Tag: U. S. Department of Justice

Hellraisers Journal: Eugene Debs Indicted, States: “I can now be the candidate of the capitalistic class, for the penitentiary”

Janet RayeEugene Victor Debs
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Quote US DA re Editors, AtR p1, Nov 30, 1912—————

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday December 1, 1912
Terre Haute, Indiana – Debs Responds to Indictment by Federal Grand Jury

From the Richmond Evening Item (Indiana) of November 26, 1912:

DEBS DECLARES WORLD WOULD
STAND AGHAST
———-

IF WHOLE TRUTH WERE DISCLOSED ABOUT
CONDITIONS AT LEAVENWORTH PRISON.
———-

(By the Associated Press.)

Terre Haute, Ind., Nov. 26.-Eugene V. Debs, indicted by the federal grand jury at Girard, Kas., Saturday, appeared at his home Monday, refuting the report that he had started for Ft. Scott, Kas., on hearing of the indictment. In speaking of the case, Debs said:

These indictments are based on an infamous lie. There was never any attempt on the part of the officers of The Appeal to Reason to induce any witness to leave anywhere. I have recently been the candidate of the working classes for the presidency. I suppose I can now be the candidate of the capitalistic class, for the penitentiary. Were the whole truth told about conditions in the Ft. Leavenworth prison, the world would stand agast.

[Emphasis added.]

From The Coming Nation of November 30, 1912:

AN INCREDIBLE STORY

By A. M. Simons

THAT within two weeks after receiving the votes of almost a million citizens for the office of president of the United States, Eugene V. Debs should be indicted by federal grand jury for obstructing the orderly process of the court by alleged tampering with a witness is almost incredible…..

EVD at AtR Desk, Cmg Ntn p2, Nov 30, 1912

When the Appeal turned the light on Leavenworth penitentiary it pulled a bone away from a pack of hungry office-holding curs who sprang in hydrophobic rage upon the persons who had disturbed their foul feast. When to this was added the exposure of the corruption of the federal courts of the nation and especially of the southwest, another allied pack was started into full cry for vengeance. It was easy for these to get the backing of the great powers of capitalism, and all the branches of class government…..

Fred Warren, Cmg Ntn p2, Nov 30, 1912

In their blind baffled rage the conspirators played their last card. A servile grand jury indicted Eugene V. Debs, Fred D. Warren and J. I. Sheppard for attempted tampering with a witness in the case based upon the Leavenworth exposure…..

The object of this assault is to cripple the publications against which it is directed. Throughout this fight the Appeal has helped to carry the COMING NATION. In this desperate crisis no extra weight can be carried. Yet if the news goes out that the first effect of the assault was to compel the abandonment of the COMING NATION that will have all the effect of a victory for the enemy. They will have restricted and choked the voice of revolt by just that much. They will have strangled in youth what promises to be a powerful champion when full grown…..

[Emphasis added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: Editorial from the Baltimore Sun: “Belated Justice”-at Long Last for IWW Philadelphia Longshoreman

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Ralph Chaplin, Prison Reveille, Lv New Era p2, Apr 4, 1919—————

Hellraisers Journal –Friday October 20, 1922
Fellow Workers, Fletcher, Nef and Walsh, Offered Belated Justice

From the Baltimore Sun of October 18, 1922:

BELATED JUSTICE.

IWW Local No 8 MTW Button, Feb 1917

Exactly six months ago it was announced by the Department of Justice that the cases of four Philadelphia longshoremen, imprisoned under the Espionage act, were being subjected to individual review. At that time it was admitted by the Administration that evidence was not available to disprove the assertions of many men of reputation, the former United States District Attorney in Philadelphia for one, that their war records were blameless. In particular their work in the responsible duty of loading munitions for overseas was shown to be of the most patriotic character.

On Monday three of these men were offered liberty on condition that “they will be law abiding in the future.” Those three, whose names should be well known to SUN readers, are Walter T. Nef, former secretary-treasurer of the Marine Transport Workers of Philadelphia; John J. Walsh and Benjamin H. Fletcher, members of the same union. All are members of the I. W. W. Three Swedish workmen, likewise said to be members of this organization, were also offered liberty-to be deported.

