Hellraisers Journal – Sunday July 23, 1922 Washington, D. C. – Matilda Robbins Arrives with Petition for Political Prisoners
From The Washington Times of July 20, 1922:
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This truck, in charge of Miss Matilda Robbins, arrived in Washington yesterday, bringing a petition signed by a million persons asking for the release of political prisoners.
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday July 22, 1922 Photograph of Eugene Debs at Lindlahr Sanitarium near Chicago, Illinois
From The West Virginian of July 21, 1922:
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Eugene Debs, Socialist leader, is a patient at a Chicago sanitarium where he is undergoing treatment for insomnia. “I am not ill, but for the first time in my life I feel tired and worn,” he says. Shown with him are Drs. Boerma Daniels an Matthiesen Yunkers.
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday July 16, 1922
The Miners’ Strike in the Non-Union Coke Regions of Connellsville, Pennsylvania
From the United Mine Workers Journal of July 15, 1922:
Tent home of an evicted miner at Tower Hill, No. 2, in the Connellsville Coke Region, Pennsylvania
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Miners’ Union Has Brought the Light of Freedom
to the Non-Union Coke Region around Connellsville
By VAN A. BITTNER, Personal Representative of President John L. Lewis
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July finds the 40,000 miners in the coke region of Pennsylvania more determined than ever to win the great industrial struggle in which they are engaged against the might coke corporations headed by Frick and Rainey. It is, indeed, the most stupendous struggle that has ever taken place in any non-union coal field in this country and is only over-shadowed by the gigantic national strike of the coal miners of America. After thirty years of industrial slavery, without a single attempt being made to free themselves from the yoke of bondage, these miners and their families have awakened to a realization of their hopes and dreams of engaging with the organized miners of America in their battle for industrial freedom. They have implicit faith in the United Mine Workers of America and are in this fight to do or die.
The real spirit of unionism is found here. These men and their families are not asking for any relief. They realize the fact that the men who made the United Mine workers of America did so by sacrificing their very lives for the principles upon which our great union stands, and these men are willing to and are going forward, realizing it is the opportunity of a lifetime and they are making the best of it…..
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday July 15, 1922 Eugene Debs Shares Letter from Inmate at Atlanta Penitentiary
From the Buffalo New Age of July 6, 1922
From Atlanta Prison: A Letter from a Prisoner with a Warning by Eugene V. Debs ———-
Eugene Debs Leaving Atlanta Penitentiary Christmas Day 1921
I have received a letter from a prisoner in the United States penitentiary in Atlanta that makes interesting and profitable reading. The name of the writer for the present at least must remain unknown. The letter would never have been permitted to go out of the prison in the regular way. Not a word of criticism of the prison, of anyone connected with its management is allowed to pass the censor. No matter what practices may prevail or what outrages may be perpetrated, no report thereof is permitted to pass the walls. The general public, which supports the prison, is not allowed to know what goes on there except as it may please the officers in charge to let the people known what a fine place it is and what a privilege to be locked up there.
Just at this writing a huge scandal has been uncovered at the United States penitentiary at Atlanta. A “dope ring,” headed by a prison physician and several guards, has been long operating there making dope fiends of young prisoners and supplying all who could pay for it at robber rates with the poisonous drug that would ruin them for life. And this is the benevolent United States government institution where drug addicts are sent to be reformed. And truly it is a fine bourgeois reformation they get at this walled-in inferno.
Underground Kite.
The letter, which follows, was sent out underground or it would never have left the prison. It is from a man who served a term of years in the navy and has been rewarded for his patriotism by a long prison sentence. There are several hundred inmates at Atlanta who were soldiers, marines, and sailors, some of them of many years standing, who for more or less trifling offenses were court-martialed by their “superiors” and sent to the penitentiary to contemplate the beauty of their reward for putting on a uniform and fighting to make their country “safe for democracy.” The writer of this letter is one of those victims and the letter speaks eloquently for itself. Here it is:
Through your many friends and comrades in prison here I have learned of your suffering for the noble cause of the human race. Your martyrdom will blaze the trail to the goal which the working class are destined to reach. With a few more such martyrs the cause will be won. Your undying devotion to your noble principles and your untiring efforts to secure liberty and justice for all, to make this country a fit place to live in, will be crowned with victory at last. From now on my life belongs to your cause.
Having thrown away 11 years in the navy, the lessons of experience have at last been a blessing to me. I have learned what our navy really stands for and that is not for the protection against invasion, but simply a school that teaches the doctrines of the rich.
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday July 1, 1922 “The Knight of the Round Belly” by Robert Minor -United State Supreme Court Rules Against Nation’s Child Workers
From The Liberator of July 1922:
January 1911, South Pittston Pennsylvania -Breaker Boys of Pennsylvania Coal Company by Lewis Hine
The dust was so dense at times as to obscure the view. This dust penetrates the utmost recesses of the boy’s lungs. A kind of slave driver sometimes stands over the boys, prodding or kicking them into obedience.
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