Tag: San Diego Free Speech Fight of 1912

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.

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Hellraisers Journal: Joe Hill Speaks on Behalf of California Free Speech League at San Francisco Building Trades Temple

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Quote Joe Hill, General Strike, Workers Awaken, LRSB Oct 1919—————

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday April 13, 1912
San Francisco, California – Joe Hill Speaks on Conditions in San Diego Jail

From the Spokane Industrial Worker of April 11, 1912:

FREE SPEECH DOINGS IN CALIFORNIA

(By Caroline Nelson).

IWW San Deigo FSF, re UE of San Francisco, IW p2, Apr 11, 1912The free speech protest in Building Trades hall Last Sunday [March 31] was a great success; $175 were collected to carry on the fight in San Diego.

Austin Lewis delivered one of his masterly addresses. He showed that street speaking of the I. W. W.’s was an absolute necessity. Without street speaking the migratory worker could not be reached, because he would not go to any hall. Without street speaking there would have been no organization among the lumber workers and section laborers, and therefore no strikes or fights for better conditions. In street speaking pamphlets, circulars and propaganda sheets are given out and find their way to camps where they do their work.

The last speaker was a released speaker from San Diego, Fellow Worker Hill. He explained that he had just come from the hospitality of the M. & M. [Merchants and Manufacturers Association] in San Diego, that owing to that hospitality he was physically unable to make any lengthy speech. He looked as though he had just risen from a sick bed. His face was pale and pinched. Dressed in overalls he bespoke the low standard of living that our modern civilization imposes upon our most intelligent workers; for he spoke more intelligently and eloquently than many a widely heralded upper class jaw smith, who has had nothing to do all his life but to wag his tongue and to look up references. He nailed the widely circulated lie that the upper class have bought out all the workers who have any intelligence, and that every intelligent man can get work.

Fellow Worker told how they practiced sabotage in San Diego in the jail in the form of building battle ships, as they called it, by hammering on the iron doors. The court was located on the second story over the jail and terrible noise made by the hungry prisoners prevented them from holding a session in the upper region. They sent word down to the prisoners to be quiet or they couldn’t hold court. The prisoners’ replied that it was their intention that no court should be held until they were fed.

Hill brought down the house when he proposed that the army of fifty thousand unemployed of San Francisco move on the San Diego, to free the men now in jail there which the M. & M. intend to railroad to the pen. The San Diego jail and bull pen are full now. They are running up the expenses of the tax-payers fearfully and an army of invaders would scare them stiff, and prevent the sending of the ten men now on trial to the penitentiary. But unless something was done quickly these men would be sent over the road; for there is nothing our ruling class doesn’t dare when it comes to strike terror to the hearts of the workers. They violate every law on the statute books, and trample in the dust every human right that is supposed to be sacred. They hold no law sacred except when it protects them in their piracy.

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Hellraisers Journal: Michael Hoey, Martyr of San Diego Free Speech Fight, Funeral Oration by Laura Payne Emerson

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Quote Laura Payne Emerson Make This Hell a Heaven, Ind Pnr p12, Mar 1921—————

Hellraisers Journal –  Friday April 12, 1912
Farewell Tribute for Michael Hoey, Martyr of San Diego Free Speech Fight

From the Spokane Industrial Worker of April 11, 1912:

IWW San Diego FSF, Michael Hoey Martyr, IW p1, Apr 11, 1912

——-

MICHAEL HOEY–MARTYR

(By Laura Payne Emerson).

Fellow Workers: I count it an honor to be accorded the privilege of paying a tribute, on this occasion, to our martyred dead fellow-worker, Michael Hoey. He was a soldier in the war for industrial freedom. Early in life he joined the forces that were making for better conditions for his class, the working class, and to the day when he fell mortally wounded, and was carried from the field of battle, never did he falter.

It was in San Diego, Cal. A fight for free speech was on. An infamous ordinance had been passed by the common council denying the natural and constitutional right of free speech and public assembly to certain citizens. Many brave souls had undertaken to test the odious law by attempting to speak on the streets, and had met the policeman’s club and the jail. Among those on the fire line in that contest was Michael Hoey, a man sixty-three years of age. When told by a friend that he was too old to enlist in such a fight, and that he should leave it to younger and more vigorous men, he replied:

I have nothing to give but myself and life is not worth living
when all liberty is gone.

That night, amid a cheering crowd, his fine face appeared for a moment, while his voice was raised in a last appeal to his class to stand firm for human rights! Then!! Burly guardians of the law snatched him down, and with kicks and clubs, jail and starvation, silenced his voice forever.

