———-
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday September 12, 1909
Mother Jones News Round-Up for August 1909, Part I:
-Found Speaking in Texas, Missouri, and Kansas
From The Houston Post
-of August 1, 1909:
Socialist Meeting at Tyler.
(Houston Post Special.)
TYLER, Texas, July 31.-About fifteen campers with outfits from Van Zandt and Henderson counties arrived this evening to attend the socialist encampment which commences Monday and lasts until Saturday of next week. The speakers for the encampment are prominent in the socialist party and includes Colonel Dick Maples, “Mother” Jones and Rev. Mr. Andrews.
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From The Kansas City Star
-of August 4, 1909:
“Mother Jones,” the well known Socialist lecturer, is announced for a lecture Friday night in the circuit court room at Independence under the auspices of the Independence Socialist club.
From Appeal to Reason of August 7, 1909:
WESTERN FEDERATION
—–The convention of the Western Federation of Miners which recently adjourned was the most progressive in the history of that organization. There were some exciting debates and there were some minor elements with extreme tendencies, but on the whole the convention was composed of the clear-eyed, honest and progressive workers whose highest purpose it was to place their organization in the van of the working class movement…..
Mother Jones and Emma F. Langdon were the honored guests of the convention and made rousing speeches to the delegates. Mother is called “The Uncrowned Queen” by the rugged miners of the mountain states who have reason to know her for her fearless and faithful devotion to their interests at a time when it was at the peril of her life…..
From the Kansas City, Kansas, Labor Record of August 13, 1909:
HAWKINSON ELECTED
—–THIRD ANNUAL CONVENTION OF
STATE FEDERATION A SUCCESS.
—–
Hawkinson Elected Secretary-Treasurer
-Has Made Good Progress
During Past Year.
—–The third annual convention of the Kansas State Federation of Labor was called to order in Leavenworth Monday morning, August 9, at 10 o’clock, by President Sim A. Bramlette…..
The entire session of the convention from opening until it was closed with an eloquent address by Mother Jones was a most harmonious gathering, despite the fact that the Leavenworth delegates tried by every means in their power to break down the ranks of their opponents, to give them a clear field for the election of their candidate for secretary-treasurer, Geo. W. Edgell, former vice-president…..
[Note: President Bramlette, Miners, Columbus, was re-elected; D. T. Hawkinson, Painters, Kansas City, was elected to office of Secretary-Treasurer over Geo. W. Edgell.]
From The New York Times of August 19, 1909:
Note: This story does not directly involve Mother Jones. However, Mother has previously made her opinion of such meetings very clear (see below).
BANKER’S WIFE DINES LABOR DELEGATES
—–
Mrs. J. Borden Harriman Entertains
One Hundred of Them at
Her Country Villa.
—–JOHN MITCHELL SPEAKS
—–
Hostess Also Makes an Address,
in Which She Indorses
Labor Organizations.
—–Capital and labor sat down at the same board last night, when Mrs. J. Borden Harriman, wife of the banker whose firm, Harriman & Co., is at 111 Broadway, entertained one hundred members of the International Brotherhood of Stationary Firemen at her Summer home, The Uplands, at Mount Kisco. The principal guests were John Mitchell formerly President of the United Mine Workers of America, and Timothy Healy, President of the brotherhood. Both of them made speeches of an informal nature, which touched upon the labor question.
The members of the International Brotherhood of Stationery Firemen have been holding their annual convention at Yonkers, and Mrs. Harriman as Chairman of the Committee on Welfare Work for Industrial Employes of the National Civic Federation, resolved that the opportunity was too good to lose to show her attitude toward labor and the doctrine of good-fellowship. She therefore asked the delegates to dine at her Summer home, and induced Mr. Mitchell, Mr. Healy, and several other prominent labor men to be there as her special guests…..
