Hellraisers Journal – Saturday January 18, 1919
Chicago, Illinois – National Labor Convention for Mooney Hears from Radicals
From The Butte Daily Bulletin of January 16, 1919:
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(Special Dispatch to The Bulletin.)
Chicago, Jan. 16.-At this morning’s session of the Mooney Labor Congress Ed Nolan scored the capitalist press on its criticism of the invitation of Debs and its attempt to give a sense of dissension among the delegates. Debs’ name was again greeted with tumultuous applause. It was moved that the Nonpartisan league be given the floor. The motion was defeated. Dunn of Butte moved to give the Detroit delegate the floor. The Detroit leader clearly outlined the program before the convention as follows:
No political begging, a general strike to free Tom Mooney and also to take a stand to free political prisoners and recognize Russia; reorganize the American Federation of Labor on an industrial basis.
Hellraisers Journal – Friday January 17, 1919:
Chicago, Illinois – National Labor Convention Convenes on Behalf of Mooney
From The Seattle Star of January 14, 1919:
CHICAGO, Jan. 14.-Nation-wide strikes and boycotts will be the weapons used by labor to secure the release of Thomas J. Mooney, according to Edward B. Nolan, San Francisco, secretary of the International Workers’ Defense league who made the keynote speech at the opening session of the labor congress in the Mooney case here today.
Nolan asked the congress to set a definite date for the strikes.
[Declared Nolan:]
Legislation is not forthcoming for Mooney’s benefit. Labor must use its last resort, its powerful economic weapon-the strike and the boycott-to win Mooney his justice. The case has become the greatest question of the nation. We must use the final expression of labor and lay our cards on the table.
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 – Tuesday December 17, 1918
Eugene Debs Sends Message to Tom Mooney: “Tear up that commutation!”
From The New Appeal of December 14, 1918:
Debs Wires Mooney
Eugene V. Debs has sent the following telegram to Tom Mooney:
Tear up that commutation and fling the scraps in the brazen face of the corporation hireling that insulted you and the working class by that infamous act.
Let Patrick Henry once more speak through you, “Give me liberty of give me death!”
There must be no compromise! You are innocent! The working class is aroused as never before in history. They will tear the murderous clutch of criminal capitalism from your throat.
All hail the general strike. If they insist on war let it come. We have nothing to lose but our chains.
God loves justice and hates cowards. Stand by your colors and the workers of the world will stand by you; to victory or death.
Now is the time for the workers of America to prove themselves. Tom Mooney and his comrades cry aloud to the proletariat of the world.
Arouse ye millions for whom he risked his life, and save that life for the future of his class, and for the vindication of right and justice.
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.
Solidarity Forever
For the Union makes us strong.
-Ralph Chaplin
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Hellraisers Journal, Thursday March 28, 1918
Kansas City, Missouri – General Strike Is Spreading
Workers of Kansas City, both union and non-union, are rallying to the aid of laundry drivers and laundry workers who have been on strike now for about five weeks.The employers have repeatedly refused to bargain with their employees, and have even refused to meet with the federal conciliators sent by the U. S. Department of Labor.
From The Leavenworth Post of March 27, 1918:
GREAT STRIKE AT KANSAS CITY
NOW WELL UNDER WAY
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Walkout Began at Eight o’Clock This Morning
With Barbers, Bartenders and Brewers
in the Forefront of the Fray.
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TROUBLE REPORTED THIS AFTERNOON
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Sympathetic Strike, Called to Aid Laundry Drivers,
Brought Out 700 Card Men
From Other Unions in First Call.
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Kansas City, March 27.-Kansas City today was in the midst of a general strike, the exact extent of which was unknown this afternoon. The strike began at 8 o’clock this morning and although labor leaders declared it would result in a virtual tie-up of all industry by tomorrow night, best reports indicated that so far only 700 union men, including brewers, bartenders, barbers and members of certain building trades unions had quit work. Men from other crafts were walking out this afternoon, however, it was said. No disorders had been reported to the police. The strike was called to support the walkout of laundry workers and drivers.
Street cars were still operating this afternoon and reports were current that members of the Street Railway Employes’ union had voted not to strike.
Late News Tells of Violence.
The first violence in connection with the strike occurred at 2 o’clock this afternoon when a crowd estimated at one thousand persons rushed a crowd of police reserves who had arrested three men in connection with the overturning of a laundry wagon. The officers used their clubs freely and the crowd responded with stones and fists. A number of persons were injured, none severely it was reported. The prisoners escaped during the tussle and only one of them was recaptured it was said.
Reports late this afternoon indicated that the strike was spreading slowly.
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[Inset is from Chicago Daily Tribune of March 27th.]
I studied carefully the New York East Side,
the slums, the dives, and the sweatshops
and the terrible conditions of the people there
drove me into socialism.
-Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
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Hellraisers Journal, Wednesday September 18, 1907
Chicago, Illinois – Girl Socialist Is I. W. W. Delegate
Miss Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, age 17, of New York City, is a delegate to the Convention of Industrial Workers of the World which opened its first session on Monday morning, September 16th.
From The Chicago Daily Tribune of September 17, 1907:
…Industrial Workers of the World Open Annual Convention…..
With a gavel valued at $100 in the chairman’s hands, the annual convention of the Industrial Workers of the World opened in the morning at Brand’s hall. The gavel was presented by the unions of Alaska. It is made of walrus tusks. It is expected a tangle over the credentials will be straightened out today, and the unionists will take up business matters…
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[Photograph added.]
Miss Flynn, “Platform Wonder”
MISS GLYNN IN SOAPBOX TALKS.
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“Platform Wonder” Tells Her Hearers
the General Strike Is to Be the
Watchword of Future.
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Standing on a soapbox at Halsted and O’Brien streets last night, Miss Elizabeth Gurley Glynn [Flynn], the 17 year old union “platform wonder,” addressed a crowd of 200 workingmen and exhorted them to prepare for the “general strike” in Chicago in the near future. Other unions “revival” meetings were held at Clark and Erie streets and elsewhere about the city. The soapbox campaign will be conducted while the convention of the Industrial Workers of the World is in session this week at Brand’s hall.
[Declared Miss Flynn:]
Not until every workingman quits his labor and refuses to go back until he is given a fair share of the profits will the labor question be settled. The general strike is the watchword of the future. It is certain to come soon.
Meetings will be held tonight in the Milwaukee avenue district and at several places on the west side.
Hellraisers Journal, Monday April 2, 1917
From the International Socialist Review: “The Deadly Parallel”
“The Deadly Parallel” was first published in Solidarity, organ of the Industrial Workers of the World, on March 24, 1917, and is republished in this month’s edition of the Review:
Hellraisers Journal, Friday February 9, 1917
Chicago, Illinois – I.W. W. Opposes War, Advocates Class Solidarity
In the dark shadow of War, now looming over the nation’s working class men and women, we have concluded that now is a good time to consider the Resolution on War and Class Solidarity passed at Tenth Convention of the Industrial Workers of the World. The delegates gathered together in Chicago for ten days last fall, from November 20th to December 1st of 1916. Resolution #112 was passed during the afternoon session on the last day of the convention:
No. 112—A DECLARATION:
We, the Industrial Workers of the World, in convention assembled, hereby reaffirm our adherence to the principle of Industrial Unionism, and rededicate ourselves to the unflinching, unfaltering prosecution of the struggle for the abolition of wage slavery and the realization of our ideals in Industrial Democracy. With the European war for conquest and exploitation raging and destroying the lives, class consciousness and unity of the workers, and the ever growing agitation for military preparedness clouding the main issues and delaying the realization of our ultimate aim with patriotic and, therefore, capitalistic aspirations, we openly declare ourselves the determined opponents of all nationalistic sectionalism, or patriotism, and the militarism preached and supported by our one enemy, the capitalist class. We condemn all wars and, for the prevention of such, we proclaim the anti-militarist propaganda in time of peace, thus promoting Class Solidarity among the workers of the entire world, and, in time of war, the General Strike in all industries. We extend assurances of both moral and material support to all the workers who suffer at the hands of the capitalist class for their adhesion to these principles and call on all workers to unite themselves with us, that the reign of the exploiters may cease and this earth be made fair through the establishment of the Industrial Democracy.
F. H. LITTLE,
W. E. MATTINGLY,
FRANCIS MILLER,
WM. D. HAYWOOD.
National Organizer McGuckin suggested that every effort should be made to get this published in the capitalist press, and that it should also be printed in leaflet form and widely distributed. Motion made and seconded that this be adopted unanimously, and published in the presses throughout the United States of America and the world. Unanimously carried.
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