Hellraisers Journal – Friday June 13, 1913 Paterson, New Jersey – 15,000 Striking Silk Workers Cheer the I. W. W.
From the International Socialist Review of June 1913:
On the Paterson Picket Line
By William D. Haywood
[Part II of II]
Industrial Worker May 8, 1913
The night preceding this silent manifestation of protest against capitalist brutality the wildest demonstration of the strike took place in Armory Hall, where John Golden and Sarah Conboy, of the American Federation of Labor, escorted by manufacturers and policemen, came to try to repeat the infamous strikebreaking tactics they attempted a year ago in Lawrence. They came heralded by the local press, by the civil authorities, by the clergy, and the employers as the instruments through which the great silk strike would be settled. The armory had been obtained for them through state officials. The state militia had been called out and stood in the ante-rooms with guns loaded for action. Chief of Police Bimson and his entire force were on hand. The fire department had been ordered to hold themselves in readiness and had their hose attached to hydrants in the immediate vicinity.
The striking silk workers were invited to attend this meeting. It had been previously arranged that they would attend in a body and listen to what the A. F. of L. had to say, providing that they would be given a chance to reply to state the position of the strikers and the principles of the Industrial Workers of the World.
15,000 Cheer for I. W. W.
When organizers of the I. W. W. appeared in the hall, the 15,000 people present went wild. For minute after minute they yelled and cheered with ever-increasing -volume. The floor and gallery was a waving forest of the red membership books of the I. W. W. held aloft by what seemed to be countless thousands. After a time Organizer Ewald W. Koettgen of the I. W. W., appeared on the platform and announced that the I. W. W. speakers would not be allowed to present their side. Or rather, he intended to announce this, but he got no further than “I. W. W.”-when the audience leaped to its feet, and for perhaps fifteen minutes drowned every utterance with frantic cheers. Koettgen at last managed to make himself heard and said: ”Let’s all go home.” As one man the audience arose and began to file out. As these departed thousands on the outside who had not been able to enter, rushed in and soon the armory was again filled. Those who left went to their own halls where they greeted every utterance of their speakers with roars of applause.
For an hour and three-quarters Golden and Mrs. Conboy tried to speak, only to be drowned down by the unceasing cheers that the audience sent up for the I. W. W. In desperation Mrs. Conboy tried the appeal-to-home-mother-and-patriotism stunt and seizing an American flag, waved it from the stage, which act was greeted by another outburst of derisive cheers. When Golden finally made himself heard about 300 persons stayed to listen, the hall having been cleared by police clubs.
It was the funeral of the A. F. of L., so far as Paterson was concerned. It was remarked afterward that it was indeed fitting and appropriate that the A. F. of L. should choose an armory, the training quarters of the bayonet-carrying murderers of the capitalist class, as its own burying place.
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday June 8, 1913 New York, New York – John Reed Recalls Time Spent in Passaic County Jail, Part II
From The Masses of June 1913:
The Paterson Evening News April 28, 1913
[Part II of II]
And so it was that I went up to the County Jail. In the outer office I was questioned again, searched for concealed weapons, and my money and valuables taken away. Then the great barred door swung open and I went down some steps into a vast room lined with three tiers of cells. About eighty prisoners strolled around, talked, smoked, and ate the food sent in to them by those outside. Of this eighty almost half were strikers. They were in their street clothes, held in prison under $500 bail to await the action of the Grand Jury. Surrounded by a dense crowd of short, dark-faced men, Big Bill Haywood towered in the center of the room. His big hand made simple gestures as he explained something to them. His massive, rugged face, seamed and scarred like a mountain, and as calm, radiated strength. These slight, foreign-faced strikers, one of many desperate little armies in the vanguard of the battle-line of Labor, quickened and strengthened by Bill Haywood’s face and voice, looked up at him lovingly, eloquently. Faces deadened and dulled with grinding routine in the sunless mills glowed with hope and understanding. Faces scarred and bruised from policemen’s clubs grinned eagerly at the thought of going back on the picket-line. And there were other faces, too-lined and sunken with the slow starvation of a nine weeks’ poverty—shadowed with the sight of so much suffering, or the hopeless brutality of the police—and there were those who had seen Modestino Valentine shot to death by a private detective. But not one showed discouragement; not one a sign of faltering or of fear.As one little Italian said to me, with blazing eyes: “We all one bigga da Union. I. W. W.—dat word is pierced de heart of de people!”
