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Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday March 31, 1909
Oakland, California – Big Bill Haywood Speaks to Trade Unionists
From the Oakland Tribune of March 30, 1909:
“LABOR MUST ENTER POLITICS,”
CRIES HAYWOOD TO GREAT THRONG
—–‘ROASTS’ RICH AND MINISTERS
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Pastors Afraid to tell Truth About
Money-Devil, He Says
—–DEMANDS FULL RETURN OF TOIL
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Speaker Urges Workers Not to Let Others
Idle Away Their Earnings
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Many of the leaders of labor say that your industrial organization should not mix in politics. That is all wrong. Although I am addressing you tonight under the auspices of three of your most powerful local central labor bodies, I am not afraid to declare to you that the man who advises you to keep politics out of your organization is the worst enemy you ever had, be he ever so powerful a factor in the councils of your association.
And I will go a step further. The man who tells you that the interests of capital and labor are mutual and that they should work hand in hand, is either a fool or a knave.
When William Haywood of the Western Federation of Miners uttered these words with dramatic force from the platform in Rice’s Institute, corner of Seventeenth street and San Pablo avenue, last night, they were like a firebrand applied to a powder house. The audience cheered them to the echo and manifested in every other possible way its-hearty concurrence in the sentiment.
