Written like a man facing death, which he was, a barn-burner from Haywood. In jail waiting trial on the ridiculous charges of murdering that state’s former governor Frank Steunenberg in 1905, Western Federation of Miners leader William D. Haywood accepts the nomination for Governor of Colorado (where he was extradited from) on the Socialist Party ticket. Winning 16,000 votes or about 8% that November, Haywood and his comrades were successfully defended by Clarence Darrow in a case that brought Haywood to national attention. Haywood and his comrades were acquitted in July, 1907.

‘Letter of Acceptance’ by William D. Haywood from Appeal to Reason. No. 557. August 4, 1906.

Ada County Jail.

Boise, Idaho, July 14, 1906.

State Committee Socialist Party of Colorado–Comrades and Fellow Workers:

WHILE sitting with my lately widowed, gray-haired mother in in the shadow of this jail, surrounded by guards, I received your message notifying me that I had by acclamation been nominated the Socialist party candidate for governor of Colorado. After brief reflection on the duties of a member of the party, I said to mother: “I will accept the nomination.” The maternal love in her eyes was partly veiled with a mist gathered from a lake of tears, while, like a benediction, she spoke these words: “It is well, my son.” Thus was your notification received and the nomination accepted.

The Socialist platform is the cornerstone of industrial liberty. The program is clean, clear-cut, uncompromising. Principles cannot be arbitrated. Let the campaign slogan be: There is nothing to arbitrate.” The class struggle must go on as long as one man eats bread in the sweat of another man’s face.

Aim of Socialism.

Capitalism is the common enemy of the working class, whether in the realm of czars, kings, emperors, or “captains” of industry if there be a difference it is against the last-named breed of despots, monarchs of wage slaves instead of serfs or subjects; they attempt to shirk every vestige of responsibility in a mad, wanton lust for the power of gold. Under a system that mortgages the inventive genius of man, capitalism assumes–in fact, claims–a vested right of private ownership in the collective production of society. It is the aspiration, the object, the sole purpose of the Socialist party to dispel the illusion, to quash the presumption, to take and control the means of production and distribution, to vest in every producer the honest right to the full equivalent for the product of his toil. No other state in the union presents the same ghastly, emaciated, hollow-eyed skeleton of political government poor, fagged, corporation-cursed Colorado. Through every artery capitalism has dragged its slimy, poisonous, length defiling, contaminating everything it touched, until a modern Diogenes, with the proverbial lantern would search the several departments of administration in vain for an honest man. Proud, beautiful, noble Colorado! the tentacles of capitalism are sapping her life blood; her vestal garments are besmirched, debauched, ravished and dishonored by her own sons in legislature.

Crimes of a Court.

Four times has her supreme court plunged the murderous, poisoned stiletto of the assassin into the very vitals of her constitution, while the governors whom the “King’s Bench” crowned with the blood-soaked royal prerogatives, danced and clapped their hands with the glee of a mad dervish.

For a capitalistic chief justice, a fitting name is Gabbertan invective that oozes like slime on the first syllable and accents with the sting of an asp: name with which to conjure the maledictions of all the imps of Dante’s Inferno There is in Australia a nondescript creature with fur-covered body, four legs, wings and beak. It lays eggs and suckles its young. It is defined as bad case of fusion, a pervert, a skyphos, a gabbert.

So far has the supreme court of Colorado sunk below the level of common decency, a windlass will be required to hoist them into the presence of His Satanic Majesty. Under the black robes of iniquity Beelzebub will recognize the prototypes of Iscariot and Arnold: the five “King’s Bench” advocates are distinguished by the traitor’s symbol.

So coarse, so flagrant is the last fell decision of the supreme court that the dilettante politicians are aroused; sitting on their haunches, they are bowling like a pack of mangy coyotes; their dwarfed mentalities are unable to discern the cause of the corruption in the supreme court, which is a boil on the body politic: it needs lancing and a strong poultice of Socialism; the suppuration is the natural result of a dis eased system. Eliminate the virus of profit, interest and rent from the industrial arteries of the state, and the commonwealth will no longer suffer the soul-racking tortures, the effect of capitalism.

Socialism the Only Hope.

