I am not conscious of having committed any crime.
The thing that I am conscious of is having endeavored
to inspire higher ideals and nobler lives.
If to do that is a crime in the eyes of the government,
I am proud to have committed that crime.
-C. E. Ruthenberg
Hellraisers Journal, Saturday February 16, 1918
Canton, Ohio – Prison Doors Close Behind Ohio Socialists
The New York Evening Call of January 17th reported that the United States Supreme Court had affirmed the prison sentences of C. E. Ruthenberg, Secretary of Local Cleveland, Alfred Wagenknecht, State Secretary and Charles Baker, State Organizer, all of the Socialist Party of America. All three stand sentenced to serve a year in Canton prison by Federal Judge Westenhaver. The statements of Ruthenberg and Wagenknecht, made before they were taken to Canton, were published this month in the International Socialist Review:
NEWS AND VIEWS
From Ohio-As the prison doors at Canton, Ohio, open to receive our comrades, Ruthenberg and Wagenknecht, for one year, they send greetings and these words to the REVIEW and its readers:
THE Supreme Court has decided we must spend a year in jail.
The “crime” of which we are convicted is truth-telling.
We believe in certain principles. We fought for those principles. We go to jail.
Ostensibly we are convicted of inducing a certain Alphonse Schue not to register. The charge is merely the excuse. Neither of us knew Schue. Neither of us heard of him until his name appeared in the indictment against us.
The ruling class is always able to find a Judas. Schue was induced to say he heard our speeches and had been influenced thereby not to register, by the promise of his freedom.
It is not the Judas that is important, nor the fact that we were convicted by a hand-picked jury and a judge bitterly prejudiced against organized labor.
The important thing is that the ruling class feared our message to the workers and is trying to silence that message.
That knowledge should make a hundred willing workers take up the work we lay down. Confident that this will be the result of our conviction, we go to jail smilingly and at the end of our year will return to work for the cause we believe in, the cause we fought for and will fight for.
C. E. RUTHENBERG
WE unflinchingly face prisonward. Far beyond the prison we see the Socialist Republic, peopled with carefree, happy men, women and children. We unhesitatingly step prisonward because we know our incarceration but constitutes part of the rope with which capitalism is going to hang itself.
There’s no fear of prison written on the face of sentenced Socialists. Don’t I know? Haven’t I seen them sentenced and walk from the judge with smiles upon their faces—smiles from set jaws that portend no good for the ruling class!
In a day, the “under dogs” of Russia became the rulers of the land. In a day the over-burdened, over-worked, bent Russian straightened up, cast the parasites from his back, took a deep breath and said: “This is my Russia.”
Only a year in jail! We gladly make the sacrifice. It is about the least we can do as our part in the work of freeing the workers from their masters.
A. WAGENKNECHT.
From The Ohio Socialist of February 11, 1918:
Details:
SOURCES
The Evening Call
(New York, New York)
-Jan 17, 1918
http://www.marxisthistory.org/history/usa/parties/spusa/1918/0117-ruth-atimprisonment.pdf
International Socialist Review Volume 18
(Chicago, Illinois)
Charles H. Kerr and Company
July 1917-Feb 1918
https://archive.org/details/ISR-volume18
ISR-Feb 1918
https://archive.org/stream/ISR-volume18#page/n198/mode/1up
“News and Views”-Ruthenberg & Wagenknecht
https://archive.org/stream/ISR-volume18#page/n219/mode/1up
https://archive.org/stream/ISR-volume18#page/n220/mode/1up
IMAGE
Ruthenberg, Wagenknecht, Baker, The Ohio Socialist, Feb 11, 1918
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/ohio-socialist/015-feb-11-1918.pdf
See also:
C. E. Ruthenberg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._E._Ruthenberg
Alfred Wagenknecht
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Wagenknecht
Guilty? Of What?
Speeches before the jury in connection with the trial of C.E. Ruthenberg, Alfred Wagenknecht, Charles Baker
http://debs.indstate.edu/g9627g8_1917.pdf
http://palmm.digital.flvc.org/islandora/object/fau%3A32394
U.S. Supreme Court
Ruthenberg v. United States, 245 U.S. 480 (1918)
Ruthenberg v. United States
No. 656
Argued December 13, 14, 1917
Decided January 14, 1918
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/245/480/case.html
Do You Hear the People Sing?
And see a great video here!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_67JhrCTMfc