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Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday January 7, 1903
Divine Rights Baer Explains His God-Given Right to Rule the Working Class
From the Appeal to Reason of January 3, 1903:
Tag: working class
Hellraisers Journal: “You are waging a class fight!” Eugene Debs Speaks at Philadelphia’s Labor Lyceum, Part I
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Hellraisers Journal – Sunday March 20, 1910
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – General Strike Committee Sends for Debs
From The Philadelphia Inquirer of March 17, 1910:
[Statement of Philadelphia’s General Strike Committee.]
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Announcement of the plans of the labor leaders for today was embodied in the following statement issued by the General Strike Committee, from its headquarters at Twelfth and Filbert streets:
In our statement issued last night we announced several mass meetings would be held in different parts of the city, to which organized and unorganized working men and women and the general public are invited. These meetings will be held at Kensington Labor Lyceum. Second and Cambria streets; Mercantile Hall, 849 Franklin street; Academy Hall, 524 South Fourth street, and Labor Lyceum, Sixth and Brown streets, on Thursday, March 17, at 8 P. M.
These meetings will be addressed by C. O. Pratt, Jeff Pierce, organizer of the American Federation of Labor; John J. Murphy and other prominent speakers…
The committee has also made arrangements for holding a monster mass meeting at Labor Lyceum, Sixth and Brown streets, at 3 P. M., Saturday, March 19, which meeting will be addressed by Eugene V. Debs and other prominent speakers…
[Photographs added.]
Hellraisers Journal: From the Cleveland Toiler: Eugene V. Debs on the Power of the Capitalist Press, Fed Fat by Ruling Class
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Hellraisers Journal – Saturday February 21, 1920
Power of Press Underestimated by American Socialist Movement
From the Cleveland Toiler of February 20, 1920:
The Power of the Press
—–– by Eugene V. Debs –
The power of the press is sadly underestimated in the socialist movement. The ruling class make no such mistakes. They are keenly alive to the power of the press in molding public sentiment and in shaping affairs in accordance with their interests. The capitalist papers do not suffer for the want of support and never die of starvation. They are fed fat and ungrudgingly by the class in power and in return serve that class with all their power.
Not so with the press of the working class. With scarcely an exception the papers and periodicals published in the interest of labor eke out a precarious existence. Ninety-five percent of them line the highway of the past with their skeletons. They lingered for a brief while and then gave up the ghost, falling victims to the chronic labor-paper malady, starvation.
Of course not all papers claiming to be labor papers are fit to exist. Many of them are fakes and run by political grafters. These often thrive in their blackmail and graft while an honest paper is allowed to die for the want of support.
Working men and women ought to have intelligence enough by this time to discriminate between an honest labor paper and a grafting sheet and they ought to be loyal enough to the working class to give their support to the paper that uses its influence to mold sentiment in favor of their cause and fights their industrial and political battles.
It is when the strike comes that the working class suffer most keenly the lack of a powerful press that reaches the people. They are always at a fearful disadvantage on this account. The capitalists get in a thousand licks to their one, not only because they can get their case before the people in its most favorable light and keep it there, but because they can put the case of the workers in the most unfavorable light and keep it there.
Hellraisers Journal: Eugene V. Debs Speaks to 1,000 Strikers at McKees Rocks: 15 Nationalities; One Class
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Hellraisers Journal – Thursday August 26, 1909
McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania – Eugene Debs Speaks to Strikers
From Pennsylvania’s Butler Citizen of August 26, 1909:
Eugene V. Debs Makes Good His Declaration
and Speaks to Men
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PITTSBURG, August 25.-Eugene V. Debs, late candidate for President on the Socialist ticket, today addressed the strikers of the Pressed Steel Car Company on the Indian Mound, McKees Rocks.
Debs and J. W. Slayton, Socialist organizer for Pittsburg, went to McKees Rocks by trolley and were met at the foot of the bridge by a committee of strikers. They were then escorted to Indian Mound, where more than l,000 men had gathered. Only four women were at the meeting.
Mr. Debs’ remarks were terse and to the point. His voice could be heard plainly for quite a distance, and his denunciation of the Pressed Steel Car Company aroused much enthusiasm. He said:
There are 15 nationalities represented here this morning, but you are of one class. You are workmen, united in a single cause. You are wage-slaves in the eyes of the corporation. Though I cannot understand your language I can read your hearts and can make myself understood to you.
I, too, have suffered. I have been on strike and have become involved in riots. I know what it is to face a heartless power.
This desperate fight must be continued. The eyes of the civilized world and the eyes of all the laborers of the world are upon you. It is the greatest labor fight in all history. The laboring men in Pittsburg particularly should stand by their fellow workers in this fight,
I want to warn you of traitors, beware of spies. They circulate among you and talk your language. They pretend to suffer with you when in reality they are employes of the Press Steel Car Company.
They are employed by parasites who are lounging in their summer retreats while you are suffering and starving. You make the money which the degenerate sons of these parasites squander on champagne. They hold that the cheapest thing in the world is human flesh. Your blood means nothing to them. Because you have walked away from your work you are be shot.
