Let me see you wake up and fight.
-Mother Jones
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Hellraisers Journal, Saturday June 22, 1918
Mother Jones News for May 1918, Part I: Found in St. Louis
Mother Jones was first found missing from the May Day celebration in Springfield, Illinois. It appears she was called to an unspecified strike in Quincy, Illinois.
We next found her in Washington, D. C. where the May 1st edition of The Washington Times stated:
“Mother” Jones, noted labor leader, arrived here today to appear before the National War Labor Board and plead with former President William H. Taft, in the interest of commercial telegraphers demanding the right to organize.
On May 10th and 11th, we find Mother in the pages of the St. Louis, Missouri, newspapers where her efforts on behalf of the men and women on strike against the Wagner Electric Manufacturing Company are well covered.
We will pick up the story of Mother Jones in St. Louis in Part II of our Mother Jones News Round-Up for May 1918.
From the Illinois State Register of May 1, 1918:
Strike at Quincy Holds Mother Jones
—–A strike at Quincy [Illinois] prevented Mother Jones, prominent labor speaker, from being present at the ball given last night by the striking machinists of the Lourie Manufacturing plant. Mother Jones was expected to be present with Ed Carbine, organizer of the machinists, and to lead the grand march. In her place Mrs. T. W. Dexheimer, wife of the chairman of the machinists’ union and C. H. Haper led the march.
———-
From The Washington Times of May 1, 1918:
U.S. OWNERSHIP IS FAVORED BY TELEGRAPHERS
—–“Mother” Jones, noted labor leader, arrived here today to appear before the National War Labor Board and plead with former President William H. Taft, in the interest of commercial telegraphers demanding the right to organize.
[Said Mother Jones:]
I am in the fight with the telegraphers and am going to stick with them from start to finish. They are not asking any more than they are entitled to and the whole country is behind them.
The National War Labor Board held a long distance telephone conference here this morning with Newcomb Carlton, president of the Western Union Telegraph Company, who is in New York. Carlton presented the company’s side of the case over the phone to William Howard Taft.
Telegraphers in the delegation here freely expressed the hope that the Government would take over all telephone and telegraph lines under the plea of military necessity and thus settle the problem.
———-
From The Washington Times of May 2, 1918:
Taft Is Nominated For the Presidency!
“Mother” Jones Did It
—–“Gentlemen, I have just been nominated for the Presidency of the United States.”
This announcement, gravely made by former President Taft to the National War Labor Board this afternoon, for a moment puzzled the other members.
“Who has done this thing, Mr. President?” some one asked.
“Mother Jones,” was the reply. “Mother” Jones, on her way to the West Virginia coal fields, where she declared she was “going to give ’em h—,” had stopped on her way to pay her respects to the former President, and to “renominate” him.
———-
From The St Louis Star of May 10, 1918:
‘MOTHER’ JONES IN ST. LOUIS
URGING INDUSTRIAL PEACE
—–
88-Year-Old Labor Agitator Does Not
Favor Sabotage in War Time.
—–“Mother ” Jones, 88-year-old labor agitator, whose presence in the past in a district where there were labor disturbances meant a boiling pot, today came to St. Louis urging industrial peace if the war is to be won.
Rocking in her chair in a room at the Majestic Hotel, Mother Jones granted interviews. She wore a dress of black silk, with yellow and red sprigs of flowers in the pattern. Dainty lace encircled her neck. Her grey hair was smoothly brushed, with a wayward curl over one ear. Blue eyes looked kindly on two men reporters, and flashed scorn at a woman interviewer.
“The only times I’ve ever been betrayed in my life, were by my own sex,” she snapped, apropos an argument with the newspaper woman.
Sabotage Only in Peace Time.
She celebrated her 88th birthday May 1, and while she still believes in force, fire and tempest if necessary to win a labor argument-these methods of sabotage are only for peace time. With the nation at war, industry must be at peace, if the nation is to defeat its enemies on the firing line, she said.
Mother Jones was scheduled to address the striking Wagner Electric Manufacturing Company workers at New Club Hall, Thirteenth street and Chouteau avenue, late today.
She came to St. Louis because she felt it her duty to bring her message of industrial peace, she said. She had no definite idea of how she would present this to the workers in about twenty-one plants on strike here.
But she thought she would find a way to straighten out matters, she added with great self-assurance.
Mother Jones divulged, by the way, that all these years while the kaiser was spoiling for a war, there was one person who was willing to fight him. It was Mother Jones.
Always Hated Kaiser.
[She remarked:]
I never liked that ruler across the sea. I always hated him. I wanted to fight him years ago. He was one of the owners of a silk mill in Paterson, N. J., where the working conditions of girls and women were only a forerunner to the atrocities he imposed on Belgian women in 1914.
President Wilson has her whole-hearted admiration.
