Hellraisers Journal – Saturday October 25, 1919
Gary, Indiana – Mother Jones: “Fight for Righteousness and Justice on Earth”
Mother Jones at Gary, Indiana, October 23, 1919:
Christ himself would agitate against [the Steel Barons]. He would agitate against the plutocrats and hypocrites who tell the workers to go down on their knees and get right with God. Christ, the carpenter’s son, would tell them to stand up on their feet and fight for righteousness and justice on the earth.
[Emphasis added.]
From The New York Times of October 24, 1919:
-The kept press is suddenly concerning itself with strike violence. Not a word, have they, of course, for the strikers and organizers (including Mrs. Fannie Sellins) slaughtered thus far, before and during the strike. But should the strikers decide to get off their knees and stand up and fight for their lives, well, that’s another matter altogether.
MOTHER JONES URGES STRIKERS TO VIOLENCE
—–
Col. Mapes Says Situation in Gary Is Serious
and Orders Troops to Shoot Rioters.
—–
Special to The New York Times.
CHICAGO, Oct. 23.-Making the first public appeal for violence since the steal strike started in the Calumet region and declaring herself a Bolshevik, Mother Jones stirred to enthusiasm some twelve hundred strikers and their wives in Turner Hall, Gary, Ind., today following the refusal of the authorities to permit her to speak in East Side Park.
Mother Jones with William Z. Foster -from New York Daily News of October 1, 1919
[Said Mother Jones, who was cheered for five minutes:]
So this is Gary. Well, we’re going to change the name and we’re going to take over the steal works and were going to run them for Uncle Sam. It’s the damned gang of robbers and their political thieves that will start the American revolution and it won’t stop until every last one of them is gone.
I’ll be 90 years old the first of May, but by God if I have to, I’ll take ninety guns and shoot hell out of ’em. For every scab on the mills there is a woman that reared him. Women, the destiny of the workingman is in your hands. Clear hell of every damned scab you can lay hold of. We’ll hang the bloodhounds to the telegraph poles. Go out and picket.
Mother Jones then, lectured the soldiers on guard in the hail.
[She said:]
You went abroad to clean up the Kaiser, and the bones of 50,000 of your buddies lie bleaching on the battlefield of France. My God, ain’t you men enough to come over and help us get the Kaisers at home? We’ll have an army as big as yours and you’ll be with us and we’ll lick hell out of ’em. We’ll give Gary, Morgan, and the gang of bloodsuckers a free pass to hell or Heaven.
[She continued:]
God Almighty never made a man that could stop a woman from talking. You can arrest me, but I’ll be free. I can raise more hell in jail than out. If Bolshevist is what I understand it to be, then I’m a Bolshevist from the bottom of my feet to the top of my head. All the world’s history never produced a more brutal and savage time than this, and Mr. Soldier, I’m ready to prove my statement that we’ve got to change or this nation will perish. This is the century of the worker.
All through human history man has been toiling and dreaming to this day. Christ was the world’s greatest agitator, but I defy any one to tell me Christianity reigns. A lot of hypocrites an trying to hypnotize us to get down on our knees to the robbers. For Christ’s sake be men and women.
With Mother Junes urging the women to violence, Colonel W. S. Mapes, commanding the troops in Gary, said to newspaper men:
“We are now entering the most critical period of the strike. The men are getting desperate because they see the strike is breaking up. They are trying out new stunts. Last night they surrounded three houses on the outskirts and threw bricks through the windows. They do this to terrorize the wives and children of men who work in the mills. The strikers have also taken to stoning our automobiles so that we have abandoned the use of civilian automobiles entirely in making our raids and are using military machines.
“We are equipping our soldiers with the regular riot guns which shoot buckshot. We have ordered our soldiers to fire on rioters. The situation is growing very serious.”
As a result of the dangerous change in the attitude of the men staying away from the mills, the Federal forces, which were weakened by the recent withdrawal of troops, will be brought back to their former strength as soon as possible.
———-
[Photograph and emphasis added.]
