Tag: Frank Prevey

Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: “800 Per Cent and the Akron Strike” by Leslie H. Marcy, Part I

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote BBH One Fist, ISR p458, Feb 1911—————

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday April 16, 1913
Akron, Ohio – 20,000 Workers on Strike Against Rubber Barons

From the International Socialist Review of April 1913:

800 Per Cent and the Akron Strike

By Leslie H. Marcy

[Part I of IV]

Akron Rubber Plant, ISR p711, Apr 1913

THE Rubber Aristocrats are having “tire trouble” in Akron, Ohio. Their mammoth 75-acre, 25,000-man-power, profit-making machines-known as the Goodrich-Diamond, Goodyear, Firestone and Buckeye rubber factories, have been badly punctured by a strike of 20,000 wage slaves.

The workers who have slaved for years laid down the bosses’ tools, rolled up their greasy working rags and walked out unorganized, on February 10, as a protest against tyrannical working conditions and repeated cuts in wages.

They are standing shoulder to shoulder and their arms are folded. There is no fire under the boilers; nor smoke issuing from the hundreds of industrial spires; the belts are on loose pulleys and even the wheels refuse to run.

The Rubber Barons refused to arbitrate with the state officials and threatened to move their plants from the city. Meanwhile the strike was rapidly being organized by militant members of the Socialist party working with the Industrial Workers of the World. The Socialist headquarters became the home of the strike committees while larger halls were secured for mass meetings, where thousands of workers hear the message of Revolutionary Socialism and Industrial Unionism. Comrades Frank Midney, “Red” Bessemer, George Spangler and fellow-workers George Speed, William Trautman, Jack Whyte and several more “live ones” are on the job speaking daily, organizing committees and strengthening the picket lines.

The home of Comrade Frank and Margaret Prevey was thrown open to the strikers and became a busy center of strike activity-sending out appeals for support, press notices and planing the work of taking care of those who were in need. Here was a hive that hummed twenty hours out of the twenty-four. Of course the Capitalist hirelings suddenly discovered that this was “an Agitators’ meeting place,” and made dire threats.

But the Rubber Barons in their palaces out on West Hill were also busy moulding public opinion through press and pulpit against this “foreign devil” called a strike. Were not collections dwindling on Sundays and business becoming “bad” during the week, and is not idleness the devil’s workshop?

Akron Women ag Goodrich, ISR p712, Apr 1913

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Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for November 1910, Part II: “Trinity of Sleek Parasites,” Roosevelt, Mitchell, Bishop of Scranton

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones, Capitalists Money Grabbing Parasites, AtR p2, Nov 5, Mnrs Mag p11, Nov 17, 1910———-

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday December 29, 1910
Mother Jones News Round-Up for November 1910, Part II:
–Roosevelt, Mitchell and Bishop of Scranton: “Trinity of Sleek Parasites”

From The New York Call of November 14, 1910:

MOTHER JONES’ LATEST VISIT
TO THE ANTHRACITE FIELDS

Mother Jones, the friend of the miners, the Socialist apostle, is now seventy-seven years old, but her activities in behalf of the oppressed are as vigorous as ever. Only lately she paid a visit to the anthracite fields. Her account of her visit, written for The Call, is as follows:

What I Saw in the Anthracite Fields.

Mother Jones, WDC Tx p5, June 18, 1910

My work in connection with the Mexican cases being completed at Washington, and feeling assured that the victims of this “bloodocracy” would not be rearrested on their liberation from prison, I decided to visit the boys in the anthracite regions, investigate conditions, and see what progress, if any, had been made in the way of organization and education since the last general strike. My visit to the anthracite regions which border on the inferno followed that of Roosevelt and his ex-labor leader, John Mitchell [ex-President of United Mine Workers of America], who had visited the coal fields, so it is said, for the purpose of making some observations and investigations as to the condition of the slaves whose lifeblood is coined into profits that the few may riot in luxury.

When Roosevelt and his bodyguard arrived at Scranton they were received by the Bishop of Scranton, who wined and dined them and who remarked during the meal that it was the first time in his life he had had the honor of sitting between two Presidents. On the right of the bishop sat Mr. Roosevelt, friend of the workingman. It was he who, in order to show his friendship, sent 2,000 guns to Colorado to shoot the miners into subjection and, if they did not obey, blow their brains out, and who, while president of the United States, sent hundreds of messages to Congress, but never one in the interest of the working class. Not even when the explosion in the Monongah mine sent 700 souls, the souls of wage slaves, into the shadows and shocked the civilized world, did he find it in his sterile conscience to send a message to Congress demanding protection for the men whose labor feeds the mammoth maw of industry and warms the fireside of the world. Roosevelt’s real interest in the working class is only aroused when he seeks their votes. On the left of the bishop sat the $6,000 Civic Federation beauty [Mitchell], pet of the mine owners, decorated with diamonds, gifts from the coal barons.

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Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for October 1910, Part II: Found in Akron, Ohio, Speaking on Socialism at Central Labor Union Hall

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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———-

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday November 13, 1910
Mother Jones News Round-Up for October 1910, Part II:
–Found in Akron, Ohio, Speaking on Socialism at Central Labor Union Hall

From the Akron Beacon Journal of October 14, 1910:

“MOTHER JONES” A SPEAKER HERE
—————
Famous Character Addresses
Socialists and Others.

Mother Jones crpd, WDC Tx p5, June 18, 1910

“Mother Jones,” well known among the laboring people as a speaker of ability and a woman who understands the conditions of the laboring man, spoke at the Central Labor Union hall in the Walsh block for an hour and a half Thursday evening, although she had declared she was here for a rest. Her talk was mostly devoted to socialism, and she told of reforms along the line that she considered would benefit the condition of the masses. “Mother” Jones has been called the “Stormy Petrel of the Industrial Revolution.”

She has also been called the “Angel of the Coal Miners,” and has had many interesting experiences during her life of 76 years, and the fire of her eloquence seems to burn as brightly as ever. At one time she addressed a crowd of striking miners in West Virginia in defiance of the police force and state militia.

—————

[Photograph added.]

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for October 1910, Part II: Found in Akron, Ohio, Speaking on Socialism at Central Labor Union Hall” →