Hellraisers Journal – Saturday May 4, 1912 “The Shame of San Diego” by Hartwell S. Shippey, Part II
From the International Socialist Review of May 1912:
The Shame of San Diego
by HARTWELL S. SHIPPEY
[Part II of II]
Up to and preceding March 14, the fight was the conventional free speech fight; but on that date (Sunday) the police took the initiative and ceased booking their prisoners, though the original captives who are charged with criminal conspiracy and jail breaking are still reposing behind the bars. (The “jail breaking” consisted of supposed smashing of jail windows by prisoners who were denied food and water and were compelled to drink from the toilet.) At a meeting held in front of the city jail, outside of the proscribed district, the fire department was called upon and three fire engines played powerful streams of water upon the speakers, knocking down Mrs. Emerson, Miss McKamey, Mrs. Wightman, a religious speaker, but a courageous and high-minded woman, Miss Ruth Wightman, 44 years of age, and overturning a baby carriage, the baby being swept into the gutter by the heavy stream of water.
Mrs. Ray Holden, an innocent by stander, was clubbed over the abdomen by a guardian of the “peace,” being unconscious for two hours following. When her husband called at the police station to investigate, he was locked up and a charge of sending in false fire-alarms was preferred against him.
Egged on by the violent and incendiary press, the local real estate dealers and other capitalists and members of the M. and M. formed themselves into vigilance committees and mob law was instituted. With the connivance and open aid of the police, bands of semi-disguised ruffians, appeared nightly at the police station, from whence, at the dead of night automobile loads of prisoners, industrial unionists, trades unionists in good standing, Socialists, and some with no affiliation, were carried from twenty to thirty miles into the hills and there beaten, clubbed, kicked while helpless on the ground and left with bloody heads and bruised bodies and with threats of death should they return. But return they did, to make affidavits of their persecutions.
[Martyr Michael Hoey]
March 28 died Michael Hoey, the first martyr of the San Diego battle. An old man, was Michael, but in perfect health, having walked 140 miles to the seat of war from Imperial Valley in the space of 5½ days. Kicked in the stomach and groin by a policeman, Hoey complained continually of pain in the swelling on his side but was laughed at by the official physician, Dr. Magee, until Hoey was removed from the jail and taken to Agnew Hospital by the Free Speech League, remaining there until his death. He was cared for by Dr. Leon De Ville, a Socialist, and a devoted soldier of the revolution.
[The Funeral of Michael Hoey]
The following Saturday, March 29, sorrowing fellow-battlers of Michael Hoey’s gathered on a vacant lot where, under the pitying smile of sunny California’s blue sky, they paid their last respects to the fallen hero of labor’s struggle. Waving sadly over his bier was the red flag, the emblem of brotherhood for which Michael Hoey had offered up his life. Not an insignia of violence and hatred, as conceived in the maggot-eaten brains of hired murderers and prostituted “journalists,” but a token of peace and love. And then-ah, well is this article entitled “The Shame of San Diego”-then Harvey Sheppard, a minion of armed and brutal violence, invaded the sanctity of their victim’s funeral and wrested the banner of brotherhood from the hands of the unresisting workingman who bore it, and placed the bearer under arrest! As I write all this I am seized with a feeling that the readers will deem that my story is an exaggeration. But the official organ of the trades-unionists, the Labor Leader, and the Weekly Herald, an independent, profit-making sheet, will fully verify my tale.
Vincent St. John, secretary-treasurer of the I. W. W., has published a reward of five thousand dollars for the conviction of those who were the cause of Hoey’s death.
Hellraisers Journal – Friday May 3, 1912 “The Shame of San Diego” by Hartwell S. Shippey, Part I
From the International Socialist Review of May 1912:
The Shame of San Diego
by HARTWELL S. SHIPPEY
[Part I of II]
SPAT upon, cursed, reviled; the victims of lying calumny and vile vituperation; the recipients of farcical indignities on the part of the legal lackeys of an organized oligarchy; beaten, kicked, clubbed, starved by brass-bound blue-coated Cossacks and vigilantes, the scorned and despised members of the I. W. W. hold San Diego-on-the-bay in their grasp.
Laughing, only passively resistant, singing their songs of solidarity, these homeless, propertyless, countryless “hoboes,” incarcerated in the iron-bound bastiles of smiling San Diego, are clamoring not for physical comforts or luxuries, but for mental food, the works of Marx, Spencer, Renan, Rousseau and Dietzgen.
Even without definite knowledge of the rhythmic tread of the thousands marching to their rescue, these modern Crusaders, buoyed up by their indomitable idealism, secure in the virtue of their cause, have that great faith in the loyalty of their kind to feel, if they cannot know, that theirs will be the victory.
Rivaling the Coeur d’Alene and Colorado, the San Diego fight for free speech and free press will enter the pages of revolutionary history as a stupendous example of red-blooded men heroically enduring every conceivable form of “Man’s [perfect?] self-control in the face of fiendishly inhumanity to man” and preserving brutal persecution.
San Diego may congratulate herself on being the instrument by which two socially valuable bits of education have been given to the world. First the world has come to know the extremes to which an overbearing despotism will go in its efforts to crush labor; and second, it is being demonstrated that, under certain conditions, revolutionary and conservative branches of the labor movement will line up together solidly and unitedly.
