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Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday August 18, 1920
West Virginia – Mother Jones Speaks at Princeton, West Virginia, Part II
August 15, 1920 – Princeton, West Virginia
-Mother Jones Speaks at Public Meeting, Part II of III:
Now I am going to talk, men. I have come up against those things [the brutalities of the Baldwin-Felts gunthug system], perhaps, more than any other one person. I was up in Raleigh, and these Baldwin-Felts turned two machine guns on me—two here, and one here (pointing to each side of her head and her forehead). It was on Sunday and they put their guns against my head, but I took no back water, and they didn’t shoot them. They didn’t pull the trigger.
These Baldwin-Felts men, when they had that machine gun up there in Cabin Creek, turned that machine gun to murder thirty-six men that didn’t even have a pen-knife, and were coming down to meet me. The men screamed, and I jumped out of the buggy and went up and put my hands on the guns and told them not to shoot a bullet. They told me to take my hands off and I told them I had a right to examine them. They made me wade a creek the next day up to here (pointing), but I came back and organized the men.
I am not like you, a pack of damn measly cowards. Damn you. They are so afraid of the operators—so afraid of the managers.
Did you ever watch a mule in a mine. If a mule turns his head around and the boss goes on, the mule takes to his hind legs and says “Get the Hell out of here.”
Here is the thing. We are after this. This paper said today that I came in here and there is always trouble. Well, we are not after trouble. We are not looking for trouble. We are going to do this. The newspaper men are organized. The mine owners are organized and have their Union. The lawyers are in their Union. The sky-pilots are in their Union. The judiciary are in their Union. The merchants are in their Union. Don’t you think we have the same rights they have? Now if you don’t think so, we are going to show you, and we are not going to offer you or your press apology for doing it.
It is so sickening and nauseating to hear men talking today. We are moving.
I was along the Coast and after I had gone, the men sent for me to come back. Everywhere there is that unrest. Now, what is the cause of this unrest? It is injustice.
You cannot stop this thing with police. You cannot stop it with deportation, nor with the assassination of the press. It is the awakening. The night bell of the worker is ringing in the dawn of that new day. Hanging, deporting and shooting them is not going to stop it. There is nothing that will stop it but industrial and social justice.
That is the cause of the unrest. See what the miners are getting. They say, “You ought to see the fine homes they have.” We don’t howl at the fine homes they have got. They robbed us. We paid for their homes and we pay for our own.
They threw them out here at Matewan. Threw the children out—these Baldwin-Felts. Suppose somebody would go to throw them out, they would have all of Baldwin-Felts taking care of them. These children, whose fathers created the wealth, are thrown out on the highways. A Baldwin- Felts-
(Here the speaker was interrupted.)
You muzzle that damn mug of yours up—if you don’t, I will. I am not afraid of 9900 of you. I would clean you up just like a sewer rat.
The time is here. Don’t beg the masters. Don’t be afraid of them. If you want the organization you have got that right, and assert that right. Don’t fear their bullets. How many Baldwin guards have they. I could take an army and clean the whole bunch out. Yes, I could. I could do it so quick you would be asleep while in the game.
The question lies here. The year is here. It is time to line up in our Union, to show no fear of no man. There is nobody that can come in to save you, unless you want to be saved. What would the black man do in slavery? Why is the Union so dangerous today? If it was safe in the days of Lincoln, who took the chattel slavery off your back, why shouldn’t you, the industrial slave, take a lesson? He didn’t shirk. That old black slave went like a man over to the Union.
When I got in town today, you were afraid to look at me. You bunch of damn cowards.
Look at that (showing another picture). This is the blood of the babes that stained the mountain. These babes struck for industrial freedom, for better homes, for better schools, for better manhood, for better womanhood, and you took their blood.
They put $60,000,000.00 into it. How long does it take to make $1,000,000.00? It takes 548 years to make one million dollars, working every day, seven days a week, and off the 4th of July every 25 years, at $5.00 per day.
These fellows put sixty million dollars in it, and they never worked a day in their lives. Where did they get it? They stole it out of the blood of the men they starved and shot.
I was put out of the State [Colorado] in the dead of night. They put me out of the State with five cents in my pocket. In the middle of the night. I got a document from the Governor [James H. Peabody] not to come back in the State. I asked the conductor on the Santa Fe train to take me and he said he would. I told him that I didn’t have any money, and he said that didn’t make any difference. The next morning [March 26, 1904] I didn’t wait to eat my breakfast. I sat down and wrote a letter. I said,
Mr. Governor: You notified your Gods of War by their bayonets to put me out of the state. You sent me a document not to return to the State. I want to notify you that you don’t own this State. If I break the law, the civil courts that Washington and Jefferson established will deal with me. But you have no authority. After eight hours, I am right back in four blocks of your office. What in the hell are you going to do about it?
