Some of those parasitical fellows come along
and tell [the miners] they can’t have beer.
I don’t care about the whiskey,
but the boys do need the beer.
-Mother Jones
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Hellraisers Journal, Friday August 23, 1918
Mother Jones News for July 1918, Part II: Found in West Virginia
From the Fairmont West Virginian of July 20, 1918:
U.M.W. ORGANIZERS BUSY IN REGION
—–
Meetings Being Held in Mining Towns
Practically Every Day.
—–
United Mine Workers in this section held several meetings yesterday evening giving instruction as to further organization and inspiring miners to produce more coal. W. F. Ray and Sam Ballentyne were in Wilsonburg where they were straightening up an organization which had not been properly organized. B. A. Scott and Joe Angelo were at the Dawson mine in Clarksburg for the same purpose. P. E. Gaiens was at Lumberport yesterday evening looking after interest of the United Mine Workers Association. James Diana and Representatives Peters were at Gypsy.
W. F. Ray, B. A Scott and Organizer Peters will leave tonight to spend a few days at their homes. Mr. Ray is a resident of St. Albans,, W. Va., while Peters and Scott are both from Charleston.
President C. F. Keeney will return to Fairmont tonight from Charleston, where he has been for the past several days.
David Fowler, who has been in the Morgantown section for the past several days assisting in the organisation of miners, returned to Fairmont yesterday.
J. L. Lewis, of Indianapolis, Ind., international [acting] president of the United Mine Workers of America, came to Fairmont last night and paid a visit to the local office of United Mine Workers.
Mother Jones returned to Fairmont yesterday evening.
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[Photograph added.]
From The Hartford Courant of July 21, 1918:
TWO VIEWS OF IT.
—–The “New York Tribune” of recent date published a Washington letter saying that the “National Coal Association,” said to represent interests mining 400,000,000 tons of bituminous annually, has notified the administration that “national prohibition for the period of the war is absolutely necessary to make effective” full production. The statement reads:-“It is now up to Congress to make a clean-cut choice between booze for the mining communities and coal for the war and the public.” On the other hand, old “Mother Jones,” the labor agitator, says to the “New York World”:
Just to show you how enthusiastic the boys are, I asked in one district, where I had been told they were getting restless: “Boys, the nation is depending on you for coal. I want to know if President Wilson can depend on you to mine all you can. Can he?”
One of them shouted back: “Tell him he can depend on us till death. We will dig coal night and day. We’ll dig it six days a week and Sunday too, if necessary. We won’t stop at all.” All the others applauded.
[Continued Mother Jones:]
The boys are willing to work like that, but some of those parasitical fellows come along and tell them they can’t have beer. I don’t care about the whiskey, but the boys do need the beer. Let them get away with that, and pretty soon they’ll say you can’t get any meat. Why don’t they do away with women chewing snuff in southern cotton mills. That poisons the brain.
To balance Sister Jones the article in the “Tribune” says:-
Always a source of demoralization of the coal industry, the riotous prosperity, that has come to the miners with the high wages and unlimited opportunity for employment that war has brought to them, has made drinking the chief impediment to expansion of production.
———-
From the United Mine Workers Journal of July 25, 1918:
Unity Brings Changes
Clarksburg, W. Va.—Seventeen years ago Mother Jones was arrested by United States marshals and taken at night to Parkersburg and placed in jail with eight union miners for violating a federal injunction. Five years ago two miners were notified that if they distributed bills announcing an address by Mother Jones in this city they would be shot to death. This year one of the features of Clarksburg’s Fourth of July celebration was a parade of union miners and other workers. As orator of the day Mother Jones headed the parade in a carriage in which were also seated the mayor and the chief of police.
———-
Note: Emphasis added to each article: Mother Jones.
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SOURCES
The West Virginian
(Fairmont, West Virginia)
-July 20, 1918
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn86072054/1918-07-20/ed-1/seq-8/
The Hartford Courant
(Hartford, Connecticut)
-July 21, 1918
https://www.newspapers.com/image/368994516/
The United Mine Workers Journal, Volume 29
(Indianapolis, Indiana)
-May 9 to Dec 15, 1918
Executive Board of the United Mine Workers of America,
https://books.google.com/books?id=iwxOAAAAYAAJ
-UMWJ Vol XXIC No 12, July 25, 1918
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=iwxOAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PT360
Page 26: “Unity Brings Changes”
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=iwxOAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PT385
IMAGE
Mother Jones, Ft Wy Jr Gz p3, Dec 17, 1917
https://www.newspapers.com/image/29086040/
See also:
Mother Jones
The Most Dangerous Woman in America
-by Elliott J. Gorn
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Jun 2, 2015
(search altogether: “mother jones” “west virginia” 1917 1918)
https://books.google.com/books?id=9gRpCAAAQBAJ
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