Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday September 8, 1914
Columbus, Kansas – Mother Jones Speaks at Labor Day Celebration
From The Pittsburg Daily Headlight of September 7, 1914:
Mother Jones at Columbus.
Columbus, Sept. 7-“Mother” Jones, the aged woman who has figured in the mine troubles of West Virginia and Colorado, and who has spent a large part of the past few years in military prisons and jails as a result of her activity among the miners, was the principal speaker at the Labor Day celebration in this city today. She spoke to an immense audience in the City park. L. F. Fuller of Girard, Socialist candidate for Congress, was the other speaker. It is estimated 5,000 persons came to Columbus to participate in the celebration today. There was a parade in the morning and outdoor exercises in the afternoon.
Hellraisers Journal – Monday March 9, 1914 Trinidad, Colorado – Writ of Habeas Corpus Denied for Mother Jones
From El Paso Herald of March 6, 1914:
MILITIA MAY HOLD WOMAN, COURT RULES ———- Judge Denies Writ of Habeas Corpus in the Case of “Mother” Jones. ———-
POWER OF MILITARY OFFICIALS UPHELD ———-
Trinidad, Colo., March 6.-In a verbal decision rendered at the opening of the district court this morning, Judge A. W. McHendrie denied the writ of habeas corpus for “Mother” Mary Jones, the noted woman strike leader held under military guard at the San Rafael Hospital, and remanded the prisoner to the custody of the respondent in the action, Gen. John Chase, commander of the state militia in the strike zone.
The ruling of the court was brief. Immediately upon hearing the decision, attorney F. W. Clark, local counsel for the United Mine Workers, asked for and was granted 60 days to prepare a bill of exceptions to be submitted to the supreme court.
Like [Albert] Hill Case, Says Court.
The court held the case in all essential respects to be the same as the case instituted early in February for others who were held prisoners by the military authorities for alleged connection with the burning of the Southwestern mine tipple and postoffice.
The court in its ruling upheld the powers of the military authorities in arresting and detaining the petitioner under specific instructions form governor Ammons, who in his order to Gen. Chase, declared the woman to be a “dangerous person” and one likely to raise riot or disorder.
To Appeal Case.
But few people were in court when the opinion was rendered this morning. The attorneys for the petitioner will now submit the case on appeal to the supreme court, which a short time ago denied an original application.
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday July 2, 1913 “The Paterson Strike Pageant” by Phillips Russell, Part II
From the International Socialist Review of July 1913:
[Part II of II]
The New York Press the next day said:
“The Garden has held many shows and many audiences, from Dowie to Taft to Buffalo Bill, but it is doubtful if there ever was such an assemblage either as an audience or as a show as was gathered under the huge rafters last night. In fact, it was a mixed grouping that at times they converged and actor became auditor and auditor turned suddently into actor. When more than 10,000 sang and shouted within, 5,000 outside clamored for admittance and were willing to pay double the prices to get in.”
The New York Evening World said:
“Fifteen thousand specators applauded with shouts and tears the great Paterson Strike Pageant at Madison Square Garden. The big mill aglow with light in the dark hours of early winter morning, the shrieking whistles, the din of machinery-dying away to give place to the Marseillaise sung by a surging crowd of 1,200 operatives, the fierce battle with the police, the sombre funeral of the victim, the impassioned speech of the agitator, the sending away of the children, the great meeting of desperate hollow-eyed strikers-these scenes unrolled with a poignant realism that no man who saw them will ever forget.”
No spectacle enacted in New York has ever made such an impression. Not the most sanguine member of the committee which made the preparations for the pageant believed that its success would be quite so overwhelming. It is still the talk of New York, most cynical and hardened of cities, and will remain so for many days.
There were times when the committee were assailed with oppressive doubts. When one sat down and thought it over in cold blood, the idea of arranging for and carrying through such a thing in two weeks’ time seemed almost grotesque. Outside of the mechanical difficulties involved, the multitudinous details to be attended to, the advance outlay of money that would be necessary seemed to present an insuperable obstacle. There was the single item of $1,000 to be put down for the rental of one night, the $750 needed for scenery, the huge sum for advertising, all to be provided.
