Hellraisers Journal: Ida Crouch-Hazlett Pleads Guilty to Good Speechmaking; Scores the Hysterical Helena Independent

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Ida Crouch Hazlett, Quote, MT Ns, Sept 26, 1907

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Hellraisers Journal, Friday September 27, 1907
From the Montana News: Ida Crouch-Hazlett Speaks

Socialist Editor Makes Her Voice Heard, September 26, 1907:

Guilty as Charged
—–

Mrs. Hazlett Fined by Spokane Judge
For Being Good Speaker-
Appealed to Superior Court

Ida Crouch-Hazlett, wiki, Montana News, Aug 3, 1904

Wednesday, Sept. 18, was the day set by Judge Hide for hearing the arguments of the attorneys upon my case, and rendering his decision. The trains are running so irregularly that to make sure of being in court at two o’clock, I was obliged to take the night train from Rathdrum after the meeting. It should have gone at 11 o’clock, but did not start out till three in the morning. So I was obliged to lose my night’s sleep, although I got several hours after reaching Spokane.

The court room was filled again, with policemen scattered through the working class audience. To be a working man is prima facie evidence of criminal tendencies according to capitalist jurisprudence.

The prosecuting attorney, a redheaded, sharp-eyed fellow with the stamp of a character on his face that must necessarily belong to one who would put in his time perpetrating injustice upon his helpless fellow creatures that are herded in a police court, said with much emphasis that I had violated a city ordinance against any one who would do anything that would have a tendency to obstruct the streets.

Our attorneys were A. Kirby and Comrade Pence. Mr. Kirby made the argument. He showed conclusively that by our 15 witnesses to the prosecution’s two neither the sidewalks nor streets were blockaded. He went over the constitutional right to hold meetings on the street where they were peaceably and interfering with no one. He quoted many authorities and made a fine argument.

After he had closed the prosecuting attorney pulled out from under the table where he had hidden them a steak of law books. So trivial are the silly tricks upon which the great structure of capitalist injustice depends that he acted as though that were the heavy part of his argument to perform a little, trifling schoolboy trick like that, as if perchance he might mystify the defense attorney. There was nothing to his argument whatever. He did not make a single definite point. He acted as though the whole thing were cut and dried anyhow, as it evidently was, and he was just talking to make a show.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Ida Crouch-Hazlett Pleads Guilty to Good Speechmaking; Scores the Hysterical Helena Independent”

Hellraisers Journal: From the Duluth Labor World: “Character Sketch Of Clarence S. Darrow”

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True patriotism hates injustice
in its own land
more than anywhere else.
-Clarence Darrow

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Hellraisers Journal, Thursday September 26, 1907
A Tribute to Clarence Darrow, Hero of Many Battles For Labor

From the Duluth Labor World of September 21, 1907:

CHARACTER SKETCH OF CLARENCE S. DARROW
—–
Great Lawyer Who Defended Haywood
Fought Many Battles For Labor.
—–
He has Ever Been On the Firing Line
In the Interest of Humanity.
—–

HMP, Darrow Addresses the Jury, OR Dly Jr, June 29, 1907

—–

Twelve years ago, when Eugene V. Debs was imprisoned as a result of his activities in the great railway strike in Chicago, Clarence Darrow became his legal champion. Three years later he defended Thomas I. Kidd and two striking woodworkers who were charged with having “conspired,” through their union, “to injure the business” of a great lumber company in Oshkosh, Wis. His arguments, which has been printed in phamphlet form and is pronounced by no less a critic than William Dean Howells “as interesting as a novel” resulted in the acquittal of his clients.

A more distinctive figure than Darrow’s, says Kellogg Durland, in the Boston Transcript, has seldom come out of the west:

He was born in the Western Reserve of Ohio. His father was an honest man. After qualifying for the church he gave up the cloth for a country store that he might “feel surer of what he was doing.” At 19 young Darrow was teaching school. One year of college life satisfied him. Early in his twenties he drifted to Chicago and studied law. All his life he has been a dreamer and happy in his dreams. He has the strength of a man of vision. As a lawyer he has wide reputation, for he has been the corporation counsel for a great railroad and the defender of men like Eugene V. Debs and Kidd in the famous woodworkers’ conspiracy case. Public life has always called him, but he has mostly been deaf to the call. “I want to make my living as a lawyer and devote my leisure to writing stories and essays,” he has pleaded almost peevishly. “And I want to write a long novel.”

