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Hellraisers Journal – Thursday June 4, 1914
War with Mexico? by K. R. Chamberlain; “What About Mexico?” by John Reed
From The Masses of June 1914:
Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From The Masses: “What About Mexico” by John Reed”
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Hellraisers Journal – Monday June 1, 1914
“The Ludlow Massacre” by John Sloan
From The Masses of June 1914:
Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: John Sloan Illustrates the Ludlow Massacre for The Masses”
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Hellraisers Journal – Friday May 22, 1914
Brooklyn, New York – Mother Jones Speaks at Labor Lyceum
From The Brooklyn Daily Eagle of May 18, 1914:
Mother Jones spoke May 17th at the Brooklyn Labor Lyceum. She spoke out about the rule of the Rockefellers in Colorado, and called for government ownership of the mines. She took a stand against Women’s Suffrage, a stand which Hellraisers does not support. However, we will point out that it was a Democratic Governor in Colorado, lickspittle for the Rockefeller interests, elected with the help of Colorado’s women voters (as well as the Labor Vote), who was ultimately in command of the Colorado National Guard at the time of the Ludlow Massacre. This was the same Governor who allowed for the reign of Military Despotism which kept Mother Jones locked up in the Military Bastille of Colorado, including the cold cellar cell in Walsenburg which had already claimed the life of a striking miner.
DEMAND GOVERNMENT OWNERSHIP OF MINES
———-
Labor Men Stirred to High Pitch of Enthusiasm
by Mother Jones.
———-DENOUNCES ROCKEFELLERS.
———-
Blames Colorado Conditions Upon Mine Owners
-Resolutions to Be Sent To President Wilson.
———-Declaring that if Christ came to New York he would be kicked out church by John D. Rockefeller, ordered arrested by Mayor Mitchell and thrown into jail; decrying the present system of Government and murders by the militia of Colorado and emphatically denouncing Women’s Suffrage. “Mother” Jones held an audience that filled the Brooklyn Labor Lyceum yesterday afternoon, while she related the hardships miners and their families have been forced to undergo in Colorado and elsewhere. The white haired speaker of four score and two years told how the militiamen set fired to a tent colony inhabited by miners and their families, and stood ready to shoot down those who tried to escape from the flames and smoke that wiped out a score or more of lives.
Throughout her address, “Mother” Jones was wildly cheered. Following her speech resolutions were adopted denouncing the Rockefellers, father and son, of Colorado for ordering the militia to the miners camps, and demanding that President Wilson confiscate the coal mines there and operate them in the interests of the people, until Congress enacts Legislation providing for a government ownership of the natural resources of the country. A copy of the resolutions will be forwarded to the President and to congress by the Central Labor Union of Brooklyn, under whose auspices yesterday’s meeting was held.
It was shortly before 4 o’clock when President Maurice De Young introduced “Mother” Jones. Clad in purple silk waist and a black skirt, with a little bonnet covering her snowy hair, she was in striking contrast to the fashionably dressed women who surrounded her. Pathos and humor mingled throughout her address of two hours and forty minutes. She showed remarkable vitality for a woman of her years. Almost immediately she set about to denounce the present system of government, John D. Rockefeller and John D. jr. She blamed these two men for the conditions in the coal mine regions. She mocked the Rockefeller interests in foreign missions, saying that they spent money to educate the Chinese, while their employees were not even paid sufficiently to support a church.
[She said, while the crowd laughed:]
They send Jesus to China because they are afraid to face Him in this country.
If Jesus Christ came to New York today and went to the church of Mr. Rockefeller and told him of the manner in which his men are killing innocent men, women and children in the West, Mr. Rockefeller would grab him by the back of the neck and throw him into the street; then Mayor Mitchel would have a squad of police arrest him and throw him in jail.
