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Hellraisers Journal – Friday December 5, 1913
Mother Jones Opines on Churches, Labor Unions and Christianity
From the Chicago Day Book of December 1, 1913
-Mother Jones Interviewed by Jane Whitaker:
Tag: Salvation Army
Hellraisers Journal: “Facts Suppressed in Spokane” by Fellow Worker J. C. Knust for the Socialist Workingman’s Paper
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Hellraisers Journal – Friday February 25, 1910
Spokane, Washington – Facts of Free Speech Fight from J. C. Knust
From the Seattle Socialist Workingman’s Paper of February 19, 1910:
FACTS SUPPRESSED in SPOKANE
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By J. C. Knust, of Spokane
EDITOR’S NOTE.-Here we give yet another dose of FACTS to the sick Spokane authorities. It is killing testimony, and until the record is disowned officially it will damn Spokane in the eyes of the whole world.
The second round in the fight against the Working class is now being fought by the city authorities of Spokane, backed by the employment agencies and other expressions of corporate rule.
Spokane is the natural and the principal distributing point of labor and its supplies to the great Northwestern lumber regions, agricultural districts and mining camps.
Spokane, being a comparatively young city, is necessarily under heavy expense, and, like many young cities in the past, through their spasmodic growth, has given undue power to certain official individuals, who sometimes make, either wilfully or maliciously, grievous mistakes in the use of such power in order to serve private interests.
In order that the reader may get a fairer and more clear conception of the immediate cause of this fight of the workers to maintain their rights, it will be necessary to begin at the beginning.
Every year thousands of men are sent out by the employment agencies to all parts of the country, through faked advertisements, to work which does not exist. For many years these licensed thieves have reaped in this way a rich harvest. Men would come here, buy a job and ship out. Some would find work for only a week where they expected to find steady employment. Others found no work at all.
Investigation proved often that employers, foremen and agents were dividing spoils, their fee being anywhere from $1 to $15 for jobs. After a few days work these men would be discharged and another crew would be sent to fill their places, thus keeping three crews-one going, one coming and one working. [Perpetual motion!]
Can you suggest anything for these men to do but to organize to do away with such thievery? No redress was to be had from the courts, the city attorney saying, “Nothing can be done,” showing plainly that there is plenty of “law,” but it is not for the benefit of the masses.
These conditions grew to be intolerable. One office alone in this benighted town boasts proudly of having sent out in one year 85,000 men. Think of it! Out of that number there were less than 1 per cent. who actually found remunerative employment. And again consider that there are many of these slave markets here, and all doing a thriving business.
Then these men grew desperate; something had to be done. So about two years ago they began to organize themselves into one union known as “The Industrial Workers of the World,” one object being to educate its members to buy no more jobs, but compel employers to come to a union headquarters for their men, where no fee would be charged.
Hellraisers Journal: “47 Days in Spokane City Jail” by William Z. Foster, Part I -from the Seattle Workingman’s Paper
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Hellraisers Journal – Monday February 14, 1910
Spokane, Washington – Foster Describes 47 Days in City Jail
From the Seattle Socialist Workingman’s Paper of February 12, 1910:
[Part I of II.]
On the afternoon of December 11th, when a contingent of men left the I. W. W. headquarters for the purpose of speaking on the street, I accompanied them, as usual, so as to witness their arrest and be enabled to report any unusual features attending it. On this particular afternoon Korthagen and Holland, two I. W. W. members from Seattle among others, were billed to speak, and having been closely associated with them in Seattle, I was anxious to be in at the death.
I walked with them to the appointed street corner, and while they spoke I stood some twenty feet away in the thick of the crowd. They were duly arrested and a few moments later the redoubtable Captain Burns came on the scene in answer to a call sent in to the station, and although he knew nothing whatsoever as to what had taken place, and had no warrant for my arrest, he immediately placed me under arrest when he happened to see me standing in the crowd.
At the police station I had the honor of a half-hour talk with Pugh, Sullivan and Burns, during the course of which conversation these worthies attempted to pump me. They adopted a dozen different ruses by which they hoped to secure a promise from me to desist from taking part in the street fight in return for my liberty. One of these was ridiculous in the extreme. Chief Sullivan (brainy man) said that he had just received a letter from the I. W. W., stating that I was a Pinkerton, his plan being to rouse my ire against the organization and to get me to desert it, or at least promise to take no active part in the fight. Failing in this he adjudged me guilty in his office of some unknown offense, because I wouldn’t answer for my conduct for the future, and I was taken to the notorious sweat-box, where I joined the balance of the street-speaking “criminals.”
Hellraisers Journal: “Barbarous Spokane” by Fred W. Heslewood from the International Socialist Review, Part I
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Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday February 1, 1910
Spokane, Washington – Battleground of Great Fight for Free Speech
From the International Socialist Review of February 1910:
Barbarous Spokane
—–By Fred W. Heslewood.
—–[Part I of II]
OT Mexico, but Spokane—the battleground of the greatest fight for Free Speech, Free Press, and Public Assemblage in America.
