Tag: Austrian Immigrants

Hellraisers Journal: International Socialist Review: The Michigan Copper Miners’ Strike by Edward J. McGurty, Part I

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
Share

Quote Mother Jones, Stick Together, MI Mnrs Bltn p1, Aug 14, 1913—————

Hellraisers Journal – Monday September 1, 1913
“Copper Country” of Michigan – Western Federation of Miners Issues Strike Call

From the International Socialist Review of September 1913:

The Copper Miners’ Strike
By Edward J. McGurty

[Part I of II]

MI Copper Strike McGurty, First Day, ISR p150, Sep 1913

THE territory known as the “Copper Country” of Michigan is a peaked peninsula lying to the north of the Upper Peninsula. It is washed on three sides by the waters of Lake Superior, embracing the counties of Keweenaw, Houghton and Ontonagon.

The country is rich in copper and has one of the deepest incline shafts in the world, the Calumet & Hecla No. 7, at Calumet, which goes down about 8,000 feet. The Calumet & Hecla Company, with its subsidiaries, owns and controls practically all the property up here. For the past thirty years there has been no labor trouble here of any consequence. In that time the C. & H. has paid out $125,000,000 in dividends on an original capitalization of $1,200,000. The employes, many of them Cornish miners, have not revolted for years. They have submitted to every injustice and to tremendous exploitation.

For a number of years it was impossible for the Western Federation to make any headway in the Upper Peninsula. Attempts at organization have been met by the sacking and firing of men. Little could be accomplished. Gradually the Federation formed organizations at various points along the range. The Finns were very zealous in keeping activity alive. This last year especial efforts have been made to organize the men of the various nationalities. Those working in the mines are Cornish, Finnish, Croatian, Italian and Austrian. Up to May first, about 7,000 men were taken into the union.

The companies have worked a pseudo-contract system and cheated the men outright. They have paid low wages, many of the men getting as low as a $1.00 a day and some even less. The shifts have been long, running as high as twelve and thirteen hours. Last year the companies installed what is known as a “one-man” drill which is a man-killer.

It was the straw that broke the camel’s back in the copper zone. On the night of July 22, men went from one end of the range to the other, on foot and in rigs rousing the miners and making known the strike order. The next day there were 15,000 mine-workers who had laid down their tools. Smelter-men, surface-men, under-ground-men, all were out and the copper mines were tied up as tight as a drum. Then the men who had not already joined the union began to make their way to the offices and in a few days 90 per cent of the miners were organized.

MI Copper Strike McGurty, Union HQ Red Jacket Calumet, ISR p151, Sep 1913

Directly the men went out the sheriff of Houghton county deputized about 500 men and sent them about to create trouble. They provoked the strikers to the breaking point and there were 500 deputies without stars or guns in a short time. There were also a few of them went to the hospitals.

The papers here, under the control of the companies, have, as usual, lied about the strike, slandered the strikers, burned the “locations” up in their columns; killed law-officers, etc. The second day of the strike the sheriff acting under orders from McNaughton, $85,000-a-year-manager of the Calumet & Hecla, requested troops from Governor Ferris. Without any investigation of the situation Ferris ordered the entire state militia dispatched here. Protest after protest has been made by the people here, because the presence of the troops is for the purpose of creating trouble. But Ferris stalwartly keeps them here.

The commander of the troops is a real, dyed-in-the-wool conservative. He says that the refusal of the union men to work the pumps and keep water from flowing into the mines amounts to the DESTRUCTION OF PROPERTY. Even in times of industrial war, the mine-owners are accustomed to meek wage slaves that pump the water out of the mines.

