Hellraisers Journal: Jack Whyte States His Contempt for San Diego Court: “To hell with your courts; I know what justice is.”

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Quote Jack Whyte, Too Hell with Your Court, Ky Pst p4, Aug 21, 1912—————

Hellraisers Journal – Friday August 23, 1912
San Diego, California – Fellow Worker Jack Whyte Expresses His Contempt of Court

From The Kentucky Post of August 21, 1912:

San Diego I. W. W., Convicted, Bluntly Explains
to Judge His Contempt for Court
———-

Jack Whyte, To Hell With Your Courts SDg FSF Aug 5, KY Pst p4, Aug 21, 1912

SAN DIEGO, CAL., Aug. 21-Contempt of court, more bluntly expressed than probably ever before in the history of California, whose court records have been dirtied often by judicial acts which have disgraced the State, marked the close of proceedings here recently [August 5th], when Judge Sloane sentenced several members of the Industrial Workers of the World for conspiracy to violate the street-speaking ordinance. 

Sloane asked Jack Whyte, Industrial Worker, if he had anything to say as to why he should not receive sentence.

Whyte had something to say. He talked straight. This is what he said:

There are only a few word that I care to say, and this court will not mistake them for a legal argument, for I am not acquainted with the phraseology of the bar, nor the language common to the courtroom.

There are two points which I want to touch upon-the indictment itself and the misstatement of the Prosecuting Attorney. The indictment reads: “The People of the State of California against J. W. Whyte and others.”

It’s a hideous lie. The people of this courtroom know that it is a lie, and I know that it is a lie. If the people of the State are to blame for this persecution, then the people are to blame for the murder of Michael Hoey and the assassination of Joseph Mickolasek. They are to blame and responsible for every bruise, every insult and injury inflicted upon the members of the working class by the vigilantes of this city.

The people deny it, and have so emphatically denied it that Gov. Johnson sent Harris Weinstock down here to make an investigation and clear the reputation of the people of the State of California from the odor that you would attach to it. You cowards throw the blame upon the people, but I know who is to blame and I name them-it is Spreckels and his partners in business, and this court is the lackey and lickspittle of that class, defending the property of that class against the advancing horde of starving American workers.

The Prosecuting Attorney in his plea to the jury accused me of saying on a public platform at a public meeting: “To hell with the courts; we know what justice is.” He told a great truth when he lied, for if he had searched the innermost recesses of my mind he could have found that thought, never expressed by me before, but which I express now. “To hell with your courts, I know what justice is,” for I have sat in your courtroom day after day and have seen members of my class pass before this, the so-called bar of justice.

I have seen you, Judge Sloane, and others of your kind, send them to prison because they dared to infringe upon the sacred right of property. You have become blind and deaf to the rights of men to pursue life and happiness, and you have crushed those rights so that the sacred rights of property should be preserved. Then you tell me to respect the law.

I don’t. I did violate the law, and I will violate every one of your laws and still come before you and say: “To hell with the courts,” because I believe that my right to live is far more sacred than the sacred right of property that you and your kind so ably defend.

I don’t tell you this with the expectation of getting justice, but to show my contempt for the whole machinery of law and justice as represented by this and every other court. The Prosecutor lied, but I will accept it as a truth and say again, so that you, Judge Sloane, may not be mistaken as to my attitude:

“To hell with your courts; I know what justice is.”

[Emphasis added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: From Mother Earth, San Diego Edition: Emma Goldman and Ben Reitman Describe Brutal Cossack Regime

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Quote re IWW FSF San Diego Tribune, Mar 4, 1912 fr Mother Earth p106, June 1912—————

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday June 15, 1912
San Diego, California – Emma Goldman and Ben Reitman Report on Free Speech Fight

From Mother Earth of June 1912:

Mother Earth Cv IWW San Diego FSF Edition, June 1912

—–

Mother Earth Contents p96, IWW San Diego FSF, June 1912

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Hellraisers Journal: “Advertise San Diego!” -Brutal Crimes Committed Against Men and Women Engaged in Free Speech Fight

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Quote re IWW FSF San Diego Tribune, Mar 4, 1912 fr Mother Earth p106, June 1912—————

