Hellraisers Journal: International Socialist Review: “Class Struggle News; The Latest from Trinidad; the Mother Jones Parade”

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Quote Mother Jones, Chase No Own State, RMN p3, Jan 12, 1914—————

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday March 1, 1914
Trinidad, Colorado – Mother Jones Still a Military Prisoner, Held Incommunicado

From the International Review of March 1914:

Trinidad CO Parade f Mother Jones ISR p517, Mar 1914

The Latest from Trinidad

INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST REVIEW,
Chicago, Ill.
Dear Comrades:

Replying to yours of Feb. 5, regarding a letter to Mother Jones, I must say it is impossible. She is held absolutely “incommunicado”-no one having seen her since incarceration except Horace Hawkins, attorney for U. M. W. A., and his admission was since the Congressional investigation was approaching. I enclose you clipping from yesterday’s daily showing how even medical advice from outside was denied her. “Military discipline” and general conditions are softening down much since the investigation has become a certainty. This puts new hope and courage into us all.

Yours for Socialism,
GRACE B. MARIANS,
Local Secty., S. P.
Feb. 10, 1914

Mother ]ones Parade

On January 22 a women’s parade was formed to make a demonstration protesting against the imprisonment of “Mother Jones.” The line of march was to proceed from Castle Hall up Commercial street, along Main to the postoffice, and then return to Castle Hall. One of the leaders was an Italian woman, who did not speak or understand English well. She was carrying an American flag in the form of a large banner. Not knowing that the parade was to turn at the postoffice, she led the parade towards the hospital where Mother Jones is held. A block from the postoffice the parade was met by a troop of cavalry commanded in person by General Chase. The soldiers immediately pulled the flag out of the woman’s hands. Other women ran up and demanded the return of the flag. This was finally returned to them amidst cheers.

Colorado Militia at Trinidad, ISR p519, Mar 1914

On receiving the flag the paraders re-formed, turned around and started back to the hall. They had not proceeded a block when the troop of cavalry, who had now been reinforced by the infantry, charged at full gallop with drawn sabers. Women were rode down, others flocked to the sidewalks. The cavalry then charged the sidewalks, beating the people with the flat of their swords. One woman received a gash on the hand from the saber stroke. Mrs. Margaret Hammond was struck by a militiaman with his fist, cutting her forehead above the left eye and blackening both eyes. Any person objecting to the treatment was immediately seized and taken to jail.

The infantry backed up the charge with drawn bayonets, forcing the people before them. Private lawns were invaded and any persons standing on them were herded off. Even government property was not sacred. The troops drove people from the postoffice steps.

A number of people were injured in this charge, mostly women, and eighteen were taken to prison. The streets were then blocked by the militia and no person was allowed to pass up or down them without permission of an officer.

Governor Ammons upheld General Chase in his chivalrous attack upon the women of the community.

—————

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: International Socialist Review: “Class Struggle News; The Latest from Trinidad; the Mother Jones Parade””

Hellraisers Journal: The Children of Calumet-a Poem by Bert Leach and a Drawing by Maurice Becker

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Quote re Annie Clemenc at Mass Funeral Calumet, Day Book p4, Jan 6, 1914—————

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday February 11, 1914
CALUMET! Poetry by Bert Leach and Artwork by Maurice Becker

From The Coming Nation of February 1914
-formerly The Progressive Woman:

POEM Calumet by Bert Leach, The Coming Nation Vol 1, p6, Feb 1914

From The Masses of February 1914:

DRWG Calumet by M Becket, Masses p9, Feb 1914

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: The Children of Calumet-a Poem by Bert Leach and a Drawing by Maurice Becker”

Hellraisers Journal: “I Make Cheap Silk (The Story of a Fifteen-year old Weaver in the Paterson Silk Mills, as Told by Her to Inis Weed and Louise Carey.)”

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Quote EGF Organize Women, IW p4, June 1, 1911—————

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday November 5, 1913
Paterson, New Jersey – Young Weaver Tells of Conditions in Silk Mill

From The Masses of November 1913:

Paterson Story of Theresa, Age 15, by Inis Weed and Louise Carey, Masses p7, Nov 1913

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: “I Make Cheap Silk (The Story of a Fifteen-year old Weaver in the Paterson Silk Mills, as Told by Her to Inis Weed and Louise Carey.)””

