Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for September 1921, Part III: Found Speaking at Indianapolis Convention of United Mine Workers
Hellraisers Journal – Friday February 10, 1922 Mother Jones News Round-Up for September 1921, Part III Found Speaking to Delegates at Convention of United Mine Workers
Indianapolis, Convention of the United Mine Workers of America Sixth Day, Afternoon Session, Monday September 26, 1921
“I can fight…”
Indiana Daily Times September 27, 1921
Vice-President Murray: I understand that Mother Jones has just arrived in the convention and I am going to request Brother David Fowler to escort her to the platform. It isn’t necessary that I should introduce Mother Jones to you at this time; it isn’t necessary that I should eulogize the work she has performed for the coal diggers of America, and I will simply present to the convention at this time our good friend, Mother Jones.
ADDRESS OF MOTHER JONES
Mr. Chairman and Delegates: I have been watching you from a distance, and you have been wasting a whole lot of time and money. I want you to stop it.
All along the ages, away back in the dusty past, the miners started their revolt. It didn’t come in this century, it came along in the cradle of the race when they were ground by superstition and wrong. Out of that they have moved onward and upward all the ages against all the courts, against all the guns, in every nation they have moved onward and upward to where they are today, and their effort has always been to get better homes for their children and for those who were to follow them.
I have just come up from West Virginia. I left Williamson last Friday and came into Charleston. I was doing a little business around there looking after things. We have never gotten down to the core of the trouble that exists there today. Newspapers have flashed it, magazines have contained articles, but they were by people who did not understand the background of the great struggle…..
I walked nine miles one night with John H. Walker in the New River field after we had organized an army of slaves who were afraid to call their souls their own. We didn’t dare sleep in a miner’s house; if we did the family would be thrown out in the morning and would have no place to go. We walked nine miles before we got shelter. When we began to organize we had to pay the men’s dues, they had no money.
At one time some of the organizers came down from Charleston, went up to New Hope and held a meeting. They had about fourteen people at the meeting. The next morning the conductor on the train told me the organizers went up on a train to Charleston. I told Walker to bill a meeting at New Hope for the next night and I would come up myself. He said we could not bill meetings unless the national told us to. I said: “I am the national now and I tell you to bill that meeting.” He did.
When we got to the meeting there was a handful of miners there and the general manager, clerks and all the pencil pushers they could get. I don’t know but there were a few organizers for Jesus there, too. We talked but said nothing about organizing. Later that night a knock came on the door where I was staying and a bunch of the boys were outside. They asked if I would organize them. I said I would. They told me they hadn’t any money. Walker said the national was not in favor of organizing, they wanted us only to agitate. I said: “John, I am running the business here, not the national; they are up in Indianapolis and I am in New Hope. I am going to organize those fellows and if the national finds any fault with you, put it on me—I can fight the national as well as I can the company if they are not doing right.”
[…..]
When we began organizing in 1903 the battle royal began. The companies began to enlist gunmen. I went up the Stanaford Mountain and held a meeting with the men. There wasn’t a more law-abiding body of men in America than those men were. While they were on strike the court issued an injunction forbidding them to go near the mines. They didn’t. I held a meeting that night, went away and next morning a deputy sheriff went up to arrest those men. He had a warrant for them. The boys said: “We have broken no law; we have violated no rules; you can not arrest us.” They notified him to get out of town and he went away. They sent for me and I went up. I asked why they didn’t let him arrest the men. They said they hadn’t done anything and I told them that was the reason they should have surrendered to the law.
That very night in 1903, the 25th day of February, those boys went to bed in their peaceful mining town. They had built their own school house and were sending their children to school. They were law-abiding citizens. While they slept in their peaceful homes bullets went through the walls and several of them were murdered in their beds. I went up next morning on an early train. The agent said they had trouble on Standifer [Stanaford] Mountain, that he heard going over the wires news that some people were hurt. I turned in my ticket, went out and called a couple of the boys. We went up the mountain on the next train and found those men dead in their homes, lying on mattresses wet with their blood and the bullet holes through the walls.
I want to clear this thing up, for it has never been cleared up. I saw there a picture that will forever be a disgrace to American institutions. There were men who had been working fourteen hours a day, who had broken no law, murdered in their peaceful homes. Nobody was punished for those murders.
