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Hellraisers Journal – Sunday May 19, 1912
Mother Jones News Round-Up for April 1912, Part I
Found as Author of Series on Her Work Among Nation’s Coal Miners
From The Kentucky Post of April 1, 1912:
MOTHER JONES, 8O, SENDS WORD TO MINERS
THAT SHE WILL HELP THEM TO WIN STRIKE
Staff Special.
DENVER. COLO., April 1-Great heavy blankets of snow stretched from Rocky Mountain top to valley below as the Transcontinental Limited plowed on to Denver on its own made-to-fit-the-tracks schedule, going forward when the “beautiful” was’t hugging the streaks of steel too thickly, and standing still, when the snowplows whirled and plastered the landscape with frozen moisture vainly.
In the tourist car a little, old, motherly woman was the only person who didn’t seem to mind this helter-skelter method of running trains from snow pile to snow pile. She was sewing-mending, maybe. The silver-crowned bead bent down over the needle and thread and cloth. Presently she raised her head to thread a needle and I caught the kindly, motherly twinkle of eyes I had seen before. Where? On fields of great industrial battles.
“How are you Mother Jones?” I asked, grasping the worn, wrinkled hand. “What are you doing away up here in this snow-buried country?”
“I am well” she replied, carefully removing her “sewing” from the other half of the seat. “I am traveling along this road preaching ‘in union there is strength’ to the shopmen. You see, they have ‘borrowed’ me from the miners for a short time”
“Mother, I am going East to the coal fields, shall I carry them a message from you?”
“Tell my boys that when they strike to get justice,” replied the woman who is known as “the mother of every mother’s son” in the ‘coal mines of America, “tell them that Mother Jones will come and help them if it takes the last hour of her life!”
On May-day Mother Jones will celebrate her eightieth birthday. In the last 35 years of her life she has led the advance guard in so many strikes that the number has long since crept from her memory. Judges have sent her to jail for defying anti-labor injunctions. She has faced the Cossacks of Pennsylvania, the ‘’commercialized bloodhounds” of West Virginia, sheriffs and private detectives the country over.
Born in Ireland in 1832 she was brought to America when six years old. Before she married she taught school. At 35 she was left a childless widow. Then she became a “mother” to the wives and babies of the railway strikers at Pittsburg in the conflict of 1877. Soon the woes of the coal miners drew her to them and to them and their families she has been steadfast ever since.
“I will go to where their ranks are thinnest,” the little old woman said, as she read the strike news in the newspaper I had handed her.
“Will you tell the readers of The Post some of your experience among the coal miners?” I asked.
“Oh, I couldn’t now, it would take too long, but I’ll tell you I what I’ll do. When I get to Denver I will write down some incidents I have seen myself.”
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And thus was concluded an arrangement whereby The Post is able to announce a series of articles from the pen of Mother Jones, the best known person, man or woman, in American labor circles. There is hardly a workingman or woman who does not admire her, and many of them love her as a second mother. The first of her articles will appear soon in The Post.
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[Emphasis added.]
From The Kentucky Post of April 2, 1912:
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MOTHER JONES TELLS OF PART
PLAYED BY WOMEN IN STRIKE
By Mother Jones
“The Angel of the Coal Mines”The strike of 1900 in the anthracite district was perhaps won in the shortest time and with less violence than any other strike recorded in history. The women played a most important part in that strike; they organized and went out every night.
It was pathetic to see them; old women, with their heads white, with years of sorrow and care; young women, with hearts beating with hope for a brighter day, joined forces and marched close up to the mines. In one instance we marched 15 miles in one night. During the march we stopped to rest. Few knew where we were going, but there were 5000 men in some mines which we wanted to call out and get them to join our forces.
Halted by Troops
One night 5000 women from different camps gathered together and marched 15 miles over the mountains to Coledale, Pa. We had a band along, so we played and sang patriotic songs as we marched to Lansford, and the people dashed out in their night gowns and said, “ —ll, it is that old woman and her army. They are going to clean us all up.”
As we attempted to pass along the road the glitter of bayonets in the dead hour of night faced us. The Colonel yelled “Halt!” and we obeyed orders, of course.
Allowed To Pass
“You will not charge bayonets,” said I, “not on this crowd. We are not fighting the Government. We are simply going to get 5000 of our brothers, who are still working, to join our forces.”
The regiment was the crack 13th, of Pennsylvania. The militia saw that we did not have a single weapon in our hands, but were armed only with our voices, which we raised in defense of childhood yet to come. We were peaceful and law abiding, but we wanted justice, that was all. So finally the soldiers let us pass.
