Hellraisers Journal – Friday May 16, 1919
Mother Jones News for April 1919, Part I
-Found Speaking to Strikers in Rockford, Illinois
From Rockford Morning Star of April 9, 1919:
“MOTHER” JONES TELLS STRIKERS NOT TO GIVE UP
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OVER 2,000 PERSONS CROWD ARMORY TO HEAR
WOMAN LEADER OF LABOR.
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SAYS SHE’S BOLSHEVIK
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Don’t go back to work until you get an eight-hour day! Don’t go back to work until you get more pay, because the cost of living is going up! I have got to go away tonight, but I am coming back, and if you have not enough officers to continue this fight, let me know, and I will put ’em on the scrap pile.
With this declaration “Mother” Jones the eighty-nine year old woman leader of labor, closed her address before a mass meeting of Rockford’s furniture strikers at Armory hall Tuesday afternoon, which brought forth a tremendous ovation from over 2,000 persons who had crowded the hall to hear the comments of a veteran on the struggle between capital and labor.
[She said:]
The trouble with us is that we have used our brains to build up industry and have created wealth by the billions and haven’t asked where this wealth is going to. But the pendulum is now swinging in another direction. We are not pleading any longer-we are demanding! The time has come to demand. I have no use for the cringing slave. We are now facing a new regime.
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday May 14, 1919
Upton Sinclair Exposes the Barbaric Sedgwick County Jail
From the Appeal to Reason of May 10, 1919:
Hell Holes in America
In the Amnesty Edition of the Appeal I reproduced a circular sent out by the I. W. W. boys, describing the terrible conditions in the Sedgwick county jail at Wichita, Kans. I made no investigation of their statements, but acted on my general impulse to believe the worst about American jails. Those which I have investigated in past times have disposed me to believe that nobody could possibly exaggerate their evils. But soon after this article appeared in the Appeal I received letters from several correspondents who reported that they had complained to the Governor of Kansas about the matter, and had received from him a report of a confidential investigation which he had had made into this Wichita jail. The report stated that conditions in the jail were excellent, and that all the accounts sent out by the I. W. W. were false.
Now the Governor of Kansas, Henry J. Allen, is a progressive politician and a gentle man. I feel acquainted with him from reading “The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me,” by William Allen White-Governor Allen being the Henry” of that book. So I began to feel real bad about what I had published, and made ready to apologize to Governor Allen, and also to the readers of the Appeal for the blunder I had made.
But I studied that report again and noted that the Governor’s investigator denied that the I. W. W. boys had been arrested for trying to call a strike of the oil workers. He said they had been arrested for hindering the prosecution of the war. I have encountered that official bunk so often that I know the type of mind that swallows it.
And then I recalled the many, many times in my life when I had followed the work of official investigators, in cases with which I myself was entirely familiar. I recalled, for example the statement given out about the county jail here in Los Angeles, that the prisoners had had lice brought in and put them on their bodies prior to my inspection! I recalled Major Louis L. Seaman of the United States army, who investigated the Chicago stockyards for Collier’s Weekly, at the time when the Appeal to Reason was publishing “The Jungle.” Major Seaman was a gentleman of undoubted integrity, and he reported that everything was lovely in that inferno of graft. You see, these gentlemen of undoubted integrity have their class point of view, and they let themselves be escorted around, and they only see what they are shown-and even then, most of the time they don’t realize what they are seeing!
So I decided that before I apologized to Governor Allen, I would inquire a little farther. I wrote to Caroline Lowe, a woman who has interested herself in the defense of political prisoners, and asked if she happened to know anything about this particular jail. In reply came a letter which speaks for itself and which I quote:
Regardless of any denial made by the Governor of the State of Kansas, I can testify of my own knowledge that the conditions not only in the Wichita jail but in the jail at the State capitol at Topeka, Kans., beggar description. The rotary tank in the jail at Wichita is a relic of barbarism. I have been in the jail many times and have seen this tank in operation.
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday May 7, 1919
Lawrence, Massachusetts – The Ordeal of Anthony Capraro and Nathan Kleinman
From the Boston Evening Globe of May 6, 1919:
TWO LAWRENCE STRIKE LEADERS KIDNAPED
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BEATEN BY CROWD, THEY BOTH SAY
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One Found in Andover, the Other in Lowell
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Special Dispatch to the Globe
Brattleboro Daily Reformer May 6, 1919
LAWRENCE, May 6–Anthony Capraro, reputed to be a representative of the New York Call, a Socialist newspaper, who has been here several weeks, reported to day that he and Nathan Kleinman, also of New York, who is an organizer for the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, endeavoring to organize the Amalgamated Textile Workers as a nucleus, were kidnaped at 1:30 this morning by masked and armed men and terribly beaten.
Kleinman appeared at hotel in Lowell early today. Capraro was found in West Andover early this morning in a badly battered condition, and he was taken to the office of Dr. P. J. Look in Andover and his wounds dressed, and afterward taken to the Andover Police Station, where he now is.
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Alleges Mob Beat them
Capraro told his own story while in the Andover Police Station. He said he and Kleinman were in their rooms at the Needham Hotel in Lawrence this morning at 1:30, when a bell boy named James Silk brought the mob of 20 men to their doors. Capraro declared that the score of men were heavily masked and carried revolvers and blackjacks in their hands. When they got into the rooms of Kleinman and Capraro they began beating both labor leaders, Capraro alleged, and finally hustled them down to the street and put them into an automobile and drove away under the cover of darkness.
