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Hellraisers Journal – Thursday February 16, 1899
“O Masters…How will the Future reckon with this Man?”
From the Appeal to Reason of February 4, 1899:
Tag: Appeal to Reason
Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for January 1909, Part I; Found in Girard, Kansas, and in Springfield, Illinois
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Hellraisers Journal – Monday February 15, 1909
Mother Jones News Round-Up for January 1909, Part I:
-Found Writing and Speaking on Behalf of Mexican Patriots
During the month of January 1909, we first find Mother Jones in the pages of the Appeal to Reason advocating on behalf of the Mexican Patriots imprisoned in the United States and facing deportation to Mexico where certain death awaits them at the hands of the Tyrant, Porfirio Díaz.
Hellraisers Journal of January 10th republished an article from the Appeal to Reason of January 9, 1909, in which Mother was quoted:
The Appeal can and will arouse the American People. Its voice rings like a clarion over all the nation. How the hearts of the refugees must be cheered when they hear the Appeal’s ringing challenge to the czar of Russia and the dictator of Mexico! More power to the Appeal! May every one of its more than three hundred thousand readers resolve this very hour to double its circulation, that a million more American people can be shaken from their lethargy and swell the mighty protest against Russian bastiles and Mexican dungeons on American soil.
[Photograph added.]
Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones 1898, Part II: June-December; Found in Kansas and Nebraska
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Hellraisers Journal – Saturday February 11, 1899
-Mother Jones News Round-Up for the Year 1898, Part II
October 9, 1898
In the pages of the Appeal to Reason of July 2, 1898, Mother Jones was found as “Mary G. Jones” on the list of delegates who bolted the Convention of the Social Democracy, held in Chicago during June of 1898. The disgruntled delegates immediately set about to establish a rival organization called the “Social Democratic Party of America,” and are now calling for “every loyal supporter of socialist principles” to “promptly come to the front and join” the new party. Mother Jones finds herself in good company as Eugene V. Debs and his brother, Theodore, are among the prominent Socialists who have joined the newly founded S. D. P.
July 1898 also found Mother Jones speaking in Omaha to packing house strikers. It was reported that she was speaking as “a traveling representative of the paper known as the “Appeal to Reason.”
In October 1898, Mother Jones was found in the “two Kansas Citys” preaching socialism along with Mrs. Anna Ferry Smith of San Diego. It was reported that the two women had traveled by a horse-drawn wagon from Chicago, speaking on street corners along the way.
In December 1898, Mother Jones was found leaving Kansas City and heading towards Texas “in a prairie schooner drawn by one white horse.” She was next found in Fort Scott and Mound City, Kansas. The Mound City Torch reported:
She is on her road to Texas, traveling in a private carriage alone. She is distributing literature and lecturing on needed reforms as she goes.
Hellraisers Journal: From the Appeal to Reason: “Oh! Ye Lovers of Liberty,” Mother Jones Pleads for Our Mexican Comrades
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Hellraisers Journal: Monday January 25, 1909
Los Angeles, California – Mexican Revolutionaries Languish in Jail
From the Appeal to Reason of January 23, 1909:
BROTHERS AND COMRADES: From the bastile of capitalism in Los Angeles comes the cry of our brave brothers, calling on you to stand for freedom, right and justice. I know and feel that the cries will not be in vain. You responded cheerfully to the needs of our comrades of the industrial revolution as they were voiced from Idaho, and I know you will be none the less responsive now, in behalf of our Mexican comrades.
If ever there was a time in history when it was imperative that men and women should promptly rally to the banner of freedom and justice, that time is now. Before, it was the power of the state and the nation that the capitalists were using for the destruction of the working class. Now, it is the United States government seconding the murderous despotism of Russia and the irresponsible dictatorship of Mexico. The fight has become international; yet it centers in the United States. If these foreign vultures of oppression win now, then our liberty goes.
For Diaz and American capitalism are partners, even as American capitalism and the Russian czar are partners. Pierpont Morgan goes to Russia and shakes hands with the czar; and now the czar comes to America demanding the surrender of political refugees. Mrs. Diaz, when visiting in Texas is entertained by members of the Copper Queen syndicate whose headquarters are at 95 John street, New York, and Elihu Root, of New York, is wined and dined by the tyrant dictator, Diaz, when in Mexico.
This tyrant, this fiend, beside whom King George was a gentleman and lover of the poor, has given to American capitalists concessions that are worth millions of dollars, and guarantees them peon labor that dare not ask higher wages under penalty of being shot for violating the law; and in return he asks that if political refugees escape to America, or if a Mexican dare to come to America and criticise him, they must be returned to him, that they may be shot.