Where over four hundred men and women of the ranks of labor, using the weapons of Passive Resistance, are pitted against the law of brutality, tyranny, oppression and greed. Where the ancient methods of torture are being used to subdue the workers, who wish to safeguard the weapons of the dispropertied, disfranchised—yes, disinherited class. Where truth is crushed to earth, and where a lie is a wholesome morsel, and is relished by the arrogant and ignorant who do not want the truth. The truth hurts. It is a two-edged sword. It must be driven to the hilt. The people must be torn from their lethargy and made to realize that the boasted liberties of this country are fast being taken away.
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Hellraisers Journal: From the Spokane Industrial Worker: “Free Speech Fight is On” -IWW Hall Raided, FWs Arrested
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Hellraisers Journal – Friday November 5, 1909
Spokane, Washington – “Free Speech Fight Is On”
From the Spokane Industrial Worker of November 3, 1909:
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[From page 1:]
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FREE SPEECH FIGHT IS ON IN SPOKANE
—–With the end of the trial of James P. Thompson held in the Municipal court of Spokane Tuesday morning, November 2, the fight for free speech or the right to speak on the streets has started in earnest by the members of the union here in the city and many others that have arrived from all over the northwest.
Meetings were started in different parts of the city at about 1 o’clock in the afternoon and kept up till 5 o’clock in the evening; as one speaker was pulled off the box by the police another would take the stand for the purpose of being arrested. All told there were about 100 men arrested on Monday, including James Wilson, James P. Thompson, C. L. Filigno, A. C. Cousins, who were arrested on a warrant charged with criminal conspiracy. Also Mrs. Fernette was taken for street speaking, and Mrs. Arquette and Miss Huxtable were arrested in the raid made on the hall at 3 o’clock Monday afternoon.
Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones Speaks to Convention of United Mine Workers on Behalf of Mexican Revolutionaries
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Hellraisers Journal – Friday January 29, 1909
Indianapolis, Indiana – Mother Speaks at U. M. W. Convention, Part I
From Proceedings of United Mine Workers Convention
-Wednesday January 27, 1909
Speech of Mother Jones, Part I:
President Lewis—If there are no objections we will have a short intermission at this time and hear from a visitor we have present.
We have with us this morning a friend with whom many of the delegates are acquainted. The Mine Workers of the country generally know of the work of this friend. In many of the districts in the turbulent times when our men were engaged in a struggle, when men, women and children were suffering all the hardships incident to industrial warfare, she spent her time helping them. This morning she is here in the interest of men who have been persecuted in other countries and have come to this country in the belief that they were coming to the land of the free. We understand that the men in whose interest she is here have not committed any crime, but rather are regarded as political criminals because they believed that all men have certain rights that all other men should respect. She has encouraged our men, women and children, not alone in the mountains of West Virginia and the valleys of Pennsylvania, but on the prairies of some of our states where words of encouragement were needed by those whose spirits were drooping because of surrounding conditions. I therefore take great pleasure in introducing to this convention Mother Jones, who has lost none of her vigor, none of her interest in the cause of organized labor and in the cause of humanity because of her age or her white hair.
Mrs. Mary Jones (Mother Jones)—Permit me to extend to your worthy President my appreciation for his introduction. In the days of old when the revolutionists fought against the conditions that King George III was about to fasten upon them, could he have reached his claws in and have put them around Washington he would no doubt have hung him. Today, after a century or more of history in this nation, we find two diabolically tyrannous governments reaching their hands into this country and asking us to deliver men who have taken refuge here and surrender our rights to the czar of Russia and the military despot of Mexico. You will realize, my friends, that international economic interests are back of all this; you must realize that for this change in our nation’s history there is a cause. Economic interests, both in Mexico and Russia, are dictating the policy of our government today—I mean the other fellow’s government. As the method of production changes, the policy of the government must change to fit into it. Newspapers, magazines, churches, all must fit into the changed order. It governs home life, it governs national life, it governs the newspapers, it governs all avenues of educating the people.
Hellraisers Journal: From the Appeal to Reason: A Shameful Picture of Poverty in “The Greatest Country in the World”
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Hellraisers Journal, Monday March 14, 1898
From the Salvation Army: A Picture of Poverty in America
From the Appeal to Reason of March 12, 1898:
A SHAMEFUL PICTURE.
Comrade Booth, of the Salvation Army gives us some facts that ought to make the “greatest country in the world” ashamed of itself. Read this and wonder no longer why socialism is growing:
The pauper world-there’s a world for you! A world with starvation. Then the vicious world, the gambler and the harlot. Last the criminal world-why, in this country alone there are 80,000 men and women who are behind bars. These are the three worlds in which our work lies. We have 415 different institutions, ninety of which are at work in the United States. We feed 250,000 hungry men, women and children every night and shelter 13,000 ragged men and women, of which 4,500 are in the United States. On cold nights the figures sometimes double. We give them hot and cold water with which to wash, and if the person is afflicted with those strange little pests-unknown, of course, in Denver-we furnish crematories for them. While the poor fellow is taking a bath we bake his garments, so that if he comes in 20,000 strong he goes out one single personality. In addition to this we furnish him with a rousing salvation meeting and give him something to think about. If a man falls we offer a hand to help him onto his feet again. We have sixty-nine institutions for the rescue of young girls. Talk of pity! Am I not talking to a people who are sending pity to that island Cuba? Yet in their midst they have objects of pity.