The troops have ridden up the streets of Calumet and Red Jacket at night on horse-back and have ruthlessly clubbed innocent men and women conversing on the side-walks. They knocked down an old man of 70, and threw a baby out of a buggy onto the pavement. They have shot at strikers all over the range when the strikers were doing picket duty.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: International Socialist Review: The Michigan Copper Miners’ Strike by Edward J. McGurty, Part I” →

Hellraisers Journal: 47 Miners, Entombed at Argonaut Mine, Found Dead; Ernest Miller Was Hero of Butte Mine Fire of 1917

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
Share

Quote Mother Jones, Pray for dead, ed, Ab Chp 6, 1925—————

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday September 24, 1922
Jackson, California – 47 Miners Found Dead at Argonaut Mine

From The Anaconda Standard of September 19, 1922:

re Aug 28 Argonaut MnDs, Jackson CA, 1, 47 Found Dead, Anaconda Stn p1, Sept 19, 1922re Aug 28 Argonaut MnDs, Jackson CA, 2, 47 Found Dead, Anaconda Stn p1, Sept 19, 1922

 By the Associated Press.

re Aug 28 Argonaut MnDs, Jackson CA, Hero of Butte MnDs Among Dead, Anaconda Stn p1, Sept 19, 1922

JACKSON, Cal., Sept. 18.-All 47 of the miners entombed in the Argonaut mine Aug. 27 are dead, it was announced officially shortly before 9 o’clock tonight. A note found on one of the bodies indicated that all the men had died within five hours of the beginning of the fire, Aug. 27, officials said.

All the miners were found behind the second of two bulkheads they had built in a crosscut 4,350 feet down in the Argonaut mine. Byron Pickard, chief of the federal bureau of mines for this district, was the first man to go behind the bulkhead and discovered the bodies.

Pickard, on an earlier exploration behind this bulkhead, had counted 42 bodies and expressed the belief that there were others there.

The same note bore a scrawled figure “4,”  apparently indicating the same man had attempted to leave word for  those who might come as to the condition of the mine at that hour.

Mine officials declared that the condition of the crosscut behind the bulkhead was such that life could not have been sustained there by the entombed men for more than five hours.

The bodies were found piled one on top of another and decomposition had progressed so far that identification would be impossible, Pickard reported.

Relatives Mourn in Silence.

Jackson as a whole took the tragic news calmly and courageously. The general topic of conversation except in the immediate family circles of the dead, was arrangements for the funeral, which it was said would be held as a joint affair.

Those of the bodies that were not piled atop of one another were huddled together in little groups. Since death came approximately 22 days ago and the temperature in the crosscut where the men took refuge averages about 100 degrees, it will be necessary to wrap each body in canvas prior to its removal to the surface.

Officials thought it, likely some, but not all, of the bodies could be removed before morning.

The sad scenes customarily associated with removal of the dead from mine disasters were lacking here tonight. There was no crowd of weeping widows and sorrowing relatives at the mine mouth. Among those gathered at the entrance to the great gold workings, newspaper men and miners and comrades of those entombed predominated. For days the relatives have remained at home under persuasions of mine officials and Red Cross workers and tonight it was the Red Cross or sympathetic friends acting under its guidance that broke the sad news to them.

The time elapsing since the men were entombed had given opportunity, to all to prepare for the worst and when that came it was accepted without demonstration.

Most of the miners were of Austrian or Italian birth. Eighteen of them were married and these leave 25 orphans. The second communication from the dead was discovered near the body of William Fezzel. Scratched on a timber were these words, “3 a. m. Gas very bad. Fezzel.”

The hour indicated was only three hours after fire broke out in the Argonaut.

———-

re Aug 28 Argonaut MnDs, Jackson CA, Miners Fot Calmly and Coolly, Anaconda Stn p1, Sept 19, 1922

[Emphasis added.]

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: 47 Miners, Entombed at Argonaut Mine, Found Dead; Ernest Miller Was Hero of Butte Mine Fire of 1917” →

Hellraisers Journal: Strikebreakers Return to New York City from McKees Rocks with Tales of Imprisonment and Abuse

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
Share

Quote Mother Jones, Powers of Privilege, Ab Chp III———-

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday September 2, 1909
Strikebreakers Return to New York City from McKees Rocks with Tales of Abuse

From The New York Times of August 28, 1909:

RETURN FROM McKEES ROCKS.
—–
Strikebreakers Who Enlisted Here
Come Back with Tales of Abuse.
—–

McKees Rocks Strike, Stockade, Loco Fmen Mag p715, Nov 1919 —–

Five white-faced, sunken-cheeked men got off a train at Jersey City yesterday and disperse, wearily and in silence, to their east side tenement homes.

