Harrison George on the strike of iron ore miners in northern Minnesota.

‘Meaning of the Mesaba Strike’ by Harrison George from Industrial Worker. (new) Vol. 1. No. 34. December 2, 1916.

James P. Thompson Sounds Notes of Job Revolution at Gilbert; Why Courts are Used in Labor Struggles.

The Finnish Opera House at Gilbert Minnesota has a stage curtain upon which is painted the figure of Liberty holding aloft the Red Flag as she looks across the ocean toward the rising dawn. Before this curtain, last Monday night, James P. Thompson, whom the San Francisco Bulletin called the “rough-neck Isaiah” brought to the assembled iron ore miners the picture of what their strike means to the world.

He said, “You have taught the capitalists the lesson that nothing they may do can stop the march of revolutionary labor. You have given a lesson, also, to the workers on the railroads and in the docks and on the ore-boats, a lesson of how to help themselves. You have given new hope to those who burn their lives away in the hells of Gary and of Pittsburg. You have united divided races and struck with the clinched fist of Solidarity. In their palaces of ease and riches the masters were eating and drinking their fill, thinking they had you beaten like a whipped cur; when on their clear horizon broke the black clouds of industrial revolt, shot thru with the flash of lightning–the I.W.W. Their slaves–the Mesaba miners, were on strike. You showed the master that you were men and you gave an illustration of the revolution that is to be!”

“Yes,” the speaker said, as he tapped the Red Flag on the curtain behind him, “there is going to be a revolution and your battle on the Range has hastened the day when this beautiful banner of freedom shall kiss the winds from every shore and wave above a world-wide Industrial Democracy. The battle fields of history are white with the bones of workers who have died for those who sat upon a throne, and if the workers can fight and win for syphilitic kings, they can go to battle and to victory for themselves.”

“The masters always try to jail and hang the leaders, little knowing that it results in but a firmer solidarity on the part of the workers. When they selected Sam Scarlett, Joe Schmidt and Carlo Tresca to be the victims in this fight of yours they opened the eyes of countless workers to the struggle of the classes. When the lumber barons of the Northwest shot down your fellow workers at Everett on the 5th of November, they started a fire of revolt on the Pacific Coast that will be extinguished only when their damnable system of robbery and murder is overthrown forever!”

“It is said that we should not take our cases to the courts, the capitalist courts; but you must bear in mind that it is the courts and not our prisoners that are on trial in the eyes of men. We must each the world that there is one law for the rich and another for the poor. That is why we hire lawyers to bare the conspiracy between the corporations and the courts. When the gunmen get upon the stand to tell their tales, we will have the most expert legal talent that is familiar with labor problems to show these criminals up for what they are. And the searchlight of publicity, will be turned upon their murderous schemes, while all the world shall see and listen. Then you, and all workers like you, shall render your verdict and if the Steel Trust dares to send Scarlett, Schmidt, Tresca, or any of the others to rot behind their walls of stone, in your hearts will die what little respect is left for the law and the courts and in the minds of millions will be born the knowledge of class tyranny that sooner or later shall herald the general strike and the social revolution.”

Send funds for the Minnesota Defense to James Gilday, Box 372, Virginia, Minn.

The Industrial Union Bulletin, and the Industrial Worker were newspapers published by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) from 1907 until 1913. First printed in Joliet, Illinois, IUB incorporated The Voice of Labor, the newspaper of the American Labor Union which had joined the IWW, and another IWW affiliate, International Metal Worker.The Trautmann-DeLeon faction issued its weekly from March 1907. Soon after, De Leon would be expelled and Trautmann would continue IUB until March 1909. It was edited by A. S. Edwards. 1909, production moved to Spokane, Washington and became The Industrial Worker, “the voice of revolutionary industrial unionism.”

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