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Hellraisers Journal – Monday June 2, 1913
Mother Jones, “The Very Incarnation of Aggressive and Fighting Labor”
From the Huntington Socialist and Labor Star of May 30, 1913:
The Angel of The Mines.
———-By NORA GILLESPIE.
Seventy-three years ago there fled from Ireland a political refugee, with a little girl of eight, taking refuge in the land of freedom. Thus the spirit of rebellion and revolt is the heritage of the most noted and talked-of woman in the U. S. today. Mother Jones has stood for so many years as the very incarnation of aggressive and fighting labor, that it is very hard to picture her as a school teacher, and as a busy wife and mother fulfilling her domestic duty in the home. Yet she was all of these. She had a good education and taught school for several years before she married a worker, a staunch union man, and she, soon began organizing other workingmen’s wives into an auxiliary realizing even at that early stage the value of organization for the workers whether they be men or women.
Four children were born to her in rapid succession, and the wives of workingmen will understand what her life was for six years, when the great tragedy took place, which changed her from the mother of four to the mother of the working class.
An epidemic [of yellow fever] broke out in the town [Memphis, 1867] where she lived and in the space of seven days she saw death take from her one after another, her husband and four children. It was overwhelming and the average woman would have succumbed utterly. But not Mother Jones of the great heart and rebellious spirit. All the love, devotion and self-sacrifice she would have bestowed upon her own dear ones became transmuted into a declaration for the cause of labor. Here is heroism for you in comparison with which DYING for a cause seems insignificant. To determine to LIVE for a cause, when your own life is shattered and your whole being pleads-that is the very flower of heroism.
Since that time the story of Mother Jones has been the story of the labor war that goes on and must go on in every country where workers are exploited to make profit for shirkers, and always has she taken her place on the firing line. Neither the bullpen nor the jail have held any terrors for her and she [has] known the inside of both.
“The Angel of the Mines” has other names, one of which is “the old she-devil,” which the owners of the earth and the fullness thereof apply to her. This is a good example of the difference in classes.
[Photograph, paragraph breaks and emphasis added.]
From the Appeal to Reason of May 31, 1913:
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GOVERNOR HATFIELD of West Virginia proclaimed the observance of “mothers’ day” on May 11th, and celebrated it by keeping Mother Jones in prison for protesting against the maltreatment of “her boys.” Such hypocrisy is doing more against religion than all the agitation of the atheist.
[Emphasis added.]
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SOURCES & IMAGES
Quote Mother Jones, WV Court Martial, No Plea to Make, Ptt Pst p3, Mar 8, 1913
https://www.newspapers.com/article/pittsburgh-daily-post-mar-8-1913-pittsb/123676845/
The Socialist and Labor Star
(Huntington, West Virginia)
“Right and Justice for All, Special Privileges to None.”
“Endorsed by Huntington Trades and Labor Assembly”
-May 30, 1913
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85059765/1912-05-31/ed-1/seq-3/
Appeal to Reason
(Girard, Kansas)
-May 31, 1913, page 1
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/appeal-to-reason/130531-appealtoreason-w913.pdf
IMAGE
Mother Jones, Cora Older, at Military Bastile WV, Colliers p26, Apr 1913
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=pst.000068356118&view=2up&seq=152
See also:
Mother Jones
Raising Cain and Consciousness
-by Simon Cordery
UNM Press, Oct 9, 2011
(search: “yellow fever”)
https://books.google.com/books?id=dMIzWgzbdGMC
Mother Jones
The Most Dangerous Woman in America
by Elliott J. Gorn
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Jun 2, 2015
(search: catherine elizabeth)
https://books.google.com/books?id=9gRpCAAAQBAJ
Names and year of birth of Mother’s children
-per Gorn, page 38:
Catherine-1862
Elizabeth-1863
Terence-1865
Mary-1867
Hellraisers Journal: Without Husband or Children,
Mother Jones Chooses as Her Family the Toilers from Coast to Coast
More from Appeal to Reason of May 31, 1913, see pages 1&2
“Crimes of Private Army” by John Kenneth Turner
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/appeal-to-reason/130531-appealtoreason-w913.pdf
Search: Washington newspapers, Apr-May 1913, mother jones women protest
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/search/pages/results/?state=Washington&dateFilterType=range&date1=04%2F01%2F1913&date2=05%2F15%2F1913&language=&ortext=&andtext=women+protest&phrasetext=mother+jones&proxtext=&proxdistance=5&rows=20&searchType=advanced&sort=date
Search: Day Book, May 1913, Senator Kern
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/search/pages/results/?lccn=sn83045487&dateFilterType=range&date1=05%2F01%2F1913&date2=05%2F31%2F1913&language=&ortext=&andtext=&phrasetext=senator+kern&proxtext=&proxdistance=5&rows=20&searchType=advanced&sort=date#tab=tab_advanced_search
Search: D. C. newspapers, May 20-31, 1913, kern resolution west virginia
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/search/pages/results/?state=District+of+Columbia&dateFilterType=range&date1=05%2F20%2F1913&date2=05%2F31%2F1913&language=&ortext=&andtext=kern+resolution+west+virginia&phrasetext=&proxtext=&proxdistance=5&rows=20&searchType=advanced&sort=date#tab=tab_advanced_search
Tag: West Virginia Court Martial of Mother Jones + 48 of 1913
https://weneverforget.org/tag/west-virginia-court-martial-of-mother-jones-48-of-1913/
Tag: Senate Investigation of Paint Creek Coal Fields of West Virginia of 1913
https://weneverforget.org/tag/senate-investigation-of-paint-creek-coal-fields-of-west-virginia-of-1913/
Tag: Paint Creek-Cabin Creek Strike of 1912-1913
https://weneverforget.org/tag/paint-creek-cabin-creek-strike-of-1912-1913/
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No More Death for Dollars – Ed Pickford
“Mother’s sorrow took my kids; the miners eased my pain.”