Hellraisers Journal: “47 Days in Spokane City Jail” by William Z. Foster, Part I -from the Seattle Workingman’s Paper

Janet RayeElizabeth Gurley Flynn
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Quote EGF, Compliment IWW, IW p1, Nov 17, 1909———-

Hellraisers Journal – Monday February 14, 1910
Spokane, Washington – Foster Describes 47 Days in City Jail

From the Seattle Socialist Workingman’s Paper of February 12, 1910:

Spk FSF, 47 Days WZF, Workingmans p1, Feb 12, 1910Spk FSF, 47 Days by WZF, Workingmans p1, Feb 12, 1910

[Part I of II.]

On the afternoon of December 11th, when a contingent of men left the I. W. W. headquarters for the purpose of speaking on the street, I accompanied them, as usual, so as to witness their arrest and be enabled to report any unusual features attending it. On this particular afternoon Korthagen and Holland, two I. W. W. members from Seattle among others, were billed to speak, and having been closely associated with them in Seattle, I was anxious to be in at the death.

I walked with them to the appointed street corner, and while they spoke I stood some twenty feet away in the thick of the crowd. They were duly arrested and a few moments later the redoubtable Captain Burns came on the scene in answer to a call sent in to the station, and although he knew nothing whatsoever as to what had taken place, and had no warrant for my arrest, he immediately placed me under arrest when he happened to see me standing in the crowd.

At the police station I had the honor of a half-hour talk with Pugh, Sullivan and Burns, during the course of which conversation these worthies attempted to pump me. They adopted a dozen different ruses by which they hoped to secure a promise from me to desist from taking part in the street fight in return for my liberty. One of these was ridiculous in the extreme. Chief Sullivan (brainy man) said that he had just received a letter from the I. W. W., stating that I was a Pinkerton, his plan being to rouse my ire against the organization and to get me to desert it, or at least promise to take no active part in the fight. Failing in this he adjudged me guilty in his office of some unknown offense, because I wouldn’t answer for my conduct for the future, and I was taken to the notorious sweat-box, where I joined the balance of the street-speaking “criminals.”

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Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for January 1910, Part II: Found Speaking at Indianapolis United Mine Workers’ Convention

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones, Last Great Battle, UMWC p420, Jan 26, 1910———-

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday February 13, 1910
Mother Jones News Round-Up for January 1910, Part II:
-Found in Indianapolis Speaking at Mine Workers’ Convention

From The Indianapolis Star of January 25, 1910:

Mother Jones Lg, Ipl Str p3, Jan 25, 1910

From Hellraisers Journal of January 29, 1910
-Indianpolis, Indiana – Mother Jones Speaks to Her Boys:

From The Indianapolis News of January 26, 1910:

Mother Jones Speaks.

After music by the Lianelly Royal Welsh choir, which was applauded with a warmth that showed thorough appreciation. President [Thomas L.] Lewis introduced Mother Jones, who misses no convention of the miners. Mother Jones arraigned capital and set forth the claims of labor to better treatment. She referred to the anthracite strike and the Colorado strike.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for January 1910, Part II: Found Speaking at Indianapolis United Mine Workers’ Convention” →

Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for January 1910, Part I: Found with the Miners of the Hazleton Area of Pennsylvania

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones, Last Great Battle, UMWC p420, Jan 26, 1910———-

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday February 12, 1910
Mother Jones News Round-Up for January 1910, Part I:
-Found with the Miners of Northeastern Pennsylvania

Mother Jones, Ipl Str p3, Jan 25, 1910 copy
Indianapolis Star of January 25, 1910
—–

From the Wilkes-Barre Evening News
of January 5, 1910:

“Mother” Jones, who was such a prominent figure in the 1900 and 1902 strikes of the miners in this region, last night addressed the miners of Beaver Brook and was there given a hearty ovation. She will make a number of addresses in the lower end of the county to mine workers. “Mother” Jones who is now past the 70 year mark is always a welcome visitor among the miners.

[Emphasis added.]

From the Shenandoah Evening Herald
of January 5, 1910:

Mother Jones In Hazleton.

Among the visitors to Hazleton yesterday was “Mother” Jones, the well known organizer of the United Mine Workers, who took such a prominent part in the miners’ strike of this section. She was on her way from Philadelphia to the West. She just assisted the shirt waist strikers in their struggle in the Quaker City.

From The Philadelphia Inquirer
of January 6, 1910:

“Mother Jones” in Hazleton

Special to The Inquirer.

HAZLETON. Jan. 5.-Fresh from Philadelphia, where she helped in the strike of the shirtwaist workers. “Mother” Jones, who was a leading figure in the mines’ strikes of 1900 and 1902 in this section, arrived here today to conduct a series of meetings throughout the district among the miners “Mother” Jones has not been in the anthracite field since 1902.

[Emphasis added.]

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for January 1910, Part I: Found with the Miners of the Hazleton Area of Pennsylvania” →

Hellraisers Journal: “Behind the Picket Line, The Story of a Slovak Steel Striker” by Mary Heaton Vorse, Part II

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote MHV Immigrants Fight for Freedom, Quarry Jr p2, Nov 1, 1919———-

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday February 11, 1920
Youngstown, Ohio – Mary Heaton Vorse Visit the Home of a Striker

From The Outlook of January 21, 1920:

BEHIND THE PICKET LINE

THE STORY OF A SLOVAK STEEL STRIKER
-HOW HE LIVES AND THINKS

BY MARY HEATON VORSE

[Part I of II.]

[Leaving the Picket Line in Youngstown, Ohio:]

MHV, NYS p37, Dec 1, 1918It was seven o’clock. The morning vigil was over; the strike was unbroken. The deluge had not occurred. The men, weary with watching, broken with inaction and with suspense, drifted to their homes.

“You’re cold, ma’am,” my guide said to me, gently; “I want you should come to my house to get breakfast; my house it ain’t far.”

It seemed to me an imposition to appear in a strange woman’s house at that hour in the morning, especially as Mike let fall casually that he had eight children. A strike and eight children and a husband seemed to me quite enough for any woman to cope with, but he would not let me go without a cup of coffee. We walked past little detached dwellings, small frame houses and some of concrete.

These have been lately built. They show the modern impulse toward better housing. Here and there a rambler was planted over a door; there were porches, and plots of ground surrounded the houses. This was the most meritorious community, from the point of view of decency, that I have seen in any steel town.

Later we met a handsome lad coming out of the gate—Steve’s oldest boy on his way to high school. Then we went into the kitchen, and my first impression was of rows and rows of brightly polished shoes all ready to be hopped into—any amount of brightly polish-little shoes standing neatly two by two.

Now, any student of domestic life will know what this means. How many families are there who can get the boys to black their shoes the night before? I can’t in my household—indeed, it takes savage pertinacity to st shoes blacked at all. Just the sight of those shoes made me realize that my hostess was no ordinary woman. In the meantime Mike was calling up the stairs:

Mother, come down and see who’s here! Come down and see what I’ve got in the kitchen!” To hear him one would have supposed that I was a birthday present. And when “mother” appeared there was nothing that could have shown a third person that I was not an old friend. The owners of the shiny shoes came into the room with their shy “good mornings.”

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: “Behind the Picket Line, The Story of a Slovak Steel Striker” by Mary Heaton Vorse, Part II” →

Hellraisers Journal: “Behind the Picket Line, The Story of a Slovak Steel Striker” by Mary Heaton Vorse, Part I

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote MHV Immigrants Fight for Freedom, Quarry Jr p2, Nov 1, 1919———-

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday February 10, 1920
Youngstown, Ohio – Mary Heaton Vorse Observes the Picket Line

From The Fresno Morning Republican of February 8, 1920:

Mary Heaton Vorse can see-and tell what she sees. Her study of a Slovak steel striker is mighty well done, entitled “Behind the Picket Line,” in the Outlook for January 21.

[Emphasis added.]

From The Outlook of January 21, 1920:

BEHIND THE PICKET LINE

THE STORY OF A SLOVAK STEEL STRIKER
-HOW HE LIVES AND THINKS

BY MARY HEATON VORSE

[Part I of II.]
[Note: see Introduction by “The Editors” below.]

MHV, NYS p37, Dec 1, 1918
When I got out of the street car, he detached himself from the darkness and murmured:

“Ma’am, I come to meet you.”

It was not yet five, and black as midnight, except as the fiery salvos of the newly started blast-furnace of the Ohio plant shattered the night with glory. No need to ask how he knew me. Women do not usually get off the cars at five in the morning at this point.

On my way to the picket line I had been alone, with the exception of two uneasy-looking scabs. I didn’t look at them. I didn’t like to. The right of the individual workman to work when and how he wished seemed a rather hypocritical theory to me at that moment. It seemed about as tenable as the right of the individual citizen to desert to the enemy in war time.

For weeks I had been immersed in the strike. I had gone merely as an observer, rather skeptically even, and the thundering immensity of the thing had caught me up.

The people—that is to say, the public, those not directly interested—look on strikes as unchancy occurrences, violent manifestations which interfere with the ordered flow of existence. Something that wouldn’t happen at all if it were not for “outside agitators”—that most slippery of all explanations.

What had happened to me was that I had looked at the strike close to, and it had resolved itself into the lives of human beings—thousands of human beings thinking the same thing, thousands of human beings hoping the same thing, thousands and thousands of human beings hoping and willing the same thing, with the terrible patience of the simple. It is a dramatic thing when thousands of men all through the country, men in eight different States, men in fifty different towns and communities, all decide to stay home, all decide to do nothing, because they wish to alter certain conditions.

Men who never saw each other, men who never will see each other, many men who couldn’t understand each other if they were to meet, all doing the same thing, sitting quiet—abstaining violently from action, all bound together by the same thought—the men in all these widely sundered communities thinking together about the same thing. That is one of the things a strike resolves itself into when you look at it close to.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: “Behind the Picket Line, The Story of a Slovak Steel Striker” by Mary Heaton Vorse, Part I” →

Hellraisers Journal: Sour Dough’s Bible by Agnes Thecla Fair, Now On Sale by Seattle Socialist Workingman’s Paper

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Agnes Thecla Fair, Revolutionary Women, Stt Sc Wkgmn p4, Nov 20, 1909———-

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday February 9, 1910
Seattle, Washington – Ready for Sale: Book of Poetry by Agnes Thecla Fair

From the Seattle Socialist Workingman’s Paper of February 5, 1910:

Ad Sour-Dough by Agnes Thecla Fair, Wkgmns p3, Feb 5, 1910

Sour Dough’s Bible by Agnes Thecla Fair:

Sour Doughs Bible by Agnes Thecla Fair, 1910

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Hellraisers Journal: Philadelphia Shirtwaist Strikers Fighting to Live, Part II -from the International Socialist Review

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones, Spirit of Revolt, Philly Dec 19, NY Call Dec 21, 1909———-

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday February 8, 1910
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – Shirtwaist Strikers Fight to Live, Part II

From the International Socialist Review of February 1910:

Fighting to Live
—–

By Tom A. Price.
—–

[Part II of II.]

[Mother Jones in Philadelphia.]

Mother Jones. This little woman whose heart is as big as the nation and beats wholly for humanity, came to Philadelphia while the trumpet was still reverberating after the call to arms had been sounded. Under her bold leadership the fighters were organized before the manufacturers had fairly realized that their workers had at last been stung to revolt by the same lash which had so often driven them to slavery.

Mother Jones, ISR Cover crpd p673 ed, Feb 1910

In impassioned speech after impassioned speech Mother Jones urged the girls on to battle. Shaking her gray locks in defiance she pictured the scab in such a light that workers still shudder when they think of what she would have considered them had they remained in the slave pens of the manufacturers. Every man and woman and child who heard her poignantly regrets the fact that her almost ceaseless labors at last drove her to her bed where she now lies ill.

But she had instilled into the minds of her followers the spirit which prompted her to cross a continent to help them. That spirit remains and is holding in place the standard which she raised. It is leading the girls to every device possible to help the cause. Many of them are selling papers on the street that they may earn money to contribute to the union which they love.

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Hellraisers Journal: Philadelphia Shirtwaist Strikers Fighting to Live, Part I -from the International Socialist Review

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones, Spirit of Revolt, Philly Dec 19, NY Call Dec 21, 1909———-

Hellraisers Journal – Monday February 7, 1910
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – Shirtwaist Strikers Fight to Live, Part I

From the International Socialist Review of February 1910:

Fighting to Live
—–

By Tom A. Price.
—–

[Part I of II.]

Letter H, ISR p673, Feb 1910 ARRASSED by a subsidized police force which drives them from corner to corner at the behest of their employers, disputing their right to live and move and exercise free speech upon the streets once resonant with the peal of Liberty’s bell; lashed by the slave whip of necessity in the hands of manufacturers who grudge them a paltry dole sufficient to keep body and soul together, three thousand girls in Philadelphia are fighting against tremendous odds for the privileges which, according to the frequent boast of American orators, are elementary—the common heritage of all.

It is no longer a question of higher wages, important as that feature of the struggle is and has been from the beginning. It is a question of emancipation from something infinitely worse than hunger, a condition far more distressing than want.

Philly Shirtwaist Strike, Strikers n Cop, ISR p674, Feb 1910

Without sympathy save among those of their own order; without resources; without a knowledge in many cases of our language, much less our laws, these girls have shown a heroism, a devoted self-sacrifice, which should command the admiration of all men. With fear of neither confinement nor bodily harm in their minds they go forth every day to do picket duty under the very eyes of the police whom they know are against them, not only as a matter of policy but as a matter of absolute necessity.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Philadelphia Shirtwaist Strikers Fighting to Live, Part I -from the International Socialist Review” →

Hellraisers Journal: Explosion at CF&I’s Primero Mine Kills 79 Miners in Colorado; Company Continues to Withhold News

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Mother Jones Quote, Life Cheaper Than Props, Trinidad CO, Sept 16, 1913, Hse Com p2630
Mother Quotes CF&I Mine Manager
———-

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday February 5, 1910
Trinidad, Colorado – Primero Mine Disaster Leaves 300-400 Children Fatherless

From The Fort Collins Express of February 3, 1910:

Primero MnDs, HdLn 79 Dead Explosion, Fort Collins Exp p1, Feb 3, 1910—–

THE REPORT OF THE EXPLOSION REACHED HERE AT SIX O’CLOCK TONIGHT BY A MESSENGER AND TELEPHONE THE WIRES WERE PURPOSELY CUT OR WERE BROKEN BY SOME UNKNOWN CAUSE BETWEEN HERE AND THE SCENE OF THE DISASTER, FOR JUST AFTER THE EXPLOSION THE WIRES PUT OUT OF COMMISSION AND ONLY MEAGER NEWS HAS BEEN RECEIVED FROM THE MINE.

At 11:30 tonight a messenger reported from a point about half way between here and Primero that fifteen bodies bad been recovered and that 135 more were in the mine with no hope of being rescued alive.

The cause of the explosion is unknown. A rescue party that left this city is expected back about 2 o’clock in the morning with complete reports of the disaster.

The criticism being directed against the company owning the mine is very severe as there is an apparent attempt to prevent the details from being made public. A large number of men who worked in the mine live in Trinidad, going back and forth on miners’ trains each morning and evening. Great excitement prevails in this city among the wives and children of the entombed men.

———-

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