Hellraisers Journal – Monday April 17, 1911 Mother Jones News Round-Up for March 1911: –Found in Denver Fighting for Sixteen Miners Jailed by Judge Whitford
From the Black Hills Daily Register of March 6, 1911:
Accuses Judge of Bribery
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(By Pan-American Press.)
Sixteen miners freed from jail with assistance of Mother Jones. —–
Denver, March 6.-The impeachment investigation against Judge Greeley W. Whitford, which is being conducted by a committee of the Colorado house of representatives, took a most sensational turn when the committee was told by Mrs. Margaret Miller that prior to his sentencing sixteen union men to jail a few mouths ago, she had delivered a package to Whitford which, she alleged, contained $3,000.
Mrs. Miller said she had been on terms of close relationship with Whitford for eight years. She testified that during the Cripple Creek mining troubles she was in the employ of the Mine Owners’ Association. She alleges a man associated with her in those troubles, gave her the money to give to Judge Whitford.
The sixteen miner were released from jail recently by Judge Whitford after serving two months of their sentence.
Union labor organizations all over the state of Colorado united in petitioning for Judge Whitford’s removal from the bench, declaring that the court in sentencing the miners, had found them guilty of a criminal charge without giving them the right of trial by jury. “Mother Jones” played an important part in the freeing of the men by holding immense meetings in all the large cities of the state.
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[Photograph added.]
From the Daily People of March 13, 1911:
It will surely interest people in the Movement to know what Mother Jones has to say to the findings of the special committee of the Socialist party appointed to investigate a number of charges made against the party’s National Secretary, J. Mahlon Barnes. One of the charges was that Barnes borrowed $250 from Mother Jones and that he had sought to escape payment. The committee finds that Mother Jones had been duly paid, that she denied having been paid, and that she was paid over again, thus receiving back $500 for $250. This would make Mother Jones out to be an extortionist, a charge that all would like to know whether she is willing to abide under.
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Note: A letter to the Editor from J. H. Arnold of Louisville, Ky., published in the March 9th People stated, in part, that the Appeal to Reason
and such other S. P. papers…were withholding from their readers all information of the serious charges now being urged against the leaders of the Socialist party by “Mother” Jones, James Brower, E. C. Carr of the “Christian Socialist,” Miss Flaherty for years in the S. P. national office, and Thos. J. Morgan, with his strong and salty weekly “Provoker.”
Daily People
“Published Every Morning by the
Socialist Labor Party”
(New York, New York)
-Mar 13, 1911, page 2
-Mar 9, 1911, page 2 https://www.genealogybank.com/
Out of the Depths The Story of John R. Lawson a Labor Leader
-by Barron B. Beshoar
Denver, 1980 (first edition 1942)
(search: shafroth impeachment) https://books.google.com/books?id=gQ4eAAAAIAAJ
Governor Shafroth announced he was “convinced an injustice had been done these men.” Demands were made on the Legislature for impeachment of Judge Whitford. Before the protests could materialize into more concrete action, Judge Whitford had the miners brought from jail…..After calling them “anarchial” and “revolutionary” he released them with a warning.
-per page 150, and sources given on page 244, John O’Neill, editor of the Miners Magazine (WFM), came to the defense of Mother Jones in the March 23rd and March 30th editions, stating that Mother was not a “blackmailer” and that the Socialist Party of America needed to get rid of
professional parasites and soulless slanderers [or else] the party will be submerged in a cesspool whose stench of “free love” and moral rottenness will nauseate even the callous stomach of the Brotherhood of Libertines.
Note: Sadly Miners Magazine for this period cannot yet found online.
March 12, 1911, Mother Jones from Denver to Attorney Thomas J. Morgan of Chicago:
I had to leave Chicago Sunday night [March 5th?]. I had meetings billed in the mining camps…..
The miners magazine is going to clean them up [SPA NEC] in a few days. When he gets through with Germer there won’t be so much left of [him?]. I won’t let up on that gang. If they put me out of the party I am [going?] to keep up this fight. So far as these slurs at me it don’t go.
March 27, 1911, Mother Jones from Denver to TJM:
Germer is beginning to Squeel he read last weeks Magazine. I guess-he is getting a little bit afraid. Wait until ONeil gets done with the Gang…
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The Union Forever, γνωστό και σαν Colorado Strike Song, τραγούδι της Απεργίας του Κολοράντο
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