Hellraisers Journal – Monday December 11, 1911 Socialists Throughout the Grieve Deaths of Paul and Laura LaFargue
From The Coming Nation of December 9, 1911:
Death of the LaFargues
Paul LaFargue
That Paul LaFargue, the keen thinker, Jovial writer and cheerful companion, and his wife, Laura Marx LaFargue, the genial hostess, and co-worker of her husband have committed suicide is the startling news that has brought sorrow to hosts of Socialists throughout the world.
Those who had enjoyed the hospitality of their home at Draveil, near Paris, who knew their remarkable personalities and especially their apparently unfailing good humor and optimism the news seems incredible.
The reason given is that for years he had been suffering from a mysterious incurable disease that baffled the skill of even the greatest physicians of Paris to diagnose. Sixty-eight years of age, it seems that he, with his wife, looked upon the world and decided that for them the time had come to leave it and they acted upon that decision bravely and frankly.
Laura Marx LaFargue
For almost half a century Paul LaFargue has been known as a revolutionist. From the time when in 1866 he was expelled from the French University for having taken part in an anti-military demonstration, this expulsion sent him to England where he met Karl Marx, whose daughter Laura he married.
The story of his life has been the story of the revolutionary movement of Europe. Exiled from France, for activity in the Commune he returned to become a member of the Chamber of Deputies. With Jules Guesde he built up the strongest and the most intelligently revolutionary wing of the French Socialist party.
His writings have been translated into almost every language, and their sharp, biting wit, keen analytic power, shot through with that gentle humor so much needed and so seldom found in Socialist writings will go on for many years fighting the cause to which he and his wife gave so many years.
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday May 17, 1911 “The General Strike” -from Speech by Big Bill Haywood
From the International Socialist Review of May 1911:
[Part I of II]
Comrades and Fellow-Workers:
I came tonight to speak to you on the general strike. And this night, of all the nights in the year, is a fitting time. Forty years ago today there began the greatest general strike known in modern history, the French Commune; a strike that required the political powers of two nations to subdue, namely, France and the iron hand of a Bismarck government of Germany. That the workers would have won that strike had it not been for the copartnership of the two nations, there is to my mind no question. They would have overcome the divisions of opinions among themselves. They would have re-established the great national workshops that existed in Paris and throughout France in 1848. The world would have been on the highway toward an industrial democracy, had it not been for the murderous compact between Bismarck and the government of Versailles.
We are met tonight to consider the general strike as a weapon of the working class. I must admit to you that I am not well posted on the theories advanced by Jaures, Vandervelde, Kautsky and others who write and speak about the general strike. But I am not here to theorize, not here to talk in the abstract but to get down to the concrete subject of whether or not the general strike is an effective weapon for the working class. There are vote-getters and politicians who waste their time coming into a community where 90 per cent of the men have no vote, where the women are disfranchised 100 per cent and where the boys and girls under age of course are not enfranchised.Still they will speak to these people about the power of the ballot, and they never mention a thing about the power of the general strike.
C’est la lutte finale
Groupons-nous et demain
L’Internationale
Sera le genre humain.
-Eugène Pottier – Paris, June 1871
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Hellraisers Journal: Monday May 2, 1898
From London’s Social Democrat: the Story of an Old Communard, Conclusion
The story of the Old Communard, begun in a French village in the year 1880, ends in that same village in the year 1891, during the month of May:
Father Martin was carried to the cemetery and laid to rest in the little corner of earth reserved for the poor, of whom he had been all his life the valiant defender.
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From the Social Democrat of May 1898:
THE OLD COMMUNARD.
(Il en Était)
—–
(From the French of J, B. Clément.)
—–
—–
V.
The honest and laborious sallies of the brave William, who was respected largely on account of his herculean strength, at length brought forth fruit.
Father Martin was able from time to time to go and enjoy the shelter of the grand old tree of liberty without being molested. In time, too, the people, who until now had regarded him with an air of contempt, began to acknowledge him at meeting, and sometimes even to salute him with respect.
The old man informed his son of this little alteration of opinion.
“Father,” replied the latter, “I also have observed it; the people who lately shunned me are coming to me again, and are testifying a sympathy which is quite touching. I am happy for your sake, but indifferent as regards myself.”
C’est la lutte finale
Groupons-nous et demain
L’Internationale
Sera le genre humain.