After plunging in with enthusiasm for the first few days, a bad reaction seized the promoters. They called a meeting in which the most gloomy forebodings were indulged in. There were disturbing reports of the small advance sale of tickets and there wereserious proposals to give the whole thing up.
It was the workers themselves who stepped into the breach. Delegates from the New York silk strikers,whose cause has almost been lost sight of in the more spectacular struggle of Paterson, arose indignantly.
“What?” they cried. “Give this thing up after our people have set their hearts upon it? Never! Is it money you need? Leave it to us-we’ll raise that! We are poor. We are on strike. But a lot of us still have a few dollars left in the savings bank that we’ve been putting by through many years. We’ll get it out and lump it together. We will go to our business men and say: ‘Here, we’ve been trading with you a long time. We have helped to make your profits. Now you help us or we won’t trade with you any more.’ Never mind. You leave it to us-we will raise the money.”
And they did. Other generous people, more richly upholstered with ready cash, also came forward with contributions and in four days there was ample money with which to cover all deposits.
And it was found that the result was worth all the toil and trouble involved. The lives of most of us are sordid and grey. So tightly are we tied to the petty round of toil to which our galley-masters bind us, that most of us probably are born, live and die without experiencing one deep-springing, surging, devastating emotion. We are either afraid to feel or we have lost the capacity.
The Paterson pageant will be remembered for the sweeping emotions it shot through the atmosphere if for no other reason. Waves of almost painful emotion swept over that great audience as the summer wind converts a placid field of wheat into billowing waves. It was all real, living, and vital to them. There were veterans of many an industrial battle in that audience, though the cheeks of many still held the pink of youth.
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday June 28, 1913 New York, New York – Frederick Boyd Issues Financial Report on Paterson Pageant
From The New York Times of June 25, 1913:
DEFICIT OF $1,996 FROM STRIKE SHOW
———- Instead of Making Rumored $6,000 Profit, Paterson I.W.W. Lost by Pageant at Garden. ———-
MANY LOANS STILL UNPAID ———- But All Who Cannot Afford Loss Got Their Money -Good Seats Sold for Almost Nothing. ———-
Despite the statements, made after the Paterson strike pageant in Madison Square Garden, that it would net $6,000 to the strike fund, the Executive Committee of the strike announced yesterday that when all expenses were paid there would be a deficit of $1,996.45.
The greater part of this is due to sympathizers who advanced money to help the show, but the committee says that the loans still unpaid were furnished by people in comfortable circumstances who could afford the loss, while the loans from actual strikers had been paid back already.
Frederick Sumner Boyd, Chairman of the Executive Committee, had a conference yesterday with Miss Jessie Ashley, a lawyer, of 27 Cedar Street, who was Treasurer of the Entertainment Committee, and others, and a statement of the receipts and expenditures was prepared to show the Paterson strikers where all the money went to. The Socialist Party has nothing to do with the Industrial Workers of the World, but individual Socialists are members of the I. W. W., and Miss Ashley is one of these.
In discussing yesterday’s criticisms of the managers of the pageant and the questions which had been asked as to what had become of the rumored $6,000 profit, she said it was outrageous to hint that there had been dishonesty on the part of the strike leaders, unless figures could be produced to show that there had been irregularities.
Frederick Sumner Boyd, after the conference in Miss Ashley office, said for the committee:
“Miss Ashley was the first treasurer of the pageant, but becoming tied up with other duties, Mrs. Florence Wise of the Women’s Trades Union League took her place. At first it looked as if the pageant would be a source of profit, when the expenses began to pile up, and we were uncertain of a paying audience, we began to be afraid of a breakdown. At one time we had practically decided to abandon the pageant, but as we had made contracts and had incurred expenses we should have to meet in any case, we decided to pull the entertainment through.
“We had to raise $3,000 for expenses, so we called a meeting of the entire committee and of five delegates of the New York silk strikers. We told them the entertainment could not be brought off-but the delegates insisted that it must be. It was decided to raise the $3,000, and within twenty-four hours John Steiger brought in $1,600 and Miss Mabel Dodge collected $600. About $1,000 more was raised from various sources. Then we went ahead.”
Boyd then went on to explain the deficit, he said that neither Haywood, Reed, Miss Dodge, or others associated with them directly had anything to do with handling the money, except to sell a few tickets.….
