Hellraisers Journal, Wednesday May 1, 1907
From the Appeal to Reason: Thoughts on May Day and The Red Flag
William D. Haywood writes to the Appeal from the Ada County Jail:
May Day of all the year is the most momentous to the workers of the world. In every civilized country the first of May is recognized as International Labor Day. On this day thought-waves are carrying around the globe messages of love and encouragement. “The world is my country man is my brother,” expresses the sublime sentiment of a world-wide fraternity in every land where men and women are straining under the galling chains of oppression. This noble thought quickens the soul and kindles the spark of hope in the breast of the heavy laden.
Brave hearts of every clime are beating in unison and millions of feet are keeping step in the onward, upward march to industrial liberty.
This era of evolution is blotting out racial and national hatreds, the toilers are awakened and conscious of the truth that sufferings now endured are but the labor pains that foretell the new democracy to be born.
WM. D. HAYWOOD,
Ada County Jail, Boise, Idaho.
———-
[Photograph added.]
Eugene Debs on “The Red Flag” for the Appeal:
A vast amount of ignorant prejudice prevails against the red flag, it is easily accounted for. The ruling class the wide world over hates it and its sycophants therefore must decry it.
Strange that the red flag should produce the same effect upon a bull that it does upon a tyrant.
The bull is enraged at the very sight of the red flag, his huge frame quivers, his eyes become balls of fire, and he paws the dirt and snorts with fury.
The reason of this peculiar effect of a bit of red coloring upon the bovine species we are not particularly interested in at this moment, but why does it happen to excite the same rage in the czar, the emperor and the king; the autocrat, the aristocrat and the plutocrat?
Ah, that is simple enough.
The red flag, since time immemorial, has symbolized the discontent of the downtrodden, the revolt of the rabble.
This is its sinister significance to the tyrant and the reason of his mingled fear and frenzy when the “red rag,” as he characterizes it, insults his vision.
It is not that he is opposed to red as a color, or even as an emblem, for he has it in his own flags and banners, and it never inflames his passion when it is blended with other colors, but red alone, unmixed and unadulterated, the pure red that symbolizes the common blood of the human family, the equality of mankind, the brotherhood of the race, is repulsive and abhorrent to him because it is at once an impeachment of his title, a denial of his superiority and a menace to his power.
Precisely for the reason that the plutocrat raves at the red flag the proletaire should revere it.
To the plutocrat it is a peril; to the proletaire a promise.
The red flag is an omen of ill, a sign of terror to every tyrant, ever robber and every vampire that sucks the life of labor and mocks at its misery.
It is an emblem of hope, a bow of promise to all the oppressed and downtrodden of the earth.
The red flag is the only race flag; it is the flag of revolt against robbery; the flag of the working class, the flag of hope and high resolve-the flag of Universal Freedom.
From the New York Worker of April 27, 1907:
REVOLUTION.
—–By Eugene V. Debs.
This is the first and only International Labor Day. It belongs to the working class and is dedicated to the Revolution.
Today the slaves of all the world are taking a fresh breath in the long and weary march; pausing a moment to clear their lungs and shout for joy; celebrating in festal fellowship their coming Freedom.
All hail the Labor Day of May!
The day of the proletarian protest;
The day of stern resolve;
The day of noble aspiration.
Raise high this day the blood-red
Standard of the Revolution!
The banner of the Workingman;
The flag, the only flag, of Freedom.—–
Slavery, even the most abject—dumb and despairing as it may seem, has yet its inspiration. Crushed it may be, but extinguished never. Chain the slave as you will, O Masters, brutalize him as you may, yet in his soul, though dead, he yearns for freedom still.
—–
The great discovery the modern slaves have made is that they themselves their freedom must achieve. This is the secret of their solidarity; the heart of their hope; the inspiration that nerves them all with sinews of steel.
They are still in bondage, but no longer cower;
No longer grovel in the dust,
But stand erect like men.Conscious of their growing power the future holds up to them her outstretched hands.
—–
As the slavery of the working class is international, so the movement for its emancipation.
The salutation of slave to slave this day is repeated in every human tongue as it goes ringing round the world.
