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Hellraisers Journal – Saturday June 11, 1910
Mother Jones News Round-Up for May 1910, Part I:
-Found Speaking in Sioux City, Iowa, and Fort Wayne, Indiana
From The Sioux City Journal of May 2, 1910:
FIGHTING WORKERS NEEDED.
—–
Mother Jones Says Capitalism Drives
Laboring Men to Drink.
We don’t get the philosophy we want from the preachers, that is why we don’t go to church.
-declared Mother Jones, known country wide as a battler for the cause of the working man, during her address before a large socialistic audience at Bennett’s hall last night.
[She continued:]
Ministers never work. We need fighting workers now.
Mother Jones is well advanced in years and small in stature. In her opinion the capitalistic class owns the officials, the policemen and the ministers. She has her own theory regarding prohibition. She figures the antisaloon leagues are going at the question from the wrong side. In her opinion the factories in which the working men toil away their lives and the hardships imposed upon them by the capitalistic class drive them to drink, and it is through a radical change from this source that temperance will come.
The speaker said the womanhood of the nation is sinking slowly but gradually because girls and women are forced from home to sweatshops, where also may be found little children. When the history of this age is written, in her opinion, it will go down on the books as the most corrupt of all times. If the women would assert themselves she believes the trouble of the working man would be cleared up over night.
[Photograph added.]
From the Black Hills Daily Register of May 4, 1910:
BLAMES SYSTEM FOR PRESENT EVILS
—–Sioux City, Ia., May 4. Unfair economic and industrial conditions are responsible for the sins as well as the misfortunes of laboring men and laboring women, in the opinion of Mother Jones, the aged woman friend of labor, expressed in an address at Bennett hall Monday night Mother Jones riddled to the best of ability the common preachment that the poor are poor because they are shiftless and naturally are without enough ambition to succeed. She mercilessly attacked the assertion that the laboring man with a large family could rise to the level of the well-to-do if he would save his money instead of spending it in saloons and at the gaming table. Bitterly she denounced those who claim that prostitutes are such because in their hearts they prefer to live such lives.
[She said:]
Merciless and unrelenting capitalism grinds and crushes down the workers. For ages and ages it has been grinding and crushing them down and if many of them now are broken in spirit, dead in ambition, hopeless wrecks, seeking what solace they can find in drink, it not their fault. It is the fault of the pernicious system that has made them what they are.
No one with a true understanding of the economic conditions which make them, despise the woman who is lost. Seldom is she such by her own wish. Her resistance against the commercialization of her own flesh has been beaten down and broken by the system which has made it so hard and almost impossible for her to live without making herself an article of commerce.
In the majority of cases these women are what they are because poverty or work harder than they could bear drove them to that condition. And in most cases their patrons are their patrons because the industrial conditions do not permit them to secure enough of what they earn to provide a home for anyone.
Laws against the saloon and the house of evil repute never will accomplish the result desired by those who favor them. They are sincere, most of them, but they are in error. They do not go to the root of the evil. Make economic and industrial conditions fair and these places will die a natural death. All that remain will be a few needed to satisfy the unnatural inclinations of a certain few and in a few generations under fair conditions even the few will disappear.
Capitalism must be supplanted by socialism. Capitalism now owns the officials and the policemen and the ministers. These must shake themselves loose from the chains and become real men. When this is done we will have gone a long way toward a better condition.
From the Black Hills Daily Register of May 6, 1910:
The Daily Gall [Lead Daily Call] hints that if Mother Jones comes to Lead to stir up the workers, the Gall will publish Mother’s biography, as written by the notorious Polly Pry, a former Denver muck-raker. By all means do so, Doc. Mother Jones’ life is an open book and her good deeds so completely outweigh her faults that both the editor of the Call and Polly Pry might well envy Mother Jones her place in the hearts of the toiling millions. One thing is certain, if Mother Jones has a message to deliver in Lead, no threat of exposing her past life is going to deter her. She is not a candidate for office nor for matrimonial honors.
From The Fort Wayne Sentinel of May 9, 1910:
“MOTHER” JONES GIVES ADDRESS
—–
Noted Woman Who Sympathizes With Labor
Talks to Steel Workers.
—–[…..]
“Mother” Jones, the noted woman who is known far and wide for her sympathy with the cause of union labor, and whose life is devoted to an effort to better the condition of toiler every where, was a guest of honor at the convention of the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Tin and Steel Workers today, and addressed the delegates. The session was largely social in character, little business being transacted, and at noon adjournment was taken until Tuesday morning, when in all probability the report of the wage committee on the muck mill scale for the new year will be taken up…..
