Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday June 21, 1922 Ricardo Flores Magón Denied Clemency, Remains at Leavenworth
Editorial from the Oklahoma Leader of June 15, 1922:
TO OUR EVERLASTING SHAME ———-
Ricardo Flores Magon, was transferred from McNeil Prison to Leavenworth, arriving there on November 3, 1919
The breadth and depth of the ever-widening and deepening gulf which separates this government from the lofty ideals which glorified the minds of the lovers of human liberty who founded it, was never so clearly illustrated than by the recent refusal of the so-called department of justice to extended clemency to Ricardo Flores Magon.
Magon, Mexican patriot, poet and idealist, fled from Mexico when the tyrant and usurper Porfirio Diaz, always popular in this country, sought to take his life because he raised his voice and pen in behalf of his oppressed countrymen. Across the Rio Grande, safe, as he thought, from the power of his persecutor, and in a country which in times past had offered asylum to those who were exiled by liberty hating tyrants, Magon sought to arouse his countrymen to rebel and repudiate the government which was traducing the spirit of liberty and trampling the Mexican constitution in the mire.
Because of his activity in this respect, and at the instance of the secret service agents of Diaz, Magon was arrested and indicted in federal courts for inciting revolution against a friendly nation, and was convicted and given a long sentence twenty years in Leavenworth. Meantime the little flame he had fearlessly kindled burst into a refining conflagration Diaz, the bloody tyrant and usurper, abdicated his throne and escaped to a foreign land, never daring to return to the country he had impoverished and betrayed.
But notwithstanding the goal for which Magon yielded his liberty was won, the usurper removed and his regime destroyed, a servant of the people placed in office, order restored and constitutional government instituted Ricardo Flores Magon is still a poor and miserable prisoner in a stone cell in a penitentiary, the property of the United States, a nation conceived in justice and born in the name of Liberty. More than that, Magon is going blind and unless he is shortly released will never see the result of his humble labor, so fearlessly performed, to achieve his country’s redemption.
The Mexican ambassador, the legislatures of the states of Yucatan and Coahuila de Zeragoza and the Mexican Federation of Labor have memorialized the alleged department of justice at Washington for clemency for Magon, and for his fellow prisoner, Libraro Rivera, all to no avail. The capitalist government at Washington is taking sweet revenge upon the man, who was most responsible for the exile of Diaz, the dear friend of the capitalists of this country.
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday November 9, 1921 Walter T. Nef Writes from Leavenworth Penitentiary
From Then Messenger of November 1921:
MISCARRIAGEOFJUSTICE
[by Walter T. Nef] (Continued)
OnJuly16, 1916,Ilefttheofficein Philadelphia andwenttoworkasalongshoremanandworked mostofthetimeonammunitionandpowder, general cargoforMurphy,Cook&Co.,andsometimes on lumber,towhichIcanget manymemberstotestify. TherehavebeennoexplosionsonthedocksofPhiladelphiaoronanyshipsoutofthatportandall the ammunitionwasloadedbymembersoftheI.W.W.andtherewerenoguardsonthedocks.The head foreman, called “Billboro,” cantestifytomy work asalongshoreman. BesidestherearemanymemberswhocantestifytomypositioninregardtoGermany andthewar.
AsIstatedbeforeHonorableJudgeK.M.Landis before sentencewaspassed, Iknowofnoconspiracy andiftherehadbeenaconspiracyagainstthegovernmentthenexplosionsandobstructions would havetakenplace. Buttherewerenone. We had lotsofmembersonthePanamaLine, whichis under governmentcontrol, andtherewasnotrouble. Besidesthememberslikedtoworkonthoseboatsand notimewaslostonanytrips. TheBulletinstestify tothis,Ithink. TheBulletinswerepublished in “Solidarity,” Ithink, and“Solidarity”wasintroducedasevidence.
Nunca Olvidamos: Tomás Martínez, 1893-1921, Class-War Prisoner -Died October 23, 1921, after Deportation to Guadalajara, Mexico
Photograph of Tomás Martínez, sent to Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, shortly before his death.
