Hellraisers Journal – Saturday December 11, 1920 Mother Jones News for October & November 1920 “Veteran Organizer” Found in West Virginia and Washington D. C.
From The Charleston Daily Mail of October 2, 1920:
COAL COMPANIES AFTER RESTRAINT ON MINERS ———- Petition Federal Court for Injunction to Prevent Officials Organizing. ———-
The United Mine Workers have made defendants in two injunction suits brought in the southern district federal court by the Red Jacket Coal company of Red Jacket, Mingo County, and the Pond Creek Colliery to restrain them from interfering with employes of the two companies in efforts to unionize the mines operated by the coal concerns. Notices were reported as served yesterday evening from the United States marshal’s office, and arguments will be heard October 11, at Huntington.
John L. Lewis, president of the United Mine Workers of America; William Green, secretary and treasurer of the United Mine Workers; C. F. [Frank] Keeney, president of district No, 17, United Mine Workers; Fred Mooney, secretary and treasurer of the district; Harold W. Houston, attorney; Mary Harris, (“Mother Jones“), J. A. Baumgardner, president of Local Union, No. 4804, at Williamson; C. L. McShan, secretary of the local union; Dock Wolford, president of Local Union No. 4181 and Bud Auzier, secretary of the union, and a score of others are named in the petition.
Petitions in both cases are said to be based on the allegation that activities of agents and organizers of the mine workers interfere with contracts which the companies have made with the miners and would prevent the delivery of coal to customers. The further charge is made that the purpose of the United Mine Workers in organizing is illegal.
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday October 31, 1920 Moscow, Russia – Great Funeral Demonstration Panned for John Reed
From the Cleveland Toiler of October 30, 1920:
John Reed Is Dead
By Robert Minor.
The Tzar Nicholas once complained that he was unable to have the best of Russian music because, unfortunately, the best composers were guilty of the crime of sedition and he could not encourage them.
Today the Tzar Nicholas lies in a hole in the ground of a Siberian village, and the sweetest music of Russia is played in his palace to the ears of the plain workingmen for whom the composers really wrote their music anyway.
In Moscow there died the other day a great American literary artist, John Reed. He was a young man, only thirty-three, and already known about the earth as one of the finest of American artists.
John Reed began his career ten years ago as a reporter for the New York World and for the New York Tribune. He did well. Very soon he graduated from the ranks of daily reporters and was acknowledged as one of the most brilliant writers on the high-priced magazines that spend their thousands to get the best of writing.
Hellraisers Journal – Monday October 25, 1920 Atlanta Federal Penitentiary – Norman Hapgood Interviews Eugene Debs
From the Appeal to Reason of October 23, 1920:
Did you ever enter the strong gates of a prison? Has your mind ever pictured the sinking heart of a man who hears those heavy iron doors clank behind him? Wife and child, perhaps, are shut from him in the outer world. And inside? The lost are there, the despairing, the destroyed. Leave hope behind, ye who enter. And yet it is not as bad as it was, some centuries ago. The harmonious and austere building at Atlanta is infinitely superior, in what happens inside of it, to the prisons of Lincoln’s day. God knows it is bad enough.
Partly, it is bad because we in truth do not know what to do with certain types of dangerous depravity. Give us time, a century or two, and we may learn the alphabet of treating such aberration. Granted we are ignorant about crime — what about prisoner 9653? Why is he in this place?
To see prisoner 9653 we go only so far as a reception room, and Eugene V. Debs, four times nominee of a great party for the Presidency, now No. 9653, steps forth eagerly to meet me. How warm his grasp! How pure and sunny his smile! How his face carries the record of his 40 years of service, of forbearance, of hope of a great belief.
Debs’ Warm Cordiality.
We sit down on opposite sides of a long table. Debs’ lawyer is there and so is the prison attendant. Neve mind; Debs doesn’t mind. He leans across, his face alight, his speaking and delicate hands at play. He will not let me get in my question. His warm cordiality prevents. He knows I am not a Socialist and that I am not going to vote for him. He knows all about it. But what is that to him? I am a human being, which is enough. But there is more. I have recently chosen the unpopular course on a great subject — Russia — and Debs knows all about that also, and pours out an overgenerous appreciation until, afraid of that man at the end of the table, who is responsible for the allotment of time, I see a chance to turn the switch and I suddenly ask the most dangerous question I know.
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday October 24, 1920
Mother Jones News for September 1920, Part II Found in Stone Cutters’ Journal: Los Angeles Speech of March 7th
From The Stone Cutters’ Journal of September 1920:
Mother Jones Speaks in Los Angeles.
Los Angeles Times March 11, 1920
Mother Jones spoke to the workers in the Labor Temple in Los Angeles recently. She said in part:
Fellow Workers:-I came here to rest, but I never allow rest to interfere with an opportunity to spread my religion among the workers. First of all, I want to say to you secret service men, get out your books and pencils and come right up here on the platform, and listen closely to every word I say. You might learn something for your own good-some new ideas might percolate through your thick skulls, and you might form a desire to lead a cleaner, better, more useful life.
Fellow workers, you are today in a most critical position. You are either facing liberty and emancipation or else if you don’t wake u , you are going into the blackest, most abject slavery ever known by man in the history of this world.
We whipped the Kaiser abroad and all his autocrats; now, let’s clean ’em up at home.
