For Freedom laughs at prison bars
Her voice re-echoes from the star;
Proclaiming with the tempest’s breath
A Cause beyond the reach of death!
-Ralph Chaplin
Hellraisers Journal, Monday April 22, 1918
From the Chicago I. W. W. Publishing Bureau:
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“I. W. W. Prison Song” by Ralph Chaplin:
We want all the workers in the world to organize
Into a great big union grand
And when we all united stand
The world for workers we’ll demand.
-Joe Hill
Hellraisers Journal, Monday April 15, 1918
“I. W. W. Songs to Fan the Flames of Discontent”
From the recently released General Defense Edition:
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
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.
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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!
If you are a red-blooded worker
you will see that
this fight is your fight.
–International Socialist Review
Hellraisers Journal, Thursday January 3, 1918
Chicago, Illinois – General Defense Committee Appeals for Funds
From the International Socialist Review of January 1918:
“WHERE LIBERTY IS THERE IS MY COUNTRY”
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Six of the one hundred and sixty-six socialists and members of the I. W. W. who are indicted on a charge of seditious conspiracy.
Most of the boys are in Cook County or near-by jails as it would take a cash bail of over a million and one-half dollars to secure their liberty.
They belong to the working class and are in jail because they organized and educated the workers to fight for Industrial Democracy.
It will be a class trial. Capitalist interests will demand that these men be convicted and their union legally destroyed. They want the U. S. government to do what their gunmen and governors have failed to do by brute force.
If one man has a dollar he didn’t work for,
some other man worked for a dollar he didn’t get.
-Big Bill Haywood
Hellraisers Journal, Saturday November 3, 1917
Cook County Jail, Illinois – Big Bill Haywood Speaks
From the International Socialist Review of November 1917:
HAYWOOD LONGS FOR “OTHER BOYS” IN JAIL
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Wants All I. W. W. Prisoners Brought Here—
“It Will Be so Homelike”
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By Carl Sandburg
Thru a steel cage door of the Cook county jail, Big Bill Haywood today spoke the defiance of the Industrial Workers of the World to its enemies and captors.
Bill didn’t pound on the door, shake the iron clamps nor ask for pity nor make any kind of a play as a hero. He peered thru the square holes of the steel slats and talked in the even voice of a poker player who may or may not hold a winning hand. It was the voice of a man who sleeps well, digests what he eats, and requires neither sedatives to soothe him nor stimulants to stir him up.
The man accused of participation in 10,000 separate and distinct crimes lifted a face checkered by the steel lattice work and said with a slow smile:
Hello, I’m glad to see you. Do you know when they’re going to bring the rest of the boys here? We’d like to have them from all over the country together here. It would be homelike for us all to be together. Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From Behind the Bars of Cook County Jail, Big Bill Haywood Interviewed by Carl Sandburg”
