Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for June 1910, Part II: Found Testifying Before House Rules Committe on Behalf of Mexican Refugees
Hellraisers Journal – Monday July 18, 1910
Mother Jones News Round-Up for June 1910, Part II:
-Found in Washington, D. C., Testifying Before House Committee
From the San Francisco Call of June 15, 1910:
“MOTHER” JONES DENOUNCES DIAZ
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Mexican Refugees Persecuted by American Officers,
She Tells House Committee
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Writer Declares Los Angeles Detectives Open
Private Letters in Postoffice
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WASHINGTON, June 14.—”Mother” Jones addressed the rules committee of the house today in behalf of the Mexican refugees, who, it is alleged, are being persecuted in the United States through the agencies of American officers and Mexican government “spies.”
Mrs. Jones related that while she was in Douglas, Ariz., addressing a meeting, of “the unorganized slaves who work in the smelters,” she witnessed the kidnaping of a Mexican refugee, who, she said, was seized, strangled, thrown into an automobile and carried across the line into Mexico.
“Mother” Jones” denounced President Diaz of Mexico for sending “his hirelings across the border to crush the constitution of our country.”
John Kenneth Turner, a magazine writer, and John Murray, a newspaper writer, continued their testimony. The offering of evidence was finished today and the committee will decide within a few days whether an investigation by congress shall be recommended.
Murray testified to the opening of his own mail and that of a large number of other persons by the American authorities.
Turner said he had discovered city detectives in the Los Angeles postoffice examining the mail of Mexican residents there. He also told of the suppression by the authorities of many small newspapers published by Mexican refugees in various cities in Texas, California and Arizona.
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[Photograph added.]
Hellraisers Journal of June 17, 1910:
Mother Jones Before House Rules Committee, Part I
Washington D. C., June 14, 1910-During the morning session of the Hearings before the House Rules Committee on H.J. Res. 201, “Providing for a Joint Committee To Investigate Alleged Persecutions of Mexican Citizens by the Government of Mexico,” Mother Jones was called to the stand by Congressman William B. Wilson of Pennsylvania. Mother testified as follow:
Mr. Wilson: Mr. Chairman, I would like to have Mother Jones speak.
The Chairman [Representative John Dalzell of Pennsylvania]:
Mother Jones, please give the stenographer your name and residence.
STATEMENT OF MRS. MARY JONES
[Part I of II.]
Lebanon Daily News June 15, 1910
[Questioned by Chairman Dalzell:]
My name is Mary Jones. I live in the United States, but I do not know exactly in what place, because I am always in the fight against oppression, and wherever a fight is going on I have to jump there, and sometimes I am in Washington, sometimes in Pennsylvania, sometimes in Arizona, sometimes in Texas, and sometimes up in Minnesota, so that really I have no particular residence…No abiding place, but wherever a fight is on against wrong, I am always there. It is my pleasure to be in the fray.
[Mr. Wilson questions Mother about the kidnapping of Manual Sarabia from Douglas, Arizona, during summer of 1907:]
I was in Arizona at that time. We had a strike on there with the Philip Dodge copper interest. The smelters, the men, or the slaves, rather, working in the smelters, had not been organized, and I went down there in Douglas to help organize those workers.
[Wilson asks Mother if she would rather sit down]
I am so accustomed to standing when I am talking that I am uncomfortable when sitting down. That is too easy. [Laughter.]
Well, I was holding a meeting on the streets of Douglas on Sunday night for the workers that were in the smelters. An automobile was run out from the jail, from what I learned afterwards and this young Sarabia was thrown into it.
He screamed out, “They are taking my liberty,” and then they choked him off…..the editor of El Industrio, whose paper has been suppressed since, came running down very much excited, and said, “On, Mother, they have kidnaped our young revolutionist.”…..
The next day we met, and I went into the office of El Industrio, thinking the matter over, and this gentleman, the editor of the paper, came to me. He is also a Mexican, and he had lived in this country for some time, and he was speaking of the horrors of the affair, and I said, “That must be stopped. The idea of any bloodthirsty pirate on a throne reaching across these lines and crushing under his feet the Constitution,” I said, “which our forefathers fought and bled for.” I said, “We must get up a protest meeting and arouse the territory about it tonight.” I said, “If this thing is allowed to go on, they are liable to come and kidnap any of us.”…..