The Socialist party is the medium through which these results can be accomplished. The republican and democratic parties are the consistent allies of the corporations, and a working man who enters either leaves hope behind unless he has greased well his knee joints and intends to sell himself and his fellow workers for party exploitation.

Municipal ownership; as exemplified in Denver, is even more plutocratic than either of the old parties. Having endorsed it, the dads of the municipal party are solely responsible for clause or section XX (note the sign, XX) of the Denver charter; it is the “double cross” that disfranchised thousands of the producing class and hoisted municipal ownership with its own petard, to which the Socialists of the Queen City of the Plains say “Amen,” as we realize that only by reverses will the irrational municipal reformers learn that a structure must be builded from the foundation. The first essential to the development of a free society is to control the means of producing the necessaries of life. Kipling says, and truthfully, “The cheapest commodity know about is–human life.” So long as the litterateur’s statement contains the element of man’s inhumanity to man, so long as wage slavery reduces labor to a market commodity, just so long will it be immaterial how the utilities are operated, whether by a municipal corporation or by a franchise company. If the difference in the cost of transportation is added to the cost of living, the purchasing power of wages remains the same under municipal ownership, which is nothing but a coupon clipping system, removing none of the elements of capitalism, merely converting private semi-responsible ownership into interest bearing bonds, thus creating a bond-holding aristocracy utterly incompetent for assuming any more serious responsibilities than monkey dinners, meddling in politics, chasing titles and drawing dividends. Municipal ownership would be a snap for capitalist who desired to retire from active participation in the game of making money; his worry but not his income would be lessened. In the culmination of the Civil war, chattel property–animate values wrapped up in black skins were confiscated private ownership was abolished and society assumed protective control.

What Socialism Will Do.

In the final adjustment of the war which Socialism has declared against capitalism, wage slavery will be abolished; labor that produces all wealth will continue in industrial activity with unwonted zeal, working under a self-ordained proclamation, confining the division of the collective product to the actual producers thereof, and a general industrial fervor will be ushered in, every able-bodied man will contribute by brain or muscle to the general welfare, prosperity and progress of society.

While to me every effort that tends toward a socialistic triumph is a labor of love, it is but human to admit that in aspiring to election to an office that could be used to materially assist in the overthrow of capitalism, one would be somewhat imbued with the spirit of pleasure that controlled the Irishman when he wrote to his brother Denny, saying:

“Come over on the nixt boat, this is a foine counthry. Oi hov a noice job pullin’ down a Protestint church, and Oi’m gettin’ paid fer it.”

The Celt’s sense of fun was akin to the Socialist’s enjoyment in seeing the squirming of the exploiters when Upton Sinclair threw his harpoon “Jungle” clear up to the hilt into the beef trust and dragged out entrails, filth and corruption for public inspection. compelling the band to stop playing long enough to permit President Roosevelt to relieve himself of two speeches eulogies on the man with the rake and the genus homo (hobo) with patches on his panties while Gen. Miles before his mirror, with curling tongs and powder puff, related the weird tale of “Armour’s Colossal Crime.”

What Miles Portrayed.

Three thousand dead soldiers all in a row, from Welcome Arch to the Supreme Court Chambers–a ghastly sight, a corduroy road of corpses; at the head of each dead body a broken-hearted, disconsolate, weeping mother, sobbing o’er her darling boy There were no shattered limbs, no empty sleeves: the bloated faces did not have the resigned, almost cheerful look of a soldier killed in battle. Every countenance was distorted, twisted, writhed in pain; the stomachs swollen, bursted. Poisoned, they had died like dogs. A mile of dead soldiers, three thousand anguished mothers, capitalism’s magnanimous reward for love of country and the patriotism of American youth. Armour and his ilk had Krag and Jorgensen beaten a Mormon block; every round counted one. Weyler, as a butcher, was a puling infant in comparison.

Such disclosures remove obstacles in the way of Socialist education. Colorado’s corporations are no less cruel and vicious than the beef trust, only they are dealing in different products. As dispensers of heart-aches, the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company and the American Smelting and Refining Company take the palm. Like the packing companies, they have their private graveyards of men killed in their employ. But the worst wrong they inflict upon the state is, in company with railroad and utility corporations, the manipulation of legislation inimical to the welfare of the people. Laws they cannot control they ignore. With reckless abandon the corporations of Colorado have trampled under foot the mandates of the people. They brook no interference in their nefarious schemes. Individuals who have the temerity to discountenance crime in high places are subjected to every imaginable indignity. At the instance of these “law and order brigands hundreds of Colorado’s best citizens have been vilified, maligned, persecuted, robbed, flogged, imprisoned, disfranchised and deported. Murder has been resorted to, and is not the least of corporation crimes. Through bribery, blackmail, browbeating and coercion to effect their ends, they have fastened their bloody talons into the people’s throat and strangled free government.

