Hellraisers Journal – Thursday March 12, 1914 Calumet, Michigan – House Committee Hears Testimony on Italian Hall Disaster
From The Indianapolis Sunday Star of March 8, 1914:
SWEAR STRANGER STIRRED UP PANIC
———- Calumet Witnesses Repeat Charges That
Man Wearing Alliance Button Started
Christmas Eve Death Rush.
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STORIES OF WITNESSES VARY ———-
Prosecutor Conducts Inquiry to Determine
Truth of Story That Children Died
as Result of Premeditated Plot.
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CALUMET, Mich., March 7.-Persons who testified before the coroner’s inquest last January that a man wearing a “Citizens’ Alliance” button started the Christmas eve panic, here in Italian Hall today, repeated their assertions before Representatives Taylor of Arkansas and Casey of Pennsylvania, congressional investigators.
Description of the man varied as greatly as it did before the coroner’s jury, which body disregarded this line of testimony in reaching an open verdict.
O. N. Hilton was present to represent the Western Federation of Miners, but he was not allowed to question the witnesses as the full committee at Houghton had agreed that Anthony Lucas, prosecutor of Houghton County, and the committee members should do all the questioning.
Wore Button on Coat.
Mrs. Josephine Leskela [Leskella] testified that she was near the middle of the hall when a man who stood alongside her yelled “fire, fire” and then started for the door. She said he was a large man with a long overcoat and that he wore the button of the Citizens’ Alliance on his coat.
John Burogr, 18 years old [John Burcar, age 13], said the cry of “fire” was given by a short stout man.
“He wore a long overcoat with the fur collar turned up and had a Citizens’ Alliance button on his breast pocket,” said this witness.
Could Not See Lettering.
Mrs. Mary Koskolos [Koskela] said a large stout man cried “fire, rush,” and the panic started. She said he wore a button, but she could not distinguish the lettering on it.
Mrs. Elisha Lesh [Elin Lesh] heard a male voice cry “fire” twice in English, and then its Slavonic equivalent, “watra.”
Mrs. Anna Lustig, who lost a little boy in the rush, was positive that the man who cried “fire” wore the insignia of the Citizens’ Alliance.
Another 12-year-old boy, Frank Shaltz [Schaltz], said he heard a man, wearing a “white button, with a red inscription,” cry “fire.” He said the man had a dark mustache and he recognized him as one he had seen on the street several weeks before, carrying a club.
This One Saw Two Men.
Eric Ericcson [Erick Erickson] testified that he heard some one behind him yell “fire.” He turned to see who had uttered the cry and saw two well-dressed men moving toward the door. Both wore Citizens’ Alliance buttons, he said. He could not swear that either of these men raised the cry.
Charles Olsen said he was standing on a chair when he heard a cry of “fire” in English, and no other language. He saw the man, he said, and he described him as being 5 feet 8 inches in height and wearing a dark gray overcoat and gray cap. The witness thought the button the man wore on his coat was the badge of the Citizens’ Alliance, although he was not close enough to say positively.
Paul Jakkola said he was standing in the vestibule when a man wearing the alliance button came up the stairway and shouted “fire” twice. Witness said he was a good-sized man, wearing a coat with a corduroy collar and a fur cap pulled over his forehead. He had a dark mustache.
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday March 10, 1914 “Why, Governor Ammons?” by Mrs. Lizabeth A. Williams
From the Denver United Labor Bulletin of March 7, 1914:
WHY, GOVERNOR AMMONS? -by Mrs. Lizabeth A. Williams
Oh, what has become of your once fair name, That is doomed to die in disgrace and shame, Governor Ammons? Why cease the whir of our industry’s wheel, Why end the output of iron and steel, Why call for arms, so that labor should kneel, Governor Ammons?
[…..]
Your victims are tortured, hungry and cold, Truth has been crushed, our rights have been sold, Governor Ammons. A white-haired mother, in her eighty-one, Long a victim of your bayonet and gun, What would your soul do if you were her son, Governor Ammons?
Your reign of injustice will soon be o’er, Your cossacks will ride on their raids no more, Governor Ammons. Our martyred ballots took our rights away, Your blood-stained power we have felt each day, Before the Judge of All what will you say, Governor Ammons?
Hellraisers Journal – Monday March 9, 1914 Trinidad, Colorado – Writ of Habeas Corpus Denied for Mother Jones
From El Paso Herald of March 6, 1914:
MILITIA MAY HOLD WOMAN, COURT RULES ———- Judge Denies Writ of Habeas Corpus in the Case of “Mother” Jones. ———-
POWER OF MILITARY OFFICIALS UPHELD ———-
Trinidad, Colo., March 6.-In a verbal decision rendered at the opening of the district court this morning, Judge A. W. McHendrie denied the writ of habeas corpus for “Mother” Mary Jones, the noted woman strike leader held under military guard at the San Rafael Hospital, and remanded the prisoner to the custody of the respondent in the action, Gen. John Chase, commander of the state militia in the strike zone.