Mother Jones on “Wining and Dining”
-from Speech at United Mine Workers Convention
Indianapolis, January 27, 1909
And while I am on this wining and dining subject I am going to say something about the board member from Pennsylvania, Miles Dougherty. I want to talk to you Pennsylvania fellows. You had an awful fight there. I was out West and took up a paper and read of Mr. Miles Dougherty sitting down with his feet under the table looking Mrs. Harriman square in the eye and putting a bowl of champagne inside of his stomach— “Here’s a health to you, Mr. Belmont; here’s a health to you, Miss Morgan, and here’s a health to you, Mrs. Harriman.” And then, when Mrs. Harriman and Miss Morgan walked down the street with Miles Dougherty the fellows over home in Pennsylvania said, “Don’t you see how labor is getting recognized?” How labor is getting recognized! That’s true, Mr. Lewis, as sure as you sit there, they said that about labor getting recognized! I want to tell you here the trouble with you is this: your skull hasn’t developed only to the third degree. You would consider it an honor to go down the street with Miss Morgan, who never worked a day in her life. You would consider it an honor to dine with those fellows that skinned you and your children and murdered you in the mines, and while they were filling you with champagne they murdered us poor devils with bullets.
Note: Emphasis added throughout.
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SOURCES
Quote Mother Jones, We Will Rest, UMWC Jan 27, 1909
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=dyhRAQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PA380
The Houston Post
(Houston, Texas)
-Aug 1, 1909
https://www.newspapers.com/image/94867643/
The Kansas City Star
(Kansas City, Missouri)
-Aug 4, 1909, page 2
https://www.genealogybank.com/
Appeal to Reason
(Girard, Kansas)
-Aug 7, 1909
https://www.newspapers.com/image/66982044/
The Labor Record
“Official Paper of the Central Labor Union of Kansas City
and of Kansas State Federation of Labor”
(Kansas City, Kansas)
-Aug 13, 1909
https://www.newspapers.com/image/488543255/
The New York Times
(New York, New York)
-Aug 19, 1909
https://www.newspapers.com/image/25975173/
IMAGE
Mother Jones, Elkhart IN Dly Rv p2, July 19, 1909
The Elkhart Daily Review
(Elkhart, Indiana)
-July 19, 1909, page 2
https://www.genealogybank.com/
See also:
Tag: Socialist Encampments
https://weneverforget.org/tag/socialist-encampments/
Tag: WFM Convention of 1909
https://weneverforget.org/tag/wfm-convention-of-1909/
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday January 30, 1909
Indianapolis, Indiana – Mother Speaks at U. M. W. Convention, Part II
More from Mother Jones on Wining, Dining, and John Mitchell
-from: Autobiography, Chapter 27-Progress in Spite of Leaders
https://www.iww.org/history/library/MotherJones/autobiography/27
Never in the early days of the labor struggle would you find leaders wining and dining with the aristocracy; nor did their wives strut about like diamond-bedecked peacocks; nor were they attended by humiliated, cringing colored servants.
The wives of these early leaders took in washing to make ends meet. Their children picked and sold berries. The women shared the heroism, the privation of their husbands.
In those days labor’s representatives did not sit on velvet chairs in conference with labor’s oppressors; they did not dine in fashionable hotels with the representatives of the top capitalists, such as the [National] Civic Federation. They did not ride in Pullmans nor make trips to Europe.
The rank and file have let their servants become their masters and dictators. The workers have now to fight not alone their exploiters but likewise their own leaders, who often betray them, who sell them out, who put their own advancement ahead of that of the working masses, who make of the rank and file political pawns.
Provision should be made in all union constitutions for the recall of leaders. Big salaries should not be paid. Career hunters should be driven out, as well as leaders who use labor for political ends. These types are menaces to the advancement of labor.
In big strikes I have known, the men lay in prison while the leaders got out on bail and drew high salaries all the time. The leaders did not suffer. They never missed a meal. Some men make a profession out of labor and get rich thereby. John Mitchell left to his heirs a fortune, and his political friends are using the labor movement to gather funds to erect a monument to his memory, to a name that should be forgotten.
In spite of oppressors, in spite of false leaders, in spite of labor’s own lack of understanding of its needs, the cause of the worker continues onward. Slowly his hours are shortened, giving him leisure to read and to think. Slowly his standard of living rises to include some of the good and beautiful things of the world. Slowly the cause of his children becomes the cause of all. His boy is taken from the breaker, his girl from the mill. Slowly those who create the wealth of the world are permitted to share it. The future is in labor’s strong, rough hands.
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The Spirit Of Mother Jones – Andy Irvine