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Hellraisers Journal – Saturday June 4, 1910
New Castle, Pennsylvania – Big Bill Haywood on the Jailing of Solidarity
From the International Socialist Review of June 1910:
“Leading exponent of Revolutionary Unionism east of the Rockies.”
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“Solidarity in Prison” by William D. Haywood
[Part I of II.]
CTIVITY in the socialist movement presents some complex situations, some unusual rewards.
There are socialists in jail in New Castle. There are socialists in office at Milwaukee.
If the opportunity of the individuals concerned could be reversed, it is certain that Comrade Emil Seidel, mayor of Milwaukee, and his colleagues, would bear with fortitude the gloomy ignominy of the cells in Lawrence County Jail. It is likewise true that comrades McCarty, Stirton, Williams, Jacobs, Fix and Moore, the manager and editorial staff of Solidarity, could administer the affairs of a municipality with honor to the party, and credit to themselves. But those who know the boys in jail, know that neither would voluntarily change places. All are filling their present positions, in upholstered, revolving office chairs or hard rough benches for the same great cause.
The imprisonment of our fellow-workers in New Castle is an incident in the strike against the American Sheet and Tin Plate Co., which has been on since last July.
Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Staff of Solidarity Behind Bars in New Castle, Pennsylvania, for Displeasing Steel Trust, Part I” →
HE case against the comrades comprising the committee engaged in the publication of the New Castle Free Press, charged with “seditious libel,” was tried under what was known as the old English common law. This law against “seditious libel” was framed at a time when kings ruled by divine right, and in order to establish the guilt of the “pestiferous” McKeever, Hartman, McCarty and White, the prosecutor of Lawrence County, Pennsylvania, cited a case that occurred during the reign of Charles II. A score of Irish peasants raised a rebellion, so the prosecutor read, against the English land lords. These Irish peasants were arrested, charged with “seditious libel” and sentenced to prison. That was nearly four hundred years ago, yet we find a fossilized county prosecutor referring to it today in an effort to convict these four comrades of ours. It would be laughable were it not for the serious consequences that are likely to follow this New Castle trial for “seditious libel.”
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