Hellraisers Journal: Lawrence Strikers Vote Unanimously to Confer With Mill Owners as a Whole; Spirit of Unity Prevails

Janet RayeBread and Roses Strike of 1912
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Quote Bread and Roses Verse 1, American Magazine p214, Dec 1911
—————

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday January 25, 1912
News from Lawrence Textile Strike: Unity Prevails at Mass Meeting

From The Boston Daily Globe of January 23, 1912:

HdLn Lawrence Strikers to Meet w Mill Owners, On Paraded, Bst Glb p1, Jan 23, 1912

By F. P. SIBLEY.

LAWRENCE, Jan 23-Two steps in the negotiations between the striking mill operatives and the employers were taken today.

The strikers have put it up to the mill owners to make the arbitration general and to apply to all establishments alike. This proposition accompanies a refusal of the plan offered yesterday by the corporations for each mill to deal with a committee of its own employes.

This reply of the employes, drawn up last night by their executive committee, was ratified by a mass meeting of more than 3000 strikers on Lawrence Common this afternoon. 

[…..]

Chairman Ettor announced at this morning’s meeting of the executive committee that William D. Haywood, lecturer of the I. W. W., is coming here to help tomorrow or Wednesday. Haywood sprang into prominence in connection with the Western Miners’ Federation trouble in Idaho in 1906, when Gov Steunenberg’s residence was dynamited. The trials of Haywood, Moyer and Pettibone that followed stirred the labor men of the whole Nation.

The regular number of mills opened this morning. The pickets were fairly active and at the Pacific Mills a half-company of militia was sent to keep the crowd moving and prevent intimidation. At noon there was another slight disturbance at this mill and one Syrian, James Vlahodimo, 34, of 467 Common st, was arrested and locked up, charged with intimidation. This was the only arrest of the day in connection with the strike.

[…..]

HdLn Lawrence Strikers on Common, Thousands, Bst Glb p4, Jan 23, 1912

Big Crowd at Meeting.

The committee last night decided once more on recommending that a committee representing all the manufacturers should deal with another committee representing all the strikers.

This afternoon at 2 more than 3000 strikers, men and women, were gathered around the bandstand on the Common to listen to their committee’ proposition and to vote on it.

Joseph Ettor, August de Tollenaer for the French-speaking strikers, A. M. Giovannati [Giovannitti] for the Italians, and a Polish and a Syrian speaker climbed into the handstand and so far as possible divided the crowd into Nationalities, so that each speaker would have his own people before him. This set the crowd to “milling” round the bandstand. The pressure was fearful, and one woman was slightly hurt. She was helped out of the crowd, and remained there through the meeting.

Joseph Ettor said:

I hope nothing will be done to disturb this very important meeting. I know that it may be disturbed, for the purpose of distracting your attention from the real issues.

The question of meeting the employers was submitted to the strike committee last night, and its recommendation is that we offer a plan for a meeting of two committees, one representing all the operators and the other all the employes. (Cheers.) This is the report your committee now offers for your approval or rejection.

—–

Plan Unanimously Indorsed.

It means much to you. Accept and you say to the mill owners that the solidity and unity of the workers will be kept regardless of mills or employers. Decline and you will have to elect committees to deal with each mill separately.

When this speech had been translated into the various tongues, one after another, a show of hands was called for and it was wonderful to see the hands sprout out of the mob. The vote was unanimous.

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Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for August 1921: Found Advocating for Workers of Mexico and Standing with West Virginia Miners

Janet RayeBattle of Blair Mountain of 1921
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Quote Mother Jones PAFL Congress, p72, Jan 13, 1921————————-

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday January 24, 1922
Mother Jones News Round-Up for August 1921
Found Advocating for Mexican Workers and Standing with West Virginia Miners

From the Salina Kansas Leader of August 4, 1921
-from The New Majority (Chicago Federation of Labor):

U. S. LABOR ASKED TO ASSIST MEXICO
———-
Mother Jones Brings Request for Alliance in
Fight for New Civilization

The Republican administration under President Harding is beating the tom-toms to arouse the country to stand for a war against Mexico to bind and gag that country while the oil profiteers continue to pick its pockets. Excuse has been made of a strike of oil workers to send United States gunboats to Mexican waters in an effort to cow the Mexican workers back to work for their “American” employers.

