Hellraisers Journal: Mother Ella Reeve Bloor Describes Army of Little Factory Girls of Western Pennsylvania

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It is not enough to say that something good,
something beautiful is being born.
We must help it become a
reality-not a dream.
-Ella Reeve Bloor

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Hellraisers Journal, Tuesday October 8, 1907
Child Labor in America: An Army of Little Factory Children

From the Appeal to Reason of October 5, 1907:

Killing Children for Profits.

Ella Reeve Bloor, Packing Hse Invstg, Abq Eve Ctz, June 5, 1906

Mrs. Ella Reeve Bloor, of Philadelphia, writer and lecturer on industrial topics, who is investigating child labor conditions in the factories of western Pennsylvania, declares that hundreds of little children under the legal age are employed in a chimney factory at Charleroi, Pa.

[Said Mrs. Bloor:]

An army of little girls came flocking from all directions to the factories this morning. They work from 7 a. m. until 6 p. m., when little boys take their places and work until 2 a.m. The little fellows are afraid to go home at that hour and many boys of 10 and 11 years carry revolvers to and from their work. I believe the condition of child labor in Pennsylvania is as bad as it is in the south.

To show you how the glass manufacturers disobey the law, I will state that I have secured 6,300 convictions in six years of my office. One large factory covering 640 acres in Alton, Ill., has two gates for inspectors to get in and lots of holes for kids to get out.-Edgar T. Davies, Chief Factory Inspector of Illinois.

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Hellraisers Journal: Appeal to Reason Takes on Collier’s Claim That “Best Detectives” Know Orchard Told the Truth

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There are no limits to which
powers of privilege will not go
to keep the workers in slavery.
-Mother Jones

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Hellraisers Journal, Sunday October 6, 1907
The View from Girard, Kansas:
Collier’s Licks the Velvet Hand

From the Appeal to Reason of October 5, 1907:

“Crucify Him!”
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HMP, Haywood in Cell, Colliers, June 22, 1907

Collier’s Weekly, in the face of all the antagonistic circumstances under which Haywood was tried and acquitted, says that it is privately informed by the best detectives in the country that Orchard told the truth. Well, the Appeal is informed by the best detectives in the country that Orchard maliciously lied, to save his craven neck, under the paid expert coaching of a man whose antecedent history in the “Mollie Maguire” period, and at Parsons, Kan., where good citizens made affidavits denouncing him, shows him to be a creature whose moral pulse beats lower than a snake’s. All the time Orchard was “telling the truth” he was telling stories of his own despicable treachery and double dealing for pay.

HMP, Orchard on Stand, Colliers, June 22, 1907

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Hellraisers Journal: J. A. Wayland of Girard, Kansas, Publishes “Darrow’s Speech in the Haywood Case”

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Darrow Peroration Haywood Trial, Waylands Monthly, Oct 1907


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Hellraisers Journal, Thursday October 3, 1907
Girard, Kansas – J. A. Wayland Publishes Darrow’s Greatest Speech

From Girard, Kansas, home of the Appeal to Reason, Socialist weekly, comes the publication of the entire speech made by Clarence Darrow on July 24th and 25th. This speech resulted in the famous “Not Guilty” verdict which was cheered by working men and women the world over.

From Wayland’s Monthly of October 1907:

Darrow Speech Haywood Case, Waylands Monthly, Oct 1907

—–

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Hellraisers Journal: From the Appeal to Reason: 2,225 Coal Miners Killed on the Job in 1916, 988 in Pennsylvania

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“Dagos are cheaper than props.”
-Mother Jone quoting a Mine Manager

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Hellraisers Journal, Wednesday September 19, 1917
Pennsylvania Leads Nation for Coal Mine Fatalities in 1916

From the Appeal to Reason of September 15, 1917:

Coal Mine Fatalities, 1916

Cherry (IL) Mine Disaster of 1909, McClures Mag Mar 1910
Waiting for word.

The number of persons killed in and about coal mines during the calendar year 1916 was 2,225, as compared with 2,269 in 1915, 2,454 in 1914 and 2,785 in 1913. Pennsylvania led with 988, of which 433 were in bituminous mines. Fatalities in West Virginia numbered 372, in Illinois 128, and in Alabama 119, Alaska, California, Idaho, Nevada and South Dakota had no fatalities.

Those killed underground from falls of rock, coal, etc., numbered 961; from mine cars and locomotives 390; from exploding or burning gas, 170, and from explosives, 148. Those killed on the surface numbered 150, and in shafts 49.

