Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: Harrison George Claims Victory on the Mesabi

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You ought to be out raising hell.
This is the fighting age.
Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
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Hellraisers Journal, Saturday January 6, 1917
From the Mesabi Range, Minnesota, Comes News of Plea Agreement

The International Socialist Review of January 1917:

MN16 Gunthugs on the Mesabi, ISR Jan 1917

Victory on the Mesaba Range

By HARRISON GEORGE
We were all ready to go to press when the following telegram came in. We feel sure all REVIEW readers will be interested in the brief sketches that follow:
Virginia, Minn., Dec. 15, 1916.
Tresca, Scarlett, Schmidt, Mrs. Masonovitch, Orlandich, [F]reed, Phil Masonovitch, Nikich, Cernogorovich year sentence each. All cases against Gilday, Greeni, others dismissed. Full statement will follow. Funds needed here meet honor bound obligations. All committees rush balance funds on hand here. All together for freedom Everett and all class war prisoners.
Ettor, Gilday, Flynn.

CARLO TRESCA, who was born in Sulmona, Italy, in 1879. Entering the labor movement at an early age, he became editor of a Socialist paper in his native town when he was only twenty years old. By 1904 he had shown his worth by being many times sent to prison on political charges. In 1903 he was elected secretary of the largest labor organization of Italy, the Syndicate of Firemen and Railroad Engineers. In 1904, however, he was given choice of eighteen months penal servitude or ten years exile for political offenses, and, choosing exile, he landed in America in August, 1904. As organizer and editor he continued his fight for labor, now being editor of an Italian paper in New York, LL’Avenire [L’Avvenire]. Jailed for months on different occasions, he was attacked by an assassin, who is said to have been an emissary of the Italian consul in Pittsburgh and his throat badly slashed. In the last six years Tresca has taken part in all big strikes of the I. W. W., which involved Italian workers. Lawrence, Little Falls and Paterson are only a few of the many strikes where thousands cheered when Tresca stood before them. Now he is on trial for murder. The witness against him has said that when a certain remark was made by another speaker, Tresca smiled and said, “Good, good!” For a smile and one short word, twice uttered, Tresca has been charged with murder!

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Hellraisers Journal: Elizabeth Gurley Flynn for The Masses: “The Minnesota Trials”

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It is a privilege and a duty even by sacrifice
to advance our priceless cause.
-John R Lawson

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Hellraisers Journal, Friday January 5, 1917
From The Masses: FW Flynn on Behalf of Minnesota Defendants

EGF, MN Iron Miners Strike, Ev IN, Aug 17, 1916

The following article was obviously written for The Masses by Fellow Worker Flynn, I. W. W. organizer, before the plea agreement was reached in the cases of the strikers and organizers charged with first degree murder in connection with the strike of iron miners up on the Mesabi Range of northern Minnesota. The article is nevertheless valuable for the information given regarding the defenses campaign along with a short history regarding “criminal conspiracy” as related to labor struggles, past and present. Tomorrow’s Hellraisers will present an article from this month’s edition of the International Socialist Review, written by Harrison George, which claims the plea agreement as a victory for the strikers and for the cause of labor in general.

From The Masses of January 1917:

The Minnesota Trials

Masonovich-P. & M. & Boarders, ISR, Sept 1916

Many of our friends fail to appreciate the magnitude of the Minnesota strike, involving 15,000 miners and the United States Steel Corporation, and are beguiling themselves into belief that the murder cases pending are not serious.

Mrs. Masonovitch [Masonovich], the woman prisoner, wife of one of the strikers, is a particularly pathetic and appealing figure, a young and beautiful Montenegrin woman, mother of five children, one a nursing baby. She speaks little English, does not understand the proceedings, looks frightened and bewildered and clings frantically to her children. If the parents should be convicted these little ones would be practically orphans. The older ones, twelve and eight, bright, nice boys, tell very clearly what happened on July 3, the night of the tragedy, how the deputies came to arrest their father, how one struck their mother and threw her to the floor, how the fight then started in which Mr. Myron was killed, and how Nick Dillon, the notorious gunman, shot and killed Thos. Ladvalla [Tomi Ladvalla-WE NEVER FORGET], a bystander. If the episode was not connected with a strike, it would be comparatively easy to clear these poor people.

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