-Eugène Pottier – Paris, June 1871
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Hellraisers Journal: Monday April 18, 1898
From London’s Social Democrat: the Story of an Old Communard
The following story of an old communard’s tribulations, in a small French village during the early 1880s, was begun in the April edition of The Social Democrat and will be continued in the May edition.
THE OLD COMMUNARD.
(Il en Était)
—–
(From the French of J. B. Clément.)
—–
I.
One morning in the month of December, 1880, the omnibus which connected the station of —– with a little village at several miles distance, stopped before the door of a farm, on the threshold of which waited the farmer, his wife, and their two young children.
“Ah! Here he is! What happiness!” cried the two little ones, dancing, and clapping their hands with joy the while.
The farmer, followed by his wife, ran to open the door of the carriage and to assist a man of about sixty years of age to descend. He was of middle height, and was supported by a crutch.
“Good morning, father,” said the farmer, as he embraced the old man with effusion.
The farmer’s wife and the two children fell upon his neck and covered his face with kisses.
C’est la lutte finale
Groupons-nous et demain
L’Internationale
Sera le genre humain.
-Eugène Pottier – Paris, June 1871
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Hellraisers Journal, Thursday March 31, 1898
Paris Commune Celebrated Annually by Socialists
From The Social Democrat of March 1898:
THE COMMUNE OF PARIS.
The 18th of March, the anniversary of the Paris Commune, is annually celebrated by Socialists throughout the world. The Commune of Paris is an event unique in history. It was the first working-class government that the world had ever seen. For the first time the working people had seized the reins of government, and taken into their hands the administration of a great city. No wonder the possessing classes were alarmed; no wonder all the forces of “respectability,” of reaction and obscurantism, rallied to the government of the “little man,” Theirs, and his gang of Imperialist mouchards and Royalist ruffians at Versailles. The revolution of the Parisian proletariat was not a mere political movement, it was a menace to all those interests which live and thrive by the enslavement, the exploitation, and the plunder of the workers.
The history of this epoch-marking insurrection is an oft-told tale. Who, among Socialists, does not know of the desertion of Paris by the reactionary Assembly; of the measures for disarming the Parisian National Guards; of the attempted seizure of the guns on the heights of Montmartre in the morning of the 18th of March; how that attempt was frustrated, and how the troops sent to carry it out fraternised with the National Guards, and shot the officer who ordered them to fire upon the people?
The issue is Socialism versus Capitalism.
I am for Socialism because I am for humanity.
We have been cursed with the reign of gold long enough.
-Eugene Victor Debs
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Hellraisers Journal, Monday March 21, 1898
Eugene V. Debs on Tour-Found in Wilmington, Baltimore, & Washington
From the Wilmington Every Evening of March 19, 1898:
Debs on Social Democracy.
Eugene V Debs, head of the Social Democracy movement, and C. Wesley Callahan, the secretary, explained the movement to a fair-sized audience in Turn Hall last evening. B. Lundy Kent presided. The aim of socialism is industrial equality, to be obtained by the co-operative commonwealth. The people, as explained by Debs are to seize the instruments and all means of production. The State is to run business as well as government. The local Social Democracy is to meet on Sunday afternoons at 610½ Market street.
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[Ad for The Social Democrat is from the Duluth Labor World]
Hellraisers Journal, Tuesday October 17, 1916
From the New York Call: A Warning from Dante Barton
The New York Call (Socialist) of October 12th published a warning to the American people regarding the strike situation in Bayonne, New Jersey, from Dante Barton of the Committee on Industrial Relations:
As for the American people:
Is it not time that the American people should awaken to the essential brutality of millionaires and billionaires running their business on the principle that they cannot and will not pay their hardest-worked workers enough to give them a decent living? Ought we any longer to have business on terms in which it is considered respectable for that sort of treatment to be given to workers? The majority of these Polish workers receive now $2.50 a day, which, with the increased cost of living, does not give them enough for a profitable living.
And as for big business:
When these Polish workers have the ambition and the fine qualities to strike against that degraded condition in life, gunmen and special policemen, armed with guns and machine guns, are rushed against them, and the workers are abused because they have manhood and courage.
This sort of industrial injustice, if it is not cured and overthrown, must necessarily lead to the kind of revolutionary disorder that men like the Rockefellers and Morgans consider so terrible. Men like these are sowing the wind and they will reap the whirlwind.
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Comrades and Fellow-Workers:
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