Capraro stated that it seemed as if they would never reach their destination, the ride was so long, and all the while they were speeding over the country roads in the automobiles the mob was busy beating Kleinman and Capraro over the heads, faces and bodies with their bludgeons.
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Put Noose About His Neck
Capraro said the mob took him out of his automobile in the woods and fixed a noose about his neck and told him they were going to hang him. All the while some of the members of the mob were beating him. Capraro said he could not see Kleinman while this was going on. The crowd which had Kleinman evidently took him to another spot. Finally they decided not to hang Capraro, he said, and they removed the noose from his neck and choked and beat and kicked him unmercifully. When the crowd tired of beating him, Capraro asserted, he managed to escape and he ran into a field and in the dark eluded his screaming pursuers.
Capraro declared that he finally reached a field, fell exhausted and crawled into the high grass and concealed himself. He lay there suffering untold pain and anguish until dawn. He then managed to crawl to the farmhouse of William I. Livingstone, near the Hackett’s Pond railroad station in West Andover. He aroused the occupants of the farmhouse at 5:30 and told his story.
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday May 6, 1919
Lawrence, Massachusetts – Carlo Tresca Speaks to Strikers
From the Boston Evening Globe of May 3, 1919:
SMUGGLE TRESCA IN AND OUT OF LAWRENCE
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I. W. W. Agitator Addresses Strikers After
Dodging the Police in Search
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Special Dispatch to the Globe
LAWRENCE, May 3-Carlo Tresca, noted I. W. W. advocate and prominent leader of the strike in 1912, addressed an enthusiastic mass meeting of the strikers behind locked doors in Lexington Hall, last night. Tresca was accorded a great reception. Leaders pleaded with the strikers to restrain from demonstrations for fear of police interference.
One speaker, the police were informed, advised the strikers to go out and shoot every policeman that interfered with them.
Tresca was smuggled into Lawrence late Wednesday afternoon. His presence in the city was closely guarded because the strike leaders knew the police would not tolerate his presence.
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Secreted Under the Stage
At 6 he was taken to the hall in a closed automobile. He was secreted beneath the stage, and only a few knew that he was there. At 7:30 the hall was filled to capacity, and hundreds on the outside clamored for admission, it having been stated that there was to be a prominent speaker.
At 7:30 Anthony Capraro of the general strike committee, and chairman of the meeting, told the audience that the had a great surprise for them and that he was going to introduce a speaker they loved and for whom they were clamoring. He then called Tresca on to the stage.
In the course of his remarks Tresca, it is said, congratulated the Lawrence strikers for the manner in which they were conducting their fight, and flayed the police for their alleged oppression. When he concluded all doors were guarded and no one was allowed to leave the hall for 20 minutes after Tresca had departed. This was done so as to cover Tresca’s tracks in leaving the city.
Hellraisers Journal – Monday May 5, 1919
Butte, Montana – The Bulletin on “Bomb Plot” Frame-Up and May Day “Riots”
The following reports and opinion pieces are from The Butte Daily Bulletin, published May 1st, May 2nd and May 3rd, and covering the dramatic events surrounding May Day 1919.
From The Butte Daily Bulletin of May 1 1919:
BOMBS ARE SENT BY MAIL
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Packages Sent to Several Government Officials
and Citizens Throughout U. S.
Contained Explosives.
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(Special United Press Wire.)
Washington May 1.-What is believed by the officials to be a wide spread attempt on the lives of members of Wilson’s cabinet has just been discovered. Seventeen packages being held in the postoffice at New York were found to contain explosives. it is not known how many have already passed through the mail.
The packages were addressed to officials throughout the United States among whom were; Postmaster-General Burleson, Secretary of Labor Wilson, Attorney-General Palmer, and Commissioner-General Palmer, and Commissioner-General of Immigration Caminetti. There were also packages addressed to John D. Rockefeller, J. P. Morgan, New York Commissioner Howe, Mayor Hylan of New York, Governor Sproul of Pennsylvania, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, District Attorney Fickert of California and his assistant, Edward Cunha. The bombs were similar to the ones received by Mayor “Ole” Hanson of Seattle and former Senator Hardwick of Georgia. The packages all bear the label of Gimble Bros., a New York department store, but the officials of the store declare they are imitations.
Fear is expressed that some of the packages may have had sufficient postage to insure their delivery through the mails and may be enroute to their intended victims. It is noted that virtually all the prominent men to whom the packages were addressed are concerned one way or another with the immigration problems. A warning has been issued by the postoffice department to all postoffice inspectors and superintendents in charge of the railway mail service to watch for any bombs that may still be in transit. If has not been ascertained, the officials state, whether any bombs have been sent to the Americans who are attending the peace conference.
Friends of Edward Cunha delivered the package to him at his sick bed, thinking that it was a present for him. The package was only partly opened when their suspicions were aroused and the package was not opened until later. When the contents were disclosed they were found to contain sulphuric acid and explosives similar to that received by Mayor Hanson. Ficket’s package was left unopened.
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