Tag: Socialism

Hellraisers Journal: The Independent: “The Social Democratic Party” -by Comrade Eugene V. Debs

Janet RayeEugene Victor Debs
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Quote EVD, Children of the Poor, AtR p2, Mar 17, 1900

———-

Hellraisers Journal – Friday August 24, 1900
Presidential Candidate Eugene V. Debs on Mission of Social Democratic Party

From The Independent of August 23, 1900:

The Social Democratic Party

By Eugene V. Debs,

PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE OF THE PARTY.

SDP Campaign, EVD n Job Harriman, SF Call p2, Mar 9, 1900

———-

In the Presidential election of 1892 the socialist candidate received 21,512 votes; in the election of 1896 the vote was increased to 36,275 votes [Socialist Labor Party]. The following two years witnessed an unprecedented spread of Socialist sentiment and in the Congressional and state elections of 1898 the Socialist candidates received 91,749 votes, an increase of almost 200 percent, in two years. But it must not he assumed that this vote represented the entire political strength of Socialists in the United States. In a number of states the election laws were such that the Socialist ticket could not be placed upon the official ballot, while in many districts the number of socialists was so small and they were so widely scattered that no nominations were made and the socialist vote was not polled.

The figures given are sufficient to indicate that in the United States, as in other countries. International socialism is making tremendous strides and that its seven million supporters, spread over all the belts and zones of the globe, and the most active propagandists ever known, will in the next few years be multiplied into controlling majorities in all lands which have modern industry as the basis of their civilization. Socialism being wholly a question of economic development. This will mean the end of the present capitalist competitive system and the introduction of its economic successor, the cooperative commonwealth.

The movement is international because it is born of and follows the development of the capitalist system, which in its operation is confined to no country, but by the stimulus of modern agencies of production, exchange, communication, and transportation, has overleaped all boundary lines and made the world the theater of its activities. By this process all the nations of the earth must finally be drawn into relations of industrial and commercial cooperation, as the economic basis of human brotherhood.

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Hellraisers Journal: Debs Accepts Nomination for President , Stands for Class-Conscious Socialism

Janet RayeEugene Victor Debs
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Quote EVD, Proud Socialists SDP Conv, SF Cls Strgl p4, Mar 17, 1900———-

Hellraisers Journal -Tuesday August 7, 1900
Eugene Debs Will Represent International Class-Conscious Socialism

From The Scranton Republican of August 6, 1900:

EVD Accepts Nom, Scranton Rpb p1, Aug 6, 1900

SDP Campaign, EVD n Job Harriman, SF Call p2, Mar 9, 1900—–

SPRINGFIELD, Mass., Aug. 5.-Eugene V. Debs, the presidential nominee of the Socialist Democratic party, has sent his letter of acceptance to William Bubscher, national secretary of the party in this city. Mr. Debs writes his letter from Terre Haute, Ind., under date of July 31,

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Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for May 1910, Part I: Found Speaking for Workers in Sioux City, Iowa, and Fort Wayne, Indiana

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones, Capitalism Owns, Black Hills Dly Rg p1, May 4, 1910———-

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday June 11, 1910
Mother Jones News Round-Up for May 1910, Part I:
-Found Speaking in Sioux City, Iowa, and Fort Wayne, Indiana

From The Sioux City Journal of May 2, 1910:

FIGHTING WORKERS NEEDED.
—–
Mother Jones Says Capitalism Drives
Laboring Men to Drink.

Mother Jones, Cprd, Dly Missoulian p28, May15, 1910

We don’t get the philosophy we want from the preachers, that is why we don’t go to church.

-declared Mother Jones, known country wide as a battler for the cause of the working man, during her address before a large socialistic audience at Bennett’s hall last night.

[She continued:]

Ministers never work. We need fighting workers now.

Mother Jones is well advanced in years and small in stature. In her opinion the capitalistic class owns the officials, the policemen and the ministers. She has her own theory regarding prohibition. She figures the antisaloon leagues are going at the question from the wrong side. In her opinion the factories in which the working men toil away their lives and the hardships imposed upon them by the capitalistic class drive them to drink, and it is through a radical change from this source that temperance will come.

The speaker said the womanhood of the nation is sinking slowly but gradually because girls and women are forced from home to sweatshops, where also may be found little children. When the history of this age is written, in her opinion, it will go down on the books as the most corrupt of all times. If the women would assert themselves she believes the trouble of the working man would be cleared up over night.