The inhuman way in which the workers were dealt with in, the steel strike is a fair example of the Prussianism of big business. They tell you that the steel strike was lost, but I say to you that the steel strike was one of the greatest victories ever won by labor in this country—great, because 350,000 workers of all nationalities, and different tongues, stood shoulder to shoulder, and demonstrated what “solidarity” means. They paralyzed one of our strongest industries, and the supply of steel will not be normal for six months yet.
There’s a great cry going up now to Americanize these foreigners—that’s the trouble with them now, they are Americanized. Most of them were imported here 20 years ago or more by those patriotic profiteers, Carnegie, and Gary, to act as scabs during the Homestead strikes— they scabbed then, and broke that strike, but they’re Americanized now and there’s no scabs in their families any more. You can bet on that.
They have learned what true “Americanism” means, and they want it; they want freedom and decent working conditions and they’ll get it some day.
They’ve been slaving 12 and 14 hours a day, with a 24-hour shift every other Sunday. That’s not Americanism, and that’s why they struck. They are not machinery or animals; they’re human beings and they want a square deal.
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday October 23, 1920 Mother Jones News for September 1920, Part I “Famous Woman Leader of Miners” Found in Missouri and Illinois
From the United Mine Workers Journal of September 1, 1920:
Labor Day Speakers
Notice of the following assignments of speakers for celebrations of the United Mine Workers of America on Labor Day have been received at the office of the Journal:
Philip Murray, International Vice President, New Kensington, Pa . William Green, International Secretary Treasurer, Cambridge, Ohio. Ellis Searles, Editor of the United Mine Workers Journal, Ernest, Pa. Samuel Pascoe, President of District 30, Novinger, Mo. Andrew Steele, International Board Member from District 25, South Fork, Pa. William Turnblazer, International Organizer, Spadra, Ark. Mother Jones, Kirksville, Mo. William Feeney, International Organizer, Midland, Ark
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday October 19, 1920 Moscow, Russia – John Reed Has Died of Typhus, According to Cable
From The Butte Daily Bulletin of October 18, 1920:
JOHN REED DlES IN MOSCOW SAYS CABLE ————— Well Known American Radical Writer and Editor Succumbs to Typhus, According to Message. ——-
(Special United Press Wire.)
Portland, Ore., Oct. 18.-John Reed, well known radical writer and editor, died Sunday at Moscow, Russia, according to cablegrams received by his relatives here. Typhus was the cause.
Reed spent considerable time in Russia as a war correspondent and writer for magazines. He had been previously on the staff of the American magazine. He returned to the United States after the war with a commission as Soviet ambassador to the United States, but his commission was later recalled.
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Reed’s commission as ambassador to the United States was refused recognition by the state department.
An address by Reed recently delivered in Moscow was widely quoted in the press of the United States and Europe within the last two weeks. In his address Reed was quoted as declaring that the workers in the United States and Europe were in favor of recognition of the Soviet republic, but that the opposition to such recognition was being fostered by reactionary interests connected with the international financial interests.
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[Emphasis added; Newsclip added from Utah’s Ogden Standard of February 19, 1918.]
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday October 17, 1920 Tug River Field, W. V. – Scabs Arrive as Lick Creek Tent Colony Prepares for Winter
From the United Mine Workers Journal of October 15, 1920:
Bringing in Strike Breakers in the Tug River Field
The Butte Daily Bulletin September 24, 1920
Dispatches from Williamson, W. Va., say that coal operators in the Tug River strike field have begun the importation of strike breakers on an extensive scale. It is said that 125 men, recruited mainly from factories in Akron, O., and other points in that region, have been sent to Williamson to be distributed throughout that district, and across the river in Pike county, Ky.
A man believed to be Anton Skilba, of Cleveland, is at the tent colony of strikers on Lick creek, two miles up the Tug River from Williamson, suffering from a fractured skull, received in one of the numerous clashes in the mountains.
The Lick creek colony contains sixty-two tents housing 107 men, women and children. Preparations are being made to put board floors in the tents, presaging an intention to cling to the makeshift homes and continue the strike into the winter. Living conditions there are of the most primitive type. Food in many cases is cooked on stoves made of rocks and mud.
None of the children wear more than one garment. The men and women are shabby. Food is scarce and what there is of a very coarse variety.
Hellraisers Journal – Thursday October 7, 1920 Mingo County, West Virginia – Mine Owners’ Gunthugs Maintain “Law and Order”
From The Butte Daily Bulletin of September 29, 1920:
West Virginia Mine Owners Take Steps to Get More U. S. Regulars —————
By PAUL HANNA. (Staff Writer, the Federated Press.)
Washington, Sept. 29.-West Virginia mine owners have acted quickly to overcome the complaint of Mingo county miners against the anti-labor conduct of federal troops in that district.
The detailed charges against federal troops made by Fred Mooney, district president [secretary-treasurer] of the United Mine Workers was printed in Federated Press newspapers on the morning of Sept. 24. That same afternoon the following “news” dispatch was sent out from Charleston, W. Va., and widely printed in the capitalist press:
A reign of terror and lawlessness still prevails in the Williamson and Pocahontas coal fields, according to reports sifting through from various sources and reaching here today.
———-The United Mine Workers have made defendants in two injunction suits brought in the southern district federal court by the Red Jacket Coal company of Red Jacket, Mingo County, and the Pond Creek Colliery to restrain them from interfering with employes of the two companies in efforts to unionize the mines operated by the coal concerns. Notices were reported as served yesterday evening from the United States marshal’s office, and arguments will be heard October 11, at Huntington.
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