Let me see you wake up and fight.
-Mother Jones
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Hellraisers Journal, Sunday June 23, 1918
Mother Jones News for May 1918, Part I: Gives Long Interview in St. Louis
From the St Louis Post-Dispatch of May 13, 1918:
Valiant Champion of the Workers Pink of Cheek
at 88 and Wears a Fussy Little Bonnet.
—–
Objects to Women Doing Heavy War Time Work;
Opposes Suffrage, Knitters Rile Her.
—–BY MARGUERITE MARTYN.
I WOULD like to have had a union card to show. I was glad I was conversant with the after-the-war platform of the British Labor Party as voluminously printed in the Post-Dispatch, and that I could profess full faith in the justice of trade unionism, when I went to call on Mother Jones. As it was, I came out of the interview with the valiant little 88-year-old labor champion comparatively unscathed, though I sat meekly silent while her scorching tongue excoriated many institutions I have at least looked upon with toleration.
Women in war industries supplanting men, she had little patience with.
[She said:]
I see them climbing over engines with their oil cans. I see them pumping levers on street cars; I see them pushing heavy trucks of munitions, and I think, what of the future generation? Woman’s nervous organism is not equal to such work. One of the principles of trade unionism is that women shall work under conditions that will safeguard to the utmost their bodily welfare.
Woman suffrage she dismissed with equal scorn.
Women vote in Colorado and what have they done to improve industrial conditions? After the riots at Trinidad and 20 women and children were laid out in the morgue, committees of ladies came and looked over the scene, and they said, “Too bad, too bad!”
They knew the murder of these innocents, whose men were fighting only for the right to work and earn their bread, had been authorized by the [Democratic] Governor they had helped to put in power. They did not criticise the Governor and some of the women were in the militia that committed the crimes.
Women in war relief work were entirely beneath her contempt.
They must do everything in public. If they knit they must sit out on the balcony or in some more public place. They knit-so- (and she crooked her fingers in imitation of a painfully awkward beginner at knitting)- The while they berate their maids and their laundresses and their dressmakers.
Women social workers came in for their share of condemnation.
Social settlements, rescue homes and organized charities are supported for the most part by capital wrung from the blood and souls of those who become the objects of charity and the inmates of these asylums. The charitable institutions are but part of the capitalistic system. They wouldn’t be necessary if it were not for the system which lets a few pirates dictate whether 97% of the people shall eat or starve. Women social workers are to blame for keeping the people in ignorance.
Eloquence With a Droll Irish Twist.
I cannot give her words the eloquence they have as they roll off her tongue with its droll Irish twist, and the deep, sonorous cadences of her voice that do not belong to age.
Her expletives and swear words are far-famed, and she doesn’t hesitate to use them in private conversation any more than she does when publicly “starching the spines” of strikers who are not defending themselves as belligerently as she would have them. But you do not get an impression of hardness in Mother Jones.
I found her just coming in from a shopping expedition with some notions she required to finish a black poplin skirt which lay spread out on the bed in her room at Majestic Hotel. She wore as fussy a bonnet as I ever hope to see. A big bow of plum-colored ribbon trailed over her white hair, and a valence of black net embroidered in Oriental colors adorned the front of it. A white lace jabot, jet bead necklace and gay ribbon bows on her black blouse testified further to a decorative taste.
One of “her boys,” Edward Carbine, second vice president of the Illinois State Labor Federation, who came in as we were discussing sewing, remarked with the admiration men frequently show for women’s needle work, “Mother makes all her own bonnets and dresses.”
She has pink cheeks and an erect, high-corseted figure. She hadn’t been to lunch, she said, upon Mr. Carbine’s inquiry. She usually eats but two meals a day, as she doesn’t believe in stuffing when not doing active work.
Women Can Learn Only by Experience.
To resume her discourse upon women, she said:
They aren’t wholly to blame for their mistakes. Women’s training is a part of the capitalistic system, too. They are kept in ignorance, The only way they can learn is by experience in industry. Why, if all women knew conditions as they exist in industry women could, if they wanted to, revolutionize the world. But even women in industry, the younger ones, are slaves of centuries of tradition. They won’t organize.
