The labor journal. [volume] (Everett, Wash.) 1909-1976, 1912-03-08
OFFICIALS
DENOUNCED
SOCIALIST MASS MEETING AT
LIBERTY HALL ADOPTS
SOME RINGING RESOLU-
TIONS DEALING WITH THE
LAWRENCE STRIKE AND
WIRE SAME TO TAFT.

A good crowd of socialists, unionists
and sympathizers gathered in Liberty
Hall Sunday afternoon to protest
against the authorities and mill owners
in Lawrence, Mass, and Muscatine,
Iowa, in their brutal and inhuman meth
ods taken to suppress the strikes of the
textile workers and button workers.
Clarence j. Folsom presided and strong
speeches were made by Seattle speakers.
A free will offering amounting to fifty
dollars was taken for the strikers in the
above named cities. The following reso.
luton was adopted and ordered for
warded by night letter to the president
of the United States and to the COVER
nors of Massachusetts, and Iowa:
Everett, Wash, March 3, 1912.
Whereas, Many thousands of workers
in the button industry in Muscatine,
Iowa, and in the textile industry in Law
renee Mass, are on strike for an inn
provement in working conditions; and
Whereas, The wages paid in these in
dustries are wholly inadequate to the
needs of the toilers and ridiculously out
of proportion to the cost of living; and
Whereas, The meagre increase demand
ed would, if granted, still be far from
meeting the amount necessary to pro
vide the pressing necessities of life, to
say nothing of luxuries; and
Whereas, Their efforts to wrest from
the greedy hands of their employers
have been met with police and military
brutality scarcely exceeded even in
Darkest Russia, men, women and chill
dren having been dubbed and NAL
treated, thrown into Jail without pretext
of law, denied the right to send their
children where they might be saved
from starvation, denied the right of
peaceful assemblage; and
Whereas, The strikers in Lawrence
and Muscatine have again demonstrated
that the police, military and. judicial
powers of our sovereign states are, in
stead of affording the protection of law
to citizens within their legal rights, used
by the capitalists to defeat the workers
in their struggle against oppression; and
Whereas, We recognize that these ever
recurring Industrial situations are Incl
dents of the great class struggle and
believe that not to voice our protest
against such shameful abuses of mill
tary and police power would be cow
ardice on our part and render us unfit
and undeserving of industrial freedom;
therefore, be it
Resolved, That we extend to the strik
ers of Aluscatine Iowa, and Lawrence.
Mass, our moral and financial support;
and be it further
Resolved, That we urge upon the
working class throughout the nation
that it give every assistance to the
strikers to the end that these unscrup-
ulous employers shall be compelled to
heed the protest of an aroused working
SidoS anu SidHO pHC JuoU VI thc
workers ;and be it still further
Resolved, That we commend the solid
arity on the industrial field shown by
these strikers in their epochal struggle
for freedom and urge them to display
the same solidarity on the political field
to the end that our full economic, social
and industrial freedom may be attained
and be it still further
Resolved, That through the Washing
ton state secretary of the socialist party
a copy of these resolutions be sent to
the governors of Iowa and Massachus-
etts, a copy sent to strike headquarters
at Muscatine, Iowa, and Lawrence, Mass,
and copy sent to the socialist and
labor press for publication