Hellraisers Journal: IWW Attorney Moore and Miss Caroline Lowe Report on Brutal Conditions at Leavenworth, Part II
Hellraisers Journal – Thursday January 16, 1919
Leavenworth Penitentiary – Report on Brutal Treatment of Prisoners, Part II
From The New Appeal of January 11, 1919:
[Part 2 of 2.]
Summing up the results of his inquiry, Mr. Moore [Attorney for the Industrial Workers of the World] says:
Extremely fragmentary as is the above, I believe that the following points may be considered as fully established:
1. That negro convicts armed with clubs were used under the direction of Mr. Fletcher [Deputy Warden] to beat up white men. That among those so beaten up were Stratton, Murphy and Floyd Ramp.
2. That many prisoners, whose physical condition was extremely bad, were placed on bread and water diet and deprived of their blankets and compelled to sleep on the cement floor at a time when this would seriously endanger their health.
3. That many prisoners were chained by their wrists to the sides of their cells and so compelled to stand for a period in excess of twenty-four hours.
Visits Husband in Cell.
In an affidavit, of which The New Appeal has been furnished a copy, Mrs. Floyd Ramp, wife of one of the solitary prisoners, states that she was allowed a brief visit with her husband on December 15, having come to Leavenworth in response to a report from friends that her husband had been seriously injured. Mrs. Ramp states that she was not permitted to question her husband regarding his injuries, but that his right eye was badly discolored and he was in an emaciated condition. Owing to the presence of the guard she could elicit no information of what had occurred beyond the most vague and unsatisfactory references. Ramp did say that Stratton was “pretty badly hurt.” Mrs. Ramp states “that Jack Phelan, who was released from the Leavenworth prison on December 18 because declared by the Appellate Court to have been illegally incarcerated on a charge of violating the Espionage Act, told her he had seen Floyd Ramp’s body and that it was a mass of bruises which led him to believe that he had been beaten, kicked and trampled upon.”
Hellraisers Journal: IWW Attorney Fred Moore and Miss Caroline Lowe Report on Brutal Conditions at Leavenworth
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday January 15, 1919
Leavenworth Penitentiary, Kansas – Brutal Treatment of Prisoners Reported
From The New Appeal of January 11, 1919:
[Part 1 of 2.]
In its issue of last week The New Appeal reproduced a report of conscientious objectors at Camp Funston, Kans., detailing the brutal treatment to which they were subjected at the command of certain officers, contrary to the express directions of the war department in Washington. This report was published primarily as a matter of record, the guilty officers having been dismissed from the service and the conditions complained of corrected.
We are now in the way of making a more important exposure-an exposure of brutalities committed upon Socialists, I. W. W.s. and others imprisoned in the Federal penitentiary at Fort Leavenworth, Kans., brutalities that we have reason to believe have not been brought to the notice of the higher authorities since the efforts of interested persons to investigate these brutalities have been baffled at every turn by prison officials. Enough evidence has been dragged into the light, however, to make it shamefully plain, to use the words of Mrs. Floyd Ramp, wife of a Socialist prisoner, “that things are occurring in this penitentiary which citizens of a democracy should not knowingly countenance.”
Could Not Question Prisoners.
On December 12, F. H. Moore, a Chicago attorney, went to Leavenworth to discuss certain legal steps with the group of prisoners sentenced under the Chicago indictment of the I. W. W. alleged anti-war agitators. He also desired to make personal inquiry of the treatment the prisoners were receiving, disquieting reports of which had reached him through “underground” channels. In company with Miss Caroline A. Lowe, who assisted in the defense of the prisoners at the trial, Mr. Moore called upon the warden. They were told by the warden that they could talk over legal matters connected with the case, but they were absolutely forbidden to question the prisoners as to conditions in the penitentiary.
Mr. Moore, in a somewhat lengthy communication sent to The New Appeal, repeatedly emphasizes this autocratic censorship of the warden. As they interviewed, separately, each one of twenty-two prisoners held in solitary confinement with unusual punishment, the deputy warden, who was present during the interviews, sternly suppressed every attempt to question the prisoners as to the manner in which they had been handled and as to their physical condition at the time. Nor were Mr. Moore and Miss Lowe, when they met and conferred with the majority of the prisoners in a body permitted to refer to the condition of their fellow prisoners who were “in solitary.”
Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for December 1908; Found in Springfield, Illinois, Speaking to UMW Locals
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday January 12, 1909
-Mother Jones News Round-Up for December 1908
Found with Locals of U. M. W. in Springfield, Illinois
During the month of December 1908, we found Mother Jones in Springfield, Illinois, where it was reported by the December 17th edition of the Illinois State Register that:
“Mother” Jones, a noted leader among the miners’ organization of the country, addressed the Springfield sub-district quarterly meeting [U. M. W.] at Arion hall yesterday afternoon [December 16th], and in consequence the meeting was very largely attended. “Mother” Jones is engaged in soliciting assistance for Mexican workingmen who are engaged in a struggle against the despotism of the Mexican government, and who, when their plans became apparent to that government escaped to the United States, their extradition now being sought. The efforts of “Mother” Jones has the endorsement of the Illinois executive board of the United Mine Workers of America [John H. Walker, President], and it is her intention to make a tour of the state visiting the miners’ locals in behalf of these men.
Hellraisers Journal: Staff Writer for Appeal to Reason Interviews Mexican Revolutionaries in Los Angeles Jail
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Hellraisers Journal – Monday January 11, 1909
Los Angeles, California – Against All Odds, Shoaf Meets with Mexican Patriots
From the Appeal to Reason of January 9, 1909:
[by George H. Shoaf]
Los Angeles, Dec. 30.
SOCIALISTS and trade unionists with whom I talked relative to seeing the revolutionists, who were in jail “incommunicado,” declared emphatically that United States District Attorney Oscar Lawler would never let me see them. Only once in six months, they said, had the “incommunicado” rule been broken, and that was when Mrs. Librado Rivera was permitted to hold a few minutes’ conversation with her husband, in the presence of the jailer. Local newspaper men also who had been denied the usual privileges of the press in regard to interviewing prisoners stated that the matter of my seeing Magon and his comrades was entirely out of the question. Even Attorneys Harriman and Holstan, the only persons who were permitted to see the men, seriously doubted whether District Attorney Lawler would grant my request….
The surprise of the jailer, when the marshal ordered him to let me see Magon et al., can better be imagined than described, and when he learned that I was merely the correspondent of a Socialist paper-the Appeal to Reason-he nearly fell off his seat. Socialists are rare visitors at the county jail, except when they are locked up for some crime alleged to have been committed against the government, and I was the object of much curiosity on the part of the mailer and his assistants. So unusual was the order that even the jailer would not be convinced until he verified it by telephoning direct to the district attorney himself. I was invited into a room adjoining the jailer’s office, in which were a number of chairs and a table. Ten minutes later the door was thrown open and, accompanied by their guards, Magon, Villarreal and Rivera walked in…..
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Hellraisers Journal: Save Our Mexican Comrades is Message from Mother Jones & Big Bill Haywood in Appeal to Reason
[The Mexican Patriots] appeal to us
from their prison cells.
We hear their cry and, by the eternal,
we are with them and the dogs of Diaz
shall not tear their flesh.
-J. A. Wayland
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Hellraisers Journal – Sunday January 10, 1909
Big Bill Haywood & Mother Jones Rally Support for Mexican Patriots
From the Appeal to Reason of January 9, 1909:
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CHAPTER OF HORRORS
THE Appeal is in the fight to thwart the conspiracy of the United States and Mexican governments to have the Mexican patriots now lying in jail at Los Angeles surrendered to the cannibal Diaz to be shot for treason. It is a burning disgrace that they are in jail at all. They are men and that is their crime in Mexico. The bloody butcheries of Diaz shocked and horrified them and they took up the cause of their mutilated and agonizing countrymen and hurled their defiance at the monster who posed as president. From that time to this they have been hunted like beasts. They have suffered everything and sacrificed every thing in the cause of freedom.
Hellraisers Journal: Eugene V. Debs Calls for Rescue of Mexican and Russian Patriots Now Held in American Jails
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Hellraisers Journal – Monday January 4, 1909
Five Patriots Illegally Imprisoned in American Jails
With a banner headline and a wide column down the center of the front page of this weeks’s Appeal to Reason, Eugene V. Debs calls for the rescue of the Mexican and Russian patriots now held for deportation by American authorities at the behest of foreign tyrants.
From the Appeal to Reason for January 2, 1909:
RESCUE THE REFUGEES
By EUGENE V. DEBS.
When Louis Kossuth, the Hungarian revolutionist, refugee from his native land for attempting to overthrow its government, reached the United States, in 1851, he was received as the “distinguished Hungarian patriot” by President Fillmore, hailed as another Washington by the American congress and welcomed by the American people amidst demonstrations of the wildest enthusiasm. He was a rebel and a revolutionist and before making his escape had been condemned for “treason” and sentenced to four years’ imprisonment “on account of taking a position favorable to six patriots who had been illegally imprisoned.”
