Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones, Joseph and Laura Cannon Speak to Striking Miners and Families in Michigan Copper Country

Quote Mother Jones My Life Work, Cton Gz June 11, 1912, ISR p648, Mar 1913 —————

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday August 9, 1913
Michigan’s Copper Country – “Fiery” Mother Jones and the Cannons on the Scene

From the Escanaba Morning Press of August 8, 1913:

COPPERDOM IN DREAD
CRISIS IS IMPENDING
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Houghton, Mich., Aug 7.-The general impression in the district affected by the copper mine workers’ strike is that a crisis impending through the presence of Mother Jones and Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Cannon, three fiery orators of the Western Federation of Miners. Persons who have had an opportunity in other strikes to see these people in action say they likely to inflame the strikers and their families to such a pitch of enthusiasm as may result in a reoccurrence of the of the first week of the strike.

The leaders of the strike here, Messrs. Mahoney, Miller and Lowney, have counselled peace in all their recent speeches, have the strikers to preserve law and order and to wait with determination because they are going to win.

But the speeches made by Cannon and his wife [Laura Gregg Cannon] at the Kansankoti hall, Hancock, Tuesday night were certainly not pacific. They aroused more enthusiasm than any speakers previously heard here since the strike opened and gave a good forecast of the result of their later speeches.

The strikers are for the most part phlegmatic Huns, Croatians and Finns, members of races not given to vociferous outbursts. If the Jones and the Cannons of the strike forces can stir these people up something more exciting than has been seen in the past week may be expected.

Mother Jones and Mrs. Cannon have reputations for exciting the women of strike districts to a point of frenzy resulting in rioting. Something of this sort is feared.

An example of the dangerous potentiality in Mother Jones can be seen in the interview given out by her at Calumet Tuesday afternoon [August 5th]. She said:

I’m a socialist, Why shouldn’t I be? That is the party that stands ready to help the working man.

I can’t see the need for the militia. Take a plumber and make him a major and he swells up like a toad and seems to forget that he is a workingman. The struggle is between the employer and employee and the state ought to let them fight it out. The strikers don’t believe in damaging property or the destruction of lives and I always impress on the men that they shouldn’t do damage.

They threw me into the bull pen in West Virginia, but before then, I went with 16 representatives of the miners to see the governor. When they heard I was coming, the governor wired for the fire department and the police and the legislators crawled under their desks and cried, “Is she coming?” The firemen came running up the streets without their socks. I had the devil scared out of the whole bunch of sewer rats. An old woman like me, over 80 years old. They thought I was coming to murder them, I guess.

What do you think the charge was they arrested me on. Stealing a field gun, my dears, and the damn fools were looking for it in the hills for months.

Ah, boys this is a terrible thing to go through. I hope you don’t see the like here. I saw my brave boys, who I know would not commit a crime, taken from their homes to far-away jails while their wives and babies screamed for their husbands. I raised my hand to heaven and prayed for their safe return.

And they talk about the red flag, bless you. Why, don’t they know the red flag was the first flag hoisted at Lexington, that a farmer who didn’t have time to put his shirt on went into the ranks of the bloody Sassenachs [English persons] and waved his red shirt in the air to cheer his comrades. Don’t they know the red bar is the first on the flag, signifying that blood was shed for the union?

The federal investigation in West Virginia never would have come to a head if it hadn’t been for a telegram I wrote Senator Kern while I was locked up in the bull pen. I happened to pick up a bit of information that Senator Kern would be a good man to appeal to, so I wrote him. I told him of an old woman reaching her eighty-first milestone behind prison walls. I made it pathetic and when it was read in Washington, dry eyes were few. The investigation was started and, thank God, West Virginia is in peace. When it is all over I go up and shake hands with the operators. I bear no ill will toward any one.

Following the reception to Mother Jones at Calumet, Cannon addressed a meeting of the strikers in the federation hall. He said he was pleased with the strike situation.

[And further asserted:]

There is no doubt as to the way the strike will end for you men are working so well together and are standing so firm. There is no doubt the way any strike will end when so many nationalities, as here, get together and erase all national lines and unite in one cause against a greedy corporation.

The speaker went on with words abuse and vituperation directed against the mining companies, the militia, the press, General Manager James MacNaughton of the Calumet & Hecla, Governor Ferris and Sheriff James Cruse and pointed his whole statement with the remark:

Get the idea of the one-man machine out of your mines. You have right here in this state a one-man machine that the state from the governor down to little sheriff. The governor has no backbone and the press is under control.

[Photograph and emphasis added.]