Fighting On – Ricardo Flores Magón (1911)

From the Industrial Workers of the World newspaper ‘Solidarity’, July 8, 1911, New Castle, Pennsylvania, published under the title “Why Magón Fights”

Last week my own brother, who is a prominent attorney at Mexico City and does not pretend to be a revolutionist, visited me in Los Angeles, having been sent by Madero to induce me to give up the fight. I refused and the arrest of the Junta of the Mexican Liberal Party followed.

Madero had the support of the moneyed power of the world, rebel though he was. He had the support of the United States army, the officers of which feted him after the fall of Juarez. All the assistance that money and influence could give him was at his command, regardless of national boundaries. For he had made his peace with the money power.

How different is it with us! Because we stand for the people; because we wish to see them in possession of the necessaries of life and do not want them cheated with fine words; because we insist that their blood and hard-won, inexpressibly hard-won earnings, must not be allowed to have been spent in vain; because we will not give up their cause, we find ourselves again in prison – in prison unquestionably as part of the concerted effort to break up the one movement that seriously threatens the money power in Mexico and promises to lift the masses out of the unspeakable misery into which plutocracy has plunged them.

How can we help fighting on? How, so long as we retain a vestige of honor and self-respect, can we give up the ship? And why should we think for one moment of surrender when we know we are struggling for what the masses passionately desire and for which, thus far, they have fought so successfully?

Ricardo Flores Magón

Public letter from the Mexican Liberal Party to the American Federation of Labor

From ‘Solidarity‘, March 25, 1911, New Castle, Pennsylvania, published under the sarcastic headline “How About This, Sammy?”. Republished in ‘Industrial Worker’, April 6, 1911, Spokane, Washington, under the headline “Will Gompers ‘Come Thru’?”, and in ‘Mother Earth’, April 15, 1911, New York City, under the title of “The Appeal of Mexico to American Labor”, followed by Magon’s public letter to Emma Goldman

Following is a copy of a letter sent by the Junta of the Mexican Liberal Party to Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor:

Headquarters of the Junta of the Mexican Liberal Party,
519 1-2 E. 4th St., Los Angeles, Cal., U.S.A.

March 11, 1911

To Samuel Gompers, President of the A.F.L,
425 G St., N.W., Washington, D.C.

Sir:

The Mexican Liberal Party appeals to you, to you directly and officially, as head of the largest body of organized labor in the United States. It appeals to you in a cause as just and holy as ever history recorded; it makes an appeal, therefore, that you cannot and, we are sure, will not resist.

It is time that the workingmen of the United States Speak out, and it is for you to give the word, promptly and decisively.

The slavery against which we are fighting is the slavery your American Federation of Labor was organized to fight. The chains that the money power has fastened on us are the chains against which you fret. Our cause is your cause, but your cause in its extremist, most pitiable and, therefore, most irresistible form.

We are in revolt against unspeakably atrocious slavery, forced on us and supported by the American money power. The Standard Oil Co., the Guggenheims, the Southern Pacific Railway, the Sugar Trust — all that Wall Street autocracy against which you and the great masses of your nation are making such vigorous protest — are the powers against which we of Mexico are in revolt. They have dispossessed us of our lands and rendered us homeless by the hundreds of thousands; they have left us the choice of exile or imprisonment in such hells as the Valle Nacional.

To support this Wall Street inferno, American soldiers are being called to arms. Already by the tens of thousands they are being sent to our borders, that they may aid in stamping out the last spark of that freedom which is supposed to be the basis of your republic.

It is time for effective protest, and it is you who can make it most effectively.

The issue is clear, unmistakable, beyond evasion.

We repeat that our cause is your cause, and we call on you to give it voice — promptly, clearly, and decisively.

Yours, for human liberty,

(Signed)

Ricardo Flores Magón,
President, Junta, Mexican Liberal Party

(Seal of the Junta attached)

[“SG sent a copy of Magón’s letter of Mar. 11, 1911, and his own letter of Mar. 18 to the AFL Executive Council on Mar. 28, noting that he would submit the matter to a vote upon receipt of Magón’s reply (Executive Council Records, Vote Books, reel 11, frame 581, AFL Records). On Apr. 8 he sent the Council a copy of Magón’s letter of Mar. 29 and asked the members whether a protest should be entered in the name of the AFL (ibid., frame 608). The vote was indecisive, and at its June meeting the Council decided to defer action on the question.”
– note added by the Samuel Gompers Papers to Gompers’ reply letter]