Law and Liberty Spurned.

Law and equity, the foundation, the life and liberty of state and nation, is spurned, insulted and ignored. “To hell with the constitution!” To hell with the law is the cry and the daily practice of Colorado’s disciples of capitalism. Every statute supposed to restrict and prevent oppression has been spit upon. The eight-hour law is a page of history that won’t stay turned down. The bi-monthly pay-day law, the adit and ventilation law, the check weigh-man law, the anti-script law, the contract labor law, are all being daily violated by the corporations: and when that part of the working class directly affected inaugurated an industrial strike to enforce those laws, their determined and just action was referred to as “superlative folly” by those who are now baying at the supreme court. It was not folly to strike against oppression: but it would be a crime against society, against family, against self to vote for the continuance of the political parties responsible for the cesspool of iniquity Colorado presents at this time. No amount of cleansing, repairing, whitewashing and fumigating can make the pest-joints of democracy or republicanism a safe refuge for a self-respecting working class. The time has come when men and women who work with brain or muscle must unite at the polls.

Let Labor Act Wisely.

The aggressive forces of Colorado must concentrate every effort at the coming election. Let the Socialist party be the reflex, the political expression of the material interest of every wage worker. The economic power of organized labor is determined by united political action. To win the demands made on the industrial field it is absolutely necessary to control the branches of government, as past experience shows every strike to have been lost through the interference of courts and militia.

The same functions of government controlled by a class-conscious working class will be used to inspire confidence and compel the wheels of industry to move in spite of the devices and stumbling blocks of capitalism. Strikes will be averted by enforcing the demands of labor, ultimately to control industrial pursuits, when this principle is firmly fixed in the mind of the producer. Then will the spellbinder, that capitalistic microbe, sing in vain the siren song. “Pointing with pride and viewing with alarm,” to lure the unwary to political shores of destruction. You will recognize the political jade of capitalism though she change her wrapper and assume a different alias every time you meet her: preening herself, and, in dulcet notes, whispering of the brotherhood of capital and labor, the identity of interests so faithfully portrayed by dogs with gold-filled teeth and diamond collars, and hungry, bare-footed children.

How Wealth Is Concentrated.

The champions of the system, with swaggering blasphemy between squirts of tobacco juice, tell of the nation’s prosperity, per capita the richest country in the world, but neglect to say that four per cent of the people own seventy per cent of the wealth and practically control the balance. While the workers toil and sweat, the shirkers are this year spending four hundred millions of dollars in Europe. This is only a part of the wealth, the prosperity, that the producers are buncoed out of by playing at the capitalists political shell-game.

The working class are neither bigots nor fools, but they have been lulled to sleep with the lethal weed of patriotism while scoundrels who chirp “My Country, Tis of Thee” are plotting a further downfall, asserting that commercial supremacy “demands a lower standard of living among the American working class.” Are you prepared for it? Already the wife has been dragged from the home, the children from the school-room, and harnessed like beasts of burden to the industrial wheels of capitalism which grind all wage slaves down to the level of a “Scarlet Empire.”

A Warning to All

Capitalism has decreed that my companions and I shall never leave these prison cells alive. I do not mention this to divert your attention to us, but to warn you not to put the seal upon your own death warrant. If you feel that you are free, reach out, assert yourself, and see how quickly you will feel the restraining arm of the master of your job. To be absolutely free the worker must control his job and the proceeds of his labor. Use your ballot as a weapon to dispel coercion–the groveling, groping imp of force–and enthrone reason with the beacon light of emancipation’s real freedom–industrial liberty. Organized industrially, united politically, the working class can and must free the human race from bondage. I wish to assure you of the deepest appreciation of my imprisoned comrades and myself for the splendid support and confidence reposed in us. It is my purpose, whether in jail, in the governor’s chair, or in the field of labor, to use my best efforts to establish an industrial government wherein the working class will own, operate, control and supervise the means of production and distribution for the benefit of the working class alone. In this program “there is nothing to arbitrate.”