“Yes! Yes! Dass righ’! I. W. W.! One bigga da Union”—they murmured with soft, eager voices, crowding around.
[Introduced to Quinlan and Strikers by Big Bill]
I shook hands with Haywood, who introduced me to Pat Quinlan, the thin-faced, fiery Irishman now under indictment for speeches inciting to riot.
“Boys,” said Haywood, indicating me, “this man wants to know things. You tell him everything”—
They crowded around me, shaking my hand, smiling, welcoming me. “Too bad you get in jail,” they said, sympathetically. “We tell you ever’t’ing. You ask. We tell you. Yes. Yes. You good feller.”
And they did. Most of them were still weak and exhausted from their terrible night before in the lockup. Some had been lined up against a wall, as they marched to and fro in front of the mills, and herded to jail on the charge of “unlawful assemblage”! Others had been clubbed into the patrol wagon on the charge of “rioting,” as they stood at the track, on their way home from picketing, waiting for a train to pass! They were being held for the Grand Jury that indicted Haywood and Gurley Flynn. Four of these jurymen were silk manufacturers, another the head of the local Edison compony—which Haywood tried to organize for a strike—and not one a workingman!
“We not take bail,” said another, shaking his head. “We stay here. Fill up de damn jail. Pretty soon no more room. Pretty soon can’t arrest no more picket!”
It was visitors’ day I went to the door to speak with a friend. Outside the reception room was full of women and children, carrying packages, and pasteboard boxes, and pails full of dainties and little comforts lovingly prepared, which meant hungry and ragged wives and babies, so that the men might be comfortable in jail. The place was full of the sound of moaning; tears ran down their work-roughened faces; the children looked up at their fathers’ unshaven faces through the bars and tried to reach them with their hands.
“What nationalities are all the people!” I asked. There were Dutchmen, Italians, Belgians, Jews, Slovaks, Germans, Poles—
“What nationalities stick together on the picket- line?”
A young Jew, pallid and sick-looking from insufficient food, spoke up proudly. “T’ree great nations stick togedder like dis.” He made a fist. “T’ree great nations—Italians, Hebrews an’ Germans”—
“But how about the Americans?”
They all shrugged their shoulders and grinned with humorous scorn. “English peoples not go on picket-line,” said one, softly. “’Mericans no lika fight!” An Italian boy thought my feelings might be hurt, and broke in quickly: “Not all lika dat. Beeg Beell, he ‘Merican. You ‘Merican. Quin’, Miss Flynn, ‘Merican. Good! Good! ‘Merican workman, he lika talk too much.”
This sad fact appears to be true. It was the English-speaking group that held back during the Lawrence strike. It is the English-speaking continent that remains passive at Paterson, while the “wops” the “kikes,” the “hunkies”—the ‘degraded and ignorant races from Southern Europe”—go out and get clubbed on the picket-line and gaily take their medicine in Paterson jail.
But just as they were telling me these things the keeper ordered me to the “convicted room,” where I was pushed into a bath and compelled to put on regulation prison clothes. I shan’t attempt to describe the horrors I saw in that room. Suffice it to say that forty-odd men lounged about a long corridor lined on one side with cells; that the only ventilation and light came from one small skylight up a funnel-shaped airshaft; that one man had syphilitic sores on his legs and was treated by the prison doctor with sugar-pills for “nervousness;” that a seventeen-year-old boy who had never been sentenced had remained in that corridor without ever seeing the sun for over nine months; that a cocaine-fiend was getting his “dope” regularly from the inside, and that the background of this and much more was the monotonous and terrible shouting of a man who had lost his mind in that hell-hole and who walked among us.
