Tag: World War I

Hellraisers Journal: William Z Foster on the Alschuler Award: “How Life Has Been Brought into the Stockyards,” Part II

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote WZF, re Poverty of Packinghouse Workers, LnL, April 1918


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Hellraisers Journal, Saturday April 6, 1918
Victory! for Packinghouse Workers by William Z. Foster, Part II

From Life and Labor of April 1918:

HOW LIFE HAS BEEN BROUGHT
INTO THE STOCKYARDS
A Story of the Reorganization of the Packing Industry

William Z. Foster
Secretary Chicago Stockyards Labor Council

The main questions, touching wages, hours and conditions of labor, involved in the Stockyards arbitration hearing before Judge Alschuler, and his decision concerning them, are of overwhelming importance, both in principle and in consequence. Just how far-reaching will be the results of the decision one cannot now forecast. But lips stiffened by poverty will perhaps now learn to smile, and thousands of families will for the first time taste of life.

[Part II]

DRASTIC ACTION TAKEN

Chicago Stockyards, WZF, LnL p68, April 1918

The cup was full. It was evident that the packers had no intention of living up to their agreement, but were seeking openly to destroy the unions, let the consequences be what they might. The unions accepted the issue. They at once broke off negotiations with the packers and sent the committee away to Washington again to demand that the President take over the packing houses, as the only way to guarantee their operation during the period of the war.

On January 18th the committee met with President Wilson, explained to him the imminent danger of a great strike in the packing houses and asked that he take steps to seize the industry. The President replied that the proposed remedy involved a big issue, that he would take it under advisement, and that in the meantime another, effort would be made to get a settlement through arbitration.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: William Z Foster on the Alschuler Award: “How Life Has Been Brought into the Stockyards,” Part II” →

Hellraisers Journal: William Z Foster on the Alschuler Award: “How Life Has Been Brought into the Stockyards,” Part I

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote WZF, re Organizing Packinghouse Workers, LnL, April 1918

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Hellraisers Journal, Friday April 5, 1918
Victory! for Packinghouse Workers by William Z. Foster, Part I

From Life and Labor of April 1918:

Life and Labor, Editors, and WZF, April 1918

The main questions, touching wages, hours and conditions of labor, involved in the Stockyards arbitration hearing before Judge Alschuler, and his decision concerning them, are of overwhelming importance, both in principle and in consequence. Just how far-reaching will be the results of the decision one cannot now forecast. But lips stiffened by poverty will perhaps now learn to smile, and thousands of families will for the first time taste of life.

[Part I of III.]

Chicago Stockyards, WZF, LnL p63, April 1918

EIGHT MONTHS ago the vast army of packing house workers throughout the country were among America’s most helpless and hopeless toilers. Practically destitute of organization, they worked excessively long hours under abominable conditions for miserably low wages. Hope for them indeed seemed dead. But today all this is changed. Like magic splendid organizations have sprung up in all the packing centers. The eight hour day has been established, working conditions have been improved and wages greatly increased. From being one of the worst industries in the country for the workers the packing industry has suddenly become one of the best.

The bringing about of these revolutionary changes constitutes one of the greatest achievements of the Trade Union movement in recent years. A detailed recital of how it occurred is well worth while.

Since the great, ill-fated strike of 1904 the packing trades unions had put forth much effort to re-establish themselves. But, working upon the plan of each union fighting its own battle and paying little or no heed to the struggles of the rest, they achieved no better success than have other unions applying this old-fashioned and unscientific method in the big industries. Complete failure attended their efforts. No sooner would one of them gain a foothold than the mighty packers, almost without trying, would destroy it.

The logic of the situation was plain. Individual action had failed. Possibility of success lay only in the direction of united action. Common sense dictated that all the unions should pool their strength and make a concerted drive for organization. Therefore, when on Friday, July 13, 1917, exactly thirteen years after the calling of the big strike, Local No. 453 of the Railway Carmen proposed to Local No. 87 of the Butcher Workmen that a joint campaign of organization be started in the Chicago packing houses, the latter agreed at once. The two unions drafted a resolution asking the Chicago Federation of Labor to call together the interested trades and to take charge of the proposed campaign.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: William Z Foster on the Alschuler Award: “How Life Has Been Brought into the Stockyards,” Part I” →

