You ought to be out raising hell.
This is the fighting age.
Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
Hellraisers Journal, Friday May 3, 1907
From the Montana News: Organized Labor Plans Protests
Massive protests parades in support of the officials of the Western Federation of Miners, now imprisoned in Boise, Idaho, will take place this weekend in New York City and in Boston. This week’s Montana News describes the preparations now underway:
Undesirable Citizens
—–Action Taken by Organized Labor to
Resent the Insult of Roosevelt
and to Insure Justice
“Undesirable citizens” clubs were started throughout the country yesterday. In Chicago members of the Moyer-Haywood conference prepared to order a supply of buttons for organized working men bearing the Words: “We are undesirable citizens.”
This is intended to amalgamate the men branded by President Roosevelt as “undesirable citizens” and show that the men be puts such a brand on are really the men who do the world’s work, the men who always stand as a class for lofty measures in public life and progress of the human race.
In New York plans are made to place 100,000 badges on the men who will parade in protest against the mine owners’ conspiracy to hang Mover, Haywood and Pettibone.
The New York Plan.
New York.—The executive committee of the Moyer and Haywood protest committee called off its expedition to the White House. In a statement the committee declared: “Only the respect in which we hold the presidential office restrains us from characterizing Roosevelt’s assertion by the term which the incumbent of that office so frequently employs—’an in famous lie.'”
The committee of three named to call upon Roosevelt will read a report at the next meeting of the organization Sunday morning. An order was placed today for 10,000 buttons bearing the inscription:
We are undesirable citizens.
They will be worn by laboring men in a great parade which will be held here May 4 as a public “rebuke” to the president. The parade will be so much greater than at first expected it is planned to divide it. It is expected that 30,000 will be in the uptown division and 40,000 in the downtown section. Eugene V. Debs will be one of the leading speakers.—Chicago Socialist.
Boston In Line
Four hundred and fifty unions will march in the parade being arranged for Sunday, May 5, in Boston. This will not include those coming from Brockton, Salem, Lynn, Beverly, New Bedford and Fall River, where successful meetings addressed by Luella Twining, have been held and committees elected to visit all unions and solicit for the defense fund.
The musicians affiliated with the A . F. of L. have volunteered their services, so that for the first time in the history of Boston the musicians of the Knights of Labor and the A. F. of L. will play together in one line of march. The spirit of “get together” is in the air. Hundreds of children will also march, including the Socialist Sunday School.
Last Sunday Luella Twining addressed a protest meeting in Brockton arranged by the local Moyer-Haywood conference, at which resolutions were adopted and measures taken for vigorously pushing the collection of funds.
Demand Retraction.
Providence. R. I.-A mass meeting held here under the auspices of the Central Trade and Labor Council of this city, on motion of Delegate Wm. Johnson of the Machinists’ Union instructed its executive committee to send a telegram to President Roosevelt demanding that he retract his unwarranted denunciation of the imprisoned officials of the Western Federation of Labor. Miss Luella Twining and Vice-President Thos. L. Wilson of the International Association of Machinists addressed the meeting.
—–
[Emphasis and drawing by Ryan Walker added.]
An Editorial by Ida Crouch-Hazlett:
The letter of Roosevelt to Honore Jackson [Honoré Jaxon] shows him up in his true light and exposes the hypocrite that has been howling “Square Deal” while all the time lending whatever assistance he could to assist the corporations [to] further enslave labor.
In this letter Roosevelt condemns Mover, Haywood and Pettibone and declares them guilty of the crime charged. The prisoners are not charged with killing Steunenberg but wit h inciting others to kill Steunenberg, and Teddy distinctly and outright declares that they are guilty before they have their trial.
As usual Roosevelt side steps and evades the issue. He condemns the unions in passing resolutions in favor of the prisoners and says that they are trying to prevent justice being done.
Had it not been for the demonstrations by organized labor Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone would have been murdered long before this and Roosevelt would have grinned in ghoulish glee.
Organized labor is not passing resolutions to prevent justice being done, but to demand justice.
Roosevelt does not allude to the Bullpens of Colorado and Idaho, or the deporting of working men out of the state of Colorado by the thugs and deputies of the mine owners and the state militia, and the great square dealer did not use his executive power to give them protection.
Roosevelt conveniently forgets that the right of habeas corpus was ignored in Colorado, that bis old pal [General Sherman Bell] who was bossing the extermination of union men in Colorussia said “to hell with the constitution.”
That Mover, Haywood and Pettibone were kidnapped in Denver, not arrested and rights of citizens denied them.
The dissenting opinion of the United States supreme court is not considered by Teddy.
Nothing is said how the mine owners of Idaho used the Fourth United States Cavalry to invade Missoula county, Montana, and take men from their homes to the bull pen in the Coeur d’Alene and continue to do such until the unions of Butte threatened to commence proceedings against Governor Smith if he allowed such acts to continue. The mine owners can do no harm, only the members of organized labor are law breakers and undesirable citizens.
There was a man in the White House before Roosevelt that called the Rocky Mountain states undesirable states. The inhabitants of those states were proud of the distinction Grover Cleveland placed upon them.
And the friends and champions of Mover, Haywood and Pettibone are equally as proud of the distinction Roosevelt places on them.
When Cleveland retired from the White House he was at considered one of the must undesirable presidents we ever had, although four years previous he had been hailed as a demigod. We say that the stand taken by Roosevelt in condemning the victims of the Mine Owners’ conspiracy will make him as equally undesirable as Grover Cleveland ever was.
———-
[Photograph added.]
SOURCE
Montana News
“Owned and Published by the
Socialist Party of Montana”
(Helena, Montana)
-May 2, 1907
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84024811/1907-05-02/ed-1/seq-1/
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84024811/1907-05-02/ed-1/seq-2/
IMAGES
HMP, Undesirable Citizen, Walker 3, AtR, Apr 20, 1907
https://www.newspapers.com/image/67586854/
Honoré Jaxon, Chicago, 1907, wiki
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honor%C3%A9_Jackson
See also:
For Roosevelt’s letter to Honoré Jaxon:
The Square Deal, Volumes 2-3
(New York, New York)
Aug 1906 – Mar 1908
Citizens’ Industrial Association of America
https://books.google.com/books?id=cytJAQAAMAAJ
SD of June 1907
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=cytJAQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&hl=en&pg=GBS.RA9-PA3
“THE PRESIDENT REPLIES TO THE LABOR TRUST’S ASSAULT Defends His Classification of “Undesirable Citizens.” Repeats Attack on Harriman, Debs, Moyer and Haywood in Sharp Letter Showing the Unfairness of the Defenders of those Accused of Steunenberg’s Murder.”
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=cytJAQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&hl=en&pg=GBS.RA9-PA18
For more on Western Federation of Miners v Mine Owners’ Association, see:
The Cripple Creek Strike:
A History of Industrial Wars in Colorado, 1903-4-5;
Being a Complete and Concise History of the Efforts of Organized Capital to Crush Unionism
-by Emma Florence Langdon
Great Western Publishing Company,
-This is edition most likely about 1908, since it contains the Appendix which covers the Haywood-Moyer-Pettibone case.
-Search with “cour d alene” for more on that conflict.
https://books.google.com/books?id=olgpAAAAYAAJ