The many millions are at last awakening. For countless ages they have suffered; drained to the dregs the bitter cup of misery and woe.
At last, at last the historic limitation has been reached, and soon a new sun will light the world.
—–
Red is the life-tide of our common humanity and red our symbol of universal kinship.
Tyrants deny it; fear it; tremble with rage and terror when they behold it.
We reaffirm it and on this day pledge anew our fidelity—come life or death, to the blood-red Banner of the Revolution.
—–
Socialist greetings this day to all our fellow-workers; to the god-like souls in Russia marching grimly, sublimely into the jaws of hell with the Song of the Revolution in their death-rattle; to the Orient, the Occident and all the Isles of the Sea!
VIVA LA REVOLUTION!
—–
The most heroic word in all languages is REVOLUTION.
It thrills and vibrates; cheers and inspires. Tyrants and time-servers fear it, but the oppressed hail it with joy.
The throne trembles when this throbbing word is lisped, but to the hovel it is food for the famishing and hope for the victims of despair.
Let us glorify today the revolutions of the past and hail the Greater Revolution yet to come before Emancipation shall make all the days of the year May Days of peace and plenty for the sons and daughters of toil.
It was with Revolution as his theme that Mark Twain’s soul drank deep from the fount of inspiration. His immortality will rest at last upon this royal tribute to the French Revolution:
The ever memorable and blessed revolution, which swept a thousand years of villainy away in one swift tidal wave of blood—one: a settlement of that hoary debt in the proportion of half a drop of blood for each hogshead of it that had been pressed by slow tortures out of that people in the weary stretch of ten centuries of wrong and shame and misery the like of which was not to be mated but in hell. There were two Reigns of Terror, if we would but remember it and consider it: the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death on ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the horrors of the minor Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty and heartbreak? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery should contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror, which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over, but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.
The first page of this week’s New York Worker features news of the Moyer-Haywood Protest Parades planned for this upcoming weekend:
[New York City]
MAY DAY IN NEW YORK.
—–
Moyer-Haywood Case to the Fore-
A Great Parade To Be Held.Preparations for the great May Day parade and demonstration of the organized working class of New York on Saturday, May 4, are rapidly being completed. Interest has been greatly stimulated by the events of the past three weeks and the approach of the long-delayed trial in Idaho, and a gigantic protest is assured
The parade will be followed by a meeting in Grand Central Palace…The Central Federated Union last Sunday voted to take part in the parade..Overflow meetings are also being arranged for…
[Brooklyn]
Brooklyn Parade.
—–
Plans and Route for Organizations
-A Great Outpouring Expected.At the regular meeting of the Brooklyn Moyer-Haywood Protest Conference last Friday night, preparations for the monster parade to be held on May 4 were practically completed…
[Boston]
BOSTON UNIONS UNITE FOR PARADE.
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.
———-
SOURCES
Appeal to Reason
(Girard, Kansas)
-Apr 27, 1907,
https://www.newspapers.com/image/67586856
https://www.newspapers.com/image/67586855
The Worker
“An Organ of the Socialist Party [SPA]”
(New York, New York)
-Apr 27, 1907, page 1 & 2
(Also source for image of masthead.)
http://www.genealogybank.com
IMAGES
Haywood, Wilshire’s Magazine, 1906
http://moses.law.umn.edu/darrow/documents/Wilshire_Mag.pdf
May Day, The Red Flag by EVD, AtR Apr 27, 1907
https://www.newspapers.com/image/67586855
Eugene Debs, AtR Oct 29, 1904
https://www.newspapers.com/image/66991420/
See also:
Debs Internet Archive
https://www.marxists.org/archive/debs/
“Revolution” by Eugene Victor Debs
https://www.marxists.org/archive/debs/works/1907/revolution.htm
Debs:
His Life, Writings and Speeches
-pub by Charles H. Kerr & Company Co-operative
-copyright 1908
(This is the third edition, see pages v-vii.)
Chicago, 1910
https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/005657103
“The Crimson Standard” -page 245
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015076839839;view=2up;seq=278;size=125
“Revolution” -page 305
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015076839839;view=2up;seq=338