Hellraisers Journal: Part III: “Mother Jones & Her Methods -Personality & Power of This Aged Woman”-Boston Sunday Herald

[FROM OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT.]

NEW YORK, Sept. 9, 1904

“MOTHER” JONES’ CONDUCT WITH FRIENDS AND ENEMIES
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She Shines Among the Workers.
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The mother nature which is so strong in this remarkable woman as to have given her her beautiful soubriquet is not revealed among the ordinary surroundings which come to her during her brief sojourns in Chicago, New York or Washington, but is at once ready to shine forth when she is among the workers whom she calls her children-the girls of the silk mills, the men in the coal fields, or in the humble homes among the mothers and children.

In the strike of 1900 in Pennsylvania she started out one evening from Hazleton to go to Macadoo [McAdoo], to address a local union of miners. On the electric car she sat by the writer quietly observant of the other passengers. No one was as yet aware of her personality. Looking across at a young man and young woman who were sitting closely together, comparing two much thumbed note books with their heads quite close together, Mrs. Jones said: “Look at the dear children; they are comparing their savings. They are lovers, wondering how long it may be before they will be able to marry.”

There was a smile of tenderness on her face which did not wane when at transfer station some noisy youngsters outside discovered her and set up a cry of “Mother Jones! Mother Jones!”

“That’s so, children,” she said, standing up and leaning out of the window to them. “This is old ‘Mother’ Jones going to talk to your fathers and mothers. Are you union boys and girls?”

“You bet we are; hurrah for Mother Jones! Hurrah for Mother Jones!”

The youngsters kept pace with the car, and when the old lady stepped off they made her an escort as she walked to the hall, crowding and pushing to get close to her, to touch her dress, to hold her hand, to look up into her face and to shout the tidings that she was coming. When she reached the hall it was filled with men, who respectfully made way for her, and she passed among them to the platform.

After talking to them for a short time about the progress of the strike, and about a particularly obstinate body of workers at the Coleraine colliery, she told them that she had a plan, and asked them to clear the hall and send the women of their families to her. The men immediately yielded to her suggestion without understanding her intention, for she had worked so long among them as an organizer that they had faith in her judgment.

In about half an hour a strange audience had assembled. there were old, bent women of 70 and young, fresh-faced girls of 16. There were young matrons with babes in their arms, and women faded before their time. The faces that looked up from the rude benches of the strikers’ hall were at first only curious, or somewhat shy and embarrassed.

Walking to the edge of the platform “Mother” Jones stretched out her arms to them, and in her thrillingly sweet voice said, “Sisters!” A perceptible wave of emotion like the breath of wind sweeping the long grasses of downs and meadows passed over her audience. Still the women waited, wondered, watched.

“In the old revolutionary days,” said “Mother” Jones, “your mothers were heroes, as well as your fathers.”

The faces awoke; the souls back of them kindled. For an hour the speaker walked to and fro telling the deeds of mothers of the past, of sisters and wives. The listeners drew nearer. They leaned their elbows on the platform and lifted their faces to drink in her words. Their bosoms heaved and the tears rolled unheeded down their cheeks, but quickly the smiles flashed out again at the will of the speaker. She was explaining to them a plan to march by night through the mountains to surprise at dawn the body of workmen who had refused to strike, and by soft words and cajoleries to woo them to make common cause with their fellows. For who would stop a body of women carrying flags and singing.

“To Colerain-ah!” they whispered among themselves, and then broke out tumultuously: “We’ll go; yes, tonight; to win the boys of Colerain.”

Leading the Women to Colerain.
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And so, just as the sun broke over the mountains that September morning, 500 women from McAdoo poured down into the village of Colerain, and in spite of deputy sheriffs, special guards and a special trainload of militia, they entered the homes of the workers, or surrounded squads of departing workmen, and by tears and smiles, and kisses and loving words they got their way with the men, took possession of the dinner pails, and held a dance of triumph in the village square. The wives and sisters of the town fell in with them, and nothing but boos and baas of derision greeted the company of soldier bank clerks and book-keepers from Scranton when they tried to stampede the impromptu picnic, which lasted throughout the day.

This is one of the ways in which “Mother” Jones is most dangerous from the point of view of the capitalist who is at outs with his employes. Her magnetic influence over women is remarkable. Old or young, rich or poor, she understands them and draws them irresistibly.

