Hellraisers Journal: John Reed Returns to USA to Face Federal Charges of Conspiracy to Obstruct the Draft Law

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The speculators, the employers,
the plutocracy…with lies and sophistries
they will whip up our blood until we are savage-
and then we’ll fight and die for them.
-Jack Reed

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Hellraisers Journal, Friday May 3, 1918
New York, New York – John Reed Facing Federal Charges

From Portland’s Oregon Daily Journal of April 29, 1918:

John Reed, Ogden Standard p12, Feb 19, 1918

John Reed, Writer For
“Masses,” Held
—–

An American [Atlantic] Port, April 29.-(I. N. S.)-John Reed, an American writer, bearing credentials from the Bolsheviki as consul general at New York, was detained aboard a Scandinavian steamer upon his arrival here Sunday.

Reed was one of the contributors to “The Masses” who were indicted by a federal grand jury for alleged conspiracy to defeat the draft law. He appeared in the federal court today and pleaded not guilty to the charge of conspiracy to obstruct the draft law.

—–

John Reed is a former Portland man, son of Mrs. Charles J. Reed.

———-

[Photograph added.]

From The Liberator of May 1918:
John Reed located and series on “Red Russia” continues-

John Reed Found, Liberator p3, May 1918

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Hellraisers Journal: As Jury Selection Continues in Chicago, New York Tribune’s Full-Page Article Finds IWW Guilty, II

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Quote Ralph Chaplin"all the world that's owned", Leaves
-Ralph Chaplin
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Hellraisers Journal, Wednesday April 17, 1918
As Chicago Trial Continues, IWW Found Guilty by Kept Press, Part II

Today we offer the conclusion of our two-part series featuring the article by Boyden R. Sparkes which appeared as a full-page spread in the April 14th edition of the New York Tribune.

THE I. W. W.: AN X-RAY PICTURE

Chicago Trial Shows Searing Sparks from the Anvil Where Industrial-Military Power is Being Forged Endanger Progress-
Sabotage, Malcontents’ Principal Weapon,
a Menace to Farm, Factory and Home.

By Boyden R. Sparkes
Chicago, April 13, 1918.

[Part II]

WWIR, IWW Leaders BBH StJ BF etc, NYTb p28, Apr 14, 1918

WWIR, IWW Leaders Sketched in Court by MM Evers, NYTb p28, Apr 14, 1918

—–

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Hellraisers Journal: As Jury Selection Continues in Chicago, New York Tribune’s Full-Page Article Finds IWW Guilty

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The worst thief is he who steals
the playtime of children.
Join the I. W. W. and help put
the thieves to work.
-Big Bill Haywood

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Hellraisers Journal, Tuesday April 16, 1918
As Chicago Trial Continues, IWW Found Guilty by Kept Press

Today we offer Part One of the following article by Boyden R. Sparkes which appeared as a full-page spread in the April 14th edition of the New York Tribune. We will conclude tomorrow with Part Two.

THE I. W. W.: AN X-RAY PICTURE

Chicago Trial Shows Searing Sparks from the Anvil Where Industrial-Military Power is Being Forged Endanger Progress-
Sabotage, Malcontents’ Principal Weapon,
a Menace to Farm, Factory and Home.

THE I. W. W. PRINCIPLES AS SHOWN IN THEIR OWN CARTOONS

By Boyden R. Sparkes
Chicago, April 13, 1918.

WWIR, IWW, Sabotage Beware, NYTb p28, Apr 14, 1918

OUT in the hill country of Oklahoma last August a group of tenant farmers and oil field workers were just a little too quick on the trigger, and what Federal officials believe was intended to have been a country-wide uprising of American “Bolsheviki” against the draft law was quelled almost before it started.

At the hearing in the Federal court in Enid, Okla., it was developed that forty-eight organizations under the leadership of the Industrial Workers of the World had planned a nation-wide revolution. The anti-draft rioters in Seminole, Hughes and Pontotoc counties began shooting just a little too soon, and posses of patriotic citizens had put 500 of them under arrest before many persons had been killed.

WWIR, IWW, Sabotage Sabots, NYTb p28, Apr 14, 1918

The men arrested belonged to organizations affiliated with the I. W. W., chief among these being the “Working Class Union.” The government is still trying to find out where the money used to purchase arms for the rioters came from.

