In Free America!! – Ricardo Flores Magón (1917)

From ‘Regeneración’, English Section, edited by Enrique Flores Magón, September 1, 1917, Los Angeles, California (also appeared in Spanish in the same edition)

Frank H. Little, member of the executive board of the I.W.W. [Industrial Workers of the World], was dragged from his bed in the dead of night, in Butte, Montana, by six hired ruffians of Capitalism and hanged in the outskirts of the city.

Little had been extremely active in the late strikes of the miners, and that was his crime.

Had he helped the bourgeoisie in soothing the spirit of the workers, preaching resignation and humility to them, his would have been a very different fate. He would have probably become a Congressman, a Senator, a Minister and even President of the Republic.

He didn’t do so: that is why he was lynched.

He tried to be useful to his class brothers; he tried to wrest some advantages from the parasitic class for the workers, and the parasitic class did not forgive him for that crime. Six masked ruffians dragged him from the bed where he reposed, and while the population slept, his life was snuffed out.

Fruitless exploit! Feeble crime! Alive, Frank Little inspired courage and life to certain groups of men. Dead, his martyrdom sets aflame all honest breasts.

Stupid error of a maddened bourgeoisie! The death of an agitator does not put an end to discontent. Misery and tyranny did not go down to the tomb with Frank Little, these have remained on foot, remember that, you lords, nourishing the fist that shall strangulate you.

Naturally, the assassins have not been arrested. They promenade the streets of Butte undisturbed, squandering in dens and dives the money they received for their exploit. Let those who do not believe that Authority is the bawd of the rich bear this in mind. Let those open their eyes who are still so obstinate and so stupid as to believe that Authority is necessary to protect the weak.

Ricardo Flores Magón

Frank Little – Emma Goldman (1917)

Untitled excerpt from ‘Mother Earth: Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature’, August 1917, New York City, published and edited by Emma Goldman

It was to be expected that not a single one of those six Vigilantes who murdered Frank Little, organizer of the I.W.W. in Butte, Mont., would be apprehended by the law. When the brutal extermination of Anarchists, I.W.W. members, and other antagonists of plutocratic rule, is openly proposed in Congress as a “national necessity,” why should the coroner and police in Butte exert themselves to find the cowardly murderers who dragged a sick man from his bed at night to lynch him. Didn’t they do it in the name of exploitation and patriotism, the most sacred things in the country?

The murder of Frank Little, the courageous agitator who called things by their right name and therefore was hated by the enemies of truth, will never be punished by the courts, but it will be avenged by the vigorous determination of all true friends of justice not to desert the banner of the social revolution until the rotten conditions have ceased to exist which make such foul deeds as committed in Butte possible.