After a while we met the miners, some of them coming down to work on the cars. We took possession of the cars and cleaned them out, and the men went back home, and those fellows were among the first to lay down their tools in response to the call of 1902.
Then more than 5000 went to the hotels where the militia had ordered their breakfasts, took the food right out of the kitchen and ate it and allowed the militia to go without.
Dropped Over Fence
We went on singing as the band played until we met the little Sheriff. He made a lot of fuss about our “disorderly” conduct. I guess he didn’t like our singing, or the way the band played. Anyway he was awfully cross and flashed his star all the while he was trying to boss us.
The easiest way to get by him was to remove him from the road, we thought. That some of the women did by picking him up and dropping him down on the far side of the fence.
He was shaking like an aspen leaf as he got up and ran away.
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[Emphasis added.]
From The Cincinnati Post of April 3, 1912:
MOTHER JONES HAS BEEN IN WEST VIRGINIA;
LET HER TELL OF INJUSTICE DONE THE MINER(EDITOR’S NOTE—For 35 years Mother Jones, “the angel of the mines,” has wandered from one coal pit to another, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, helping the helpless, soothing the sorrowing and caring for the dying. Following is the second of the series she has written for The Post.)
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By Mother Jones
In 1902 one of our organizers went up into the mountains of West Virginia to organize the men. He returned in a few hours. I asked him why he came back so soon and he said:
“The Superintendent got a gun and chased me down and told me not to come back there again. I didn’t come out here to get killed, Mother,”
I concluded to go up and meet that Superintendent. I got off at one of the little mining towns and stayed all night with the family of a miner, gathered up eight or 10 of the union miners and the next morning we started up the mountain.
Announces Meeting
It was a six-mile walk, straight up, and it was noon when we got up there. I said to the boys, “Go down and tell the miners that I am going to have a meeting up here at 2 o’clock, and tell that superintendent that I will feel highly honored by his presence also.
While I was sitting on a rock a man came out of an old log cabin and motioned for me to come over. I went and shook hands with him, and found that he was a miner from Ohio. I went in and there I saw, oh, such a beautiful young girl lying on a pallet of straw with a clean patched quilt spread over her.
I think I never gazed on a more sublimely beautiful face than here in my life. I turned to the father and asked:
“Mountain fever?” he said, “Yes, she is sick, but not fever, it is consumption.”
“I could not make enough at the mines,” he continued, “to take care of these six children” (four of them were sitting around the fire), “so we concluded to let the girl go down and work. I went down a month ago and brought her up. This is all I’ve got left of her. They worked her to death.”
“Better Some Day”
He broke down and she said from her dying pillow:
“Papa don’t cry, I’ll be better some day.”
There was a little bottle of medicine by her bed. She took it up and said, “Mother Jones, that cost a dollar.” I said, “Well, what of it, if does you good,” and she replied, “Yes, but it would have bought the children so much.”
We had the meeting. The superintendent did not show up, but a lot of his men did. We organized them all at the close of the meeting, and I bade them good-by and told them I would be back inside of 10 days.
I went over to bid the young girl good-by, and she looked at me and said: “Mother Jones, I used to go down that mountain and thought it fun, but I’ll never go again. I will never see you again, mother, good-by.”
Father Is Discharged
Next morning when the father went to the mine the Superintendent told him to take his time and leave. He said to him: “You entertained that woman agitator yesterday and you cannot work in our mines.”
In vain did the father explain my visit to his dying daughter. He got his time, but no money. That company gives the men the time and keeps the cash. He went home broken-hearted and told the mother.
They only had three days in which to vacate the shack, for the company owns every shingle on it, and sometimes there are not so many shingles on it, either. The girl dropped back and died as the father told of his discharge and that they must move at once.
The father went out to the outhouse and taking the boards from that made a coffin, wrapped his dead daughter in a sheet and laid her to rest in the mountain.
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[Emphasis added.]
From The Cincinnati Post of April 4, 1912:
By Mother Jones
“Angel of the Mines”In 1907 [1897] at Lattimar, Pa., the miners quit their work because they were being robbed by a company’s pluck-me store, and they concluded they would march up to the next town and get some of their brothers to join with them.
The Sheriff with a number of deputies some of them mine owners sons, thirsting for blood, met those men on the public highway, and, under the flag of the United States, shot 22 of them without warning. They watered the ground with their blood, although they were injuring no property; they were not trespassing on anybody’s’ rights; they were simply walking the public thoroughfare, which belongs to the people, but even this is a crime in Pennsylvania at times.
