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Hellraisers Journal – Saturday March 12, 1910
Mother Jones News Round-Up for February 1910, Part I:
-Found Fighting for Working Women of Philadelphia and Milwaukee
From the International Socialist Review of February 1910:
Fighting to Live
—–By Tom A. Price.
—–* * *
[Mother Jones in Philadelphia.]
Mother Jones. This little woman whose heart is as big as the nation and beats wholly for humanity, came to Philadelphia while the trumpet was still reverberating after the call to arms had been sounded. Under her bold leadership the fighters were organized before the manufacturers had fairly realized that their workers had at last been stung to revolt by the same lash which had so often driven them to slavery.
In impassioned speech after impassioned speech Mother Jones urged the girls on to battle. Shaking her gray locks in defiance she pictured the scab in such a light that workers still shudder when they think of what she would have considered them had they remained in the slave pens of the manufacturers. Every man and woman and child who heard her poignantly regrets the fact that her almost ceaseless labors at last drove her to her bed where she now lies ill.
But she had instilled into the minds of her followers the spirit which prompted her to cross a continent to help them. That spirit remains and is holding in place the standard which she raised. It is leading the girls to every device possible to help the cause. Many of them are selling papers on the street that they may earn money to contribute to the union which they love.
* * *
[Photograph from cover of February Review.]
From The Progressive Woman of February 1910:
Dear Editor—I like the Children’s edition fine. I like the “Struggle for Existence” best of all. I m a Socialist, and the reason I am one is because I want to live and see the people free and all the poor little children have nice, and happy homes. I live in the south where the little children have to work in the cotton mills and tobacco factories, where they catch the hacking cough and it lasts forever. They cough themselves to death. I don’t have to work in them now, but I don’t know what I will have to do latter on. Oh, I was about to forget to tell you all of the good comrades that work so faithfully for the better time who have been at home. I’ll tell you their names: John M. Ray, J. L. Fitts, Guy Miller, E. E. Carr, Geo. H. Goebel, Charles Furner, and, last but not least, Mother Jones. God bless her! My papa is trying to get Mr. Debs to come by selling Appeal cards. He says if Mr. Debs comes he is going to take all us. Mama, my two brothers, and sisters, and he says he is even going to take Jack. Oh! I how you wonder who Jack is. I will tell you. Jack is our shepherd dog. When papa makes fire Jack comes in and comes to my bed and barks to wake me up. We all love Jack. I am nine years old.–Mattie Wilson, Pffafftown, N. C.
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From The Leavenworth Post of February 2, 1910:
She Couldn’t Take a Chance.
Speaking in aid of the striking shirtwaist girls during the last week “Mother” Jones has frequently told the workers to insist that cuters employed in the various shops join the ranks of the strikers under a threat not to marry any of them if they persist in working. She has also told the men who are striking that not one of them should ever marry a girl who is what she terms a “scab.”
One of the little strikers not more than fifteen years old appeared at the office of one of the factories yesterday to draw the pay which was due her. She counted the money in her envelope carefully and had started down stairs when her employer called after her.
“Esther, why do you go on a strike against me.”
She turned and regarded him carefully and thoughtfully for an instant, then said:
“Mister Blank, I’m sorry, but I can’t take any chance on losing Able.”
“Able,” the manufacturer explained, “is a boy of sixteen, who runs errands for the office.”-Philadelphia Times.
From the Appeal to Reason of February 5, 1910:
MOTHER JONES AGAIN.
—–Mother Jones has been in Milwaukee organizing the young women employed as bottlers in the breweries. The Milwaukee News says of her:
“Mother” Jones is a singular character, an unsung heroine. She is a gray-hired woman of seventy. Her feature are furrowed by lines of care which are the stamp of many battles fought to maintain the standards of organized labor. Her body is old and worn, but her mind and purpose are young. Most women of her age are content with the environments of home and whatever may have been their mission in life they seek domestic seclusion at seventy.
Not so with “Mother” Jones. She has been toiling unceasingly for the advancement of the working class all her life. Hardly a crisis has passed in any union without her inspiring presence and guidance. And now at the time one would suppose the fighting spirit of her were quelled, it is still dominant and she is a free lance of unrivaled leadership.
Among the thousands of wage earners who love “Mother” Jones for her motherly qualities and marked marked ability in general are the members of the Western Federation of Miners. While Moyer and Haywood were in jeopardy Mrs. Jones campaigned throughout the west. Her stirring speeches were the means of retaining the membership of many wavering miners and of enlisting public sympathy for the imprisoned leaders.
