Hellraisers Journal: Women of Michigan Copper Country Tell of Brutal Treatment from Company Guards; Berger Testifies

24th February 202425th February 2024 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Quote Poem Ellis B Harris re Annie Clemenc n Women of Calumet, Mnrs Mag p14, Nov 27, 1913 —————

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday February 24, 1914
Hancock, Michigan – Deputized Company Gunthugs Brutalize Women

From the Detroit Evening Times of February 17, 1914:

From the Duluth Labor World of February 21, 1914:

BERGER TESTIFIES AT STRIKE INQUIRY
———-
Says Socialist Party Had Nothing to Do With Strike
Simply Contributed Money
———-

Victor Berger appeared before the congressional committee at Hancock [Michigan] Tuesday to tell what he knew about the copper strike. Mr. Berger appeared as a committee witness. He was not called by the Western Federation of Miners. He declared the Socialist party had nothing to do with calling the strike and nothing to do with fomenting it. “When the strikers got hard up” he said, “the Socialists gave them financial aid up to $25,000 in money and a greater quantity of clothing.”

Mr. Berger said the national flag of the Socialists was the Star Spangled Banner, but “the red flag is our international flag-the red flag of brotherhood.”

Women Were Assaulted.

The committee listened to a large number of women witnesses during the week. One woman said she was hit in the back by a rock thrown by a gunman. She was afterwards arrested and was taken to jail in an automobile carrying her 4-months-old baby with her. The baby died from exposure from the cold a few days later. She has not been able to find out why she was arrested…..

The woman whose baby died was Margaret Cibacca. Her testimony, describing how she was taken into custody along with her children and then dumped out into the cold, is disturbing. Mrs. Cibacca the wife of a striking copper miner, was at home with her five children, ages 3 months to six years, when the deputies came pounding at her door. They told her that they wanted her to come to the mining office to visit a sick woman.

She gathered up her five children and went with them in their automobile to the mining office of the Baltic Mine. They forced her to leave the three older children outside in the cold with only the six-year-old to watch them. The two littlest ones, they allowed her to take inside. Once they had her in the office, they locked the door. She was alone in there with three deputies. There was no sick woman.

She asked why she was there, what she had done, and they laughed at her and beat her, even as she held her little children. She begged them to let her go home and feed her children, and they laughed at her again and began to beat her with a club on her side and on her back as she attempted to ward off the blows and protect her tiny children. The bruises can still be seen on her back.

Finally, they forced her with her children into the automobile for the drive to Houghton to see Justice Little. On the way they told her that she would be locked up for six months. Justice Little questioned her for about a half hour and then told her she was free to go, but go where? There was no ride back to Baltic, eight miles away, the deputies were gone, and she had no money.

At last, her husband was able to come for her. He brought blankets for the children who were cold to the bone, especially the three-month-old baby, from waiting outside for their father. They were too late for the train back to Baltic, and the striking miner was forced to spend his meager strike benefit on a rented automobile to take his tired, hungry, and terrified family home.

The baby came down deathly ill the next day, and died shortly thereafter.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Women of Michigan Copper Country Tell of Brutal Treatment from Company Guards; Berger Testifies” →

Hellraisers Journal: President Charles Moyer and Auditor Charles Tanner of the Western Federation of Miners Return to Upper Michigan’s Copper Country

16th January 202419th January 2024 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Quote Mother Jones, Powers of Privilege ed, Ab Chp III —————

Hellraisers Journal – Friday January 16, 1914
Houghton, Michigan – Cheering Crowd Meets Moyer and Tanner at Station

From the Miners Magazine of January 15, 1914:

From the Miners’ Bulletin of January 9, 1914:

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: President Charles Moyer and Auditor Charles Tanner of the Western Federation of Miners Return to Upper Michigan’s Copper Country” →

Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: Debs Denounces Critics of the S. P. A. Committee’s Report on the Investigation into West Virginia Situation

11th August 202312th August 2023 Janet RayeEugene Victor Debs

HdLn re WV SPA NEC Investigation Fail, Lbr Str p1, June 13, 1913 —————-

Hellraisers Journal – Monday August 11, 1913
Debs Denounces Critics of Socialist Party’s Report on West Virginia Situation

From the International Socialist Review of August 1913:

Debs Denounces Critics

From the N. Y. Call

Terre Haute, Ind., June 27.-The National Committee of the Socialist party in its regular session in May appointed a committee of three to investigate conditions in West Virginia. That committee, of which the writer was a member, was instructed to work in harmony with the United Mine Workers.

