On Sunday afternoon, May 5, a meeting of workingmen was held on the public square in New Castle. It was a belated May Day demonstration, and for a week before had been advertised to be held under the auspices of the Italian Syndicalist Federation and the local of the Industrial Workers of the World. The meeting was preceded by a parade headed by a red flag and a banner bearing the words: “Close the mill gates or open the jail door–Ettor and Giovannitti.”

During the entire meeting on the square, the red flag floated alone back of the speakers’ stand. There was no American flag with it. The red flag is the symbol of international working class solidarity, its color being that of the blood of the world’s working class–blood which feeds the tissues of brawn and brain that move a world and make possible a civilization. It is a universal symbol, and probably in no other country in the world does it signify so much to an assemblage of workers as in the United States into which have emptied the streams of all nationalities; and probably in no other organization is its international and universal symbolic character more evident than in the I.W.W., which contains all nationalities in its ranks. There was no call for the use of any other flag, and there was no- crave spirit on the part of the demonstrator that would have led them to cater to the alleged “patriotism” of New Castle’s labor skinners and the jingo “patriots” who like to be classed among the respectables.

The demonstration was held on Sunday, because as yet the workers of New Castle are not sufficiently acquainted with the International Labor Day (May 1) to voluntarily quit work on that day and take part in such a demonstration.

The crowd on the public square Sunday consisted of syndicalists, I.W.W. members and Socialist Party men, the latter furnishing a large proportion of the English speaking audience. Throughout the speaking no interest in or hostility toward the red flag was manifested, until one drunken old man, whom we know positively was put up to the work by “citizens” too cowardly to do it themselves, sneaked up to where the red flag was fastened and attempted to pull it down. Without violence he was prevented from doing so by several members of the Socialist Party who happened to be near, and was led out of the crowd. The red flag remained floating throughout the remainder of the meeting, and was carried back through the streets at the head of a parade after the meeting was over. There was no excitement and no evidence of hostility outside of the above incident, during the entire performance.

Now comes the New Castle Daily News of the following day with a two-column lurid account of the affair, in which among other things, “the red flag was torn from its staff and trampled under foot by a hostile German whose spirit boiled ” The kind of “spirit” that boiled is explained above, along with a true statement of what happened. But the News goes on and winds up its story with the following quotation from an alleged interview with Mayor Tyler. (Perhaps some of our readers do not know that Mayor Tyler is a socialist):

“I was down in Mahoningtown yesterday afternoon and knew absolutely nothing of the red flag parade held yesterday. I had no knowledge that such a parade was to be held and was not informed of the affair until 8 o’clock last night, when I came up from Mahoningtown. The Socialist Party had absolutely nothing to do with the demonstration yesterday, and would have had nothing to do with such a procedure. The socialists have adopted the red flag as the emblem of the party, but the socialists have respect for the Stars and Stripes and would never tolerate any parade in which the Stars and Stripes were not carried at the front. I deplore any such affair as that which occurred here yesterday. I’ve got respect for the national flag and I can’t understand why the action yesterday was taken. It was probably done to start trouble and gain notoriety or to have it throw discredit upon the socialists.”

The fact that Mayor Tyler “was absent from the scene” during Sunday afternoon might seem to some sufficient cause for keeping his foot out of his mouth over the affair. But in his anxiety to pose as a “respectable patriot” and lover of the “stars and stripes” our mayor immediately rushes into print to “exonerate” himself and the socialist administration. But the fact is that the socialists did take part in the May Day demonstration. True enough, the Party would have nothing to do with it officially, though given an opportunity to show their solidarity with the other workers, when at the meeting of the S.P. local on April 30 they were asked to participate. But many of their members were present at the Sunday meeting, and their organizer, Wm. J. White, was speaking from the stand when the red flag incident occurred, as above stated. Why does the mayor attempt to shift his alleged responsibility upon some one else? Even if he were absent, there were plenty of cops in sight when the lone red flag was carried by the paraders past the police station, and if there was anything irregular about the parade it could have been stopped by the police. In another New Castle daily, the Herald, a reason for not stopping it is given by Chief Mitchell who is reported to have said: “We didn’t want to oblige these people by advertising them.” This is a unique reason for not “enforcing the law.”

Mayor Tyler says he has respect for the Stars and Stripes,” sufficient we suppose to place them above the “emblem of his own party,” which socialists claim is international. If so, that is his privilege, but he will have to show us where the stars and stripes have ever stood for the working class at any stage in American history. On the contrary, we can show our mayor where the American flag has always accompanied institutions of oppression against the workers. It floated over the bloody industrial battlefields of Homestead and Lattimer; it was carried by the brutal soldiers who surrounded the bull pens of the Coeur d’Alene and of Cripple Creek; it accompanied the militia pimps of the master class in Lawrence in their brutal reprisals against starving strikers. It doubtless floats over the court house wherein Ettor and Giovannitti were “tried” on trumped up charges, and the jail wherein they and others are awaiting further trials for their lives. It was borne aloft by the Vigilantes of San Diego, while kidnapping and murdering workers upholding the freedom of speech and of assemblage supposed to be guaranteed under it.

And just so long as the Stars and Stripes are used for such purposes–as an emblem of oppression–just so long will red-blooded workers, socialists and others, refuse to accord it their respect. If the red flag were to be stolen by our masters we would disown it in the same way.

Come, Mayor Tyler, let the capitalists keep their flag. Our movement–the labor movement–IS international, and when we get ready to oust the robber class from the stage of history, it will he done not in this country alone, but in all countries at the same time. Then the red flag will float over all nations as the universal symbol of a freed humanity.

Meanwhile, why should we cater to the hypocritical jingoism of the enemy? If we can not carry the red flag alone, we can march without any flag.

Transcribed by Revolution’s Newsstand