From Iron in Her Soul by Helen C. Camp, page 95:
Thomas Martinez was deported to Mexico after he left the Kansas penitentiary in the spring of 1921. He arrived there very ill, suffering from tuberculosis-“which I suppose I took from the jail of Free America”-and the effects of a botched appendectomy. The Mexican IWW gave him a little money, as did [Elizabeth Gurley] Flynn, and the Workers’ National Prison Comfort Club branch in Milwaukee sent him two union suits and a pair of shoes. A friend of Martinez sent Elizabeth a photograph taken of him shortly before he died in October of the same year.
[Emphasis added.]
From “Red Scare Deportees” by Kenyon Zimmer:
Tomás Martínez (Thomas Martinez)
Born 1893, Mexico. Miner. 1905, a founding member of La Unión Liberal Humanidad in Cananea, which was affiliated with the new Partido Liberal Mexicano (PLM) and helped lead the 1906 Cananea miners’ strike. Member of several more PLM-affiliated groups. Migrated to the US circa 1907; active in Morenci, Arizona; helped plan and joined the PLM’s cross-border invasion of Baja California in 1910. Taken prisoner by Carranza’s forces and ordered executed, but escaped. 1914 organizing miners in Cananea; denounced and expelled as a “Huerta supporter,” leading to a strike of 2,500-3,000 miners until he was allowed to return. 1915-1918 active in IWW and PLM activities in Arizona and Los Angeles. Wrote numerous articles for the IWW’s paper El Rebelde (1915-1917). Arrested Miami, Arizona, March 1918; convicted to two years in Leavenworth Penitentiary and a $500 fine for violation of the Espionage Act [convicted of having literature of seditious nature]. Contracted tuberculosis while in prison, and a botched operation resulted in septicemia. Upon his release, detained for deportation but he petitioned to be allowed to leave what he called “the Jail of Free America” to another country at his own expense for fear that he would be executed for his past revolutionary activities if returned to Mexico; his petition was denied and he was deported in 1921; according to one report, “When he was finally shipped across the border he was more dead than alive.” Furthermore, he wrote to a friend in the US, “When I arrived at the border, they left me naked, they burned my clothes and shoes.” He never recovered, and died in Guadalajara, October 23, 1921. Comrades buried him with a headstone reading: ¡Nunca olvidamos! (We Never Forget!).
Hellraisers Journal – Friday August 5, 1921 Letter from Fellow Worker James Rowan, Class War Prisoner
Leavenworth Prisoner #13113:
From The Nation of August 3, 1921:
The Imprisoned I. W. W. at Leavenworth
TO THE EDITOR OF THE NATION:
SIR: May I call your attention, as well as that of your readers, to the cases of the I. W. W. prisoners at present doing time at Leavenworth? There are about one hundred and twenty of these men, all told. They are serving sentences varying from five to twenty years. I happen to be one of those serving a twenty-year sentence, so I can speak from first-hand knowledge.
We were arrested in 1917 under three indictments, known respectively as the Chicago, Sacramento, and Wichita indictments, charging us with conspiracy to hamper and obstruct the United States Government in the conduct of the war. After being held from one to two years under unspeakable conditions which caused the death of some, and others to go insane, in the county jails of Chicago, Sacramento, Wichita and other towns in Kansas, we were “tried,” convicted, and given sentences varying from one to twenty years. Fifteen received twenty-year sentences and the majority of the remainder are now serving ten year sentences.
Not one of us was proven guilty of any crime. We were convicted under the stress of war-time hysteria and public prejudice. Our real offense was that we all were, or had been, more or less active members of the I. W. W. We held, and still hold, certain opinions regarding the present system of society which are unfavorable to the ruling class and at variance with those held by the great majority of the people. Whether these opinions are right or wrong cuts no figure as far as the principle involved in these cases is concerned. If men can be imprisoned for their opinions then the liberties guaranteed by the Constitution no longer exist in the United States; free press and free speech are only empty phrases used to deceive the unthinking. If we are forced to serve out these sentences then no one is safe. Anyone holding opinions which the American plutocracy consider dangerous to their privileges can be thrown behind prison bars and forced to spend many years in a felon’s cell.
Our imprisonment not only means loss of liberty and all that makes life worth living to us. It is also a direct attack on the liberties of one hundred and ten million people. If the American people stand for these high-handed and savage judicial acts, unparalleled in any modern civilized country, it means that they have abandoned all claims to the rights and liberties for which our forefathers shed their blood. The lives of one hundred and twenty men are of little consequence. If forced to serve out our sentences we can do so, and I for one would rather stay in jail with a clear conscience than bow the knee to privilege on the outside. The real tragedy lies in the moral breakdown of a great people.
The only power that can free us is aroused public opinion. These cases must be investigated and the facts given wide publicity, and such a strong protest made to the officials at Washington that they may see their way clear to take action leading to the early release of all political prisoners in the State and Federal prisons of the United States. A small group of liberals and radicals are doing all in their power to bring about general amnesty for all political prisoners. Needless to say we thoroughly appreciate their efforts on our behalf. I ask you to add your voice to theirs, to the end that justice may be done and the voice of freedom, in unmistakable tones, may once more ring through the land.
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday July 3, 1921 From Leavenworth Penitentiary – Letter from Fellow Worker John L. Murphy
Fellow Worker John L. Murphy
From The Liberator of July 1921:
March 22nd, 1921.
THERE are some facts I would like to blot out from memory, but I cannot. Had you layed in Sacramento jail as I did, and seen your comrades dying all around you and seen them losing their reason from the inhuman treatment they were receiving, you too would want to blot it from your memory.
On Dec. 22nd, 1917, fifty-five workingmen from all walks of life were sitting in the Industrial Workers of the World hall at Sacramento, California, reading. Some of these men were members of the organization and others were not. Most of them had just come in from their work, and were sitting there reading. When without any warning the police drove up, and with drawn guns rushed into the hall and made everybody put up their hands. After finding nothing more dangerous than a red card, they then loaded every man of them into the patrol wagon and unloaded them in a drink tank at the city jail.
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday April 27, 1921 Leavenworth, Kansas – Fellow Workers Report to Prison Voluntarily
From The Leavenworth Times of April 26, 1921:
PRISON WELCOMES TWENTY WOBBLIES TO ITS ROCK PILE. ———-
INDUSTRIAL WORKERS OF WORLD REPORTED VOLUNTARILY YESTERDAY. ———-
SAY ‘HAYWOOD IS COMING’ ———-
Charles Ashleigh, Oxford Graduate, Ralph H. Chaplin, Artist-Poet, Ben Fletcher, Walking Delegate and Other “Leading Lights” Among Those Who Re-Entered Federal Penitentiary -Several Refuse to Believe “Big Bill” Fled to Escape Sentence. ———-
Twenty of the forty-six Industrial Workers of the World, convicted for violation of the espionage law and obliged to return to the Federal penitentiary because the United States supreme court denied an appeal on a trial review, reported voluntarily yesterday.
“Haywood will be here soon,” declared most of the “wobblies,” who reported yesterday. They refuse to believe that “Big Bill,” their international secretary and chieftain, fled to Russia to escape the prison sentence of five to twenty years.
Stanley J. Clark, Chicago attorney, under sentence of ten years, was the first to report. He arrived yesterday morning from Fort Worth, Tex. Charles Bennett, also under sentence of ten years, was the twentieth man to report, being “dressed in” at 5 o’clock yesterday evening.
Twelve “wobblies” marched through the prison gates in one group. Among the twelve were Ben Fletcher, walking delegate for the I. W, W. and the only colored man in the entire consignment Charles Ashleigh, Englishman and graduate of Oxford University, and Ralph H. Chaplin, artist and poet, who was detailed by the “wobblies” to investigate the Centralia, Wash., conspiracy. Nizra Pietro [Pietro Nigra], who drew the shortest sentence, only ten months, also reported.
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