Hellraisers Journal: Women and Babes From Ludlow Visit Chicago, Leave for Washington to Visit with President

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Quote Ludlow Mary Petrucci, Children all dead, ed, Trinidad Las Animas Co  CO Affidavit, May 11, 1914—————

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday May 24, 1914
Chicago, Illinois – Judge Lindsey and Survivors of Ludlow Speak at Hull House

From The Fort Wayne Sentinel of May 20, 1914:

Judge Lindsey, Mary Thomas, Pearl Jolly, Mary Petrucci, Thomas Girls, Ft Wayne Sent p6, May 20, 1914
Judge Ben Lindsey; Women left to right: Mary Thomas,
Pearl Jolly, Mary Petrucci; Thomas Daughters.
Five survivors of the Ludlow Massacre stopped off in Chicago, as guests of Miss Jane Addams of Hull House, on their way to Washington D. C. where they met with President Wilson. Mary Petrucci whose children were all killed in the fire, Mary Thomas and her two little daughters who hid from machine gun bullets throughout that terrible day, and Pearl Jolly, the heroine of Ludlow, who spent the day under fire as she assisted the women and children to escape: they are all being escorted to Washington by Judge Lindsey and Mrs. Lee Champion. The Judge’s wife was, unfortunately, hospitalized yesterday soon after their arrival in Chicago, and will not be able to accompanied the party further.
 
From The Daily Capital Journal (Salem, Oregon) of May 19, 1914:

LUDLOW’S STORY IS

TOO HORRIBLE TO PUT IN PRINT
———-

Details Equaled Only by the Burning and Sacking of Ancient Rome
———-
COLORADO SITTING ON VOLCANO’S EDGE
———-
Father Saluted with Child’s Corpse When He Went to Militia’s Camp
———-

Chicago, May 19,-“The true story of what transpired at Ludlow is too horrible to print.” said Judge Ben Lindsey here today. The famous Denver jurist is en route to Washington, accompanied by Mrs. Pearl Jolly, Mrs. Mary Petrucci and Mrs. M. Thomas, all Ludlow survivors.

“The details of the Ludlow affair are almost unbelievable,” said Judge Lindsey. “They are equaled only in the stories of the sacking of Rome, the pillaging of Carthage and the inhumanities of the Balkan war.

We are going to Washington to beg President Wilson to not withdraw the federal troops. My own interests are neutral. I want law and order and the citizens of Denver have asked me to help get order.

“The Ludlow story is a black mark on the nation’s history. I can only suggest it and fill in the outlines with the direct testimony of these women who have suffered. As one instance of what occurred-and I have affidavits to back it up-a father went to a militia camp for his boy who had been missing. He was saluted with the child’s corpse. The boys’ head had been shot off and the body half burned. A soldier threw it over a tent to the father, saying: ‘Here, take the _ thing.’

Mothers who went to rescue their babies were shot down and mutilated. Children only a few years old were killed. Barbarians in even the most unholy days could not have been more cruel than some of the militiamen at Ludlow.”

The party visited Hull House and related the story to Jane Addams. The latter broke down as the women told of the cruelties practiced on helpless women and children by the militiamen. Mrs. Lindsey, a victim of nervous prostration as a result of Denver’s high altitude, was taken to a Chicago hospital and will await her husband’s return from Washington.

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Hellraisers Journal: Women Survivors of Ludlow, Visit Chicago, Tell of Massacre Committed by Blood-Mad Militia

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Quote Mary Petrucci, Joe's Little Hammer, NY Tb p7, Feb 4, 1915—————

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday May 20, 1914
Chicago, Illinois – Women of Ludlow Tell of Massacre of Tent Colony Citizens

From the Chicago Day Book, Last Edition, of May 19, 1914:

Women Ludlow Survivors Visit Chicago, Day Book Last p1, May 19, 1914

Note: The Ludlow Massacre was perpetrated by the Colorado state militia against the colonists on April 20th. The correct names of the three miners’ wives are Mary Thomas, Pearl Jolly, and Mary Petrucci.

The article continues:

They left this noon for Washington, where they will tell President Wilson he must intervene to, stop civil war in Colorado.

