Hellraisers Journal, Tuesday November 26, 1907
Eugene Debs on Pennsylvania’s “Day of the Rope”
From the Appeal to Reason of November 23, 1907:
“Looking Backward.”
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BY EUGENE V. DEBS.
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The Day of the Rope, Black Thursday, June 21, 1877.
Before me lies a copy of the Philadelphia Evening Herald, bearing date of June 21, 1877. On that day the “Mollie Maguires” were executed, six of them-Boyle, McGeghan, Munley, Roarity, Carroll and Duffy-at Pottsville; four of them-Campbell, Doyle, Kelly and Donahue-at Mauch Chunk, and one-Lanahan-at Wilkesbarre. They all protested their innocence and all died game. Not one of them betrayed the slightest evidence of fear or weakening. The issue of the Herald referred to contains a full account of the executions, with portraits of the hapless victims.
Not long ago in the jail at Pottsville I stood on the spot where the six “Mollies” met their doom, and I uncovered in memory of their martyrdom.
Not one of them was a murderer at heart. All were ignorant, rough and uncouth, born of poverty and buffeted by the merciless tides of fate and chance.
To resist the wrongs of which they and their fellow-workers were the victims and to protect themselves against the brutality of their bosses, according to their own crude notions, was the prime object of the organization of the “Mollie Maguires.” Nothing could have been farther from their intention than murder or crime. It is true that their methods were drastic, but it must be remembered that their lot was hard and brutalizing; that they were the neglected children of poverty, the products of a wretched environment.
At the scenes of the execution the tragedy is today, thirty years later, still spoken of in whispers. A vague dread of reviving the fearful past seems to silence the tongue of the resident when the subject is introduced. But bit by bit the truth has slowly and painfully filtered through the dungeon doors of false history, and the world is beginning to understand the true inwardness of the “Mollie Maguire” organization and its real relation to the labor movement.
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, Sunday October 6, 1907
The View from Girard, Kansas: Collier’s Licks the Velvet Hand
From the Appeal to Reason of October 5, 1907:
“Crucify Him!”
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Collier’s Weekly, in the face of all the antagonistic circumstances under which Haywood was tried and acquitted, says that it is privately informed by the best detectives in the country that Orchard told the truth. Well, the Appeal is informed by the best detectives in the country that Orchard maliciously lied, to save his craven neck, under the paid expert coaching of a man whose antecedent history in the “Mollie Maguire” period, and at Parsons, Kan., where good citizens made affidavits denouncing him, shows him to be a creature whose moral pulse beats lower than a snake’s. All the time Orchard was “telling the truth” he was telling stories of his own despicable treachery and double dealing for pay.
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, Friday June 21, 1907
Boise, Idaho – Orchard Breaks Down Under Cross-Examination
Ida Crouch-Hazlett, editor of the Socialist Montana News, is on the scene in Boise covering the Haywood murder trial, and gives the following account of the cross-examination of the prosecution’s star witness, Harry Orchard, by Edmund Richardson, Attorney for the Defense:
Orchard Weeps
—–
Breaks Down on Witness Stand-
McParland’s Methods Exposed
Under Richardson’s Fire
Boise, June 15.
The attitude of the Boise press towards this trial is a disgrace to the name of human freedom. The way the defense has riddled Orchard and shown his utter incompetency and reliability as a witness is potent to all observers. Even the judge looks disgusted at the revelations of this abandoned wretch, as he reluctantly makes admission after admission on the cross-examination to crimes be had not mentioned before. It is common comment that no jury could convict a man on such contaminated evidence. Yet the local papers, notably the “Statesman” [Idaho Daily Statesman of Boise] comes out with flaring articles about Richardson’s “blundering” ways, and his utter failure with the witness, how the friends of the defense are disgusted, and how the socialist reporters throw down their pencils in despair over his stupid efforts. It is needless to say that this is all fiction, pure and simple. Richardson’s work has been magnificent. He has held the strong, aggressive from the very beginning. Orchard has had to put forth a terrible defensive against him in order to bear up at all, and the tactics of the famous attorney have laid bare the very soul of the cringing and cowering murderer.
If they hang Moyer and Haywood,
they’ve got to hang me.
-Eugene Victor Debs
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Hellraisers Journal, Friday June 7, 1907 Current Literature on Moyer-Haywood-Pettibone Case, Part I
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WHAT Mr. Debs, once a Socialist candidate for President, calls “the greatest legal battle in American history,” is now in progress in Boise City, Idaho. Fifty special correspondents of newspapers and magazines from all parts of the country hastened last month to the little city to report the case, and the telegraph company installed ten additional circuits to handle the press of business. Boise City itself is not excited. It has not furnished any of the defendants, nor any of the lawyers, nor the victim whose murder is the cause of all this excitement. All it furnishes is the jury to try the case. But the country at large is furnishing the excitement. The President of the United States has been involved in a heated controversy over the character of the defendants. The United States Supreme Court has rendered a decision which is likened by Socialist orators to the Dred Scott decision of half a century ago. Thousands of men have been parading the streets of many cities—50,000 in New York alone according to The Herald’s estimate—waving red flags, singing the Marsellaise, denouncing the Supreme Court and assailing the President in terms of bitter reproach. And a collection of $250,000, according to some estimates, has been gathered from the members of labor unions to insure for the defendants in this trial an adequate defense.
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, Thursday May 30, 1907
Boise, Idaho – William D. Haywood on Trial for Murder
From Harper’s Weekly of May 25, 1907:
THE MURDER CHARGE AT A
LABOR UNION’S DOOR
BY THE CONFESSION OF ONE OF ITS MEMBERS, THE WESTERN
FEDERATION OF MINERS IS CHARGED WITH HAVING INSTIGATED
TWENTY-SEVEN MURDERS, INCLUDING THE ASSASSINATION, IN 1905,
OF FORMER GOVERNOR STEUNENBERG, OF IDAHO. FOR COMPLICITY
IN THIS CRIME, W. D. HAYWOOD, OF THE FEDERATION’S
“INNER CIRCLE,” IS ON TRIAL FOR HIS LIFE
AN attempt to learn the truth about the most serious charge that ever has been laid at the doors of organized labor is now being made at Boise City, Idaho. William D. Haywood, secretary-treasurer of the Western Federation of Miners, is on trial in the District Court, charged with the murder of Frank Steunenberg, former Governor of Idaho. Two other officers of the Federation are jointly accused, but they will be tried separately. One remarkable fact which provokes arguments for and against the organization is that the evidence upon which Haywood and his associates have been indicted is based upon the confession of a member of the Federation who is reported since to have lost his reason.
The three men charged with conspiracy and murder are Haywood, Charles H. Moyer, President of the Western Federation of Miners, and G. A. Pettibone, formerly a member of the supreme governing body of the organization. These three are men of unusual intelligence and high executive ability.
