Hellraisers Journal – Saturday March 22, 1902 From Terre Haute, Indiana, Eugene Debs Pays Tribute to John Peter Altgeld
From The Toiler of March 21, 1902:
Altgeld, the Liberator
-by Eugene V. Debs
John Peter Altgeld
John Peter Altgeld has joined Abraham Lincoln in the realm of the immortals [March 12, 1902]. His career was tempestuous and heroic, and the end tragic and sublime. The gods must have set the stage for the last earthly act of the intrepid warrior and most nobly did he fill the leading role. When the last word of his impassioned plea for liberty died upon his eloquent lips the climax came and the curtain fell upon another martyr in the great drama of humanity.
John Altgeld was born in the throes of revolt [December 30, 1847].A thousand years of feudal tyranny were culminating. The fateful year of 1848 had a violent temper. It rocked the cradle of the babe that was destined to become the tribune of the people.
The leader, now fallen, never took a backward step, never subordinated principle to policy, never sacrificed conviction to attain his end. He was fearless, he was determined, and he was incorruptible.
John P. Altgeld was in the highest sense a statesman, he was a daring leader and a fiery and intense orator whose eloquent and lofty appeals inspired the multitude.
His noblest and therefore greatest official act was the opening of dungeon doors to liberate innocent victims of corporate tyranny [Chicago’s Eight-Hour Class-War Prisoners]. If the gods have to do with politics they ordained the election of John P. Altgeld for this incomparable service to humanity.
Through the rain of fire he walked with steady step to the hideous bastille’s doors, nor faltered once until the captives walked forth men; his official robes turned to ashes in the ordeal, but lo! the flame of calumny to which our hero bared his head is even now become the aureole of his fame.
The robbers of the people, the stranglers of liberty, the foes of humanity feared and hated him; the fawning sycophants of wealth, the time serving mercenaries of power slandered him; this was the measure of his greatness.
The few honest men who knew John P. Altgeld loved him. He was genuine; he was true; he could look God and man straight in the eye.
In the railroad strikes in 1894 he expanded to his true proportions.There he proved to be the fearless champion of the people. He stood upon the boundary line of Illinois and protested against the military usurpation of the President, and though overwhelmed, he proudly vindicated his high honor, and he, more than any other man, retired Grover Cleveland and his pirate crew from American politics.
Altgeld was too great to become President; he will be remembered long after most Presidents are forgotten.
How glorious the final scene! See him summon all his wasted strength. Note the transfiguration in the last superhuman effort—the light of liberty in his eye, the flush of dawn upon his brow as he defiantly exclaimed:
Again to the battle, Achaians!
Our hearts bid the tyrants defiance!
Our land, the first garden of Liberty’s tree,
It has been, and shall yet be, the land of the free.
Workingmen and workingwomen never had a truer friend; he yearned to see them happy, and consecrated all he had to make them free.
He paid the penalty of all the earth’s redeemers. Socrates was poisoned, Christ crucified, John Brown strangled, Lincoln assassinated, and Altgeld stabbed by a million venomous tongues.
The grandchildren of his slayers will seek his works for knowledge and inspiration, and to the coming generations he will speak forever.
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday December 21, 1921
Mother Jones News Round-Up for May and June 1921
Found in Mexico City, Standing for Organization of Mexican Workers
From the Tucson Citizen of May 11, 1921:
MOTHER JONES WILL RESIDE IN MEXICO.
In January Mother Jones, the noted socialistic agitator who has been in the public eye throughout the United States through many years, went to the City of Mexico to attend an international congress of workingmen and women.
It is announced now that Mrs. Jones has decided to make her permanent residence in Mexico. She is quoted as saying that after many years of story experience in the United States including six penitentiary sentences served she finds Mexico “the only country where she can live la tranquility.”
[Photograph added.]
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Note: Mother has been taken into custody many times during her long life of standing with working people, but has never served a sentence in any penitentiary sentence that we know of.
From the Cleveland Toiler of June 4, 1921 -excerpt from article by Geo. N. Falconer:
MOTHER JONES.
Seemed as if she had been imported specially to boost the Workers’ Mexican Government. “Workers,” she shouted during her several addresses during the Pan-American Congress, “stand by your government and it will stand by you.”
“The pulse of the world is throbbing today,” declared ‘Mother’ Jones. “Humanity is watching the new Mexico. I want to tell you that there will be no intervention by the capitalist robbers of the United States in the affairs of Mexico. We won’t stand for it. We are going back to the United States and appeal to the workers there to stand by the workers here.”
When she shouted, “You are going to bring the new day in this country and center the eyes of the world on Mexico as well as Russia,” the applause was tremendous.
Didn’t Mother Jones boost for Woodrow Wilson in 1916? And Mother Jones paid many compliments to that “grand old man of labor,” King Gompers. Why? Is she so ignorant of Samuels’ labor history?
