Hellraisers Journal – Sunday December 10, 1911 “FREE SPEECH must be established in Aberdeen! ON TO ABERDEEN!!”
From the Spokane Industrial Worker of December 7, 1911:
We will now sing that touching hymn entitled “Throw a Little Dough Upon the Drum.”
——-
ABERDEEN FULL OF THUGS —————
A LULL IN THE STORM -700 AUTHORIZED THUGS TO STOP FREEDOM OF SPEECH -MAYOR PARKS THREATENS TO MURDER. —————
ABERDEEN, Wash., Dec. 1.-Aberdeen is quiet after the storm. The I. W. W.’s have left, and can’t come back now if they want to. In fact, they did petition the mayor for permission to return peaceably, and were refused. So say the citizens.
Sympathizers with the organization, however, say guardedly that the “woods are full” of I. W. W.’s waiting for the proper time to strike a second blow against the town which, they say, has denied them the right of free speech.
The bustling lumber town is in a hubbub of excitement. The recent “invasion” is the topic of conversation on every street corner. Every one is aroused. “Aberdeen for law and order,” is the motto.
The 700 citizen police are still in authority and have their hickory ax handles and stout wagon wheel spokes handy in case they are needed again. The town is unnaturally quiet-like the calm before a storm. Serious men realize that the war may not yet be ended, and are waiting.
When the first skirmish took place five men mounted soap boxes on prominent street corners and demanded the right to preach their doctrine wherever they pleased. They were arrested. The next night 150 men wearing red tags made a demonstration before the city jail in favor of their imprisoned comrades. City officials ordered out the fire department and the crowd of I. W. W.’s and many bystanders were soaked with water. Several arrests followed. Friday Mayor Parks gave the oath to 500 special police. The number has since been swelled to 700. The I. W. W.’s attempted to hold a meeting in the Empire theater and the hardest struggle of the week took place. Citizen police patrolled all streets in squads and arrested every man they could find wearing the red tag of the I. W. W.’s. The meeting was dispersed.
Hellraisers Journal – Thursday December 7, 1911 Los Angeles, California – McNamaras Sentenced; Darrow Stung by Criticism -Socialist Candidate for Mayor, Job Harriman, Defeated
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday December 5, 1911 Terre Haute, Indiana – Eugene Debs Reacts to Confession of McNamara Brothers
From The Indianapolis News of December 4, 1911:
VIEWS OF EUGENE V. DEBS —————
Job Harriman, Socialist Candidate for Mayor of Los Angeles
Socialist Leader Says the McNamaras Do Not Belong to His Party.
(Special to The Indianapolis News.)
TERRE HAUTE, Ind., December 4.-Eugene V. Debs repudiates the assertion that the McNamaras are Socialists. Said he:
“The brothers are Democrats and Catholics, and that church is fighting the Socialist Party. We Socialists took the ground that they were to be regarded as innocent until proven guilty. We have nothing to apologize for; we never condoned dynamiting, but always condemned it. We simply tried to see that the brothers got a square deal, and especially because they had been kidnapped.
If the confessions had been held until after Tuesday [election day] the men would have been hanged. The mercy extended to them is the price paid for political effect in the election that day in Los Angeles.”
Hellraisers Journal – Monday December 4, 1911 Gila Bend, Arizona – Southern Pacific Official Denies Water to New Born Babe
From the Duluth Labor World of December 2, 1911:
TUCSON, Ariz., Nov. 30.-The Southern Pacific officials at this point have resorted to brutal and desperate methods to compel its striking employees to return to work. Out on the desert where many men are on strike they depend upon the company to bring them water. As a last resort the company has refused to furnish or sell water to any employee on strike.
In a news story published by, “The Voice of the People” of this city, a tale is told of the tactics of the company in its attempt to crush the men on strike: The paper states:
Refused Water.
“Even a Digger Indian or a Papago buck on the war path, will turn over a rock and allow a squaw with a new born pappoose the first pick of the fat grubs which may be found beneath it, but it has remained for an official of the Southern Pacific railroad, Superintendent J. H. Dyer, of the Tucson division, which extends from El Paso, to Yuma, to refuse a drink of waiter to a strikers’s wife with a new born babe at her breast,
“The babe was only three days old when the order was issued by the railroad superintendent, and on account of the order the wife of W. E. Stewart a striking boilermaker at Gila Bend, Ariz., out in the desert, miles from civilization, is without water for the nurse to wash the linen, which the simplest demands of sanitation, to say nothing of civilization, require in such cases.
