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Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday December 21, 1921
Mother Jones News Round-Up for May and June 1921
Found in Mexico City, Standing for Organization of Mexican Workers
From the Tucson Citizen of May 11, 1921:
MOTHER JONES WILL RESIDE IN MEXICO.
In January Mother Jones, the noted socialistic agitator who has been in the public eye throughout the United States through many years, went to the City of Mexico to attend an international congress of workingmen and women.
It is announced now that Mrs. Jones has decided to make her permanent residence in Mexico. She is quoted as saying that after many years of story experience in the United States including six penitentiary sentences served she finds Mexico “the only country where she can live la tranquility.”
[Photograph added.]
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Note: Mother has been taken into custody many times during her long life of standing with working people, but has never served a sentence in any penitentiary sentence that we know of.
From the Cleveland Toiler of June 4, 1921
-excerpt from article by Geo. N. Falconer:
MOTHER JONES.
Seemed as if she had been imported specially to boost the Workers’ Mexican Government. “Workers,” she shouted during her several addresses during the Pan-American Congress, “stand by your government and it will stand by you.”
“The pulse of the world is throbbing today,” declared ‘Mother’ Jones. “Humanity is watching the new Mexico. I want to tell you that there will be no intervention by the capitalist robbers of the United States in the affairs of Mexico. We won’t stand for it. We are going back to the United States and appeal to the workers there to stand by the workers here.”
When she shouted, “You are going to bring the new day in this country and center the eyes of the world on Mexico as well as Russia,” the applause was tremendous.
Didn’t Mother Jones boost for Woodrow Wilson in 1916? And Mother Jones paid many compliments to that “grand old man of labor,” King Gompers. Why? Is she so ignorant of Samuels’ labor history?
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From Proceedings of the Convention of American Federation of Labor at Denver, Colorado, June 13-25, 1921:
…..Ernest Greenwood representing the International Labor Office at Geneva, Frank Bohn, publicist, together with Mother Jones as the invited guest of General Villarreal, minister of agriculture of Mexico, accompanied the party [of representatives of the American Federation of Labor] from St. Louis to Mexico City. Mother Jones attended the meetings of the convention and spoke on two occasions.
On arrival at Nuevo Laredo we learned that that the government of Mexico had sent a reception committee representing the government and labor to the boundary line to meet and greet us…..
Note: emphasis added throughout.
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SOURCES
Quote Mother Jones PAFL Congress, p72, Jan 13, 1921
-Jan 10-18, 1921 PAFLC Report
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=coo.31924003670712&view=2up&seq=1
Pages 72-76: Jan 13th, Address of Mother Jones
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=coo.31924003670712&view=2up&seq=74&q1=mother%20jones
Tucson Citizen
(Tucson, Arizona)
-May 11, 1921, p1
https://www.newspapers.com/image/580243360/
The Toiler
-“transitional publication of the American Communist movement.”
(Cleveland, Ohio)
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/thetoiler/
-June 4, 1921, p2
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/thetoiler/n174-jun-04-1921-Toil-nyplmf.pdf
Proceedings of Convention of
American Federation of Labor
(Denver, Colorado)
-June 13-25, 1921, p83
https://archive.org/details/sim_american-federation-of-labor-proceedings_1921/page/82/mode/2up
IMAGE
Mother Jones, ed WDC Tx p2, Aug 29, 1920
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84026749/1920-08-29/ed-1/seq-2/
See also:
Full article in The Toiler of June 4, 1921, page 2:
“Has Mexico a labor Government?
Who Is Telling the Truth About Mexico?”
-by G. N. Falconer
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/thetoiler/n174-jun-04-1921-Toil-nyplmf.pdf
Full Report to 1921 Denver AFL Convention
re Pan-American Convention at Mexico City
-pages 82-89:
“The Third Annual Convention of the Pan-American Federation of Labor, Mexico City, January 10-18 (Inclusive), 1921”
https://archive.org/details/sim_american-federation-of-labor-proceedings_1921/page/82/mode/2up
Tag: Mexican Revolution
https://weneverforget.org/tag/mexican-revolution/
Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for April 1921:
Found in Washington DC with Gompers, Protesting West Virginia’s Jury Bill
Correspondence, May-July 1921
-letters as written except: emphasis added,
periods added where necessary for clarity.
The Correspondence of Mother Jones
-ed by Edward M. Steel
University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985
https://books.google.com/books?id=EZ2xAAAAIAAJ
May-July 1921—Pages 226-233 (277-284 of 416)
https://digital.library.pitt.edu/islandora/object/pitt%3A31735057897435/viewer#page/276/mode/2up
From Mother Jones at Mexico City to John Fitzpatrick and Ed Nockles:
Mexico City,
May 16, 1921.Mr. John Fitzpatrick,
President of the Chicago Federation of Labor
Ed Knockles,
Secretary of the Chicago Federation of Labor
My dear friends:Your very beautiful telegram of May the first reached me on May second. I don’t know of anything I received in years that so deeply affected me for the time being. I hope you do not think or have the impression that I was unappreciative for your humane consideration of me in a far off city. I have no words to convey to you and your associates in the great struggle for justice the deep appreciation that I feel.
