You’ve been using your hands,
now I want you to use your heads.
We’ve got to do it,
because we must lick the Kaiser.
-Mother Jones
Hellraisers Journal, Sunday January 20, 1918
Indianapolis, Indiana – Miners Greet Mother Jones with “Lusty Yell”
From The Scranton Republican of January 18, 1918:
MINERS HEAR MOTHER JONES
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Tells Delegates to Use Their Heads,
“Because We Must Lick the Kaiser.”
——
INDIANAPOLIS, Ind., Jan. 17.-To permit federal investigations to have complete powers to interpret contracts existing between mine workers and operators, to investigate causes for layoffs and other mine troubles, who in all probability would possess no knowledge of the coal industry, would be a serious blunder and only complicate mine labor troubles, according to the viewpoints expressed in the mine workers’ convention today.
The proposal was contained in a resolution which sought to provide means to refute accusations by operators that the mine workers were deliberate slackers, and as a result coal production was reduced.
The resolution brought the first real fight of the convention. A remedy was suggested in the creation of a federal commission composed of an equal number of employers and employes, whose duty it would be to investigate charges made by employer and employes as to each others failure to observe contract conditions.
Might Invite Conscription.
White, Hayes, Greene, Walker and the committeemen, before whom the resolution was considered declared that such a step would possibly invite the conscription of labor. White and Hayes, denied that the charges made by few operators occasionally was given credence at Washington and assured the authors that the government knew of the truth or falsity of the reports charging miners in various localities with slacking.
That the present shortage of labor is a bugaboo and women should not be permitted to take the place of men in laborious tasks, was decided by the convention in a resolution asking that the department of labor investigate the labor shortage and the replacing of men with women in positions requiring heavy toil.
Mother Jones was an unexpected arrival just as the debate as to printing constitutions and other official documents during the war was under debate. There went forth a lusty yell, the debate was forgotten and Mother swung into action.
You’ve been using your hands, now I want you to use your heads. We’ve got to do it, because we must lick the Kaiser.
She praised Woodrow Wilson as being the greatest president of all time and urged the delegates to stand loyally behind him and also their own president, Frank J. Hayes; to be politically ambitious within the organization, she admonished that this was no time to play politics, that the hatchet must be buried for the good of the cause.
She declared she had just arrived from a sleuthing trip at Cincinnati, where she had scoured the railroad yards.
[She said:]
Why we have hundreds of empty cars lying in the yards.
The fuel shortage came in for considerable discussion at the miners’ convention today, when the resolutions committee recommended non-concurrence in a resolution proposing a federal investigation of complaints that members of the organization remained idle while mines were in operation.
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[Emphasis and photograph added.]
SOURCE
The Scranton Republican
(Scranton, Pennsylvania)
-Jan 18, 1918
https://www.newspapers.com/image/48845384
IMAGE
Mother Jones, Ft Wy Jr Gz p3, Dec 17, 1917
https://www.newspapers.com/image/29086040/
See also:
Proceedings of Convention of the
United Mine Workers of America
Indianapolis, Indiana
January 15 to 26, 1918
https://books.google.com/books?id=8fQUAAAAIAAJ