Hellraisers Journal, Tuesday November 26, 1907
Eugene Debs on Pennsylvania’s “Day of the Rope”
From the Appeal to Reason of November 23, 1907:
“Looking Backward.”
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BY EUGENE V. DEBS.
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The Day of the Rope, Black Thursday, June 21, 1877.
Before me lies a copy of the Philadelphia Evening Herald, bearing date of June 21, 1877. On that day the “Mollie Maguires” were executed, six of them-Boyle, McGeghan, Munley, Roarity, Carroll and Duffy-at Pottsville; four of them-Campbell, Doyle, Kelly and Donahue-at Mauch Chunk, and one-Lanahan-at Wilkesbarre. They all protested their innocence and all died game. Not one of them betrayed the slightest evidence of fear or weakening. The issue of the Herald referred to contains a full account of the executions, with portraits of the hapless victims.
Not long ago in the jail at Pottsville I stood on the spot where the six “Mollies” met their doom, and I uncovered in memory of their martyrdom.
Not one of them was a murderer at heart. All were ignorant, rough and uncouth, born of poverty and buffeted by the merciless tides of fate and chance.
To resist the wrongs of which they and their fellow-workers were the victims and to protect themselves against the brutality of their bosses, according to their own crude notions, was the prime object of the organization of the “Mollie Maguires.” Nothing could have been farther from their intention than murder or crime. It is true that their methods were drastic, but it must be remembered that their lot was hard and brutalizing; that they were the neglected children of poverty, the products of a wretched environment.
At the scenes of the execution the tragedy is today, thirty years later, still spoken of in whispers. A vague dread of reviving the fearful past seems to silence the tongue of the resident when the subject is introduced. But bit by bit the truth has slowly and painfully filtered through the dungeon doors of false history, and the world is beginning to understand the true inwardness of the “Mollie Maguire” organization and its real relation to the labor movement.
Hellraisers Journal, Wednesday November 21, 1917
Butler County, Kansas – I. W. W. Oil Workers Seized by Feds
A round-up by federal agents of members of the Industrial Workers of the World has commenced in Butler County, Kansas. Reports from Kansas indicates that most of those taken into custody were members of the Oil Workers Industrial Union. Butler County is located just east of Wichita. The county seat is located at El Dorado.
From The Topeka State Journal of November 20, 1917:
FEDERAL AGENTS START A ROUNDUP
I.W.W. IN KANSAS
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Fifty Arrests Made in Butler
Oil Fields Today.
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Starts Gigantic Drive Thru
Forest of Derricks.
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ATTORNEY ANNOUNCES CLEANUP
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“Workers” Won’t Get Chance to
Duplicate Okla. Trouble.
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Robertson, U. S. District Attorney,
Will See to It.
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Kansas City, Nov. 20.-A roundup of I. W. W’s in the oil fields of Kansas is to be made immediately, Fred Robertson, district attorney for Kansas, announced late today. Already more than fifty alleged I. W. W.’s were arrested in the Butler county oil fields today, it was announced.
The arrests today were made in the vicinity of Augusta by state and federal agents, it was announced. A tent alleged to have been used for I. W. W. meetings there was raided and a great quantity of literature was seized.
The purpose of the raids will be to rid the oil fields of the state of undesirables, federal officers say, and each man arrested will be examined as to whether he was registered.
The presence of alleged I. W. W.’s in the Butler county fields recently led to the placing of armed guards.
Pray for the dead
and fight like hell for the living.
-Mother Jones
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From the United Mine Workers Journal of October 4, 1917:
Gunmen Murder Unarmed Miner
Pineville, Ky., October 1. — On the pretense of serving a warrant on Luther Shipman, a leader among the miners on strike in this district, a posse headed by County Judge Ward of Harlan county called at the home of Mr. Shipman.
They ordered him to dress and accompany them. As he turned to get his hat one of the gang shot him in the back of the head, instantly killing him. They then opened a general fusilade on the other occupants of the miners’ cabin and mortally wounded Frank Shipman, a relative of the other murdered man.
Press dispatches, inspired by the influential men who headed this murder raid, state that there was a battle. There was no battle; the gang of gunmen had made the boast they would shoot down the leaders and drive the other miners back to work on the company’s terms.
Luther Shipman was a quiet, religious man, well liked and trusted by the miners. The men are very bitter, but the leaders hope to prevent reprisals in kind.
Pray for the dead
And fight like hell for the living.