Hellraisers Journal: From The Eye Opener: Eugene V. Debs on Indicted Socialists and Attacks on Russia

Janet RayeEugene Victor Debs
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I have no country to fight for;
my country is the earth,
and I am a citizen of the world.
-Eugene V. Debs

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Hellraisers Journal, Sunday March 17, 1918
Eugene V. Debs on Indictments of Socialist Comrades

From The Eye Opener of March 16, 1918, page 2:

Indicted, Unashamed and Unafraid.
by Eugene V. Debs

Socialist Party of America Button

Sunday morning, March 10, the press dispatches in the daily papers announced the indictment the day before in the federal court at Chicago of Adolph Germer, National Secretary; Victor L. Berger, member of the National Executive Committee; J. Louis Engdahl, editor of The Eye Opener; William F. Kruse, Secretary of the Young People’s Socialist League; and Irwin St. John Tucker, writer and lecturer, all of the Socialist Party [of America]. The charge against them is seditious utterance and interference with the prosecution of the war.

The indictments were found Feb. 2, we are told, but secrecy was preserved regarding the proceeding until the administration at Washington could be consulted and its sanction secured before entering the prosecution.

It is thus made clear that this indictment, while ostensibly directed against certain individuals, is in fact the indictment of the Socialist Party by the national administration at Washington.

If Germer, Berger, Engdahl, Kruse, and Tucker are guilty, so are we all. They have but spoken and written what the Socialist Party stands for, and if Socialism, the thing we stand for and shall continue to stand for, is criminal and subject to indictment and prosecution, then the administration, to be logical and consistent, should indict, prosecute, and imprison not only the spokesmen of the party but its entire membership of more than 100,000 social rebels, who in opposing the damnable profiteering system which has precipitated this bloody deluge upon humanity are alike guilty of sedition and disloyalty in the bleared eyes of the autocratic rulers of this country.

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Hellraisers Journal: From The Liberator: “Red Russia-The Triumph of the Bolsheviki” by John Reed

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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In the relations of a weak Government
and a rebellious people
there comes a time when every act of the authorities
exasperates the masses,
and every refusal to act excites their contempt.
-Jack Reed

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Hellraisers Journal, Saturday March 16, 1918
From The Liberator: John Reed on the Russian Revolution

Correspondent John Reed was in Russia with his wife, Louise Bryant, during the amazing events of October and November 1917. In the latest edition of The Liberator is published Reed’s account of what he witnessed, and which we republish, in part, below:

Liberator Cover, Russian Revolution by John Reed, Mar 1918

RED RUSSIA-
The Triumph of the Bolsheviki

I.

THE real revolution has begun. All the swift events of the last eight crowded months–the sudden debacle of Czarism in February, the brief inglorious attempt of Miliukov to establish a safe and sane bourgeois republic, the rise of Kerensky and the precarious structure of hasty compromise which constituted the Provisional Government–these were merely the prologue to the great drama of naked class-struggle which has now opened. For the first time in history the working-class has seized the power of the state, for its own purposes–and means to keep it.

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Hellraisers Journal: From the Buffalo New Age: Kate Richards O’Hare, “Tribune of the People” Facing 5 Years in Prison

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Kate Richards OHare, Dangerous to war profiteers, ab Dec 1917

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Hellraisers Journal, Wednesday February 27, 1918
Buffalo, New York – Kate O’Hare to Speak on Thursday

From the Buffalo’s Socialist New Age of February 23, 1918:


Tribune of The People,
–Speaker at Music Hall
—-Faces 5 Years in Jail
—–

FIVE YEARS AWAY FROM HER CHILDREN
-KATHLEEN, JUST STANDING WHERE CHILD TURNS TO MAIDEN;
AFFECTIONATE, BROWN-EYED GENE, NOW NINE YEARS OLD;
KEEN, ALERT VICTOR, THE OTHER TWIN,
AND DICK, 14 THE ELDEST.
—–

Kate Richards O'Hare Bff New Age p1, Feb 23, 1918

Kate Richards O’Hare, who was considered the most powerful woman orator in the Socialist movement, and whose ability as a lecturer is comparable only with such men as Eugene V. Debs and William Jennings Bryan, will deliver one of her mastery addresses under the auspices of the Socialist Party in Elmwood Music Hall on the evening of Thursday, February 28th. Mrs. O’Hare is known throughout the length and breadth of the land as a most eloquent advocate of the cause of Socialism, and a fearless defender of the rights of the oppressed.

