———-
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday January 15, 1911
Mother Jones News Round-Up for December 1910:
–Praised by Max Hayes and Eugene Debs for Work in Pennsylvania
From the International Socialist Review of December 1910:
THE WORLD OF LABOR
BY MAX S. HAYES.
[…..]
MOTHER JONES has been busying herself during the past few weeks in trying to bring cheer and comfort to the poor miners in the Irwin-Greensburg soft coal district of Pennsylvania [Westmoreland County], and assisting those unfortunate victims of one of the most heartless lockouts in American industrial history (as has been shown in THE REVIEW) to gain a semblance of humane working and living conditions. Mother is never so happy as when helping “the boys” in the mining fields, and, as every officer and member of the U. M. W. knows, she has gone into districts in Colorado, Alabama, West Virginia and other places where many of the bravest of men have feared to tread. She has faced injunction judges, served time in jail, lived on bread and water and has undergone a thousand hardships where others have hesitated or flunked, and never a word of complaint as to her own sufferings escape her lips. In fact she is as jolly and happy-go-lucky as a girl of sixteen and always refers to her direful experiences as humorous escapades.
Mother Jones only grows sorrowful and indignant when she discusses the fool factionalism among the miners and the sufferings endured by “the boys” and their wives and children, whom she knows and loves and for whom she has done organizing work in past campaigns. She has little patience with the penny-ante politics of this or that alleged leader who aspires for place or power, and when in a reminiscent mood she can relate some wonderful stories.
Anyhow, when Mother Jones gets through in the soft coal region she intends to invade the anthracite region again, the scenes of earlier triumphs, and endeavor to bring order out of chaos. From all reports, the hard coal miners are in a deplorable condition from the union standpoint. Back in 1902, when the big strike took place that Roosevelt “settled,” the U. M. W. was in splendid shape. The men were all out and the industry was so thoroughly paralyzed, despite all that the mine barons could do with their courts and strike-breakers, that Baer, Oliphant, Truesdale & Co. were on the verge of capitulating, when who should butt in but “the workingman’s friend,” Roosevelt. By flattery the Big Noise turned the head of Mitchell and secured his consent to appoint the celebrated “strike commission,” with Judge Gary as chairman.
After much unwinding of red tape and capitalistic investigation, recommendation, etc., a report was adopted under which practically all the active workers and officers have been blacklisted or driven from the fields or are coerced and cowed into submission. Today not more than 30 per cent of the men in the Hazleton district are organized and less than 15 per cent in the Schuylkill and Wyoming districts. When Roosevelt visited the Scranton neighborhood several months ago the miners thought that he had come to help them out of the mire. But he only made campaign thunder and had his picture taken with the Pennsylvania Cossacks. Mother Jones will have no pictures taken with the scabs. She is going in there to work.
———-
[Photograph added.]
From the Appeal to Reason of December 17, 1910:
Mother Jones Among the Coal Diggers
BY EUGENE V. DEBS.
There is no one who can do the work of Mother Jones in the anthracite coal regions [Hazleton District of Luzerne and surrounding counties of Pennsylvania]. It takes moral heroism to do what she is doing and stay where she is staying, months at a time. She does not merely preach the class struggle she lives the class struggle, better still, she IS the class struggle. This grand old veteran who has been all her life fighting for the oppressed has gone to the anthracite regions for the winter. Here she will live in the cabins, huts and hovels of the coal diggers, sharing their crusts, sleeping on their cots, and inspiring them with hope and life.
Anthracite and hell are synonymous terms under the capitalist system. This means that Mother Jones spends fully half her time in hell to serve the slaves. She distributes literature, holds meetings on the hillsides, the streets, anywhere she may be needed, to deliver the message of emancipation. The corporation curs, known as the coal police and the deputies of all descriptions know her well and have the profoundest respect for her. She tells them to their murderous faces what she thinks of them and they stand and take it or sneak away in silence. These mercenary assassins know when they are face to face with a true, champion of the oppressed and downtrodden.
The conditions in the anthracite, since John Mitchell with the aid of his friend Theodore Roosevelt achieved the great victory there which made him “the greatest labor leader the world has ever known,” are simply frightful. The organization has gone entirely to pieces in some districts and in others, but a fragment remains. It is pitiable in the extreme. Mother Jones is exerting her great powers to revive the hopes of the poor slaves and start them on the right road to emancipation. She tells the truth about John Mitchell, the king of diamonds. The “Civic Federation Beauty” is one of the titles she has bestowed Pierpont Morgan’s highly decorated labor lieutenant.
There is something inspiring in the bravery, pluck and loyalty of this grand old comrade, whose honest face is crowned with the spotless whiteness of her great soul, in the anthracite inferno regions, at seventy-five years of age, preaching the gospel of salvation to the despairing slaves.
The world will not see the like of Mother Jones again.
———-
From the Appeal to Reason of December 24, 1910:
Greetings From Mother Jones.
