Hellraisers Journal, Monday February 18, 1907
From the Appeal to Reason, A Song for Henrietta Haywood
Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: “Will Papa Die?” -Song for Henrietta Haywood”
Hellraisers Journal, Thursday February 14, 1907
Mother Jones News for January: Campaigns for Idaho Prisoners
Mother Jones began the month of January in the city of Chicago where she spoke on behalf of the leaders of the Western Federation of Miners imprisoned in Idaho.
From The Public of January 12, 1907:
NEWS NOTES
— Mother Jones addressed a large meeting in Chicago on the 4th in behalf of the labor leaders of Colorado who are about to be tried in Idaho for the murder of ex-Governor Steunenberg.
Hellraisers Journal, Sunday February 10, 1907
Girard, Kansas – Debs Rallies Readers of Appeal to Reason
From The Girard Press of February 7, 1907:
Eugene V. Debs, twice the candidate of the Socialist party for President, has been in Girard during the past week, and is assisting in preparing matter for a special edition of the Appeal to Reason.
“The Kidnaping Edition” of the Appeal to Reason is now one week away from publication, and orders for Number 585 have already surpassed the one million mark. On the front page of this week’s edition, we find Comrade Eugene Debs rallying the troops of the Appeal Army to:
Turn on the Light! Spread the Truth!! Every labor and every Socialist paper is engaged in this righteous and supremely important work.
Now is the time to widen the circulation of these heralds of light and truth.
Let the workers everywhere bestir themselves as never before in this crucial hour, so fraught with possibilities for weal or woe to the American people.
Let every atom of latent energy and determination be aroused and the cloud that now threatens will be dispelled and the cause of Justice triumphantly vindicated.
Hellraisers Journal, Monday February 5, 1917
The Labor World – Reports on Labor Hearings
In this weeks edition of the Duluth Labor World we find coverage of the hearings which took place on January 30th before the Labor Committee of the Minnesota House of Representatives. Joe Ettor, I. W. W. organizer, testified, as did Virginia Mayor, Michael Boylan, and Duluth Attorney, S. M. Slonim.
Working conditions in the lumber camps were scored by Joe Ettor who stated:
Go into the lumber camps of Northern Minnesota; live the lives of the lumberjacks and then see if you wonder at conditions of unrest.
From The Labor World of February 3, 1917:
INVESTIGATE CONDITIONS
—–House Labor Committee Conducts Hearing
on I. W. W. Situation.
—–
MANY WITNESSES TESTIFY
—–
Labor Conditions in Northern Minnesota
Said to Be Abominable.
—–ST. PAUL, Minn., Feb. 1.—The house committee on labor is determined to ascertain the facts, with regard to the situation in the lumber camps in Northern Minnesota.
It took all Tuesday afternoon to examine two witnesses, members of the Industrial Workers of the World, and Attorney S. M. Slonim, of Duluth, the third witness, did not furnish his testimony until late in the night.
Several persons who have been national figures in labor wars were on hand, in addition to a score of witnesses from the range country, including C. M. Atkinson, editor of The Mesaba Ore, and Michael Boylan, mayor of Virginia.
Ettor Scores Conditions.
[He asserted:]
Ignorance alone is responsible for the unfair attitude shown toward the I. W. W. It is an organization of the working man, the working woman and the working child.
Go into the lumber camps of Northern Minnesota; live the lives of the lumberjacks and then see if you wonder at conditions of unrest. Fancy 50 men, all with wet feet and legs, retiring at night in a small shack, unventilated. To prevent putting on wet clothing the next morning they must hang their socks over the only stove. This merely is one of the many unpleasant conditions to which the lumberjack and mine employes are subjected.
It is not so much the wages paid. Give our men fair living conditions. Feed them fairly and permit them to organize. Then you have picked up the key to the entire situation.
If the plutocrats begin the program,
we will end it.
