All strikes are alike;
They are protest against charity,
ignorance, misery, hunger,
industrial slavery, and jails.
-Mother Jones
Hellraisers Journal, Tuesday February 27, 1917
Chicago, Illinois – Mother Jones Arrives to Aid Garment Strikers
Mother Jones states she will aid the garment workers now on strike in this city, court injunction notwithstanding. Most of the strikers are women. Many of them have been brought before Judge Baldwin, the old injunction judge, forced to listen to his endless lectures and sentenced for up to six months in jail.
From The Pittsburgh Press:
PREPARE TO DEAL WITH “MOTHER” JONES
—–By United Press.
Chicago, Feb. 26.-Officials anticipated activities of “Mother” Jones, aged 83, labor leader. When she arrived here from New York to participate in the garment workers’ strike, she was served with a copy of the injunction prohibiting picketing.
[She declared:]
What a lot of rot. Imagine an old judge issuing a thing like that in the twentieth century.
I shall speak in Chicago if I am asked and attend meetings too. All strikes are alike; they are a protest against charity, ignorance, misery, hunger, industrial slavery, and jails.
Miss Gertrude Barnum, who with Theodore Roosevelt, helped settle the kimona workers’ strike in 1913, has also arrived to help the strikers.
[Photograph added.]
From the Chicago Day Book:
MOTHER JONES AND GERTRUDE BARNUM
TO HELP STRIKERS
Two new figures bobbed up into the ladies’ garment makers’ strike yesterday. They are Mother Jones and Gertrude Barnum, arbitrator of labor disputes.
Mother Jones, who has been in jail dozens of times during the 83 years of her stormy life, was served with a notice signed by Judge Jesse Baldwin, which threatened her with a prison sentence if she interfered in favor of the workers.
Miss Barnum, in a letter to the attorneys for the garment manufacturers, said that the workers felt that the cards were stacked against them and they could not understand the use of the injunction.
Attorney Clarence Darrow, representing the striking garment workers, will appear in Judge Baldwin’s court this afternoon and ask that jurist to modify his recent drastic injunction restraining the strikers from picketing. Four hundred strikers, who have been thrown into jail by the police for alleged violation of the injunction, will appear in court with Darrow.
Harry Reutlinger, a reporter for the Chicago American, has been summoned to appear in Baldwin’s court to explain a story that appeared in the Hearst sheet last Friday. In the story Reutlinger quoted Sam [Sol] Sideman, vice pres. of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers union, as instructing the strikers to picket regardless of Judge Baldwin.
———-
[Photograph added.]
From The Chicago Daily Tribune:
MOTHER JONES COMES TO JOIN
GARMENT STRIKE
—–
Scoffs at Injunction When
It is Served on Her
as She Arrives.
—–
Mother Jones, the 83 year old insurrecto of the labor movement, is in Chicago to take part in the garment makers’ strike. Judge Baldwin’s injunction forbidding interference, picketing, or disturbance in the clothing district was served on her as soon as she arrived yesterday.
“What a lot of slush!” she exclaimed as she read the document.
The idea of an old judge issuing a thing like that in the twentieth century!
Never before, she said, has she been served personally with an injunction. Often-she doesn’t know how many times-she has been in jail for infringing on strike injunctions, or violating military laws, but this is the first time her activities in a strike have been anticipated.
Will Attend Meetings.
“I shall speak in Chicago if I am asked to do so and attend meetings, too,” she declared, throwing the injunction on her bed.
All strikes are alike, they are a protest against horrible conditions. They are an outcry against charity, ignorance, misery, hunger, industrial slavery and penitentiaries.
Think of girls working eleven and twelve hours! The strike here is a protest against such conditions as this.
Equal suffrage is rot. Women should rise and say that their sex shall not perish on the altar of gold. Women in Colorado have voted for twenty-five years, and behold women slaughtered in the miners’ strike there two years ago.
Saw New York Riots.
Mother Jones come to Chicago from New York, where she witnessed the food riots last week. She told of her visits to the slums, where women and babies are almost starving, she says, within a mile of the world’s greatest gold supply.
[She questioned:]
Investigate the food shortage? What do they ever accomplish? They make me sick. In New York a charity howler gets $80 a month and an automobile to go around and feel the stomachs of hungry people and see how long they can go without food. Pay living wages and break the grip of speculators on foodstuffs and charity will not be needed.
SOURCES
The American Labor Year Book, 1917-18
-ed by Alexander Trachtenberg
Rand School of Social Science, 1918
https://books.google.com/books?id=4541AQAAMAAJ
“The Strike of the Waist and White Goods Workers in Chicago”
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=4541AQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&source=gbs_atb&pg=GBS.PA77
The Pittsburgh Press
(Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania)
-Feb 26, 1917
https://www.newspapers.com/image/143950855/
The Day Book
(Chicago, Illinois)
-Feb 26, 1917
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045487/1917-02-26/ed-1/seq-32/
The Chicago Daily Tribune
(Chicago, Illinois)
-Feb 26, 1917
(Also source for image.)
https://www.newspapers.com/image/28698633/
IMAGES
Mother Mary Harris Jones, Logansport, IN, Sept 27, 1916
https://www.newspapers.com/image/32403158/
Gertrude Barnum, Hull House, Eve Hld Ottawa, KS, Jul 21, 1913
https://www.newspapers.com/image/93028386/
See also:
“Sol” Seidman according to court records:
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=69lW7I6ZBdwC&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&source=gbs_atb&pg=GBS.PA258