-Mother Jones
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From American Political Prisoners by Stephen M. Kohn:
Between 1917 and 1931, at least thirty-one young men died as a direct result of imprisonment for their opposition to World War I or for their radical trade union activities. For the most part, these men died in obscurity at a time when the general public ignored the First Amendment abuses that led to their imprisonment and death.
April 8, 1918 – Fort Hancock, New Jersey
-Ernest Gellert. Socialist CO.
June 29, 1918 – Leavenworth Penitentiary
(Date of death from Davenport Daily Times of July 1, 1918, page 1.)
-Daniel H. Wallace, convicted under Espionage Act for anti-war speech given at Davenport, Iowa. Member, League of Humanity.
October 14, 1918 – Bellevue Hospital, New York
-Jacob Schwartz of New York City. Anarchist who criticized US intervention in Russia.
Transferred to hospital from Blackwell’s (? needs verification) after severe beating.
November 1918 – Sacramento County Jail
-R. J. Blaine, IWW-Federal Prisoner, died while awaiting trial.
-Ed Burns, IWW-Federal Prisoner, died while awaiting trial.
-Ed Evans, IWW-Federal Prisoner, died while awaiting trial.
-James Nolan, IWW-Federal Prisoner, died while awaiting trial.
-Frank Travis, IWW-Federal Prisoner, died while awaiting trial.
Pray for the dead
And fight like hell for the living.
-Mother Jones
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Fellow Worker Frank Thornton
Organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World
Fellow Worker James Rowan, in his work entitled “The I. W. W. in the Lumber Industry,” described the death of Frank Thornton:
Near the end of July there occurred at Troy, Montana, an incident of shocking barbarity. A man named Frank Thornton was arrested in a saloon after a quarrel with the bartender, and the constable took him to the jail, a small wooden structure. According to the statements of by-standers who witnessed the arrest, two Lumber Trust gunmen followed them, and the sound of blows was heard coming from the jail, as if they were giving Thornton a terrible beating. That night the jail was burned down and Thornton, the only prisoner, was burned in it. It is thought by some that Thornton was beaten to death by the constable and gunmen on the afternoon of his arrest, and that the jail was purposely set on fire to cover up the crime. Others claimed that while the jail was burning, they could see Thornton writhing in agony among the flames. This much is certain: the jail burned and either Thornton or his dead body was burned with it. Thornton was beaten to death or burned alive in the jail, and the authorities who arrested him and put him in that jail are responsible for his death.
Pray for the dead
and fight like for the living
-Mother Jones
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Fellow Worker James H. Brew
Card-Carrying Member of the Industrial Workers of the World
Fellow Worker James H. Brew was a card-carrying member of the Industrial Workers of the World. He was a miner and a boilermaker, and a seasoned veteran of the Cripple Creek Strike of 1903-1904.
During the early morning hours of July 12, 1917, he was asleep at his rooming house when a band of Sheriff Wheeler’s army of deputized gunthugs and citizen vigilantes came to grab him as part of their warrantless round-up of the striking miners and strike sympathizers of Bisbee, Arizona.
Leading this band of kidnappers was Orson P. McRae, shift boss at the Copper Queen Mine and a member of the Loyalty League. McRae was accompanied by five deputized gunthugs.
FW Brew warned the would-be kidnappers not to enter, but with McRae in the lead, they were determined to force their way inside.
He knew he was taking his life in his hands
in going to Trinidad, but as he was ordered there
he would not shirk his duty.
-Henry Morris of Pueblo on murder of
WFM Organizer Alex Obremski
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Hellraisers Journal, Saturday June 29, 1907
Denver, Colorado – W. F. of M. Convention Wants Investigation
From the Albuquerque Evening Citizen of June 15, 1907:
WILL INVESTIGATE THE SHOOTING
OF A MINER
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Murdered Western Federation Organizer
May Have Been Victim of Conspiracy.
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LETTER CONTAINS STRONG ALLEGATION
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Denver, Colo., June 15.-The Western Federation of Miners’ convention today received a communication from a member in Las Animas county, suggesting an investigation of the killing of Alexander Obrenski [Obremski], a Federation organizer, by Juan Eskinas [Espinosa], at Rugby, Colo., about one month ago [May 18th].
The killing was alleged, at the time, to have occurred in a barroom row, but the writer of the communication suggested that it was the result of a conspiracy to injure the Federation.
Strong Statement.
He makes the statement that the row was not participated in by the organizer, but that the belligerents managed to gather around Obrenski, and before he could get away a shot was fired, and he fell to the floor, [..and..?] The fighters melted into obscurity immediately.
