Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for May 1917: Found in West Virginia and Indiana

14th June 2017 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

You ought to be out raising hell.
This is the fighting age.
Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones

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Hellraisers Journal, Thursday June 14, 1917
Mother Jones News for May: Organizing in West Virginia

Mother Jones, Garment Strike, Chg Dly Tb, Feb 26, 1917, crpd 2

During the month of May 1917 Mother Jones was found in West Virginia on a mission for the United Mine Workers of America organizing the mining camps of the Winding Gulf District where she is beloved by the miners and considered a treasonous old-hag by the mine owners.

The following is part of a report from West Virginia published in the United Mine Workers Journal:

Judging from [her listeners’] expressions, I am confident that the results of that grand old lady’s talk and the clean-cut statements of the other representatives as to the opportunity that the United Mine Workers of America are offering the miners of this field, and considering that we now have officials that believe in making contracts above the table, I believe I heard at least fifty or more men this evening say that if the national will keep Mother Jones in this field a while longer we will get a hundred per cent organization.

She also paid visits to Chicago and to Brazil, Indiana.

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Hellraisers Journal: From the American Socialists: An American Mother Searches for Her Boy in France by Ryan Walker

27th May 201726th May 2017 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

I have no country to fight for;
my country is the earth,
and I am a citizen of the world.
-Eugene Victor Debs

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Hellraisers Journal, Sunday May 27, 1917
From the American Socialist: An American Boy in France

“Her Boy” by Ryan Walker:

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Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: “Hunger, The Master Strategist”

23rd May 201723rd May 2017 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

If blood be the price of your lawful wealth
Good God! we have bought it fair.
-Unknown Proletarian

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Hellraisers Journal, Wednesday May 23, 1917
Worldwide – Hunger Rules the Earth

From the International Socialist Review of May 1917:

Hunger by C. D. Batchelor

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Hellraisers Journal: Anna Louise Strong for The Survey: “The Everett Verdict”

21st May 2017 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

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, Monday May 21, 1917
Seattle, Washington – Tom Tracy Acquitted , Free-Speech Prisoners Released

From The Survey of May 19, 1917:

The Verdict at Everett

Acquittal for the Man Tried, Release for the Other I. W. W.’s
By Anna Louise Strong

“Not guilty!” With these words the great labor trial growing out of the battle on the Everett dock last November drew to a close, on May 5. “We are making history,” said the judge in his opening remarks to the jury. They were, indeed. Although driven from public notice by the opening of war, the trial of the seventy-four I. W. W.’s, represented technically in the person of one of their number, Thomas Tracy, is in many respects the greatest labor trial in our history. Tracy has been adjudged not guilty, after nine weeks of trial, and the others have been released without trial.

The main events leading up to the trial were covered in the SURVEY of January 27, and the evidence coming in at the trial has shown that statement to have been correct, except for one or two irrelevant details. A boatload of I. W. W.’s went to Everett on November 5, having previously announced a meeting on the streets of that city, and invited by circular the citizens of Everett to “come and help defend your and our constitutional rights.” They were met at the dock by the sheriff and 150 deputies. In the fight that ensued two deputies and five I. W. W.’s are known to have been killed, and there is a strong probability that three or four more I. W. W.’s were lost in the waters of the sound. On the return of the steamer Verona to Seattle, the entire load of passengers was arrested, and subsequently seventy-four were held on a charge of murder in the first degree.

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Hellraisers Journal: Elizabeth Gurley Flynn Leaves Seattle, on Speaking Tour Back to New York City

18th May 2017 Janet RayeElizabeth Gurley Flynn

You ought to be out raising hell.
This is the fighting age.
Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones

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Hellraisers Journal, Friday May 18, 1917
From the Industrial Worker: Elizabeth Flynn Heading Back East

According to tour dates published in Seattle Industrial Worker, organ of the Industrial Workers of the World, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, has left Seattle and is heading back east, with speaking engagements scheduled along the way. She has a small son in the care of her mother in New York City, and she must surely be eager to be with him again.

From the Industrial Worker of April 21, 1917:

From the Industrial Worker of May 8, 1917:

From The Rockford Republic (Illinois) of May 12, 1917:

ELIZABETH FLYNN SPEAKS.

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, noted agitator, speaks tonight at the Olympic theater on Seventh street. She will tell about the trials at Everett, Wash., in which seventy-nine I. W. W. men are being tried for murder.

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Hellraisers Journal: Everett Class War Prisoners Released After Tracy Acquittal, Honor Murdered Fellow Workers

13th May 201712th May 2017 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Pray for the dead and
fight like hell for the living.
-Mother Jones

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Hellraisers Journal, Sunday May 13, 1917
Seattle, Washington – Mount Pleasant Cemetery

Following the acquittal of Tom Tracy, the Everett Free Speech Fight Prisoners have been released. They immediately visited the Mount Pleasant Cemetery were three of five Everett Martyrs lie buried:

Everett Free Speech, Class War Prisoners at Cemetery, May 12, 1917, WCS

Their next action was to turn themselves in at the I. W. W. Union Hall, to be assigned as needed. They have spent the time in jail studying in preparation to become capable union organizers.

