Don’t worry, Fellow Worker,
all we’re going to need
from now on is guts.
-Frank Little
Hellraisers Journal, Friday September 14, 1917
Federal Government Claims “War Measure” for Move Against I.W.W.
From Ohio’s Marysville Evening Tribune of September 10, 1917:
Hellraisers Journal, Friday July 6, 1917
Duluth, Minnesota – Miss Flynn “Expelled” from I. W. W.
From the Pittsburgh Daily Post of July 1, 1917:
Note: the information below comes via the Duluth Police Department, and not directly from Elizabeth Gurley Flynn.
I. W. W. President Expels
Miss Flynn
—–
DULUTH, Minn., June 30.-Elizabeth Gurley Flynn of New York told Duluth police, before departing for her home, that William Haywood, Chicago, president [General Secretary-Treasurer] of the Industrial Workers of the World, had expelled her from the organization. Miss Flynn, according to the police, said Haywood and his advisors charged she conspired with Carl [Carlo] Tresca, Haywood’s former lieutenant, to “double cross” four industrial workers who received penitentiary sentences recently on a murder charge, in connection with labor troubles.
Miss Flynn exhibited a manuscript which was to have been her speech at Virginia, Minn., last Sunday. In it she made pleas against stories at the mines during the war, and this address, she said, was in conflict with Haywood’s plans. It was Miss Flynn’s story that brought about her release from charges of vagrancy Thursday, the police said today.
———-
[Photograph added]
Hellraisers Journal, Saturday January 6, 1917
From the Mesabi Range, Minnesota, Comes News of Plea Agreement
The International Socialist Review of January 1917:
Victory on the Mesaba Range
By HARRISON GEORGE
We were all ready to go to press when the following telegram came in. We feel sure all REVIEW readers will be interested in the brief sketches that follow:
Virginia, Minn., Dec. 15, 1916.
Tresca, Scarlett, Schmidt, Mrs. Masonovitch, Orlandich, [F]reed, Phil Masonovitch, Nikich, Cernogorovich year sentence each. All cases against Gilday, Greeni, others dismissed. Full statement will follow. Funds needed here meet honor bound obligations. All committees rush balance funds on hand here. All together for freedom Everett and all class war prisoners.
Ettor, Gilday, Flynn.
CARLO TRESCA, who was born in Sulmona, Italy, in 1879. Entering the labor movement at an early age, he became editor of a Socialist paper in his native town when he was only twenty years old. By 1904 he had shown his worth by being many times sent to prison on political charges. In 1903 he was elected secretary of the largest labor organization of Italy, the Syndicate of Firemen and Railroad Engineers. In 1904, however, he was given choice of eighteen months penal servitude or ten years exile for political offenses, and, choosing exile, he landed in America in August, 1904. As organizer and editor he continued his fight for labor, now being editor of an Italian paper in New York, LL’Avenire [L’Avvenire]. Jailed for months on different occasions, he was attacked by an assassin, who is said to have been an emissary of the Italian consul in Pittsburgh and his throat badly slashed. In the last six years Tresca has taken part in all big strikes of the I. W. W., which involved Italian workers. Lawrence, Little Falls and Paterson are only a few of the many strikes where thousands cheered when Tresca stood before them. Now he is on trial for murder. The witness against him has said that when a certain remark was made by another speaker, Tresca smiled and said, “Good, good!” For a smile and one short word, twice uttered, Tresca has been charged with murder!
It is a privilege and a duty even by sacrifice
to advance our priceless cause.
-John R Lawson
Hellraisers Journal, Friday January 5, 1917
From The Masses: FW Flynn on Behalf of Minnesota Defendants
The following article was obviously written for The Masses by Fellow Worker Flynn, I. W. W. organizer, before the plea agreement was reached in the cases of the strikers and organizers charged with first degree murder in connection with the strike of iron miners up on the Mesabi Range of northern Minnesota. The article is nevertheless valuable for the information given regarding the defenses campaign along with a short history regarding “criminal conspiracy” as related to labor struggles, past and present. Tomorrow’s Hellraisers will present an article from this month’s edition of the International Socialist Review, written by Harrison George, which claims the plea agreement as a victory for the strikers and for the cause of labor in general.
