Recently in New York, there was held a banquet
at which $15,000,000 was represented.
Not one of the men present at that banquet
ever produced one dollar’s worth.
All that they posses was taken
away from the toilers.
Hellraisers Journal, Thursday October 19, 1916
Moline, Illinois – Mother Jones Speaks and Encourages Illegal Street Music
From The Monmouth Daily Atlas of October 17, 1916:
MOTHER JONES HAS A GOOD TIME
IN MOLINE
—–Moline, Oct. 17. – “Mother” Jones needs music to start off her meetings.
Mayor Martin T. Carlson of Moline Saturday refused to issue a permit for a band to play Sunday afternoon on the streets but “Mother” Jones told the boys to go ahead. There was a musical program on the streets before the meeting and at a late hour this afternoon, city officials had taken no notice of the disregard to the mayor’s order.
The meeting at the Moline theater was a monster one and “Mother” Jones delivered one of her dynamic talks touching on several phases of modern life, touching political religious, civic and individual questions of the hour.
—–
[Photograph added.]
Mother Jones Interviewed by The Davenport News:
LABOR LEADER SCORES HUGHES, BOOSTS WILSON
—–
‘Mother’ Jones, National Celebrity,
in Davenport for Short Time.
Decries Past Conditions.
—–
Says U. S. Home of Nation of ‘Dollar Hogs’
Holding Down Toilers.
—–
I am not a Democrat by philosophy. I am not of either Hughes’ or Wilson’s political faith I am a Socialist, but I admire Wilson for the things he has done. I am big and broad enough to see things squarely. And when any man or woman does something for humanity I say go to him and shake him by the hand and pat him on the back and say, “I’m for you!”
This was the statement made by “Mother” Jones, celebrated labor leader and lecturer, Saturday night.
She arrived in Davenport at 2 o’clock Saturday afternoon, from New York via Chicago. At 2 o’clock this afternoon she addresses a mass meeting of working men in the Moline theater, Moline. She was present for a short time at the Machinists’ dance at the Coliseum Saturday night.
Stopping at St. James
Mother Jones received a Democrat representative in her room at the St James hotel. She sat in a comfortable rocking chair by a south window, her figure silhouetted against the square of fading light.
As the reporter entered the room she rose easily and shook hands with him graciously. Her grip was firm. Her voice, slightly hoarse from many speeches, rasped a little as she talked. Yet it seemed but to emphasized her sentences the more.
As to Description
One rather hesitates to describe Mother Jones. She is not a large woman, though heavily-built. She was dressed simply in black. Her hair, silver-white, curled on top of her head and flung lingering tendrils around a face calm, kind, yet deeply-lined. Her chin, square and firm, pushed forward aggressively as she told of the indignities suffered by the toilers.
Started Work 40 Years Ago
[Mother Jones went on:]
It’s been 40 years since we first started this movement for an eight-hour working day…Franklin said that four hours was enough. Of course, in the beginning, there wasn’t as much noise made about this movement as there is now. There was no need to make all the fuss.
Nowhere in human history will you find a time when the toilers produced as much as they do now. And nowhere in human history, likewise, will you find a time when the toilers were paid as little in proportion to what they produce.
There is no reason why the United States should drift like ancient Rome. In the last 50 years there has been more money accumulated in the United States than there was in all the years of the existence of the ancient Greek and Roman empires. And those nations perished.
Criticizes Political Gathering
Recently in New York, there was held a banquet at which $15,000,000 was represented. Not one of the men present at that banquet ever produced one dollar’s worth. All that they posses was taken away from the toilers.
Before that, a train of women representing $1,000,000, went out campaigning for the politicians who attended the banquet. They never went to Armour and said to him, “You have many women working in your factories. They should be given a chance to rise. They are to be the future mothers of the land. Help them.”
Women’s Condition Horrible
You should see those women. They are paid $1.15 a day. Fifteen of them sleep in one room. After a certain time at their work their muscles become cramped and will only move a certain way. Those are the women who are producing the men and women of America.
