———-
Hellraisers Journal – Thursday January 15, 1920
Altoona, Pennsylvania – Mother Jones Speaks at Mishler Theater, Part II
From the Altoona Times Tribune of January 12, 1920:
Mother Jones Elucidates Theories To Altoona Audience
[Part II of II.]
OVERWORK AND UNDERPAY
She scored the conditions which permit men and women to be overworked and underpaid and results in riots and strikes when women and children are shot by brutes. Under her own personal observation at a time like this in the south, she said, was a case of a woman run down by mounted police who gave birth to a child as she was being taken to the morgue.
[She passionately declared:]
You have no Christianity. If you had conditions like this would not exist.
However, the speaker gave it as her opinion that the workers are becoming educated, getting a different vision; they feel the pulse of the world beating and different days coming. In West Virginia 65,000 men are organized since the inception of the union movement in that section a short time ago. Recently 10,000 of these men marched in a parade which the mayor of the city characterized as the most orderly parade he ever saw. All of which is a good omen.
BRUTALITY COVERED UP
[She cried:]
We want to give America a well fed humanity, intellectually, morally and physically. If the ministers do not wake up they will be thrown on a scrap heap.
At this point she derided the idea of saying “Your honor” to the governor of a state, who has permitted the murder of women and children in industrial uprisings.
This is the most insidiously brutal age that ever was, but it is covered up.
She told of a strike in Utah which the sheriff attempted to quell with 40 gunmen, one of whom was a sentenced bank wrecker. Taking the men out of their tents and with out giving them leave to put on their clothing, they forced the men, at the point of their guns, to march two and a half miles in the cold, mean-time beating them with their guns. Very affectingly she recited the story of a woman whose little son was born at 11 o’clock at night and, through her desire to educate her children and in order to ameliorate their condition, got up at 4 o’clock the next morning to cook breakfast for a dozen men who boarded at her home. Helen Gould, the speaker asserted, carried on her philanthropic work by means of suffering such as that.
JUSTICE, NOT CHARITY
[She cried:]
Why don’t the churches rise as Christ arose? Why don’t you women rise? Not as suffragettes, temperance workers or charity workers. We don’t want charity; we want justice.
Here she interjected an instance of workers who had fallen under the bar of law who were confined into prison, for a term of from 5 to 20 years in default of from $5,000 to $20,000 bail. Imprisoned, they were subjected to such conditions that 15 contracted pneumonia, five of whom died.
[Continued the speaker:]
I love my country and I want to make her the greatest country in the world and she will be! Weren’t you afraid of the A. F. of L., of Gompers? I am afraid of no one on earth, in or out of office; no one owns me. I don’t care if you are a Bolshevist or a Spartacist; if you are a working man, I am with you.
You have got to wake up, cement your forces, cast away your jealousies and quit looking for office. The only office I have wanted for the last 50 years was raising Hell with the robbers. Organize and quit looking for office and when you have office holders, keep the whip in your own hands.
ADMITTED SHE’S RADICAL
Declaring she was a radical, Mother Jones asseverated that Columbus, Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Lloyd Garrison were radicals. The coming ages will be ashamed of the today, when the nation was degraded with dollars.
If you women were true to the nation, you would follow the example of the women of Faneuil hall and bid the tyrannists, “Shoot now, we don’t believe in the slavery of dollars.”
Mother Jones interspersed her address with numerous humorous stories that she gleaned from her long and varied experiences, which convulsed her audience with laughter. She told of being arrested in Trinidad, Colorado for making the statement, “Stand like men.” Forcing her captors to drag her through the streets, a man who remonstrated in her behalf was fined $25 for expressing his sympathy.
WANTED AGITATION
Again reverting to citation of the agitators in our history, she said that Thomas Jefferson once declared that he “hoped the time would never come when there would bo no agitator.” Christ wa an agitator 1900 years ago. If he was not, “why did they hang Him,” was her pertinent remark.
[Her behest was:]
I hope agitation never will be stopped, but keep the flag at the mast. It was bought by the blood of men; as proof it carries the red stripe. Do not let it perish on the altar of dollar.
[Her plea to the women in the audience was:]
Women, clean house in the nation as you do in the home.
[And she declared:]
We can controvert the robbers; we can starve them, freeze them.
Telling of an incident when she stood in water to her waist, to save some industrial workers on whom the cavalry had turned their machine guns, she told that she placed her hands on the muzzles on the machine guns; and pleaded with the soldiers, “Don’t shoot them. My class makes these guns; I have a right to examine them. I don’t want the creeks watered with their blood; they are not fighting you, they are fighting their oppressors.”
MUCH USELESS WORK
[Another foreword to woman was:]
Nature had placed in every heart a human chord. You women have spent too much time on things that have not the nation. A nation can not rise above its womankind. Cut out the Missionary societies, the Y. W. C. A., the clubs, W. C. T. U.’s and get down to real work.
No nation in the world is like America. You must save her from the ruin of dollars, she will perish if you don’t bestir yourselves. Every wrong perpetrated on your children is your fault.
At this point she interjected a story of her experience in Johnstown. Inviting the policemen on the stage, uniformed sewer rats, she dubbed this gentry in the course of her lecture, she scored them by saying,
You will fight for the steel trust, but not the nation’s honor, better houses, better food, better schools.
[She continued:]
Here you are disunited. It is a terrible indictment on this generation; get together.
