Tag: Ruling Class

Hellraisers Journal: Appeal to Reason: Mother Jones on Capitalism, Socialism, and the Keys to Nature’s Storehouse

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones, Capitalists should surrender gracefully, AtR p2, Sept 14, 1901—————

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday September 18, 1901
Mother Jones,  Interviewed in Indianapolis, Advises Ruling Class

From the Appeal to Reason of September 14, 1901:

An Interview With Mother Jones.

Mother Jones, Drawing, SDH p4, Mar 9, 1901

“Mother” Jones, as she is affectionately called by her boys, for whom she labors in season and out of season, was interviewed by an Indianapolis reporter at the time of her visit to that city, in which she said:

The issues of the day are capitalism and Socialism. We have our rights and I will I fight for them until the bitter end. We are now in a great industrial battle with the two armies of labor and capital arrayed against each other. We want to bring harmony out of chaos. A great industrial war is on. There is no question about it. We will have a number of strikes and other uprisings, but the workers are educating themselves. While they are producing they are reasoning. They will resort to the ballot and not to the bullet. Out of this industrial chaos they will bring industrial harmony. They will not be begging their masters to give them a day’s work or a loaf of bread, They will simply take that which is theirs by rights. They produce it, and in producing it, they should own it. We are after the machinery of production, distribution and exchange.

The era of Socialism is dawning. From the records I find that in 1850 the wealth of the American nation was $8,000,000,000. The share of the working people was 62½%, and the people who exploit had but 37½%. In 1880 the producer’s share went down to 24%, while the wealth of the nation had increased to $48,000,000,000, and the share of the non-producers had increased to 76%. In 1901 the nation’s wealth is estimated at $100,000,000,000, and the exploiters have 90% of that amount, and the producers only 10%. After $22,000,000 were raked in on the first of July as dividends, the workers had not even 10%.

Here is the point I am getting at: The capitalist class can do but little more exploiting in America. The people are disinherited, but they do not seem to realize it.

Inside of the next ten years the capitalists will have reached into eastern nations for new fields, and the middle class capitalists will have disappeared from society. The proletariat of nations will have molded its parts together and will come on the field as the conscious revolutionary party for the first time in the history of the world and will demand the surrender of the keys of nature’s storehouse. If the ruling class takes notice of the past it will surrender gracefully.

I look for the possible solution of the industrial problem in the dawn of the era of Socialism. Then will the masses of oppressed men and women of the nations of the earth rally to its bright banner and hail the advance of the Co-operative Commonwealth when all laborers will be capitalists and every capitalist will be a laborer, and industrial harmony will at last have come to a patient, long-suffering people.

—————

[Photograph and emphasis added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: “Mother Jones on Deck” -Speaks on Behalf of Striking Miners of Greensburg, Pennsylvania

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones, Hell, Greensburg PA Jan 14, AtR p2, Jan 28, 1911———-

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday February 1, 1911
Greensburg, Pennsylvania – Mother Jones Speaks for Striking Miners

From the Appeal to Reason of January 28, 1911:

Mother Jones on Deck
———-

Mother Jones, WDC Tx p5, June 18, 1910

The papers of Greensburg, Pa., are filled with accounts of the great speech delivered there by Mother Jones in behalf of the striking miners on January 14th. Mother Jones appears to have been in perfect form and to have electrified the audience of three thousand people assembled to hear her. Below will be found brief extracts:

Thrusting aside hands proffering assistance, Mother Jones mounted the speakers table. Holding up her hands for silence, when the wave of applause swept over the audience, she burst out into a fierce invective against the business men of Greensburg. With her expressive hands gesticulating, she said;

“They are so full of greed that they won’t take a day off to find out what is the matter. The business men furnish the scabs with Armour’s rotten beer and swill whiskey. Then they blame disorder on the miners. It’s the changing order of economics. The small business man is put to the wall and he scratches his head and wonders what the hell is the matter.”

