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Hellraisers Journal – Monday August 4, 1913
Paterson Strikers Won’t Scab Under Flag; Quinlan Goes to Prison
From The Progressive Woman of August 1913:
From the Appeal to Reason of July 26, 1913
-Patrick Quinlan Taken to State Penitentiary at Trenton by Ryan Walker:
-Quinlan’s Own Story of the Paterson Strike:
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Hellraisers Journal – Sunday July 13, 1913
Paterson, New Jersey – Trial of Miss Flynn, Quinlan to Prison, Striker Murdered
From Solidarity of July 12, 1913:
From The Topeka State Journal of July 3, 1913:
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Hellraisers Journal – Saturday June 14, 1913
Paterson, New Jersey – Socialists Party Members Support Strike of Silk Weavers
From the International Socialist Review of June 1913:
What the Reds are Doing
in PatersonBy Alexander Scott
Editor of The Weekly Issue,
Socialist Party Paper of Passaic County.
THE Socialists of Paterson have from the beginning of the silk strike taken an active part and have performed real service for the strikers. How could they help doing so? The fight of the 25,000 silk workers, organized in the I. W. W., was their fight. A majority of the party members are themselves silk workers.
When the general strike was called, the Socialists rolled up their sleeves, ready for any emergency. No question arose as to whether the workers were being organized by the I. W. W., the A. F. of L., or S. L. P. That did not matter then.
Had the strike been called by the A. F. of L.-much as some of us might doubt the sincerity of the organizers of that organization, and dubious as we might be of the outcome of the strike-there is no doubt but that the Paterson Socialists would have as readily jumped into the fray. In fact, when a year or so ago, the Detroit faction of the I. W. W. (S. L. P.) attempted, or pretended to organize the textile workers of the Passaic county, the Socialist Party members assisted, and when it was seen that the workers had been defeated through petty political trickery, they just as readily denounced them as traitors to the working class.
In the present strike, the two arms of the revolutionary labor movement have worked in unison. The Industrial Workers of the World and the Socialist Party have demonstrated the tremendous power of their organizations when united to fight a common enemy. No force is powerful enough to overcome them.
It is the opinion of the writer that the strike would have been lost had we not all fought together, throwing the weight of our organization and press in with the I. W. W.
Let it here be understood that this article is not written with the purpose of showing the superiority of political action over direct action, but with the view of showing the necessity of both political and industrial union action in the struggle of the working class for emancipation.
The general strike was called for February 28. “Nip the strike in the bud,” ordered the mill owners. “Righto. At your service,” replied the city administration, the police, the press and some of the clergy.
The police gave orders that all halls be closed against the I. W. W., and got their clubs in readiness. The newspapers put their lying pens to work, and the clergy prepared sermons to suit the occasion. The strikers had already engaged Turn Hall as their headquarters, and the police had ordered this closed, too, and, moreover, intended to enforce the order by means of their clubs and guns, if necessary.
On the first day of the general strike a few hundred strikers filed out of Turn Hall and proceeded peacefully along the sidewalk in double file, when they were brutally attacked by a gang of blue-coated, brass-buttoned ruffians, headed by their Chief. Clubs were swung right and left, and no discrimination was made as to sex or age. One girl was struck and her cries could be heard two blocks distant.
“Well done!” said the silk bosses, and their editorial lackeys echoed, “Well done!” The bosses’ papers appeared with headlines announcing, “Rioting Strikers Suppressed by Timely Work of Chief of Police Bimson and his Squad of Men-Strike Being Nipped in the Bud.”
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Hellraisers Journal – Thursday June 12, 1913
Paterson, New Jersey – Silk Workers on Picket Line, Braving Death, Standing Firm
From the International Socialist Review of June 1913:
On the Paterson Picket Line
By William D. Haywood
[Part I of II]
FIVE o’clock every morning finds thousands of Paterson silk workers on the picket line with spirits as dauntless as ever despite the fact that after twelve weeks of struggle, starvation is staring them in the face. Some of them have been out in front of the battle for sixteen weeks.
