Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for October 1902, Part I: Speaks in Iowa, Takes Part in Anthracite Strike Conference in New York
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday November 15, 1902 Mother Jones News Round-Up for October 1902, Part I Found in Colfax, Iowa, and at New York Anthracite Strike Conference
From the Des Moines Registrar and Leader of October 1, 1902:
Colfax, Ia., Sept. 30.-(Special.)-Mother Jones, the famous organizer of the miners in the anthracite region, gave an address, tonight at the Methodist church, and urged the miners of the Sixth district to work for John P. Reese of Albia for congress.Mother Jones denounced the capitalists of the country in severe terms, and was bitter against the use of the injunction by the courts.Her address was listened to by a large audience, composed for the most part of miners. Immediately after her speech, Mother Jones started across the country to Prairie City and caught a night train for Albia, where she will speak. She will also deliver an address at Ottumwa and then return east.
Mother Jones is now over sixty years of age, her hair being white as snow. Yet she is vigorous and energetic, and speaks with wonderful feeling and eloquence when describing the sufferings of the miners in the anthracite regions. She urged the miners and workingmen to wake up and work for their rights.
[She said:]
You don’t need a gun. Let us bury the bullet and resurrect the ballot.
Wants Iowa to Act.
I want Iowa to be the first state to carry the banner of organized labor into congress and elect a workingman to that body. I want a worker to make laws for me and not a henchman. If ever an awakening comes in this country it must come now. The injunction must be stopped. I plead with you young men; shall you all be slaves or shall you be men? You have got to take hold of this government and run it for all the people. It is your duty to see that the next congressman from this district is a miner so that the next congress shall have a miner in it.When the last injunction bill was up before congress there was no one there to press it, because no one there had felt the sting of the injunction injustice.
I say down with the government that upholds injunctions. I repeat I want to see the next congress have a miner in it. When the corporations see the workingmen waking up and electing workingmen to office they will tremble. You have got to break up this corporate power. The only way to break it up is by legislation. If you men feel that you are too big cowards to do it, stand aside and let us women do it and we’ll show you how. Woman is the greater sufferer from the power of corporate wealth.
Mother Jones, at the outset of her address, spoke of the progress of the human race and the various inventions that have been made.
[She said:]
Yet the workers have not the benefit of these inventions. A few men who have never done anything in their lives have taken advantage of them all and the human race stands aghast and asks “What shall we do?” If these inventions have been produced by society, why should one band of thieves and robbers, and assassins, and plunderers possess them to the detriment of all the rest? That is the great question before the human race. There is no other question before you. You have the labor question to settle, and it will be settled in this century. The men who produce the wealth will have the wealth.
Who has built your magnificent homes and public buildings? Who have gone down into the depths of the earth and toiled sixteen hours a day? The workers. Who live in your palaces? The parasite. Why? Because he has plundered other men of what they produce. When he boasts of prosperity, what is it to 30,000 breaker boys in the anthracite region? That you can make money by scheming doesn’t make a nation prosperous. You can’t have a prosperous nation until the workers prosper. If you give to your nation an illiterate broken down body of workers, ruin will overtake your country.
Mother Jones paid her respects to Morgan for saying he had nothing to arbitrate, and to Baer, who says he owns the earth and is the “steward of the Almighty.”
[She said:]
I wish he would take care of these men and women down in West Virginia, if he is the Almighty’s steward, as he claims.
[And again:]
Every page of every book of every Carnegie library in the country is written with the blood of Homestead.
Keep Missionaries at Home.
She said the country should keep its missionaries at home-that there was more for them to do here than in any other land in the world. She said:
Morgan and Baer and Rockefeller, and all the rest of the thieves were born into the world on the same footing as every other child. There were three great necessities, that everyone must have first food, then clothing, then shelter.
