Hellraisers Journal – Monday January 27, 1919
Leavenworth Penitentiary – Fellow Workers Arrive from Sacramento
From The Leavenworth Times of January 26, 1919:
MORE I. W. W. PRISONERS HERE
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Special Car Load of Them Brought in
From California Yesterday
-Names and Sentences.
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Silent Defenders
Another big batch of I. W. W. prisoners was landed in the Federal penitentiary yesterday. They were brought in from California in a special car in charge of six deputy United States marshals. They got into the prison at 3:30 in the afternoon.
These were all white men and they were a tough looking bunch. There were sharp and well dressed looking prisoners in the ninety-one that were brought over from Chicago with Haywood last fall, but the California gang seems to be run down hobos.
They will be dressed in Monday and put to work Tuesday. Like the other I. W. W. prisoners they will be divided up among the working gangs of the penitentiary.
Hellraisers Journal – Monday December 16, 1918
Sacramento, California – Fellow Workers Continue Silent Defense
From the San Francisco Examiner of December 14, 1918:
U. S. AGENTS TELL OF RAIDS ON ‘WOBBLIES’
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Poster Ridiculing Army, Emery Dust,
Copper Nails Seized;
Trial at Sacramento Continues
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Prosecution to Present Testimony Showing
Connection With I.W.W. Organization
in Chicago
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SACRAMENTO, December 13.-Emery dust, a poster ridiculing the United States Army, copper nails and leaflets ostensibly warning against sticking nails in fruit trees “while Ford and Suhr are in jail,” were seized in a raid on Fresno I. W. W. headquarters, S. J. Shannon, deputy United States marshal, testified here today at the trial of 46 persons for alleged conspiracy of the Industrial Workers of the World to hinder war work.
Hellraisers Journal, Saturday June 29, 1918
Chicago, Illinois – Big Jim Thompson for the Defense
James P. Thompson, known to his Fellow Workers as Big Jim Thompson, was the first witness called by the defense in the Chicago I. W. W. Trial. He was on the stand for two days and spoke of his many years as an I. W. W. organizer.
FW Thompson wept as he recalled the Wheatland hop-pickers strike of 1913 and the massacre of the improvised workers there, shot down by sheriff’s deputies for the crime of attempting to organize.
Hop Pickers, Durst Ranch, Wheatland, California, 1913
Through his tears, Thompson predicted:
Some day, when Labor’s age-long fight for life and freedom is ended, then will there be a monument raised over the graves of the Wheatland martyrs-and it will show the little water-carrier boy and his tin pail lying there on the ground mingling his blood with the water that he carried, and over him, in a posture of defense, the brave Porto-Rican with the gun he had torn from the cowardly hands of the murderers who had fired upon a crowd of women and children.
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