Hellraisers Journal – Thursday November 6, 1902 Eugene V. Debs Describes the Western Labor Movement
From the International Socialist Review of November 1902:
The Western Labor Movement [by Eugene V. Debs] ———-
There seems to be considerable misapprehension, especially among Socialists, in regard to the trade union movement of the Western states, whose delegates, recently assembled in national convention, adopted the platform of the Socialist Party and pledged the support of their organizations to the International Socialist movement. This radical departure from the effete and reactionary non-political policy of the American Federation of Labor, so long and so earnestly striven for by the Western leaders, and so entirely compatible with the Socialist conception of class-conscious and progressive trade unionism, should have been met with the prompt and hearty approbation of every unionist and every Socialist in the land. That such was not the case, the lukewarm comment and half-approving, half-condemning tone of the Socialist Party press, with but one or two exceptions, bear convincing testimony, while the uncalled for, unwise, and wholly unaccountable official pronunciamento of the St. Louis “Quorum,” purporting to speak for the National Committee, capped the climax of unfairness and injustice to the Western movement. [See REVIEW of October 1902]
Stripped of unnecessary verbiage and free from subterfuge, the Socialist Party has been placed in the attitude of turning its back upon the young, virile, class-conscious union movement of the West, and fawning at the feet of the “pure and simple” movement of the East, and this anomalous thing has been done by men who are supposed to stand sponsor to the party and whose utterance is credited with being ex cathedra upon party affairs.
They may congratulate themselves that upon this point at least they are in perfect accord with the capitalist press, and also with the “labor lieutenants,” the henchmen, and the heelers, whose duty it is to warn the union against Socialism and guard its members against working class political action.
The writer takes issue with these comrades upon this vital proposition; and first of all insists that they (including the members of the Quorum) speak for themselves alone, as they undoubtedly have the right to do, and that their declaration in reference to the American Labor Union is in no sense a party expression, nor is it in any matter binding upon the party, nor is the party to be held responsible for the same.
As a matter of fact the rank and file of the Socialist Party, at least so far as I have been able to observe, rejoice in the action of the Denver convention, hail it as a happy augury for the future, and welcome with open arms the Western comrades to fellowship in the party.
“Why didn’t they stay in the Federation of Labor and carry on their agitation there? Why split the labor movement?” This is made the burden of the opposition to the Western unionists, who refused to be assimilated by Mark Hanna’s “Civic Federation”-the pretext for the scant, half-hearted recognition of their stalwart working class organization and their ringing declaration in favor of Socialism and in support of the Socialist Party.
And this objection may be dismissed with a single sentence. Why did not those who urge it remain in the Socialist Labor Party and carry on their agitation there? Why split the Socialist movement?
It is not true that the Western unionists set up a rival organization from geographical or sectional considerations, or to antagonize the Federation; and they who aver the contrary know little or nothing about the Western movement, nor about the causes that brought it into existence. A brief review of these may throw some light on the subject.
In 1896 the annual convention of the Federation of Labor was held in Cincinnati. The Western Federation of Miners, at that time an affiliated organization, was represented by President Edward Boyce and Patrick Clifford, of Colorado. The strike of the Leadville [Colorado] miners, more than 3,000 in number, one of the bloodiest and costliest labor battles ever fought, was then in progress and had been for several months. The drain and strain on the resources of the Western Federation had been enormous. They needed help and they needed it sorely. They had always poured out their treasure liberally when help was needed by other organization, East as well as West, and now that they had reached their limit, they naturally expected prompt and substantial aid from affiliated organizations. Boyce and Clifford appealed to the delegates. To use their own language they were “turned down,” receiving but vague promises which, little as they meant, were never fulfilled. At the close of the convention they left for home, disappointed and disgusted. They stopped off at Terre Haute to urge me to go to Leadville to lend a helping hand to the striking miners, which I proceeded to do as soon as I could get ready for the journey. It was here that they told me that the convention was a sore surprise to them, that 3 or 4 men had votes enough to practically control the whole affair, and that the dilatory and reactionary proceedings had destroyed their confidence in the Federation.
Afterward I was told by the officers in charge of the strike that no aid of the least value, or even encouragement, had been rendered by the Federation of Labor and that the financial contributions were scarcely sufficient to cover the expense of the canvass for same.
It was not long after this that the Western miners withdrew from the Federation and a couple of years later, conceiving the necessity of organizing all classes of labor in the Western states, which as yet had received but scant attention, the American Labor Union was organized, the Western Federation of Miners being the first organization in affiliation with the new central body.
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday October 4, 1902
“How I Became a Socialist” by Father Thomas Joseph Hagerty
From The Comrade of October 1902:
How I Became a Socialist.