Hellraisers Journal, Friday June 22, 1917
United Mine Workers of America to Honor Ludlow Martyrs
From the United Mine Workers Journal of June 21, 1917:
The Ludlow Monument
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While it is fully recognized that there would be only words of commendation if the International Executive Board had appropriated sufficient money to build a monument to our martyred dead, on the field of Ludlow, there is a sentimental value in the recommendation adopted instead that, no doubt, will be appreciated by the membership.
We wish to perpetuate the memory of those who died that the organization might live in Colorado and in the entire country.
Let us place that memorial upon every minute book of every local in the jurisdiction of the miners’ union. In subscribing a small sum to be expended in the erection of a fitting monument we recognize anew the bitter cost some were called upon to pay.
So many of us have fallen heir to the benefits that are derived from unionism. We have never learned to appreciate the cost of its up building and some of us may hold them lightly, and even so, the organization gained with sacrifice, struggle and pain, even unto death.
There are no limits to which
powers of privilege will not go
to keep the workers in slavery.
-Mother Jones
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Hellraisers Journal, Friday March 15, 1907
From the Montana News: Ida Crouch-Hazlett Reports From Caldwell
GOV. STEUNENBERG’S WIDOW
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Interview by Ida Crouch-Hazlett
Since the kidnapping case has been put off till the close of Steve Adams’ trial, which is simply the preliminary skirmish of the same conflict, I took the time on March 5 to walk out to the Steunenberg residence, and have a talk with the widow of the bull-pen governor. The house stands at the extreme edge of the little country town of Caldwell, it is modest modern cottage with no signs of great wealth about it, but an air of comfort and indications of sufficient means to cover ample middle class wants. Mrs. Steunenberg is a pleasant-faced, portly woman, short in stature of those general characteristics that are ordinarily called “motherly.” She was not averse to giving any information asked for and indeed seemed to think it her duty to satisfy the public curiosity. She is an ardent adherent of the Adventist faith, and seems to reconcile everything with the idea that it is “God’s will.” She says she knows nothing of papers and politics.
A neighbor who sometimes did little chores about the house was at first arrested for the terrible crime. She always strenuously opposed any suspicion being laid upon this man. She showed me the fragments of clothing that were gathered up about the fatal spot. The largest one was not over six inches long. She said she had formed no opinion as to the perpetrators of the deed, that there were those whose business such matters were and she left everything to them.
The depth of the class struggle between the economic forces of society is nowhere more evident than in this calm, placid woman, who has no idea that her husband’s actions in the brutal Idaho war were anything but necessary and fully justified by the circumstances. The father is looked upon as a martyr to public service, and the young children of which there are four, have each full sets of his pictures. The entire forms of bourgeois thought must be shaken from their adamantine strongholds before even a suspicion of justice can find lodgment in the social consciousness.
The very fact that such a heinous, insensate, cowardly crime should have been laid at the doors of men banded together to better and uplift the conditions of the workers, who have nothing to gain by crimes, but everything to lose, that these men should have been followed so relentlessly by the iron hand of all the machinery that the employing class can use shows the desperate straits to which this robber class will go to maintain the prerogatives and retain the slave.
Men who work, awaken. There is no peace or security for you, except as you arise and give battle for the common rights of all human beings.
Pray for the dead
and fight like hell for the living.
-Mother Jones
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FW Marciionas Petkus
Martyr of the Philadelphia Sugar Workers’ Strike of 1917
By February 21 of 1917 the strike at the Franklin and McCahan sugar refineries had been on for several weeks. At about 5:30 p. m. that afternoon, police were escorting scabs home from the plants when they were met by strikers and their wives, led by Florence Sholde who threw pepper into the faces of the scabs and police.
Wobbly Historian Bob Helms picks up the story:
The crowd grew and the confrontation escalated into a pitched battle of bricks and pistol shots, involving hundreds of union supporters. FW Sholde was arrested for inciting to riot (police agents supposedly had spotted her earlier in the day urging militant action at a meeting), and scores of people were injured on both sides, but Martin Petkus was killed by a single bullet in the chest and fell across a railroad track….
The news reports say that he was one of the striking Franklin workers, that he was “known among them as a giant of strength and courage,” and that the police found an IWW membership card in his pocket. He was recognized by all as a leader, and accordingly his funeral was a formidable event.
Petkus’ body lay in state at the Lithuanian National Hall (still standing), which was the headquarters of MTW IU #510 at that time, and on February 26th he was carried to St. Casimir’s Lithuanian Catholic Church, a dozen or so blocks away, with a crowd of about 10,000 accompanying his casket. Little girls wearing red dresses sold red carnations to union supporters.
