Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday November 19, 1902 Mother Jones News Round-Up for October 1902, Part V Found Speaking in Holyoke and Celebrating John Mitchell Day in Wilkes-Barre
From the Holyoke Daily Transcript of October 27, 1902:
MOTHER JONES SPEAKS. ———-
LARGE AUDIENCE LISTENS ———- The Most Successful Socialist Rally Held Here For Many Years. ———-
“Mother Jones, the miners’ friend” who has become well known all over the country for her fierce defence of the miners in the coal strike, and who has been arrested in the mining regions several times for her utterances, lectured in this city at the city hail last evening. That she was one of the persons who gained in popularity for her course was shown by the enthusiastic reception she received here. She was welcomed by the largest audience of any campaign speaker this fall, and the largest which attended a socialist rally for years, in Holyoke. It was attributed to her cause in which she appears to be in sympathy body and soul, and to the active part she has taken in it. “Mother” Jones is a pleasant-faced woman who speaks clearly and convincingly, and at times with the most bitting sarcasm. She made a big hit with the large audience. She has force and eloquence. She has been speaking a week in New England.
E. A. Buckland, the congressional candidate of the Socialist party, in this district, presided and introduced L. F. Fuller of Springfield, as the first speaker.
It was 8.30 o’clock before the speaking began.
Mr. Fuller said that a great case was on trial, a case of dollars against men. “The statement is sometimes made that money always did rule and always will rule. This is not true; as in the case of primeval man, money did not rule, and it is my firm belief that it will not long rule. In this country we do not recognize a governmental despotism, but an industrial despotism has already taken place. Abraham Lincoln placed labor above capital. Even in this country the hardest work is done by those who have the least. Labor is the creator of all values. We notice that the home-owners are disappearing. In the last few years the percentage of home-owners has dropped from 69 to 34 per cent. Socialism demands justice for humanity. The socialist objects to dividing up. If the laboring man was not continually dividing up the profits of his labor, there would be no millionaires in this country.
“Mother” Jones, at her introduction, was received with hearty applause.
One of the most important statements made by Mrs. Jones was that the strike is not at an end. She said the commission appointed by the president was organized because an election was approaching. Mrs. Jones wanted to know why the president took the insults of the coal barons so mildly sometime ago and then consulted with Morgan last Sunday on a yacht. She said the miners went back because of public opinion and public opinion did not care for them until the matter was brought home to the people by empty coal bins.
In speaking for organized labor co-operating with the socialists she said that during her 30 years’ acquaintance with the coal regions not a single clergyman protested against the oppression of the miners until the United Mine Workers entered the district. She said that if there is any Christian religion today it is in organized labor.
In speaking of the operators of Pennsylvania and the manner in which they treat the miners she said the operators can violate the law any time they please and 10 times a day if they desire. They seem to own the world, and all the people thrown in. She pictured the manner in which the coal barons live in contrast with the bare existence of the miners, who are compelled to bring their young children into the mines to help get a living. She made much of the journey of Morgan and some others across the continent when wine costing $35 a bottle was opened.
[…..]
She said the strike will not be settled in the coal regions until the miners get what belongs to them. They did not want charity, they wanted justice. Solidarity of labor, she said, was still in its incipiency. Mention was made of the probability of a strike of engineers and firemen that would overshadow the one now in existence. She said much was being urged against the militia and other weapons of the capitalists, but the greatest danger to the miners is the injunction.
In conclusion she urged the working people to emancipate themselves [by] the power of organized labor and by voting the socialist ticket at the polls.
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday November 18, 1902 Mother Jones News Round-Up for October 1902, Part IV Boston, Massachusetts – Found Speaking on Behalf of Striking Coal Miners
From The Boston Globe of October 20, 1902:
“Mother” Jones, who has become famous all over the country as a result of her work in behalf of the coal miners, addressed a gathering of more than 7000 yesterday afternoon at the open-air meeting at Apollo garden, Roxbury. The meeting was in behalf of the striking miners, and was under the auspices of the general committee of the socialist party.
It is said that more than 8000 tickets were sold and a good sum was realized, which will be forwarded for the assistance of the strikers. The meeting was also addressed by Representative James F. Carey and Ex-Mayor Chase of Haverhill, the latter socialist candidate for governor.
