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Hellraisers Journal – Sunday March 27, 1910
Cincinnati, Ohio-Speech of Mother Jones at Miners’ Special Convention
From The Topeka State Journal of March 24, 1910:
SOUNDS CALL TO ARMS.
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“Mother Jones” Arouses Coal Miners
to Great Enthusiasm.
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Cincinnati. O., March 24.-Bituminous coal operators and miners of Ohio, Indiana and Pennsylvania, entered their subscale meeting this afternoon with almost certainty that a disagreement would be reported to the joint committee, that the joint conference would reach a like disagreement before tomorrow noon and that the International Convention of United Mine Workers would then be asked to say whether it should be industrial peace or war after April 1.
Operators of the three states immediately concerned, held a secret conference all morning and at the conclusion announced that the vote had been unanimous to resist all of the miners’ demand. The attitude of the miners in the international convention was shown during an address by “Mother” Jones when she declared:
If the operators force a fight we are all in trim to give them the hottest fight they ever had in their lives.
The convention was almost stampeded and the cheering did not cease for several minutes.
[She shouted:]
Line up, we are ready for war.
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[Photograph and emphasis added.]
From Proceedings of Special U. M. W. of A. Convention
-Cincinnati, March 24, 1910:
[MOTHER JONES SPEAKS]
—–
Mother Jones-I am not here today to talk on the mining industry. Another phase of the industrial conflict has brought me here. With the wonderfully rapid changes in the field of economics we have brought in a new condition, something unknown in the history of the nation before. For the last two months I have been in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, going through the breweries studying the phase of the industry that affects women. I have come to the conclusion that the breweries are no place for women workers; but if economic conditions enforce the women to abandon their homes they have to find some place to earn their bread.
I went to the head of one of the firms and said to him, “Your foreman uses the most beastly language to those women. You realize as well as I do that in this nation there is growing a terrific sentiment against your industry. You realize as well as I do that your industry is the product of the profit system, and while the profit system lasts your industry will go on, either openly or secretly. Therefore I have come to you to show how you can correct some of the horrors existing in your institution.” I told him the language used by those men to the women who worked in the breweries would not sound well in print. He said, “I thank you for coming here.”
I went to Milwaukee at the request of the Brewery Workers’ organization. There are between 600 and 700 girls and women working in those breweries, and the average wage is from $2.50 to $3.00 a week. They work in the bottle-washing department, where the work is very disagreeable, as their clothing becomes very wet. Many of them are foreigners, but some of them are American born. I tremble for the future of some of the young girls who were driven to such work. Some statesman once said in the early days of this country, “When a nation sends her old to the poor house and her young to the scaffold and to the jails that nation is in its decline, there is something wrong with it.” When a nation stands for its women being dragged from their homes and driven to do such work for the master class and to be ground into profit for them there is something wrong.
These breweries are making millions upon millions of dollars. They prohibit the organization of the girls and women that are working for them, and discharge them as soon as they join a union. I have been there for two months, and while some of them are organized, as soon as the bosses get on to it they are discharged under one pretext or another. I went to Blatz’s brewery and I said to the proprietor, “I would like to go through your brewery.” He said, “We held a meeting of the Brewers’ Association when we heard you were in Milwaukee and we concluded we could not allow our girls to be organized. They get married and go away and they don’t need to be organized.”
I said, “If women have to go into the industries we need to get them together to show them the future state of civilization. You surely will help me to do that?” He said, “I will not. You cannot go into the breweries.” I said, “There is one place you can’t keep me out of and that is the legislature of Wisconsin. I will go there and ask the legislators if they can afford to have the women of the state slaughtered to build a monument to you.”
Like the mine owners, the brewery owners do not know everything. There is a good deal they don’t know. The only thing they are expert in is getting profit and crushing us and degrading us. I wrote and article on this, or rather I gave the points and some one else wrote it-I didn’t know enough to write it myself. I belong to the working class and you know we don’t have time to go to school. There is only one school we get proficient in and that is the school of hard knocks and hunger.
Now I want to tell you why I am here. I want to ask this body of men to help those girls. You can go into any mining camp-and very few of them I haven’t been in-and find that Milwaukee beer is sole there. Those girls working in those breweries tell me how good it would be if they could get only $7 a week. One told me that in two weeks she only earned $5, and another said that in two weeks she only earned $6. Some of them said they only earned enough to pay their room rent, and that they washed dishes and helped the woman where they boarded for their meals. These conditions exist in the Milwaukee breweries.
I have tried every way to organize the girls peacefully and without hitting the brewery owners; but I have concluded that the only way to hurt them is to touch their pockets, and therefor I want this convention to help me. If you could see the pictures I have seen there is not one of you who would not rise to your feet and pass the resolution that will be presented to you, not one of you that would not pledge yourselves not to drink a glass of Milwaukee beer or see that not a glass is sold in any mining camp in the country until those girls are organized.
When this nation gives back to her womanhood the economic rights that have been stolen from them; when this nation gives back to childhood the right to be well born and well cared for; when this nation gives back to the motherhood of the nation the time to mold and train the children well, want will cease, robbery will cease, jails will be no more, there will be institutions for the uplift of the race, not for its degradation.
