———-
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday January 14, 1920
Altoona, Pennsylvania – Mother Jones Speaks at Mishler Theater, Part I
From the Altoona Times Tribune of January 12, 1920:
Mother Jones Elucidates Theories To Altoona Audience
[Part I of II.]
Yesterday afternoon shortly after 2:30 o’clock, the crowd of workingmen and their women folks who had assembled at the Mishler theatre, were given the privilege of seeing Mother Jones in the flesh and of hearing her speak. At that moment there appeared upon the platform a silver haired motherly looking woman in black, wearing a flowing white lace jabot. Looking on her self-composed, benign countenance, the wonder struck one. Is this the Mother Jones who has created a furore in the whole world, whose impassioned waging of her cause for full economical rights of the working man has caused kings of finance to tremble in fear and who by her own admission says she wants “to raise Hell”?
But a second glance at that sturdy upright figure and one recognized a presence that radiates a dynamic force and vitality which gives the impression that it could conquer all obstacles no matter how great. Her strength and power in look and speech bely that 90th mile stone, which she said would reach May 1 of 1920, by many years.
Introduced by Pres. Charles Kutz, of Machinist Union No. 1008, Mother Jones wasted no time in digression but at once launched upon her theme by saying that this is the great year in the turning tide of oppression. For centuries the greatest agitators were murdered and driven off the earth through the power of money.
CITES CARTHAGE AGITATOR
Referring, by way of illustrations, to the time in Carthage when the rulers feared annihilation at the hands of the agitators, she detailed the incident of the leading one who was brought before the rulers. Asked, “Who are you?” he replied, “I am a man, a member of the human family.” “Why do you persist in this sedition?” “I belong to a class that through the progression of time has been murdered, maligned, imprisoned, roasted and tyrannized over.”
She gave point to the story by saying that identically the same condition exists today in the United Slates and the world. If you are an agitator you are called a Bolshevist or an I. W.W. and arrested or deported. But the change is here, the time is ripe, she continued, and our statesmen understand. The remedy for the unrest is not deportation nor imprisonment. Every I. W. W. deported makes ten to spring up in his place.
SLAVES AND FREEDOM
A wise Greek when approached by some citizens to give a reason why the people were divided into slaves and oppressors, replied, “There must always be free men and slaves; when men must always produce they can not stop to analyze, study and learn to understand the affairs of state, but if something could be originated that would do the work of the slaves, then all men would be free.”
Today, declared Mother Jones, the invention dreamed of by the Greek philosopher has been discovered. It is the machine which takes the place of slaves but it has not removed the burdens of slaves. Since the World war which people were deceived into believing was a war for Democracy, and which exacted a toll of 50,000 American braves whose bones bleach on the plains of France, people are beginning to say, “We want to have freedom of thought, politics and religion.”
REMEDY FOR THE DISEASE
With voice ringing out in stentorian notes, Mother Jones exhorted,
Don’t you see how spontaneous the spark is; how essential it is? It is a disease that is gnawing at the vitals of economics systems. You must provide the remedy by removing the cause of disease-remove it by force of law; not by law of force. You working men have the power if you are Americans. Put the pirates out of business; if that won’t do put them in jail.
There’s a light breaking, the Star that rose in Bethlehem is lighting the world. We here in America have the blood of revolution flowing in our veins. The powers of greed can not crush us in spite of the institutions of capitalism, in spite of tyranny.
STEEL’S HAND RULES
J. Pierpont Morgan is head of the steel trust, Elbert H. Gary is only his spokesman. In 1901 the steel trust acquired 160 acres of land and organized the steel trust with a valuation of $150,000,000. Today it is worth $2,751,617,000. The workers have been robbed of that. They own the press, the pulpit, every avenue of communication. But it is a dangerous thing to be a lion that kings it over all. All nations, all men of power have gone down when wealth was in the hands of a few. With this truth in mind I am made to say. “O, America, America! You that have been bought with the blood of men who for eight years waged a pitifully unequal war against a powerfully equipped army!“
Mother Jones, interrupted her address to remark for the benefit of the secret service men, if there were any in the house,
I love America. I love the flag that was bought with the blood of men 150 years ago better than the steel trust and I am going to fight for it.
She also asserted that she wasn’t a bit afraid of jail and that when she is put behind the bars, as is her experience once in a while, she looks out at the robbers and takes the time to rest and think.
ADVOCATES PERSONAL FREEDOM
Declaring that she was not a parlor ornament, nor a Sunday school teacher, a suffragette nor a temperance worker, she gave it as her opinion that men should eat and drink what they want, letting their self-respect guide them as to what to eat and drink and what to leave alone.
In ages to come, she said, the world will regard with horror the brutality of today. The steel strike was glorious, according to the speaker, because 350,000 men, two-thirds of whom could not speak English responded, kept together against police and constabulary and showed the world what they could do.
THE STRIKE IN JOHNSTOWN
[Continued Mother Jones:]
In Johnstown, the steel trust wanted to form a Rockefeller union and a McKenzie King union. They brought a guy from Canada to show the men how it ought to be done just as if the men here didn’t know anything. But they didn’t get it done. Instead or having McKenzie King to represent them, the workmen elected Conboy and Foster to head them and the trust didn’t get its union in the steel industry. That was one thing the steel strike accomplished.
In working this thing out, some of us may go to jail, but what of that? We built the jails, they’re ours. But when we get sense enough we will put Rockefeller, Morgan and those fellows in jail.
