Tag: Brotherhood of Timber Workers

Hellraisers Journal: Shall Emerson Die?-President of Brotherhood of Timber Workers Jailed in Lake Charles, Louisiana

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote BBH re BTW LA White n Black Unity, ISR p106 , Aug 1912—————

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday August 24, 1912
Jay Smith, Secretary of B. of T. W., Appeals for Funds to Save Fellow Workers

From Pittsburg (Kansas) Labor Herald of August 16, 1912:

Shall Emerson Die?
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[Letter from Jay Smith, B. of T. W. Secretary]

A. I. Emerson, Pres BTW, Cmg Ntn p6, Aug 24, 1912

Brother, Comrades, Fellow-workers:

On Sunday evening, July 7, 1912, while the Brotherhood of Timber Workers were holding a mass meeting on the public road at Grabow, La., thugs concealed in the office of the Galloway Lumber Co., fired upon our people with rifles and pump guns loaded with buck-shot. When the firing ceased, three men were found to be killed outright, several mortally and seriously wounded and thirty-odd others injured, the great majority being union men. Immediately following the “riot”, as it was called by the capitalists class, President A. L. Emerson, who was our chief speaker on the occasion, and other members of the Brotherhood, were arrested, denied bail, and placed in the county jail at Lake Charles, La., which prison is totally inadequate to accommodate the number of men now confined there, and is in a deplorably unsanitary condition, besides. Despite the condition of this prison, sick and wounded men are confined there, the authorities giving the excuse that there is no room in the I hospital for them and our boys are still being arrested.

This, so far, is the outcome of the “riot” at Grabow. That our boys were neither looking for nor expecting any such trouble is borne witness to by the fact that many of them had taken along their women and children, and, that none of the last were killed by the Trusts gunmen, is a miracle.

All the news and evidence so far reported shows that our men were not only ambushed, but that the “riot” had been carefully planned by the Lumber Trust, and we have every reason to believe, that hidden in the offices of the Galloway Lumber Co., were gunmen who had been sent over from other places by the Southern Operators’ Association. The “riot” was but the culmination of a long series of outrages against the Brotherhood and all other Union labor, and was staged by the Operators’ Association for the purpose of crushing out the unions in the Southern timber districts and terrorizing its workers back into meek submission into peonage. This has been the boasted purpose of the Operators’ Association: “To crush all union labor out of their mills and camps, drive all Socialist speakers out of their towns, and run things as they damned please.”

For twenty long months we have fought this mighty and merciless combination of capital, this vicious combine of grafters and gunmen, and, because they have not been able to whip us back into their mills and slave pens, they have planned the massacre of Grabow, and, failing there to kill our President Emerson and his bravest associates, they have taken him and them to jail and are preparing to stage another legal murder.

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Hellraisers Journal: International Socialist Review: “Timber Workers and Timber Wolves” by William D. Haywood, Part II

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote BBH re Industrial Freedom BTW LA, ISR p , Aug 1912—————

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday August 3, 1912
Brotherhood of Timber Workers Organizing Campaign in Louisiana

From the International Socialist Review of August 1912:

Timber Workers by BBH, ISR p105, Aug 1912

[Part II of II]

Before the campaign of organization [Brotherhood of Timber Worker] now inaugurated by the Industrial Workers of the World is closed the lumber barons of Dixieland will have learned that it is impossible to fell trees with rifles and saw lumber with six shooters.

It should be mentioned here that of the nine men arrested four are non-union men, two of them, John and Paul Galloway, being owners of the Lumber Company. All are charged with murder. This, perhaps, indicates that the Trust has not entirely corralled the officialdom of Louisiana. It is certain that they are in bad repute with the business element in nearly all of the towns as their commissaries have been the means of controlling nearly the entire earnings of their employees, who are compelled to trade with the companies or lose the only means they have of making a living.

To maintain their absolute control of the camps the lumber companies, with the aid of their thugs, patrolled the towns, in some places inclosures were built around the mills and shacks. Notices were posted warning away union men, peddlers and Socialists.

