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Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday November 30, 1909
New York, New York – Mother Jones Speaks for Convicted Mexican Revolutionary
From The New York Times of November 29, 1909:
‘MOTHER’ JONES HITS OUT AT THE COURTS
—–
They’d Pronounce the Ten Commandments
Unconstitutional, She Says.
—–THIS AT A FORNARO MEETING
—–
Woman Agitator and Gaylord Wilshire Ask
Berkeley Theatre Audience to Help Free
Artist Convicted of Libel.
—–
Mother Jones, who goes about fighting the battles of the downtrodden, turned up again in New York last night as a speaker. She joined with Gaylord Wilshire, Joshua Wanhope and others at a meeting held in the Berkeley Theatre to protest against the conviction of Carlo de Fornaro, the caricaturist, who has been sentenced to one year’s hard labor on Blackwell’s Island on the charge of libeling Rafael Reyes Espindola, an editor and politician of Mexico, in his book on Mexico published last year.
Resolutions were adopted protesting against the conviction, calling for the repeal of the law under which the conviction was obtained, and asking that Gov. Hughes immediately pardon Mr. de Fornaro. Moreover, a collection was taken up to help fight the case in the courts, if that is found necessary.
Mother Jones, though she said last night that she was 74 years old, is still marvelously vigorous, at least in speech. She said she had been spending a lot of her time of late down in the Southwest, where she had learned some horrible things about Mexican rule. She is going back there immediately, she declared. Assuming that the Berkeley Theatre was almost filled with spies of the Mexican and United States Governments, she hurled defiance at them, and spoke a good deal more cruelly about Mexico and big Mexicans than Fornaro did in his book.
[She said:]
In 1861 they used to say, “all is quiet along the Potomac.” Now the black press is saying that all is quiet along the Rio Grande. But in 1861, while all that talk was going on, there was the glint of bayonets on both sides of the Potomac and to-day United States officers are arresting all along the Rio Grande hundreds of Mexicans for no other crime than that they have denounced the tyrannical Government in their own country.
In Kansas to-day three young men are lying in prison for doing just exactly what Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry did for their country. Our judges and officers are doing scavenger work for the Mexican pirate. Let the Mexican bloodhounds here to-night take that to Taft if they want to.
The aged woman shook her white head here and stamped her softly shod foot. She said that one day not long ago a young Mexican revolutionist [Sarabia] she knew about in the Southwest was kidnapped from the jail in which he had been thrown after arrest on some trumped-up charge. He was hurried across the Mexican line in an automobile, she declared. She and some others went to work to save him, and after telegraphing to Washington and the State Government the young man was sent back by Mexico, tried, and released.
[Said Mother Jones:]
We just happened to know about his case. How many are there that we don’t know about?
Mother Jones lambasted the woman suffragettes. She had watched them in Colorado, she said, and they had done nothing worth while. They worked for the capitalists, she declared.
[She cried out:]
What do you want to do here? You wan to go meowing around with Mrs. Belmont like a lot of tabby cats. If you were any good you’d have made the men do something here at the ballot by this time. Oh, I knew. You come here and clap your hands until you get blisters on them, but you won’t use your brains at the polls.
She then turned her fire on Justice Malone, who charged the jury in the Fornaro case. She had no doubt that he appeared at church the next day, she said.
But if you took the Ten Commandments before one of these Judges in court, she went on, he’d say, “The Commandments be hanged; they ar not constitutional.”
Gaylord Wilshire, who presided over the meeting and who made a long speech, was utterly pessimistic about the world as it is now governed, and particularly about this country, and more particularly about such meetings as last night’s. He did not think they did the least good. People came, listened, clapped their hands now and then at some striking statement, went home, and remarked, “It’s a shame.” Then they forgot all about it. He was certain that the United States is the most perfect despotism the world ever looked upon.
Mr. Wilshire intimated that the conviction of Mr. Fornaro was due to President Taft’s solicitude for the business welfare of his two brothers-H. W. Taft and Charles Taft, the former a lawyer in New York and the latter a ranch owner in Texas and Mexico. He declared that Charles Taft owned heavy interests in Mexico, that he needed the good-will of the Mexican government, and that H. W. Taft had been employed in the case here against Fornaro.
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[Photograph and emphasis added.]
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SOURCE
The New York Times
(New York, New York)
-Nov 29, 1909
https://www.newspapers.com/image/20458889
IMAGE
Mother Jones, Elkhart IN Daily Review p2, July 19, 1909
https://www.genealogybank.com/
See also:
Tag: Carlo de Fornaro
https://weneverforget.org/tag/carlo-de-fornaro/
Diaz, Czar of Mexico: An Arraignment
by Carlo de Fornaro
International Publishing Company, 1909
https://books.google.com/books?id=Jdg4AQAAMAAJ
https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/006773898
https://archive.org/details/diazczarofmexico00forniala/page/n2
Review of “Diaz, Czar of Mexico”
-from The Vancouver BC Province-p15 of Apr 22, 1909
re Mexican Revolutionaries: “The Great Persecution”
-from Appeal to Reason-p2 of Nov 13, 1909
Mexican Revolutionary Carlo de Fornaro Gets On Year
-from Appeal to Reason-p5 of Nov 20, 1909
Books by Carlo de Fornaro
http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/lookupname?key=Fornaro%2C%20Carlo%20de%2C%201871%2D
Diaz the Dictator
A Story of International Intrigue and Politics
-by Charles Lincoln Phifer
Menace Publishing Company, 1913
(search: “carlo de fornaro”)
https://books.google.com/books?id=fRgzAQAAMAAJ
Tag: Mexican Revolutionaries
https://weneverforget.org/tag/mexican-revolutionaries/
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Internationale Spanish