Hellraisers Journal: The Masses: “When the Leaves Come Out” by Paint Creek Miner & “The Miner” by Charles A. Winter

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Quote Ralph Chaplin, WV Miners Longing for the Spring, Leaves, Paint Creek Miner, ISR p736, Apr 1913—————

Hellraisers Journal – Monday June 9, 1913
Poetic and Artistic Commentary on the West Virginia Coal Miners’ War

From The Masses of June 1913:

Miner by CA Winter, WV Leaves by PCM RC, Masses p9, June 1913
“When the Leaves Come Out” by Paint Creek Miner
“The Miner” by Charles A. Winter

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: The Masses: “When the Leaves Come Out” by Paint Creek Miner & “The Miner” by Charles A. Winter”

Hellraisers Journal: From The Masses: John Reed on the “War in Paterson”-Part II

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Quote John Reed, Paterson Prisoners Soon we back on picket line, Masses p15, June 1913—————

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday June 8, 1913
New York, New York – John Reed Recalls Time Spent in Passaic County Jail, Part II

From The Masses of June 1913:

HdLn Paterson War by John Reed, Masses p14, June 1913

John Reed to Jail at Paterson, Eve Ns p9, Apr 28, 1913
The Paterson Evening News
April 28, 1913

[Part II of II]

And so it was that I went up to the County Jail. In the outer office I was questioned again, searched for concealed weapons, and my money and valuables taken away. Then the great barred door swung open and I went down some steps into a vast room lined with three tiers of cells. About eighty prisoners strolled around, talked, smoked, and ate the food sent in to them by those outside. Of this eighty almost half were strikers. They were in their street clothes, held in prison under $500 bail to await the action of the Grand Jury. Surrounded by a dense crowd of short, dark-faced men, Big Bill Haywood towered in the center of the room. His big hand made simple gestures as he explained something to them. His massive, rugged face, seamed and scarred like a mountain, and as calm, radiated strength. These slight, foreign-faced strikers, one of many desperate little armies in the vanguard of the battle-line of Labor, quickened and strengthened by Bill Haywood’s face and voice, looked up at him lovingly, eloquently. Faces deadened and dulled with grinding routine in the sunless mills glowed with hope and understanding. Faces scarred and bruised from policemen’s clubs grinned eagerly at the thought of going back on the picket-line. And there were other faces, too-lined and sunken with the slow starvation of a nine weeks’ poverty—shadowed with the sight of so much suffering, or the hopeless brutality of the police—and there were those who had seen Modestino Valentine shot to death by a private detective. But not one showed discouragement; not one a sign of faltering or of fear. As one little Italian said to me, with blazing eyes: “We all one bigga da Union. I. W. W.—dat word is pierced de heart of de people!”

“Yes! Yes! Dass righ’! I. W. W.! One bigga da Union”—they murmured with soft, eager voices, crowding around.

[Introduced to Quinlan and Strikers by Big Bill]

I shook hands with Haywood, who introduced me to Pat Quinlan, the thin-faced, fiery Irishman now under indictment for speeches inciting to riot.

“Boys,” said Haywood, indicating me, “this man wants to know things. You tell him everything”—

They crowded around me, shaking my hand, smiling, welcoming me. “Too bad you get in jail,” they said, sympathetically. “We tell you ever’t’ing. You ask. We tell you. Yes. Yes. You good feller.”

And they did. Most of them were still weak and exhausted from their terrible night before in the lockup. Some had been lined up against a wall, as they marched to and fro in front of the mills, and herded to jail on the charge of “unlawful assemblage”! Others had been clubbed into the patrol wagon on the charge of “rioting,” as they stood at the track, on their way home from picketing, waiting for a train to pass! They were being held for the Grand Jury that indicted Haywood and Gurley Flynn. Four of these jurymen were silk manufacturers, another the head of the local Edison compony—which Haywood tried to organize for a strike—and not one a workingman!

“We not take bail,” said another, shaking his head. “We stay here. Fill up de damn jail. Pretty soon no more room. Pretty soon can’t arrest no more picket!”