Only a few days ago, H. G. Creel, one of the Rip-Saw editors on a lecture tour, was roughly handled at Oakdale and DeRidder, La. He was compelled to leave the first-named place, being threatened and intimidated by gun-men.

The small merchant realizes that if the workers are allowed to trade where they choose some of their money would pass over their counters and they know if wages are increased there would be a corresponding increase in their day’s receipts. This will account for the fact that the small business man and farmer have given their sympathy and a measure of support to the growing union of timber workers.

Arthur L. Emerson and Jay Smith, both Southern born, are the men around whom interest centers. They are the men who organized the Brotherhood of Timber Workers. Emerson had made two trips to the West-one to the Lumber District to the Southwest and the other to the Northwest. It was during the time that he worked with the lumber jacks of the Pacific Coast that he learned the need of organization. This thought was especially developed when he came in contact with the Lumber Workers’ Union of St. Regis and other points in the Bitter Root Range of Mountains. Being a practical lumber jack and saw mill hand and mill-wright himself, he saw at once the discrepancy in wages between the Pacific Coast and the Gulf States and upon his return to Dixieland he immediately took up the burden of organizing the workers as the only possible means of bringing up their wages and conditions to the level of the already too-low Western scale.

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Hellraisers Journal: International Socialist Review: “Timber Workers and Timber Wolves” by William D. Haywood, Part I

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Hellraisers Journal – Friday August 2, 1912
Lake Charles, Louisiana – A. L Emerson, President of B. T. W., in Jail

From the International Socialist Review of August 1912:

Timber Workers by BBH, ISR p105, Aug 1912

[Part I of II]

A. L. EMERSON, President of the Brotherhood of Timber Workers, is in jail at Lake Charles, La. He was arrested following the shooting at Grabow, La., where three union men and one company hireling were killed outright and nearly two score of men were more or less seriously wounded.

The shooting is the outcome of the bitter war waged against the members of the Brotherhood of Timber Workers by the Lumber Trust for the last eighteen months. The scene of the tragedy that occurred on Sunday, July seventh, is a typical Southern lumber camp. The mill at this place is operated by the Galloway Lumber Company. In common with all others, it is surrounded by the miserable houses where the workers find habitation, the commissary store of the Company being the largest place of business in the towns. A strike has been on at this place since the middle of last May. The single demand on the part of the union men was for a bi-weekly pay day. Heretofore the pay days have been at long intervals-usually a month apart.

During the intervening weeks, when the men were in need of money to meet the necessities of life, they could secure advances on their pay but not in real money. They were compelled to accept Company Scrip payable only in merchandise and exchangeable only at the company commissary. If accepted elsewhere it is uniformly discounted from 10 to 25 per cent on the dollar.

Timber Workers LA Scrip, ISR p106, Aug 1912

In the commissary stores where the cash prices are always from 20 to 50 per cent higher than at the independent stores, the company has established another means of graft by making two prices-the coupon or scrip price being much higher than that exacted for real cash.

The conditions at Grabow can be used as an illustration of nearly all of the other lumber camps of the South.

The commissary store is not the only iniquity imposed upon the Timber Workers. For miserable shacks they [are] compelled to pay exorbitant rents; sewerage there is none; there is no pretense at sanitation ; the outhouses are open vaults. For these accommodations families pay from $5 to $20 a month. In one camp worn-out box cars are rented by R. A. Long, the Kansas City philanthropist, for $4 a month. Insurance fees are arbitrarily collected from every worker, for which he receives practically nothing in return, but whether his time be long or short-one day or a month-with the company, the fee is deducted. The same is true of the doctor fee and the hospital fee, which, in all places, is an imaginary institution. The nearest thing to a hospital that the writer saw was an uncompleted foundation at DeRidder, the place visited a few days prior to the Grabow tragedy. The gunmen and deputy sheriffs are an expensive innovation in the manufacture of lumber. These miserable tools are to be found everywhere and are used to browbeat and coerce the workers.

