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Hellraisers Journal, Friday September 18, 1908
-Mother Jones News Round-Up for August, 1908, Part II
Found Visiting the Appeal to Reason at Girard, Kansas
From the Appeal to Reason of August 22, 1908:
Two Noted Agitators.
—–
The Appeal has the distinction this week of entertaining two of the most distinguished agitators in the Socialist movement. At almost precisely the same hour Mother Jones and Luella Twining entered the Temple of the Revolution. There was genuine delight and surprise all around. The heartiest greetings were exchanged and the visitors made to feel that they were among comrades who know of their work and appreciate them at their full value.
And here let it be said that it is a distinction of no ordinary account to entertain two such crusaders. The work Mother Jones has done for the downtrodden of this nation can never be told. Her three score years have whitened her hair, but not in the least abated her ardor in the cause. She is a born agitator and wherever she goes there is something doing. A grand old warrior she is who will be known better long after she is at rest, for then only will the true story of this warrior in the cause of human freedom be known.
Luella Twining, though much younger in years and in service, has already a wonderful work to her credit. Her service during the Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone struggle is well remembered, and if she had not lived a day after this was completed she would have written her name indelibly into the labor movement. But she has all her years still before her, and is filled with the spirit which seeks to serve without thought of personal reward, and she is certain to add fresh luster to the future chapters of her life work.
Truly it is an honor to have such royal guests and the Appeal and its comrades will leave nothing undone to make them feel that here they are thrice welcome and always at home.
———-
A Letter to Mother from Alabama
Miners’ Struggle in Alabama.
—–A letter to Mother Jones, in care of the Appeal, written by a man on the ground from Birmingham, Ala., says:
The miners’ strike is in full swing. The mines are pretty well tied up, despite the efforts of a subsidized press, a corporation-owned governor and all the sheriffs and guards. I have been among many miners, but these poor devils have been getting it worse than any I ever saw. After working steadily for years, the majority are in debt to the company, and yet have lived in miserable cabins and often eaten food scarcely fit for dogs. They were required to load from 2,400 to 3,500 pounds for a ton, and every imaginable injustice was heaped upon them. This is the Solid South, and if Sam Gompers continues to attempt to turn over the American Federation of Labor to the democrats, he should go the whole hog and come down here and serve as a guard for the corporation he defends.
———-
From the Appeal to Reason of August 29, 1908:
She Understood.
—–[Mother Jones in a reminiscent mood said:]
During a strike in West Virginia, I had gone into the affected district and called a mass meeting. I heard that the mine owners had threatened to prevent the meeting, and so the first thing I did was to call on the sheriff of the county.
“Sheriff,” said I, “I am Mother Jones.”
“I am glad to meet you, Mother,” said the sheriff.
“I am going to hold a meeting this afernoon, sheriff,” said I, “and I woudld like for you to make arrangements for me to speak on the commons.”
“What kind of meeting do you want to hold, Mother?”
“I just want to talk to everybody. There are some things I would like to say to the mine owners and miners both, and I would like for you to be out.”
“Well, Mother,” said the sheriff, “I guess we can make arrangements for you.”
It was just what I had been planning for. You see, the man who was going to break up the meeting was now pledged to make arrangements for it.
When I went to speak in the afternoon the sheriff was there and with him about twenty of the mine owners.
“It seems to be a frost,” said I to the miner who accompanied me to the grounds.
“Will you speak, Mother?”
“Certainly,” said I.
I had noticed a few people peeping from behind boulders a little distance away, and knew the miners were afraid to show themselves. But I determined they should hear, and so raised my voice so it would carry for quite a distance. Then I began telling about the way miners lived. I knew all about it.
“I understand why you poor devils are always tired,” I told them. “The tired is born in you. When you stretched your little limbs the day you were born, they were tired, and as you put forth your little thin arms and cried when you saw the light, it was because you were tired and your mothers were tired before you were born. You go into the mines and lie in the darkness, cramped up all day, and the tired never gets out of your bones. It is passed on to your children. And do you call this life? Life, indeed! Why, when there is an explosion and a dozen of you are cooped up in the mine, the boss comes running and he never asks, ‘Are the men killed?’ but only, ‘Are the mules killed?’ and why does he do that? Because a mule costs a hundred ad fifty dollars, but you don’t cost five cents a piece. There are always plenty more to take your places and the mine owners lose nothing when you are killed”
While I had been talking the miners were coming out from behind boulders and rocks, and now there were fully five hundred in sight. It was a marvel where so many had come from in so short a time. I continued:
“And when the mule is killed the boss takes off of your allowance five or six tons of coal to pay for it, and you can’t help yourselves.”
“That’s God’s truth,” cried a miner stepping to the front. He walked up to one of the bosses and said to him-and only five minutes before the poor fellow had been in hiding:
“You know that when old Nell was killed you took six tons of coal from me, and I wasn’t anywhere in the neighborhood when old Nell was killed.”
I continued speaking for half an hour entering into the inner life of the miner and laying bare his squallor and sorrow. When I had finished three or four fellows came to the men at whose home I was stopping, and with great tears streaming down their rough features, one said to him:
“You needn’t tell us that this is Mother Jones. I tell you it is not. It is Jesus Christ come back to earth in the disguise of Mother Jones. Nobody but he could know and understand all this.”
———-
From The Daily Missoulian of August 31, 1908:
THE RED SPECIAL.
—–Eugene V. Debs, socialist nominee for the presidency, will start today in a special train for the widest swing around the circle that has been made since the first McKinley campaign. The special will leave Chicago this morning and will twice cross the country before its journey ends. The schedule calls for more than three hundred stops, at each one of which there will be speeches. The red special, as it has been named, will go to the Pacific coast by way of Denver and Salt Lake; on the coast the run will be from San Diego to Seattle, whence the route will be over the Northern Pacific, to Spokane. From there the candidate will come to Missoula by way of Wallace. The itinerary of the trip, received by The Missoulian in yesterday’s mail, shows that Mr. Debs will be here on the afternoon of September 17 and will remain here half an hour. He will go east to St. Paul from here and thence, through Ohio and New York cities, to the Atlantic coast. Ben Hanford and Mother Jones will be the accompanying speakers. The trip will be watched with interest.
———-
Note: emphasis added to Mother Jones throughout.
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SOURCES
Appeal to Reason
(Girard, Kansas)
-Aug 22, 1908
https://www.newspapers.com/image/67587412/
https://www.newspapers.com/image/67587415/
-Aug 29, 1908
https://www.newspapers.com/image/67587426/
The Daily Missoulian
(Missoula, Montana)
-Aug 31, 1908
https://www.newspapers.com/image/349242363/
IMAGE
Mother Jones from Cripple Creek Strike by EFL
http://www.rebelgraphics.org/wfmhall/langdon17.html
See also:
The Autobiography of Mother Jones
-ed by Mary Field Parton
Charles H. Kerr & Company, 1925
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/jones/autobiography/autobiography.html
Chapter IV-Wayland’s Appeal to Reason [Girard, Kansas]
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/jones/autobiography/autobiography.html#IV
& More Stories from West Virginia (before 1912)
Chapters: III, VI, VII, IX,
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/jones/autobiography/autobiography.html#III
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/jones/autobiography/autobiography.html#VI
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/jones/autobiography/autobiography.html#VII
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/jones/autobiography/autobiography.html#IX
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The Death of Mother Jones – Gene Autry
“She fought for Right and Justice;
She took a noble stand…”