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Hellraisers Journal – Friday January 14, 1921
Mexico City – Mother Jones Speaks at Pan-American Labor Congress
From the Washington Evening Star of January 13, 1921:
LABOR CONGRESS HEARS TALK
BY ‘MOTHER’ JONES
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Thirty More Questions Likely to Be
Brought Up in Mexico City.By the Associated Press.
MEXICO CITY, January 13.-Delegates to the Congress of the Pan-American Federation of Labor, in session here, listened today to an address by “Mother” Jones, the radical labor leader, who arrived here last week from the United States. She has been a regular attendant at sessions of the congress, although not a delegate, and yesterday was granted special permission to appear this morning before the federation.
The resolutions committee was busily engaged yesterday receiving motions to be brought before the congress, and when the committee adjourned, John P. Frey, its chairman, announced that a score of resolutions dealing with pan-American activity had been received and that the recommendations contained in the report of the executive committee would provide thirty more questions to be brought before the congress for final disposition.
The congress proper enjoyed a virtual holiday yesterday, the day’s session lasting only thirty minutes.
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[Photograph and emphasis added.]
Mexico City, Pan-American Federation of Labor Congress
-Thursday January 13, 1921-Fourth Day, about 10 A. M.:
Delegate Tobin (presiding):
At this time it gives me great pleasure to present to this Congress one of the noblest characters that we have in the great masses of the workers in the United States. This woman for half a century has struggled amongst the working classes to make the world brighter and better for those who are suffering. She has devoted her life to the cause of the workers, making sacrifices that are almost impossible to explain. She is well-known in every section of our country and in every district in which she visits she brings with her a ray of light and hope. I feel it a very proud privilege and a distinct honor to introduce to you Mother Jones, of the United Mine Workers of the United States.
Address of Mother Jones
Mr. Chairman and fellow workers: The speaker said he was presenting Mother Jones, of the Mine Workers. It is true I have given most of my time to the miners’ organization, but I don’t belong to any individual organization or creed; I belong to the workers wherever they are in slavery, regardless of what their trade or craft may be. I want to say this is something I did not expect was coming to my life while here below—the privilege of speaking and attending a congress where all the elements representing the opportunities of the Western Hemisphere are here to discuss in this meeting the breaking of the chains and bringing in the light that would never darken the world again. We are today passing through a crisis. Many people say it was the war, but let me say to you, my friends, while the war was tragic, it has done a most wonderful work for the world. Bear this in mind, it has awakened the workers in every corner of the earth. From every corner today forces are moving and touching the human heart to all the shores of the world waters, my friends, and if you only read the news and take up the papers, you can see the pulse beating.
It is a great age; it is a great time to live in. Some people call us Bolsheviks, some call us I. W. W.’s, some call us Reds. Well, what of it! If we are Red, then Jefferson was Red, and a whole lot of those people that have turned the world upside down were Red. Do you know that? What is the distinction? What is socialism? What is Bolshevism ? What is I. W. W.? Why, my friends, it is the soul of the unrest that is back of all these movements. Who can satisfy a hungry stomach with a small bite of food? You have got to have the food before the stomach gets satisfied. You can’t satisfy the people today with what they had two or four years ago. They are thinking. Professors wonder what is the matter. Newspapers wonder what is the matter. The churches wonder what is the matter. They are all coming to save us, every one coming along. They have got a dose of medicine for us. Don’t you understand what is the matter today?
The man up in the tower, watching the clouds rumbling all over, knows that before there is a crash of thunder there are clouds everywhere, and so it is today, my friends. There is unrest everywhere, and it is not only in the United States, but all over the Western Continent—it has reached everywhere. The reason is because the world’s workers have produced the enormous wealth of the world, and others have taken it; therefore, when the war was over, soldiers began to ask what was this war for, and why did we give up our wives and join the army. There is discontent everywhere, no matter where you, go.
