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Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday April 26, 1921
Mother Jones News Round-Up for March 1921
-Found in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Will Swear as Needed
From The Grand Rapids Press of March 15, 1921:
MOTHER JONES WILL SWEAR
IF IT IS REQUIRED
———-
“Mother” Jones, for many years a labor leader of national repute, arrived in Grand Rapids Tuesday noon for her first visit to this city in 20 years. She was a guest at the Eagle hotel and lunched at noon with a group of local labor leaders and their wives. During the afternoon she spoke at Trades and Labor council hall on general labor conditions in the United States, being introduced to the Grand Rapids audience by D. B. Hovey. Tuesday evening she will give another address at the Railway Workers’ union.
Grand Rapids labor circles greeted the venerated leader in a spirit of tribute for her many years of service in the cause of labor. She is a picturesque figure, but in spite of her flat bonnet and old-fashioned dress the impression the white haired old lady gives is not that of quaintness but of power, for the lines of her face are very strong and certainly she has a mind of her own. Though 85 years old she is more active than many persons much younger.
Mother Jones said she never knows what she is going to say to an audience until she faces it.
[She said:]
I’m not one of those orators that prepare a speech beforehand. I have to see what the folks I’m going to talk to look like first. If they’re a lot of roughnecks like us not I’ll swear at ’em.
———-
[Photograph added.]
From The Grand Rapids Press of March 16, 1921:
CAPITAL AND LABOR BOTH ARE
FLAYED BY MOTHER JONES
———-“I’m a Bolshevist,” She Tells Trades
and Labor Audience.
———-Capital and labor alike came in for denunciation by “Mother” Jones, veteran labor leader, in her address at Trades and Labor council hall Tuesday evening. At times in scourging what she characterized as the weak-kneed attitude of labor her epithets became curses, but they were received good naturally by the several hundred laboring men and women present who cheered, laughed and applauded.
The audience, which arose when the strong-minded old women was introduced, was ordered peremptorily to “sit down except when fighting the other fellow.”
[Mother Jones said:]
Get this into your head, I’m not going to throw any bouquets at you. The I. W. W.’s have done good work you couldn’t do, but you have helped crush them. I tell you I’m an I. W. W., a bolshevist, a Red or anything else that will crush this rotten system.
You railroad men would carry machine guns across sevens states [from West Virginia to Ludlow, Colorado, in 1914] to kill the men who mine the coal that keep your babies warm-and you call yourselves the miner’s brothers.
[Mother further said:]
You electrical workers could shut off the electric lights of the nation and stop every wheel in an hour because you have the wires in your hands and some of these days you’re going to use them if things keep on going as they are.
The speaker administered many a seething rebuke to government officials.
[She said:]
Down in Kansas they can’t even strike because the bosses and politicians say it isn’t respectable. D–n your respectability-America was founded on a strike There was a time when you could get a glass of beer and a free lunch and now they won’t even let you have that.
Takes Rap at Women.
“You have produced the wealth of today, but you don’t get it,” Mother Jones said in advocating more vigorous action on the part of labor.
When your employer gives you a tenth of a cent more you think he is a fine fellow. You want his interests protected by law, but you don’t think of yourselves. Stop putting the whip into the hands of the fellow you pay. Keep it in your own hands. Stop asking for what belongs to you. D–n you, go and take it! Awake from the slumber they have put you in. You must come out fearlessly and not be afraid of jails or anything, for you live in the land of the brave, the true and the free.
Mother Jones had some harsh things to say about women, admitting frankly that she has “no use for them because they won’t fight for the cause.”
[She said:]
I haven’t time to bother with women. They’ll fight each other and fight their husbands but they won’t fight for the cause…they could fight, [and] they could change the whole economic situation in the United States.
Charles W. Wagner, president of the Trades and Labor council, introduced Mother Jones to the Grand Rapids audience. Edward Kosten, district organizer for the International Molders’ union, and D. B. Hovey, Sr., of the typographical union, gave the other addresses.
———-
Note: emphasis added throughout.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
SOURCES
Quote Mother Jones, UMWC, Jan 17, 1918
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=8fQUAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PA358
The Grand Rapids Press
(Grand Rapids, Michigan)
-March 15, 1921, page 2
-March 16, 1921, page 5
https://www.genealogybank.com/
IMAGE
Mother Jones, ed WDC Tx p2, Aug 29, 1920
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84026749/1920-08-29/ed-1/seq-2/
See also:
re Kansas Anti-Strike, Industrial Court Law, see:
“The Story of Alex Howat” by James P. Cannon
-from The Liberator of April 1921
https://www.marxists.org/archive/cannon/works/1921/howat.htm
re “machine guns across seven states”-WV to CO, see:
Conditions in the Coal Mines of Colorado: Hearings Before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Mines and Mining
-United States. Congress. House. Committee on Mines and Mining
U.S. Government Printing Office, 1914
(search: “imported into colorado from west virginia the machine guns”)
https://books.google.com/books?id=Gj46AQAAMAAJ
Mother Jones News Round-Up for February 1921
-C. H. Newell Claims Mother Jones is Helping to Make Mexico Safe
The Correspondence of Mother Jones
-ed by Edward M. Steel
University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985
https://books.google.com/books?id=EZ2xAAAAIAAJ
Feb & Mar, 1921—Pages 220-222 (271-273 of 416)
https://digital.library.pitt.edu/islandora/object/pitt%3A31735057897435/viewer#page/270/mode/2up
Feb 15, 1921
-to MJ from former Governor Hunt of AZ, now part of American Legation at Bangkok:
Hunt states that he is sick at heart to see his beloved State “so long the real progressive state..turn down all that was good for labor…”
Mar 22, 1921:
-from MJ at Charleston WV to John H. Walker, Pres. IL F of L:
Mother writes re situation in Mingo, Kansas Court Law, and re Howat, “he is a remarkable man he stood the fire for years…..The labor movement will never be wrecked from out side, John, the wrecking force will be from within.”
Mar 24, 1921
-to MJ at Charleston WV from JHW:
JHW anticipating , with pleasure, a visit from MJ on her way to Mexico, visit planned for April
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The Spirit of Mother Jones – Andy Irvine