Two of the most prominent European Socialists comment on the political case of the first decade of the 20th century–the prosecution of Western Federation of Miners leaders Charles Moyer, George Pettibone, and William D. Haywood for the murder of Idaho ex-governor Frank Steunenberg. All were acquitted. His fearless conduct and clear words at the trial made Haywood a national, even international, figure in the workers’ movement. In 1910, Haywood would be a delegate to the International’s Copenhagen Congress.

‘August Bebel and Karl Kautsky Plea for Haywood, Moyer, and Pettibone’ from The Worker (New York). Vol. 17 No. 12. June 22, 1907.

Eugene V. Debs has received the following letters from August Bebel, Socialist leader in the German Reichstag, and Karl Kautsky, the most famous living Socialist economist of Germany, relative to the Moyer, Haywood, Pettibone cases.

From Bebel.

Dear Comrade Debs: For a long time I have been following the development of the working-class movement in the United States with lively interest and am glad to be able to observe that it inclines more all the time to Socialism. you, of course, having done your share of the task.

For this reason, we may expect to see, in your country the most highly developed, industrially, in the world, the movement attain a strong influence upon the public events of your country, that is, in the sense of an intellectual development of the impoverished classes of the people and a struggle against the overpowering and baleful influence of the capitalist class.

We in the old world behold with astonishment, but also with the greatest misgiving, what an unheard of influence the capitalists of your country have known how to obtain, not only upon the industrial but above all, upon the political institutions of the United States, in spite of all its democratic freedom. Yes, we see with indignation that, while the capitalists hold all of the public powers in their hands, they know best of all how to control the most important palladium of the state, in their own interests.

If it is true, as we understand, that the bourgeoisie there is succeeding with its fiendish plan to deliver the brave leaders of the Western Federation of Miners to the hangman under the pretext that these three men are said to have the murder of a higher state official upon their conscience, then I can only express my deepest horror at the complete absence of conscience and scruples which lies in such an attack upon right and justice.

I hope that the energy, sacrifice and devotion of class conscious workingmen of North America to the pitiable victims of capitalist baseness, will achieve success in freeing our innocent comrades from the clutches of the hangman and in restoring them to their field of activity.

In the old world it would have raised a storm of protest among workingmen and Socialists, if the judicial murder which was executed upon the so-called Anarchists in Chicago, were to be successfully followed by a new, and if possible, more frightful judicial murder in Idaho.

We shall greatly rejoice if we hear that the exertions of the American class-conscious workers for the freeing of the lenders of the Western Federation of Miners have been crowned with complete success.

Wishing for this success with all my heart. let me sign myself. With fraternal greetings, yours, A. BEBEL.

From Kautsky.

Dear Comrade Debs: The German proletariat has not been spoiled by its judges. For example, in Prussia and Saxony there are only too many administrators of justice who are responsible for the most monstrous injustices, who doom workingmen to years of imprisonment for crimes for which they punish with fines the bourgeoisie if these ever receive at all a judgment by their class associates. But even the most prejudiced of such judges have some regard for the preservation at least of the forms of justice.

To trample the forms of justice under foot so shamelessly as has been done in the case of our Comrades, Haywood. Moyer, and Pettibone, by the judicial officials of the American republic, would not have been dared by the most fanatical of the Prussian and Saxon officials. Everywhere justice is the cheap maid of the ruling classes, but nowhere does she prostitute herself so shamelessly and so publicly as in America. It is in the great republic itself that the capitalists are most conscious that they are the masters of the state, the state they regard most recklessly as their dominion and the state’s officials as the instruments of capital.

The times are past when the United States were a “refuge of justice”. From their beginning under the Pilgrim fathers to the time of Bismarck’s Socialist laws, the North American settlements had been a freehold for all those in Europe who were oppressed by the tyranny of the feudal monarchy and its scoundrel judges. The strongest, the boldest, the most intelligent spirits of Europe were attracted by America; it was they who founded the supremacy of America over Europe and conceived that energetic race which has made America within a few decades the greatest and richest power of the world.

But this power of attraction has long since ceased. To-day it is no longer the advance guard of fighters for the higher political and social forms who stream from Europe to America, but only the most uneducated and backward of its elements. The others find to-day in America the same slavery as at home.

It is high time that the proletariat of America rise against the same slavery in the same manner as the proletariat of Europe has long since been doing. If the capitalists and judges of America are more shameless than those of Europe, then it is more than all else because they meet less opposition than the latter. Nothing more false than the saying: “Like master, like man”. Much more correct to say: “Like slave, like master”.

The exploiting classes love to feel themselves the educators of the working people: they love to regard them as a mass of undeveloped children who must first be trained before they can be left to themselves. But the truth is that all training and character building has come out of the working classes. The less capable of resistance and the weaker the working class, the greater the immorality of the ruling class.

Thus to-day the proletariat not only has the task of training itself, of declaring itself, of developing, of perfecting character, but it has also its masters and exploiters to train, to impart to them decency and obedience to law and consideration for the workingmen. And the one training, like the other, is accomplished thru the same activity: thru continuous and untiring struggle against every exploitation, every oppression, every brutality.

Never was such a struggle more needed than in the case of the judicial murder which a knavish justice is attempting to execute upon our comrades, Haywood, Moyer, and Pettibone. Never was there a bolder challenge to the working classes, never was there so much need to hold fast with loyalty. For only because of their selfish devotion to the cause of the workers are our three brave comrades suffering and only for this reason will all the commands of humanity and Justice be trampled under foot by their accusers in order to clear them out of the way.

But it is a question not only of the life and happiness of our three champions, but of a crime whose success would drive the arrogance of the capitalists and the brutality and cheapness of their justice to the highest point.

The American comrades who enter the fight against this crime are fighting not only for their comrades and friends, they are starting a struggle for the moralization of American life.

May it be successful and the starting point of a mighty uprising of the American proletariat against its oppressors: Our American comrades may be assured of the warmest sympathy of the whole international proletariat, for their fight is our fight and the proletariat of America is called by its members. Its strength and intelligence as well as the economic significance of its country to seize the leadership in the international class struggle, to precede other people in the fight against capitalism. Impatient and expectant, we watch from here the great republic on the farther side of the ocean.

Fraternally. K. KAUTSKY.

The Worker, and its predecessor The People, emerged from the 1899 split in the Socialist Labor Party of America led by Henry Slobodin and Morris Hillquit, who published their own edition of the SLP’s paper in Springfield, Massachusetts. Their ‘The People’ had the same banner, format, and numbering as their rival De Leon’s. The new group emerged as the Social Democratic Party and with a Chicago group of the same name these two Social Democratic Parties would become the Socialist Party of America at a 1901 conference. That same year the paper’s name was changed from The People to The Worker with publishing moved to New York City. The Worker continued as a weekly until December 1908 when it was folded into the socialist daily, The New York Call.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/the-people-the-worker/070622-worker-v17n12-haywoodtrial.pdf