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Hellraisers Journal – Thursday September 11, 1902
Mother Jones News Round-Up for August 1902, Part III
Found in Anthracite Region of Pennsylvania, Returns to West Virginia
From the Wilkes-Barre Daily News of August 11, 1902:
MOTHER JONES CONDEMNS
———-
She Does Look With Favor
on Certain Statements.BELIEVES THAT IT IS ONLY A QUESTION OF A SHORT TIME
UNTIL THE MINERS WIN-TRAINMEN UP IN ARMS.
———-
President Mitchell spent yesterday at Scranton, the guest of friends. His visit was one of pleasure and had no bearing on the strike situation. He returned last evening but had nothing of an interesting nature to disclose. He is still confident of the ultimate results.
Mother Jones still remains in the city and unless the present plans are changed she will deliver an address this afternoon at Nanticoke. Mother Jones has no particular love for Father O’Reilly and believes the latter to be unwise in his assertion about the miners and their organization. She believes that he will profit by his indiscretion. When told that he had delivered another address derogatory to the miners’ cause, she waxed warm, saying that if the occasion permitted; she would go to Shenandoah and tell the miners some pertinent facts.
[Declared Mother Jones:]
I know the miners are going to win this struggle, and every just man who is a competent observer of the prevailing conditions must be actuated by the same feeling. It is fallacy for even biased persons to harbor the idea that the miners are not steadfast. They show the same determined spirit, are practically speaking, of one mind and will never swerver the least iota from that course, they planned to take. The time is not far distant when the operators must mine coal or else lose their markets. In September the consumers will make an effort to get anthracite, and if they cannot they will look elsewhere and once the grates are changed it will take years, perhaps, before they resume the use of hard coal. If the operators permit it their business ability is not as great as credited. There may be an attempt made to operate the mines with non-union men, but the number will be so decidedly small and the work incompetently done, the effort will be given up with disgust. The operators will, after the trials, comprehend the determination of the men and will make the necessary concessions. The people of this country can rest assured that the miners are going to win this strike.
How about the one in West Virginia? asked the reporter.
[Mother Jones continued:]
We will not give up until the same results are achieved. Some of the places are completely tied up and victory is only a question of a short time. The collieries at Fairmont have not been reached, that I will admit, but do you know that there is a fence built around the town and no one in allowed to enter unless a permit is secured from some company agent. The men of West Virginia are partly paid in script, receive their money every month, sometimes every six weeks, deal in ‘”pluck me” stores and undergo other indignities. No American can or will endure such conditions.
[Photograph added.]
From the New York Tribune of August 12, 1902:
President Mitchell declined to-day to discuss the assertions made yesterday by Father O’Reilly, of Shenandoah, in which he attacked the United Mine Workers and its officers, but “Mother” Mary Jones was less reticent. She read the report of the sermon and said:
If Father O’Reilly’s statements were less extreme I would have been somewhat annoyed by them, and the public would have been much more impressed. As they stand they display nothing but utter venom and poison. They are sentiments that a Roman Catholic priest should blush to hear, let alone to give utterance to. Father O’Reilly sees and hears much of the operators and consequently cannot help becoming imbued with their spirit. This accounts for his partisan utterances. Of this I feel sure-that if the most radical extremist among all the operators were to air his views they would have been far more mild than the words of Father O’Reilly. It should be his duty to uplift, and not to deter the cause of the mine workers. His sermons appall me with their coarseness.
From The Philadelphia Inquirer of August 12, 1902:
MOTHER JONES SAYS NO SURRENDER
———-Special to The Inquirer.
WILKES-BARRE, Aug. 11.-National Board Member John Fallon, “Mother” Jones and others addressed an immense mass meeting of striking miners at Nanticoke this afternoon. Mr. Fallon told his hearers not to pay any attention to the reports sent out by the operators that they were ready to resume. The truth of the matter is, said Mr. Fallon, they are not in a position to start up their collieries. Miners are as scarce as hens’ teeth, and the operators cannot get them to return to work and cut coal until they grant their demands.
Mother Jones said there was no such thing as surrender. The anthracite miners were as steadfast as ever, and were prepared, with the assistance now given them by organized labor, to remain out for a whole year if necessary.
From The Philadelphia Inquirer of August 13, 1902:
Release Pleases Leaders
Special to The Inquirer.
WILKES-BARRE, Pa., Aug. 12. The officials at President Nichols headquarters were pleased to-night over the release of the labor leaders, except John Gehr, from the Parkersburg jail. “Mother” Jones especially was delighted. She said:
It was hard on the poor fellows to be confined. They are all law-abiding citizens and deserved better treatment.