[Photograph added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: From the Social Democratic Herald: Acceptance Speech of Eugene Victor Debs, March 9, 1900

Janet RayeEugene Victor Debs
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Quote EVD, Proud Socialists SDP Conv, SF Cls Strgl p4, Mar 17, 1900———-

Hellraisers Journal – Monday March 26, 1900
Indianapolis, Indiana – Eugene Debs Accepts Nomination for President

From the Social Democratic Herald of March 24, 1900:

DEBS’ SPEECH OF ACCEPTANCE

[Social Democratic Party Convention
Indianapolis, March 9th]

SDP Campaign, EVD n Job Harriman, SF Call p2, Mar 9, 1900—–

Mr. Chairman and Comrades:— A few moments ago your committee advised me of the great honor conferred upon me by this convention in making me one of the standard-bearers of the party in the great campaign upon which we are now entering. Never in all of my life was I so profoundly impressed with the conviction that there is a divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will. Yesterday [March 8th, Third Day of Convention] I left this hall under the solemn belief that I could not, under any possible circumstances, accept the nomination tendered me with such enthusiastic unanimity. But with your united voices ringing in my ears, and your impassioned appeals burning and glowing in my breast, and your eyes searching the very depths of my soul, I was soon brought to realize that in your voice in behalf of socialism there was the supreme command of Duty—that I could not disregard it and decline the nomination without proving myself wholly unworthy of the confidence which inspired it.

I felt that I could not decline the nomination, tendered me under such circumstances, without being guilty of treason to the cause we all love so well; and so I come to you this afternoon, obedient to the call voice by your committee, to say that I accept your nomination, and with it all of the responsibilities that the great trust imposes; and with my heart trembling upon my lips, I thank the comrades, one and all, for the great honor your have conferred upon me. I also thank you for having nominated as my associate and colleague so true a socialist, so manly a man as Comrade Job Harriman, and let me assure you that we will stand together, side by side, in the true spirit of socialism, and joining hands, will bear aloft the conquering banner of the Social Democratic Party of America.

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Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for September 1909: Found in South Dakota Black Hills

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote John ONeill re Mother Jones Resting Place, Miners Mag p6, Sept 23, 1909———-

Hellraisers Journal – Friday October 15, 1909
Mother Jones News Round-Up for September 1909:
-Found Speaking at Labor Day Celebration in Lead, South Dakota

From The Deadwood Daily Pioneer-Times of September 1, 1909:

Ad Mother Jones Labor Day, Dwd SD Dly Pr Tx p5, Sept 1, 1909

From the Appeal to Reason of September 4, 1909:

Mother Jones Doing Good Work.

Mother Jones is speaking in Texas and New Mexico in behalf of the accused [Mexican] revolutionists and is attracting great crowds of workers. Even the papers are compelled by the force of public opinion to speak well of her work. The Houston Chronicle recently devoted a column to her full of praise. It quotes her as saying:

I hope the time will come when the lead which is now used for making bullets will be used for making type to educate the masses.

Everywhere she goes she is greeted with large and enthusiastic audiences.

—–

Note: We last found Mother in Texas, speaking in San Antonio, on August 21st.

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Hellraisers Journal: The Messenger Takes on Gompers and Congressman Byrnes of North Carolina, Stands for Socialism

Janet RayeA. Philip Randolph
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“The only radical Negro magazine in America.”
-The Messenger
———-

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday October 1, 1919
“Why Negroes Should Be Socialists” by the Editors

From The Messenger of October 1919:

Messenger, Unionizing Negro Workers, Gompers, Oct 1919

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Hellraisers Journal: Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Interview with Spokane Review: “Girl, 19, Fights in Cause of Labor”

Janet RayeElizabeth Gurley Flynn
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———

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday July 25, 1909
Spokane, Washington – Elizabeth Gurley Flynn Devoted to Downtrodden

From the Spokane Spokesman-Review of July 8, 1909:

GIRL, 19, FIGHTS IN CAUSE OF LABOR
—–
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Industrial Agitator,
Devotes Life to Downtrodden.
—–

STARTED WHEN ONLY 15
—–
Young Woman Believes in Evolution and
Socialism and Rejects Christianity.
—–

EGF, Restored, Spk Rv p7, July 9, 1909

I will devote my life to the cause of the downtrodden wage-earner.

My father was a victim of the master class and my brothers and sisters and myself have felt the pinch of poverty as the result of industrial tyranny and I am in the fight to a finish.

My sole aim in life is to do what lies in my power to right the wrongs and lighten the burdens of the laboring class.

In these words Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, not yet 19 years old, explained how she came to take to the lecture platform in the interests of the Industrial Workers of the World, an organization which conceives all capitalists to be its deadly enemies.

Only Slip of a Girl.

She is only a slip of a girl, tall, pale and slender, but she has strong convictions and a will to stick to a purpose.

Taking the lecture platform before she was 16 years old, at the completion of her high school course in New York city, she has followed her work persistently for more than three years and is regarded as one of the most effective apostles of the organization.

She has appeared in nearly every city in the country.

She sat for nearly an hour last night telling of her work and its purpose.

There was no bitterness in her words as she spoke of industrial conditions as she sees them, in fact, she smiled several times and her eyes sparkled with a kindly light.

There was no denunciation, no venom, only regret that things are not better than they are.

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Hellraisers Journal: Eugene V. Debs on First Anniversary of Social Democratic Party, “No More Compromise”

Janet RayeEugene Victor Debs
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Quote EVD, SDP Revolutionary, Sc Dem Hld p1, July 1, 1899———-

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday July 5, 1899
Zanesville, Ohio – Debs Speaks on June 16th Anniversary of S. D. P.

