Wednesday April 11, 1906
Wilshire's Magazine: Editorial Calls for General Strike

The working class in this country have it in their power to say to the plutocracy "You shall starve to death if a hair on the head of either Haywood, Moyer or Pettibone is injured."

Let us show the world that the workingmen of America are not so lost to shame not so devoid of the red blood of courage, that they will allow one of their comrades to suffer death at the hands of their enemies, when they have at their command a weapon which will set him free.

Hurrah for the General Strike!

So says Editor Gaylord Wilshire in this month's edition of the socialist magazine which bears his name. The full editorial can be read below:

Strike to Set Them Free

By GAYLORD WILSHIRE

THE secret night arrest and deportation from Colorado to Idaho of Haywood, Moyer and Pettibone, of the Western Federation of Miners, is an event not only of the greatest interest to the labor movement of the United States, but is an act menacing the whole fabric of our present industrial and social structure.

Society to-day is held together by the large majority of the people feeling that if substantial equity is not done to every man by our present laws and customs, at any rate the equity is about as near as can be expected, taking one thing with another.

We Socialists know and are trying to make the people know, that the present economic inequality and injustice is the direct consequence of our competitive system, and we are endeavoring to show the people that the only way to avoid inequity is to establish Socialism, but it is admittedly a long, tedious, slow process to teach the people the economics of Socialism.

But when it comes to a question of the people deciding about life or death for a man, they do not hesitate a single moment. If the people think that a man has committed a crime against an individual or the commonwealth, there is practically a consensus for his execution. If, upon the other hand, they think he is not guilty, they have no hesitancy in expressing their feelings against the carrying out of the sentence. The common instinct of humanity is aroused at the thought of killing an innocent man, no matter who he may be. But when the man threatened is one who is known to have devoted his life for the good of his fellow men, and when the people feel that not only has he committed no crime, but that he is picked out for slaughter merely because he has devoted himself to their interests, then may we expect a great wave of indignant protest to sweep the nation.

Never before the arrest of Haywood, Moyer and Pettibone, has such a condition as this ever been presented before to the American nation. The nearest approach to it was probably when the Southern Confederacy threatened with execution a number of captured Union officers upon the false charge that they were spies. This so aroused the whole country that Lincoln, in response, advised the Confederacy that he would execute certain Confederate officers then held in captivity by the North, if the South should carry out its threat. This act of Lincoln's caused the South to change its mind, and the incident was over.

The execution of the anarchists in Chicago, in 1886, was similar in certain respects to the threatened execution of Moyer and Haywood. However, the execution in 1886 did not excite any great national protest, first because the labor movement was not developed to the extent that it is to-day, and, secondly, because the men accused had associated themselves, in the public mind, with the advocacy of bomb throwing, and the public felt that their execution, after a bomb throwing actually did take place, was only a matter of just retribution. The public felt that, even if the individuals accused were not guilty, they had at any rate excited some other man to throw the bomb, and to have deserved the hanging.

As I said before, the present Haywood-Moyer-Pettibone case is upon quite a different footing. The labor movement of America is to-day infinitely better organized than it was twenty years ago; not only is labor organized, but the people generally have had so many striking indictments of the present capitalistic system by such writers as Lawson, Sinclair, Steffens, Phillips and others, and have seen so many of their idols fall, like Senator Depew, and have been enlightened by the insurance investigations as to how graft permeates throughout our whole political and industrial structure, that they no longer feel that keen resentment against the criticizers of the present system of society that they did at one time.

Instead of looking upon America as the perfection of all things, as we did in 1886, and looking upon the man who criticised us as one quite worthy of hanging, we now place our critics on the pinnacle of public esteem.

We no longer have the respect for the courts that we did have. We can no longer doubt that they are corrupt and venial. We cannot doubt that the money interest of the country controls them. Twenty years ago the courts were still an honored institution.

Then the growth of Socialism has made such progress in twenty years that thousands of people are to-day ready for a Social Revolution, and eager to listen to the words of a Revolutionist, where twenty years ago they would have mobbed him.

The public protest of to-day about the Haywood-Moyer affair is infinitely greater and more powerful than any similar protest. The labor unions from one end of the country to the other are making the case of Haywood and Moyer their own. At this writing $200,000 have been subscribed for the defense fund, and $1,000,000 can be had if necessary.

