Hellraisers Journal: Industrial Worker: “Union Scabs Working on Harriman Lines; 30,000 Shop Men on Strike”

17th October 202119th October 2021 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Quote Joe Hill, General Strike, Workers Awaken, LRSB Oct 1919 —————

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday October 17, 1911
30,000 Shopmen on Strike on Harriman Lines; Union Scabs Continue Working

From the Spokane Industrial Worker of October 12, 1911:

It is estimated that there are 30,000 shop men, members of the Federated Shopmen’s Union, now on strike on the Harriman lines. The strikers comprise four crafts, which includes the blacksmiths, carmen, machinists and boilermakers. Up to the present time the men remain firm in their demands and few desertions are recorded, if any. Much of our news has come through the capitalist press and therefore we are forced to read between the lines. That there has been an earnest effort on the part of the strikers to keep the professional scabs from going to work in many places is certain. We have not heard of any bricks being thrown at the switchmen, who are also members of the A. F. of L., neither has many firemen, who are firing the coal into the engines that pull scabs around the country, had their heads knocked off.

There is some hope expressed that the strike may extend. We hope so. We hope that every craft now employed on the Harriman system will discover the fact that they are also employes of the Harriman management and have interests in common with the strikers and so long as they continue to work when four crafts are battling for better conditions, that they are scabbing. If the strike goes the way of many strikes it cannot be said that it was LOST. It will be of some benefit to the workers, as it will point the way to a more solid organization. It will demonstrate that it was not the so-called professional scabs that caused the temporary defeat, but was caused directly by the union scabs who stayed and helped the master whip those who were battling for better conditions. Until all the slaves working for the one industry and all the slaves working for all the industries recognize that “an injury to one is an injury to all” it will be a case of recording defeat after defeat. Not a train has been bottled up so far on the Harriman system and it would be absurd to say that the object in a strike is not to bottle up a railroad or other industry and FORCE the boss to come to terms. To FORCE concessions is the object of any strike, then why not have enough FORCE?

Is it creditable to go into an affray knowing that you have not enough FORCE to be victorious? Is it creditable to be always getting whipped? We hope the federated crafts will win their strike. We hope all strikes could be won. It is our one desire to not only win the little strikes known as skirmishes, but to win the BIG STRIKE when the boss will be FORCED to do his share of the work of the world instead of living off the toil of labor. If the strikers will only discover the fact that there are other scabs than professional scabs and will treat other scabs in the same way and with the same contempt as they are those who are directly taking their places or attempting to, the strike will be of short duration. Bottle up the railroad. Make the other crafts strike or forever damn them as the lowest scabs on earth. Make them fight to help you if possible. Send back their resolutions of sympathy and call a spade a spade. Call a scab a scab. Let every railroader on the Harriman lines lay down his tools or be condemned as a traitor to the working class. It’s a skirmish in the great class struggle, then fight it on class lines.

—————

[Emphasis and paragraph break added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: From the Spokane Industrial Worker: Elizabeth Gurley Flynn Speaks to Detroit Auto Workers

16th October 202116th October 2021 Janet RayeElizabeth Gurley Flynn

Quote EGF, Heaven n Hell, ISR p617, Jan 1910 —————

Hellraisers Journal – Monday October 16, 1911
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn Speaks to Detroit Auto Workers

From the Spokane Industrial Worker of October 12, 1911:

GURLY FLYNN IN DETROIT
———-

ELIZABETH GURLEY FLYNN
-DAUGHTER OF INTERNATIONAL REVOLUTION
-DELIVERS THE GOODS IN DETROIT
-GOOD CROWD PRESENT.
———-

Local No. 16, Automobile Workers, I. W. W., engaged Turner Hall for a lecture to be held in the afternoon of September 24. On account of the train being late three hours that was to bring the speaker from Cleveland the meeting had to be postponed until 7:30 p. m. Money for tickets was refunded at the door to those who thought of spending the evening some other place. Later on it rained to beat the band, but many came anyhow. No use in giving an account of her lecture. Let the workers go and hear her message of hope to the toilers, her masterful arraignment of the futility of craft unionism, her logical , convincing and comprehensive explanation of industrial unionism as a bonafide expression of industrial or shop solidarity. The I. W. W. de facto and not the “ism” as an ideal to the exclusion of the real, was emphasized at every opportune time. Only “ism” propounders should take notice. It’s the goods that count every time and the I. W. W. is the means to get the goods.

No questions were asked except on the position of the I. W. W. toward politics. And one “Sabotage” was “recognized.” Ha!ha! Recognized! by whom? By the desk revolutionists that never worked in a shop but want to be “it” in every respect in the labor movement, of course. Answer, brilliant. Go and ask that question at her meeting and get it first hand. We also took up a collection to continue the propaganda-nearly $10; some “subs” taken and literature sold. If not for the rain a full house would have listened to her. As it was the crowd was full-of enthusiasm.

An incident worth mentioning took place in the afternoon in front of the hall. Section sidewalk of the S. L. P. was busy distributing some of their labor “savioring” dope. “A Mutt” cam along, ordering them away from the entrance to the hall. Well, they went away and never came back in the evening to put their questions.

“A. MUTT.”

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Hellraisers Journal: From the Spokane Industrial Worker: Baby Born Sentenced to Life of Child Slavery and Poverty

1st October 20213rd September 2021 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Mother Jones Quote, Child Labor Man of Six Snuff Sniffer —————

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday October 1, 1911
Behold: Babies Born into Child Slavery and Poverty in America

From the Spokane Industrial Worker of September 28, 1911:

There is little hope for the child of today, born of working parents, but a life of unceasing toil in the master’s profit-grinding hell pens. The child has supplanted the mother and father, because it works cheaper. Child slavery in America is openly carried on and many thousands of little tots are wearing their little lives away in order to make wealth for a fat profit-monger. If nothing else would rouse the great army of men toilers to action, the very thought of the thousands of little children working in the mills, should stir them to action. Child slavery is a greater blot on civilization than prostitution, as it is a forerunner of prostitution, disease and misery. Let us unite industrially and free every child from the greedy grasp of the gold-crazed glutton that fattens from their toil. Ninety percent of the child slaves of the cotton factories of the south are absolutely illiterate. Be a man and fight. Organize and save he children and then yourselves.

[Emphasis added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: Newly Arrived Photo Shows Haywood at Unveiling of John Reed Memorial in Moscow’s Red Square

19th September 202128th August 2021 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Quote BBH re Capitalist Class, Lbr Arg p4, Mar 23, 1911 —————

Hellraisers Journal – Monday September 19, 1921
Photo Shows Big Bill Haywood at Unveiling of John Reed Memorial in Moscow

From the Oregon Sunday Journal of September 18, 1921:

From The Liberator of September 1921:

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Hellraisers Journal: From Leavenworth New Era: “To My Little Son” by Ralph Chaplin, IWW Class-War Prisoner

10th September 202121st August 2021 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Quote Frank Little re Guts, Wobbly by RC p208, Chg July 1917 —————

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday September 10, 1921
“To My Little Son” by Ralph Chaplin, Chicago I. W. W. Class War Prisoner

From the Leavenworth New Era of September 9, 1921:

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Hellraisers Journal: From the Industrial Pioneer: “The Rubiyat of El Vagabondia” Poem for Those Who Ride the Rails

24th August 20215th August 2021 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Quote POEM, You Built the Road, Vagabond, Ind Pnr p18, Aug 1921

—————

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday August 24, 1921
Poem for those who laid the railroad track but not allowed to ride at all.

From the Industrial Pioneer of August 1921:

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Hellraisers Journal: From the Industrial Pioneer: Art Shields on Conviction of Sacco and Vanzetti by Capitalist Court

23rd August 20215th August 2021 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Quote EGF, re Sacco at Dedham Jail, Oct 1920, Rebel Girl p304 —————

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday August 23, 1921
Dedham, Massachusetts – July 14th, Sacco and Vanzetti Convicted of Murder

From the Industrial Pioneer of August 1921:

Sacco-Vanzetti: Victims

By Art Shields

Bartolomeo Vanzetti, Nicola Sacco, Rosina Sacco

AMERICAN workers are getting hardened to the prostitution of capitalist courts,—so the conviction of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti in the court house at Dedham, Mass. [on July 14, 1921], does not bring the shock that such action would have brought ten years ago, but none the less the case is the most glaring perversion of that abstraction known as “justice” that has been seen in years.

