Convicted of the 1916 ‘Preparedness Day’ bombing in San Francisco in which ten died at a militarist parade, Tom Mooney was sentenced to death, to which Debs responds below. Mass outcry got the sentence ‘reduced’ to life the following year. In 1939 Mooney was released and pardoned, finding his conviction was based on false testimony.

‘An Appeal for Tom Mooney to the Organized Workers of America!’ by Eugene V. Debs from International Socialist Review. Vol. 17 No. 10. April, 1917.

A TELEGRAM just received from San Francisco announces the sentence of Tom Mooney. He is to hang by the neck until he is dead. The day set for his murder is May 17th. The capitalist jury and judge have done their foul work, and it is now up to us to do ours.

Tom Mooney is an absolutely innocent man and his conviction an infamous crime. We, the workers of America, are duty bound to challenge the verdict of the capitalists’ jury and set aside the sentence of the capitalist judge. We constitute a court, a jury and a judge of our own.

We sat thru this case from the hour the vile conspiracy was concocted and we knew beyond doubt that Mooney was framed and that he is to be murdered for no other reason than that the corporation criminals, the big capitalist thieves and their official highbinders could not buy him, or silence his agitation.

More than twenty reputable witnesses not only testified to Mooney’s innocence but proved it beyond even the shadow of a doubt. His alibi was without a flaw. He was miles away from the bomb when it exploded in the preparedness parade. He had absolutely no connection with and no knowledge of the affair. Bourke Cockran, the eminent New York lawyer who defended him, is positively convinced of this and so is every other man or woman who attended the trial and is not in the pay or under the influence of the United Railroads, the Manufacturers’ Association, and other redhanded bandits who have for years been plundering San Francisco and have now set themselves up as the autocratic rulers of the Pacific coast.

You know the record of the Manufacturers’ Association. You remember the Mulhall story and the trail of this slimy serpent in the investigation at Washington. If the law had been enforced every one of these criminal conspirators would now be keeping the lock-step in penitentiary.

You know, too, the rotten record of the United Railroads, every page of which drips with corruption and reeks with stenches that cry to heaven. You also know the attitude of the Chamber of Commerce of San Francisco, that gang of pot-bellied exploiters and thieves and their mangy spaniels. It is these sweet-scented elements that constitute the despotic power that rules San Francisco with a rod of steel, these private interests organized for loot, rapine and plunder, as conscienceless a gang of pirates as ever sandbagged an honest man or picked the pocket of a blind orphan.

And it is this gang that issued its declaration of war against organized labor and in cold blood set to work thru its sleuths, hirelings and prostitutes, male and female, of high and low degree, to drive every union man and woman and every Socialist from the Pacific coast.

This is the real cause, the true inwardness of Tom Mooney’s conviction. He would not lay down like a cur at the command of the blear-eyed, bloated bandits. He stood up like a man and defied them. In every protest of the workers Mooney’s voice was heard; in every strike he was at. the front and his influence was felt. He was true in every throb of his heart to the organized workers in their battle against annihilation. He lost sight of self entirely. He was the kind of a man when the crisis came we should have a thousand of instead of one, and if we had, those broadcloth, bediamonded, greasy desperadoes who are now trying to assassinate him under the cover of law would have seen ignominious finish long ago.

The arrest of Mooney in connection with the bomb explosion was an outrage, his trial from first to last a farce, and his conviction and sentence a crime so flagrant, so cruel, so shocking that the working class of the whole nation should and must rise in revolt against it.

The plundering plutocrats thirsting to lap Tom Mooney’s honest blood must be thwarted. These hyenas shall not break his neck and gloat over his dead body. Their infamous court and its filthy hirelings have brought him bound and gagged to the gallows, but they shall not chortle over his ghastly murder.

Comrades and fellow-workers of America, I appeal to you! If ever my voice was heard, I want it to be heard now. If ever I was engaged in an act of duty to justice and service to the working class I am engaged in that act now in pleading with you to help save as honest a workingman and as true a unionist as ever stood under the banner of the labor movement.

I know Tom Mooney and I know him well. For weeks he was with us on the Red Special. We ate and slept together. Everyone on the train loved him. To me he was a younger brother. He is innocent. I swear it. His murder would be a foul and indelible blot upon our movement and an everlasting disgrace to ourselves.

We can save him. We have got to save him. Let us get to work and lose no time. From now on my pen and ray voice are at his service. My duty is clear and so is that of every other union man and Socialist in America.

First of all there is the most urgent need for funds. Everyone should contribute at least his mite. Send your contribution at once to Robert Minor, Room 210, Russ building, San Francisco, Cal. But this is not all. We must get busy at our union and local meetings. Publicity is extremely important. Protest meetings should be at once organized and proper action taken. We can stir the country from end to end before the San Francisco hangmen in evening dress can dislocate the neck of their framed-up victim.

Every labor union and every Socialist local must swing into line.

This is the hour for solidarity. Now is the time to stand up straight on our hind legs all over this country and say, IT SHALL NOT BE DONE!

We are patient and long suffering, but there is a limit. It has been reached. Let us show this country that labor is alive. Let its lightning strike just once and there will be a sudden halt in the murder program scheduled for May 17th.

Comrades, the red blood in you must now prove itself. I pledge myself to you in this fight to its finish.

The International Socialist Review (ISR) was published monthly in Chicago from 1900 until 1918 by Charles H. Kerr and critically loyal to the Socialist Party of America. It is one of the essential publications in U.S. left history. During the editorship of A.M. Simons it was largely theoretical and moderate. In 1908, Charles H. Kerr took over as editor with strong influence from Mary E Marcy. The magazine became the foremost proponent of the SP’s left wing growing to tens of thousands of subscribers. It remained revolutionary in outlook and anti-militarist during World War One. It liberally used photographs and images, with news, theory, arts and organizing in its pages. It articles, reports and essays are an invaluable record of the U.S. class struggle and the development of Marxism in the decades before the Soviet experience. It was closed down in government repression in 1918.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/isr/v17n10-apr-1917-ISR-riaz-ocr.pdf