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday June 8, 1913 New York, New York – John Reed Recalls Time Spent in Passaic County Jail, Part II
From The Masses of June 1913:
The Paterson Evening News April 28, 1913
[Part II of II]
And so it was that I went up to the County Jail. In the outer office I was questioned again, searched for concealed weapons, and my money and valuables taken away. Then the great barred door swung open and I went down some steps into a vast room lined with three tiers of cells. About eighty prisoners strolled around, talked, smoked, and ate the food sent in to them by those outside. Of this eighty almost half were strikers. They were in their street clothes, held in prison under $500 bail to await the action of the Grand Jury. Surrounded by a dense crowd of short, dark-faced men, Big Bill Haywood towered in the center of the room. His big hand made simple gestures as he explained something to them. His massive, rugged face, seamed and scarred like a mountain, and as calm, radiated strength. These slight, foreign-faced strikers, one of many desperate little armies in the vanguard of the battle-line of Labor, quickened and strengthened by Bill Haywood’s face and voice, looked up at him lovingly, eloquently. Faces deadened and dulled with grinding routine in the sunless mills glowed with hope and understanding. Faces scarred and bruised from policemen’s clubs grinned eagerly at the thought of going back on the picket-line. And there were other faces, too-lined and sunken with the slow starvation of a nine weeks’ poverty—shadowed with the sight of so much suffering, or the hopeless brutality of the police—and there were those who had seen Modestino Valentine shot to death by a private detective. But not one showed discouragement; not one a sign of faltering or of fear.As one little Italian said to me, with blazing eyes: “We all one bigga da Union. I. W. W.—dat word is pierced de heart of de people!”
“Yes! Yes! Dass righ’! I. W. W.! One bigga da Union”—they murmured with soft, eager voices, crowding around.
[Introduced to Quinlan and Strikers by Big Bill]
I shook hands with Haywood, who introduced me to Pat Quinlan, the thin-faced, fiery Irishman now under indictment for speeches inciting to riot.
“Boys,” said Haywood, indicating me, “this man wants to know things. You tell him everything”—
They crowded around me, shaking my hand, smiling, welcoming me. “Too bad you get in jail,” they said, sympathetically. “We tell you ever’t’ing. You ask. We tell you. Yes. Yes. You good feller.”
And they did. Most of them were still weak and exhausted from their terrible night before in the lockup. Some had been lined up against a wall, as they marched to and fro in front of the mills, and herded to jail on the charge of “unlawful assemblage”! Others had been clubbed into the patrol wagon on the charge of “rioting,” as they stood at the track, on their way home from picketing, waiting for a train to pass! They were being held for the Grand Jury that indicted Haywood and Gurley Flynn. Four of these jurymen were silk manufacturers, another the head of the local Edison compony—which Haywood tried to organize for a strike—and not one a workingman!
“We not take bail,” said another, shaking his head. “We stay here. Fill up de damn jail. Pretty soon no more room. Pretty soon can’t arrest no more picket!”
It was visitors’ day I went to the door to speak with a friend. Outside the reception room was full of women and children, carrying packages, and pasteboard boxes, and pails full of dainties and little comforts lovingly prepared, which meant hungry and ragged wives and babies, so that the men might be comfortable in jail. The place was full of the sound of moaning; tears ran down their work-roughened faces; the children looked up at their fathers’ unshaven faces through the bars and tried to reach them with their hands.
“What nationalities are all the people!” I asked. There were Dutchmen, Italians, Belgians, Jews, Slovaks, Germans, Poles—
“What nationalities stick together on the picket- line?”
A young Jew, pallid and sick-looking from insufficient food, spoke up proudly. “T’ree great nations stick togedder like dis.” He made a fist. “T’ree great nations—Italians, Hebrews an’ Germans”—
“But how about the Americans?”
They all shrugged their shoulders and grinned with humorous scorn. “English peoples not go on picket-line,” said one, softly. “’Mericans no lika fight!” An Italian boy thought my feelings might be hurt, and broke in quickly: “Not all lika dat. Beeg Beell, he ‘Merican. You ‘Merican. Quin’, Miss Flynn, ‘Merican. Good! Good! ‘Merican workman, he lika talk too much.”