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday May 27, 1903 West Virginia Miners Face Gatling Guns, Company Guards & Peonage
From the Duluth LaborWorld of May 23, 1903:
GATLING GUN FOR THE MINERS ———-
RIDDLES GREAT TREES IN FOREST IT IS TRAINED UPON. ———-
WORKMEN HELP PRISONERS ———- Will Resort to More Bloodshed If It Becomes Necessary to Coerce the Miners. ———-
Labor conditions in West Virginia mines are not enviable. Besides reports of Gatling guns mounted on fortifications to command approaches to the mines, comes the further news that the mining camps are surrounded by armed guards ready to shoot down any of the workers who try to reach the outside world. So, between the guns and the guards, the wage workers of one of the naturally rich states of the Union cannot be said to pass very happy lives.
Though so rich in natural resources-for there are coal and iron mines and virgin forests that have never yet been touched-West Virginia is cursed by monopoly. As a result, the wage workers are not free to employ themselves, but must accept the conditions of those who control the source from which all must draw their subsistence-the land.
For no other reason do the inhabitants of that state submit. Those who are enticed into its boundaries under false pretences, as evidenced by the affidavits of the miners published in the organ of the Mine Workers’ Union; have hard work to get away. They are subdued by their poverty and fear of the armed guards.
The necessity for organizing West Virginia is so apparent that it is a wonder the American Federation of Labor does not flood the state with “agitators” for human freedom and human rights. What the wage workers there need is the knowledge that their own efforts to improve their own condition will be supplemented by the good will and financial assistance of organized labor everywhere. It is a hard proposition, to be sure, to go into territory dominated by such powerful social and political interests, but greater tasks have been accomplished, and it only needs the united power of an aroused commonwealth to bring about great and good industrial changes in that section of the country.
Hellraisers Journal – Thursday May 15, 1913 New York, New York – Detachment of Paterson Children Arrive in City
From the Paterson Evening News of May 13, 1913:
WILL CARE FOR MORE CHILDREN ———-
“New Yorkers are anxious to take care of your children until the strike is over, and help you win your battle,” said Miss Elizabeth Gurley Flynn in a recent address at Helvetia hall. This seems to be true if the following dispatch from New York is to be believed:
New York, May 13 [Tuesday].-Seven or eight hundred men and women pushed and shoved and almost came to blows on Saturday [May 10] for the possession of sixty-five frightened little boys and girls. They were the third detachment of children of the striking Paterson silk weavers sent here to be farmed out to board among strike sympathizer, and the men and women who almost mobbed them were fighting for one of them to care for.
Industrial Workers of the World followers, their friends and few curious people began to gather early yesterday afternoon at the Labor Temple. They came because the Paterson strike committee had sent out 250 postcards asking volunteers to board and lodge 150 children, who would be allotted to their temporary guardians at five o’clock. Twice before in the last ten days this appeal had been sent out, and already 175 children have found homes in New York. A special committee, of which F. Sumner Boyd is chairman, and Mrs. Anna M. Sloan director, has had charge of the distribution.
When children arrived by auto truck from Paterson at 5.30 o’clock there were only sixty-five of them. They ranged in age from four to fourteen years, and when Miss Jessie Ashley and Miss Ethel Byrne, Paterson nurse, the others who had brought here had seated them in rows at Labor Temple hall and announced that only sixty-five, instead of 150, would be assigned, trouble began…
[Mr. Boyd declared:]
We shall probably bring 100 or more over the middle of the week, and we already have more than twice as many applications for the children as we have children to be cared for. We will bring them all, though.
Like the 175 children that have already been brought here, those who came yesterday were all found on examination by physicians in Paterson to be below normal from malnutrition.