The meeting was an enthusiastic one and every telling point scored by the speakers brought forth ready approval. In the gathering was a fair sprinkling of women. The speakers stood on the balcony of the old house, which had been decorated free of charge, and the grove was given free of charge also.
The principal interest centered about the appearance of “Mother” Jones. She sat on the balcony while the other speakers were talking. She was dressed in a plain gown of black cloth and wore no hat. She looks to be more than 50 years old, and her hair is almost snow white. Her keen, small eyes look out from under rather heavy brows, and she has a voice of remarkable power, her address easily being heard at the other side of the grove.
She is a fighter for her “boys,” as she terms the men who work in the mines, and it was easy for those in the audience to see how she has come by the loving term of “mother.”
She told in a quiet, easy manner of her work among the miners, of their toil in the bowels of the earth, their attempts to keep their little families from starving, and of their grinding down by the coal barons. “Mother” Jones evidently knows whereof she speaks, for she told of her visits to the mines underground, and her control over the miners was illustrated by a story she told of a recent occurrence in the present strike, when she led a gathering of 7000 strikers and many women over the mountains in the coal region and their meeting with the armed militia.
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Respects the Law.
The keynote of her address was that the people had made the government, and must obey the law and abide by its decisions. When she was being introduced by the presiding officer, Patrick Mahoney, a man on the balcony interpolated the remark that “She also defied Judge Jackson.” She was hardly on her feet before she made a denial of the statement, saying that Judge Jackson represented the law, and she never defied the law.
Representative James F. Carey of Haverhill was the first speaker. He said the coal strike would have been a failure but for the fact that it has taught the miners a lesson. It has opened the eyes of the people. The class in economic power, he continued, always controls the government, and socialists, knowing that, have tried to bring to the attention of the voters the absurdity of voting for the representatives of capital…..
John C. Chase, socialist candidate for governor, was received with cheers. He said that if the strikers had to go back without gaining a single thing it would show one thing, and that is that the working class must stand together in industrial matters and politics…..
“Mother” Jones was the next speaker, and there was a wave of applause as she came forward. She spoke clearly and distinctly and rather slowly. At no time till she grow heated, but the pathos of her voice showed clearly that the interests of the striking miners were her interests.
She said she largely was responsible for the miners’ organization.
[She said:] For ages men had been struggling to right the wrongs of the world. In this country we first had the civil struggle, and we settled that. Now at the beginning of the 20th century we have the industrial struggle.
Hellraisers Journal – Monday November 17, 1902 Mother Jones News Round-Up for October 1902, Part III New York, New York – Mother Jones Speaks to Socialists at Cooper Union
From The New York Times of October 18, 1902:
From The Pittsburg Post of October 18, 1902:
Thomas Duffy, Mother Jones and President John Mitchell
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday November 16, 1902 Mother Jones News Round-Up for October 1902, Part II Found Describing Miner’s Sorrow; Assist Efforts to Settle Anthracite Strike
From the Duluth Labor World of October 11, 1902:
[Mother Jones stated:]
If Christ came to America, took advantage of the best university education the country affords, then went into the anthracite and West Virginia mining regions he never would be able to write a book which could properly convey to the minds of its readers the horrors that surround the lives of miners. The human tongue cannot tell of the miseries that blast the lives of those who earn a living in the bowels of the earth, nor of the sufferings of their unfortunate wives and children. My hair is white and I am burdened with the weight of many years, but while I have strength enough left to use my voice it will be lifted in behalf of those miners whose lives have been ruined and who have been made slaves through the avarice of those who not only believe but declare boldly they have a divine right to the earth and the fullness thereof.
A woman of small stature, credited with having spent three-score years and ten on earth, spoke as above. Her hair is white, but her form is erect. Fire flashed from her eyes and her voice trembled with emotion as she told of her experiences with the miners. “
[She further said:]
I have spent years with them. I have lived in their homes, have partaken of their scant, coarse fare, have wept with them by the deathbeds of their loved ones, have shared their sorrows, but alas, I cannot say that I ever rejoiced with them. Joy is unknown in the mining regions of West Virginia, as far as the miners and their unfortunate families are concerned.