———-

Everett Massacre Martyrs of Nov 5, 1916

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Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for April 1917: Found in West Virginia as Organizer for UMWA

10th May 2017 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

What the lawmakers give you
they can take away.
The only thing you are sure of
is what you win for yourself.
-Mother Jones

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Hellraisers Journal, Thursday May 10, 1917
Mother Jones News for April: Mother Jones Returns to West Virginia

Mother Jones, WV with children of striking miners, ISR 1913

Who could ever forget the story of Mother Jones in West Virginia during the Paint and Cabin Creek Strike of 1912 and 1913 when she was held prisoner and court-martialed by the military forces of the that state?

Mother Jones has recently returned to the state of West Virginia, along with Peggy Dwyer, as an organizer for the United Mine Workers of America. This is where we find her during most of the month of April 1917.

First, however, we find her mentioned in and article in the New York Tribune of April 1, 1917, written by John J. Leary, Jr., and entitled “How Old Is The Eight-Hour Movement?”

“How old is the eight-hour movement,” asked the city editor, when the attention of the country was focussed on the labor question by the decision of the Supreme Court upholding the Adamson eight-hour act….

As a matter of cold fact, the first law fixing the hours of labor at eight was enacted in New York fifty years ago, in 1857, to be exact. A joker in the law, however, prevented its being much more than a dead letter, for it was also provided that the law should apply only “where there is no contract or agreement to the contrary.” [With the bosses, of course, writing the contracts.]

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Hellraisers Journal: “To the Shame of Labor” by Robert Minor, “Mooney Plot Exposed!”

8th May 2017 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

You ought to be out raising hell.
This is the fighting age.
Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones

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Hellraisers Journal, Tuesday May 8, 1917
From the International Socialist Review: The Mooney Case

TO THE SHAME OF LABOR

By ROBERT MINOR

W. Bourke Cockran is a democratic leader, as well as the most noted lay orator in expounding the doctrines of the Catholic Church. Bourke Cockran is known internationally for his remarkable mentality and almost unequaled oratory in Congress and upon the democratic platform. He cannot be accused of being prejudiced in favor of violent overturners of society. Cockran spent six weeks in San Francisco as volunteer chief counsel for Tom Mooney, and at that time steeped himself in every detail, confidential or otherwise, of the entire story of the prosecution of Mooney, Billings, Nolan, Weinberg and Mrs. Mooney on the charge of blowing up the preparedness parade. One of the highest-priced attorneys in the world, he charged for his services—nothing.

When a cynical jury of twelve business men and retired derelicts sentenced Tom Mooney to hang, Cochran told me that he had never received so heavy a blow in his life. He said that if such things could be, the nation was rotting at its foundation.

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Hellraisers Journal: Victory for Industrial Workers of the World: Tom Tracy Found Not Guilty by Seattle Jury

7th May 2017 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

You ought to be out raising hell.
This is the fighting age.
Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones

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Hellraisers Journal, Monday May 7, 1917
Seattle, Washington – Victory for Everett Defense!

From The Seattle Star of May 5, 1917:

Everett Massacre, Tracy Freed, Stt Str, May 5, 1917

From the Everett Prisoners’ Defense Committee:

SEATTLE, Wash., May 5th.-Thomas H. Tracy after a trial lasting exactly two months, has been acquitted. It is also exactly six months since the red outrage of Bloody Sunday on November 5. The fifth seems to be a significant date in this case and on November 5th was the trouble; on March 5th Tracy’s trial started and on May 5th he secured his acquittal.

JURY DELIBERATES 21 HOURS.

The case went to the jury yesterday, Friday, at 11:30 a. m. and the verdict was handed to the clerk of the court at 8:30 this morning. The Los Angeles sleuth, Malcolm McLaren, was rushing up to the courtroom to hear the verdict when he met Tracy himself returning in freedom! The famous “defective” did not look very happy at that moment!

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Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: the SPA Emergency Convention at St. Louis

4th May 20173rd May 2017 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

I have no country to fight for;
my country is the earth;
I am a citizen of the world.
-Eugene Victor Debs

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Hellraisers Journal, Friday May 4, 1917
The Socialist Party of America on War and Militarism

From April 7th to the 14th, delegates gathered in St. Louis, Missouri, for a “National Emergency Convention” to consider the Socialist position on the “orgy of war.” A Majority Report and two Minority Reports on War and Militarism were the end result of that convention and those Reports are being put up to a vote of the membership this month.

From this month’s International Socialist Review:

The Emergency National Convention

By LESLIE MARCY

IN compliance with a mandate hurriedly issued by the National Executive Committee, delegates assembled at the Planters Hotel in St. Louis on Saturday morning, April 7th. All states were represented with the exception of Alabama, Alaska, Mississippi, North Carolina and South Carolina, while Texas was represented part of the time by one delegate.

This convention was called without a referendum vote and in face of the fact that there was very little demand on the part of the membership for it. The Constitution nowhere empowers the National Executive Committee to call a special convention. In many states the membership was not even given an opportunity to elect delegates but the rank and file will be asked to dig up $15,000.00 to cover the cost of the convention. The excuse for the convention was to find out how the party stood on the question of war. All the National Executive Committee had to do was to say, Let there be a convention, and there was a convention.

As many theories were represented regarding war, its cause and cure and the attitude the party should take in the present crisis, as there were tongues around the Tower of Babel. Many of the delegates came uninstructed but there were half a dozen delegations which came instructed to vote against all wars, offensive or defensive. The delegates from Illinois, Michigan, Washington and Ohio were cleancut and uncompromising and voted solidly together for a clear, concise statement of the party’s position.

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