Having completed its investigation the committee has submitted its report, and it is in reference to this report, which has been widely published, that I now have something to say in answer to those who have assailed it.

First of all I want to say that I shall make no defense of the report. It does not need defense. It will answer for itself. But I do want to show the true animus of its critics and assailants, which they have been careful not to reveal in what they have written against it.

Two or three Socialist papers have bitterly condemned the report. Not one of them published it. Each of them suppressed it. They evidently did not want their readers to see it. It was sufficient for them to condemn it.

These Socialist papers have in this instance adopted the method of the capitalist papers with which I have had so much experience. A thousand times a speech of mine has been denounced by a capitalist paper while not a line of the speech was permitted to appear. That is precisely what these Socialist papers have done with our report, and if this is fair to themselves and their readers, I am willing to let it pass.

When our committee was appointed, more than sixty of our comrades were in the bullpen, martial law was in full force, two Socialist papers had been suppressed and there was a terrible state of affairs generally. Within four days after our committee arrived upon the ground every prisoner was released, martial law was practically declared off, the suppressed papers were given to understand that they could resume at their pleasure, and the governor of the state gave his unqualified assurance that free speech, free assemblage and the right to organize should prevail and that every other constitutional right should be respected so far as lay in his power.

[Here Debs neglects to say that when the two papers were “suppressed” equipment was destroyed, for which the papers were never compensated.]

It may be that our committee had nothing to do with bringing about these changes. As to this I have nothing to say. I simply state the facts.

Soon after our arrival it became evident that a certain element was hostile to the United Mine Workers and determined to thwart the efforts of that organization to organize the miners. This is the real source of opposition to our action and to our report.

Let me say frankly here that I do not hide behind the instruction of the National Committee that we work in harmony with the United Mine Workers. I would have done this under existing circumstances without instruction.

In our report to the party, we made a true transcript of the facts as we found them. We told the truth as we saw it.

And yet we have been charged by the element in question with having whitewashed Governor Hatfield and betrayed the party.

The truth is that we opposed Governor Hatfield where he was wrong and upheld him where he was right. But Hatfield is not the reason, but only the excuse in this instance. The intense prejudice prevailing against him has been taken advantage of to discredit our report as a means of striking a blow at the United Mine Workers.

[Here Debs ignores the hardships of Hatfield’s bullpen, where his comrades were held for several months, and the court martial they faced with possible death sentences hanging over their heads. All of which may have been a source of the “prejudice prevailing against him.”]

Had we, instead of doing plain justice to Governor Hatfield, as to everyone else, painted him black as a fiend, our report would have provoked the same bitter attack from the same source unless we had denounced the officials of the United Mine Workers, without exception, as crooks and grafters and in conspiracy to keep the miners in slavish subjection.

That would have satisfied those who are now so violently assailing us. Nothing less would.

For this reason and no other we are being vilified by sabotagers and anti-political actionists, and by those who are for just enough political action to mask their anarchism.

I am an industrial unionist, but not an industrial bummereyite, and those who are among the miners of West Virginia magnifying every petty complaint against the United Mine Workers and arousing suspicion against every one connected with it, are the real enemies of industrial unionism and of the working class.

[“Bummereyite” is an insult directed against the I. W. W., who are, at this time, facing prosecutions and long prison sentences in Ipswich, Paterson, and Little Falls, not to mention fellow workers who have lost their lives in those struggles.]

I am quite well aware that there are weak and crooked officials in the United Mine Workers, but to charge that they are all traitors without exception is outrageously false and slanderous.

The whole trouble is that some Chicago I. W. W.-ites, in spirit at least, are seeking to disrupt and drive out the United Mine Workers to make room for the I. W. W. and its program of sabotage and “strike at the ballot box with an ax.”

[This charge is simply not true. The I. W W. is engaged in its own struggles at this time and in no way attempted to destroy the U. M. W. A., only offering support to those oppressed under the rule of Hatfield’s pro-operator military dictatorship. Rather than listen to local leaders, on the ground in West Virginia, Debs makes a boogeyman of I. W. W., much like the capitalist press.]

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: Debs Denounces Critics of the S. P. A. Committee’s Report on the Investigation into West Virginia Situation” →

Hellraisers Journal: How the Coal Miners’ Victory in West Virginia Was Turned Into a “Settlement” by W. H. Thompson, Part II

5th July 20237th July 2023 Janet RayeEugene Victor Debs

—————

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday July 5, 1913
West Virginia Coal Miners’ Victory Turned into “Settlement”-Part II

From the International Socialist Review of July 1913:

How a Victory Was Turned Into
a ”Settlement” in West Virginia

-by W. H.Thompson,
Editor Huntington Socialist and Labor Star

[Part II of III]

Realizing that laudatory speech-making and persuasion were not going to induce these hard-headed delegates to sell the blessing of victory for a mess of burned pottage, they were compelled to resort to downright trickery and deceit.

A committee was appointed from among the delegates to draw up a counter-proposition, setting forth the terms upon which they would be willing to return to work, this to be submitted to the governor in answer to his proposal. The committee drew up the proposition which was presented to and endorsed by the convention. It was then turned over to the officials with instructions that they present it to His Highness.

The following day the convention was given to understand that Hatfield had accepted their proposal as an amendment to his proposition. The two documents were then read and a vote was taken upon what the delegates afterwards, and now, claim they believed was the acceptance of their own proposal. However, the two propositions had been juggled in such a manner, by those who are adepts in such arts, that the miners-necessarily untrained in the gentle ways of parliamentary legerdemain, had in reality voted for and accepted the original odious Hatfield offer, their own proposition having been promptly turned down by that gentleman with the remark that he “could not force the mine owners to comply with it.”

These things were not made public, of course, until after the convention had adjourned. You can imagine the surprise and chagrin of the miners upon being informed by the daily papers that they had tamely submitted to the dictator’s demands after he had spurned their own offer of a basis of settlement.

This information was followed by orders from headquarters at Charleston to the effect that the miners return to work at once. This they refused to do. Then the officials, escorted by detachments of the governor’s hated yellow-legs, visited the tented villages in the mountains and bluntly informed the rebellious strikers that their relief would be cut off at once and the tents burned over their heads if they did not submit to the settlement and return to work.

Under these circumstances there was nothing to do but obey and the strikers began to apply for work at the mines. All those known to have been most active during the strike were refused employment. These to the number of 400 are still idle, for the good and simple reason that they are very effectively black-listed at every coal mine in the valley. All others are working under the same, or worse conditions than existed before the strike began.

Of course it was thoroughly realized by the powers that be that there was one remaining obstruction in the way of a complete establishment of their neatly planned “settlement.” That was the Socialist press.

Editor C. H. Boswell, of the Charleston Labor Argus, had been approached some months before and it was insinuated that a “settlement” might be arranged. He promptly and forcefully informed the “approachers” that The Argus was fighting for victory for the rank and file and that if any crooked work was attempted something would drop. Boswell was arrested a few days later and safely planted in the bull pen. The Argus, however, had continued, and the Huntington Socialist and Labor Star had also begun to show an inquisitive interest in the happenings affecting the strikers. These two agencies must be silenced, temporarily at least; decided the three-armed combination most interested in the success of the settlement. No sooner said than done. Martial law was in effect in the coal field, so the commander-in-chief simply dispatched a detail of yellow-legs to Charleston to confiscate The Labor Argus and “jug” Fred Merrick, who was suspected of being editor pro tem. The same gentle methods of suppression were used on the Huntington Star.