SENTENCED FOR
FIVE YEARS.

Recently she has been sentenced to five years in a Federal prison for alleged violation of the espionage law, in which she was accused of stirring up opposition to the draft in a speech delivered last summer in North Dakota. She is out on bail pending the appeal of her case.

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Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts & Doings of Mother Jones for January 1918: Found in Indianapolis at Convention of United Mine Workers of America

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones, Praying Swearing, UMWC, Jan 17, 1918

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Hellraisers Journal, Tuesday February 26, 1918
Mother Jones News for January 1918: Gives Speech at Miners’ Convention

Mother Jones Fire Eater, Lg Crpd, St L Str, Aug 23, 1917

On January 17th of this year, Mother Jones was found speaking in Indianapolis, Indiana, at the Convention of the United Mine Workers of America. She voice her support for President Wilson and for the war effort, declaring:

We must lick the Kaiser.

She also spoke regarding the ongoing attempt to organize West Virginia:

There is a system of industrial feudalism in the State of West Virginia but before another year ends the backbone of that damnable system will be broken and men will rise beneath those stars and stripes as they should rise, free, for the first time. We propose to put the infamous gunmen there out of business. We will make them find other occupations. You are robbed and plundered to pay these gunmen that are hired to keep you in industrial slavery. If it takes every man of the 500,000 miners in this country to march into West Virginia we propose to drive out that feudal system that survives there. It is an outrage and an insult to that flag. They may as well prepare for business, for we are going to do it. The president of the Winding Gulf gang said in Washington, “Don’t you know that Mother Jones swears?” I was asked, “Do you swear, Mother Jones?” I said, “You don’t think I’m hypocrite enough to pray when I’m talking to those thieves!”

[Emphasis added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: Eugene V. Debs Defends I. W. W., Declares Charges “Absurd and Malicious”

Janet RayeEugene Victor Debs
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EVD Quote, Revolutionary Solidarity, ISR Feb 1918

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Hellraisers Journal, Sunday February 3, 1918
Eugene V. Debs Defends the Industrial Workers of the World

From the International Socialist Review of February 1918:

THE I. W. W. BOGEY

By EUGENE V. DEBS

WWIR, Chg IWW, EVD re Stanley J. Clark, ISR Feb 1918

The morning paper I have just read contains an extended press dispatch from Washington, under screaming headlines, making the startling disclosure that a worldwide conspiracy to overthrow the existing social order has been unearthed by the secret service agents of the government The basis of the conspiracy is reported to have been the discovery of some guns and ammunition in the hold of a Russian freighter just arrived at a Pacific port in charge of a Bolsheviki crew, from which it has been deduced that the guns must have been sent by the Russian revolutionists to the I. W. W. of the United States in pursuance of a conspiracy of the Russian reds, the Sinn Fein leaders of Ireland, and the American I. W. W.s to overthrow all the governments of the civilized world.

This is really too much!

We are not told how the Sinn Feiners happen to get in on this universal conspiracy, but as their name, like that of the Bolsheviki and the I. W. W., has great potency as a bogey to frighten the feeble-minded, the inventors of this wonderful cock-and-bull story may well be allowed this additional license to their perfervid imagination.

Everything that happens nowadays that the ruling classes do not like and everything that does not happen that they do like is laid at the door of the I. W. W. Its name is anathema wherever capitalism wields the lash and drains the veins of its exploited victims.

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Hellraisers Journal: West Virginia Vagrancy Law Targets Striking Coal Miners, No Penalty for Lock-Outs

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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There are no limits to which
powers of privilege will not go
to keep the workers in slavery.
-Mother Jones
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Hellraisers Journal, Saturday February 2, 1918
State of West Virginia – Targets Strikers with Vagrancy Law

From the Duluth Labor World of January 26, 1918:

STRIKERS ARE TERMED LOAFERS
—–
West Virginia Law Makes Idle Men Subject
to Arrest for Vagrancy.
—–

WV Miners Strike, Gunthugs, Labor World, Sept 1, 1917

WHEELING, W. Va., Jan 24-Men who go on strike in West Virginia are liable to arrest for vagrancy under the new vagrancy law rushed through the last special session of the legislature. The law provides, under penalty of arrest and sentence for vagrancy, that able-bodied men, between the ages of 16 and 60, must be employed in some lawful, useful and recognized business or occupation whereby they may earn a sufficient income to support themselves and those legally dependent upon them.