The multitude of evidence proving the innocence of these two working men of the charge of killing a paymaster and a shoe company guard at South Braintree, Mass., in May, 1920 has been put before working class readers time and again, so there is no need to go over it here. Nor is it necessary to recount again the methods which the Department of Justice and the labor-hating state police of Massachusetts used, to put over their nefarious act. It has been told before in this case and others, the putting of stoolpigeons into adjacent cells with stories of their I. W. W. connections and their desire for dynamite to blow up the prison, for the purpose of entrapping the defendant into conversation in order to pervert his remarks later. The use of witnesses, who were far away from the scene, the burglarizing of defense offices; these and a dozen other dirty finkstunts are nothing new to any intelligent worker.

The point is that these workingmen, whose crime was their advocacy of economic direct action in the shoe and cordage mills of New England, and their determined resistance to the murder tactics of the secret police in the case of their fellow worker, Andrea Salsedo, who pitched to his death from the fourteenth story window of the Department of Justice in New York, the point is that these men have lost a legal battle with the owners of the law.

The lives of Sacco and Vanzetti will not be saved without direct action. This does not mean to state that further legal efforts will not also be necessary. But what is meant it that the added power, the kind of power that obtained the release of Ettor, Giovannitti and Caruso from the death cage at Salem, after the Lawrence strike of nine years ago, comes from the force of organized labor in motion.

———-

[Photograph and emphasis added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: From The Nation: Letter from James Rowan, Class War Prisoner 13113 at Leavenworth, Kansas

5th August 202128th July 2021 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Quote BBH IWW w Drops of Blood, BDB, Sept 27, 1919 —————

Hellraisers Journal – Friday August 5, 1921
Letter from Fellow Worker James Rowan, Class War Prisoner

Leavenworth Prisoner #13113:

From The Nation of August 3, 1921:

The Imprisoned I. W. W. at Leavenworth

TO THE EDITOR OF THE NATION:

SIR: May I call your attention, as well as that of your readers, to the cases of the I. W. W. prisoners at present doing time at Leavenworth? There are about one hundred and twenty of these men, all told. They are serving sentences varying from five to twenty years. I happen to be one of those serving a twenty-year sentence, so I can speak from first-hand knowledge.

We were arrested in 1917 under three indictments, known respectively as the Chicago, Sacramento, and Wichita indictments, charging us with conspiracy to hamper and obstruct the United States Government in the conduct of the war. After being held from one to two years under unspeakable conditions which caused the death of some, and others to go insane, in the county jails of Chicago, Sacramento, Wichita and other towns in Kansas, we were “tried,” convicted, and given sentences varying from one to twenty years. Fifteen received twenty-year sentences and the majority of the remainder are now serving ten year sentences.

Not one of us was proven guilty of any crime. We were convicted under the stress of war-time hysteria and public prejudice. Our real offense was that we all were, or had been, more or less active members of the I. W. W. We held, and still hold, certain opinions regarding the present system of society which are unfavorable to the ruling class and at variance with those held by the great majority of the people. Whether these opinions are right or wrong cuts no figure as far as the principle involved in these cases is concerned. If men can be imprisoned for their opinions then the liberties guaranteed by the Constitution no longer exist in the United States; free press and free speech are only empty phrases used to deceive the unthinking. If we are forced to serve out these sentences then no one is safe. Anyone holding opinions which the American plutocracy consider dangerous to their privileges can be thrown behind prison bars and forced to spend many years in a felon’s cell.

Our imprisonment not only means loss of liberty and all that makes life worth living to us. It is also a direct attack on the liberties of one hundred and ten million people. If the American people stand for these high-handed and savage judicial acts, unparalleled in any modern civilized country, it means that they have abandoned all claims to the rights and liberties for which our forefathers shed their blood. The lives of one hundred and twenty men are of little consequence. If forced to serve out our sentences we can do so, and I for one would rather stay in jail with a clear conscience than bow the knee to privilege on the outside. The real tragedy lies in the moral breakdown of a great people.

