Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts & Doings of Mother Jones for January 1919-Found Messaging Mooney Convention from Los Angeles

Quote Mother Jones, Courts n Justice, ES2 p190, to Mooney Conv, Jan 14, 1919 ———-

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday February 22, 1919
Mother Jones News for January 1919
-Found in Los Angeles, California

On January 14th, Mother Jones sent a message from Los Angeles to the National Labor Convention for the defense of Tom Mooney which opened in Chicago on that date.

Telegram from Mother Jones:

January 14, 1919

To Ed Knockels,
166 Washington St.,
Chicago, Illinois

To the delegates in Convention greeting. May your resolutions be tempered with reason. Courts of our country must be exonerated. Convention must demand courts be cleansed of corporation judges. Place men on bench who will consider justice before dollars. Blot must be removed from courts. If the workers lose faith in courts then where are they to turn for justice.

Mother Jones.

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[Photograph added from The Evening Review (East Liverpool, Ohio) of January 4, 1919.]

From Nebraska’s Lincoln Daily Star of January 15, 1919:

LABOR RADICALS BADLY DEFEATED IN FIRST CLASH
—–

CHICAGO, Jan. 15.-After a fight which occupied the entire morning session the conservatives defeated the radicals by a vote or 2 to 1 today in organizing the national labor congress, called to consider plans for obtaining a new trial for Thomas J. Mooney, serving a life term for murder growing out of the San Francisco preparedness day parade bomb out rage.

[…..]

At the opening of today’s session Chairman Nolan made a plea for harmony and urged the delegates to speedily get to the consideration of the business for which the convention was called.

A message of greeting from “Mother” Jones at Los Angeles was read, in which she expressed the opinion that a rehabilitation of the country’s judicial system was necessary. “If labor loses confidence in the courts where can we turn for justice,” the message read.

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From the Erie County Socialist Truth of January 11, 1919:

Should women in industry help labor to struggle toward freedom?

Many women, otherwise clever at their new jobs, would reply: “No; it would not be ladylike.”

Ladies have been created by the masters. A lady submits to prevailing standards.

Women were created by God Almighty. A women submits to no one.

As long as women in industry have that word “ladylike” lodged in their minds, they will make no progress and help the world to make none. The question: “Will this be nice?” is a slave-chain about a woman’s neck.

Women who enter the labor world must get into the labor fight. They cannot escape it-they can only avoid their duty. The woman worker must break her individualistic shell and amalgamate.

NOT A SEX ISSUE.

Women ought to join men’s unions-not organize separate unions of their own. The battle against unpatriotic greed, the struggle for a free America, is no sex matter.

An infusion of women into men’s unions works for good to both men and women. Man has studied the disease longer than woman; he has a broader vision of society’s problems. Woman is less indifferent to suffering than man. She will contribute energy and inspire to action.

A woman will not see the hair torn from the scalp of a ten-year-old girl by unprotected cog-wheels, without wanting to do something about it. But she does not yet know what to do and how to do it. She must learn…..

———-

[Photograph added from The Harrisburg (Pennsylvania) Evening News of January 6, 1919.]

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SOURCES

The Correspondence of Mother Jones
-ed by Edward M. Steel
University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985
From MJ to Mooney Convention, Jan 14, 1919-page 190
https://books.google.com/books?id=EZ2xAAAAIAAJ

The Lincoln Daily Star
(Lincoln, Nebraska)
-Jan 15, 1919
https://www.newspapers.com/image/309672456/

The Truth
“A Socialist Newspaper”
“Owned by Local Erie County Socialist Party”
(Erie, Pennsylvania)
-Jan 11, 1919, page 3
https://www.genealogybank.com/

IMAGES of Mother Jones

The Evening Review
(East Liverpool, Ohio)
-Jan 4, 1919
https://www.newspapers.com/image/58042371

The Harrisburg Evening News
(Harrisburg, Pennsylvania)
-Jan 6, 1919
https://www.newspapers.com/image/57884211

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To Mother Jones from John H. Walker
-From Steel’s Correspondence of Mother Jones, page 189:

January 8, 1919

Mother Jones
2759 Marengo St.,
Los Angeles, Cal.
Dear Mother:

Yours of the 28th of December received. It is just as you have said. There were returns from over 130 local unions reached the national office after the 23rd of December; some of them as late as the 31st., notwithstanding the fact that the district officers had the tabulated returns in district one, which showed that I carried it by 1,000, Hayes beat me there 409 votes and in district 2, he beat me 1009 votes,-with 2/3ds of the votes counted in district 5, he beat me 8,000 votes which means a 12,000 majority.

It is going to be pretty close under those circumstances; the chances are they will steal it by some means. In the event they do, if I get sufficient proof to warrant me in believing I have a fighting chance, I am going to give them a fight for it. However, I don’t expect to fight otherwise.

Glad to know that you are feeling so well mother. I know a month or two out there will do you good. I am very very sorry to say that poor Vic [Victor A. Olander] has got diabetes, and that every physician I speak to about him, holds out no hope for him; they say if he was a little older ten or 15 years that there would be some hope, but that in his case he don’t know of a single individual who ever had it as he has, that ever recovered.

Just got a letter from him this morning. We sent him to Seminole Alabama. I know if you would write him it will make him feel good, and as this may be the last chance we will have, I am doing the best I can to make him comfortable, and happy.

With the fullest measure of love and assuring you that no matter how it goes, or how long it lasts while I am living, I am going to continue plugging away and do the best I can.

Yours,
[from John H. Walker]

Tag: National Labor Convention for Mooney Chicago 1919
https://weneverforget.org/tag/national-labor-convention-for-mooney-chicago-1919/

Edward Knockels
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Nockels

Tag: Edward D Nolan
https://weneverforget.org/tag/edward-d-nolan

Re Mary van Kleeck, Mary Anderson and Women In Industry Service:
(Perhaps Mother Jones thought van Kleeck and Anderson were too ladylike in their approach.)
VCU Social Welfare History Project-Mary van Kleeck

John H Walker
https://weneverforget.org/tag/john-h-walker/

Re results of UMWA Elections of December 1918:
“Hayes Wins Out” from Fairmont West Virginian of Feb 13, 1919
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn86072054/1919-02-13/ed-1/seq-3/

Frank Hayes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Hayes_(unionist)

Tag: Victor Olander
https://weneverforget.org/tag/victor-olander/

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