You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
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Wednesday April 7, 1915
Chicago, Illinois - Mother Jones Pleads for Structural Iron Workers before C. F. of L.
Mother Jones appeared at a meeting of the Chicago Federation of Labor on April 4th and was asked to speak to the delegates assembled there. She spoke to them about her meeting with President Wilson on behalf of the Colorado miners and their families. She also requested that the federation back her appeal to the president and the pardon board for the liberty of the structural iron workers
now in the federal penitentiary at Leavenworth.
Mother is on her way to Washington to make a protest against the continued imprisonment of the iron workers who were found guilty of conspiracy in connection with the famous McNamara dynamiting case in California.
From the Chicago Day Book of April 5, 1915, Last Edition:
ORGANIZED LABOR TO MAKE FIGHT FOR
DOUBLE PLATOON AT POLLS
Members of organizations affiliated with the Chicago Federation of Labor, following a speech by George Hargan, president of the Chicago Firemen's ass'n, at the meeting of the federation yesterday, were urged to go to the polls and work for the passage of the double platoon system.
[Said Hargan:]
This isn't going to increase your taxes...It's going to promote efficiency in the department as well as unionize it. Our statements denying the allegations of the Helmet club and the Chicago Board of Underwriters' ass'n, who are secretly fighting this bill, have been ignored by the trust press. Thousands of dollars have been paid by the board of underwriters for printing of cards and circulars to hand out to the public.
Ray Williams, delegate from the barbers' union, reported that members of his union had been beaten up by men who were working to defeat the double platoon system. When he accompanied the men to the mayor, he said, he was refused an audience. When First Ass't Fire Marshal Patrick Donahoe was asked to investigate and take action, he refused, it is claimed.
The federation instructed Pres. Fitzpatrick and Sec'y Nockels to visit the mayor with the slugged men this morning and demand an investigation.
Delegates from practically every union in the federation stated their organization was supporting the measure which will, if passed, allow the firemen to go home every day.
Mother Jones dropped in near the close of the meeting to see the structural iron workers, for she is on her way to Washington to protest against the imprisonment of the men in the Leavenworth penitentiary for dynamiting. She was called upon to speak and told how she interviewed Pres. Wilson on her last visit to Washington, a few weeks ago.
[She said:]
I arrived in Washington to ask the president to take action upon the refusal of the coal operators to take the strikers back to work...I was told that his highness was receiving no guests today. I told the gentleman that I did not come as a guest but wanted to see him on business. Tuesday, they informed me, was cabinet day. I said, "How about Wednesday." They didn't seem to know when the president would grant an audience to me, so I walked over to see Secretary of Labor Wilson. I told him since the president refused to see me I was going back to Colorado and raise hell till he sends for me.
That afternoon while our party was packing up the phone rang. The president had granted me an immediate audience. We talked over the situation in Colorado. I asked him why the government didn't take over the mines. He replied that the mine owners had refused to sell.
"Fifty years ago this country had a president who, when the gentlemen of the south refused to sell their property, put it up the people," said I. "They declared war." "That was a civil war," says he. "Yes," I said, "but this is a civil, industrial and national war." And do you know, men, that he backed out and refused to take the chance to make himself as big a man as Lincoln.
Mother Jones asked the backing of the federation in her appeal to the president and the pardon board for the liberty of the structural iron workers.
Following a review of the proceedings of the recent labor conference by Charles Fry of the Machinists' union, several delegates from the unions who have refused to sign the agreement condemned Samuel Gompers, president of the A. F. of L., and Thomas Williams, president of the building trades dept. of the A. F. of L., for the stand they took in this conference, which accomplished nothing.
[Photograph added.]
TURNER W. BELL FOR THE DEFENSE
Three of the structural iron workers are being represented by the Honorable Turner W. Bell of Kansas. The following newspaper accounts give some explanation of the progress of their case through the courts. The legal career of Attorney Bell is also covered.
From The Kansas City Sun of January 23, 1915
DYNAMITERS' PLEA IS MADE BY NEGRO.
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Turner W. Bell of Kansas Argues Here Against
Alleged Excessive Penalties for Three.
A hearing to determine whether sentences to six years' imprisonment imposed on Philip Cooley, Frank C. Webb and Jack Bright, alias J. E. Munson, for alleged complicity in the McNamara dynamiting outrages three years ago, was excessive, was held in the United States Court of Appeals yesterday.
