Hellraisers Journal – Saturday September 27, 1902 “The Anthracite Coal Strike” by Comrade William Mailly, Part I
From the International Socialist Review of August 1902:
The Anthracite Coal Strike.
[-by William Mailly] ———-
[Part I of II]
Scranton Tribune September 26, 1902
There is only one issue in the present struggle between the anthracite coal miners and the mine and railroad owners. That issue is the right to organize. There were other issues when the strike began—wages, hours, dockage, weighing, etc., but they have all been subordinated to this one. The coal trust wants to get rid of the union; the miners want to preserve it. No other question will be settled, or will even be considered, until this one is disposed of: The right of the miners to organize—that is, the issue. The mine owners refuse to arbitrate because that will mean recognizing the union. This they will not do, unless forced to it. The miners, having exhausted every other means, say they will compel recognition.
In order to fully understand how much the preservation or the destruction of the miners’ union means to both sides, one has to be right on the ground and hear direct testimony. For twelve years, following upon the failure of the Hazleton and Panther Creek Valley strike in 1887, there were practically no unions in the anthracite region. Strikes broke out spasmodically, but were soon crushed. Lattimer became famous through one of these in 1897. The operators had everything their own way, and that way was simply one of extortion and oppression. There are no gentler names for it—and these are too mild. The miners were discouraged, cowed and spiritless. Those among them who tried, secretly or openly, to organize were “spotted” and blacklisted out of the region. I met several such men, who had returned after the strike of 1900. During this time the mine owners were organizing. Untrammeled by any resistance from their employes, they had free scope to fight one another in the market. Inevitably combination resulted. Small owners were wiped out or absorbed, until now the coal trust controls the anthracite output, the transportation facilities and dictates prices to the consumer. There are individual operators, but they are dependent, more or less, upon the trust, and their position makes them even harder task masters than the trust companies.
In 1899 the Vanticoke [Nanticoke] miners succeeded in organizing, and in winning a strike which lasted five months. Wages were increased, docking regulated, hours reduced and several minor grievances adjusted. This victory awoke the miners of the whole region. A clamor for organization arose from various quarters. President Mitchell answered the cry by sending “Mother” Jones and other organizers into the field. They worked all winter. Every corner of the region was invaded. The capitalists fought them tooth and nail. At some places the miners themselves, goaded on by their bosses, mobbed and jeered the agitators. There are exciting stories told of those time, but this is not the place to tell them.
Out of those feverish days and nights of dangerous and difficult work came the strike of 1900. Not all the miners responded immediately to the call. Persuasion was required to get some, exhibition of numbers to get others. After six stormy weeks the strike was settled. It was won, whether politics had anything to do with it or not. True, the union was not directly recognized, but it was established. And that was the main point.
From that time, organization spread and strengthened. Every mine in the region has its local and the districts are well organized. Last year, when the mine owners refused to consider the miners’ demands, a strike was avoided through the advice of President Mitchell. He counseled peace, told the men they were not ready to strike, the organization was not compact enough and that they lacked resources. They should accept the situation and prepare for decisive action later. The advice was taken. The men continued to organize and they did prepare. And the present strike is the result.
Hellraisers Journal – Thursday March 28, 1912 Mother Jones News Round-Up for February 1912, Part II The Four Score Hard Winters of Labor’s Heroine by Lawrence Todd
From The Tacoma Times of February 14, 1912:
Four Score Hard Winters Has Mother Jones Seen, and She Is a Heroine in Labor’s Ranks Still ———-
BY LAWRENCE TODD.
“Where do you live, ‘”Mother Jones?” asked the chairman of a Congressional investigating committee of a little old woman in rusty black.
She had kindly, determined Irish features and the most piercing and confusing of blue Irish eyes. Brave, kindly, faith-inspiring eyes the old woman had, and a motherly way of speaking when she was not aroused. But this chairman was trying to defend the steel barons from the charge of enslaving their men.
“I live in the United States, sorr,” she replied.
“But where-in what state have you a home?”
“Where the big thieves are wringing their dollars out of the blood and bone of my poor, miserable people, sorr,” came back the reply, in a voice like that of an accusing judge. “Sometimes it is among the slaves of the Alabama iron mines; sometimes with the gold and silver miners of Arizona, where the Southern Pacific has fastened itself on their throats; sometimes with the boys on the northern copper range, and often in the coal miners’ shacks in Pennsylvania or West Virginia. Where you send your militia where men are shot and women driven from their homes at night by armed bullies, there I stay.”
“Mother” Jones is nearly 80 years of age. What she told the corporation congressman is literally true. For more than a generation she has been an organizer for the Western Federation of Miners and for their brothers, the United Mine Workers. Strikes she has seen and taken a part in, since she was a little girl in a southern cotton mill. Once she led 1,500 women of the coal miners’ families against a Colorado sheriff and his deputies. The sheriff for once was driven back from the strikers picket line.
