Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday December 5, 1911 Terre Haute, Indiana – Eugene Debs Reacts to Confession of McNamara Brothers
From The Indianapolis News of December 4, 1911:
VIEWS OF EUGENE V. DEBS —————
Job Harriman, Socialist Candidate for Mayor of Los Angeles
Socialist Leader Says the McNamaras Do Not Belong to His Party.
(Special to The Indianapolis News.)
TERRE HAUTE, Ind., December 4.-Eugene V. Debs repudiates the assertion that the McNamaras are Socialists. Said he:
“The brothers are Democrats and Catholics, and that church is fighting the Socialist Party. We Socialists took the ground that they were to be regarded as innocent until proven guilty. We have nothing to apologize for; we never condoned dynamiting, but always condemned it. We simply tried to see that the brothers got a square deal, and especially because they had been kidnapped.
If the confessions had been held until after Tuesday [election day] the men would have been hanged. The mercy extended to them is the price paid for political effect in the election that day in Los Angeles.”
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday June 19, 1920
-Mother Jones News for May 1920, Part I
Found in Washington, D. C., Age 90 and Fit to Fight Another 40 Years
From The Washington Times of May 4, 1920:
“SISSIES”
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Mother Jones on 90th Birthday Pays Respects
to Prohibition Advocates.
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‘SUFFS” GIVE HER PAIN
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Wants to Live Forty Years More
to Fight “Wall Street Rats.”
—–
The Topeka Daily State Journal May 4, 1920
Mother Jones came to town today breezily announcing that she had just observed her ninetieth birthday and was fit for forty more years of battle against “them Wall Street sewer rats.”
It was suggested that she might live long enough to see a woman President of the United States.
“May God save us!” she said.
She looked sharply at the reporter.
[She said:]
Maybe you’re one of them fools who’s worrying about the women not getting the ballot. It won’t hurt the country any if they don’t. It’ll help. Colorado elected some good men until them women out there got to voting.
The women of today give me a pain. Whining for the ballot like sick cats! Do you find ’em at home rearing their babes in fine ideals. No, you find ’em at the club uplifting the nation smoking cigarettes or dancing the fol-de-rol, looking like naked hussies. Ask ’em why they don’t put their nightgowns on and they get insulted. Say ‘Hell’ before them like an honest woman and they faint with shame. And where d’ye find their babes? At the picture show.
Reminiscing, she lamented the passing of the era “when the America of Patrick Henry was still on the throne and people were clean and fine and you got pure whiskey.”
“That was seventy-five years ago,” she said. “None of them prohibition sissies running around taking nourishment out of the mouths of honest working men.”
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday November 20, 1918
Laredo, Texas – Charles Moyer Spews Bitter Venom at Bill Haywood
With great sadness we report and correct the half-truths and untruths spewed by Charles Moyer at Big Bill Haywood during the recent Pan American Labor Conference held at Laredo, Texas. Charles Moyer knows what it is to face the persecutions of the ruling class. He nearly lost his life in the 1913 Michigan Copper Miners strike when he was kidnapped, shot, and deported from the strike zone by company gunthugs.
From the Chicago Day Book of December 29, 1913:
He nevertheless returned to the strike zone after his release from the hospital, and was greeted by thousands of cheering strikers and their families. That this hero would now turn on his fellow workers brings deep disappointment and sadness.
No matter what your fight don’t be ladylike!
God Almighty made women
and the Rockefeller gang of thieves
made the ladies.
-Mother Jones
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Hellraisers Journal, Wednesday February 28, 1917
Chicago, Illinois – Mother Jones Jumps into Garment Strike
From The Day Book of February 27th:
MOTHER JONES URGES STRONG ACTION
IN GARMENT STRIKE
The same old Mother Jones, with her scream of hatred for the bosses who grind their workers, jumped into the garment ladies garment strike yesterday. Twice she addressed the strikers and twice the crowd of workers yelled back in answer when she shouted for more vim in the strike.
“Picket,” she screamed at the packed hall at 180 W. Washington st.,
Picket! Let them arrest you. Don’t picket in ones or twos. Go in hundreds-five hundreds of you. Get out there, and if they arrest one they’ll have to arrest all of you.
When they start taking you to cells by the hundreds, taxpayers will begin asking questions. Pretty soon they’ll find out what this is all about and your strike will be won.
The substance of Mother Jones’ talk yesterday, which is as yet unprinted, follows:
They call me a radical agitator. They call your organizers radical agitators. Let me tell you that the most radical agitators we have ever had were those who founded our government. It was founded on a mighty revolt against tyrants. Let us keep up our revolt against indecent labor conditions until we clean up the bosses in Chicago.
They served me with a copy of an injunction Sunday as I came into the city. I thought it was the Salvation Army because it was handed me on the Sabbath. Then I read the name of one of your judges and I knew it was an injunction sent in violation of the Lord’s commandments. Why I’ve had enough injunctions served on me to fill 99 coffins when I go to meet my master.
I hope that Judge Baldwin has his lap dog here because I want to give him a message to carry back. I want him to hear what I have to say about this strike that I am butting into.
All strikes are alike;
They are protest against charity,
ignorance, misery, hunger,
industrial slavery, and jails.
-Mother Jones
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Hellraisers Journal, Tuesday February 27, 1917
Chicago, Illinois – Mother Jones Arrives to Aid Garment Strikers
Mother Jones states she will aid the garment workers now on strike in this city, court injunction notwithstanding. Most of the strikers are women. Many of them have been brought before Judge Baldwin, the old injunction judge, forced to listen to his endless lectures and sentenced for up to six months in jail.