They were James Gottfried, Alexander Friedman, Joseph Diamond, James Graden, and Joseph Bredes. They had been taken to Schoenville, near Pittsburg, with more than a hundred other machinists from this city two weeks ago to break the Pressed Steel Car Company’s strike [at McKees Rocks]. They had been hired for the job through the activity of Leo Bergoff’s “Service Bureau” ” of this city.

According to the story told by the five men yesterday, they spelled out an advertisement for “machinists” in the “help wanted” columns of a Manhattan newspaper about two weeks ago. All five had recently come to this country and wanted work. They went over to the basement at 205 West Thirty-third Street, as the advertisement directed. They were met there by Bergoff, “Sam” Cohen, and their lieutenants. Cohen told them that he wanted ” 1,000 railroad car truck builders,” and that he was willing to pay $3 a day. He said the “job” was in Pittsburg, and that it was a “good one.” To impress the men with its excellence he had them sign their names to a piece of paper, on which there was some writing which they could not see, because, the men said yesterday, his hand was in the way.

The men agreed to go, and on July 16 they were taken to Jersey City by Cohen and put on a train. Getting off at Pittsburg, they were herded on a big transport and taken up the river to the Pressed Steel Car Company’s works. Here they were set to work immediately without being given even a chance to rest after their journey. For the next nine days and nights the five men worked, ate and slept in big, barn-like structures inside the stockade with 2,000 machinists and other laborers who, they say, were kept at work inside the stockade against their will.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Strikebreakers Return to New York City from McKees Rocks with Tales of Imprisonment and Abuse” →

Hellraisers Journal: Honeymoon of Elizabeth Flynn & Jack Jones Halted, Will Rejoin Comrade Husband in Spring

Janet RayeElizabeth Gurley Flynn
Share

You ought to be out raising hell.
This is the fighting age.
Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hellraisers Journal, Friday February 14, 1908
New York, New York – Young Socialist Returns to Parent’s Home

For the past few weeks, the news of the arrest of the husband of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn has been published in newspapers across the nation. For example, we have this item from Alabama’s Centreville Press of February 13th:

Socialist’s Husband Arrested.

John A. Jones, husband of Elizabeth Flynn, the girl Socialist agitator, was arrested at Aurora, Minn., on a charge of incendiarism.

—–

At this time Elizabeth Gurley Flynn is in New York City and her husband, Jack Jones, is out of jail and has recently been interviewed by a reporter for the Duluth News Tribune.

From Mississippi’s Vicksburg Evening Post of February 3, 1908:

PRISON HALTS HONEYMOON OF GIRL
—–

EGF, DEN (ca) p 21, crpd, Sept 21, 1907

New York, Feb. 3.-With a romance written in suffering, a lifetime crowded into a few months, through which the divine fire of a cause gleams like a beacon light, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, the girl Socialist agitator whose words have at seventeen made her known across a continent, has returned ill and exhausted to her father’s home in New York City.

It is just two years ago since Miss Flynn, then a student in the Morris Heights High School, became affiliated with the Socialist movement. Gifted with a quick brain and a facile oratory, she seized upon the dramatic possibilities of the great struggle of labor and capital and spoke as one inspired.

The Flynns are New England folk, the father of a Bowdoin College man and civil engineer, whose difficulties with a company which refused him the money he had earned first aroused the thoughtful Elizabeth, eldest of a brood of four, to interest in the situation. When the Flynns left their Connecticut home to come to New York the girl, already deep in socialist literature, became associated with the leaders in this city. But she was a child, too young to become a member of the association, therefore she was permitted to speak from their platform only as an affiliated agitator.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Honeymoon of Elizabeth Flynn & Jack Jones Halted, Will Rejoin Comrade Husband in Spring” →