Tag: Colliers Weekly

Hellraisers Journal: Colorado Militia Dismisses Case Against John M. Glover, Former Congressman from Missouri

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones, CFI Owns Colorado, re 1903 Strikes UMW WFM, Ab Chp 13, 1925—————

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday February 18, 1904
Cripple Creek, Colorado – District Court Dismisses Case Against John M. Glover

From the Moberly Evening Democrat of February 11, 1904
Colorado Militia’s Case Against Rep. John M. Glover Dismissed:

John Glover Arrested by Military, SLTb p1, Jan 16, 1904

SECOND CASE DISMISSED.

The case against John M. Glover, formerly Congressman from Missouri, for having shot at Sergeant Smith, was dismissed at Cripple Creek, Colorado, yesterday in the District Court on the ground that the accused could not be tried twice for the same offense. Glover had already been found guilty of an assault upon Sergeant Dittmore.

Before sentence in the latter case is passed Mr. Glover will appeal to the Supreme Court.

The cases of General Sherman M. Bell and General Chase, charged with unlawfully imprisoning citizens in the bull pen while martial law was in effect, were then taken up.

[Newsclip from Salt Lake Tribune of Jan. 16, 1904, added.]
[Emphasis added.]

—————

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Hellraisers Journal: Miners’ Magazine: “Fourteen Cents for a Girl’s Life”-Triangle Fire’s Blanck Fined $20 for Locked Door

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Rose Schneiderman Quote, Life So Cheap, NY Met Opera Hse, Apr 2, Survey p84, Apr 8, 1911—————

Hellraisers Journal – Friday October 17, 1913
Max Blanck, of Triangle Fire Infamy, Fined $20 for Locking Up Yet Another Firetrap

From the Miners’ Magazine of October 16, 1913:

Triangle Girls Life Worth 14 Cents, Mnrs Mag p5, Oct 16, 1913

From Collier’s Magazine of May 7, 1913:

Triangle Fire Rotten Risk by AE McFarlane, Beat Upon Locked Door, Colliers p8, May 17, 1913

From the Chicago Day Book of September 26, 1913:

Triangle Girls Life 14 Cents, Day Book p7, Sept 26, 1913

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Miners’ Magazine: “Fourteen Cents for a Girl’s Life”-Triangle Fire’s Blanck Fined $20 for Locked Door” →

Hellraisers Journal: Miners of Michigan Copper Country Request Meeting with Operators to Discuss Working Conditions

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Wealth to Producer, WFM Motto, Miners Mag Jan 1, 1914—————

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday July 16, 1913
Hancock, Michigan – Organized Copper Miners Request Meeting with Operators

From The Brooklyn Daily Eagle of July 8, 1913:

MI Copper Strike, Miners Make Demands, Brk Dly Egl p4, July 8, 1913

Letter from Copper District Union (W. F. of M.) to C. & H. Mines,
James MacNaughton, Manager:

Copper District Union
Western Federation of Miners
Box 217, Hancock Mich., July 14, 1913

To the Calumet & Hecla, Tamarack, Ahmeek, Allouez, Centennial, Superior, Laurium, Isle Royale, and all other mining companies connected with and under the management of Calumet & Hecla; James MacNaughton, manager.

GENTLEMEN: Your employees, organized into various unions of the Western Federation of Miners, have decided by referendum vote to ask that you meet their representatives in conference on some day during this month for the purpose of discussing the possibilities of shortening the working day, raising wages, and making some changes in the working conditions.

The men working in your mines are dissatisfied with the wages, hours, and other conditions of employment. Realizing that as individuals they would not have sufficient strength to correct these evils or to lessen the burden placed upon them, they have organized into the local unions of the Western Federation of Miners, and through the local unions they have formed one compact body of the whole copper district, with an understanding and hope that from now on they may be enabled to sell their labor collectively with greater advantages for themselves as well as their employers.

While the men have decided that they must have greater remuneration for their services and that the working day must be shortened, it is not their or our desire that we should have a strike, with all the sufferings that it is bound to bring to them, to the employers, and to the general public. On the other hand, we earnestly hope that the questions that have arisen between us would be settled amicably, with fairness and justice to both sides. Should you have the same feeling, we believe that the friendly relations that have existed between you and your employees in the past will continue in the future.

However, should you follow the example given by some of the most stupid and unfair mine owners in the past, the men have instructed us by the same referendum vote to call as strike in all the mines owned and controlled by your company.

We deem it unnecessary to set forth the facts and reasons for the demand for higher wages, shorter hours, and other things, in this letter, as we intend to do that in the conference – should you be fair enough to meet us.

We hope you realize that labor has just as much right to organize as capital, and that at this age these two forces, labor and capital, while their interests are not identical, must get together and solve the problems that confront them.