From the Social Democratic Herald of July 1, 1899:

THE GROWTH OF A YEAR PRESAGES SUCCESS
—–

GREETING FROM EUGENE V. DEBS
—–
Socialism and the Independent Political Movement
in Ohio-A Question of Principles and
Not Persons-No More Compromise.
—–

[Speech at Zanesville, Ohio, June 16, 1899]

EVD, Sc Dem Hld p1, July 1, 1899

The first year of the Social Democratic Party has been completed and congratulations are in order. The results are equal to our most sanguine expectations. In a twelvemonth our party has extended over nearly all the states of the Union and is now in superb condition for the great work mapped out for it. Our comrades are active and harmonious, aggressive and hopeful. They enter upon the second year with a determination that presages success.

On this Anniversary Day I salute the Social Democratic Party, and tender hearty greeting and congratulation to each comrade. As we have tramped together on the highlands and in the valleys of the past, so will we keep step together to the strains of socialism in the future. Each day adds to the strength and influence and sweep of our movement. Each day brings us nearer victory. No backward step will be taken. No retreat will be sounded. International socialism is the goal and it will be reached while the 20th century is in swaddling clothes.

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Hellraisers Journal: From The Rebel Worker: “Can the Capitalists Run the World?” (without ruin, waste and war?)

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones Raising Hell, NYT p1, Oct 6, 1916———-

Hellraisers Journal – Monday April 21, 1919
Can the Capitalists Run the World without Ruin, Waste, and War?

From the New York Rebel Worker of April 15, 1919:

CAN THE CAPITALISTS RUN THE WORLD?

Art Young, Capitalism All right so far, Liberator p19, Apr 1919

The March [April] Liberator wants to know, “Can the workers run the world?” This question tickles our risibilities and causes us to submit to an attack of the merry ha ha! It unconsciously re-echoes the capitalists’ claim that they run the world and that they are the only ones that can run the world. For a radical socialist magazine to re-echo capitalist misstatements is bad Marxian-ism-the sin of sins against the holy of holies. And then the question is preposterous in the light of contemporaneous events. What we behold, if our eye sight is not falling us, is not a world run by capitalists, but a world that is running the capitalists—running them out of existence, p. d. q. (By the way, we suggest that Art Young draw a cartoon for his new satirical weekly, “Good morning,” showing the capitalists “running” the world according to modern history.)

Then look at the way the capitalists run the world when the world is not running them. H. L. Gantt, one of New York’s foremost production engineers, says the present system is only 15 per cent efficient. There’s some running for you-running to waste-85 per cent. Will the Liberator please repeat its question again? We enjoy anything that suggests a collosal joke, such as the capitalists’ assumption that they are the efficient world runners par excellence. Ask Gantt; he knows.

Now, for a change, let us take seriously this question of running the world. Let us state frankly that if the workers ever run the world the way the capitalists are running it, we’ll start a bloodly counter-revolution against them! And we’ll inflict an antiproltetarian mismanagement dictatorship on them; by God, so we will. We want the world to be run, not ruined or wasted.

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Hellraisers Journal: From the Appeal to Reason: Your Liberties Will Go With ‘Gene Debs When He Goes to Prison

Janet RayeEugene Victor Debs
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Quote EVD Slave is My Brother, AtR p1, May 1, 1909———-

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday March 30, 1919
“…while Debs is in prison, you are not free, no honest man is free…”

From the Appeal to Reason of March 29, 1919:

Banner Headline EVD to Go to Prison, AtR p1, Mar 29, 1919
—–

The decision of the United States Supreme Court upholding the prison sentence passed upon Eugene V. Debs by a lower federal court came as a distinct shock to several millions of the American people. It is true that the hopes of these people were not pinned to the slender faith that Debs would find a just refuge in this high court of the powers that be. While the Supreme Court frequently sets aside laws with an astonishing alacrity, they are such laws as are obnoxious to privileged interests rather than to plain citizens. Setting aside the Espionage Act, especially to remove the threat of prison from Debs the spokesman of labor, was the last thing the Supreme Court could have been rationally expected to do.

The reply of the Appeal to the Supreme court is simply this: Whatever you can or cannot do, whatever you will or will not do, in the case of Debs makes little difference in the actual and final settlement of the issue. Where ignorance and prejudice are blissfully enthroned, ’tis folly to look for wisdom and tolerance. If you had it in your power and province to make Debs a free man by a mere effortless nod of the head, we know well that you would not do so. Politically you may safely defy any storm of public opinion, because you are secure in your arbitrary life jobs. But there are other branches of the government that depend upon the suffrage of the people and that must, unless madness has seized them and they are led to listen to the most stupid of counsels, place themselves responsive to the manifested will of public opinion. We believe that President Wilson and certain members of his official family are really inclined to favor action that a sufficient sentiment of the people, clearly expressed, may demand. That is to say, we believe that they are wise enough to listen to the people when the people talk loud enough and that they are not so wrapped in reactionary stupidity and prejudice that they will obdurately refuse to follow a course that demonstrates itself to be popular.

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