The Watertown news. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1917-1919, 1919-01-15
LABOR WRECKS
30LSHEv|K PLOT
Extremists Are Barred From the
Mooney Defense Conference
at Chicago.
REDS ARE PUT OUT OF HALL
Delegates Suppress Radicals Who At
tempt to Stampede Convention
Carefully Planned Plot Is De-
feated by the Chairman.

Chicago, Jan. 15.-Organized labor
defeated a carefully planned plot to
prOmulgate national bolsheviki
movement, with anarchists, straight
bolsheviki, "St Louis platform So
cialists," and /. w. w. as it's sponsors.
By close vote in a near-riotOus
session, the "ultra-reds' were barred
from the national Mooney defense
conference in session here.
The defeat of the reds was the first
dig crisis met by union labor since
the signing of the armistice. The
"Crimsons," the "Cerises," and vari-
Gus radicals were closeted in secret
meetings until the early morning
hours. If they are prevented further
from participating, their program may
evolve into a rump congress whose
actions they will attempt to attribute
to organized labor.
From the fall of the gavel, the reds
attempted to force through their prob
gram of organizing national bOlshe-
vik movement. All forms of ''isms"
killed by the war, including l. w. W.,
anarchists, and anti-war Socialists, at
tempted to revive themselves by pin
ming themselves onto the Mooney
case
The BoIshevik Plan.
1t was admitted by the bolsheviks
that their purpose was to organize a
soviet here and then make a demand
on congress-in the name of organized
labor-that amnesty be granted all
political prisoners" Under this head
are included those in prison for the
crimes of sedition, disloyalty, and OBJ
structing the nations war program.
as well as interned Germans. Among
those whom it was planned to free are
big Bill Haywood, |. w. w. chief.
and his 90 comrades, Eugene V. Debs,
Victor L. Berger and his four code
PENDANTS, and Rose Pastor Stokes.
While the labor congress, called ito
formulate plans to secure justice" for
Thomas Fl. Mooney, under life impris-
Onment sentence in connection with 81
San Francisco bomb explosion, was at
tempting to Gull out the $50 delegates
to which credentials had been issued
from the 1900 who packed the hall.
w. Bourke Cochran, New York law
yer, made a bitter attack on the courts
and dissertation on bOlshevism.
cochran's Speech.
"BOlshevism can't be stayed by
food, as the president has said, or by
force" he declared from the platform,
II don't know quite what bolshevism
is, but if it is what the word implies,
"a movement of the majority / am
not afraid of it. 1t is always from the
masses that improvement comes"
He asserted that 'any man with
S5,OOO,OOO can commit any crime and
go free; there isn't enough machinery
to convict him." and that no matter
what the executive or legislative de-
partments may do, the courts can
change it.
He declared that hundreds Of work
ers-members of the l. w. W.-had
been deported from Bisbee, "but take
one rich man away from his home
over night and the scareheads would
say a revolution had broken out"
Praises Wilson Policies.
He took pains to laud President VIII
son and his policies and declared that
1.-The same elements who are sneer.
ing at Wilson are holding Mooney in
jail." He declared 1--WE are not here
merely for the sake of Mooney, but
to improve the laws of California
and that I'VE don't ask that Mooney
be liberated, but that he be given a
fair trial" 1t was decided to com.
municate the statements in Cochran's
speech to President Wilson at the
Paris peace conference.