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 6, 1914
From The Washington Post: Joe Ettor Says Labor Is Passing Its Own Laws
While they were in prison together and on trial for their lives, Arturo Giovannitti wrote a poem for Joe Ettor which included this verse:
Nay, 'tis all silly fuss, there's no wisdom in us
To renounce to the brunt of the strife;
We were wrought on the fire and to love and desire
And to fight and to sing is our life.
So, should we many a year be immured alive here,
Now that you're twenty-seven, old mate,
The best wish I can make for your own and my sake
Is that never you be twenty-eight.
Arturo Giovannitti and Joseph Ettor
Although the Textile Kings attempted to have him hung, Smiling Joe Ettor is very much alive and still fighting, singing and giving speeches on behalf of the Industrial Workers of World. The
Post reports:
ETTOR TELLS OF THE I. W. W.
Explaining the objects and purposes of the Industrial Workers of the World, Joseph J. Ettor, who was the leader of the Lawrence, Mass., textile strike two years ago, in an address in National Rifles Hall last night, said that the I. W. W. was a labor organization that has become "the nightmare of capitalists and industrial slave drivers of the bread winners and wage earners. We are banded together," continued Ettor, "to shorten hours of labor and increase wages, and in other ways better the working, domestic, and living conditions of the masses."
Mr. Ettor declared that "capital is responsible to the 30,000,000 of wage earners of the country for the 1,000 lives sacrificed weekly in the mills, factories, and shops of the country because of the lack of proper protection and life-saving measures."
He discussed the Lawrence strike at length, and said that all legislation passed in recent years to benefit labor had been pronounced unconstitutional by the higher courts, and that now the union workman was passing his own laws in the halls of his union, and that in many cases these laws were in force, the capitalists respecting them because they are the mandatory decrees of organized men and women.
Unemployed Workers Fail to Freeze and Starve in Orderly Manner
Frank Tannenbaum
It seems that the homeless and unfed unemployed workers of New York City are not starving and freezing in an orderly enough manner to please the "respectable population" who resent having their "peace and security" disrupted by "agitators" seeking shelter and food. This month's issue of the
International Socialist Review tells the story of Frank Tannenbaum and the 190 men arrested with him on night of March 6th:
The Catholic Church and the Unemployed
ON Friday night, March 6th, a crowd of over five hundred unemployed men stood for two hours in the chill drizzle of rain and snow on the streets of New York City because it had been announced that speakers would tell them how to improve their condition. Among these were Lincoln Steffens and Leonard Abbott, editor of Current Opinion, who declared that the arrest of some of the unemployed the night before was an outrage.
Frank Tannenbaum, a young man of twenty-one, a member of the I. W. W., had suggested that the starving fellows who could get no work should go to the churches and ask that they be permitted to sleep there or that, at least, some food be given them.
Several churches were appealed to and one and all gave SOME kind of assistance to the men who appeared shivering, coatless, soxless and very often without underwear.
It was not until they appealed to the St. Alphonsus Roman Catholic Church that any real trouble began. The Catholic Church not only refused to give them any aid of any kind, but ejected them from the church and had many of the starving applicants arrested.
Young Tannenbaum was arraigned in the Jefferson Market Court and held over to the grand jury on a charge of inciting to riot. Magistrate Freschi ruled that the twenty-one year old boy was to be held responsible for every act on the part of the pleading group of workless unfortunates. Of the 190 arrested, all were diligently searched by the police and it was found that ONE man actually possessed money in his pockets. Now it is claimed that Tannenbaum and his fellow-conspirator, Hamilton, have been making false pretenses.
The trials of three members of the unemployed army were held before Magistrate Campbell. They were tried on a charge of disorderly conduct. Isador Wissotsky, who is nineteen years old, was given sixty days in the workhouse. The attorney who appeared for the prisoners said, "I think leniency should be shown this boy. He is young and I think we should be proud of him because of the interest he has taken in attempting to help solve the problem of the unemployed." But the judge was obdurate.
