You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
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Monday April 20, 1914
New York, New York - The Times Accuses Haywood of "Stirring Sedition"
Big Bill Haywood
As war with Mexico looms just over the horizon, the
New York Times today blasts Big Bill Haywood as a seditionist for opposing war with Mexico in a speech given last evening at Carnegie Hall. At the top center of the front page the
Times featured this headline:
HAYWOOD OPENLY STIRS SEDITION
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I. W. W. Leader Threatens Wilson with Great Strike if War Comes.
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SAYS MINERS HAVE PLANNED
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Warns of Industrial Struggle Which He Says President Will Start Automatically.
To the left, at the top of the front page:
HUERTA DEFIES US, WON'T SALUTE;
WILSON TO GO TO CONGRESS TODAY;
BLOCKADE FLEET OF 52 SHIPS READY
The
Times is reporting that President Wilson plans to meet with his Cabinet at 10:30 this morning and will address Congress at 3 o'clock this afternoon.
The ultimatum to Huerta was explained:
Washington, April 19.....In the high state of excitement prevailing here to-night practically everybody, except the President's closest official associates, is predicting that the coming punitive measures of this Government are bound to result in war.
The Administration contention is that the President will use the army and the navy merely to compel Gen. Huerta to make reparation for the indignity offered the American uniform and flag at Tampico, this reparation to comprise the firing of a national salute to the Stars and Stripes and the punishment of the Mexican colonel who arrested Assistant Paymaster Copp and enlisted men of the Dolphin....
The Times reported the reaction of the Attorney General to Haywood's speech:
Sedition, Says Washington
Special to The New York Times
WASHINGTON, April 19.-Attorney General McReynolds could not be seen to-night, but it was learned that he had had under consideration such an emergency as that suggested in Haywood's speech in New York to-night, and his course of action has been fully decided upon.
At the Department of Justice the view was expressed that the threat to bring on a general strike to prevent the Government from going to war with Mexico was seditious, and the summary arrest of any man who attempted to execute such a threat would speedily follow proof of the act...
The New York Times article reporting the speech of Big Bill Haywood delivered last night at Carnegie Hall:
William D. Haywood, founder and chief organizer of the I. W. W. told an audience which more than half filled Carnegie Hall last night that the minute President Wilson and Congress declared war against Mexico they should automatically start the greatest general strike this country had ever known.
Supplementing Haywood's threat, Ernest Bohm later told the audience that all Socialists would favor a general strike against war with Mexico. "It would be a test," he said, "of the working people's power to conduct a general strike against the capitalist class."
Haywood, in the course of his speech, said that he prophesied the great strike upon authority of the United Mine Workers of America and the Western Federation of Miners.
"The mine workers of this country," he shouted to his inflamed hearers, "will simply fold their arms, and when they fold their arms there will be no war.
"Sherman said war was hell. Well, then, let the bankers go to war, and let the interest-takers and the dividend-takers go to war with them. If only those parasites were out of the country it would be a pretty decent place to live in. They live on graft, and if they stay here the best that I can promise them is that we will speedily bring them to the day when they will turn over the keys of the city to the marching [homeless] men such as Frank Tannenbaum led against the churches."
Haywood said that the mine workers already had made up their minds about what they would do in case of war. He said they had already done all the voting necessary, and that the situation purposely was arranged so that President Wilson might automatically start the general strike himself.
Appeals for Mother Jones.
"We will do this," Haywood went on, "in memory of a good woman who stood here in Carnegie Hall with me a year ago. She was over 80 years old. But she was on her way to jail. We mine workers called her 'Mother.' We were interested in Mother Jones, and we appealed to President Wilson on her behalf. He forgot us. He could have let her out of jail, where she was put in defiance of all her legal rights.
"You may say." Haywood said a little further on, "that this action of the mine workers is traitorous to the country but I tell you it is better to be a traitor to a country than to be a traitor to your class. We are through with trying to make brilliant individuals, and men of of brilliant individual successes in life. We want now a whole class that is permeated through with leaders who will fight not for themselves but for their class."
"But President Wilson not only forgot us-he forgot Mother Jones, in whom we were interested, and what was of more consequence to him, he forgot that we also were interested in war. We work for a day when we can bring Mother Jons down to Washington and let her tell her full story there, so that all the worth while people in this country can understand."
Haywood was cheered heartily by I. W. W. men in the upper gallery and was hissed by persons who had purchased box tickets with the understanding that at the meeting they would gain first-hand knowledge of the I. W. W. agitators and their real purposes.
Max Eastman, under indictment for libeling the Associated Press, introduced Haywood with the assertion that he was the "most misunderstood man in America," and one of its "most deeply poetical souls."
After Haywood concluded his outline of the Policy to be pursued by the mine workers in case of war, he outlined a policy to be pursued in "taking away from capital all the power it has and every vestige of its strength except the strength to do manual labor."
"If we were brutal like capital," he said, "and really sought vengeance for murders done against laboring people-against our class-why we could not find enough capitalist heads in all this broad land to cut off, and thereby satisfy our demands for justice. They have killed more of us than there are of them all put together."
