—————
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday May 2, 1914
Pittsburg, Kansas – Mother Jones Speaks at Convention of U. M. W. A., District 14
From the Pittsburg Workers’s Chronicle of May 1, 1914:
Yes, she swears. Says “dam” and “hell” and other such words. That’s Mother Jones. But did you ever hear people swear when it sounded like a benediction or a prayer? Mother don’t swear like other folks. Some way or other her swear words are more like poetry than vulgarity. Ask ANYONE who ever heard her.
She spoke to the delegates at the convention yesterday morning and not a miner in that hall will ever forget her message. Among other things she said:
I was asked by the congressional committee if I was opposed to sending the federal troops into Colorado, “I certainly am” I said. I am deadly opposed to bayonets being sent into any strike district where an industrial conflict is being waged. The miners in Colorado have had bayonets for months. They are not needed. Justice is what they want, not bayonets.
Out of the past eleven months I have served more than six of them in the bastiles of West Virginia and Colorado. I have seen the suffering of these wretched strikers, their ragged and defenseless wives and their starving babies in these strike districts and human pen or tongue will never be able to adequately portray the awful scenes enacted there.
She told of the Greek, Louis Tikas, whose truce with the gunmen of Mr. Rockefeller, ended in his murder; of the 51 bullet holes in his body and its laying exposed for days after his infamous murder. Told of his coming to her early in the strike and in his broken language and with tears streaming down his bronzed cheeks explaining how his Greek government had tried to draft him into the Balkan war and how he resented it to the extent that he was almost branded as a coward by the minions of that government’s plutocracy. This, however, was a fight of his class and he was willing to die a thousand deaths rather than see his fellow workers submit to the shackles of the mine owner corporations.
In dealing with the Colorado and West Virginia strikes she said that the ones who had died had not given up their lives in vain, but that they had died for a great cause.
When the congressional committee asked her if it would be acceptable if Rockefeller would consent to grant every demand of the miners except the one compelling recognition of the U. M. W. of A. she replied: “NO! We’ll give up every demand before that. It is the meat in the nut and without it we would be just as helpless as before.”
It might be well to state that Mother Jones’ confinement in Colorado was due to a fight for a principle. In 1904 what is known as “The Moyer” decision was passed by the supreme court. That decision gave to the military the right to arrest and confine any person without preferring charges of any kind against them. This was one of the most infamous decisions against labor ever rendered and has been the instrument with which more than one strike has been broken. Her fight was to get out of jail on a writ of habeas corpus and secure the reversal of that infamous Moyer decision. Up to the present time they have managed to evade the testing of the law but Mother Jones is still after them and if it is within human power to secure a reversal she will assuredly secure it.
Mother Jones came direct from Denver to Girard [home of the Appeal to Reason] where she arrived on Wednesday night. She will return to the strike zone immediately after a monster protest meeting in Kansas City next Sunday. She speaks in Frontenac at the May Day celebration today. Don’t fail to hear her.
[Emphasis added.]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
SOURCES & IMAGES
Quote JP White re Mother Jones, Pittsburg KS, Apr 30, 1914, Speeches Steel p130
https://digital.library.pitt.edu/islandora/object/pitt%3A31735035254105/viewer#page/152/mode/2up
The Worker’s Chronicle
(Pittsburg, Kansas)
-May 1, 1914
https://www.newspapers.com/image/484356673/
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
Apr 30, 1914, Pittsburg KS p129 (150 of 360)
https://digital.library.pitt.edu/islandora/object/pitt%3A31735035254105/viewer#page/150/mode/2up
Note: Mother Jones testified before the House Investigating Committee, in Washington D. C., on Thursday April 23, 1914. She left that evening for Denver. She arrived in Girard KS, near Pittsburg KS, on Wednesday April 29th.
Conditions in the Coal Mines of Colorado.
Hearings before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Mines and Mining
House of Representatives, Sixty-Third Congress, Second Session
Pursuant to H. Res. 387, a Resolution Authorizing and Directing
the Committee on Mines and Mining to Make an Investigation of
Conditions in the Coal Mines of Colorado.
Washington, DC, Government Printing Office, 1914
–Hearings of Feb. 9-April 23, 1914, Martin D. Foster, Chairman.
https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/011159608
-p2917-2940-Testimony of Mother Jones, WDC, Apr 23, 1914
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=msu.31293006718120&seq=905
Search: Mother Jones, Pittsburg KS, May 1914
https://www.newspapers.com/search/?city=pittsburg&country=us&date=1914-05&keyword=%22mother+jones%22®ion=us-ks&sort=paper-date-asc
Search: Mother Jones, Appeal to Reason (Girard KS), May 1914
https://www.newspapers.com/search/?city=girard&country=us&date=1914-05&keyword=%22mother+jones%22®ion=us-ks&sort=paper-date-asc
Hellraisers Journal – Monday April 27, 1914
Thousands Gather in Denver, Sunday April 26th for Rain-Soaked Meeting to Protest Slaughter of the innocent at Ludlow; Ammons Denounced; Mother Jones Speaks
Tag: Ludlow Massacre
https://weneverforget.org/tag/ludlow-massacre/
Tag: Colorado Coalfield War of 1914
https://weneverforget.org/tag/colorado-coalfield-war-of-1914/
Tag: Colorado Coalfield Strike of 1913-1914
https://weneverforget.org/tag/colorado-coalfield-strike-of-1913-1914/
Google Map: Girard KS, Pittsburg KS, Frontenac KS
https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Girard,+KS+66743/Pittsburg,+KS/Frontenac,+KS/@37.4544117,-94.8076128,9.9z/am=t/data=!4m20!4m19!1m5!1m1!1s0x87c7ece45d1ced3f:0x5ca76db922392e5a!2m2!1d-94.8380215!2d37.5111596!1m5!1m1!1s0x87c7e7c0e0f68fff:0x5059d9ff4d827370!2m2!1d-94.70496!2d37.410884!1m5!1m1!1s0x87c7c18afb42e4b5:0x20b177349a61f0a8!2m2!1d-94.689127!2d37.4556049!3e0?authuser=0&entry=ttu
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~