Tag: Working-Class Unity

Hellraisers Journal: “May Day and the Revolution” by Eugene Victor Debs

Janet RayeEugene Victor Debs
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Quote EVD, SPA Campaign Opens, Riverview Park, Chicago, June 16, 1912—————

Hellraisers Journal – Friday May 1, 1914
“May Day and the Revolution” by Eugene V. Debs

From The Goltry News (Oklahoma) of May 1, 1914:

May Day and the Revolution

(By Eugene V. Debs.)

EVD Life Size Photo by Jas Soler, ISR p1044, May 1910

We are again about to celebrate the annual holiday of the International Socialist Movement. The thrill of May Day is even now in our veins and our hearts beat faster as we contemplate the glad tiding of this day to the workers of the world. 

May Day is above all days in the year the day of the working class; the day of rejoicing and fraternal greeting; the day of high hope and lofty aspiration; the day of national and international celebration.

Not yet have we of the United Stales risen to the heights of this grand occasion and given to May Day its revolutionary significance as have our comrades in European and other nations; not yet have we grasped the full and splendid meaning of this day to our class and to humanity, but this year I trust our celebration may be worthy of the day and that this jubilee of the working class may resound from coast to coast with the glad tidings of the coming revolution.

May Day was not granted as a boon to the workers by their patronizing masters to tranquilize their discontent, but was chosen and set apart by themselves as the day upon which to arouse themselves from their lethargy, lift up their weary bodies from the earth, clasp hands with their fellow workers, and solemnly vow to break their fetters and emancipate themselves from slavery. 

May Day is henceforth emancipation day for the working class. On this day the revolution breathes the breath of life into the nostrils of the workers and the awaking pulsing workers recruit with eager, passionate spirit the swelling ranks of the revolutionary movement.

Each and every industrial center and each agricultural district should this year join the May Day celebration and make its observance so general and fill it with such ardor and enthusiasm as to compel attention to the program of the day and the significance of the event. The very thought that labor’s holiday has been internationally proclaimed and will be celebrated by the workers of every nation on the face of the earth; the very contemplation of the fine spirit of the day and the eager greeting of comrades to comrade and nation to nation, voiced in every tongue known to man and borne to us on every tide and every breeze, is of itself enough to thrill us in every fiber and set every drop in our veins tingling with the fervor of international solidarity.

On this day of the downtrodden masses the inspiring message that Socialism brings to them must be heard around the world. The electrifying shibboleth of Marx must be echoed and re-echoed everywhere:

“Workers of the world unite: you have nothing to lose but your chains. You have a world to gain.”

Unity and solidarity must be the watchword of the day. Industrial and political organization of the workers, all the workers, regardless of race, sex or creed, must be urged with all the force and persuasiveness at our command. Without organization the struggle is vain and the cause lost. The commonwealth of the workers that is to be must be organized primarily in the industries where they are employed and the time to do that is now, and May Day is the day to emphasize its supreme necessity.

The political power of the workers must also be developed through the Socialist Party, the only party organized and controlled by themselves; the only party which represents their interests, expresses their aspirations, and fights their battles in the war for emancipation.

May Day, pregnant with new and bounding life and rapture of resurrection, is the glorious harbinger of the social revolution, the gleaming promise of industrial freedom and social justice to all the WORKERS of the WORLD.

May Day Red Special International, Goltry OK Ns p2, May 1, 1914

[Photograph of Debs and emphasis added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: International Socialist Review: “Timber Workers and Timber Wolves” by William D. Haywood, Part II

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote BBH re Industrial Freedom BTW LA, ISR p , Aug 1912—————

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday August 3, 1912
Brotherhood of Timber Workers Organizing Campaign in Louisiana

From the International Socialist Review of August 1912:

Timber Workers by BBH, ISR p105, Aug 1912

[Part II of II]

Before the campaign of organization [Brotherhood of Timber Worker] now inaugurated by the Industrial Workers of the World is closed the lumber barons of Dixieland will have learned that it is impossible to fell trees with rifles and saw lumber with six shooters.

It should be mentioned here that of the nine men arrested four are non-union men, two of them, John and Paul Galloway, being owners of the Lumber Company. All are charged with murder. This, perhaps, indicates that the Trust has not entirely corralled the officialdom of Louisiana. It is certain that they are in bad repute with the business element in nearly all of the towns as their commissaries have been the means of controlling nearly the entire earnings of their employees, who are compelled to trade with the companies or lose the only means they have of making a living.