Only the labor movement of the United States can prevent war with Mexico. The Denver convention of the A. F. of L., adopted a policy of resisting such a war. The time seems to be at hand for the American unions to start their protest, if it is to become effective.

Mother Jones has just returned from her second trip to Mexico within the year. She was in Chicago last week and brought with her a message from the Mexican organized workers. Just before she left, she attended a meeting of the presidents and secretaries of the unions affiliated with the Mexican Federation of Labor. They asked her to bear this greeting to organized labor of the United States : 

We send greetings to our brother workers in America and we want you, Mother Jones, to carry the message to them that the world is in the birth throes of a new civilization and that we in Mexico are coming to her aid to relieve her pain. We also wish you would ask our brothers in the United States to join us and we will stand shoulder to shoulder with them to usher in the new day and the civilization.

Now is Time to Help

If the workers of the United States are to stand shoulder to shoulder with the workers of Mexico, the job has got to begin with making impossible a war by our oil kings against the Mexican people.

Mother Jones reports that labor is making great strides in Mexico. She says that the newspaper reports that President Obregon is giving in to American demands that article 27 of the Mexican constitution be repealed are false. Article 27 vests ownership of the underground wealth of Mexico in the Mexican people.

She says that recently the Mexican government provided 300 striking miners with agricultural implements and placed them on farm lands so they could support themselves during their struggle and that in another case when the workers of a factory were locked out, the employer was compelled to reinstate them and pay their back wages.

[Said Mother Jones:]

Mothers who are employed are now retired on full pay for three months before childbirth and three months thereafter. Then for another three they bring their babies to work and have them cared for during working hours in nurseries provided by the employers. Whereas Mexican workers heretofore never knew when starvation and death would overtake them, their condition has improved so that now their children are going to school and are assured of their breakfast every morning before they go.

-New Majority.

[Photograph added.]

From North Carolina’s Wilson Times of August 5, 1921:

UNION MINERS GO TO COAL
FIELDS N MINGO COUNTY
———-

MOTHER JONES IS GOING
———-
Union Official Sates if the Organizers Were Arrested
He Would Send More Until the Jails Were Full.
Coal Fields in Mingo County Are Under Martial Law
———-

Charleston, W. V., July 29.-100 members of the United Mine workers of America from Cabin Creek and Paint Creek fields will start for Mingo county according to C. F. Keeney, president of district No. 17.

Mother Jones, organizer, is expected to arrive here tonight and also will go to the coal fields.

The decision to send the union men into the district which is under martial law was made the miners president said after C. F. Workman an organizer was reported arrested. Keeney claimed Workman had permission from the state authorities to return to the fields to wind up his personal business.

Keeney stated if organizers were arrested he would send more until every jail was filled, and if they were not arrested it would prove “organizers can go into a strike zone unmolested.”

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Hellraisers Journal: Dynamite Found in Lawrence; Strikers Blamed and Arrests Made; Elizabeth Gurley Flynn Arrives

Janet RayeBread and Roses Strike of 1912
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Quote Lawrence Strike Committee, Drunk Cup to Dregs, Bst Dly Glb Eve p5, Jan 17, 1912—————

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday January 23, 1912
Lawrence, Massachusetts – Joe Ettor Asserts Dynamite a “Plant”

From The Boston Sunday Globe of January 21, 1912:

HdLn Lawrence Dynamite Found, Bst Glb p1, Jan 21, 1912

By JAMES C. O’LEARY. 

LAWRENCE, Jan 20-With more than 20,000 mill operatives, among whom are Italians, Poles, Syrians, Russians, Lithuanians, Franco-Belgians, Portuguese and those, of other nationalities on a strike, and talk of dynamite plots, indiscriminate bomb throwing and other acts of violence rife here for the past week, the city was thrown into a violent state of excitement today when Inspector Rooney of Boston and his men, working in squads, discovered dynamite, fulminating caps and fuss [fuses?] in three different places.

[…..]