Hellraisers Journal – Friday June 14, 1912
San Diego, California – Brutal Crimes Committed in Effort to Stop Free Speech Fight

From the Spokane Industrial Worker of June 13, 1912:

IWW San Diego FSF, List of Crimes, IW p4, June 13, 1912

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Hellraisers Journal: IWW Honors Fellow Worker Joseph Mikolasek with Great Funeral Demonstration in Los Angeles

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Quote EGF, re Spk FSF, ISR p618, Jan 1910—————

Hellraisers Journal – Friday May 24, 1912
Los Angeles, California – Great Funeral Demonstration Held for FW Mikolasek

From the Spokane Industrial Worker of May 23, 1912:

GREAT FUNERAL DEMONSTRATION
FOR MIKOLASCK.

(Special Telegram to the “Worker.”)

WNF Mikolasek Funeral, LA Eve Exp p17, May 13, 1912

Los Angeles, Cal., May 13.-Fifteen hundred rebels were in line at the funeral of our brave fellow worker and comrade Joseph Mikelasck [Mikolasek], who was murdered by the San Diego police on the seventh inst. It was the greatest demonstration in the history of the city. The banner of the Industrial Workers of the World led the procession and the groups which followed carried red flags. Along the line of march the “Red Flag” and “Marseillaise” were sung. Parade traversed the business district and the police were forced to aid the parade by stopping traffic. The banners carried in the parade read:

“With the suppression of free speech our liberties are gone.”

“We are organized, not for riot and disorder, but for universal peace.”

“The defenders of liberty are jailed and murdered. The vigilantes go free.”

“He had nothing to give but his life, that he gave freely.”

“Our fellow worker who was murdered in the fight for free speech in San Diego.”

“Our silence in the grave will be more powerful than the voices you strangled today.”

Going along Hill Street the procession was joined by a body of Mexicans who threw down their tools in response to the cry of  

“ONE BIG UNION FOR ALL”

J. J. McKELVEY.

[Emphasis added; newsclip added from Los Angeles Express of May 13, 1912.]

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Hellraisers Journal: From the Industrial Worker: “Blood Shed in San Diego”-The Murder of Fellow Worker Joseph Mikolasek

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Quote EGF, re Spk FSF, ISR p618, Jan 1910—————

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday May 18, 1912
San Diego, California – The Death of Fellow Worker Joseph Mikolasek

From the Spokane Industrial Worker of May 16, 1912:

HdLn Blood Shed Mikolasek, IW p4, May 16, 1912

San Diego, Calif., May 9, 1912-The climax in the free speech fight came Tuesday, May 7. as a result one unarmed worker [Joseph Mikolasek] was murdered by the police, the town was practically under martial law, workers were clubbed on the streets, and over one hundred deported.

Tuesday morning it was reported that 84 members of the Industrial Workers of the World who were coming to participate in the free speech campaign, had arrived in the city on a freight train and were at Old Town, about three miles from the heart of the city. The police excitedly sent out all the reserves and special police men, who held up the train and took from a box car 84 free speech fighters on their way to battle. The men were lined up and herded into an old schoolhouse.

At 2 o’clock it became apparent that the vigilante outrages would be repeated for the business men were hurriedly arming themselves with rifles and shot guns. At 3 o’clock Attorney Moore of the free Speech League applied for a writ requesting the sheriff to take possession of the 84 prisoners. He also presented to the court an affidavit charging that it was the intention of the police to hand the men over to the “Vigilantes.” The writ was refused, the judge stating later in the evening he might grant a writ of habeas corpus. This was done at 8:45 p. m., too late to serve it.

Late that night, under cover of darkness, the police and the Vigilance Committee escorted the 84 Socialists and Industrial Workers out to the county line, and after tying them to trees, horsewhipping them and otherwise brutally treating them, they were told to “March north and keep going.”

Among the men thus deported were several members of the American Federation of Labor and the Socialist party.

At 7 o’clock Tuesday evening the men in town decided to make another attempt to speak on the streets. Accordingly 70 men went to the corner of Fifth and E streets and started to speak. The fifth man had mounted the rostrum when the reserve squad of the police charged the crowd which had gathered, clubbing indiscriminately. One small man named Catallon was knocked down and jumped on by a vigilante. Several citizens were injured and many speakers were arrested.

