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Hellraisers Journal – Saturday July 24, 1920
-Mother Jones News for June 1920, Part I
Found Speaking in Williamson, Mingo County, West Virginia
From the Baltimore Evening Sun of June 10, 1920:
REPORTS COMPANIES TERRORIZE MINERS
—–
Lawyers Sent To Pike County, Kentucky, By Union,
Tells Of Brutalities Perpetrated.
—–FEARFUL DEPUTIES WILL BRING ON GREAT TRAGEDY
—–
Tells Of Man’s Hands Shot Off And Of Others
Chained Together On Long March.
—–(Special Dispatch to the Evening Sun.)
Charleston, W. Va., June 10.- Conditions in Pike county, Kentucky, are described in a written report to headquarters of the United Mine Worker here by Thomas West, attorney, of Williamson, W. Va., who visited the scene of the trouble. Pike county is opposite Matewan, across Tug river, in which section mine workers are organizing, miners being evicted from their homes by coal companies after joining the union. Frank Keeney, miner’ district president, asked West to go into Pike county, which he did. He reported:
The miners were chained together and, with a mounted armed guard, were walked through to Pike, 25 or 30 miles away, in a pouring rain. Mud was almost knee deep. Pike county deputies shot a man’s bands off on the Kentucky side at Borderland. About 30 of them are terrorizing both aides of the river. The miners came to Williamson and asked for assistance. I would not be surprised to hear any minute of a tragedy which would make the Matewan difficulty look like 30 cents. Pike county deputies were all drunk. In my opinion they constituted one of the most dangerous gangs of men I have ever come in contact with. I would not go back into Pike county for any amount of money.
The Borderland Coal Company and the Pond Creek Coal Company have employed the detectives. Fred Mooney, miners secretary, requested Attorney General Palmer to take some action. Governor Morrow, of Kentucky, was also asked by Mooney to help. It is feared that miners of Matewan will secure arms and cross the Kentucky Border to help their fellow miners. Mother Jones is here and will go to Pike county.
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[Photograph added.]
From The Washington Post of June 22, 1920:
TROOPERS GUARD MATEWAN JURY
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Judge Directs Investigation of Evictions
That Led to Fight in Which
10 Were Killed.Williamson W. Va. June 21.-Judge James Damron, of the Mingo county court, impaneled a special grand jury here late today, to investigate the shooting at Matewan, W. Va., on May 19, in which Mayor C. G. Testerman, of that village, two other residents and seven men of the Baldwin-Felts detective agency were killed and half a dozen other persons wounded.
Col. Jackson Arnold and Capt. Rippatoe with 24 members of the State constabulary are on duty here and at Matewan. The troopers will guard all entrances to the courthouse. Judge Damron announced that no one would be permitted to enter the grand jury room bearing arms.
In his charge to the jury, Judge Damron said that the inception of the Matewan tragedy was the attempt to unionize the Thacker coal field, which, he declared, had been resisted by the coal operators. Ill feeling was engendered, he continued, when a force of Baldwin-Felts men ejected five miners from houses owned by the Stone Mountain Coal Corporation. Eviction of the miners without proper warrants and notice was described by the judge as unlawful. He told the jury that reports had reached him that bribes had been offered county and municipal officers so that the eviction of the miners could be accomplished.
Under the judges instructions, the jury will investigate every phase of the shooting, including the eviction of the miners, murder and conspiracy to murder, alleged offer of bribes and robbery of the bodies of the detectives.
It was announced today that 200 witnesses will appear before the jury. They will be summoned in relays of ten each day.
“Mother” Jones, nationally known in the labor movement, was at Matewan today. She addressed a meeting of miners there tonight.
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From Hellraisers Journal of June 22, 1920:
Williamson, West Virginia – Sunday Evening June 20, 1920
-Mother Jones Speaks at Public Meeting in Front of Courthouse[Quotations from Part I of Speech of Mother Jones]
[The Pagan Agitator]
The old condition is passing away. The new dawn of another civilized nation is breaking into the lives of the human race.
Away back, eighteen hundred years ago, two hundred years after the world’s savior was hung there arose an agitation. The Roman lords got uneasy about it…They sent down and brought up all those they could get together…among those that was brought in was a young man. When he came into the Roman court to get his decision the Judge said, “Who are you?”
“I am a man, and a member of the human family.”
“Then why do you carry on this agitation?”
“Because I belong to a class that all down the ages have been robbed, murdered, maligned, crucified, deluded, and because I belong to that class I think it is my duty to be with that class and to put a stop to these crimes.”
…..This pagan slave was not a Christian. By no means. He was a pagan in those days, but he was teaching real Christianity. He was teaching Christ’s Christianity, that an injury to one working man is an injury to all. But they called him a pagan.
[“We Know How to Raise Hell”]
You see, it is a new fever, my friends, that is brought on. Men have come home to America from the war, and they have been told, “Now let’s clean up the Kaiser in Germany and we will have democracy.” Well, they came home. They didn’t find any democracy but an increased autocracy at home. They came back, and therefore they have lined up and they are giving us the signals, the railroad men, the miners and all around. Now we are after the robbers, the Kaisers at home. There is the whole of it all in a nut-shell. All industrial Kaiserism has seen its day. They know it. You read after Schwab, the great steel magnate, what he says. Them fellers are beginning to take notice. They know their day is doomed. But they are going to give us a fight, and if they want to we are going to give them a fight, and we know how to raise Hell as well as they do. (Applause.)
