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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