An old colored woman ran out from a cabin on the mountain road and fell on her knees in the dust at “Mother” Jones’ feet crying; “Lemme des kiss de hem of your garment.” “Not in the dust, sister, to me; but here on my breast, heart to heart,” replied “Mother” Jones, lifting the negress; and the reporter who saw this incident declares that the women went mad with emotion, crying out: “Kiss me, too, Mother.”

When the writer once asked “Mother” Jones why it was she stirred up the women, she replied that it was because every drop of their blood was precious, that they were the inner life of the race, and that every nation was but the reflex of its women.

[Said she:]

No nation..will ever go beyond the development of its women. Lift up the women, make them intellectual; thus will great sons be born, and men find true comrades in their wives.

The Famous Ride to New York.
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When, like the “Pied Piper of Hamelin,” “Mother” Jones led all the mill children of Philadelphia out of the city a year ago, and conducted them along the highways of New York, trolley cars gave them free rides and hotels fed them, and at last the great metropolis saw them parade up Broadway, and gave them a free excursion to Coney Island, where they had a delightful outing, riding the camels and elephants of the animal show and playing in the surf like happier conditioned little ones.

“Why do you do this?” her friends asked in irritation. “Don’t you know it is spectacular, theatrical and ridiculous?”

[Said “Mother” Jones:]

The children are on strike, and these babes shall have one holiday they may remember..But, mark you, it goes deeper than that. I have made selfish New York stop a moment and think of the children. You’ll see result.

“Mother” Jones has been accused of being irreligious. Unorthodox she certainly is, for Jew and Gentile are alike to her; but her speeches are full of religious conviction, and she spends no little time reading her Bible. Next to the book of books, she cherishes the poetry of Robert Burns, and says that the peasant poet felt what he did not understand, and sang of the joys and sorrows of the people as no other poet has ever done. Her two other literary favorites are Tolstoi and Wendell Phillips. She carries with her always a worn volume of the great abolitionist’s orations.

But she does not care overmuch for the special writers on the labor question. She knows Bernard Shaw, Jack London and others, and calls them the intellectuals.

[Says “Mother” Jones:]

They are all right..the dilletanti have a work to do, to reach the cultivated. If they are only sincere it is enough, but let them not dare to play with the great questions.

When the William Morris Club of San Francisco gave her a banquet, she attended, but persisted in eating the simplest of food.

[She said:]

I am..going to be very frank with you, I will not wine and dine even with you whom I love lest you corrupt me with the flesh and blood of the working people, because you know these things are got at their expense. Stop being dilletantes, social settlers that settle nothing, and charity workers offering insult instead of remedy. Stop patronizing and emotionalizing, and get down among us and make common cause.

When “Mother” Jones was arrested in West Virginia for violating an injunction against holding a mass meeting, she was taken into court a Parkersburg, and to the venerable judge’s question as to why an old lady like herself did not remain quietly at home and engage in charity and church work, she replied:

Your honor, I do not believe in charity. I would pull down every almshouse in the world, and upon their ruins build temples of justice.

The judge pardoned her and let her go.

When asked recently if she would not soon leave off her arduous work and take some comfort in her old age, “Mother” Jones replied:

I am not uncomfortable nor weary. I am an extraordinarily happy woman, with just enough pain in my life to keep me true. If I yielded to luxury I might lose myself. And if the world were not so foolishly afraid of pain it might end all its misery. Luxury makes slaves. I prefer the open road, a comrade’s greeting and the breath of freedom.

[Paragraph breaks and emphasis added.]

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday September 13, 1904
Part I of III: “Mother Jones & Her Methods”-Her Power Proved

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday September 14, 1904
Part II of III: “Mother Jones & Her Methods”-Then and Now

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday September 27, 1900
Pennsylvania – Mother Jones Leads Army of Women from McAdoo to Coleraine

Category: March of the Mill Children 1903
https://weneverforget.org/category/march-of-the-mill-children-1903/

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday August 19, 1902
Mother Jones News Round-Up for July 1902, Part IV
Judge Jackson Severe on the Miners, Releases Mother Jones with Lecture

The Battles of Labor: William Levi Bull Lecture, Year 1906
-by Carroll Davidson Wright
G. W. Jacobs & Company, 1906
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=pst.000000169400&seq=7
-p144: The Great Anthracite Coal Strike of 1900
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=pst.000000169400&seq=150
-p145: The Great Anthracite Coal Strike of 1902
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=pst.000000169400&seq=151