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Hellraisers Journal – Friday September 30, 1921
Mother Jones Speaks at United Mine Workers Convention, Part IV
Indianapolis Convention of the United Mine Workers of America
Sixth Day, September 26, 1921, Mother Jones Speaks, Part IV of IV:
The day is gone in American history when judges can assume the role of lords above us. The pulse of the world is beating, my friends, as it never beat in human history. Not alone in America is it throbbing but the world over. Editors don’t know. They sit in the oflice using a pencil and stabbing us in the back sometimes. Ministers don’t know; statesmen don’t know; professors in the universities don’t know what is going on; but the pulse of the world is throbbing for the civilization that was started back in Jerusalem two thousand years ago. You can not crush a man today; you may put him in jail; you may fill your jails, but the fight will go on. You are living in an electric age. The current is touching the human heart of man, and never again will the system of slavery that has prevailed in the past and that we are driving out now come into the world.
I want to warn that judge today that it is best to bring conciliation to bear than to drive us apart. America will live on, and we are going to march and we are going to bring back the old times of Patrick Henry and Jefferson and Lincoln. It is up to you to stop wasting time on technicalities and get down to business and save this money you are spending. You are going to need it. Put away your prejudice and let us fight. I spoke Labor Day in District 2. Then I went down into Mexico and New Mexico. I got a paper there in which I saw that President Brophy of District 2 was doing business. I wrote him a letter congratulating him. I am glad to know that District 2 has a good president, and, Brophy, I am with you. Whenever you want to raise hell with the other fellows, send for me!
I am going after this fellow (indicating Vice-President Murray) because he isn’t doing business in Pittsburgh as he ought to. That used to be the old fighting ground. Vice-President Murray, you do business there.
And now I am going to say something to the women. The destiny of nations depends upon the women. No nation had ever grown beyond its women. Whatever corruption, whatever brutal, ugly instincts the man has he hasn’t got from his mother. I have studied this for fifty years; I have studied every great man I have ever met and he has always had a great mother. Many times I walked fifteen miles to see a woman after I had met her son.
I want to say to John P. White before I close that I expressed appreciation of him for what he did for me when he was President. At no time did I go to him and explain to him what I wanted done but what he handed me money or endorsed what I had done, and we got results. I could have done a great deal more in West Virginia, but I think from all we can hear that we are going to go forward. Don’t blame the Governor of West Virginia. Don’t be so ready to knife him. There are things no statesman can override. This is a dangerous time. Presidents and Governors must move with care. There is no state in America that has better miners than West Virginia. Some of the noblest characters you have are there and you know it. They live up the creeks and the speakers who appear before them do not always use their language or appeal to them. You must know the life of those men. There isn’t another state in the Union like West Virginia, and the organizers that go out, Mr. Lewis, don’t understand the game. I have gone to Mr. White time and again and have told him to take them out because they didn’t fit into the situation. I don’t believe in giving the miners’ money to anyone who doesn’t bring results.
I asked Mr. Lewis to send a man into Mingo to handle the finance. He mentioned one or two and then said: “What do you think of Fowler?” “He is just the man,” I said, and he gave him to me and we got results. I am interested in the children and in those poor fellows who can’t be reached except by the capitalists’ papers that go in. That is all they know. You must educate them, and I want to say, Mr. Editor of the Journal, that you ought to cut out that picture “How to Dress.” We know how to dress when we get the money to dress with. What you want to tell us is how to pull that money out of the other fellow.
Up in Princeton the men were asking for years for organization. We sent a boy up to bill the meeting but didn’t tell them who was going to speak. The boy had to run away the minute he circulated the bills or he would be killed. I went up with Mr. Houston, the attorney for the miners. We were told the meeting would be in the park three miles and a half away. I said we wouldn’t hold it there, that we would start a riot out there, and then they would say: “Old Mother Jones went out in the park and started a riot.” I said: “See if the city authorities won’t give us a place in the town to meet.” We got it and seven thousand men came there, largely railroad men, machinists and farmers. Seven cars of Baldwin-Felts thugs came down, loaded with whiskey and guns. There was no prohibition men there that day. Houston got up to speak and I saw that something was being plotted. I got up and spoke, but I hadn’t talked more than ten minutes when they began to start the riot.