“Mother” Jones, as she is affectionately known in the labor world, has attended many conventions of the steel workers as well as of other labor bodies, and she is always a welcome guest. Her address to the convention dealt largely with labor conditions in Mexico as they affect workmen in the United States, and she told of her experiences in the investigation of recent labor difficulties, including the anthracite strike. “Mother” Jones will leave today for Peoria, Ill.
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From the National Labor Tribune of May 12, 1910:
Mother Jones, probably the most prominent woman in the labor movement, addressed the meeting Monday [of the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers in Fort Wayne, Ind.]. She was deadly in earnest in what she said and her words stirred up such hatred of the corporation evils as nothing else has done during the entire convention.
Her subject was the government of Diaz. she has taken great interest in the labor movement in Mexico and the efforts of the government to keep it down.
She brought up instances which all the men had known, but she brought them up in such rapid succession that it stirred the spirits of the labor delegates. Her description of the prosecutions of the persons who try to establish unions, of the help received in America and of all the minor details were such as to make the steel workers take up arms in behalf of their rights.
From the Leavenworth Labor Chronicle of May 13, 1910:
MOTHER JONES RAPS MR. DICK.
—–
“I am Fighting You” She Said When
Introduced to the Ohio Senator, Author
of Notorious Military Bill.
—–Mother Jones, whose “boys” are working in every coal mine in Pennsylvania and every camp of Colorado, met Senator Dick, of the Notorious Dick military law, as that urbane member of the upper house was standing in the senate lobby of the capitol the other day [during late April].
All smiles and gladness the senator acknowledged the introduction to the white-haired woman and offered his hand, but “Mother” dropped hers significantly to her side.
I’m fighting you, Senator Dick. It was your work that sent the two thousand guns out to Colorado in the last big strike, and shot us up.
“You don’t look as if you had been injured, madam,” flushed the senator.
No, thanks to your law and the guns that killed others while they missed me
-answered the woman, whose appearance and participation in almost every miners’ strike during the past thirty years has earned for her the name of “the stormy petrel.”
“But, madam,” argued Senator Dick, “don’t we need soldiers in time of revolution?”
[Flashed Mother Jones:]
In the revolution that drove King George hack across the sea, yes. But do we need a law that will do for America what the Irish constabulary law did for Ireland? No, no, Senator Dick, I saw the brutal and bloody work of the militia in Colorado, and the truth is that the guns your law would place in the hands of the mine-owners and the mill-owners are loaded with bullets for the hearts of the workers.
The 76 years of the old, white-haired woman dropped from her like magic as she “spoke her mind” for her “boys” to the most powerful Republican senator from the most powerful Republican state in the union.
“And why arc you in Washington, madam?” evasively questioned the senator.
“To help undo the work of another tyrant that rules with guns-I mean Diaz, answered the relentless agitator.
At this moment 12 strokes of the clock brought a longed for relief to the quivering senator, and with a hasty bow he left the gathering group, and disappeared, into the senate chamber.-West Virginia Labor Argus.
From The Daily Missoulian of May 15, 1910:
Note: Emphasis added throughout.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
SOURCES & IMAGE
The Sioux City Journal
(Sioux City, Iowa)
-May 2, 1910
https://www.newspapers.com/image/436669803/
Black Hills Daily Register
(Lead, South Dakota)
-May 4, 1910
https://www.newspapers.com/image/91658698/
-May 6, 1910
https://www.newspapers.com/image/91658707/
The Fort Wayne Sentinel
(Fort Wayne, Indiana)
-May 9, 1910
https://www.newspapers.com/image/29110849/
National Labor Tribune
(Pittsburg, Pennsylvania)
-May 12, 1910, page 4
https://www.genealogybank.com/
The Labor Chronicle
(Leavenworth, Kansas)
-May 13, 1910
https://www.newspapers.com/image/488911382/
The Daily Missoulian
(Missoula, Montana)
-May 15, 1910
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83025316/1910-05-15/ed-1/seq-28/
See also:
Hellraisers Journal – Thursday May 19, 1910
Mother Jones News Round-Up for April 1910, Part I:
-Found Fighting for Coal Miners, Brewery Girls, and Mexican Comrades
Hellraisers Journal – Friday May 20, 1910
Mother Jones News Round-Up for April 1910, Part II:
-Found in Senate Lobby of Nation’s Capitol Berating Senator Charles Dick
For more on Pinkerton charges against Mother Jone
-from Polly Pry, 1904, see:
Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts & Doings of Mother Jones for June 1916:
Arizona Newspaper Revives Polly Pry
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Which Side Are You On – Dropkick Murphys
Lyrics by Florence Reese