a free people may live!
-Big Bill Haywood
Saturday July 14, 1906
From Appeal to Reason: Ringing Words From Haywood
“Gabbertized capital…” is a reference to Justice Gabbert of the Colorado Supreme Court, a loyal friend of the mine-owners of Colorado.
Max S. Hayes on Justice Gabbert and Habeas Corpus
The following thoughts on Habeas Corpus and Chief Justice Gabbert of the Colorado Supreme Court appeared in the International Socialist Review of May 1906. Comrade Hayes produces “The World of Labor” each month for the Review.
The occurrence that has aroused the greatest interest in the minds of the working people next to the troubles of the coal miners and long-shoremen during the past few months was the imprisonment of Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone. From one end of the country to the other the later class has become aroused as it never was before. Protest meetings have been held by the hundreds, resolutions by the bushels have been adopted, and funds have been and are being collected in every branch of industry. The most conservative organizations vie with the most radical in giving substantial evidence of uncompromising opposition to the villainous methods that have been adopted by the tyrannical mine-owners and their Cossacks and Black Hundred to railroad men to the scaffold because they dared to dedicate their lives to the uplifting of their fellow-workers.
The readers of the REVIEW have undoubtedly kept themselves informed through the daily papers of the developments that have taken place from time to time in this Western drama, from the night that the men were kidnaped through the connivance of two governors owned body and soul by the mine-owners to the recent decision of Chief Justice Gabbert, of the Colorado Supreme Court, in which he declared that “the governor of the state has the power to suspend habeas corpus at his discretion and that the courts cannot review the action.” Thus at one blow this eminent jurist has invaded the sanctuary of American liberty and seeks to drag us back into the Dark Ages to keep company with the brutality and inquisitorial methods of tyrants whose names stink in oblivion.
It has been asked, is Colorado in Russia? Judging from the autocratic manner in which the plutocrats and their politicians corrupt courts, override constitutions, laws and every semblance of decency, and the supine, cringing way in which the voters of that state swallow every insult and accept every blow, it begins to look as though Colorado is several degrees deeper in slavery and monarchy than the Russians. Even when Lincoln suspended habeas corpus as a war measure the thoughtful men of his time expressed grave doubts regarding the wisdom of enforcing such a drastic measure. But in Colorado there is no war to overthrow the state, and no necessity for government resorting to such extreme means to perpetuate itself.
Gabbert promulgated his edict because he was morally certain that the people of Colorado did not possess sufficient moral stamina to drive him from office and drag him, as well as his masters, before the bar of justice and place them on trial for committing high treason. The plutocrats have become blind drunk with the power they possess, and, knowing all about the rottenness and corruption that exists in the political life of the Centennial State, no methods are too vile that will not be eagerly seized to destroy the last vestige of freedom and enthrone the usurping multi-millionaires whose insatiable greed and thirst for power causes them to resort to every scheme to wreck the Republic.
Either habeas corpus is as much a right principle now as when it was wrested from King John at Runnymede or it is wrong and persons may be seized and imprisoned and tortured in dungeons or be deported to Siberia or Idaho without let or hindrance. It is improbable, however, that the great mass of people of this nation will accept as final the decision of the Colorado Jeffries any more than they agreed to regard the Dred Scott decision as the law of the land, or permitted any one or number of states to secede from the union.
The widespread interest manifested in Colorado and Idaho affairs at this juncture, as reflected even in daily newspapers, is a safe indication that the Western tories and conspirators are being carefully watched and that the people will stand for no martyrdom. Enough blood has been shed to gain and perpetuate this Republic and its free institutions with out making more sacrifices, and those who start to dig graves for others should preserve a due amount of caution for fear that they may fall into the pit themselves. It is my firm conviction, after personal observation of the manner in which the country has become awakened to a realization of the outrages committed against workingmen in the West by the profit-mongers, that Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone will not be convicted of any crime, no matter how many alleged confessions may be prepared by hired assassins or what the political perverts now in office may say or do.
[Paragraph breaks and emphasis added.]
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SOURCES
Appeal to Reason
(Girard, Kansas)
-July 14, 1906
https://www.newspapers.com/image/66994264/
The International Socialist Review, Volume 6
-ed by Algie Martin Simons, Charles H. Kerr
Charles H. Kerr & Company
July 1905-June 1906
https://books.google.com/books?id=0Z9EAQAAIAAJ
ISR of May 1906
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=0Z9EAQAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&source=gbs_atb&pg=GBS.PA641
Max Hayes on Chief Justice Gabbert of Colorado
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=0Z9EAQAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&source=gbs_atb&pg=GBS.PA698
Fountain Filled With Blood & Tears – May Day Chorus of Asheville