To maintain their absolute control of the camps the lumber companies, with the aid of their thugs, patrolled the towns, in some places inclosures were built around the mills and shacks. Notices were posted warning away union men, peddlers and Socialists.

Only a few days ago, H. G. Creel, one of the Rip-Saw editors on a lecture tour, was roughly handled at Oakdale and DeRidder, La. He was compelled to leave the first-named place, being threatened and intimidated by gun-men.

The small merchant realizes that if the workers are allowed to trade where they choose some of their money would pass over their counters and they know if wages are increased there would be a corresponding increase in their day’s receipts. This will account for the fact that the small business man and farmer have given their sympathy and a measure of support to the growing union of timber workers.

Arthur L. Emerson and Jay Smith, both Southern born, are the men around whom interest centers. They are the men who organized the Brotherhood of Timber Workers. Emerson had made two trips to the West-one to the Lumber District to the Southwest and the other to the Northwest. It was during the time that he worked with the lumber jacks of the Pacific Coast that he learned the need of organization. This thought was especially developed when he came in contact with the Lumber Workers’ Union of St. Regis and other points in the Bitter Root Range of Mountains. Being a practical lumber jack and saw mill hand and mill-wright himself, he saw at once the discrepancy in wages between the Pacific Coast and the Gulf States and upon his return to Dixieland he immediately took up the burden of organizing the workers as the only possible means of bringing up their wages and conditions to the level of the already too-low Western scale.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: International Socialist Review: “Timber Workers and Timber Wolves” by William D. Haywood, Part II” →

Hellraisers Journal: International Socialist Review: “Timber Workers and Timber Wolves” by William D. Haywood, Part I

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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—————

Hellraisers Journal – Friday August 2, 1912
Lake Charles, Louisiana – A. L Emerson, President of B. T. W., in Jail

From the International Socialist Review of August 1912:

Timber Workers by BBH, ISR p105, Aug 1912

[Part I of II]

A. L. EMERSON, President of the Brotherhood of Timber Workers, is in jail at Lake Charles, La. He was arrested following the shooting at Grabow, La., where three union men and one company hireling were killed outright and nearly two score of men were more or less seriously wounded.

The shooting is the outcome of the bitter war waged against the members of the Brotherhood of Timber Workers by the Lumber Trust for the last eighteen months. The scene of the tragedy that occurred on Sunday, July seventh, is a typical Southern lumber camp. The mill at this place is operated by the Galloway Lumber Company. In common with all others, it is surrounded by the miserable houses where the workers find habitation, the commissary store of the Company being the largest place of business in the towns. A strike has been on at this place since the middle of last May. The single demand on the part of the union men was for a bi-weekly pay day. Heretofore the pay days have been at long intervals-usually a month apart.

During the intervening weeks, when the men were in need of money to meet the necessities of life, they could secure advances on their pay but not in real money. They were compelled to accept Company Scrip payable only in merchandise and exchangeable only at the company commissary. If accepted elsewhere it is uniformly discounted from 10 to 25 per cent on the dollar.

Timber Workers LA Scrip, ISR p106, Aug 1912

In the commissary stores where the cash prices are always from 20 to 50 per cent higher than at the independent stores, the company has established another means of graft by making two prices-the coupon or scrip price being much higher than that exacted for real cash.

The conditions at Grabow can be used as an illustration of nearly all of the other lumber camps of the South.

The commissary store is not the only iniquity imposed upon the Timber Workers. For miserable shacks they [are] compelled to pay exorbitant rents; sewerage there is none; there is no pretense at sanitation ; the outhouses are open vaults. For these accommodations families pay from $5 to $20 a month. In one camp worn-out box cars are rented by R. A. Long, the Kansas City philanthropist, for $4 a month. Insurance fees are arbitrarily collected from every worker, for which he receives practically nothing in return, but whether his time be long or short-one day or a month-with the company, the fee is deducted. The same is true of the doctor fee and the hospital fee, which, in all places, is an imaginary institution. The nearest thing to a hospital that the writer saw was an uncompleted foundation at DeRidder, the place visited a few days prior to the Grabow tragedy. The gunmen and deputy sheriffs are an expensive innovation in the manufacture of lumber. These miserable tools are to be found everywhere and are used to browbeat and coerce the workers.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: International Socialist Review: “Timber Workers and Timber Wolves” by William D. Haywood, Part I” →