The only power that can free us is aroused public opinion. These cases must be investigated and the facts given wide publicity, and such a strong protest made to the officials at Washington that they may see their way clear to take action leading to the early release of all political prisoners in the State and Federal prisons of the United States. A small group of liberals and radicals are doing all in their power to bring about general amnesty for all political prisoners. Needless to say we thoroughly appreciate their efforts on our behalf. I ask you to add your voice to theirs, to the end that justice may be done and the voice of freedom, in unmistakable tones, may once more ring through the land.

JAMES ROWAN
Leavenworth, Kansas, July 13

[Emphasis and paragraph break added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts & Doings of Mother Jones for June 1911, Part I: Reporting on Pittsburgh Protest Rally on Behalf of McNamara Brothers

19th July 202114th July 2021 Janet RayeEugene Victor Debs

Quote Mother Jones, Powers of Privilege ed, Ab Chp III —————

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday July 19, 1911
Mother Jones News Round-Up for June 1911, Part I
Found with “Characteristic Style” at Rally on Behalf of McNamaras

From the Appeal to Reason of June 3, 1911:

Solidarity at Pittsburg.
[Mother Jones Speaks.]

By Telegraph to APPEAL.

Pittsburg. Pa., May 27.-The most tremendous labor demonstration Pittsburg ever saw occurred tonight. Thirty thousand indignant working men and women marched through the principal streets in protest against the kidnaping of McNamara, congregated at west side and yelled themselves hoarse at every telling point made by the speakers. Hundreds of policemen guarded the streets in squads and mingled with the monster crowd.

Socialists, Industrial Workers and craft unionists were thoroughly united on this occasion and all made the very earth tremble with their yells of defiance. The spirit of solidarity prevailed as it has never been known to prevail before, and Pittsburg is alive to its power. The echo will be heard in the morning to the cell doors of the victims in Los Angeles and to every nook and corner of America. Capitalists will realize once again that they have to deal with an aroused and awakened class. The chant was started tonight by Comrade Debs that was used in the Moyer-Haywood case “If McNamara die, twenty million working men will know the reason why.”

The first speaker of the evening was Comrade Fred H. Merrick, who is under indictment for libeling a Judge here in Pittsburg. Debs followed, and not only described the McNamara case in detail, but also analyzed the Pennsylvania strike and reviewed the great strike of the Pennsylvania railroad employes. His force and eloquence inspired the multitude and something will drop if the enthusiasm of the crowd was an indication.

Mother Jones in characteristic style appealed to the assemblage to be men and stand together, both on the political and economic field. De Leon, of New York, also spoke.

GEORGE D. BREWER.

———-

[Photograph added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: From the Spokane Industrial Worker: Magonista Rebels Defeated at Tijuana, But Not Conquered

8th July 20217th July 2021 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Quote Joe Hill, All aboard for Mexico, IW p1, May 25, 1911 —————

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday July 8, 1911
Second Battle of Tijuana Ends in Defeat for Rebel Forces

From the Spokane Industrial Worker of July 6, 1911:

REBELS ARE DEFEATED BUT NOT CONQUERED
—————

The liberal campaign in Lower California was practically ended with the defeat of the hundred men under General Jack Mosby at Tijuana, Mexico, on June 22nd, although there is yet two bands of armed rebel Mexicans, one near Santa Rosalia, in the southern end of the peninsula and another of about twenty-five men in the mountains between Tijuana and Mexicali in the north

[…..]

The rebels who surrendered were held at Fort Rosecrans for three days and then released with the exception of thirteen who were deserters from the army and navy and Mosby and [Adjutant Bert] Laflin, whom the Madero government is trying to extradite to torture and murder in Mexico. Boys, will we stand for it? I’ll leave it to your actions. Will you act?

About the same time the battle took place the Liberal Junta in Los Angeles were arrested. They have already served three years in our vile American prisons and we must not let them serve any more years.

Subscribe for “Regeneracion” (address 519½ East Fourth street, Los Angeles) and learn the facts of the case.

Remember although the little campaign in Lower California has been smashed the Mexican people are not through revolting. Madero did not start the revolution NOR WILL HE END IT.

Yours in the eternal revolution,
CHILI-CON-CARNE.

—————

[Photograph and emphasis added.]

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Tag: Industrial Workers of the World