The second prisoner was a Catholic and received a sentence of only ten days.
During a wrangle between court and counsel over witnesses, the attorney said: "These men are charged with disorderly conduct simply because they went to a church and asked for bread."
The papers say that the rest of the hungry men will be tried in batches of from fifteen to twenty. A promise has been extended to many of these of getting off if they will swear to the names of those who suggested that the unemployed ask help from the churches.
The wife of one of the prisoners, with her baby, came to the court and begged that something be done for her and the child. It was found that her small house hold belongings had been set out upon the street.
Frank Tannenbaum did just what Jesus Christ would have done if he had been in New York. The men heard him and hoped that those who declare that all men are brothers would help them in their extremity. Some few churches actually DID see that they got at least ONE course of ONE square meal. It was the Catholic Church that gave their brothers a "stone," that had these unhappy men arrested and imprisoned.
The following account of the invasion of the church by the hungry men is taken from the Live Issue, a Catholic daily, published in New York City, under the guise of a reform sheet:
Down the middle aisle the mob tramped, uttering boisterous and uncouth language. As they reached the altar, Brother Adrian confronted them with trepidation and referred them to Father Schneider. "My name is Tannenbaum," said the leader of the I. W. W. crowd. "We have come in here to sleep. Can we do it?"
"No, you cannot," replied Father Schneider, "You cannot profane this church. The Blessed Sacrament is here. You must leave."
"We will die before we will let you stay," muttered Brother Peter, who stood near the priest.
While this scene was being enacted in St. Alphonsus Church the telephone wire communicating with Police Commissioner McKay was busy. It developed that several detectives were in the midst of the crowd.
One hundred and ninety-one prisoners were taken to the nearby stations.
Tannenbaum was arraigned before Magistrate Campbell on the charge of inciting to riot and for unlawful entry. The magistrate fixed his bail at $5,000 and that of the others at $1,000.
Under the caption, "A Priest Starts the Machinery of Law," the New York Sun commented on the incident as follows:
From the day when the Industrial Workers of the World first assailed the peace of the country the Catholic Church refused to be misled as to the purposes of this organization or to condone the methods of its leaders because of the professedly philanthropic objects of its crusade in the latest manifestation of its revolutionary propaganda. In this city it remained for a priest of the Catholic Church, first to assert the rights of order against disorder, to refuse to submit to its threats, and to treat its blackmailers as they deserve.
Father Schneider's duty to his church jumped with his duty as a citizen. He failed in neither. He did not temporize or parley. He took with commendable promptness the one course that can end the menace that weak sentimentality has allowed to grow up in the city. He sent for the police, and the invaders of his church, with their mockeries of religion on their lips, were taken to the cells where they belonged.
A priest has put in operation the machinery to suppress their portentous and carefully contrived onslaught on the institutions of law and order. It remains for the police and the courts to see that its authors receive punishment their conduct merits, in which notice will be served on all agitators that this city can and will defend its respectable population in peace and security.
A fig for those by law protected!
Liberty's a glorious feast!
Courts for cowards were erected,
Churches built to please the priest.
-Robert Burns.
SOURCES
Arrows in the Gale
Arturo M. Giovannitti
Hillacre Bookhouse, 1914
http://books.google.com/...
(search preview with "Ettor," choose page 70)
The Washington Post
(Washington, District of Coloubia)
-of Apr 6, 1914
International Socialist Review of April 1914
The International Socialist Review, Volume 14
Algie Martin Simons, Charles H. Kerr
Charles H. Kerr & Company, 1913-14
http://books.google.com/...
(search preview with "Tannenbaum," choose page 608)
Photos:
1). Arturo Giovannitti and Joseph Ettor
https://www.reuther.wayne.edu/...
2). Frank Tannenbaum
http://universityseminars.columbia.edu/...
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There Is Power in the Union-Utah Phillips
If you want nothing before you are dead,
Then shake hands with your boss and look wise.
-Joe Hill
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