Hellraisers Journal – Sunday June 1, 1919
Lawrence, Massachusetts – Children Return Following Textile Workers’ Victory
Happy News from the Norwich Bulletin of May 26, 1919:
About 30 of the children sent from Lawrence during the textile strike were brought back to their homes today.
From The New York Call of May 21, 1919:
From The New York Call of May 23, 1919:
–The following article by Anthony Capraro covers nearly half of page three of this edition of The Call and documents the harrowing story of the kidnapping and near lynching of Capraro and fellow strike leader, Nathan Kleinman.
Hellraisers Journal – Thursday May 22, 1919
Lawrence, Massachusetts – Textile Strikers Stand Firm
From The Liberator of May 1919:
The Lawrence Strike
[by Ruth Pickering]
THE causes of the Lawrence strike are the most elemental in the whole history of the labor movement. It is a struggle simply for a living wage. But the “law and order” fraternity are doing their best to bring on what they so much fear-a revolution. Partly as an excuse for breaking the strike, partly out genuine nervousness, they are attempting to obscure the primary issues in the fog of “Bolshevism.” And the more they advertise the revolution as something which they hate, as something so manifestly dangerous to them, the more do the workers wonder: “If they hate this thing so-whatever it is-it must have something in it for us.” Fear of Bolshevism and memories of 1912 have made the Lawrence citizens and the press applaud all repressive measures. Mounted police have been imported from Lynn, and stray recruits have been added which cost the city 3,000 extra dollars per week to maintain. Their horses are scrawny and rickety and they ride with some difficulty, but what pride they lose in their consciousness of these facts, they take out on the pickets.
Men come in from the picket-line with their heads cut open and blood covering their shirt fronts. That the strikers have a legal right to maintain the picket-line is out of the question. Liberty has come to be a joke. There is no law for the “damned Bolshevik foreigner.” The brave mounted police ride up on the sidewalk cursing and swinging their sticks. The pickets retreat before these onslaughts-but they will never forget.
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday May 7, 1919
Lawrence, Massachusetts – The Ordeal of Anthony Capraro and Nathan Kleinman
From the Boston Evening Globe of May 6, 1919:
TWO LAWRENCE STRIKE LEADERS KIDNAPED
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BEATEN BY CROWD, THEY BOTH SAY
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One Found in Andover, the Other in Lowell
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Special Dispatch to the Globe
Brattleboro Daily Reformer May 6, 1919
LAWRENCE, May 6–Anthony Capraro, reputed to be a representative of the New York Call, a Socialist newspaper, who has been here several weeks, reported to day that he and Nathan Kleinman, also of New York, who is an organizer for the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, endeavoring to organize the Amalgamated Textile Workers as a nucleus, were kidnaped at 1:30 this morning by masked and armed men and terribly beaten.
Kleinman appeared at hotel in Lowell early today. Capraro was found in West Andover early this morning in a badly battered condition, and he was taken to the office of Dr. P. J. Look in Andover and his wounds dressed, and afterward taken to the Andover Police Station, where he now is.
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Alleges Mob Beat them
Capraro told his own story while in the Andover Police Station. He said he and Kleinman were in their rooms at the Needham Hotel in Lawrence this morning at 1:30, when a bell boy named James Silk brought the mob of 20 men to their doors. Capraro declared that the score of men were heavily masked and carried revolvers and blackjacks in their hands. When they got into the rooms of Kleinman and Capraro they began beating both labor leaders, Capraro alleged, and finally hustled them down to the street and put them into an automobile and drove away under the cover of darkness.
Capraro stated that it seemed as if they would never reach their destination, the ride was so long, and all the while they were speeding over the country roads in the automobiles the mob was busy beating Kleinman and Capraro over the heads, faces and bodies with their bludgeons.
