Marie Le Compte at the International Social Revolutionary Congress, mandate and report

[mandate]

Resolved: That this meeting authorise Miss M. P. Le Compte, associate editor of the Labour Standard and, whose tongue and pen has been so devoted to the revolutionary movement, to represent the Boston Revolutionists in the International Convention to be held in London, England, on the fourteenth of July, 1881.

Signed: John W. Wilkinson, Pres.

Walter Elliott, Sec.

Boston, Mass.
June 22, 1881.

[report]

1,
Miss Le Compte delegate from Massachusetts made an elaborate report of all the revolutionary elements in America - Of these, the Irish Land League is the newest and has all the ardent impulses of youth. It is as much as the leaders Parnell & Co. can do to keep them from breaking out in revolt against England. Large sums of money are being sent continually by cable to Ireland - and to France for this Land League - but the feeling is growing that the Land Bill will never be passed and that it dont matter. The Land League is not dying out in America as is said in the English papers it is extending, but the people are saying it is only economic it is only to feed Ireland - That before long Ireland will be freed and the Fenians are the force that will free her. The one name that thrills the Irish heart in America is that of the brave Fenian Michael Davitt.

2,
Another element of the Revolution in America is the Secret Order of “Molly Maguires.” Their stronghold is the mines and mountains of the mining regions of Pennsylvania. They are called the “Brigands of the mines” and the “Black Terror” by the railroad and mining corporations. They are mostly young men of Irish origin who have worked in the mines and from taking part in strikes have been “blacklisted” or have revolted against the conditions imposed on the miners and turned in defiance to exploit their exploiters. They say “our means violence - our end justice”. Everything of incendiary character in the ?state - and every murder of a capitalist is ascribed to them - they are hanged by the batch when ?taken and with the merest farce of trial before packed juries. But they are increasing and have sent the most intelligent of their number to the Russian Nihilists in New York to learn to make bombs.

3,
Anti-Lorillard Bands are for the boycotting or personal punishment of employers who impose “Lorillards” on their workpeople - they take their name from the great tobacco manufacturing firm of that name which drew up and presented to its employees to sign - a document granting the officers of the firm the right to examine their persons or enter their premises at any hour of the day or night to search for stolen tobacco or tools. The enormity of this was appreciated by the fact that there was several hundred young women at work for the firm; these resisted the “Lorillard” at once and struck - the men followed and the “Bands” were formed. They are secret and cruel in their revenge - and their “victims” never are eager to tell acquaint any but the secret police and the doctors how they have been outraged.

4,
The Hoodlums (young bears) of California form another element of Revolution. They are part tramp part working man, mostly or Irish origin and a few years ago they united under the leadership of Denis Kearney a dray-driver of San Francisco to oppose the landing of ship-loads of Chinese who had contracted in China to work for a few cents a day in California. Several gangs were already at work in San Francisco living in barracks with one ? to every hundred hands - food - rats and mice - continuous production at a low rate and all the employers anxious to make contracts with the Chinese companies and dismiss their regular workmen. These “Hoodlums” gathered on the sand lots, held meetings there which made the name of sand lots famous. Their war cry was the “Chinese must go” - At the ballot box they made a new constitution for California - but at last accounts they find the new constitution does not ? make their situation any better and all ? their next move will be the revolution, and instead of ballots bombs.

5,
The “Revolters of the Seas” a secret society which sends its members among the steerage passengers of ships to teach them to rebel against the close quarters, the bad air, the bad food and the bad treatment of the ships officials. The society is American, it sees the necessity of emigrants getting some sense of their rights before landing in America, as the exploiters get hold of them on landing, and, demoralized with the passage and often still sea sick they face victims as soon as they touch American shores. The society is at the wrong side of the water to do its best work. It wants the revolutionists of London, Liverpool, Queenstown and other sea port cities in Europe to take up the idea, send a revolutionist speaking several languages out with every shipload of emigrants. It thougly [thoroughly?] advises the employment of women as well as men in this mission.

6,
Tramps for a large revolutionary element in America - it is the most intelligent of all the revolutionary elements among the people for it is of no class. Students, actors, clerks, workingmen have all been swept into the highways of America as tramps by failures of firms, banks and business houses in the great crashes that every now and then disorganises American life, but the larger part come from mills and factories where there is a “lockout” or where they have been blacklisted for taking part in strikes. As tramps they learned to take everything they could lay hands on - to slay the bloodhounds the farmers set on them - to burn down his barns and hamstring his horses, but to keep up such a reign of terror that the farmer gladly paid him the food as tribute that he denied him as charity. These tramps returned to industry 

7, 
keep up in the shops the same spirit they had on the road. They have two hatreds “fat farmers” who denied them food when they were starving and “bosses” who make them work like blazes for a living. It is said among employers that one returned tramp will black sheep a ?-fold of a hundred steady-going workingmen. Tramps have a secret writing - a system of signs - which they write on rocks in conspicuous places where other tramps may see it, telling the ways of a neighborhood and where and how food may be had. In several parts of the States tramps combine and have a camp and a loose organization for watch and for supplies. They always have a woman in the camp. Sometime she is young - oftener very old - her office is to receive the booty and decide disputes. She must be nobody’s wife - they call her Mother. 

Source: G. Brocher Papers, Folder 79. ‘Mandat remis à Marie P. Le Compte par les Boston Revolutionists (signé par Walter Elliot) et rapport de celle-ci sur l’Amérique du Nord.’ https://search.iisg.amsterdam/Record/ARCH00115