You must agree with me that there are just three channels to satisfy those three demands. No scientist has ever discovered any other. First, to have to work and produce. If you don’t work and produce then there are but two other ways to satisfy your demands. You may get them through charity. Neither Rockefeller, nor Morgan, nor Baer got them in that way. You know very well, then, there is but one other channel. They must steal, and I defy any human being on earth to contradict it. They may not hold us up on the highways, but it doesn’t differ to the miner whether he is held up one place or another, whether it is the company store or down in the mines.
A graphic description was given by Mother Jones of what she said were the sufferings of her breaker boys in the anthracite country. She asked her audience to contrast the lives of those breaker boys, who are producing wealth, with the lives of thousands who were wasting their wealth on monkeys at Newport. She said as she beheld HarryLehr and others of their set she said to herself, “And this is the way ancient Rome came to its fall.” She recounted from the miners’ standpoint the history leading up to the anthracite strike, and declared that in the three conventions held before the strike opened invitations had been sent to each of the operators to arbitrate. Not a single reply came to the invitations.
Describing the situation in West Virginia she said the miners paid $2.50 for powder that cost 90 cents. She mentioned a number of other instances of alleged extortion of the companies. Flour, she said, cost $8 per barrel to the strikers that could be bought elsewhere for $4. They even had to pay $1 a month for water, and then had to bring it up from the river. They ware obliged to pay $1.25 to $1.50 a ton for coal that never cost a cent for digging. The miner sold his $5 worth of script for $2.50 and the companies got it back at 85 per cent of its value. Under these circumstances, she said, it was
[N]o wonder the wealthy could afford to get up charity balls and dance on the quivering hearts of the people who made the wealth.
Mother Jones declaimed at length against the methods employed by the courts in issuing injunctions. She denounced the injunctions in unsparing terms. She urged the election of judges and senators by direct vote of the people and also woman suffrage. In the methods of issuing injunctions she declared the constitutional guarantee of trial by jury was violated. Where is the safeguard of liberty if this sort of thing was to go on, she asked. She believed there was no public officer in the United States who could not be freely criticised under law.
[Said she:]
Five years more of the present lining up of capitalistic power and you will be so enslaved you can never break your chains unless you break them by a bloody rebellion.
Mother Jones was introduced by John White, secretary of the United Mine Workers of this district. A number of prominent miners were seated on the platform with her. Rev. Mr. Stahl of the Methodist church, before the opening of the meeting, said that he had to leave the city and could not remain through the meeting, but he assured the meeting of his most earnest sympathy. He was warmly applauded. Mother Jones was frequently applauded throughout her address.
[Photograph and paragraph breaks added.]
From the Columbus Evening Republican (Indiana) of October 4, 1902:
Picturesque “Mother” Jones, the best- known labor organizer in the United States, was here last night en-route to West Virginia. She has been making speeches in Iowa for the American Federation of Labor. Organized labor everywhere, she declared, is deeply interested in the anthracite strike.
[She said:]
Every strike affects organized laborers, and this is generally realized in connection with the anthracite strike.
“Mother” Jones was included in the injunctions by Judge Jackson to prohibit the organizers from talking to the West Virginia miners either privately or in public. But she has gone right ahead talking to “her boys” as she calls them.
[She said:]
Why, I don’t mind the injunctions. Every time you set your foot down in West Virginia you step on an injunction. You don’t need to have your shoes shined because of the injunction papers. “Mother” Jones has grown gray in the service of the miners, by whom she is almost worshiped as a benefactress.
From The Indianapolis Journal of October 4, 1902:
“Mother” Jones in the City.
“Mother” Jones was in Indianapolis yesterday en route from Iowa to West Virginia. She has been speaking in Iowa under the auspices of the American Federation of Labor. She said organized laborers are deeply interested in the anthracite strike. She expects to take an active part in the West Virginia strike, although she was included in Judge Jackson’s injunctions to prohibit the organizers from talking to the strikers.
