There are no limits to which
powers of privilege will not go
to keep the workers in slavery.
-Mother Jones
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hellraisers Journal, January 12, 1917
San Francisco, California – Frame-Up of Tom Mooney Examined
Writing in this month’s edition of the International Socialist Review, Robert Minor, Treasurer of the International Workers’ Defense League, exposes a few interesting details in the ongoing frame-up of the San Francisco labor leader, Tom Mooney:
The Suitcase Ghost
By ROBERT MINOR
LIKE the giant trees that astonish the eye of the traveler, like the wonderful climate and other marvels of the state, California produces the most amazing manifestations of the Labor Struggle.
Since the McNamara plea of guilty, there has been a ghost in nearly every labor dispute. That ghost is “the Suitcase.” There is a suitcase in every strike. Sometimes made of yellow leather, some times of black morocco, the suitcase is more often built of nightmares—pure imagination. But the suitcase, in one form or another, is a California institution.
When made of more than imagination, the suitcase has usually been (since the McNamara case) in the hand of an agent of the corporations, and loaded with dynamite.
In Stockton, three years ago, Anton Johannsen, labor organizer, “got the drop on” a gunman who came to his hotel room to kill him for the Merchants,’ Manufacturers’ and Employers’ Ass’n. The trapped gunman confessed that it was his intention, after killing Johannsen, to place a suitcase of dynamite in his room, another suitcase of the same explosive in the Santa Fe station checking room, with the check slipped into the pocket of the Secretary of the Building Trades Council. One of the other plotters, J. J. Emerson, was caught by a bungling policeman with a suitcase of dynamite, confessed to the plot to “plant” it so as to blame the strikers, but was, of course, acquitted in spite of the confession. (What are courts for?) Ed Nolan and Tom Mooney were instrumental in the expose.
In the same strike, Warren K. Billings, then 19 years of age, out of a job, was accosted by strangers who offered him $50 to carry a suitcase to Sacramento, to be delivered to two men whom he was to meet in a saloon. The boy accepted the offer. The men waiting for him in the saloon in Sacramento proved to be detectives, the suitcase contained dynamite, and Billings was given a two-year sentence.
When an explosion occurred in the San Francisco preparedness parade and killed ten persons, the blame was laid upon labor organizers with a suitcase. This in spite of the fact that the most reliable witness, a prominent physician, and several others whose names the police promptly lost, stated that they had seen a large, cylindrical bomb thrown.
Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Robert Minor, of International Workers’ Defense League, on the Mooney Frame-Up” →
