Hellraisers Journal: “There Is Only One Mother Jones” -Found at Wilkes-Barre Fighting for Striking Anthracite Miners

Quote Mother Jones re Company Store, St L Pst Dsp p32, Sept 23, 1900 ———-

Hellraisers Journal – Monday October 8, 1900
Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania – “There Is Only One Mother Jones”

From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch of September 23, 1900:

WILKESBARRE, Pa., Sept. 20.

Special Correspondence of the Sunday Post-Dispatch.

THERE is only one Mother Jones. Her field is all her own.

Clara Barton has her work of mercy, Susan B. Anthony has her equal suffrage. Mother Jones has her “boys”-the great, patient army that sweats and strives and suffers wherever there is labor to be done.

It is a big brood she mothers-a big, toilsome, troublesome brood, scattered all over the face of the land, delving in the earth and under the earth, swarming in mills and factories and sweatshops. There is seldom a time when some part of it is not on the ragged edge of hunger and in need of a mother’s help.

That is the time for Mother Jones. She has been called the stormy petrel of industry. Her appearance is a signal for those who grow rich by grinding the faces of the poor to “go slow,” and if they disregard the warning so much the worse for them and the better for organized labor.

For Mother Jones is the most successful organizer and sustainer of strikes in the country. That is why she is at Wilkes-barre now. That is why the miners expect to win. That is why the mine owners accompany her name with anathemas.

How does she do it? By the greatest of all powers-the power of love. She love her “boys”-be they Polish or Bohemian or Irish or American-and she teaches them to love her. The combination is irresistible. The ranks of the toilers stand firm at her bidding and the strategy dictated by her woman’s intuition does the rest.

It might be thought that she is an Amazon in physique and voice and gesture; that she sweeps her forces along with her by the sheer power of her vitality. Or else that she is endowed with the youth and beauty and mysterious spiritual influence of a Joan of Arc.

In a Maine city she met the man of her choice. His name was Jones, and she married him.

At that time it was not part of her vocation to address labor unions, but she was interested in the labor questions. The fact that 6 and 10-year-old children were working In the cotton mills of Lewiston, Lowell and Fall River roused her wrath. Writing to her old father in Canada about it, she said that in America there were as great abuses of the poor as there were in old Ireland.

Drifting South and West with her husband, she became interested in the first great battles of the Knights of Labor. Her husband encouraged her in the study of the labor statistics of the various states.

While other women were joining women’s clubs and discussing Shakespeare she was talking with the street car conductors in Chicago, the miners of Hazleton, the mill girls in Fall River, telling them that it was their duty to strike and to drive their employers into giving them the wages that they earned.

The great coal miners’ strike of 1891 brought her into public attention, though she had before that been prominent in many affairs of the kind. In the American Railway Union strike she did a great deal of campaigning and her strong, womanly voice rang from many a stage, and her white head and bent shoulders were seen in many places of danger during the troubles.

In 1898 the miners of Arnatt [Arnot] were practically beaten and the owners were preparing to dictate terms to them at starvation prices when one night a lone woman arrived in town.

She was driven by a teamster from an adjoining town, and she went to the headquarters of the strikers and interrupted the leaders, who were talking of surrender. She delivered a speech that aroused the utmost enthusiasm and the heartiest support of the cause. She organized the women and children and aroused their enthusiasm.

How she did it will never be told, but for nine months she held the strikers together and fed them by co-operative methods, which she knows so well how to organize. At the end of that time financial ruin stared in the faces of the mine owners, and she in turn dictated terms that they were glad to accept.

Mother Jones has a sweet old face, as fresh as a rose in spite of the fine lines that are creeping into it, and her snow-white hair makes a queenly frame for her countenance. Her eyes are sharp and steel gray. They are the kind that look through ore and make deception hard in their light. It is said of her that she is deeply religious at heart.

At Elkton, Md., last May she took hold of the strike when it was on the point of falling through. She saved the situation. One June 3 she addressed 3000 miners in Braddock Park, at Frostburg, and the next morning was in the midst of the mob at Lonaconing trying to forestall the break that discontented miners were making. She strengthened the lines and that night was at the head of 3000 marching strikers.

At Wilkesbarre, just now Mother Jones has full sway. She is the one ruler of the majority of the strikers. The mine owners and operators object to recognizing her as the leader of the trouble, but have to in order to hold any communication with the men. Her eloquent presentation of the wrongs suffered by the miners has made many new members for the United Mine Workers’ Union.

[She said to the Sunday Post-Dispatch:]

We want the laws of the state recognized; 2240 pounds of coal make a legal ton in this state. The mine owners oblige the men to turn out 3300 pounds for a ton. That is only one of the things. We are going to keep on, little by little, till we have secured the best conditions for the miners.

Then the company store is another evil. If you have to buy all your goods from the man you work for, he comes pretty near to being your master.

I want the people to own all public monopolies. The poor will then have the chance to enjoy educative and civilizing things the same as the rich.

Mother Jones is a resourceful woman. From reading of the troubles of the laboring people she took to talking of them. Her hands are small, white and strong. Her emphasis of a statement is made with the hand-a gentle wave.

[Emphasis added.]