Turning around in partial apology to Rev. Mr. Schultz. she said:

“You ministers think you are the only ones who can talk about hell. I live in hell and I have a right to talk about it.”

Assuring them that she did not get into the labor movement yesterday, she said:

“The class who owns the industries, owns the governments, the newspapers and all.”

Turning to Mr. McGinley, Mother Jones spit out:

“You may like the constabulary, but I don’t-no true American would belong to the constabulary.”

Then in a bitter tirade against the state police she said:

“Their little gray cap covers the outside of their skull, buy they have nothing inside.”

Constantly throughout her invective, the state police were referred to as “dogs of war” and “bloodhounds.”

Notwithstanding the radical speech of Mother Jones and her unmerciful flaying of the coal company and its hirelings and lackeys the papers treated her with great regard. The following description of her as a she took her place upon the platform is interesting:

With firm tread, keen old eyes peering out at the crowds from behind spectacles set determinedly on her nose, Mother Jones advanced through the crowds and took her place at the speakers table. A modest bonnet covered her wealth of soft gray hair, soft laces appeared at her throat and wrists, and her strangely youthful face broke into smiles and her eyes twinkled in a roguish Irish way as she acknowledge greetings.

The seventy-seven years of Mother Jones sit lightly upon her venerable features. She is just as active and quite as revolutionary as at any time in her life. If only the great mass who are in their prime were imbued with her spirit and nervous energy what a great change there would be in this world. There would be no question about the social revolution in our time. We are glad this great effort of Mother Jones was made in behalf of the miners and earnestly hope they will stand solidly together to the end. If they do this they are sure to win and they certainly ought to win, for never was there a strike more justified than this, nor more deserving of the support of the working class and those who sympathize with it.

———-

[Photograph and emphasis added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: “You are waging a class fight!” Eugene Debs Speaks at Philadelphia’s Labor Lyceum, Part I

Janet RayeEugene Victor Debs
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Quote EVD, Lawmakers Felons, Phl GS Speech, IA, Mar 19, 1910———-

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday March 20, 1910
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – General Strike Committee Sends for Debs

From The Philadelphia Inquirer of March 17, 1910:

[Statement of Philadelphia’s General Strike Committee.]

Phl GS, Murphy n Pratt, LW p1, Newark NJ Str p1, Mar 5, 1910———-

Announcement of the plans of the labor leaders for today was embodied in the following statement issued by the General Strike Committee, from its headquarters at Twelfth and Filbert streets:

In our statement issued last night we announced several mass meetings would be held in different parts of the city, to which organized and unorganized working men and women and the general public are invited. These meetings will be held at Kensington Labor Lyceum. Second and Cambria streets; Mercantile Hall, 849 Franklin street; Academy Hall, 524 South Fourth street, and Labor Lyceum, Sixth and Brown streets, on Thursday, March 17, at 8 P. M.

These meetings will be addressed by C. O. Pratt, Jeff Pierce, organizer of the American Federation of Labor; John J. Murphy and other prominent speakers…

The committee has also made arrangements for holding a monster mass meeting at Labor Lyceum, Sixth and Brown streets, at 3 P. M., Saturday, March 19, which meeting will be addressed by Eugene V. Debs and other prominent speakers…

[Photographs added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: From the Cleveland Toiler: Eugene V. Debs on the Power of the Capitalist Press, Fed Fat by Ruling Class

Janet RayeEugene Victor Debs
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Quote AtR p1 Nominates EVD for President, May 24, 1919———-

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday February 21, 1920
Power of Press Underestimated by American Socialist Movement

From the Cleveland Toiler of February 20, 1920:

The Power of the Press
—–

– by Eugene V. Debs –

EVD f President by OK SP, Mpl Str Tb p2, Feb 2, 1920

The power of the press is sadly underestimated in the socialist movement. The ruling class make no such mistakes. They are keenly alive to the power of the press in molding public sentiment and in shaping affairs in accordance with their interests. The capitalist papers do not suffer for the want of support and never die of starvation. They are fed fat and ungrudgingly by the class in power and in return serve that class with all their power.

