Socialist Red Special of 1908

Pettibone was hounded to his death by Taft.
-Eugene Victor Debs
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Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday October 28, 1908
St. Louis, Missouri – Eugene Debs and Mother Jones Speak to 10,000

From the St Louis Post-Dispatch of October 24, 1908:

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Eugene V. Debs, Socialistic candidate for the presidency of the United States, speaking at the First Regiment Armory Friday night [October 23rd], tore into Taft and Bryan to the huge delight of an audience of 6000 people, presumably Socialists, or at least those with Socialistic tendencies, and when he finished his 50-minute speech he retired bathed in perspiration, trembling with exhaustion and tottering from weakness.

He went to the arms of his devoted wife, who hurried him between rows of young militiamen away from his shouting, applauding admirers to a room in the back of the hall, where he descended a ladder to a carriage that was awaiting him in an alley and was driven to his private car and to bed. He was thoroughly exhausted.

Debs arrived in St. Louis at 6:15 Thursday night [Oct 22nd], several minutes late, and his private car was switched out of the Union Station and to a sidetrack along Clark avenue east of Eighteenth street.

Glimpse of Debs Impossible.

On Clark avenue several hundred Socialists with a banner waited to see him, but he was so carefully guarded that his admirers did not get even a glimpse of his car, and after waiting for some time they departed.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Socialist in St. Louis: Debs Speaks to 6000 Inside Armory While Mother Jones Speaks to 4000 Outside” →

I am loyally yours for a damn fine fight.
-Mother Jones

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Hellraisers Journal, Saturday December 16, 1916
Mother Jones Found in Washington D. C. During November

We pause to review the activities of Mother Jones, that fearless champion of the cause of working-class men, women and children in their struggle for industrial freedom. We first find her remembered for her work on behalf of the children of the mills when she led them on the March of the Mill Children during the summer of 1903.

From the Iowa Bayard Advocate of November 2, 1916:

TENEMENT CHILDREN WILL
VISIT WILSON
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Their Welcome Will Be Unlike That
Once Given at Oyster Bay.
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New York, Oct. 28.-Fifty mothers of New York’s east side, with their children, who have been emancipated from sweatshops by the enactment of

the child labor law, are going to Shadow Lawn, Saturday, in person to thank President Wilson.

A “kind lady,” who prefers to conceal her identity, has donated a special car to be attached to one of the trains bearing pilgrims from New York to Shadow Lawn to hear the president’s address on “Wilson day.” The children will carry armsful of artificial flowers which they used to make in the factories, before their emancipation.

No such pilgrimage of the children of the poor has been attempted since the one when Theodore Roosevelt was president of the United States and a carload of children from the Pennsylvania coal mines [textile mills] journeyed to the summer capital at Oyster Bay to petition for a national child labor law.

“Mother Jones,” who conducted that excursion, told recently in public of the refusal of the guards at Oyster Bay to allow the children to pass the outer gate, and of their return home to wait 14 years for a Woodrow Wilson to set them free.

[Photograph added.]

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts & Doings of Mother Jones for November 1916: Pays Visit to President Wilson with Labor Delegation” →