The picket line is the modern barricade. It is there that the strike will be either lost or won. It is the picket line that has taught the Paterson silk workers the meaning of the class struggle. Here men and women daily meet the guns of hired thugs and the clubs of policemen. Braving death, suffering indignity and humiliation, nearly 800 strikers have been arrested on trumped-up charges and thrown into jail. Some of them have been jailed a number of times.
It takes courage to face a term in the Paterson bastile. It was built in 1854, before the era of alleged prison reform began. In the cellhouse where most of the strikers have been thrown the cells are narrow, with two bunks, one above the other. The ventilation is bad and the sanitation worse. The food is on a par with the usual prison fare.
Before being transferred to this county jail, the prisoners are, as a rule, compelled to spend a night in the city jail before appearing before Recorder Carroll’s court. The conditions that have been imposed on the strikers in the city jail are beyond description, reminding one of accounts of the hell-holes of Russia. Here seven and eight men have been crowded into a single cell intended to be occupied by one. No bedding of any kind is provided and no food is furnished. One group of strikers reported they were held for nineteen hours without even water.
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Hellraisers Journal – Thursday May 15, 1913
New York, New York – Detachment of Paterson Children Arrive in City
From the Paterson Evening News of May 13, 1913:
WILL CARE FOR MORE CHILDREN
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“New Yorkers are anxious to take care of your children until the strike is over, and help you win your battle,” said Miss Elizabeth Gurley Flynn in a recent address at Helvetia hall. This seems to be true if the following dispatch from New York is to be believed:
New York, May 13 [Tuesday].-Seven or eight hundred men and women pushed and shoved and almost came to blows on Saturday [May 10] for the possession of sixty-five frightened little boys and girls. They were the third detachment of children of the striking Paterson silk weavers sent here to be farmed out to board among strike sympathizer, and the men and women who almost mobbed them were fighting for one of them to care for.
Industrial Workers of the World followers, their friends and few curious people began to gather early yesterday afternoon at the Labor Temple. They came because the Paterson strike committee had sent out 250 postcards asking volunteers to board and lodge 150 children, who would be allotted to their temporary guardians at five o’clock. Twice before in the last ten days this appeal had been sent out, and already 175 children have found homes in New York. A special committee, of which F. Sumner Boyd is chairman, and Mrs. Anna M. Sloan director, has had charge of the distribution.
When children arrived by auto truck from Paterson at 5.30 o’clock there were only sixty-five of them. They ranged in age from four to fourteen years, and when Miss Jessie Ashley and Miss Ethel Byrne, Paterson nurse, the others who had brought here had seated them in rows at Labor Temple hall and announced that only sixty-five, instead of 150, would be assigned, trouble began…
[Mr. Boyd declared:]
We shall probably bring 100 or more over the middle of the week, and we already have more than twice as many applications for the children as we have children to be cared for. We will bring them all, though.
Like the 175 children that have already been brought here, those who came yesterday were all found on examination by physicians in Paterson to be below normal from malnutrition.
[Photographs and emphasis added.]
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Hellraisers Journal – Sunday May 4, 1913
Paterson, New Jersey – The Arrest of Bill Haywood and Adolf Lessig
From the International Socialist Review of May 1913:
The Arrest of Haywood and Lessig
By Phillips Russell
DETERMINED that the 25,000 silk strikers of Paterson, N. J., should not listen to William D. Haywood on Sunday, March 30, the guardians of Paterson’s law and order, seized Haywood and Adolph Lessig on their way to Haledon and, in the interests of the mill owners, secured Haywood’s conviction and sentence to six months at hard labor, and Lessig to six months.
No single act or process in the proceeding had the least semblance of legality, and no attempt to make even a show of legality was made. The mill owners are represented on Paterson’s Police Commission by one of themselves. They appointed as Recorder one James F. Carroll, notorious in the city as a bar room politician. They wanted Haywood and Lessig out of the way; they had them seized by their police; they put them behind the prison bars, and intended them to stay there.
A mass meeting had been called for Sunday, March 30, in Lafayette Oval, which had been secured for the purpose by the strikers. On the preceding Saturday Police Chief Bimson issued an order prohibiting the meeting, but partly because of the lateness of the order’s appearance, but more largely because they believed they had the rights of free assemblage and free speech, the strikers ignored the order, and at the appointed hour began to pour in thousands down the roads leading to the meeting place.