HdLn Lawrence Ctzn Com Try Settle Strike, Bst Glb p2, Jan 21, 1912—–Lawrence Diagram Where Dynamite Found, Bst Glb p2, Jan 21, 1912

“Plant” Is Claim of Ettor. 

The searchlights in the different mills are kept constantly at work, and sharpshooters posted in the towers and on the mill property are unusually alert. 

Joseph J. Ettor of the Industrial Workers of the World, who is recognized by the strikers themselves and by every one else as the leader in the strike, says that the dynamite which was found was placed where it could be found by persons who later directed the searchers where to look for it.

[…..]

Seven Under Arrest. 

The five men and two women who were in the tenement house when taken in the first raid at 292-294 Oak st. where seven sticks of dynamite and a box of caps were found in a closet of an unoccupied room, said their names were Farris Marad, who led the parade of Syrians on Thursday and who came into contact with the soldiers at the head of Canal st; Joseph Assaf, Trinidad Beshon, David Roshed, David Beshara, Mary Squeriq and Zekla Roshell. 

A five-chambered revolver was found in the pocket of Marad, and Beshara had a pail of steel knuckles. 

 Marad and the two women were bailed out tonight, the former furnishing $1000 and the latter $500 each. 

[…..]

Miss Flynn Begins Work. 

…..Leader Joseph J. Ettor of the strikers relaxed his efforts this evening after a busy day, and went into conference with Miss Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, National organizer of the Industrial Workers of the World, who arrived on a late afternoon train. 

She will begin her work tomorrow at the meeting of the Franco-Belgians and Americans in Franco-Belgian Hall in the morning and will probably address one or two more meetings in the afternoon. 

—–

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Hellraisers Journal: From the Spokane Industrial Worker: Ad for New Edition of “General Strike” by Big Bill Haywood

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Make Cp Suffer Pocket Book, GS by BBh, ISR p681, May 1911—————

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday January 21, 1912
“General Strike” by Big Bill Haywood, New Edition

From the Spokane Industrial Worker of January 18, 1912:

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Hellraisers Journal: News from Lawrence Textile Strike: Militia Attacks Strikers; Committee Appeals to All Workers

Janet RayeBread and Roses Strike of 1912
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Quote Lawrence Strike Committee, Drunk Cup to Dregs, Bst Dly Glb Eve p5, Jan 17, 1912—————

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday January 20, 1912
Lawrence, Massachusetts – Militia Attacks Strikers; Strike Committee Issues Appeal

From The Boston Daily Globe (Evening) of January 17, 1912:

Lawrence Militia v Strikers Parade, Bst Glb Eve, Jan 17, 1912

LAWRENCE, Jan 17-Conflict between the textile strikers and State militiamen who have the mill district of the city in charge broke out afresh today. A mob of 3000 strikers who had paraded through the city was subdued only by the vigorous use of clubs and swords by members of Battery C, Light Artillery, of Lowell, when the strikers entered the mill district, within which zone martial law has been declared…

The larger part of the crowd was driven back, and the combat ceased for a moment. After being forced up Hampshire at the strikers began to bombard the soldiers with ice, bricks and tin cans, several of the militiamen being hit. None suffered serious wounds. Many of the strikers sustained injuries to heads and bodies by clubs and swords, and two had their faces badly cut in the same manner. Several children were trampled upon in the melee.

———-

Flag to Protect Them.

The strikers wee finally allowed to go up Canal st and when they reached the Lawrence Duck mill bridge, half a mile away, they made an attempt to cross [but Lieut. Davies] ordered the strikers to continue down Canal st without crossing the bridge.

An interesting episode occurred here. One of the strikers, who was carrying a big American flag, held it up and cried out, “This is the American flag; it can go anywhere.”…

In another moment Lieut Davis had ordered the men to “charge bayonets,” and the flag was trailed in the snow by the Italians, who had stampeded when the strikers were forced to retreat before the bristling steel. No trouble developed beyond this point, the crowd ultimately dispersing.

———-

[…..]

Appeal to Non-Strikers.

