Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones: “Every man should shoulder his gun and start to Colorado”-Speech to Kansas Miners

Mother Jones gave a long speech Thursday, April 30th, in Pittsburg, Kansas, at the Convention of District 14, United Mine workers of America. She came seeking donations for the striking miners of Colorado, and, in the end, the miners of Kansas gave her all that she asked for.

Chairman [John P.] White: Now, this morning I know that I voice the sentiments of this convention when I say that we appreciate the presence here of our great old organizer, Mother Jones. (Applause.)

Yesterday I gave you a pretty strong bump about Colorado, and what you were going to do about the money that you had loaned the national organization, that I plead guilty to being responsible for, so God help you for I put you in the hands of Mother Jones now. (Loud applause.)

A Delegate: I think the brothers ought to put up their pipes, put them in their pockets.

Mother Jones: You should join John D. Rockefeller, you are getting so nice…

[Mother Jones continued]: You see, my brothers, the trouble with us all is we don’t feel the pains of our fellow beings in the great struggle. I wonder if the nation felt horror of that affair at Ludlow? Why, if that happened in Mexico we would go down to clean up Mexico, and it happened here at home and there is very little said about it, when every man should shoulder his gun and start to Colorado to stop the war there. (Applause.)

…No time in modern history has there been anything so horrible as this trouble in Colorado. I know those men in Colorado pretty well. No state in the Union has truer, better fellows; they have made a great fight against the men in power. There is no question about it. The poor fellow that got killed, this Greek [Louie Tikas], when I went to Ludlow, when the battle first started, the tears came streaming down his face, and he said, “Mother, they jumped at me to go war, and I got away and let the capitalists fight their own battle. I am here now, and this is my battle, the battle of right for the class that I belong to.” That summed up the whole philosophy of the labor movement. In other words, it was a battle for freedom for the class that he belonged to. And he said, “Mother, I need a gun.” I said, “You will have one, Louie, if Mother has to take her hat off and sell it, you will get the gun.” (Applause.)

Now, those brave men were the ones brought over, most of them, after the last strike that we had in Colorado; Rockefeller sent his agents to Europe and brought those fellows over. He has been able to crush them, rob them, persecute them until he has made his millions out of their precious blood, and then he goes into church on Sunday and is hallowed by the people of this great nation.

[Mother Jones continued:] I happened to be down-I just want to show you the modern woman of today, not the miner’s wife in Colorado and West Virginia, not  her, but your modern parasite. I happened to be in San Francisco; I went up to hear an orator on the rostrum. He was rather dramatic. I sat there and listen to him, you know, and in my estimation he didn’t say anything that touched the real class war, but when he got through along came a bunch of the cats, and one said, “Dear comrade, we are so charmed; I really thought when I was listening to you that it was almost Jesus that was speaking.” (Laughter.)

Just imagine those women, the mothers of the nation, coming out with such rot in these terrific struggles of ours, when every woman should arise in her right and stand shoulder to shoulder as the woman of the old Romans did 2,000 years ago, when they marched barefooted through the desert to carry the message of hope to their sister women and their brothers. That is the type of woman that has seen the jail and the scaffold and has stood side by side with her brother, working on the battlefields, urging him to keep on in this desperate struggle until victory is ours. It is a wonderful battle….

[Mother Jones continued:] But these men [of the Dawson Mine disaster?]-300 men-were roasted to death while they were making wealth for their master there was not very much said about it. Their own children went to their bodies. The heads were blown off in that mine, and their own children went to look at the bodies and opened the shirts to see if they could recognize it as their father. That was the only way that they had to recognize that it was their own father, and when those bodies were brought out of the mines they were there making wealth for the Philip Dodge Copper company. I said before a mass meeting of the Trades Council of New York, how many of you men went down to the office of the Philip Dodge gang of thieves on 99 John Street; how many of you laid down your tools and went down and told those bloodthirsty pirates, you stop murdering our men or we will take a hand in the game? Not one. They don’t think of that. They can go and play pool and go on to the saloon and get a drink. I don’t object to that if you get it, if you stop there, but when I want money to buy guns they have not got any, to defend the wives and children of these men; they have not got any. All honor to Wyoming, she sent us $15,000.00 right down. I didn’t come here to talk to you. I came here to get after you.

I want every infernal cent that you have in your treasury turned over to go to Colorado to make this fight. Don’t you know, boys, that this fight is the greatest battle, industrial battle, ever fought in America?

…Never in the history of America will we have to put up a greater fight if the miners’ organization is going to stand. You are the revolutionary forces of the labor movement in America. You are the power they are afraid of. You are the power that the invisible government is after; the miners’ organization is the real power of the labor movement of this country….

[Mother Jones continued:] I have stood in Milwaukee, when the brewery workers came to me that time..The brewery workers said, “We want you to go to Milwaukee for us; we have so many hundred girls we cannot touch there, we can’t organize them, and will you give us a hand:” “I don’t know what I can do in there,” I said, “but I will try it, anyhow.”  I went up there. Every time I would undertake to organize those girls the breweries would discharge them, and so I concluded I would go to Cincinnati and put it up to the board of brewery workers. I said, “I cannot do anything, and I don’t want to take your money for hotel and railroad fares unless I bring you results,” and I said, “There is only one way you can get those fellows; the miners are in convention; get them to boycott the beer.”