Of course, it is instinctive that they should think of getting married and getting out of industry. That is natural and right. But women ought to go into trade unions for the sake of the economic education there is in it, and they ought to stay organized so that conditions will be made right for their children when they come on.
[She said heartily:]
Why, I wouldn’t give what I have learned through association with labor for all the education in all the universities in the world. I wouldn’t give my experience for all the money in the United States Treasury.
I have learned a lesson when I have been walking 12 miles over railroad ties on a dark night with a baby strapped on my back. I was seeking shelter for the family of a striking miner in West Virginia. The mother beside me had another child strapped on her back and one in her arm, while ther trudged between us a 10-year-old boy who had worked in the mines, never seeing light except from a lantern as he opened and shut a door for 10 hours every day. I can hear him now saying, “Mother, when I get to be a man will it always be as hard as this?”
I learned a lesson when I waded three-quarters of a mile in a creek with the water up to my breast, because they wouldn’t let me walk on the track. It was the company’s track and there were gunmen guarding it.
[She laughed heartily at this reminiscence:]
I learned a lesson when I was being driven to prison with 150 infantry on the left of me and 150 infantry on the right of me, and the chauffeur trembling like a leaf. That was in Colorado when the Governor had issued orders that I was not to come into the State, whereupon I took the first train and was in the town three hours before his lookouts discovered me.
I value my education and I did not fail to appreciate each lesson as I was getting it and I never have been intimidated.
Strikes and War as a Last Resort.
[She said with emphasis:]
But don’t get the idea I am not a woman of peace. Strikes and wars I believe in as the last resort. The kind of victory I enjoy most is one we had in Washington one day. A bill was to be introduced which would be a discrimination against my boys (the union miners). A crowd of them went into the gallery of the House and sat with their elbows on the railing and just stared into the faces of he congressmen. The bill did not come up that day, nor has it ever come up since. The kind of victory I enjoy was such as we had in Pennsylvania, where from 6000 the union was increased to 160,000 in nine weeks without a bit of property destroyed and almost no man hurt.
Lives to See Light Breaking Through.
The reason I am feeling good these days is because I have lived to see the light breaking through. Five years from now will see the end of strikes. They will belong to the dark past.
I believe in strikes and wars as the last resort, and that when one must strike, one must strike hard.
The big strike being made for democracy in Europe is going to put the world centuries ahead. We must put all our strength into this war.
“Have you any men in the war?” I asked.
I have 20,000 of my boys, my miners, over there. I hope they help finally to bring every crown in Europe tumbling down. Get the worst of the imperialists and we will see what will happen to the rest. I have no love for England. I was born in Ireland and my father was naturalized in this country 83 years ago. But get Germany first and then we’ll attend to England with regard to Ireland and India.
[Added Mother Jones:]
Even without the war the light was beginning to break through in this country. President Wilson has learned a lot since he went into the White House. Even Mr. Taft is learning. And you’ve heard what Schwab has been saying. “We are safe, perhaps,” he told those capitalists, “but what of our children? Do we want to bequeath a revolution to them?”
“Aren’t the labor people to be suspected of taking unfair advantage of the situation by striking in war time?” I asked.
The capitalists are trying in every way they can to make it look that way, but the Government can take care of that situation. That is, it can if it will send the right kind of mediation. I do not think a Major of the army is likely to be a just labor conciliator. Not if he thinks a man can work for 20 or 30 cents an hour and support a family, as I’m told they are expected to do at the Wagner plant.
[Concluded Mother Jones:]
What the Government really ought to do is to conscript capital. We are conscripting men and labor. Why not capital? Ten thousand dollars a year is enough for any of those fellows. We don’t pay our Generals more than that, and they are in charge of humanity. Why should mere captains of industry be allowed more than our Generals?
From the St Louis Post-Dispatch of May 14, 1918:
MOTHER JONES.
It was a fine picture of a fine old lady that Marguerite Martyn drew for the Post-Dispatch in her article on “Mother” Jones, even if “Mother” is an old lady who uses swear words and has pink cheeks and a fussy hat at 88.
