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Hellraisers Journal – Sunday July 16, 1899
“Treasonous and Seditious” Speech Sends Editor Stewart to Wardner Bullpen
From the Duluth Labor World of July 15, 1899:
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Writing of the imprisonment of Editor Stewart of the Mullen (Idaho) Mirror and the suppression of his paper on the charge of treason and sedition, J. J. Noll says in the People’s Paper:
His criticism was an honest objection, honestly expressed, to Gen. Merriam’s shutting men up in box cars and cattle pens, and imposing such indignities and sufferings on them that four of them died outright and a number are on the verge of the grave. Is this governor and this general made of such stuff that one may not voice an objection to their methods of treating human beings. Can it be that a uniform and a majority vote converts ordinary mortals into gods?
Here is some of the treason and sedition uttered by Editor Stewart:
The “authorities” are declaring that they are handling the affair at Wardner as expeditiously as possible. That may be true. They say that the men are being examined as fast as they can be reached. That may be true. But what compensation will be made to the hundreds of men who have been falsely imprisoned in box cars and a vile filthy barn for from five days to four weeks, herded like sheep in a pen; taken from their work in the mines and mills with no chance to change their wet, heavy mine and mill garments for dry ones? How will the state compensates these men arrested at the bayonet point, while in the peaceful pursuit of their daily toil, given no chance to show whether or not there was any reason why they should be arrested at all? What excuse or compensation will the state make to those men who are released after being subjected for weeks to indignities, insults and abuses such as are said to be accorded political prisoners in Russian Siberia.
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But why were they imprisoned at all? and why treated as convicts before they were given a hearing? The governor may be a hero in the dollar blinded eyes of the Spokane Review, and in “American official life” heroes are scarce, but heroes of the Review stripe are easily procurable for money—and the Standard Oil company has lots of money. Steunenburg has acted the paltroon in the matter from the start. He sent a fool to spy out the situation and bind the state to the oil company and hasn’t the courage to break the fetters that bind him.
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