1. Ricardo Flores Magón (1873?-1922), a Mexican political journalist and anarchist, was imprisoned and in 1904 exiled for his opposition to the regime of Porfirio Diaz. The following year in St. Louis he was a founder of the Junta Organizadora del Partido Liberal Mexicano (organizing Committee of the Mexican Liberal Party), which he served as president. He was subsequently imprisoned on several occasions in the United States for the violation of neutrality laws in connection with his efforts to foment a revolution in Mexico and for anarchist publications. He died in prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kans.

2. Magón to SG, Mar. 11, 1911, Executive Council Records, Vote Books, reel 11, frames 583-84, AFL Records.

3. On Mar. 6 and 7, 1911, President William Howard Taft ordered some 20,000 American troops to strategic points along the U.S.Mexican border. Known officially as the Maneuver Division, they were to protect property, secure the border, enforce neutrality laws, and demonstrate the military's ability to mobilize quickly. After Diaz was overthrown by Francisco Madero on May 25 and the Mexican situation stabilized, Taft ordered the withdrawal of the Maneuver Division, which began on July 1.

4. William Howard Taft (1857-1930), was elected president of the United States as a Republican in 1908 and served from 1909 to 1913. He had previously served as an Ohio superior court judge, U.S. solicitor general, federal circuit court judge, governor of the Philippines, and U.S. secretary of war (1904-8) and was subsequently joint chairman of the National War Labor Board (1918-19) and chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1921-30).

5. Magón responded that his party was struggling for "possession of the land, reduction of the hours of labor and increased wages," and he warned that if American labor stood idly by and permitted the Mexican people to "be crushed by militarism, at the behest of the money power, they will drag with them, to the lowest depths, their immediate neighbors--the American workingmen" ([Mar. 29, 19111, Executive Council Records, Vote Books, reel 11, frames 608-9, AFL Records; quotation at frame 609).

6. SG sent a copy of  Magón's letter of Mar. 11, 1911, and his own letter of Mar. 18 to the AFL Executive Council on Mar. 28, noting that he would submit the matter to a vote upon receipt of Magón's reply (Executive Council Records, Vote Books, reel 11, frame 581, AFL Records). On Apr. 8 he sent the Council a copy of Magón's letter of Mar. 29 and asked the members whether a protest should be entered in the name of the AFL (ibid., frame 608). The vote was indecisive, and at its June meeting the Council decided to defer action on the question.

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