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Hellraisers Journal: Company Gunthugs Shoot Down Members of Brotherhood of Timber Workers at Grabow, Louisiana

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote BBH re Capitalist Class, Lbr Arg p4, Mar 23, 1911—————

Hellraisers Journal – Friday July 19, 1912
Grabow, Louisiana – Company Gunthugs Shoot Down Members of B. T. W.

From the Spokane Industrial Worker of July 18, 1912:

Kirby’s Thugs Shed Workers’ Blood

Grabow Massacre, Four Shot Dead, WDC Tx p2, July 8, 1912
The Washington Times
July 8, 1912

Not content with maiming and mangling the peons in their slave camps in the lumber district the Southern Lumber Operators’ Association has turned loose their gunmen to take the lives of those who dare to struggle for better conditions.

As a sequel to the degenerate actions of Kirby’s thugs there are three men lying dead in Grabow, La., and 20 others are wounded. Some of the latter are not expected to live.

Among those placed under arrest as the result of the battle between the scabs and the B T. W. men are A. L. Emerson, president of the Brotherhood of Timber Workers, and J. T. Galloway, president of the Galloway Lumber Co.

The dead are A. T. Vincent, scab; Roy Martin, Cates Hall, and two unidentified men, unionists; the fatal wounded being Ed Brown and J. Tooley, union men, and Bud Hickman, farmer.

The union men were from De Ridder and nearby points. They had gathered under direction of Emerson to hold demonstration in front of the non-union mills. The objective point was Grabow, where the Galloway plant is located.

Following a series of meetings, one of which was held at Carson, amid the jeers of the company thugs and the continual din created by hoodlums hired by the Kirby interests, the band of union men marched to the Galloway mills.

There Emerson commenced to address the non-union men, asking them to be men rather  than peons and to stand up for their class. The beating of tin cans and other noises created by company hirelings drowned out his voice. Suddenly an oath was heard high above all other noises and a shot pierced the body of a union man standing just beside Emerson. The shot came from the company office, it is alleged.

This was a signal for action and the scabs and thugs of the Lumber Trust had access to the guns and ammunition stored close at hand and the shooting became general.

After a battle lasting over ten minutes Emerson and the union men were forced to beak for cover. They gained the woods and made their way to their homes.

It is said that more than a score of arrests have been made upon the charge of murder. The militia has been called out, despite the protests of many persons. Especially strong in denouncing the calling of the troops are Wm. D. Haywood and Covington Hall., who were in New Orleans on business for the B. T. W. at the time of the outrage. It is thought that the presence of troops will add to the tenseness of the situation.

The feeling against Kirby’s hired murderers is growing and its echo is heard in Eastern Texas. In Oakdale, La., the company gunmen shot at H. G. Creel, leading writer for the National Rip-Saw. Creel has been instrumental in exposing Kirby’s blacklist and also is spreading broadcast the story of the shameful conditions in the Southern lumber camps. Along with the leaders of the B. T. W. there is a price upon his head, it is alleged, offered by the Lumber Trust.

The brotherhood was organized about 16 months ago and just recently decided to affiliate with the I. W. W. Organizers from the ranks of the Industrial Workers were sent into the district and were getting results. W. D. Reed, well known Colorado speaker, was also in the Southern lumber district, in the interest of the lumber workers.

The Southern Sawmill Operators’ Association has its headquarters at St. Louis, from which point it has been directing a bitter warfare against the B. T. W. The weapons used have been the boycott of B. T. W. sympathizers, the blacklist of B T. W. men, the mysterious shooting of active union men, the lockout of 5,000 men from their plants, and now open warfare on the B. T. W. and I. W. W. organizers at the hands of hired murderers, while the instigators of these cowardly deeds skulk in their palatial offices.

The B. T. W. is built of the same kind of men as the I. W. W. and against the spirit of revolution that springs alike in their breasts the guns of Kirby’s thugs are powerless.

Instead of breaking up the B. T. W. these damnable actions will awaken the spark of manhood in those who have been mere onlookers and the result will be ONE BIG UNION of toilers which will soon have control of the forests and the mills now being despoiled by Kirby and his breed of degenerate coyotes.

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[Newsclip and emphasis added.]

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