Hellraisers Journal: Speech of IWW Organizer Elizabeth Gurley Flynn at Spokane on June 29, 1909, Part I
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Hellraisers Journal – Saturday July 10, 1909
Spokane, Washington – June 29th Speech of Gurley Flynn, Part I
From the Spokane Industrial Worker of July 8, 1909:
ELIZABETH G. FLYNN ADDRESS TO WORKERS
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Address of Miss Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Organizer and lecturer of the Industrial Workers of the World, given at Spokane, Wash., on Tuesday evening, June 29, 1909.
This meeting as you well know, is held under the [auspices?] of the Industrial Workers of the World. The organization is a new form of labor organization, one that stands for the industrial working class and that class alone. We are not interested in the welfare or the ideas of any other class in society; and we who are the members of the tolling class have in these sufficient of our own interests that need looking after, that we have no time to bother with other classes.
The working class of this country look out upon a situation where there are natural resources present to supply the entire world with plenty; they look out upon an industrial situation which has invented machinery capable of getting these natural resources with but little labor expenditure into finished commodities of necessities or luxuries. Yet in spite of that and in spite of the productiveness made possibly by men who labor and the natural abundance of the earth itself, in spite of that, we have people starving in this country and five million idle; over a million child laborers in the United States; seventy thousand children in New York City and fifty thousand in Chicago that go to school without a breakfast in the morning we have a condition in which the majority of the people are a propertyless class, are a class that own no land, that control none of that productive machinery, that control absolutely nothing in this land of the free and home of the brave but their own labor power, their own abilities to work. Just the same as the mule can pull a big load, so a worker can handle his labor power, muscular energy; and is the only thing he has; and if some trust could have been organized to separate us from that, to divide us from ourselves. I suppose even that would have been done long ago.
Hellraisers Journal: From Appeal to Reason: U. S. Supreme Court Legalizes Traffic in Daughters of the Working Class
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Hellraisers Journal – Monday April 19, 1909
Chicago, Illinois – Crusade Against Traffic in Girls Halted by U. S Supreme Court
From the Appeal to Reason of April 17, 1909:
TRAFFIC IN GIRLS.
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When it comes to suppressing real crime the law, as administered under the present system, always proved a mockery and a farce. The decision is invariably in favor of the strong and against the weak; in favor of the class in power and against its subjects.
Recently there has been a federal investigation of the unspeakable white slave traffic in Chicago. District Attorney Edward W. Sims has been honestly trying, be it said to his credit, to suppress the revolting commerce in young girls which has blackened the centers of our so-called civilization. About the time the district attorney had his evidence complete and felt sure of his case the United States supreme court rendered a decision shattering the prosecution and in effect legalizing the shocking white slave traffic. It seems unbelievable and yet the facts stand forth beyond dispute. The decision in question has just been rendered and in referring to it District Attorney Sims says:
It will be necessary now to prove the actual importation in each case. I think the federal government will be able to do very little in obtaining convictions. The entire prosecution of such cases will be left to the state courts and to the police.
Which means that the white slave traffic will be left to the gamblers, blacklegs, hack-politicians and pimps, agents of the commercial pirates who established the traffic, and who are carrying it forward to the everlasting disgrace of the state and for their own private gain.
Under this odius and abhorrent traffic thousands of poor, innocent girls are lured to this country, ruined and placed in brothels under contract to end their blasted lives in nameless horror.
The point above all others to take into account is that these girls are uniformly the children of poverty, the daughters of the working class, and for this reason it is of grave significance and its lesson should be graven deeply upon the hearts of all the millions who toil.
Hellraisers Journal: Boardman Robinson on Justice: for Capitalists (Bisbee Gunthugs), for Working Men (Mooney)
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Hellraisers Journal – Friday January 3, 1919
Justice in America: for Capitalist, for Working Men.
From The Liberator of January 1919:
-Boardman Robinson on Justice for Capitalists
-Boardman Robinson on Justice for Working Men
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Hellraisers Journal: Debs Speaks at Kansas State Federation of Labor Convention on Labor Unity and Victory
To serve the working class is to me
always a duty of love.
-Eugene Victor Debs
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Hellraisers Journal, Sunday August 16, 1908
Eugene Debs Speaks to Delegates at Labor Gathering
Eugene Debs, Socialist Party candidate for President, was invited to speak at the State F. of L. convention. He arrived at the convention from Girard where he had been resting after touring through the eastern states.
Pittsburg, Kansas, August 12, 1908
Kansas State Federation of Labor Convention:
Introduction by Chairman Cable
Gentlemen of the Convention: I assure you it is a great privilege on my part to present to you at this time a gentleman who needs no introduction at my hands; a gentleman who is known to you and who is known to the workingmen throughout the length and breadth of this country as a true and tried trade unionist and the candidate of the Socialist party for President of the United States. I, therefore, take great pleasure in presenting to you Brother Eugene V. Debs.
