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Hellraisers Journal – Thursday May 29, 1913
New York, New York – Mother Jones Speaks to Socialists at Carnegie Hall
From The New York Call of May 27, 1913:
From The New York Call of May 28, 1913:
This was the scene, as described by the New York Call, when Mother Jones was introduced by Max Eastman last night at Carnegie Hall:
Scarcely had her name left his lips then the audience burst into shouting, stamping, and handclapping. Several women surged down the aisle toward the stage and threw kisses to the aged agitator and flowers at her feet.
Mother Jones spoke at length about the West Virginia strike, the terror inflicted on the miners by the gun thugs, and the mass round-up of strikers by the military. She referred to West Virginia as “The Little Russia in America.” She sounded this warning:
West Virginia is on trial before the bar of the nation. The military arrests and the court martial to which I and others were forced to undergo in West Virginia was the first move ever made by the ruling class to have the working class tried by the military and not civil courts. It is up to the American workers to make sure that it is the last.
The comfortable New York Socialist were not spared the ire of Mother Jones:
What galled me most about my confinement at the military prison at Pratt, West Virginia, was the knowledge that a bunch of corporation lickspittles had the right to confine me. But I must be frank and tell you that the second thing that galled me was the silence of many here tonight who should have shouted out against the injustice. I would still be in jail if Senator Kern had not introduced his resolution… No thanks, then, to you that I am here today. Cowards! Moral cowards! If you had only risen to your feet like men and said, “We don’t allow military despotism in America! Stop it!” A lot of moral cowards you are. Not a word of protest did we get out of you, but instead you sat idly by and let these things be.
The New York Call continued:
After Mother had spoken a collection was taken up and $267.80 contributed. It was intended for the striking miners. Mother Jones announced the miners would take care of the miners, and said the collection could go to the Paterson silk strikers.
[Emphasis added.]
From The New York Times of May 28, 1913:
MOTHER JONES STIRS CROWD
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“Moral Cowards,” She Calls Her Hearers
at Carnegie Hall Meeting.
“Mother” Jones, the eighty-one-year old labor agitator who was imprisoned for three months in Wast Virginia and tried by a court-martial there for her activities in inciting the coal miners to riot in the recent violence there, was the central figure at mass meeting that filled Carnegie Hall last night.
Max Eastman was Chairman of the meeting, and the other speakers, besides “Mother” Jones, were Joshua Wanhope, editor of The Call, and Charles Edward Russell. In a box to the balcony, under a banner of the Women’s Trade Union League, sat “Big Bill” Haywood.
Although there has hitherto been little love between Socialists and the I. W. W., owing to the latter’s reliance on direct and violent action, the speakers last night almost without exception said that the “labor class” had “come to its last ditch,” could rely on moral suasion or the awakening of sympathy no longer, and must be turned into “an army of fighters” imbued with “the spirit of revolution.” Joshua Wanhope explained that, saying:
We are past the point where we can teach morality to boa constrictors and ethics to hyenas. We are here to get the power to destroy the power they wield. There is hope for the laboring class so long as they are in it, as was shown in West Virginia, men who, seeing that it is a case of killing or being killed, are willing to take guns and do a share of the killing.
“Mother” Jones told about the West Virginia mining troubles, and the gun-fights in the mountains between miners and Baldwin guards. When she told of the organisation of a court-martial, before which she and other agitators were tried-“the first move ever made by the ruling class to have the working class tried by military and not civil courts”-she turned upon the audience [of mostly Socialist] and shouted:
Cowards! Moral cowards! If you had only risen to your feet like men said, “We don’t allow military despotism in America! Stop it!” A lot of moral cowards you are. Not a word of protest did we get out of you, but instead you sat idly by and let these things be.
She said that she would still be in jail if Senator Kern of Indiana had not introduced his resolution in the United States Senate calling for a Senate commission to investigate the conditions in West Virginia.
A resolution was passed by the mass-meeting calling upon President Wilson and the Senate to further the investigation called for by Senator Kern’s resolution.
[Photograph, newsclip and emphasis added.]
From the New York Tribune of May 27, 1913:
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SOURCES
New York Call
(New York, New York)
-May 27 & 28, 1913, per:
Mother Jones Speaks
-ed by Philip S Foner
NY, 1983
(search: carnegie hall)
https://books.google.com/books?id=OE9hAAAAIAAJ
The New York Times
(New York, New York)
-May 28, 1913
https://www.newspapers.com/image/20347860/
New York Tribune
(New York, New York)
-May 27, 1913
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030214/1913-05-27/ed-1/seq-7/
IMAGES
Ad for Mother Jones at Carnegie Hall, NY Call, May 27, 1913
https://www.theattic.space/home-page-blogs/2022/10/6/the-childrens-crusade
Mother Jones, Binghamton Press NY p4, May 28, 1913
https://www.newspapers.com/image/256805547/
See also:
New York Tribune
-of May 26, 1913: Mother Jones to Speak
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030214/1913-05-26/ed-1/seq-5/
-of May 27th: Interview with Mother Jones
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030214/1913-05-27/ed-1/seq-7/
-of May 28th: re Speech at Carnegie Hall on May 27th
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030214/1913-05-28/ed-1/seq-5/
The Sun (New York, New York)
-of May 27, 1913: Mother Jones Speaks to reporters at Union Square Hotel
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030272/1913-05-27/ed-1/seq-5/
-of May 28th: re Speech at Carnegie Hall
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030272/1913-05-28/ed-1/seq-7/
The New York Call
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/the-new-york-call/index.htm
Max Forrester Eastman (1883-1969)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Eastman
Tag: Joshua Wanhope
https://weneverforget.org/tag/joshua-wanhope/
Charles Edward Russell (1860-1941)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Edward_Russell
Tag: West Virginia Court Martial of Mother Jones + 48 of 1913
https://weneverforget.org/tag/west-virginia-court-martial-of-mother-jones-48-of-1913/
Tag: Senate Investigation of Paint Creek Coal Fields of West Virginia of 1913
https://weneverforget.org/tag/senate-investigation-of-paint-creek-coal-fields-of-west-virginia-of-1913/
Tag: Paint Creek-Cabin Creek Strike of 1912-1913
https://weneverforget.org/tag/paint-creek-cabin-creek-strike-of-1912-1913/
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The Death of Mother Jones · Bobbie McGee