With all those who would doubtless make an effective protest against the deal being put over on the fighting miners by the unholy trinity, safely “jugged,” the settlement proceeded apace. The coal operators, the prostituted press and the U. M. W. of A. officials all joined in singing hosannas of praise for the highly satisfactory manner in which His Highness, Hatfield, had settled the strike.

But the last act of despotism on the part of the trinity, the confiscation of the Socialist papers, brought on unexpected complications. The Socialist and labor papers, and hundreds of the capitalist papers throughout the country severely condemned this blundering attack upon the rights of a free press. The National Socialist organization was at last shocked into action and decided to send a committee into West Virginia to find out if we really were having a fight down here. The committee arrived, established headquarters at the most expensive hotel in the capitol city and immediately went into conference with the leaders of the U. M. W. of A.

From conferences with this branch of the triumvirate the committee naturally drifted into conferences with the other branches, Hatfield, the local politicians and the coal barons.

After a week devoted exclusively to these secretive but doubtless instructing conferences, and before they had visited the mining camps or talked with the local Socialists, members of the committee began talking-to the capitalist papers.

The sayings attributed to them had a familiar sound. They were practically the same sentences that the U. M. W. of A. officials had used, and that the newspapers themselves had used, and that Hatfield himself had used, to justify existing conditions and official anarchy.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: How the Coal Miners’ Victory in West Virginia Was Turned Into a “Settlement” by W. H. Thompson, Part II” →

Hellraisers Journal: From The Masses: John Reed on the “War in Paterson”-Part II

8th June 20238th June 2023 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Quote John Reed, Paterson Prisoners Soon we back on picket line, Masses p15, June 1913 —————

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday June 8, 1913
New York, New York – John Reed Recalls Time Spent in Passaic County Jail, Part II

From The Masses of June 1913:

The Paterson Evening News
April 28, 1913

[Part II of II]

And so it was that I went up to the County Jail. In the outer office I was questioned again, searched for concealed weapons, and my money and valuables taken away. Then the great barred door swung open and I went down some steps into a vast room lined with three tiers of cells. About eighty prisoners strolled around, talked, smoked, and ate the food sent in to them by those outside. Of this eighty almost half were strikers. They were in their street clothes, held in prison under $500 bail to await the action of the Grand Jury. Surrounded by a dense crowd of short, dark-faced men, Big Bill Haywood towered in the center of the room. His big hand made simple gestures as he explained something to them. His massive, rugged face, seamed and scarred like a mountain, and as calm, radiated strength. These slight, foreign-faced strikers, one of many desperate little armies in the vanguard of the battle-line of Labor, quickened and strengthened by Bill Haywood’s face and voice, looked up at him lovingly, eloquently. Faces deadened and dulled with grinding routine in the sunless mills glowed with hope and understanding. Faces scarred and bruised from policemen’s clubs grinned eagerly at the thought of going back on the picket-line. And there were other faces, too-lined and sunken with the slow starvation of a nine weeks’ poverty—shadowed with the sight of so much suffering, or the hopeless brutality of the police—and there were those who had seen Modestino Valentine shot to death by a private detective. But not one showed discouragement; not one a sign of faltering or of fear. As one little Italian said to me, with blazing eyes: “We all one bigga da Union. I. W. W.—dat word is pierced de heart of de people!”

“Yes! Yes! Dass righ’! I. W. W.! One bigga da Union”—they murmured with soft, eager voices, crowding around.

[Introduced to Quinlan and Strikers by Big Bill]

I shook hands with Haywood, who introduced me to Pat Quinlan, the thin-faced, fiery Irishman now under indictment for speeches inciting to riot.

“Boys,” said Haywood, indicating me, “this man wants to know things. You tell him everything”—

They crowded around me, shaking my hand, smiling, welcoming me. “Too bad you get in jail,” they said, sympathetically. “We tell you ever’t’ing. You ask. We tell you. Yes. Yes. You good feller.”