The women of many states are crying out for the ballot. What are they going to do with it when they get it? I want to tell you men to do all in your power to discourage such a thing. The states where the franchise has been granted, despotism, grafting, murdering and crookedness reign. In Colorado, where women have had the ballot for twenty-one years, conditions are worse than any other state in the union. While the gunmen, whom you people call soldiers, shot down the people of that state the women there asked that more murderers be sent to mow down more mothers and babies.
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Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday May 5 1914
Wars in Colorado and Mexico, Workers’ Blood Shed to Serve Rockefeller’s Interests
From the Appeal to Reason of May 2, 1914:
Practicality the entire issue of the latest edition of the Appeal to Reason is dedicated to supporting the class war, now ongoing, in Colorado, and opposing the war for “commercial and political domination of Mexico.”
The front-page masthead proclaims:
On the second page the masthead makes known:
The Murderous Colorado Militia Was Recruited
from Professional Gunmen
The following are portions of a few of the articles on the Colorado Coal War from Saturday’s Appeal to Reason.
Blood of Slaughtered Babes Calls
for Immediate Action“God give us men: A time like this demands
Great hearts, strong minds, true faith and willing hands.”
Two wars are now on. Both are wars in the interest of John D. Rockefeller and American capitalism. One is a war for the commercial and political domination of Mexico by the oil king and his colleagues. The other is a war to crush out the rebellious spirit of the wage slaves of the Colorado coal mines, owned and operated by the Rockefeller interest.
As you read this, the newspapers will have given you columns upon columns about the American conquest of Mexico. Every known method of appealing to the gullibility of the American workers will have been used. The flag incident and other excuses will have been put forward to justify the sending of the American military and naval forces to our neighboring country. At the same time distorted reports of the bloodiest slaughter of working men in modern times will have appeared in the capitalist press.
This latest battle at Ludlow, Colo., is probably the most outrageous assault upon the rights, liberties and lives of the working class in American history. This issue of the Appeal to Reason gives you only what cold ink and type can transmit. No amount of writing can give you an adequate description of the murdering and maiming of women and children such as occurred last week in one of the sovereign states of this republic. On the other hand the slightest affront to the alleged dignity of American capitalism will have been played up and elaborated upon by most expert writers, artists and photographers that the filthy lucre of capitalism’s prostituted press can purchase…..
[Photograph, paragraph break and emphasis added.]
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Hellraisers Journal – Monday March 23, 1914
“General Villa’s Ultimatum to President Wilson”
From the Appeal to Reason of March 21, 1914:
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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.
[Drawing and emphasis added.]
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Hellraisers Journal – Saturday January 17, 1914
Trinidad, Colorado – Chase: Mother Jones is “an Inciter of Violence and a Disturber”
From the Trinidad Chronicle News of January 15, 1914
-200 Women Invade Hotel, Demand Gen. Chase Release Mother Jones:
From The Day Book of January 16, 1914
-Mother Jones on Mexican “Bandits” and Colorado Soldiers:
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Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday January 13, 1914
Trinidad, Colorado – Mother Jones Seized by State Militia, Held at San Rafael Hospital
From the Trinidad Chronicle News of January 12, 1914:
“Mother” Mary Jones, nationally known as a strike leader, is a military prisoner at the San Rafael hospital where she is being held incommunicado. The woman, who was deported from the strike zone Sunday, January 4, by the military authorities and warned not to return to the district under pain of immediate arrest, accepted the defi and returned this morning. She slipped quietly out of Denver at midnight on a C. & S. train.
That she expected arrest is indicated by her action in alighting at the D. & R. G. crossing this morning instead of waiting until the train reached the station. She walked to the Toltec hotel alone and took a room but did not register at once. The fact of her presence became known to the military authorities about eleven o’clock and a few moments later a military detail in command of Lieut. H. O. Nichols entered her room, placed her in an automobile and whirled her away to the hospital at full speed, with a swarm of cavalry men galloping behind the machine.
