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Hellraisers Journal – Monday January 28, 1901
Indianapolis, Indiana – Mother Jones Speaks to Miners, Part I
January 25, 1901-Convention of United Mine Workers of America:
President Mitchell: Ladies and gentlemen: There are few persons in the Industrial movement who have impressed themselves upon the toilers as has the one who will address you this afternoon. During the long years of struggle in which the miners engaged they have had no more staunch supporter, no more able defender than the one we all love to call Mother. I don’t believe there is a Mine Worker from one end of the country to the other who does not know her name. It gives me great pleasure to pre- sent to you this afternoon Mother Jones.
Mrs. Mary Jones: Fellow toilers, it seems strange that you should have selected the month of January for your conventions. It has a lesson by which you may well profit, and no craft needs more to profit by that lesson than the miners. The month of January represents two seasons, a part of the dead winter and a part of the beautiful coming spring. I realize as well as you do that you have traveled over stormy paths, that you have rubbed up against the conflict of the age, but I am here to say that you have come out victorious, and in the future you will stand as the grand banner organization. My brothers, we are entering on a new age. We are confronted by conditions such as the world perhaps has never met before in her history.
We have in the last century solved one great problem that has confronted the ages in the mighty past. It had ever been the riddle of the people of the world. The problem of production has been solved for the human race; the problem of this country will lie with the workers to solve, that great and mighty and important problem, the problem of possession. You have in your wisdom, in your quiet way, with a little uprising here and a little uprising there solved the problem of the age. You have done your work magnificently and well; but we have before us yet the grandest and greatest work of civilization.
We have before us the emancipation of the children of this nation. In the days gone by we found the parents filled with love and affection. As the mother looked upon her new-born boy, as she pressed him to her bosom, she thought, “Some day, he will be the man of this nation; some day I shall sacrifice myself for the education, the developing of his brain, the bringing out of his grander, nobler qualities. But, oh, my brothers, that is past, that has been killed! Today, my friends, we look into the eyes of the child of the Proletariat as it enters into the conflict of this life, and we see the eyes of the poor, helpless little creature appealing to those who have inhabited the world before it. Now when the father comes home the first question he asks is “Mary, is it a boy or a girl?” When she answers, “It is a boy, John,” he says, “Well, thank God! he will soon be able to go to the breakers and help earn a living with me.” If it is a girl there is no loving kiss, no caress for her for she cannot be put to the breakers to satisfy capitalistic greed.
But my friends, the capitalistic class has met you face to face today to take the girls as well as the boys out of the cradle. Wherever you are in mighty numbers they have brought their factories to take your daughters and slaughter them on the altar of capitalistic greed. They have built their mines and breakers to take your boys out of the cradle; they have built their factories to take your girls; they have built on the bleeding, quivering hearts of yourselves and your children their palaces. They have built their magnificent yachts and palaces; they have brought the sea from mid-ocean up to their homes where they can take their baths—and they don’t give you a chance to go to the muddy Missouri and take a bath in it.
My friends, we are here to tell you that the mothers of this nation will join hands with you in the mighty conflict ahead. We are here to tell you that no more will the mother reach down into the cradle and take the babe out of it and sell it for so many hours a day to their capitalistic masters. You older men here today can go back in memory with me to the time of chattel slavery, when the babe was torn from his mother’s breast and sold; how she wailed and mourned and pleaded with the God of justice to give her a chance to save her child. But, my friends, when that child was taken from her she had no other redress than to lay down on Mother Earth and ask if it was for this reason and purpose her babe was sent to her. But, my friends, we have abolished that, so far as the chattel is concerned; but we have transferred it all to the little white slave.
When I look into the faces of the little toiling children and see their appealing eyes, it touches the tender chord of a mother’s heart. Think of these helpless little things with no one to fight their battles but labor’s hosts! No church, no charity organization, no society, no club takes up the war in their behalf; it is only labor and labor’s force that come to their rescue. I stand here today to appeal to you in behalf of the helpless children. I want all of you to go to your homes and act as missionaries in their behalf. Get your brothers into your organization, bring them up under the banner of a coming civilization where we can take the little children and put them in the school room and educate them for the benefit of the nation.
One stormy night at Coleraine [Pennsylvania] I went down to see the little breaker boys as they came into the schoolroom. The little fellows came to me and said they wanted to get organized, because they had a mighty mean boss and they wanted to lick him. I explained to them that they are in bondage owing to the indifference of their own fathers and mothers. I told them that there was a glimmer of light for them, and that I hoped their condition would soon be better. Then I said to them, “In all the years your father has worked what has he now as a compensation for his years and years of labor?” One little fellow, whose face was old and withered with the hard tasks he had to perform, stood up and looked me in the face and said, “Mother Jones, all my father has is the hump on his back and the miner’s asthma.” It occurred to me that that child was a far better philosopher than the father was. The father had not stopped to think what his compensation would be, but the child had reasoned it out.