When we remember the number of political prisoners still in jail we see no reason to congratulate the Government on this belated act of justice. Imprisoned under a Democratic administration and held in jail by its Republican successor, they are free at last-after all of the few bomb-plotters and German spies ever convicted under the Espionage act have been given liberty. Apparently nothing illegal was ever proved against these men. Simply because they were members of the I. W. W. they were held five years in prison. And at the end Mr. Daugherty, over-busy with injunctions, found six months necessary to “review their cases.”

Considering the whole ignoble history of the Espionage act, it is perhaps scarcely surprising that the Department of Justice could not let them go without that final insult about being good in future.

—————

Solidarity w MTW of Philly, Messenger p396, Apr 1922

[Photographs and emphasis added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: “The Men I Left at Leavenworth” by Pierce C. Wetter (Formerly Class War Prisoner, Inmate 13179), Part II

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote BBH IWW w Drops of Blood, BDB, Sept 27, 1919—————

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday October 14, 1922
“The Men I Left at Leavenworth” by Pierce C. Wetter, Part II

From The Survey Graphic Number of October 1922:

IWW Class War Prisoners, Men Left at Leavenworth by Wetter, Survey p29, Oct 1922

[Part II of II.]

IWW Class War Prisoners, Men Left at Leavenworth by Wetter, T, Survey p29, Oct 1922wo of our men-Caesar Tabib and Edward Quigley—are suffering from tuberculosis aggravated if not contracted in the Sacramento jail where they spent a year before they were brought to trial. Because of their physical condition, these two men were prevailed on by the rest of us to make application for release, for “clemency,” but their application was coldly refused by the Department of Justice. Apparently they are not yet near enough to death to make it “safe” to release them.

Another of our number, William Weyh, was kept on the “rock-pile” last December until the exposure resulted in severe illness, hemorrhages—twelve in a single day. He was so emaciated as to be scarcely recognizable. It was at this point that a prison official said to him: “I don’t believe you have another ten hours to live if you stay in this place. Drop your I. W. W. affiliations, and you can go out of here as soon as you please.” Weyh’s answer was: “No. I’ll die first.” We had been urging him to make application for release and he at last consented, and the authorities agreed, apparently preferring that he should die outside the walls. He stipulated, however, in writing, that “I have not wavered in my adherence to the I. W. W. and its principles.”

There is not space here to go further down the list of these fifty-two men; they all have the same splendid spirit, the same high courage, the same sense of the crucial human value of solidarity.

AGAIN and again I am asked by those who depend only upon newspapers for their information, why we refuse to ask for “clemency”; and last July,  when a petition for general amnesty (that is, for unconditional release for all charged with the same “offence”) signed by some three hundred thousand names from all over the country, was presented to President Harding by a delegation of representative men and women, the President expressed “surprise” about this refusal on our part, and of course at the same time went through with that same ancient formula—”No one advocating the overthrow of the government by violence will be pardoned.” This phrase is continually used by officials, apparently in lieu of any reason they can give for our continued imprisonment.

The truth of the matter is, not one of these fifty-two men was ever even indicted on the preposterous charges brought against them in the press during war-time hysteria, such as the receipt of German gold, and being spies. They are in prison now solely for expression of opinion, and none of those opinions have anything to do with the overthrow of any government in any way—they are merely opinions against war. Note also that these men are confined under the Espionage Act only, though it is now no longer in force. In lieu of any legal reason for their continued incarceration, Attorney General Daugherty even felt obliged to resort to giving out false information in reply to inquiries made on this subject by the Federal Council of Churches (see March 11, 1922 issue Information Service Research Department, Commission on Church and Social Service, F. C. C. C. A., room 604, 105 East 22 Street, New York).

Now, to revert to the President’s “surprise” that we are unwilling to crawl out, I don’t for a moment doubt his genuineness. It is entirely likely that it really is very difficult for him to understand such a thing. Let me quote from the Open Letter since prepared by these fifty-two men and sent a month ago not only to the President, but also to all Cabinet officials, Congressmen, the Governors of the forty-eight states, and to editors and others throughout the country. (I shall be very glad to send a copy to any one who will write me in care of the SURVEY.)