Ernest Bohm, who spoke at the meeting as a representative of the "Socialist battalion in the army of revolt," said that all Socialists would favor a general strike against war with Mexico as a test of the working people's power to conduct a general strike against the capitalist class. He said such a strike would greatly add to the solidarity of labor and to class-consciousness of the workers.
Opposed to War.
This resolution was offered as representing the views of those present about President Wilson's Mexican policy and the present crisis.
Whereas, we are assured by the press that war may at any moment be declared against Mexico because of incidents trivial in themselves which have no economic significance, and
Whereas, American workers will be obliged to battle against Mexican workers for issues in which the working class of neither country has any interest, and
Whereas, the fighting strength of labor should be conserved to win from the exploiters the privilege to live, therefore, be it:
Resolved, That this assembly condemns any act by the Administration tending to involve the United States in such a war.
There were calls of "No, no," from the occupants of the boxes when the resolution was read, but thunderous applause from the top gallery in its favor.
The crowd in the main auditorium was divided. On a call for a standing vote, most of those in the boxes voted against the resolution, and half of those on the lower floor voted for it. The crowd in the galleries carried the resolution.
Another resolution was introduced, which asserted that Frank Tannenbaum was sentenced unjustly by Judge Wadham and that imprisonment of one year for a first offender who had done no actual harm to anybody "was contrary to the moral sense of the community and the universal custom of the courts in the case of a first offender." This resolution was adopted with only two votes against it.
In commenting on this resolution Haywood said that he would address some remarks "from one who had been in jail, to some who ought to be in jail." He pointed up to the box from which the two votes against the resolution had come. Some one in the audience called out that the firm of J. P. Morgan & Co. had bought that box and three others. Joseph O'Brien, Secretary of the meeting, confirmed this report, and the audience cheered for several minutes.
The advertisement of the meeting included a notice that a fund would be raised to pay Frank Tannenbaum's fine of $500, imposed at the time he was sentenced to imprisonment.
Chairman Eastman announced that in pursuance of this plan the International Defense Conference had been organized not only to pay Tannenbaum's fine, but to hire lawyers for "all who break the laws not for their own selfish purposes, but to bring about social reforms."
He said that the Conference wanted clergymen, "those rare allies of the revolutionary forces" in the movement with the Socialists, Anarchists, I. W. W., Single Taxers, and all other reformers. Then he introduced the Rev. Dr. James G. Mythem of the Protestant Episcopal Diocese of Baltimore, as about the only clergyman he could find who was willing to talk at such a gathering.
"I find it lonely, very lonely, in my pulpit," the Baltimore clergyman said. "I preach to men who would like to cut my throat for what I say. They run to the Bishop and tell tales about me. But I do not care. I know we are engaged to-night as a nation in deciding whether there will be war to-morrow. Yet the war the nation knows it faces with Mexico is only a skirmish in a teacup compared to the war that is preparing right here among us in order that the working class may rise and come into its own.
Frank Tannenbaum on his way to jail.
Preacher Rails at Churches.
"Only a week ago we celebrated the resurrection of the Nazarene. He was-I want to say this to you I.W. W. men with cracked heads-one of you criminals. I want to warn you that the churches are not your friends. I want to tell you that I come here as an individual, because no church would let me come to represent the Church. Christ trusted the priests and was fooled by them and put to death by them.
"You do well to mistrust the churches. I want to tell you that when Frank Tannenbaum walked into the churches in Manhattan Christ walked by his side, and that he came in response to the invitation of the Master. 'Come unto me all ye that labor and I will give you rest.' I want to tell you that when the priests threw Tannenbaum out of the churches they threw Christ out with him. And that what they did will stand against them as a curse forever and forever."
The Church that Christ founded is slumbering-almost dead. Walk into the churches. Seize them. Turn them to Christian service. And don't leave us clergymen who want to be of service to you so lonesome as we now are. We want to be with you, not because you need us but because we need you."
Linclon Steffens, Frank Hamilton, a veteran of the Tannenbaum raids, Alexander Berkman, an anarchist who served 12 years in jail for attempting to murder Henry C. Frick, and "Wild Joe" O'Carroll were the other speakers. The sum of $128 was raised toward the $500 needed to pay Tannenbaum fine.
[emphasis added]
SOURCE
The New York Times
(New York, New York)
-of Apr 20, 1914
http://select.nytimes.com/...
http://select.nytimes.com/...
See also:
The General Strike
-by Big Bill Haywood
March 16, 1911
http://www.iww.org/...
Hellraisers+Tannenbaum
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Hellraisers on Mary Heaton Vorse
& the Unemployed of 1914 in New York City
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Photos:
1). Big Bill Haywood
http://www.iww.org/...
2). "The IWW Is Coming" Poster
http://libcom.org/...
3). Frank Tannenbaum on his way to jail
http://universityseminars.columbia.edu/...
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The Red Flag - Songs of Irish Labor
Then raise the scarlet standard high.
Within its shade we live and die,
Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer,
We'll keep the red flag flying here.
-Jim Connell
As President Wilson beat the drums of war in Washington D.C., a war of extermination was being waged against the Ludlow Tent Colony in Colorado. This song is dedicated to the miners and their families who were under attack for the entire day of April 20th, 1914:
The Men, Women and Children Who Lost Their Lives in Freedom's Cause