Hellraisers Journal – Sunday January 9, 1921 New York, New York – Mary Heaton Vorse Reports from Employment Bureau
From the Oklahoma Leader of January 3, 1921: (Note: the leader is a member of Federated Press.)
IN THE EMPLOYMENT BUREAU —–
BY MARY HEATON VORSE
New York Daily News December 15, 1920
In the employment bureau of the Amalgamated [Clothing Workers of America] on East Tenth street, groups of women gather every morning. There are bareheaded women, and smart, well dressed women, who look as if they had just stepped off Fifth avenue. In the same room Sicilian peasants meet and talk with advanced workers of Tuscan descent.
Labor contests are lost and won in such little groups. Put a dozen of them together and you have the temper of the people. It is not what people shout for in big meetings that always counts most, it’s what they say at home or among themselves in slack moments on gray, rainy mornings, waiting in the employment bureau.
Out of the murmur and talk a voice cuts with corroding sharpness: “Children! I haven’t any children! Children break strikes. The worker’s children make it easy for the employers to tramp us. The workers are afraid because they are afraid for the children. Look at our Sicilian women who have a baby every year. How terrible a strike is for them! Babies are scab makers and strikebreakers for a worker! I’ll not have babies to live wretched like me! Let the rich people have the children! Let the employers’ children do the work!“
The revolt in this woman was a hot blue flame. It never went out. It was a spirit like this that had taken the factories in Italy. With that example before her, what a scorn she had for the American workers.
“The people in this country lie down for the bosses to walk on. My husband he’s just come back from Italy. The workers here make me ashamed-when a policeman waves a club at a crowd they run; there it takes fifty guards to capture thirty workers.”
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday January 5, 1921 Dedham, Massachusetts – A Visit with Nicola Sacco, Gallant Fighter
From The World Tomorrow of January 1921:
Sacco and Vanzetti
By MARY HEATON VORSE
WE drove through the sweet New England towns on our way to the jail in Dedham , where Nicola Sacco has been sitting for six months , deprived of all occupation, waiting his trial.
He is accused of having killed two men on April 15th and having made off in an automobile with $ 18,000 from the pay roll of the Slater and Morrill Shoe Plant in South Braintree. Labor is again on trial in Massachusetts.
Bartolomeo Vanzetti is also accused of this crime. But he is not in Dedham Jail because he has already begun serving a fifteen year sentence in Charlestown. On December 24th, 1919 , there was an attempted hold-up in Bridgewater of another shoe company. No arrests were made-not until May 5th, 1920. There were eighteen people who swore an alibi for Vanzetti. Eighteen people testified that on the afternoon and evening of December 24th Vanzetti was selling eels in Plymouth, for eels on Christmas Eve are to Italians what turkeys are to us on Thanksgiving. These witnesses knew Vanzetti very well, for he was a fish peddler in Oldtown, where they lived. But the testimony of these eighteen people did not count with the American jury. There were three people who identified Vanzetti as the man whom they had seen six months before driving in an automobile, from which shots were fired in Bridgewater. One of the women who identified Vanzetti was blind in one eye. But their identification convicted him.
As for Sacco, not one of the people brought in to identify him swear that this was the man they saw shooting, yet he is held without bail.
But Sacco and Vanzetti are offenders of another sort than criminal offenders. They have both taken an active part as labor leaders among the Italians. Not only were they gallant fighters, both of them, but they were inconveniently holding meetings about Salsedo– Salsedo, who went crazy—maybe—and on May 1st jumped from the fourteenth floor window of the Post Office Building in New York City, where he had been illegally detained by the Department of Justice agents for months—the only man who died in Mr. Palmer’s great May Day revolution. Among the Italians there is a ghastly suspicion that Salsedo did not jump-anyway, it was mighty inconvenient having young men holding meetings about him.
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday January 2, 1921 Chicago, Illinois – Mary Heaton Vorse Has Supper with Convicted Fellow Workers
From The Liberator of January 1921:
Twenty Years
By Mary Heaton Vorse
RECENTLY in Chicago, after a meeting, I went to get a sandwich with a group of labor men. As I looked around the table, it came to me with a shock that I was the only person there, but one, who was not condemned to a long jail sentence. For all the people at the table were members of the Industrial Workers of the World convicted in the famous Chicago case.
Ralph Chaplin sat next to me. I had been talking only a few minutes before with his wife, a girl of extraordinary loveliness. She had not come out with us to supper because she had gone home to put her little boy of seven to bed. I had seen them standing all three together, only a half hour before.
Ralph Chaplin is a gifted idealist, a poet, as well as a man of action. His quality of uncompromising courage made me think of Jack Reed. It is upon such youth that the strength of a people is founded, men ready to suffer and with gifts to make people understand the beliefs which have stirred their hearts. And his wife is like him. It made you feel right with life to see them together. They face a 20-year sentence.
Ralph Chaplin is to be put in jail because he belonged to an industrial union, a legal organization.
Ralph Chaplin was Editor of “Solidarity.” And that is why he was given twenty years. It was a pretty bad crime for anyone to hold a red card. The talented ones were selected for 20-year sentences. Apparently Judge Landis could not bear that a man of attainments and gifts should belong to the organization of the I. W. W.
Charles Ashleigh is another poet. What had he done? He had been an I. W. W. He has a sentence of five years. He was one of those against whose sentence even Captain Lanier of the Military Intelligence protested. One wonders if the Captain had ever read the poem by his distinguished relative, called “Jacquerie.” And so Charles Ashleigh is among those who are slated for Leavenworth, where he has already spent two years.
Opposite me sat George Hardy, the. General Executive Secretary. He was one of those who got off easy. He only got a year and he has already served his sentence. No one knew exactly why some got long sentences or why some got short ones.
Bill Haywood, at the head of the table, as a matter of course was given the maximum sentence; that means a death sentence if it is carried out.
———–
———-
WE drove through the sweet New England towns on our way to the jail in Dedham , where Nicola Sacco has been sitting for six months , deprived of all occupation, waiting his trial.
———-