‘Greatest man since Abraham Lincoln,” she remarked several times. He won her heart, she explained, when he went before Congress and said that body could not adjourn until the child labor law was passed.
Mother Jones is an organizer for the United Mine Workers of America, and is, of course, financed by them. She is “Mrs. Mary Jones” if one cares to ask, but she doesn’t like the “Mistress”-“Mother” to all the union workers in America is the job her heart longs to fill.
[She said:]
Let the parasites-the women with no work in the world to do-have the title “Mistress.” I just want to be “Mother Jones.
———-
From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch of May 10, 1918:
‘MOTHER’ JONES, 88, HERE, FIERY SPIRIT
RATHER TRANQUIL
—–
Rights of Labor Still Her Great Interest, but She
Is Calm in Confidence President Is Fair.
—–LABOR ORGANIZATION HERE “LITTLE BEHIND”
—–
She Expects War to Result in Industrial Democracy
-Against Suffrage, for Temperance.
—–“Mother” Jones, mention of whose name is sufficient to conjure turmoil before most minds, is in St. Louis-a subdued Mother Jones, quite content with the world, little bitterness in her speech, altogether different from the Mother Jones who has stamped across the country and back again to any spot where trouble seems most violent or likely.
The reason? Mother Jones, who was 88 years old last Wednesday, herself says:
If those bosses won’t behave now, I go to Washington, and that great, kindly man there makes them behave.
President Wilson’s stand for labor, it seems, has won the confidence of Mother Jones.
Mother Jones came to St. Louis because “the folks here are just a little behind the times.” She explained that she meant labor had not progressed as far in organization as it had in other cities. With Mother Jones organization is the cure-all.
Organization and Education.
[Mother Jones said:]
Capital is not wringing as much of riches from the frames of the worker as it did. The workers have banded together and demanded what is theirs. And with organization has come education, and that is even more important than organization. Labor has more newspapers standing for it than it did and localities where feudalism has been have been saved by organization.
Where there is organization men have more time to read and more things to read for the union sends its literature and men are beginning to see clearly, and seeing, they are demanding and getting their rights.
Mother Jones thinks that the war is going to bring industrial democracy as well as political democracy.
[She said:]
Those boys who are fighting for the freedom of the seas are going to come back with a demand for industrial freedom. I have no patience with these employers who, when their workers strike set up a cry that war work is being hampered. They are dollar patriots. Let them share their war profits with their workers and pay a living wage and there will be no strikes.
Against Suffrage.
Mention of suffrage set the old Mother Jones aflame.
[She exclaimed:]
I never have seen any good of it. Women don’t need the vote. They need to get back to their natural instincts of home-building and children-raising.
Look at the parasites we see about us now-their fingers adorned with jewels, their waists cut down her to here (Mother Jones indicated a point near her waistline), about their necks a string of beads and in their hands a pair of knitting needles. They go this way (Mother Jones gave the motions of a laborious stitch). Woof, I’d like to do this (she gave a sweep of her arm that had it encountered those knitting needles would have sent them sky high).
Look at those suffragettes standing before the White House when our President was overwhelmed with war work. I boiled. I felt like rounding up a bunch of negro women and cleaning them up.
Favors Temperance.
Nor does Mother Jones think that prohibition is something to better the workers’ condition.
Give them better wages and time to read, and temperance among the working classes will follow. Temperance is better than prohibition. Let the Government make our whisky and it will be pure. That’s better than paying $8 a quart for rotten stuff and that’s what’s going on in prohibition states now.
It was not President Wilson’s stand for the eight-hour day that first won Mother Jones to him. Mother Jones first interest (she does not say when it was, but that she came from Ireland 83 years ago, and it was “not long after’) was over the child-labor problem That has been her first concern since.
[She exclaimed:]
Thank God, I have lived to see the passing of child labor. When Congress tried to pigeonhole the Federal bill against child labor, President Wilson left the White House one morning and went down to the Capitol. “That bill has got to pass,” he said, and my heart warmed to him.
Mother Jones spoke in the afternoon to strikers of the Wagner Electric Co. at New Club Hall, Thirteenth street and Chouteau avenue.
———-
From the The Topeka State Journal of May 11, 1918:
MAY BE BIG STRIKE
—–
General Walkout of Car Men
Expected in St. Louis.
—–St. Louis, Mo., May 11.-Strike sentiment favoring a general walkout of all St. Louis labor in sympathy with strikers of the Wagner Electric company was believed crystalizing today.
“Mother ” Jones, central figure in scores of labor moves, is in St. Louis.
“This is no time for strikes,” “Mother” Jones declared on her arrival here. “But we are fighting for democracy the same as they are fighting for it in Europe.” She indicated, however, she would urge walkouts only after all efforts to mediate failed.
