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, Monday August 5, 1918
Duluth, Minnesota – Workingmen Demand Freedom for Mooney
Labor mass meetings, demanding justice for Tom Mooney, were held across the nation on Sunday July 28th. The labor unions of Duluth, Minnesota, joined the nationwide protests, listened to speeches, and passed resolutions.
From The Labor World of August 3, 1918:
DULUTH WORKINGMEN ASK
“TOM” MOONEY’S FREEDOM
—–
Declare Condemned Man Was Convicted
on Perjured Evidence and Demand
He Be Granted New Trial Without Delay.
—–
Rena and Tom Mooney
Duluth workingmen, at a largely attended meeting held at Owls’ hall last Sunday evening [July 28th], joined in the nation-wide protest against the proposed legal murder of Thomas J. Mooney at San Francisco. A. G. Catlin of Duluth Typographical union served as chairman and speeches were made by W. E. Towne of Duluth and Arthur Le Sueur of St. Paul.
Mr. Towne reviewed the history of the Mooney case, pointing out that all other persons charged with being participants in the alleged conspiracy had been acquitted by juries, including Mrs. Mooney, wife of the condemned man. He revealed the fact that since Mooney was tried it has been conclusively proven and admitted by the attorney general of the state that two of the witnesses against him were self-confessed perjurers and had been so found in other cases where they seemed to have served as professional witnesses.
Hellraisers Journal, Friday July 17, 1908
Kansas City, Kansas – “Red Special” Expected in August
THE “RED SPECIAL.”
Socialist Train With Debs on Board
Will Visit Kansas.
—–
—–
Milwaukee, Wis., July 15.-Kansas will, in August, get a look at the “Red Special,” which the national Soicalist party will send out for a sixty-day tour, just before election, with candidate Debs aboard. When at Topeka, excursion will be run by the local committee to give all the Kansans a chance to hear him. Already over 200 speeches have been arranged for, and the number placed that wish to hear him is said to be nearly three times as large. The train will leave Chicago in August, visit the west first, then wind up the campaign in the east.
Hellraisers Journal: Saturday June 20, 1908
Chicago, Illinois – Socialist Party Platform and Principles
From the International Socialist Review of June 1908:
Socialist Platform.
PRINCIPLES.
Human life depends upon food clothing and shelter. Only with these assured are freedom, culture and higher human development possible. To produce food, clothing or shelter, land and machinery are needed. Land alone does not satisfy human needs. Human labor creates machinery and applies it to the land for the production of raw materials and food. Whoever has control of land and machinery controls human labor, and with it human life and liberty.
To-day the machinery and the land used for industrial purposes are owned by a rapidly decreasing minority. So long as machinery is simple and easily handled by one man, its owner cannot dominate the sources of life of others. But when machinery becomes more complex and expensive and requires for its effective operation the organized effort of many workers its influence reaches over wide circles of life. The owners of such machinery become the dominant class.
In proportion as the number of such machine owners compared to all other classes decreases, their power in the nation and in the world increases. They bring ever larger masses of working people under their control, reducing them to the point, where muscle and, brain are their only productive property. Millions of formerly self-employing workers thus become the helpless wage slaves of the industrial masters.
As the economic power of the ruling class grows it becomes less useful in the life of the nation. All the useful work of the nation falls upon the shoulders of the class whose only property is its manual and mental labor power—the wage worker—or of the class who have but little land and little effective machinery outside of their labor power—the small traders and small farmers. The ruling minority is steadily becoming useless and parasitic.
Hellraisers Journal, Tuesday June 9, 1908
Chicago, Illinois – Socialist Party of America Stands with Labor
In this month’s edition of the International Socialist Review, Charles H. Kerr gives a day-by-day account of the national convention of the Socialist Party of America, held in Chicago from May 10th until May 17th. The convention took a strong stand with organized labor, as a whole, while, sadly, side-stepping the issue of Industrial Unionism.
