An account of a mass meeting held on New York’s Union Square called by the S.L.P. to protest the murder of two dozen striking miners in Lattimer, Pennsylvania on September 10, 1897. Includes speeches from many well-known Socialists and resolutions. The brutal killings, known as the Lattimer of Hazleton Massacre, were done by the local sheriff and his posse took the lives of mainly Polish, Slovak, and Lithuanian immigrants.

‘The Class-conscious Proletariat on the Hazleton Massacre’ from The People (S.L.P.). Vol. 7 No. 26. September 26, 1897.

PROTEST–INDIGNATION—SENSE.

Monster Indignation Mass Meetings in the East Against the Hazleton Tragedy–Calm Reasoning on its Significance–Deliberate Resolves–The Voice of New Haven, Ct., New York, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Pa., Westchester County, N.Y., and Many Other Places

The Class Struggle Now at its Hottest; the Birth Pangs of a New Civilization–Wage Slaves Unite!

Even in compressed form, it is impossible to do justice to as much of the majestic, intelligent and emphatic protest, raised by the class-conscious Socialists against the foul deed at Hazleton, as has reached this office. Let a rapid sketch suffice.

On the 18th, a monster Socialist Labor Party parade and mass meeting at Union Square, the biggest ever held by Socialists in this city, took place. The telling transparencies were numerous. One of them read:

Homestead!
Coeur d’Alene!
Buffalo!
Tennessee!
Chicago!
Brooklyn!
Etc., Etc., Etc.!
Hazleton!
Next?!

The parade was so long and the crowd so large that it was nearly 9 p.m. before the assemblage could be called to order by the General Chairman, Wm. L. Brower, of D.A. 49. S.T. & L.A., and the speakers could start from the main and the several other stands. The points scored by these, amidst a perpetual storm of applause, were shortly summed up, the following:

Daniel De Leon: “What has happened is as natural as that 2+2 make 4. The working class must lie in what bed it makes for itself. It now chooses to make for itself the bed of capitalism, by upholding the capitalist system with its ballot. The result is that it is slaughtered by Hazleton and other massacres, after being fleeced raw in the shops. Simply to protest against this result is silly. It must lay the axe to the root of the evil, and fell the capitalist system with the S.L. P. ballot.”

Ben Hanford: “There is as little chance of peace under the capitalist system as of frost in hell. In the words of Lincoln: May these men not have died in vain!”

James Allman: “The blood of our fellow wage slaves, murdered by the capitalist system, cries to heaven for vengeance. We pledge ourselves to our murdered brothers to avenge them on election day.”

Isaac Bennett: “It is not the capitalist class alone that is bespattered with the blood of the miners; the whole labor fakir class is likewise bespattered.”

Chas. L. Furman: “Capitalism is fast driving us back into barbarism. only are unarmed men shot, but they are shot in the back.”

R. Katz: “Misiead by false leaders, our Luzerne County, Pa., fellow wage slaves of the mines voted into the hands of their future murderers the weapons they should have voted into their own hands for the protection of their own class.”

L. Malkiel: “Next November the election returns will answer the question whether the proletariat of this city and everywhere else, where the Socialist Labor party is in the field, is satisfied with the treatment meted out to its class in Hazleton.”

W. Berger: “There is no escape from this throat-cutting system other than the Socialist Commonwealth.”

Chas. Franz: “By means of present government by injunction, guns and bullets, the capitalist class is driving the fact home to the workers that it is suicidal to vote for its political candidates.”

G. Rosenblath: “It is high time that we workingmen realize the folly, of expecting from the capitalist political machines any better treatment than we receive from the capitalists in the shop.”

Edwd. Knight: “The capitalist class enacts and enforces laws to enable it to rob the working class and to prevent the working class from resisting this robbery. Leave them in power, put them in power, and we have nothing to complain about. Ours is the blame.”

Ch. Bock: “Parades and demonstrations alone do no good. These must be followed up by the class-conscious ballot of the proletariat.”

George Sieburg: “Where are the labor fakirs at this season? What are they doing? They are simply shivering because, by the murder of the Hazleton miners some more of their rapidly drying up sources to collect dues from have been dried up. Dead workingmen don’t pay dues.”

Emil Kirchner: “The Hazleton affair is but another outrage added to that long list of atrocious and cowardly crimes committed against the suffering working class; it can be avenged only by the Socialist ballot which pronounces this capitalist system infamous and guilty.”

Chas. Vanderporten: “The privately owned machine, produced by labor, throws out the working men: and then the guns, also produced by them, shoot them down. We want to gain possession of both. And we shall by voting ourselves into power.”

A. Jablinowski (German): “This monster demonstration of the class-conscious workingmen and women of New York will resound throughout the land, and quicken the pulse of the working class to organize itself–Intelligently to overthrow the capitalist system.”

Hermann Schlueter (German): “What are the workingmen to do in the face of such scoundrelism as has been perpetrated against them by the bosses, the officials of Pennsylvania and the whole capitalist press? They must realize that there is nothing for them to do but to stand together, and fight with might and main to overthrow the capitalist system.”