A number of strikers already have been arrested under new law. The restlessness of organized labor in West Virginia is conceded to be the impelling force that necessitated an extraordinary session of the legislature to pass this law.

[Says a West Virginia labor official:]

Under the guise of attacking the loafer, the state legislature created the most effective instrument for the breaking of strikes.

The sinister aspect of the law is to be seen in the fact that no penalty is provided for the man who withholds work from others eager for the opportunity to earn. Lockouts are legal, while strikes are criminal.

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Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones Speaks at United Mine Workers Convention, Indianapolis, Indiana, January 17, 1918

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones, Praying Swearing, UMWC, Jan 17, 1918

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Hellraisers Journal, Monday January 21, 1918
Indianapolis, Indiana – Mother Jones Speaks at U. M. W. Convention

The following is a transcript of the speech delivered by Mother Jones Thursday Afternoon, January 17th, to the Twenty-Sixth Convention of the United Mine Workers of America:

President Hayes:

I feel that the convention is very anxious to hear the distinguished visitor who has just come on the platform. She is a pioneer in our movement, a woman who has been with us for many years and has helped in all the great strikes that have occurred for years past. She needs no introduction to this convention of the United Mine Workers of America. I am now going to present the grandmother of the movement, a young lady of eighty-seven, Mother Jones.

ADDRESS OF MOTHER JONES.

I want to say, boys, that I am glad I have lived to see this gathering of the miners in this country in this hall today. Years ago no one ever dreamt that this great mass of producers would meet in the capital of a great state. I am not going to throw any bouquets at you—I am not driven to that at all. I did not expect to speak in this convention. I came here more to look it over until the officers of West Virginia came back. For the first time in the history of West Virginia we have good officers; that is, we have honest, clean, sober men. They don’t make any crooked deals with the high class burglars—and if I catch one of them doing it I will see that he is hung so he will not make another.

I want to call your attention, as I have often done, to a few illustrations of what is taking place the world over today. History tells us that away back in the days of the Roman Empire they were gathering in the blood of men who produced the wealth, just as they have been doing up to this time. Back in that time the Roman lords said, “Let us go down to Carthage and stop the agitation there.” They went down and all they arrested at that time they sold into slavery or held them. They do pretty much the same today, for the courts put you in jail, which is worse than any slavery.

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Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones to United Mine Workers Convention: “We Must Lick the Kaiser.”

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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You’ve been using your hands,
now I want you to use your heads.
We’ve got to do it,
because we must lick the Kaiser.
-Mother Jones

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Hellraisers Journal, Sunday January 20, 1918
Indianapolis, Indiana – Miners Greet Mother Jones with “Lusty Yell”

From The Scranton Republican of January 18, 1918:

MINERS HEAR MOTHER JONES
—–
Tells Delegates to Use Their Heads,
“Because We Must Lick the Kaiser.”
——

Mother Jones, Ft Wy Jr Gz p3, Dec 17, 1917

INDIANAPOLIS, Ind., Jan. 17.-To permit federal investigations to have complete powers to interpret contracts existing between mine workers and operators, to investigate causes for layoffs and other mine troubles, who in all probability would possess no knowledge of the coal industry, would be a serious blunder and only complicate mine labor troubles, according to the viewpoints expressed in the mine workers’ convention today.

The proposal was contained in a resolution which sought to provide means to refute accusations by operators that the mine workers were deliberate slackers, and as a result coal production was reduced.

The resolution brought the first real fight of the convention. A remedy was suggested in the creation of a federal commission composed of an equal number of employers and employes, whose duty it would be to investigate charges made by employer and employes as to each others failure to observe contract conditions.

Might Invite Conscription.

White, Hayes, Greene, Walker and the committeemen, before whom the resolution was considered declared that such a step would possibly invite the conscription of labor. White and Hayes, denied that the charges made by few operators occasionally was given credence at Washington and assured the authors that the government knew of the truth or falsity of the reports charging miners in various localities with slacking.

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