Hellraisers Journal – Saturday February 28, 1914 Calumet, Michigan – Annie Clemenc Leaves on Speaking Tour
From The Calumet News of February 27, 1914:
Annie Clemenc to Tour with Mother Bloor
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.
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday March 22, 1902 From Terre Haute, Indiana, Eugene Debs Pays Tribute to John Peter Altgeld
From The Toiler of March 21, 1902:
Altgeld, the Liberator
-by Eugene V. Debs
John Peter Altgeld
John Peter Altgeld has joined Abraham Lincoln in the realm of the immortals [March 12, 1902]. His career was tempestuous and heroic, and the end tragic and sublime. The gods must have set the stage for the last earthly act of the intrepid warrior and most nobly did he fill the leading role. When the last word of his impassioned plea for liberty died upon his eloquent lips the climax came and the curtain fell upon another martyr in the great drama of humanity.
John Altgeld was born in the throes of revolt [December 30, 1847].A thousand years of feudal tyranny were culminating. The fateful year of 1848 had a violent temper. It rocked the cradle of the babe that was destined to become the tribune of the people.
The leader, now fallen, never took a backward step, never subordinated principle to policy, never sacrificed conviction to attain his end. He was fearless, he was determined, and he was incorruptible.
John P. Altgeld was in the highest sense a statesman, he was a daring leader and a fiery and intense orator whose eloquent and lofty appeals inspired the multitude.
His noblest and therefore greatest official act was the opening of dungeon doors to liberate innocent victims of corporate tyranny [Chicago’s Eight-Hour Class-War Prisoners]. If the gods have to do with politics they ordained the election of John P. Altgeld for this incomparable service to humanity.
Through the rain of fire he walked with steady step to the hideous bastille’s doors, nor faltered once until the captives walked forth men; his official robes turned to ashes in the ordeal, but lo! the flame of calumny to which our hero bared his head is even now become the aureole of his fame.
The robbers of the people, the stranglers of liberty, the foes of humanity feared and hated him; the fawning sycophants of wealth, the time serving mercenaries of power slandered him; this was the measure of his greatness.
The few honest men who knew John P. Altgeld loved him. He was genuine; he was true; he could look God and man straight in the eye.
In the railroad strikes in 1894 he expanded to his true proportions.There he proved to be the fearless champion of the people. He stood upon the boundary line of Illinois and protested against the military usurpation of the President, and though overwhelmed, he proudly vindicated his high honor, and he, more than any other man, retired Grover Cleveland and his pirate crew from American politics.
Altgeld was too great to become President; he will be remembered long after most Presidents are forgotten.
How glorious the final scene! See him summon all his wasted strength. Note the transfiguration in the last superhuman effort—the light of liberty in his eye, the flush of dawn upon his brow as he defiantly exclaimed:
Again to the battle, Achaians!
Our hearts bid the tyrants defiance!
Our land, the first garden of Liberty’s tree,
It has been, and shall yet be, the land of the free.
Workingmen and workingwomen never had a truer friend; he yearned to see them happy, and consecrated all he had to make them free.
He paid the penalty of all the earth’s redeemers. Socrates was poisoned, Christ crucified, John Brown strangled, Lincoln assassinated, and Altgeld stabbed by a million venomous tongues.
The grandchildren of his slayers will seek his works for knowledge and inspiration, and to the coming generations he will speak forever.
Hellraisers Journal – Friday March 1, 1901 Mother Jones Remembers “Civilization in Southern Mills” of 1896
From the International Socialist Review of March 1901:
Civilization in Southern Mills
———-
The miners and railroad boys of Birmingham, Ala., entertained me one evening some months ago with a graphic description of the conditions among the slaves of the Southern cotton mills. While I imagined that these must be something of a modern Siberia, I concluded that the boys were overdrawing the picture and made up my mind to see for myself the conditions described. Accordingly I got a job and mingled with the workers in the mill and in their homes. I found that children of six and seven years of age were dragged out of bed at half-past 4 in the morning when the task-master’s whistle blew. They eat their scanty meal of black coffee and corn bread mixed with cottonseed oil in place of butter, and then off trots the whole army of serfs, big and little. By 5:30 they are all behind the factory walls, where amid the whir of machinery they grind their young lives out for fourteen long hours each day. As one looks on this brood of helpless human souls one could almost hear their voices cry out, “Be still a moment, O you iron wheels or capitalistic greed, and let us hear each other’s voices, and let us feel for a moment that this is not all of life.”
