Tag: Revolution

Hellraisers Journal: From The Liberator: “Reflections on the Seattle General Strike by a Woman Who Was There”-Revolution?

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Anna Louise Strong, NO ONE KNOWS WHERE, SUR p1, Feb 4, 1919———-

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday April 29, 1919
Seattle General Strike: Revolution? -60,000 Striking Workers Run the City

From the New York Liberator of April 1919:

When Is a Revolution Not a Revolution

Reflections on the Seattle General Strike
by a Woman Who Was There

Seattle General Strike, Metal Trades Council, SUR p3, Feb 4, 1919

“A GENERAL STRIKE, called by regular unions of the American Federation of Labor, cutting across contracts, across international union constitutions, across the charter from the American Federation of Labor,”-this was what the chairman of the strike committee declared it to be. A General Strike in which the strikers served 30,000 meals a day, in which the Milk Wagon Drivers established milk stations all over town to care for the babies, in which city garbage wagons went to and fro marked “Exempt by Strike Committee”; a General Strike in which 300 Labor Guards without arms or authority went to and fro preserving order; in which the Strike Committee, sitting in almost continuous session, decided what activities should and should not be exempted. from strike in the interests of public safety and health, and even forced the Mayor to come to the Labor Temple to make arrangements for lighting the city.

Yet almost any member of the Strike Committee will tell you, in hot anger, that “this was no revolution, except in the Capitalist papers; it was only a show of sympathy and solidarity for our brothers in the shipyards.” And so in truth it was, in intention. It would seem that the beginnings of all new things take place, not through conscious intention, but through the inevitable action of economic forces.

Hardly yet do the workers of Seattle realize all the things they did.

The shipyard workers of Seattle struck, 35,000 strong, on [Tuesday] January 21st. On January 22, a request was brought to the Central Labor Council for a general strike in sympathy with the Metal Trades. This was referred to the various unions for referendum. By the following Wednesday, January 29, the returns were pouring in.

“Newsboys vote to strike and await instructions of Joint Strike Committee.” “Hotel maids vote 8 to 1 for strike.” “Waitresses expect to go strong for general strike.” Foundry employees, butchers, structural iron workers, milk wagon drivers, garment workers, carpenters, barbers, building laborers, longshoremen, painters, glaziers, plasterers, cooks and assistants, these were among the votes to come in the first week.
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Hellraisers Journal: Debs in Omaha, Believes Workingmen Will Soon be Ready for Economic Revolution by United Ballot

Janet RayeEugene Victor Debs
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Quote EVD, Modern Wage Slave, Terre Haute May 31, 1898, Debs-IA

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Hellraisers Journal – Friday December 23, 1898
Omaha, Nebraska – Eugene Debs Tells Old Story of Wealth and Poverty

On Wednesday December 21st, Eugene Debs was interviewed in Omaha and said, in part:

It is the old, old story—economics—the concentration of industry. The middle class of middlemen are being obliterated; they buy goods in small quantities and pay more than the department stores which buy by the carload. The department store advertises cheap goods, gets the laboring man’s cash, and the little corner grocery has the “credit” business. The small dealer is crushed: labor is pinched and suicides have increased 200 percent in the last ten years…..

I believe the present system, so destructive to the better elements of mankind, is soon to be eradicated, and that by the workingmen. They are beginning to think, and from the products of their minds is developing an economic revolution.

From the Omaha World-Herald of December 22, 1898:

Morally I Mean to Pay Them
[Interview with Eugene Debs]

EVD re Social Democracy, SLTb p3, Feb 9, 1898

No, I did not attend the [A. F. of L.] convention at Kansas City. I am in deep sympathy with the meeting and wanted very much to go, but my lecture engagements prevented. I have been speaking every night for two weeks.

With what success?

At Boone, Iowa, I had a fair audience, but usually through Iowa my audiences were not large. You know, the railroads and other corporations have no love for me, and it is given out cold to the men, and many of them who would attend stay away, fearful of incurring the displeasure of the powers that be. Especially is this true in railroad towns. However I cannot complain: I speak and the papers report and thus I reach the masses.

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Hellraisers Journal: Eugene Debs: “A worldwide, humanity embracing revolution is on the calendar.”