From The Philadelphia Inquirer of August 14, 1902:
BIG MASS MEETING GREETS “MOTHER” JONES
———-Special to The Inquirer.
LANSFORD. Pa., Aug. 13.-“Mother” Jones was the means of the holding of one of the largest mass meetings ever held in Lansford, yesterday. A crowd numbering 2000 gathered at the Opera House to hear her discourse on the subject of labor. Every local in the surrounding towns was represented, the members parading to the scene of the mass meeting headed by musical organizations.
From The Philadelphia Inquirer of August 22, 1902:
“MOTHER” JONES PLANS MARCH ON WASHINGTON
———-INDIANAPOLIS, Aug. 21.-“Mother” Jones, well-known throughout mining districts, was a visitor at the national headquarters of the United Mine Workers of America to-day. She said:
The wives of the miners will march on Washington if the strike is not settled by next winter. We will shake them up down there. We will have a popular congress there, when the other Congress is in session.
From the Appeal to Reason of August 23, 1902:
Mother Jones is among the Pennsylvania strikers. Where men are oppressed and need encouragement and leadership, Mother Jones is always present. She works without money, without price, and without fear of suffering which she endures with the miners, lives on their short rations, and holds out that hope without which men sink into the lowest animal levels. Her name will be written high among the characters who lived and worked and suffered that the human family might have a human government-not a beastly one to live under.
From the Kansas Agitator of August 29, 1902:
Strange Talk on the Bench.
Federal Judge Jackson’s decision in the “Mother Jones” contempt cases, delivered at Parkersburg, W. Va., reopens the old controversy over the reasonable restrictions of free speech in the conduct of strikes. Judge Jackson used language on the bench that certainly was not a model of temperate expression. He spoke, for example, of the officers of the miners’ union, who are the elected representatives of an organization just as lawful as the coal mining companies, as “vampires that live and fatten on the honest labor of the miners of the country.” The cause of industrial peace and good-will in the coal country will hardly be promoted by such judicial utterances.
From the Baltimore Sun of August 31, 1902:
WEPT AT MINERS’ WOES
———-
“West Virginians Moved To Tears
By “Mother Jones.”
———–SHE PLEADS FOR THE WIVES
———-
Tells Of An Infant Dying In Its Evicted Mother’s Arms
-A Series Of Questions For Gov. White.(Special Dispatch to the Baltimore Sun.)
HUNTINGTON, W. Va., Aug. 30.-“Mother” Jones, the miners’ friend, who arrived here today from the New river coalfield, addressed 2,000 persons at an open-air meeting at night.
She told of the conditions as they existed in that region, and as she talked of the gray-haired grandmothers and little infants being thrown from miners’ cabins into the dusty public highways by constables and United States officials women in the assembly could be heard weeping aloud. On Piney creek, near Thurmond, only a day or so ago, she said, an infant died in the arms of its mother, who was seated on a stone by the roadside, a few hours after being ejected from her home. Mother Jones denounced Governor White for sending troops into the strike region and told the laboring people that if he ever bobbed up for office in West Virginia again to “forgive, but never forget.”
Governor White is billed to address a master labor meeting here next Monday. Mother Jones said that if she remained here until Monday she would not speak from the same platform with the Governor and gave a list of questions to propound to him which will no doubt cause him some embarrassment. She spoke for two hours and made a deep impression on her hearers, among whom were many of the leading residents of Huntington.
The Sheriff of Mercer county and a number of prominent coal operators from the Flat Top coal field, on the Norfolk and Western railroad, passed through Huntington on their way to Charleston, where they go to make a plea to Governor White for troops to be sent to that region. It is stated by the Sheriff that the recent shooting near Bramwell has stirred the miners to such a degree that an outbreak is feared at any time. Human life and the destruction of property, he declares, are at stake in the coal fields on the Norfolk and Western. It is probable that the company of militia at Bluefield will be sent to the Flat Top field and a part of the troops now on New river may also be sent to that region.
Persons arriving here from the New river fields state that this morning while the militia was lined up in the vicinity of Red Ash, in that district, soldiers yelled “scabs” at non-union men as they entered the mines. Most of the members of the three companies of militia from this city belong to labor organizations, and there is considerable speculation here as to the outcome of the situation should it reach a critical point. The action of Governor White in calling out the militia is condemned here.
From The Washington Times of August 3, 1902:
[Excerpt:]
“Mother” Jones, the Famous Leader of Men
…..Foremost among labor agitators of the most pronounced type stands “Mother” Jones. This extremely strenuous woman who was arrested in West Virginia recently for attempting to assemble a crowd of striking miners has been known among labor unions for twenty years. She conducts her followers to victory or defeat in labor agitations with fanatical enthusiasm.