“Hang that old woman…”
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In 1902 a board member and your President, John L. Lewis, went up Kelly Creek. They chased him out. I was determined to organize that Creek. I went to the town at Eastbrook and in the morning went across by ferry, then walked six miles. The company was paying two deputies to keep me out but we got into the mining camp. I told a merchant my business and he said we could use a hall over his building. I rented that for four months. I took the men down and organized them that night. The company suspected there was something wrong and the next day discharged forty of the men. Then the drivers got restless and came out. I was determined to finish the job and on Sunday went through the camp with the boys marching. I told them to ask every fellow they saw sitting on the steps of the houses to be an American and come down. They came.
We told Jack Roan, the manager, who had come over from Columbus that day, to come out. He didn’t come out. In front of the hotel were two fellows and one said: “I would like to have a rope and hang that old woman to a tree.” Another one said: “And I would like to pull the rope.” After the meeting the boys pointed those men out. I stood with my back to a tree and said: “You said you would like to hang the old woman. Here is the old woman and the tree, where is your rope?” They ran away because there were more than a thousand men at the place.
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Warning for Gunthugs
Muncie Morning Star September 27, 1921
The gunmen were driven out of there [Cabin Creek, West Virginia] and there has been peace ever since. They were driven out of Paint Creek, where they had sent a death special with thirty deputy sheriffs on board. When they wanted that special car equipped to send up the mountain the painters at Huntington said they wouldn’t paint it. The machinists said they wouldn’t equip it. Some other men were asked to do it and they said: “We will talk about it tonight and ask the Lord”—they were Holy Rollers. Well, the Lord must have told them to do it because in the morning they equipped the train and later that armored car fired into the tents of the strikers.
Here are the machine guns that were turned on us (exhibiting a picture). I went up to speak to the boys and the guns were turned on them. I didn’t see them until I got on the track. There were twenty-five of those gunmen who turned on those law-abiding citizens. I put my hands on the guns. One fellow told me to take my hands off the gun. I said: “No, sir; my class go into the bowels of the earth to get the materials to make these guns and I have a right to examine them. What do you want?” He said: “We want to clean out those fellows, every damn one of them.” I told him they were not doing anything wrong, that they were only trying to earn money for their wives and children. I told him if they shot one bullet out of that gun the creek would be red with blood and theirs would be the first to color it. They asked what I meant and I told them I had a lot of miners up above who were fully armed. There was nothing up the mountains but a few rabbits, but we scared hell out of them! We organized the men there. We have them solid to this day.
Those are the guns they sent across seven states to Colorado when the men there struck. The railroad men hauled them. Those are the guns that murdered the women and children at Ludlow, Colo. Here are the Baldwin thugs (showing several pictures). Here are some of the boys who were killed. Some young men joined the militia in Colorado, but when they found they were called out to turn their guns on the miners they went home. The mine owners said they would have to have an army. Here they are in this picture. They were not citizens of the state. The laws of Colorado said a man must be a citizen before he could put on the uniform, but these were the private armies of overlords and they kept committing crimes against the miners and their families until the horror of Ludlow shocked the country. Here is the picture of the children who were murdered…..
“Rather Die Fighting”
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Up in Princeton the men were asking for years for organization. We sent a boy up to bill the meeting but didn’t tell them who was going to speak. The boy had to run away the minute he circulated the bills or he would be killed. I went up with Mr. Houston, the attorney for the miners. We were told the meeting would be in the park three miles and a half away. I said we wouldn’t hold it there, that we would start a riot out there, and then they would say: “Old Mother Jones went out in the park and started a riot.” I said: “See if the city authorities won’t give us a place in the town to meet.” We got it and seven thousand men came there, largely railroad men, machinists and farmers. Seven cars of Baldwin-Felts thugs came down, loaded with whiskey and guns. There was no prohibition men there that day. Houston got up to speak and I saw that something was being plotted. I got up and spoke, but I hadn’t talked more than ten minutes when they began to start the riot.
