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Hellraisers Journal – Thursday February 9, 1911
Jack London Supports “Dear Brave Comrades of Mexican Revolution”
From The Sacramento Star of February 6, 1911:
JACK LONDON CALLS SELF
CHICKEN-THIEF
LOS ANGELES, Feb. 6-Friends of Jack London, the author, today are expressing surprise over a communication the writer sent to a gathering of Socialist and Mexican revolt sympathizers here last night in which he proclaimed himself a “chicken thief and a revolutionist.” Although used to the radical socialistic expression of London, his friends say be went further last night than ever before. His letter to the meeting follows:
To the dear, brave comrades of the Mexican revolution:
We Socialists, anarchists, hoboes, chicken thieves, outlaws and undesirable citizens of the United State are with you heart and soul in your effort to overthrow slavery and autocracy in Mexico. You will notice that we are not respectable. Neither are you. No revolutionist can possibly be respectable in these days of the reign of property. All the names you are being called we have been called. And when graft and greed get up and begin to call names, honest men, brave men, patriotic men and martyrs can expect nothing else than to be called chicken thieves and outlaws.
So be it. But I, for one, wish that there were more chicken thieves and outlaws of the sort that formed the gallant band that took Mexicali, of the sort that is heroically enduring the prison holes of Diaz, of the sort that it fighting and dying and sacrificing in Mexico today.
I subscribe myself a chicken thief and revolutionist.
JACK LONDON.
[Photograph added.]
