The official Socialist Labor Party pronouncement and call to demonstrate in the aftermath of the murder of 21 striking United Mine Workers in Lattimer, Pennsylvania on September 10, 1897. The brutal killings, known as the Lattimer of Hazleton Massacre, by the local sheriff and his posse took the lives of mainly Polish, Slovak, and Lithuanian immigrants. Those that died were Michael Cheslock, Sebastian Bozestoski, John Chobonshi, Adalbert Czaja, John Futa, John Gastack, Antonio Grazke, Frank Kodel, Andrew Kollick, Andre Nikzkowuski, Rulof Rekenits, John Ruski, John Sheka, John Tranke, John Turnasdich, Stephen Urich, Andrew Varicku, Andrew Yerkman, Stanley Zagorski, Adam Zamoski, Andrew Zeminski, and John Zernovick.

‘Massacre! Committed by Capitalists and Their Political Lackeys from The People (S.L.P.). Vol. 7 No. 25. September 19, 1897.

ONWARD, SOCIALISTS!

The Affair at Hazleton is an Act of Unprecedented Capitalist Felony, Participated in by the Whole Capitalist Class, and in Which the Labor Fakir Shares the Full Responsibility-The Importance of Sound and Speedy Socialist Education to Prevent The Continuance of Such Acts and also of Fruitless Acts of Retribution.

Hazleton, Pa., witnessed last week. and continues to witness a scene that, so far, touches the highest water mark of capitalist infamy in the country. It connects directly with similar, though. not as glaring acts in the past, and it points to similar and infinitely worse ones to come–unless headed off by the Social Revolution.

A Sheriff, with a posse of about 100 men, recruited from the ranks of the mine-owners’ class itself and its retainers, meets a procession of miners who were unarmed and exercising their constitutional right of peaceful assemblage. The Sheriff and his fellow thugs forthwith open fire, kill on the spot some 19 miners, mortally wound some 10 more and injure more and less severely a much larger number, MANY OF THE KILLED AND WOUNDED BEING SHOT IN THE BACK.

Forthwith a warrant of arrest is se- cured against the cold-blooded assassins, but the server of the process of the Court of Justice finds his path barred by bayonets. The mine-owners, some of whom had personally been among the Sheriff’s posse, and whose children and other dependents had constituted that squad, the rioters in fact, had issued their orders to the political representative of their brigand class, the Governor of the State, for “protection,” and without delay he obeyed their order. Gen. Gobin and a regiment of soldiers are sent to the place to protect the rioters against the just indignation of the community, and this armed arm of the State shields the assassins to-day from the order for their arrest!

Nor is this all! As if to demonstrate the class-consciousness of the capitalist class and hold that up as a reproach to the working class, whose masses still ignore their class unity, from one end of the country to the other the capitalist press breaks out in hosannas of praise for the Sheriff who led, for his deputies who helped to execute, and for the Governor of Pennsylvania and his General Gobin who rushed to protect the execrable felons! Here, in New York, in particular, the exhibition is most striking. The Tammany Hall Democratic and Tom Platt Republican Press, on the one hand, and the Seth Low Citizen’s Union press on the other, that had just previously been scratching out each other’s eyes in their wrangle to control the city, and who are still at this work of political depravity, stopped for a moment in their private quarrel and in unison raised their voices in praise of the “Sheriff of Luzerne County.”

What is it that these papers praise? The Sheriff’s story bears the mark of falsehood on its face. It contradicts itself, and furthermore his own appearance belies his yarn about having suffered violence. Not a scratch is on his body, nor are his clothes in the least ruffled. He and his started the riot in which only they participated; and, in view of the fact that so many of the wounded and killed were hit in the back, the evidence is clear that, in this riot, all the barbarism of criminal ruffianism animated the shooters; the principle of civilized warfare, that the fleeing foe is spared, was here not thought of, on the contrary, it seems to have incited the murderers. Even if, indeed, the innocent procession of miners had been an aggressive force and had deserved the Sheriff’s fire, their flight should have put an end to the carnage; to the Sheriff and his fellow assassins the flight of the miners only offered an opportunity for further carnage. Finally, the event acquires peculiar significance from the circumstance that his time the Sheriff’s deputies were not recruited, as they usually are, from the admittedly depraved classes of society: they were the “élite” of the place, “distinguished citizens.”

The blood of the miners that bespatters the Sheriff and his posse, bespatters the whole capitalist class, and every member thereof. It is their work; the crime is theirs collectively; collectively they incited it; collectively they committed it; collectively they are cheering and protecting it; and collectively they are its beneficiaries–so far. But the roll of criminals is not complete if we look only at the capitalist class, at our precious “élite.” Alongside of them, sitting in the same prisoners dock, manacled in the same chain-gang, and indicted in the same indictment, is that scoundrel crew of labor fakirs–the Gomperses, McBrides, Sovereigns, Ratchfords, Prescotts, Perkinses, McGuires, etc., etc., etc.-without whose aid our capitalist “élite” could not to-day enjoy the double advantage of not only being in full possession of the governmental powers. but of finding the working class in general, and the miners in particular, so wholly at the mercy of their exploiters and oppressors. Capitalists’ under-strappers are these and all other labor fakirs; the guilt that attaches to the former is shared by the latter–both sets are arraigned before the bar of Conscience, before the bar of the Spirit of the Age, and are pronounced guilty. a thousand times guilty!