Not so with the press of the working class. With scarcely an exception the papers and periodicals published in the interest of labor eke out a precarious existence. Ninety-five percent of them line the highway of the past with their skeletons. They lingered for a brief while and then gave up the ghost, falling victims to the chronic labor-paper malady, starvation.

Of course not all papers claiming to be labor papers are fit to exist. Many of them are fakes and run by political grafters. These often thrive in their blackmail and graft while an honest paper is allowed to die for the want of support.

Working men and women ought to have intelligence enough by this time to discriminate between an honest labor paper and a grafting sheet and they ought to be loyal enough to the working class to give their support to the paper that uses its influence to mold sentiment in favor of their cause and fights their industrial and political battles.

It is when the strike comes that the working class suffer most keenly the lack of a powerful press that reaches the people. They are always at a fearful disadvantage on this account. The capitalists get in a thousand licks to their one, not only because they can get their case before the people in its most favorable light and keep it there, but because they can put the case of the workers in the most unfavorable light and keep it there.

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Hellraisers Journal: Speech of IWW Organizer Elizabeth Gurley Flynn at Spokane on June 29, 1909, Part I

Janet RayeElizabeth Gurley Flynn
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Quote EGF re Useless Capitalist Class, Ptt Prs p47, Sept 27, 1908———-

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday July 10, 1909
Spokane, Washington – June 29th Speech of Gurley Flynn, Part I

From the Spokane Industrial Worker of July 8, 1909:

ELIZABETH G. FLYNN ADDRESS TO WORKERS
———-

EGF, Spk Rv p7, July 9, 1909

Address of Miss Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Organizer and lecturer of the Industrial Workers of the World, given at Spokane, Wash., on Tuesday evening, June 29, 1909.

This meeting as you well know, is held under the [auspices?] of the Industrial Workers of the World. The organization is a new form of labor organization, one that stands for the industrial working class and that class alone. We are not interested in the welfare or the ideas of any other class in society; and we who are the members of the tolling class have in these sufficient of our own interests that need looking after, that we have no time to bother with other classes.

The working class of this country look out upon a situation where there are natural resources present to supply the entire world with plenty; they look out upon an industrial situation which has invented machinery capable of getting these natural resources with but little labor expenditure into finished commodities of necessities or luxuries. Yet in spite of that and in spite of the productiveness made possibly by men who labor and the natural abundance of the earth itself, in spite of that, we have people starving in this country and five million idle; over a million child laborers in the United States; seventy thousand children in New York City and fifty thousand in Chicago that go to school without a breakfast in the morning we have a condition in which the majority of the people are a propertyless class, are a class that own no land, that control none of that productive machinery, that control absolutely nothing in this land of the free and home of the brave but their own labor power, their own abilities to work. Just the same as the mule can pull a big load, so a worker can handle his labor power, muscular energy; and is the only thing he has; and if some trust could have been organized to separate us from that, to divide us from ourselves. I suppose even that would have been done long ago.

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Hellraisers Journal: From Appeal to Reason: U. S. Supreme Court Legalizes Traffic in Daughters of the Working Class

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Joe Hill, White Slave, Girls in this way, LRSB 1913———-

Hellraisers Journal – Monday April 19, 1909
Chicago, Illinois – Crusade Against Traffic in Girls Halted by U. S Supreme Court

From the Appeal to Reason of April 17, 1909:

TRAFFIC IN GIRLS.
—–

White Slavery Ernest A Bell, War on White Slave Trade p194, 1909

When it comes to suppressing real crime the law, as administered under the present system, always proved a mockery and a farce. The decision is invariably in favor of the strong and against the weak; in favor of the class in power and against its subjects.