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[Debs Speaks]
Mr. Chairman, Delegates and Fellow Workers: It is with pleasure, I assure you, that I embrace this opportunity to exchange greetings with you in the councils of labor. I have prepared no formal address, nor is any necessary at this time. You have met here as the representatives of organized labor and if I can do anything to assist you in the work you have been delegated to do I shall render that assistance with great pleasure.
To serve the working class is to me always a duty of love. Thirty-three years ago I first became a member of a trade union. I can remember quite well under what difficulties meetings were held and with what contempt organized labor was treated at that time. There has been a decided change. The small and insignificant trade union has expanded to the proportions of a great national organization. The few hundreds now number millions and organized labor has become a recognized factor in the economics and politics of the nation.
There has been a great evolution during that time and while the power of the organized workers has increased there has been an industrial development which makes that power more necessary than ever before in all the history of the working class movement.
This is an age of organization. The small employer of a quarter of a century ago has practically disappeared. The workingman of today is confronted by the great corporation which has its ironclad rules and regulations, and if they don’t suit he can quit.
In the presence of this great power, workingmen are compelled to organize or be ground to atoms. They have organized. They have the numbers. They have had some bitter experience. They have suffered beyond the power of language to describe, but they have not yet developed their latent power to a degree that they can cope successfully with the great power that exploits and oppresses them. Upon this question of organization, my brothers, you and I may differ widely, but as we are reasonable men, we can discuss these differences candidly until we find common ground upon which we can stand side by side in the true spirit of solidarity–and work together for the emancipation of our class.
Hellraisers Journal: From the Socialist Party of America: Principles and Platform Adopted by 1908 Chicago Convention
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Hellraisers Journal: Saturday June 20, 1908
Chicago, Illinois – Socialist Party Platform and Principles
From the International Socialist Review of June 1908:
Socialist Platform.
PRINCIPLES.
Human life depends upon food clothing and shelter. Only with these assured are freedom, culture and higher human development possible. To produce food, clothing or shelter, land and machinery are needed. Land alone does not satisfy human needs. Human labor creates machinery and applies it to the land for the production of raw materials and food. Whoever has control of land and machinery controls human labor, and with it human life and liberty.
To-day the machinery and the land used for industrial purposes are owned by a rapidly decreasing minority. So long as machinery is simple and easily handled by one man, its owner cannot dominate the sources of life of others. But when machinery becomes more complex and expensive and requires for its effective operation the organized effort of many workers its influence reaches over wide circles of life. The owners of such machinery become the dominant class.
In proportion as the number of such machine owners compared to all other classes decreases, their power in the nation and in the world increases. They bring ever larger masses of working people under their control, reducing them to the point, where muscle and, brain are their only productive property. Millions of formerly self-employing workers thus become the helpless wage slaves of the industrial masters.
As the economic power of the ruling class grows it becomes less useful in the life of the nation. All the useful work of the nation falls upon the shoulders of the class whose only property is its manual and mental labor power—the wage worker—or of the class who have but little land and little effective machinery outside of their labor power—the small traders and small farmers. The ruling minority is steadily becoming useless and parasitic.
Hellraisers Journal: James P. Thomas on Revolutionary Industrial Unionism, Part I: Craft Unionism Creates Union Scabs
Solidarity Forever
For the Union makes us strong.
-Ralph Chaplin
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Hellraisers Journal, Sunday January 27, 1918
From the International Socialist Review: Revolutionary Industrial Unionism
From the January edition of the Review, we find the testimony of James P. Thompson given before the Commission on Industrial Relations at Seattle, Washington, on August 12, 1914.
Industrial Unionism:
What It IsBy JAMES P. THOMPSON
[Part I.]
CALLED as a witness, before the Federal Industrial Relation Commission, he testified as follows: Mr. O. W. Thompson, Council for the Commission: Will you please give us your name? Answer: Mr. J. P. Thompson: James P. Thompson. Question: And your business address? Answer: 208 Second Avenue S., Seattle. Question: And your occupation? Answer: Organizer of the Industrial Workers of the World. Question: That is the organization with headquarters in Chicago? Answer: Chicago. Question: Of which Mr. Vincent St. John is general secretary ? Answer: Yes, sir. Question: How long have you been an organizer of the Industrial Workers of the World? Answer: I have been an organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World, that is drawing a salary from them as an organizer, since 1906. I was one of those who worked for it before it was born, I mean I helped organize it. Question: You say you helped work for it before it was born; you mean as a similar organization? Answer: I mean I was one of those who worked to have it formed and took steps in starting it. Question: How long have you been engaged in the work of propagation or agitation or whatever you want to call it, along that line? Answer: Well, let me see, I think I got to be a sort of an agitator when I was a fireman on the Great Lakes when I was about fifteen or sixteen years old. Question: As you look over the labor field and look into the condition of the workers and look at the organization then in existence, what was in your mind that gave you the idea that a new organization should be formed? What was the reason that led you to that conclusion?
