Tag: Capitalism

Hellraisers Journal: William Z Foster on the Alschuler Award: “How Life Has Been Brought into the Stockyards,” Part II

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote WZF, re Poverty of Packinghouse Workers, LnL, April 1918


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Hellraisers Journal, Saturday April 6, 1918
Victory! for Packinghouse Workers by William Z. Foster, Part II

From Life and Labor of April 1918:

HOW LIFE HAS BEEN BROUGHT
INTO THE STOCKYARDS
A Story of the Reorganization of the Packing Industry

William Z. Foster
Secretary Chicago Stockyards Labor Council

The main questions, touching wages, hours and conditions of labor, involved in the Stockyards arbitration hearing before Judge Alschuler, and his decision concerning them, are of overwhelming importance, both in principle and in consequence. Just how far-reaching will be the results of the decision one cannot now forecast. But lips stiffened by poverty will perhaps now learn to smile, and thousands of families will for the first time taste of life.

[Part II]

DRASTIC ACTION TAKEN

Chicago Stockyards, WZF, LnL p68, April 1918

The cup was full. It was evident that the packers had no intention of living up to their agreement, but were seeking openly to destroy the unions, let the consequences be what they might. The unions accepted the issue. They at once broke off negotiations with the packers and sent the committee away to Washington again to demand that the President take over the packing houses, as the only way to guarantee their operation during the period of the war.

On January 18th the committee met with President Wilson, explained to him the imminent danger of a great strike in the packing houses and asked that he take steps to seize the industry. The President replied that the proposed remedy involved a big issue, that he would take it under advisement, and that in the meantime another, effort would be made to get a settlement through arbitration.

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Hellraisers Journal: From The Eye Opener: Eugene V. Debs on Indicted Socialists and Attacks on Russia

Janet RayeEugene Victor Debs
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I have no country to fight for;
my country is the earth,
and I am a citizen of the world.
-Eugene V. Debs

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Hellraisers Journal, Sunday March 17, 1918
Eugene V. Debs on Indictments of Socialist Comrades

From The Eye Opener of March 16, 1918, page 2:

Indicted, Unashamed and Unafraid.
by Eugene V. Debs

Socialist Party of America Button

Sunday morning, March 10, the press dispatches in the daily papers announced the indictment the day before in the federal court at Chicago of Adolph Germer, National Secretary; Victor L. Berger, member of the National Executive Committee; J. Louis Engdahl, editor of The Eye Opener; William F. Kruse, Secretary of the Young People’s Socialist League; and Irwin St. John Tucker, writer and lecturer, all of the Socialist Party [of America]. The charge against them is seditious utterance and interference with the prosecution of the war.

The indictments were found Feb. 2, we are told, but secrecy was preserved regarding the proceeding until the administration at Washington could be consulted and its sanction secured before entering the prosecution.

It is thus made clear that this indictment, while ostensibly directed against certain individuals, is in fact the indictment of the Socialist Party by the national administration at Washington.

If Germer, Berger, Engdahl, Kruse, and Tucker are guilty, so are we all. They have but spoken and written what the Socialist Party stands for, and if Socialism, the thing we stand for and shall continue to stand for, is criminal and subject to indictment and prosecution, then the administration, to be logical and consistent, should indict, prosecute, and imprison not only the spokesmen of the party but its entire membership of more than 100,000 social rebels, who in opposing the damnable profiteering system which has precipitated this bloody deluge upon humanity are alike guilty of sedition and disloyalty in the bleared eyes of the autocratic rulers of this country.

