When there’s a fight on, I go.
-Mother Jones
Hellraisers Journal, Tuesday September 5, 1916
Evansville, Indiana – Two Interviews with Mother Jones
The people of Evansville were fortunate enough to enjoy the presence of Mother Jones at their Labor Day celebration yesterday. While in Evansville, Mother was interviewed by two of the town’s newspapers-which interviews we are pleased to offer in full.
From the Evansville Press of September 4, 1916:
MOTHER JONES DEMANDS 6-HOUR DAY;
WANTS WILSON
—–Eight-hour day! Huh!
Mother Jones, in Evansville Monday to speak at the Labor day picnic, thinks that six hours a day is enough.
(White-haired, she has, at 86, a complexion 16 might envy-rose and snow she is!)
[She told a Press reporter:]
With modern machinery, all the work of the world could be done in six hours a day…The worker would have time to improve his mind and body.But the railroad brotherhoods have won a great victory. Yet, they’d better look out for the supreme court! Some of the high class burglars may carry the eight-hour law to the supreme court and the supreme court may knock it out. This power to declare laws unconstitutional should be taken away from the supreme court. When congress says that a bill is a law, that should end it.
Congress, in passing the eight-hour law for the railroad brotherhoods, has taught the workers that it could pass a law to give every worker in the country in every occupation an eight-hour day!
Socialist, But She Wants Wilson
Mother Jones, famed as a socialist, was asked what she thought of the campaign.
[She said:]
I think Wilson will be re=elected and I think he ought to be!…I don’t know of anyone we could put in the White House who would do better. Socialism is a long way off; I want something right now!
Wilson went down to the capitol and told the congressmen that they MUST stop the child labor by which our rising generation was being ground into dollars!
What other president did that? I myself got 80 children from the slave-pens of Philadelphia-some of them with their hands cut off by the machinery!-and took them to Oyster Bay as an object lesson to President Roosevelt. But his secret service men kept me out and he never saw those children.
Won’t Object to Wet Picnic
Mother Jones will have no quarrel with the Central Labor Union because they are selling beer at their picnic.
[She said:]
No fanatics have a right to say what people shall eat or drink!…Other people have only a right to give us a chance to develop self-respect and self-control.
I travel a good deal and I haven’t found a dry state yet.
Let the government manufacture all the liquor that is manufactured. Then it would be pure and its sale would not be forced upon anyone. Did you ever hear of anyone opening a corner emporium for the sale of two-cent stamps? No, indeed, because there is no profit in the sale of two-cent stamps!
—–
From The Evansville Courier of September 4, 1916:
HALE AS A GIRL AT AGE OF 86
—–
“Mother” Jones Arrives with Her Advise[?]
to Speak at Labor Picnic Today
—–
HOPED TO MEET SEN. KERN
—–
Tells How He Succeeded in Getting Her
Out of a Jail in West Virginia
—–
Thinks Women Must Solve the Economic Problems
Confronting Country
—–
By ROSE RUDIN“No, they dont.”
And Mother Jones, champion of the United Mine Workers, who is the leading speaker at the Labor day celebration this afternoon at Oak Summit park, paused to let the emphatic declaration work its rugged way into a clear-cut impression by way of answer to my careless, cock-sure:
“The miners always call for you, when in trouble, don’t they?”
[She continued:]
When there’s a fight on, I go…My boys know I’ll come. They don’t have to send for me. I’ve gone for the past fifty years.
And Mother Jones again paused. In her deep tones that sounded conviction, in her erect, solid figure, in the alert glance was the determination of a woman of 24 summers instead of one of 86 winters as the snow-white locks of this aged woman mutely testify.
I caught her at the Lincoln hotel in the act of changing rooms to avoid Main street’s fussy, noisy street cars. She had picked up her suit case and made such a “quick transfer” of all her worldly goods that I was left far behind in this rapid transit from one floor to another.
Speaks of Senator Kern
“I was more than glad to come to Evansville today,” she went on after the suit case, toilet grip and hand bag were deposited and she had settled herself in a chair.I had heard that Senator Kern was to be here. I regard him as one of the most just and able senators in the country. His work on the recent child labor legislation is only an example of his attitude on all questions of reform. He has always labored for the people and not for the high class interests.