We are not criminals and are not in prison because we committed any crimes or conspired to commit them. From the beginning, justice has been denied us and the truth of our case withheld from the consideration of the public….In the press, the I. W. W. is like the Mexican in the movie show; he is always the villain….We are in prison now solely for exercising our constitutional right of free speech…. If it is a crime to exercise the right for which our fathers laid down their lives, we have no apology to make.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: “The Men I Left at Leavenworth” by Pierce C. Wetter (Formerly Class War Prisoner, Inmate 13179), Part II” →

Hellraisers Journal: Oklahoma Leader: Imprisonment of Ricardo Flores Magón Continues “To Our Everlasting Shame”

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Freedom Ricardo Flores Magon, ed, Speech re Prisoners of Texas, May 31, 1914—————

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday June 21, 1922
Ricardo Flores Magón Denied Clemency, Remains at Leavenworth

Editorial from the Oklahoma Leader of June 15, 1922:

TO OUR EVERLASTING SHAME
———-

Ricardo Flores Magon 14596 Leavenworth Pen, Nov 3, 1919
Ricardo Flores Magon, was transferred from McNeil Prison
to Leavenworth, arriving there on November 3, 1919

The breadth and depth of the ever-widening and deepening gulf which separates this government from the lofty ideals which glorified the minds of the lovers of human liberty who founded it, was never so clearly illustrated than by the recent refusal of the so-called department of justice to extended clemency to Ricardo Flores Magon.

Magon, Mexican patriot, poet and idealist, fled from Mexico when the tyrant and usurper Porfirio Diaz, always popular in this country, sought to take his life because he raised his voice and pen in behalf of his oppressed countrymen. Across the Rio Grande, safe, as he thought, from the power of his persecutor, and in a country which in times past had offered asylum to those who were exiled by liberty hating tyrants, Magon sought to arouse his countrymen to rebel and repudiate the government which was traducing the spirit of liberty and trampling the Mexican constitution in the mire.

Because of his activity in this respect, and at the instance of the secret service agents of Diaz, Magon was arrested and indicted in federal courts for inciting revolution against a friendly nation, and was convicted and given a long sentence twenty years in Leavenworth. Meantime the little flame he had fearlessly kindled burst into a refining conflagration Diaz, the bloody tyrant and usurper, abdicated his throne and escaped to a foreign land, never daring to return to the country he had impoverished and betrayed.

But notwithstanding the goal for which Magon yielded his liberty was won, the usurper removed and his regime destroyed, a servant of the people placed in office, order restored and constitutional government instituted Ricardo Flores Magon is still a poor and miserable prisoner in a stone cell in a penitentiary, the property of the United States, a nation conceived in justice and born in the name of Liberty. More than that, Magon is going blind and unless he is shortly released will never see the result of his humble labor, so fearlessly performed, to achieve his country’s redemption.

The Mexican ambassador, the legislatures of the states of Yucatan and Coahuila de Zeragoza and the Mexican Federation of Labor have memorialized the alleged department of justice at Washington for clemency for Magon, and for his fellow prisoner, Libraro Rivera, all to no avail. The capitalist government at Washington is taking sweet revenge upon the man, who was most responsible for the exile of Diaz, the dear friend of the capitalists of this country.

—————

[Photograph and emphasis added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: Justice Dept. Considers Amnesty for Nef, Fletcher, Walsh and Doree of Philadelphia Marine Transport Union

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Matilda Robbins ed, Ben Fletcher, p132 PC—————

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday April 22, 1922
Washington, D. C. –  Amnesty Possible for Fletcher, Nef, Walsh and Doree

From the Baltimore Sun of April 20, 1922:

HdLn Amnesty Move for Fletcher Nef Walsh Doree, Blt Sun p13, Apr 20, 1922

(From The Sun Bureau.)

Washington, April 19.-In the face of a renewed effort, led by the American Civil Liberties’ Union, to secure the pardon or commutation of sentences of 113 so-called political prisoners who still are in Federal prisons, it was learned today that the Department of Justice has no thought of recommending amnesty for the group. It is willing, however, to take up individual cases in the usual way, it is said. Apparently only Presidential intervention can accomplish general amnesty, and of that there is no sign. 

