Hellraisers Journal: From the Social Democratic Herald: Eugene Debs on Current Events: The Bullpens of Idaho & Progress of Social Democratic Party

Janet RayeEugene Victor Debs
Share

Quote EVD, SDP Revolutionary, Sc Dem Hld p1, July 1, 1899———-

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday September 6, 1899
Eugene V. Debs on Current Events: Honest Workingmen Held in Idaho Bullpen

From the Social Democratic Herald of September 2, 1899:

CURRENT EVENTS PASSED IN REVIEW
—–

MINERS’ “VICTORIES” SO-CALLED
—–
Thirteen-Dollars-a-Month Patriotism
-“Bull Pens” and Socialism-Justice in France
in Spite of Hell and the French Army
-Cleveland Boycott
—–

By Eugene V. Debs, Terre Haute, Ind.

[Part II of II.]

Idaho.

EVD, Houston Daily Post p6, May 22, 1899

The “bullpen” of Idaho is the joint product of Republican, Democratic, and Populistic administration. The pictures drawn of this hellhole by reliable correspondents are enough to make decent devils blush with shame. The Democratic Populistic Governor Steunenberg and the Republican General Merriam, monsters of degeneracy, constitute the tsars of this domain. Here hundreds of honest workingmen, without a charge against them, are corralled like cattle, starved like outlaws, and shot like mad dogs, and while the outrages are being perpetrated in the name of “law and order” their wives are made victims of the lust of their brutal keepers.

We often hear that violent revolution is close upon us, but this is only bluster, for if there were but the faintest revolutionary spirit abroad, the Idaho “Bullpen” would fan it into flame like a cyclone and such fiends as Steunenberg, Merriam, and other degenerate tools of the Standard Oil Company would be hung higher than Haman.

Some of these miners may remember what I told them nearly three years ago about coming events, about voting with the old parties and about socialism. They were not ready for socialism then, but now that their unions are broken up, their homes desolate, and themselves prisoners or exiles, and all this by the capitalist system which they have supported by their own votes, they will be compelled to realize that through socialism alone is there escape from the tyranny of capitalist rule and the atrocities of the wage system.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From the Social Democratic Herald: Eugene Debs on Current Events: The Bullpens of Idaho & Progress of Social Democratic Party” →

Hellraisers Journal: From the Social Democratic Herald: Eugene Debs on Current Events: So-Called Miners’ Victories & Patriotism at $13 per Month

Janet RayeEugene Victor Debs
Share

Quote EVD, SDP Revolutionary, Sc Dem Hld p1, July 1, 1899———-

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday September 5, 1899
Eugene V. Debs on Current Events: Miners of Girard, Illinois, Appeal for Aid

From the Social Democratic Herald of September 2, 1899:

CURRENT EVENTS PASSED IN REVIEW
—–

MINERS’ “VICTORIES” SO-CALLED
—–
Thirteen-Dollars-a-Month Patriotism
-“Bull Pens” and Socialism-Justice in France
in Spite of Hell and the French Army
-Cleveland Boycott
—–

By Eugene V. Debs, Terre Haute, Ind.

[Part I of II.]

EVD, Houston Daily Post p6, May 22, 1899

We have heard a great deal about the “glorious victories” won for miners during the last two yeas. It is a ghastly lie. The only victory I know of is the $3,600.00 job snatched from the enemy by Ratchford [Michael D. Ratchford, former President of the United Mine Workers’ Union], the understudy of [U. S. Senator] Mark Hanna.

Here in Indiana hundreds of them are idle and suffering. In Illinois, according to the official report of [U. M. W. District 12] State Secretary Ryan, they are on strike at 14 different points. At Girard [Illinois] the other day they issued an appeal for charity, declaring that they were homeless and hungry. The “glorious victories” have reduced them to common beggars—and they belong to the union to a man.

Oh, miners, will you not open your eyes and will you not use your brains and see and think for yourselves?

You have won no victories worthy the name. You are slaves, every last one of you, the victims of the wage system, and as long as the mines you work in are privately owned you will be robbed while at work and clubbed and shot like dogs when you quit.

Arouse from your slavery, join the Social Democratic Party and vote with us to take possession of the mines of the country and operate them in the interest of the people, as well as the railroads, factories, and all the means of production and distribution, and then, and only then, will “glorious victories” have been achieved and you and your comrades be free and our families happy.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From the Social Democratic Herald: Eugene Debs on Current Events: So-Called Miners’ Victories & Patriotism at $13 per Month” →

Hellraisers Journal: Louis Duchez on Strikes Ongoing in McKees Rocks, Butler & New Castle, Pennsylvania, Part II

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
Share

Quote Mother Jones, Powers of Privilege, Ab Chp III———-

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday September 4, 1909
“The Strikes in Pennsylvania” by Louis Duchez, Part II

From the International Socialist Review of September 1909:

McKees Rocks Strike, Indian Mound Meeting, ISR p193, Sept 1909—–

[Steel Trust Bulls and Pennsylvania Cossacks]

The steel trust “bulls” and “Pennsylvania Cossacks” were rushed in by the hundreds to club the laborers to death. One poor Hungarian while on the run was shot twenty-four times in the back. Comrade J. W. Slayton has the coat and every bullet hole shows up. The victim is lying in the hospital at the point of death. Another one, an Italian, looked through a knot hole in the fence surrounding the company’s property and two “bulls” ran out with drawn revolvers. One of them kept him covered while the other beat him so badly that he had to be dragged away by his fellow strikers and carried to the hospital. It would take volumes to relate in all its detail the brutality and boldness and lawlessness of the Pressed Steel Car Company.

It is no wonder that the country was aroused over the matter. No one with human feeling and a cent to give could refrain from offering it to the poor, starving men and children and sick women, who were treated a thousands times worse than the serfs of the Middle Ages or the black chattel slaves of the South.

In Butler the strikers were treated about the same as in McKees Rocks. Before the “Cossacks” came all was quiet, aside from the fact that the company “bulls” did everything to start a riot.

When the “Cossacks” came into town, naturally, the striking men and their families would crowd along the main streets. Hundreds of them got out in the middle of the streets of the little village of Lyndora, the Standard Steel Car Company’s town, and the mounted constabulary rushed into them without warning.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Louis Duchez on Strikes Ongoing in McKees Rocks, Butler & New Castle, Pennsylvania, Part II” →

Hellraisers Journal: Louis Duchez on Strikes Ongoing in McKees Rocks, Butler & New Castle, Pennsylvania, Part I

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
Share

Quote Mother Jones, Powers of Privilege, Ab Chp III———-

Hellraisers Journal – Friday September 3, 1909
“The Strikes in Pennsylvania” by Louis Duchez, Part I

From the International Socialist Review of September 1909:

McKees Rocks Strike, PA Strikes, ISR p193, Sept 1909

Letter I, ISR p193, Sept 1909

T is impossible to treat this subject fully within the space allowed. The writer will simply present a few of the more important facts gleaned from a study of conditions as they exist at McKees Rocks, Butler and New Castle.

At McKees Rocks fifty riveters of the “erection department” of the Pressed Steel Car Company’s plant came out on strike. The others remained at work. Half of those fifty returned the next day—the other half were discharged. The following day one-third of the force in the “passenger car department” walked out and they returned to work twenty-four hours later. About half of those were “fired.” On the third day half of the force of the “Pennsylvania porch department” walked out.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Louis Duchez on Strikes Ongoing in McKees Rocks, Butler & New Castle, Pennsylvania, Part I” →

Hellraisers Journal: Strikebreakers Return to New York City from McKees Rocks with Tales of Imprisonment and Abuse

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
Share

Quote Mother Jones, Powers of Privilege, Ab Chp III———-

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday September 2, 1909
Strikebreakers Return to New York City from McKees Rocks with Tales of Abuse

From The New York Times of August 28, 1909:

RETURN FROM McKEES ROCKS.
—–
Strikebreakers Who Enlisted Here
Come Back with Tales of Abuse.
—–

McKees Rocks Strike, Stockade, Loco Fmen Mag p715, Nov 1919 —–

Five white-faced, sunken-cheeked men got off a train at Jersey City yesterday and disperse, wearily and in silence, to their east side tenement homes.

