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Hellraisers Journal – Friday March 28, 1919
New York, New York – Defense Committee Statement on Persecution of I. W. W.
From The Ohio Socialist of March 26, 1919:
Defense Committee Tells of
Persecution of I. W. W.
—–
The New York Defense Committee of the I. W. W. has issued the following statement in regard to the government’s activities in persecuting that organization:
With the war-time prosecutions being pushed relentlessly by the U. S. government and with a fresh outburst of capitalist persecution everywhere […..against?] radical labor elements, the I. W. W. is being driven to redoubled efforts to raise the large sum needed to protect its members throughout the country and defend the right of the organization to carry on its work as a labor union.
The New York Defense Committee of the I. W. W. has been reorganized and has mapped out an energetic money-raising and publicity campaign. The labor organizations of New York and vicinity and radical groups and individuals throughout the country are going to be appealed to for help in meeting the financial demands of the situation.
The committee, in its appeal for the support of all friends of the radical labor movement, points to the fact that, in addition to 93 I. W. W.’s convicted in the famous Chicago trial last summer and sentenced to 807 years’ imprisonment and fined aggregating $2,570,000, 46 members were convicted last January in the Sacramento bomb frame-up. Besides there, 34 more are to be tried in Wichita this month, while 28 are still awaiting trial in Omaha and 27 in Spokane, in addition to scores of individual cases throughout the western states, either under the Espionage act or under state laws against “criminal syndicalism” enacted within the past year for the express purpose of crushing the I. W. W.
Government Plans Deportation.
The government plan for the whole sale deportation of foreign born workers holding radical economic opinions is aimed particularly at the I. W. W., the committee claims, pointing to the fact that, of the first batch of 58 deportees received at Ellis island, 45 were members of that organization.
Raids on I. W. W. branches and dragnet arrests of members are coming to be almost daily occurrences all over the country, it is stated. Wherever signs of I. W. W. activity crop out, the local authorities resort to any means in their power to try to stamp it out. The Chicago office of the organization has been recently raided three times in quick succession, the members found there being arrested without a warrant and quantities of literature and office supplies confiscated. [Similar illegal?] raids and arrests are reported from Springfield, Mass.; Bridgeport, Conn.; Newark, N. J.; Kansas City, Mo.; Portland, Ore,; Seattle and Spokane, Wash., and many other [police departments attempt?] by threat of arrest and prosecution, to intimidate new members and get them to renounce their connection with the I. W. W.
The systematic newspaper campaign now under way charging the I. W. W. with complicity in wild plots of assassination, bomb explosions and incendiarism is cited as part of a plan to prepare the public mind to justify any arbitrary acts deemed necessary in the effort to wipe out this militant labor organization. It is pointed out by the I. W. W. that their philosophy in no way endorses wanton destruction of personal violence, but aims solely to educate and organize the workers so that they may be prepared when the time comes, to take over the industries and operate them for the benefit of society at large-what the I. W. W. preamble calls “building the structure of the new society within the shell of the old.”
Funds Needed.
With eight or nine hundred of its members confined in jails or deportation pens throughout the country, the I. W. W. finds itself obliged to raise a staggering sum of money for their defense. Between two and three thousand dollars a week, it is estimated, is required to supply these men with the food, clothing, reading matter, tobacco and other “jail comforts” they need to provide for the wives and children many of them have left without support, and meet the cost of legal defense and publicity.
[In closing its appeal for funds, the committee says:]
The fight of the I. W. W. is the fight of all the workers throughout the country who long for freedom from industrial slavery. It is their fight as well as ours. We cannot win it without them. They must help, or the present opportunity for gaining industrial democracy will be lost and capitalism will be firmly entrenched for years to come.
Contributions to help in the work of defense should be sent to the N. Y. Defense Committee, 27 E. 4th St., New York City.
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[Photograph and emphasis added.]
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SOURCES
Quote Frank Little re Guts,
-from Wobbly by Ralph Chaplin, Chg July 1917
Chapter 18-War, pages 208-9
https://books.google.com/books?id=n-ygPQAACAAJ
The Ohio Socialist
(Cleveland, Ohio)
“Official Organ of the Socialist Parties of Ohio,
Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia and New Mexico”
-Mar 26, 1919
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/ohio-socialist/061-mar-26-1919.pdf
IMAGE
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: Class-War Prisoners
https://weneverforget.org/tag/class-war-prisoners/
New York Defense Committee (IWW) published The Rebel Worker
https://reuther.wayne.edu/node/5239
I have found one edition on-line, so far-Vol. II, No. 6, see:
-First page of Rebel Worker for April 15, 1919
as republished by New York Tribune of May 25, 1919:
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030214/1919-05-25/ed-1/seq-88/
-Thanks to the U. S. Department of Justice, this appears to be
the full text for that same edition:
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=fuMtAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PA653
Re: Political and Class-War Prisoners to March 1919, see:
War-Time Prosecutions and Mob Violence
-National Civil Liberties Bureau
41 Union Square,
New York City, March, 1919
https://books.google.com/books?id=cZ5DAQAAMAAJ
https://cudl.colorado.edu/MediaManager/srvr?mediafile=MISC/UCBOULDERCB1-58-NA/1508/i73549228.pdf
Involving the rights of free speech, free press and peaceful assemblage.
[From April 1, 1917 to March 1, 1919]
This list of cases is compiled from the correspondence and press clippings of the National Civil Liberties Bureau. It is by no means a complete record. The Bureau would appreciate information about other cases.
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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