Four cases are now concretely before the department-those of Walter T. Nef, Ben Fletcher, John J. Walsh and Edward F. Doree. They were members of the Marine Transport Workers’ Union, of Philadelphia, which is affiliated with the I. W. W. They were sentenced to prison by Judge Landis, in Chicago, because of their activity in the I. W. W., although, it is asserted by their friends, they had been wholly loyal to the Government in their work at Philadelphia.

No Evidence Yet Of Disloyalty.

Investigation made thus far by the Department of Justice has failed to disprove contentions of champions of Nef, Fletcher, Walsh and Doree that the Transport Workers’ Union in Philadelphia, which Nef, dominated and which embraced practically all of the dock workers in Philadelphia, performed its work with complete loyalty to the Government.

Dr. Frederick Edgerton, of the University of Pennsylvania, a champion of the men, has said that the Philadelphia dock workers did better than those anywhere else. 

Dr. Frederick Edgerton has said that enormous quantities of munitions were shipped from Philadelphia during the war without a single accident at the dock or on any ship loaded at the dock; that many accidents occurred at other ports, and ships loaded elsewhere were taken to Philadelphia and reloaded. He also asserted that there was no strike in 1917 among the Philadelphia longshoremen, although strikes occurred elsewhere; that Nef used his influence against a strike, and also intervened against strikes in Boston and Baltimore; that many of the members of the Philadelphia union entered the service and that the members of the union bought $115,000 of Liberty bonds.

Thinks Record Should Count.

All of this, according to Dr. Edgerton and others, should outweight any significance that may attach to the activity of the four men in the central organization of the I. W. W., which led to their indictment and conviction with a large number of others, under the Espionage act, on charges of conspiracy. And it seems that Government officials, so far as they have gone into these cases, have no evidence that the men were not helpful to the Government at Philadelphia or that they were guilty of any overt acts elsewhere.

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Hellraisers Journal: Dramatic Story of Eugene Debs’ Unguarded Visit to Washington to See Attorney General

Janet RayeEugene Victor Debs
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Quote EVD if Crime to oppose bloodshed, AtR p1, Oct 23, 1920—————

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday April 5, 1921
Atlanta Federal Penitentiary – Debs Returns After Unguarded Visit to Washington

From the Appeal to Reason of April 2, 1921:

Dramatic Story of Debs’ Sensational Visit
to Attorney General Daugherty

BY SAMUEL CASTLETON 
Personal Attorney for Eugene V. Debs
and member of Debs Amnesty Lobby.

By Telegraph to the Appeal.

EVD Returns to Pen ed crpd, Perth Amboy NJ Eve Ns p12, Rck Isl IL Arg p15, Apr 1, 1921

Atlanta, Ga.—In spite of the mysterious secrecy that shrouded Gene Debs’ dramatic departure for Washington to hold his conference with the United States Attorney General, a leak was sprung from the effort to suppress all information about his movements when it became rumored a few hours after his departure that he had been pardoned and had left the city.

I immediately telegraphed to the Appeal’s Amnesty Lobby in Washington for Verification at the department of Justice. The rumor also had reached the city editors of the three Atlanta newspapers and reporters went scurrying to the federal penitentiary in taxi cabs and to the office of the Warden. Some of them even went at midnight to the Federal prison farm on the McDonough road ten miles from the outskirts of the city, over almost impassable highways. All communication with the prison officials was completely shut off and it was impossible to obtain either a verification or denial of the rumor. An error of the Western Union Telegraph Company caused my message to Washington to miscarry and I was unable to learn anything from that source.

The next day the Attorney General issued a statement relating to the conference between Debs and himself. Then it became known in Atlanta that the rumor of the day before was partially based on facts and that Gene had been extended an invitation by the Attorney General to clarify misunderstandings.

I was certain that this administration, well as the preceding one, knew that Gene was adamant and uncompromising in his principles and ideals and that the administration did not summon him for the purpose of the decantation of his convictions or retraction of his views.