Janet RayeEugene Victor Debs
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EVD Quote, cry for freedom, Duluth Truth, Feb 15, 1918
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Hellraisers Journal, Sunday February 17, 1918
Eugene V. Debs on the Coming Social Revolution

From the Duluth Truth of February 15, 1918:

Towards the Rising Sun

by Eugene V. Debs

EVD by LS Chumley, ISR Jan 1916

The earth is in travail; the race is suffering from the pangs of parturition. A worldwide, humanity embracing revolution is on the calendar—in red letters—of the 20th Century. The impending social crisis is the most portentous that ever issued from the womb of time.

Historical epochs mark the growth of man, the progress of events, the rise and sweep of civilization.

Prophets and philosophers, catching the spirit of coming events, force and proclaim them; and as they approach, poets and pamphleteers, orators and agitators, dramatists and musicians, animated by the new spirit, acclaim the glad tidings of the sunrise of the morrow.

These are the heralds of the dawn; the torchbearers of progress, the evangels of advancing civilization.

Living, they are hated and reviled, crucified and damned.

Dead, they live again and forever.

Freedom is the universal shibboleth of the present age.

And as the cry for freedom surges from the soul and leaps from the lips of Labor, a thousand and million proletarians, in all the zones that girdle the globe, lift their bowed bodies from the dust, and join in the swelling anthem of the Social Revolution.

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Hellraisers Journal: May Day Messages from Comrades Big Bill Haywood and Eugene V. Debs

Janet RayeEugene Victor Debs
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BBH Quote re May Day, AtR p2, Apr 27, 1907

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Hellraisers Journal, Wednesday May 1, 1907
From the Appeal to Reason: Thoughts on May Day and The Red Flag

William D. Haywood writes to the Appeal from the Ada County Jail:

Haywood, Wilshire's Magazine, 1906

May Day of all the year is the most momentous to the workers of the world. In every civilized country the first of May is recognized as International Labor Day. On this day thought-waves are carrying around the globe messages of love and encouragement. “The world is my country man is my brother,” expresses the sublime sentiment of a world-wide fraternity in every land where men and women are straining under the galling chains of oppression. This noble thought quickens the soul and kindles the spark of hope in the breast of the heavy laden.

Brave hearts of every clime are beating in unison and millions of feet are keeping step in the onward, upward march to industrial liberty.

This era of evolution is blotting out racial and national hatreds, the toilers are awakened and conscious of the truth that sufferings now endured are but the labor pains that foretell the new democracy to be born.

WM. D. HAYWOOD,
Ada County Jail, Boise, Idaho.

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Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: “Red flag of the Revolution” flying in Petrograd.

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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The workers flag is deepest red;
It shrouded oft our Martyred Dead,
And ere their limbs grew stiff and cold
Their hearts’ blood dyed its ev’ry fold.
-Jim Connell, 1889

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Hellraisers Journal, Thursday April 26, 1917
From the International Socialist Review: “The Russian Revolution”

THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION

“And let us not fear that we may go too fast. If, at certain hours, we seem to be running at a headlong and dangerous pace, this is to counter-balance the unjustifiable delays and to make up for time lost during centuries of inactivity.”

Soldiers Demonstration, Petrograd Feb 1917

AS WE go to press, cablegrams bring the good news from Russia that “the national colors, with their eagles, have given place to plain red flags. The red flag of the Revolution is flying from almost every building in Petrograd, even over the famous winter palace of the Czar; tiny red ribbons have been distributed among the people and they are being proudly worn.”

While it is still too early to predict the results of the three day revolt, it is safe to say that the bloody absolutism of centuries is doomed and that the Russian people are on the way to a liberal democracy that will leave Germany the only remaining powerful autocracy on earth.

Hundreds of bread riots and strikes in many large cities culminated in mass action in Petrograd where 13,000 Cossacks were promptly dispatched to quell the “open and violent revolution of the people.” Several thousand imperial police were stationed about the city, provided with machine guns, with orders to mok [mow?] down the hungry crowds clamoring for bread.