And they did. Most of them were still weak and exhausted from their terrible night before in the lockup. Some had been lined up against a wall, as they marched to and fro in front of the mills, and herded to jail on the charge of “unlawful assemblage”! Others had been clubbed into the patrol wagon on the charge of “rioting,” as they stood at the track, on their way home from picketing, waiting for a train to pass! They were being held for the Grand Jury that indicted Haywood and Gurley Flynn. Four of these jurymen were silk manufacturers, another the head of the local Edison compony—which Haywood tried to organize for a strike—and not one a workingman!

“We not take bail,” said another, shaking his head. “We stay here. Fill up de damn jail. Pretty soon no more room. Pretty soon can’t arrest no more picket!”

It was visitors’ day I went to the door to speak with a friend. Outside the reception room was full of women and children, carrying packages, and pasteboard boxes, and pails full of dainties and little comforts lovingly prepared, which meant hungry and ragged wives and babies, so that the men might be comfortable in jail. The place was full of the sound of moaning; tears ran down their work-roughened faces; the children looked up at their fathers’ unshaven faces through the bars and tried to reach them with their hands.

“What nationalities are all the people!” I asked. There were Dutchmen, Italians, Belgians, Jews, Slovaks, Germans, Poles—

“What nationalities stick together on the picket- line?”

A young Jew, pallid and sick-looking from insufficient food, spoke up proudly. “T’ree great nations stick togedder like dis.” He made a fist. “T’ree great nations—Italians, Hebrews an’ Germans”—

“But how about the Americans?”

They all shrugged their shoulders and grinned with humorous scorn. “English peoples not go on picket-line,” said one, softly. “’Mericans no lika fight!” An Italian boy thought my feelings might be hurt, and broke in quickly: “Not all lika dat. Beeg Beell, he ‘Merican. You ‘Merican. Quin’, Miss Flynn, ‘Merican. Good! Good! ‘Merican workman, he lika talk too much.”

This sad fact appears to be true. It was the English-speaking group that held back during the Lawrence strike. It is the English-speaking continent that remains passive at Paterson, while the “wops” the “kikes,” the “hunkies”—the ‘degraded and ignorant races from Southern Europe”—go out and get clubbed on the picket-line and gaily take their medicine in Paterson jail.

But just as they were telling me these things the keeper ordered me to the “convicted room,” where I was pushed into a bath and compelled to put on regulation prison clothes. I shan’t attempt to describe the horrors I saw in that room. Suffice it to say that forty-odd men lounged about a long corridor lined on one side with cells; that the only ventilation and light came from one small skylight up a funnel-shaped airshaft; that one man had syphilitic sores on his legs and was treated by the prison doctor with sugar-pills for “nervousness;” that a seventeen-year-old boy who had never been sentenced had remained in that corridor without ever seeing the sun for over nine months; that a cocaine-fiend was getting his “dope” regularly from the inside, and that the background of this and much more was the monotonous and terrible shouting of a man who had lost his mind in that hell-hole and who walked among us.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From The Masses: John Reed on the “War in Paterson”-Part II” →

Hellraisers Journal: From The Socialist and Labor Star: Debs, Berger and Germer Investigate Conditions in West Virginia

1st June 20234th June 2023 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

—————

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday June 1, 1913
Charleston, West Virginia – Socialists Committee Investigates Industrial Conditions

From the Huntington Socialist and Labor Star of May 30, 1913:

From The Coming Nation of May 24, 1913:

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From The Socialist and Labor Star: Debs, Berger and Germer Investigate Conditions in West Virginia” →

Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones Writes from the West Virginia Military Bastile to Tom Hickey, Editor of the Texas Rebel

17th May 202321st May 2023 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

—————

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday May 17, 1913
Mother Jones Writes from West Virginia Bastile to Tom Hickey, Editor of The Rebel

From the Oklahoma City Social Democrat of May 14, 1913:

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones Writes from the West Virginia Military Bastile to Tom Hickey, Editor of the Texas Rebel” →

