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Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday January 13, 1914
Trinidad, Colorado – Mother Jones Seized by State Militia, Held at San Rafael Hospital
From the Trinidad Chronicle News of January 12, 1914:
“Mother” Mary Jones, nationally known as a strike leader, is a military prisoner at the San Rafael hospital where she is being held incommunicado. The woman, who was deported from the strike zone Sunday, January 4, by the military authorities and warned not to return to the district under pain of immediate arrest, accepted the defi and returned this morning. She slipped quietly out of Denver at midnight on a C. & S. train.
That she expected arrest is indicated by her action in alighting at the D. & R. G. crossing this morning instead of waiting until the train reached the station. She walked to the Toltec hotel alone and took a room but did not register at once. The fact of her presence became known to the military authorities about eleven o’clock and a few moments later a military detail in command of Lieut. H. O. Nichols entered her room, placed her in an automobile and whirled her away to the hospital at full speed, with a swarm of cavalry men galloping behind the machine.
Apparently the only object of the aged strike leader had in returning to Trinidad was to see if the threat to arrest her would be carried out. It was. “Mother” Jones was apparently not surprised at the action but was loud in her denunciation of the “military despots who stab and spit upon constitutional rights.” She declares she has viloated no law and that she is willing to face any sort of a civil inquiry. “Why take me to a hospital?” she shouted at Lieut. Nichols , when arrested. “I am not sick! Why not take me to jail?” The prisoner made it clear that she was even more willing to be placed in a cell “for the sake of the cause.”
[…..]
[Paragraph break and emphasis added.]
From The Omaha Daily News of January 11, 1914:
Special Correspondence.
Denver, Colo., Jan. 10. “Mother” Jones, a general in an army of 445,000 miners, came back to Denver recently [January 4th] after a campaign in Chihuahua with General “Pancho” Villa. She told of the battle there in a militant fashion, in the straightforward fashion she ever does.
[Said the 82-year-old veteran in the struggle for human rights:]
I was down there for ten days. And it’s the same fight those stalwart fellows are leading there that’s being carried on in Calumet, in Colorado, in every place where private greed had extirpated human right!
They call Villa a pancho-meaning bandit-they sneer at his men as robbers and brigands, but theirs is the same struggle for rights that we fight now in our mining districts! And treat me well? Why those soldiers cared for me even as my boys of the mine camps do. You ask why I went? Because I wanted to see the sort they are. I was in El Paso and went to the interior.
And I’m going to help those fellows, too. You know, up at Paint Creek in West Virginia, where the militia persecuted my boys, we had a machine gun-I had it, and it’s there yet, too-but I’m to send it to the south-to Mexico, and it’ll help redress wrongs there just as it did in the fight against the coal barons!
But maybe you’d better not mention that. They might hang me for treason!
That was an interesting time I had, though. They were just through sacking Chihuahua, and I was interested in the foundries and smelter places they have there. They went right on at their work all the time and didn’t seem a bit concerned about it.
There were land robbers who had millions of acres of land that they had thieved, and Villa soon put them to flight, believe me or not!
I’m getting old now and I’ve fought the good fight. Eighty-two, you know; and when I got back from Mexico the other day and reached Trinidad those brave American “soljers” grabbed me again. Hustled me right to the train at a bayonet’s point. Fine sight I was!
Mother Jones laughed.
Me-82, hair white, as harmless as a “chessy” cat, and eight young fellers afraid to touch me lest I’d pizen ’em! So they sent me up here [deported her to Denver, Jan. 4th].
Perhaps I’ll go back to Mexico where the “bandits” are gentlemen.
[Emphasis added.]
From The New York Times of January 13, 1914:
“MOTHER” JONES ARRESTED
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State Troopers Seize Her on Her Return to TrinidadTRINIDAD, Col., Jan. 12-“Mother” Jones, strike leader, who was deported from the Southern Colorado coal fields Jan. 4 by the militia, returned to Trinidad this morning from Denver. As soon as her presence was learned by the military authorities she was arrested and taken to the San Rafael Hospital, where she was held a prisoner and was permitted to see no visitors.
She left the train at the outskirt of Trinidad and later appeared at a local hotel. She was arrested by a detail of State troops, hurried out of the hotel, placed in an automobile, and whirled through the streets with a cavalry escort galloping at full speed in front and behind the machine.
Several hundred coal mine strikers lined the streets and cheered wildly while “Mother” Jones waved her hand in response.
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DENVER, Jan. 12-Gov. Ammons tonight issued a statement in which he assumed full responsibility for the arrest of “Mother” Jones by the military and declared that she would be held until such time as she saw fit to give her promise to leave the strike zones of the State.
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SOURCES & IMAGES
Quote Mother Jones, Chase No Own State, RMN p3, Jan 12, 1914
https://www.genealogybank.com/doc/newspapers/image/v2:12C601A5C4B97518@GB3NEWS-1478F5FED1489F20@2420145-14776648A6574308@2-14776648A6574308
The Chronicle News
(Trinidad, Colorado)
-Jan 12, 1914
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn90051521/1914-01-12/ed-1/seq-1/
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn90051521/1914-01-12/ed-1/seq-5/
The Omaha Daily News
(Omaha, Nebraska)
-Jan 11, 1914
https://www.newspapers.com/image/744875394
The New York Times
(New York, New York)
-of Jan 13, 1914
https://www.newspapers.com/image/20503810/
See also:
Hellraisers Journal – Thursday January 8, 1914
San Francisco Bulletin-Mother Jones Deported from Trinidad, Colorado
Denver, Colorado – Stormy Petrel of the Strikers States She Will Return
The Rocky Mountain News of Jan 13, 1914
“Mother Jones’ Arrest Arouses Union Men”
https://www.genealogybank.com/doc/newspapers/image/v2:12C601A5C4B97518@GB3NEWS-1478F5FF63718838@2420146-14776648B2F02170@7-14776648B2F02170
Chicago Day Book of Jan 13, 1914
“Labor Leaders Plugging for Release of Mother Jones”
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045487/1914-01-13/ed-2/seq-8/
Out of the Depths
The Story of John R. Lawson, A Labor Leader
-Barron B. Beshoar
Colorado Labor Historical Committee
of the Denver Area Labor Federation, 1942
https://archive.org/details/outofdepths0000unse
-pages 128-130
https://archive.org/details/outofdepths0000unse/page/128/mode/1up?q=mother+jones&view=theater
https://archive.org/details/outofdepths0000unse/page/129/mode/1up?q=mother+jones&view=theater
https://archive.org/details/outofdepths0000unse/page/130/mode/1up?q=mother+jones&view=theater
Tag: Military Despotism Colorado 1914
https://weneverforget.org/tag/military-despotism-colorado-1914/
Tag: Colorado Coalfield Strike of 1913-1914
https://weneverforget.org/tag/colorado-coalfield-strike-of-1913-1914/
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