The truth is reaching the hearts of the workers the world over, and we are in that age; we are in that day; as the shepherds were back in Jerusalem, when they were guiding the sheep along to care for them and see that they were fed. We are doing the same, we are developing the brain and heart of the workers and we are feeding them, my friends, on a logical line; we are not feeding them with stars rotating up in the sky, but with logic of today, and you have got to realize one thing—that we are never going back to the conditions we have left behind. We are in a new age when new conditions face us, and all these things we have got, we are going to keep. Now let me say to you, I know what is your inheritance. I have made a study of all those things.
One time I thought this thing was going too slow for me, and again it was going too fast. I have seen children murdered on the altar of gold. I used to get discontented. We licked the high-class burglars, and the boys wanted to give me something, and I asked them to give me a horse and buggy and a good harness and I would go out and circulate the literature among the farmers, and the boys got a horse, an old blind horse. They got him very cheap and I got my horse harnessed, loaded up with food and got a friend to go with me, and we went through the country and circulated literature, and I thought we were going to save the world over night. Then we moved in another way, and so I got my crowd with me. We realize this, my friends, that you have got to educate the workers in the economic field.
Let me say this to you: There is no army of churches, no foreign home missions; there are no welfare workers; Y. M. C. A.’s; no Salvation Armies, that have done the Christian teaching for the betterment of the nations and of humanity that the trade union movement has done. It has had the enemies of capitalism on every side, but it has moved on regardless. It has faced the jails, it has been subjected to calumny and slander, but it has moved onward and upward and forward. Do not divide your forces. Bring in new blood and get together. Get together on the economic field. Now we have courts in America and they put us in jail, but we get out again and they can’t muzzle us, and we keep on talking and go on educating. We are not afraid of courts. The courts are what we make them, and when we get advanced enough we will tell Mr. Judge to take a back seat. But we haven’t got that far yet, and this delegation is having a mighty mission to fulfill. We have got to bear this in mind. Why, all the world is centered on this congress, from all over the world they are looking at us here today.
Now, why am I in Mexico? I have perhaps to explain to you I was here when President Madero was elected and a very prominent Mexican in New York who had to leave his country came to talk matters over with me for two hours. He said, “I wish you would go to Mexico.” I took it up with the President of the Miners, I got one of the metal miners and one of the coal miners to come with me, and we came down here [in 1911]. We spent some time at the Palace. We spent a couple of hours with President Madero, and I want to make a statement here; I never in all my life came in contact with a more noble human character than I consider President Madero to have been. I sat over two long hours with him, and he said to me, “Mother: Come down to Mexico; organize the miners; put them in the miners’ union.” But I said: “Mr. President, if I come down and do what I can at Cananea, the big American interests in all those mines will arrest me and put me in jail.” President Madero said: “If they do I will come down and make them take you out.”
Now this is the situation today, my friends, and you are marching on. No man living would ever have thought four years ago that you in Mexico would be where you are today. You are beginning to pave the way for a stable government of the people, and I want to ask you to do all you can to render all the faithful assistance you can to the noble men you have got in office now. I have studied them all, my friends, and there will not be an invasion. I want to tell you that now there will be no invasion, that Mexico will be yours. This congress will stop that invasion, if it does nothing else, and the oil trust nor none of those will come to capture this nation. I know that; I know what I am talking about, so it is up to you to stand like men; go on with the message from this congress to your people. I want to tell you something: Stop this thing of throwing stones at each other; it is a horrible disease today in the labor movement. The capitalists are doing their noble work, as they look at it. They are poisoning one against the other.
Now the world was not made in a day. Mr. Tobin, Mr. Gompers nor Mr. Nobody else has not got the making of this thing. It is the workers themselves, and when the workers solidify the world will rise, my friends. As long as you permit the capitalists to keep you divided, calling each other names and poisoning each other, you are going to make no progress. Cut out this nonsense; get down to business and move along with the army.
Now we have got a state over in West Virginia, the most remarkable state in the union, that does some remarkable fighting. We use the force of law wherever we can, but if we are forced to use the law of force, if the other fellow makes us, we do; we don’t offer apologies for doing it. We all have a gun, and we know how to use it; we don’t do anything with it unless we are called on to do so. We are moving on, and we have better homes for our children, better playgrounds and we have time to educate and agitate.