We are in an age of reason, we are in an age when men and women are thinking. You know as well as I that a way back when women started out to compete with men, when the machine came in, you stood appalled at that machine, and your first thought was to smash it, not to own it, there came with the machine another competitor—women. You tried to close your doors against her; your colleges and universities were closed against her; she had no ballot to pave the way; she had no way of advancing herself but that true grand character implanted in her by the hand of nature and her confidence in the everlasting future. She loved the human race, she perceived the wrongs that one part of the race was suffering under, and she took down the bars and made you let us in.
My friends, it is often asked, “Why should a woman be out talking about miners’ affairs?” Why shouldn’t she? Who has a better right? Has she not given you birth? Has she not raised you and cared for you? Has she not struggled along for you? Does she not today, when you come home covered with corporation soot, have hot water and soap and towels ready for you? Does she not have your supper ready for you, and your clean clothing ready for you? She doesn’t own you, though, the corporations own you, and she knows that well. She is well aware that she is as yet needed as a tool; but she is rapidly, steadily breaking down the bars, she is entering every avenue. She did not have to go to war, she did not have to take up a gatling gun and a bayonet to do it: She did it by love, by reason, and appeal.
When the Galilean was here did he appeal to men for sympathy, for love? No. When all the world looked dark around him, when men said “Hang him” Mary and the others stood by him and said “We love you.” Woman’s mission here below is that of love, not that of war, and when the whole world turns you out, you come home to your loving wife, or mother, or sister, and they take you in.
My friends, I am not the only woman who is going to take up the battle of the miners. We propose to organize every mining camp in this country, we propose to get our women together and keep them together. We were with you in your battles, we were with you in your darkest hour, we were with you in your prosperity, and I believe we should be with you in your organization. Of course some Smart Aleck will say, “O, but the women talk too much; they tell everything they know!” Let me tell you that if the women had half so glib tongues as some of you men I would hate to be a woman. If you know anything after you have met in the union at night, it simply burns you until you can run over to the boss by the back door and tell him about it. If you can get a smile from these worms of the earth it is the greatest compensation you can get.
I read in the papers this morning about your tendering a vote of thanks to an operator who addressed you yesterday. I want you to stop this. You have nothing to thank them for. I want you to know that they are the fellows who should thank you, not you thank them. What right have you to thank them? When I saw that in the paper this morning I was indignant, and I said to myself, “Those fellows have not got over being serfs yet, and I will have to get after them.” You are living in America, in America where Patrick Henry and Jefferson lived, those heroes of days gone by, and they are the ones you ought to thank.
I want to see an awakening among you. I don’t want to see any more strikes; I want strikes done away with. We have come out of one great and mighty battle. I watched with an eagle eye your chief [John Mitchell] as he sat in that old room in Hazleton [Pennsylvania] weary and worn, thinking hard, and making a friend of no one but his God and himself, thinking only of the 145,000 human souls that he had in his care. Let me say that I looked upon him and I thought, “Your mother is dead, but she has left to the human race God’s noblest work, an honest man.” In the dark hours, my friends, when they brought the militia in—by the way it was that corporation dog of an officer [William A. Stone, Governor of Pennsylvania] that you fellows elected by your votes that did that—in those times he felt that there was a just God, and that the battle we were in was for justice and that we would win.
When I looked at your leader I thought of another man of the years gone by. The other day I took up my paper and read a notice that Martin Irons was dead, and I thought, “You good, you noble soul, you fought the battle of labor well. You died in poverty, you died alone, died deserted as the Galilean died; but you left behind you a record of worth and goodness and honesty that the whole Gould system could not buy.” But he died in poverty. Yes, he died in poverty, but he left a wealth of honor, right and justice behind. I would rather be Martin Irons dying alone and in poverty, and know that there wasn’t a single thing to mark my grave, than to be McKinley or Mark Hanna, or anyone else in the world.
Now I want to say a warning note to you. I have not entered the labor movement today. I have seen it rise and fall. I have seen many of your leaders walk over your backs into high positions and leave you behind in the struggle. I have watched the movements of the capitalistic class. Martin Irons could not be bought, and he went down in defeat. The American Railway Union could not be bought, because Eugene V. Debs would not sell out. My friends, when the capitalistic class cannot buy one of these, its next work is to ruin them. This is their work before you now. They were not able to buy your leader, they could not touch him with their millions. But they will send into your ranks their minions in order to bring on trouble, and they will make it their aim to ruin him. But I want to tell you now that they have a job on their hands.