-Eugene V. Debs
Hellraisers Journal, Sunday February 3, 1907
Goldfield, Nevada – Red Flags, Red Banners, Red Ribbons Rule!
The kept press finds itself in a state of supreme outrage in view of the fact that the rabble of the nation are not conducting themselves in a calm and reasonable manner as the authorities of the states of Colorado and Idaho, acting in the interests of the Mine Owners Association, attempt a frame-up on Big Bill Haywood and Charles Moyer, officers of the Western Federation of Miners.
From the Appeal to Reason of February 2, 1907:
KING GEORGE AND CAPITAL
—–
The Words of Vincent St. John Have the
Same Effect on American Tories as
Those of Patrick Henry Had
Upon the British Tories.
—–
TO illustrate the attitude invariably assumed by the conservators of the dominant order at various times in the world’s history, I herewith reprint two articles taken from papers published more than a hundred years apart. One refers to the demonstration of the Goldfield miners last Sunday, in behalf of Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone, and is clipped from the Denver Republican; the other describes the scenes in the Virginia House of Burgesses, when Patrick Henry delivered his famous philippie against King George, and is selected from a history in which was copied the article as it was taken from an old English paper. The Denver Republican typically represents the cause of capitalism today; the old english paper typically represented the cause of toryism a century ago.
Read and observe the parallel:
If they hang Moyer and Haywood,
they’ve got to hang me.
-Eugene Victor Debs
Hellraisers Journal, Sunday January 27, 1907
From the Appeal to Reason: “We Must Fight! by Eugene V. Debs
THE supreme court and the president of the United States have left us no other alternative. We have got to stand up like men or crawl on our bellies like cravens.
There is no compromise.
The class struggle is as clearly reflected in the supreme court decision and the president’s action as if traced in the skies in letter of fire. All the powers of capitalism, from Standard Oil down, are combined against Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone, and find expression along the political line all the way from Ruzvlt [Roosevelt] to McPartland [McParland] and along the judicial line all the way from the supreme court of the United States to a police magistrate in Idaho.
It is not a case of punishing crime that law may be vindicated, but the violation of law that crime may be committed.
The case against our comrades is notorious in court annals for the utter defiance of all law, state and national, statutory and constitutional, that has marked its proceedings from its inception. Indeed, the case, to be properly understood, must be traced back at least as far as the purchase by the mine owners and smelter trust of the legislature of Colorado, at the current Colorado rates per head, thereby defeating the eight-hour amendment which the people of that Guggenheim state by a clear majority of nearly 50,000 votes had commanded these political perverts to enact into law. This was followed by the military despotism of the infamous Peabody and his sodden satraps, who emblazoned the escutcheon of his murderous administration with the immortal shibboleths: “To hell with the constitution,” “To hell with habeas corpus” and “To hell with any court that decides against us.” These are some of the foundation stones of the fabric of law and order which Ruzvlt sent Taft out to Idaho to commend to the people of that state.
This law and order cry issues from the brazen throats of political hirelings, the tools of capitalism, to conceal its own crimes.
When such monsters as Peabody and Gooding and such misshapen degenerates as McPartland talk about law and order in the lurid light of their own crimes, and President Ruzvlt sends his fat special emissary to the scene of these crimes to give them the backing of the national administration, all in the name of law and order, and this in the very shadow of a dungeon in which innocent kidnaped American citizens are guarded by criminal body-snatchers-when it comes to this, then, indeed, has justice fled to brutish beasts, all law is miserable mockery, and even hypocrisy, used as she is to sickening saturnalia, is nauseated and deserts the scene.
That our comrades have been kidnaped and are unlawfully held by legalized brute force is admitted; there is no question about it, not even by the supreme court. That the preconceived purpose is to do them to death, regardless of their innocence, has been apparent from the start.
It is not as individuals that these workingmen are to be murdered, but as the incarnation of class-conscious organized labor that they must be annihilated.
That makes the issue my issue and their cause my cause.