The speaker was “Mother” Jones, the idol of the miners, who have spent the greater part of her life in an effort to organize them and improve their conditions. She is lecturing in several towns on the conditions of the miners in the anthracite regions of Pennsylvania and in West Virginia.
Any reference to West Virginia roused the champion of the miners.
When asked “How do the miners get along in West Virginia? She answered:
How do they live? they don’t live-they exist. Harriet Beecher Stowe never drew a picture of slavery that compares with the conditions of the miners in West Virginia. The wage slavery of that state is the blackest page in American history. I tell you, you people in the north can’t realize the amount of human misery that exists among the unfortunates with whom I have made my home for years.
“How are the miners housed?” she was asked. “
[She cried:]
Housed? Housed, did you say? Why, cattle may have decent roofs over them, but the shacks they call homes among the mines of West Virginia would not be tolerated in the worst sections of your city. They are are not houses—they consist of six boards, a bundle of shingles and half a pound of nails. Such are the homes the West Virginia miners when they are working, but many of them at present have only heaven for a roof and the ground for a pillow.
The coal operators do not propose to let the strikers indulge in the luxury of a board roof, and men, woman and children have been driven out to die on the mountain sides. At Piney Ridge three weeks ago I saw a mother with her babe, 6 months old thrown out of the shack called home by the officers of the law. An old, gray headed grandmother was thrown out with them.
The feeble old grandmother took the babe on her lap and with tears streaming down her cheeks said: “My poor babe, how soon they have begun to persecute you!”
Three hours later the babe died under God’s sunlight. I could recite hundreds of cases just as bad as this. They thought they would break their spirits when they threw them out of the shacks, but the woman and children in many cases have been given shelter in barns and the men can live on the mountain sides until the fight is won.
[She continued:]
The children are the worst sufferers, and their sufferings prompt some of the strikers to seek employment elsewhere. Just as I started for Iowa one of the strikers came to me and said: “Mother, I would like to stay and fight, but I’ve got twins 4 months old and I’m afraid I’ll have to go and get work some other place so can buy malted milk for them or they’ll die.” I said: “You stay here, Jack, and fight and when I get to Iowa I’ll sell books and get the money which I will send to you and you can buy malted milk for the babes.” Tears ran down the cheeks of the poor fellow as he grasped my hand and said: “If you’ll do that mother, I’ll stay and fight to the end. T’hey can’t lick us.”
The miners will win. They have come to the conclusion that they might as well starve striking as working and they will stick to the last.
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday November 15, 1902 Mother Jones News Round-Up for October 1902, Part I Found in Colfax, Iowa, and at New York Anthracite Strike Conference
From the Des Moines Registrar and Leader of October 1, 1902:
Colfax, Ia., Sept. 30.-(Special.)-Mother Jones, the famous organizer of the miners in the anthracite region, gave an address, tonight at the Methodist church, and urged the miners of the Sixth district to work for John P. Reese of Albia for congress.Mother Jones denounced the capitalists of the country in severe terms, and was bitter against the use of the injunction by the courts.Her address was listened to by a large audience, composed for the most part of miners. Immediately after her speech, Mother Jones started across the country to Prairie City and caught a night train for Albia, where she will speak. She will also deliver an address at Ottumwa and then return east.
Mother Jones is now over sixty years of age, her hair being white as snow. Yet she is vigorous and energetic, and speaks with wonderful feeling and eloquence when describing the sufferings of the miners in the anthracite regions. She urged the miners and workingmen to wake up and work for their rights.
[She said:]
You don’t need a gun. Let us bury the bullet and resurrect the ballot.
Wants Iowa to Act.
I want Iowa to be the first state to carry the banner of organized labor into congress and elect a workingman to that body. I want a worker to make laws for me and not a henchman. If ever an awakening comes in this country it must come now. The injunction must be stopped. I plead with you young men; shall you all be slaves or shall you be men? You have got to take hold of this government and run it for all the people. It is your duty to see that the next congressman from this district is a miner so that the next congress shall have a miner in it.When the last injunction bill was up before congress there was no one there to press it, because no one there had felt the sting of the injunction injustice.