Then I had to leave Arizona and go up to the steel [iron] range in Minnesota, where a strike was going on. I had to go up there and fight the steel robbers, and so of course I left the scene there, but I started the ball rolling. Before I went away I went up to Phoenix to see the governor, who, I believed was of the American type of Patrick Henry and Lincoln and Jefferson, and I felt it my duty to go and see him. We have very few of that type of men in this age. The general run of them are after the fleshpots of Egypt instead of the rights of the people of the country. So I went up and paid my respects to the governor, and there I met Captain Wheeler, whom I had met before. Captain Wheeler had orders to go into Mexico and bring back young Sarabia, which he did…..
[Photograph added.]
Hellraisers Journal of June 18, 1910:
Mother Jones Before House Rules Committee, Part II
Washington D. C., June 14, 1910-During the morning session of the Hearings before the House Rules Committee on H.J. Res. 201, “Providing for a Joint Committee To Investigate Alleged Persecutions of Mexican Citizens by the Government of Mexico,” Mother Jones continued her testimony as follow:
STATEMENT OF MRS. MARY JONES
[Part II of II.]
I left there [Arizona] then, but in 1908, immediately after the campaign. I learned from those men in jail at Los Angeles their condition [Ricardo Flores Magon, Librado Rivera, and Antonio I. Villareal]. They were without money, without aid…..and that if they were without money, but were in the fight for liberty, a fight against the most bloody tyrant that has been produced, I would protect them; and so, although I was not in very good health, I went out and raised $4,000. I sent it West to get stenographers, hire attorneys, and bring witnesses to Tombstone, Arizona, where they were to be tried. I did not expect any great amount of mercy from the court at Tombstone, because Judge Doan is not very humane man. People who are feasting and eating and drinking with those who own the fleshpots of Egypt are not generally very humane characters. But I still felt that probably through the efforts we were making, and the publicity we were giving it, they would not be turned over to be murdered, and if they could be saved from being murdered that would satisfy me, knowing that some day we would get them out of the clutches of the tyrant. And so they were tried and sentenced to eighteen days in Yuma. From there they were moved to the new prison.
Now, then, to finish my part of it. After I had raised that money and sent it west and they were tried and sentenced, there were four then in the penitentiary in Leavenworth. I went up to the penitentiary to see them, and saw the warden, and I went to see this Sylva [Prisciliano Silva], who was dying at that time, apparently. He was sick, and he appealed to me. To think that in an institution like that a patriot should perish and we should stand by and see him. So I immediately came to see the president [President Taft] about him, and I put the matter before the president, and the president gave me a very nice audience, and he said, “Mother, if you will bring me the evidence, I will read it over.” I went back to the penitentiary, got a notary public, got a man who spoke the language, and I took him up there, and I asked the warden to give me permission to speak with those prisoners, and the warden very graciously brought them in, and they sat there and I took the evidence. When they were about going out of the room I looked at these men and thought, how sad it is that our Constitution must be buried underfoot in the interest of the tyrant across the line. So I looked at the poor fellows, and I said, “Boys, be good boys and some day you will get out,” and the warden turned and he said, “Mother, they are always good; they have never given us any trouble.”
I came here and brought the documents to the president in Washington again, and the president said, “Mother Jones, I am very much afraid if I put the pardoning power in your hands there would not be anyone left in the penitentiaries.” [Laughter.] I said, “Mr. President, if this nation devoted half the money and half the energy to give men an opportunity to get out of the penitentiaries-the men who are forced into them-we would not need any penitentiaries in the country.”…..
[Mr. Clark asks if Mother knows where they were keeping Sarabia.]
Yes; they were keeping him in the Hermosillo Penitentiary. I felt that it was our duty as citizens of the United States to look into these things. I do not think, gentlemen, that this country should run penitentiaries in the interest of the Mexican government……
I beg that this body of Representatives will probe down to this evil and protect these wretches from the tyranny and oppression of that bloody pirate [Porfirio Diaz]. I would like to get a chance at it. [Laughter.]
Mr. Wilson: I simply want to state, Mr. Chairman, that we have in our possession, or Mr. Turner and Mr. Murrayhave in their possession, a mass of additional evidence along the same line that has been presented. Out of deference to the wishes of the committee we have boiled it down as much as we could, and we feel that we have demonstrated the necessity of an investigation of the entire question.
(Thereupon, at 12:15 o’clock p. m., the hearings were concluded.)
For more information on subjects covered by Mother Jones
-use links below and scroll down to “See also” section:
Hellraisers Journal: Testimony of Mother Jones before
House Committee on Behalf of Persecuted Mexican Refugees Part I & Part II
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