When I wound up my speech I said: “Mr. Baldwin-Felts guards, I am going to serve notice on you that I will take this thing up to Uncle Sam, explain the matter, and if Uncle Sam don’t protect the children of the nation Old Mother Jones will. They won’t be raised under the influence of murderers like you.” The railroad men were afraid I would be killed and asked policemen to take me away. I told them I was not afraid of being killed, that I would rather die fighting than die in my bed. I want to say to you mothers to quit buying pistols for your children. Train them to something better than a pistol and a gun. Almost every child today has a toy pistol. You began training them to use a pistol while they were in the cradles and the welfare workers never raise their voices about it. The legislature should pass a law that no mother should buy a pistol for a child.
I am going back to West Virginia and I want to ask you, for God’s sake, for the sake of the children, to stand up like men and work shoulder to shoulder. You are the basic industry of the world, you are the basic organization of labor. You and the railroad men get together. Meet with the railroad men and join hands, because the battle royal is ahead and you must get the railroad men with us so they will not haul scab coal, the gunmen, the militia and the guns to shoot us.
I had two guns put to my head on Sunday. I took the matter up in Washington. The company telegraphed to New York for their lawyer to come down and watch me. I went to the War Department and from there to the Navy Department, then to the Fuel Department. The secretary there asked me what I would advise. I advised him to call both sides there and have him sit at the table. They came up. Dwyer, Ballantyne and myself sat in the room. The officials went to vaudeville that Sunday night although they were going to meet the Governor the next morning. You must discharge such men from office right away; you must do in the future as we have done in the past in West Virginia; we must act with the forces of law.
The miners’ organization is the most law-abiding organization in the world. The miners are not law-breakers. They are honest, hard-working men. They break no law until the gunmen get after them. You must go to Congress and demand that the murderers and the gunmen who help rob, degrade and murder men, women and children be punished. I am going to take the matter up with the President and put the whole history before him. I will tell him this question is up to him and to get Congress to protect the miners of West Virginia.
Another thing I want to set right. The International office never called the Cabin Creek strike. That statement was made and it was never corrected. I went up the Creek and if anybody is responsible I am the one and not the International. I didn’t ask the men to strike. The company discharged the men and then the strike was on. Now I want you to hold public meetings and wake the public to what is going on. Not one of the writers who went into Mingo, Logan or McDowell ever wrote the true story. That is why their scribbling has no effect on the public mind. If you show where the real evil lies and wake up the sleepy and indifferent public you will get those conditions changed.
Delegate Wilson, Local 2654, moved that the convention tender Mother Jones a rising vote of thanks for her visit to the convention and for her address.
The motion was adopted by unanimous rising vote.
[Photograph and emphasis added.]
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SOURCE
Proceedings…Convention of the United Mine Workers of America
Indianapolis, IN, September 20 to October 5, 1921
https://books.google.com/books?id=aV9ZAAAAYAAJ
-Mother Jones Speaks – 6th Day Sept 26, 1921, Part IV
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=aV9ZAAAAYAAJ&pg=GBS.PA737
Quote Mother Jones, Rather Die Fighting, UMWC p739, Sept 26, 1921
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=aV9ZAAAAYAAJ&pg=GBS.PA739
IMAGE
Mother Jones, Lecompton KS Sun p10, Sept 8, 1921
https://www.newspapers.com/image/231087027/
See also:
Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones Speaks at Convention of United Mine Workers of America
Part I: “I can fight…”
Part II: “Hang that old woman…”
Part III: Warning for Gunthugs
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The Most Dangerous Woman – Ani DiFranco & Utah Phillips