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Hellraisers Journal – Thursday September 18, 1919
Cleveland, Ohio – Mother Jones Speaks at U. M. W. A. Convention, Part II
From Stenographic Report by Mary Burke East
-September 16th speech of Mother Jones continued:
In Homestead the labor men were allowed to speak for the first time in 28 years. We were arrested the first day. When I got up to speak I was taken. Eight or ten thousand labor men followed me to the jail. They all marched there. When we went into the jail they remained outside. One fellow began to cry and said: “What for you take Mudder Jones?” and they took him by the neck and shoved him behind the bars. That is all he did or said. We put up a bond of $15 each. We were to come for trial the next day, but the burgess didn’t appear. They postponed the trial on account of the mob that appeared outside. When they got me in jail the police themselves got scared to death. One of our men said: “Mother can handle those men.” He was told, “No, nobody can handle them.” “Yes, she can; let her get out.” I went out and said: “Boys, we live in America! Let us give three cheers for Uncle Sam and go home and let the companies go to hell!” And they did. Everybody went home, but they went down the street cheering. There was no trouble, nobody was hurt-they were law-abiding. They blew off steam and went home.
In Duquesne they took forty men. One man came out of a restaurant and asked what the trouble was. They got him by the back of the neck and put him behind the iron bars. He was kept there from two o’clock Monday afternoon until ten o’clock Sunday morning without a bite to eat or even a drink of water. That was the only crime the man had committed. Is there any kaiser who is more vicious than that? Do you think it is time for us to line up, man to man, and clean out those kaisers at home?
The steel workers have taken a strike vote and decided to strike. You men must stand behind them. Never mind what anybody says, that strike will come off next Monday. The miners and all the other working men of the nation must stand with them in that strike, because it is the crucial test of the labor movement of America. You are the basic industry. They didn’t win the war with generals, and the President didn’t win the war. They could have sent all the soldiers abroad, but if you hadn’t dug the coal to furnish the materials to fight with, what could they have done? You miners at home won the war digging coal. You have been able to clean up the kaisers abroad, now join with us and clean up the kaisers at home.
Gary gave a banquet to the newspaper men in New York. I happened to be in New York at that time. During the dinner they discussed the labor movement, and some newspaper man said: “Well, you know there is a great deal of discontent.” Gary said: “I will tell you what we can do—we can give them a cup of rice and that will quiet them.” I want to tell Judge Gary to be careful or he may have to eat the rice himself before this thing is over. That is what was said to the people in France before the revolution, when they were starving, and the people didn’t take rice; they did away with the divine right of kings, and we are going to do away with the divine right of these rulers who rob and plunder the people
A woman was murdered in Pennsylvania the other day (Mrs. Fannie Sellins). You fellows didn’t amount to a row of pins! You ought to have lined up fifty thousand men and women and gone there and cleaned up that gang that murdered that woman in cold blood. You haven’t got any manhood in you! You want Congress to investigate. How very thoughtful you are! They got Congress to investigate for you. Not on your life! Why didn’t you do as we did in West Virginia? We do business down there.
A Delegate: Our officers have told us to keep out of politics. I advise them to go into politics.
Mother Jones: Oh, shut up with your rotten politics! We have got things more serious than politics.
I went up Stanford [Stanaford] Mountain and talked to a boy up there. He said: “Mother, when you find us you will find us always together.” That very night up went the mine owners’ gunmen and shot that man while he slept. One man lay dead over there, another over here—two as loyal men as ever lived—and the blood streamed down on each side. Even in death they were together. The shacks were riddled and those people had been murdered while they slept. Ten days afterward I went up the mountain again, and out in the field I saw a mother with her baby kneeling over the grave of one of those men. When she saw me the baby said: “Oh, Mother Jones, won’t you bring my daddy back? Won’t you bring him back and let me kiss him?” When the history of these struggles is written by those who saw them at first hand it will not be a eulogy of officers, it will be a history of the crimes the workers have stood for, and hundreds in the days to come will stand aghast as they read.
I want you to stand by the steel workers. The call has gone out and I don’t think it will come back. I know what I am talking about. I don’t live in the parlor, I am not a Sunday school teacher, I am right down in the trenches and I see the horrors. I remember one awful night when that man came to see me (pointing to President Keeney, of District 17) at one o’clock in the morning. It was in 1912. He came to me with tears in his eyes and said nobody would come to them. He asked if I would come.
I was thinking it was time to break in there anyhow, so I said I would go. He said, “But they might kill you.” I said I was not afraid, that I could meet no more glorious death than fighting those thieves and robbers. We went up that morning with a company of militia. Of course, the governors always have to send the bayonets when labor is going to pull anything off. In the face of the gunmen, the bayonets and their employer, in the face of a whole gang of operators those men asked me if I would organize them. I asked if I organized them would they stay in the organization. They all said “Yes.” Then old “Peggy” Dwyer, who has only one leg, wheeled around on that and said: “Yes, we will stay,” and they made good.
In West Virginia you have over 50,000 miners organized, and before another year you will have over 80,000. If you send a fellow in there that don’t suit us, Mr. Lewis, we will ship him out. That is the way we do business. I put up many a scheme to get rid of the leeches, and there are a few more of them I will get after before I get through. I remember when that boy there (President Keeney) was a little fellow. I gave him a book one Sunday and said to him and a few more: “Go up under the trees and read. Leave the pool room alone. Read and study and find out how to help your fellow miners.” And he did it.
I will probably go back to the steel strike tomorrow. I told the boys I would be back for a big meeting Thursday night. Yesterday I wrote the Attorney General in Washington and told him: “This thing won’t go and it is the duty of the government to stop it. The people will not submit to this tyranny and oppression.” I also sent an article to the Washington Times, because that is at the seat of government, it is where the Congressmen and Senators are. I called attention to these cheap office holders, these pie counter politicians who have no interest in the nation. We have. Your children will be the future population of the country, and it is your duty to stand together in this great battle that is coming. And when we get through America will be here for the Americans and not for the cheap, rotten royalty of Europe. We are Americans.
When President Keeney had the army up on New River the governor telegraphed to General Wood for the United States troops. That is the first thing they ask for when you are concerned; but they didn’t ask for the United States troops to bring Gary down to Washington. Oh, no! that is another thing! Did you ever see one of those fellows beat up by a policeman? You bet your life you didn’t! Did you ever see one of those fellows build a jail or make a club to use on you ? No, you build the jails and make the clubs and they use them on you. It is only the working man that gets clubbed. He finds the stuff to make the guns and the clubs, he hires the policemen—the other fellow does-puts the club and the gun in his hands and he goes out and gets you. Did you ever see a man with five million dollars in the penitentiary? No, of course not. Then why don’t you build a jail and have a court that will put them in and put you out?
A rising vote of thanks was tendered Mother Jones for her presence in the convention and for her inspiring address.
[Photograph, paragraph breaks and emphasis added.]
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SOURCES
Quote Mother Jones, Judge Gary Cup of Rice, Clv UMWC p540, Sept 16, 1919
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=-V5ZAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PA540
Sixth Day-Afternoon Session, Sept 16, 1919
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=-V5ZAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PA531
Mother Jones Speaks
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=-V5ZAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PA536
Speech of Mother Jones continued: “In Homestead…..”
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=-V5ZAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PA538
From:
Proceedings of Twenty-Seventh Consecutive and
-Fourth Biennial Convention of United Mine Workers of America,
Cleveland, Ohio, September 9-23, 1919
https://books.google.com/books?id=-V5ZAAAAYAAJ
Volume I-p1, Sept 9-15, 1919
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=-V5ZAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PP7
Volume II-p481, Sept 15-23, 1919
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=-V5ZAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PA483
IMAGE
Mother Jones Women in Industry, Eve Ns Hburg PA p2, Jan 6, 1919
https://www.newspapers.com/image/57884211
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
Mother Jones Speaks
Collected Writings and Speeches
-ed by Philip S Foner
Monad Press, 1983
https://books.google.com/books?id=T_m5AAAAIAAJ
Re “Divine Rights, “ see:
American Federationist of June 1914
“Rockefeller, Industrial Dictator by Divine Right”
-by Samuel Gompers
(also takes on George F. “Divine Rights” Baer)
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=PaRHAQAAIAAJ&hl=en&pg=GBS.PA474
Tag: Fannie Sellins
https://weneverforget.org/tag/fannie-sellins/
Re Massacre at Stanaford Mountain, see:
WE NEVER FORGET: Feb 25, 1903
Mother Jones and the Massacre of the Raleigh County Miners
Re Mother Jones Assists Keeney in 1912, see:
Struggle in the Coal Fields
the Autobiography of Fred Mooney
-With JW Hess
WV University Library, 1967
https://books.google.com/books?id=nE3tAAAAMAAJ
MOTHER JONES BRINGS OUT CABIN CREEK
Cabin Creek was known as “forbidden territory.” Miner Frank Keeney was not afraid to enter, but could find no one to go with him until early August when he found Mother Jones. Miner Fred Mooney later told the story:
He [Frank Keeney] proceeded to locate Mother Jones and after a thorough understanding was reached, a date was set for Mother Jones to go into the forbidden territory. I was standing on the bridge at Cabin Creek Junction the day Mother Jones entered Cabin Creek. Her hair was snow white, but she could walk mile after mile and never show fatigue. When we saw her drive by in a horse drawn vehicle we knew the meaning of that visit and we fully expected to hear of her being killed by the gunmen. She arrived at Eskdale without mishap, but after she passed through the business center of town and as she approached the southern residence section a body of gunmen could be seen just ahead….But she drove her rig near [to the gunmen] and one of the miners assisted her to alight. She surveyed the scene with a critical eye and walked straight up to the muzzle of one of the machine guns and patting the muzzle of the gun, said to the gunman behind it, “Listen here, you, you fire one shot here today and there are 800 men in those hills (pointing to the almost inaccessible hills to the east) who will not leave one of your gang alive.”
[Emphasis added.]
It was a bluff, there were no miners in those hills. But the bluff worked. Mother Jones held her mass meeting in Eskdale, and the miners of Cabin Creek joined the [Paint Creek] strike with Eskdale as a militant center of strike activity.
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She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain -Ken Carson and the Choraliers