Apparently the only object of the aged strike leader had in returning to Trinidad was to see if the threat to arrest her would be carried out. It was. “Mother” Jones was apparently not surprised at the action but was loud in her denunciation of the “military despots who stab and spit upon constitutional rights.” She declares she has viloated no law and that she is willing to face any sort of a civil inquiry. “Why take me to a hospital?” she shouted at Lieut. Nichols , when arrested. “I am not sick! Why not take me to jail?” The prisoner made it clear that she was even more willing to be placed in a cell “for the sake of the cause.”
[…..]
[Paragraph break and emphasis added.]
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Hellraisers Journal – Sunday January 4, 1914
El Paso, Texas – Mother Speaks, Praises Pancho Villa and the Rebels
From El Paso Herald of January 3, 1914:
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Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday December 5, 1922
Ricardo Flores Magon Found Dead in Prison Due to Brutal, Inhumane Conditions
From the Oklahoma Leader of December 1, 1922:
RICARDO FLORES MAGÓN
Several times the writer of this column has called the attention of the country to the unspeakable outrage perpetrated against Ricardo Flores Magon, a Mexican citizen and patriot, who having been convicted in one of our federal courts of the crime of inciting revolution against a friendly republic, was sentenced to serve a long term in the Leavenworth penitentiary and until a few days ago occupied a cell there.
It was when we learned of his declining health, the information that he could not survive for many months, that we entered our first protest against his brutal confinement, and if the so-called department of justice had been animated with one atom of justice and moral courage, his life might have been spared, for now Ricardo Flores Magon is dead, another brave martyr to the cause of human liberty.
He was prosecuted and convicted and imprisoned at the instance of the corrupt agents of the still more corrupt and tyrannical government of the Dictator Porfirio Diaz. In fear of assassination he fled Mexico and on this side of the Rio Grande sought to enthuse the hearts of his fellow countrymen with those hopes and ideals which glorified the lives and characters of the fathers of American liberty.
Diaz, bloody and unscrupulous tyrant, was the bosom friend of the capitalists of this country, and their word and wish was law, so when Ricardo Flores Magon, raised his voice in protest against the cruel wrongs from which his countrymen were suffering-when his powerful pen delineated the indictment against Diaz and portrayed him as the braided beast he was-his friends on this side of the Rio Grande were wild with fury and Magon became their victim.
Notwithstanding, the flame which gallant and courageous Magon kindled, grew into a mighty conflagration, and Diaz, the usurper and autocrat, was exiled, never again to set foot in the country he had cursed by his presence-notwithstanding a free government was established and the constitutional liberties of the people of Mexico restored-notwithstanding the great cause for which he struggled was triumphant, Ricardo Flores Magon continued, for years afterward, to breath the foul air of a felon’s home, even until the day when merciful death closed his kindly eyes and composed in rest and peace a body which knew no weariness in toiling for the liberation of his oppressed countrymen.
What a mighty and cruel force is capitalism! It knows no country. It does not respect international boundaries. It follows its victims, even within the temple where sanctuary, except for its cruel sway, might be obtained, and upon the very tree of liberty it hangs its victims, and in the name of the law, does them to death. Ricardo Flores Magon, pure and gentle, unselfish and brave, should have lived through many happy years, and died at last in the arms of loved ones, amid the worshiping prayers and tears of those compatriots to whom he was an inspiration, but thanks to the international powers of capitalism, whom he had offended, he died a felon and with his last gasp paid the last installment of the penalty which capitalist hate demanded.
So long, Magon, at last your body rests calmly and sweetly in the land you loved. We are ashamed of our part in your cruel murder. Some day we hope we shall be able to make partial restitution, for as the train which bore your wasted and emaciated form, wound its way across the Western plains, the hopes and prayers of many more than a million souls followed you, and some day, please God, our countrymen shall join yours in the erection of a monument to your memory which will express in some small measure the love we bear you.
[Photograph and emphasis added.]