For, know ye, the battle is not primarily one fought for a short hundred yards of city street, nor yet for free speech and press alone. It is, at bottom, a struggle on the part of labor for the privilege of organizing and educating its kind to the end that the products of labor shall be rendered unto labor, and that better living conditions for the toilers shall make of this modern miasma of human misery a more fit state for human beings to occupy.
What precipitated this struggle in the non-commercial city nestling on the hills above a beautiful bay with the blue mountains rising in the distance?
California will, barring intervening preventatives, hold two great fairs in 1915, one at San Francisco and one at San Diego. A great amount of labor will be employed in instituting and conducting these fairs. Organized labor, as represented by the A. F. of L., insists on having a voice in determining the rate of wages it will receive and the conditions under which it will work. Organized capital, dominated by the M. and M., declares that IT shall be the sole arbiter in reference to these questions. Organized capital insists that the open shop shall prevail in California; while organized labor realizes that the closed shop is its life-principle. Knowing that it cannot prevail against the unions when there are no idle men to take their places, the M. and M., controlling the press of the country as it does, has systematically published misinformation throughout the country to the effect that jobs are plentiful in California-to the end that jobless men may flood the labor market of the coast and imperil the power of the unions.
The chief function of the Industrial Workers of the World on the coast has been, and is, an education of the unemployed to an understanding of the interests of labor that prevents the out-of-works from acting in the selfish and cowardly role of strike-breaker or scab. The M. and M. recognizes this menace to their plans and strikes at the vitals of this education by an attempted suppression of free speech and press, these forms of freedom being imperative to the educators of the floating population.
Hellraisers Journal – Thursday May 2, 1912 Big Bill Haywood Tells the Story of the Joyful Return of Lawrence Children
From the International Socialist Review of May 1912:
When the Kiddies Came Home
WILLIAM D. HAYWOOD
Monster Parade Welcomes Lawrence Children Home
After two months’ vacation in their temporary homes in New York, Philadelphia, Barre, Vt., and Manchester, N. H., the children of the Lawrence strikers, who had been involved for ten weeks in an industrial war with the master class of the woollen and cotton industries, returned to receive the greatest reception ever held at Lawrence. Most of the children were too young to appreciate what the wonderful demonstration of solidarity meant or the reason of their departure and their return under such changed circumstances. There were among their number, however, some who were strikers themselves and knew their home leaving was to lessen the burden of their parents. The strikers understood it was not a matter of sentiment, but that this rigorous action was adopted as a war measure.
It was for the purpose of calling the attention of the world to the conditions existing at Lawrence, to the conditions of the thousands of children in the textile industry of the New England states that were slowly starving to death because their parents were unable to make a living wage, likewise for the purpose of relieving the Strike Committee of the burden incident to caring for so many little ones and to remove their emaciated and wan faces from the vision of their parents who were on strike.
Although this measure had never been adopted before in America, its significance was soon realized and the spirit of class consciousness became aroused in the working class everywhere. The children found excellent homes and the letters they wrote back to their parents were a comfort and an inspiration. At the same time it enabled those who cared for the children to take an active part in the struggle that was on at Lawrence. Ordinarily they would have contributed their quota to the strike fund, but in caring for the little ones of the striking textile workers, they not only gave many times what their contributions would have amounted to, but they took a big part in the real battle.
The strikers of Lawrence hold a feeling of deepest appreciation for those who have cared for their children. They know that their little ones were treated better than they could have been at home. From all reports, they were received as little guests, and when the time came for them to leave: their “Strike Parents” there was many a tug at their little heartstrings. They had learned to love their new homes. They left Lawrence physically destitute, often ill-clad and without underclothes and wearing garments made of shoddy.
These were the children of parents who weave the cotton, linen and woollen fabric that helps to clothe the world.
They went to other cities to be clothed and returned to their homes well dressed, with roses in their cheeks and laden with toys and other gifts.
Their arrival was made the occasion of a great demonstration in celebration of the millworkers’ notable industrial victory. More than 40,000 people thronged the streets, over half of them taking part in the monster parade.
While the mass of workers were waiting for the arrival of the train, the Syrians, headed by their drum corps, marched around the county jail playing their inspiring Oriental music and carrying to the cells of Ettor and Giovannitti the glad tidings of the coming children.
Long before the special train with the children arrived from Boston, the region in the vicinity was black with people, while along the side streets leading into Broadway, the different divisions of the Industrial Workers of the World were drawn up in line according to nationality, there being fourteen divisions in all. The Italians and Syrians were accorded the place of honor. The heads of their divisions were made prominent by the beautiful floral decorations, the Italians carrying a massive piece on a litter held up by four men. It was these two nationalities that furnished the martyrs for the strike, Anna Lapizzio, the Italian woman who was killed in a fusilade of bullets fired by policemen, andJohn Rami, the sixteen-year-old Syrian boy who was stabbed in the back with a bayonet in the hands of a militiaman. His lung was pierced and he died shortly after being taken to the hospital. The floral pieces were in remembrance of the dead.
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