Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday April 30, 1913 Paterson, New Jersey – John Reed Sentenced to 20 Days in Passaic County Jail
From The New York Times of April 29, 1913:
WRITER SENT TO JAIL. ———- John Reed of the American Magazine Among Strike Victims. ———-
The Paterson Evening News April 28, 1913
John Reed, a writer and a member of the staff of the American Magazine, was arrested in Paterson yesterday on a charge of disorderly conduct in the silk workers’ strike. He was arraigned before Recorder James F. Carroll, who, after hearing the evidence, sentenced Reed to twenty days’ imprisonment in the Passaic County Jail. Reed gave his address as 42 Washington Square, and according to some of his friends was in Paterson getting “local color” for a magazine story dealing with the silk workers’ strike.
Reed was at the corner of Cross and Ellison Street yesterday in the centre of the strike zone, talking to three men strikers. Policeman McCormick came along and ordered the men to disperse. The strikers said they lived in the house in front of which they were standing.
“Well, get inside then,” said McCormick.
“But I don’t live in there,” said Reed.
“Well, move on, then,” said McCormick to the magazine writer.
Reed started to obey and then changed his mind and went back to where McCormick was and demanded his number.
An argument between the policeman and Reed followed which ended in the arrest of Reed on a charge of disorderly conduct. He was immediately taken to court and arraigned before Recorder Carroll.
“What’s your business?” asked the Recorder.
“Poet,” answered Reed.
“What’s your business here?” the Recorder asked again.
“None; I am a bystander,” Reed replied.
McCormick then testified that Reed had refused to move on when ordered to do so, and had insisted on questioning his authority.
The Recorder took McCormick’s view of the case and sentenced Reed to jail.
John S. Phillips, editor of The American Magazine, was asked last night if the management of that publication would interest itself in the affairs of Mr. Reed and attempt to have him released from jail on appeal or by suing out a writ of habeas corpus. Mr. Phillips replied that he did not know of any contemplated action by the magazine management and that he did not care to discuss the matter.
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday April 26, 1913 Clarksburg, West Virginia – Comrade John W. Brown Writes from Jail
From The Wheeling Majority of April 24, 1913:
John Brown Writes From Harrison Jail ———-
John W. Brown, who, with Charles Boswell, editor of the Charleston Labor Argus, and George F. Parsons, United Mine Workers’ organizer, have been imprisoned under the martial law anarchy system in West Virginia since last February, has written a letter to W. A. Peters, of this city, from the present abode of the three men, the Clarksburg jail.
These men, with Mother Jones and many others, were arrested by the militia and have been in jail ever since, having been tried at a farcial trial at which they were not even represented, and tried by men who had previously sworn that they believed them guilty. Their crime is defending the poor mine workers of this state from the greed of the coal barons. For this they will likely be sentenced to the penitentiary, and sent under a violation of the constitution of the state of West Virginia and the United States, for they have been denied a trial in the civil courts, before a jury.
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The Letter.
Following is the letter:
Harrison County Jail. Clarksburg W. Va., April 10, ’13.
Dear Comrade Peters:
Your kind favor of March 25 just reached me. Was mighty glad to hear from you. Nothing doing in the Haywood line for this bunch; I know of but two Haywoods in this country, and I am not one of them. As to trials and tribulations…I will tell you all about it some other time. Let it suffice to say: We are here—because we’re here.—Because we can’t get away.
We arrived here April 2 from Pt. Pleasant, where we were flooded out. And, strange as it may seem, we are treated here as human beings. We have been under arrest since Feb. 10, and up to the time we were brought here we were held “incommunicado.” Yet notwithstanding this, did not prevent us from touching an underground wire, and stinging them once in a while. Do you get the “Argus”? Did you see “Old Liberty” from the Bull Pen at Pratt or “Don’t give up the Fight” from Mason county jail?
It is impossible to say at this time what they are going to do with us. But you can take it from me that if they can get Boswell, Parsons and myself, we will sure go. I am looking for about five years. They couldn’t get us for a day in the civil-courts.
As to matters personal, there is nothing the comrades can do for us other than to demand a trial in the civil courts. It’s a great opportunity for the [Socialist] party, but unfortunately, the party is not taking advantage of it.