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Hellraisers Journal: Elizabeth Gurley Flynn Found in New York City Supporting Strike of Young Millinery Workers

Janet RayeElizabeth Gurley Flynn
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You ought to be out raising hell.
This is the fighting age.
Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
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Hellraisers Journal, Thursday February 13, 1908
New York, New York – Elizabeth Gurley Flynn Stands with Strikers

Since her marriage in Minnesota, in early January, to I. W. W. organizer Jack Jones, his arrest and her subsequent return to her parent’s home in New York, we have not heard much from Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. But we did find this item in the New York Sun of February 7th:

GIRL SOCIALIST TO STRIKERS
—–

ELIZABETH FLYNN ENLIVENS A MEETING OF MILLINERS
—–
Commends the Workers to the Socialist Trades Unions
and Describes Hearst as a Middle Class Reformer
-As for Roosevelt, What’s He to Labor?

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

The mantle which Thomas W. Lawson discarded when he announced that so far as he was concerned the “System” might work out its own destruction has fallen upon the shoulders of Miss Elizabeth Flynn. She wore it last night most becomingly and effectively at a mass meeting of milliners in Teutonia Hall, 66 Essex street.

Miss Flynn is 17 and slim, with big Irish blue eyes, nut brown hair and the milk white skin that betokens a Killarney ancestry. Her voice is clear, soft and coaxing, with a carrying power and a staying quality that the average Madison Square Garden orator would be glad to attain at almost any cost.

The crusader against capital spoke for one hour and a quarter and at the end of that period seemed fresher and more enthusiastic than when she began. As for what she didn’t say about the robbers who stole from the poor working man his country, the tools and materials and the finished product of his labor, and even annexed his inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, it would be difficult for the most ingenious opponent of the “System” to conceive.

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Hellraisers Journal: “Suffer Little Children” Does Not Mean to Crush Their Souls & Grind Their Bodies into Profits

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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But the young, young children, O, my brothers,
They are weeping bitterly.
They are weeping in the playtime of others.
In the country of the free.
-Anon.

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Hellraisers Journal, Wednesday January 19, 1898
In United States of America: Grinding Up Children for Profit

From the Appeal to Reason of January 15, 1898:

Suffer Little Children, AtR, Jan 15, 1898Hear the Children Weeping, AtR, Jan 15, 1898

IN addition to the above it might also be stated that improved labor-saving machinery is rapidly, and at an increasing ratio, forcing children into the shops and factories, displacing the women who had previously displaced the men. In New England textile papers you will see advertisement after advertisement for help: “Spinners wanted; only those with large families, whose children are old enough to work in the mill.”

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Hellraisers Journal: New York Tribune Article Paints Haywood as “American Bolsheviki” Bent on “Reign of Terror”

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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The mine owners did not find the gold,
They did not mine the gold,
They did not mill the gold,
But by some weird alchemy
All the gold belonged to them!
-Big Bill Haywood

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Hellraisers Journal, Monday December 31, 1917
New York, New York – Kept Press Waxes Hysterical on Big Bill

From the New York Tribune of December 30, 1917:

BBH American Bolsheviki Terror, NYTb p22, Dec 30, 1917

The article, authored by Theodore Knappen, is a long one and describes Fellow Worker Haywood’s long history of service to the working class as an effort to seek “the destruction of the existing system of government and industry by means of direct action.”

Interesting that the same author seems to hold no such outrage for the enslavement of children in mine and mill, for the thousands of men who perish each and every year in the mines, for the strikers and their wives and children murdered at Ludlow, Calumet, Roosevelt and other scenes of massacres too numerous to mention, nor for the millions thrown onto the scrap heap to face homelessness and starvation when they can no longer work or find work. One might conclude that such an “existing system” deserves to be replaced with a system which honors and respects the working men, women and children who provide the labor that keep it running.

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Hellraisers Journal: Appeal to Reason: Eugene Debs on “Panic Philosophy” & “widespread poverty, misery & despair.”

