Tuesday April 24, 1906
From The San Francisco Call: Fire Boundary Twenty-Six Miles

From its temporary offices at 1651 Fillmore Street, The Call continues to report on the devastating aftermath of the earthquake and fire which leveled the city on April 18th. Plans by The Call to rebuild its own destroyed offices are already in the works:

The Call reports that aid is reaching the city from all parts of the country:

SOURCE & IMAGES
The San Francisco Call
(San Francisco, California)
-Apr 23, 1906
https://www.newspapers.com/image/80940023
https://www.newspapers.com/image/80940037

See also:

Hellraisers Journal: Thousands Feared Dead as Earthquake and Fire Destroy San Francisco by JayRaye
http://caucus99percent.com/content/hellraisers-journal-thousands-feared-...

The following letter by Joe Hill was written on April 24, 1906, and was published in the Gefle Dägblad of Gävle, Sweden, on May 16th:

THE CATASTROPHE IN SAN FRANCISCO-
A RESIDENT OF GAVLE TELLS THE STORY

From a former resident of Gävle, Joel Hägglund, who was present at the terrible catastrophe in San Francisco, we received a letter dated the twenty-fourth which gives you some idea of what they had to go through there. He writes a among other things:

I woke up on the morning of Wednesday, April 18, at 5:13 by being thrown out of bed. I stood up by grabbing the door handle which I got hold of by accident, and after opening the door, I managed to reach the stairway after much scuffling. How I managed to get down the stairs I can't really tell, but I went fast. I had come halfway down the third and last flight and began to hope I would make it, when suddenly the stairway fell in and I fell straight through the floor down into the basement.

I thought that my last moment had come, so I tried to recite one of the old hymns I had learned in Sunday School in Gävle. Then I closed my eyes and waited for my fate.

But then the shakings became weaker and weaker and finally they were completely still. I was pinned between some boards, but managed after some effort to get loose. I moved my arms and legs and found them still working. With the exception of some bruises on my right side and arm, I was completely unhurt. I heard voices and shouts and crept up until I saw a hole large enough for a man to crawl through. In a moment I was out in the street only to meet a sight still worse than was in the basement.

View in Jefferson Square
``````````

A large six story house on the other side of the street was flat as a pancake on the ground, and men, women and children were running around in complete disorder. Some had some clothing on, and some had not more on than a newborn child, and to tell the truth, I wouldn't have taken a walk on main street in the suit I was wearing.

I got hold of a pair of trousers which fit me about as well as a pair of Swedish soldier's pants, and I went up to an opening where I had a good view of the city. It was a terrible sight to see the large houses, some in ruins, some similar to the leaning tower of Pisa. The ground was full of cracks, some nearly three feet wide, and here and there a dark smoke pillar came out of the ruins, which was the first indication of the terrible fire that later hit San Francisco. It didn't take long before red flames were seen in several places and as all the water pipes had broken and not a drop of water could be had, these spread with terrible speed and the city was changed within a few hours into one single lake of fire.

Hospital Crew at Golden Gate Park Tennis Quarters
``````````

I saw many moving and heart rending scenes. Half-naked women carrying small children were driven from their homes. Some refused to leave their old homes, and were seized and bound to keep them from going back into the flames. So-called "martial" law was proclaimed immediately-that means momentary death for the least criminal act or disobedience. Two soldiers came and gave me an axe and put a large steel hat on me, and before I knew what it was all about, I was employed as a fireman in the San Francisco Fire Department. I worked for thirty-six hours without food or drink before I was released. My work consisted of helping old people from the fire, carrying out sick from the hospitals, saving valuables, etc. The officer who released me first wrote down my name, then he looked into my pockets for loot. If he had found any, I would have received an extra buttonhole in the vest for all my work and would probably have never written this letter.