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Hellraisers Journal: From the Appeal to Reason: Michael Hoey, Murdered by Jailers, Martyr of San Diego Free Speech Fight

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

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday April 9, 1912
San Diego, California – Fellow Worker Michael Hoey Murdered by Brutal Jailers

From the Appeal to Reason of April 6, 1912:

LABOR WAR IN WEST
———-

By Telegraph to the Appeal.

HdLn IWW San Diego FSF, Death of Michael Hoey, Sac Str p3, Mar 28, 1912
The Sacramento Star
March 28, 1912

San Diego, Cal., March 31.-Michael Hoey died at Agnes hospital Thursday as a result of being kicked in the stomach and groin while a prisoner. The coroner’s jury refused to allow attending physicians and witnesses to testify.

The police interfered with a monster funeral parade, arresting the standard bearers and confiscating a red flag. There is great public indignation.

Fred H. Moore, attorney for the Free Speech league, published a letter to the chief of police warning him that kidnaping, deporting, beating up and horrible brutality of unbooked men must cease. Many men have been beaten insensible in cells. Joseph F. Tierman, union reporter, was slugged. Automobiles are employed in the fight against the working men and men are beaten and kicked and left twenty-five miles in the hills.

Monster mass meeting was held by trade unionists, Socialists, Industrial Workers last night and speakers were madly cheered. Moore introduced resolutions to boycott merchants who assist the masters in the fight. Fifty thousand unemployed have left San Francisco to join in the fight. Two hundred and fifty dollars was collected at the mass meeting held at Labor Temple at Los Angeles. To the present the fight has cost the city $30,000. Judge Sloan presides over the superior court and prejudiced grand jurors are admitted, among them Adam Witcher, who advised beating the speakers with pick handles and the tarring and feathering of Industrial Workers. Judge Sloan admits the findings of this jury as right, although contrary to the rulings of the supreme court in a similar case. He admits this is not justice, but says it is law.

Prisoners in the city jail are denied food and water until forced to drink from the toilet. Stool pigeon of the capitalists destroyed jail property and charged the offense to free speech prisoners. Of this there is positive proof. 

The M. and M. association met in Grant hotel in December. Harrison Gray Otis being present, and decided to annihilate the Industrial Workers and Socialists in San Diego at all hazards.

The district attorney refuses to prosecute the police on the charge of murder, though backed by many affidavits. An effort will be made to have the superior court compel prosecution.

Two hundred men have just left Los Angeles for San Diego and more are coming later. A monster mass meeting will be held at Frisco labor temple tonight, some of the speakers being Fremont Adler [Fremont Older?], Austin Lewis, and J. E. Morgan. It is the first time in the history of the movement that Socialists, Industrial Workers and trade unionists are united, realizing their common cause against the effort to exterminate laborism on the coast. The capitalist press predicts conditions similar to those in England. Three hundred men, women and children have so far been arrested.

Funds are needed to carry on the fight, and should be sent to the treasurer of Free Speech League, San Diego, Cal.

H. S. SHIPPLEY

[Newsclip and emphasis added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: Industrial Worker: Police Turn Fire Houses on San Diego Protest Meeting as Laura Emerson Speaks

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Among the women soaked were
Mrs. Laura Emerson and Juanita McKamey,
both of whom are under the ban of the police.
–Los Angeles Times, March 11, 1912
—————

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday March 23, 1912
San Diego, California – Fellow Worker Stumpy Reports on Vicious Police Action

From the Spokane Industrial Worker of March 21, 1912:

SAN DIEGO IS ABOUT ALL IN
Vicious Actions  Show Fight Is About Won
———-

San Diego FSF, LPE Juanita McKamey Soaked, LA Tx p
Los Angeles Times
March 11, 1912

To the “Worker:”-The fifth week of the free speech fight here has made a seething cauldron of human passions in this would-be exposition burg of fleas and oppression.

The M. and M. has raised a fund of five million dollars to crush organized labor in general and the I. W. W. in particular on the Pacific coast, and they have selected San Diego as the point of attack, though they are not overlooking a chance to make trouble in various other places. There has been 216 arrests to date for street speaking, and over 200 of these are in jail now and intend to stay there until free speech is established. More men are coming in every day and speaking in the restricted district. The city and county jails here are full and 70 men have been sent to the jails of other counties. Tomorrow the city will start building a stockade where unknown amounts of rock are to be broken by I. W. W.’s.

We have the support of all classes of labor here in this fight. The carpenters union has levied a fine of ten dollars a day on any of its members who will work on the city stockade. All others are equally as loyal.

Two evenings ago an enthusiastic meeting was held in front of the U. S. Grant Hotel (just outside the sacred ground) and the aristocratic guests of that ten-dollar-a-day dump of snobbery were thoroughly acquainted with San Diego’s infamy.