The article by Comrade Kerr was eighteen pages long, from which we offer excerpts below.
From the International Socialist Review of June 1908:
Sunday Session, May 10th:
The Convention opened at 12:30 pm at Brand’s Hall, Chicago. A complete list is given of Delegates representing forty-five states.
I am not conscious of having committed any crime.
The thing that I am conscious of is having endeavored
to inspire higher ideals and nobler lives.
If to do that is a crime in the eyes of the government,
I am proud to have committed that crime.
-C. E. Ruthenberg
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Hellraisers Journal, Saturday February 16, 1918
Canton, Ohio – Prison Doors Close Behind Ohio Socialists
The New York Evening Call of January 17th reported that the United States Supreme Court had affirmed the prison sentences of C. E. Ruthenberg, Secretary of Local Cleveland, Alfred Wagenknecht, State Secretary and Charles Baker, State Organizer, all of the Socialist Party of America. All three stand sentenced to serve a year in Canton prison by Federal Judge Westenhaver. The statements of Ruthenberg and Wagenknecht, made before they were taken to Canton, were published this month in the International Socialist Review:
NEWS AND VIEWS
From Ohio-As the prison doors at Canton, Ohio, open to receive our comrades, Ruthenberg and Wagenknecht, for one year, they send greetings and these words to the REVIEW and its readers:
THE Supreme Court has decided we must spend a year in jail.
The “crime” of which we are convicted is truth-telling.
We believe in certain principles. We fought for those principles. We go to jail.
Ostensibly we are convicted of inducing a certain Alphonse Schue not to register. The charge is merely the excuse. Neither of us knew Schue. Neither of us heard of him until his name appeared in the indictment against us.
The ruling class is always able to find a Judas. Schue was induced to say he heard our speeches and had been influenced thereby not to register, by the promise of his freedom.
Is there aught we hold in common with the greedy parasite
Who would lash us into serfdom and would crush us with his might?
Is there anything left to us but to organize and fight?
For the union makes us strong
-Ralph Chaplin
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Hellraisers Journal, Sunday February 10, 1918
I. W. W. Prepares for Greatest Labor Trial in History
From the International Socialist Review of February 1918:
The General Defense Committee of the I. W. W.
—–
THE conspiracy of the Owners of American Industry to put the One Big Union out of business by legal procedure will come to a showdown during the coming I. W. W. trials in Chicago, about the 25th of February.
It may be the greatest labor trial in the history of these United States, resulting in the conviction of the 106 workers, or the trial itself may turn into an indictment of the profit system, which will shake the thrones of the fat copper and lumber profiteers. For as Prof. Roger W. Babson points out in the Magazine of Wall Street: “There are two wars in progress today. One is between nations and the other is between classes.”
At the present time, over one thousand members of the I. W. W. are in jails across country, but there are away over one hundred thousand members on the outside. The faster they jail them the faster they grow. Tomorrow there will be more of them than today. There will never be enough jails to go around!
The Word is said; the Time is nigh.-
Stand fast, O rebel clan!-
For, what are gallows or jails to us
Upbuilders of the Plan?
You cannot stay the Debtor’s Day,-
The Heritage of Man!
-Charles Ashleigh
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Hellraisers Journal, Monday February 4, 1918
From the Cook County Jail: “Labor in Prison” by Charles Ashleigh
From the International Socialist Review of February 1918:
Hellraisers Journal, Sunday February 3, 1918
Eugene V. Debs Defends the Industrial Workers of the World
From the International Socialist Review of February 1918:
THE I. W. W. BOGEY
By EUGENE V. DEBS
The morning paper I have just read contains an extended press dispatch from Washington, under screaming headlines, making the startling disclosure that a worldwide conspiracy to overthrow the existing social order has been unearthed by the secret service agents of the government The basis of the conspiracy is reported to have been the discovery of some guns and ammunition in the hold of a Russian freighter just arrived at a Pacific port in charge of a Bolsheviki crew, from which it has been deduced that the guns must have been sent by the Russian revolutionists to the I. W. W. of the United States in pursuance of a conspiracy of the Russian reds, the Sinn Fein leaders of Ireland, and the American I. W. W.s to overthrow all the governments of the civilized world.
This is really too much!
We are not told how the Sinn Feiners happen to get in on this universal conspiracy, but as their name, like that of the Bolsheviki and the I. W. W., has great potency as a bogey to frighten the feeble-minded, the inventors of this wonderful cock-and-bull story may well be allowed this additional license to their perfervid imagination.
Everything that happens nowadays that the ruling classes do not like and everything that does not happen that they do like is laid at the door of the I. W. W. Its name is anathema wherever capitalism wields the lash and drains the veins of its exploited victims.
Solidarity Forever
For the Union makes us strong.
-Ralph Chaplin
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Hellraisers Journal, Sunday January 27, 1918
From the International Socialist Review: Revolutionary Industrial Unionism
From the January edition of the Review, we find the testimony of James P. Thompson given before the Commission on Industrial Relations at Seattle, Washington, on August 12, 1914.
Industrial Unionism:
What It Is
By JAMES P. THOMPSON
[Part I.]
CALLED as a witness, before the Federal Industrial Relation Commission, he testified as follows: Mr. O. W. Thompson, Council for the Commission: Will you please give us your name? Answer: Mr. J. P. Thompson: James P. Thompson. Question: And your business address? Answer: 208 Second Avenue S., Seattle. Question: And your occupation? Answer: Organizer of the Industrial Workers of the World. Question: That is the organization with headquarters in Chicago? Answer: Chicago. Question: Of which Mr. Vincent St. John is general secretary ? Answer: Yes, sir. Question: How long have you been an organizer of the Industrial Workers of the World? Answer: I have been an organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World, that is drawing a salary from them as an organizer, since 1906. I was one of those who worked for it before it was born, I mean I helped organize it. Question: You say you helped work for it before it was born; you mean as a similar organization? Answer: I mean I was one of those who worked to have it formed and took steps in starting it. Question: How long have you been engaged in the work of propagation or agitation or whatever you want to call it, along that line? Answer: Well, let me see, I think I got to be a sort of an agitator when I was a fireman on the Great Lakes when I was about fifteen or sixteen years old. Question: As you look over the labor field and look into the condition of the workers and look at the organization then in existence, what was in your mind that gave you the idea that a new organization should be formed? What was the reason that led you to that conclusion?
Don’t worry, Fellow Worker,
all we’re going to need
from now on is guts.
-Frank Little
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Hellraisers Journal, Saturday January 5, 1918
Reprinted from The Masses: Part II-Harold Callender on the I. W. W.
From the International Socialist Review of January 1918:
The Truth About the I. W. W.
By HAROLD CALLENDER
EDITOR’S NOTE: Harold Callender investigated the Bisbee deportations for the National Labor Defense Council. He did it in so judicial and poised and truth-telling a manner that we engaged him to go and find out for us the truth about the I. W. W., and all the other things that are called “I. W. W.” by those who wish to destroy them in the northwest.-The Masses.
[Part II]
—–
—–
Perhaps the funeral tribute to Little by the working people of Butte may be considered the reply to the warning which the lynching constituted. About 7,000 marched to the cemetery, representing most of the labor unions of the city. As the casket was lowered into the ground the last thing seen was a pennant of the Industrial Workers, bearing the words, “One big union,” lying across the coffin. At the headquarters of the mine union there hangs a photograph of Little, and under it, “Frank Little, victim of the copper trust, whom we shall never forget.” When I saw James Rowan, secretary of the Lumber Workers’ Industrial Union, in the county jail at Spokane, Wash., he wore on a lapel of his coat a button bearing a picture of Little and the motto: “Solidarity.” Behind him sat a youth in khaki, fingering a rifle and watching him as he talked.