[Her prophetic asseveration was:]
I see the clouds of darkness passing away in the dawn of a better day, when the homes and schools will approach the ideal and noble motherhood will sing lullabies and caress her babe without fear; when there will be no need of policemen and gunmen. I see the sun rising. I feel that I have not lived in vain.
AGITATORS, RED
If you are an agitator, you are a Red. I am just as red as God can make me. I have not had time to study Bolshevism, but if Bolshevism is what they say it is, let us have Bolshevism. On every side there is a warning cry-a cry in the night. We are standing on the threshold of a great change.
Pointing out the terrible living conditions that came under her observation in different industrial communities, she reiterated that:
[T]he history of the labor movement of the world has has never been written. It has never been touched by human pen. When the writer attempts to put down a tythe of the struggle, the patience, the submission of the working class of America, the world will stand aghast. It’s up to you; it’s up to me.
You may think I’m a little radical. I am. I have nothing to hide. Our forefathers said to the Europeans, “You oppressed, come over here where we are the sovereigns.” In Europe the king is the sovereign, but in this country the president, the supreme court and congress, are not the sovereigns, they are the servants of the people and it is time that you let them know it.
WRONG CANNOT LIVE
[The speaker continued:]
No wrong can live long if intelligently, openly and logically discussed by the people, is my philosophy. Putting I. W. W.’s and Bolshevists in jail and deporting them is not the remedy for our troubles of today. Get together, organize, go to your union every night, get your union paper and get an editor that knows how to write for you. Get a man that understands this thing and can point it out for the guidance of the men below. Put organizers drawing pay out of the blood of the workers out of business.
[She encouraged:]
Get a move on you. Don’t be afraid of anybody. This is America.
Here she interjected a humorous story of an experience she had with what she called “a little two-by-four lickspittle of a British emigration officer” who tried to prevent her from entering British Columbia. She answered his objections by saying she had an uncle who would get her through.
UNCLE WOULD HELP
“Who is your uncle?”, he inquired. “Uncle Sam,” was the answer. “He licked hell out of you once and he can do it again.” She digressed at this point to commiserate with the woman whom she described as “the cat of a mother who raised him.”
Telling of being asked “Why don’t work for Jesus?”, she replied, “He doesn’t need me. I’m working for the people he worked for.”
[She continued:]
Each of us will have to make our neighbors wrongs our own. Go to your union and discuss these wrongs and don’t fight each other.
[She declared:]
If I had my way, every labor union would have an open door. There’s nothing to discuss that needs closed doors. Then every rotten sleuth would be out of a job. There are no secrets to discuss. Conduct your business openly even if your employer does drop in and let the Secret Service men come in and sit there.
BACK THE PRESIDENT
At this point the speaker gave an explanatory note that she had, “The Life of Debs” for sale, the proceeds of which were used for the comfort of the agitators who have been imprisoned. Again she cautioned,
Don’t attack government. Don’t attack the President. He has gone through a terrific ordeal and is up against it. If you don’t agree with him politically, be men, stand back of him. He has made blunders but Jesus Christ made blunders. Back him up for the honor of the nation.
Scoring Prince Albert of Wales who declared that he could not go into a reception given him by “the burglars of Wall street unless he was given a glass of brandy,” and she said that he thanked God that he was away from America when once more he set foot in London. Rotten royalty kings have gone away from America. Put rotten money kings aside in the same way and stand for the flag.
STORY OF STRIKER
She told of a striker whose hands were lacerated with shoe tacks by the powers that be, in an effort to make him go to work. She used this instance as a reason why the working man of today should not be a coward; should not hunt for a job, but should wake up and then he doesn’t need to submit to the tyranny of a few.
[She said:]
We are going to put kaisers out of business. Educate yourselves for the safety of the nation, then you will have justice done you. You can’t get justice in the courts now, yet you women raise these rotten judges of the court, marry them and go to banquets with them. The women are to blame.
[She declared:]
We won’t need courts if you quit raising men of this type.
WANTS BIG PEOPLE
[This was her closing sentence:]
I want this nation to have big men, big women, well cared for, intellectually, morally and physically, and that is my work.
In response to a word of thanks by Chairman Kutz, eloquently spoken, Mother Jones replied:
No man nor woman is entitled to thanks for anything that he or she does for humanity! Any one deserves condemnation who does not do what he can for his fellow man. I have the hope that the day is coming when there will be no A. F. L.’s, no Bolshevist, no I. W. W.’s, but that all will be Americans.
[Photograph and emphasis added.]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
SOURCE
Altoona Times Tribune
(Altoona, Pennsylvania)
-Jan 12, 1920
https://www.newspapers.com/image/55394780/
IMAGE
Mother Jones, Chg Tb p120, Oct 26, 1919
https://www.newspapers.com/image/355273232/
See also:
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday January 14, 1920
Altoona, Pennsylvania – Mother Jones Speaks at Mishler Theater, Part I
For more on the work of Mother Jones, in her own words, see:
The Autobiography of Mother Jones
-ed by Mary Field Parton
CH Kerr, 1925
https://www.iww.org/history/library/MotherJones/autobiography
https://www.marxists.org/subject/women/authors/jones/index.html
https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/jones/autobiography/autobiography.html
Mother Jones Speaks
Collected Writings and Speeches
-ed by Philip S Foner
Monad Press, 1983
https://books.google.com/books?id=OE9hAAAAIAAJ
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
The Correspondence of Mother Jones
-ed by Edward M. Steel
U of Pittsburgh Press, 1985
https://books.google.com/books?id=EZ2xAAAAIAAJ
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
They’ll Never Keep Us Down – Hazel Dickens