Whatever may be the business that brings her to intervene in the labor affairs of St. Louis, there are a lot of people who are glad to welcome her. She is the Mme. Defarge, the Mme. de Maintenon and the Baronne de Stael of organized labor, without the hardness of one of her famous prototypes, the self-interest of another or the levity of the third. While not daring to risk what would happen for kissing her hand, St. Louis is at least willing to hold out his own paw and say, “Howdy.”
It is not hard to understand her prodigious scorn for modern feminists. A woman who has lived and suffered with the poor, who has stilled the wailings of children orphaned by the toil of the sweatshop, who has stood at bay against rifles and machine guns with desperate men, and who has waged merciless war, right or wrong, in the fiercest battles of class antagonism cannot be expected to be overly patient with her gentle sisters of the Women’s Club and the crochet needle. For her interest in the great industrial problems of the day is not within a thousand leagues of the most exalted dilletantism. Whatever else may be said of what she stands for, her cause has been one that has had no place in it for weaklings.
No doubt there are many estimable persons who would like to see the old lady locked up for the rest of her days and many other estimable persons who would like to see an annual holiday set apart for the veneration of her name. Remaining strictly neutral, it is still permissible to wish that, whatever her fate, she take with her the best remembrances our city can give with the hope that she will devote her remaining strength to solidifying labor and capital for the winning of the war.
———-
From the United Mine Workers Journal of May 16, 1918:
DISTRICT NO. 29, NEW RIVER FIELD
OF WEST VIRGINIA
Board Member Lawrence Dwyer Addresses
Circular to MembershipTo the Members of District No. 29:
On Thursday evening, May 3, Mr. T. L. Lewis, representing the operators of the New River and Winding Gulf field, and District President James Gilmore, national representatives Sam Ballantyne, Robert Gilmore and myself met with the representatives of the United States Fuel Department, at which time the complaints of the men of this field were taken up. After a lengthy discussion, it was agreed by all parties that the cause of so many grievances “hanging fire” without being settled was due to the fact that there was no final umpire. The miners’ representatives agreed to let the United States Fuel Department name a final umpire. Mr. Lewis, the operators’ representative, agreed that the operators would report to the Fuel Department a satisfactory person for final umpire or propose to the department a plan whereby an umpire can be secured. Hence the time is now very near when all the grievances in this field will be settled.
The Fuel Department then took up the Virginia matter with us, which case is as follows: For the past twelve months these men have been appealing to us to allow them to become members of our organization. They appealed first to me, then to District President Gilmore, and C. F. [Frank] Keeney, District President of District No. 17 and later to National President, F. J. Hayes. Last December we received a letter from them telling us if we would not grant them a charter, they would make application to the secretary of the state of Virginia and organize under the state law. We granted them a charter and they completed an organization.
Some of the operators in conversation with the men stated they had no objection to executing a contract with them and in response to appeals, representatives of our organization went over and consulted with some of the operators in reference to such a contract, but they informed our representatives they would rather wait awhile.
Later, we were notified that two of the companies discharged about 175 men that had joined the union. These men were black listed from securing work elsewhere as they applied at the brick yards that were in need of men and were told they could not employ them. The coal companies offered them their work back if they would sign a contract agreeing not to belong to a union as long as they were in their employ, which the men positively refused to do and now there are something over 300 men locked out.
We have refused to start any activities in that field owing to the awful crisis our country is facing and I ask the representatives of our government how will the twenty thousand members of our organization that are now fighting at the front, to save our country, feel if our organization does not go to the aid of these three hundred men who are asking for nothing but to be allowed to exercise their lawful state rights to belong to our union.
[Mother Jones and Peggy Dwyer to Hold Meeting]
I wired the men in Virginia that Mother Jones and I would hold a meeting with them in Richlands. I then came to Indianapolis and consulted with President Hayes. We agreed to postpone our meeting for one week, but we are determined to go to the aid of these men who are asked to sign away their lawful state rights. We feel if these few operators in Virginia were allowed to carry out successfully their undertaking, it would encourage other operators who are Pro-Germans or profiteers to take the same advantage. Only the other day, we received a letter from one of our members, who is in the trenches in France, in which he said: “Peggy, we are certainly doing our bit over here, and we feel when we return to West Virginia we will have a 100 per cent organization.”