In the meantime, a squad of special police detailed for special duty, namely, to prevent the meeting and disperse the crowd, held up Haywood and Lessig a block before they reached the Oval. The police informed Haywood that no meeting would be allowed, and that if he attempted to speak he would be arrested, whereupon the strikers within hearing distance shouted “On to Haledon!”
The cry was taken up by the thousands assembled, Haywood assenting: “All right we’ll go to Haledon,” and he began to walk the two miles beyond which lies the little Socialist municipality, followed by the strikers who had just learned that in Paterson they had no rights.
The crowd was perfectly orderly, although without any formation, but when it had got within half a block of the city’s limits the patrol wagon thundered through the mass of men, women and children to where Haywood and Lessig were walking in front. Motorcycle police had noted the general direction of the crowd and had rushed for the wagon, which was hooted and jeered by the strikers as it dashed directly for Haywood and Lessig.
Police Sergeant Ryan jumped out of the wagon, pointed at Haywood, saying, “You’re under arrest!” and grabbed Lessig, at the same time shouting, “Get Tresca!” Carlo Tresca, however, had dropped behind. As the wagon dashed by on its way to Haywood, some friends seized Tresca and hurried him into the house of a friend from whence he smiled pleasantly at the police who came to seize him.
After Haywood and Lessig were under arrest, the police, in a frantic effort to drive back the crowd, met with one who refused to be hurried. This was Messari, who was arrested and later arraigned on the same charges as the two principal defendants, some of the police conveniently swearing he was with them, as the amended charge required three defendants to make it legal.
“Have you a warrant?” asked Haywood of the policemen who rode with him in the wagon.
“I have,” answered one of them.
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Hellraisers Journal – Saturday May 3, 1913
Paterson, New Jersey – Bill Haywood on the General Strike of Silk Workers, Part II
From the International Socialist Review of May 1913:
The Rip in the Silk Industry
By William D. Haywood
———-[Part II of II]
The Red Badge of Toil
In this connection it is worth while to relate an incident-one of the most dramatic of the strike. The Paterson bosses lost no time in injecting the “patriotic” issue after the fashion of Lawrence, Little Falls and Akron. The red flag, they howled, stood for blood, murder and anarchy-the Star Spangled Banner must be upheld, etc., etc. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn was on the platform at a big strike meeting one day explaining the significance of the red flag when a striking dyer sprang up from the middle of the audience crying:
“I know ! Here is the red flag!”
And aloft he held his right hand-stained a permanent bloody crimson, gnarled from years of toil, and corroded by the scarlet dye which it was his business to put into the fabrics worn by the dainty lady of the capitalist class as well as by the fawning prostitute.
For an instant there was silence and then the hall was rent by cries from the husky throats as all realized this humble dyer indeed knew the meaning of the red badge of his class.
Ribbon weaving is largely done by men and women. In this department the bosses have developed a speeding up system with reductions in pay, overlooking no opportunity to introduce improved machinery. Thus they increase production, at the same time they lowered the pay, until the workers are now demanding a scale which 19 years ago was imposed upon them! That is, the weavers now ask a wage that prevailed two decades ago.
The significance of this demand makes it plain that in the evolution of industry and the introduction of new machinery the workers have obtained no benefit, while the bosses have reaped ever increasing profits.
Many children are employes in the silk industry, most of them being between the ages of 14 and 16. However there are few violations of the child labor law, not because. the manufacturers care anything about either the law or the children, but because the making of high grade silk requires the careful and efficient work that only adults can give. However the Paterson capitalists have begun to set up plants in the southern states as well as in the mining regions of Pennsylvania, installing there new style looms which can be operated by girls and children.
Meeting For Children
One of the best and most enthusiastic meetings held during the strike was that for the benefit of the children of the mills. They packed Turner Hall and listened eagerly and with appreciation as speakers outlined to them the development in the manufacture of silk from the cocoon to the completed fabric lying on the shelves of the rich department store.
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Hellraisers Journal – Friday February 28, 1913
Paterson, New Jersey – Chief of Police Bimson Threatens Arrest of Haywood
From The Boston Evening Globe of February 27, 1913:
