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Hellraisers Journal, Saturday May 18, 1918
Mother Jones News for April 1918, Part II: Found in San Francisco
Mother Jones was the featured speaker at a mass meeting held at the Auditorium in San Francisco on Tuesday evening, April 16th. The next day the following telegram was sent to the Machinists’ Union headquarters in Washington, D. C.:
From the San Francisco Chronicle of April 17, 1918:
Mass Meeting Is Held by Partisans
Of “Tom” Mooney
—–President to Be Told New Trial Is
Favored by Large Audience
—–
Thousands of Thomas J. Mooney sympathizers gathered in the Auditorium last night to hear Mrs. Rena Mooney, Mrs. Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington, Israel Weinberg, Mother Jones and others discuss the Preparedness day bomb cases.
“Ten thousand persons in mass meeting in San Francisco favor unanimously a new trial for Mooney,” is the effect of a message they voted to send to President Wilson.
Many of the people left when they found they couldn’t hear Mother Jones, the first speaker, whose voice did not carry far enough to be of value to those in the back of the Auditorium. A burst of applause at a time when applause scarcely was necessary apprised Mother Jones of her audience’s difficulties, and she quit speaking shortly after 10 o’clock.
The meeting was opened with the “Star-Spangled Banner.” Everybody stood up except a man in the audience and Mrs. Sheehy-Skeffington. The man arose under pressure, but the woman on the speakers’ platform remained seated.
After Mother Jones spoke a collection was taken. John P. [H.] Beckmeyer of the machinists’ union presided. A large number of Mooney sympathizers from Alameda county marched to the Auditorium from the Ferry building.
In an open letter Mooney told his friends “organized labor is the one weapon that will bring us speedy justice.”
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[Photograph added.]
From Nevada’s Elko Independent of April 18, 1918:
NEW TRIAL FOR MOONEY ASKED
—–Resolutions endorsing President Wilson’s request for a new trial of Thomas Mooney, a number of speeches by local and visiting labor leaders and by persons connected with the various trials of preparedness day bomb defendants, marked a public mass meeting at the Civic auditorium last night attended by 8,000 persons. A statement by Thomas Mooney was read by William Spooner of the Alameda Building Trades council after Clarence [John H.] Beckmeyer had opened the meeting. Mooney called on the audience to stand firmly for pardon for him and not for commutation of sentence.
Among those who spoke were Mother Jones, Colorado labor organizer; Mrs. Hannah Sheehy Skellington, Edward J. Nolan, Mrs. Tom Mooney and Israel Weinberg. The speakers were frequently interrupted with applause when they referred to the determination of the defense eventually to free Mooney, and with hisses and catcalls when the names of Mooney’s prosecutors were mentioned.
Preceding tho meeting several thousand men and women marched in two parades, one forming at the Ferry and the other near the Labor Temple.
The marchers were made up of boilermakers, molders, shipwrights, waitresses, laundry workers and other unions. They carried American flags and inscribed banners and marched behind bands to the lilt of “Over There” and other war airs.
Nearly all the banners and transparencies made reference to the request of President Wilson to Governor Stephens that executive clemency be exercised in the case of Mooney to prevent the carrying out of the death sentence already imposed on him.
“Stand by the president in his demand for a new trial for Thomas J. Mooney,” one set of banners read.
Others read: “The world is watching for Justice in California” and “A fair trial will set Mooney free.”
Maxwell McNutt, chief counsel for Mooney, was to be among the speakers, but was unable to attend the meeting because of illness.
Mrs. Mary Mooney, mother of Mooney, rode in an automobile in the parade that formed at the Ferry.-S. F. Examiner
———-
From Cronaca Sovversiva:
Cronache della Forca
San Francisco, Cal. Il comizio al Civic Auditorium per Tom Mooney è riuscito una magnifica, impressionante manifestazione di solidarietà e di protesta: quattromila persone stilarono dal Ferry Bldg. per Market street, altrettante per Valencia e Mission Street e non meno di tredicimila persone, affollate nella sala immensa, dissero colla muta eloquenza del numero che Tom Mooney è un galantuomo e Fickert una canaglia matricolata.
Parlarono Mother Jones con una prolissita estenuante anche se disse parecchie cose buone; Mr. Heuke Skeffington vedova di un rivoluzionario irlandese, strozzato dall’Inghilterra liberalissima in seguito ai moti del 1916, parlo Rena Mooney con un fil di voce, ma in cui vibrava tanto strazio e tanto amore che il pubblico pervaso da intensa commozione sorse à piedi acclamando plebiscitariamente. Forti, incisivi, magnifici, i discorsi di Edoardo Nolan implacabile alle ferocie dell’Inquisizione republicana come alla farisaica ipocrisia dei grandi sindacati proletarii; e di Isacco Weimberg fremente I’entusiasmo e lo sdegno….
From Goodwin’s Weekly of April 27, 1918:
A DANGEROUS DELAY.
