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Hellraisers Journal – Friday April 3, 1914
Artwork by Sloan, Glintenkamp, and Young Depicts Cossacks and Unemployed
From The Masses of April 1914:
“Shall We Have a State Constabulary in New York?” by John Sloan
Discussing Pennsylvania Cossacks by H. J. Glintenkamp
Mill Owner Wants Three-Year-Old to Replace Father by Art Young
“Calling the Christian Bluff [Concerning Unemployment]” by John Sloan
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Hellraisers Journal – Saturday March 7, 1914
New York City – Police Attack and Arrest Unemployed Men Seeking Shelter
Some 200 unemployed men were arrested during a blizzard on the night of March 4th as they sought shelter at St. Alphonsus’ Catholic Church. Frank Tannenbaum is being held on a felony charge with his bail fixed at $5,000. The others could be bailed out at the cost of $1000 each, were that amount available. The men are being held at four different prison: the Tombs, Jefferson Market, West 57th Street, and West 53rd Street.
At the Jefferson Market prison, the men are being kept in a large pen without cots and with only eight blankets for 50 men. Conditions at West 57th are much the same. At the Tombs and the West 53rd Street prison, the men have been crowded five and six to cell, and are being kept in unsanitary conditions described as vile.
Mary Heaton Vorse explains how the arrests came about:
Frank Tannenbaum, [Frank Strawn] Hamilton and [Charles] Plunkett had asked Father Schneider of St. Alphonsus if they might have shelter in his church. Father Schneider had refused on the ground that the Blessed Sacrament of the Body of our Lord was exposed and it would be sacrilege to allow men to sleep in the church at such a time.
The crowd of unemployed had not understood their instruction to wait outside and had started going inside to sit down in the back seats. A police officer told Tannenbaum to go into the church and bring the men out. Tannenbaum obeyed. The doors were closed and locked on him as soon as he went inside. The arrest followed before he could speak to the men. The papers had been told that the Catholic Church was going to stand for no nonsense and there was a battery of reporters and cameramen ready for the trouble.
It so happens that the newly formed Labor Defense Conference was holding its first meeting at the home of Mary Heaton Vorse and her husband, Joe O’Brien, the same night that the men were arrested. The Conference was organized by Big Bill Haywood of the Industrial Workers of World, and has attracted what Vorse calls “a strangely assorted group.” All of them are committed to defending workers, whether currently employed or not.
In the middle of the meeting, Heber Blankenhorn entered the room, and said, “We have your first case for you. Frank Tannenbaum and a crowd of two hundred men have just been arrested down at St. Alphonsus’.”
The Labor Defense Conference launched into action immediately. Justus Sheffield was contacted and will act as the attorney for men.
Note: Newsclip from New York Tribune of March 5, 1914
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Hellraisers Journal – Saturday May 4, 1912
“The Shame of San Diego” by Hartwell S. Shippey, Part II
From the International Socialist Review of May 1912:
The Shame of San Diego
by HARTWELL S. SHIPPEY
[Part II of II]
Up to and preceding March 14, the fight was the conventional free speech fight; but on that date (Sunday) the police took the initiative and ceased booking their prisoners, though the original captives who are charged with criminal conspiracy and jail breaking are still reposing behind the bars. (The “jail breaking” consisted of supposed smashing of jail windows by prisoners who were denied food and water and were compelled to drink from the toilet.) At a meeting held in front of the city jail, outside of the proscribed district, the fire department was called upon and three fire engines played powerful streams of water upon the speakers, knocking down Mrs. Emerson, Miss McKamey, Mrs. Wightman, a religious speaker, but a courageous and high-minded woman, Miss Ruth Wightman, 44 years of age, and overturning a baby carriage, the baby being swept into the gutter by the heavy stream of water.
Mrs. Ray Holden, an innocent by stander, was clubbed over the abdomen by a guardian of the “peace,” being unconscious for two hours following. When her husband called at the police station to investigate, he was locked up and a charge of sending in false fire-alarms was preferred against him.
Egged on by the violent and incendiary press, the local real estate dealers and other capitalists and members of the M. and M. formed themselves into vigilance committees and mob law was instituted. With the connivance and open aid of the police, bands of semi-disguised ruffians, appeared nightly at the police station, from whence, at the dead of night automobile loads of prisoners, industrial unionists, trades unionists in good standing, Socialists, and some with no affiliation, were carried from twenty to thirty miles into the hills and there beaten, clubbed, kicked while helpless on the ground and left with bloody heads and bruised bodies and with threats of death should they return. But return they did, to make affidavits of their persecutions.
[Martyr Michael Hoey]
March 28 died Michael Hoey, the first martyr of the San Diego battle. An old man, was Michael, but in perfect health, having walked 140 miles to the seat of war from Imperial Valley in the space of 5½ days. Kicked in the stomach and groin by a policeman, Hoey complained continually of pain in the swelling on his side but was laughed at by the official physician, Dr. Magee, until Hoey was removed from the jail and taken to Agnew Hospital by the Free Speech League, remaining there until his death. He was cared for by Dr. Leon De Ville, a Socialist, and a devoted soldier of the revolution.