This sad fact appears to be true. It was the English-speaking group that held back during the Lawrence strike. It is the English-speaking continent that remains passive at Paterson, while the “wops” the “kikes,” the “hunkies”—the ‘degraded and ignorant races from Southern Europe”—go out and get clubbed on the picket-line and gaily take their medicine in Paterson jail.
But just as they were telling me these things the keeper ordered me to the “convicted room,” where I was pushed into a bath and compelled to put on regulation prison clothes. I shan’t attempt to describe the horrors I saw in that room. Suffice it to say that forty-odd men lounged about a long corridor lined on one side with cells; that the only ventilation and light came from one small skylight up a funnel-shaped airshaft; that one man had syphilitic sores on his legs and was treated by the prison doctor with sugar-pills for “nervousness;” that a seventeen-year-old boy who had never been sentenced had remained in that corridor without ever seeing the sun for over nine months; that a cocaine-fiend was getting his “dope” regularly from the inside, and that the background of this and much more was the monotonous and terrible shouting of a man who had lost his mind in that hell-hole and who walked among us.
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday June 7, 1913 New York, New York – John Reed Recalls Time Spent in Passaic County Jail
From The Masses of June 1913:
“Speaking of Anarchy” by Art Young
[Part I of II]
There’s war in Paterson. But it’s a curious kind of war. All the violence is the work of one side—the Mill Owners. Their servants, the Police, club unresisting men and women and ride down law-abiding crowds on horseback. Their paid mercenaries, the armed Detectives, shoot and kill innocent people. Their newspapers, the Paterson Press and the Paterson Call, publish incendiary and crime-inciting appeals to mob-violence against the strike leaders. Their tool, Recorder Carroll, deals out heavy sentences to peaceful pickets that the police-net gathers up. They control absolutely the Police, the Press, the Courts.
Opposing them are about twenty-five thousand striking silk-workers, of whom perhaps ten thousand are active, and their weapon is the picket-line. Let me tell you what I saw in Paterson and then you will say which side of this struggle is “anarchistic” and “contrary to American ideals.”
At six o’clock in the morning a light rain was falling. Slate-grey and cold, the streets of Paterson were deserted. But soon came the Cops-twenty of them—strolling along with their nightsticks under their arms. We went ahead of them toward the mill district. Now we began to see workmen going in the same direction, coat collars turned up, hands in their pockets. We came into a long street, one side of which was lined with silk mills, the other side with the wooden tenement houses. In every doorway, at every window of the houses clustered foreign-faced men and women, laughing and chatting as if after breakfast on a holiday. There seemed no sense of expectancy, no strain or feeling of fear. The sidewalks were almost empty, only over in front of the mills a few couples—there couldn’t have been more than fifty-marched slowly up and down, dripping with the rain. Some were men, with here and there a man and woman together, or two young boys. As the warmer light of full day came the people drifted out of their houses and began to pace back and forth, gathering in little knots on the corners. They were quick with gesticulating hands, and low-voiced conversation. They looked often toward the corners of side streets.
Suddenly appeared a policeman, swinging his club. “Ah-h-h!” said the crowd softly.
Six men had taken shelter from the rain under the canopy of a saloon. “Come on! Get out of that!” yelled the policeman, advancing. The men quietly obeyed. “Get off this street! Go home, now! Don’t be standing here!” They gave way before him in silence, drifting back again when he turned away. Other policemen materialized, hustling, cursing, brutal, ineffectual. No one answered back. Nervous, bleary-eyed, unshaven, these officers were worn out with nine weeks’ incessant strike duty.
On the mill side of the street the picket-line had grown to about four hundred. Several policemen shouldered roughly among them, looking for trouble. A workman appeared, with a tin pail, escorted by two detectives. “Boo! Boo!” shouted a few scattered voices. Two Italian boys leaned against the mill fence and shouted a merry Irish threat, “Scab! Come outa here I knocka you’ head off!” A policeman grabbed the boys roughly by the shoulder. “Get to hell out of here!” he cried, jerking and pushing them violently to the corner, where he kicked them. Not a voice, not a movement from the crowd.
A little further along the street we saw a young woman with an umbrella, who had been picketing, suddenly confronted by a big policeman.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he roared. “God damn you, you go home!” and he jammed his club against her mouth. “I no go home!” she shrilled passionately, with blazing eyes. “You bigga stiff !”