Hellraisers Journal, Saturday January 26, 1907
From Chicago, Illinois – Mother Jones Writes to Mrs. Palmer
The following letter, from Mother Jones to Mrs. Potter Palmer, Chicago socialite, was published in the January 24th edition of the Miners Magazine, official organ of the Western Federation of Miners.
43 Welton Place, Chicago, Ill.,
January 12, 1907Mrs. Potter Palmer,
100 Lake Shore Drive,
Chicago, Ill.
Dear Madam:
By the announcement of the daily press I learn that you are to entertain a number of persons who are to be present as representatives of two recognized classes of American citizens-the working class and the capitalist class, and that the purpose of this gathering is to choose a common ground on which the conflicting interests of these two classes may be harmonized and the present strife between the organized forces of these two classes may be brought to a peaceful and satisfactory end.
I credit you with perfect sincerity in this matter, but being fully aware that your environment and whole life has prevented you from seeing and understanding the true relationship of these two classes in this republic and the nature of the conflict which you think can be ended by such means as you are so prominently associated with, and with a desire that you may see and understand it in all its grim reality, I respectfully submit these few personal experiences for your kind consideration.
I am a workman’s daughter, by occupation a dress-maker and school teacher, and during this last twenty-five years an active worker in the organized labor movement. During the past seventy years of my life I have been subject to the authority of the capitalist class and for the last thirty-five years I have been conscious of this fact. With the years’ personal experience-the roughest kind best of all teachers-I have learned that there is an irrepressible conflict that will never end between the working-class and the capitalist-class, until these two classes disappear and the worker alone remains the producer and owner of the capital produced.
In this fight I wept at the grave of nineteen workers shot on the highways of Latterman [Lattimer], Pennsylvania in 1897. In the same place I marched with 5,000 women eighteen miles in the night seeking bread for their children, and halted with the bayonets of the Coal and Iron police who had orders to shoot to kill.
If they hang Moyer and Haywood,
they’ve got to hang me.
-Eugene Victor Debs
Hellraisers Journal, Sunday January 20, 1907
Girard, Kansas – Good News From the Appeal to Reason!
After the first forms of the edition for this issue were on the press the following letter came by special delivery from Comrade Eugene V. Debs. Every APPEAL reader will throw up his hat, yell for Debs, and go in for the greatest fight ever waged by the working class on its own behalf.
The toilers of the world have heretofore fought all the battles of the ages and have handed the spoils over to the masters.
Today the working class stands united and will make the last glorious fight in its own behalf!
Listen to Debs’ burning words and make up your mind to enlist under his banner:
I am getting over my rheumatic attack and I leave for Cincinnati Monday, where a specialist will treat my throat. I expect to be out in a few days. As soon as I get through with this and am in physical shape I will come to Girard and stay until the kidnaping edition is made up, and take a hand at helping you on the APPEAL. I am full of fire and want to pour it into the APPEAL. I would like a chance to edit the APPEAL for a couple of weeks, or help you edit it, or help in any way to do the thing that this supreme hour tells me must be done.
Now is the time to strike!
A few weeks more and it will be too late. I have a rush of ideas and want to fuse them with yours and I believe that in combination we can raise hell with the capitalist plans, so far as Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone are concerned. I believe furthermore, that we can do work in three or four weeks’ time that will give you a hundred thousand more subscribers and after the trial begins send it up to half a million and climbing towards a million. I say I believe this can be done and I would like a chance to try it. Should the trial be announced while I am in Girard I could go from there straight to Caldwell, for I propose to be in the center of the fight.
If that is frenzy, I plead guilty
and I notify the Globe
I shall not soon recover.
-Luella Twining
Hellraisers Journal, Sunday January 13, 1907
From the Appeal to Reason: New York Workers Aroused!
Luella Twining of Denver can now be found in New York City assisting in the organization of the defense movement for Comrades Haywood, Moyer and Pettibone by the working men and women of that city.