Hellraisers Journal: “Ettor and Giovannitti Must Be Saved” -a Message from National Executive Committee of the Socialist Party

2nd July 20223rd July 2022 Janet RayeBread and Roses Strike of 1912

Quote Giovannitti, The Walker, Rest My Brother —————

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday July 2, 1912
Message to Workers from N. E. C. of Socialist Party of America

From the International Socialist Review of July 1912:

—–

—–

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: “Ettor and Giovannitti Must Be Saved” -a Message from National Executive Committee of the Socialist Party” →

Hellraisers Journal: Eugene Debs Opens Socialist Party Campaign with Speech at Chicago’s Riverview Park, Part II

20th June 202230th June 2022 Janet RayeEugene Victor Debs

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Hellraisers Journal – Thursday June 20, 1912
Riverview Park, Chicago, Illinois – Debs Opens Socialist Party Campaign

[Eugene V. Debs Speaks to Thousands at Grand Picnic
Sunday June 16, 1912 – Full Text of Speech, Part II:]

The national convention of the Socialist Party recently held at Indianapolis was in all respects the greatest gathering of representative socialists ever held in the United States. The delegates there assembled demonstrated their capacity to deal efficiently with all the vital problems which confront the party. The convention was permeated in every fiber with the class-conscious, revolutionary spirit and was thoroughly representative of the working class. Every question that came before that body was considered and disposed of in accordance with the principles and program of the international movement and on the basis of its relation to and effect upon the working class.

The platform adopted by the convention is a clear and cogent enunciation of the party’s principles and a frank and forceful statement of the party’s mission. This platform embodies labor’s indictment of the capitalist system and demands the abolition of that system. It proclaims the identity of interests of all workers and appeals to them in clarion tones to unite for their emancipation. It points out the class struggle and emphasizes the need of the economic and political unity of the workers to wage that struggle to a successful issue. It declares relentless war upon the entire capitalist regime in the name of the rising working class and demands in uncompromising terms the overthrow of wage-slavery and the inauguration of industrial democracy.

In this platform of the Socialist Party the historic development of society is clearly stated and the fact made manifest that the time has come for the workers of the world to shake off their oppressors and exploiters, put an end to their age-long servitude, and make themselves the masters of the world.

To this end the Socialist Party has been organized; to this end it is bending all its energies and taxing all its resources; to this end it makes its appeal to the workers and their sympathizers throughout the nation.

In the name of the workers the Socialist Party condemns the capitalist system. In the name of freedom it condemns wage-slavery. In the name of modern industry it condemns poverty, idleness, and famine. In the name of peace it condemns war. In the name of civilization it condemns the murder of little children. In the name of enlightenment it condemns ignorance and superstition. In the name of the future it arraigns the past at the bar of the present, and in the name of humanity it demands social justice for every man, woman, and child.

The Socialist Party knows neither color, creed, sex, or race. It knows no aliens among the oppressed and downtrodden. It is first and last the party of the workers, regardless of their nationality, proclaiming their interests, voicing their aspirations, and fighting their battles.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Eugene Debs Opens Socialist Party Campaign with Speech at Chicago’s Riverview Park, Part II” →

Hellraisers Journal: From The Comrade: How the Woodstock Jail Turned a Union Leader into a Socialist by Eugene Debs

10th April 202211th April 2022 Janet RayeEugene Victor Debs

Quote EVD Brush the Dust, Saginaw Eve Ns p6, Feb 6, 1899 —————-

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday April 10, 1902
How Six Months in the Woodstock Jail Made a Socialist of Eugene Debs

From The Comrade of April 1902:

As I have some doubt about the readers of “The Comrade” having any curiosity as to “how I became a Socialist” it may be in order to say that the subject is the editor’s, not my own; and that what is here offered is at his bidding—my only concern being that he shall not have cause to wish that I had remained what I was instead of becoming a Socialist.