Recently there has been a federal investigation of the unspeakable white slave traffic in Chicago. District Attorney Edward W. Sims has been honestly trying, be it said to his credit, to suppress the revolting commerce in young girls which has blackened the centers of our so-called civilization. About the time the district attorney had his evidence complete and felt sure of his case the United States supreme court rendered a decision shattering the prosecution and in effect legalizing the shocking white slave traffic. It seems unbelievable and yet the facts stand forth beyond dispute. The decision in question has just been rendered and in referring to it District Attorney Sims says:

It will be necessary now to prove the actual importation in each case. I think the federal government will be able to do very little in obtaining convictions. The entire prosecution of such cases will be left to the state courts and to the police.

Which means that the white slave traffic will be left to the gamblers, blacklegs, hack-politicians and pimps, agents of the commercial pirates who established the traffic, and who are carrying it forward to the everlasting disgrace of the state and for their own private gain.

Under this odius and abhorrent traffic thousands of poor, innocent girls are lured to this country, ruined and placed in brothels under contract to end their blasted lives in nameless horror.

The point above all others to take into account is that these girls are uniformly the children of poverty, the daughters of the working class, and for this reason it is of grave significance and its lesson should be graven deeply upon the hearts of all the millions who toil.

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Hellraisers Journal: From The Ohio Socialist: “Debs Goes to Prison,” the Class Character of the Supreme Court Decision

Janet RayeEugene Victor Debs
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Quote EVD, Debs Address to the Court, Sept 14, 1918———-

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday March 12, 1919
“The machinery of capitalism has completed its work…Debs must go to prison.”

From The Ohio Socialist of March 12, 1919:

DEBS GOES TO PRISON

EVD, Bstn Glb p3, Sept 13, 1918

The machinery of capitalism has completed its work and ground out the decision that Eugene V. Debs must go to prison.

No one who has studied the class character of the governmental institutions of this country expected a different verdict than that which has just been rendered by the United States Supreme Court.

It was inconceivable that the Supreme Curt would declare the Espionage law unconstitutional.

The interpretation of the constitution follows the needs of the ruling class. Only unsophisticated persons with a ludicrously naive belief in the “democracy” of modern capitalist government could imagine such a contingency as the Supreme cCourt declaring a law in the interest of the capitalist class unconstitutional in the hour of capitalism’s greatest need.

But if there was no hope for Debs, even though, as many people believe, the Espionage law violates clearly expressed provisions of the national constitution in regard to the right of free speech and free press, it did seem that the selfish interests of the ruling class of this country might save Debs from prison.

Capitalism in this country is resting upon a slumbering volcano-the volcano of a suppressed, oppressed and exploited working class.

In Russia and Germany the volcano has burst and is flinging the debris of capitalism to the four winds.

In England, France and Italy the rumbling which forecasts a similar activity can be distinctly heard.

Even here the warning signals are not wanting. Unemployment, strikes, discontent, Seattle’s [General Strike] and Lawrence’s [Textile Strike], all suggest a growing bitterness that is the sign of a coming eruption.

Well might the ruling class hesitate before adding another grievance, a grievance that will deepen and make more bitter the hatred of the working class of the system that holds them under its iron heel.

That is what the sending of Eugene V. Debs will mean to the ruling class of this country.

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Hellraisers Journal: Boardman Robinson on Justice: for Capitalists (Bisbee Gunthugs), for Working Men (Mooney)

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones re Tom Mooney and Courts, Dec 16, 1918~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hellraisers Journal – Friday January 3, 1919
Justice in America: for Capitalist, for Working Men.