What would these men say if the United Mine Workers’ organization would allow 12,000 to 15,000 men (the number employed in that territory) to be forced into signing a contract not to affiliate with this organization as long as they are employed by these companies ? We will not stand for it, so let us make up our minds that every man working in West Virginia can and will be members of the United Mine Workers of America.
Fraternally,
LAWRENCE DWYER.
From the Wilkes-Barre Evening News of May 20, 1918:
Durkee’s Survey
[by Colonel Durkee]
Past eighty-four years of age “Mother” Jones, the laboring man’s friend, is now in the struggle to help make the world safe for democracy. This well intentioned and zealous woman is in the war doing her “bit” to help save the world from being overrun by the Huns. She says that throughout the ages mankind has suffered from autocracy, but that it “is a glorious privilege to have been permitted to live long enough to see it made the issue of a world-war.”
Mother Jones is perhaps the best known woman labor leader in the world. She is especially well known here because of her activity in the miners behalf during their strikes. It will be pleasing for those who had the pleasure of meeting her to know that at her venerable age she is out encouraging “her boys” to go and help “lick the kaiser.” The great labor leader besides giving this encouragement to the laboring men is also selling war savings stamps and in asking the working woman to buy she says, “If we are not true to the government in this fight when can we ever be true?” This is the spirit that wins.
Many of us believe that we are true to the country but we sit idly by and permit all of the work to be done by others. We also permit them to do the buying of Liberty Bonds and war savings stamps and smugly imagine that we are real 100 per cent Americans just because we are not out shouting against the President and the allies. The only way to be a patriot is by doing something to help win the war.
“Mother” Jones surely should be entitled to spend her remaining days in quiet, if anybody, but she is not that type of an American. She wants the world made a fit place for the coming generations to live in and is willing to do her share to make it so…
Let us all make up our minds that we are going to do the very best we can to assist “The Greatest Mother in the World’ help alleviate pain and suffering. Let us think of the first three young Americans who gave their all, their lives. Let us think of the fatherless, suffering and starving children of Belgium and then give up some luxury, some pleasure that we may save at least a day’s pay to help the Red Cross.
———-
[Paragraph breaks added.]
From the United Mine Workers Journal of May 23, 1918:
NOTICE TO LOCAL UNIONS
[Mother Jones, Heroine of Paint Creek
and Senator Kern]When Senator John W. Kern introduced his resolution in the United States Senate calling for an investigation into the conditions of the Paint Creek and Cabin Creek regions of West Virginia all the special interests in the country became active in an effort to defeat it.
The story of the ten-year battle for the unionization of miners in West Virginia is told fully and graphically in the
Life of Senator Kern,
which is being written by Claude G. Bowers, who was intimately associated with him. Mother Jones, the “heroine of Paint Creek,” has furnished much data to the author for this chapter—the longest in the book.
This biography is the only monument, except that above his grave, that Senator Kern will ever have. Miners of America who knew him as a courageous champion should help to make it possible by subscribing now for the book.
The volume, printed on the best paper, illustrated, and bound in the best binding, will make a book of more than 450 pages. Clip the following, sign it, and send it at once to Claude G. Bowers, editor The Journal Gazette, Fort Wayne, Indiana.
——————————
I, the undersigned, hereby subscribe for——- copies of the Life of Senator John W. Kern, and agree upon delivery to remit at the rate of $2.25 per copy.
Name —————
Address—————
——————————Every miners’ local in America could well afford as a local to subscribe for one copy of this story of the life of the man who was hated by every enemy of union labor in America.
From the Baltimore Sun of May 31, 1918:
Grafton Has Big Parade.