[The Funeral of Michael Hoey]
The following Saturday, March 29, sorrowing fellow-battlers of Michael Hoey’s gathered on a vacant lot where, under the pitying smile of sunny California’s blue sky, they paid their last respects to the fallen hero of labor’s struggle. Waving sadly over his bier was the red flag, the emblem of brotherhood for which Michael Hoey had offered up his life. Not an insignia of violence and hatred, as conceived in the maggot-eaten brains of hired murderers and prostituted “journalists,” but a token of peace and love. And then-ah, well is this article entitled “The Shame of San Diego”-then Harvey Sheppard, a minion of armed and brutal violence, invaded the sanctity of their victim’s funeral and wrested the banner of brotherhood from the hands of the unresisting workingman who bore it, and placed the bearer under arrest! As I write all this I am seized with a feeling that the readers will deem that my story is an exaggeration. But the official organ of the trades-unionists, the Labor Leader, and the Weekly Herald, an independent, profit-making sheet, will fully verify my tale.
Vincent St. John, secretary-treasurer of the I. W. W., has published a reward of five thousand dollars for the conviction of those who were the cause of Hoey’s death.
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Hellraisers Journal – Friday May 3, 1912
“The Shame of San Diego” by Hartwell S. Shippey, Part I
From the International Socialist Review of May 1912:
The Shame of San Diego
by HARTWELL S. SHIPPEY
[Part I of II]
SPAT upon, cursed, reviled; the victims of lying calumny and vile vituperation; the recipients of farcical indignities on the part of the legal lackeys of an organized oligarchy; beaten, kicked, clubbed, starved by brass-bound blue-coated Cossacks and vigilantes, the scorned and despised members of the I. W. W. hold San Diego-on-the-bay in their grasp.
Laughing, only passively resistant, singing their songs of solidarity, these homeless, propertyless, countryless “hoboes,” incarcerated in the iron-bound bastiles of smiling San Diego, are clamoring not for physical comforts or luxuries, but for mental food, the works of Marx, Spencer, Renan, Rousseau and Dietzgen.
Even without definite knowledge of the rhythmic tread of the thousands marching to their rescue, these modern Crusaders, buoyed up by their indomitable idealism, secure in the virtue of their cause, have that great faith in the loyalty of their kind to feel, if they cannot know, that theirs will be the victory.
Rivaling the Coeur d’Alene and Colorado, the San Diego fight for free speech and free press will enter the pages of revolutionary history as a stupendous example of red-blooded men heroically enduring every conceivable form of “Man’s [perfect?] self-control in the face of fiendishly inhumanity to man” and preserving brutal persecution.
San Diego may congratulate herself on being the instrument by which two socially valuable bits of education have been given to the world. First the world has come to know the extremes to which an overbearing despotism will go in its efforts to crush labor; and second, it is being demonstrated that, under certain conditions, revolutionary and conservative branches of the labor movement will line up together solidly and unitedly.
For, know ye, the battle is not primarily one fought for a short hundred yards of city street, nor yet for free speech and press alone. It is, at bottom, a struggle on the part of labor for the privilege of organizing and educating its kind to the end that the products of labor shall be rendered unto labor, and that better living conditions for the toilers shall make of this modern miasma of human misery a more fit state for human beings to occupy.
What precipitated this struggle in the non-commercial city nestling on the hills above a beautiful bay with the blue mountains rising in the distance?
California will, barring intervening preventatives, hold two great fairs in 1915, one at San Francisco and one at San Diego. A great amount of labor will be employed in instituting and conducting these fairs. Organized labor, as represented by the A. F. of L., insists on having a voice in determining the rate of wages it will receive and the conditions under which it will work. Organized capital, dominated by the M. and M., declares that IT shall be the sole arbiter in reference to these questions. Organized capital insists that the open shop shall prevail in California; while organized labor realizes that the closed shop is its life-principle. Knowing that it cannot prevail against the unions when there are no idle men to take their places, the M. and M., controlling the press of the country as it does, has systematically published misinformation throughout the country to the effect that jobs are plentiful in California-to the end that jobless men may flood the labor market of the coast and imperil the power of the unions.
The chief function of the Industrial Workers of the World on the coast has been, and is, an education of the unemployed to an understanding of the interests of labor that prevents the out-of-works from acting in the selfish and cowardly role of strike-breaker or scab. The M. and M. recognizes this menace to their plans and strikes at the vitals of this education by an attempted suppression of free speech and press, these forms of freedom being imperative to the educators of the floating population.
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Hellraisers Journal – Monday January 15, 1912
Mother Jones News Round-Up for December 1911, Part I
Found in Berkeley, California; Learns of Confession of McNamara Brothers
From the Richmond (California) Daily Independent of December 1, 1911:
MOTHER JONES TO SPEAK.