An appeal issued today to English speaking and other mill operatives not on strike through the agency of the strike committee which was distributed on the picket lines and at meetings during the day was in part as follows:

To all workers, men and women, and all those who sympathize with their aspirations for a better day:

We, striking textile workers, who in the past suffered untold exploitations, outrages and insults, have reached the limit of human resignation and endurance. We submit to a candid world in brief our grievances and reason for revolt. Our wages have been gradually reduced, machines have been speeded to the point that in order to keep up with them we have o strain to the limit of endurance.

Taking advantage of a law that was passed to reduce the long working days of women and children, the mill owners reduced our wages and average of 5 percent.

Urged to “Strike all Together.”

According to the figures of the mill owners themselves, last pay day, Jan. 11, 25,000 workers received a total wage of $150,000, or an average wage of $6 for a week’s work.

We had to rebel because we had drunk of the cup to the very dregs.

We are opposed to rioting, opposed equally and strenuously, even though it hides its brutalities under the cloak of law and order and armed with bayonets.

These reasons and others too numerous to mention are sufficient, we believe, to entitle us to the support of all fellow-workers and friends.

We urge and plead with all who wish our case well to express themselves in words and deeds in no mistaken way.

Workers, remember! An injury to one is an injury to all. Strike all together; stick together. All to victory.

(Signed)
Strike Committee.

—————

Note: emphasis added throughout.

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Hellraisers Journal: News from Lawrence Textile Strike: Militia Drives Back Strikers: Young Dominico Rapsardo Bayoneted

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Lawrence Strike Committee, Drunk Cup to Dregs, Bst Dly Glb Eve p5, Jan 17, 1912—————

Hellraisers Journal – Friday January 19, 1912
Lawrence, Massachusetts – Young Striker, Dominico Rapsardo, Bayoneted by Soldier

From The Boston Globe (Morning Edition) of January 16, 1912:

Lawrence Strikers Driven Back by Militia, Bst Glb Morn p1, Jan 16, 1912

By JOHN W. CARBERRY.

Lawrence, Jan 15-In an attempt to prevent the operation of the woolen mills today, strikers and their sympathizers incited a riot which compelled the City Government to summon police aid from Salem, Lynn, Haverhill, Everett and Lowell, and to call into service eight companies of militia……

Today, in the clash between militiamen and those supporting the cause of the striking textile workers, one youth, Dominico Rapsardo, was stabbed in the breast by a soldier, and is seriously, though not mortally, wounded.

Many others were injured by being struck with the butts of rifles and the clubs of policemen.

More than 30 were arrested charged with damaging property and disturbing the peace…

Lawrence Militia Holds Strikers in Check, Bst Glb Morn p2, Jan 16, 1912—–Lawrence Strike Leader Joe Ettor, Bst Glb Morn p2, Jan 16, 1912

[…..]

Rapsardo Is Struck Down.

[About 10 a. m., at the Atlantic mills, militiamen with fixed bayonets, charged the strikers and drove them across the bridge at Canal st.]

In the charge Dominico Rapsardo of 51 Essex st was wounded. The crowd was packed so densely that those in front did not fall back quickly enough to suit the soldiers, and young Rapsardo received a thrust from a bayonet in his left breast. he fell fainting to the street, and was hastily driven to the General Hospital, badly injured. The bayonet had penetrated the flesh between the ribs, but doctors believed that no vital organ had been pierced.

[…..]

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: News from Lawrence Textile Strike: Militia Drives Back Strikers: Young Dominico Rapsardo Bayoneted” →

Hellraisers Journal: News from Lawrence Textile Strike: Joe Ettor, IWW Leader, Urges Mill Workers to Stand and Make a Fight

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Lawrence Strike Committee, Drunk Cup to Dregs, Bst Dly Glb Eve p5, Jan 17, 1912—————

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday January 18, 1912
Lawrence, Massachusetts – Fellow Worker Joe Ettor Urges Strikers to Fight On

From The Boston Sunday Globe of Jan 14, 1912:

Lawrence HdLn Strikers Firm, Joe Ettor, Bst Glb Sun p1, Jan 14, 1912

Mayor Scanlon Addresses Big Mass Meeting.
———-

LAWRENCE, Jan. 13-Tonight sees approximately 15,000 Mill operatives out of employment and grave apprehensions are felt that this number may be further increased Monday morning. Some of the mill agents and owners contemplate a general shut down. About 4000 of the men now out are strikers and the rest have been forced out by the closing of several mills.