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Hellraisers Journal: Letter to Upton Sinclair from John L. Murphy, Sacrament IWW Class War Prisoner at Leavenworth

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Frank Little re Guts, Wobbly by RC p208, Chg July 1917———-

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday March 13, 1921
Leavenworth Federal Prison – Letter from Fellow Worker John L. Murphy

From the Appeal to Reason of March 12, 1921:

The White Terror at Work

Ad, Story of a Patriot by Upton Sinclair, AtR p3, Nov 13, 1920

Recently I [Upton Sinclair] published a novel [100%-A Story of a Patriot] dealing with the activities of spies and secret agents of big business. Our gracious Postoffice Department does not permit me to mention the name of this novel, otherwise this contribution will be considered as an advertisement. But here is a letter which has just come to me, and which you might take to be a chapter out of the aforesaid unnameable novel. Read it, and see how very proud of your country it makes you. I do not know the writer of this letter, but the accent of truth is in every word of his story, and it what I have learned of hundreds of other cases, makes me quite ready to believe what he tells. If you know any 100 per cent American patriots in your neighborhood, take them this letter and try to get them to read it.

[Letter from John L. Murphy, No. 13586]

IWW Sacramento Class War Prisoner John L Murphy, Leavenworth, Jan 25, 1919

Leavenworth, Kans., Feb. 13, 1921.

Mr. Upton Sinclair, Pasadena, Cal.
Dear Comrade: 

Below I am sending you the facts of my case.

I was born in Boston the boasted, cradle of Liberty. I am a working man, not a leech. In 1918 while working at Olympia, Wash., I wrote a letter to Chris Luber at Sacramento, Cal. He was an I. W. W. He was in jail at the time of my writing. This I did not know at the time. In fact he had been in jail almost two months before I wrote my first letter. My letter was the ordinary kind exchanged among workers—working conditions, etc. This letter was not delivered to Luber. The Department of Justice got it. They answered it and forged Luber’s name to it. This letter was indeed very bitter against the government. I thought my friend Luber had gone “bugs.” How was I to know that the Department of Justice agent was writing to me? They had his name forged to the letter, and I did not know he was in jail at the time. They wound up by asking me to “Pull off” something violent, just anything would do.

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Hellraisers Journal: From the New York Liberator: Salsedo Dead-Sacco and Vanzetti in Danger -by Robert Minor

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote EGF, re Sacco at Dedham Jail, Oct 1920, Rebel Girl p304———-

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday March 2, 1921
Salsedo Dead in New York City; Sacco and Vanzetti in Danger in Massachusetts

From the New York Liberator of March 1921:

One Dead-Two in Danger

By Robert Minor

Cover by Robert Minor, Are They Doomed by Art Shields, Ad Lbtr Mar 1921
-by Art Shields
-cover design by Robert Minor

OUT of a window high in an office building in Park Row, a man’s body took the long drop to the street below. Early morning newspaper distributors and a policeman smoothed back the black hair on the head that rolled loosely. There were the fine forehead of olive skin, the black eyes and aquiline nose of an Italian.

The body had fallen from a window that gaped open in the half-dark of dawn, fourteen stories above. Investigation of the fourteenth floor showed that this was a window of a secret prison kept by the agents of the United States Department of Justice.

Do you remember “Palmer’s Revolution?” It was dated for May 1st, 1920. The Italian workman’s plunge to death on May 3rd from Palmer’s secret prison was its only casualty.

The secret jail, hidden away in an office building in the heart of the business district, was the headquarters for “Palmer’s Revolution.” In that resort, away from the restraints of regular prisons, Palmer’s agents handled “reds.” Andrea Salsedo was one of the working men that was being handled there. There was another man in the prison, Roberto Elia, a friend of the dead man. Elia had seen that Salsedo’s head and face were a mass of bruises. Salsedo had been taken out each day three times, he said, to be questioned and to be beaten so as to make him give the answers that were wanted. Elia said that he heard Salsedo’s screams while he was being tortured, and saw the agents examine Salsedo’s eyes and finger nails to learn whether the beating was going so far as to endanger life. When Elia went to sleep at night, the agents pointed to the open window, saying: “Don’t forget this is the fourteenth floor.”