Hellraisers Journal – Thursday April 17, 1913 Akron, Ohio – The Speeding-Up System and the Akron Rubber Strike
From the International Socialist Review of April 1913:
800 Per Cent and the Akron Strike
By Leslie H. Marcy
[Part II of IV]
One of the strikers informs us that very recently the Speeding-Up System has forced the tire builders to produce 2,000 more than the regular output of tires in a single night. The same man reported that while it formerly took three hours to “cure” a tire, the time had been cut to 55 minutes in one plant. And that the “curing process” depends altogether upon the quantity of rubber used in the compound.
Five hundred to six hundred pounds of compound are made up at a time. In the good old days THREE POUNDS of actual pure rubber was used in a batch; much less is used now. A gum plant is one of the ingredients, also old rope, rags, alkali and shoddy (old rubber, such as worn-out tubing, worn-out rubbers, etc.). Although the price of pure rubber is lower than it was a few years ago, the rubber companies have cut down the quantity used steadily. Formerly tire curers earned $5.00 for curing five tires. They are now forced to cure 50 tires for the same sum. And there is NO LET UP IN THE SPEEDING UP SYSTEM. And the pay per worker goes steadily down.
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday March 10, 1903 Indianapolis, Indiana – United Mine Workers Receives Report from Chris Evans
From the Baltimore Sun of March 9, 1903:
WERE MINERS KILLED IN BED?
Evans Describes Atkinsville Affair As A Massacre By Officers.
Chris Evans, 1890
INDIANAPOLIS, March 8.-The official report of Chris. E. Evans, who was sent to the West Virginia coalfields to investigate the killing of the colored miners at Atkinsville [near Stanaford City, Raleigh County] has been received at the headquarters of the United Mine Workers.
The report states that General St. Clair, attorney for the coal companies, created an agitation to have the men arrested and taken to Charleston, and that immediately afterward arrangements were made with the United States Marshal by the Mine Workers’ officials to give bond for all who were arrested. Later, on account of the agitation created by Deputy Marshal Cunningham, he says, the agreement with the Marshal was broken and Cunningham was sent to arrest the men.
According to the report, there was a great feeling against Cunningham, and the men decided not to allow him to arrest them and he was driven away. Mr. Evans says that he, as a miners’ official, sent a telegram to the men to submit quietly, but the local coal companies, who own all the telegraph and telephone lines into the town, refused to deliver it. Before he could get any message to the men Cunningham and his deputies. Evans alleges, went to the town a second time and killed the miners in their beds at night.
Mr. Evans says that he went to the scene of the trouble the next morning and that 48 men had been arrested for conspiracy to kill Cunningham. He found in a house occupied by a colored man named “Stonewall” Jackson the dead bodies of William Dodson, William Clark and Richard Clayton, all negroes.
The report continues:
We found that the wife of Jackson and her four children, with eight negroes, were in the house, and that about daybreak all were awakened by shots, fired into the house from the outside. This shooting took place without warning, and the three colored men were found dead on the floor. Two were in their night clothes and the other one was partly dressed.
We visited another house, where Joseph Hizer lay in bed mortally wounded, having been shot as he was dressing. Hizer lived with his sister, and she made the statement at the inquest that she pleaded with those shooting not to kill her children, and in reply Cunningham said: “Women and children must take care of themselves.” In no instance could we find where these people had been asked to surrender until after the deputies had commenced shooting at the occupants of the house.
We next went to the house of Lucian Lawson, who was considered mortally wounded. I understand that after the shooting referred to this man, with others, returned the fire of the posse, and this is the only instance where any attempt of resistance was made by the miners.
During the shooting in many instances the men and women pleaded with the men outside to have mercy on them, but their cries were met with derision and curses. Our investigation proves conclusively that no effort was made to shoot or resist except in the one case mentioned, but that all would have been glad to surrender if they had been allowed the opportunity.
Mr. Evans says that the coroner’s jury has returned a verdict of felonious killing against Cunningham for the killing of William Dodson.
[Photograph, emphasis and paragraph breaks added.]