MINERS ENRAGED AT
INHUMAN TREATMENTTheir lifeless bodies were picked up, the sides were taken out of the cars, and they were piled up like hogs to be sent to the slaughter house, instead of like human beings being taken to the morgue. They were buried; their families were left desolate; their wives were wailing; their babies were weeping, but all of their sorrow touched no cord of sympathy in the breasts of the masters and their bloodhounds.
The miners in the entire district became enraged and wondered what was best to do, but on cool advice they decided to let the law take its course. The law took its course, and every single murderer was acquitted.
Three years after the above incident the superintendent of this mine made the threat that if I came in that vicinity again I would not go out alive. Well, when there is an industrial war going on, and the lives of little children are at stake, I have no fear upon the public highways.
There were several thousand men working at Lattimar. You could not persuade them to come out, so I went and gathered up about 1000 women and had them ready. I took into my room one man from each camp and told him to have his men meet me at a certain point in the morning at 5 o’clock. The result was that some 3000 men surrounded the mines in the morning. The women came into town with mops and brooms.
We met the Sheriff, and by the way, he was a pretty good fellow. He said:
“You are out a little early, mother.”
“Yes,” I replied, “we are out getting a little air while we have the chance.”
He made no comment and passed on.
HERE COMES THE OLD
WOMAN AND ARMYA little boy happened to be in a window on the outskirts and he hallooed so that everybody in the house could hear: “Here comes the old woman and her army. The road is black with them.”
Well, as we entered the town we began to mop and sweep in front of the houses and to shout “No work today.” Many of the men came to the doors and told us that they wouldn’t go to work.
We met others on the way an a lot more were turned back. But there were some stubborn fellows who would not listen to us women and then the fun began.
The women charged them with mops and brooms and there was a lot of funny ducking. We grabbed their dinner pails and threw them broadcast. They got them back the best they could. One very funny incident occurred:
A fellow was coming toward us (I guess he was some straw boss) when his wife ran out in her night gown and yelled, “Please don’t hurt my John,” but the women took John and threw him over the fence and told the wife to take him home. He did not show his face again that day.
The superintendent came out and put up a card stating that there would be no more work until the strike was settled.
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[Emphasis added.]
From The Cincinnati Post of April 5, 1912:
MOTHER JONES TELLS MORE ABOUT MINERS’
STRIKES IN THE KINGDOM OF WEST VIRGINIABy Mother Jones
“The Angel of the Mines”During the strike in West Virginia in 1901 and 1902 I went up to Stamford [Stanaford] Mountain and held meeting with the miners. I found them to be peaceful, law-abiding boys. There was no drinking, no gambling, no carousing. They even had a little schoolhouse of their own.
The afternoon we held the meeting a Deputy United States Marshal had been there and wanted to arrest some of them. They were supposed to have violated some injunction, but the men told him they had violated no law, and that they did not propose to have their brothers carted off like a crowd of criminals. They gave him so many minutes in which to leave town, and he left.
Shoot at Cabins
That night a big gang of special deputies went up the mountain-side and shot up the miners’ cabins after all were in bed and asleep. Several miners were killed and about 20 others were wounded. Mattresses saturated with the life blood of these helpless, innocent slaves, were hung out to dry the next day and were a shocking exhibit.
So mean were the owners of a the mines that they refused to allow the body of one of the murdered boys, a leader of the union men, to be buried in the near-by graveyard, the ground of-which was owned by the coal operators. He was buried in his father-in-law’s back yard.
A few days later I found his widow watering the grave with her tears, while a little child, digging in the fresh clay, was crying over and over: “Papa tum back to see baby.”
I learned the next morning from the telegrapher at Montgomery that there had been trouble in the mountain, and when I asked what the trouble was he said he did not know, but that some one had been killed. I went up with a few of the boys, and there I beheld the most horrible picture imaginable. The women were begging the deputies not to kill their children, and the reply was, ‘To —ll with your children.” It was a blood night, it was a fearful night!
Women Homeless
Those women, left homeless, shelterless, with their little broods around them, asked me what to do, and in their insane frenzy they said to me: “Oh, Mother Jones bring him back to me!” I am almost afraid to tell the terrible thoughts I had that day.
Now you say, “Well, but these murderers at the mines were arrested.”
I answer, “Yes, but they were all acquitted.”