The number killed per 1,000 employed was 3.22 in 1914 and 3.09 in 1915. The 1916 figures were not available when this report was published.

———-

[Photograph added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: Federal Government Passive as Miner Owners Establish Industrial Despotism in Bisbee

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There are no limits to which
powers of privilege will not go
to keep the workers in slavery.
-Mother Jones
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Hellraisers Journal, Tuesday August 28, 1917
Bisbee, Arizona – Deputized Company Gunthugs Control City

From the Appeal to Reason of August 25, 1917:

The Truth About Bisbee

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Bisbee Deportation Miners and Supporters July 12, 1917

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Bisbee, Ariz., has not formally seceded from the Union, but the mining companies of that district have set up an independent sovereignty-an industrial despotism-in utter defiance of American laws and the rights of American citizens. In the presence of this organized outlawry of capitalism, the great government of the United States remains passive and idle. Official Washington has virtually ignored the situation in Bisbee, just as it ignored the outrages in West Virginia and in Colorado and in a score of other places where capitalistic despotism sought to crush the workers. In connection with the Bisbee trouble it is interesting to note that one of the leading mining corporations of that district is the Phelps Dodge Company, and to recall that Cleveland H. Dodge, vice president of the Phelps Dodge Company, was a heavy contributor to the Democratic national campaign fund. A full and disinterested account of the happenings in Bisbee is given by the San Francisco Bulletin in a personal interview with Thomas McGuinness, a real estate dealer of Bisbee. The following is Mr. McGuinness’ story:

—–

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Hellraisers Journal: From Appeal to Reason: Woman Representatives Score Butte & Bisbee, Article by Rosa McKay

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I am not a member of the I. W. W.
or an industrial workers of the world sympathizer
but a woman who believes in
the constitutional rights of every man and woman.
-Rosa McKay

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Hellraisers Journal, Thursday August 23, 1917
From the Appeal to Reason: Two Brave Women Speak for Labor

The Appeal to Reason of August 18th featured the opinions of two women elected to represent the people: the first, Miss Jeannette Rankin of the United States House of Representatives, and the second, Mrs. Rosa McKay of the Arizona House of Representatives. Yesterday we featured the speech by Miss Rankin who outlined conditions at Butte. We conclude today with an article by Mrs. McKay who describes recent events in Bisbee.

Butte and Bisbee Outrages Scored
by Brave Woman Representatives

Rosa McKay, WTUL Life and Labor, Nov 1918

…In an article to the Appeal, Mrs. Rosa McKay, member of the Arizona House of Representatives from Bisbee, Cochise county, Arizona, tells of the Bisbee deportation….

By Mrs. Rosa McKay

Member Arizona House of Representatives

For fourteen years I have claimed Bisbee as my home. But after Thursday, the twelfth day of July. I hang my head in shame and sorrow for the sights I have witnessed here. When the full truth about Bisbee reaches the outside world, it will be looked upon with deserved aversion.

In this article I shall give an honest and unbiased statement, from a fair and impartial standpoint, of the labor situation in Bisbee today. I belong to no labor organization or mining corporation. I am merely an onlooker and spectator, and a firm believer in the constitutional rights of all American citizens, whether by birth or naturalization, the rights that our forefathers fought, bled and died for.

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Hellraisers Journal: From Appeal to Reason: Woman Representatives Score Butte & Bisbee, Jeannette Rankin Speaks

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No one is safe where lynching is sanctioned.
-Jeannette Rankin

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Hellraisers Journal, Wednesday August 22, 1917
From the Appeal to Reason: Two Brave Women Speak for Labor

The Appeal to Reason of August 18th featured the opinions of two women elected to represent the people: the first, Miss Jeannette Rankin of the United States House of Representatives, and the second, Mrs. Rosa McKay of the Arizona House of Representative. Today we begin with Miss Rankin who outlines conditions at Butte. We will conclude tomorrow with Mrs. McKay and her view of recent events in Bisbee.

Butte and Bisbee Outrages Scored
by Brave Woman Representatives

Jeannette Rankin, MN Princeton Union, Aug 9, 1917

The stories of the labor troubles in Butte, Mont., and Bisbee, Ariz., are told below by two women, both of them elected representatives of the people from their respective districts.

Miss Jeanette Rankin, of Montana, the first Congresswoman of the United States, told of conditions in Butte in a speech [August 7th] before the national House of Representatives.

In an article to the Appeal, Mrs. Rosa McKay, member of the Arizona House of Representatives from Bisbee, Cochise county, Arizona, tells of the Bisbee deportation.

