Hellraisers Journal: “Men don’t scare easy when they fight to keep other men from burning their homes.”-Don MacGregor

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Quote John Lawson 1913, after October 17th Death Special attack on Forbes Tent Colony, Beshoar p74—————

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday May 10, 1914
Don MacGregor Describes the Battle of the Hogback, Near Walsenburg

From the Chicago Day Book of May 5, 1914:

Remember Ludlow Battle Cry on Hogback Near Walsenburg CO, Day Book p1, May 4, 1914

They fired carefully, deliberately. They didn’t fire to frighten but to kill.

But they didn’t shoot at those militiamen because the blood lust was in their veins. They shot because the memory of Ludlow was in their minds.

Soon after the battle started, Rockefeller’s murderers at the Walsen mine turned their machine guns on the city of Walsenburg. Two men were killed there, while women and children crouched in terror in the basements of their homes.

Such was the battle of Walsenburg, in which 300 strikers Wednesday [April 29th] defended their position on a hilltop against about 200 so-called militiamen.

They tell me that one militiamen and ten gunmen were killed. It’s too bad but they shouldn’t be militiamen and gunmen. They shouldn’t be working for greedy coal operators against men and women and children who are striking for bread.

It wouldn’t be so bad if they weren’t working against the women and children. The men can stand their attacks. But when they kill wives and mothers and babies, kill them for hire it’s different.

I never knew braver or better men than those miners. They’re rough; they’re ignorant, but they’re men. They love their families.

And I know that when they fought the militia at Walsenburg it was simply to protect their families.

It wasn’t for revenge. It was from fear of another massacre.

The strikers under me occupied a position on a hill “the Hogback.” One-half mile back of them was their camp of Toltec, and stretching twelve miles back of that were seven other strikers’ camps in which were fifteen hundred women and children. All that stood between John D. Rockefeller’s murderers and these fifteen hundred women and children was “The Hogback” and the strikers on it.

And every man was thinking of Ludlow. Four men who had lost wives and children in the massacre there were in our ranks. They’d told the story of Ludlow, over and over again. They’d told how the militiamen and the gunmen, brought to Colorado to kill for hire, had trained their machine guns on the camp. They’d heard how the tents were set on fire, how the children screamed and died in cruel flames!

And they were determined to die rather than let those militiamen reach the camp back of Walsenburg.

We didn’t do wrong. We didn’t resist officers of the law. We resisted men who have preyed on us for months, who have shot us down, who have burned our camps and who have killed our women and children. That’s the awful part.

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Hellraisers Journal: From Behind the Bars of Cook County Jail, Big Bill Haywood Interviewed by Carl Sandburg

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If one man has a dollar he didn’t work for,
some other man worked for a dollar he didn’t get.
-Big Bill Haywood

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Hellraisers Journal, Saturday November 3, 1917
Cook County Jail, Illinois – Big Bill Haywood Speaks

From the International Socialist Review of November 1917:

HAYWOOD LONGS FOR “OTHER BOYS” IN JAIL
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Wants All I. W. W. Prisoners Brought Here—
“It Will Be so Homelike”
—–
By Carl Sandburg

Big Bill Haywood, ISR, Nov 1917

Thru a steel cage door of the Cook county jail, Big Bill Haywood today spoke the defiance of the Industrial Workers of the World to its enemies and captors.

Bill didn’t pound on the door, shake the iron clamps nor ask for pity nor make any kind of a play as a hero. He peered thru the square holes of the steel slats and talked in the even voice of a poker player who may or may not hold a winning hand. It was the voice of a man who sleeps well, digests what he eats, and requires neither sedatives to soothe him nor stimulants to stir him up.

 

The man accused of participation in 10,000 separate and distinct crimes lifted a face checkered by the steel lattice work and said with a slow smile:

Hello, I’m glad to see you. Do you know when they’re going to bring the rest of the boys here? We’d like to have them from all over the country together here. It would be homelike for us all to be together. Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From Behind the Bars of Cook County Jail, Big Bill Haywood Interviewed by Carl Sandburg”

Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: Carl Sandburg on “Government in Action”

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I saw militiamen level their rifles
at a crowd of workingmen…
-Carl Sandburg

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Hellraisers Journal, Friday October 12, 1917
“The Government-…I went out to find it.” -Carl Sandburg

Machine Gun Aimed at Ludlow, Apr 20, 1914

From the International Socialist Review of October 1917:

Carl Sandburg on Government, ISR Oct 1917

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Hellraisers Journal: Preparedness Logic by Boardman Robinson & Carl Sandburg on War

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Onward, Christian soldiers! Rip and tear and smite!
Let the gentle Jesus bless your dynamite.
Splinter skulls with shrapnel, fertilize the sod;
Folks who do not speak your tongue deserve the curse of God.

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Hellraisers Journal, Tuesday September 19, 1916
Views on Preparedness and War from Robinson and Sandburg

From this month’s edition of The Masses:

Preparedness Logic, B Robinson, Masses, Sept 1916

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Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: Robert Minor and Carl Sandburg Comment on War

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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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Monday July 10, 1916
From the International Socialist Review: The Workers and War

Robert Minor, Perfect Soldier, ISR, July 1916
Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: Robert Minor and Carl Sandburg Comment on War”