VII. [of Series]
By Rev. T. [J]. HAGERTY.
A CONVICTION grew upon me in my boyhood days-which has broadened and deepened with the out-going years—that human nature is inherently good. In the old Hebraic records, composite of earlier documents which register the world’s notion of creation, I was caught by the reiteration of the idea of the goodness of all things. The after-development of tribe and nation, however, seems to give the lie to this primal verity. Prophets and philosophers in the cuneiform script and Vedic hymn of Egypt and India, singers and sculptors in the psalm and glistening marble of Palestine and Greece, throughout the centuries have sought to keep alive the sense of goodness in the brain of man. Yet all the time murder and rapine, disease and wretchedness flaunted denial in the face of truth. Pariah, slave, and bond-servant groaned in hopeless toil the while Kung-fu-sdu and Gotamma the Buddha proclaimed kindness and justice and David and Homer sang of high emprise.
Christianity came, with a catholic breadth of goodness, teaching the brotherhood of man, gathering up the treasures of foregoing ages wherewith to enrich the race, and sending messengers of peace through all the turbulent highways in every land. Far-reaching deeds of love marked its growth in palace and hovel: yet the clash of swords and the snarl of the slave-driver’s lash broke in upon its holiness; and, ever and anon, hunger drove some mother to insane slaughter of the anæmic babe at her breast. The rich in high places rose up against a Savonarola and a Sir Thomas More and tried to silence the reproach of their goodness in death:
“And in such indexes, although small pricks
To their subsequent volumes, there is seen
The baby figure of the giant mass
Of things to come at large.”
Within reach of every banquet’s savor crouched the gaunt figure of Poverty; and the shadows of the Universities swept athwart the bleak paths of Ignorance and intensified the darkness. Gradually, through all the travail of the earth’s growth, came the machine to lift the burden from the straining muscles of men; and its only effect was to change the servitude of the many into an equally galling wage-slavery without surcease of misery and hate and crime. Meanwhile, the inherent goodness of human nature asserted itself in large heroism and patient bravery. Republics were builded out of the strength of the common people; and fine philosophies of liberty were engrossed upon the parchment of history, but humanity failed to reach the heights where gladness holds her breathing-places. The goodness of human nature seemed to be spent in the Sisyphus-like task of rolling some needless burden up the hill of Time and falling ever backward to the bottom in a futile renewal of toil.
As I read the annals of civilization in books and traced their later chapters in field and shop and factory, my early conviction of the inherent goodness of human nature was sharpened by its contrast with the physical evils everywhere so blatant. I saw the tragic waste of life wherewith the commerce of to-day stands crimsoned in the blood of the proletariat. I noticed little children slowly murdering by the loom and sewing-machine. In the disease-sodden tenements of the slums I saw hundreds of men and women dragging out a living death their lives foreshortening by the vilest adulteration of food and drink and by the foul air and reeking bodies of their fellow-men in the low, narrow rooms in which they huddled together. Drunkenness, insanity, and sexual perversions were all too common: nevertheless self-sacrifice, kindness, and wondrous patience were equally in evidence.
Hellraisers Journal – Monday September 1, 1902 Comrade Eugene Debs on Class Consciousness and the Ballot
From the Duluth Labor World of August 30, 1902:
GENE DEBS DEFINES LABOR LEADERS DUTY ———-
The time is near at hand when a member of a union will be expelled just as promptly for casting a scab ballot, that is to say for supporting the party of the enemy of labor, as if he took the place of a member while out on strike.Indeed, there may be some justification for the latter, but there can be none for the former act of treason, except alone that of ignorance. And thus it is the duty of the true leader to use his best efforts to overcome, so that the workers on all occasions, economically, politically, and otherwise, can use their entire organized class power in resisting the capitalist system, and in charging it at every point until finally it is overcome and the world’s workers stand forth free men.
The action taken by the three national conventions of labor organizations recently held at Denver [W. F. M., A. L. U. and United Association of Hotel and Restaurant Employes] in adopting a working class political program, has created widespread interest in every part of the country. The reactionary element predict for the new policy speedy and complete failure. So certain are they of this that they do not hesitate to misrepresent the action of the conventions and bear false testimony against those who took part in them. A number of misleading statements have appeared in the papers, and others are quietly circulated to bring the personnel of the conventions into disrepute, and this is engaged in by those who lack the courage to openly charge and face the men who led the movement which culminated in a new departure, which promises to remould the entire labor movement of the country, and bring it up-to-date in all its economic and political equipment.