My reason for not acknowledging your message at once was that I was not well, but I am now beginning to get back my old fighting qualities. On the day your message arrived, I was down in Orizaba, a strictly manufacturing town. I addressed a large meeting there with several diputatos, or congressmen also. It was the most remarkable meeting I addressed in years; the spirit was so marvellously fine. The town was thoroughly organized and the spirit they possessed was an inspiration. One got new hope for the future. They had a union band with the finest music I ever heard in a labor display. The building was a municipal building, very large, tendered by the public officials to the Labor movement. There was no uniformed police there, either at the entrance or inside of the building. This was something marvellously new to me, because with us in the United States, in the great American Republic, you know the outside and inside would have been multiplied by the uniformed representatives of the high class burglars. The meeting continued until nearly twelve o’clock. Not one human soul left the hall. All were deeply interested to my surprise, a flag representing the murder of the so-called anarchists in Chicago of ’86 came marching in side by side with the national banner. Everyone of you would have been put in jail for the next ten years if that occurred in Chicago. The congressmen, most all of them, referred to it in their speeches, the tribute paid to that banner as it entered that hall was the most remarkable demonstration I had witnessed in all my years in the industrial conflict. The next morning as the train pulled in and stopped on its way to Mexico City, the workers came out of the shop and jumped on the train and no one could keep them off. The came in and urged me to come back again. I promised them to do so and fell just in fine spirit now to return to them.
After all one’s life is not in vain when they witness the beautiful conception of industrial freedom that is taking possession of the souls of the workers. Here they are making wonderful progress and they are not bothered with a lot of police and capitalist henchmen. But we have a good many so-called Cominist freaks here that want to rule and dictate. God help the day that those fanatics should ever get to the helm, we’d be worse off than we were under the rule of a Wilson. The workers went up to the Camara of Deputados last Friday, May 13; walded into the Congressional Hall, planted the Red flag and notified the Congressmen that they were not getting a square deal from their representatives and told them it act for the interest and honor of the Nation and the future destinies of the children yet to come. Of course the kept-press howled a little. There was no violence, nothing rough or loud-it was simply a practical and logical demand of their representatives. They returned in peace. If such a thing had happened in Washington, all the machine guns within a hundred miles would be called in and turned on them. They are making marvellous progress here in the Labor movement. If they only keep their heads level for the next few years, they will give an example to the world of what can be acquired in a peaceful manner instead of by force.
I expect to go to Yucatan inside of a week. The only one danger that there is here to interfere with their progress is that religious issue. If that can be kept out of the Labor movement, there will be marvellous progress made here….
They are going to have a Labor Convention here on the first of July. I am going to stay over for that. One of those refugees that I got out of jail during the Diaz administration called to see me and told me that the Mexican government would extend all the hospitality to me while I was in Mexico, and they would spare nothing to make my stay here pleasant.
I hole that things will go along smoothly. This awful unemployment question I am afraid will bring on trouble in the United States. It looks as if the greed for money and power developed during the war, and they want to continue the game, but then the labor movement did not take advantage of the opportunity that they had.
Well you will hear from me again soon, and give my deep appreciation to all the delegates. Tell them the future is ours if they only stand like men together.
With best wishes, I am
Sincerely yours,
Mother Jones
From Mother Jones at Mexico City to John H. Walker, Pres. IL Federation of Labor:
Apartado 1855
Mexico City, Mexico.
May 27, 1921.Mr. John H. Walker,
Pres. of the State Federation of Labor,
Springfield, Illinois.My dear John:
I have been trying to write you ever since I came down here, but I have not been very well…
Weve had some stormy times down here since I’ve been here. You know they have an element of so-called revolutionists here that are doing their best to destroy the Labor movment. No they are not well on their feet yet here. They don’t understand the danger they are up against with those fellows. You know as well as I do the enemy gets his tools inside our ranks and once they get their poison in it is not easy to apply the chemical to undue it. There is another phase, John, that the heads of the Labor movement of Mexico do not understand the background and treachery of the common enemy. They have got good men, but you know here they have gone through a twelve yrs. turmoil, torn to pieces with scarsely no organization and no education on the industrial field. They had just entered the kindergarten when this political, this communist and religious question began to be injected into them. They got to fighting each other and you know John those freaks that see the light breaking out of heaven for their interest are the most dangerous sewer-rats we can get. They imagine God Almighty never gave any brains to anyone but them and they are going to solve the whole problem with the sole of their shoes. And even the fellows working for Jesus take a hand in the game. Last Sunday in Morelia the sky-pilot delivered a sermon after Mass and aroused the peoples’ passions against the Reds in the Labor movement until the whole congregation went out, men and women and stoned the building where the socialist paper was published. That was Christ’s philosophy filled up with capitalist swill. I wonder what Jesus will do to that dam pirate when he gets his claws on him— I want to be round. Unfortunately John, these poor fellows here have been crushed for centuries and they are just emerging from that oppression. It seems so sad that they should be interfered with, but such runs the stream of the vicious philosophy of the capitalist vultures…
Try and keep your health for you will be needed in the near future,
Sincerely,
Mother Jones
From Mother Jones at Mexico City to John H. Walker:
Apartado 1855
Mexico City, Mex
June 21, 1921.Mr. John H. Walker,
Pres. of the State Federation of Illinois,
Springfield, Ill.Dear John:
…I have not seen a well day in the two months that I have been here. I am leaving next Friday night for the East and I’ll have to stop off at San Antonio on a mission—also at Denver. Then I shall go right on to Chicago and I want you to try and meet me there…
Things are not just as bright here as I would like to see them, John. But I hope the future will clear things up. You know they are up against it with those oil pirates and the gov’t is doing all it can to render assistance to the workers. But they are up against a powerful machine…
With devotion to you and the cause we are both engaged in,
Sincerely,
Mother Jones
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There Is Power in the Union – Street Dogs
Lyrics by Billy Bragg