~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Saturday March 10, 1906
From the Montana News: Comrade Debs Speaks, Warns Plutocrats

From this week's edition of the Montana News:

Debs' Stirring Message.
-----

Calls Working Class to Prepare for Action
to Prevent Judicial Murder.
-----

What I have to say about the latest and boldest stroke of the plutocracy will require but little space. It is not talk that is wanted but action.

The issue is clear. There can be no mistake about it.

The labor leaders that cannot be bribed or bullied must be ambushed and murdered. That is the situation in a nutshell. How shall we meet it? In just one way. We have got to fight.

Another Haymarket attempt will precipitate a revolution.

If murder must be committed it is not the working class alone that will furnish the victims this time.

Moyer, Haywood and their colleagues are absolutely innocent. The writer knows them to the heart's core and will stake his all on them.

The only crime they are guilty of is that they are unswervingly true to the working class, and the working class can do no less than stand by them to the finish.

A million of men at the least will meet the issue with guns.

All working men and all other men who have red blood in their veins will rise up against this murderous plot of the plutocracy.

They have stolen our country, debauched our politics, defiled our judiciary and ridden over us roughshod, and now they propose to murder those who will not abjectly surrender to their brutal dominion.

Totally regardless of all other differences organized labor from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from Canada to the Gulf can unite in one solid phalanx against plutocratic tyranny and crime.

We have no courts to appeal to. They belong to the plutocracy. We have tried them for years, and for one I am opposed to squandering our means going up against a brace game judiciary.

We are men and we have got to prove it. This fight is not of our seeking. It has been forced upon us and we can only evade it by showing the white feather of cowardice.

If we stand by supinely and see our loyal leaders murdered in cold blood, we deserve a similar fate and shall not escape it.

Let mass meetings be held all over the country and the workers arouse.

If they put our leaders in the penitentiary without trial we will pull them down as they did the bastile in France a hundred years ago.

The governors of Colorado and Idaho are but executing the mandates of their masters, the plutocracy.

The issue is the Workers versus Plutocracy.

If they strike the first violent blow we will strike the last.-Toledo Socialist.

[Photograph added.]

More from the Montana News of March 7th:

Stirring Call To Action.
-----

Labor Warned to Prepare, and Capital Warned
to Beware, if Union Leaders Are Murdered.
-----

Terre Haute, Ind., Feb. 19. 1906 -
Moyer and Haywood, Pioneer Block,
Denver, Colorado:

"Hearty congratulations upon the latest move of Standard Oil. The gang of pirates who are running things out there will next charge you with having crucified Christ. The crimes they impute to you they are guilty of themselves. You can appeal from the capitalist courts owned by these red-handed plunderers to the working class of America. If they want an uprising, they can have it. A million of revolutionary workingmen stand behind you and will be with you at the finish. Every fresh outrage they perpetrate upon you to divert attention from their own criminal guilt but hastens the day of their doom. Down with the capitalist system. On with the social revolution, the day of emancipation is drawing near." EUGENE V. DEBBS [Debs].

-----

From one end of the country to the other militant labor is stirred to its depth by the dastardly attempt to murder the officers of the Western Federation of Miners. The entire tenor of the militant labor press is a sense that nothing but firm and united action on the part of the working class will prevent the judicial murder, as is evidenced by the following;

It being evident that the Standard Oil freebooters have taken the law in their own hands, nothing remains for us but to meet them upon the ground and with the weapons of their own choosing. Workingmen of America, be prepared to act.
(Signed)
CHAS. O. SHERMAN,
General President.
Wm. E. Trautmann,
General Secretary-Treasurer
Industrial Workers of the World.

-----

"We are growing in strength and nearing a crisis. We are strong enough to prevent them from hanging those men in Idaho. Our lives must be given before we permit them to hang."
- A. M. Simons. [Editor, International Socialist Review.]

-----

If the Standard Oil gang of pirates persist in their attempt to strangle Moyer, Haywood, Pettibone and other representatives of the working class we predict that they will pay an awful price for their victory. They may murder a few labor leaders that they see standing in the way of their complete rule of the mining states, but they cannot kill the class that Moyer and Haywood represent. In the name of 500,000 class-conscious socialists of America we warn Rogers and his hirelings that we will hold them answerable for the lives of the men they have unconstitutionally and without due process of law dragged from their state without a hearing.-Chicago Socialist.

-----

The kidnapping of Comrades Moyer and Haywood and the evident attempt of the capitalists to railroad them to the gallows may prove the most costly blunder ever committed by the tools of plutocracy. So far it has resulted in uniting for a common purpose unions that were not on speaking terms before. If this dastardly plot to murder our leaders and crush unionism goes much further the old historic song of the miners may again ring in the ears of the ruling class:

"Then shall our leaders die?
Shall our leaders die?
Here's half a million fighting men will know the reason why."
-Salt Lake Crisis

-----

One thing is certain, every move that is made in this western drama will be watched by millions of workingmen and their friends in this country, and woe to those who attempt to duplicate the Haymarket affair! -Cleveland Citizen.

-----

The class struggle is on; and, as long as it prevails, labor will supply all the men necessary to fight it to a successful issue in labor's behalf.-Weekly People.

-----

This much can be said: That if these men are put to death without every opportunity to defend, capitalism in this country will have called upon itself a black mark that it can never erase and that will one day rise up to politically avenge the foul deed.-Social Democratic Herald.

-----

They will be able probably, if they are determined, to clear the officers of the Western Federation out of their head-long path, but if they do they will have to pay the price. The day of working class revolt, and working class triumph, and capitalism's final and everlasting defeat will be materially hastened.-Union Sentinel.

-----

If the capitalists convict them of this murder without giving them a fair trial, they will pull down an avalanche about their heads that will bid fair to throw this country into an armed revolution.-Common Sense.

-----

[Photographs added.]

SOURCE
Montana News
"Owned and Published By
The Socialist Party of Montana"
(Helena, Montana)
-Mar 7, 1906
https://www.newspapers.com/image/77934196
https://www.newspapers.com/image/77934182

IMAGES
Eugene Debs, Wilshire's Magazine, Nov 1905
pdf! https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/parties/spusa/1905/1100-debs-winnin...
Moyer and Haywood from Darrow Collection
http://darrow.law.umn.edu/photo.php?pid=1384
http://darrow.law.umn.edu/photo.php?pid=1385
Algie Martin Simons
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algie_Martin_Simons

````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````