———-
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday November 15, 1910
“What I Saw in the Anthracite Fields” by Mother Jones
From The New York Call of November 14, 1910:
MOTHER JONES’ LATEST VISIT
TO THE ANTHRACITE FIELDSMother Jones, the friend of the miners, the Socialist apostle, is now seventy-seven years old, but her activities in behalf of the oppressed are as vigorous as ever. Only lately she paid a visit to the anthracite fields. Her account of her visit, written for The Call, is as follows:
What I Saw in the Anthracite Fields.
My work in connection with the Mexican cases being completed at Washington, and feeling assured that the victims of this “bloodocracy” would not be rearrested on their liberation from prison, I decided to visit the boys in the anthracite regions, investigate conditions, and see what progress, if any, had been made in the way of organization and education since the last general strike. My visit to the anthracite regions which border on the inferno followed that of Roosevelt and his ex-labor leader, John Mitchell [ex-President of United Mine Workers of America], who had visited the coal fields, so it is said, for the purpose of making some observations and investigations as to the condition of the slaves whose lifeblood is coined into profits that the few may riot in luxury.
When Roosevelt and his bodyguard arrived at Scranton they were received by the Bishop of Scranton, who wined and dined them and who remarked during the meal that it was the first time in his life he had had the honor of sitting between two Presidents. On the right of the bishop sat Mr. Roosevelt, friend of the workingman. It was he who, in order to show his friendship, sent 2,000 guns to Colorado to shoot the miners into subjection and, if they did not obey, blow their brains out, and who, while president of the United States, sent hundreds of messages to Congress, but never one in the interest of the working class. Not even when the explosion in the Monongah mine sent 700 souls, the souls of wage slaves, into the shadows and shocked the civilized world, did he find it in his sterile conscience to send a message to Congress demanding protection for the men whose labor feeds the mammoth maw of industry and warms the fireside of the world. Roosevelt’s real interest in the working class is only aroused when he seeks their votes. On the left of the bishop sat the $6,000 Civic Federation beauty [Mitchell], pet of the mine owners, decorated with diamonds, gifts from the coal barons.
What would Christ have said if he could have looked down upon this trinity of sleek parasites as they sat at the bishop’s table gorging themselves with the richest of food and the finest of wines, while thousands of their brothers down in the valley “had no where to lay their heads”?
Roosevelt and Mitchell made their investigations of the anthracite regions mostly from the comfortable seats of a large touring car. Waiting press representatives at each point were told that prosperity was rampant throughout the coal fields; that the miners never enjoyed to such an extent the good things of life. What an infamous libel on the truth! Careful indeed was the labor scavenger, the well-groomed vassal of the Civic Federation, to avoid Latimer and other points where the misery and wretchedness of the miners defy exaggeration. Here is where twenty-one of his comrades rest in eternal peace, murdered victims of a murderous mine owners association! Upon the breast of these rugged heroes, true to their brothers, loyal to their class even unto death, there flashed no radiant gem as scintillating evidence of servility that thrift may follow fawning!
Had Roosevelt followed my trail through the anthracite regions he would have seen women old and young carrying sixteen gallons of water on their heads across the coal strippings for a distance of a mile. He would have seen the motherhood of the future dwarfed morally, mentally, physically and spiritually in the mills where they are required to work ten hours a day and walk three or four miles each way going and coming from their work for a niggardly pittance. He would have seen the victims of his commission, whose award was so favorable to the coal barons that they have forced upon the miners ever since poverty and degradation.
In Wilkes-Barre, where they were received by a prominent divine, the outside of the house was illuminated by sixty dollars’ worth of electric lights, while the bloodsuckers were feasting inside. There were forty sky-pilots and some public officials at the table, but not a single workingman among them! Mr. Roosevelt was the guest of the distinguished divine all night, and in order that the monkey chaser might have rest they hid his shoes and would not allow him to arise until the sun had cast its charming rays into the room. While all this was going on, my attention was called to a most diabolical act of one of the coal company clerks, who stripped a young boy of eighteen of all his clothing for owing the company $4 that he was unable to pay just at that time, and the child was forced to go home in torn underclothing, walking over a mile before he got from under public gaze. There are many more horrifying sights that Roosevelt and his lapdog might have seen in their tour of investigation, if they had so desired. Roosevelt’s real mission to the anthracite regions was one of spectacular self-exploitation, while Mitchell simply poodled in the interest of his salary-paying master.
(Just before the fall of the Roman empire I heard of such things happening.)
[Photograph, emphasis and paragraph break added.]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
SOURCES
Quote Mother Jones, Last Great Battle, UMWC p420, Jan 26, 1910
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=WyH1VOBn6BsC&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PA420
The New York Call
(New York, New York)
-Nov 14, 1910, page 6
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/the-new-york-call/1910/101114-newyorkcall-v03n318.pdf
IMAGE
Mother Jones, WDC Tx p5, June 18, 1910
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84026749/1910-06-18/ed-1/seq-5/
See also:
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
https://digital.library.pitt.edu/islandora/object/pitt%3A31735035254105
page 294 (316 of 361)
“What I Saw in the Anthracite Fields”
-by Mother Jones, New York Call, Nov 14, 1910
https://digital.library.pitt.edu/islandora/object/pitt%3A31735035254105/viewer#page/316/mode/2up
Tag: Westmoreland County Coal Strike of 1910–11
https://weneverforget.org/tag/westmoreland-county-coal-strike-of-1910-11/
Hellraisers Journal: Testimony of Mother Jones before House Committee on Behalf of Persecuted Mexican Refugees
Part I Part II
Scranton Truth, Aug 3, !910,
-Col Roosevelt, John Mitchell, Bishop Hoban, Photo, Guests at Dinner
https://www.newspapers.com/clip/63305087/scranton-truth-aug-3-910-col/
The Cripple Creek Strike:
A History of Industrial Wars in Colorado, 1903-1905
-With appendix covering the Haywood-Moyer-Pettibone Case
by Emma F Langdon
Great Western Publishing Company, 1908
(search: roosevelt)
https://books.google.com/books?id=olgpAAAAYAAJ
Tag: Monongah Mine Disaster of 1907
https://weneverforget.org/tag/monongah-mine-disaster-of-1907/
National Civic Federation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Civic_Federation
WE NEVER FORGET: September 10, 1897
-The Lattimer Massacre: The Martyred Miners of Pennsylvania
https://weneverforget.org/we-never-forget-september-10-1897-the-lattimer-massacre-the-martyred-miners-of-pennsylvania/
-for more on Mother Jones v John Mitchell, see:
Autobiography
https://archive.iww.org/history/library/MotherJones/autobiography/
https://archive.iww.org/history/library/MotherJones/autobiography/27/
In big strikes I have known, the men lay in prison while the leaders got out on bail and drew high salaries all the time. The leaders did not suffer. They never missed a meal. Some men make a profession out of labor and get rich thereby. John Mitchell left to his heirs a fortune, and his political friends are using the labor movement to gather funds to erect a monument to his memory, to a name that should be forgotten.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lattimer Massacre by Van Wagner