We are united against a common enemy. Now we must stop all this ramble, every day going along, every day battling wherever we are as we go along. We are moving, my friends, and are going to keep that battle on and we can say to you miners of Mexico and the miners of the United States: “Unite!” I speak so much about the miners, because mining is the basic industry and the miners are the federated army in the labor movement of America. I have learned them, and for that reason I remain with them. Again I am going to tell you, no good is coming from uplift. It is not coming from the top, it is coming from here coming from below. It is doing this all over the world, and so you got this start two years ago. It has been traveling slowly around the world, and now it has reached the Western Hemisphere. It is the cause of human freedom, and we are prepared to enter the gate when that gate opens and the sun shines in that day that is coming.
There are many ideas brought in by capitalism to fool the workers. Capitalism knows the game thoroughly, for it has the time and the means to build the machine, and we don’t. Now, I have gone over the country, I have been down here in Mexico and up in Canada and over in Europe and as for taking back water, the guns of capitalism can’t make me do it. I fight for your children, and your women are to blame for lots of wrongs. I am going to be honest with you. If you raise the child properly we would have no murders and we would not have to resent war, because nobody would go to war. There would be more time in the home to develop the coming generations, plant the human feeling in their breast and show them their duty. If they spend their time in clubs, suffragette and welfare work, we will be our own welfare workers. We want the right of happy homes. We want a noble mankind, a great womankind; that is what we are after.
The American Federation of Labor can do more to advance the nations, to plant Christianity in the bosom of mankind than all the churches and all your institutions. I have had some experience, men and women; I don’t think there is anyone else that has had to go through more than I have. I know that this institution of the American Federation of Labor is the one institution that is leading the nations upward and onward to the final goal. This may be my last visit to Mexico. My days are closing in. I want to say to you, young men, there is a mighty task to perform. The world never before had such a mission for you as it has now. It has granted that opening for you to enter a new civilization that will make the millions and thousands happier. I stand here pleading with you as one of you to stand together on the solid ground for industrial freedom for yourself. You are here for a purpose. You are here to make your home better. And in the days to come when you have departed the loved ones left behind will come over your grave and with the birds above they will sing that beautiful song: “He did well; he did his work for us; because of what he did we are here to kiss the ground he is in.”
Oh, men, the stories I could tell you and this convention gives me new life. There is sitting behind me a young man (Fred Mooney, of West Virginia) who was nothing but a child when I first saw him. He spent fourteen years in the subterranean caverns of earth for twenty-five cents from his master for fourteen hours a day in the darkness. He dug the wealth and he sent it out. Today he is the secretary of nearly 70,000 miners. I schooled them; I educated them; I used to give them Bolshevist literature long ago; yes, I used to give them Bolshevist literature. We didn’t call it that then. I didn’t name it for you.
My friends, you are here to unlock the doors to the coming age. I knew that poor man sitting there before me when he went barefoot in West Virginia many years ago. I have known Mr. Tobin many long years. I have known this man here (James Lord) with the red head, since he was a kid. I have hammered him often. I know them all, but I want to say to you here that you could not get better, truer men than they are. I want you to shake hands and when you adjourn this mighty convention, the greatest event in history, I don’t think in all the ages of time there ever was a gathering as important as this is. It will go down in the ages of history. Unite your forces, stand shoulder to shoulder. Come up here and shake hands with Mr. Gompers. Shake hands with the boys.
We are going on; we are going on for a better world; we are going to carry the message to Central and South America. We are going to carry the message that will conquer the common foe of humanity. We are going to take over the industry. We are going to take the money from the robbers that have robbed ; yes, we are going to do business. I am trying to speak clearly. We have got the greatest, finest organization, but the robbers are trying to get the wealth, and we want to help you stand together. Some men have been thinking that my days are counted. I have more fight in me than ten years ago. You, South Americans, particularly, stand together now solidly. I am coming down to South America some day. Keep your heads level and build your organizations. Stand together, let nothing divide you, and make every part of this hemisphere a fit place for men and women and children to live in.