———-Dear Comrade Warren-I notice by press dispatches that you must pay to the American oligarchy the price for defending justice. You will be a much more dangerous man when you leave their bastiles than when you entered. The courts are the lickspittles of the corporations. When the prison doors close behind you the work you have done for the cause of justice will travel much farther than the pirates ever dreamed of. They do not know they are digging their own graves. You will be much more powerful and dangerous when the prison door opens to turn you out to battle than when they send you in.
Greensburg, Pa.
Mother Jones.
———-
Note: emphasis added throughout.
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SOURCES
The International Socialist Review, Volume 11
(Chicago, Illinois)
-July 1910 to June 1911
Charles H. Kerr & Company, 1911
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/isr/
https://books.google.com/books?id=8-05AQAAMAAJ
ISR – Dec 1910
-p372-4: re Mother Jones in Irwin-Greensburg Coal Dist PA
-by Max Hayes for “World of Labor”
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/isr/v11n06-dec-1910-ISR-gog-Corn-OCR.pdf
Appeal to Reason
(Girard, Kansas)
-Dec 17, 1910, page 4
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/appeal-to-reason/101217-appealtoreason-w785.pdf
-Dec 24, 1910, page 2
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/appeal-to-reason/101224-appealtoreason-w786.pdf
IMAGES
Mother Jones, Latest Picture, Ft Wayne Dly Ns p9, Apr 9, 1910
https://www.newspapers.com/image/28832110/
See also:
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday December 28, 1910
Mother Jones News Round-Up for November 1910, Part I:
–Blames Roosevelt for State of Miners Union in Anthracite Field
Hellraisers Journal – Thursday December 29, 1910
Mother Jones News Round-Up for November 1910, Part II:
–Roosevelt, Mitchell and Bishop of Scranton: “Trinity of Sleek Parasites”
Tag: Westmoreland County Coal Strike of 1910–11
https://weneverforget.org/tag/westmoreland-county-coal-strike-of-1910-11/
Map: PA anthracite (hard coal) & bituminous (soft coal) districts:
http://files.dep.state.pa.us/Mining/BureauOfMiningPrograms/BMPPortalFiles/dcnr_008139.pdf
What are the different types of coal?
https://www.americangeosciences.org/critical-issues/faq/what-are-the-different-types-of-coal
Fred Warren
https://spartacus-educational.com/USAwarrenF.htm
Correspondence for December 1910:
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 82-3 (135 of 416):
https://digital.library.pitt.edu/islandora/object/pitt%3A31735057897435/viewer#page/134/mode/2up
Note: Attorney Morgan represented Mother in her dispute with J. Mahlon Barnes, national secretary of the Socialist Party America (SPA).
December 16, 1910, from Greensburg, PA
-Mother Jones writes to Thomas Morgan, Chicago Attorney:
Dear Comrade Morgan
I have been up to my ears in a strike of the miners here I have not had a moment to spare. 20 thousand men and women are here to be looked after. I have not had a moment to spare for the last six weeks. I just got back after ten miles going and coming in a blizzard to a house away from Civilization I find the father down with Typhoid fever the mother and six children shivering with cold no clothing not a thing to eat…..these wretches have been on strike since last March living in tents. The little ones ailing with cold. Our wise nice [SPA?] Ex. Bd. feel their pains. They know or care nothing for their suffering. I have not seen a Socialist paper for weeks nor do I hear anything from the seat of war-it would not surprise me if you did not hear of Congress from Milwaukee [Victor Berger?] banqueting with Civic Federation next…..
Loyally
Mother
December 25, 1910, from Greensburg, PA
-Mother Jones writes to Thomas Morgan, Chicago Attorney:
Dear Comrade Morgan
Just came in from the camp of a lot of strikers. Some of them in tents. it is the Class War in its reality. The poor little ones look as if the old world is hopeless for them. The day is cold and I am cold with it. The Scabs gave a dance last night. There was a keg of Powder somewhere round. it went off and 25 of the wretches are in Hospital as a result of an explosion. These industrial wars are fierce but as long as the profit system lasts lives will be cheap.
[SPA?] N. E. C. meeting-I do not see where any justice to us will come from that Board….I am here in an industrial battle against the powers that oppress my class I have neither time nor strength to waste with that bunch of midle class dictators……
[B]ut come what may I will stand with you for a clean movement. Don’t think that I will flinch. They can put me out of the party but out of the movement never. Count on me.
They have been doing their dirty work. Their henchmen have been Daming Thommy Morgan. Dam the Provoker. To Hell with old Mother Jones. Shes getting old. We will make her shut up. She must go off and die. The capitalist don’t think i am getting old. They wish I was . Well Merry Xm. it is a little lonely for me.
Always yours until I rest
in the..Earth
Mother
Note: emphasis added. Mother’s letters as written, except that periods were added wherever missing for easier reading.
For good summary of Mother’s dispute with Barnes & SPA, see:
Mother Jones
The Most Dangerous Woman in America
-by Elliott J. Gorn
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Jun 2, 2015
-pages 162-4.
(search: “mother jones” 1910 “thomas morgan” “chicago attorney”)
(search: barnes morgan)
https://books.google.com/books?id=9gRpCAAAQBAJ
Tag: Thomas Morgan
https://weneverforget.org/tag/thomas-morgan/
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I Am A Union Woman – Deborah Holland