Hellraisers Journal – Monday March 3, 1913 New York, New York – The Striking Garment Workers and The Protocol
From the International Socialist Review of March 1913:
New York Garment Workers and the Protocol -Phillips Russell ———-
The New Disease: Protocolic
As this is written, the great strike of the garment workers in New York is in its seventh week and, according to present indications, it may last even longer than the historic struggle of the cloakmakers in 1910, which endured for nine weeks.
At present the garment workers’ strike seems to be suffering from a bad attack of the new industrial ailment that might be described as the “protocolic.” Twice the officials of the United Garment Workers’ Union, who pulled the strike, have tried to get an agreement approved which involved the signing of a protocol, but both times got severe jolts from the strikers as a whole who made known their opinions of compromise in no uncertain tones. The attempt to induce the strikers to accept the protocol has so far produced little but dissension and has had much to do with smothering the spirit of the workers which at first was militant and aggressive.
The waist makers have already gone back to work under the terms of a protocol, though a considerable part of them did so reluctantly, and so great opposition was manifested towards it at one meeting in Cooper Union that a serious outbreak was narrowly averted.
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday February 4, 1913 New York, New York – The Garment Strike by Mary Marcy, Photos by Paul Thompson
From the InternationalSocialistReview of February 1913:
THE NEW YORK GARMENT WORKERS By MARY E. MARCY
Photographs by Paul Thompson, New York.
[Part II of III]
The thugs employed by the shop bosses have proved very energetic and reliable. They have worked early and late beating up strikers whenever possible, starting trouble and blaming it on the workers, while the police stood by (or took a hand) to see that nobody attacked or injured them.
During the first week in January the union officials conferred with the employers relative to a settlement of the strike, but the New York Call reports that all negotiations were broken off when the employers insisted upon a return of the strikers to the shops pending an investigation of the conditions in the trade by a special commission to be appointed for that purpose. The union officials declared that under no circumstances would “they order the men to return to work” pending an investigation or arbitration of their demands.
As the pickets began to suffer at the hands of the company guards, it was decided to take a lesson from the strikers at Lawrence, Mass., and chain picketing was employed for the first time in New York City.
Ten thousand pickets were asked to report each day, starting to work on the “Chain Picket Line” at 5 :00 o’clock in the morning, to pass constantly in a steady stream of pedestrians before the strikebound shops.
On the day of the inauguration of the Chain Picket plan, the unions held various meetings which were well attended by the strikers. Hugh Frayneurged a general strike in every branch of the needle and garment industries, promising the support of the A. F. of L. while Abe Cahan closed one meeting begging the strikers to be true to the American Federation of Labor. He urged them to carry an A. F. of L. card in one pocket and a Socialist party card in the other (that is to work for class organization on one side and craft division on the other.)
This is very different from the calls of the Industrialists, all of whom insist upon a CLASS UNION card on the industrial field and a Socialist party card to represent their class interests upon the political field.
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday January 24, 1903 Mother Jones News Round-Up for December 1902, Part II Found Organizing in West Virginia for the United Mine Workers
From the Clarksburg Daily Telegram (West Virginia) of December 27, 1902:
“MOTHER” JONES VISITS CLARKSBURG ———- Upon Her Return From the New River District -On Her Way to Tunnelton to Make an Address to Miners. ———-
Talked Freely of Strike Conditions in Other Sections of the State -Compliments Jackson but Has no Flattery for Goff.
“Mother” Jones, the noted strike and labor agitator, arrived in the city Friday evening on No. 12 from the New River district. She reports conditions in that field unsettled and the strike unended. Many miners are residing in camps and there is considerable suffering. She paid her compliments to both Judge John J. Jackson and Judge Nathan Goff. She thinks Judge Jackson has a tender spot in his heart but entertains a different opinion of Judge Goff. Her remarks about the latter were not at all flattering. She left Saturday morning for Tunnelton to address a mass meeting of miners there Saturday night.
