More Photos From Meitzen Family
January 10, 2002
Got
more photos. One was the original sepia tone photo of the New Era printshop
featuring Hickey and several Meitzens. Quite astonishing. Another is of the Texas socialists with Debs in the back. I don’t know who anyone else is
in the photo besides Hickey. I'm still trying to work out the rest of the
identities from the other photos. See the photos attached.
--Marty Boswell
[When we visited
Halletsville in search of the Meitzen family and their publishing operation,
the old New Era print shop was being used as a downtown restaurant. The town
also has a library and an historical society. T.A. “Red Tom” Hickey, editor, is
probably the full-bearded man at right in the last photo. –Gene Lantz]
In July, 1991,
Elaine Lantz and I looked up Meitzen & Hickey in the Barclay labor history
section of the library at University of Texas in Austin. We learned that E.R.
Meitzen was 33 years old when he ran for Governor in 1914. Here are some of his
positions:
For union
organization, for industrial unionism, denounced war, opposed intervention in
Mexico, for tax on all land except homesteads, for collective ownership, for
irrigation development, for compulsory insurance for all workers, for old age
pensions, against child labor, for free medical attention, for employers
liability (workers comp), oppose poll tax, for abolishing the Texas Senate, for
women’s suffrage, and for the 8-hour day.
E.O. Meitzen edited
the New Era in the 1890’s. Slogan on The
Rebel “The great appear great to us only because we are on our knees – let us
arise!” Found a copy of 7/1/11 Rebel. T.A. Hickey listed as editor and owner.
On June 2, 1917,
there was a story about the kidnapping of Tom Hickey. He wrote from a jail cell
in Dallas, “The real story will appear in the next Rebel unless I am dead of
kidnapped again.” But the Rebel, cut off from the U.S. Mails by federal fiat,
was never published again.
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