Although we were clearly outside the forbidden ground the bosses could not forgive the telling of the truth. At the street meeting last evening a crippled man bought ten “Workers” of a newsboy for free distribution, when the brave cop who wears badge No. 10 struck him a terrific blow and valiantly landed the poor cripple on his back.

Today, March 10, has seen the climax of police brutality and the patience of the citizens has been tested almost to the breaking point. In the morning a meeting was held in front of the county jail to cheer the boys who are behind the bars. Not a policeman was in sight, and the meeting was very orderly and soon adjourned to the city jail to give the boys there a cheer and a song.

Here the scene was different. It was truly representative of Russia-or San Diego. More than a score of uniformed police and plain clothes thugs were lined up n the sidewalk in front of the jail. Behind a heavily barred gate, with blanched face, stood the infamous captain of police, Sehon, directing the work of brutality of his minions.

The meeting had proceeded but a few minutes when the police were ordered to turn the hose on the crowd. In this they were no respecters of persons. Hundreds of men were drenched and knocked down by the force of more than 100 pounds pressure per square inch. One man was knocked down by a police man before the hose was turned on him. Four young girls were nearly drowned before they could get out of the way. A woman past sixty years of age was struck on the side of the head by the stream of water and nearly paralyzed. Mrs. Emerson, who was speaking at the time, had the box washed from under her feet, and she and Mrs. Wightman were soaked [also soaked was Juanita McKamey, the Joan of Arc of San Diego]. A man named Patterson put an American flag over his shoulders and stepped into the street, but even this was no protection, as one bull tore it from his shoulders and another hustled him off to jail. Later Patterson’s father tried to take him some dry clothes but the brave bulls denied him that privilege. A woman who was going from a neighbors to her own home was drenched and driven by the stream as long as she was in range. A man and his wife who were going home from church with their baby in a buggy were struck and the baby nearly drowned before they could get away.

Many other instances of brutality are reported, but they did not come under my personal notice.

Aside from the wholly unwarranted action of the police nothing was more noticeable than the tone of subdued anger among the thousands of spectators. The brave (?) actions of the noble (?) police continued for nearly three hours, and every minute of the time the crowd could have been led to crush the entire police force by the sheer weight of numbers, but the I. W. W.’s were everywhere counseling peace. Only for this cool-headed action it is not doubted that the streets of San Diego would tonight be drenched in blood that would take many streams of water to wash away.

The police have but one more card to play.

The daily papers have followed Otis’ lead and are now counselling the murder of the boys in jail. The San Diego Tribune of the 5th inst., has the following works in an editorial: “Why are the tax payers of San Diego compelled to endure this imposition? Simply because the law which these lawbreakers flout prevents the citizens of San Diego from taking the impudent outlaws away from the police and hanging them or shooting them! This would end the trouble in half an hour.” Will they do it?

There is a bunch of the worst gun men of the West here, just “hanging around.” But these men do not come into a trouble zone by accident.

Two men were arrested for speaking tonight. The police have tried a new method. Heretofore there have been twelve to twenty bulls at the corner of 5th and E streets to make arrests, but last night there was but one when the speaking started. In a few minutes, however, 25 bulls came charging down the street at a run, cracking all the heads they could reach. Many were severely injured. One man was knocked insensible and had to be carried from the street. A woman was beaten until her hair was clotted with blood. She, too, was carried from the street. And this is the U. S.! The Mexican line should have been run north of San Diego, then we could have laid the crimes of the police to “Barbarous Mexico” instead of to the Christianized Otis gang.

STUMPY.

—————

[Newsclip and emphasis added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: From the Spokane Industrial Worker: “The Shame of San Diego!” -Fight for Free Speech Continues

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

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday March 2, 1912
San Diego, California – I. W. W. Free Speech Fight Continues Despite Mass Arrests

From the Spokane Industrial Worker of February 29, 1912:

San Diego FSF Shame, IW p4, Feb 29, 1912

For nearly three months eighty-five business men of San Diego communicated with Captain Sehon and Chief of Police Wilson, secretly holding meetings in the U. S. Grant hotel, in an endeavor to find ways and means to gradually regulate the supreme law of the United States out of existence, namely, the law of FREE SPEECH and PUBLIC ASSEMBLY as granted to the people in the Constitution of the United States.

The Real Conspirators.

Here is the way these business men criminals finally proceeded to act:

They made their tools, the city council, pass an ordinance regulating street speaking under provisions of which they could move persons from the place where they had been wont to hold meetings. They thought that by moving the speakers some they gradually could move them more, and finally could move or regulate them clear out of town, and if necessary clear into old Mexico. They said that that was where the agitators belong.

