Hellraisers Journal: International Socialist Review: “Bishop Spalding and Socialism” by A. M. Simons, Part II: The Capitalist System

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Quote Mother Jones, Coming of the Lord, Cnc Pst p6, July 23, 1902—————

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday January 18, 1903
“Bishop Spalding and Socialism” by Editor Algie M. Simons

From the International Socialist Review of January 1903:

Bishop Spalding and Socialism.*
[by A. M. Simons]
—————

[Part II of II]

Bishop Spalding, Colfax WA Gz, p5, Nov 28, 1902

Again, in [Bishop Spalding’s] recognition of the class character of our present law, he comes very close to Socialism. Speaking of punishment for crime, he says:

The delinquents who are incarcerated are chiefly the poor, who had they money to pay the fines would escape punishment. The heaviest punishment is inflicted on the most helpless, and frequently on the least guilty; and thus the morally weak, the victims of unfortunate environments, are degraded, hardened, and made habitual offenders.

I do not wish to push the matter too far and to ascribe too great a comprehension of or favorable attitude towards Socialism on the part of Bishop Spalding. But on page 58 we see some thing that reads very like a description of the rise of proletarian class consciousness. He says:

The laborers, who in proportion as their minds have been awakened, have become conscious of the hardships and limitations to which they are subject, feel this more keenly than any other class, and hence they have formed in numerable organizations to protect their rights and promote their interests.

Finally, we would seldom find a harsher indictment against the capitalist system than is to be found on pages 173 and 174:

The political and social conditions which involve the physical deterioration and the mental and moral degradation of multitudes are barbarous, and unless they are improved must lead to the ruin of the State. From this point of view, which is the only true point of view, our present economic and commercial systems are subversive of civilization. They sacrifice men to money; wisdom and virtue to cheap production and the amassing of capital. They foster greed in the stronger and hate in the weaker. They drive the nations to competitive struggles which are as cruel as war, and in the final results more disastrous; for their tendency is to make the rich vulgar and heartless, and the poor reckless and vicious. As stratagems and lies are considered lawful in war, so in the warfare of commercial competition opinion leans to the view that whatever may be done with impunity is right. The adulteration of food and drink, the watering of stocks, the bribing of legislators, the crushing of weaker concerns, the enforced idleness of thousands, who are thereby driven to despair and starvation, are not looked upon as lying within the domain of morals, any more than the shooting of a man in battle is considered a question of morality. The degradation and ruin of innumerable individuals are implications of the law of competition, just as in the struggle for existence there is a world-crushing and destruction of the weak by the strong.

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Hellraisers Journal: From the Duluth Labor World: “Gene Debs Defines Labor Leaders Duty”-Do Not Vote for Enemy of Workers

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Quote EVD, Socialist Ripe Trade Unionist, WLUC p45, May 31, 1902—————

Hellraisers Journal – Monday September 1, 1902
Comrade Eugene Debs on Class Consciousness and the Ballot

From the Duluth Labor World of August 30, 1902:

GENE DEBS DEFINES LABOR LEADERS DUTY
———-

EVD, LW p1, Aug 30, 1902

The time is near at hand when a member of a union will be expelled just as promptly for casting a scab ballot, that is to say for supporting the party of the enemy of labor, as if he took the place of a member while out on strike. Indeed, there may be some justification for the latter, but there can be none for the former act of treason, except alone that of ignorance. And thus it is the duty of the true leader to use his best efforts to overcome, so that the workers on all occasions, economically, politically, and otherwise, can use their entire organized class power in resisting the capitalist system, and in charging it at every point until finally it is overcome and the world’s workers stand forth free men.

The action taken by the three national conventions of labor organizations recently held at Denver [W. F. M., A. L. U. and United Association of Hotel and Restaurant Employes] in adopting a working class political program, has created widespread interest in every part of the country. The reactionary element predict for the new policy speedy and complete failure. So certain are they of this that they do not hesitate to misrepresent the action of the conventions and bear false testimony against those who took part in them. A number of misleading statements have appeared in the papers, and others are quietly circulated to bring the personnel of the conventions into disrepute, and this is engaged in by those who lack the courage to openly charge and face the men who led the movement which culminated in a new departure, which promises to remould the entire labor movement of the country, and bring it up-to-date in all its economic and political equipment.

