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Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday November 24, 1920
Washington, District of Columbia – Mother Jones Stands by W. Z. Foster
From The Butte Daily Bulletin of November 19, 1920:
‘MOTHER’ JONES STANDS BY FOSTER
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Secretary Machinists’ Union Replies to Press Canard
about Cleaning Movement of the Reds.
—–(By LAURENCE TODD.)
(Federated Press Correspondent.)
Washington, Nov. 19.–[Request of Mother Jones to the Federated Press:]
Say to the world of labor for me that never since the beginnings of the labor movement in this country were there finer, straighter, braver, more sincere or more unselfish men in its service than John Fitzpatrick, William Z. Foster and Jay G. Brown of the steel strike committee.
All this stuff in the capitalist press about the repudiation of Fitzpatrick and Foster by organized labor, and the cleaning out of the reds and Bolsheviks, is rot. The bosses are mighty anxious to stir up one set of union men against another, and it looks easy to them to call one set reds, and to tell the other set that this first lot is plotting against them. Any man who makes the fight for the workers against the oppressions of capitalism is my brother, no matter what he calls himself, and every good labor man and woman feels the same way. This bugaboo about radicals and reds is played out.
General Secretary Davison of the International Association of Machinists remarked that “if there were any reds in the ranks of organized labor who were trying to destroy the labor movement, our enemies wild be very glad to leave them undisturbed. It is the effective trade unionism that is branded as red by the anti-union forces. We have no dangerous radicals in our organization. The dangerous people are those outside.”
[…..]
[Emphasis added; photograph of Mother Jones with W. Z. Foster added.]