We stopped at 12 for a scanty lunch and a half-hour’s rest. At 12:30 we were at it again with never a stop until 7. Then a dreary march home, where we swallowed our scanty supper, talked for a few minutes of our misery and then dropped down upon a pallet of straw, to lie until the whistle should once more awaken us, summoning babes and all alike to another round of toil and misery.
I have seen mothers take their babes and slap cold water in their face to wake the poor little things. I have watched them all day long tending the dangerous machinery. I have seen their helpless limbs torn off, and then when they were disabled and of no more use to their master, thrown out to die. I must give the company credit for having hired a Sunday school teacher to tell the little things that “Jesus put it into the heart of Mr. – to build that factory so they would have work with which to earn a little money to enable them to put a nickel in the box for the poor little heathen Chinese babies.”
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday May 9, 1920
-Mother Jones News for March 1920, Part III
Jim Seymour Describes Labor Defense Meeting in San Francisco
From The Butte Daily Bulletin of March 29, 1920:
—–
Bulletin’s “Minister Without Portfolio”
Attends Interesting Gathering of
“Vicious Syndicalists.”
—–
BY JIM SEYMOUR.
(Special to the Bulletin.)
Frisco (known bourgeoiseally as San Francisco), March 20 (By Mail).-Last night [Friday, March 19th] California hall was filled to “S. R. O.” by specimens of the various breeds of workers and a very few others. William Cleary, attorney for a number of vicious criminal syndicalists, and some woman called “Mother Jones,” were billed to speak under the auspices of the Labor Defense league. Cleary jimmed the meeting by exercising his prerogative as a member of the bar and coming late. The trial was kept waiting for him until several of the chairs got too hot for the comfort of the sitters, whereupon Robert Whitaker, ex-sky pilot [preacher] and chairman of the meeting, who seems too good-natured to be named anything more dignified than Bob, delivered a serm-an opening address in which he mentioned the names of Anita Whitney, Kate O’Hare and one Eugene Debs. The applause percentages follow: Whitney, 96; Debs, 72; O’Hare, 49. Collection for defense of criminal syndicalists, for which the Lord be praised, $148.03.
The Rev. Bob then addressed us a few remarks that convinced us that the white-haired old woman on the stage was really Mother Jones and that nobody was trying to palm off a ringer on us. I don’t know just what it was, but Whitaker said something that Mother Jones didn’t quite agree with; and I don’t know just what Mother Jones’ reply was, but she gave him a good-natured bawling out that seemed to amuse the audience but failed to disturb the equanimity of the man who had just collected $148 for the cause. And so long as it didn’t harm him, or us, or the boys in jail, we will remark that it served him jolly well right-he should have known better than to pull that absurd burgeoise stunt of introducing a speaker that is better known than Jesus Christ. [Note: Mother Jones as a devote Catholic would certainly dispute that description of her fame.]
Hellraisers Journal – Monday March 22, 1909
Antonio de Pio Araujo, An Innocent Man Imprisoned in a Strange Country
From the Appeal to Reason of March 20, 1909:
Araujo’s Address from His Prison Cell.
—–
TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE:
Evansville Press, Indiana March 20, 1909
It is hard to be sentenced as an innocent man to a long term of imprisonment in a strange country. It is in this unfortunate position that I find myself. But I have no regret and I address you in no spirit of despair. I have felt from the first that if the American people knew the truth about my case I would not now be in a convict’s cell. But the American people do not know the truth. In fact but few of them know anything at all about my conviction. The silence of the press was a part of the conspiracy to destroy my activity by sending me to prison.
Through the medium of the Appeal I have been given the opportunity of addressing myself to the American people, and I gladly avail myself of this privilege. Readers of the Appeal know that for some time there has been trouble in Mexico growing out of the awful condition of the people. For this the administration of Diaz, backed by American capitalists, is responsible. Myself and comrades of the liberal party were opposed to the administration. We were persecuted, spied upon and hunted down until we had to leave the country. When we landed on this side of the Rio Grande we felt ourselves secure under the stars and stripes of the American republic. But alas, we soon realized that the same power which had driven us from our native land also ruled the American states. Our papers were suppressed and we were tracked from place to place by the spies of the Mexican government, reinforced by American detectives, also in its employ. In due time we were arrested upon baseless charges. Some of my comrades have been in jail almost two years. This seems very strange in a land of freedom. Why is trial denied them? I do not know and no one can tell me.
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.
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.
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:
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.
—————
—————
—————
———-
———-
—–
———-
———-