In the morning Elia was told that Salsedo had “jumped out of the window.” The newspaper men and city policemen and strangers came, asking questions. The pile of shapeless flesh in the pool of blood below the window of the secret prison was embarrassing to Palmer and to Flynn of the Secret Service. Even the capitalist press stirred a little with the tang of the mystery. Did the man jump and kill himself, or was he thrown from the window? Was he thrown out alive? Or was a dead body dropped from the window to conceal the manner in which death had taken place?

The newspapers were shut off at last. The body was quickly buried without any coroner’s inquest. Roberto Elia was the only one who knew anything-except Palmer’s men. He was quickly deported to Italy, where he disappeared from sight. Then the Italian population of various American industrial districts began to make trouble. Agitators began to make protest meetings.

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Hellraisers Journal: Butte Daily Bulletin: At Matewan, W. V: Baldwin-Felts Gunmen “have at last met their just deserts.”

Janet RayeBattle of Blair Mountain of 1921
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Quote Mother Jones, Powers of Privilege ed, Ab Chp III———-

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday May 23, 1920
Matewan, West Virginia – Gunthug Brothers Invade the Wrong Town

From The Butte Daily Bulletin of May 22, 1920:

Matewan, Felts Bros Got What Needed, BDB p1, May 22, 1920———-

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Hellraisers Journal: Winthrop D. Lane for The Survey: “Uncle Sam: Jailer” – IWWs in Kansas Hell Holes-Insanity & Death

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Ralph Chaplin, When we claim our Mother Earth, Leaves 1917———-

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday September 11, 1919
I. W. W.’s Languish in Kansas Hell Holes, Part V & VI of Series by W. D. Lane

From The Survey of September 6, 1919:

IWW KS, Uncle Sam Jailer by WD Lane, Survey p806, Sept 6, 1919
—–
IWW KS, Investigation by WD Lane, Survey p806, Sept 6, 1919
—–

[Parts V & VI of VI.]

V

Several times in this account I have referred to the jails described as having been “chosen” by the United States government for the confinement of prisoners awaiting trial. Let us see what justification there is for the use of this word.

The thirty-four men held under the Wichita indictment were originally taken into custody November 21, 1917. These men were all engaged in the oil industry in Kansas. They were, for the most part, young men, some of them married, some not. Judging from their names-Anderson, Boyd, Gordon, Forbes, Stark, Sapper, Barr, Poe, Gossard, Davis, etc.—many of them were of American or Allied extraction; some foreign names were among them, but only five, so far as I learned, were accused of being enemy aliens. The indictment against them charged violation of the espionage law, the food control law and the selective service law.

On March 10, 1918, a motion to quash this indictment was filed by their attorneys. No ruling on this motion was ever made. The attorneys stood ready, therefore, to go to trial on September 24, the day set. To their surprise, a new indictment was returned on that very day. This was drawn on lines similar to the previous Chicago indictment, which had resulted in sending nearly a hundred I. W. W.’s to prison for terms varying from a few days to twenty years. The attorneys could not at once accept trial on this new indictment, and so they were granted until March 10, 1919, in which to plead.

The men who, in September, had already spent ten months in jail awaiting trial, thus faced another five and a half months of confinement. Miss Lowe, their attorney, undertook to find as comfortable jails as possible, in which, she hoped, they might be allowed to spend the winter. They were then in the Sedgwick county jail, having been transferred to it for the trial. Sheriff Sprout, at Hutchinson, agreed to take twelve of the men, and the sheriff in Winfield, where there was a modern, sanitary jail, agreed to take sixteen. Thinking that she had thus arranged accommodations for twenty-eight, Miss Lowe reported her action to the United States district attorney, Fred Robertson, who was prosecuting the case. Mr. Robertson turned a deaf ear to her plea. In vain did she dwell upon the physical condition of the men and the consequences of spending another five months amid overcrowding and filth. Mr. Robertson said that prisoners had no voice in choosing their places of incarceration, and declared.that he intended to ask Judge John C. Pollock, judge of the United States district court for Kansas, to have all of the men placed in the Wyandotte county jail in Kansas City. This was one of the worst in the state.

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