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Hellraisers Journal – Monday October 7, 1901
Mother Jones News Round-Up for August 1901, Part I
Found Organizing for United Mine Workers in West Virginia
From the Columbus Evening Dispatch of August 2, 1901:
MORE ORGANIZERS
———–
Sent to West Virginia to Unionize Mine Workers.
According to information received at the local mine workers’ headquarters, an effort will be made to more thoroughly organize the miners of West Virginia during the next few months. It is understood that the national organization has sent a number of organizers into the field and will soon send more.
Those said to be working among the miners at the resent time are Thomas Burke, Edward Cahill, John H. Walker and “Mother Jones.” of organizing fame.
Heretofore the organization has had a great deal of difficulty in getting the men into line, but owing to the consolidation of a majority of the companies of the state, it is now thought that the men will agree to join the union.
[Photograph added.]
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From the New York Worker of August 4, 1901:
NATIONAL CONVENTION AT INDIANAPOLIS.
———-One Hundred and Twenty-Four Delegates Gather,
Representing Twelve Thousand Organized Socialists.
—–
First Three Days’ Sessions Are Lively, but Harmonious
-After Long Discussion, “Immediate Demands”
Are Retained in Modified Form
-Resolutions on Negro Question and on Puerto Rican
Conditions Adopted-Unity Now Seems Assured
-Warm Greetings Received from Many Quarters.The National Convention which opened its sessions at Indianapolis last Monday has proved by the number of its delegates and the membership they represent, by its enthusiasm, and by the seriousness of its deliberations, the wonderful growth that the Socialist movement has made in recent years, and especially in the last year. Up to the time of our going to press, all reports are most favorable in the promise they give of a united movement with redoubled energy and influence. While there have been hot debates-as indeed there should be among men who are in earnest-there seems to have ben less than might have been expected of personal or factional feeling……
Before the convention adjourned for the day telegrams were read from “Mother” Jones, from the Russian Social Democratic Club of New York, and from locals in Georgia, Oregon, and Nebraska, all expressing their desire for unity…..
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From the New Yorker Volkszeitung of August 5, 1901:
From The Tammany Times of August 12, 1901:
THE WORKINGMAN’S HEROINE.
———-
A Woman of Sixty Who Devotes Herself
to Lifting the Burdens from Humanity.
———-While Jingo humbugs prate about our duty to mankind and to taking up the “white man’s burden,” while looking on the helpless and the suffering at home, a white-haired woman of sixty, who was educated with the nuns in Canada, goes to the men and women of the mines to do some real good to the unfortunate at home.
This widowed woman, who lost husband and five children by the yellow fever scourge, is known as Mother Jones, “the heroine of one hundred strikes.”
Of this faithful worker for humanity, Dorothy Adams writes to the New York Herald:
No political heroine of history ever essayed a task fraught with more difficulties, moral and physical, than that which falls upon this old woman, who comes into the wilderness of West Virginia as an evangel, preaching the new social gospel, teaching the new industrial creed.
For Mother Jones the State of West Virginia is a forbidden land. She enters its borders as an outlaw and in defiance of the Federal judiciary. Under the ban of the perpetual injunction issued by Judge Jackson in 1897, forbidding and restraining organizers of the United Mine Worker; from entering the confines of the State for ever and ever, this gentle apostle of industrial emancipation is liable to arrest and imprisonment any moment that vested interests deem it expedient to enforce that dangerous and obnoxious law
It is my privilege to accompany Mother Jones into this forbidden land and to journey with her on foot through the enemy’s country. And it is in all truth a forbidden land and an enemy’s country. Constables and squires meet us at every turn and serve all manner of papers and warrants and restraining injunctions on Mother Jones, which she, with fine contempt, chucks into her big black silk handbag, and then goes ahead and does as she pleases. Only day before yesterday, as we walked into North Caperton at dusk, the constable and squire challenged Mother Jones and forbade her the right of addressing a meeting of miners at the tipple on the opposite side of the river that night.
Only this morning the miner at Mount Carbon who sheltered us last night was discharged and his family evicted from the wretched company shack they called home. The West Virginia coal miner speaks to Mother Jones at the risk of losing his job, and his family harbors her under certain penalty of eviction should the fact reach the ears of the mine superintendent.
