Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday April 22, 1919
Poetry and Philosophy from the New York Rebel Worker
From The Rebel Worker of April 15, 1919:
I FEEL SO GOOD.
I have to sing
I feel so good.
Because some grand
Duke’s sawing wood.
And pretty soon
A big bunch more,
Will have to work
Until they’re sore.
And then we stiffs.
Will run this earth.
And all their pains
Will cause us mirth.
And if some guy
Tells us that’s wrong,
We’ve got a story
Good and long.
Of things they’ve done
While we were slaves;
Grand Dukes and such
Are common Knaves.
-A. SIGISMUND.
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[From Jean-Jacques Rousseau]
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1712-1778
The first man who, having inclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying “This is mine,” and found people simple enough to believe he was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not anyone have saved mankind by pulling up the stakes or filling up the ditch and crying to his fellows:
Beware of listening to this imposter; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to all of us, and the earth itself to nobody.
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday April 20, 1919
Wichita, Kansas – I. W. W. Prisoners Appear in Court
From the New York Rebel Worker of April 15, 1919:
WICHITA DEFENDANTS GO RACK TO DUNGEONS
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Starve In Jail Awaiting Trial
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C. W. Anderson
On March 10 the former Newton group were taken to Wichita for trial, as had the other boys a day or two before. On the 12th of March all defendants were marched to the Federal court. This first day in the squared arena was taken up with the selection of a jury composed almost wholly of “farmers.” At the end of that first day the 12 men who were supposed to judge us “guilty” or “not guilty,” consisted of one banker and eleven farmers. What would you have given for our chances?
Judge Pollack suggested that the jury be picked first of all so as to enable the empaneled men to either be accepted or sent home and not to be kept waiting while the arguments were heard on the bill of particulars, demurrers, and motion to quash the indictment.
The second day in court, March 13, was taken up almost wholly by Attorney George F. Vandeveer for the defense on arguments for quashing the indictment, the return of papers illegally seized, and many other matters. Vandeveer was at his best and his talk was so clear cut and convincing that he held the attention of the entire court, including the judge, the entire period. The five counts of the indictment was literally torn to shreds.
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday April 9, 1919
New York, New York – Dress and Waist Makers Declare Victory
Local 25 of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union declared total victory for 12,000 striking Dress and Waist Makers on April 7th (see article below from the New York Tribune).
From the Liberator of April 1919:
“Strike!” OUR cover design, drawn by Cornelia Barns, will carry to readers all over the country something of the spirit with which Local 25 of the International Garment Workers is conducting its strike for the 44-hour week in New York. Eighty-five per cent of the strikers are girls. Of the 35,000 who went out on January 21st, 23,000 have already won their terms and gone back to work. The rest are sticking it out magnificently.
Hellraisers Journal – Friday March 28, 1919
New York, New York – Defense Committee Statement on Persecution of I. W. W.
From The Ohio Socialist of March 26, 1919:
Defense Committee Tells of
Persecution of I. W. W.
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The New York Defense Committee of the I. W. W. has issued the following statement in regard to the government’s activities in persecuting that organization:
With the war-time prosecutions being pushed relentlessly by the U. S. government and with a fresh outburst of capitalist persecution everywhere […..against?] radical labor elements, the I. W. W. is being driven to redoubled efforts to raise the large sum needed to protect its members throughout the country and defend the right of the organization to carry on its work as a labor union.
The New York Defense Committee of the I. W. W. has been reorganized and has mapped out an energetic money-raising and publicity campaign. The labor organizations of New York and vicinity and radical groups and individuals throughout the country are going to be appealed to for help in meeting the financial demands of the situation.
The committee, in its appeal for the support of all friends of the radical labor movement, points to the fact that, in addition to 93 I. W. W.’s convicted in the famous Chicago trial last summer and sentenced to 807 years’ imprisonment and fined aggregating $2,570,000, 46 members were convicted last January in the Sacramento bomb frame-up. Besides there, 34 more are to be tried in Wichita this month, while 28 are still awaiting trial in Omaha and 27 in Spokane, in addition to scores of individual cases throughout the western states, either under the Espionage act or under state laws against “criminal syndicalism” enacted within the past year for the express purpose of crushing the I. W. W.
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday March 25, 1899
New York, New York – Eugene Debs Speaks on Prison Labor
On Tuesday March 21st, Comrade Eugene Debs came before the wealthy members of the Nineteenth Century Club at Delmonico’s to lecture them on the evils of prison labor. The Indianapolis Journal quotes the speech in part; the full speech can viewed below.
From The Indianapolis Journal of March 22, 1899:
DEBS ON PRISON LABOR.
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Terre Haute Agitator Talks to Business,
Professional and Scientific Men.