Yet the voice of these society women was never raised in protest. When one of the workers deviates from the straight and narrow path and goes down, there are “homes” for her. And there she can stay with the brand of fallen woman on her back forever.
The society women are the fallen women! They are the ones who force women to fall.
There’s something wrong about it all. Something that must be remedied.
“A Race of Dollar Hogs”
The United states has become the home of a race of dollar hogs.
We have strikes and humanity is murdered by professional gunmen, because the toilers ask for a little more money, a little more bread, a little more sunshine in their sordid lives. The dollar hogs are the murderers.
The churches never protest against the wholesale murders. Take Colorado for an example. The ministers never get up in their pulpits and preach for better things for the toilers.
But-
But when the working men are strained to the limit and get out and raise h-, then out come the ministers hand-in-hand with the high-class burglars. Gunmen are hired to slaughter the workers and throw them into jail. The children are left alone to shift for themselves. The women toil along and “go wrong.”
America won’t let her walls be stained with the blood of her people much longer.
We demand an eight-hour law so that men and women can use their brains a little more instead of their muscles.
No Gunmen in Slavery Days [?!]
No gunmen were ever hired in the days of chattel slavery. Such a thing was unheard of in those times. [With all due respect to Mother Jones, this is a preposterous statement!] Yet today they hire professional murderers to shoot the toilers down in cold blood and murder women and children. I have seen these things.
This is a terrible indictment against the twentieth century in the United States of America.
Never Heard Before
As I say, we fought for an even chance for 40 years. Yet never until four years ago did we get a hearing from the White House. Never until then did the executive of a nation come out of the White House and enter the senate and demand that the toilers be given an even break in the world.
Wilson saved the country from a complete demoralization. If the railroad workers had gone out, it would only have been a very short time until the machinists and the boilermakers and all the rest of the workers would have followed.
There is a continuous under-current – a seething spirit of unrest that occasionally bubbles up. This will cease when proper conditions are gained.
And then besides, Wilson has done so many other things. Under his administration the country has been freer from want. He has fixed it for the farmers.
Kept Out of War
He kept the country out of a war with Mexico. That is something that I should have dreaded to have seen. It would have meant the murder of thousands of peons as well as the loyal boys of the army and national guard.
It would have meant thousands of blighted homes, stricken mothers, deserted wives and fatherless children. It would have been a calamity.
And then, in softer tones, which took on a harsh note occasionally as she told of some of the indignities. Mother Jones told of some of the conditions she had seen in her many years of working for the organized labor interests of the country.
She is, without doubt, sincere in her views. She will make only a short stay in Davenport, leaving here this evening.
SOURCES
The Monmouth Daily Atlas
(Monmouth, Illinois)
-Oct 17, 1916, page 7
http://idnc.library.illinois.edu/cgi-bin/illinois?a=d&d=MDA19161017
Mother Jones Speaks: Collected Writings and Speeches
-ed by Philip Sheldon Foner
Monad Press, 1983
(Search: Davenport.)
https://books.google.com/books?id=OE9hAAAAIAAJ
(Note: the exact date of this interview is unknown. Formerly, my best educated guess was that it occurred some time during the third week of September, due to the fact that I found a “Mother Jones” at a farmers meeting in Southern Iowa at about that time. I now believe that the interview took place the day after her speech in Moline, as described above. More research needed. The Davenport News cannot be found online, and anyone in Davenport who could verify the date of this interview would be greatly appreciated.]
IMAGES
Mother Jones, UMWJ Cover, Feb 10, 1916
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=NQpQAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&source=gbs_atb&pg=GBS.RA11-PA1
See also:
For more on “a train of women representing $1,000,000:”
-here Mother is referring to the so-called “Golden Special:”
https://archive.org/stream/californiahistor65cali#page/92/mode/2up
For more on “If the railroad workers had gone out…”
-Mother is most likely referring to the recently passed Adamson Act.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adamson_Act