She believes the Roosevelt commission’s work will be of much benefit to the miners’cause, especially in the way of moulding public opinion. She also thinks that some beneficial legislation will result from the investigation of the commission. She expressed herself as gratified with what she termed a more liberal spirit on the part of the press toward the miners.
She reviewed briefly prevalent conditions in some sections of the southern part of this state. She says the miners are allowed the regulation weight and the short ton and they have the privilege of buying at the pluck-me store as she terms it or elsewhere. There is nothing compulsory about it. She thought under those circumstances that the strike had been beneficial to the miners.
Inquiry was made by her as to what was doing around here. She made no comment when informed that all was quiet and we were running along in the even tenor of our ways.
“Mother” Jones was in her usual splendid health and was quite talkative and courteous.
While in the city she was the guest of Mr. and Mrs. D. W. McGeorge in Glen Elk.
Hellraisers Journal – Friday January 23, 1903 Mother Jones News Round-Up for December 1902, Part I W. V: Saved from Suspicious Hotel Fire; Ill: Attends Celebration for Mitchell
FromThe Richmond Dispatch (Virginia) of December 3, 1902:
TO BURN “MOTHER” JONES. ———- This Seemed the Object of Incendiaries at Montgomery, W. Va.Mother Jones,
PARKERSBURG, VA., December 3.-(Special.)—”Mother” Jones, the friend of the miners, narrowly escaped with her life from a burning hotel at Montgomery, early this morning.
Mrs. A. R. Wagoner, the wife of the proprietor of the Montgomery Hotel, was aroused from her slumbers and gave the alarm. The room occupied by “Mother” Jones was full of smoke when she wakened, and in a short time she would have been suffocated.
The fire was of incendiary origin, starting in a room that had not been occupied for three days. The hotel has been on fire three times within the past few weeks, and it is supposed that it was because “Mother” Jones was stopping there.
John C. Todd, one of the guests, had a hip fractured by jumping from the third story window. All the guests lost most of their valuables and clothing.
[Photograph added.]
From Hinton Daily News (West Virginia) of December 6, 1902
Mother Jones was at Beckley yesterday and made a speech at the labor meeting.
From the Duluth Labor World of December 13, 1902:
Mother Jones was nearly suffocated in a hotel fire at Montgomery, W. Va., this week. The fire was of incendiary origin. The coal operators would not be sorry to learn that Mother Jones lost her life, and it is not improbable that some of their thugs had something to do with firing the hotel.
From the Chicago Inter Ocean of December 15, 1902:
MITCHELL IS HERE; RECEIVES OVATION ———- Mine Workers’ Chief Greeted by Chicago Labor Men. ———-
HAS LITTLE TO SAY ———- Refuses to Discuss Matters Before the Commission. ———- Goes to Spring Valley Today for Reception and Will Hasten Back to Scranton. ———-
John Mitchell, president of the United Mine Workers of America and the most prominent figure in the labor movement today, arrived in Chicago at 10:30 o’clock last night. He will leave at 9:15 o’clock this morning for his home in Spring Valley, where a public demonstration is planned in his honor by the residents of that city.
The train on which Mr. Mitchell arrived was delayed seven hours on account of a snowstorm, but the friends who had gathered to greet him waited patiently for his arrival. The Cabdrivers’ union sent a carriage to the depot, and he was driven to McCoy’s hotel, where he was given an ovation by the crowd in waiting in the rotunda.
[…..]
“Mother” Jones Here.
At the same hotel is “Mother” Jones, the socialist agitator and organizer of the miners of the country. She will be one of the speakers at the reception at Spring Valley today. Mrs. Jones is almost as popular among the miners as Mr. Mitchell, and while she shakes her head over the probable outcome of the investigation of the commission, she is rejoicing that the actual condition existing in the mines are being held up to the public.
[She said:]
I have been preaching about those conditions for years, but the world refused to listen.It is listening now, and whatever the final outcome may be it cannot fail to be an advantage to the suffering miners.
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