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Put Noose About His Neck
Capraro said the mob took him out of his automobile in the woods and fixed a noose about his neck and told him they were going to hang him. All the while some of the members of the mob were beating him. Capraro said he could not see Kleinman while this was going on. The crowd which had Kleinman evidently took him to another spot. Finally they decided not to hang Capraro, he said, and they removed the noose from his neck and choked and beat and kicked him unmercifully. When the crowd tired of beating him, Capraro asserted, he managed to escape and he ran into a field and in the dark eluded his screaming pursuers.
Capraro declared that he finally reached a field, fell exhausted and crawled into the high grass and concealed himself. He lay there suffering untold pain and anguish until dawn. He then managed to crawl to the farmhouse of William I. Livingstone, near the Hackett’s Pond railroad station in West Andover. He aroused the occupants of the farmhouse at 5:30 and told his story.
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday May 6, 1919
Lawrence, Massachusetts – Carlo Tresca Speaks to Strikers
From the Boston Evening Globe of May 3, 1919:
SMUGGLE TRESCA IN AND OUT OF LAWRENCE
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I. W. W. Agitator Addresses Strikers After
Dodging the Police in Search
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Special Dispatch to the Globe
LAWRENCE, May 3-Carlo Tresca, noted I. W. W. advocate and prominent leader of the strike in 1912, addressed an enthusiastic mass meeting of the strikers behind locked doors in Lexington Hall, last night. Tresca was accorded a great reception. Leaders pleaded with the strikers to restrain from demonstrations for fear of police interference.
One speaker, the police were informed, advised the strikers to go out and shoot every policeman that interfered with them.
Tresca was smuggled into Lawrence late Wednesday afternoon. His presence in the city was closely guarded because the strike leaders knew the police would not tolerate his presence.
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Secreted Under the Stage
At 6 he was taken to the hall in a closed automobile. He was secreted beneath the stage, and only a few knew that he was there. At 7:30 the hall was filled to capacity, and hundreds on the outside clamored for admission, it having been stated that there was to be a prominent speaker.
At 7:30 Anthony Capraro of the general strike committee, and chairman of the meeting, told the audience that the had a great surprise for them and that he was going to introduce a speaker they loved and for whom they were clamoring. He then called Tresca on to the stage.
In the course of his remarks Tresca, it is said, congratulated the Lawrence strikers for the manner in which they were conducting their fight, and flayed the police for their alleged oppression. When he concluded all doors were guarded and no one was allowed to leave the hall for 20 minutes after Tresca had departed. This was done so as to cover Tresca’s tracks in leaving the city.
Hellraisers Journal – Thursday February 27, 1919
Terre Haute, Indiana – Eugene V. Debs on Deportations of Working Men
From The Butte Daily Bulletin of February 21, 1919:
Debs Brands Plot to Deport
Radicals “Crime of Crimes”
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Recalls Lincoln’s Birthday. Says Rail Splitter Was
Murdered by the Ruling Class, that Same Power That
Today Is Shipping Men Overseas Like Cattle Because
They Are Protesting Against Wage Slavery.
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By EUGENE V. DEBS.
Terre Haute, Ind., Feb. 12.-This is Lincoln’s birthday. It is a day rich with memory and dark with tragedy. Lincoln was and is the sweetest product of American soil. Like the Nazarene, he loved the poor, sympathized with the lowly, and was hated, vilified and finally murdered by the ruling class of his time.
The birthday of the immortal rail splitter is being celebrated in part by deportation from the land he loved of the men of honest toil, who, like himself, hated the money power and believed in government of and by and for the people. This is one of the beautiful ironies of capitalism. Its vaunted love of freedom is but the velvet cloak which conceals its iron-fisted despotism.
These men are charged by the ruling class and its prostitute press with being enemies of the government. Precisely the same charge that is being brought against these men today under capitalist despotism was brought against Abraham Lincoln by the slave power of his day. Lincoln was murdered by same power that is now tearing our brothers from their families and friends and shipping them over the wide seas like cattle for the crime of protesting against wage slavery and aspiring to walk the earth free men.
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