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<DIV><FONT face=Arial><STRONG>This is an excerpt from a much longer website post
of ours:</STRONG></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial><STRONG><FONT face=Tahoma>One of the most venomous
Western writers was Zane Grey ["no relation" as a<BR>prominent Mississippi
journalist named Salter always indicates when<BR>discussing me]. Grey was
born in Zanesville, Ohio, in 1872 and, in due<BR>course, settled in North
Central Arizona, under the Tonto Rim. He lived in<BR>that general region
for a very long time [before returning to the East and<BR>dying there in 1939]
and wrote a myriad of Western novels -- some dimensions<BR>of which reflect
capable observation of the cattle culture and the rough<BR>country.<BR><BR>But,
a puritan in the most narrow and rigid sense, he was venomously<BR>anti-Mormon
and anti-Industrial Workers of the World -- all of these fine<BR>folks
frequently found in the region where he pitched his tents. [It's also<BR>much
around the area where I grew up.] In RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE,<BR>written
many years after the LDS church had formally abandoned polygamy, and<BR>first
published in 1912, Grey provides the full package of anti-Mormon<BR>bigotry
undergirded and pervaded by massive and sensational falsehoods:<BR>e.g., "closed
towns," "captive women," Mormon "enforcers." If this was<BR>puzzling to
the local "Gentiles" [non-Mormons] who failed completely to<BR>recognize their
pleasant and hospitable Mormon neighbors in these lurid<BR>accounts, it played
well -- as the poison still sometimes does -- in the<BR>East and West coast
bastions of Liberal America.<BR><BR>Zane Grey's viciously [and I don't use the
word lightly], best known<BR>anti-IWW novel, THE DESERT OF WHEAT, written and
published [1919] during the<BR>worst of the Red Scare, depicts the Wobblies as
torch-carrying,<BR>field-burning saboteurs. Since some members of my
mother's family were<BR>involved in large wheat acreages and flour mills in
Kansas and Oklahoma, I<BR>was interested [but not surprised] in their comments
after I read this tract<BR>when a very young man. None of my kin on that
side of the family had the<BR>slightest awareness of IWW "sabotage" -- and some
of the old-timers, indeed,<BR>had been Populists and Debs Socialists, while a
well known close cousin of<BR>Mother's, Chris Hoffman, who was known as the
"millionaire Socialist of<BR>Kansas," had dropped dead of a heart attack while
addressing an IWW rally in<BR>Kansas City. Even the old Republican
relatives in Kansas remembered the<BR>Wobbly harvest hands as good, dependable
workers -- a sentiment shared by<BR>other kin in North Dakota. In his
classic and highly detailed A HISTORY OF<BR>CRIMINAL SYNDICALISM LEGISLATION IN
THE UNITED STATES [Baltimore: Johns<BR>Hopkins Press, 1939] -- a good copy
of which I have right here -- Professor<BR>Eldridge Foster Dowell can find
nothing in IWW practice involving<BR>destructive sabotage and he states
categorically on pages 34-35 that "The<BR>three great Federal trials of the
I.W.W. and the state criminal syndicalism<BR>trials yield, in the writer's
opinion, no reliable evidence of the<BR>commission of sabotage by the I.W.W. . .
."</FONT></STRONG><BR><BR>HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq
/St. Francis <BR>Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk <BR>Protected by NaŽshdoŽiŽbaŽiŽ
<BR>and Ohkwari' <BR>Member, National Writers Union AFL-CIO<BR><A
href="http://www.hunterbear.org">www.hunterbear.org</A> <BR>(much social justice
material)</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>I have always lived and worked in
Borderlands.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>See the Stormy Adoption of an Indian Child [My
Father]:<BR><A
href="http://hunterbear.org/James%20and%20Salter%20and%20Dad.htm">http://hunterbear.org/James%20and%20Salter%20and%20Dad.htm</A><BR>(expanded
May 2012)</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>For the new, just out (11/2011) and
expanded/updated<BR>edition of my "Organizer's Book," JACKSON MISSISSIPPI --
<BR>with a new and substantial Introduction by me. We are close
upon<BR>the 50th anniversary of the massive Jackson Movement of1962-63:<BR><A
href="http://hunterbear.org/jackson.htm">http://hunterbear.org/jackson.htm</A></FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>Personal Background Narrative (with many
links):<BR><A
href="http://hunterbear.org/narrative.htm">http://hunterbear.org/narrative.htm</A>
</FONT></DIV>
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