Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for October 1902, Part III: Found Speaking at Socialist Mass Meeting at Cooper Union, New York City
Hellraisers Journal – Monday November 17, 1902 Mother Jones News Round-Up for October 1902, Part III New York, New York – Mother Jones Speaks to Socialists at Cooper Union
From The New York Times of October 18, 1902:
From The Pittsburg Post of October 18, 1902:
Thomas Duffy, Mother Jones and President John Mitchell
From The New York Times of October 19, 1902:
MOTHER JONES EVOKES CHEERS, LAUGHTER, TEARS ———- Arraigns Coal Operators and Capital at Cooper Union. ———-
Calls Mr. Baer “The Anointed Baron” -Says She Made Miners Intoxicated In Order to Organize Them. ———-
“You’re all right. Mother Jones. You’re a peach!” “No, I’m not a peach. I wouldn’t be called that. It belongs to [Senator] Depew, and, thank God, I’m not in his class.”
This was one of the compliments paid to the friend of labor, and especially of the miner, and her retort thereto at the mass meeting of the Social Democratic Party [affiliated with S. P. A.] held last night at Cooper Union. The gathering was not only enthusiastic, it was large, filling the amphitheatre and necessitating the organisation of overflow meetings outside.
They all went there to hear Mother Jones and they were well repaid. She stirred their emotions in her tales of the suffering miners, and roused them to boisterous hilarity by her arraignment of the coal operators. Mother Jones was attired in a black gown, her gray hair was neatly dressed, and she looked more like a dignified matron of Colonial days than the woman who has roughed it in the mines with what she terms in slight Irish brogue “me bhoys,” referring to the miners. After five minutes of cheering, hat swinging, and hurrahs she began,
What are you cheering me for? Keep your cheers for election day.
That remark won another storm of applause.
She talked for two hours, and then apologized for saying that she was a woman and couldn’t help it. This made the women in the audience roar with laughter.
[She told them:] Oh, you needn’t laugh. If you’d do your talking in the right direction instead of gossipping all day, you’d be better for it. (This of course tickled the men.) A Federal Judge [Jackson] down in West Virginia tried to stop me talking once, but he gave it up for a bad job after three days’ trying.
Mother Jones divided her speech into sections. First she addressed her remarks to the press. She wanted the reporter of a newspaper who had made fun of her in a story to fight out with her, and she described him as slimy.” The crowd laughed and hissed. Then she assailed the clergy.
At times Mother Jones got very dramatic and tears ran down her cheeks in streams. She pictured the poor babes in the coal fields and held an imaginary dead baby in her arms, and then the crowd were silent and many of the women wept.
The policemen in the audience, of which there were many, came in for a little bit of confidential scolding. Mother Jones did not think their presence was needed, and thought that the hall should be called “Copper Union.”
Once she stopped and asked: “Shall I stop?” “No,”answered a dozen voices.” “Keep on all night!” “Well, I’m just the boy that can do it!” she said.
[She continued:] But I want to tell you that if you people know what an idiotic gang that crowd of capitalists are you’d have everything you want. But there is one who knows. The State of Illinois sent out a Lincoln to free the slaves of the South, and it has now sent out another Lincoln to free the miners, and he is young John Mitchell.
The applause at the mention of the labor leader’s name lasted for several minutes, and repeatedly there were three cheers given for him.
[She declared:] Now, all the riots that have been in the coal fields have been made by the newspapers. For a month there were but six people killed, while during the same time there were eighteen people killed by the automobiles of the capitalists.
No football field ever heard a greater tumult of applause man than that which greeted this remark. This was followed by a roar of laughter when she referred to President Baer as “the annotated baron.”
The injunction, she said, was the greatest enemy of labor, and continued:
I was the only fellow in West Virginia that had no respect for the court, and they said I was in contempt. Well, I never had any contempt for the court till I got in there. I happened to be the only Socialist in the crowd, and they didn’t know it till they got hit good and hard.
One statement which her hearers were not inclined to applaud as freely as they had her previous remarks was one wherein she told of having given beer to the men in order to induce them to attend her meetings.
[Said she:] I had been served with another injunction, and told that I must not work among the miners or I would be in contempt, and the men were afraid to come to hear me on that account and because some of the others had been arrested. But I knew the miners and I sent a wagon for seven half barrels of beer and I let it be known around everywhere that the beer was on tap, and then (here Mother Jones swung her arms vigorously) I got those miners drunk. But I had to do it. But I organized them. They had to be organized. It was their only salvation, and I knew it. Their wives and children were hungry and half clothed and organisation meant food and clothes for them, and I knew they were better organised drunk than unorganized sober.
Several other advocates of Socialism also addressed the crowd.
Mother Jones, at the conclusion of the meeting, left for Boston.
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