A Socialist in rural Louisiana doing inter-racial organizing among the workers of the most powerful capitalist interests in the State is dangerous today; in 1912 it was a potential death sentence. Heroic leader of the Socialist Party in the small lumber company town of DeRidder, Louisiana was charged with highway robbery and murder during the Brotherhood of Timber Workers strike of 1912 and thrown in the hole with dozens of other B.T.W. members. He was acquitted on November 2, 1912 after several witnesses corroborated he was not a participant in the ‘Grabow Riot.’

‘John Helton, Socialist’ from Solidarity. Vol. 3 No. 40. September 28, 1912.

Among the 64 prisoners now in the dungeons at Lake Charles, La., (there were 65, but Fellow Worker Ferro has recently died from his wounds) is Comrade John Helton, secretary of Local De Ridder, Socialist Party. Comrade John does not know what the word fear means and he has long been a thorn in the side of the lumber trust politicians in his section of Louisiana. When the new parish of Beauregard was recently formed there was every chance that its entire administration would be composed of socialists. It was certain not to be lumber trust. This did not suit that extremely “Christian” institution known as the Long Bell Co., not the old pandering breed of politicians, so, when they pulled off the massacre of Grabow, he being also a staunch member of the Brotherhood, Comrade John was seized by the man-hunters and put where it was hoped he could do no harm in the pending parish election and the struggle of the Brotherhood to gain control of the lumber industry.

Not only was Comrade John most active and aggressive in his championship of the party and the union, but in spite of the fact that all these states and United States officials told him to “let it alone,” he insisted on delving into the titles by which several “law-abiding” lumber companies held thousands of acres of land. These he found so rotten, se wet in fraud that he and several other workers insisted, and kept on insisting that the United States government give them, the workers, patents to a few patches of it which, to say the least, was annoying to the officials and highly “anarchistic” in the eyes of the lumber trust, as it tended to dynamite the very foundation of “law and order” and to upset the “equilibrium” of society completely.

Long and earnestly the officials pleaded with Comrade John to “listen to reason,” “the state is in enough trouble now,” by which they simply meant “quit your agitation for the Socialist Party and the Brotherhood, and drop the notion that you or any other working stiff has a right to inquire into the sacred stolen land titles of the lumber kings or to oppose the holy rule of the Democratic party after which they advised him after this manner: “You ain’t doin’ nuthin’ but buttin’ yo head again a stone wall,” all of which affected Comrade John not in the least, he coming from that old Southern Scotch-Irish stock that doesn’t know when it is whipped, and he replied to them ever in this wise: “All right, but I’ll keep on buttin’ until I butt a hole thru that wall or butt my fool head off.” And as he said, even so he did.

Plainly something had to be done with such a man, and now they have him in  prison and he is one of the four they have Detective Burns and Congressman Pujo greasing the ropes to hang.

Yes he, Comrade John, the fearless and the true, is going to HANG, because he has found out too much on our lord and masters, the lumber kings; HANG because he was loyal to his Party, his Union and his Class; HANG because he could neither be bought nor intimidated: HANG because he fought for “A man’s life” for all the workers in the mills and forests of the South; HANG or, worse, be sent to penal servitude on the levees of Louisiana if the attempt to hang him fails.

And the Association will hang him as sure as the sun shall rise and set unless his Fellow Workers throughout the nation wake up and come to his aid with the funds necessary to defend him and his fellow prisoners.

Fellow workers, will you let them send to the gallows or the levees, Comrade John, the fearless and the true.

COMMITTEE OF DEFENSE, BROTHERHOOD OF TIMBER WORK ERS, Box 78, Alexandria, La.

The most widely read of I.W.W. newspapers, Solidarity was published by the Industrial Workers of the World from 1909 until 1917. First produced in New Castle, Pennsylvania, and born during the McKees Rocks strike, Solidarity later moved to Cleveland, Ohio until 1917 then spent its last months in Chicago. With a circulation of around 12,000 and a readership many times that, Solidarity was instrumental in defining the Wobbly world-view at the height of their influence in the working class. It was edited over its life by A.M. Stirton, H.A. Goff, Ben H. Williams, Ralph Chaplin who also provided much of the paper’s color, and others. Like nearly all the left press it fell victim to federal repression in 1917.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/solidarity-iww/1912/v03n40-w144-sep-28-1912-Solidarity.pdf