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Hellraisers Journal – Friday September 21, 1900
Mother Jones in Pennsylvania: Great Strike Forced by Starvation Conditions
From the Philadelphia Times of September 17, 1900:
NO “FULL DINNER PAIL” FOR ANTHRACITE MINERS
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Mother Jones Says the Great Strike Was Forced on
the Workmen by Actual Starvation and Suffering.
——-Written for The Times by “MOTHER” MARY JONES,
the Woman Labor LeaderCARBONDALE, September 16.
Questions have been asked by hundreds, who are not familiar with the matter, why the miners have struck. After visiting nearly every mine in the anthracite region I think I am enabled to write intelligently on the subject, and I can say truthfully that they were forced to act by starvation.
For years the wages of the men have been falling lower and lower, while the combinations of capital have been forcing the prices of the necessities of life upwards, until, taking these two facts jointly, the mine worker to-day does not get more than one-half of what he did a few years ago for his labor. In fact, the trusts and combinations have made the conditions such that the miner had to strike or starve.
In every town I have visited I found that it is with only an economy so rigid that it is unknown outside of the coal fields, that the majority of the families manage to exist at all. The “full dinner pail” is something that is unknown in this region. The term “full dinner pail” suggests plenty of meat and bread and vegetables. It suggests thorough and robust living, but as are many other things related of the mine workers, the assertion that they have such food is miserably false. The “full dinner pail” means that, though the tin may shine throughout the furnishing of a tidy house wife, inside, instead of roast beef and vegetables and other things, there are usually a couple of slices of dry bread and a small piece of ham or pork. The whole would make a poor sandwich. The wife has to strive hard to make even this meagre fare last through the month. With flour fifteen per cent. higher than four years ago, beef ten per cent. higher, sugar two and three cents a pound more, pork ten per cent. higher, and all other food as costly, and with average wages down to less than one dollar a day for the year around, the readers of The Times have the real cause of the strike.
MARY JONES
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[Photograph of Mother Jones and emphasis added.]
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SOURCES
Quote Mother Jones, If war Shamokin Sep 8, Phl Iq p2, Sept 9, 1900
https://www.newspapers.com/image/167217933/
The Times
(Philadelphia, Pennsylvania)
-Sept 17, 1900
https://www.newspapers.com/image/53319961/
IMAGE
Mother Jones, Kenosha Ns WI p7, June 26, 1900
https://www.newspapers.com/image/595263678/
See also:
Tag: Great Anthracite Strike of 1900
https://weneverforget.org/tag/great-anthracite-strike-of-1900/
Sept 18, 1900-Philadelphia Inquirer: Army of Miners Begins Monster Strike in This State
https://www.newspapers.com/clip/57824554/sept-18-1900-philadelphia-inquirer/
Sept 18, 1900-Philadelphia Inquirer: News re Miners’ Strike (cont.); Mother Jones in Locust Gap
https://www.newspapers.com/clip/57824875/sept-18-1900-philadelphia-inquirer/
Sept 19, 1900-Philadelphia Inquirer: Miners’ Big Strike Spreads; Photo of Speech by Gompers
https://www.newspapers.com/clip/57825128/sept-19-1900-philadelphia-inquirer/
Sept 19, 1900-Philadelphia Inquirer: Miners’ Big Strike (cont.); Mother Jones at Trevorton
https://www.newspapers.com/clip/57825407/sept-19-1900-philadelphia-inquirer/
Sept 20, 1900-Philadelphia Inquirer: Miners Are Determined re Anthracite Strike
https://www.newspapers.com/clip/57825673/sept-20-1900-philadelphia-inquirer/
Sept 20, 1900-Philadelphia Inquirer: Miners Determined (cont); Photo Dilcher, MJ at Shenandoah
https://www.newspapers.com/clip/57825951/sept-20-1900-philadelphia-inquirer/
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