Hellraisers Journal – Friday September 12, 1902 George F. Baer Expounds Upon the Divine Rights of the Capitalist
From the Appeal to Reason of September 6, 1902:
GEO. F. BAER ———-
Kansas Agitator September 5, 1902
Before he became president of the Reading railroad:
Extracts from an address delivered by Geo. F. Baer, before the law department of the university of Pennsylvania, on October 3, 1887:
States Resources Fabulous.
The natural resources of this state, (Pennsylvania ) are simply fabulous. How much of this great wealth falls to the share of our state and her citizens? It has passed into the hands of giganticassociations, kept together by state charters, or some cunning called a trust, whose principal stockholders are not among us nor of us. Daily they carry off our treasures, and leave only enough to pay the labor, which prepares them for and transports them to market. The profit which should enrich our citizens and state, goes beyond our borders and we thus receive little benefit from it. All this has only become possible through the mistaken policy of attempting to foster the development of our resources by departing from the simple principles of honest, free government. It is thru the manipulation of these associations that men ride to ‘sudden fortune,’ and thereby provoke the discussion of social problems and the promulgation of theories, which are at variance with all sound thinking and past experience.”
After he became president of the Reading railroad:
Wilkesbarre, Penn., Aug. 20.-W. F. Clark, a photographer of this city, recently addressed a letter to President Baer, of the Philadelphia & Reading railroad company, appealing to him as a Christian to settle the miners’ strike. The writer said that if Christ was taken more into our business affairs there would be less trouble in the world, and that if Mr. Baer granted the strikers a slight concession they would gladly return to work, and Baer would have the blessing of God and the respect of the nation.
Baer’s Reply Was:
“I see you are evidently biased in your religious views in favor of the right or the working man to control a business in which he has no other interest than to secure fair wages for the work he does. I beg of you not to be discouraged. The rights and interests of the laboring man will be protected and cared for, not by the labor agitators, but by the Christian men to whom God in his in his infinite wisdom has given the control of the property interests of the country. Pray earnestly that the right may triumph, always remember that the Lord God Omnipotent still reigns, and that His reign is one of law and order, and not of violence and crime.”
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday February 6, 1912 The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire: “God Did It” by Phillips Russell
From the International Socialist Review of February 1912:
A NEW YORK jury composed of capitalistic cockroaches has absolved Harris & Blanck of the murder of 147 young workers in the Triangle shirtwaist factory fire of March 25, 1911.
Harris & Blanck, the two bosses, were tried only for the death of one girl worker, according to the crooked ways of capitalist courts, and since “it couldn’t be proved” that they were responsible for this one girl’s death, they were freed.
A member of the jury afterward expressed himself as follows:
“I can’t see that anyone was responsible for the loss of life, and it seems to me that it must have been AN ACT OF GOD.”
Poor God! The capitalists have got him just where they have the working class-cornered! They tell us He can do all things. But there is one thing God can’t do, it seems-He can’t answer back. Else the moment this pitiful squirt uttered these words He would have rent the sky open, would have hurled His scepter aside, thrown off His robe, stepped down from His awful throne, taken this petty capitalist croaker by the throat, and rammed his statement back down him again.
Hasn’t God any manhood at all? How long will He continue to allow Himself to be made the goat for capitalist crimes? Or is His eternal silence a confession of guilt? If so, then it is time we were knowing. Is it God who has been up to the deviltry of all these years? Is it God who traps the worker in blazing factory or buries him in tomblike mine, without providing him with even one means of escape? Is it God who sends the sailor abroad in a rotten hulk of a ship and drowns him before he can leap from his foul bunk? Is it God who hurls the iron worker from his lofty perch a thousand feet to the stones below and mangles the brakeman and the machine hand into an unrecognizable mass, telling the weeping wives and children that He is very sorry but the dead men were guilty of contributory negligence? Is it God who takes into His tender care all that the worker produces and hands him back just enough to live on?
The capitalists say so. Their priests and preachers, their professors and editors, their teachers and other kept men, say so.
But we have begun to suspect. We have begun to see that the capitalists have created God in their own image. And He is running up a terrible account which some day He will have to settle with the working class of the world.
Women, it’s up to you to change the evils.
Men will not change them, and the ballot will not do it.
I don’t care what party is in power
if you give me a well organized economic army.
-Mother Jones
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Hellraisers Journal, Wednesday August 23, 1916
El Paso, Texas-Mother Jones “Eats Fire” as Crowd Cheers
From El Paso Herald of August 21, 1916:
‘MOTHER’ JONES EATS MORE FIRE CALLS
SPADE A SPADE AND SWEARS
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Aged Labor Agitator Says She Asked Colorado Governor
“What the Hell He Was Going To Do About It”
When She Returned; Crowd Cheers Her On To
Make Hot Statements in Cleveland Square.
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“Roasted babies” and Children’s blood” were articles on the oratorical menu that was served by “Mother” Jones to an audience of 1500 in Cleveland Square Saturday night. The fiery speaker called a spade a spade and the crowd was with “Mother” from start to finish. Cries of “Give it to ’em, ‘Mother,'” “Tell it to ’em were heard after many of the speakers most telling points; but Mother needed no invitation.
Roasts George Baer.
“When George Baer told me that God Almighty had appointed him to take care of us working people, I answered him that God Almighty must have had a jag on when he did the appointing,” shouted the aged speaker, while her listeners broke out into a pandemonium of applause and laughter…
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A NEW YORK jury composed of capitalistic cockroaches has absolved Harris & Blanck of the murder of 147 young workers in the Triangle shirtwaist factory fire of March 25, 1911. 