“I shall never forget when I first met him,” and the aged woman who calls no place her home, who has slept on mountain side, and prison pallet for “her boys,” looked away out of the window as if upon the scenes of that stirring miners’ strike of Charleston, W. Va.
It was in 1913. I had been arrested on the streets of Charleston by the state militia. I was incarcerated in the military prison for three months. One day Mrs. Freeman Older, wife of the editor of the San Francisco Bulletin, visited me in the prison cell. Her husband had sent her in quest of a magazine story. She wrote it-It was a ‘bully” story, the magazine editors told her, but shrugged their shoulders with “It’s against capital, and we dare not print it.”
Collier’s Weekly finally published the story. It was widely read. Later Mrs. Older met John Kern.
Kern’s Work in Congress
“Can’t something be done by congress? Think of that old woman in prison? Can’t an investigation be made?” she asked the Hoosier senator.
Well, one day some one threw into my cell a Cincinnati Enquirer. In it I read an article which stated that Wall street interests, having an inkling that the West Virginia mine disturbance was to be investigated, had telephoned Senator Kern with the request that the matter be dropped. They neither wrote nor wired, but telephoned the article stated. That’s how I got the name of the Indiana senator. I sent him this telegram:
“From out of the walls of the military prison where I have walked over the eighty-third milestone of my life. I send you the groans, tears and heartaches of men, women and children as I have heard them in this state. Push that investigation and the children yet unborn will rise up and call you blessed.”
I was released from prison that day and the senate passed resolutions calling for federal investigation. Later I went to Washington and saw the mine workers released from prison and a victory won in their behalf.
This typical Mother Jones story (for she has lived through hundreds of such episodes) tells a bigger one-that of a woman with a heart that beats with tender throb for the men and women who toil.
The problem of this age is not suffrage, not feminism, not liquor: it’s the industrial question. That’s the nation’s disease, that has bred nearly every war of mankind, for most wars are wars fought for capital.
Woman Can Solve the Problem
You never can change the situation in which those who toil are illfed and ignorant, until woman is awakened to the economic situation in this country. She is by nature more human than man. When she becomes more enlightened to real labor conditions in this country, she will not rest until every child is well fed, well clothed and well educated.
SOURCE
Evansville Press
(Evansville, Indiana)
-Sept 4, 1916
https://www.newspapers.com/image/139947888/
The Evansville Courier
(Evansville, Indiana)
-Sept 4, 1916, page 1
http://www.genealogybank.com/
Mother Jones speaks: collected writings and speeches
-Philip Sheldon Foner
Monad Press, 1983
Note: on page 519, Foner incorrectly places the first interview in the
Evansville Times of Illinois.
https://books.google.com/books?id=T_m5AAAAIAAJ
IMAGES
Mother Jones, Evansville (IN) Press, Labor Day Sept 4, 1916
https://www.newspapers.com/image/139947898/
Senator John W Kern, IN, 1911-1917
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_W._Kern
See also:
Adamson Act
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adamson_Act
Railroad Brotherhoods
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railroad_brotherhoods
Mother Jones’ March of the Mill Children 100 Years Later
http://www.democracynow.org/2003/7/28/mother_jones_march_of_the_mill
Prohibition
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition
West Virginia Court-Martial of Mother Jones
-by Janet Raye (JayRaye)
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2013/3/10/1188855/-ACM-The-West-Virginia-Court-Martial-of-Mother-Jones
For more on Cora Older’s interview with Mother:
https://books.google.com/books?id=5KEeBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA34&dq=mother+jones+cora+older&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjpuuTe3_jOAhVEax4KHRrwCQMQ6AEIJDAB#v=onepage&q=mother%20jones%20cora%20older&f=false
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Solidarity Forever – Angela Kelly & Troy Coman
-of UAW Local 898, Rawsonville
Lyrics by Ralph Chaplin, 1915
https://archive.org/stream/whenleavescomeou00chap#page/28/mode/2up