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Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday October 28, 1913
Mother Jones Lectures Rich Suffragettes on Suffering of Miners’ Wives
From the Chicago Day Book of October 27, 1913:
RICH SUFFRAGETS KNOW NOTHING OF
MINERS’ WIVES’ SUFFERING
SAYS MOTHER JONESBY WM. G. SHEPHERD
Trinidad, Col., Oct. 27.-Mother Jones, 81, here fresh from the West Virginia prisons to help Colorado coal strikers, recently gave me her opinion on women’s suffrage.
From what I see of conditions in this corrupted state of Colorado, where they have had women’s suffrage for 14 years, it seems to me that the influence of women has been utterly useless. I wish Mrs. Pankhurst would frame me a statement as to why women’s suffrage has failed so utterly in Colorado. Conditions of women and children in mining districts are worse than in any other part of the United States.
This state is owned by corporations. Votes of the women of Colorado have never helped Colorado women and children, made their lives easier or lessened their toil or gained for them any additional human rights.
The rights of lower classes are less respected in this great woman suffrage state than in West Virginia, where women don’t vote. It is like prescribing cough medicine to cure consumption for Mrs. Pankhurst to suggest votes for women as a cure for economical slavery.
Mrs. Pankhurst doesn’t understand problems of the lower classes; she belongs to the upper classes. What does Mrs. Belmont or Mrs. Mackay or other rich women who surround Mrs. Pankhurst know about suffering of miners’ wives and infants? Mrs. Pankhurst travels with women who are opposed to what laboring classes of America stand for. They demand to know what right Mrs. Pankhurst has to associate with such women at the same time she talks about uplifting the world. The consumptive, economical America needs something more than Mrs. Pankhurst’s celebrated cough syrup. I wish Mrs. Pankhurst were coming to speak to the women in the tented camps of the coal strikers of Colorado. It would be more of a lesson for Mrs. Pankhurst than for the wives.
[Emphasis added.]
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SOURCES & IMAGES
Quote Mother Jones, Dont need vote to raise hell, Ab Chp 22, 1925
https://archive.iww.org/history/library/MotherJones/autobiography/22/
The Day Book
(Chicago, Illinois)
-Oct 27, 1913
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045487/1913-10-27/ed-1/seq-29/
See also:
The Seattle Star
(Seattle, Washington)
-Oct 24, 1913
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn87093407/1913-10-24/ed-1/seq-1/
United Labor Bulletin
(Denver, Colorado)
-Nov 8, 1913
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn91052295/1913-11-08/ed-1/seq-2/
Estelle Sylvia Pankhurst (1882-1960)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvia_Pankhurst
Alva Erskine Belmont (née Smith; 1853-1933)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alva_Belmont
Katherine Alexander Duer Mackay (1878–1930)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katherine_Duer_Mackay
Tag: William Gunn Shepherd
https://weneverforget.org/tag/william-gunn-shepherd/
Tag: Colorado Coalfield Strike of 1913-1914
https://weneverforget.org/tag/colorado-coalfield-strike-of-1913-1914/
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The Women and Children of Ludlow – Tom Breiding
Lyrics by Frank Hayes