Lindsey said:

The president of the United States is the only power that can preserve peace now in our state. The governor, the legislature, the federal troops, the proposed mediation bodies have all failed.

The president must force arbitration on the ground of military necessity. This is the positive and unmistakable sentiment of the people of Colorado.

Mrs. [Pearl] Jolly, who was fired upon though wearing a Red Cross uniform while caring for wounded during a truce, said that when she left Ludlow last week, there were rumors that companies of armed guards were being former secretly by the coal companies.

[She said:]

If they come again to shoot women and children, they will find us ready for them. The women will take guns and fight.

I saw the dead body of Louis Tikas, the Greek. I saw where his head was split by some kind of a club. I saw the mark of a heel where somebody tramped on his face after he was dead. And I saw the four bullet holes in his back where they shot him after clubbing him to death.

I would not have believed things could happen as terrible as I saw. The soldiers seemed to go crazy. After they had killed women and children and burned the tent colony, they shot at everything that moved. Chickens, dogs, anything that moved, was a mark for them.

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Hellraisers Journal: Annie Clemenc, the Miners’ Joan of Arc, Departs from Calumet on Speaking Tour with Ella Reeve Bloor

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Quote Carlo Tresca re Annie Clemenc, Daring Woman, Freedoms Banner Iola KS, Feb 7, 1914—————

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday February 28, 1914
Calumet, Michigan – Annie Clemenc Leaves on Speaking Tour

From The Calumet News of February 27, 1914:

Annie Clemenc Leaves on Speaking Tour w Bloor, CNs p8, Feb 27, 1914

Annie Clemenc to Tour with Mother Bloor

Annie Clemenc, Mother Bloor , Dog Picket,

Annie Clemenc, known as the Joan of Arc of Calumet, left the strike zone February 26th to go on tour with Ella Reeve Bloor, a well-known member of the Socialist Party of America, and a hard-working union organizer. Annie was given a rousing send-off at the train station by members of the Women’s Auxiliary of Western Federation of Miners. The Women’s Lodge of the Slovene National Benefit Society was also well represented. Annie holds the office of Local President in both organizations.

Annie was dressed in a new black suit and a handmade hat, both given to her especially for the tour. Dog Picket joined them for the send-off, and a photograph was taken of Annie and Mother Bloor with Picket standing on a table between them. Annie can be seen standing tall in her new suit and hat.

The speaking tour will include Milwaukee and Chicago and these states: Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. They will also visit Washington, D.C.

—————

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Hellraisers Journal: From The Comrade: “How I Became a Socialist” by May Wood Simons, Eighth of Ongoing Series

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Women of the World, Unite.
You have double chains to lose
and you have the world to gain.
-May Wood Simons
—————

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday November 9, 1902
“How I Became a Socialist” by May Wood Simons

From The Comrade of November 1902:

How I Became a Socialist.

VIII.
By MAY WOOD SIMONS

May Wood Simons, Comrade p32, Nov 1902

“Day’s Wages for Day’s Work.” Over and over again I had read the rugged lines of Carlyle’s “Past and Present” in my university days. It all came back to me one summer vacation when I returned to our Wisconsin town to find it excited over the trial of a favorite professor at the State University.

“Socialism” was then a new word to me and had little or no meaning, but my curiosity led me to at once procure and read the book that was arousing the commotion-R. T. Ely’s “Socialism and Social Reform.” I read it several times and then fell to studying his “French and German Socialism” I was far more impressed by his statement of Socialism than by his objection to it. The latter seemed to me very weak.

In the fall when I returned to Northwestern University I began the reading of Ruskin on the one hand and the study of Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill’s “Principles of Political Economy” on the other. Fortunately I was not so fascinated by Mill’s wonderful logic and beautiful style that I lost my spirit of criticism. Hence I did not acquiesce blindly in his conclusions as did the majority of my fellow students. The “Wage Fund” theory, so universally accepted in the economics department, was to me a stumbling block. Long  before reading Marx I came upon the Labor Value theory in Mills and Ricardo, and as I turn over my old note-books, I find them filled with quotations from Mill, that set forth the Class Struggle as plainly as any Socialist ever stated it. These contradictions I could not explain. There was no one to tell me of Mill’s change of mind, and not until I became interested in his personality, and took up his autobiography, did I find that before he died he called himself a Socialist.