The two men who led and inspired the conventions were Edward Boyce, president of the Western Federation of Miners, and Daniel McDonald, president of the Western, now the American Labor Union. McDonald was unanimously reelected upon that issue and holds his position by practically the unanimous confidence of the members of his great and growing organization. Edward Boyce retired from official life, honored by every true man and only hated by those who found him staunch and incorruptible, and utterly incapable of being swerved from his duty to his fellowmen. The name of this man will be honorably written in the history of trades unionism, as he has already written it in the deeds of duty that live forever.

I need not, at this time, repeat the terms of the essential change which has taken place in the Western labor movement. It is all summed up in this single statement that it has adopted a working-class political platform and is now equipped for united action in the political field in every contest until the victory is finally won.

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Hellraisers Journal: From the Social Democratic Herald: Eugene Debs Recalls Labor’s Battles in the “War for Freedom”

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SDH p2, Jan 11, 1902———————-

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday January 12, 1902
Eugene Victor Debs Recalls Bloody Scenes of Battle in Class War

From the Social Democratic Herald of January 11, 1902:

The War for Freedom.

By Eugene V. Debs.

EVD crpd Nw Orln Tx Dem p3, Jan 26, 1900

The country we inhabit is generally supposed to have been in a state of peace since the close of the Civil War, excepting the brief period required to push the Spaniards off the western continent. And yet during this reign of so-called peace more than a score of bloody battles have been fought on American soil, in every one of which the working class were beaten to the earth, notwithstanding they outnumber their conquerors and despoilers at least ten to one, and notwithstanding in each case they asked but a modest concession that represented but a tithe of what they were justly entitled to.

To recall the bloody scenes in the Tennessee mountains, the horrors of Idaho, the tragedies of Virden, Pana, Buffalo, Chicago, Homestead, Lattimer, Leadville, and many others, is quite enough to chill the heart of a man who has such an organ, and yet above the cloud and smoke of battle there shines forever the bow of promise, and however fierce the struggle and gloomy the outlook, it is never obscured to the brave, self-reliant soul who knows that victory at last must crown the cause of labor.

Thousands have fallen before the fire of the enemy and thousands more are doubtless doomed to share the same fate, but

“Freedom’s battle once begun,
Bequeathed from bleeding sire to son,
Though baffled oft, Is ever won.”

The struggle in this and other lands by the children of toil is a struggle between classes which in some form or other has been waged since primitive man first captured and enslaved his weaker fellow-being. Through the long, dark night of history the man who toiled has been in fetters, and though today they are invisible, yet they bind him as securely in wage slavery as if they were forged of steel.

How the millions toil and produce! How they suffer and are despised! Is the earth forever to be a dungeon to them? Are their offspring always to be food for misery? These are questions that confront the workingmen of our day and a few of them at least understand the nature of the struggle, are conscious of their class interests, and are striving with all their energy to close up the ranks and conquer their freedom by the solidarity of labor.

In this war for freedom the organized men in the Western states have borne a conspicuous and honorable part. They have, in fact, maintained better conditions on the whole than generally prevail, and this they have done under fire that would have reduced less courageous and determined men. But, notwithstanding their organized resistance, they must perceive that in common with all others who work for wages they are losing ground before the march of capitalism.

It requires no specially sensitive nature to feel the tightening of the coils, nor prophetic vision to see the doom of labor if the government is suffered to continue in control of the capitalist class. In every crisis the shotted guns of the government are aimed at the working class. They point in but one direction. In no other way could the capitalists maintain their class supremacy. Court injunctions paralyze but one class. In fact, the government of the ruling class today has but one vital function, and that is to keep the exploited class in subjection.

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Hellraisers Journal: The Independent: “The Social Democratic Party” -by Comrade Eugene V. Debs

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Quote EVD, Children of the Poor, AtR p2, Mar 17, 1900

———-

Hellraisers Journal – Friday August 24, 1900
Presidential Candidate Eugene V. Debs on Mission of Social Democratic Party

From The Independent of August 23, 1900:

The Social Democratic Party

By Eugene V. Debs,

PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE OF THE PARTY.

SDP Campaign, EVD n Job Harriman, SF Call p2, Mar 9, 1900

———-

In the Presidential election of 1892 the socialist candidate received 21,512 votes; in the election of 1896 the vote was increased to 36,275 votes [Socialist Labor Party]. The following two years witnessed an unprecedented spread of Socialist sentiment and in the Congressional and state elections of 1898 the Socialist candidates received 91,749 votes, an increase of almost 200 percent, in two years. But it must not he assumed that this vote represented the entire political strength of Socialists in the United States. In a number of states the election laws were such that the Socialist ticket could not be placed upon the official ballot, while in many districts the number of socialists was so small and they were so widely scattered that no nominations were made and the socialist vote was not polled.