From The Chicago Daily Tribune of October 24, 1919:
“I’M BOLSHEVIK,” CRIES “MOTHER” JONES AT GARY
—–
The first public appeal for a resort to violence since the steel strike started in Gary was made yesterday by “Mother” Jones, aged agitator who was addressing strike meetings when organized labor was in its swaddling clothes.
“Mother” Jones declared herself to be an out and out bolshevik.
[She shouted:]
We’re going to take over the steel mills and run them for Uncle Sam.
Women, the destiny of the workingman is in your hands. Clean out every nonunion man you can lay hold on. We’ll hang the bloodhounds to the telegraph poles and go out and picket.
God Almighty never made a man that could stop a woman from talking. You can arrest me, but I’ll be free. If bolshevik is what I understand it to be, then I’m a bolshevik from the bottom of my feet to the top of my head.
The deportation cases against seven Gary radicals were heard in secret during the day by immigration inspectors. It was reported three of the men were freed.
Col. J. Romayne of Adjt. Gen. F. S. Dickson’s staff expressed satisfaction at conditions in the South Chicago district. Wisconsin Steel company officials reported 75 per cent of their men were back at work. Theodore Vind, labor organizer, announced a commissary for strikers will be opened next week.
Mother Jones Speaks
Collected Writings and Speeches
-ed by Philip S Foner
Monad Press, 1983
-Pages 316-319
(search: “turner hall gary indiana october 23 1919”) https://books.google.com/books?id=T_m5AAAAIAAJ
Organizers would come in with bandages on their heads. They had been beaten. They would stop a second before the picture of Fanny Sellins, the young girl whom the constabulary had shot as she bent protectingly over some children. She had died. They had only been beaten.
Fannie Sellins, Labor Martyr -from Butte Daily Bulletin of October 1, 1919
Foreigners were forever rushing in with tales of violence. They did not understand. Wasn’t this America? Hadn’t they come to America to be free?
We could not get the story of the struggle of these slaves over to the public. The press groveled at the feet of the steel Gods. The local pulpits dared not speak. Intimidation stalked the churches, the schools, the theaters. The rule of steel was absolute.
Although the strike was sponsored by the American Federation of Labor, under instructions from the Steel Trust, the public were fed daily stories of revolution and Bolshevism and Russian gold supporting the strike.
I saw the parade in Gary. Parades were forbidden in the Steel King’s own town. Some two hundred soldiers who had come back from Europe where they had fought to make America safe from tyrants, marched. They were steel workers. They had on their faded uniforms and the steel hats which protected them from German bombs. In the line of march I saw young fellows with arms gone, with crutches, with deep scars across the face – heroes they were! Workers in the cheap cotton clothes of the working class fell in behind them. Silently the thousands walked through the streets and alleys of Gary. Saying no word. With no martial music such as sent the boys into the fight with the Kaiser across the water. Marching in silence. Disbanding in silence.
The next day the newspapers carried across the country a story of “mob violence” in Gary. Then I saw another parade. Into Gary marched United States soldiers under General Wood. They brought their bayonets, their long range guns, trucks with mounted machine guns, field artillery. Then came violence. The soldiers broke up the picket line. Worse than that, they broke the ideal in the hearts of thousands of foreigners, their ideal of America. Into the blast furnace along with steel went their dream that America was a government for the people-the poor, the oppressed…..
[Stand on Your Feet and Fight]
I say, as I said in the town of Gary, it is the damn gang of robbers and their band of political thieves who will start the next American Revolution; just as it was they who started this strike. Fifty thousand American lads died on the battle fields of Europe that the world might be more democratic. Their buddies came home and fought the American workingman when he protested an autocracy beyond the dream of the Kaiser. Had these same soldiers helped the steel workers, we could have given Gary, Morgan and his gang a free pass to hell. All the world’s history has produced no more brutal and savage times than these, and this nation will perish if we do not change these conditions.
Christ himself would agitate against them. He would agitate against the plutocrats and hypocrites who tell the workers to go down on their knees and get right with God. Christ, the carpenter’s son, would tell them to stand up on their feet and fight for righteousness and justice on the earth.
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