—–OUR belief is that it is bad business to temporize longer with Mooney and his gang of undesirable sympathizers and supporters. The longer the notorious case is allowed to drag, the uglier grow its aspects. Mooney was convicted by two juries of complicity in the bomb throwing that occurred during the preparedness parade in San Francisco, and the supreme court of California sustained the verdicts of the lower courts. Nothing stands in the way of the execution of sentence except maudlin sentiment created by the agitation of an element that is a menace to law and order. To dally longer with this dangerous aggregation is simply to cheapen the standing of the courts and encourage crime.
Word comes that Mother Jones of Colorado, she of unsavory reputation, is on the job directing the demonstrations of the agitators in their endeavors to rescue the convicted dynamiter from the toils of justice. There was a day when Californians would not have tolerated such indignities for a single minute. Then comes the claim of the mediation commission, that the state owes Mooney a pardon “in the interest of the cause of democracy.” This finding was arrived at, we believe, in view of a demand made by anarchists in far away Russia that America must liberate Mooney to show good faith in her fight for world-wide democracy. What a preposterous proposition to advance.
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SOURCES
San Francisco Chronicle
(San Francisco, California)
-Apr 17, 1918
https://www.newspapers.com/image/27336775/
Elko Independent
(Elko, Elko County, Nevada)
-Apr 18, 1918
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn86076367/1918-04-18/ed-1/seq-4/
Cronaca Sovversiva
[Subversive Chronicle]
(Lynn, Massachusetts)
-Apr 13[?], 1918
[I believe this page is filed under wrong date. Note that the meeting described here took place on April 16th. This page is likely from the edition of Apr 20. Unfortunately individual pages of CS were not dated.]
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/2012271201/1918-04-13/ed-1/seq-3/
Google Translates:
San Francisco, Cal. The rally at the Civic Auditorium for Tom Mooney succeeded in a magnificent, impressive demonstration of solidarity and protest: four thousand people stalked from the Ferry Bldg for Market street, as many for Valencia and Mission Street and not less than thirteen thousand people, crowded in the huge hall, said with the mute eloquence of the number that Tom Mooney is a gentleman and Fickert a rogue matriculated.
They talked Mother Jones with an exhausting curse even though she said several good things; Mr. Heuke Skeffington widow of an Irish revolutionary, strangled by the liberal England following the riots of 1916, I speak Rena Mooney with a voice, but in which he vibrated so much torment and love that the public pervaded by intense emotion arose on foot plebiscitely acclaiming. Strong, incisive, magnificent, the speeches of Edoardo Nolan implacable to the ferocies of the Republican Inquisition as to the pharisaic hypocrisy of the great proletarian unions; and Isaac Weimberg trembles with enthusiasm and indignation…
Goodwin’s Weekly
(Salt Lake City, Utah)
-Apr 27, 1918
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/2010218519/1918-04-27/ed-1/seq-6/
IMAGES
Telegram sent Apr 17, 1918, from SF by Beckmeyer to ed of Machinists’Journal
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.$b661086;view=2up;seq=502;size=150
Mother Jones, Ft Wy Jr Gz p3, Dec 17, 1917
https://www.newspapers.com/image/29086040/
See also:
Hellraisers Journal, Friday May 17, 1918
Mother Jones News for April 1918, Part I: Found in West Virginia
Whereabouts & Doings of Mother Jones for April 1918, Part I: Found in West Virginia; Will Speak at Mooney Meeting in San Francisco
Machinists’ Monthly Journal.
Official Organ of the
International Association of Machinists
WDC, 1918
https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/010012091
Volume 30-Jan to Dec 1918
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.$b661086;view=2up;seq=6
Vol XXX, No. 3: March 1918
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.$b661086;view=2up;seq=206;size=150
“Federal Commission Reports to President Wilson on Mooney Case”
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.$b661086;view=2up;seq=218;size=150
Vol XXX, No. 5: May 1918
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.$b661086;view=2up;seq=438
Apr 17, 1918: Telegram from SF by Beckmeyer to ed of Journal
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.$b661086;view=2up;seq=502;size=150
Note: Lodge 68=San Francisco, John H. Beckmeyer=Business Agent
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.$b661086;view=2up;seq=906
Justice and Labor in the Mooney Case
International Workers’ Defense League, 1919
https://books.google.com/books?id=FvA7AQAAMAAJ
Sadly, Mrs. Mary Mooney did not live to see the release of her son from prison.
From: WDC Evening Star of Sept 3, 1934
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1934-09-03/ed-1/seq-7/
—–
Re-Cronaca Sovversiva
See-Luigi Galleani
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luigi_Galleani
Note: This was not the first time that Goodwin’s Weekly had attacked the reputation of Mother Jones:
“True Record and Life of Nefarious ‘Mother’ Jones”
-by John R. Thornby
From Goodwin’s Weekly of July 11, 1914:
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/2010218519/1914-07-11/ed-1/seq-15/
The Most Dangerous Woman in America