Hellraisers Journal – Saturday February 1, 1919
Sacramento, California – I. W. W. Defendants Silent Except for the Coughing
From The Liberator of February 1919:
The Silent Defense in Sacramento
By Jean Sterling
Silent Defenders
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“Do the defendants, not represented by attorneys, wish to interrogate the talesman?”
The court reporter held his pencil suspended. The forty-three defendants faced with mocking eyes and closed lips their jailers, prosecutors and the presiding judge.
“Do they wish to exercise the right of challenge?”
For a tense second the inexorable wheels of justice stopped turning. Some one had thrown a felt slipper in the cogs. The defendants gave the prospective juror not so much as a glance. They had read and yawned and gazed vacantly out of the high windows while the attorneys for the prosecution had been probing the talesman’s soul for any humane or modern ideas on the subject of labor.
Then, after a decorous silence, such as is observed in court procedures and funeral rites, the Judge said quietly, “If, then, there are no objections to the talesman, he may take his seat in the jury box.”
And so the juryman, an ancient rancher, the prophesy of the type to follow, took his seat.
And in this manner did the forty-three defendants, I. W. W.’s, now being tried in Sacramento, California, on charges of conspiracy, under the Espionage Act, open their “silent defense.”
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday January 22, 1919
Mother Jones News for December 1918, Part III
-Mother Found in Taft, California, Organizing Oil Field Workers
Following her audience with the Governor of California on behalf of Tom Mooney, Mother Jones spoke in and around the San Francisco area urging working men and woman to take action to free Mooney and all other political and class-war prisoners. Mother then traveled to Taft, near Bakersfield, at the request of the oil field workers there with the intention of organizing them into the United Mine Workers of America.
We next find her in the pages of the The Kalamazoo Gazette as the author of a “Message to Women in Industry.” Here she states that the organization of women into “men’s” unions will strengthen organized labor for both working women as well as for working men:
Women ought to join men’s unions-not organize separate unions of their own. The battle against unpatriotic greed, the struggle for a free America, is no sex matter.
An infusion of women into men’s unions works for good to both men and women. Man has studied the disease longer than woman; he has a broader vision of society’s problems. Woman is less indifferent to suffering than man. She will contribute energy and inspire to action.
A woman will not see the hair torn from the scalp of a ten-year-old girl by unprotected cog-wheels, without wanting to do something about it.
Note: the photograph above is from The Buffalo Enquirer of December 26, 1918.
There are no limits to which
powers of privilege will not go
to keep the workers in slavery.
-Mother Jones
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Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday December 18, 1918
Duluth, Minnesota – Mass Meeting Supports Tom & Rena Mooney
From The Labor World of December 14, 1918:
DULUTH LABOR IS FOR MOONEY
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Mass Meeting Held By Metal Trades Council
-Telegram Sent to Gompers.
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Mrs. Mooney, wife of Tom Mooney, whose death sentence has been commutated to life, has worked since her acquittal to secure a new trial for her husband.
A mass meeting to protest against the incarceration of Tom Mooney was held at Woodman hall last Wednesday evening. The meeting was largely attended by representative union men from nearly every organization in the city.
Sentiment for Mooney was strong and the meeting lasted until nearly midnight.
William E. Towne, president of the Typographical union, and one of the best known trade unionists at the Head of the Lakes, was the first speaker. He touched upon Mooney’s life and described his earnest efforts to organize the workers, and how the money power had been used against him. Mr. Towne also gave a brief history of Rena Mooney, wife of Tom Mooney.
Duty of Labor.
Following Mr. Towne’s address, W. D. Croker, printer, touched upon the duties of every member of union labor and what was expected of labor in the nation.
[Said Mr. Croker:]
If by December 9, the governor doesn’t grant Mooney a new trial or an unconditional pardon, it is labor’s duty to hold the wheels of production until some one thing or the other is granted this man Mooney.
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday November 30, 1918
Pacific Coast, Nation-Wide, and World-Wide, Labor Organized for Mooney
In advance of the commutation by the Governor of California of the death sentence of Tom Mooney, Labor was organizing on his behalf, even to the extent of considering a General Strike. The Governor’s opinion that this case does not represent a clash between Capital and Labor is not shared by the millions of working men and women around the world who have organized and are yet organizing against the frame-up of Brother Mooney.
From The Seattle Star of November 28, 1918:
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SAN FRANCISCO, Cal., NOV. 28.-Desperate but not united plans by Pacific coast labor to initiate a national protest strike, together with the federal Densmore dictaphone report exposing the methods of District Attorney Charles Fickert of San Francisco, where two sensational developments that sent the internationally known Mooney case into double quick time as it approached its crisis.
The general strike to which scores of federated bodies pledged themselves as the date for the hanging of Tom Mooney drew near, was regarded by a great portion of organized labor as the only effective means left to protest against the widely assailed prosecution methods used in the Preparedness day bomb cases.
With the execution date for Mooney set for December 13, his fate rests today with Governor Stephens of California, to whom President Wilson has three times addressed pleas to reopen the case.
Excluding presidential intervention, a pardon by Governor Stephens in Mooney’s only chance-that or provisional pardon, which would demand a retrial on one of several bomb indictments still standing against Mooney and his co-defendants.
Appeals to every court in the land had been denied before the agitation for a general strike began.
Strike Idea Grows
Just what effect John B. Densmore’s eleventh-hour espionage report upon Fickert’s secret activities in the Mooney case might have upon this contemplated protest remained speculative as labor digested its revelations.
After reading it, San Francisco labor council delegates, in violent disagreement, refused to sponsor a general strike, but instead decided to send a protest committee to the governor.
Meantime a number of big labor organizations thruout the country had already decided upon a general stoppage of industry to focus public attention upon the “persecution and unfair trial” of Thomas Mooney and the sentence of Warren Billings to life imprisonment.
There are no limits to which
powers of privilege will not go
to keep the workers in slavery.
-Mother Jones
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Hellraisers Journal – Friday November 29, 1918
Sacramento, California – Life of Brother Mooney to be Spared
From the San Francisco Chronicle of November 29, 1918:
—–
Governor, in Decision,
Refuses to Recognize
Case as Representing
Clash of Capital and Labor
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ACTION INFLUENCED BY
APPEALS FROM WILSON
—–
Convicted Man No True Friend
of Working Class,
Statement Says;
Matter Decided on Merits
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Sacramento, November 28,-The death sentence of Thomas J. Mooney was commuted to life imprisonment today by Governor William D. Stephens. Mooney, convicted of the Preparedness parade bomb murders in San Francisco July 22, 1916, was sentenced to be hanged at San Quentin Prison December 13.
In announcing his decision governor Stephens asserts the case does not represent a clash between capital and labor. He characterizes as “absurd” propaganda that would make Mooney appear as a martyr to the cause of labor, and indicates that this action was influenced by two telegraphic appeals from President Wilson which urged commutation of sentence for international reasons….
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