———-
From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch of May 11, 1918:
“COWARDS,” SAYS MOTHER JONES
TO WAGNER STRIKERS
—–
Famous Woman Labor Leader Regains Old Form
in Addressing Meeting at New Club Hall.
—–DEMANDS THEY PUT UP BOLDER FRONT
—–
If Employers Won’t Discuss Grievances, She Declares,
“Send for Secretary of War.”
—–Mother Jones, whose statements to reporters yesterday gave the impression that the fire which had been the despair of sheriffs the country over was waning, regained her form when she took the platform before a gathering of strikers of the Wagner Electric Co. yesterday afternoon at New Club Hall, Thirteenth street and Chouteau avenue. She spouted expletives, vituperation and homely, scornful adjectives, scorching the strikers more than the bosses, because, she said, the strikers were “cowards” for not putting up a bolder front.
Strike leaders who preceded Mother Jones let it be known that she had been called to St. Louis to “starch the spines of the strikers.” The appeals of the male speakers were met by decorous hand-clapping, but when Mother Jones got well warmed up, shouts, howls and whistling and much enthusiasm answered her.
[She demanded:]
What’s this I hear about 12 or 14 pickets reporting for duty at the Wagner plant? What’s the matter with you. Damn you, get out on the picket line, the whole of you, you cowards.
Arraigns Woman Strikers.
Striding to a side of the platform from which she could shake her finger at a knot of women strikers, she shouted,
And you. What’s the matter with you. What’s this about the women strikers going back to work. If you had any red blood, if you were not all feathers outside and not a damn thing inside, you’d be out on that picket line and you’d go to the home of your sisters and forbid them to go back to work.
My boys could show you how to fight. They could show you how to clean up a bunch of scabs (Mother Jones did not dignify strikebreakers with “scabs,” however; she called them always “sewer rats”). A man comes into your house to rob you and you call the police. The lapdog of the law takes that man by the scruff of his neck and yanks him to court. A bunch of men come out and rob you of your jobs and the police come out to help them do it. What’s the matter with you. Why don’t you chase every damn scab out of town.
Mother Jones told many incidents to show the valor with which mine workers, “my boys,” had fought in the past.
[She said:]
But those days are gone. We don’t play the game that way so much any more. We do it differently now. Education has changed things. Let me tell you the way to settle strikes now. We say to the employer, “now, you take your seat on that side” and we take our seats on the other side of the table and each one tells his story. You see, they are both together, and when one side lies, the other side can call him. Then we give in a little here and concede a little there, but as little as we can, and the thing is settled.
“Send for Secretary of War.”
Now if those men who have been robbing you don’t take their seat at the table, let me tell you what to do. You send word to the Secretary of War to come out here and take over the plant and run it for you. It’s yours anyway.
When my brave boys marched away to fight in France, they said to me, “Mother Jones, we are going over to fight for freedom of the seas; you tell the boys who stay at home to fight as hard for freedom of industry.”
The strikers gave their greatest cheers of the afternoon to that statement.
[Mother Jones concluded:]
Don’t you give in an inch. This strike is won for you now. Let me see you wake up and fight.
Strike leaders declared to the meeting that a small body of machine mechanics had gone back to work yesterday on threats that the Wagner company, which had gained them exemption from the army draft, would withdraw its support and the men would be compelled to go to war.
[The speakers stated:]
If the Wagner company gained exemption for you to do war work at home, they gained you the right to work wherever you choose under the Stars and Stripes.
Figures were read, which were said to be a count by pickets of men going into the Wagner plants, to show that only a few more than 300 men were at work.
It was announced that a meeting of union labor was planned, when it was hoped that from 15,000 to 25,000 workers would gather at the Coliseum, to pledge their loyalty to the United States and to adopt resolutions demanding that the Federal Government take over and operate plant in St. Louis at which strikes were in progress.
———-
From the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen’s Magazine
-of May 1918:
Scheme to Send Mooney to Prison for Life
His Persecutors Afraid to Let Him be Tried Again
Another Trial Would Be Sure to Result In
Exposures They Greatly DreadOrganized greed is not relaxing its efforts to destroy the life of Tom Mooney. With all the ferocity of master class intolerance and prejudice that has marked his persecution from the time he, with Mrs. Mooney, Warren K. Billings, Israel Weinberg and Edward D. Nolan, were indicted on murder charges following the preparedness day bomb explosion in San Francisco on July 22, 1916, when ten persons were killed and two score injured, the San Francisco Chamber of Perjury has sought to railroad him to the gallows.
And now with the exposure of a frame-up that has shocked and aroused justice loving millions throughout the whole civilized world his persecutors, fearing public opinion will free Money from the hangman’s noose, are bent on dooming him to a living death by having his sentence commuted to life imprisonment. The action of the machinery of the courts has been exhausted in Mooney’s case. He has been tried, convicted on perjured testimony, a new trial has been denied him and the Supreme Court of the State of California, in the face of the strongest kind of evidence disclosed since his trial that he is the victim of a frame-up—has ruled that it could not go outside of the record of the trial court, and has permitted the conviction to stand.
