Tom Mooney writes to the Labor Defender a message he hopes gets to the many new class war prisoners jailed in the upsurge of struggle.

‘Tom Mooney Speaks from Prison’ from Labor Defender. Vol. 6 No. 8. August, 1931.

California State Prison, August 1, 1931.

Comrades:

I hail you from the cell into which I was cast fifteen years ago, the victim of a frame-up instigated by California corporations seeking to halt my activities as a militant labor organizer.

And through the LABOR DEFENDER I greet all my friends and comrades affiliated with the I.L.D.

In common with all class war prisoners rotting in American bastiles, I was very much pleased to hear that the August issue of the LABOR DEFENDER is to be devoted to a demand for general amnesty.

My own case has not suffered from want of protest, but I hasten to tell you how glad I am to see that the other militants in jail for fighting for their class are not being forgotten.

In California penitentiaries alone, there are some sixteen class war prisoners. To that fact I call attention in my new politicians who have failed to lift a hand politicians who have failed to life a hand to help any of these men in jail for opposing master class dominance.

I don’t know whether the LABOR DEFENDER is admitted to the various penitentiaries holding class war prisoners, but if it is, I wish to take this means to extend my best wishes to the Centralia group and to all rebels held in state and federal jails. I say to them:

Hold your heads high, comrades and be of good spirit, for the seed you cast has taken root, and the day is approaching when the world shall see it blossom into a new epoch of working class triumph.

Prison life is hard, but one of the tragic jokes of the capitalistic system is in the fact that millions of “free” wage workers at this time, and a tremendous number at ALL times, are not as well fed nor as well sheltered as the so-called criminals in the penitentiaries.

I am not, mark you, defending prison conditions, but I am pointing out that we so-called felons are at least sure of our daily bread and a mattress to flop on at night, which is more than can be said for the millions of unemployed enjoying the “blessings” of American freedom at this moment.

Of those facing starvation today by reason of unemployment, numerous are what the old-fashioned orator used to call “the flower of American citizenship.’ They are men who have always obeyed the master’s law in letter and in spirit. Many of them fought in the World War and in the Spanish-American conflict. Yet, in the matter of daily keep, they have good reason to envy the so-called malefactors doing time, but eating regularly, such as it is, in our penitentiaries.

The “virtuous” unemployed should grasp this fact out of their present misery:

The employing class, when it comes to a situation affecting their cash income, does not hesitate to kick out the docile, law-abiding, flag-waving wage slave. They are not restrained by any consideration of the wage-worker’s welfare, but boot him out regardless of his reputation for peace and quiet, his respect for the law and his loyalty to the firm, even though said loyalty may have once or twice taken the form of scabbing in time of strike.

We class war prisoners look beyond the stone walls that hem us in, and what do we see going on in the blessed freedom of the capitalistic system outside? In every city, famine-stricken thousands, young and old, in want of their daily bread. Sheriffs and deputies putting poor families out of house and home for failure to pay rent. Working class mothers being carried off to mad houses after breaking under the strain of hearing the whines of their hungry children. Babies dying of malnutrition because local charities can attend to only a fraction of the cases of destitution reported. Applications for admission to poorhouses growing every day. And prison population increasing constantly as hungry men, spurred on by the will to live, resort to what the masters call theft.

That is the scene we class war prisoners call out upon today from our dungeons of steel and stone. Over the walls come the cries of starving children, the weeping of helpless mothers, the hysterical mirth of the sister or daughter offering her body to all men on the street for the price of food and shelter, and the husky voice of the unemployed mechanic in his first violation of the law–begging for the price of a cup of coffee.

We are proud, each and all of us class war prisoners, that we have been listed as enemies of the existing “Order.” We are glad that while we were footloose we lifted up our voices against the existing “Order.” We are more certain than ever before that we made no mistake in urging that the existing “Order” be given to the scrap heap and a new epoch of industrial and political sanity proclaimed.

“We have fed you all for a thousand years,

“And you hail us still unfed!”

That two-line indictment of the existing “order” is being hurled into the faces of the master class by the Left Wing of the labor movement in an attitude of challenge. And we class war prisoners are glad there is a Left Wing and that it is growing bigger and bolder apace. Carry on, comrades. Our bodies are in durance, but we are with you in spirit.

Sincerely and fraternally yours, TOM MOONEY.

Labor Defender was published monthly from 1926 until 1937 by the International Labor Defense (ILD), a Workers Party of America, and later Communist Party-led, non-partisan defense organization founded by James Cannon and William Haywood while in Moscow, 1925 to support prisoners of the class war, victims of racism and imperialism, and the struggle against fascism. It included, poetry, letters from prisoners, and was heavily illustrated with photos, images, and cartoons. Labor Defender was the central organ of the Scottsboro and Sacco and Vanzetti defense campaigns. Editors included T. J. O’ Flaherty, Max Shactman, Karl Reeve, J. Louis Engdahl, William L. Patterson, Sasha Small, and Sender Garlin.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/labordefender/1931/v06n08-aug-1931-LD.pdf