At another crisis, when the children of the Philadelphia factories were crying for protection, “Mother” Jones shocked the community by organizing a great parade of 7,000 crippled and maimed boys and girls, ragged and pale, underfed and haggard as factory children always become, to march through the streets of the fashionable shopping quarter. Always she is making a fight against social wrongs. Usually she is dramatic about it. Always her warm heart and her fearless tongue, and her white forehead that has more than once been pressed by the muzzle of a deputy’s gun, endear her to the wretched people who spend their days in factories and mines.
Just now the miners have lent “Mother” to the striking stoop employes of the Harriman railroads in the western country, where she is making appeals to the women to do picket duty. Incidentally she visited the convention of the California State Building Trades council at Fresno, and urged the delegates to stand by their officials, Tveitmoe and Johannsen, indicted in connection with the alleged dynamiting conspiracy.
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday January 12, 1902
Eugene Victor Debs Recalls Bloody Scenes of Battle in Class War
From the Social Democratic Herald of January 11, 1902:
The War for Freedom.
By Eugene V. Debs.
The country we inhabit is generally supposed to have been in a state of peace since the close of the Civil War, excepting the brief period required to push the Spaniards off the western continent. And yet during this reign of so-called peace more than a score of bloody battles have been fought on American soil, in every one of which the working class were beaten to the earth, notwithstanding they outnumber their conquerors and despoilers at least ten to one, and notwithstanding in each case they asked but a modest concession that represented but a tithe of what they were justly entitled to.
To recall the bloody scenes in the Tennessee mountains, the horrors of Idaho, the tragedies of Virden, Pana, Buffalo, Chicago, Homestead, Lattimer, Leadville, and many others, is quite enough to chill the heart of a man who has such an organ, and yet above the cloud and smoke of battle there shines forever the bow of promise, and however fierce the struggle and gloomy the outlook, it is never obscured to the brave, self-reliant soul who knows that victory at last must crown the cause of labor.
Thousands have fallen before the fire of the enemy and thousands more are doubtless doomed to share the same fate, but
“Freedom’s battle once begun, Bequeathed from bleeding sire to son, Though baffled oft, Is ever won.”
The struggle in this and other lands by the children of toil is a struggle between classes which in some form or other has been waged since primitive man first captured and enslaved his weaker fellow-being. Through the long, dark night of history the man who toiled has been in fetters, and though today they are invisible, yet they bind him as securely in wage slavery as if they were forged of steel.
How the millions toil and produce! How they suffer and are despised! Is the earth forever to be a dungeon to them? Are their offspring always to be food for misery? These are questions that confront the workingmenof our day and a few of them at least understand the nature of the struggle, are conscious of their class interests, and are striving with all their energy to close up the ranks and conquer their freedom by the solidarity of labor.
In this war for freedom the organized men in the Western states have borne a conspicuous and honorable part. They have, in fact, maintained better conditions on the whole than generally prevail, and this they have done under fire that would have reduced less courageous and determined men. But, notwithstanding their organized resistance, they must perceive that in common with all others who work for wages they are losing ground before the march of capitalism.
It requires no specially sensitive nature to feel the tightening of the coils, nor prophetic vision to see the doom of labor if the government is suffered to continue in control of the capitalist class. In every crisis the shotted guns of the government are aimed at the working class. They point in but one direction. In no other way could the capitalists maintain their class supremacy. Court injunctions paralyze but one class. In fact, the government of the ruling class today has but one vital function, and that is to keep the exploited class in subjection.
Hellraisers Journal – Monday September 10, 1900 Mother Jones News Round-Up for August 1900, Part II Found Visiting Massacre Site at Lattimer, Pennsylvania
From the Freeland Tribune of August 17, 1900:
DEMANDS OF THE MINERS ——-
[…..]
Miners marching near Hazelton, Pennsylvania, September 10, 1897.
As announced in Wednesday’s issue of the Tribune, the representatives of the United Mine Workers of America, in convention at Hazleton, adopted a resolution which calls upon the coal operators to meet delegates from the three districts in joint conference in Hazleton on Monday, August 27. [A] committee was appointed to correspond with the operators…..
The convention then adjourned. The delegates afterwards visited Lattimer, where the miners were killed three years ago by Sheriff Martin’s posse. On the exact spot where the men were shot down addresses were delivered, and the men rededicated themselves to the cause of labor. Speeches were made by President Mitchell, District President Duffy, “Mother” Jones and National Board Member James.
John Bernoski, of Shamokin, addressed the crowd in Polish. Frank Riecco, who carried the American Flag and was with the miners on that fatal day, was present and spoke a few words. On the way back many of the delegates visited St. Joseph’s cemetery, where the dead miners were buried.
The [strike] situation now hinges on the operators’ attitude next Monday.
Beneath the starry banner
Though they came from foreign lands,
They died the death of martyrs
For the noble rights of man.