The ruling of the court was brief. Immediately upon hearing the decision, attorney F. W. Clark, local counsel for the United Mine Workers, asked for and was granted 60 days to prepare a bill of exceptions to be submitted to the supreme court.
Like [Albert] Hill Case, Says Court.
The court held the case in all essential respects to be the same as the case instituted early in February for others who were held prisoners by the military authorities for alleged connection with the burning of the Southwestern mine tipple and postoffice.
The court in its ruling upheld the powers of the military authorities in arresting and detaining the petitioner under specific instructions form governor Ammons, who in his order to Gen. Chase, declared the woman to be a “dangerous person” and one likely to raise riot or disorder.
To Appeal Case.
But few people were in court when the opinion was rendered this morning. The attorneys for the petitioner will now submit the case on appeal to the supreme court, which a short time ago denied an original application.
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday March 7, 1914 New York City – Police Attack and Arrest Unemployed Men Seeking Shelter
200 Unemployed Men Held after Arrests at St. Alphonsus’ Catholic Church
Some 200 unemployed men were arrested during a blizzard on the night of March 4th as they sought shelter at St. Alphonsus’ Catholic Church. Frank Tannenbaum is being held on a felony charge with his bail fixed at $5,000. The others could be bailed out at the cost of $1000 each, were that amount available. The men are being held at four different prison: the Tombs, Jefferson Market, West 57th Street, and West 53rd Street.
At the Jefferson Market prison, the men are being kept in a large pen without cots and with only eight blankets for 50 men. Conditions at West 57th are much the same. At the Tombs and the West 53rd Street prison, the men have been crowded five and six to cell, and are being kept in unsanitary conditions described as vile.
Mary Heaton Vorse explains how the arrests came about:
Frank Tannenbaum, [Frank Strawn] Hamilton and [Charles] Plunkett had asked Father Schneider of St. Alphonsus if they might have shelter in his church. Father Schneider had refused on the ground that the Blessed Sacrament of the Body of our Lord was exposed and it would be sacrilege to allow men to sleep in the church at such a time.
The crowd of unemployed had not understood their instruction to wait outside and had started going inside to sit down in the back seats. A police officer told Tannenbaum to go into the church and bring the men out. Tannenbaum obeyed. The doors were closed and locked on him as soon as he went inside. The arrest followed before he could speak to the men. The papers had been told that the Catholic Church was going to stand for no nonsense and there was a battery of reporters and cameramen ready for the trouble.
It so happens that the newly formed Labor Defense Conferencewas holding its first meeting at the home of Mary Heaton Vorse and her husband, Joe O’Brien, the same night that the men were arrested. The Conference was organized by Big Bill Haywood of the Industrial Workers of World, and has attracted what Vorse calls “a strangely assorted group.” All of them are committed to defending workers, whether currently employed or not.
In the middle of the meeting, Heber Blankenhorn entered the room, and said, “We have your first case for you. Frank Tannenbaum and a crowd of two hundred men have just been arrested down at St. Alphonsus’.”
The Labor Defense Conference launched into action immediately. Justus Sheffield was contacted and will act as the attorney for men.
Note: Newsclip from New York Tribune of March 5, 1914
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday March 3, 1914 Herman Suhr and Richard Ford Convicted of Second Degree Murder
From the International Socialist Review of March 1914:
The Wheatland Boys
HERMAN Suhr and Richard Ford, leaders of the strike on the Durst Hop Ranch at Wheatland, have been convicted of murder in the second degree, in the trial for the murder of District Attorney Edmund Manwell, killed in the raid of the sheriff’s posse on a peacable meeting of men, women and children strikers. William Back and Harry Bagan, who stood trial with them, have been released “on account of insufficient evidence.”
Ford and Suhr are convicted of murder. But they are not convicted of actually having murdered Mr. Maxwell. They are convicted of conspiring to murder, of being accessory before the fact.
The evidence of several eye witnesses proved that the District Attorney was killed by a Porto Rican, who came to the rescue of his fellow strikers. But the Porto Rican was killed himself; Ford and Suhr were not killed. And, as Prosecuting Attorney Carlin says, “The blood of Ed Manwell cries from the ground for their conviction.” The employing class cry for their conviction, Mr. Carlin might have added with less false sentiment and more truth. For these men, Ford and Suhr, were strike leaders, and their strike promised to be successful, had not the sheriff’s posse acted as strikebreakers for the Hop Barons.