It is the opinion of government attorneys that these I. W. W. leaders believed they would receive the support of the American Federation of Labor. Naturally any such hope was doomed to disappointment. But the government is still picking up threads of evidence that strengthen the belief that the American Bolsheviki leaders were prepared and hoping for a reign of terror in America that would have far outdone the Bolsheviki uprising in Russia.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: As Jury Selection Continues in Chicago, New York Tribune’s Full-Page Article Finds IWW Guilty”

Hellraisers Journal: “Six Red Months in Russia” by Louise Bryant, Series Running in Philadelphia Evening Ledger

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On the grey horizon of human existence
looms a great giant called
Working Class Consciousness.
He treads with thunderous step
through all the countries of the world.
There is no escape, we must go out and meet him.
-Louise Bryant

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Hellraisers Journal: Sunday April 14, 1918
Stories from the Russian Revolution by Louise Bryant

From the Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger comes a series by Louise Bryant, written from the front lines of the Russian Revolution.

From Public Ledger of April 2, 1918:

Ad, 6 Red Months in Rss, Bryant, Phl Pb Ldg p15, Apr 2, 1918

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Hellraisers Journal: From The Eye Opener: Eugene V. Debs on Indicted Socialists and Attacks on Russia

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I have no country to fight for;
my country is the earth,
and I am a citizen of the world.
-Eugene V. Debs

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Hellraisers Journal, Sunday March 17, 1918
Eugene V. Debs on Indictments of Socialist Comrades

From The Eye Opener of March 16, 1918, page 2:

Indicted, Unashamed and Unafraid.
by Eugene V. Debs

Socialist Party of America Button

Sunday morning, March 10, the press dispatches in the daily papers announced the indictment the day before in the federal court at Chicago of Adolph Germer, National Secretary; Victor L. Berger, member of the National Executive Committee; J. Louis Engdahl, editor of The Eye Opener; William F. Kruse, Secretary of the Young People’s Socialist League; and Irwin St. John Tucker, writer and lecturer, all of the Socialist Party [of America]. The charge against them is seditious utterance and interference with the prosecution of the war.

The indictments were found Feb. 2, we are told, but secrecy was preserved regarding the proceeding until the administration at Washington could be consulted and its sanction secured before entering the prosecution.

It is thus made clear that this indictment, while ostensibly directed against certain individuals, is in fact the indictment of the Socialist Party by the national administration at Washington.

If Germer, Berger, Engdahl, Kruse, and Tucker are guilty, so are we all. They have but spoken and written what the Socialist Party stands for, and if Socialism, the thing we stand for and shall continue to stand for, is criminal and subject to indictment and prosecution, then the administration, to be logical and consistent, should indict, prosecute, and imprison not only the spokesmen of the party but its entire membership of more than 100,000 social rebels, who in opposing the damnable profiteering system which has precipitated this bloody deluge upon humanity are alike guilty of sedition and disloyalty in the bleared eyes of the autocratic rulers of this country.

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Hellraisers Journal: From The Liberator: “Red Russia-The Triumph of the Bolsheviki” by John Reed

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In the relations of a weak Government
and a rebellious people
there comes a time when every act of the authorities
exasperates the masses,
and every refusal to act excites their contempt.
-Jack Reed

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Hellraisers Journal, Saturday March 16, 1918
From The Liberator: John Reed on the Russian Revolution

Correspondent John Reed was in Russia with his wife, Louise Bryant, during the amazing events of October and November 1917. In the latest edition of The Liberator is published Reed’s account of what he witnessed, and which we republish, in part, below:

Liberator Cover, Russian Revolution by John Reed, Mar 1918

RED RUSSIA-
The Triumph of the Bolsheviki

I.

THE real revolution has begun. All the swift events of the last eight crowded months–the sudden debacle of Czarism in February, the brief inglorious attempt of Miliukov to establish a safe and sane bourgeois republic, the rise of Kerensky and the precarious structure of hasty compromise which constituted the Provisional Government–these were merely the prologue to the great drama of naked class-struggle which has now opened. For the first time in history the working-class has seized the power of the state, for its own purposes–and means to keep it.

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Hellraisers Journal: With Band Playing “The Marseillaise,” Bolsheviki Steamer Shilka Leaves Seattle, Sets Sail for Russia

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I have no country to fight for
My country is the earth
And I am a citizen of the world.
-Eugene Victor Debs

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Hellraisers Journal: Thursday January 10, 1918
Seattle, Washington – The Shilka Sets Sail to Cheers of Supporters

From The Tacoma Times of January 9, 1918:

Rss Rev, Shilka lvs Stt, Tacoma Tx p5, Jan 9, 1918

—–

(Special to the times.)

SEATTLE, Jan. 9.-Serenaded by a volunteer brass band playing “The Marseillaise” and “The Star Spangled Banner,” cheered by more than a hundred admirers and friends, the Russian steamship Shilka, which had return from Tacoma on Monday morning with her bunkers full of coal, bade farewell to Seattle at Pier 5 at 2 o’clock Tuesday afternoon when she sailed for Kobe via Yokohama.

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