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Hellraisers Journal – Saturday September 20, 1913
Poetry by Agnes Thecla Fair, Hobo Poet, and Mike Gallagher, Slatepicker Poet
From the Miners Magazine of September 18, 1913:
Tag: Labor Press
Hellraisers Journal: From the Cleveland Toiler: Eugene V. Debs on the Power of the Capitalist Press, Fed Fat by Ruling Class
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Hellraisers Journal – Saturday February 21, 1920
Power of Press Underestimated by American Socialist Movement
From the Cleveland Toiler of February 20, 1920:
The Power of the Press
—–– by Eugene V. Debs –
The power of the press is sadly underestimated in the socialist movement. The ruling class make no such mistakes. They are keenly alive to the power of the press in molding public sentiment and in shaping affairs in accordance with their interests. The capitalist papers do not suffer for the want of support and never die of starvation. They are fed fat and ungrudgingly by the class in power and in return serve that class with all their power.
Not so with the press of the working class. With scarcely an exception the papers and periodicals published in the interest of labor eke out a precarious existence. Ninety-five percent of them line the highway of the past with their skeletons. They lingered for a brief while and then gave up the ghost, falling victims to the chronic labor-paper malady, starvation.
Of course not all papers claiming to be labor papers are fit to exist. Many of them are fakes and run by political grafters. These often thrive in their blackmail and graft while an honest paper is allowed to die for the want of support.
Working men and women ought to have intelligence enough by this time to discriminate between an honest labor paper and a grafting sheet and they ought to be loyal enough to the working class to give their support to the paper that uses its influence to mold sentiment in favor of their cause and fights their industrial and political battles.
It is when the strike comes that the working class suffer most keenly the lack of a powerful press that reaches the people. They are always at a fearful disadvantage on this account. The capitalists get in a thousand licks to their one, not only because they can get their case before the people in its most favorable light and keep it there, but because they can put the case of the workers in the most unfavorable light and keep it there.
Hellraisers Journal: Eugene Debs Now in Girard Assisting Appeal to Reason in Effort to Save Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone
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, Sunday February 10, 1907
Girard, Kansas – Debs Rallies Readers of Appeal to Reason
From The Girard Press of February 7, 1907:
Eugene V. Debs, twice the candidate of the Socialist party for President, has been in Girard during the past week, and is assisting in preparing matter for a special edition of the Appeal to Reason.
“The Kidnaping Edition” of the Appeal to Reason is now one week away from publication, and orders for Number 585 have already surpassed the one million mark. On the front page of this week’s edition, we find Comrade Eugene Debs rallying the troops of the Appeal Army to:
Turn on the Light! Spread the Truth!! Every labor and every Socialist paper is engaged in this righteous and supremely important work.
Now is the time to widen the circulation of these heralds of light and truth.
Let the workers everywhere bestir themselves as never before in this crucial hour, so fraught with possibilities for weal or woe to the American people.
Let every atom of latent energy and determination be aroused and the cloud that now threatens will be dispelled and the cause of Justice triumphantly vindicated.