For Immediate Relief.

While it is the duty of the Socialist party candidates to at all times advocate its platform and ultimate intentions, still there is certain remedial legislation requisite to the immediate welfare of the state. The first essential is the health of our people, as there are tons of canned filth on the markets of our state, labeled meats of divers kinds, which, by investigation of the national government, are shown to be certain by-products of well-known packing plants, entirely unfit for food; therefore, necessary laws should be enacted providing for inspectors and authorizing the confiscation, collection and destruction of all canned meats from packing plants known to be unclean: further, to prohibit the sale of such goods until proper sanitary precautions have been installed in the establishments for the manufacture of canned goods. Some such measure is necessary, as cheapened prices will force the whole bulk of rottenness down the throats of the working class.

The courts of a state are the barometer of its morals, and certain of the courts, from police magistrate to the supreme bench of the state, have assumed prerogatives not vested in the judiciary. In the lesser courts the vagrancy laws are operated like a sausage mill, much to the discomfort the proletariat, while the higher court renders decisions that make a franchise fit a corporation like a tailor-made suit. Positive laws should be enacted restricting the courts from over lapping the other branches of government. Particularly should the courts be relieved of the burden of deciding or weighing the vox populi, which must remain determinative and Imperative, even to the extent of abolishing the presumptive court.

To Abridge Authority.

Certain court decisions have resulted in violent outrages to personal rights, by decreeing extraordinary power to be vested in the state executive. This should immediately be remedied by law to positively re-establish the great writ of habeas corpus. I would, at this juncture, comment on the question of martial law, but, as the governor is the commander in chief, it may not be advisable to disband the militia, because, being the defenders of the state’s honor, it could be used to good advantage as bull pen guards in the event of being confronted with an obstreperous supreme court.

Claims have been filed against the state by citizens who suffered personal and property injury during quasi martial law, by being deported, robbed and violently used. Among other wrongs, the most severe was the enforced loss of franchise. Appropriation should be made to cover the claims filed and others that may be properly presented.

Provision should be made to protect and prevent further encroachment upon the state’s property; the leases of coal lands in Routt county, and the coal bearing lands in the southern part of the state should be investigated, and where such lands are fraudulently held action should be taken to recover them for the benefit of the people.

For Benefit of Farmers.

Proper effort should be made to direct and promote the Campbell system of dry farming, even to the extent of negotiating state aid for that purpose the event its practicability is demonstrated.

The farmer should receive encouragement and protection from the state in proportion to his importance to society. A fixity in the value of his products without regard to market quotations will effect permanent relief to the farmer and dismay to the stock jobber. I have mentioned provisions for the health, and moral and personal rights of the people, and state property. The working class are so slightly encumbered with private property that it is needless to suggest protective legislation at this time other than to reassure every citizen of the right to bear arms as a means of self-protection and the maintaining of the law.

Would Abolish Apprenticeship.

At once upon convening, Colorado’s legislature should direct to congress and to all sister states, a memorial recommending the abolishment of every form of the pernicious slave system of apprenticeship, urging the establishment of industrial training schools where every boy and girl would have the opportunity to develop the productive faculties of trade and art, thus preparing them to become useful members a Cooperative Commonwealth.

With these and other absolutely essential and opportune measures, a guarantee to enforce and uphold the law as it exists until changed by proper legislation, combined with the general revolutionary platform of the Socialist party, our success is the people’s victory.

The Appeal to Reason was among the most important and widely read left papers in the United States. With a weekly run of over 550,000 copies by 1910, it remains the largest socialist paper in US history. Founded by utopian socialist and Ruskin Colony leader Julius Wayland it was published privately in Girard, Kansas from 1895 until 1922. The paper came from the Midwestern populist tradition to become the leading national voice in support of the Socialist Party of America in 1901. A ‘popular’ paper, the Appeal was Eugene Debs main literary outlet and saw writings by Upton Sinclair, Jack London, Mary “Mother” Jones, Helen Keller and many others.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/appeal-to-reason/060804-appealtoreason-w557.pdf