From The Masses of January 1917:
The Minnesota Trials
Many of our friends fail to appreciate the magnitude of the Minnesota strike, involving 15,000 miners and the United States Steel Corporation, and are beguiling themselves into belief that the murder cases pending are not serious.
Mrs. Masonovitch [Masonovich], the woman prisoner, wife of one of the strikers, is a particularly pathetic and appealing figure, a young and beautiful Montenegrin woman, mother of five children, one a nursing baby. She speaks little English, does not understand the proceedings, looks frightened and bewildered and clings frantically to her children. If the parents should be convicted these little ones would be practically orphans. The older ones, twelve and eight, bright, nice boys, tell very clearly what happened on July 3, the night of the tragedy, how the deputies came to arrest their father, how one struck their mother and threw her to the floor, how the fight then started in which Mr. Myron was killed, and how Nick Dillon, the notorious gunman, shot and killed Thos. Ladvalla [Tomi Ladvalla-WE NEVER FORGET], a bystander. If the episode was not connected with a strike, it would be comparatively easy to clear these poor people.
Hellraisers Journal, Tuesday December 26, 1916
New York City – Carlo Tresca Welcomed Home at Mass Meeting
From the New York Sun of December 25, 1916:
TRESCA WELCOMED BCK.
—–
I. W. W. Leader Kissed on Both
Cheeks at Public Meeting.
Nearly a thousand anarchists and Industrial Workers of the World expressed in a variety of ways yesterday their happiness at the return to New York of their fiery leader, Carlo Tresca, who has been on trial* in Minnesota as a result of his activities in the Mesaba iron range strike.
A meeting of welcome was held in Manhattan Lyceum, 66 East Fourth street. In his exuberance William Shatoff kissed the protesting Carlo first on one cheek and then on the other, while the crowd yelled its appreciation of the scene Shatoff afterward made a speech, but as it was in Russian it will not be reported. Hundreds of his compatriots gathered around Carlo and kept him busy shaking hands for half an hour. Then the meeting began. Tresca said the Minnesota iron miners were ready for another strike “when the gong rings.”
[*Note-Tresca did not stand trial, but was released as part of a plea agreement.]
Hellraisers Journal, Saturday December 23, 1916
Mesabi Range, Minnesota – Plea Agreement & Vindication Meeting
Today’s Duluth Labor World discusses the issues of Justice surrounding the plea agreement reached last week which led to the release of I. W. W. organizers Tresca, Scarlett, and Schmidt:
OTHER DEFENDANTS DRAW
INDEFINITE TERMS
———-
Tresca, Scarlett and Schmidt are freed. Last Friday they were let out of the dingy, over-crowded St. Louis county jail and given their liberty.
Months ago The Labor World made the prediction that the cases against these men would never come to trial; that as soon as the trouble on the ranges blew over these men would be let go. Our prediction was correct, although we have no inclination to claim the virtues of a prophet.
Hellraisers Journal, Thursday December 14, 1916
The Mesabi Range – Miss Flynn Fired Up; Famous Attorney Arrives
The Duluth News Tribune, which newspaper seems to approve of the black-hearted Biwabik editor who advocated Everett-style murder against the iron range strikers, nevertheless disapproves when Elizabeth Gurley Flynn wonders aloud why that same editor doesn’t go right on ahead and “start something.”
Meanwhile the famous labor attorney, Judge Orrin N. Hilton has arrived on the Range and is honored to be on the defense team of those charged with murder in connection with a lawless raid on a miner’s home in Biwabik during the miners’ strike last summer. Judge Hilton was the attorney for Joe Hill during the appeal of his murder conviction in the state of Utah. Hilton delivered the Memorial Oration at the Chicago funeral of our Martyred Rebel Songwriter, and that oration so offended the state of Utah that the Judge was formally disbarred in that state on July 1st of this year.