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From the Duluth Labor World: “Character Sketch Of Clarence S. Darrow””

Hellraisers Journal: “Fool Policeman of Spokane” Arrests Mrs. Hazlett, Socialist Editor, for Soapbox Speech

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To advocate peace with things as they are
is treason to humanity.
This is a class struggle and on class lines
it must be fought out to a finish.
-Ida Crouch-Hazlett

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Hellraisers Journal, Sunday September 15, 1907
Spokane, Washington – Ida Crouch-Hazlett Arrested

From the Montana News of September 12, 1907:

Assail Free Speech in Spokane
—–

Mrs. Hazlett Arrested
—–
Two Thousand People Storm Jail and
Form a Triumphal Procession After
She Is Released on Bond

Ida Crouch-Hazlett, Socialist, Montana News, Aug 3, 1904

The fool policemen of Spokane and the idiotic city “reform ” administration has broken out in a new place and attempted to put an end to socialist street speaking.

Saturday evening, September 7, Mrs. Hazlett [editor of the Montana News] was addressing a crowd of 5,000 people on the street. She had spoken for an hour and a half without any molestation. There was not the slightest disturbance, the crowd standing remarkably still in a compact mass during that time. Just as she had announced her collection and was beginning to sell her books and subscription cards, a policeman in plain clothes came up and said, she was obstructing the sidewalk. She said she was not obstructing the sidewalk as she was in the middle of the street, but asked the crowd to open up a passage, which it immediately did. She then told the policeman that it was his business to keep people off the sidewalk and not hers. Whereupon he jerked her down from the box and placed her under arrest. The vast crowd began a most vigorous protest, shouting and shaming the policeman and even threatening to use force.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: “Fool Policeman of Spokane” Arrests Mrs. Hazlett, Socialist Editor, for Soapbox Speech”

Hellraisers Journal: Miss Elizabeth Flynn, Girl Socialist, Found on Soapbox Lecturing on Philadelphia Street Corner

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It’s great to fight for Freedom
with a Rebel Girl.
-Joe Hill

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Hellraisers Journal, Tuesday September 10, 1907
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – Miss Flynn Lectures on Socialism

From the Chicago Inter Ocean of September 9, 1907:

GIRL IN HIGH SCHOOL SOCIALIST LECTURER
—–
Miss Elizabeth Flynn Mounts Dry Goods Box
on Philadelphia’s Corners to Expound the
Doctrines of Her Political Beliefs.
—–

STRICKEN BY POVERTY, SHE AIMS BLOW AT CAPITALISTS
—–
Handles Rockefeller, Roosevelt, and Other Leaders
Without Gloves in Addresses to Masses
-Says Crisis Will Bring Change.
—–

Special Dispatch to The Inter Ocean.

EGF Girl Socialist w Hat, NYW, Aug 24, 1906

PHILADELPHIA. PA., Sept. 8.-Philadelphia is being treated to a series of lectures on socialism, delivered by a girl of 17 years. She is miss Elizabeth Flynn of New York, still in high school, and every night she expounds the doctrine of ther political faith from the top of a dry goods box at a busy corner.

Two weeks ago Miss Flynn passed her seventeenth birthday, celebrating this important occasion by delivering two powerful addresses on socialism, brimful of tart remarks about Mr. Rockefeller’s fine and about the insincerity of Mr. Roosevelt and any other politician of the capitalistic class.

Draws Picture of Capitalist.

Here are some hammer blows from her speeches:

On the one hand is the working class, on the other hand the things they need, and between the two the capitalist dragging down the working man and pushing up the price of materials he must have.

Are we going to sit around and starve ourselves waiting for the capitalist to get out of his market glue?

Mark me!The downfall of capitalism will come in some great crisis.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Miss Elizabeth Flynn, Girl Socialist, Found on Soapbox Lecturing on Philadelphia Street Corner”

Hellraisers Journal: Debs Reflects on Haywood Verdict: Thinks Roosevelt Should Tender an Apology

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A thousand times rather would I be
one of those men in Ada county jail
than Theodore Roosevelt in
the White House at Washington.
-Eugene Victor Debs

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Hellraisers Journal, Saturday August 10, 1907
From the Montana News: Debs Reflects on Haywood Verdict

Readers of Hellraisers will remember the controversy begun by Roosevelt when it was revealed, last April, that the President had declared Haywood, Moyer, Pettibone and Debs to be “Undesirable Citizens.”

