Tag: August Bebel

Hellraisers Journal: “Our Unfortunate Sisters” by Theresa Malkiel: on Low Wages, Poverty and Prostitution

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote T Malkiel, Sisters Arise, Sc Woman p10, July 1908
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Hellraisers Journal – Monday November 16, 1908
Theresa Malkiel: “Prostitution is very seldom a voluntary choice…”

From The Socialist Woman of November 1908:

Our Unfortunate Sisters

THERESA MALKIEL

The quality of mercy is not strain’d,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.

Theresa Malkiel 1874-1949, wiki

It has been estimated that there are six hundred thousand women in the United States who sell their bodies for a living. I know that many of you will shudder reading of this number of unfortunates and will think of them with hatred and disgust.

But be merciful, women, those sisters of yours are not bond slaves like the prostitutes of ancient times, nor are they aliens like the medieval woman of the street. They are gathered from your very midst, from the girls who have by adverse circumstances been impelled to turn to prostitution as a means of livelihood.

Like ourselves, these unfortunates have been carried under a mother’s heart, like ourselves they have been born and destined for an honest life, but victims of force and fraud, or economic conditions, they soon reached the point where society held out nothing better for them than the life of shame.

Prostitution is very seldom a voluntary choice on the part of the fallen. Girls do not elect to cast themselves away, they are driven to the haunts of vice. A young working girl is an easy mark for a man’s designing. And the designers are not wanting. Their most fruitful recruiting grounds are the stores where girls work long hours for small pay; the homes that have few comforts and no pleasures; the streets where girls are often cast while still unknown to sin, but are in want and without shelter; in places where distress and temptation stand ever present.

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Hellraisers Journal: From The Liberator: “The Trial of Eugene Debs” by Max Eastman -Cleveland, September 1918

Janet RayeEugene Victor Debs
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Quote EVD Duty of Love, Canton June 16, 1918~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday November 12, 1918
Max Eastman on the Federal Trial of Eugene Debs at Cleveland

From The Liberator of November 1918:

-Note: Comrade Debs was convicted of violating the Espionage Act in Federal Court in Cleveland on September 12, 1918.

The Trial of Eugene Debs

By Max Eastman

EVD Rose Stokes Max Eastman, Cleveland During Trial, Sept 1918

AT a Russian Socialist convention held in Stockholm in 1907 it was estimated that the delegates-140 of them-had spent, collectively, one hundred and thirty-eight years, three months and fifteen days in prison. They had been in exile one hundred and forty-eight years, six months and fifteen days. The length of time the convention as a whole had been active in Socialist propaganda was 942 years.

“It follows,” says Trotsky in a preface to one of his books, “that the time spent in prison and exile is about one-third of the time a Social-Democrat is active.” Reading that preface on my way west to attend the trial of Eugene Debs, I was struck by Trotsky’s unconscious assertion that the time spent in prison is part of the time that a Socialist is “active.” It is often the time that his influence is most active. And though the government may succeed in accelerating the immediate war program by imprisoning Debs, they will also accelerate the effect of his life-long service to the social revolution.

Whatever else he may be, Debs is the spiritual chief and hero of American Socialism, and I find myself in a very real perplexity in trying to report his trial on a charge of obstructing the war program. I believe that the postal authorities will recognize the necessity I am under, as a Socialist editor, of giving this news to the readers of the LIBERATOR. And, of course, I cannot write the news without some special appreciation of his life and character and the elevation of his motives. Yet, on the other hand, I recognize the necessity that the postal authorities are under of keeping out of circulation anything designed to obstruct the war program of the government. Therefore I assure the reader in advance, not only that I shall not quote or refer to anything that Debs said about the war, but that I shall not in any indirect way imply any such quotation or reference; or any discussion of what he said. As a Socialist, bidding a kind of temporary hail and farewell to a companion who is dear to the hearts and minds of millions of Americans-whether pro-war or anti-I write the news of his trial for Socialists.

When I slipped into the court-room at Cleveland a pretty young man in a pressed suit and a bow tie was reading Debs’ speech at Canton to the jury. He was manifestly embarrassed to find so much eloquence in his mouth. Debs was never younger, more spirited, more full of love and irony, than he was in that speech of June 16th.

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Hellraisers Journal: Appeal to Reason Announces Socialist Party Convention & Socialist Women Send A Message

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Women are tired of being “included,”
tired of being taken for granted.
They demand definite recognition,
even as men have it.
-Josephine Conger Kaneko

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Hellraisers Journal, Monday May 11, 1908
Chicago, Illinois – National Convention of Socialist Party of America

From the Appeal to Reason of May 9, 1908:

The Convention
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Socialist Party of America Button

The greatest political convention ever held in the interest of the working class in the United States will begin its deliberations on May 10th in the city of Chicago. This convention will represent every state and territory in the union and it will be the only political convention which will adopt a platform and name national candidates wholly in the name, and for the benefit of the working class.

Compared to the conventions of capitalist parties this will be a unique gathering. It will consist of both men and woman and its deliberations will be marked by the one unvarying purpose to faithfully express in political terms the economic interests of the working class….

The Appeal sends greetings to the delegates assembled at Chicago. It has full faith in their ability to clearly see the important duties which lie before them, and in their fidelity to discharge those duties with equal credit to themselves and the party.

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[Photograph added.]

From The Socialist Woman of May 1908:

ARE THE INTERESTS OF MEN AND WOMEN IDENTICAL?
A Suggestion to the National Convention
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Josephine C. Kaneko.

Josephine Conger Kaneko, 1904 as M Josephine Conger, Little Love and Nature Poems

It is an oft repeated phrase among Socialist agitators that the interests of men and women of the working class are identical, and therefore there should be no methods of education and appeal instituted for one sex alone; but that all efforts of this kind should be directed from one point, whether it be newspaper, pamphlet, street corner or platform, to all persons regardless of sex, creed or color.

And on this theory our educational work has proceeded, in this country at least, for the past quarter of a century. That is, we think we have proceeded on this theory. But it does not take very careful thought on the matter to discover that we have not acted in accordance with our theory at all, but have worked always as a matter of expediency along the line of least resistance with the male portion of humanity. It has never been very likely that we could reach the workingman in his wife’s kitchen or nursery, or her little parlor, and as it has seemed more expedient to work with him than with her, we have followed him to his lair—to the street corner, to the trade union hall, to the saloon. We have opened our locals in localities where he could be most easily reached, and have accommodated the environment to his tastes and needs. The little room at the rear of the saloon has not been so comfortable as his wife’s parlor or sitting room, and sometimes no larger. but he has felt more at ease in it when congregating with other men, so the locals have in some instances been established in the rear rooms of saloons, and frequently in other dreary, comfortless halls which are always obnoxious to women.

We have said, half-heartedly, that women could come to our locals in these dreary places. But they haven’t cared to come to any great extent, any more than the men would have cared to meet in the women’s parlors. It has been plainly a discrimination in favor of one sex above another. But it has always seemed a matter of expediency.

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