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Mother Jones, the mother of the working men, will speak at the Building Trades Temple on Fourth and Macdonald avenue, Friday evening at 8:15. Her subject will be “McNamara Defense.” The public is cordially invited to attend.
[Photograph added.]
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From the Richmond Daily Independent of December 2,1911:
MCNAMARA CONFESSION
CREATES COMMOTION
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At First Held Ridiculous Here. But Mother Jones
Meeting at Trades Hall Is Postponed–Many
See Political Move in Los Angeles Election.
———-The blood-red extra of the Oakland Tribune last evening set the Richmond world ablaze. Its headlines, in letters inches long, read “J. B. McNamara Pleads Guilty,” “Admits Slaying Haggerty,” and “Brother Admit Dynamiting.” The Trib had little else save that it claimed that J. B. McNamara would be given life imprisonment and that his brother, J. J. McNamara under agreement with state, would receive fifteen years.
[…..]
The union labor forces of Richmond and the sympathizers with the McNamaras found themselves in queer position with the appearance of the evening papers. Mother Jones was announced to address the Richmond people at the Building Trades Council hall on Fourth street on the matter of aiding in the defense of the accused men.
Quite a body of people assembled to listen to the famous woman, but after a short wait, it was announced by the officials of the council that Mother Jones would not be present, as she was waiting in Berkeley for later and more reliable information from the southern city. There was nothing else to be done but postpone the meeting, and it was done. At a later date, should tho conditions at Los Angeles be different than reported last night, Mother Jones may appear here…..
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Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday November 16, 1921
Cartoon by Boardman Robinson: Labor Leaders and Unemployment
From The Liberator of November 1921:
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Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday June 7, 1921
Boardman Robinson on the Unemployment Crisis
From The Liberator of June 1921:
[Details:]
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Hellraisers Journal – Monday August 8, 1910
The Employer-The Unemployed-The Man on the Job
From the Spokane Industrial Worker of August 6, 1910:
[Text:]
The boss works not at all. The unemployed works not at all. The worker works 10 hours per day. The worker produces a luxurious living for the boss, an existence for the unemployed, and a bare living for himself. What’s the matter with letting the unemployed go to work, making the boss go to work, and having the worker working one-third as long? If we organize and cut the working hours the boss will have to hire the unemployed. That will reduce competition among the workers for a job and give them power to later force the boss to cease being a boss and become a worker.
Don’t Mourn, Organize!
-Joe Hill
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Hellraisers Journal – Saturday December 26, 1908
National Elections Pass into History; Hardships Continue for Toilers
From the Charleston Labor Argus of December 24, 1908:
Trade Union Are Toilers Only Hope
—–Only Protection and Safety for the Working
Masses is Organized Labor
-Politicians Are But Tools of the Trusts.
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Now that another national contest has, passed into history and the working people can take a sober view of the economic situation, the Cleveland Citizen calls attention to the fact that the labor problem was not solved on Nov. 3, 1908.
While the unsuccessful politicians are now in the dumps and the victors are celebrating their acquaintance of the spoils of office, the workingmen are confronted by exactly the the same conditions that they were to face the day before election.
The problem of unemployment for some and overwork for others, the evils for cheap women and child labor, the introduction of labor-displacing machinery, the threats of wage reductions, the attacks of union smashing open shoppers and similiar questions are here today just as they were here last week, and they must and considered for the reason that they cannot lie dodged.
Since there is no likelihood that the victorious politicians will establish the millennium week after next or next year or the year following, what are the working people going to do for their own betterment? Sit on their haunches and suck their thumbs. Go into a trance and give up the few advantages that they still possess?
We believe not. Down in their hearts the workingmen and women know that their only protection and safety lies in organizing-in combining the toilers into trade unions for offensive and defensive purposes.
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Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday December 15, 1908
From Reno, Nevada – Frank Little Describes Journey from Prescott, Arizona
From The Industrial Union Bulletin of December 12, 1908:
EXPERIENCES OF A HOBO MINER.
The experience of a wage slave, seeking a master during the panic of 1907-8:
On December 5, 1907, Fellow Worker Chris Hansen and myself left [P]rescott, Arizona, for a trip across the desert to see if we could find some kind-hearted parasite who would clasp the chains of wage-slavery upon us and allow us, along with other workers, to produce wealth that would allow a few parasites to live in luxury and idleness, giving us in return for our labor enough bacon and beans to keep us alive. We had heard that the American workers were free and had the right to work when, where and for whom they pleased. But we soon found that this was false.
The first place we went to was Octave, a mining camp south of Prescott, thinking we could get a job there. But one of the first men we met was an overdressed, well-fed parasite, who was in Clifton, Arizona, at the time I was trying to organize the slaves of that place.
We next went to Congress, the worst scab hole in Arizona. The looks of that place were enough to drive a man “nutty.” From there we went to Wickenburg, but this place was full of jobless slaves. We started across the desert towards the Colorado River, stopping at all the mining camps, but could not find a master at any of them.