But while the workers were willing to stand for reasonable regulations, they, like the Steel Trust, do not want strangulation, so on February 8 the dance started.

Workers Unite in Parade.

A protest parade was held in which I. W. W. members, Socialists, Single Taxers, Trade Unionists and unorganized and unattached workers joined hands and the line of march was arranged in a masterly manner.

We marched down to the sacred territory and then divided from four abreast into two sections, so that two could march together upon the sidewalk in accordance with Johnny Law. The forty-one persons who had decided to stand for their rights-rights which existed prior to governments-then mounted the box, only to be taken as are rabbits in a ferret drive, one by one, by those eunuch minded barbarians on the San Diego police force.

San Diego FSF, Parade, IW p4, Feb 29, 1912—–

Conspiracy Charged Against “Agitators.”

The M. and M. criminals, whose every move is illegal because of their actions in restraint of trade, had their judicial flunkeys go the limit and place a charge of conspiracy against 48 members of the army that is fighting to uphold freedom of speech. Bonds were set at $1,500 in order to secure those who dared to advocate that the workers gain more of the good things of life through organization.

Instead of discouraging the fighters this action increased the determination to win and results were that arrests for street speaking have occurred almost nightly since the judicial outrage.

Rebels Show the Proper Spirit. 

The police do not know how to deal with people who seem anxious to break into jail and the spectacle of agitators drawing lots to see who shall have the honor has them worried. When the brutalities of the police inside the jail was made public the indignation rose so high that a change had to be made. So the attempt to discourage new recruits by refusing those who were arrested even the common necessities of life and by herding 45 men in one small room failed dismally and made matters worse for the asinine authorities.

One hundred and sixty men and women are in jail up to date (February 20). The majority of these are of the I. W. W. The presence of the women who are class conscious enough to fight right on the firing line is a great factor in the fight.

Idiotic Statements of Dist. Attorney Utley.

The lack of useful work for the supernumeraries is shown by District Attorney Utley’s statements as reported by the San Diego Herald.

“It is the duty of the county to attend to these vandals, barbarians, tramps, hoboes, I. W. W.’s, and such trash, and I am going to attend to it.

“There’s going to be no street speaking, if I can prevent it, in the main part of the city. Some of ’em might tell the truth.

“We will starve them into submission by keeping them in the jug until they are tame. They won’t feel like telling the truth about us any more.”

We Workers Will Win.

Well! Well! Time will tell. We intend to keep up this fight and keep on telling the truth to our fellow workers until the last parasite is forced to leave our backs. So hop to it, kind friend of the wig and gown, and help to fan the flames of discontent.

When the workers are awakened so they deal equitably as man to man they will have no need of delving into the pasts for precedent or listening to ponderous, musty, meaningless Latin phrases from the lips of the satyr-sensed satellites of the capitalist class.

As for stopping us we are the useful members of society and you the useless. The useful persists and the useless decays and dies. The river must seawards despite you.

San Diego’s Salubrious Climate.

We extend a cordial invitation to all who have not visited this city to come and feast upon our salubrious climate and to make the acquaintance of those staunch upholders of working class justice-SEHON, WILSON and UTLEY.

Come on the cushions
Ride up on top;
Stick to the brakebeams;
Let nothing stop
Come in great numbers;
This we beseech:
Help San Diego
To win FREE SPEECH!

PRESS COMMITTEE,
Local 13, I. W. W. 

—————

[Emphasis added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: San Diego Fights IWW Rebels; Ninety Men and Women Locked Behind the Bars of City’s Filthy Jail

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

Hellraisers Journal – Friday February 23, 1912
San Diego – I. W. W. Rebels Locked Behind Bars for Speaking in Public

From the Spokane Industrial Worker of February 22, 1912:

IWW San Diego FSF, HdLn Jailed, IW p, Feb 22, 1912

—–

Appeal from IWW San Diego FSF, IW p4, Feb 22, 1912

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Hellraisers Journal: From Pearson’s Magazine: Courtenay Lemon on Free Speech in the U. S. of A.; Praises I. W. W.

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You ought to be out raising hell.
This is the fighting age.
Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hellraisers Journal, Monday December 11, 1916
From Pearson’s Magazine: Courtenay Lemon on Free Speech

In a long article in this month’s edition of Pearson’s, we find Courtenay Lemon discussing the state of free speech as that sacred constitutional guarantee is applied at the present time in the United States of America. The Industrial Workers of the World comes in for special mention by Mr. Lemon:

IWW & FSFs, C Lemon, Pearsons, Dec 1916

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