Alexander Jonas (German): “He who, after all these experiences, advises the workingmen anything short of the conquest of the political powers, is either a hopeless blockhead or a traitor.”

Peter Fiebiger (German): “At this critical moment, has the working class its own press from which to gather trustworthy information? No. It must rely upon the Republican, Democratic and other capitalist papers that deal in false information, and lead it back to the political shambles of its exploiters.”

Chr. Pattberg (German): “Remember on election day that, from the President down, all capitalist politicians, have but one aim–the oppression of the working class.”

B. Feigenbaum (Jewish): “We imagined we escaped the despotism of Russia, and we find that capitalism here also has only but bullets for the working class.”

William Edlin (Jewish) “My heart. throbs with joy at this demonstration. It brings out clearly the fact that the principles implanted by our uncompromising party in the minds of the workers has borne fruit.”  The three cheers which he called for, in closing. for the S L.P. were heartily given by the large crowd of Jewish class-conscious workingmen around that stand.

G. Moren (Polish): “The shots that killed our Hazleton brothers establish the solidarity of the capitalist class, and the blood of our brothers shed at Hazleton establishes the solidarity of the working class of all races and nationalities. Their blood mingles with that of our American fellow wage slaves shed in Tennessee, of our Irish, German, Italian, Jewish, American and all others shed on so many capitalist fields of slaughter in this and other countries.”

At the conclusion of the last speaker at each of the several stands the following resolutions were read and adopted with emphatic approbation:

WHEREAS, On the 10th instant, Sheriff Martin, of Luzerne County, with his deputies, consisting of relatives and hangers-on of the mine owners, fired upon a body of miners marching peacefully upon the highway:

WHEREAS, In consequence of the shooting, 24 of these inoffensive workingmen were murdered, and more than 50 wounded:

WHEREAS, Instead of causing the prompt arrest of the murderers, their aiders and abettors, the political power of the State of Pennsylvania gent to the place of slaughter a regiment to protect the rioters and prevent even a warrant of arrest from being served upon them:

WHEREAS, The capitalist press of the land–Gold Republican, Silver Republican, Gold Democrat, Silver Democrat Protectionist, Free Trade, Tom Platt, Tammany Hall and Citizens’ Union alike–have hailed the act of the murderers as an act deserving of praise; therefore be it

RESOLVED, That the working class of this Greater New York, in mass meeting assembled at Union Square on this 18th day of September, brand the deed at Hazleton as an act of foul and premeditated murder:

RESOLVED, That the perpetrators of this deed are the whole capitalist class of the country, together with their hired men, the Labor Fakir class, with whose assistance the capitalist class stands today behind the guns, in full possession of the public powers, while the working class stands in front of the guns, bereft of all power:

RESOLVED, That we call the attention of our fellow wage slaves throughout the country to the fact that the Hazleton massacre underscores, to wit, that there is a class struggle going on in society today between the idle, parasite class of capitalists, together with their hirelings, on the one hand, and the working class or wage slaves on the other, and that this struggle cannot be patched up, but will proceed, marked by ever greater atrocities, unless the working class oust its oppressors from public power, legislate for itself, abolish the capitalist system and establish the Socialist Co-operative Commonwealth:

RESOLVED. That we call upon the working class to join the Socialist Labor party organization, and on election day march with it to the polls and crush under the sledge hammer blows of the S.L.P. ballot the capitalist system of murder and rapine that today disgraces and endangers civilization.

The following despatches were also read from the platforms as they came in:

“Scranton. Sept. 18. To the Mass Meeting at Union Square: Greetings to the New York Comrades. Let us silence the capitalist bullets with the Socialist ballot.”

Miners’ Local Alliance, S.T. & L.A. of Lucerne Co.

“Paterson, N.J., Sept. 18. To the Mass Meeting at Union Square: Section Paterson, now assembled in convention to nominate county ticket, sends greeting. Shall join our voice to yours at a mass meeting here next Friday.”

It was after 11 o’clock before the meeting broke up.

New York Labor News Company was the publishing house of the Socialist Labor Party and their paper The People. The People was the official paper of the Socialist Labor Party of America (SLP), established in New York City in 1891 as a weekly. The New York SLP, and The People, were dominated Daniel De Leon and his supporters, the dominant ideological leader of the SLP from the 1890s until the time of his death. The People became a daily in 1900. It’s first editor was the French socialist Lucien Sanial who was quickly replaced by De Leon who held the position until his death in 1914. Morris Hillquit and Henry Slobodin, future leaders of the Socialist Party of America were writers before their split from the SLP in 1899. For a while there were two SLPs and two Peoples, requiring a legal case to determine ownership. Eventual the anti-De Leonist produced what would become the New York Call and became the Social Democratic, later Socialist, Party. The De Leonist The People continued publishing until 2008.

PDF of issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/the-people-slp/970926-thepeople-v07n26.pdf