At this point Mother Jones read a letter from one of the union men in Colorado telling of the progress of the working men’s movement there.
HELL IN CANADA
Stating that she had been to Canada, Mother Jones remarked that she didn’t go there like “you fellows who chew scab tobacco and play poler. When I go I raise Hell.” She declared she did not want any one to fall in love with her, that was not why she was on the platform.
[She declared:]
I am out to fight, and we can’t very well strike one we love.
[She continued:]
When laws are put on the statute books, they must be obeyed. We can’t disobey laws. Get together in the economical field and put the objectionable laws off the books by the ballot.
NO STOPPING A WOMAN
Referring to her arrest by an officer whom she termed “a lap dog of a pirate,” Mother Jones in answer to his statement that he was “chief of police and you can’t speak here” told him, “Well, you’ve been dead 40 years and don’t know it. Don’t you know that God Almighty never made a woman that you can stop from talking?”
Giving an instance of her arrest at the time of a strike in Carnegie, she told of asking the privilege of her jailer of addressing 10,000 excited men who had gathered in one of the public squares and whose general attitude portended trouble. Finally acceding to her demand, she stated that her jailer was astonished at what happened. Climbing into an automobile she began her address by calling for “Three cheers for Uncle Sam! Three cheers for America and its institutions!” and the sky, she said, rang with the strength of their voices.
FOR A NORMAL PULSE
They obeyed her behest to go quietly to their homes and for four consecutive nights they congregated and dispersed to the utmost astonishment of everybody. She asserted that
Uncle Sam is all right. The most dangerous thing you have to face is cheap office holders. The pulse of the nation is at fever heat and you must get it back to normal.
You must remove the cause of the disease and social unrest and revolution will take care of themselves. Deportation won’t settle it; imprisonment won’t settle it. Get together, obey the laws of the country, but if you don’t forestall it you will have to face the worst condition in history. Out of the military conflict has come the economic conflict and you can’t crush it.
ECONOMIC CLOUDS GATHERING
Before there is a clap of thunder clouds must gather. Economical clouds are gathering over the world now. Uprising is the thunderbolt that comes from the economical clouds. There is an electric current that may start in America. It runs around the world and sets the human chord in the heart afire. It is our duty to realize what is wrong. Private ownership of industry is at fault. It controls our bread. We can’t eat unless it says we may!
Drastically she said,
You opened wide the gates of immigration and when the stream of foreigners flowed in, you had no schools to educate them in American institutions. You brought the to this hell hole and worked them 12 and 14 hours a day and on their bones built fine churches and Y. M. C. A.’s. The best of the human instincts are dead and the dollar rules.
———-
[Photograph added of Mother Jones with William Z. Foster, from The Survey.]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
SOURCE
Altoona Times Tribune
(Altoona, Pennsylvania)
-Jan 12, 1920
https://www.newspapers.com/image/55394780/
IMAGE
GSS, Mother Jones, WZF, Survey p64, Nov 8, 1919
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=MoEbAQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PA64
See also:
Tag: Great Steel Strike of 1919
https://weneverforget.org/tag/great-steel-strike-of-1919/
Ancient Carthage
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Carthage
Re Rockefeller’s Company Union, see:
The Labor World of December 18, 1915
“How Young John D. Put Fake Union Across”
-by Chester M. Wright
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn78000395/1915-12-18/ed-1/seq-1/
Re Johnstown PA and the Steel Strike, see:
Strike!
-by Jeremy Brecher
South End Press, 1997
(search: “Johnstown Steel Workers Council”)
https://books.google.com/books?id=uoCNcKLzM_sC
Re Thomas J Conboy, see:
The Great Steel Strike and Its Lessons
-by William Z. Foster
B. W. Huebsch, Incorporated, 1920
(search: conboy)
https://books.google.com/books?id=Hbt-AAAAMAAJ
Note: this speech was given a just a few days following the defeat of the Great Steel Strike, which Mother describes here:
The Autobiography of Mother Jones
Charles Kerr, 1925
Chapter 24 – The Steel Strike of 1919
https://www.iww.org/history/library/MotherJones/autobiography/24
The strike was broken. Broken by the scabs brought in under the protection of the troops. Broken by breaking men’s belief in the outcome of their struggle. Broken by breaking men’s hearts. Broken by the press, by the government. In a little over a hundred days, the strike shivered to pieces.
The slaves went back to the furnaces, to the mills; to the heat and the roar, to the long hours – to slavery.
At headquarters men wept. I wept with them. A young man put his hands on my shoulders.
“Mother,” he sobbed. “It’s over.”
A red glare from the mills lighted the sky. It made me think of Hell.
“Lad,” said I, “it is not over. There’s a fiercer light than those hell fires over yonder! It is the white light of freedom burning in men’s hearts!”
Back to the mills trudged the men, accepting the terms of the despot, Gary; accepting hours that made them old, old men at forty; that threw them on the scrap heap, along with the slag from the mills, at early middle age; that made of them nothing but brutes that slept and worked, that worked and slept. The sound of their feet marching back into the mills was the sound of a funeral procession, and the corpse they followed was part of their selves. It was their hope.
Gary and his gang celebrated the victory with banquets and rejoicing. Three hundred thousand workers, living below the living wage, ate the bread of bitterness.
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.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Never Cross A Picket Line – Billy Bragg