I say down with the government that upholds injunctions. I repeat I want to see the next congress have a miner in it. When the corporations see the workingmen waking up and electing workingmen to office they will tremble. You have got to break up this corporate power. The only way to break it up is by legislation. If you men feel that you are too big cowards to do it, stand aside and let us women do it and we’ll show you how. Woman is the greater sufferer from the power of corporate wealth.
Mother Jones, at the outset of her address, spoke of the progress of the human race and the various inventions that have been made.
[She said:]
Yet the workers have not the benefit of these inventions. A few men who have never done anything in their lives have taken advantage of them all and the human race stands aghast and asks “What shall we do?” If these inventions have been produced by society, why should one band of thieves and robbers, and assassins, and plunderers possess them to the detriment of all the rest? That is the great question before the human race. There is no other question before you. You have the labor question to settle, and it will be settled in this century. The men who produce the wealth will have the wealth.
Who has built your magnificent homes and public buildings? Who have gone down into the depths of the earth and toiled sixteen hours a day? The workers. Who live in your palaces? The parasite. Why? Because he has plundered other men of what they produce. When he boasts of prosperity, what is it to 30,000 breaker boys in the anthracite region? That you can make money by scheming doesn’t make a nation prosperous. You can’t have a prosperous nation until the workers prosper. If you give to your nation an illiterate broken down body of workers, ruin will overtake your country.
Mother Jones paid her respects to Morgan for saying he had nothing to arbitrate, and to Baer, who says he owns the earth and is the “steward of the Almighty.”
[She said:]
I wish he would take care of these men and women down in West Virginia, if he is the Almighty’s steward, as he claims.
[And again:]
Every page of every book of every Carnegie library in the country is written with the blood of Homestead.
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday November 14, 1922 Charles Town, West Virginia – Keeney Awaits Ruling Regarding Change of Venue
From The Labor World of November 11, 1922:
Accessory to Murder.
Keeney had been called to trial on a charge of accessory to a murder-the charge growing out of the attempted march of union miners into Logan county several months ago in protest of the feudal conditions in its coal fields.
Efforts of the prosecution to call William Blizzard to trial on the same charge, after Keeney had been granted a change of venue, brought a ruling from the court that further proceedings would be suspended until after the Court of Appeals of West Virginia has passed upon the action of the court here in granting a new change of venue in a case which was originally removed here from Logan county. This ruling is expected in about fifteen days. While granting the change of venue, the court declined to issue an injunction against the coal interests of the state from participating in the prosecution and putting up the money for conducting the trials.
First Defeat.
Keeney’s victory brings to the coal interests their big defeat in the effort to oust the miners’ union from the state. Incidentally, it exposes in a court of record the activities of the coal interests in using the prosecuting power of the state to fight the miners’ union.
Attorneys for the prosecution bitterly contested the motion of Keeney for a change in venue. It was claimed that one change in venue is all that the law allows, and that Keeney was enjoying that in having his trial removed to Jefferson county from Logan county. It was claimed that the court did not have the power to grant a second change, and maintained that the allegations of prejudice in Jefferson county were unfounded.
About 100 affidavits were offered from residents of Jefferson county, where three convictions had already taken place in the “treason” cases, that no fixed prejudice exists in the county, and that Keeney could “get a fair jury.” The court ruled these affidavits were too general in character to be of value.
Sought to Stop Flood of Money.
Keeney’s motion for a change in venue was quickly followed by an application for an injunction to prohibit the Logan Coal Operators’ Association and 77 coal corporations from contributing money to finance the prosecution of the miners’ union officials. This application was later denied by Judge Woods.
Hellraisers Journal – Monday November 13, 1922 Vera Cruz, Mexico – Maritime Workers Strike for Release of Ricardo Flores Magón
From El Paso Herald of November 9, 1922:
VERA CRUZ, Mex., Nov. 9.—(By the Associated Press.)—Workers belonging to the maritime league were on strike here today in protest against the alleged unlawful imprisonment of Ricardo Flores Magon, former Mexican rebel leader in Leavenworth, Kan., prison.
Magon in 1917 was sentenced to 20 years for complicity in a communist plot in Los Angeles.
Want Release Of Radicals.
The workers made a demonstration before the American consulate and presented a petition for the release of Magon and other Mexicans imprisoned in the United States as dangerous radicals. A cable message embracing the protest and the petition was sent to the Mexican charge d’affaires in Washington. Other demonstrations were held in various Mexican gulf ports.
