The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1933-04-22
F a tn er Fled Mine
After Defending
Himself
Rr LAMRENCE EMERY.

Lawrence Emery, one Of the
eight Imperial Valley prisoners,
originally sentenced to AZ years for
organizing agricultural workers in
Southern California, spent three
years in San Quentin with Tom
Mooney. He tells here from in
formation obtained from Moneys
own lips, the story Of the latter's
frame-up)
TOM MOONEY is worker and
the son of a worker. His father
was a coal miner, a militant, class
conscious worker who for years be-
fore his death was an organizer for
the old knights of Labor. He died
of tuberculosis when Tom was eight
years old.
Toms boyhood in the CRIME and
dirt of an Indiana company coal
town Is typical of the lives of mill
lions of workers children. Even
when his father was alive and
working, he was often hungry and
cold, and learned early what it
meant to be the child Of proletar-
ian in capitalist America.
After the death of his father,
Tom was taken with his brother
and sister to Holyoke, Mass, where
his mother went to work for twelve
hours a day in a paper mill to sup
port her family. She even took
in washing in those early days in
a heroic effort to feed and clothe
her growing children. Tom and
his brother John sold papers and
ran errands or went down to the
railroad tracks to pick up coal,
while their little sister Anna stayed
at home and did the house work.
BEGINS WORK AT IL
Tom got only about four years
Of school. When he was twelve he
was big enough to go to work in a
foundry where he served his four
years apprenticeship. 1t is i'm
portant to know that as soon as
he became q journeyman in his
trade, he joined the International
Molders' Union and has been
member in good standing ever
since. Before he was twenty he
was nominated a delegate to the
National Convention of his union,
which is held every five years. Since
he has been in prison, he has been
elected an honorary delegate. 70
every convention. -->--
WHEN his brother ana sister had
W grown up and gone TO work,
Tom felt that he was free to start
out and have look at the world.
He felt that perhaps he could make
up 8 little for all that he had mis-
sed in his boyhood and youth. But
in Europe he met an American del
egate to the international Socialist
Congress who Travelled With him
and talked TO him. AZ 1H'q s"'
LEARNS OF
CLASS STRUGGLE
When Tom left this acquaintance,
his ss-consciousness. was ded-
nitely awakened, and when he COM
pleted his tour of Europe he I'M
derstood fully and completely that
there was no way out of hunger
and oppression except through rev.
dictionary struggle against capital
ism.
He landed in Boston iii the vim
ter of a crisis year. There were no
jobs; hundreds of thousands of
workers were on the streets, I'M
employed. Tom started out to look
for work, and his search took him
through New Orleans, into old
Mexico and back north again to
Stockton, Cal, where he found 8
job at his trade.
With his first pay-check he
joined the Socialist Party and sub
scribed to the old Appeal to
Reason" Within a few months
he had become one of the most
active workers in the party, and
was sent to the State Nominating
Convention in the presidential
campaign year Of 1908.
He was at the station in San
Jose to greet the famous Red
Special, and made such an i'm
preston on Eugene Debs with his
youthful vigor and enthusiasm that
he was asked to accompany the
Red Special as literature agent.
CLASHES WITH
4. F. T.. MISLEADERS
The tour stimulated his interest
in the revolutionary movement, and
when the campaign came to an end,
Tom went to Chicago where he
studied all winter at the famous
Marshall Field Research Library
under the tutorship of A. NJ.
Simons.
On his way home once more to
California he entered a Subscrip-
ton contest for Wilshires Month
ly, a socialist review, and staged
whirlwind sub campaign all
through the West. He won second
prize: a free trip as spectator to
the International Socialist Con-
gress, held that year in Denmark.
He landed back in California in
1910, with d deep understanding
of the labor movement and a broad
interl1a tionaI oittlook which i,1111ae-