—–
San Francisco Call – January 30, 1898
NEW YORK, March 21.-About 230 members of the Nineteenth Century Club gathered at the ballroom of Delmonico’s tonight to listen to an address to the organization by Eugene V. Debs, the labor agitator. There were a number of substantial business, professional and scientific men present. The interest in Mr. Debs’s words was rather out of the ordinary and the speaker was applauded mildly several times during his remarks. Mr. Debs spoke on “Prison Labor, Its Effects on Industry and Trade.” Among other things Mr. Debs said:
Here in this proud city, where wealth has built its monuments, grander and more imposing than any of the seven wonders of the world named in classic lore, if you will excavate for facts you will find the remains, the bones of toilers buried and imbedded in the foundations. They lived, they wrought, they died. In their time they may have laughed and sung and danced to the music of their clanking chains. They married, propagated their species and perpetuated conditions, which, growing steadily worse, are to-day the foulest blots the imagination can conceive upon our much vaunted civilization, and from these conditions there flow a thousand streams of vice and crime which have broadened and deepened until they constitute a perpetual and ever increasing menace to the peace and security of society. Jails, workhouses, reformatories and penitentiaries have been crowded with the victims, and the question how to control these institutions and the unfortunate inmates is challenging the most serious thought of the most advanced nations on the globe.
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday February 25, 1919
Ellis Island – FWs, Deported on “Red Special,” Held Incommunicado
From The Survey of February 22, 1919:
The Deportations
[Part II]
Who are the fifty-three men and one woman who reached New York city last week? It is difficult to tell, since they have been held incommunicado at Ellis Island since their ar rival on February 11 to noon of February 17, when this issue of the Survey went to press. All requests of friends, attorneys and representatives of the press to see them have been denied. A list giving their names, date of conviction and the reasons for deportation of each was, however, supplied to the press by Byron H. Uhl, acting commissioner of immigration at New York in the absence of Frederic C. Howe, who is in Europe.
According to this list, eleven have been found to be “members of or affiliated with an organization that advocates or teaches the unlawful destruction of property.” Eighteen were found actually “advocating or teaching the unlawful destruction of property.” Some of these are declared, also, to have been guilty of other offenses, such as advocating “the overthrow by force or violence of the government of the United States or of all forms of law.” Three are declared to be anarchists or to have taught anarchy. The remainder are charged with various offenses, most of them with being “likely to become public charges.” Several are said to be “morally unfit,” a few served prison terms before coming to this country, and one or two committed “crimes involving moral turpitude” within five years after entering.
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday February 23, 1919
New York, New York – Chinese Fellow Workers Arrested and Deported
From the South Bend (Indiana) News of February 21, 1919:
RAID ON CHINESE I. W. W. MAY CAUSE DEPORTATIONS
[Detail]
I. W. W. Organizers: Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Harry Kelly, Jack Isaacson, Carlo Tresca, and Frank Levy —–
Thousands of Chinese in the United States may be deported as a result of the recent discovery in New York of an active Chinese branch of the I. W. W. Just as Chinese there prepared to sow discontent among their fellow countrymen by misrepresentation, intimidation and other means the police stepped in and obtained sufficient evidence to cause the deportation of four Chinese. In the round up of the Chinese I. W. W. fifteen prisoners were taken and eleven remained to be tried by the federal authorities. The Accompanying pictures shows some of the most prominent agitators.
Hellraisers Journal – Friday February 19, 1909
New York, New York – Lewis Hine Speaks to Social Problems Club
From The Brooklyn Daily Eagle of February 15, 1909:
CHILDREN IN COTTON MILLS
—–
Lewis Hine Tells Social Problems Club
About Conditions in the South.
—–
Noon hour at Newberry Mills of South Carolina. All these children are working here. Witness, Sara R. Hine. —–
Before the Social Problems Club of the Young Women’s Christian Association, yesterday afternoon. Lewis Hine gave a lecture on the “Children in the Southern Cotton Mills.” The lecture was illustrated with lantern slides. Mr. Hine has worked in the Ohio valley and in the South investigating child-labor conditions. His camera has played an important part in his investigations, and the pictures shown yesterday were taken in mills of North and South Carolina and in Georgia. The speaker said that no little trouble is experienced with the superintendents and overseers of the factories in gaining admission and permission in take pictures. They are suspicious of all Northerners and are afraid that conditions existing in the mills will be exaggerated.
Hellraisers Journal – Friday December 27, 1918 New York, New York – Jack Reed & Art Young on Second Masses Trial
From The Liberator of December 1918:
-Defense Attorney Seymour Stedman by Art Young
SEYMOUR STEDMAN, attorney for the defense, in his eloquent summing up, referred as follows to the fact that the Masses editors asked an injunction compelling the Post Office to mail the very magazine for publishing which they were later indicted:
Do men who are committing a crime go into a Federal Court and face a District Attorney and ask the privilege of continuing it? A strange set of burglars! A strange set of footpads! A strange set o smugglers! A strange set of criminals! I ask Mr. Barnes to tell you when before in his experience, men in the City of New York came in and filed an appeal, opening all their proof and all their evidence and all their testimony and said, “if the Court please, we insist on the right to continue this deep, dark, infamous conspiracy, and have it sanctified by an advocate of the United States Court.” History finds no parallel that I know of in any criminal procedure which has ever taken place.
-John Reed on Second Masses Trial
About the Second Masses Trial
by John Reed
IN the United States political offenses are dealt with more harshly than anywhere else in the world. In the amendment to the Espionage Act [the Sedition Act] it is made a crime equivalent to manslaughter to “criticize the form of government.” The sentences in Espionage cases run anywhere from ten to twenty years at hard labor, with fines of thousands of dollars.
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