Hellraisers Journal: “You are waging a class fight!” Eugene Debs Speaks at Philadelphia’s Labor Lyceum, Part II

Janet RayeEugene Victor Debs
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Quote EVD, Starve Quietly, Phl GS Speech IA, Mar 19, 1910———-

Hellraisers Journal – Monday March 21, 1910
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – Eugene Debs Speaks at Mass Meeting

From The Philadelphia Inquirer of March 20, 1910:

PRATT AND DEBS AT LABOR MEETING
—–

EVD, Spk Chc p15, Nov 22, 1909

Sympathetic strikers crowded Labor Lyceum Hall, at Sixth and Brown streets, when their big mass meeting was called to order at 3 o’clock yesterday afternoon [Saturday March 19th], and the streets about the building were blockaded with hundreds who were unable to enter the hall.

Many policemen, under command of Lieutenants Nippes and Ehrsman, were stationed about the entrance to the hall and along Sixth and Brown streets to prevent possible rioting, and riot wagons from City Hall were placed in near-by streets.

C. O. Pratt, the executive chairman of the carmen’s organization, arrived at the Labor Lyceum soon after 3 o’clock in an automobile, and was cheered by the crowd as he made his way to the entrance. The doors had been ordered closed by the police, but the lieutenant in charge made way for Pratt and the speakers with him. As soon as Pratt was inside the hall the crowd picked him up and passed him along to the platform.

Pratt in his speech exhorted the labor men to stand firm in their demands. In concluding he asked all who would remain out on strike to say “aye.” The answering chorus of “ayes” was heard in the streets.

Eugene [V]. Debs, a former Presidential candidate on the Socialist ticket, also addressed the meeting.

[He said:]

You are waging a class fight. I am not here to philosophize, but to tell you to fight and fight to the end, and you will win. There is nothing to concede, nothing to arbitrate. If you concede anything you will lose all. Fight the Philadelphia Rapid Transit Company. J. Pierpont Morgan could end the strike in a minute if he wanted to.

———-

[Photograph added.]

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: “You are waging a class fight!” Eugene Debs Speaks at Philadelphia’s Labor Lyceum, Part II” →

Hellraisers Journal: Mary Heaton Vorse on the Great Steel Strike: “Their Weapons and Ours” -Unity, “Almost a Miracle”

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote MHV Immigrants Fight for Freedom, Quarry Jr p2, Nov 1, 1919———-

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday December 20, 1919
Mary Heaton Vorse on Organizing Steel Workers in Youngstown

From the Pittsburg [Kansas] Workers Chronicle of December 19, 1919:

THEIR WEAPONS AND OURS.
—–

(By Mary Heaton Vorse.)

MHV, NYS p37, Dec 1, 1918

Not long ago a friend of mine came to Pittsburgh [Pennsylvania] who wanted to know about the strike. He wanted me to tell him first of all what had impressed me most. My answer was the answer that anyone who had watched the strike must have given. What had impressed me the most was the courage of the men; what had impressed me the most was their endurance; what had impressed me most was their uncomplaining patience.

It had seemed almost a miracle to me that men of a dozen or more nationalities and half a dozen states, separated into isolated communities, should one fine day have struck altogether, 350,000 strong.

The longer I stayed and the more knew about the strike, the more in credible did the strike seem, for as I went from town to town staying a few days now in one community and now in another, I realized how little organization they had before the strike started.

Take Youngstown for instance. No one had ever organized Youngstown and everyone said that Youngstown never could be organized.

In Youngstown and East Youngstown and the nineteen small communities surrounding it where steel is made, there are about 70,000 steel workers. The first large meeting ever held of the National Committe occurred in January of this year. Between that time and September 22 there was never a larger force of organizers in this whole district than six. Six men organized Youngstown and the surrounding country. Six men and that was all.

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Hellraisers Journal: From The Messenger: Cartoon by W. B. Williams: “When they get together they’ll dump us off!!”

Janet RayeA. Philip Randolph
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Quote re Employers No Race Line to Exploit, Messenger p11, Aug 1919———-

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday August 13, 1919
Workers Unite, Black and White, and Dump the Bosses Off Your Backs

From The Messenger of August 1919:
-Cartoon by W. B. Williams

CRTN When Workers Get Together, Msgr p4, Aug 1919

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From The Messenger: Cartoon by W. B. Williams: “When they get together they’ll dump us off!!”” →