The men, structural ironworkers of Indianapolis, were sentenced December 31, 1912, and imprisoned in the Leavenworth, Kans, penitentiary.
Turner W. Bell, Negro attorney of Leavenworth, represented the prisoners. He contended the men should have been sentenced on one count only and that maximum punishment for the offense is two years and a fine of $10,000 under the revised statutes of the United States.
The case was tried originally in the United States District Court in the eastern division of Kansas July 10, 1914, but the decision was against the Negro attorney's contention.
The appeal yesterday was before United States Appellate Judges Adams, Carland and Amidon. They took the case under advisement...
-St. Louis Republic.
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From The Tulsa Star of April 3, 1915:
Three judges of the United States circuit court of appeals listened with profound interest to the plea of a Negro attorney, a one-time slave, who appeared before them in the Federal building at St. Louis.
Probably few in the courtroom realized until he started his argument that a gray-haired Negro sitting near the front was a noted lawyer who has appeared before every United States judge in the central district in many famous trials.
The attorney, Turner W. Bell, represented three men who are confined in the federal penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kan., serving sentences on convictions of conspiracy in the famous structural iron workers' dynamiting cases two years ago.
Bell fingered his brief as he sat listening to the argument of Assistant United States District Attorney L. S. Harvey of the eastern district of Kansas, representing the government.
He had spoken but a few words, however, when the crowd knew that such incidents evidently were in the every-day life of the Negro lawyer.
The men represented by Bell are white and were given sentences of six years at Indianapolis in December, 1912.
They were convicted of being implicated in more than one hundred dynamiting cases, including the destruction of the Times building in Los Angeles, in half of the states of the United States. they were at one time officers of the organization of which J. J. McNamara was a member and who is now serving a life sentence in California.
Bell represented the men in the United States district court in Kansas last July and was defeated. He appealed.
Bell's chief contention is that the men could legally have been convicted on but one charge under the revised statutes of the United States, and that the maximum penalty should have been but two years in the penitentiary or a fine of $10,000. They were charged with having transported dynamite throughout the country, and with the blowing up of a bridge at Indianapolis.
Bell has been a practicing attorney in Leavenworth 28 years. His "hobby," he said, is appeal cases.
In 1914 he filed 61 appeals in the United States courts, and was successful in 41 of them. In but two cases were his clients Negroes.
Bell was born a slave in Tennessee. He was taken with his parents to Oskaloosa, Ia., when young, and earned enough money to carry him through a course in law.
The day he was admitted to the bar, at Leavenworth, United States Judge Hook was in the courtroom, and Bell considers Judge Hook one of his best friends.
Among famous appeals in which Bell has been successful was the case of Charles A. Stevens, a wealthy Negro boy, of Kansas City, who stole a mail sack containing $55,800. Stevens' sentence was reduced from ten to five years. As his fee Bell received $13,000.
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SOURCES
The Day Book
(Chicago, Illinois)
-Apr 5, 1915, Last Edition
http://www.newspapers.com/...
The Kansas City Sun
(Also source for image.)
"A Fearless Defender of the Race"
(Kansas City, Missouri)
-Jan 23, 1915
http://www.newspapers.com/...
The Tulsa Star
(Also source for image.)
(Tulsa, Oklahoma)
-Apr 3, 1915
http://www.newspapers.com/...
IMAGES
Chicago Federation of Labor Emblem
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
Mother Jones on train, 1914
http://www.newspapers.com/...
See also:
Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones Visits Leavenworth Prison,
Meets with "Convicted Dynamiters"
http://www.dailykos.com/...
From The New York Times:
(New York, New York)
"38 LABOR LEADERS ARE FOUND GUILTY;
Indianapolis Jury, Out Forty-one Hours,
Frees Only Two in the Dynamite Case."
-December 29, 1912,
http://query.nytimes.com/...
"DYNAMITERS LOSE IN SUPREME COURT;
Highest Tribunal Declines to Review Convictions
of Ryan [President of Iron Workers' Union]
and Other Union Leaders."
-March 10, 1914
http://query.nytimes.com/...
"SURPRISE TO LABOR MEN.;
Gloom at Indianapolis Headquarters of the Ironworkers."
-Mar 10, 1914
http://query.nytimes.com/...
More on the Case of the McNamara Brothers:
Los Times Bombing (& McNamara Brothers' Case)
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
The McNamara Brothers Trial
http://darrow.law.umn.edu/...
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Folsom Prison Blues Johnny
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