We have lived a few years since Martin Irons, and we will look behind us now. We have our pickets out, and there isn’t a traitor in the camp that we cannot put our hands on tonight if we want to. I will say here that when the men of this organization sell it out to the corporations there will be women enough in the country to sell you out so you will not live any more. I am warning you to take care of yourselves. Women and children, my friends, are not going to be bartered away any more.
Sitting here on my left, as Mr. Mitchell is on my right, is one near my heart [William B. Wilson]. In the great conflict we passed through last year for three long months not a dollar came into the home for his wife and children. He walked in highways with his feet out through his shoes while he was fighting labor’s battles; and when the Erie Company could not back him down in any other way they thought to buy him. They went to him with their offers. He said to them, “Gentlemen, if you have come to pay me a friendly visit you can have the hospitality of my house; but if you came to ask me to sell my fellow men, there is the door.” That man was W. B. Wilson. I stand here to shake hands with such men; I thank God such men are here. I thank God that you fellows have such men at the helm. Where they are I have no fear of the future.
I believe we will get together and stay together and bury all personalities. We will join hands together for the emancipation of the human race. We do not live for ourselves alone. We are not building here today for now; we are building for long years to come, and the foundation which you lay with aching backs and your bleeding hands and your sore hearts will not perish with the years. It will grow and grow and live, and when the enemies of this organization shall lie mouldering in the grave and the world will have forgotten that they ever lived, your organization and your work will live. The men and women that are with you are with you because they know you are right.
Just think of it! While over in Virginia I got a statement from some of the miners at the Red Ash mine. I got this from the person who heard it read from the books. Fifty human souls were murdered inside that mine. One morning they went from their homes down into that mine, after bidding their wives and children goodbye they never saw those wives and little ones again. They were slaughtered, murdered, and when they were about to be buried the corporation which murdered them had the list of the men called out from the books, and the clerk said, “Two dollars for a suit of clothes, five dollars for a coffin, five cents for a necktie, ten cents for a pair of stockings, fifteen cents for a bosom to cover his breast.” That was all that poor miner was worth to that corporation. Mind you, that did not come out of their pockets. That man had worked four years and a half for them and during all that time he had to pay twenty-five cents a month into a burial fund, yet when they came to bury him the corporation, like the robber it was, put half of the amount into its pockets.
Of course it is a crime to offend the dignity of the gentlemen who compose the corporation by calling them robbers. You must call them gentlemen, I suppose I will be told, but here is one who is going to call them robbers.
[Photograph, emphasis and paragraph breaks added.]
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SOURCES
Quote Mother Jones, Stormy Paths, UMWC Ipl IN, Jan 25, 1901
MJ Speeches, Steel, p4
https://books.google.com/books?id=vI-xAAAAIAAJ
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/viewer#page/26/mode/2up
IMAGE
Mother Jones, at Her Lecture Stand, Detail, Phl Iq p1, Sept 24, 1900
https://www.newspapers.com/image/167226270/
See also:
Minutes of the Twelfth Annual Convention of the United Mine Workers of America, Indianapolis, Indiana, January 21 to 30, 1901
(Note: held at Tomlinson’s Hall, sadly not found online thus far)
https://libraries.catholic.edu/special-collections/archives/collections/finding-aids/finding-aids.html?file=mitchell#series2
Indianapolis Journal p3, -Jan 21, 1901-UMWC to begin 10 am at Tomlinson’s Hall, 1000 delegates, long article re career of Mother Jones.
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn82015679/1901-01-21/ed-1/seq-3/
Tag: Great Anthracite Strike of 1900
https://weneverforget.org/tag/great-anthracite-strike-of-1900/
Tag: UMW West Virginia Organizing Campaign of 1900-1902
https://weneverforget.org/tag/umw-west-virginia-organizing-campaign-of-1900-1902/
Tag: Pennsylvania Silk Mill Workers Strikes of 1900
https://weneverforget.org/tag/pennsylvania-silk-mill-workers-strikes-of-1900/
Tag: UMW Women’s Auxiliary
https://weneverforget.org/tag/umw-womens-auxiliary/
PA Governor William A. Stone
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_A._Stone
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday December 16, 1900
“Tribute to Martin Irons” by Comrade Eugene V. Debs
-from the Social Democratic Herald of December 15, 1900
William Bauchop Wilson
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Bauchop_Wilson
Hellraisers Journal – Thursday March 8, 1900
Red Ash, West Virginia – Explosion Brings Death to Coal Miners
-from The New York Times of March 7, 1900
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We Have Fed You All For A Thousand Years – Bruce Brackney