During the melee on the street some policemen were heard to say that the I. W. W. hall would be raided that night, and word was sent by sympathizers to vacate the hall, which was done, and at 7:30 p. m. when four policemen appeared at the hall it was empty. The policemen came to the doors and without demanding entrance, they poured a volley of shots into the building. They then broke into the hall and finding no one present they approached a group of I. W. W. men standing on the sidewalk around the corner. These men they proceeded to “beat up” but did not arrest them.

They then went back to the hall and saw Joe Mickolasek [Mikolasek] an I. W. W. who had just entered the building. According to Mickolasek’s dying statement the police immediately opened fire on him without any provocation. Mickolasek thereupon picked up an axe and although mortally wounded, attempted to defend himself. He wounded a policeman with the axe. The policeman who was hit with the axe was named Heddon. Thereupon Policeman Stevens opened fire upon Mickolasek. Nine shots took effect in Mickolasek’s body. During the excitement Policeman Stevens was shot in the shoulder it is supposed that this was an accident, but Woodford Hubbard, a socialist organizer, was charged with attempting to murder, although he was not in the crowd at the time of the shooting.

—————

[Emphasis added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: Inquiry into San Diego Free Speech Fight Strips Mask from Army of Thugs and Brutal Vigilante Justice

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Quote EGF, re Spk FSF, ISR p618, Jan 1910—————

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday May 12, 1912
San Diego, California – Weinstock Inquiry Proves Brutality of Vigilantes 

From the Spokane Industrial Worker of May 9, 1912:

INQUIRY STRIPS MASK FROM THUGS

GOVERNOR ORDERS INVESTIGATION OF SAN DIEGO
-INQUIRY REVEALS FRIGHTENED OFFICIALS
-MEN STILL ENTERING CITY.

[-by Stumpy]

San Diego FSF, Jail re Death of Hoey, Cmg Ntn p13, May 4, 912

San Diego, Cal., April 22, 1912

To the “Worker”-The most notable event of the past week has been the taking of testimony in the Free Speech fight by commissioner, Mr. Harris Weinstock, appointed by Governor Johnson to come to San Diego to get the facts in regard to the complete abrogation of all laws by the police and vigilantes, and incidentally this investigation has been the means of showing as fine an example of unqualified heroism as the world has ever seen.

The governor has appointed the commissioner in response to requests from scores of people here and elsewhere who knew of the lawlessness that was being carried on here, and he had issued invitations to all who wished to come forth and testify regarding the methods of the police and the justification for the vigilantes.

It would seem that here was a chance for the lovers of “law and order” to come forth and prove what martyrs the people of San Diego had been, but with the exception of two police officials and two others, one of them a vigilante, there was no one in all the town who had the nerve to come forth and justify their actions.

The first of the “citizens” to come forth had been well loaded with whisky, and he wanted to know if the commissioner was going to take the word of a lot of “anarchists and ragamuffins who were there to make trouble.” He then wanted the commissioner to go somewhere to get the statements of “a thousand citizens who were willing to testify, but the room where the investigation was being held was no fit place for them to come.” His scheme failed, as the commissioner told him plainly that no star chamber proceedings would be held.

Detective Shepherd was also on the job, but was unable to hold it down for more than a few minutes. When he was asked one or two questions about taking men out to be slugged by the vigilantes his prompter at a side door said “Telephone message for Shepherd,” and that was the end of his talk.

But it was not the end of the record. Thomas Kilcullen and one of the other I. W. W. men at once took the stand and testified that Shepherd was telling a point blank lie in the very essence of his testimony. He had had the nerve to state that no men were beaten up and that no one was turned over to the vigilantes. But men were there to prove him to be an unqualified liar, and the proof went into the record next after Shepherd’s attempt at a whitewash.

The true heroes were seven men who had been driven from the town and clubbed, some of them to insensibility, and told that if they ever returned to San Diego they would be killed. Some of them had been driven out two or three times, some had been clubbed on the streets of rotten San Diego, all had been threatened with death if they ever returned, yet they were defying the most vicious gun men of the west to give their story of cruelty to the governor that there might be the evidence for him to give us a measure of justice and fair dealing in our fight.

