Hellraisers Journal – Friday June 17, 1910
Washington D. C. – Mother Jones Before House Rules Committee, Part I
Washington D. C., June 14, 1910-During the morning session of the Hearings before the House Rules Committee on H.J. Res. 201, “Providing for a Joint Committee To Investigate Alleged Persecutions of Mexican Citizens by the Government of Mexico,” Mother Jones was called to the stand by Congressman William B. Wilson of Pennsylvania. Mother testified as follow:
Mr. Wilson: Mr. Chairman, I would like to have Mother Jones speak. The Chairman [Representative John Dalzell of Pennsylvania]:
Mother Jones, please give the stenographer your name and residence.
STATEMENT OF MRS. MARY JONES
[Part I of II.]
Lebanon Daily News June 15, 1910
[Questioned by Chairman Dalzell:]
My name is Mary Jones. I live in the United States, but I do not know exactly in what place, because I am always in the fight against oppression, and wherever a fight is going on I have to jump there, and sometimes I am in Washington, sometimes in Pennsylvania, sometimes in Arizona, sometimes in Texas, and sometimes up in Minnesota, so that really I have no particular residence…No abiding place, but wherever a fight is on against wrong, I am always there. It is my pleasure to be in the fray.
[Mr. Wilsonquestions Mother about the kidnapping of Manual Sarabia from Douglas, Arizona, during summer of 1907:]
I was in Arizona at that time. We had a strike on there with the Philip Dodge copper interest. The smelters, the men, or the slaves, rather, working in the smelters, had not been organized, and I went down there in Douglas to help organize those workers.
[Wilson asks Mother if she would rather sit down] I am so accustomed to standing when I am talking that I am uncomfortable when sitting down. That is too easy. [Laughter.]
Well, I was holding a meeting on the streets of Douglas on Sunday night for the workers that were in the smelters. An automobile was run out from the jail, from what I learned afterwards and this young Sarabia was thrown into it.
He screamed out, “They are taking my liberty,” and then they choked him off. I do not know how many were in the automobile, but coming down from the meeting where the crowd had been all the evening and the streets were vacant otherwise, one of the workers came to me and said, “Oh, Mother, there has been something horrible going on at the jail,” and he said, “some man has been taken there and deprived of his liberty.” I said, “I suppose it is somebody with a jag on,” and did not think further of it at all. So we went to the hotel I was staying at, and we were discussing the meeting over with a dozen of these poor unfortunate wretches in the smelters, and just then the editor of El Industrio, whose paper has been suppressed since, came running down very much excited, and said, “On, Mother, they have kidnaped our young revolutionist.”
Well, kidnaping seemed to be in the air just about that time. The Idaho affair was on, and I just did not understand at first what he meant. He was very excited, so I said, “Sit down a moment.” There were perhaps six or seven of us sitting down there, and he sat down, and I said, “Whom did they kidnap, did you say?” He said, “Our young Mexican revolutionist.” I said, “What for? How so?” He said, “He worked on the paper here, and they threw him in jail this afternoon, and while you had a meeting in the crowd there they ran an automobile out and took him away.” I said, “Get as may items on that as you can, and get a line on it, and immediately telegraph to the governor, and you boys find out all you can about that and telegraph it to Washington. Do not stop a minute, because if you stop they will murder him.” They are bloodthirsty out there. So they telegraphed the governor and telegraphed to Washington before the morning.
The next day we met, and I went into the office of El Industrio, thinking the matter over, and this gentleman, the editor of the paper, came to me. He is also a Mexican, and he had lived in this country for some time, and he was speaking of the horrors of the affair, and I said, “That must be stopped. The idea of any bloodthirsty pirate on a throne reaching across these lines and crushing under his feet the Constitution,” I said, “which our forefathers fought and bled for.” I said, “We must get up a protest meeting and arouse the territory about it tonight.” I said, “If this thing is allowed to go on, they are liable to come and kidnap any of us.”
So two deputies that were on duty, that were put on that evening, said to me then-they just came in-“It was a horrible affair.” And they said, “We had instructions, Mother, not to give them any supper, although he had the money to pay for it.” And I said, “Well, we will attend to that tonight. We will have the meeting on the street.” So we had some issues of the Examiner, the Douglas Examiner, which was a weekly. The other papers belonged to the Southern Pacific bunch and the Copper Queen, and of course we could not get anything into them, but we got hold of the Douglas Examiner, and we took several copies of it and circulated them throughout the town, and got up a meeting that night.
I spoke at the meeting, and I am not very choice, you know, when the Constitution of the country is violated and the liberties of the people are trampled on. I do not go into the classics of the language at all. I am not praying at that time. [Laughter.] So I put the matter very strong before the audience.
Then I had to leave Arizona and go up to the steel [iron] range in Minnesota, where a strike was going on. I had to go up there and fight the steel robbers, and so of course I left the scene there, but I started the ball rolling. Before I went away I went up to Phoenix to see the governor, who, I believed was of the American type of Patrick Henry and Lincoln and Jefferson, and I felt it my duty to go and see him. We have very few of that type of men in this age. The general run of them are after the fleshpots of Egypt instead of the rights of the people of the country. So I went up and paid my respects to the governor, and there I met Captain Wheeler, whom I had met before. Captain Wheeler had orders to go into Mexico and bring back young Sarabia, which he did.
Captain Wheeler was captain of the rangers, and a pretty fine fellow to be captain of the rangers. I never think men who head the army of a bloodthirsty pirate dressed up in uniform are very fine men, but he was an exception to that rule.
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