These are the reasons for the conviction of Ford and Suhr. The precedent of a conviction of a labor leader for conspiracy to murder, of being accessory before the fact to any violence fomented by the employers in time of industrial trouble, is choked down the throats of the working class in California. And a staggering blow is given of the organization of the migratory workers, in whose vast army they urge toward organization had just begun to take embryonic shape.
Immediately behind the four prisoners during the trial sat Mrs. Suhr and Mrs. Ford, each with her two children. Suhr is desperately broken by the tortures of the Burns detectives, and even wiry, spirited hopeful Ford shows the long imprisonment and the strain. But the men show their ordeal hardly more than their wives.
As they sat before the twelve men who were to decide their fate, it was difficult to imagine a situation where justice would be more bitterly impossible to secure than in this county of Yuba, from which change of venue had been denied the four prisoners. Not a man in the jury who would not consider (however falsely) that his financial interest would be more secure for the conviction of these men. Not a man there who knew them or had ever looked upon their faces before. Not a man there who did not know at least by reputation, the dead man, his widow and orphans. Not a man who had not read the bitter attacks of the local press, condemning these men to the gallows before they were even brought to trial. Not a man who had ever read a word favorable to them (the reading of the pamphlet [“Plotting to Convict the Wheatland Hop Pickers”] sent into Yuba County by this league having been declared by the judge to disqualify a man from jury service). Not a man in the jury, probably, who did not share the prejudice of the man with a home, against the so-called hobo.
Austin Lewis’ plea for the defense was brilliant, profoundly human and convincing. It took the evidence, as given by both sides and utterly demolished the case of the prosecution with the sword of cold reason, slashed the cowardly Stanwood for his persecutions of helpless prisoners, and then flung itself upward in such an appeal to the blood-kindred of all men in aspirations for betterment and freedom, such as the strike on the Durst Ranch, as must have stirred the blood of every listener. But Lewis was a stranger to the jurymen, and their petty life in an agricultural community rendered it impossible for them to judge in a case involving an industrial question.
Prosecuting Attorney Carlin, who followed, had set his stage well. Opposite the jury sat the widow of the dead man with her six children. Intimately, as a man might talk to them leaning over the front fences, Carlin drove his plea home to the jury, every man of whom knew him, and many of whom, it is stated, were under obligations to him. Analysis of the testimony there was none; argument there was none; reason there was none.
A poor, shabby, cowardly speech, vulgar and dull. But it did not have to be very clever. All was well prepared without a clever plea. The judge read to the jury instructions from the law exactly covering a conviction for conspiracy in these cases, and hastily skipped over the instructions which would have freed the men by showing that Ford and Suhr did not aid and abet the Porto Rican who did the shooting.
The crooked, brutal case was about finished. The prophecy of gentlemen intimately associate with the ever clever Burns detectives to the effect that the verdict would be brought in at 1:30 p. m. on January 31, was correct. Society women and social workers who had come up from San Francisco, representatives of the press, investigators from the new Federal Commission on Industrial Relations, townsmen and townswomen crowded the courtroom. And the impious mock dignity of the law went on its wind-inflated way, to free the two men whom it dare not hold and to pronounce guilty the two whose sole crime was that they rose to lead out of the darkness, a helpless crowd of men, women and children, to convict these men who used what talents were theirs to voice the will and aspirations of these people for clean and decent conditions and a wage sufficient to allow them to hold up their heads as men.
Their cases will be appealed, and the storms of protest and wrath will not be downed until they are free.
Hellraisers Journal – Monday March 2, 1914
Chicago, Illinois – Annie Clemenc Stands with Striking Henrici’s Waitresses
From The Day Book of February 28, 1914:
THE JOAN OF ARC OF THE CALUMET COUNTRY
SIZES UP THE WAITRESSES’ STRIKE
BY JANE WHITAKER
Do people go in that restaurant and eat? Oh, that cannot be possible when they know these girls are picketing outside in a battle for their rights?
I smiled as the question was asked by Annie Clemenc, the Joan of Arc of the Calumet country, the girl who has led so many parades of the striking copper miners and their wives, the girl who has been arrested so many times as she silently or verbally protested against the injustice of the conditions that surround the working class.
“They do patronize that restaurant, some people,” I answered, “but I always try to excuse them by believing they are representatives of the Restaurant Keepers’ Association and the Brewers’ Association, who are backing Henrici’s fight against labor. And even those people have a look of half shame and half bravado on their faces as they come out.”
But the girls inside! The girls who have taken the places of these girls on strike.
Annie’s arm trembled under my fingers, and I knew she was thinking bitterly of the word she uses when she speaks of the miners who have taken the places of the strikers in Calumet.