The Judge ordered the photographer to destroy the pictures which I had him take of these seven dead men.
I heard of a poor woman, with four children, who was in great distress. I collected $50 and a Catholic priest came out on the platform and gave me $5. I sent it to the mothers by a miner, and I said to him:
“Give the woman with the four orphans $80 of this, for the other women will be better able to get along than she. When the miner found that family they were hungry, they were cold, they were living in an old shack and they had no coal nor food in the house.
When the miner came back be said: “Mother you ought to have seen that poor woman when I gave her the money.”
She said: “Tell Mother Jones I have nothing to send her in return for her kindness but the tears and gratitude of the widow and the orphans, but when the good Lord calls me home I will ask Him to be good to Mother Jones.”
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[Emphasis added.]
From The Cincinnati Post of April 6, 1912:
MOTHER JONES TELLS HOW A LITTLE GIRL
PUT DEPUTIES TO FLIGHT WITH BIG GUNBy Mother Jones
“The Angel of the Mines”During the 1897 strike I held a meeting at Plumb Creek Pa., one of the camps where the striking minors were living in tents .The bright face of a little girl of 13 drew my attention to her. Each day as I was talking about the purposes of the strike and what a victory would mean to the miners and their families, most of whom had not had a good square meal for years, as I would portray the suffering of the women and children, this little girl’s eyes would fill with tears.
One day the company, in a desperate effort to break up the strike, sent Deputy Sheriffs, each with s big star pinned on his coat, around to corral the strikers and force them into the mine. They went to the tent where this girl with her sisters and brothers and father lived.
The deputies went in and dragged the father out, but they had no more than got him started toward the wagon than the children, headed by the oldest girl, came a-running. The four smallest ones began screaming and crying, to which the deputies paid less attention than they would have to a stray cur’s yelping.
The eldest girl ran into the tent and came out dragging an old shotgun. Only one end of it could she keep off the ground at a time, but that happened to be the business end of the gun, and the deputies caught themselves looking down into the double barrels.
“Now you just let go of my papa,” the little girl cried hysterically, “and if you don’t this gun will shoot every one of you bad men.”
“The little fool might shoot, Bill,” one deputy said to another. They let the father climb out of the wagon and then turned the team around and drove back to the Mine Superintendent for further instructions.
“Bring that kid to me!” he said.
A whole company of deputies went down and catching the girt in the road carried her to the mine company’s office.
The Superintendent told her that he was going to send her to the Reform School for attempting to murder officers of the law.
“You can send me there if you want to, the old gun didn’t have any hammer or trigger on it. Them fellows are all cowards anyway, Gee! You ought to have seen them let loose of paps, ’cause they were scared I’d shoot day-light through them.
The Superintendent didn’t send the little girl to the Reform School and they didn’t try to kidnap any other strikers either. We all held a meeting and I made a crown which we placed upon the little girl’s head. From then until the men won the strike, which they finally did, the girl was the heroine of all the mining country thereabout.
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[Emphasis added.]
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SOURCES & IMAGES
Quote Mother Jones, Army Strong Mining Women, Ab 1925
https://archive.iww.org/history/library/MotherJones/autobiography/12/
The Kentucky Post
(Covington, Kentucky)
-Apr 1, 1912
https://www.newspapers.com/image/760492249/
-Apr 2, 1912
https://www.newspapers.com/image/760492412
https://www.newspapers.com/image/760492435
The Cincinnati Post
(Cincinnati, Ohio)
-Apr 3, 1912
https://www.newspapers.com/image/761227413/
-Apr 4, 1912
https://www.newspapers.com/image/761227520
-Apr 5, 1912
https://www.newspapers.com/image/761227907/
-Apr 6, 1912
https://www.newspapers.com/image/761228194
See also:
The Autobiography of Mother Jones
CH Kerr, 1925
https://archive.iww.org/history/library/MotherJones/autobiography/
The Speeches and Writings of Mother Jones
-ed by Edward M. Steel
University of Pittsburgh Press, 1988
-Pages 296-303 (319 of 361)
Articles from Cincinnati Post, April 1912
https://books.google.com/books?id=vI-xAAAAIAAJ
https://digital.library.pitt.edu/islandora/object/pitt%3A31735035254105/viewer#page/318/mode/2up
Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for March 1912
Part I: Found Speaking in Illinois, Denver, Colorado and Tacoma, Washington
Part II: Found Speaking in Spokane, Washington and in Missoula and Butte, Montana
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She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain -Ken Carson and the Choraliers