We expect to have your answer not later than on the 21st of this month. If you agree to meet us our representatives will be ready for a conference on any day and at any place you may choose; provided you do not set the date any later than the 28th of this month. Your failure to answer this will be taken as proof that you are not willing to meet us and to have the matters settled peacefully.

Hoping to hear from you soon, we remain,

Respectfully, yours.

Dan Sullivan,
President Copper District Union
of the Western Federation of Miners
C.E. Hietala,
Secretary Copper District Union
of the Western Federation of Miners

[Emphasis added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: International Socialist Review: The Conviction of Alexander Scott, Editor of the Weekly Issue of Passaic Co.

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Alexander Scott re Conviction n Free Speech, ISR p11, July 913—————-

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday July 3, 1913
The Conviction of  Alexander Scott, Editor of the Weekly Issue

From the International Socialist Review of July 1913:

The Conviction of Alexander Scott

Alexander Scott, ISR p10, July 1913

A STATES Prison sentence of not more than fifteen years nor less than one year, with a fine of $250, was imposed, June 6th, on Alexander Scott, editor of the Weekly Issue, official organ of the Socialist party of Passaic County, who was convicted on June 3rd on a charge of “aiding and abetting hostilities to the government of the City of Paterson,” by Judge Klenert in the Court of Quarter Sessions.

No sooner was sentence announced when Henry Carless, a Socialist attorney of Newark, and Henry Marelli, both of whom defended Scott, filed notice that a writ of error had been applied for, a copy of which notice was presented to the judge. Bail of $3,000 was fixed and Scott was later released when Samuel Ginsburg, of Passaic, furnished the bond.

Scott was found guilty and sentenced under a law placed on the statute books in 1902 shortly after the assassination of President McKinley, but never before invoked in the State of New Jersey. Scott’s indictment was caused by the publication of editorials and pictures in the Issue in which the police, especially Chief Bimson, was characterized as the “boss anarchist” and the “boss strike-breaker.”

Scott’s conviction practically makes it a crime for any paper to criticize public officials, and makes the constitutional guarantee of free press a dead letter. In the prosecution of the case the state contended that the police were a part of the city government and that ridiculing the police was ridiculing the government.

“If we can’t criticize a policeman for his brutality, we might as well give up publication of newspapers in this country,” remarked a prominent newspaper man who was a visitor in court when sentence was imposed on Scott. He was highly indignant over the sentence, and said he would start a nation-wide movement to have the Scott verdict reversed.

That the authorities of Paterson have made up their minds to suppress the Issue was evidenced by the fact that they forced the sentence of Scott as soon as he was convicted. Though Patrick L. Quinlan, the silk strike leader, was convicted several weeks ago, the authorities made no move to sentence him, but they hurried the sentence of Scott.

While Scott’s case was rushed through, the authorities have made no move to prosecute the policemen who stole an edition of the Issue by breaking in the Socialist party headquarters and taking possession of 5,000 copies of the paper. The policemen are now out on $200 bail each, while Scott’s bail is fixed at $3,000.-N. Y. Call.

While the lawyers were arguing over technicalities, Scott, unconcerned, was busily engaged noting the proceedings in a notebook. “I am in the fight to win, and I am confident of exoneration in the higher courts,” said Scott. “They cannot suppress the Issue”

But the Socialists and Industrial unionists do not propose that Scott should serve one month in prison if they can help it. The S. P. of New Jersey, will appeal to the National Socialist Party to take up the Scott case and make a nation-wide fight in his behalf.

Solidarity, the I. W. W. organ has issued a call for protest meetings. “Scott has stood by the I. W. W. and the I. W. W. must stand by him,” writes Justus Ebert.

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Hellraisers Journal: From Collier’s, The National Weekly: “The Triangle Fire-The Story of Rotten Risk” by Arthur McFarlane

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Rose Schneiderman Quote, Life So Cheap, NY Met Opera Hse, Apr 2, Survey p84, Apr 8, 1911—————

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday May 21, 1913
Arthur E. McFarlane Tells the Story of “Rotten Risk” and the Triangle Fire

From Collier’s National Weekly of May 17, 1913:

MORE than two years ago [March 25, 1911], in New York, 146 factory workers, most of them girls, were burned to death on the upper floors of the Asch Building. It will seem that every possible story of that fire has long ago been told. But the insurance story has never been told. And in the end it may be held to be the one vital story. I am going to tell it now.