[Paragraph breaks and emphasis added.]
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SOURCES
The Evening Star
(Washington, District of Columbia)
-Jan 13, 1921
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1921-01-13/ed-1/seq-10/
Report of the Proceedings of the Third Congress of the
Pan-American Federation of Labor, Held in Mexico City, Mexico,
January 10th to 18th, inclusive, 1921
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=coo.31924003670712&view=2up&seq=1
Pages 72-76: Jan 13th, Address of Mother Jones
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=coo.31924003670712&view=2up&seq=74&q1=mother%20jones
IMAGE
Mother Jones, NYC Dly Ns p12, May 7, 1920
https://www.newspapers.com/image/391486555/
See also:
Tag: Pan-American Federation of Labor Congress of 1921
https://weneverforget.org/tag/pan-american-federation-of-labor-congress-of-1921/
Tag: Cananea Copper Strike of 1906
https://weneverforget.org/tag/cananea-copper-strike-of-1906/
WE NEVER FORGET:
The Cananea Martyrs of June 1906
-re fear of possible invasion of Mexico by US in 1921, see:
Mexico on the Verge
by Emile Joseph Dillon
H. Doran Company, 1921
https://books.google.com/books?id=acpmAAAAMAAJ
Chapter XIX: “The Public Debt and National Criminality”
“No nation can live longer in peace than its neighbour pleases…..”
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=acpmAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PA225
Jan 13, 1921-WDC Evening Star:
Mother Jones Speaks at Congress of Pan-AFL, Mexico City
https://www.newspapers.com/clip/67607440/evening-star/
The Speeches and Writings of Mother Jones
-ed by Edward M. Steel
University of Pittsburgh Press, 1988
https://books.google.com/books?id=vI-xAAAAIAAJ
-Pages 232-7 (255 of 361)
Jan 13, 1921-Mexico City: “Speech at Meeting of t
he Pan-American Federation of Labor”
https://digital.library.pitt.edu/islandora/object/pitt%3A31735035254105/viewer#page/254/mode/2up
Mother Jones Speaks
Collected Writings and Speeches
-ed by Philip S Foner
Monad Press, 1983
(“i belong to the workers”)
https://books.google.com/books?id=OE9hAAAAIAAJ
https://books.google.com/books?id=T_m5AAAAIAAJ
The Autobiography of Mother Jones
Charles Kerr, Chicago, 1925
https://archive.iww.org/history/library/MotherJones/autobiography/
Chapter 27 – Progress in Spite of Leaders
https://archive.iww.org/history/library/MotherJones/autobiography/27/
page 238:
I was ninety-one years old when I attended the Pan-American Federation of Labor held in Mexico City in 1921. This convention was called to promote a better understanding between the workers of America, Mexico and Central America. Gompers attended as did a number of the American leaders.
I spoke to the convention. I told them that a convention such as this Pan-American Convention of labor was the beginning of a new day, a day when the workers of the world would know no other boundaries other than those between the exploiter and the exploited. Soviet Russia, I said, had dared to challenge the old order, had handed the earth over to those who toiled upon it, and the capitalists of the world were quaking in their scab-made shoes. I told them of the national farce of prohibition in America.
“Prohibition came,” said I, “through a combination of business men who wanted to get more out of their workers, together with a lot of preachers and a group of damn cats who threw fits when they saw a workingman buy a bottle of beer but saw no reason to bristle when they and their women and little children suffered under the curse of low wages and crushing hours of toil.”
“Prohibition,” said I, “has taken away the workingman’s beer, has closed the saloon which was his only club. The rich guzzle as they ever did. Prohibition is not for them. They have their clubs which are sacred and immune from interference. The only club the workingman has is the policeman’s. He has that when he strikes.”
I visited the coal mines of Coalhulia and saw that the life of the miner is the same wherever coal is dug and capital flies its black flag. As I look back over the long, long years, I see that in all movements for the bettering of men’s lives, it is the pioneers who bear most of the suffering. When these movements become established, when they become popular, others reap the benefits. Thus it has been with the labor movement.
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Children of Mother Jones – Pete Duffy