My economic studies continued through the other classical writers to the Austrian, German and later American economists, and at each step I felt that I must get out of this mass of dead hair-splitting and mental calisthenics, and find something alive in the way of economics. Their a priori statements and apparent disregard of actual conditions and tendencies was evident to me.

At a bookstore I one day came upon Arnold Toynbee’s “Industrial Revolution.” As I read it I felt that here was something that gave me more of economics than the theoreticians possibly could. My next book was Marx’s “Capital.” I had heard of it before as “The Bible of the Working Classes.” I studied it carefully. The first thing that impressed me was his great scholarship and his masterly chapters on industrial history. The labor value theory was again brought to my attention, and for the first time, surplus value. Here, said I, is the secret of capitalism. When I had obtained the “Manifesto” and Engels’ little book on “Socialism, Utopian and Scientific,” and read them, I was a convert to Socialism.

Quite accidentally I had come into contact with settlement work, at Hull House and the Northwestern University Settlement. I frequently went on “slumming” trips, and having been brought up in a country town, where poverty shows few of its horrible features, I was suddenly made aware that a worse than the Inferno of Dante existed on earth. In the strike of 1894 I took the greatest interest, and my only regret was that I could not be a man on the field of action.

I had originally planned that on finishing my university work I would take a theological course preparatory to entering the ministry, in which work I had already engaged to some extent. I found, however, that my university studies had unfitted me for this, and I turned to the profession of teaching for the next few years. Here I continued my economic and sociological studies and began to fully grasp the idea of Socialism as a philosophy of society. For the first time I felt the inadequacy of our school methods and the existence of class education, and I saw that education too must pass through a revolution.

The years from 1897-99 were spent in or near the Chicago University Settlement. At this time I became a member of a branch of the Socialist Labor party. I knew little or nothing of politics, less of Socialist party matters, or of the international movement. During these two years I spent four hours a day in the office of the Bureau of Charities. Night after night that stream of haggard faces kept me company in dreams. There were three distinct stages in my attitude of mind toward this problem of poverty. The sentiment of sympathy dominated during the first stage. Then the whole thing became mechanical. This in turn gave way to a fierce rebellion against the conditions that made people come begging for a pittance. Two years spent in this settlement and charity work forced both my husband and myself to leave it and give our whole time to the Socialist cause. 

[Emphasis added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: Eugene V. Debs on Journey with Fred Warren to Leavenworth Prison for Visit with Comrade Araujo

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Quote RF Magon, no AtR in jail, p1, Mar 13, 1909———-

Hellraisers Journal – Monday March 15, 1909
Eugene Debs and Fred Warren Travel to Leavenworth, Visit Mexican Comrade

From the Appeal to Reason of March 13, 1909:

With Araujo in Prison

BY EUGENE V. DEBS.

Quote Tomas Paine, ed Receive the Fugitive, AtR p1, Mar 13, 1909

Returning from Texas whither he had hastened to ascertain the true facts in the Araujo case, the managing editor of the Appeal, Fred D. Warren, was up in arms, declaring the affair a monstrous injustice and his determination to aid the convicted Mexican by all the means in his power. This determination was made stronger by the connection he discerned between the case and the cases pending in Arizona with which Appeal readers are familiar and by its important bearing upon the whole question of the war in Mexico.

For, be it understood, the war in Mexico has begun. The despotism of assassination has done its worst and at last the people have revolted, for which thank God!

In this Mexican war the working class of the United States is deeply and vitally interested, whether it knows it or not.

In Mexico fourteen million working people are in peon slavery. Their wages, in American money, will not average 25 cents a day.

American capitalists virtually own these millions of slaves and grind out their lives to amass fortunes to squander upon syphilitic parasites. These American capitalists, in collusion with Diaz, the despot, have taken possession of Mexico. Millions upon millions of wealth are in sight. Diaz and his government-government by assassination-keep down the slaves. No labor leaders there. They are shot. Strikers are hanged and agitators waylaid and assassinated.

