1914.05.02: GROSS INSULT TO PRIEST IN PRAYER



May 2, 1914


GROSS INSULT TO PRIEST IN PRAYER


By I.W.W. Rabble Led by Anarchist Barkman (sic) 

SING OBSCENE SONGS 

And Break Up Religious and Other Gatherings—Foreigners Who Understood Songs Said They Were Unprintable.


New York, May 1.--I. W. W. leaders, followed by about 200 disciples, after a meeting today, went up
Broadway to Union square in a straggling procession, insulting women on the sidewalks and at windows, cursing churches along the route and singing obscene and blasphemous songs in Italian. They attacked a praying priest at Lafayette and Great Jones streets; they broke up an evangelistic song and prayer meeting which they found at the end of their march to the cottage in front of the Union square plaza.



The procession was led by the lecturer, Alexander Berkman, Marie Gants, Reba Edelson, "Wild Joe" O'Carroll and a number of other Anarchists who had been speaking at the meeting. Flags were carried with violent inscriptions against the Rockefellers and capitalists generally.



Rev. Alexander J. Fitzpatrick, aged rector of the Father Dramgool's Mission, leaned out over the balcony above the street as the procession came howling past, and engaged in prayer.



Mistaking the jeers and curses for May Day greeting, the priest spread out his arms as though to give a blessing. Screams of contempt and ridicule answered the gesture. A volley of banana and orange peelings, wadded newspapers and other street debris rose toward the balcony. With a horrified look on his benign face the rector hurried inside. The scalawag army howled delightedly. In front Grace church the marchers sang songs, which those who understood Italian said were not printable.



Factory hands looking down from the windows of lofts were called upon to leave their work and join the procession. The language used when the girls and young men shook their heads in refusal was obscene.



The Socialists held a mammoth "mourning party" for the dead women and children in Colorado in Union square.



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