When I wound up my speech I said: “Mr. Baldwin-Felts guards, I am going to serve notice on you that I will take this thing up to Uncle Sam, explain the matter, and if Uncle Sam don’t protect the children of the nation Old Mother Jones will. They won’t be raised under the influence of murderers like you.” The railroad men were afraid I would be killed and asked policemen to take me away. I told them I was not afraid of being killed, that I would rather die fighting than die in my bed.
[…..]
Indianapolis, Convention of the United Mine Workers of America Ninth Day, Afternoon Session, Thursday September 29, 1921
ADDRESS OF MOTHER JONES
Indianapolis Star September 30, 1921
You know, boys, I cannot yell as loud as I used to. A group of men met in Louisville, Ky., and there were many of the Blues and the Grays. A short time before they had used the guns against each other. But they met and buried the guns and shook hands and said: “We have wiped out chattel slavery, but we are facing something darker, more dangerous, than chattel slavery. Now we must join together as one grand army to fight for industrial freedom and put a stop to slavery in the long years to come.”
These men organized. That was before some of you were born. A few years before that they had been holding bayonets against each other, but they buried them, not to use them again. They organized and started out to carry the message of hope to their brothers. They had no money. In 1876, when the Union Pacific was bringing over Chinese to break the labor movement, the battle began there. They fought the battle, not with guns, but with intelligence. They made the government in Washington come out and put a stop to the Chinese coming in to invade the American labor movement.
I was all through those battles. I am now facing my closing hours of life. It hasn’t been smooth sailing. There have been storms in the past for labor, and yet the real storm has not begun. I had a hand in that Chinese agitation; we kept it up and stopped the Chinese coming over. The Union Pacific had been bringing them over in hordes and using them to break the labor movement. This is not a yesterday’s lesson with me.
I am now entering my ninety-third milestone. When you hold your next convention I may be moldering in the dust. Let me warn you now that the enemy is lined up and thoroughly prepared for battle. It must be with us as with the Blues and the Grays—we must shake hands and get together. I am going back to West Virginia. I am not going to give up the battle there, because I know it is the storm center of the labor movement. Let me warn you of what is coming. There are stormy days ahead of you. There are going to be hungry days for your children. We have some good boys in West Virginia and some good fighters, but we have got some damn snakes, too. Look after the snakes.
Now the time is here for us to get together. Stop your foolishness. This isn’t a mob gathering. The whole world is looking at this convention. There is a sane way of doing business; don’t let the world think we are a mob gathered here in Indianapolis. I am not going to say good by when I leave. I am going to be with you until death closes my eyes. Nobody can put me out. That has been tried, but I put out those who tried it before I got through with them.
The brave and true die only once; the cowards and traitors die often, and they have got some horrible deaths at that. Be true to your organization. The wires are set to break you up. I know what I am talking about. I am not looking for any office. What will the world think of us when the newspapers send out the poison ivy? You know the newspaper fellows have got to put in something to keep their jobs.
Do you know how much money you are spending here? It isn’t your money; it is the money of the children and the women. You are giving the money to the capitalists, the hotels, street cars and pool rooms. You cannot give it to the beer rooms because you can’t get a damn drop out of them. Now let us stop this foolishness that has been going on and go before the world as a sane people.
There are some fellows who don’t want me to go back to West Virginia, but I am going anyway. One fellow said I couldn’t do any more talking in West Virginia. Why, he’s been dead for forty years and the world has run away from him! The world has been made for a long time, and the Lord has never yet made a man that has been able to stop a woman talking. The gunmen, the courts, the thugs and the militia have tried to keep me from talking, and they couldn’t do it. My days are getting short, but as long as life remains I will stay with you.
You are the fighting army of the working class of America. I plead with you to do your business rapidly, get through here, go home and go to work to earn some money. We are going to win the battle in West Virginia. As long as I am able to crawl I will be around there.
Now everybody bury the hatchet, do business like sensible men and go home.
Sadly the Chinese Exclusion Act was supported by the UMWA see:
United Mine Workers Journal, Volume 27 UMWA, 1917 (search: “chinese exclusion”) Note: By 1917, William B. Wilson was the Secretary of Labor in the Wilson administration. Previously, he had been the Secretary-Treasurer of the United Mine Workers of America. https://books.google.com/books?id=c-8_AAAAYAAJ
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