[Mother Goes Washington D. C.]
I left Pittsburgh [during the Great Steel Strike] and went up to Washington. I went into the Department of Justice. I saw the Attorney-General [A. Mitchell Palmer]. I went to the Attorney-General and said, “I have come here for the safety of the nation. The pulse of the nation is beating at fever heat. It is the duty of every man and woman, regardless of what position they occupy, to do their part to bring that pulse down as near normal as possible.”
“I agree with you, madam,” he said.
“Now,” I said, “It is not the Bolsheviks; it is not the Reds; it is not the I.W.’s that America has got to fear. There is no danger from them. But the real enemy of the nation is the politicians that serve the interests before they do the honor of the nation.”
[Ministers Afraid of High-Class Burglars.]
I want to say here there wasn’t a Y.M.C.A., there wasn’t a minister, there wasn’t a social settlement worker that took a hand to make conditions better for those workers. I am talking the truth. Why don’t you ministers go out and preach as Christ did? You are afraid of the high-class burglars, and there are many. (Applause.) You are gambling in Christ’s philosophy; but you are not carrying out Christ’s doctrine, and I defy you to tell me so. How many of your ministers came with us in Cabin Creek when we cleaned out the professional murderers? There wasn’t one of them. Not one of them. But one went up to Washington and asked the Immigration Commissioner to take down the bars so “I can bring in southern Italians.” What do you think of that? He was working for Jesus—and if Jesus had ever let the bars down there would have been Hell. (Laughter.)
[Mopping Up Pennsylvania!]
Old Mother Jones was a frightful character! Good Lord, she is a horrible thing! What do you think of her? Oh, Old Mother Jones fought. I lined up four thousand women one night, took five thousand men out that no man could get near, from the crack team of Pennsylvania at two o’clock in the morning, with bayonets, and we didn’t have a stick. All we had was a mop and a broom, and we mopped them up. (Applause.)
[Wake Up!]
We brought the ten thousand men out and organized them. We brought out the striking men and organized them, and from that day to this these men have been getting along. I tell you, my friend, you have to remember, men, you have to remember, women, that America was not bought by dollars; that this great nation was bought by the blood of men who for seven long years marched the highways and byways. They bought it with their blood, and they left you and I the grandest emblem ever handed down the stairway of nations: the Stars and Stripes; and the first stripe in that flag is red, to guarantee that your liberty was fought for by blood and not by dollars; and they drove rotten royalty off. Today you are turning this great nation over to get hold of dollar thieves, and you will be worse than the slaves of ancient Rome if you don’t wake up. Men, this is the time that calls on men. Lincoln said, “It is the time that tries men’s souls.” It is the time that tries men’s hearts and brains. They who love the nation’s honor, love her future and love the children that are yet to come know that the workers must be waked from their sleep.
Note: Emphasis added throughout.
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SOURCES
Quote Mother Jones, Doomed, Wmsn WV, June 20, 1920, Speeches Steel p213
https://books.google.com/books?id=vI-xAAAAIAAJ
https://digital.library.pitt.edu/islandora/object/pitt%3A31735035254105/viewer#page/1/mode/2up
The Evening Sun
(Baltimore, Maryland)
-June 10, 1920
https://www.newspapers.com/image/368021068/
The Washington Post
(Washington, District of Columbia)
-June 22, 1920
https://www.newspapers.com/image/28973462
Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones Speaks at Public Meeting
in Front of Court House at Williamson, West Virginia
-Sunday Evening June 20, 1920, Part I
IMAGE
Mother Jones, NYC Dly Ns p12, May 7, 1920
https://www.newspapers.com/image/391486555/
See also:
The Speeches and Writings of Mother Jones
-ed by Edward M. Steel
University of Pittsburgh Press, 1988
https://books.google.com/books?id=vI-xAAAAIAAJ
https://digital.library.pitt.edu/islandora/object/pitt%3A31735035254105/viewer#page/234/mode/2up
For more on situation in WV, spring & summer of 1920:
Tag: Battle of Matewan
https://weneverforget.org/tag/battle-of-matewan/
For more on Mother’s Involvement in GSS, see:
Tag: Great Steel Strike of 1919
https://weneverforget.org/tag/great-steel-strike-of-1919/
For more on Mother’s earlier organizing campaign’s, see:
The Autobiography of Mother Jones
Charles H Kerr, 1925
https://archive.iww.org/history/library/MotherJones/autobiography/
Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts & Doings of Mother Jones for May 1920, Part I: Found in Washington, DC: Age 90, Still Fit to Battle “Wall Street Sewer Rats.”
Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts & Doings of Mother Jones for May 1920, Part II: Found Described by John D. Barry and Speaking in Streator, Illinois
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The Matewan Massacre – Hammertowne