But in the midst of all this, while the blood of the Hazleton victims cries up to heaven for vengeance, and small pots get hot and fly off at the handle, the Socialist is all the cooler, all the more collected, and urges sober thought.

What has happened and will continue to happen is as natural as that 2 and 2 should make 4. Indeed, the wonder would be if it had not happened, or should cease to happen, so long as that system is allowed to continue that is based upon rapine and needs rapine to uphold it–the CAPITALIST SYSTEM.

Under the Capitalist system the nation’s machinery of production, the machinery of production without which wealth cannot be produced, is held by private concerns for private profit. This needed capital is not the fruit of the industry or thrift of those who hold it; It is the fruit of their crime. No capitalist concern can be named that has not for its foundation some black felony. With the power conferred to the felon class by its original felony, it is able to perpetuate its felonious deeds: The law, to which it acts obedient, drives increased numbers of people into wage slavery, and drives down the wage slave proletariat into ever deeper depths of privation. Such a system breathes felony at every pore. It belches felony at the mouth of its rifles placed in Sheriffs’ hands; it utters felony by the acts of the politicians–Presidents, Governors, Mayors, Courts–whom it sets into power; it feloniously putrefies the atmosphere through the pen of its apostles, like Carroll D. Wright, who are discovered to be directors in insurance concerns that go down in fraudulent crashes; it breads felony in the brains of the weak minds of men who develop into labor fakirs: its trail is marked by capitalist riots against Tennessee free miners, by murders in Buffalo, Brooklyn, Chicago, Boston, Washington–throughout the country, and its path is lighted by the lurid light of Hazleton assassinations. To simply indignate at this is childish;

In its face is thoughtlessness–and recklessness, a thoughtlessness and recklessness comparable with that of the Haitian insurrectionists, who, ignorant of what a cannon meant, grabbed it by the muzzle-and got blown up; not until they learned the nature of the thing they had to deal with, and were systematically drilled for freedom did they succeed in wrenching the engine of force from the French and drive their oppressors from the country.

So now. The attitude of consternation among the workers, their indignation and their wrath at this moment can lead to no good. It may cause the massacre of many of their oppressors, but civilization cannot prosper by massacres, much less by fruitless ones. Rage may wreak vengeance, but it is deprived of the intelligence that removes the provocation for vengeance; the acts of rage that the untutored, and undisciplined, because untutored, working masses might indulge in, would react upon themselves, like the first thoughtless acts of the Haitian insurgents. The mission of the Socialists becomes at such times all the more important: It is to tutor the proletariat on the nature of the beast they have to deal with; to discipline them into an aggressive, revolutionary political party, and lead them to the ballot box, there to take possession by the conquest of the public powers, of the machinery of government needed to throw down the capitalist class and enthrone the working class under the dome of the Socialist commonwealth, where he who works shall live, and the felon who can and won’t, shall die.

In pursuit of this course of education, with the Hazleton assassination as an object lesson, the National Executive Committee has issued to the sections of the party the order to call public meetings in obedience whereto Section Greater New York has issued the following call: Workingmen of New York and Vicinity!

Twenty-four of your fellow wage slaves have been murdered in cold blood at Hazleton, Pa., by a body of mine owners and their retainers.

Without even the pretense of law, another representative of the capitalist class, Gen. Gobin, keeps the place under martial law, and prevents the arrest of the criminals.

Right here, in this city, the capitalist politicians applaud, the parasite capitalist class cheers, and the prostituted capitalist press approves the heinous deed; and the city officials seek to repress a free expression of popular indignation.

Scenes like this, and treatment like this, are becoming so numerous that it is imperative for you to arrive promptly at a clear understanding of your situation.

The SOCIALIST LABOR PARTY alone the upholder of the rights of the working class, summons you to a monster demonstration of your indignation, by joining it in a parade, to start from the Labor Lyceum, 64 E. 4th street, this Saturday, Sept. 18th, at 7:30 p.m. and march with it to a mass meeting at Union Square.

ORGANIZER, Section Greater New York, S.L.P.

New York Labor News Company was the publishing house of the Socialist Labor Party and their paper The People. The People was the official paper of the Socialist Labor Party of America (SLP), established in New York City in 1891 as a weekly. The New York SLP, and The People, were dominated Daniel De Leon and his supporters, the dominant ideological leader of the SLP from the 1890s until the time of his death. The People became a daily in 1900. It’s first editor was the French socialist Lucien Sanial who was quickly replaced by De Leon who held the position until his death in 1914. Morris Hillquit and Henry Slobodin, future leaders of the Socialist Party of America were writers before their split from the SLP in 1899. For a while there were two SLPs and two Peoples, requiring a legal case to determine ownership. Eventual the anti-De Leonist produced what would become the New York Call and became the Social Democratic, later Socialist, Party. The De Leonist The People continued publishing until 2008.

PDF of issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/the-people-slp/970919-thepeople-v07n25.pdf