From The Duluth News Tribune of December 11, 1916:
GURLEY FLYNN TAKES “SLAM”
AT PUBLISHER
—–
HIBBING, Dec. 10.-Elizabeth [Gurley] Flynn, speaking here this afternoon at Workers’ hall in the interests of the I. W. W. members to be tried at Virginia for alleged murder, asked the editor of the Biwabik Times “why he doesn’t start something.” Miss Flynn directed that question from the platform to the absent editor after she had referred to his recent editorial in which he suggested that the best way to treat the I. W. W. on the range was to take an example from the vigilantes of Everett, Wash., where five members of the organization were killed and 52 wounded.
Hellraisers Journal, Tuesday December 5, 1916
Minnesota Mesabi Iron Range – Bullets for Striking Miners?
The Duluth Labor World recently addressed the grave concern displayed by the Biwabik Times for the poor picked-upon Steel Trust. The Times believes that the Lumber Trust of Washington set a good example on the care and treatment of labor agitators when their deputized company gunthugs committed mass murder on Everett’s Bloody Sunday.
From The Labor World of December 2, 1916:
BIWABIK TIMES ADVOCATES MURDER!
The Biwabik Times in its issue of Nov. 24 openly
advocates murder!Think of it! That staunch defender of the poor unprotected steel trust!
It, advocates and even urges the citizens of Biwabik to take human life!
The Times is really worried over the plight of the poor unprotected steel trust. It isn’t fair to call another strike. So naturally the Times has its first convulsion when it learns that a strike of miners will be called on April 1, 1917.
Here is their recommendation:
“To the Times there is apparently but one way to stop this outrage, and that is to just as did the citizens of Everett, Washington.”
The Everett tragedy, contrary to the statements made by the Biwabik Times, is a sad commentary upon the characters and names of the Everett business men who promoted it.
Their only crime consisted of opposing
the U. S. Steel trust on the Mesaba Range
in an effort to better the condition of the toilers.
-Local 65, I. W. W., Bisbee, Ariz.
Hellraisers Journal, Sunday December 3, 1916
From the International Socialist Review: News and View
From the “News and Views” section of this month’s Review, we found a few interesting stories: A Comrade in Oklahoma wins a new car by selling subscriptions to the Review. And Fellow Workers in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Bisbee, Arizona, support the Mesabi Range miners and I. W. W. organizers who are charged with first degree murder-their only crime being loyalty to the working class.
How I Won the Ford.— The best way to get subscribers is to “get them.” I believe it was about the 15th of September that I mailed in my first remittance to the REVIEW for subscribers with the thought of winning the Ford. The victory is a collective one and the car the collective property of myself and Comrade Dorothy Merts, she having secured something over two hundred subscribers on the car. Comrade W. J. Loe was the next highest among many who assisted us. The most effective way to get the subscribers is to talk REVIEW.
Hellraisers Journal, Wednesday November 29, 1916
Minnesota’s Mesabi Iron Range – Under the Rule of the Steel Trust
Harrison George, in an article for the November 25th edition of the Duluth Labor World, describes how the Steel Trust came to rule the Mesabi Iron Range of northern Minnesota. This is same Steel Trust which steadfastly refused to bargain with its employees and now seeks to frame-up organizers for the Industrial Workers of the World who have stood with the iron miners and their families in their struggle for justice.
Harrison George says of this plot:
This is the firm that backs with its grimy millions, the persecution of brave men; the firm who desires the conviction on a framed-up murder charge of Carlo Tresca, Sam Scarlett and Joe Schmidt-organisers,-who brought their loyalty to labor into the miner’s strike and who are guilty of no other crime.
From The Labor World of November 25, 1916:
STEEL TRUST GRABS RANGE
WITHOUT COST
—–By HARRISON GEORGE.
Special Investigator for The Labor World.