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From Proceedings of the Convention of American Federation of Labor at Denver, Colorado, June 13-25, 1921:
…..Ernest Greenwood representing the International Labor Office at Geneva, Frank Bohn, publicist, together with Mother Jones as the invited guest of General Villarreal, minister of agriculture of Mexico, accompanied the party [of representatives of the American Federation of Labor] from St. Louis to Mexico City. Mother Jones attended the meetings of the convention and spoke on two occasions.
On arrival at Nuevo Laredo we learned that that the government of Mexico had sent a reception committee representing the government and labor to the boundary line to meet and greet us…..
Hellraisers Journal – Friday November 18, 1910 Lucy Parsons Recalls Terrible Day in 1887 When Chicago Martyrs Were Murdered
From the Spokane Industrial Worker of November 17, 1910:
A LOYAL WIFE AND LOVING MOTHER ——-
(Extract from “Liberator.”)
So the fatal day at last arrived. It was a sad, quiet, chilly November morning. I had not seen my husband for three days. We had two children then. I felt that I must take them to see their father, to look into his noble face once more, and to receive his blessing. I took them by the hands and led them to the jail. When I arrived there I found the accursed place where the slaughter of the innocent was to take place. all roped in for one whole block around, and police with rifles marching up and down all around. I entreated them to let me see him just once more! I was gruffly ordered away. I then begged them, the brutes , to take the innocent children to see their father; certainly they had done no wrong to deserve punishment; but the reply was a patrol wagon was called and I and the children were tumbled in and carried off to the station house and locked in a cell while the murder was being committed.
About noon the matron came to my cell and said in a cold-hearted manner: “Mrs. Parsons, it is all over; your husband has been hanged.” I remembered nothing more until I realized that my little girl was patting me on the cheek and saying. “Mamma, are you asleep?”
Hellraisers Journal – Friday November 11, 1910 Martyrs of Chicago’s Great Eight-Hour Movement Remembered
From the Spokane Industrial Worker of November 9, 1910:
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[Detail:]
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Twenty-three years have elapsed since the execution of the four men in the county jail at Chicago. Twenty-three years, ample time for the world to correct its errors of misinformation. And yet, only a comparatively small portion of the people as a whole; yes, it may be safely said that only a minority of the so-called “revolutionists” are possessed of the true status of the affair. It is for the purpose of briefly outlining the facts of the Haymarket “riot” and the resulting murder of four innocent men, and to commemorate their death that this Anniversary Number is issued. The facts are as follows: Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From the Spokane Industrial Worker: “The Haymarket and the Eight Hour Movement of 1886””→
Hellraisers Journal, Thursday February 21, 1918
Big Bill Haywood Now Out on Bail from Cook County Jail
From North Carolina’s Cleveland Star of February 19, 1918:
William D. Haywood, international secretary and treasurer of the I. W. W., who with 165 other members of that organization, was indicted by a Federal grand jury in Chicago on a charge of conspiracy and sedition, has been released in bond of $15,000.
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[Photograph added.]
From The Chicago Daily Tribune of February 13, 1918:
HAYWOOD FREED ON $15,000 BOND
OVER U. S. PLEA
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Government Fears He Will Become Active
as an I. W. W. Agent.
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William D. Haywood, international secretary of the I. W. W., and recognized as its guiding spirit, was released yesterday under $15,000 bond. He had been in jail since Sept. 28. Judge Landis permitted the reduction of the bond from $25,000.
The bond was signed by George W. Kohler, 9236 Commercial avenue; Jacob Brunning and his wife, Catherine, 4243 Lowell avenue, and William Bross Lloyd, capitalist and Socialist.
“I’ll take a chance,” was Judge Landis’ comment in granting Haywood’s release, after District Attorney Clyne and Frank K. Nebeker, special assistant attorney general, had opposed the action, declaring that Haywood, once out of jail, would at once renew his anti-government activities.
The time will come when our silence
will be more powerful
than the voices you strangle today.
-August Spies
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Hellraisers Journal: Saturday February 5, 1898
Eugene V. Debs Remembers the Chicago Martyrs of 1887
From The New Time Magazine of February 1898:
THE MARTYRED APOSTLES OF LABOR.
By EUGENE V. DEBS.
The century now closing is luminous with great achievements. In every department of human endeavor marvelous progress has been made. By the magic of the machine which sprang from the inventive genius of man, wealth has been created in fabulous abundance. But, alas, this wealth, instead of blessing the race, has been the means of enslaving it. The few have come in possession of all, and the many have been reduced to the extremity of living by permission. A few have had the courage to protest. To silence these so that the dead-level of slavery could be maintained has been the demand and command of capital-blown power. Press and pulpit responded with alacrity. All the forces of society were directed against these pioneers of industrial liberty, these brave defenders of oppressed humanity—and against them the crime of the century has been committed.
Albert R. Parsons, August Spies, George Engel, Adolph Fischer, Louis Lingg, Samuel Fielden, Michael Schwab and Oscar Neebe paid the cruel penalty in prison cell and on the gallows.
They were the first martyrs in the cause of industrial freedom, and one of the supreme duties of our civilization, if indeed we may boast of having been redeemed from savagery, is to rescue their names from calumny and do justice to their memory.
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