COLLIER’S has been charged with saying much of fires due to crime and intention, and little of those due to carelessness and negligence. This, then, is the story of a fire which may well have been due to carelessness and negligence. But there are different kinds of carelessness and negligence. If a man can obtain $100,000 of insurance upon a value of $50,000, he will very naturally be careless and negligent. If a fire means not loss but gain to him, what more natural than that he should leave even the most dangerous of conditions uncorrected? And if behind such an insurer we have an insurance system which permits and encourages over-insurance, which feels no obligation to inspect, remove dangers, or to do anything whatever other than make the insurance rate proportionate to the risk, the fire will follow almost as certainly as if kindled with matches and gasoline…

The Perfect Fire Trap

BUT I can best begin with the physical conditions in the Triangle factory-Messrs. Isaac Harris and Max Blanck, proprietors-as they were before the fire.

The 550 girls and the 50 men on the eighth, ninth, and tenth floors of the Asch Building were employed, all of them, at least 100 feet above the street. The floors of their workrooms were covered with wicker baskets, which, like the shelves above them, were filled with the most inflammable of muslin fabrics. On the eighth floor there were two barrels of oil, on the ninth two more. Beneath every sewing machine the floor was soaked with oil. Great bins beneath the cutters’ tables were filled with rags. Oil-soaked rags and lint lay about the banks of motors and the high-speed floor-way gearing which supplied the power for the machines. And, so long as they did not do it openly, the men who worked in the Triangle factory were allowed to smoke.

The 550 girls were packed so closely together that their chairs dovetailed. They had the use of only one narrow door on each floor. And they could reach it only through a single circuitous passageway not two feet wide. On each floor one window opened upon a single fire escape. According to the New York Fire Commissioner, it would have taken them three hours to escape by it. “If you could visit one of those twelve- and fourteen-story workshops”-the Triangle factory was only one of hundreds-testified Fire Chief Croker before a New York Insurance Commission three months before the fire, “you would find it very interesting to see all those people with absolutely no protection whatever-without any means of escape of any kind, in case of fire.”

[…..]

Triangle Fire Rotten Risk by AE McFarlane, Beat Upon Locked Door, Colliers p8, May 17, 1913

[Emphasis added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: Mrs. Fremont Older Travels from San Francisco to West Virginia, Enters Martial Law/Strike Zone, Speaks with Prisoners and Mother Jones

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Annie Hall per Cora Older, WV Strikers Wont give in, Colliers p28, Apr 1913—————

Hellraisers Journal – Friday April 25, 1913
Martial Law/Strike Zone, West Virginia – Cora Older Speaks with Mother Jones

From Collier’s National Weekly of April 19, 1913:

Answering a Question

By MRS. FREMONT OLDER

Mother Jones, Cora Older, at Military Bastile WV, Colliers p26, Apr 1913

Mrs. Older is the wife of Fremont Older, editor of the San Francisco “Bulletin,’’ who was one of the citizen leaders responsible for the overthrow of the Schmitz boodle gang and for the conviction of Abe Ruef. But Mr. Older is a newspaper man before he is a reformer. Hence his question-which herewith Mrs. Older answers.

———-

MOTHER JONES and forty-eight men were on trial before a military court in Paint Creek Junction, W. Va., charged with conspiracy to murder. Mother Jones and five leaders refused to plead; they would not admit that the military court had jurisdiction over civilians. It was an interesting situation, but little news came to the outside world.

“Why don’t we get news from West Virginia?” my husband asked me one morning. So I started from San Francisco to find out.

On the last day of the trial I arrived in Paint Creek Junction [Pratt], the military capital of the strike zone. A few small houses tilted toward the muddy New River. Barren brown mountains imprisoned the town. 

A flag fluttered freely over the dingy village. A soldier greeted me as I got down from the train. Soldiers swarmed about the little railway station converted into a “bull pen” for strikers on trial. Through the streets at the point of guns soldiers were driving civilians. “Prisoners,” some said; “Martial law.” Former Governor Glasscock’s proclamation posted on the little green lunch counter at the station spelled it “Marital law.”

Pickles are served at breakfast in Paint Creek Junction. “Lena Rivers” is the “best seller,” but the place is filled with class hatred and suspicion. One whispers; soldiers may hear. Americans of old colonial stock sneer at the militia. “Yellow legs!” “Spies!” “Strike breakers!”

EVERY man is his own Marconi in Paint Creek Junction. In half an hour it was known that a strange woman had arrived to visit Mother Jones. A messenger tiptoed into my boarding house to say that Mother Jones and the prisoners were allowed to meet no one, especially reporters; but if I wanted to find out about conditions I’d better talk with Mother Jones’s landlady. “Go to the side door, and into the kitchen.”

By this time I felt like a conspirator. I almost tiptoed through the soldiers. Mother Jones occupied the parlor of a small white cottage. I was welcomed by the landlady. We were chatting in the kitchen when, without rapping, an officer entered and said to me: “The Provost Marshal wants you at headquarters.”

“Why?” I asked, bewildered. I did not know I was under arrest.

Martial law was in the soldier’s glance. He repeated his command. “And they call us anarchists,” commented the fiery-eyed, white-faced landlady.

