Hellraisers Journal: Everett Trades Council Elects Delegate for Upcoming Chicago Tom Mooney Defense Conference

5th January 201922nd February 2019 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

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 – Sunday January 5, 1919
Everett, Washington – Trades Council to Send Delegate to Chicago

From the Everett Labor Journal of January 3, 1919:

EVERETT’S ORGANIZED LABOR ELECTS
DELEGATE TO CHICAGO
—–
Big Meeting of Trades Unionists Last Wednesday
Night at Red Men’s Wigwam.
—–

Wednesday, January 1, 1919.

The Council was called to order at the usual time by President Gulley.

The Trades Council, having invited the membership of the several trades unions in the city to meet with it a larger hall was necessary and the Red Men’s Hall was secured for the occasion.

Members of nearly all the unions were in attendance and a large meeting was the result.

There were present President Short and ex-President Marsh of the Washington State Federation of Labor, which added zest to the meeting.

Bro. Short addressed the meeting briefly, calling special attention to conditions existing in California growing out of the Mooney case and then discussed the subject of reconstruction. He said the nation had entered the war in a state of unpreparedness and had “made good” in helping to destroy autocracy, but was now confronted by as serious a problem in the reconstruction made necessary by changed conditions. This new problem would tax the deepest thought of the greatest minds in the country and its solution would require all the wisdom, and experience of the people. Relating to the proposed strike in defense of Mooney and his co-defendants he said it was ill-advised. It lacked organization as to its national significance. If there should be a strike it should be confined to the State of California where the trouble lay. Industrially and politically California was so strongly organized by the corporation employers of labor that united effort must be put forth to crush that opposition to the welfare of the workers.

California was the offender and to California should be applied |the drastic remedy implied by a general strike. If a nation-wide strike were necessary there must needs be nation-wide preparation for it if success in the use of this last weapon of labor’s defense be made successful…..

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Hellraisers Journal: From The Liberator: “The Peril of Tom Mooney” by Robert Minor -“Will You Let Them Do It?”

10th March 2018 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

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

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

Hellraisers Journal, Sunday March 10, 1918
From San Francisco to Petrograd, Workers Fight for Life of Tom Mooney

From The Liberator of March 1918:

The Peril of Tom Mooney

By Robert Minor

THE story of the manner in which Tom Mooney’s death sentence was procured is stock conversation in American working-class homes. It has gone as far as the trenches of the European armies. There is hardly a Russian village where the name of “Tom Muni” has not been heard. Actually, the names of the witnesses in the case are spoken in Siberian villages, and a certain California district attorney is regularly cursed around the samovar.

The only evidence against Tom Mooney that a sensible man would listen to, was that of an Oregon cattleman, Frank C. Oxman, who came into the trial at the last moment, took the stand like a breeze from the prairie, swore that he was a country gentleman, loved his wife, and had seen Israel Weinberg drive Tom Mooney, Mrs. Mooney, Billings and an unidentified man to the scene of the crime in Israel Weinberg’s jitney bus, of the number of which car he had made a note on a telegraph envelope which he had in his pocket at that moment. He never made a mistake in his life in the identity of a person, as he was used to identifying cattle on the range….Mooney was condemned to die on the gallows.

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Hellraisers Journal: International Socialist Review on Mooney Case: “They Are Building the Gallows”

3rd July 20173rd July 2017 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

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, Tuesday July 3, 1917
San Francisco, California – Report on Tom Mooney Frame-Up

From the International Socialist Review:

—–

IT HAS been proven that Tom Mooney was framed up. We who are interesting ourselves in his case were glad, after our long and terrible struggle, when we were able to offer the public the absolute and unquestioned proof that Mooney’s conviction was the result of perjury bought and paid for. We were glad to be able to silence arguments with actual letters in the handwriting of the chief perjury conspirator, which letters tell in black and white that Mooney’s death is sought by false testimony. We have silenced argument.

Franklin A. Griffin, the judge who pronounced the death sentence upon Mooney, has angrily demanded that Mooney be given another trial, free of perjury. The newspapers which formerly demanded his blood have now ceased to call for Mooney’s death, and two of them are demanding that the disgraceful conviction be undone.

All of California and American Labor has ceased to discuss personal differences and has demanded in one tremendous voice that Mooney, Mrs. Mooney, Billings, Weinberg and Nolan be freed. Every national figure in the labor movement of the United States is active now in behalf of the humble labor unionists in the jail of San Francisco.

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Hellraisers Journal: “To the Shame of Labor” by Robert Minor, “Mooney Plot Exposed!”

8th May 2017 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

You ought to be out raising hell.
This is the fighting age.
Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones

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

Hellraisers Journal, Tuesday May 8, 1917
From the International Socialist Review: The Mooney Case

TO THE SHAME OF LABOR

By ROBERT MINOR

W. Bourke Cockran is a democratic leader, as well as the most noted lay orator in expounding the doctrines of the Catholic Church. Bourke Cockran is known internationally for his remarkable mentality and almost unequaled oratory in Congress and upon the democratic platform. He cannot be accused of being prejudiced in favor of violent overturners of society. Cockran spent six weeks in San Francisco as volunteer chief counsel for Tom Mooney, and at that time steeped himself in every detail, confidential or otherwise, of the entire story of the prosecution of Mooney, Billings, Nolan, Weinberg and Mrs. Mooney on the charge of blowing up the preparedness parade. One of the highest-priced attorneys in the world, he charged for his services—nothing.

When a cynical jury of twelve business men and retired derelicts sentenced Tom Mooney to hang, Cochran told me that he had never received so heavy a blow in his life. He said that if such things could be, the nation was rotting at its foundation.

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Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones Abandons Her Neutrality; Says Kaiser Should Be “Kicked Off His Throne”

4th April 20174th April 2017 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Why should the workingmen fight for
the robbers of Wall street?
Let them fight their own battles.
-Mother Jones

That old blood sucker,
the kaiser, ought to
be kicked off his throne.
-Mother Jones

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Hellraisers Journal, Wednesday April 4, 1917
Des Moines, Iowa – Mother Jones Speaks Out on European War

WWI Dead All On Our Side, Ryan Walker, Nw Wkr, Mar 22, 1917

Overnight, perhaps reacting to the War Resolution now before Congress upon the request of President Wilson for same, Mother reversed her stand regarding American involvement in the terrible slaughter now taking place between the waring nations of Europe. In an interview reported by the April 2nd edition of The Des Moines Register, Mother declared:

I hate war. We must not throw our American workingmen into olive drab uniforms, stick guns in their hands, and ship them over to France to be fresh slaughter for the cannons of the devilish kings of Europe.

If John D Rockefeller, Morgan, the Guggenheims, or Wall street wants to see Germany defeated, let them go over and fight in the allies’ trenches. Why should the workingmen fight for the robbers of Wall street? Let them fight their own battles, says I!

The next day, the Register reported that Mother had “abandoned her neutrality:”

That old blood sucker, the kaiser, ought to be kicked off his throne, and if he ever starts anything with this country we will lick hell out of him if I have to raise a regiment of 10,000 women myself.

Thus “Mother” Jones, firebrand speaker, abandoned her neutrality in a speech that held spellbound the miners of the thirteenth district, U. M. W. A., who were celebrating the nineteenth anniversary of the securing of the eight-hour day for miners at the Coliseum yesterday afternoon.

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