The figures given are sufficient to indicate that in the United States, as in other countries. International socialism is making tremendous strides and that its seven million supporters, spread over all the belts and zones of the globe, and the most active propagandists ever known, will in the next few years be multiplied into controlling majorities in all lands which have modern industry as the basis of their civilization. Socialism being wholly a question of economic development. This will mean the end of the present capitalist competitive system and the introduction of its economic successor, the cooperative commonwealth.

The movement is international because it is born of and follows the development of the capitalist system, which in its operation is confined to no country, but by the stimulus of modern agencies of production, exchange, communication, and transportation, has overleaped all boundary lines and made the world the theater of its activities. By this process all the nations of the earth must finally be drawn into relations of industrial and commercial cooperation, as the economic basis of human brotherhood.

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Hellraisers Journal: From The Montana News: Undesirable Citizens of Organized Labor Are Aroused to Action

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To advocate peace with things as they are
is treason to humanity.
This is a class struggle and on class lines
it must be fought out to a finish.
-Ida Crouch-Hazlett

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Hellraisers Journal, Saturday April 27, 1907
American Labor Responds to President Theodore Roosevelt

From The Montana News of April 25, 1907:

ORGANIZED LABOR AROUSED

HMP, Undesirable Citizen, Walker 1, AtR, Apr 20, 1907

The statement of President Roosevelt in a letter to James S. Sherman, regarding the Harriman controversy, re-which he refers to Debs, Moyer, and Haywood as ‘undesirable citizens’ has raised a storm of protest among the labor unions and aroused to action those few that were hitherto luke-warm. The Executive Committee of the Moyer-Haywood Protest Conference of New York, representing over three hundred labor organizations, with a membership aggregating more than two hundred thousand men, addressed an open letter to the president protesting against the stand he has taken in this matter and asking him to “make such public amends as any true gentleman is bound to offer when inadvertently he has made a mistake and inflicted grievous wrongs upon men who have nothing to do with his personal quarrel.”

The Central Federated Union of New York adopted a motion calling upon Roosevelt to retract his statement that Moyer and Haywood are “undesirable citizens.”

The Boston Central Labor Union adopted a resolution condemning Roosevelt for “usurping prerogatives which neither the laws nor the constitution of the United States gave him.”

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Hellraisers Journal: “The Deadly Parallel” Compares IWW’s Declaration on War in Europe with AFL’s Pledge of Service

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IWW on War and Class Solidarity, Dec 1, 1916

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hellraisers Journal, Monday April 2, 1917
From the International Socialist Review: “The Deadly Parallel”

“The Deadly Parallel” was first published in Solidarity, organ of the Industrial Workers of the World, on March 24, 1917, and is republished in this month’s edition of the Review:

WWI, IWW, Deadly Parallel, ISR Apr 1917

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Hellraisers Journal: The Resolution on War and Class Solidarity from IWW Convention of 1916

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IWWC on War and Class Solidarity, Dec 1, 1916

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Hellraisers Journal, Friday February 9, 1917
Chicago, Illinois – I.W. W. Opposes War, Advocates Class Solidarity

IWWC 1916, Delg Little, ISR Jan 1917

In the dark shadow of War, now looming over the nation’s working class men and women, we have concluded that now is a good time to consider the Resolution on War and Class Solidarity passed at Tenth Convention of the Industrial Workers of the World. The delegates gathered together in Chicago for ten days last fall, from November 20th to December 1st of 1916. Resolution #112 was passed during the afternoon session on the last day of the convention:

No. 112—A DECLARATION:

We, the Industrial Workers of the World, in convention assembled, hereby reaffirm our adherence to the principle of Industrial Unionism, and rededicate ourselves to the unflinching, unfaltering prosecution of the struggle for the abolition of wage slavery and the realization of our ideals in Industrial Democracy. With the European war for conquest and exploitation raging and destroying the lives, class consciousness and unity of the workers, and the ever growing agitation for military preparedness clouding the main issues and delaying the realization of our ultimate aim with patriotic and, therefore, capitalistic aspirations, we openly declare ourselves the determined opponents of all nationalistic sectionalism, or patriotism, and the militarism preached and supported by our one enemy, the capitalist class. We condemn all wars and, for the prevention of such, we proclaim the anti-militarist propaganda in time of peace, thus promoting Class Solidarity among the workers of the entire world, and, in time of war, the General Strike in all industries. We extend assurances of both moral and material support to all the workers who suffer at the hands of the capitalist class for their adhesion to these principles and call on all workers to unite themselves with us, that the reign of the exploiters may cease and this earth be made fair through the establishment of the Industrial Democracy.