They made a mistake in bringing us here. Evidently the jailer told them he was running this jail, as we are getting our mail, and outgoing mail is not censored, besides we can see “everybody”, and there is someone here about all the time. The boys hold a meeting every night in front of the court house and every day they bring us in a good dinner.
We have been corraled in box cars, passenger cars, churches, freight depots, old stores and three jails in three different counties. I am afraid the comrades here are going to spoil our “playhouse,” and in that case they may take us to Wheeling.
Hellraisers Journal – Friday April 25, 1913 Martial Law/Strike Zone, West Virginia – Cora Older Speaks with Mother Jones
From Collier’s National Weekly of April 19, 1913:
Answering a Question
By MRS. FREMONT OLDER
Mrs. Older is the wife of Fremont Older, editor of the San Francisco “Bulletin,’’ who was one of the citizen leaders responsible for the overthrow of the Schmitz boodle gang and for the conviction of Abe Ruef. But Mr. Older is a newspaper man before he is a reformer. Hence his question-which herewith Mrs. Older answers.
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MOTHER JONES and forty-eight men were on trial before a military court in Paint Creek Junction, W. Va., charged with conspiracy to murder. Mother Jones and five leaders refused to plead; they would not admit that the military court had jurisdiction over civilians. It was an interesting situation, but little news came to the outside world.
“Why don’t we get news from West Virginia?” my husband asked me one morning. So I started from San Francisco to find out.
On the last day of the trial I arrived in Paint Creek Junction [Pratt], the military capital of the strike zone. A few small houses tilted toward the muddy New River. Barren brown mountains imprisoned the town.
A flag fluttered freely over the dingy village. A soldier greeted me as I got down from the train. Soldiers swarmed about the little railway station converted into a “bull pen” for strikers on trial. Through the streets at the point of guns soldiers were driving civilians. “Prisoners,” some said; “Martial law.” Former Governor Glasscock’s proclamation posted on the little green lunch counter at the station spelled it “Marital law.”
Pickles are served at breakfast in Paint Creek Junction. “Lena Rivers” is the “best seller,” but the place is filled with class hatred and suspicion. One whispers; soldiers may hear. Americans of old colonial stock sneer at the militia. “Yellow legs!” “Spies!” “Strike breakers!”
EVERY man is his own Marconi in Paint Creek Junction. In half an hour it was known that a strange woman had arrived to visit Mother Jones. A messenger tiptoed into my boarding house to say that Mother Jones and the prisoners were allowed to meet no one, especially reporters; but if I wanted to find out about conditions I’d better talk with Mother Jones’s landlady. “Go to the side door, and into the kitchen.”
By this time I felt like a conspirator. I almost tiptoed through the soldiers. Mother Jones occupied the parlor of a small white cottage. I was welcomed by the landlady. We were chatting in the kitchen when, without rapping, an officer entered and said to me: “The Provost Marshal wants you at headquarters.”
“Why?” I asked, bewildered. I did not know I was under arrest.
Martial law was in the soldier’s glance. He repeated his command. “And they call us anarchists,” commented the fiery-eyed, white-faced landlady.
Through the main street, past armed sentinels, up a flight of stairs to a large room filled with empty benches and stacked guns, we went to the Provost Marshal. Stern, unsmiling as justice, he asked me to explain my presence and my existence. I told him the truth. The Provost Marshal frowned. I wondered about the “bull pen.” I made the discovery that I am no Christian martyr. I am a sybarite hopelessly prejudiced against bull pens. I fumbled in my bag and brought forth an engraved card. I was released on good behavior.
But I was able now to answer the question which had brought me across a continent. The PROVOST MARSHAL was the ASSOCIATED PRESS CORRESPONDENT.