It was visitors’ day I went to the door to speak with a friend. Outside the reception room was full of women and children, carrying packages, and pasteboard boxes, and pails full of dainties and little comforts lovingly prepared, which meant hungry and ragged wives and babies, so that the men might be comfortable in jail. The place was full of the sound of moaning; tears ran down their work-roughened faces; the children looked up at their fathers’ unshaven faces through the bars and tried to reach them with their hands.

“What nationalities are all the people!” I asked. There were Dutchmen, Italians, Belgians, Jews, Slovaks, Germans, Poles—

“What nationalities stick together on the picket- line?”

A young Jew, pallid and sick-looking from insufficient food, spoke up proudly. “T’ree great nations stick togedder like dis.” He made a fist. “T’ree great nations—Italians, Hebrews an’ Germans”—

“But how about the Americans?”

They all shrugged their shoulders and grinned with humorous scorn. “English peoples not go on picket-line,” said one, softly. “’Mericans no lika fight!” An Italian boy thought my feelings might be hurt, and broke in quickly: “Not all lika dat. Beeg Beell, he ‘Merican. You ‘Merican. Quin’, Miss Flynn, ‘Merican. Good! Good! ‘Merican workman, he lika talk too much.”

This sad fact appears to be true. It was the English-speaking group that held back during the Lawrence strike. It is the English-speaking continent that remains passive at Paterson, while the “wops” the “kikes,” the “hunkies”—the ‘degraded and ignorant races from Southern Europe”—go out and get clubbed on the picket-line and gaily take their medicine in Paterson jail.

But just as they were telling me these things the keeper ordered me to the “convicted room,” where I was pushed into a bath and compelled to put on regulation prison clothes. I shan’t attempt to describe the horrors I saw in that room. Suffice it to say that forty-odd men lounged about a long corridor lined on one side with cells; that the only ventilation and light came from one small skylight up a funnel-shaped airshaft; that one man had syphilitic sores on his legs and was treated by the prison doctor with sugar-pills for “nervousness;” that a seventeen-year-old boy who had never been sentenced had remained in that corridor without ever seeing the sun for over nine months; that a cocaine-fiend was getting his “dope” regularly from the inside, and that the background of this and much more was the monotonous and terrible shouting of a man who had lost his mind in that hell-hole and who walked among us.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From The Masses: John Reed on the “War in Paterson”-Part II”

Hellraisers Journal: From The Masses: John Reed on the “War in Paterson”-Part I

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Quote John Reed, Paterson Prisoners Soon we back on picket line, Masses p15, June 1913—————

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday June 7, 1913
New York, New York – John Reed Recalls Time Spent in Passaic County Jail

From The Masses of June 1913:

HdLn Paterson War by John Reed, Masses p14, June 1913

CRTN Paterson v BBH n EGF by Art Young, Masses p15, June 1913
“Speaking of Anarchy” by Art Young

[Part I of II]

There’s war in Paterson. But it’s a curious kind of war. All the violence is the work of one side—the Mill Owners. Their servants, the Police, club unresisting men and women and ride down law-abiding crowds on horseback. Their paid mercenaries, the armed Detectives, shoot and kill innocent people. Their newspapers, the Paterson Press and the Paterson Call, publish incendiary and crime-inciting appeals to mob-violence against the strike leaders. Their tool, Recorder Carroll, deals out heavy sentences to peaceful pickets that the police-net gathers up. They control absolutely the Police, the Press, the Courts.

Opposing them are about twenty-five thousand striking silk-workers, of whom perhaps ten thousand are active, and their weapon is the picket-line. Let me tell you what I saw in Paterson and then you will say which side of this struggle is “anarchistic” and “contrary to American ideals.”

