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Hellraisers Journal – Sunday September 26, 1920
-Mother Jones News for August 1920, Part II
Found in Washington, D. C., Opining on Women, the Ballot, and Labor Struggles
From The Washington Times of August 29, 1920:
SEES CURE IN RIGHT VOTING
——-
Victory Futile, Says 90-Year-Old Leader,
If “Ownership of Bread” is Lost.
——-“No nation can ever grow greater or more human than its womanhood and I am not expecting the millennium as a result of woman’s privilege to vote,” said Mother Jones, noted woman leader, here today.
I am anxious to see women stand aide by side with men in developing the human family, but all of the ballots in the world will not change conditions for the people’s welfare unless attention is focused upon the disease causing the trouble.
I was ninety years old on the 1st of May. Most of my years have been spent trying to humanize the race. I admit that I have been punished for my energy, for I spent seven months in a military prison. But out of my efforts has grown the Bureau of Child Labor. It is an accomplishment of which I am proud.
OWNERSHIP OF BREAD.
I knew Susan B. Anthony personally and, like her, was deeply interested in suffrage, but saw that the remedy did not lie altogether in the ballot. It lies in the field of economics, in the ownership of the bread. So I steered my craft over the stormy course of labor. I studied the effect of suffrage in Colorado, where they have been privileged to vote for twenty-eight years, and I saw no efforts made by them there to improve conditions of men who produce bread and are not permitted to eat it. I saw no united effort on their part to protect the children.
Wyoming and Utah were like Colorado in their apathy toward cruelty practiced by greedy corporations against the miners. Women had the ballot in those two States.
The art of being kind is about all this world needs. One woman has more power than a hundred men, if this energy is rightly directed; but she needs the humanizing impulse more than the political one. I fear greatly that the ambition for political office the ballot suggests will turn her away from the human urge.
To illustrate the power of womanhood in emergency: I had the good fortune to take part in the anthracite strike in 1900. About 5,000 men (scabs) had replaced striking miners. These scabs were protected by the State militia, whose business it was to see that strike sympathizers did not persuade them to leave their work.
LEADS FEMALE ARMY.
In two hours I persuaded the wives and daughters of the strikers to put working clothes on, to wear caps denoting servitude, to carry brooms, brushes, and feather dusters across their shoulders and to march with me to the mines, fifteen miles away.
Two thousand strong, we reached the outpost of militia at 3 o’clock in the morning. Our first line was turned back by the colonel In command, who threatened to charge us with bayonets. I made appeal to the soldiers on behalf of the women whose husbands were striking for decent wage and bread for the children.
CONVERTS COLONEL.
The colonel was first converted and allowed 5,000 miners to join us. We organized them before the break of day. It was an appeal to human sympathy that won.
In 1903, 125,000 textile workers were on strike in Philadelphia. Twenty thousand were children under the age limit for work. Many had lost fingers, thumbs or hands. I gathered 8,000 of them in Independence Park and placed the most seriously crippled in the front ranks for the audience of fifty thousand to see. It was necessary to awake the sleepy public in this way. We took these children on a long hike to see President Roosevelt at Oyster Bay and we were feted in every city along the line. The people made large collections to help the strikers’ cause. It is the touch of pity which makes the whole world kin.
I entered the Alabama cotton mills where hundreds of white children under six years of age were working twelve to fourteen hours a day, just to get at the bottom of the industrial injustice. I now and then used to carry one home on my back. The public was not concerned, but out of this campaign has grown the Child Welfare Bureau and now the public is educated.
MISUSING THE BALLOT.
The ballot was given to protect us from the invasion of the common enemy, but we have used it to establish power.
Our statesmen want to get to the pie counter because it is a pie-counter age.
One big steel man came to me in Pennsylvania and said:
“Mother Jones, what a power for good you could wield if you would come to us. Why don’t you try to do good ?”
“That is what I am doing,” I answered. ‘“No,” he said, “you are an agitator.” “So was Columbus,” I replied, “and Patrick Henry, and Jefferson and Lincoln, and I must include the Man from Galilee.”
—————
From Missouri’s Macon Daily Chronicle-Herald of August 25, 1920:
BIG CELEBRATION AT KIRKSVILLE
——-
“Mother” Jones to Speak-Free Barbecue, Fireworks
and Baseball Features of the Day.
——-The central labor union in Kirksville, Mo., is planning the greatest labor celebration in its history at Kirksville on Monday, September 6. The plans for this gigantic celebration include “Mother” Jones, the 87 year old founder and organizer of labor unions, particularly the United Mine Workers of America, who will address the people in this part of the state for the first time.
Other noted speakers who will be in Kirksville on that date are R. T. Woods, state president of the American Federation of Labor; Arch Helm, vice president of District No. 25, U. M. W. of A.; and Col. James E. Rieger, hero of the Argonne Forest, lawyer, soldier and orator.
Another great feature of the day will be a big fill barbecue with plenty of beef and mutton, and everything good to eat…..
———-
[Emphasis added throughout.]
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SOURCES
The Washington Times
(Washington, District of Columbia)
-Aug 29, 1920
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84026749/1920-08-29/ed-1/seq-2/
Macon Daily Chronicle-Herald
(Macon, Missouri)
-Aug 25, 1920
https://www.newspapers.com/image/79505224
See also:
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday September 25, 1920
-Mother Jones News for August 1920, Part I
Found in Princeton, West Virginia, Speaking Near Baldwin-Felts HQ
For more on events mentioned in the above interview, see:
The Autobiography of Mother Jones
Charles Kerr, Chicago, 1925
https://archive.iww.org/history/library/MotherJones/autobiography/
The Correspondence of Mother Jones
-ed by Edward M. Steel
University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985
https://books.google.com/books?id=EZ2xAAAAIAAJ
-Pages 207-11 (259-62 of 416)
https://digital.library.pitt.edu/islandora/object/pitt%3A31735057897435/viewer#page/258/mode/2up
August 1920 Correspondence:
August 4, 1920-to Mother Jones at Charleston WV
-from John H. Walker, President of IL F of L
re National Labor Party Convention in Chicago, and struggles w/i UMWA.
August 13, 1920-to Mother Jones at Charleston WV
-from JHW
Walker sends $300 to MJ and offers more if she needs it.
August 17, 1920-from Mother Jones at Charleston WV
-to JHW at Springfield IL
re speech at Princeton WV “yesterday” (Aug 16): “certainly it was taking my life in my hands.”
August 18, 1920-from Mother Jones at Charleston WV
-to Theodore Debs at Terre Haute IN
“…..Poor Gene, he works on my nerves everytime that I turn my thoughts to Atlanta, and I cannot conceive how they could keep a kindly soul like him locked up…..”
August 18, 1920-to Mother Jones at Charleston WV
-from JHW
“…mighty glad to know that you were able to break the ground at Princeton….”
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The Rebel Girl – Hazel Dickens
Lyrics by Joe Hill & Hazel Dickens