with headquarters in St. Louis, died yesterday at Bruceville, twenty miles south of Waco, on the Missouri, Kansas and Texas railroad.
Irons came to the country three years ago, and, stopping with Dr. G. B. Harris, the then populist county chairman at Bruceville; he found congenial company and began organizing social democratic clubs. Anti-money rent was the slogan used to arouse the tenant farmers and in the course of a few months the entire south border of McLellan, east port of Bell and northwest portion of Falls counties were organized into clubs. The agitation extended in the east side of the Brazos river.
Grass-Roots Socialism Radical Movements in the Southwest, 1895–1943 -by James R. Green LSU Press, Jul 1, 1978 (search: irons harris populist) https://books.google.com/books?id=LuMPvekcRwAC
“Song for the Knights of Labor” from “Iron & Gold” -Opera by Mark Arnest
IRONS: We are the knights who ride as of old Honest, courageous, sober and bold With a wave of our lance CHORUS: With a wave of our lance IRONS: The fire of our glance, CHORUS: The fire of our glance IRONS: Capital trembles and schemers grow cold. Let us press onward and raise up the standard of right! Now is the moment to join in the fight.
———-