A boycott against American ships in Mexican ports is being considered and other measures also are threatened if the United States government refuses to liberate the Mexicans.
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Magon was arrested in Los Angeles after he had been trailed for several months by government operatives. In his possession at the time of arrest was found circulars and other propaganda issued with intent of creating a revolution in Mexico.
Ricardo Magon and a brother, Enrique were prominent in a revolution in Sonora in 1910 coincident with the Pascual Orozco uprising in the state of Chihuahua. The Magon brothers several times were charged with conspiring against the Diaz government.
Los Angeles was used principally as headquarters by the brothers and it is said, that many attempts to foment revolution began there.
Hellraisers Journal – Monday November 11, 1912 Belleville, Illinois – Debs Interviewed by Frank A. Wiedinger
From the St. Louis Star of November 4, 1912:
Debs Calls T. R. Chief Thief of Socialist Party’s Plank ———–
SAYS COLONEL IS A POLITICAL “DR. F. A. COOK”
BY FRANK A. WIEDINGER.
Pressure from below has for years been forcing the old parties to steal the planks of the Socialists, but in this campaign, in trying to keep up with the irresistible demand of the masses for remedial legislation, Theodore Roosevelt has become the chief offender.
Roosevelt feels that his existence depends upon keeping himself in the limelight. He knows that he would be a political corpse if he did not continually turn to the spectacular. He is now poaching on the Socialist preserves and going farther than we ourselves have even gone.
In thus assuming the spectacular, Roosevelt has become a political Dr. Cook. He is a monumental faker. He is a four-flusher. He tells the masses that he, and he alone, is standing for their interests, but the masses will no longer stand for him.
In this wise Eugene V. Debs, Socialist nominee for President, paid his caustic respects to the Progressive standard-bearer in a talk with the writer yesterday noon after a great Socialist rally in the Dreamland Theater at Belleville, Ill.
Both in the interview and in the public speech which preceded it, Mr. Debs devoted the major part of his utterances to Colonel Roosevelt. He also scored Taft and Wilson, but only as the “tools of the capitalistic classes.” In talking of Roosevelt his declarations were mainly in a personal vein, though he resorted to ridicule rather than direct attack.
In so doing he left the distinct impression that seems to obtain also in both Republican and Democratic circles, that he believes Roosevelt is the one who will gain the largest popular vote at the polls tomorrow, and that hence he is the one against whom all the foes of the progressives should turn their batteries.
[Continued Mr. Debs:]
Every decent man regrets and denounces the attempt to assassinate Roosevelt at Milwaukee, and none more so than the Socialists, but there is a thought connected with the first announcement of the shooting which shows how the press is ruled by the capitalists.
“Roosevelt Shot Down By a Socialist,” the papers announced in big flaring headlines. As a matter of fact, investigation showed that not only was Schrank not a socialist, but that on the contrary he had been a steady reader of Republican and Democratic literature. No wonder he was a maniac. This false announcement is only one of the many instances in which the capitalistic press, with one voice, seeks to throw all possible onus of crime upon the socialists.
These same papers, day after day, devoted columns and pages to Roosevelt’s condition, but if a downtrodden laborer was killed while at work because his employer had placed him at defective machinery, or if a sick child died of neglect while the mother was scrubbing at night in a big office building in order to get money for medicine and food, you might search these same papers from beginning to end and find not a mention of either case.
Cites Economic Injustice.
Why is this? Is the life of one human, in the final analysis, worth more than the life of another? The general answer to this would be yes, but I say no-a thousand times no. Given equal opportunity that same workingman might have become the great man which Roosevelt admits that he himself is. That dead child was as dear to its mother as are any of his own to this apostle of large families.
Possibly the reason these instances are generally ignored by the papers is that by calling attention to them they must at the same time reveal the economic injustice under which this country is now suffering. Vote the Socialist ticket on Tuesday and you can correct these conditions.
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Pressure from below has for years been forcing the old parties to steal the planks of the Socialists, but in this campaign, in trying to keep up with the irresistible demand of the masses for remedial legislation, Theodore Roosevelt has become the chief offender.