The two men who led and inspired the conventions were Edward Boyce, president of the Western Federation of Miners, and Daniel McDonald, president of the Western, now the American Labor Union. McDonald was unanimously reelected upon that issue and holds his position by practically the unanimous confidence of the members of his great and growing organization. Edward Boyce retired from official life, honored by every true man and only hated by those who found him staunch and incorruptible, and utterly incapable of being swerved from his duty to his fellowmen. The name of this man will be honorably written in the history of trades unionism, as he has already written it in the deeds of duty that live forever.
I need not, at this time, repeat the terms of the essential change which has taken place in the Western labor movement. It is all summed up in this single statement that it has adopted a working-class political platform and is now equipped for united action in the political field in every contest until the victory is finally won.
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday August 3, 1912
Brotherhood of Timber Workers Organizing Campaign in Louisiana
From the International Socialist Review of August 1912:
[Part II of II]
Before the campaign of organization [Brotherhood of Timber Worker] now inaugurated by the Industrial Workers of the World is closed the lumber barons of Dixieland will have learned that it is impossible to fell trees with rifles and saw lumber with six shooters.
It should be mentioned here that of the nine men arrested four are non-union men, two of them, John and Paul Galloway, being owners of the Lumber Company. All are charged with murder. This, perhaps, indicates that the Trust has not entirely corralled the officialdom of Louisiana. It is certain that they are in bad repute with the business element in nearly all of the towns as their commissaries have been the means of controlling nearly the entire earnings of their employees, who are compelled to trade with the companies or lose the only means they have of making a living.
To maintain their absolute control of the camps the lumber companies, with the aid of their thugs, patrolled the towns, in some places inclosures were built around the mills and shacks. Notices were posted warning away union men, peddlers and Socialists.
Only a few days ago, H. G. Creel, one of the Rip-Saw editors on a lecture tour, was roughly handled at Oakdale and DeRidder, La. He was compelled to leave the first-named place, being threatened and intimidated by gun-men.
The small merchant realizes that if the workers are allowed to trade where they choose some of their money would pass over their counters and they know if wages are increased there would be a corresponding increase in their day’s receipts. This will account for the fact that the small business man and farmer have given their sympathy and a measure of support to the growing union of timber workers.
Arthur L. Emerson and Jay Smith, both Southern born, are the men around whom interest centers. They are the men who organized the Brotherhood of Timber Workers. Emerson had made two trips to the West-one to the Lumber District to the Southwest and the other to the Northwest. It was during the time that he worked with the lumber jacks of the Pacific Coast that he learned the need of organization. This thought was especially developed when he came in contact with the Lumber Workers’ Union of St. Regis and other points in the Bitter Root Range of Mountains. Being a practical lumber jack and saw mill hand and mill-wright himself, he saw at once the discrepancy in wages between the Pacific Coast and the Gulf States and upon his return to Dixieland he immediately took up the burden of organizing the workers as the only possible means of bringing up their wages and conditions to the level of the already too-low Western scale.
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday June 29, 1902 Debs Speaks at Butte, Montana: “We Must Gain Possession of the Tools of Trade”
From the Social Democratic Herald of June 28, 1902 -Letter from Eugene V. Debs at Butte, Montana, June 17th:
From the Butte Labor World of June 20, 1902:
Eugene V. Debs was given a rousing reception at the Auditorium Monday evening [June 16th]. It was an enthusiastic audience that heard him speak, and as he stood upon the platform for two solid hours and hurled rugged truths at them he was greeted with applause which at times was in the nature of an ovation.
Few public speakers of today could have filled the spacious Auditorium upon so short notice. Stopping off for a day in Butte, it had not been Mr. Debs’ purpose to speak at that time, but he was prevailed upon by a number of the most earnest workers for the cause of Socialism, and he consented. Hardly three hours was given in which to spread the news, but somehow it went the rounds and the Auditorium was filled from gallery to rostrum. Many who had come late were compelled to stand.
A Keen, Forceful Talker.
Upon the platform, as well as off, Eugene V. Debs is a wonderfully magnetic man. His flashes of humor, his clear, strong way of putting the questions before the minds of his auditors, and his cutting sarcasm directed at things and conditions he believes to be wrong, are such as to hold his audience spellbound.
“We Must Gain Possession of the Tools of Trade,” was the tenor of his remarks. “Human life will then be sacred. The badge of labor will be the badge of nobility.”
Charles Whitely, of the Butte Mill and Smeltermen’s union, was the chairman of the meeting and introduced the distinguished speaker.
Mr. Whitely referred to him as the “ablest labor leader the United States has ever produced,” and the audience cheered loudly. Mr. Debs appeared to be pleased with the cordial and earnest feeling with which he was received. It inspired him to extra effort, and the effect was truly notable.
Debs’ Speech.
