Such a group of men one is proud to be associated with
-workers, clean hearted, clear eyed;
all fighting for the principles so plainly set forth in
the Preamble of the Industrial Workers of the World.
-Big Bill Haywood
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Hellraisers Journal, Tuesday May 7, 1918
Big Bill Haywood on Conditions in the Cook County Jail
From The Liberator of May 1918:
On the Inside
By William D. Haywood
CLANG! clang! a bell rang out, big iron doors slid back, the auto patrol wheeled up to the rear entrance of the Cook County Jail; and here we are.
We are in the wing of the “old jail,” a room about 60 by 60 with a double row of cells four tiers high; our cells face the alley to the west. Cells are six by eight, about eight feet high with ceiling slightly sloping to the rear.
This cell is parlor, bedroom, dining room and lavatory all in one. Decorations black and white-that is, the interior is painted solid black on two walls, black half way on the other two walls. The ceiling is mottled white. Wash bowl, toilet, water-pipe, small bench, a narrow iron bunk, flat springs, corn husk mattress, sheet and pillow case of rough material, blanket, tin cups and spoons, constitute the fittings of our temporary homes where we spend twenty hours out of every twenty-four, involuntary parasites, doing no more service to society than the swell guys who loll around clubs or attend the functions at fashionable resorts.
The reveille of this detention camp is the sharp voice of the “runner,” “Cups out! Cups out!”
It is the beginning of a new day. The light, streams through the grated. door and falls in a checkered pattern across the cell floor.
One stretches his body on the narrow cot and awakens to the fact that he is still in jail, accepting the situation philosophically, wondering, some of us perhaps, what manner of independence and freedom it was that our Forefathers fought for in this country.
A prison cell is the heritage we gain for the blood and lives our forefathers gave; they fought for religious freedom and left us with minds free from superstitious cant and dogma; they waged war for political justice; they carried on the struggle against chattel-slavery-these were the titanic battles that were fought, bringing us to the threshold of the greatest of all wars-the class war-in which we are enlisted as workers, against all kinds of exploiters.
Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From The Liberator: “On the Inside” by Bill Haywood, IWW Class-War Prisoners in Cook County Jail” →
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