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday April 19, 1913
Akron, Ohio – Big Bill Haywood Visits City, Speaks to Strikers
From the International Socialist Review of April 1913:
800 Per Cent and the Akron Strike
By Leslie H. Marcy
[Part IV of IV]
On Friday, Feb. 28, Haywood stopped off a day at Akron and several thousand strikers met him at the train and paraded through the factory and business districts of Akron. Haywood spoke to two immense strike meetings. He said in part:
The greatest weapon you can use against the rubber robbers just now is to keep your hands in your pockets. When you have your hands in your pockets, the capitalist can’t get his there, and unless the capitalist has his hands in your pockets, he has got to go to work. So during the time of this strike, let there be no violence on your part, not the destruction of one cent’s worth of property, not one cross word. You have got this strike won if you will but stand together in One Big Union.
If the boss starves you back to work then you know how to win this strike on the inside of the factory. Don’t use the speeding up, but the slowing down process. This is an up-to-date organization, and we are fighting with modern weapons. The workers who understand the program and the policy of the I. W. W. will never again be defeated. We are organized now and fighting this battle for an eight-hour day.
As I said to you this morning, if you work only eight hours that is going to make room for more men and more women, and as the unemployed come into work, then the wages are going up. Your wages are going up anyway, because you are going to stand together until we force them up. Four dollars per week, or four and one-half is altogether too little for a girl to try and live on, and live decently, and. every girl, or a large per cent of them, would live decently if they got wages enough. But it is not a question of girlhood or womanhood with the rubber trusts. What they want is cheap labor. Cheap labor means to them more profits.
Just remember, men that we are the working class and it doesn’t make any difference what our nationality may be. My father was born in this state, I was born in this country and am an American.
There are no foreigners in the working class except the capitalist. He is the fellow we are after and we are going to get him. We are going to get Mr. Seiberling. If he is too old to work, we will get his son, and put him right in the rubber factory alongside the rest of ’em.
You simply get back enough to keep alive and in shape to work. If any of you fall by the wayside, and the undertaker visits your home, it doesn’t make any difference to Mr. Seiberling. Now workingmen, it is for you to organize. This strike is your strike. The success of this strike depends on you. There is no one else to fight.
If you had a picket line out every morning representing a crowd as big as this there would not be anybody going to work. You can influence enough to prevent them going to work. Get on the job in the morning in the picket line and visit these friends of yours at night in their homes.
Get this organization so that it will be 100 per cent strong. We will try, as we did at Lawrence, to raise money enough to carry you through.
[He further said:]
I have a warning to issue here. Those in authority must forget this proposition of wearing out their clubs on the strikers’ heads. They made the laws and there are proper processes for them to follow. Let them live up to it. If a striker violates law, let them arrest him and bring him before the court.
But I want to appeal to you strikers to conduct this strike along the peaceful lines you have been. You built this city and the rubber barons are realizing that you are necessary to its prosperity. They are realizing that until you are getting better pay and better hours, their profits won’t increase.
Hellraisers Journal – Friday April 18, 1913 Akron, Ohio – The Story of Annie Fejtko, Goodrich Striker
From the International Socialist Review of April 1913:
800 Per Cent and the Akron Strike
By Leslie H. Marcy
[Part III of IV]
The following story printed by the Akron Press, a paper which has tried to give the strikers’ side some showing in this bitter struggle, is the general answer of the women and girls who joined the strike:
Annie Fejtko, eighteen, joined the Akron rubber strikers Friday. She’s all alone in Akron-her own provider, housekeeper, washerwoman-and a mere child.
This is Annie Fejtko’s own summary of what she pays and how she spends it:
Average weekly pay, $4 to $4.50. Weekly board bill, $3. Left for dress, amusements, etc., $1 to $1.50.
She came to Akron about a year ago and has been working for the B. F. Goodrich Company ever since. She started to work on 10-hour day work, for $1, a day.
“I only worked that way three weeks,” said Annie. “Then they put me on piece work. My average two weeks’ pay is $8 or $9. I can’t save anything and I haven’t seen papa or mamma or the little brothers and sisters since I came here.
“They only live in Pennsylvania, too, but I can’t save enough to go and see them.”
The last day Annie worked she made 75 cents. Lots of days she said she made less.
“Some days I can make $1.25 and once in a while $1.50, but that’s only when I work on certain kinds of work, and just as fast as I can all day, without resting.”
