Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones Arrives in New York City to Assist Street Car Strikers

You ought to be out raising hell.
This is the fighting age.
Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones

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Hellraisers Journal, Friday October 6, 1916
New York, New York – Mother Jones on Scene of Turbulent Strike

Mother Mary Harris Jones, Decatur Herald IL, May 14, 1916

Mother Jones arrived in New York City on Tuesday evening to assist the striking street carmen who are now threatened with the importation of scabs. At noon on Wednesday, she spoke to the strikers at Lyceum hall. According to The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, she said, in part:

Boys, I have come to New York to help you win your fight for better homes, to win more time in them and more comfort in them. You’ve been working here for 25 cents an hour for a lot of high class burglars who reward you if you are good boys by giving you another cent and hour. A lot of good a cent will do you.

O, boys, boys, there are so many of you and so few of the high class burglars. Get together and you can lick —- out of them. You can do it without the women but to make sure, have the women with you.

From The New York Times of October 4, 1916:

WOMEN PLAN PARADE HERE
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Gompers Sees Leader Fitzgerald and
Says Strike Is In Good Hands.
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…Wives and daughters of striking street car men in New York City are to take part in a sympathy campaign which has succeeded the general strike in plan arranged by the by the labor leaders. According to an announcement made last night by the car men’s union, women will parade next week and a demonstration in Union Square will follow.

The parade is part of a program mapped out by the labor leaders in an endeavor to change the public’s attitude toward the strike. The women will meet in Mozart Hall, 328 East Eighty-sixth Street, on Thursday, to arrange the details of the parade.

Samuel Gompers, President of the American Federation of Labor, conferred with William B. Fitzgerald, organizer for the strikers, at the Hotel Continental yesterday. He refused to say what had been discussed, but said referring to Mr. Fitzgerald, “The street car strike is in good hands.”

“Mother” Jones, prominent as an agitator in coal strikes, arrived here last night to take part in the car strike. Her address and the nature of her purposed activities were kept secret…

[Photograph added.]

From The New York Times of October 5, 1916:

NEW ROCHELLE ALSO KILLS CARMEN’S LAW
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Council Follows Example of Mount Vernon
as Men Hiss-Strike Still Waning.
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After a session which lasted until mid-night last night the New Rochelle Common Council followed the example set by Mount Vernon and rescinded the fifteen-day anti-strikebreaker ordinance by a vote of 6 to 2. Car strikers filled the Aldermanic Chambers and hissed the Councilmen, but were held back by their counsel, Lewis Fridiger.

While Mayor Fiske and Chief of Police Silverstein of Mount Vernon prepared yesterday for the operation of street cars by strikebreakers tomorrow, business agents of the building trades met in New York and ended all talk of a sympathy strike in Manhattan by tabling the matter indefinitely, thus again centering the car strike in Westchester County, where it started.

“Mother” Jones, who has been an agitator in many strikes and who recently was brought here from the West, addressed a meeting of street car men in Lyceum Hall yesterday, telling how violence had succeeded in many strikes in which she had taken part, union official, said the strikers would not resort to intimidation. Others, however, were not so sure the introduction of strikebreakers would not cause trouble. The Mount Vernon Common Council’s amendment to the so-called fifteen-day ordinance takes effect tomorrow instead of today, as had been announced.

After a period of comparative quiet, renewed violence in connection with the strike broke out in Manhattan last night. There were attacks on surface cars and elevated trains in which more than a dozen persons, many of them women, were injured.

Several persons were trampled and bruised after someone pulled the emergency cord of a Third avenue elevated train as it was approaching the Forty-second street station.

The train jolted to a stop at the station, and the cars were emptied in the midst of wild fighting and confusion. A girl, who said she was Mary Iria of 2386 Arthur Avenue, the Bronx, was shoved through a window and badly cut by glass.

Four persons were injured later by stones and bricks thrown at a Union Railway Company car on Willis Avenue, near 136th Street. A band of about 300 strikers or sympathizers attacked the car as it was approaching the crossing.

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[Photograph added.]