Joseph J. Ettor of New York, a member of the Executive Board of the Industrial Workers of the World, who has assumed the position of leader of the strikers, in an impassioned speech at a mass meeting in the City Hall this afternoon, urged his audience of 1300 men and women to bend their efforts toward preventing any secession from their ranks…..

[He exhorted:]

Monday morning you have got to close the mills that you have caused to shut down tighter than you have them now.

It is up to you to encourage all to stand by the cause of the workers and get them not to go to work Monday morning. If you want to avoid blood shed remove the cause.

You cannot win by fighting with your fists against men armed or the Militia, but you have a weapon that they have not got.

You have the weapon of labor and with that you can beat them down if you stick together.

[Mayor Scanlon warned that the strikers must obey the law, to which Ettor replied:]

Must Be Firm, Exhorts Ettor.

Leader Ettor said that he, too, was for calmness and for anything that would prevent bloodshed, but, nevertheless, he must insist that whatever blood was spilled was not on the head of the working people, but on those who ground down the laboring class.

[He declared:]

While we wish to be cool and clam, at the same time we must be determined to win the contention for which you have struck. We are here to consider your interests alone. It’s up to you to win, and to do so you must hold together.

He was enthusiastically received and when he later addressed the Italians in their natural tongue there was further demonstration.

[Gilbert Smith, secretary-treasurer of Local 20, I. W. of W., presided at the meeting. Also speaking were Joseph Langiet (French), August Detollanaere (Belgian), Charles L. Webert (Polish), Michael Rusecky (of United Mine Workers, Pittston, Penn., Lithuanian).]

At the conclusion committees were chosen to represent the different nationalities involved in the strike in arranging a plan of action to be reported to a mass meeting in Franco-Belgian Hall tomorrow evening.

Lawrence Mills on Strike, Bst Glb Sun, p4, Jan 14, 1912

—————

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Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for December 1911, Part II: Found in Los Angeles, Predicting Brighter Day with End of Profit System

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones Master Class Creates Violence, LA Rec p4, Dec 21, 1911—————

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday January 16, 1912
Mother Jones News Round-Up for December 1911, Part II
Found in Los Angeles, Interviewed by Estelle Lawton Lindsey

From The Los Angeles Record of December 21, 1911:

“MOTHER JONES” PREDICTS BRIGHTER DAY;
MEN NATURALLY GOOD IS HER BELIEF

Mother Jones, Small, LA Rec p4, Dec 21, 1911

By Estelle Lawton Lindsey.

“Some day men will go into the bowels of the earth and bring out lead to be made into type to enlighten the minds of their fellows, instead of bullets to brutalize. In that day we shall be civilized.”

The speaker was Mrs. Mary Jones, known through this land as “Mother Jones,” saint or revolutionist according to your point of view, a woman loved to adoration by 400,000 organized miners of the U. S., and who has been described as “the walking wrath of God.”

In conversation this woman, who will be 80 years old the first day of next May, and looks like a well-preserved and vigorous woman of 50, speaks little of wrath and much of love, understanding and education.

WOMEN MUST UNDERSTAND

My work is to prevent violence, to settle, peaceably, differences between employer and employed. Wherever there are strikes, wherever there may be violence—which I abhor—wherever feelings of revenge are rampant, there I go. My work is to teach men the causes of their difficulties, to show them how to remedy conditions by changing the laws and the system. My field of activity is the world.

The trouble with the average woman is that she is a sentimentalist. She is ignorant of the causes of our industrial disturbance. She cannot realize that as long as we have oppression we shall have violent reaction in the minds and feelings of the oppressed; and that such feelings are the root of violence. The thinker who understands the cause knows all violence can be done away with. Soon women will understand, then they will give the world better men.

My work is to keep people from getting into conflicts to get them to think instead of fighting; and to show others how to think. I believe in education; and through education I believe we can so change our forms of government that feelings of revenge will die of inanition.

In that day we will not devote millions, wrung from those least able to pay, to chaining human beings like beasts for being what the government has made them.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for December 1911, Part II: Found in Los Angeles, Predicting Brighter Day with End of Profit System” →