You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
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Sunday September 20, 1914
From the Appeal to Reason: Helen Schloss Describes the Trinidad Bastile
No stranger to the striker's Bastile,
Helen Schloss in jail during Little Falls Textile Strike.
Our readers will
remember that Helen Schloss, The Red Nurse, was recently arrested along with other women while performing picket duty. In this week's
Appeal, Miss Schloss describes conditions in the striker's bastile of Las Animas County.
Appeal to Reason of September 19, 1914:
...My Bastile...
BY HELEN SCHLOSS
Men come and men go from the bastile of Las Animas county, but no one troubles to clean the pens. The rough, hairy blankets do service for God know how many prisoners a year.
Common decency would seem to require fresh bedding on any bed that is to hold a newcomer. But the bastile authorities do not seem to see it that way. No matter who has occupied the bed and cell, whether or not it is a sick man suffering with some incurable disease, those in authority are not concerned about the matter.
In the case I speak of the newcomer happened to be a boy of 17 and he was told to go into a cell just occupied by an old man that had been very sick and had inhabited this same cell for many months.
Is there a board of health in Trinidad that allows such dirt and filth to exist in a public place? Does it really exist, this board of health, that so utterly fails to do its duty?
No, the fact is that this bastile is the most unsanitary spot in all Colorado. Nearly 70 men are at this writing huddled in this "bullpen" alone, not to say anything of the other cells. In this foul place they ignore all the rules of sanitation. A public investigation should be immediately under taken.
The women's pen is in the old part of the building that was condemned years ago. The floors and walls are decaying and the terrible odors that come from them are overpowering. As there were no lights in my cell I had to grope my way in the dark to the iron cot. You can imagine with what loathing I forced my weary body to touch the bed which swarmed with vermin.
It is the first duty of a newcomer to clean out the dirt left by the last occupants-one must bring her own soap, and cleaning tools-the jail provides none.
Food is served twice a day. I got dry bread, fried potatoes and black coffee for breakfast. Dinner consisted of beans and dishwater soup.
The matron of the jail who is supposed to look after the women never came to see me. I had to call for her.
When the men's part of the prison became overcrowded they sent prisoners into the women's pen. This deprived all of privacy. The reeking fumes of tobacco almost suffocated me.
They speak of Russia-is it worse than this?
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SOURCE
Appeal to Reason
(Girard, Kansas)
-of Sept 19, 1914
http://www.newspapers.com/...
IMAGE
Helen Schloss fro cover of
International Socialist Review of Jan 1913
http://books.google.com/...
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Hellraisers Journal is on vacation!
Hellraisers will be on a vacation of sorts until September 22nd, and will appear in abbreviated form until that date. A complete vacation is not possible since the ruling class never took a vacation from their suppression and oppression of the working class.
There are no limits to which powers of privilege
will not go to keep the workers in slavery.
-Mother Jones
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