F. H. LITTLE,
W. E. MATTINGLY,
FRANCIS MILLER,
WM. D. HAYWOOD.

National Organizer McGuckin suggested that every effort should be made to get this published in the capitalist press, and that it should also be printed in leaflet form and widely distributed. Motion made and seconded that this be adopted unanimously, and published in the presses throughout the United States of America and the world. Unanimously carried.

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Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones to Mrs. Palmer, Remembers Lattimer: “In this fight I wept at the grave of nineteen workers…”

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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, Saturday January 26, 1907
From Chicago, Illinois – Mother Jones Writes to Mrs. Palmer

The following letter, from Mother Jones to Mrs. Potter Palmer, Chicago socialite, was published in the January 24th edition of the Miners Magazine, official organ of the Western Federation of Miners.

43 Welton Place, Chicago, Ill.,
January 12, 1907

Mrs. Potter Palmer,
100 Lake Shore Drive,
Chicago, Ill.
Dear Madam:

Mother Jones, Mar 11, 1905, AtR

By the announcement of the daily press I learn that you are to entertain a number of persons who are to be present as representatives of two recognized classes of American citizens-the working class and the capitalist class, and that the purpose of this gathering is to choose a common ground on which the conflicting interests of these two classes may be harmonized and the present strife between the organized forces of these two classes may be brought to a peaceful and satisfactory end.

I credit you with perfect sincerity in this matter, but being fully aware that your environment and whole life has prevented you from seeing and understanding the true relationship of these two classes in this republic and the nature of the conflict which you think can be ended by such means as you are so prominently associated with, and with a desire that you may see and understand it in all its grim reality, I respectfully submit these few personal experiences for your kind consideration.

I am a workman’s daughter, by occupation a dress-maker and school teacher, and during this last twenty-five years an active worker in the organized labor movement. During the past seventy years of my life I have been subject to the authority of the capitalist class and for the last thirty-five years I have been conscious of this fact. With the years’ personal experience-the roughest kind best of all teachers-I have learned that there is an irrepressible conflict that will never end between the working-class and the capitalist-class, until these two classes disappear and the worker alone remains the producer and owner of the capital produced.

In this fight I wept at the grave of nineteen workers shot on the highways of Latterman [Lattimer], Pennsylvania in 1897. In the same place I marched with 5,000 women eighteen miles in the night seeking bread for their children, and halted with the bayonets of the Coal and Iron police who had orders to shoot to kill.

Lattimer Massacre of 1897, Locomotive Firemen's Mag, Nov 1897

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Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts & Doings of Mother Jones for November 1916: Pays Visit to President Wilson with Labor Delegation

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I am loyally yours for a damn fine fight.
-Mother Jones

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Hellraisers Journal, Saturday December 16, 1916
Mother Jones Found in Washington D. C. During November

We pause to review the activities of Mother Jones, that fearless champion of the cause of working-class men, women and children in their struggle for industrial freedom. We first find her remembered for her work on behalf of the children of the mills when she led them on the March of the Mill Children during the summer of 1903.

From the Iowa Bayard Advocate of November 2, 1916:

TENEMENT CHILDREN WILL
VISIT WILSON
—–
Their Welcome Will Be Unlike That
Once Given at Oyster Bay.
—–

Mother Mary Harris Jones, Logansport, IN, Sept 27, 1916New York, Oct. 28.-Fifty mothers of New York’s east side, with their children, who have been emancipated from sweatshops by the enactment of

the child labor law, are going to Shadow Lawn, Saturday, in person to thank President Wilson.

A “kind lady,” who prefers to conceal her identity, has donated a special car to be attached to one of the trains bearing pilgrims from New York to Shadow Lawn to hear the president’s address on “Wilson day.” The children will carry armsful of artificial flowers which they used to make in the factories, before their emancipation.

No such pilgrimage of the children of the poor has been attempted since the one when Theodore Roosevelt was president of the United States and a carload of children from the Pennsylvania coal mines [textile mills] journeyed to the summer capital at Oyster Bay to petition for a national child labor law.

“Mother Jones,” who conducted that excursion, told recently in public of the refusal of the guards at Oyster Bay to allow the children to pass the outer gate, and of their return home to wait 14 years for a Woodrow Wilson to set them free.

[Photograph added.]

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