The highest Annie has ever been paid for a day’s work, was $2. She never made that much again, she says. That day she was cutting paper rings to hold the rubber bulbs in packing. When Annie went home that night her hands were blistered from the scissors.
For some time before the strike Annie had been working in what is known as department 17-B, of the Goodrich. This is the rubber bulb branch. Her work is constantly changed, but for the most of the time she has been inspecting the hard rubber stems for the bulbs, she said. She is paid 9 mills a hundred for this work and makes around $1 when kept doing this all day.
But there’s stamping of time cards to be done, and the work is passed around. “Two mills a hundred is paid for this work,” says Annie, “and if you don’t work all day you couldn’t make over 25 cents.”
“In some of the departments the girls make more,” Annie states. “The buffers (a line of rubber bulb work), make as high as $2 a day when they get to work all the time, but lots of times there isn’t enough to keep them busy. Sometimes they are sent home and other times they stay around all day expecting more to do and only get about 25 cents worth of work.
“But I can’t make that much,” the girl says. “I suppose I’m not fast enough or something. But I work hard, ten hours every day and I have to do my own washing in the evenings, and skimp awful.”
When the strike started Annie didn’t quit. It ran from Tuesday until Friday. She wanted more money for her work, but she didn’t have anything saved and thought she couldn’t afford to lose a day.
“Friday Charlie, one of the pickets talked to me at noon. I decided I couldn’t be much worse off so I laid down my tools and four other girls in that department followed me out,” she explained.
“I haven’t any money and I have to pay board and-” she looked seriously out of the window, “but I suppose they’ll help me.”
“If I don’t get any more, though, when I go back, I don’t see how I can ever catch up out at Santo’s where I board.”
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 – Wednesday April 16, 1913 Akron, Ohio – 20,000 Workers on Strike Against Rubber Barons
From the International Socialist Review of April 1913:
800 Per Cent and the Akron Strike
By Leslie H. Marcy
[Part I of IV]
THE Rubber Aristocrats are having “tire trouble” in Akron, Ohio. Their mammoth 75-acre, 25,000-man-power, profit-making machines-known as the Goodrich-Diamond, Goodyear, Firestone and Buckeye rubber factories, have been badly punctured by a strike of 20,000 wage slaves.
The workers who have slaved for years laid down the bosses’ tools, rolled up their greasy working rags and walked out unorganized, on February 10, as a protest against tyrannical working conditions and repeated cuts in wages.
They are standing shoulder to shoulder and their arms are folded. There is no fire under the boilers; nor smoke issuing from the hundreds of industrial spires; the belts are on loose pulleys and even the wheels refuse to run.
The Rubber Barons refused to arbitrate with the state officials and threatened to move their plants from the city. Meanwhile the strike was rapidly being organized by militant members of the Socialist party working with the Industrial Workers of the World. The Socialist headquarters became the home of the strike committees while larger halls were secured for mass meetings, where thousands of workers hear the message of Revolutionary Socialism and Industrial Unionism. Comrades Frank Midney, “Red” Bessemer, George Spangler and fellow-workers George Speed, William Trautman, Jack Whyte and several more “live ones” are on the job speaking daily, organizing committees and strengthening the picket lines.
The home of Comrade Frank and Margaret Prevey was thrown open to the strikers and became a busy center of strike activity-sending out appeals for support, press notices and planing the work of taking care of those who were in need. Here was a hive that hummed twenty hours out of the twenty-four. Of course the Capitalist hirelings suddenly discovered that this was “an Agitators’ meeting place,” and made dire threats.
But the Rubber Barons in their palaces out on West Hill were also busy moulding public opinion through press and pulpit against this “foreign devil” called a strike. Were not collections dwindling on Sundays and business becoming “bad” during the week, and is not idleness the devil’s workshop?
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday April 15, 1913
“Sunday” -Drawing by Maurice Becker, Poem by Louis Untermeyer
-On Sunday September 29, 1912, at Lawrence, Massachusetts, a parade, led by Carlo Tresca, was attacked by police. The I. W. W. marchers were on their way to the cemetery in order to place flowers on the grave of Anna LoPizzo, martyr of the Lawrence Textile Strike. Tresca was seized by police, but freed by his Comrades.
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