Aren’t they ashamed to go on serving the people who patronize this restaurant when they know that outside these girls are fighting not only for themselves but for all working women?
She did not wait for me to answer. [She murmured:]
How I pity these girls. They go up and down so quietly with no protest. You can only tell the battle they are fighting by the flag that they carry. Six slim girls and almost an army of police. I could not obey as they obey. I would cry out, “There is a strike here, don’t you go in.”
“When they have done that, they have been arrested and sometimes man-handled,” I explained gently.
“I know what that is,” she answered, and her soft brown eyes grew hard with bitterness. I knew she was thinking of that parade not so many months ago when she led a band of strikers and their sympathizers. When one of the large American flags was cut to shreds by the militia and she snatched the other, and waved it aloft in her strong arms, as she cried:
“Come on. Follow me!”
And I knew she was thinking of the cowardly soldier who had, under a uniform that pledged him to serve his country and protect the rights of her people, a heart filled with love of gold and hatred of the toilers a soldier who struck at Annie with a saber and cut a gash across her wrist, from which the blood poured over her hand.
Annie Clemenc and Ben Goggia, Center Calumet, Michigan, September 13, 1913
And I knew she was thinking of how she had held that flag until its red, white and blue clothed her like a gown, and had cried:
“Kill me, go on and kill me. I don’t care what you do, but you got to kill me through the flag of my country. I respect my country’s flag, if you do not.”
But the cowardly soldier contented himself by striking at her, and several of the strikers dragged her away.
I knew she was thinking of all these things, as I pointed out to her Officer No. 813, the big, brawny man who had belittled himself and his manhood, according to the story told by Miss Meyers, by insulting defenseless girls.
And I pointed out to her Police-woman Mrs. Boyd, who was smiling and chatting with some men, but whose eyes glittered and whose jaw set firmly as the pickets approached and passed.
“You will see things here that will strike you as very strange,” I said. “This is what is termed, a highly civilized city, and in highly civilized cities where labor is trying to come into its rights and capital is fighting to keep labor suppressed, you see brute force matched against woman’s frailty and never against equal strength of men. Only today mounted police rode down a band of unemployed, hungry men, weak and almost hopeless, but the police rode on their horses and used their clubs. They never fight with equal odds in labor wars.”
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday March 1, 1914
Trinidad, Colorado – Mother Jones Still a Military Prisoner, Held Incommunicado
From the International Review of March 1914:
The Latest from Trinidad
INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW,
Chicago, Ill.
Dear Comrades:
Replying to yours of Feb. 5, regarding a letter to Mother Jones, I must say it is impossible. She is held absolutely “incommunicado”-no one having seen her since incarceration except Horace Hawkins, attorney for U. M. W. A., and his admission was since the Congressional investigation was approaching. I enclose you clipping from yesterday’s daily showing how even medical advice from outside was denied her. “Military discipline” and general conditions are softening down much since the investigation has become a certainty. This puts new hope and courage into us all.
Yours for Socialism, GRACE B. MARIANS, Local Secty., S. P. Feb. 10, 1914
Mother ]ones Parade
On January 22 a women’s parade was formed to make a demonstration protesting against the imprisonment of “Mother Jones.” The line of march was to proceed from Castle Hall up Commercial street, along Main to the postoffice, and then return to Castle Hall. One of the leaders was an Italian woman, who did not speak or understand English well. She was carrying an American flag in the form of a large banner. Not knowing that the parade was to turn at the postoffice, she led the parade towards the hospital where Mother Jones is held. A block from the postoffice the parade was met by a troop of cavalry commanded in person by General Chase. The soldiers immediately pulled the flag out of the woman’s hands. Other women ran up and demanded the return of the flag. This was finally returned to them amidst cheers.
On receiving the flag the paraders re-formed, turned around and started back to the hall. They had not proceeded a block when the troop of cavalry, who had now been reinforced by the infantry, charged at full gallop with drawn sabers. Women were rode down, others flocked to the sidewalks. The cavalry then charged the sidewalks, beating the people with the flat of their swords. One woman received a gash on the hand from the saber stroke. Mrs. Margaret Hammond was struck by a militiaman with his fist, cutting her forehead above the left eye and blackening both eyes. Any person objecting to the treatment was immediately seized and taken to jail.
The infantry backed up the charge with drawn bayonets, forcing the people before them. Private lawns were invaded and any persons standing on them were herded off. Even government property was not sacred. The troops drove people from the postoffice steps.
A number of people were injured in this charge, mostly women, and eighteen were taken to prison. The streets were then blocked by the militia and no person was allowed to pass up or down them without permission of an officer.
Governor Ammons upheld General Chase in his chivalrous attack upon the women of the community.
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