The activity of these two women in behalf of justice for the workers and in defense of the cause of true democracy, leaves little wonder why the reactionary, corporation-serving politicians have sought to prevent the entrance of woman into politics. Speed the day when woman will take her full share in the affairs of government! Miss Rankin and Mrs. McKay have done the cause of suffrage a great service in the noble stand they have taken.

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Hellraisers Journal: Debs Reflects on Haywood Verdict: Thinks Roosevelt Should Tender an Apology

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A thousand times rather would I be
one of those men in Ada county jail
than Theodore Roosevelt in
the White House at Washington.
-Eugene Victor Debs

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Hellraisers Journal, Saturday August 10, 1907
From the Montana News: Debs Reflects on Haywood Verdict

Readers of Hellraisers will remember the controversy begun by Roosevelt when it was revealed, last April, that the President had declared Haywood, Moyer, Pettibone and Debs to be “Undesirable Citizens.”

In the Appeal to Reason of May 18th, Comrade Debs confronted Roosevelt:

Henry Maki WFM Telluride, Chained to Pole Mar 2, 1907

Were a mob of workingmen to seize Theodore Roosevelt and chain him to a post on a public street in Washington in broad daylight, as a mob of his capitalist friends seized and chained a workingman [Henry Maki] in Colorado, or throw him into a foul bullpen, without cause or provocation, prod him with bayonets and outrage his defenseless family while he was a prisoner, as was done in scores of well-authenticated cases in both Colorado and Idaho, would he then be in the mood to listen complacently to hypocritical homilies upon the “temperate” use of language, the sanctity of “law and order” and the beauty of “exact justice to all”?

And if he heard of some man who had sufficient decency to denounce the outrages he and his family had suffered, would he then “conceive it to be his duty,” as he tells us, to condemn the language of such a man as “treasonable and murderous” and the man himself as “inciting bloodshed,” and therefore an “undesirable citizen”?

[Photograph added.]

If fighting for the rights of working people makes one an undesirable citizen, then let us hope that millions more would be proud and happy to be classed with the likes of Comrades Haywood and Debs.

In this weeks edition of the Montana News, Eugene Debs suggests that President Roosevelt should tender an apology to the man he declared guilty in advance of the trial. Comrade Debs declares the acquittal of Big Bill Haywood to be a great victory for the American labor movement and a rebuke to the prosecution and to their masters, the Mine Owners’ Association, whose interest the prosecution endeavored to serve. Comrade Debs expresses his great respect for Comrade Haywood and proposes that Haywood should be nominated as the Socialist Party’s candidate for president.

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Hellraisers Journal: Socialist Newspapers, Appeal to Reason & Montana News, Celebrate Haywood Victory

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Keep the Red Flag
of universal brotherhood flying.
-Big Bill Haywood

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Hellraisers Journal, Monday August 5, 1907
Socialist Newspapers Celebrate Haywood Acquittal

From the Appeal to Reason of August 3, 1907:

HMP, AtR HY Not Guilty, Aug 3, 1907

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Hellraisers Journal: Appeal to Reason Invites Czar to America, “Conditions here are good for your line of business.”

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While Elihu Root is advising
the new Russian democracy,
you can come over and advise
the new American autocracy.
Appeal to Reason to Czar Nicholas II

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Hellraisers Journal, Thursday July 12, 1917
Girard, Kansas – Invitation Sent to “Mr. Nicholas Romanoff”

From the Appeal to Reason of June 30, 1917:

The Appeal Invites “Czar Nick”
to Come to America

Girard, Kansas, June 27, 1917.

Mr. Nicholas Romanoff, Care Council of Workmen’s and Soldiers’ Delegates, Petrograd, Russia.

Czar Nicholas II, March 1917, wiki

Dear Nick: Not knowing just how to reach you directly, we are sending this letter in care of the Workmen’s and Soldiers’ Delegates, who are doubtless keeping an eye on you and whom we trust to deliver this message uncensored as the mail of other private citizens is now being delivered-in Russia.

We expect you to be surprised at hearing from us, but not more surprised than we are at finding ourselves writing to you, a perfect stranger, you might say. Still, we feel that we have had an introduction to you after a fashion, having read about you a great deal and followed your recent career with much interest; so we think, Nick, that you’re the very man for a job that is now open over here in this land of the recently free. Here is a new and promising field for the exercise of your peculiar talents.

You will drop your hoe and come over on the next ship when we tell you that Czarism has been introduced in America, that the United States has taken the place of Russia with a vengeance that is rather characteristic of your own past rule.

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