Many tried to make money on this calamity and charged, senselessly for food. A grocer who sold crackers small cookies valued about 1/5 of a cent apiece, for ten cents a piece and eggs for two dollars a dozen made money by the barrels. But then the police were told. They came and gave away all he had to the people outside. Then they brought him out into the street, bound him to a pole and placed a sign over his head with the following inscription: "The man who sold crackers for ten cent apiece. Spit on him." All those who passed spit on him, and I couldn't resist the temptation to go forward and aim at this very long nose. It is hardly necessary here to say that he was a Jew.

My companion, Oscar Westergren, a well known person from Gävle, I have not seen since the day before the earthquake. I know not whether he is dead or alive, but I am hoping for the best. He may have received some kind of "forced labor."

The fire is not out everywhere and the formerly rich San Francisco is now only a smoking ruin. About a hundred frame houses are all that is left of the "Proud Queen on the Shores of the Pacific Ocean."

[Photographs added.]

NOTE: I am sorry to have to include the hateful anti-semitism expressed in this letter by our Fellow Worker Joe Hill, but Hellraisers does not believe in editing out the serious short-comings of our labor heros. FW Hill is here showing himself to be, at this time, a Scissor Bill of the type that he later condemned in his song "Scissor Bill." Let us never forget, however, that Joe Hill died a martyr of the union which stood for working-class unity without regard to creed or color.

Much could be written about Jewish workers and the IWW, but here are the relevant paragraphs from "A Short History Of Jews In The American Labor Movement," an article found at the website of Congress of Secular Jewish Organizations:

...The most radical union in this period, i.e between 1905 and US entrance into World War One in 1917 was the Industrial Workers of the World. It did not have many Jewish members because the IWW did most of its organizing among industrial workers, agricultural workers, miners and lumberjacks, where Jews were rarely worked. But in their forays into the East, most notably the 1912 Lawrence, Mass. textile workers strike and the 1913 Paterson, NJ silk workers strike, thousands of Jewish workers participated, including Hannah Silverman, a Paterson mill worker, who became an important strike leader. Matilda Robbins, born Tatiana Rabinowitz, led a strike of textile workers in Little Falls, NY in 1912 and was hired by the IWW as one of two paid female organizers.

The best known Jewish Wobbly was Frank Tannenbaum, who organized unemployed workers in New York City to demand food and shelter from churches during the bitter cold winter of 1913-14. He was falsely accused of inciting to riot and served a year in a notorious city prison where he organized a strike of inmates against harsh conditions. Tannenbaum later dropped out of the labor movement to pursue a higher education. He earned a PhD from Columbia University and become a scholar specializing in race relations, criminology and Latin American history....

[Photograph adde.]

See tomorrow's Hellraisers for an article from The Masses by Frank Tannenbaum, describing the prison conditions he endured after being sentenced as an IWW agitator in 1914. Joe Hill later assisted the struggles of the unemployed from his jail cell in Salt Lake City.

SOURCES

Joe Hill
-by Gibbs M. Smith
Gibbs Smith Inc, copyright 1969
https://books.google.com/books?id=wFwsHQVuHVUC

IWW Constitution and By-Laws, 1905
http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015079028836;page=root;view=...
http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?q1=creed%20color;id=mdp.3901507902883...

Congress of Secular Jewish Organizations
"A Short History Of Jews In The American Labor Movement"
http://www.csjo.org/resources/essays/jews-in-the-american-labor-movement/

IMAGES
Joe Hill
http://www.freedomarchives.org/La_Lucha_Continua/Joe_Hill.html
From The San Francisco Call:
-San Francisco Earthquake, Jefferson Square, SF Call, Apr 23, 1906
-San Francisco Earthquake of 1906, Hospital Crew, SF Call, Apr 23, 1906
https://www.newspapers.com/image/80940023/
Frank Tannenbaum on way to jail, 1914
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/3/11/1283785/-Hellraisers-Journal-Win...

See also:

C99 Search: "Joe Hill" "We Never Forget"
http://caucus99percent.com/search/node/%22joe%20hill%22%20%22we%20never%...

Gävle
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%A4vle

We Will Sing One Song - Six Feet In The Pine
Lyrics by Joe Hill
http://www.folkarchive.de/wewill.html