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Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday July 11, 1900
Mother Jones News Round-Up for June 1900, Part II
Fondly Remembered in Birmingham as “Labor’s Joan of Arc”
From the Birmingham Labor Advocate of June 16, 1900:
MOTHER JONES
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“I Have Devoted Myself to Humanity.”
—–LABOR’S JOAN OF ARC
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Comforts the Wife and Child,
Touches as With a Mother’s Hand
the Brow of the Sick,
and Leads the Strikers.
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Mother Jones, who is distinguishing herself and honoring her dear old gray head by her efforts in labor’s cause in Pennsylvania and Maryland, is well and affectionately known in Birmingham, where she labored a few years ago, largely in the interest of cotton mill serfs. God bless her. No truer, braver or more devoted champion of the right ever graced the earth.
We are making history, and she will live in its pages. Her life will be held up as an example to emulate in that better day when right shall rule.
The following article is clipped from the editorial page of the Philadelphia North American, illustrated by a double column likeness of our well-beloved sister:
“Mother” Mary Jones comes to the front again, as is evidenced from the reports from the George’s Creek coal mining region of Maryland. By talking to the miners and their families there she has persuaded them to remain on strike. The scenes attending the speech-making of Mother Jones are intensely dramatic, as, indeed, they well might have been, judging by the Meyersdale situation and the character of the woman labor leader.
Mrs. Mary Jones is better known among the workmen of the United States and especially among the miners, as “Mother.” She has earned the title by the truly motherly manner in which she cares for the families of those men who happen to be on strike in her neighborhood. As she says, “the women are great factors in a strike.” By controlling the women and children, Mother Jones is able to win many strikes for the men.
“A man can face the devil.” says Mother Jones, “but he can’t stand out against capitalism and its servants when the wife points to the little children and says there is no bread.”
CUMBERLAND, Md., May 31.-“Mother” Jones, the noted woman organizer of Punxsutawney, Pa., arrived in the George’s creek mining region today accompanied by District President Allan Barber. They had been attending the miners’ celebration at Dubois, Pa. Mother Jones was accorded great honors. She at once took hold of affairs, Organizer William Warner and Thomas Haggerty becoming secondary in importance.
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HE case against the comrades comprising the committee engaged in the publication of the New Castle Free Press, charged with “seditious libel,” was tried under what was known as the old English common law. This law against “seditious libel” was framed at a time when kings ruled by divine right, and in order to establish the guilt of the “pestiferous” McKeever, Hartman, McCarty and White, the prosecutor of Lawrence County, Pennsylvania, cited a case that occurred during the reign of Charles II. A score of Irish peasants raised a rebellion, so the prosecutor read, against the English land lords. These Irish peasants were arrested, charged with “seditious libel” and sentenced to prison. That was nearly four hundred years ago, yet we find a fossilized county prosecutor referring to it today in an effort to convict these four comrades of ours. It would be laughable were it not for the serious consequences that are likely to follow this New Castle trial for “seditious libel.”
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