[Mother Jones Speaks]
Grafton, W. Va., May 30.-Grafton had one of the largest celebrations of Memorial Day in its history. The Red Cross of Taylor county combined with the Grand Army of the Republic in making the arrangements. In the parade were Union and confederate veterans, woman of the Red Cross in uniform. Sons of Veterans, Boy Scouts, 1,00 school children, 1,800 miners of Preston and Taylor counties and Grafton, Hazel-Atlas and Wendel bands. The Red Cross had a large float, while all motor cars and other vehicles in line were decorated. Addresses were delivered at the National Cemetery by Congressman Stuart F. Reed and Mother Jones, of the United Mine Workers.
———-
From the Fairmont West Virginian of May 31, 1918:
[Mother Jones Speaks at Grafton
on Decoration Day]“Mother” Jones and Congressman Stuart F. Reed were the speakers at a Decoration day celebration at Grafton in which union labor figured importantly. W. D. Rogers, president of the West Virginia Federation of Labor, was present at the meeting and states that “Mother” Jones made a very strong talk. She will remain in the region some time and will be heard at Fairmont, although the date has not yet been arranged.
[Local Organized at Monongah]
There was a mass meeting of miners held at Monongah Saturday night at which a president and secretary were elected and application made for a charter in the United Mine Workers of America. W. D. Rogers, of Fairmont, who had been at Clarksburg where linemen and power house men organized, stopped off at Monongah for the meeting and estimates that 500 men were assembled.
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SOURCES
St Louis Post-Dispatch
(St Louis, Missouri)
-May 13, 1918
https://www.newspapers.com/image/138329040/
-May 14, 1918
https://www.newspapers.com/image/138330038/
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 of May 16, 1918
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=iwxOAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PT40
News re UMW District 29 of WV by Dwyer
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=iwxOAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PT50
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=iwxOAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PT66
UMWJ of May 23, 1918
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=iwxOAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PT72
re Senator Kern and Mother Jones
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=iwxOAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.PT86
The Evening News
(Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania)
-May 20, 1918
https://www.newspapers.com/image/178504653/
The Sun
(Baltimore, Maryland)
-May 31, 1918
https://www.newspapers.com/image/373335359/
The West Virginian
(Fairmont, West Virginia)
-May 31, 1918
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn86072054/1918-05-31/ed-1/seq-1/
IMAGE
Mother Jones Drawing St L Pst Dsp p3, May 13, 1918
https://www.newspapers.com/image/138329040/
See also:
Hellraisers Journal, Saturday June 22, 1918
Mother Jones News for May 1918, Part I: Found in St. Louis
Whereabouts & Doings of Mother Jones for May 1918, Part I: Found Supporting Strikers in St. Louis
For more on the strike against the
Wagner Electric Manufacturing Company,
1918, St Louis, Missouri, see:
Radical Unionism in the Midwest, 1900-1950
-by Rosemary Feurer
University of Illinois Press, 2006
(search: “wagner electric” 1918) (-& see esp pages 12-18)
https://books.google.com/books?id=kocFB8whCvEC
Marguerite Martyn
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marguerite_Martyn
Governor Ammons, Democrat of Colorado
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elias_M._Ammons
For more on Ed Carbine, see:
Machinists’ Monthly Journal, 1917, Volume 29
(Sadly Volume 30, 1918, not yet available for view.)
International Association of Machinists, 1917
(Search: carbine) (photo on page 349)
https://books.google.com/books?id=9vHNAAAAMAAJ
Madame Defarge
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madame_Defarge
Madame de Maintenon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7oise_d%27Aubign%C3%A9,_Marquise_de_Maintenon
Madame de Staël
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germaine_de_Sta%C3%ABl
Tom L. Lewis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Lewis_(unionist)
By “U. S. Fuel Department,” I think Dwyer means
the Federal Fuel Administration
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Fuel_Administration
Hellraisers Journal, Tuesday May 21, 1918
“Heroine of Paint Creek” Recalls the Miners’ Friend, Senator Kern
Charles G. Bowers Writing “Life of Senator Kern” with Assistance of Mother Jones
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‘Hanging On The Old Barb Wire – Chumbawamba