From The Liberator of January 1919:

-Boardman Robinson on Justice for Capitalists

Bisbee Deportations of 1917, B Robinson, Justice for Capitalists, Liberator p12, Jan 1919

-Boardman Robinson on Justice for Working Men

Tom Mooney, B Robinson, Justice for Working Men, Liberator p13, Jan 1919

———-

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Hellraisers Journal: Eugene Victor Debs Addresses the Court: “The cross is bending, the midnight is passing…”

Janet RayeEugene Victor Debs
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Quote EVD, The Cross is Bending, Sept 14, 1918
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hellraisers Journal, Monday September 16, 1918
Cleveland, Ohio – Eugene Debs Address the Court, Part II

On September 12th, Comrade Debs was convicted under the Espionage law on charges based upon his Anti-War Speech delivered at Canton, Ohio, on June 16th. On Saturday September 14th, Debs appeared at Federal Court in Cleveland, Ohio, in order to receive the sentence of Judge Westenhaver. The motion for a new trial was denied and Debs was asked if he had anything to say before sentence was pronounced. Comrade Debs faced the Judge and spoke:

STATEMENT TO THE COURT, PART II

EVD, Debs to Terre Haute, Ipl Str p2, Sept 15, 1918

I believe, Your Honor, in common with all Socialists, that this nation ought to own and control its own industries. I believe, as all Socialists do, that all things that are jointly needed and used ought to be jointly owned—that industry, the basis of life, instead of being the private property of the few and operated for their enrichment, ought to be the common property of all, democratically administered in the interest of all.

John D. Rockefeller has today an income of sixty million dollars a year, five million dollars a month, two hundred thousand dollars a day. He does not produce a penny of it. I make no attack upon Mr. Rockefeller personally. I do not in the least dislike him. If he were in need, and it were in my power to serve him, I should serve him as gladly as I would any other human being. I have no quarrel with Mr. Rockefeller personally, nor with any other capitalist. I am simply opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful, to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while millions of men and women who work all of the days of their lives secure barely enough for existence.

This order of things cannot always endure. I have registered my protest against it. I recognize the feebleness of my effort, but, fortunately, I am not alone. There are multiplied thousands of others who, like myself, have come to realize that before we may truly enjoy the blessings of civilized life, we must reorganize society upon a mutual and cooperative basis; and to this end we have organized a great economic and political movement that spreads over the face of all the earth.

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Hellraisers Journal: Comrade Eugene Victor Debs Addresses the Court, Sentenced to Ten Years, Admitted to Bail

Janet RayeEugene Victor Debs
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Quote EVD, Debs Address to the Court, Sept 14, 1918
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hellraisers Journal, Sunday September 15, 1918
Cleveland, Ohio – Eugene Debs Address the Court, Part I

On September 12th, Comrade Debs was convicted under the Espionage law on charges based upon his Anti-War Speech delivered at Canton, Ohio, on June 16th. On Saturday September 14th, Debs appeared at Federal Court in Cleveland, Ohio, in order to receive the sentence of Judge Westenhaver. The motion for a new trial was denied and Debs was asked if he had anything to say before sentence was pronounced. Comrade Debs faced the Judge and spoke:

STATEMENT TO THE COURT, PART I

EVD, Debs Gets 10 Years, Akron Eve Tx p1, Sept 14, 1918

Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.

If the law under which I have been convicted is a good law, then there is no reason why sentence should not be pronounced upon me. I listened to all that was said in this court in support and justification of this prosecution, but my mind remains unchanged. I look upon the Espionage Law as a despotic enactment in flagrant conflict with democratic principles and with the spirit of free institutions.

Your Honor, I have stated in this court that I am opposed to form of our present Government; that I am opposed to the social system in which we live; that I believed in the change of both—but by perfectly peaceable and orderly means.

Let me call your attention to the fact this morning that in this system five per cent of our people own and control two-thirds of our wealth; sixty-five per cent of the people, embracing the working class who produce all wealth, have but five per cent to show for it.

Standing here this morning, I recall my boyhood. At fourteen I went to work in a railroad shop; at sixteen I was firing a freight engine on a railroad. I remember all the hardships and privations of that earlier day, and from that time until now my heart has been with the working class. I could have been in Congress long ago. I have preferred to go to prison. The choice has been deliberately made. I could not have done otherwise. I have no regret.

In the struggle, the unceasing struggle, between the toilers and producers and their exploiters, I have tried, as best I might, to serve those among whom I was born, with whom I expect to share my lot until the end of my days.

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