-Anonymous
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Hellraisers Journal, Sunday April 24, 1898
Lattimer, Pennsylvania – Jury Finds Massacre of Miners Was Not Murder
The miners of Pennsylvania were marching peacefully when Sheriff Martin and his army of deputized gunthugs opened fire upon them at Lattimer on September 10, 1897; and yet the miners were not murdered according to the verdict of the jury as reported by The New Time magazine of April 1898:
Plutocrats’ Hero Acquitted-
THE ACQUITTAL OF SHERIFF MARTIN.
The acquittal of Sheriff Martin, the plutocratic hero of Hazleton, was to have been expected. Never yet in the history of the United States, or for that matter any other country, have the hired murderers of workingmen been brought to justice when arraigned before a court. The slaughter of the men at Hazleton was the most infamous act ever committed under forms of law. It has its parallel in the judicial farce which resulted in the acquittal of Martin and his cowardly and blood-thirsty deputies.
Beneath the starry banner
Though they came from foreign lands,
They died the death of martyrs
For the noble rights of man.
-Anonymous
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From The Hazelton Daily Standard, September 17, 1897:
The Ballad of the Deputies
How proud the deputies must feel
Who took so brave a part
In that conflict where their rifles
Have pierced the manly hearts
Of honest fellow workmen
Without pistol, gun or knife,
Without the smallest weapon
To defend their sacred life.
We cannot forget the bravery
Of those noble warlike men,
Who after shooting victims down
Took aim and fired again.
Oh, noble, noble, deputies
Our heads are bent with shame,
We shake with fear and blush to hear
The list of cowards’ names.
Approaching the cot of Clement Platek, a 33-year-old Polish miner,
was his sunken-eyed wife and the mother of his three children.
She threw herself across his body and went into hysterics.
-Edward Pinkowski
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The Martyred Miners
Who lost their lives in freedom’s cause
at Lattimer, Pennsylvania, September 10, 1897
Broztowski, Sebastian Broztowski, 40, Polish.
Česlak, Michail Cheslock, 38, Slovak.
Chrzeszeski, Frank Chrzeszeski, 18, Polish.
Čaja, Adalbert Czaja, 21, Polish.
Futa, John Futa, 17, Slovak.
Grekoš, Anthony Grekos, Lithuanian.
Kulik, George Kulick, Polish.
Mieczkowski, Andrew Mieczkowski, 33, Polish.
Monikaski, Andrew Monikaski, Slovak.
Platek, Clement Platek, 33, Polish.
Rekewicz, Rafael Rekewiez, 25, Polish.
Skrep, John Skrep, 25, Polish.
Tomašantas, Jacob Tomashontas, 18, Lithuanian.
Jurić, Steve Urich, Slovak.
Jurašek, Andrew Yurecek, 40, Slovak.
Zagorski, Stanley Zagorski, 38, Polish.
Ziominski, Adam Ziominski, 18, Polish.
Ziemba, Adalbert Ziemba, 25, Polish.
Tarnowicz, John Tarnowicz
Pray for the dead
and fight like hell for the living.
-Mother Jones
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From the Locomotive Firemen’s Magazine of March 1898:
EDITORIAL ETCHINGS
The Lattimer Massacre.
—–
[…..]
The trial of Sheriff Martin is in progress at the present writing, and there are few who believe that justice will prevail. No matter that scores of witnesses have sworn to the details of the murder, but few doubt that long ago arrangements have been made by the defense for the introduction of other evidence which will defeat justice. It is known that the great detective agencies stand ready at any time to furnish “evidence” as well as thugs to further the ends of those who are able and willing to pay for such evidence,
At the beginning of the trial, John McGahren, of Wilkesbarre, one of the counsel retained by the citizens of Hazleton who hope for justice, said in his opening address to the jury:
This case has no parallel in this Commonwealth, or in this country. It is a case of highest importance, not only to the defendants, but to the people of the Commonwealth.
You are to try the case without sympathy for the defendants or for the persons slain [at Lattimer, Pennsylvania, on September 10, 1897]. Their condition, rich or poor, high or low, native or foreign, must not be considered by you. There will be questions of law in this case as well as of fact. It will be for His Honor to define for you not only the rights of those who are slain, but the duties of the sheriff and his deputies.
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, Tuesday February 22, 1898
Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania – Gunthugs with Badges on Trial
On September 10, 1897, striking coal miners were marching peacefully behind the American flag when they were shot down in cold blood at Lattimer, a mining village near Hazelton, by Sheriff Martin and his deputies. Many of the 19 miners who died in the massacre were shot in the back. That sheriff and his deputies are now on trial in the Luzerne County Courthouse.
From the Appeal to Reason of February 19, 1898:
THE HAZELTON MASSACRE.
There never was a case in which the evidence was more direct, explicit and full that men had committed unprovoked murder than that being given in the trial of the sheriff and his 67 pals for the murder of the miners. Not only is the guilt practically admitted, but the evidence shows that the deputies boasted before what they were going to do and boasted afterwards what they had done. One of the most significant things about it is that the bail was given by a Philadelphia trust company putting up $340,000 in cash! All the corporations are showing their interest in clearing the murderers. I [J. A. Wayland?] clip these bits of testimony from the trial report as a sample evidence:
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