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Hellraisers Journal: From the Industrial Worker: “Worse and More of It” for Free Speech in San Diego, California, 1912

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Quote EGF, re Spk FSF, ISR p618, Jan 1910—————

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday May 11, 1912
San Diego Free Speech Fight – “Worse and More of It” 

From the Spokane Industrial Worker of May 9, 1912:

San Diego FSF, Worse n More, IW p1, May 9, 1912

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Hellraisers Journal: “The Industrial Workers of the World” and “Bound for San Diego” -Songs from the Industrial Worker

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Quote Laura Payne Emerson IWW Singing, IW p5, May 1, 1912—————

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday May 7, 1912
Songs from the Front Lines of the San Diego Free Speech Fight

From the Industrial Worker of May 1, 1912:

-“Industrial Workers of the World” by Laura  Payne Emerson

IWW San Diego Jail Singing Song by LPE, IW p5, May 1, 1912

-“We’re Bound for San Diego”

Bound for San Diego, IW p2, May 1, 1912

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Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: “The Shame of San Diego” by Hartwell S. Shippey, Part II

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Quote re San Diego FSF Fire Hose Emerson, LA TX p11, Mar 11, 1912—————

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday May 4, 1912
“The Shame of San Diego” by Hartwell S. Shippey, Part II

From the International Socialist Review of May 1912:

The Shame of San Diego

by HARTWELL S. SHIPPEY

[Part II of II]

San Diego FSF Fire Hose, ISR p718, May 1912

Up to and preceding March 14, the fight was the conventional free speech fight; but on that date (Sunday) the police took the initiative and ceased booking their prisoners, though the original captives who are charged with criminal conspiracy and jail breaking are still reposing behind the bars. (The “jail breaking” consisted of supposed smashing of jail windows by prisoners who were denied food and water and were compelled to drink from the toilet.) At a meeting held in front of the city jail, outside of the proscribed district, the fire department was called upon and three fire engines played powerful streams of water upon the speakers, knocking down Mrs. Emerson, Miss McKamey, Mrs. Wightman, a religious speaker, but a courageous and high-minded woman, Miss Ruth Wightman, 44 years of age, and overturning a baby carriage, the baby being swept into the gutter by the heavy stream of water.

Mrs. Ray Holden, an innocent by stander, was clubbed over the abdomen by a guardian of the “peace,” being unconscious for two hours following. When her husband called at the police station to investigate, he was locked up and a charge of sending in false fire-alarms was preferred against him.

Egged on by the violent and incendiary press, the local real estate dealers and other capitalists and members of the M. and M. formed themselves into vigilance committees and mob law was instituted. With the connivance and open aid of the police, bands of semi-disguised ruffians, appeared nightly at the police station, from whence, at the dead of night automobile loads of prisoners, industrial unionists, trades unionists in good standing, Socialists, and some with no affiliation, were carried from twenty to thirty miles into the hills and there beaten, clubbed, kicked while helpless on the ground and left with bloody heads and bruised bodies and with threats of death should they return. But return they did, to make affidavits of their persecutions.

[Martyr Michael Hoey]

March 28 died Michael Hoey, the first martyr of the San Diego battle. An old man, was Michael, but in perfect health, having walked 140 miles to the seat of war from Imperial Valley in the space of 5½ days. Kicked in the stomach and groin by a policeman, Hoey complained continually of pain in the swelling on his side but was laughed at by the official physician, Dr. Magee, until Hoey was removed from the jail and taken to Agnew Hospital by the Free Speech League, remaining there until his death. He was cared for by Dr. Leon De Ville, a Socialist, and a devoted soldier of the revolution.

[The Funeral of Michael Hoey]

The following Saturday, March 29, sorrowing fellow-battlers of Michael Hoey’s gathered on a vacant lot where, under the pitying smile of sunny California’s blue sky, they paid their last respects to the fallen hero of labor’s struggle. Waving sadly over his bier was the red flag, the emblem of brotherhood for which Michael Hoey had offered up his life. Not an insignia of violence and hatred, as conceived in the maggot-eaten brains of hired murderers and prostituted “journalists,” but a token of peace and love. And then-ah, well is this article entitled “The Shame of San Diego”-then Harvey Sheppard, a minion of armed and brutal violence, invaded the sanctity of their victim’s funeral and wrested the banner of brotherhood from the hands of the unresisting workingman who bore it, and placed the bearer under arrest! As I write all this I am seized with a feeling that the readers will deem that my story is an exaggeration. But the official organ of the trades-unionists, the Labor Leader, and the Weekly Herald, an independent, profit-making sheet, will fully verify my tale.