I want you not only to pass this resolution in regard to the brewery workers, but I want you to help the Cigar Workers who are fighting in this city. I honor them for their spirit of revolt. I am going away in a day or so. I am going West. I will be back in Milwaukee when I have touched the brewers’ pockets. When we find we have over 500,000 miners who will not drink a glass of Milwaukee beer in any place, north, south, east or west, the breweries of Milwaukee will be brought to time.
A Delegate: Judge Jackson will get hold of you, Mother.
Mother Jones: the old fellow is dead, my friend, and I don’t know whether he’s in heaven or hell. Now I want you to pass the resolution that will be presented and pass it strong, because I am going to send a copy to the Brewers’ Association, and I am going before the Wisconsin legislature to have a bill passed providing that no girls can work in breweries.
Mr. Newspaperman, I want you to print what I have said!
Now you have been here a long time, boys, taking a rest; you have been having a picnic. I want to tell you if they force the fight we are all in trim to give them the damnedest fight they have ever had. One of the boys said I was looking well. Of course I am. There is going to be a racket and I am going to be in it! When I get a lick at them it makes me young again. I am going to watch you! Line up, and if you have got to give those fellows a fight they will regret they have brought it on.
There is a different feeling in the country now to what there was a few years ago. We are ready for war now. When I went to see the big gun of the nation his royal nibs, Taft, I was not able to hit him in the eye, but a bug did it for me. He was out automobiling and all the big guns were shaking hands with him. I thought, “What a lot of lickspittles!” A bug flew in his eye, and when I saw him he had a curtain over it, but he had one eye he could see me with. After a little conversation I said to him, “You had better not see any one else today, but go home and rest, because before the four years are at an end you will need your two eyes and your two ears, because there will be something doing in this country.” And so there will.
Get The Appeal to Reason and read it. When Turner undertook to show up the American capitalistic combine in Mexico The American Magazine closed out the articles immediately. When a man went to California to look over the articles he said, “I cannot get a magazine in America to take them up.” I said, “Of course, because the magazines and papers are controlled by the Wall Street gang of commercial pirates and they don’t want their crimes known by the people.” Now get the paper I spoke of and you will be able to read the articles. They will show how the mine owners of the United States are in league with the Guggenheims and the Standard Oil people getting the peons down there to work cheap. The president’s own brother has 250,000 acres in Texas with Mexican peons working on it for a few cents a day. That is the way they protect the American workingman!
Now pass that resolution. Mr. [Thomas] Lewis, when that fight comes on I will be with you to the last ditch-I will help you out.
[Photograph and emphasis added.]
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SOURCES
Quote Mother Jones, Young Again, Special UMWC Cinc OH p62, Mar 24, 1910
https://books.google.com/books?id=JkA6AQAAMAAJ
The Topeka State Journal
(Topeka, Kansas)
-Mar 24, 1910
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn82016014/1910-03-24/ed-1/seq-6/
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
Mar 24, 1910, Speech at UMWA Special Convention at Cincinnati OH
https://digital.library.pitt.edu/islandora/object/pitt%3A31735035254105/viewer#page/62/mode/2up
Proceeding of Special International Convention, United Mine Workers of America, Cincinnati, Ohio, March 14-29, 1910
(Sadly, could find in snippet view only.)
https://books.google.com/books?id=JkA6AQAAMAAJ
IMAGE
Mother Jones, Dnv Pst p2, July 19, 1908
https://www.genealogybank.com/
Mother Jones Lg Crpd, Ipl Str p3, Jan 25, 1910
https://www.newspapers.com/image/15337941/
See also:
Hellraisers Journal, Wednesday March 15, 1905
Last Act of Judge Jackson Is to Release the Murderers of Raleigh County Miners
Tag: John Kenneth Turner
https://weneverforget.org/tag/john-kenneth-turner/
Thomas Lewis (unionist)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Lewis_(unionist)
Delegate Pin Ribbon
-for March 15, 1910, UMW Special Convention at Cincinnati, Ohio
https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/umw-1910-united-mine-workers-america-538027660
From The Public of Apr 8, 1910:
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=4T3mAAAAMAAJ&hl=en&pg=GBS.PA321
Prospective Coal Strike.
The agreement between the bituminous coal miners and mine operators having expired on the 31st, and a joint conference having dissolved without reaching a new agreement, the special convention of the United Mine Workers of North America, in session at Cincinnati, adjourned on the 29th. Several points of disagreement were involved, but a concession of an increase in wages of 5 cents a ton on pick-mine-screen coal, with proportionate advances for other methods of mining and for outside labor, is made a pro-requisite to negotiations on the other questions. If this is conceded, there will be no strike pending further negotiations; but if this concession is denied, the miners will not return to work after the expiration of their contract. That was the situation on the 29th, and no change has taken place since, except that on April 1st, their contract having expired the day before, the organized coal miners of the bituminous fields did not return to work.
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Fire in the Hole – Hazel Dickens