As Gov. Gooding, of Idaho, and his servile judges push onward the trial of the accused men, there is no telling how high public indignation may run. No one can say if this event may not be the spark which will inflame the American people to the inevitable Social Revolution.

The greatest crime against a free people in modern history is threatened in the trial of Haywood, Moyer and Pettibone for murder. No one who knows anything about the character of the men and the circumstances of the crime, can believe that they were connected with the assassination of Gov. Steunenberg. The trial is merely an attempt on the part of the mine owners of Idaho and Colorado to intimidate the labor unions. They think that the hanging of the leaders will mean such a complete cowing of labor that capital will forever have it at its mercy. If the working class of America do not make their protest sufficiently vigorous to prevent the possibility of this judicial crime, then the execution of Haywood and Moyer may be the beginning of a series of executions of labor union leaders from one end of the country to the other.

The time for us to make our protest is now, and not after the men are in their coffins. If we wish to prevent the murder of the men who have been fighting for us, then the time for us to act is right here and now.

Let indignation meetings be held from Maine to California. Let money be collected. Let parades be made in our great cities, parades in such numbers that their immense size will intimidate the capitalist class from carrying out their infamous program.

If the trial proceeds and if such a terrible event as conviction by the servile minions of plutocracy should follow, and if a single one of our comrades, Haywood, Moyer or Pettibone, is condemned, it should be the signal for the working class of America to rise-let that mark the date for the beginning of a Great National General Strike. Let every working man who has a heart in his breast make a mighty oath that not a wheel shall turn in this country from ocean to ocean until the verdict is set aside and everyone of the accused is set free. Let our factories be closed; let our mills stop grinding flour, and our bakeries stop baking bread. Let there be a complete paralysis of railway transportation and telegraphic information. Let our coal mines close, and let us die of hunger and cold if necessary to make our protest heeded.

The working class in this country have it in their power to say to the plutocracy "You shall starve to death if a hair on the head of either Haywood, Moyer or Pettibone is injured."

Let us show the world that the workingmen of America are not so lost to shame not so devoid of the red blood of courage, that they will allow one of their comrades to suffer death at the hands of their enemies, when they have at their command a weapon which will set him free.

Hurrah for the General Strike!

[Photograph an emphasis added.]

SOURCE

"Strike to Set Them Free" by Gaylord Wilshire
-Editorial in Wilshire's Magazine of April 1906
pdf! http://darrow.law.umn.edu/documents/Wilshire_Mag.pdf

IMAGES
Moyer and Haywood, Wilshire's Magazine, 1906
pdf! http://darrow.law.umn.edu/documents/Wilshire_Mag.pdf
Gaylord Wilshire, Wilshire Editorials, 1906
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=LAYNAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcove...

See also:

Gaylord Wilshire
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaylord_Wilshire

Wilshire Editorials, Volume 20
-by Gaylord Wilshire
Wilshire book Company, 1906
https://books.google.com/books?id=LAYNAAAAYAAJ
"A Strike to Set Them Free" by Gaylord Wilshire
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=LAYNAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcove...

Muckrakers
http://www.ushistory.org/us/42b.asp

Chauncey Depew
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chauncey_Depew

"Hellraisers Journal: Lucy Parsons Pays Tribute to Governor John Peter Altgeld
as Monument Unveiled" -by JayRaye
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/9/18/1422262/-Hellraisers-Journal-Luc...

C99 Tag: Haywood-Moyer-Pettibone Case
http://caucus99percent.com/tags/haywood-moyer-pettibone-case

The Cripple Creek Strike
-by Emma Florence Langdon
Denver, 1904-05
http://www.rebelgraphics.org/wfmhall/langdon00.html
Appendix, April 1908
-Coverage of Haywood-Moyer-Pettibone Case
http://www.rebelgraphics.org/wfmhall/langdon29.html#dedication

The Darrow Collection, Haywood Trial
http://darrow.law.umn.edu/trials.php?tid=3

Workers of the World Awaken
Lyrics by Joe Hil
http://www.folkarchive.de/workers.html

If the workers take a notion,
They can stop all speeding trains;
Every ship upon the ocean
They can tie with mighty chains.
Every wheel in the creation,
Every mine and every mill,
Fleets and armies of the nation,
Will at their command stand still.