It seems but a little while-yet four years have passed and many changes have taken place since I had the pleasure of speaking to you.
Never was there a greater demand for intelligent, thorough, and progressive action on the part of the laboring class than now. That such a large attendance could be secured upon so short notice proves that the workers of Butte are alive and determined to wage a struggle with increasing vigor until the working class is free. Not until the capitalist system of exploitation is overthrown and the wage system is abolished and the workers control the means of production and receive the full product of their toil, not until then will the struggle cease and they will stand as the rulers of the world.
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday June 11, 1902
Denver, Colorado – W. F. of M. and A. L. U. Conventions Favor Socialism
From the Lead City Daily Tribune of June 10, 1902:
Moyer Elected President.
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Denver, June 9.-The annual convention of the Western Federation of Miners adjourned last night.Edward Boyce refused to serve as president and Charles Moyer of Lead, S. D., was elected in his stead. The other officers elected follow: Vice president, E. D. Hughes, Butte, Mont.; secretary and treasurer, W. D. Haywood, Silver, City, Ida.
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[Emphasis and photograph added.]
From the Butte Labor World of June 9, 1902 -Convention Number:
FEDERATION OF MINERS FAVORS SOCIALISM ———- Charles Moyer, of Lead, S. D., Is Elected President -Ed Hughes, of Butte, Vice President -Edward Boyce Retires from Office ———-
[Highlights from article.]
President Boyce, after a number of years of successful service as president, has retired. His successor, Charles Moyer of Lead, S. D., is regarded as a strong man, and one who will judiciously administrate the affairs of the organization…..
Paul Corcoran of Idaho, whose pardon as one of the Coeur d’Alene miners was effected through the miners, sent a warm and appreciative letter to the federation thanking it for assisting in rescuing him from prison…..
For favoring the pardon of Paul Corcoran a vote of thanks was extended to Governor Hunt and Secretary of State Basset of Idaho……
While the delegates upstairs at the Western Labor Union convention were discussing socialism and adopting it, those downstairs were debating the question with great vigor. The matter came up on the report of the committee on President Boyce’s report. John M. O’Neill of Cripple Creek was chairman, and recommended that President Boyce’s socialistic program be carried out in its entirety…
[T]he resolution and its political plans was adopted Wednesday morning….
One of the most significant actions of the Western Federation of Miners’ convention was the turning down by a unanimous vote the proposition of the American Federation of Labor for a reaffiliation of the two big bodies…..
A Gentle Refusal.
Secretary-Treasurer W. D. Haywood was instructed to notify the American Federation of Labor that in view of the action of the convention’s new departure in espousing socialism the invitation is respectfully declined…..
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WESTERN LABOR UNION CHANGES ITS NAME
———-
Will Carry an Aggressive Fight into the Camp of
the American Federation of Labor
-President Dan McDonald is Re-elected
———-
[Highlights from article.]
The American Labor union has closed its annual convention at Denver…..
The name of the organization has been changed from the Western Labor union to the American Labor union.
The gauntlet has been thrown down to the American Federation, and war will be waged all along the line.
The territory of the Western organization will be enlarged to take in great industrial bodies of the East…..
The union has been irrevocably pledged to socialism and independent political action [see resolution below, the platform of Socialist Party of America was adopted in its entirety]…..
Hellraisers Journal – Friday June 6, 1902 Denver, Colorado – W. L. U. and W. F. of M. Hold Conventions at Odd Fellows Hall
From the Butte Labor World of June 2, 1902, Convention Number:
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The annual convention of the Western Labor Union, and Western Federation of miners and the United Association of Hotel and Restaurant Employes, opened at Denver last week. These gatherings of men who represent the real producers of wealth showed in a measure the strength of the great organizations of labor. Denver received them with outstretched arms. The reception committees were busy looking to the comfort of the visitors and everything possible was done to make their stay in the queen city of the West a pleasant one. The hospitality was warm and well appreciated by the delegates….
There were nearly one hundred in attendance at the Western Labor Union convention and fully one hundred and fifty at the federation of miners.….
The working class and the employing class have nothing in common.
There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found
among millions of working people and the few, who
make up the employing class, have
all the good things of life
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Saturday August 4, 1906
From The Worker: Debs on the I. W. W. and the A. F. of L.
Over the next for days we offer the response made by Eugene V. Debs to the questions posed by the New York Worker regarding the debate on the relation of the Socialist Party of America to the trades unions.
The Worker introduces what it calls a symposium:
The question of the relation of the Socialist Party to the trade unions having again attracted attention within our ranks, The Worker has inaugurated a symposium to which representative comrades are being invited to contribute, setting forth various points view.
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