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Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday January 24, 1911
Miss Emmeline Pitt Pleads for Aid for Strikers of Irwin Field
Columbus, Ohio-Convention of United Mine Workers of America
-Monday January 23, 1911, Sixth Day-Afternoon Session
Miss [Emmeline] Pitt was escorted to the platform by Vice-President Hayes.
President Lewis–
By action of this convention last week a motion was adopted to extend an invitation to Miss Pitt to address the convention. Miss Pitt is an organizer of the American Federation of Labor and Secretary of the Labor Temple Association of Pittsburg. She has been doing a great deal of work in behalf of the miners in the Irwin Field district. I take pleasure at this time in presenting and introducing to you Miss Emmilinne Pitt.
Miss M. Emmilinne Pitt-
Mr. Chairman and Members of this Convention: It may seem strange to you that a woman would be so vitally interested in a miners’ convention. But in view of the fact that we are still in this endless struggle between capital and labor, it is little wonder that the women of the world today are becoming thoroughly aroused to the industrial situation. If I could bring before you this afternoon a vision of what I found in the Irwin Field a few days before Thanksgiving and a few days before Christmas on my visits to that region I believe your hearts would be sad today. Hundreds of helpless children and helpless women are suffering in that field. You all know of strikes, but I believe there is an exceptionally bad condition there. I want to ask you today as men of labor to extend your interests and your sympathy and your financial support to a continuation of one of the greatest battles, I believe, that was ever waged in the State of Pennsylvania.
Going over the field in the fall, amidst the countless golden harvest fields of plenty, in one of the wealthiest states of the Union, I found those women driven from their pitiful little homes into the highways and byways, and, like the lowly Nazarene, with no place to lay their heads. There have been extreme cases that occasioned many visits there. In one little cemetery on the hillside a Catholic priest has planted a cross above a lonely grave, which tells to us all that every man cannot be bought, body and soul, with a price. Out of the yoke of Egyptian bondage came the redemption of God’s people. Out from under the rod of Israel came a great power, and I believe organized labor will come out just as victorious.
In his history Julian Hawthorne compares America to the century plant, because it blooms once in a lifetime. He says that as the adventurers of the old world pushed their way into the wilderness they found a mighty plant with vast leaves that were tipped with unfriendly thorns. It added nothing to the beauty of the wilderness. But from the midst of some of the plants rose a spike crowned with beautiful flowers. No other flower equalled its lofty magnificence. From the gloom of the untrodden places of earth it sent its shafts to the sunshine of God, but not until it blooms after its ages of preparation do we understand its significance. This lily of the ages may fittingly stand as the emblem of this great organization, which after countless vicissitudes rises to the heaven, revealing the way to those who have lost their way in the midst of oppression. It is the conscious idea of a sublime ideal, the symbol of liberty to us.
I believe today you are going to exercise that great power you possess to help win that field over there, and, Mr. Chairman, I want to say to you, I want to say to you men of labor, unreservedly, unprejudiced, unbiased, it is your duty to extend every necessary help. Let your Executive Board or your executive officers go into that field without further delay. It is absolutely criminal to leave those women and children there, even though they have wooden shacks to live in, under the present conditions. My mission here today is to ask you to extend your help, to cut out all personal prejudice, and to go into that field and win for them that which is right.
Only the other day I took a trip over the Irwin Field, and it was depressing to see the women scantily clad and the children in their bare feet. Today they are in need of many things, although they have been well fed and clothed to some extent. I ask you, if you possibly can, to get together, send your International Board members or whoever it is necessary to send, to bring this matter to some final issue. Send them in there for the sake of humanity, for the sake of those women and children who are sending to you as brothers and sending to me as a sister the helpless cry of the needy ones.
[Photographs and emphasis added.]
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SOURCES
Quote Mother Jones, Greensburg PA Cmas 1910, Steel 2, p83
The Correspondence of Mother Jones
-ed by Edward M. Steel
U of Pittsburgh Press, 1985
-pages 82-3: letter to Thomas Morgan of Chicago
https://books.google.com/books?id=EZ2xAAAAIAAJ
Proceedings United Mine Workers Convention
Columbus, Ohio, Jan 17 to Feb 1, 1911
https://books.google.com/books?id=aRMtAQAAMAAJ
Monday, Jan 23, 1911, Sixth Day-Afternoon Session
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=aRMtAQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PA300
p301-3 — Emmilinne [Emmeline] Pitt
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=aRMtAQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PA301
IMAGES
Emmeline Emmilinne Pitt, Ptt Pst Gz p13, July 4, 1909
https://www.newspapers.com/image/85701726/
See also:
Tag: Emmeline Pitt
Note: re name of Miss Pitt: search with both spellings gives about the same number of returns. “Emmeline” gives more, esp when searching newspapers of the day.
https://weneverforget.org/tag/emmeline-pitt/
Tag: Westmoreland County Coal Strike of 1910–11
https://weneverforget.org/tag/westmoreland-county-coal-strike-of-1910-11/
United Mine Workers’ Convention
Wed Jan 25, 1911, Eighth Day
Resolution to Support Ongoing Miners’ Strikes
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=aRMtAQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PA469
Be it Resolved, That the Twenty-second Annual Convention of the United Mine Workers of America, in convention assembled, continue moral and financial support to the strikes now on in Colorado, Nova Scotia, the Irwin Field [Westmoreland County], Pennsylvania, and Tuscarawas field, Ohio, realizing that a great struggle is being made by the brave men, women and children in their battle for human rights as well as for better conditions and higher wages. [Resolution carried.]
[Emphasis added.]
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There Is Power In A Union – Billy Bragg
“Who comes to speak for the skin and the bone.”