At six o’clock in the morning a light rain was falling. Slate-grey and cold, the streets of Paterson were deserted. But soon came the Cops-twenty of them—strolling along with their nightsticks under their arms. We went ahead of them toward the mill district. Now we began to see workmen going in the same direction, coat collars turned up, hands in their pockets. We came into a long street, one side of which was lined with silk mills, the other side with the wooden tenement houses. In every doorway, at every window of the houses clustered foreign-faced men and women, laughing and chatting as if after breakfast on a holiday. There seemed no sense of expectancy, no strain or feeling of fear. The sidewalks were almost empty, only over in front of the mills a few couples—there couldn’t have been more than fifty-marched slowly up and down, dripping with the rain. Some were men, with here and there a man and woman together, or two young boys. As the warmer light of full day came the people drifted out of their houses and began to pace back and forth, gathering in little knots on the corners. They were quick with gesticulating hands, and low-voiced conversation. They looked often toward the corners of side streets.

Suddenly appeared a policeman, swinging his club. “Ah-h-h!” said the crowd softly.

Six men had taken shelter from the rain under the canopy of a saloon. “Come on! Get out of that!” yelled the policeman, advancing. The men quietly obeyed. “Get off this street! Go home, now! Don’t be standing here!” They gave way before him in silence, drifting back again when he turned away. Other policemen materialized, hustling, cursing, brutal, ineffectual. No one answered back. Nervous, bleary-eyed, unshaven, these officers were worn out with nine weeks’ incessant strike duty.

On the mill side of the street the picket-line had grown to about four hundred. Several policemen shouldered roughly among them, looking for trouble. A workman appeared, with a tin pail, escorted by two detectives. “Boo! Boo!” shouted a few scattered voices. Two Italian boys leaned against the mill fence and shouted a merry Irish threat, “Scab! Come outa here I knocka you’ head off!” A policeman grabbed the boys roughly by the shoulder. “Get to hell out of here!” he cried, jerking and pushing them violently to the corner, where he kicked them. Not a voice, not a movement from the crowd.

A little further along the street we saw a young woman with an umbrella, who had been picketing, suddenly confronted by a big policeman.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he roared. “God damn you, you go home!” and he jammed his club against her mouth. “I no go home!” she shrilled passionately, with blazing eyes. “You bigga stiff !”

Silently, steadfastly, solidly the picket-line grew. In groups or in couples the strikers patrolled the sidewalk. There was no more laughing. They looked on with eyes full of hate. These were fiery-blooded Italians, and the police were the same brutal thugs that had beaten them and insulted them for nine weeks. I wondered how long they could stand it.

It began to rain heavily. I asked a man’s permission to stand on the porch of his house. There was a policeman standing in front of it. His name, I afterwards discovered, was McCormack. I had to walk around him to mount the steps.

Suddenly he turned round, and shot at the owner: “Do all them fellows live in that house?” The man indicated the three other strikers and himself, and shook his head at me.

“Then you get to hell off of there!” said the cop, pointing his club at me.

“I have the permission of this gentleman to stand here,” I said. “He owns this house.”

“Never mind! Do what I tell you! Come off of there, and come off damn quick!”

“I’ll do nothing of the sort.”

With that he leaped up the steps, seized my arm, and violently jerked me to the sidewalk. Another cop took my arm and they gave me a shove.

“Now you get to hell off this street!” said Officer McCormack.

“I won’t get off this street or any other street. If I’m breaking any law, you arrest me!”

Officer McCormack, who is doubtless a good, stupid Irishman in time of peace, is almost helpless in a situation that requires thinking. He was dreadfully troubled by my request. He didn’t want to arrest me, and said so with a great deal of profanity.

“I’ve got your number,” said I sweetly. “Now will you tell me your name?”

“Yes,” he bellowed, “an’ I got your number! I’ll arrest you.” He took me by the arm and marched me up the street.

He was sorry he had arrested me. There was no charge he could lodge against me. I hadn’t been doing anything. He felt he must make me say something that could be construed as a violation of the Law. To which end he God damned me harshly, loading me with abuse and obscenity, and threatened me with his night-stick, saying, “You big — — lug, I’d like to beat the hell out of you with this club.”

I returned airy persiflage to his threats.

Other officers came to the rescue, two of them, and supplied fresh epithets. I soon found them repeating themselves, however, and told them so. “I had to come all the way to Paterson to put one over on a cop !” I said. Eureka! They had at last found a crime! When I was arraigned in the Recorder’s Court that remark of mine was the charge against me!

