Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday May 15, 1912 Girard, Kansas – Eugene Debs on Shipping Special Edition of the Appeal
From The Coming Nation of May 11, 1912 -April 22nd, Shipping the Special Judiciary Edition of April 27th:
A view of part of the great record-breaking edition of the Appeal to Reason, at the railroad station, Girard, Kansas
The photographer’s lens was not wide enough to catch all of the piles of the special Judiciary Edition of the Appeal to Reason which were delivered to one single train. The total edition was over 3,000,000.
From the Appeal to Reason of May 4, 1912:
April 22, 1912, at Girard
BY EUGENE V. DEBS.
SITTING at my desk at the APPEAL office, I hear the whirl and roar of the mammoth press. The Judicial Edition is racing through it-20,000 copies an hour. “Old Chap,” the veteran pressman, is pitted against his own record.
At the rate of a quarter of a million a day it will take twelve days to turn out this marvelous edition the greatest ever issued by any paper, in any nation, since the printing art was born.
“Old Chap” and the boys are standing by the racing, roaring old leviathan to win the wager that “she will not make it” and she does not miss a throb of her swift-beating heart in all the twenty-four hours of the day and night.
All about the APPEAL today the boys and girls are tense with trial-“drinking in the breath of their own swiftness”-making the record that is to stand against the world.
There is no night in Girard this week-there is but one long day-the day of Wayland, Warren and Phifer’s defiance to Pollock, Hook and Bone-the day of the APPEAL triumphant over the criminal courts of capitalist America.
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IT is now ten-thirty in the morning. I am near the depot platform and I gaze upon a mountain raised by human hands and human hearts and human brains-in sweet and sympathetic social alliance-the like of which the eyes of man never saw before.
Piled high enough to hide the depot and extending far enough to tower like a range of mountain peaks, the APPEAL,-a thousand pouches and a million copies-is awaiting transportation. And this is but the first installment of the fabulous edition.
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, 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.
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.
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.
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday March 31, 1912 Lawrence, Massachusetts – Child Workers Must Pay Boss for Drink of Water
From The Coming Nation of March 30, 1912:
“Do you have to pay for drinking water in the mills?” “Yes. Every two weeks I pay ten cents.” (Excerpt from the statement of a child worker in the mills at Lawrence before the House Committee on Rules in Washington.) – Kansas City Post.
Hellraisers Journal – Thursday March 7, 1912 “The Lawrence Strike” by John Sloan & Photographs from Scene of Revolt
From The Coming Nation of March 2, 1912:
-page 4: “The Lawrence Strike” by John Sloan
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-pages 5-6, 12: Rock Fenn on Unity, Class Solidarity and Revolt
Revolt of the Textile Workers
How the Working People of all Nationalities in Lawrence Have United in Class Solidarity and Revolt Against Exploitation
By Rock Fenn
FROM the home of the striker at Lawrence to the office beyond the canal is a long step. On the one side are tenements reeking with the effluvia of families jammed into dispiriting rooms; on the other side a few well-fed bosses in great brick buildings a hundred yards long, with wide windows one above the other, three, four, five or six stories high.
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—————Day after day waiting for news from the entombed miners-Photo by A. P. Risser
Carrying out one of the 85 victims of the explosion-Photo by Paul Thompson, N. Y.
General view of the town of Jed, W. Va. Scene of the Disaster-Paul Thompson, N. Y.
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