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Hellraisers Journal: Agnes Thecla Fair, Hobo Poet and “The Good Angel of Labor,” Memorialized by Alfred D. Cridge

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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I have a sharp tongue and a hat pin,
and know how to put any man down and out
who gets foolish.
-Agnes Thecla Fair

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Hellraisers Journal, Tuesday February 13, 1917
Portland, Oregon – Agnes Thecla Fair Journeys On

Agnes Thecla Fair, OR Dly Jr, Dec 17, 1916

We are saddened to hear of the death of Sister Agnes Thecla Fair who took her own life on January 11th in Portland, Oregon. The Oregon Daily Journal of January 12th reported:

Convinced that failing health made it impossible for her to continue her work in behalf of the downtrodden in the ranks of labor, Agnes Thesla [Thecla] Fair, noted street lecturer and writer on sociological subjects, yesterday afternoon ended it all by throwing herself in front of an Oregon City electric car on Spokane avenue in Sellwood [a neighborhood of Portland]. She was 37 years of age…

A Tribute from the Appeal to Reason of February 10, 1917:

Agnes Thecla Fair, Rough Neck, Railway Carmens Jr, Apr 1914

Agnes Thecla Fair

[“Sister Agnes”-as she was called by thousands-is dead. All through the west, Agnes Thecla Fair’s name is known to the workers in almost every mining and lumber camp. Wherever union men needed help-Agnes was there. Wherever the Socialist had a particular difficult job-Agnes was there. Wherever the victims of the system endured especially trying hardships-Agnes was there with a helping hand. She was a rare character-a real woman hobo. She never hesitated to ride the rods. She went to hundreds of cities via the boxcar route. On such trips she wore overalls. The following appreciation of “The Good Angel of Labor” appeared in the Oregon Journal of Portland, on January 14. Agnes was killed under a train:]

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BY ALFRED D. CRIDGE.

Agnes Fair has gone again, this time never to return. She was a frail and earnest little woman, whose experiences had been many and varied for her thirty-seven years of life. She never spoke of her early life or parentage to me, but in a way we were friends.

Agnes was the friend of every man who was down and out. That we were not better friends is because I never was in a position to need her help.

Agnes was first heard of by me as being active in the free speech fight in Spokane some years ago.

She was known before that in Seattle and in the Yukon territory and Alaska as the advocate, nurse and provider for the under dog.

Agnes never sought help for herself. She always sought help for others. She would sell the clothes she had on to help the down and outs. I have known her literally to do so.

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Hellraisers Journal: Miss Flynn & Arturo Giovannitti Speak Out on Behalf of Mesabi Iron Strike Prisoners

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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It’s the wrong way to treat the Miners
It’s the wrong way to go.
It’s the wrong way to best the Miners,
As the Steel Trust soon will know.
God help those dirty Mine Guards,
The Miners won’t forget.
It’s the wrong way to treat the Miners,
And the guards will know that yet.
-Written by a Miner in Jail

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Hellraisers Journal, Saturday September 9, 1916
Virginia, Minnesota – Appeal for Support

From Michigan’s Escanaba Morning Press of September 7, 1916:

SAYS DEPUTY KILLED MYRON
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EGF, Tresca, MN Iron Miners Strike, Ev IN, Aug 17, 1916

Virginia, Minn., Sept. 6-Deputy Sheriff Edward Shubisky killed Deputy Sheriff Myron during the Biwabik riot July 3 and not Sam Scarlet [Scarlett], Carlo Tresco [Tresca] and others of the I. W. W. indicated for the murder of the officer, according to Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, who made the sensational charge at Socialist hall here last night before an audience made up, it is said, largely of curiosity seers.

She declared that Deputy Shubisky had fired three shots said that three bullets caused the death of Myron’ that Shubisky admitted firing three times. “Myron was struck in the back and it appears that Shubisky, who declares he does not know where he fired the three bullets, killed him,” she shouted. Nick Dillon, special deputy, was accused of the murder of Tom Ladvala, Biwabik pop-man.

 

Her version of the Biwabik tragedy was that Mr. and Mrs. Masonovich and three boarder were in their home when Deputies Myron, Shubisky, Dillion and Hoffman entered; that Dillion struck Masonovich; that Mrs. Masonovich tried to get her husband’s shoes and that she was knocked down by Dillion and that three boarders jumped to the rescue of Mrs. Masonovich; that Dillion left for help and that in the excitement Shubisky accidentally killed Myron. She claimed that the boarders had no firearms.

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Hellraisers Journal: “Canaea Riots Not a Revolution But Simply a Strike of Under-Paid Labor”

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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There are no limits to which
powers of privilege will not go
to keep the workers in slavery.
-Mother Jones
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Sunday July 1, 1906
From the Appeal to Reason: George Shoaf on Cananea Strike, Part I

James Kirwan WFM, Quoted in AtR of June 30, 1906
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