I showed where they were in jail for white slavery, and the brewers’ wives rose and holloed, “She out to be hung.”

Well, boys, one night at 11:30 in the city of Milwaukee, I was coming from away out of town where I had a notary public taking evidence from witnesses who were robbed in the breweries of Milwaukee for $2.50 and $3.00 a week, who worked in water up to their knees and were getting diseased. I had to change cars. While I was waiting for the transfer car I was so cold-it was very cold-and I didn’t have any more clothes than the law allowed, I will tell you that, and I was backing up against a telegraph pole to keep the wind from my spine, and while I was there a young girl passed me.

She didn’t seem very well clad. It was late, and I wondered what emergency there was that put that girl on the street at that hour of the night, and just as she passed me a man came the other way. She threw her arms around the man, and she said, “Take me for a dollar.” This was on the streets of Milwaukee.

The man on his honor said, “My God, girl,” he said, “why do you do this? What would I do if it was my daughter:” and the girl broke down in my hearing and said, “Mister, don’t blame me; I work over here in a department store; I get $2.75 a week. My father is dead, and my mother is sick. I have two little brothers and a sister. I send $1.50 to my mother; I pay 75 cents for my room; I have 50 cents to spend and clothe myself,” she said; and out of the blood and womanhood of that girl, and thousands like her, we build the machinery that builds the great palaces of the invisible government, and we say it is right.

She was some man’s loved one. He pressed her to his breast before he passed away. She was loved and caressed by some mother, but she is only a sample of the thousands and thousands of working children who are driven to ruin, and we are responsible for it, my boys.

It is a horror to be thought of, and when I looked, or picked up the paper and saw where these sentimental women in Chicago were going to Marshall Field’s and to others of the leading classes, asking for an increase in wages, and telling how much the maximum wage out to be, and how much they could live on, and these women never thought of making Marshall Field produce their books to see the profit they made out of the life and blood of these girls. They didn’t think that far. They don’t belong to the class who is crucified. They belong to the sentimental class, and they must not hurt the feelings of the blood-sucking pirates.

[Paragraph breaks added.]

[Mother Jones continues:] Now, I will tell you what I came out here for. I didn’t know the president [John P. White] was here until late last night. I don’t know whether he would have let me come or not, but I would have come anyhow. Boys, I may never again appear before you. I may not be able to fight many more battles for you, but I stand here on behalf of the babies whose lives went out, I stand here on behalf of those great women who stood the storms of winter while you had shelter, I stand here on behalf of the women that heard the bullets whiz through the little tents that you had furnished them, I stand pleading with you in their behalf to send us the money, and I will tell you now there will not a dollar of that money go to waste. It will bring results. We will with the strike in Colorado, or every one of us will go to our graves in your defense in this great battle of the West.(Applause.)

…Boys, I don’t believe that you have got a man in the miner’s organization, if they knew this thing as I do, but what would give the last dollar that they had, or the last dollar that they can earn for the cause, and don’t discuss the matter, just say the treasury is at the disposal of the national president for use in Colorado if he needs it (Applause.)

…I am going away, and I want to say to the convention I have received letters from the D. & R. G. railroad organization that said, “Mother, we will need you soon, but we will help you now. Anything that you want for the United Mine Workers in Colorado you can have.” The railroad men of Colorado are standing with us. God Almighty, stop this discussion over a few dollars and cents and tell John D. Rockefeller we are going the whole route. (Applause.)

Note: Emphasis added throughout.

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In a show of Solidarity befitting International Labor Day, comes the news that the  miner’s of District 14, United Mine Workers of America, voted to offer up their entire treasury in order to aid their embattled brothers in Colorado. From the front page of the May 1st edition of The Topeka Daily Capital:

KANSAS MINERS OFFER $200,000
TO STRIKERS
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Special to The Capital.

Pittsburg, April 30.-By a vote of 117 to 27 the convention of District No. 14, U. M. W. A., this morning, accepted the resignation of President Alex Howat, at the same time entirely exonerating him from charges of graft with the making of contracts between the mine workers’ organization and the operators’ association….[International President] White declared that although he was convinced of Howat’s innocence, he believed, in view of the sentiment that had been created as a result of the charges, that Howat’s usefulness as president of the district was at and end…

The entire defense fund, approximating $200,000 of District No. 14, U. M. W. A., today was placed at the disposal of the Intentional president John P. White, to aid the striking miners in the Colorado coal fields. The resolution placing the fund at the disposal of President White was passed without a dissenting vote, and without discussion.  The action was taken this morning, immediately following the address of “Mother” Jones, which was devoted almost wholly to a description of conditions in the Trinidad and other strike districts in Colorado. At the close of the meeting a resolution was offered appropriating $10,000 from the defense fund of the district for the use of the international officials in the Colorado strike.

An amendment was proposed withdrawing the $10,000 appropriation, and placing instead, the entire defense fund of District No. 14 at the disposal of President White, to be drawn upon as he saw fit in aiding the Colorado strikers.

The Topeka Daily Capital
(Topeka, Kansas)
-of May 1, 1914
https://www.newspapers.com/image/64081866/

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