They were James Gottfried, Alexander Friedman, Joseph Diamond, James Graden, and Joseph Bredes. They had been taken to Schoenville, near Pittsburg, with more than a hundred other machinists from this city two weeks ago to break the Pressed Steel Car Company’s strike [at McKees Rocks]. They had been hired for the job through the activity of Leo Bergoff’s “Service Bureau” ” of this city.

According to the story told by the five men yesterday, they spelled out an advertisement for “machinists” in the “help wanted” columns of a Manhattan newspaper about two weeks ago. All five had recently come to this country and wanted work. They went over to the basement at 205 West Thirty-third Street, as the advertisement directed. They were met there by Bergoff, “Sam” Cohen, and their lieutenants. Cohen told them that he wanted ” 1,000 railroad car truck builders,” and that he was willing to pay $3 a day. He said the “job” was in Pittsburg, and that it was a “good one.” To impress the men with its excellence he had them sign their names to a piece of paper, on which there was some writing which they could not see, because, the men said yesterday, his hand was in the way.

The men agreed to go, and on July 16 they were taken to Jersey City by Cohen and put on a train. Getting off at Pittsburg, they were herded on a big transport and taken up the river to the Pressed Steel Car Company’s works. Here they were set to work immediately without being given even a chance to rest after their journey. For the next nine days and nights the five men worked, ate and slept in big, barn-like structures inside the stockade with 2,000 machinists and other laborers who, they say, were kept at work inside the stockade against their will.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Strikebreakers Return to New York City from McKees Rocks with Tales of Imprisonment and Abuse” →

Hellraisers Journal: McKees Rocks Pressed Steel Car Plant Called a Prison; Imported Strikebreakers Held in Stockade

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
Share

Quote Mother Jones, Powers of Privilege, Ab Chp III———-

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday September 1, 1909
Sensational Testimony Given Concerning McKees Rocks Steel Car Company

From The New York Times of August 28, 1909:

STEEL CAR PLANT CALLED A PRISON
—–
Strikebreakers Testify They Were Held
in Stockade Against Their Will.
—–

FOOD, UNFIT AND SCARCE
—–
Threats of Violence and Confinement
In Box Car Kept Men in State of
Terror, Witnesses Say.

From a Staff Correspondent of THE NEW YORK TIMES.

McKees Rocks Strike, Stockade, Loco Fmen Mag p715, Nov 1919 —–

PITTSBURG, Aug. 27.-The testimony presented before the Government investigation to-day in continuance of the conditions existing at the Pressed Steel Car Company’s works at McKees Rocks was the most sensational that has ever been heard so far.

Nathaniel Shaw, a strikebreaker from New York, was the star witness. He testified that he wanted to leave the plant the day after he arrived, but was intimidated and prevented from doing so.

His accusations were brought chiefly against Sam Cohen, the man who is immediately under Leo C. Bergoff, in charge of the strikebreakers. He said that Sam Cohen has surrounded himself with about thirty-five men, whom he has installed in the positions of company guardsmen, and that these men back Cohen in all his acts of tyrannical control. He told about gambling within the work and of winning $50 from a Deputy Sheriff.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: McKees Rocks Pressed Steel Car Plant Called a Prison; Imported Strikebreakers Held in Stockade” →

Hellraisers Journal: McKees Rocks Pressed Steel Car Company Charged with Holding Strikebreakers in Peonage

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
Share

Quote Mother Jones, Powers of Privilege, Ab Chp III———-

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday August 31, 1909
McKees Rocks Pressed Steel Car Company Faces Charges of Peonage

From The Pittsburgh Post of August 28, 1909:

McKees Rocks Strike, Fed Investigation re Peonage, Ptt Pst p1, Aug 28, 1909—–

BRUTALITY, POOR FOOD, DAILY DIET
—–
Witness Collapses at the Inquiry.
—–

NIGHT SESSION
—–

Testimony of a startling nature tending to prove that imported workmen were held in restraint within the Schoenville stockade by clubs, blackjacks and riot guns, was brought out yesterday at the Government inquiry into the charges of peonage against officials of the [McKees Rocks] Pressed Steel Car Company.

Beginning yesterday morning and continuing until late last night, witnesses told in harrowing details of terrible times within the big Schoenville enclosure.