On the evening of February 27, 1875, the local lodge of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen was organized at Terre Haute, Ind., by Joshua A. Leach, then grand master, and I was admitted as a charter member and at once chosen secretary. “Old Josh Leach,” as he was affectionately called, a typical locomotive fireman of his day, was the founder of the brotherhood, and I was instantly attracted by his rugged honesty, simple manner and homely speech. How well I remember feeling his large, rough hand on my shoulder, the kindly eye of an elder brother searching my own as he gently said, “My boy, you’re a little young, but I believe you’re in earnest and will make your mark in the brotherhood.” Of course, I assured him that I would do my best. What he really thought at the time flattered my boyish vanity not a little when I heard of it. He was attending a meeting at St. Louis some months later, and in the course of his remarks said: “I put a tow-headed boy in the brotherhood at Terre Haute not long ago, and some day he will be at the head of it.”

Twenty-seven years, to a day, have played their pranks with “Old Josh” and the rest of us. When last we met, not long ago, and I pressed his good, right hand, I observed that he was crowned with the frost that never melts; and as I think of him now:

“Remembrance wakes, with all her busy train,
Swells at my breast and turns the past to pain.”

My first step was thus taken in organized labor and a new influence fired my ambition and changed the whole current of my career. I was filled with enthusiasm and my blood fairly leaped in my veins. Day and night I worked for the brotherhood. To see its watch-fires glow and observe the increase of its sturdy members were the sunshine and shower of my life. To attend the “meeting” was my supreme joy, and for ten years I was not once absent when the faithful assembled.

At the convention held in Buffalo in 1878 I was chosen associate editor of the magazine, and in 1880 I became grand secretary and treasurer. With all the fire of youth I entered upon the crusade which seemed to fairly glitter with possibilities. For eighteen hours at a stretch I was glued to my desk reeling off the answers to my many correspondents. Day and night were one. Sleep was time wasted and often when, all oblivious of her presence in the still small hours my mother’s hand turned off the light, I went to bed under protest. Oh, what days! And what quenchless zeal and consuming vanity! All the firemen everywhere—and they were all the world—were straining:

“To catch the beat
On my tramping feet.”

My grip was always packed; and I was darting in all directions. To tramp through a railroad yard in the rain, snow or sleet half the night, or till daybreak, to be ordered out of the roundhouse for being an “agitator,” or put off a train, sometimes passenger, more often freight, while attempting to deadhead over the division, were all in the program, and served to whet the appetite to conquer. One night in midwinter at Elmira, N. Y., a conductor on the Erie kindly dropped me off in a snowbank, and as I clambered to the top I ran into the arms of a policeman, who heard my story and on the spot became my friend.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From The Comrade: How the Woodstock Jail Turned a Union Leader into a Socialist by Eugene Debs” →

Tag: Victor Berger

Hellraisers Journal: Women of Michigan Copper Country Tell of Brutal Treatment from Company Guards; Berger Testifies

Hellraisers Journal: President Charles Moyer and Auditor Charles Tanner of the Western Federation of Miners Return to Upper Michigan’s Copper Country

Hellraisers Journal: From the International Socialist Review: Debs Denounces Critics of the S. P. A. Committee’s Report on the Investigation into West Virginia Situation

Debs Denounces Critics

Hellraisers Journal: How the Coal Miners’ Victory in West Virginia Was Turned Into a “Settlement” by W. H. Thompson, Part II

How a Victory Was Turned Into
a ”Settlement” in West Virginia

Hellraisers Journal: From The Masses: John Reed on the “War in Paterson”-Part II

Hellraisers Journal: “Ettor and Giovannitti Must Be Saved” -a Message from National Executive Committee of the Socialist Party

Hellraisers Journal: Eugene Debs Opens Socialist Party Campaign with Speech at Chicago’s Riverview Park, Part II

Hellraisers Journal: From The Comrade: How the Woodstock Jail Turned a Union Leader into a Socialist by Eugene Debs

Debs Denounces Critics

How a Victory Was Turned Into a ”Settlement” in West Virginia

How a Victory Was Turned Into
a ”Settlement” in West Virginia