A pardon by Governor Stephens alone can save Mooney and in this event a new trial on another indictment in the bomb outrage case is demanded by Mooney’s defenders. Great pressure is being brought to bear on the Governor by political and financial interests in California to have him commute Mooney’s sentence to life imprisonment and avert the disclosures that would arise in another trial.
At the time this article was written, Judge Griffin, before whom Mooney was tried, has not yet resentenced him to death—a task the judge evidently doesn’t relish judging from a statement in a letter just received by the Editor from a trade union official of the Pacific Coast to the effect that Judge Griffin stated from the bench at the time the matter was brought before him after the State Supreme Court had rendered its decision that he was “very loath to sentence Mooney at all, in view of what has transpired since his conviction.”
On April 25 Mooney from his cell in San Francisco issued a statement in which he said there should be no commutation of his sentence to life imprisonment. He declared there was only one of two ways in which his case should be settled, either by carrying out his sentence or setting him free.
Numerous mass meetings are being held to protest against the persecution ,of Mooney and his co-defendants. According to the Tri-City Labor Review 15,000 persons attended a meeting of this kind held in the Civic Center Auditorium at San Francisco on April 16.
[Mother Jones Speaks]
“Mother” Jones, representing the United Mine Workers, was one of the speakers.
In her characteristic way this fearless and white-haired champion of human rights shook a shrunken fist in the direction of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce and shouted:
They can’t hang Tom Mooney. They can’t hang workingmen in America any more on trumped-up evidence. We won’t stand for it.
This statement brought a thunderous roar of applause from the vast crowd in which, the Tri-City Labor Review says:
Riveters rubbed elbows with bookkeepers, clerks sat with carpenters, school teachers applauded with shop girls, and staid middle-class citizens, jealous of the good name of the State, stood up with section laborers.
Governor Stephens Assumes Role of Autocrat
But it seems that Governor William D. Stephens is not going to be impressed with any such popular demonstrations. On April 24 press dispatches stated that Governor Stephens declared that he would “pay no attention whatever to the organized sending of telegrams and letters, nor to strikes or other demonstrations designed to influence” him in the Mooney case.
But this does not mean that Governor Stephens has said that he will not pardon Mooney, nor do we believe that he would be guilty of an act so insane as to refuse to pardon him, or of the equally insane act of commuting his sentence to life imprisonment in the face of the facts—of incontrovertible evidence that conclusively establishes Mooney’s innocence. Not only would it in our opinion be deliberate murder, but it would also be a direct affront to the President of the United States, whose humane and justice loving interest in the case has been made emphatically clear….
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SOURCES
Illinois State Register
(Springfield, Illinois)
May 1, 1918, page 6
https://www.genealogybank.com/
The Washington Times
(Washington, District of Columbia)
-May 1, 1918
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84026749/1918-05-01/ed-1/seq-8/
-May 2, 1918
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84026749/1918-05-02/ed-1/seq-4/
The St Louis Star
(St Louis, Missouri)
-May 10, 1918
https://www.newspapers.com/image/204301179/
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
(St Louis, Missouri)
-May 10, 1918
https://www.newspapers.com/image/138325183/
-May 11, 1918
https://www.newspapers.com/image/138325762/
The Topeka State Journal
(Topeka, Kansas)
-May 11, 1918
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn82016014/1918-05-11/ed-1/seq-6/
Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen’s Magazine, Volume 64
(Indianapolis, Indiana)
Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen, 1918
https://books.google.com/books?id=pL8OAQAAMAAJ
-May 1, 1918
“Scheme to Send Mooney to Prison for Life”
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=pL8OAQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&hl=en&pg=GBS.RA8-PA1
IMAGE
Mother Jones, drawing, St L Pst p3, May 13, 1918
https://www.newspapers.com/image/138329040/
See also:
Hellraisers Journal, Saturday May 18, 1918
Mother Jones News for April 1918, Part II: Found in San Francisco
Whereabouts & Doings of Mother Jones for April 1918, Part II: Found in San Francisco, Speaking on Behalf of Tom Mooney
The Commercial Telegraphers’ Journal:
The Official Organ of the Commercial Telegraphers’ Union of America
Volumes 15-16= 1917 & 1918
https://books.google.com/books?id=Za9LAAAAYAAJ
Journal for May 1918:
“Story of Organization Day”
-re Right to Organize and National War Labor Board
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=Za9LAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&hl=en&pg=GBS.RA1-PA185
National War Labor Board (1918–1919)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_War_Labor_Board_(1918%E2%80%931919)
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