From The Pittsburgh Press:
PREPARE TO DEAL WITH “MOTHER” JONES
—–
By United Press.
Chicago, Feb. 26.-Officials anticipated activities of “Mother” Jones, aged 83, labor leader. When she arrived here from New York to participate in the garment workers’ strike, she was served with a copy of the injunction prohibiting picketing.
[She declared:]
What a lot of rot. Imagine an old judge issuing a thing like that in the twentieth century.
I shall speak in Chicago if I am asked and attend meetings too. All strikes are alike; they are a protest against charity, ignorance, misery, hunger, industrial slavery, and jails.
Miss Gertrude Barnum, who with Theodore Roosevelt, helped settle the kimona workers’ strike in 1913, has also arrived to help the strikers.
When half a million mothers
in the richest city
in the richest country in the world
feel the pinch of hunger
as they are feeling it here now
nothing can prevent trouble.
-Mother Jones
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Hellraisers Journal, Saturday February 24, 1917
New York, New York – Mothers Demand Food as Children Starve
While the nation’s kept press continues to report on the food rioting taking place in New York City and Philadelphia, they continuously emphasis the foreign birth of many of the demonstrators, some of which have indeed rioted. Seems they believe that those of foreign birth should be willing to starve and perish in a quiet and orderly manner once they come to America.
The kept press mostly ignores the deep suffering of those who have been driven to such desperate measure in order to find relief. In fact, within just the past two months of January and February, the price of staples has risen dramatically. The cost of potatoes has risen 100 percent, onions are up by 366 percent and cabbage by 212 percent. Without being able to afford meat, mothers rely on beans to nourish their growing children and that staple has increased by 100 percent.
The Day Book of Chicago is an exception to this callous coverage of human suffering, pointing out that people are actually starving in New York City. The Day Book reports on attempts at relief:
STARVING CONTINUE TO RIOT
IN NEW YORK-ACTION
New York, Feb. 23.-Food riots continued sporadically in city today as heighth of Sabbath food buying among Jewish people was reached.
Mass meeting tonight, Rutgers sq., following which women will march to meeting of Board Estimate, where Mayor Mitchell is expected to make move to relieve conditions.
Demands will be made on city authorities for appropriation of $1,000,000 to open municipal stores and another $1,000,000 for school lunches. Strong demand that steps be taken to have government take over railway systems for food transportation.
But tho’ his clarion voice is hushed,
And tho’ his harp lies mute and still,
Hill’s murdered dust is vocal yet
With words that burn and notes that thrill.
-Major Honere J. Jaxon
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Hellraisers Journal, Tuesday November 30, 1915
From The Day Book:
“Another Immortal” by Honore J. Jaxon
In yesterday’s Day Book we find a poem, written by Honore J. Jaxon, which declares Fellow Worker Joe Hill to be “Another Immortal” and begins:
Once more a glorious rebel falls,
Ensnared by knaves in legal guise.
Once more a rebel’s name is smirched
By slaves who peddle purchased lies.
But tho’ his clarion voice is hushed,
And tho’ his harp lies mute and still,
Hill’s murdered dust is vocal yet
With words that burn and notes that thrill.
These words recall the chant voiced by members of I. W. W. Local 69 and their Verdandi allies as they kept vigil throughout the long night of November 18th until sunrise the next morning when the shots rang out that ended the life of Joe Hill. There, in Salt Lake City, on the corner of Second South and Commercial Streets, where Local 69 soapboxers had rallied since its founding five years earlier, they gathered and sang the songs of Joe Hill and listened to speeches by members of the Joe Hill Defense Committee, Ed Rowan and Fred Ritter among them.
The chant began, “And Joe Hill will be shot in the morning,” and was answered by “Not if we can help it!” Then someone called out:
Something is going to happen. Joe Hillstrom will never die,
do you hear it every body, Joe Hillstrom will never die.
If Joe Hill dies, spare your tears. Erect no monument to his memory,
as the man by his example has builded himself a monument
that shall endure for all time.
-Big Jim Larkin
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Hellraisers Journal, Thursday November 11, 1915
From The New York Times: Mass Meeting for Joe Hill
From the Times of November 10th:
More Pleas for Hillstrom.
A mass meeting was held in Manhattan Lyceum, at 62 East Fourth Street, last night, to adopt measures that might induce the Governor of Utah to stay the execution of Joseph Hillstrom, who is to die in Salt Lake City on Nov. 19 for murder. Among those who addressed the meeting were Joseph Ettor, its Chairman; Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, and Jack Reed, the war correspondent. At the end it was decided to send telegrams to President Wilson and Governor Spry of Utah asking for mercy for Hillstrom, and one to the condemned man himself telling him of their love and sympathy.
—–
[Photograph added.]
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Also speaking at the meeting was Big Jim Larkin, the Irish labor organizer known as the “Dublin Giant,” who insisted that Class Solidarity could yet save the life of Fellow Worker Joe Hill. Larkin exhorted the crowd:
If Joe Hill dies, spare your tears. Erect no monument to his memory, as the man by his example has builded himself a monument that shall endure for all time. At the moment of this man’s death you will have erected a monument, not to the man but in commemoration of the weakness of class union and the failure of solidarity. But let the monument of failure and of shame be not erected. Let the case of Joseph Hillstrom go to the greatest jury of all-the jury of the workers. Let the working class pass judgment and liberate Joe Hill. If we but say the word nothing can stop us. So let us speak and act that Joe Hill may again be with us and sing for us as we march on toward industrial emancipation.
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