The Mexican government is the slave herder of the American capitalists. Diaz is the chief herder in the service of Rockefeller, Morgan, Harriman and other American plutocrats who own Mexico.

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Hellraisers Journal: Convention of Social Democracy of America Ends in Fracture; Debs, Keliher, Mailly, and Others Bolt

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EVD Quote, Revolutionary Solidarity, ISR Feb 1918~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hellraisers Journal, Monday June 13, 1898
Chicago, Illinois – Debs Rejects Utopian Colonization Scheme

The Social Democracy of America was founded just one year ago in the same city where now that party is torn asunder as the result of a bitter disagreement between those who prefer to purchase themselves a refuge from the oppression of Capitalism and those who are willing to remain in thick of the fight against the forces of Capitalism.The latter group of Socialists includes Eugene Debs who has always and ever stood shoulder to shoulder with working class men, women and children,-injunctions, gunthugs, and prison bars be damned.

EVD, SDA Fdg Conv, Chg 6-15-97, wiki, Chg Chc, June 16, 1897
Debs Addressing Founding Convention of Social Democracy of America,
Chicago, June 15, 1897

From The Chicago Chronicle of June 12, 1898:

Debs Goes Out:
Social Democracy is Split into Two Factions

Eugene V. Debs left the Social Democracy of America, which he founded and of which he was President, at 2:30 o’clock yesterday morning [June 11th] and the men who seceded under his leadership formed the Social Democratic Party of America. In one year’s experience he had determined that the colonization scheme which he had fathered was chimerical and that political action should be the purpose of the organization. When the convention in Ulhich’s Hall, after a night of bitter debate, upheld colonization by a vote of 52 to 36, Debs and his followers walked out and in the Revere House organized a new society and adopted a new platform.

While the old Social Democracy will embark at once on the establishment of its first cooperative community in the mining industry at Green Mountain Falls, Colorado, the Social Democratic Party will confine its work to propagating the principles of socialism by the use of the ballot. The division extends to the old leaders. Of the men who were imprisoned in Woodstock Jail in consequence of the great railroad strike of 1894 E.V. Debs and Sylvester Keliher are in the seceding faction, while W.E. Burns, James Hogan, Roy Goodwin, and J.F. Lloyd adhere to the old party. In both organizations the officers are new, but the former leaders are the ruling spirits.

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Hellraisers Journal: From the Appeal to Reason: Jane Addams on Society, the Social Evil and the Christian Attitude

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Girls in this way, fall every day,
And have been falling for ages,
Who is to blame? you know his name,
It’s the boss that pays starvation wages.
A homeless girl can always hear
Temptations calling everywhere.
-Joe Hill

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

Hellraisers Journal, Tuesday January 15, 1918
From Hull House, Chicago – Miss Jane Addams Speaks for “Fallen” Women

In this week’s Appeal, we find a reprint of an article by Jane Addams which previously appeared in The Survey of May 4, 1912.

From the Appeal to Reason of January 12, 1918:

Jane Addams, Society and Social Evil, AtR, Jan 12, 1918

Jane Addams, Survey, Apr 6, 1912

A great English preacher has said that life holds for every man one searching test of the sincerity of his religious life, and that although this test is often absurdly trivial, to encounter it is to “fall from grace.” We all know these tests: a given relative or familiar friend has an irritating power of goading us into anger or self-pity; a certain public movement inevitably hardens us into a contemptuous mood of all uncharitableness; one particular type of sinner fills us with an unholy sense of superior virtue.

If we may assume that society itself is subject to one such test, if it too possesses a touchstone which reveals its inmost weakness and ultimate meanness, may we not say that the supreme religious test of our social order is the hideous commerce of prostitution, and that the sorry results of that test are registered in the hypocrisy and hardness of heart of the average good citizen toward the so-called “fallen” woman. May we of claim that in consequence of this irreligious attitude, prostitution remains today a hard, unresolved mass in the midst of so-called Christian civilization, until it has come to be regarded as a vice which cannot be eradicated, as a sin which cannot be forgiven, as a social disease which cannot be cured.

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