Mute evidence of the condition of the company’s food supply was furnished at the night session in the Federal building, when James Morris, one of the strike-breakers, fainted as he was about to be put on the stand. Willing hands carried the poor fellow out of the judge’s chamber and into the corridors, where a physician diagnosed his ailment as ptomaine poisoning. He was taken away in an ambulance.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: McKees Rocks Pressed Steel Car Company Charged with Holding Strikebreakers in Peonage” →

WE NEVER FORGET: Fannie Sellins & Joe Starzeleski, Shot Down by Gunthugs, August 26, 1919, at West Natrona, PA

Janet RayeFannie Sellins
Share

Quote Mother Jones, Pray for dead, Ab Chp 6, 1925———-

WNF Fannie Sellins n Joe Starzeleski, West Natrona PA, August 26, 1919———-

WE NEVER FORGET
Fannie Sellins & Joe Starzeleski
Who Lost Their Lives in Freedom’s Cause
August 26, 1919 at West Natrona, Pennsylvania

From The Woman Today of September 1936:

Fannie Sellins

-by Lillian Henry

WNF Sellins Starzeleski Monument, The Woman Today p9, Sept 1936

Gold flows down the Alleghany [Allegheny] and Monongahela Rivers and up the Ohio river to coffers in tall buildings in downtown Pittsburgh. There is a steady stream from the coal mines and steel mills-from the coal mines and the steel mills-from the plants of Jones and Laughlin, Bethlehem Steel, Carnegie, U. S. Steel, Alleghany Steel, Alleghany Valley Coal. These and many other sources fill the banks and strong boxes in Pittsburgh.

Blood has flowed along these rivers-shed at the command of the owners of the strong boxes in tall buildings, and one of their victims was Fannie Sellins, mother of four children.

Fannie Sellins’ grave stands in New Kensington on the Alleghany River. The tombstone, erected by the United Mine Workers of District No. 5, stands as a monument to those “killed by the enemies of organized labor”.

We went to see Fannie Sellins’ daughter and son-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Fred Broad, to learn about the life of this heroic woman.

[Said the former
Dorothy Sellins:]

My father died when I was two years old, and mother went to work in a garment factory in St. Louis to support her four children. We all come from the South.

Grandfather was a painter-had a regular job painting Mississippi River boats. He used to take mother and the children around to union meetings. I’ve heard union talk ever since I was a baby.

Mother worked hard to organize, not only the men, but also their women. She used to go around to the women to tell them how important it was for them to organize. She was jailed for six months in West Virginia for doing that.

Continue reading “WE NEVER FORGET: Fannie Sellins & Joe Starzeleski, Shot Down by Gunthugs, August 26, 1919, at West Natrona, PA” →

Hellraisers Journal: Union Organizer Fannie Sellins and Miner Joseph Starzeleski Murdered Near Brackenridge

Janet RayeFannie Sellins
Share

Quote Anne Feeney, Fannie Sellins Song, antiwarsongs org———-

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday August 28, 1919
West Natrona, Pennsylvania – Fannie Sellins & Joe Starzeleski Murdered

From the Pittsburgh Gazette Times of August 27, 1919:

Note: We caution our readers to remember that the enemies of organized labor, through the kept press, are often the first to tell the story of labor disturbances. Already, the day after the murders of Mrs. Sellins and Joe Starzeleski, we find the kept press charging that the two died in a “mine riot.” Other accounts, from the strikers side, indicate that there was no riot until Deputized Coal and Iron Gunthugs attacked Miner Starzeleski. When Fannie attempted to save him, she was beaten and shot. We will continue to report on this story that the truth may be told of the deaths of these two labor martyrs.

WNF Fannie Sellins, Joe Starzeleski Aug 26, Ptt Gz Tx p1, Aug 27, 1919

———-

Two persons, one of them Mrs. Fannie Sellins, organizer for the United Mine Workers of America, secretary of the Allegheny Valley Trades Council and a woman labor worker of national repute, were shot to death and five others wounded in a strike riot at the entrance of the Allegheny Coal and Coke Company near Brackenridge late yesterday.

THE DEAD

Mrs Sellins, aged 49, of New Kensington: shot in the head and instantly killed.
Joseph Strzelecki [Starzeleski], aged 58, of West Natrona, a miner: shot in the head and instantly killed.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Union Organizer Fannie Sellins and Miner Joseph Starzeleski Murdered Near Brackenridge” →