The Brotherhood of Timber Workers engages Southern lumber barons in the class war. Covington Hall on the beginning of the battle.

“Keep Out of the South” by Covington Hall from Industrial Worker. Vol. 4 No. 19. August 1, 1912.

LUMBER LORDS FIGHT B.T.W.–EMERSON INDICTED FOR MURDER–SIXTY-FOUR OTHER UNION MEN HELD ON CHARGES–MURDEROUS MILL OWNERS ESCAPE JUDGMENT–TRYING TO CRUSH THE B.T.W.

Alexandria, La., July 23, 1912.

The Industrial Worker:

Three true bills for murder against Emerson and sixty-four other union men and one true bill against each of them for assault with willful shooting. No true bill found against mill owners. A supreme effort will be made to crush the Brotherhood of Timber Workers. We need all the help you can give us. JAY SMITH, Secretary B. of T.W.

“Private Property. All Unionists, Socialists, Peddlers and Solicitors, Keep Out; Under Penalty of the Law.”

The above notice has been posted by the Lumber Trust all through Louisiana, especially in the forests. When one considers the fact that the great Southern Lumber Co., of Bogalusa, La., which town is practically its private property, owns miles and miles of forests in the States of Louisiana and Mississippi; that in Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas, The Long-Bel Lumber Co., The Kirby Lumber Co. and The Lutcher-Moor Lumber Co., to say nothing of trial and the Gulf Lumber Companies, own other thousands and thousands of acres of Southern forest lands, including whole towns located thereon, the outside world should easily grasp the sinister meaning of the notice quoted and get, at least, a faint idea of the system the Lumber Kings and Sugar Barons are trying to maintain in Louisiana and, grasping this, every freeman on earth, every lover of human right and liberty should and will come to the aid of the Brotherhood of Timber Workers, the Farmers Union and the Socialist Party in the splendid fight these organizations are now making to awaken the free South.

The Lumber Trust “owns” (?) the forest of the South through titles that rest on fraud and violence; charging its peons rent for the shacks they live (?) in, it has infamously interfered in their most private affairs; forcing them to pay doctor, hospital and accident (?) insurance “fees,” it allows the workers no voice in choosing the hospitals the lumber jacks pay for, while a demand to see the insurance policy is nothing short of high treason and is punished accordingly; it robs the workers in its commissaries or forces them to submit to a discount of from ten to twenty-five per cent on their time checks, the last in deliberate violation of the laws (?) of Louisiana; its towns are insanitary to the last degree and are a disgrace to even this so-called civilization; it took advantage of the panic of 1907 and to heavily cut the wages and stretch the hours of labor throughout the South until at this time it is working its men ten to eleven hours a day for the miserable wage of $1.25 to $1.50 per day; it has blacklisted thousands of workers; it forces them to sign employment application blanks and an anti-union oath Diaz would have been ashamed to use; it has filled its camps and towns with gunmen of the worst and lowest type and does not hesitate at murder or any other outrage in its mad effort to maintain the criminal system it has so insidiously imposed upon the South; it has turned the workers into peons, it is making tenants of all the farmers; it is crushing the independent merchants, and in all this it has been ably seconded and abetted by that political leper called the “Democratic Party”; it has overthrown all legal, civil, constitutional and fundamental human rights, even those respected by savages; it knows no mercy nor shame; gold is its only god and Justice is to it a word that has no sense or meaning.

If you think this be overdrawn, the rule of the Lumber Trust, come South and get acquainted with its methods. Buy, if you are a fool, some of the Trust’s cut-over lands, or one of those farms down in the marshes you hear so much about today; come here as a working man or working farmer if you doubt that this be truth. Otherwise, send this message north, east and west, especially to the old countries from where they are trying to entice farmers. “Unless you want to fight or be a peon, ‘keep out of Louisiana and the South.”

“NOTICE! Private Property. All Unionists, Socialists, Peddlers and Solicitors, Keep Out, Under Penalty of the Law.” Socialist and unionist papers, here and in Europe, spread this notice far and wide.

Advertise to all the workers this insult to their class and to the working farmers the fate that awaits them if they are fools enough to buy or rent lands in Louisiana and the Southern States of America.

“United we stand; divided we fall!”

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.”

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/industrialworker/iw/v4n19-w175-aug-01-1912-IW.pdf