From the Wilkes-Barre Daily News of October 6, 1902:
NUMBERS HOMELESS ———- The Mine Owners Take Revenge on the Strikers. ———-
FIFTEEN HUNDRED FAMILIES ARE EVICTED BY OPERATORS IN WEST VIRGINIA. ———-
Mother Jones, the friend of the miners, writes from Montgomery, W. Va., that the utmost suffering prevails there, in consequence of the harsh measures taken by the “Christian men to whom God in His infinite wisdom has given the control of the property interests of this country.”
[She writes:]
We have fifteen hundred families of coal miners thrown out of their homes by the capitalist cannibals, and now camping on the highways. We should not talk so much about evictions in Ireland. Free America eclipses Ireland.
The “homes” from which six or seven thousand people-men, women and children-have thus been driven by the power of the law at the bidding of the capitalists, are, at the best, wretched shanties; but they afford some protection from the weather, and the bosses are determined to reduce the miners to utter misery, to punish them for daring to strike.
The shanties were built by workingmen on land legally owned by the operators, but made valuable by the labor of the miners. There are few other houses available, for the companies mostly insist on their employes living in the company houses and paying back a large share of their wages in rent. Eviction from the company houses, therefore, mean that the women and babies as well as men, are thrust out from all shelter and exposed to fearful hardships.
From the Wilkes-Barre Daily News of October 8, 1902:
MOTHER JONES’ OPINION.
Mother Jones dropped quietly and unexpectedly into headquarters at the Hotel Hart [in Wilkes-Barre] last evening. She came here from the New River field in West Virginia, where she has been organizing for the past sixteen months or so, to see President Mitchell.She was considerably disappointed at not finding him, and will wait over until to-day. After consulting with him on the matters which brought her so many miles, she will proceed to New York, whence she will return to her labors in West Virginia.
Asked her opinion of the strike situation as it is at present, she said:
I know that the anthracite miners are going to win, despite any efforts the operators and Governor Stone may make to defeat them. I have worked among them, and I know the spirit of grim determination that animates them. They are slow to bring on a fight, but once it is on, they mean business.
From the New York Evening World of October 9, 1902:
Gov. Odell, when seen at the Fifth Avenue Hotel after the conference with coal operators in Senator Platt’s office, said the efforts to end the strike had failed. He said he new of no plan for a resumption of negotiations…..
MITCHELL’S MEN TALK TERMS.
President Mitchell, of the Mine Workers Union, called District Presidents Duffy Fahey and Nichols to his room in the Ashland House at 1.30 o’clock this afternoon and submitted to them the propositions that were made to him today and last night to end the coal strike.
“Mother” Jones, the venerable strike leader of the anthracite regions, was also called into the conference.
The nature of the advances made to Mr. Mitchell by the political and business interests that are seeking to end the strike is not known. Neither Mr. Mitchell nor any of those interested would talk about them…..
[Statement of Mother Jones, aged agitator of the coal fields:]
I am over here in New York to see that my boys don’t get into trouble.
She was taken in charge by District Presidents Fahey, Duffy and Nichols…..
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From The Boston Post of October 10, 1902:
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Two Strikers, Father and Child with Soldier on Duty at Wilkes-Barre
In their eagerness to serve their masters the courts have disregarded the constitutional rights of citizenship, brushed them aside, and thrown men into jail for disobeying an order prohibiting them from holding public meetings, or talking to their neighbors and discussing their grievances together, or assisting with food and money those who were in need of it. Many a union officer has been enjoined from distributing to the striking members the so-called relief funds they themselves have helped to create by years of contributions. The arrogance assumed by Judge Jackson in the West Virginia cases, in which Mother Jones, together with other organizers of the United Mine Workers’ Union, were cited to appear for disobeying an order prohibiting them from holding meetings, can hardly be surpassed. The judge was careful to send the organizers to different county jails, and to suspend the sentence over that elderly woman who, by years of toil and devotion for the cause of the miners, has earned the name of “Mother.” Judge Jackson only voiced the general sentiment of the judiciary of the country, when, in most severe and scathing terms, he arraigned labor organizations, their walking delegates and organizers.
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