Hellraisers Journal – Thursday September 29, 1921 Mother Jones Speaks at United Mine Workers Convention, Part III
Indianapolis Convention of the United Mine Workers of America Sixth Day, September 26, 1921, Mother Jones Speaks, Part III of IV:
Muncie Morning Star September 27, 1921
The gunmen were driven out of there [Cabin Creek, West Virginia] and there has been peace ever since. They were driven out of Paint Creek, where they had sent a death special with thirty deputy sheriffs on board. When they wanted that special car equipped to send up the mountain the painters at Huntington said they wouldn’t paint it. The machinists said they wouldn’t equip it. Some other men were asked to do it and they said: “We will talk about it tonight and ask the Lord”—they were Holy Rollers. Well, the Lord must have told them to do it because in the morning they equipped the train and later that armored car fired into the tents of the strikers.
Here are the machine guns that were turned on us (exhibiting a picture). I went up to speak to the boys and the guns were turned on them. I didn’t see them until I got on the track. There were twenty-five of those gunmen who turned on those law-abiding citizens. I put my hands on the guns. One fellow told me to take my hands off the gun. I said: “No, sir; my class go into the bowels of the earth to get the materials to make these guns and I have a right to examine them. What do you want?” He said: “We want to clean out those fellows, every damn one of them.” I told him they were not doing anything wrong, that they were only trying to earn money for their wives and children. I told him if they shot one bullet out of that gun the creek would be red with blood and theirs would be the first to color it. They asked what I meant and I told them I had a lot of miners up above who were fully armed. There was nothing up the mountains but a few rabbits, but we scared hell out of them! We organized the men there. We have them solid to this day.
Those are the guns they sent across seven states to Colorado when the men there struck. The railroad men hauled them. Those are the guns that murdered the women and children at Ludlow, Colo. Here are the Baldwin thugs (showing several pictures). Here are some of the boys who were killed. Some young men joined the militia in Colorado, but when they found they were called out to turn their guns on the miners they went home. The mine owners said they would have to have an army. Here they are in this picture. They were not citizens of the state. The laws of Colorado said a man must be a citizen before he could put on the uniform, but these were the private armies of overlords and they kept committing crimes against the miners and their families until the horror of Ludlow shocked the country. Here is the picture of the children who were murdered.
After the horror took place at Ludlow Mr. Rockefeller asked me about it in New York. I said my suggestion would be for him to go out and look into conditions. He did and he was horrified at what he found out there. We drove those people out of Colorado — there are no Baldwin thugs there today.
When we had the Matewan fight they came down to throw the people out of their houses without any warrant of law. Two of those men who shot the people in Matewan had been in Colorado. Your women had the ballot in Colorado for twenty-eight years; there was one in the Senate of that state, but they never raised their voice against this infamy. What good is the ballot if they don’t use it? They put the most infamous men in office, for they stood for the killing of those children. I put in twenty-six days in a cellar under the courthouse, where they had me locked up, and when a major came to me and said he would give me money to leave the state I told him he and the Governor could go to hell. The major got a fine place later for being so docile.
This war is going to go on until you bring it up to Congress. There would have been a great many more murders, Mr. White knows, if he hadn’t stood behind me and helped me. He gave me money often to go places; he never turned me down and he knows I always got results. Senator Kern spoke about these things on the floor of the Senate and a committee was appointed to come down. No man ever stood on the floor of the Senate in Washington who did more for the working class than Senator Kern of Indiana, but the workers turned him down when the next election came.
A great deal more might have happened if Mr. White hadn’t stood behind me in every move I made. Every one of our men was turned out and we never hired a lawyer. I don’t believe in lawyers. I defy your bookkeepers to show one five-cent piece that was ever spent by me for a lawyer. I wouldn’t allow it—I fight my own battles every time. If we weren’t so ready to hire lawyers and sky pilots we would do a great deal better than we are doing.
You are not going to settle this question in West Virginia. It will grow and grow and reach into other states unless you demand of Congress to do away with private armies. That system is eating the vitals out of the honor of the nation. The father of the family is robbed; the money he honestly earns is paid out by the overlords to these gunmen, and the children are raised up under the influence of murderers and robbers and thugs. Your churches don’t do anything about it; your welfare workers, your social settlement workers don’t do anything about it. Your temperance workers say you can not have a drink. Well, we will have all the drinks we want and not say a word to you about it. You can introduce resolutions from now until doomsday; you can go begging to Congress—nobody has any respect for a beggar; you can go to Congress and tell the Congressmen you want this thing changed, that you want West Virginia put on the map of the United States.
The Governor can not do it because he belongs with the interest. The men in the state legislature can not do it because if they lose those jobs they can’t get any others. You are to blame and nobody else. You have got the power to change it. Be men enough to arise and do it. West Virginia is coming back and things will be straightened out there. I see the court has put on another injunction.
President Lewis: Just applied for it.
Mother Jones: Well, didn’t they put one on you before? In Washington the telephone company wanted to extend their lines and they sent their men over into old Virginia. The men began digging a hole one morning near a farmer’s place. The farmer asked what they were digging a hole for. They said it was to plant telephone poles. The farmer said: “This is my ground; who told you to plant those poles?” They said the telephone company paid them to do it.
“But this is my ground,” said the farmer. “That doesn’t make any difference, the telephone company is a trust and can get the ground when they want it.” The farmer said: “You get out of here.” They wouldn’t go and the old fellow got a gun and told them they had better leave. They jumped over the fence and left. He wanted them not to come back any more.
In two or three days the men came back. The old fellow looked them over and said: “Didn’t I tell you not to come here?” “Yes,” they said, “butthis time we have got you. We have an order of the court and it gives us permission to plant these poles. You can not do anything about it. Read the order.”
The farmer read the order, scratched his head for a minute, then went to the stable and unchained an animal he had in there. He led him out and said: “Sic ’em! sic ’em!” The bull went tearing down the road and over the fence went the telephone men. The old fellow went to his porch and began smoking. They asked him to chain the bull up. He said: “I haven’t anything to do with the bull.” They asked him again to call the bull off that they had an order of the court and they had read it to him. The old farmer said: “Yes, but why in hell don’t you read it to the bull?”
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