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Hellraisers Journal, Friday June 14, 1918
Chicago, Illinois – The Sab-Cat Enters the Courtroom
From The Ohio Socialist of June 11, 1918:
A Second Runnymede
—–By HARRISON GEORGE
It is no new thing-this struggle for human rights. Every morning we Chicago prisoners are taken in irons from the Cook County jail, the tomb of the old “Eight-Hour Movement,” and dumped into a gloomy court room of the Federal Building. How often have court rooms served as undertaking parlors for the aspirations of rebellious workers?
Here in the sepulchral atmosphere of the Law are gathered the class conscious social forces of this age in cut and thrust contest of Capital versus Labor.
Fathoming the shadows of the big room, our eyes discern an inscription within an arch among the mural decorations-“No freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or be disseized of his freehold or liberties or free customs, or be outlawed or exiled, or otherwise damaged, but by lawful judgment of his peers. To no one will we sell, to no one will we deny or delay, right or justice.” Did Simon De Montfort and his followers, who forced he tyrant John to accept this Magna Charta at Runnymede, dream that six centuries later in a land whose boasted jurisprudence is based upon their great conquest, these words would lend a sanctity to such hypocritical persecution? We think of Ludlow and Lawrence, Paint Creek and Everett, of Bisbee and Butte-and we wonder why that inscription should not be painted out.
Throughout the month of April we I. W. W. men sat in the dock listening to the endless stream of questions and replies between lawyers and prospective jurors. Nebeker, the Copper Trust attorney, seeking always to constrain the issues and select employers; Vandeveer, for the I. W. W., groping in a basket of bad eggs for those the least bad, seeking to obtain men who have the social mind. “Industrial democracy”-“the class war”-“the right of revolution,” are phrases that flow like sparks from an anvil as Vandeveer, or Cleary, hammer home their questions and forged the tremendous issues. For here is a second Runnymede, and here the I. W. W. must enforce upon a tyrant master class the recognition of a new Magna Charta- the Preamble of the Industrial Workers of the World..