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From the Streator Free Press of February 10, 1910:
DELEGATES BACK FROM CONVENTION
—–BENJ. KING AND JAMES LYNCH RETURN FROM
INDIANAPOLIS-ENJOYED THE TRIP.
—–Delegates Benjamin King and Jas. Lynch have returned to Streator from the United Mine Workers convention at Indianapolis. Delegate Frank Farrington, who is also a member of the legislative committee of Illinois, is now at Springfield.
Mr. Lynch arrived in Streator about noon yesterday as he stopped off a few hours in Chicago. He states that the delegates are as adamant in their stand for an advance of wages.
He was greatly pleased with his trip. “Two of the best things I heard while in Indianapolis,” he said, were the speeches made to the miners by Eugene V. Debs and Mother Jones.
From The Scranton Times of February 11, 1910:
“Mother Jones,” who was in Scranton during the silk workers’ strike in this valley a few years ago and prior to that when a miners strike was threatened, and who has for years been an agitator for better working conditions and organized labor, attended the recent convention of the United Mine Workers of America at Indianapolis, and made an address arraigning capital and setting forth the claims of labor to better treatment. She referred to the bituminous strike and the Colorado strike; spoke of the financing ability of the woman that attends to the purchasing for a large family and said such a woman does not get the credit she deserves.
She criticised the National Civic Federation and said she would rather die in jail then to die eating a meal with the civic Federation. She said she was going to Milwaukee to organize the girls in the breweries, then to St. Louis and from there to the bituminous field to “start another war if you don’t move up.” She declared herself in favor of the destruction of jails and turning them in school houses, and making the jailers “do an honest days work.” She congratulated the delegates on the action taken in relation to the Western Federation of miners, and said that the time had come when “we should clasp hands together.”
From the Buffalo Evening Times of February 16, 1910:
“WHAT I CANT BUY I’LL STEAL”
—–Mother Jones Has a Policy of Her Own to
Overcome High Price of Meat.
—–By Associated Press.
MILWAUKEE, Wis., Feb. 16.-Attacking the trusts and “organized greed” as the cause of high prices of meat and other foods, speakers in a mass meeting last night poured forth invective against tariff on food products.
[Said Mother Jones, a labor agitator:]
I am not going to say much about meat trusts. I am going to eat all I can buy and what I can’t buy I’ll steal.
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Note: Emphasis added throughout.
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SOURCES & IMAGES
Quote Mother Jones, Ladies Women, NYT p3, May 23, 1914
https://www.newspapers.com/image/20380177/
The International Socialist Review, Volume 10
(Chicago, Illinois)
-July 1909-June 1910
C. H. Kerr & Company, 1910
https://books.google.com/books?id=MVhIAAAAYAAJ
ISR-Feb 1910
“Fighting to Live” by Tom A. Price
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/isr/v10n08-feb-1910-ISR-gog.pdf
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=MVhIAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PA673
Cover: Mother Jones in Philadelphia
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.31175013801918&view=2up&seq=696
The Progressive Woman
(Girard, Kansas)
-Mar 1909 to May 1911
(note: some issues missing)
https://books.google.com/books?id=Zo1EAQAAIAAJ
Feb 1910
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=Zo1EAQAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PA16-IA129
“Letters from the Children”
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=Zo1EAQAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PA16-IA143
The Leavenworth Post
(Leavenworth, Kansas)
-Feb 2, 1910
https://www.newspapers.com/image/109660368
Appeal to Reason
(Girard, Kansas)
-Feb 5, 1910, page 3
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/appeal-to-reason/100205-appealtoreason-w740.pdf
https://www.newspapers.com/image/66982432/
Streator Free Press
(Streator, Illinois)
-Feb 10, 1910
https://www.newspapers.com/image/543277542/
The Scranton Times
(Scranton, Pennsylvania)
-Feb 11, 1910
https://www.newspapers.com/image/533932878/
Buffalo Evening Times
(Buffalo, New York)
-Feb 16, 1910
https://www.newspapers.com/image/442036514/
See also:
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday February 12, 1910
Mother Jones News Round-Up for January 1910, Part I:
-Found with the Miners of Northeastern Pennsylvania
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday February 13, 1910
Mother Jones News Round-Up for January 1910, Part II:
-Found in Indianapolis Speaking at Mine Workers’ Convention
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The Rebel Girl – Hazel Dickens