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From The Masses: John Reed on the “War in Paterson”-Part I”

Hellraisers Journal: From The Masses: Commentary by John Sloan and Ellis O. Jones on Proper Sphere of Working Girls

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Quote Mother Jones, Great Church upon Bodies of Girls, Dnv Rck Mt Ns p2, Feb 28, 1909—————

Hellraisers Journal – Friday May 23, 1913
Proper Sphere of Working Girls, Commentary by John Sloan and E. O. Jones

From The Masses of May 1913:

“Circumstances” Alter Cases by John Sloan
-“Positively disgusting! It’s an outrage to public decency to allow such exposure on the streets!”

The Society for Curtailing the Pleasures of Working Girls
-by Ellis O. Jones

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From The Masses: Commentary by John Sloan and Ellis O. Jones on Proper Sphere of Working Girls”

Hellraisers Journal: John Reed Arrested at Paterson for Refusing “Move On” Order, Gets Twenty Days in Passaic County Jail

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Quote John Reed, Rebellious People, Ten Days, 1919—————

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday April 30, 1913
Paterson, New Jersey – John Reed Sentenced to 20 Days in Passaic County Jail

From The New York Times of April 29, 1913:

WRITER SENT TO JAIL.
———-
John Reed of the American Magazine
Among Strike Victims.
———-

John Reed to Jail at Paterson, Eve Ns p9, Apr 28, 1913
The Paterson Evening News
April 28, 1913

John Reed, a writer and a member of the staff of the American Magazine, was arrested in Paterson yesterday on a charge of disorderly conduct in the silk workers’ strike. He was arraigned before Recorder James F. Carroll, who, after hearing the evidence, sentenced Reed to twenty days’ imprisonment in the Passaic County Jail. Reed gave his address as 42 Washington Square, and according to some of his friends was in Paterson getting “local color” for a magazine story dealing with the silk workers’ strike.

Reed was at the corner of Cross and Ellison Street yesterday in the centre of the strike zone, talking to three men strikers. Policeman McCormick came along and ordered the men to disperse. The strikers said they lived in the house in front of which they were standing. 

“Well, get inside then,” said McCormick.

“But I don’t live in there,” said Reed.

“Well, move on, then,” said McCormick to the magazine writer.

Reed started to obey and then changed his mind and went back to where McCormick was and demanded his number.

An argument between the policeman and Reed followed which ended in the arrest of Reed on a charge of disorderly conduct. He was immediately taken to court and arraigned before Recorder Carroll.

“What’s your business?” asked the Recorder.

“Poet,” answered Reed.

“What’s your business here?” the Recorder asked again.

“None; I am a bystander,” Reed replied.

McCormick then testified that Reed had refused to move on when ordered to do so, and had insisted on questioning his authority.

The Recorder took McCormick’s view of the case and sentenced Reed to jail. 

John S. Phillips, editor of The American Magazine, was asked last night if the management of that publication would interest itself in the affairs of Mr. Reed and attempt to have him released from jail on appeal or by suing out a writ of habeas corpus. Mr. Phillips replied that he did not know of any contemplated action by the magazine management and that he did not care to discuss the matter.

[Newsclip and emphasis added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: From The Masses: Sunday September 29, 1912, Lawrence Mass., Parade Attacked, Tresca Seized

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Quote BBH Dream of One Big Union, Bst Glb p4, Jan 24, 1912—————

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday April 15, 1913
“Sunday” -Drawing by Maurice Becker, Poem by Louis Untermeyer
-On Sunday September 29, 1912, at Lawrence, Massachusetts, a parade, led by Carlo Tresca, was attacked by police. The I. W. W. marchers were on their way to the cemetery in order to place flowers on the grave of Anna LoPizzo, martyr of the Lawrence Textile Strike. Tresca was seized by police, but  freed by his Comrades. 

From The Masses of April 1913:

DRWG, Sunday re Sept 29, 1912 at Lawrence MA, Masses p15, Apr 1913

—–

Poem, Sunday by Untermeyer re Sept 29, 1912 at Lawrence MA, Masses p14, Apr 1913

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From The Masses: Sunday September 29, 1912, Lawrence Mass., Parade Attacked, Tresca Seized”