Janet RayeEugene Victor Debs
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While there is a lower class, I am in it,
While there is a criminal element, I am of it,
And while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.
-Eugene Victor Debs

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Hellraisers Journal, Monday December 30, 1907
#630 of Appeal to Reason Addresses “A Stupendous Crisis”

From the Appeal of December 28, 1907:
The following is the contribution made by Debs to the “Panic Edition”-

Panic Philosophy by EVD, AtR Dec 28, 1907

HMP, EVD, Eugene OR Guard, May 30, 1907

THE average man understands in a vague way that there is a panic, so-called, and he is more or less concerned about it according as it affects his business or his employment. But he has never studied economics and knows nothing about the laws governing social development. The panic distresses him, it is true, but he is not philosophic enough to inquire into its cause; he simply wants to get rid of the plague.

And so the average man falls easy prey to the political quack in the service of the industrial baron who glibly rings the changes on “financial stringency,” “elastic currency,” “lack of confidence,” “tariff revision,” “trust regulation” and like meaningless twaddle.

It is a fact to be deplored that the average man is a mental child; reads little and that mostly vapid nonsense; thinks less, and reasons not at all.

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Hellraisers Journal: To the Preachers of “Morals” by Ralph Chaplin: “You do the work of hired thugs and spies..”

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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The World’s great Wrong cries out; you do not heed,
But drivel rot with heaven-uplifted eyes,
Then creep away behind a cloud of lies
To kiss the palsied hand of murderous Greed.
-Ralph Chaplin

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Hellraisers Journal, Monday December 17, 1917
A Rebel Verse from Ralph Chaplin

Ralph Chaplin, Preachers of Morals, Leaves, 1917

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Hellraisers Journal: “GIRL WITH A MISSION,” Elizabeth Gurley Flynn Speaks to Packed House in Duluth, Minnesota

Janet RayeElizabeth Gurley Flynn
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EGF Quote, I fell in love with my country, RG 96

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Hellraisers Journal, Wednesday November 27, 1907
Duluth, Minnesota – Elizabeth Gurley Flynn Speaks to Packed House

From The Industrial Union Bulletin of November 23, 1907:

THE GIRL WITH A MISSION
—–
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn Addresses a Packed House
at Duluth on Industrial Unionism

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

The visit of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn to Minnesota in behalf of the Industrial Workers of the World is arousing great interest among the workers of that state. She spoke on Sunday night, November 17, at Duluth, to an audience that filled Odd Fellows’ hall. From an interesting report of the meeting in the Duluth Harald we take the following extracts:

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn is nothing if not earnest. Socialistic fervor seems to emanate from her expressive eyes, and even from her red dress. She is a girl with a “mission,” with a big “M,” and she delivered her sweeping generalities with perfect indifference as to where they hit.

She spoke to an audience which packed Odd Fellows’ hall last evening. There were a few labor leaders there out of curiosity; a scattering of women who were curious to see this strange school girl with the strange mission in life, and a large number of followers of the Socialistic doctrines expressed.

Characterizing the American Federation of Labor as organized scabbery, and branding it as a labor trust working injury to the majority of laborers for the benefit of the minority, the girl orator was evidently voicing the sentiments of many of her Socialistic followers in the room, but her statements in this respect made the several local labor leaders present hitch uneasily about in their chairs.

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Hellraisers Journal: Editorial from the International Socialist Review: “The Panic” by A. M. Simons

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Panic, ISR, Nov 1907

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Hellraisers Journal, Thursday November 7, 1907
From the International Socialist Review: “The Panic”

ISR Nov 1917

[…..]

ISR Editorial, Nov 1907

The Panic.

[By A. M. Simons]

Panic on Wall Street, Wiki, Oct 1907

By far the most important event of the month has been the financial disturbance. It is rather interesting that the ink was scarcely dry on the editorial in this magazine last month, questioning whether there would ever be another panic than we seemed to be launched full into the midst of one.

To be sure there is still some question of whether all the phenomena of an industrial crisis will follow, or whether, after a brief period of financial upheaval, there will be only a steady industrial depression, or possibly a revival. It is certain that never before has there been such a conscious control of affairs by great industry as has been shown during the past few weeks, but it still remains to be seen just how effective that control is in the deeper industrial phases of the subject.

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