In the Appeal to Reason of May 18th, Comrade Debs confronted Roosevelt:

Henry Maki WFM Telluride, Chained to Pole Mar 2, 1907

Were a mob of workingmen to seize Theodore Roosevelt and chain him to a post on a public street in Washington in broad daylight, as a mob of his capitalist friends seized and chained a workingman [Henry Maki] in Colorado, or throw him into a foul bullpen, without cause or provocation, prod him with bayonets and outrage his defenseless family while he was a prisoner, as was done in scores of well-authenticated cases in both Colorado and Idaho, would he then be in the mood to listen complacently to hypocritical homilies upon the “temperate” use of language, the sanctity of “law and order” and the beauty of “exact justice to all”?

And if he heard of some man who had sufficient decency to denounce the outrages he and his family had suffered, would he then “conceive it to be his duty,” as he tells us, to condemn the language of such a man as “treasonable and murderous” and the man himself as “inciting bloodshed,” and therefore an “undesirable citizen”?

[Photograph added.]

If fighting for the rights of working people makes one an undesirable citizen, then let us hope that millions more would be proud and happy to be classed with the likes of Comrades Haywood and Debs.

In this weeks edition of the Montana News, Eugene Debs suggests that President Roosevelt should tender an apology to the man he declared guilty in advance of the trial. Comrade Debs declares the acquittal of Big Bill Haywood to be a great victory for the American labor movement and a rebuke to the prosecution and to their masters, the Mine Owners’ Association, whose interest the prosecution endeavored to serve. Comrade Debs expresses his great respect for Comrade Haywood and proposes that Haywood should be nominated as the Socialist Party’s candidate for president.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Debs Reflects on Haywood Verdict: Thinks Roosevelt Should Tender an Apology”

Hellraisers Journal: Socialists Praise Ida Crouch-Hazlett of Montana News for Reportage on Haywood Trial

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To advocate peace with things as they are
is treason to humanity.
This is a class struggle and on class lines
it must be fought out to a finish.
-Ida Crouch-Hazlett

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Hellraisers Journal, Friday August 9, 1907
Helena, Montana – “Comrade Hazlett is a dandy.”

Now that Big Bill Haywood has been freed from the Ada County Jail and has returned in triumph to Denver, Colorado, Ida Crouch-Hazlett has also been able to return to her home in Helena, Montana, where she can resume her duties as editor of the Montana News. During the past several months, she has been working as a correspondent, residing first in Caldwell and later in Boise, Idaho, from where her reporting on the Haywood Trial has been read eagerly by Socialists, especially those of Montana and Milwaukee.

From the Montana News of August 8, 1907:

WHAT OTHERS THINK

Ida Crouch-Hazlett, Socialist, Montana News, Aug 3, 1904

The Social Democrat Herald says:

It is fitting just at this time for us to partly discharge a debt of gratitude to our correspondent at the Haywood trial, Comrade Ida Crouch-Hazlett, editress of the “Montana New.” Her reports were remarkably comprehensive and graphic and gave our readers an actual look in at the trial through socialist eyes. We are only sorry that more socialist papers did not avail themselves of her fine reports. And we regret also that we were not able from considerations of the limitations of our space, to print every word of the reports she sent us.

One paper did so, the Montana News, and we venture the belief that the readers of that paper secured a better idea of the work and progress of the historic trial than did the readers of any other party paper. Through the long and wearing trial, in a torrid courtroom, Mrs. Hazlett stuck to her post, and after the exhaustion of the day, spent long hours in the evening preparing her copy and telling the Social-Democrats of the country how the great inquisition was progressing. She was peculiarly fitted, also, for this task, from the fact of having formerly been a resident of Colorado and being familiar with the shocking and inhuman tyrannies of the mine owners in the great labor war of 1904.

[Paragraph break added.]

—–

The reports of the trial that the News printed from the pen of Comrade Hazlett have brought us a large number of compliments. Below a few of them that have reached this office: Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Socialists Praise Ida Crouch-Hazlett of Montana News for Reportage on Haywood Trial”

Hellraisers Journal: Socialist Newspapers, Appeal to Reason & Montana News, Celebrate Haywood Victory

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Keep the Red Flag
of universal brotherhood flying.
-Big Bill Haywood

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Hellraisers Journal, Monday August 5, 1907
Socialist Newspapers Celebrate Haywood Acquittal

From the Appeal to Reason of August 3, 1907:

HMP, AtR HY Not Guilty, Aug 3, 1907

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Socialist Newspapers, Appeal to Reason & Montana News, Celebrate Haywood Victory”

Hellraisers Journal: In Boise, “Tide Turning” in Favor of Defense Due to Fearless Testimony of Morris Friedman

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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, Saturday July 13, 1907
Boise, Idaho – Ida Crouch-Hazlett Reports from Haywood Trial

From the Montana News of July 11, 1907:

Reporting on the amazing testimony of Morris Friedman, author of The Pinkerton Labor Spy, Ida Crouch-Hazlett states that the testimony of this intrepid former employee of the Pinkerton Detective Agency has “crystalized [the] gathering sentiment” in favor of the defense. The article, “The Tide Turning,” states in part:

Pinkerton Labor Spy by Friedman, BBH, Moyer, 1907

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[Friedman] reached the climax of the effect he created when Borah accused him of stealing the copies of the detective correspondence. With his voice thrilling with the sense of the justice that had impelled him to the sacrifices he had undergone to give his knowledge of the work of these inhuman fiends to the world, he indignantly repelled the charge:

When I discovered the crimes they were committing, and the wicked plots they were attempting to fasten on the machinists, the United Mine Workers, and the Western Federation, I considered these matters the property of the various unions, and that I was restoring it the rightful owners.

The ringing words electrified the court-room, and the ranks of the Federation broke into cheers, which the guards forgot to silence.

[Photograph added.  See full article below.]

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: In Boise, “Tide Turning” in Favor of Defense Due to Fearless Testimony of Morris Friedman”

Hellraisers Journal: For the Defense: WF Davis, Union Veteran, & Morris Friedman, of “Pinkerton Spy” Fame

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If they hang Moyer and Haywood,
they’ve got to hang me.
-Eugene Victor Debs

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Hellraisers Journal, Friday July 5, 1907
Boise, Idaho – “The defense is putting up a magnificent case.”

From the Montana News of July 4, 1907:

Union Veterans
—–

Reviews History of the Idaho
and Colorado Wars—
Witnesses Tell Experience
of the Bullpen

Boise, June 28.

HMP, WF Davis of WFM, DEN, June 28, 1907

On Wednesday afternoon [June 26th] W. F. Davis took the stand. This is one of the most valiant and dauntless characters in the whole ranks of the Western Federation. He was accused of stealing and running the train in the Coeur d’Alenes at the time the mill was blown up. The mine owners declared he was on the engine and directed the engineer, and he has been pursued relentlessly ever since by the persecutions of the mine owners. He was a member of the strike committee in the Cripple Creek district, and was tried with the other members of the committee on the charge of attempted wrecking of a Florence and Cripple Creek train. Davis was dismissed by the judge without letting the case go to the jury. H e was obliged to leave the district when the union men were run out, and change his name in order to get work.

While he was held in jail, his wife and baby both died. He is a big, noble-hearted fellow who has the confidence and sympathy of the entire Federation. He was moved to tears when the fact of the loss of his family were brought out on the stand. He has jeopardized his freedom by coming here from Goldfield, as the mine owners are looking closely for a chance to arrest him for the Coeur d’Alenes difficulties. Orchard implicated him in the blowing up of the Vindicator mine at Cripple Creek, where the two shift bosses were killed. When he read Orchard’s testimony he immediately telegraphed to the attorneys of the defense that he would come to Boise and deny the cowardly lie.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: For the Defense: WF Davis, Union Veteran, & Morris Friedman, of “Pinkerton Spy” Fame”

Hellraisers Journal: From the Socialist Montana News: Clarence Darrow Opens for the Defense in the Haywood Trial

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Who comes to speak for
the skin and the bone?
-Billy Bragg
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Hellraisers Journal, Friday June 28, 1907
Boise, Idaho – Clarence Darrow Opens for the Defense

From the Montana News of June 27, 1907:

Darrow’s Statement
—–

Address to the Jury Outlining
Plans of Defense
—Orchard Spends Sunday Auto
Riding in Boise

Special to the Montana News—

Boise, June 24.

HMP, Darrow Opens June 24th, LA Herald, June 25, 1907

At the call of the defense attorneys the Federation men who are to appear as witnesses have come pouring into Boise the last few days. It seems good to see them here—all the old stand-bys that have so valiantly fought the struggles of the western labor for the last ten years. D. C Copely, formerly of the executive board, now a mine owner in Nevada; A. H. Floaten, candidate for governor of Colorado on the socialist ticket; Deportee from Telluride, a merchant who has been through the fiercest of the fight for his convictions; J. C. Barnes, who was up in a tree in Telluride, while the militia were hunting him underneath; John M . O’Neill, W. F. Davis, M. E. White, one after another. The very backbone of the Federation, fine, able, brainy men, more than a match for any capitalist prostitute that can be marshalled against them.

And they are here with the goods, the truth, the eternal fight against the injustice of employers, and the reasons for that fight. As one of them said:

We are here to go to the river, our cause is right and we’ll stay with it.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From the Socialist Montana News: Clarence Darrow Opens for the Defense in the Haywood Trial”