Silently, steadfastly, solidly the picket-line grew. In groups or in couples the strikers patrolled the sidewalk. There was no more laughing. They looked on with eyes full of hate. These were fiery-blooded Italians, and the police were the same brutal thugs that had beaten them and insulted them for nine weeks. I wondered how long they could stand it.
It began to rain heavily. I asked a man’s permission to stand on the porch of his house. There was a policeman standing in front of it. His name, I afterwards discovered, was McCormack. I had to walk around him to mount the steps.
Suddenly he turned round, and shot at the owner: “Do all them fellows live in that house?” The man indicated the three other strikers and himself, and shook his head at me.
“Then you get to hell off of there!” said the cop, pointing his club at me.
“I have the permission of this gentleman to stand here,” I said. “He owns this house.”
“Never mind! Do what I tell you! Come off of there, and come off damn quick!”
“I’ll do nothing of the sort.”
With that he leaped up the steps, seized my arm, and violently jerked me to the sidewalk. Another cop took my arm and they gave me a shove.
“Now you get to hell off this street!” said Officer McCormack.
“I won’t get off this street or any other street. If I’m breaking any law, you arrest me!”
Officer McCormack, who is doubtless a good, stupid Irishman in time of peace, is almost helpless in a situation that requires thinking. He was dreadfully troubled by my request. He didn’t want to arrest me, and said so with a great deal of profanity.
“I’ve got your number,” said I sweetly. “Now will you tell me your name?”
“Yes,” he bellowed, “an’ I got your number! I’ll arrest you.” He took me by the arm and marched me up the street.
He was sorry he had arrested me. There was no charge he could lodge against me. I hadn’t been doing anything. He felt he must make me say something that could be construed as a violation of the Law. To which end he God damned me harshly, loading me with abuse and obscenity, and threatened me with his night-stick, saying, “You big — — lug, I’d like to beat the hell out of you with this club.”
I returned airy persiflage to his threats.
Other officers came to the rescue, two of them, and supplied fresh epithets. I soon found them repeating themselves, however, and told them so. “I had to come all the way to Paterson to put one over on a cop !” I said. Eureka! They had at last found a crime! When I was arraigned in the Recorder’s Court that remark of mine was the charge against me!
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday April 30, 1913 Paterson, New Jersey – John Reed Sentenced to 20 Days in Passaic County Jail
From The New York Times of April 29, 1913:
WRITER SENT TO JAIL. ———- John Reed of the American Magazine Among Strike Victims. ———-
The Paterson Evening News April 28, 1913
John Reed, a writer and a member of the staff of the American Magazine, was arrested in Paterson yesterday on a charge of disorderly conduct in the silk workers’ strike. He was arraigned before Recorder James F. Carroll, who, after hearing the evidence, sentenced Reed to twenty days’ imprisonment in the Passaic County Jail. Reed gave his address as 42 Washington Square, and according to some of his friends was in Paterson getting “local color” for a magazine story dealing with the silk workers’ strike.
Reed was at the corner of Cross and Ellison Street yesterday in the centre of the strike zone, talking to three men strikers. Policeman McCormick came along and ordered the men to disperse. The strikers said they lived in the house in front of which they were standing.
“Well, get inside then,” said McCormick.
“But I don’t live in there,” said Reed.
“Well, move on, then,” said McCormick to the magazine writer.
Reed started to obey and then changed his mind and went back to where McCormick was and demanded his number.
An argument between the policeman and Reed followed which ended in the arrest of Reed on a charge of disorderly conduct. He was immediately taken to court and arraigned before Recorder Carroll.
“What’s your business?” asked the Recorder.
“Poet,” answered Reed.
“What’s your business here?” the Recorder asked again.
“None; I am a bystander,” Reed replied.
McCormick then testified that Reed had refused to move on when ordered to do so, and had insisted on questioning his authority.
The Recorder took McCormick’s view of the case and sentenced Reed to jail.
John S. Phillips, editor of The American Magazine, was asked last night if the management of that publication would interest itself in the affairs of Mr. Reed and attempt to have him released from jail on appeal or by suing out a writ of habeas corpus. Mr. Phillips replied that he did not know of any contemplated action by the magazine management and that he did not care to discuss the matter.
—————Mother Jones at Columbus.
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