Vincent St. John, secretary-treasurer of the I. W. W., has published a reward of five thousand dollars for the conviction of those who were the cause of Hoey’s death.

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Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: “The Shame of San Diego” by Hartwell S. Shippey, Part I

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Quote EGF, re Spk FSF, ISR p618, Jan 1910—————

Hellraisers Journal – Friday May 3, 1912
“The Shame of San Diego” by Hartwell S. Shippey, Part I

From the International Socialist Review of May 1912:

The Shame of San Diego

by HARTWELL S. SHIPPEY

[Part I of II]

San Diego FSF Balz, Shippey, Gue, ISR p720, May 1912

SPAT upon, cursed, reviled; the victims of lying calumny and vile vituperation; the recipients of farcical indignities on the part of the legal lackeys of an organized oligarchy; beaten, kicked, clubbed, starved by brass-bound blue-coated Cossacks and vigilantes, the scorned and despised members of the I. W. W. hold San Diego-on-the-bay in their grasp.

Laughing, only passively resistant, singing their songs of solidarity, these homeless, propertyless, countryless “hoboes,” incarcerated in the iron-bound bastiles of smiling San Diego, are clamoring not for physical comforts or luxuries, but for mental food, the works of Marx, Spencer, Renan, Rousseau and Dietzgen.

Even without definite knowledge of the rhythmic tread of the thousands marching to their rescue, these modern Crusaders, buoyed up by their indomitable idealism, secure in the virtue of their cause, have that great faith in the loyalty of their kind to feel, if they cannot know, that theirs will be the victory.

Rivaling the Coeur d’Alene and Colorado, the San Diego fight for free speech and free press will enter the pages of revolutionary history as a stupendous example of red-blooded men heroically enduring every conceivable form of “Man’s [perfect?] self-control in the face of fiendishly inhumanity to man” and preserving brutal persecution.

San Diego may congratulate herself on being the instrument by which two socially valuable bits of education have been given to the world. First the world has come to know the extremes to which an overbearing despotism will go in its efforts to crush labor; and second, it is being demonstrated that, under certain conditions, revolutionary and conservative branches of the labor movement will line up together solidly and unitedly.

For, know ye, the battle is not primarily one fought for a short hundred yards of city street, nor yet for free speech and press alone. It is, at bottom, a struggle on the part of labor for the privilege of organizing and educating its kind to the end that the products of labor shall be rendered unto labor, and that better living conditions for the toilers shall make of this modern miasma of human misery a more fit state for human beings to occupy.

What precipitated this struggle in the non-commercial city nestling on the hills above a beautiful bay with the blue mountains rising in the distance?

California will, barring intervening preventatives, hold two great fairs in 1915, one at San Francisco and one at San Diego. A great amount of labor will be employed in instituting and conducting these fairs. Organized labor, as represented by the A. F. of L., insists on having a voice in determining the rate of wages it will receive and the conditions under which it will work. Organized capital, dominated by the M. and M., declares that IT shall be the sole arbiter in reference to these questions. Organized capital insists that the open shop shall prevail in California; while organized labor realizes that the closed shop is its life-principle. Knowing that it cannot prevail against the unions when there are no idle men to take their places, the M. and M., controlling the press of the country as it does, has systematically published misinformation throughout the country to the effect that jobs are plentiful in California-to the end that jobless men may flood the labor market of the coast and imperil the power of the unions.

The chief function of the Industrial Workers of the World on the coast has been, and is, an education of the unemployed to an understanding of the interests of labor that prevents the out-of-works from acting in the selfish and cowardly role of strike-breaker or scab. The M. and M. recognizes this menace to their plans and strikes at the vitals of this education by an attempted suppression of free speech and press, these forms of freedom being imperative to the educators of the floating population.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: “The Shame of San Diego” by Hartwell S. Shippey, Part I”