From the Appeal to Reason of January 12, 1907:
NEW YORK IS AROUSED
—–
Working Class of City Organizing
Powerful Defense Movement
for W.F.of M. Officials.
—–By Luella Twining.
—–
New York, Jan. 4.-New York workingmen and women are demonstrating the solidarity of the working class. The second meeting of the Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone conference, composed of all workers who want to save their brothers in Idaho, irrespective of race, color, creed or politics, was more enthusiastic even than the first. Many new delegates were seated. Among the unions represented were the District Council of the Carpenters and Joiners, Central Federated Union, Brewers, Bill Posters, Typographical Union, Tobacco Workers, Bakers and Confectionary, Cloak and Suit Tailors, Cigar Makers, Butchers, Hat and Cap Makers, Beer Drivers, Beer Bottlers, Painters and Decorators, Steam Fitters, Bricklayers, Machinists, United Hebrew Trades, Sick and Death Benefit and Waiters. All of these trades were represented by more than one local, most of them by three or four.
The financial secretary reported the receipt of $2,760.20 for the “Defense Fund,” and $1,500 for the “Agitation Fund.” While we are laying particular stress on the necessity of money to carry on the trial, still we are setting forth also the necessity for agitation. We shall hold many meetings to warn the workers of the murder that is being planned in Idaho. We shall also distribute tons of literature setting forth the facts. New York City shall be buried in papers and pamphlets. Everybody shall know of this conspiracy, planned in New York, in that magnificent stone building on Broadway, and to be executed in that desolate, isolated region of Idaho. We do not intend to wait till our brothers are in their graves for the working class to say: “We did not know, we thought they would have a fair trial.”
The unions visited show intense interest. Many of them are holding special meetings for the reason that their by-laws do not permit them to give more than a prescribed sum. For instance, the “Sheet and Metal Workers” gave the maximum amount at their regular meeting. They held a special meeting the next week and gave $500. No unions before which speakers have appeared have refused to assist. All have displayed the greatest enthusiasm and expressed their indignation in burning words at the foul conspiracy to break up organized labor, and all resistance to capitalistic encroachment. They realize that Standard Oil, successful in ridding themselves of Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone, would be like wild animals after having a taste of human blood, and thirsting for more. They know they would be the next victims.
The action of the Central Federated Union, in displaying such intense interest in the “Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone Conspiracy” was a hard blow for the prosecution. The Globe commented on it editorially, and said that the C. F. U. should not have allowed such statements to be made on its floor. They called me a “Maenad” (frenzied woman). I suppose that was for portraying the sufferings of Comrade Haywood’s invalid wife, also the agony she has endured during the long year in which her husband has been incarcerated in a cell, denied every right of an American citizen. If that is frenzy, I plead guilty and I notify the Globe I shall not soon recover. I am not alone. The C. F. U. all became “frenzied,” gave all they could and promised all moral support possible.
Hellraisers Journal, Wednesday January 9, 1907
From Ada County Jail, Idaho – Big Bill Haywood Writes to Family
From his cell in the Ada County Jail, beneath the Courthouse where he will be put on trial for his life, William D. Haywood, Secretary-Treasure of the Western Federation of Miners, sends out a daily letter to his invalid wife in Denver. His wife, Nevada Jane Minor Haywood and his two daughters, Vernie and Henrietta, remain in that city and hope for the return of the husband and father who was kidnapped by the authorities of Colorado and Idaho and spirited away to Boise aboard the “Kidnappers’ Special” on February 18th of this past year.
From The Leavenworth Times of Kansas, January 5, 1907:
Accused Miner Sends Daily Letter To Wife
Denver, Colo., Jan. 4.-There is a chapter in the life of Wm. D. Haywood, leader of the Western Federation of Miners and accused accomplice in the assassination of former Gov. Steunenberg, of Idaho, now in jail at Boise, Idaho, awaiting trial, not generally known. The story this chapter tells places this one accused and censured as an anarchist in the true light of faithful and home-loving father and husband.