Two Kind of Water.
There are two. kinds of water at Gila Bend-the water which the engines must use—it eats the flues out of boilers with a celerity which requires a force of men at the round house to make what are called “running repairs” on the locomotives, and W. E. Stewart was one of these men.
“The other water is drinking water, which is brought in a water car from Sentinel. Since the strike Stewart has been standing with the other mechanics of the federation at his post, the little semi-oasis of the desert about half way between Tucson and Yuma.
“On November 7, Superintendent Dyer, angered and furious at the unbreakable lines of the shopmen who would not return to work until the grievances are adjusted, issued his order to cut off the water from all strikers at Gila Bend.
Money Is Tendered.
“The secretary of the Tucson branch of the federation received a wire from Stewart telling of the action and asking legal counsel. A. A. Worsley, the attorney for the federation, notified Stewart by wire, to tender pay for the water.
“Stewart obeyed and money was offered by his father-in-law, while Stewart held his three days old babe in his arms and looked into the eyes of his suffering wife, unable to offer her a drink of water which she craved, but the money was refused by the roundhouse foreman, Allgood, who was acting under Dyer’s orders.
“Kindly disposed women neighbors, whose husbands are still in the railroad service in other departments than that affected by the strike, have seen to it that enough water to drink has been smuggled to the bedside of Mrs. Stewart, whose condition forbids her being moved to any other place at this time.”
Hellraisers Journal – Friday December 1, 1911 I. W. W. Free Speech Fight On in Aberdeen, Washington
From the Spokane Industrial Worker of November 30, 1911:
The Spokane local of the Industrial Workers of the World is to rush 100 of its members to Aberdeen, Wash., to fill the jails of that town. They will help in a street speaking agitation now being waged there.
A telegram from Aberdeen Wednesday to the local secretary, W. A. Douglass, stated the fight was on and urged that all available men in Spokane start immediately. The communication stated the organizer and secretary of the Aberdeen local were already in jail for street speaking.
Reports from Portland, Ore., tell of an outbreak of “soap box orators” in that city. In conference Wednesday the chief of police and Commissioner Coffey decided to jail all speakers creating street demonstrations. The Spokane local says men will be rushed to the Rose city immediately, if necessary.-Spokane “Chronicle.”
———————-
Reinforcements From Vancouver.
VANCOUVER, B. C., Nov. 24.-At the local headquarters of the I. W. W. it was declared tonight that 368 men are going from here to Aberdeen, Wash., to participate in the free speech fight there.-“Spokesman-Review.”
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday January 15, 1911 Mother Jones News Round-Up for December 1910: –Praised by Max Hayes and Eugene Debs for Work in Pennsylvania
From the International Socialist Review of December 1910:
THE WORLD OF LABOR
BY MAX S. HAYES.
[…..]
MOTHER JONES has been busying herself during the past few weeks in trying to bring cheer and comfort to the poor miners in the Irwin-Greensburg soft coal district of Pennsylvania [Westmoreland County], and assisting those unfortunate victims of one of the most heartless lockouts in American industrial history (as has been shown in THE REVIEW) to gain a semblance of humane working and living conditions. Mother is never so happy as when helping “the boys” in the mining fields, and, as every officer and member of the U. M. W. knows, she has gone into districts in Colorado, Alabama, West Virginia and other places where many of the bravest of men have feared to tread. She has faced injunction judges, served time in jail, lived on bread and water and has undergone a thousand hardships where others have hesitated or flunked, and never a word of complaint as to her own sufferings escape her lips. In fact she is as jolly and happy-go-lucky as a girl of sixteen and always refers to her direful experiences as humorous escapades.
Mother Jones only grows sorrowful and indignant when she discusses the fool factionalism among the miners and the sufferings endured by “the boys” and their wives and children, whom she knows and loves and for whom she has done organizing work in past campaigns. She has little patience with the penny-ante politics of this or that alleged leader who aspires for place or power, and when in a reminiscent mood she can relate some wonderful stories.
————————
———————-
———————-
———-