He is dead now, and I don’t know whether he went up or down, and I don’t care a damn which.
They call us agitators. If it wasn’t for us, we would be in the stone ages. It is the fearless convictions of honest men and women that fear no slander of the press.
I want to say to you in the crucial hour of a trying day, America stands with her arms open to her children. Where will you go? Come with me to old America. Will you come back to the days of Patrick Henry, Jefferson, Lincoln, or will you stay with Schwab and Rockefeller? Which are you going to take? That freedom was not purchased by dollars. It was purchased by the blood of men who believed in justice, and for which seven long years they fought. They did get discouraged sometimes, but they said they would go back. They drove them from the American shore, and it is up to you to say whether you are going to bring back the old America, and not let Baldwin-Felts run it.
I have gone in the factories. I have walked in cotton factories with little children that hadn’t seen their sixth year, working 14 hours a day and eating corn bread. I worked in there until I got the information that appointed the Child Labor Law. I fought it alone. I took children out of the factories in Philadelphia and marched them through to New Jersey. I had to bear the slimy burden of the corporation wrecks. But I succeeded. When I came here, little boys worked in the mines, and went home broke at night.
You build jails and penitentiaries. You have today in the Federal and State penitentiaries and jails, 133,000. I want to ask you men, regardless of what position you hold, if there isn’t something wrong in our nation when young men are filling the jails and penitentiaries.
I am going to say to Baldwin-Felts. You had just as well get a move on you in your damnable business, because we are not going to give up West Virginia until it is all organized.
[Photograph and emphasis added.]
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SOURCE
Quote Mother Jones Princeton WV Speech Aug 15, 1920,
Steel Speeches, p227
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
-Pages 224-231 (246 of 361)
Speech at Princeton WV from
Army Intelligence Report of Aug 15, 1920
https://digital.library.pitt.edu/islandora/object/pitt%3A31735035254105/viewer#page/246/mode/2up
Part II
https://digital.library.pitt.edu/islandora/object/pitt%3A31735035254105/viewer#page/250/mode/2up
IMAGE
Mother Jones, UMWJ p11, July 15, 1920
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=2hg5AQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PT328
See also:
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday August 17, 1920
West Virginia – Mother Jones Fights for Miners, Causes Trouble for Mine Operators
Mother Jones Speaks at Princeton, W. V.-Near Headquarters of Baldwin-Felts Gunthugs, Part I
The Autobiography of Mother Jones
Charles Kerr, Chicago, 1925
https://archive.iww.org/history/library/MotherJones/autobiography/
Letter to Colorado Governor Peabody
-from Chapter 13
https://archive.iww.org/history/library/MotherJones/autobiography/13/
One night when I came in from the field where I had been holding meetings, I was just dropping to sleep when a knock – a loud knock – came on my door. I always slept in my clothes for I never knew what might happen. I went to the door, opened it, and faced a military chap.
“The Colonel wants you up at head-quarters.”
I went with him immediately. Three or four others were brought in: War John and Joe Pajammy, organizers. We were all taken down. to the Santa Fe station. While standing there, waiting for the train that was to deport us some of the miners ran down to bid me good bye. “Mother, good-bye,” they said, stretching out their hands to take mine.
The colonel struck their hands and yelled at them. “Get away from there. You can’t’ shake hands with that woman!”
The militia took us to La Junta. They handed me a letter from the governor, notifying me that under no circumstances could I return to the State of Colorado. I sat all night in the station. In the morning the Denver train came along. I had no food, no money. I asked the conductor to take me to Denver. He said he would.
“Well,” I said, “I don’t want you to lose your job.” I showed him the letter from the governor. He read it.
“Mother,” he said, “do you want to go to Denver?”
“I do,” said I.
“Then to Hell with the job;” said he, “it’s to Denver you go.”
In Denver I got a room and rested a while I sat down and wrote a letter to the governor the obedient little boy of the coal companies.
“Mr. Governor, you notified your dogs of war to put me out of the state. They complied with your instructions. I hold in my hand a letter that was handed to me by one of them, which says ‘under no circumstances return to this state.’ I wish to notify you, governor, that you don’t own the state. When it was admitted to the sisterhood of states, my fathers gave me a share of stock in it; and that is all they gave to you. The civil courts are open. If I break a law of state or nation it is the duty of the civil courts to deal with me. That is why my fore-fathers established those courts to keep dictators and tyrants such as you from interfering with civilians. I am right here in the capital, after being out nine or ten hours, four or five blocks from your office. I want to ask you, governor, what in Hell are you going to do about it?”
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Fire in the Hole – Hazel Dickens