Through the main street, past armed sentinels, up a flight of stairs to a large room filled with empty benches and stacked guns, we went to the Provost Marshal. Stern, unsmiling as justice, he asked me to explain my presence and my existence. I told him the truth. The Provost Marshal frowned. I wondered about the “bull pen.” I made the discovery that I am no Christian martyr. I am a sybarite hopelessly prejudiced against bull pens. I fumbled in my bag and brought forth an engraved card. I was released on good behavior.

But I was able now to answer the question which had brought me across a continent. The PROVOST MARSHAL was the ASSOCIATED PRESS CORRESPONDENT.

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Hellraisers Journal: Textile Strike at Lawrence, Melting Pot Boiled Over into Industrial Revolt against Starvation Wages

Janet RayeBread and Roses Strike of 1912
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quote BBH Weave Cloth Bayonets, ISR p538—————

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday March 12, 1912
“The Industrial Revolt at Lawrence” by R. W. Child, Illustrated by Jay Hambidge

From Collier’s of March 9, 1912:

Revolt at Lawrence by Jay Hambidge, Colliers p13, Mar 9, 1912

———-

Revolt at Lawrence, Woman Beaten, by Jay Hambidge, Colliers p15, Mar 9, 1912

DURING these eight weeks in Lawrence, Massachusetts, a strange and wonderful picture has been painted.

Upon the little canvas, woven on the looms of social and industrial development, are now spread the half-somber, half-glaring colors of human instincts and emotions. In the foreground one of our American melting pots, having failed to produce an alloy of many metals, has frothed, sputtered, and boiled over; in the background is the indistinct gray swirl of economic forces rushing by-out of history-into eternity. If there is an awe-inspiring quality in this picture, it is because some day it may be reproduced in great bold strokes across the whole expanse of American life.

Lawrence is drab. In the winter dusk the huge rectangular prisms of the textile mills, black and sullen against the sky line, lie along the shores of the Merrimac River, and, behind them, like a progeny of badly begotten offspring,  crowding in a hungry herd, are the countless other rectangular prisms of human habitations.

Systematic and Organized Misrepresentation

STANDING on a street corner, one sees suddenly that this crowd that moves along the street of shops is a congress of nations. He sees the faces of oppressed peoples, nine-tenths timid and patient, one-tenth of the stuff that makes mobs. The marching feet of a company of soldiers fill the cold, damp air with the grim, scuffling sound of military without music. At every street corner a pacing sentry, who is clad in wool cap, greatcoat, and leggings, lurches back and forth like a huge bird deprived of liberty. His bayonet flashes in the light from the store windows.

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Hellraisers Journal: “The Lawrence Way” by Art Young -Infamous Attack Upon Parents and Children by Soldiers and Policemen

Janet RayeBread and Roses Strike of 1912
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quote BBH Weave Cloth Bayonets, ISR p538—————

Hellraisers Journal – Monday March 11, 1912
“The Lawrence Way” by Art Young-Striking Parents and Children Under the Club 

From Collier’s of March 9, 1912:

Lawrence Way by Art Young, Colliers p14, Mar 9, 1912

On February 24 and 25, soldiers and policemen forcibly prevented parents from
sending their children away from Lawrence to cities that offered food and shelter.
[Detail 1.]

Lawrence Way by Art Young Detail 1, Colliers p14, Mar 9, 1912

Let the Children Come – Sympathy – Homes of the Workers of Other Cities

[Detail 2.]

Lawrence Way by Art Young Detail 2, Colliers p14, Mar 9, 1912

Lawrence Mass., the Hunger City
Dividends for Mill-Owners, Starvation Wages for Workers
—————

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Hellraisers Journal: Appeal to Reason Takes on Collier’s Claim That “Best Detectives” Know Orchard Told the Truth

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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There are no limits to which
powers of privilege will not go
to keep the workers in slavery.
-Mother Jones

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

Hellraisers Journal, Sunday October 6, 1907
The View from Girard, Kansas: Collier’s Licks the Velvet Hand

From the Appeal to Reason of October 5, 1907:

“Crucify Him!”
—–

HMP, Haywood in Cell, Colliers, June 22, 1907

Collier’s Weekly, in the face of all the antagonistic circumstances under which Haywood was tried and acquitted, says that it is privately informed by the best detectives in the country that Orchard told the truth. Well, the Appeal is informed by the best detectives in the country that Orchard maliciously lied, to save his craven neck, under the paid expert coaching of a man whose antecedent history in the “Mollie Maguire” period, and at Parsons, Kan., where good citizens made affidavits denouncing him, shows him to be a creature whose moral pulse beats lower than a snake’s. All the time Orchard was “telling the truth” he was telling stories of his own despicable treachery and double dealing for pay.

HMP, Orchard on Stand, Colliers, June 22, 1907

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