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

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Saturday March 3, 1906
From the Montana News: Official Call from Industrial Workers of the World

The February 28th edition of the official newspaper of the Socialist Party in Montana published the following appeal from the I. W. W. which calls for the working class men and women of America to rally to the defense of Charles Moyer and Bill Haywood:

Official Call To Action
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Stirring Appeal Sent Out by Industrial Workers
as Result of Mine Owners' Conspiracy.
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Beginning at the Coeur d' Alene in 1897 a reign of lawless violence has been waged by the capitalist class in the western states, one phase of which was the unparalleled series of outrages perpetrated against the laborers of Colorado. Throughout this conspiracy there had been continuous attempts to crush the labor organizations of the miners by seeking to foist upon them the crimes committed by the capitalist conspirators themselves. Every one of these attempts has failed. In spite of suborned witnesses and terrorized and corrupt juries, every case has ended in complete acquittal. The failure of the conspirators' diabolical schemes has filled them with desperation.

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Friday February 23, 1906
From the Appeal to Reason: Report on Mine Owners' Hired Gunthugs

The Appeal of February 17th offers this account of the results of the "law and order" campaign made by the Mine Owners' Association and the prominent gentlemen who supported that organization in its endeavors to make criminals of the metal miners of Colorado during the recent strikes in that state:

NO COLORADO MINERS CONVICTED.
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Readers of the APPEAL will remember that this paper repeatedly called attention to the fact that the mine owners of Colorado during the labor war is that state in 1904 employed thugs and criminals to carry out their nefarious ends. Since that time five prominent "law and order" gentlemen who fought under the flag of the Mine Owners' association and who were paid by the mine operators and railroads, have been sentenced to the penitentiary and are now serving behind the bars for various crimes. Three more of the delectable gang are in the toils of the law with chances good for their being sent to join their companions.

It is also a significant fact that with all the charges that have been made against the members of the Western Federation of Miners, not a single conviction has been made. And, mind you, the law is in the hands of the mine operators and they have been moving heaven and earth to convict some member of the miners' organization. These are facts which show on which side of the fence the real criminals operated and who were in reality the law-abiding citizens of Colorado. Gradually the inside history of that momentous struggle is being written, and when all the truth is known there will be disclosed the mangled reputations of a number of highly respected politicians.

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Sunday February 4, 1906
From the Montana News: Mary Beals on Child Suicide and Heartless Churches

Readers of Hellraisers might remember a story from the Montana News, written by May Beals, about the suicide of a young cotton mill worker who was too worn out from her labors to go on living. The child sought the sure rest of the grave where her slumbers could not be interrupted by the factory whistle blowing at an early hour. That was a fictional story, but, in a letter to the News, Miss Beals claims that suicides among children who labor in the mines and mills are increasing, especially obvious in France where statistics on child suicide are available.

Writes Miss Beals:

Notice that it is "poor children"—the disinherited—who have no share in the earth, who take themselves out of it. Some good people say that the rapid increase in France is due to the spread of free thought—the decay of religion.

If the function of religion is to hold children in a life of torment, that nothing else can force them to endure, the sooner it decays the better. Truly religion is worth more to the masters than either the constable or the hangman if he can keep the children alive while they are being despoiled. Even capitalism cannot grind profits out of a dead child.

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Friday December 29, 1905
From the Montana News: A Story of the Crushing of a Child's Spirit by May Beals

From the December 27th edition of Montana's leading Socialist newspaper comes this story by May Beals:

Story by May Beals
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The Wheels that Cheated the Wheels of the Mill-
Atrocities on Helpless Children.
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All night she had walked back and forth between flying spindles. The roar of the machinery was still numbing her tired brain as she sat down by the road to rest a minute for the long walk homeward. She was a very little girl-one of those who are ceremoniously bundled out of the mill while the inspector is being entertained in the office; one of those whose pitiful and well proven wrongs would take many men from legislative halls and the pews of fashionable churches to spend long terms behind prison bars if our laws were enforced against the rich as they are enforced against the poor.

But the child knew nothing of this. She could not understand, she could only feel, the injustice that was crushing the life from her frail little body. Her blindness and ignorance caused the worst of her suffering.

For she was not yet past suffering the sharp mental anguish that is so much worse than any physical pain. You can work a child until it grows incapable of thought-incapable of any feeling save physical sensations. She had not worked long enough for that.