Americanism – WE NEVER FORGET

Quote Fred Mooney, Mingo Co Gunthugs, UMWJ p15, Dec 1, 1920 —————

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday June 18, 1922
Nations Newspapers Opine on Acquittal of William Blizzard

From The Literary Digest of June 17, 1922:

“TREASON” AND REASON

THE NAME OF WILLIAM BLIZZARD, West Virginia miner, has been added to the few who have been tried in the United States for treason. Like most of the others, he was acquitted, yet, notes the Washington Herald, “there is plenty of reason to fear that if the case had been tried in Logan County he would have been found guilty and given the severest sentence possible on the treason charge.” That any fair-minded jury must acquit the youthful official of the United Mine Workers of America was obvious from the ﬁrst to The Herald, the New York Times, and other papers, and why the indictment for treason was brought is more than The Times can understand. “Attorneys for Blizzard,” caustically observes the New York Evening World, “might have claimed that the crime charged was impossible, because no Government existed in West Virginia against which treason was possible.” “In fact,” agrees the New York Herald, “Government in West Virginia had broken down, and its power had passed in part to the mine operators.” The leaders of the union miners who marched against Logan and Mingo counties, last August, according to this paper, were manifestly trying to take the law into their own hands, “which the non-union coal operators, controlling the local government in the two counties, already had done.”

In the opinion of the conservative New York Times:

Whatever their offenses, the unionist miners and their leaders were not trying to subvert the Government of West Virginia in whole or in part. Logan County can scarcely be said to have been under the rule of law or to have had a republican form of government. Private war was answered by private war. Some constitutional guaranties appear to have been suspended by conspiracy of non-union operators. If there was any “treason,” it was on both sides; but there was no excuse for charging the leaders of the misguided invaders of Logan County with the highest of crimes.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: The Literary Digest: Treason, Reason, and the Acquittal of Blizzard at Charles Town, West Virginia” →

Don’t worry, fellow-worker,
all we’re going to need from now on is guts.
-Frank Little

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Hellraisers Journal, Wednesday September 5, 1917
From the Duluth Labor World: I. W. W., Foe of Nation & Enemy of Labor

AFL Emblem, Am Fedist, Aug-Dec 1917

The Duluth Labor World, voice of the American Federation of Labor in northern Minnesota, has now declared the Industrial Workers of the World to be a foe of the United States of America and an enemy of true American Labor. Having been willing to organize foreign-born and unskilled workers where the A. F. of L., for the most part, would not, (the United Mine Workers being a noble exception), the I. W. W. is now accused of “exploiting” alien prejudices.

From the Duluth Labor World of September 1, 1917:

The time has come when it is necessary for the men of labor to speak out emphatically against any and all organizations claiming the support of workingmen that are not wholly American to the core. This is no time for quibbling. We do not propose to sit idly by and permit our cause to suffer longer from the foolhardy course of such a self-styled labor organization as the I. W. W., an organization that never did anything for the workingmen save pull their legs.

The enemies of the American trade union have for years been busy in Continental Europe propagating among workingmen against the American Federation of Labor. They declare it is controlled by the so-called “Capitalist Class;” that it is a mass-backed, conservative organization formed for the purpose of perpetuating the wage system, and when foreign laborers come here to work they bring with them their prejudices against the American labor movement.

This is why such an organization as the I. W. W., appeals to the foreign born laborers in this country who have not identified themselves with the American movement. And as a result the poor fellows are frequently led to deep industrial precipices from which they are ruthlessly hurled by the pretensive revolutionary leaders in the I. W. W.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Labor World Scores IWW: “Labor and the nation will be better off when we are rid of them.”” →