November 1908 San Francisco Haymarket Commemoration leaflet

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A Mass Meeting

To Commemorate the 21st Anniversary of the
11TH OF NOVEMBER
Will take Place on Wednesday, 8 P. M.
Equality Hall
139 Albion Ave., Between Valencia and Guerrero Sts.
ABE ISAAC of New York, W. P. LAWSON of Seattle, and ALEXANDER HORR will be the speakers of the evening
C. V. COOK will preside
Appropriate Music for the Occasion will be Rendered
ADMISSION - - 15 Cts.

FELLOW WORKERS

On November 11, 1887, Spies, Engel, Fischer and Parson[s], the John Browns of Industrial Emancipation, were murdered in cold blood by the iron hand of political justice. We are not complaining—we simply state the fact. It was an attempt to strangle free speech. The attempt failed. These men died to make the attempt a failure. The anarchists of San Francisco invite you to attend a meeting to be held at Equality Hall on Wednesday Evening, November 11th, 8 P. M.

History records nothing that equals this dastardly crime even in the black annals of the brutal career of governments. Unexampled and unique is the steadfast courage, simple honesty, stalwart dignity and heroic poise of these men of toil and learning, while their matchless loyalty to Labor, outraged and betrayed, constitutes a solitary achievement in the annals of solidarity. Albert Parson’s voluntary embrace of the governmental harlot of the State of Illinois, at that time being prostituted to the very dregs of insolent debauchery by Grinnel, Gary, Denker, Grimer, Adams, Sanford and their fellow procurers—knowing full well that his life may pay the forfeit—is so colossal an achievement that it constitutes one of those landmarks in ethical criterion and advance in emotional purity that determines the notch in progress that subsequent ages must work up to before it can be surpassed.

Nor are the beautiful characters of these victims of a vicious and shameless tyranny the main reason for lovingly commemorating their tragic demise—the issues they have raised to the dignity of a political program and the service they rendered by the example in solidarity that they set us are the mountain peaks that we must climb by doing what little there may be in us in the service of that freedom on the altar of which they have laid down their lives. Let us take up their work, the work for which they died so heroically, and carry the war into the enemy’s country for free speech, free press and free assembly, all of which are necessary factors in that educational work which alone can bring about a revolution for the purpose of solving the social problem.

Come what may, the work of emancipation and education continues, for, “like Nemesis of old, whom neither prayers nor threats could move, the Revolution advances, with Sombre and inevitable tread, over the flowers with which its devotees strew its paths, through the blood of its champions, and over the bodies of its enemies,” and as August Spies’ prophetic cry still rings from the scaffold, “There will come a time when our silence will be more powerful than the voice you strangle to-day.”

The Sunrise Club will give its First Dinner on Monday Evening, 8 P. M., November 30, 1908. Membership, $1.00 per year. Address all enquiries to W. P. Lawson, Secretary, 1237 Golden Gate Ave.
(OVER) Eastman & Co., 2792 Pine St.

[other side]

THE SOCIAL SCIENCE LEAGUE
Meets Every Sunday Evening, 8 p. m.
AT JEFFERSON SQUARE BUILDING
925 GOLDEN GATE AVENUE
For the investigation and exposition of all questions effecting current progress in a libertarian direction, whether in literature, science or art.
Program for November, 1908
SUNDAY THE 15th
ALEX. HORR = The Supremacy of Passion
SUNDAY THE 22d
W. P. LAWSON - Freeland: A Solution of the Social Problem
SUNDAY THE 29th
ABE ISAAC - - Communism, An Expression of Solidarity
ADMISSION FREE
Everybody Invited Bring Your Friends
C. V. COOK, Secretary
1237 Golden Gate Avenue
NOTICE:—Emma Goldman will be In San Francisco January 12 to 18, 1909. For information, address
A. Horr, 1237 Golden Gate Ave.
(OVER)

Two sided leaflet from November 1908 advertising a Haymarket Commemoration on Wednesday 11th November as well as a series of talks organized by the San Francisco Social Science League during November 1908. The three speakers are:

Alex Horr (1871-1947) a supporter of the utopian philosophy of Theodore Hertzka, outlined in Hertzka’s book Freeland (1890). He had played a leading role in the Freeland Colony in Bow, Skagit County, Washington State, until 1907. He was part-owner with William McDevitt, of the Liberty bookstore in San Francisco and the agent for Emma Goldman’s forthcoming visit to San Francisco in January 1909, mention in the leaflet

WP Lawson was a Seattle based anarchist who had also been involved with the Freeland Colony.

Abe Isaak (1856-1937) was on the editorial board of Firebrand, Portland, (1895-97) and editor of Free Society (San Francisco, 1897-1901, Chicago, 1901-1904 and New York, 1904). His newspapers played a leading role in introducing anarchist communism into American English language anarchism. At the time of these meetings he was on his way to set up the Aurora colony near Lincoln, California in 1909.

The secretary of the League was Cassius V Cook. A baker, Cook was, by 1915, Treasurer of the Rationalist Association of North America and based in Chicago.

Below the advert for the Haymarket Commemoration is an an announcement advertising the inaugural meeting of the San Francisco Sunrise Club – the San Francisco branch of the discussion club set up by anarchist individualist E. C Walker in New York City during 1890.