“‘Mother’ Jones is a labor agitator of the firebrand order,” said a man from the anthracite region of Pennsylvania recently. “Where strikers are to be encouraged, funds raised for unions, workers to be organized, capital to be attacked, ‘Mother” Jones is in her element, and urges her point with a vigorous personality and a searching voice. She possesses all the qualities of the successful labor agitator. She is shrewd, she knows what will arouse the workers, she can create enthusiasm, and she is clever enough not to go too far. Her value in working the men up to the necessary pitch is recognized by the unions, who employ her for that purpose…..”
Note: Emphasis added throughout.
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SOURCES
Quote Mother Jones, God s Cause, Scranton Tb p1, Aug 7, 1902
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84026355/1902-08-07/ed-1/seq-1/
Wilkes-Barre Daily News
(Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania)
-Aug 11, 1902
https://www.newspapers.com/image/425931987
New York Tribune
(New York, New York)
-Aug 12, 1902
https://www.newspapers.com/image/468688423
The Philadelphia Inquirer
(Philadelphia, Pennsylvania)
-Aug 12, 1902
https://www.newspapers.com/image/168250828/
-Aug 13, 1902
https://www.newspapers.com/image/168253162/
-Aug 14, 1902
https://www.newspapers.com/image/168254436/
-Aug 22, 1902
https://www.newspapers.com/image/168272768
Appeal to Reason
(Girard, Kansas)
-Aug 23, 1902, page 1
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/appeal-to-reason/020823-appealtoreason-w351.pdf
Kansas Agitator
(Garnett, Kansas)
-Aug 29, 1902
https://www.newspapers.com/image/168339471
The Sun
(Baltimore, Maryland)
-Aug 31, 1902
https://www.newspapers.com/image/372470809
The Washington Times
(Washington, District of Columbia)
-Aug 3, 1902
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn87062245/1902-08-03/ed-1/seq-34/
https://www.newspapers.com/clip/109417106/aug-3-1902-washington-times-cheerless/
IMAGE
Mother Jones , Phl Inq p24, June 22, 1902
https://www.newspapers.com/image/168338244/
See also:
Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for August 1902
Part I
Part II
Tag: West Virginia Coalfield Strike of 1902-1903
https://weneverforget.org/tag/west-virginia-coalfield-strike-of-1902-1903/
Tag: Mother Jones v Judge Jackson 1902
https://weneverforget.org/tag/mother-jones-v-judge-jackson-1902/
Tag: Great Anthracite Coal Strike of 1902
https://weneverforget.org/tag/great-anthracite-coal-strike-of-1902/
The Correspondence of Mother Jones
-ed by Edward M. Steel
U of Pittsburgh Press, 1985
https://books.google.com/books?id=EZ2xAAAAIAAJ
https://digital.library.pitt.edu/islandora/object/pitt%3A31735057897435
-pages 36-37 (87 of 415) for Correspondence of August 1902:
https://digital.library.pitt.edu/islandora/object/pitt%3A31735057897435/viewer#page/86/mode/2up
August? 1902-From Mother Jones at Montgomery WV to WB Wilson, Secretary-Treasurer of UMWA:
Note: as written, except for periods added for clarity.
My dear Comrade Wilson
I just want to drop you a line about things here. I have had meetings every day. They are good brave people and if they were not this Strike would be lost long ago. of all the insulting tyrants that have ever had athourty this fellow Purcell beats them. We had a meeting of the field workers last Monday. it was disgraceful. he abused coursed every one. he was the whole thing. I have had nothing from anyone but complaints from [the first] hour I landed to this. he has been putting in his licks about you. I do not know where he heard it unless Pres M—— mentioned it that you are a canidate for Congress. last Sunday I was told of Some of his Sayings. he went to See St. Clair last friday and gave it away that our funds were getting low but we were not whiped yet. St. Clair Tumbled refused any further Concession. he boast of getting a friendly invatation from the operators. I have not time to write you all for I am going on this Train.
I Saw a Telegram from McGuffin to one of the operators last Sunday. I went into the office to See one of the Telegraphers who is a warm friend of mine. McCail is willing to Settle and I think [The Miners] had better take it.
give harry the money to Settle with his field hands. he is worth a car load of P—-. he is a beast.
I wish I had time to write you. this fellow is drunk half his time.
Good bye fondly
MotherSend me Some Money
[Emphasis added.]
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Miner’s Life – Kilshannig