Wherever we go there is no room for us in the company inn, and thus we are only to often obliged to partake of the hospitality of a friendly coal digger, and thus it is that Mother Jones lies fast asleep tonight upon the hard, bare, moon washed floor of a hovel at St. Clair. Our host’s family cannot afford the luxury of a lamp. I am writing in the moonlight that streams through the sashless windows and the low, open doorway and whitens with infinite chastity the snow of Mother Jones’ hair. Her head is pillowed upon her handbag, and if she dreams at all it is of such of her people as have fallen on evil days.
Such is the heroine whose bravery and fortitude might well shame heroes of the Jingo breed and challenge all their acts of boasted bravery to equal one of hers.
This is the woman who braves the tools of oppression and goes about her mission with a determination to succeed.
Stopped by injunctions, she refers them to the Constitution and the law.
Denied the privilege of crossing a river by a trust man who claimed to own it, she exclaimed:
“Huh! You own half the river, do you? Well, God Almighty owns the other half, and I don’t think you or any other corporation tool will hinder me from crossing it!”
This is the woman who foresees the inevitable unless capital treats the laborer with just consideration’ and gives a fair proportion of its wealth to those who earn it or create it.
This is the business woman whose warm heart and cold. hard facts speak for the truth of that for which she earnestly contends.
Here is [Adams’] summing up:
Every miner in the West Virginia coal fields must dig twenty tons at the very lowest estimate to pay the various company assessments before he has anything for food and clothing and powder. He receives a wage that will average anywhere from $1.60 to $1.80 per day.
Out of this comes house rent of not less than $5 a month; water, $1 per month; squibs, 25 cents per month; 2 gallons oil per month at 50 cents per gallon, and which can be bought anywhere in open market for 25 cents per gallon; powder, of which he uses between three and four kegs per month in order to mine enough coal to pay him $1.60 per day, at $2.25 per keg, costing operators 98 cents delivered at mouth of mine; 60 cents per month for blacksmith; $1 per month for company doctor, no difference whether he ever has occasion for his services or not, and 10 cents per month for the hospital at Paint Creek.
All he has left he is at liberty to spend for food and clothing at the “Pluck-me,” the miner’s vernacular for the company store. It is truly well named. The prices charged for everything are exorbitant in the extreme. Flour of quality that can be bought in any city or railroad town or village in the land for $4.50 per barrel these people pay for at the rate of $6.75 per barrel.
“But then we bring the capital into the country and give these people work,” an operator tried to argue with Mother Jones, “and it is nothing more than fair that they should patronize the company store. If it wasn’t for us and our capital they would starve to death.” To which befuddled logician Mother Jones replied, “Fool, go and work as these men do and learn the truth before you speak to me!”
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SOURCES
Columbus Evening Dispatch
(Columbus, Ohio)
-Aug 2, 1901, page 7
http://www.genealogybank.com/
The Worker
“Organ of the Social Democratic Party”
(New York, New York)
-Aug 4, 1901, page 1
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/the-people-the-worker/010804-worker-v11n18.pdf
http://www.genealogybank.com/
New Yorker Volkszeitung
(New York, New York)
-Aug 5, 1901, page 1
http://www.genealogybank.com/
Note: was unable to get google to effectively translate, any help would be greatly appreciated.
The Tammany Times
(New York, New York)
-Aug 12, 1901, page 10
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=cqo6AQAAMAAJ&pg=GBS.RA39-PA10
IMAGE
Mother Jones, Drawing, SDH p4, Mar 9, 1901
https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/social-democratic-herald-us/010309-socdemherald-v03n38w140.pdf
See also:
Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts & Doings of Mother Jones for July 1901
Part I: Found Returning to Scranton and Hazleton from St. Louis, Missouri
Part II: Reportedly Visited Chicago as Freind of Servant Girls; Organizing Efforts Ongoing
Part III: Found with Miners of West Virginia; Sends Greetings to Socialist Convention
Hellraisers Journal: “In The Forbidden Land with Mother Jones” -Dorothy Adams Reports from West Virginia, from Denver Rocky Mountain News of August 11, 1901:
Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
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Mother Jones, No More Deaths For Dollars – Ed Pickford