I have no country to fight for;
my country is the earth,
and I am a citizen of the world.
-Eugene V. Debs
Hellraisers Journal, Sunday April 1, 1917
From The Masses: “The Way of Ancient Rome” by Art Young
Detail 1:
Detail 2:
Hellraisers Journal, Thursday February 8, 1917
Mother Jones Found in Denver During Month of January
From The Denver Post of January 1, 1917:
‘MOTHER’ JONES HERE TO SEE ‘HER BOYS’
OF THE MINERS’ UNION
—–
“Mother” Jones, leader of labor, is in Denver. She states that she came here to spend New Year with her “boys,” meaning the members of the United Mine Workers of America. She is fresh from active participation in the strike of garment workers and street car employes in New York, she stated that the returns of the recent national election showed that John P. White had been re-elected president of the miners over John H. Walker of Illinois.
“Mother” Jones says that she is not here to take any part in the factional differences of the officers of the Colorado district. She is of the opinion that there will be a satisfactory adjustment before long and that “everything will come out all right.” She is stopping at the Oxford hotel. She will leave Denver tomorrow night.
———-
Hellraisers Journal, Sunday January 7, 1917
From The Masses: Thoughts on War from Becker and Untermeyer
“Now will you enlist?” by Maurice Becker
It is a privilege and a duty even by sacrifice
to advance our priceless cause.
-John R Lawson
Hellraisers Journal, Friday January 5, 1917
From The Masses: FW Flynn on Behalf of Minnesota Defendants
The following article was obviously written for The Masses by Fellow Worker Flynn, I. W. W. organizer, before the plea agreement was reached in the cases of the strikers and organizers charged with first degree murder in connection with the strike of iron miners up on the Mesabi Range of northern Minnesota. The article is nevertheless valuable for the information given regarding the defenses campaign along with a short history regarding “criminal conspiracy” as related to labor struggles, past and present. Tomorrow’s Hellraisers will present an article from this month’s edition of the International Socialist Review, written by Harrison George, which claims the plea agreement as a victory for the strikers and for the cause of labor in general.
From The Masses of January 1917:
The Minnesota Trials
Many of our friends fail to appreciate the magnitude of the Minnesota strike, involving 15,000 miners and the United States Steel Corporation, and are beguiling themselves into belief that the murder cases pending are not serious.
Mrs. Masonovitch [Masonovich], the woman prisoner, wife of one of the strikers, is a particularly pathetic and appealing figure, a young and beautiful Montenegrin woman, mother of five children, one a nursing baby. She speaks little English, does not understand the proceedings, looks frightened and bewildered and clings frantically to her children. If the parents should be convicted these little ones would be practically orphans. The older ones, twelve and eight, bright, nice boys, tell very clearly what happened on July 3, the night of the tragedy, how the deputies came to arrest their father, how one struck their mother and threw her to the floor, how the fight then started in which Mr. Myron was killed, and how Nick Dillon, the notorious gunman, shot and killed Thos. Ladvalla [Tomi Ladvalla-WE NEVER FORGET], a bystander. If the episode was not connected with a strike, it would be comparatively easy to clear these poor people.
You that never done nothin’
But build to destroy
You play with my world
Like it’s your little toy
You put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther
When the fast bullets fly
-Bob Dylan
Hellraisers Journal, Sunday December 17, 1916
From The Masses: “The Instigators” by Art Young
Thomas Paine from Rights of Man:
As war is the system of Government on the old construction, the animosity which Nations reciprocally entertain, is nothing more than what the policy of their Governments excites, to keep up the spirit of the system. Each Government accuses the other of perfidy, intrigue, and ambition, as a means of heating the imagination of their respective Nations, and incensing them to hostilities. Man is not the enemy of man, but through the medium of a false system of Government. Instead, therefore, of exclaiming against the ambition of Kings, the exclamation should be directed against the principle of such Governments; and instead of seeking to reform the individual, the wisdom of a Nation should apply itself to reform the system.
Hellraisers Journal, Wednesday November 29, 1916
Minnesota’s Mesabi Iron Range – Under the Rule of the Steel Trust
Harrison George, in an article for the November 25th edition of the Duluth Labor World, describes how the Steel Trust came to rule the Mesabi Iron Range of northern Minnesota. This is same Steel Trust which steadfastly refused to bargain with its employees and now seeks to frame-up organizers for the Industrial Workers of the World who have stood with the iron miners and their families in their struggle for justice.
Harrison George says of this plot:
This is the firm that backs with its grimy millions, the persecution of brave men; the firm who desires the conviction on a framed-up murder charge of Carlo Tresca, Sam Scarlett and Joe Schmidt-organisers,-who brought their loyalty to labor into the miner’s strike and who are guilty of no other crime.
From The Labor World of November 25, 1916:
STEEL TRUST GRABS RANGE
WITHOUT COST
—–By HARRISON GEORGE.
Special Investigator for The Labor World.
Hellraisers Journal, Tuesday November 7, 1916
New York, New York – Frank P. Walsh on Bayonne Strike
From The Labor World of November 4, 1916:
BAYONNE TROUBLE FAULT OF OIL CO. SAYS FRANK WALSH
—–
NEW YORK, Nov. 2.-“Wherever there is a big Rockefeller interest, there you find brutal slave driving methods in the treatment of underpaid workers,” declared Frank P. Walsh, chairman of the Committee on Industrial Relations, in New York, at the height of the Bayonne strike.
[Mr. Walsh continued:]
The most dangerous as well as brutal feature of the Rockefeller treatment of labor, is the close control that the Rockefeller concerns gain over the police and other public authorities. With the mayor of Bayonne confessing that he is a hired attorney for the Rockefeller interests, and with the police department using its full force, and hundreds of special deputies [deputized company gunthugs] to beat and kill the revolting strikers, the American public has its latest demonstration of what Rockefellerism means.
You that never done nothin’
But build to destroy
You play with my world
Like it’s your own little toy
You put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther
When the fast bullets fly
-Bob Dylan
Hellraisers Journal, Sunday October 15, 1916
The War in Europe by Boardman Robinson
From The Masses of October 1916:
Detail:
Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: “Victory” in Europe by Boardman Robinson for The Masses”
By the Gods, it shall not be!
The bloated, beastly Steel Trust pirates
shall not murder our innocent
comrades and fellow-workers!
-Eugene Victor Debs
Hellraisers Journal, Monday October 2, 1916
From the International Socialist Review: Support Mesabi Range Rebels!
From the current edition of the Review, Comrade and Fellow Worker Eugene Debs calls upon unionists and socialists everywhere to support the Minnesota iron ore strikers and I. W. W. organizers who are now under indictment for first-degree murder:
Murder in the First Degree
By EUGENE V. DEBS
TRUE bills against four strikers and one woman and against Carlo Tresca and two other leaders of the striking iron workers on the Mesabe Range in Minnesota charging them with murder in the first degree, have been returned by a Steel Trust grand jury.
Not one of the accused is guilty. On the contrary, they are all absolutely innocent of the crime charged against them.
It is another case of punishing the workers for the crimes committed against them by their masters. Let us briefly review the facts in this extraordinary strike on the Mesabe Range.
Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Eugene Debs Protests Frame-Up of Organizers & Strikers on Mesabi Range”
Onward, Christian soldiers! Rip and tear and smite!
Let the gentle Jesus bless your dynamite.
Splinter skulls with shrapnel, fertilize the sod;
Folks who do not speak your tongue deserve the curse of God.
Hellraisers Journal, Tuesday September 19, 1916
Views on Preparedness and War from Robinson and Sandburg
From this month’s edition of The Masses:
