There are no limits to which
powers of privilege will not go
to keep the workers in slavery.
-Mother Jones
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Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday December 18, 1918
Duluth, Minnesota – Mass Meeting Supports Tom & Rena Mooney
From The Labor World of December 14, 1918:
DULUTH LABOR IS FOR MOONEY
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Mass Meeting Held By Metal Trades Council
-Telegram Sent to Gompers.
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Mrs. Mooney, wife of Tom Mooney, whose death sentence has been commutated to life, has worked since her acquittal to secure a new trial for her husband.
A mass meeting to protest against the incarceration of Tom Mooney was held at Woodman hall last Wednesday evening. The meeting was largely attended by representative union men from nearly every organization in the city.
Sentiment for Mooney was strong and the meeting lasted until nearly midnight.
William E. Towne, president of the Typographical union, and one of the best known trade unionists at the Head of the Lakes, was the first speaker. He touched upon Mooney’s life and described his earnest efforts to organize the workers, and how the money power had been used against him. Mr. Towne also gave a brief history of Rena Mooney, wife of Tom Mooney.
Duty of Labor.
Following Mr. Towne’s address, W. D. Croker, printer, touched upon the duties of every member of union labor and what was expected of labor in the nation.
[Said Mr. Croker:]
If by December 9, the governor doesn’t grant Mooney a new trial or an unconditional pardon, it is labor’s duty to hold the wheels of production until some one thing or the other is granted this man Mooney.
The next speaker was Mr. Jensen of the Machinists’ union. He also touched upon certain events in Mooney’s life. The last speaker was Jack Carney, editor of The Truth. He cited certain labor troubles in Dublin and the troubles of the English labor party. He concluded with an appeal to the workers to stand by Mooney, claiming that the evidence had been framed, as shown by the recent disclosures made by Mr. Densmore, the agent of the Federal Labor department.
Resolutions Adopted
After the speeches were, over, there was a motion made and carried unanimously that a telegram be sent to President Gompers.
The telegram follows:
At a mass meeting held by the Duluth Metal Trades council, the undersigned committee were instructed by a unanimous vote of the assemblage, to notify you that it was the demand of all unions represented that you call a general strike of all unions affiliated with the American Federation of Labor, on December 9, unless Thomas Mooney is granted a new trial or is given his freedom.
(Signed)
G. H. FRANKLIN,
W. LEONARD,
HAROLD HANSEN,
NELS PEDERSON,
EDWARD O. ADAMS.
Regarding the “history of Rena Mooney” we were able to find this article from November 18, 1918, edition of The Seattle Star:
SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 18.-This is the story of Rena Mooney.
It tells the fight Tom Mooney’s wife is making to save him from execution on the San Francisco bomb charge.
But-it strikes to the very core of the American family circle, and carries to all happy homes the splinting message of a devastated home.
It gets a hold on the heart, somehow or other, in a way no other chapter in the records of American labor does, and seems likely to become the classic love story of trades unionism’s annals in this country.
When Tom Mooney and his wife were arrested after the preparedness day parade explosion, Rena Mooney was one of San Francisco’s leading teachers of music.
Her classes were overflowing. In one class she had 18 pupils. One of her best pupils, a boy just entering his teens, had given exhibitions at the San Francisco world’s fair as a musical prodigy.
A Woman of Culture
Rena Mooney was a woman of culture and refinement-the kind you usually find on a soft couch of comfort, and not battling the sharp corners of life.
She was handsome and dainty. She was a student. On her library shelves were found the poets, the philosophers and the economists-Keats, Hegel, Liebknecht.
But she was not a highbrow. She had married Tom Mooney’s work, as well as his play, and she helped him organize the San Francisco carmen. She made a card index list of their telephone numbers, and did things like that.
And, all the while, she taught her pupils, played for Tom, read with Tom and planned with him for a happier home together in the happier world they were working for, and used to talk to each other about.
Rena Mooney was arrested with her husband. She was kept in jail 22 months. She was acquitted and freed-on the same evidence on which he is now sentenced to be executed December 13.
Immediately she gave up all her time and strength to the task of saving him.
Slaves and Smiles
She is just finishing mailing 2,000,000 copies of the pamphlet, “Shall Mooney Hang?” She has mailed practically all of these with her own hands. She has made herself a slave to a job which ordinarily would have been a year’s work for a roomful of men.
[She asks:]
Why shouldn’t I smile? See the wonderful friends I have made. I would have been helpless without them. I am going to win. Tom is innocent. In a few months he will be free. We shall take up our lives where we left them-richer and better for our experience and stronger in our knowledge how to serve.
Anyone who looked at Rena Mooney, neat, trim, quiet, would feel she must have sensitive tastes and love beautiful things, for her life was the life of an artist. On her workdesk is a telephone book with a cover of decorated cloth cleverly pasted on it because she could not stand the sight of the ugly, pencil-marked pastboard back.
But it is a pitiful thing. Because Rena Mooney lives in poverty and almost squalor, and surely no telephone-book daintily covered can blind her to it.
Her little flat is on a San Francisco side street, Bray st., in the midst of the homes of the poor. From the street the building does not seem an inviting place to live. Inside it is worse.
Usually Mooney’s wife gives 18 hours of the 24 to the work of mailing pamphlets, to save him. Friends come in to work with her in the evenings. They leave about midnight. Then Rena Mooney spends a couple of hours at her bookkeeping.
During her 22 months in jail she began her system of filing all her voluminous mail. She used old boxes, designed for transplanting flowers, as her filing cabinets. She still uses them. Not a cent has gone into office equipment.
Gets Thousands of Letters
In these boxes are thousands of letters from all over the world-from every American state, from England, Australia, New Zealand, Russia, everywhere. The letters are filed alphabetically, according to states and territories. In the corner of each envelope is Rena Mooney’s notation-the name of the letter’s writer, the date received, the purpose, if for pamphlets the amount enclosed, and the number of pamphlets mailed.
Her only recreation is planning the things she and Tom will do together when he gets out. She accepts no invitations. Her explanation is:
I’ll save it till Tom gets out. I don’t want to enjoy anything he doesn’t share.
On the walls of her little, cluttered “office” are two pictures, of her studio as it was in the days of her freedom. Rena Mooney looks at these pictures often, and likes to show them to her helpers. Obviously, the studio was the apple of her eye.
It contained four pianos-a large grand and three uprights. Only two are there now.
But she still holds on to the studio. She cannot give it up. Every two or three weeks she runs up there for an afternoon, locks the door and plays her heart out and tries to forget. Probably she cries there.
But, tho you wait around the Mooney flat for several days, watching friendly volunteer workers come and go and talking to them, you cannot find anybody who is willing to give evidence of having seen Rena Mooney cry. Some there are who “think” or “seem to remember” that they have seen UNSHED tears in her eyes when she showed them the pictures of her studio, but they are not willing even to take oath to that.
Works Day and Night
If Tom Mooney doesn’t hang it will be because labor’s voice is so loud that President Wilson is able to use it to force the retrial he has twice formally asked the state of California to give the man believed by union workers the world over to have been “railroaded.”
And if labor’s voice is that loud it will be because Mrs. Rena Mooney worked day and night, month in and month out, until she had mailed 2,000,000 pamphlets to every labor union in the United States and a majority of the unions in several foreign countries.
Men will write books some day about the indomitable fight of the delicate woman, former artist and student, in sordid surroundings, under the pressure of penury, to save the labor leader whose sentence played a part in the international complications of the world war.
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[First photograph and emphasis in original, all other photographs are from “Shall Mooney Hang” by Robert Minor, 15th edition.]
More Photographs from “Shall Mooney Hang” by Robert Minor:
