Hellraisers Journal – Sunday June 20, 1920
-Mother Jones News for May 1920, Part II
Found Described by John D. Barry and Speaking in Streator, Illinois
From The Pacific Commercial Advertiser of May 15, 1920:
AN EVENING WITH MOTHER JONES
BY JOHN D. BARRY
The News “New York’s Picture Newspaper” May 7, 1920
A few months ago I heard someone say: “I wonder where Mother Jones is now. I suppose that, like many an other she has pulled in her horns and gone into retirement.”
I thought of those words as I listened to the old lady in Los Angeles recently, on her way to San Francisco, and heard her declare in that deep, strong voice of hers, the highly developed voice of the practiced orator, that she had passed her ninetieth milestone.
“You’ve got a lot of fight in you yet,” said a man who had himself long been a fighter for good cause.
[Mother Jones announced:]
Whenever there’s a fight for labor, I want to be there. I’m still in the ring.
I wondered if those fights hadn’t been the means of keeping her so well and young. She fulfilled the law emphasized by the psychologists, that life, to be a success, must mean persistent devotion to the ideals of the mind and the spirit. Her ideals had been high. They had exacted hard service. She had lived up to them devotedly.
* * *
She knew that a group of us had come to hear her talk and it was characteristic of her good humor to talk freely for our entertainment and enlightenment. She was evidently a born story teller. She had a dramatic quality that, under different circumstances, might have made her a great actress or a great playwright. Her memory was like a series of brilliant slides. Now she would give us one picture, now another.
There was that meeting with President McKinley, for instance. Though it took place years ago it was as vivid in her mind as if it had occurred yesterday.
A big fellow at the door-said to me: “No-body can see the President today.” And I said to him: “Well, I’m no nobody. I’m somebody. I have something very important to say to the President and I must say it now. You go in there and tell him Mother Jones is waiting outside and won’t go away till she sees him.”
Of course, she got in. And, of course, McKinley was charmed with her and appeared at his best in her presence.
Ah, he had a very attractive look in his eye and a nice smile. I told him about the case of a lad I knew who was in prison for doing something he oughtn’t to have done in a strike. The President said to me: “Well, Mother, we have got to stop disorder, you know.” And I said to him: “Mr. President, if you only knew all I know about what the workers have to stand you wouldn’t wonder there is so much disorder. You’d wonder there wasn’t more. And you’d pity the poor lad. He has a wife and mother to support and ’tis doing no good to any one to keep him shut up in prison.”
McKinley promised to investigate. And he did something in a few months. He took his time. Meanwhile, he had made a friend in one of the most powerful workers in the labor field. A year or so later, as he was passing through St. Louis on a special train, he heard Mother Jones was there and he had his train stopped for forty minutes so that he might have a talk with her.
* * *
There was another President that didn’t show much tact in dealing with Mother Jones. When his name is mentioned, her little pink face is likely to wear a transient look of sternness.
She can be terribly stern at times.
You see, Roosevelt is associated in her mind with a strike in Pennsylvania where thousands of child operatives in the mills were involved, many of them already mutilated and crippled by their work.
If you want to see Mother Jones in her more formidable aspect you should hear her talk about child labor and about children mutilated by labor. No tragic actress that I ever heard of can compare with her then.
You see, her dramatic instinct has been of immense practical help to her. On several occasions it has enabled her to rouse the whole country.
The instant she saw those children she knew she had a change to do some effective missionary work. She got together all that had been injured by the machinery. They made a little army. She wired to several New York papers to send reporters down. When the reporters came she had her army on dress parade. She showed them off, her cripples. She made one of her impassioned speeches. She announced that she intended to march with the children through New York City to Oyster Bay, where President Roosevelt was spending the summer, and to lay their case before him.
* * *
Wherever she went, she and her army were received with acclaim. On the way they would stop here and there for a picnic or for a swim in the river. At night they were usually taken into the houses of the local police and kept till morning. For Mother Jones the police had a soft spot in their affections. Whenever one of them came within her range she would capture him exactly as she had captured President McKinley.
In New York they tried to keep her and army out; but she appealed directly to Mayor Gaynor and she got him under her spell. He made the way easy for her.
But in Oyster Bay the white haired old woman leading the children’s crusade met a rebuff. She faced an array of plain-clothes men. They kept her from seeing Roosevelt. They kept her from getting anywhere near him or near his house.
Why did Roosevelt miss this chance? It’s hard to understand. Perhaps he was afraid Mother Jones would be more than a match for him or would make him ridiculous before the nation.
At any rate, he kept out of sight.
* * *
Don’t imagine, however, that Mother Jones thinks that at this time she met a defeat. On the contrary, she thinks Roosevelt did.
What she was really after was not the privilege of seeing the great man. It was the opportunity to secure enormous publicity for the wrongs of her children and for millions of other children throughout the country who were used in child labor or who might be used in the future.
* * *
In spite of all her zest for living, her joy in her work, Mother Jones is a bit of pessimist. She is terribly pessimistic when she talks about the well to do women of this country, members of fashionable clubs. She can understand the indifference of such women to the social and economic wrongs that lie all around them. I suppose her enthusiasm keeps her from realizing that those women don’t see what she sees and haven’t imagined enough to feel the woes of the world as she herself learned to feel them through years of bitter experience.
———-
[Photograph added.]
From the Streator Daily Free Press of May 22, 1920:
MOTHER JONES COMING
—–
Good Angel of America’s Coal Mines
to Give Address.
Mother Jones, who comes here on Sunday afternoon to speak to the workers of Streator, and invites the general public to hear her, is one of the notables in the American Labor movement. She is now 90 years old and is in robust health. Her physique is remarkable for one of her age.
She is identified with the miners organization but is always found any where where labor calls.
Mother Jones is an intimate friend of T. H. Tippett, organizer for the Amalgamated Clothing workers and is now visiting the Tippett home in Peoria. She will speak before the Peoria Workers institute on Friday night, and will come to Streator with Mr. Tippett on Saturday.
Mother Jones’ history in the labor movement is too well known to bear further comment.
She is loved and respected by the mine workers of America, as well as every other man and woman whoso cause she champions. The labor union of Streator extend a hearty invitation to the public of Streator to hear her.
Child Slaves of Streator, Photographs by T. H. Tippett:
From the Streator Daily Free Press of May 24, 1920:
MOTHER JONES IS VITROLIC
—–
WOMAN LABOR ORATOR SPEAKS TO CROWD
IN CITY PARK.
—–
Mother Jones, not so strong and much grayer than when she was in Streator fifteen years ago, spoke to a large crowd in the city park yesterday afternoon following a parade of a number of union locals. However, she was just as vitrolic in her attacks as upon her last appearance here, though she dwelt more upon generalities. She spoke words of encouragement to the garment workers here, denounced prohibition in no uncertain words, took a parting shot at till the chamber of commerce and declared that within six years, bolshevists would rule Great Britain.
She emphasized the fact that she was a radical, a red, an agitator, a bolshevist or anything that anybody wanted to call her along that line.
Mother Jones, according to newspaper dispatches a few weeks ago, celebrated her ninetieth birthday, but those who heard her yesterday, would not believe that it was possible for her to have such a burden of years upon her. Her voice was resonant and carried far out from the speakers’ stand, though at times it was evident that she was tiring and her voice could scarcely be heard thirty feet away.
Some of the high lights in her talk were:
I am not talking for Jesus. I am working like hell for Jesus.
Jesus doesn’t need me to work for Him. He can take care of Himself.
The chamber of commerce here is a chamber of crooks.
The labor unions have done more for humanity than all the churches, the Y. M. C. A, the W. C. T. U. and all the other organizations in the country.
Following a parade in which the union men and women of the city participated, the crowd gathered at the park where Thomas Kelly presided over the meeting.
T. H. Tippet delivered a forty-five minute talk preceding Mother Jones.
“Mother”‘ Jones, one of the most widely known union labor agitator in the world, who has been resting in this city for the last week, will leave today for Oakland to lend her support to the shipyard strikers in the Bay cities, according to information given out yesterday at the oil workers headquarters, room 111, Central Labor Temple.
The aged agitator last night stated that she did not know whether she was going to Oakland today or not, and intimated that it was none of the newspaper’s business what she was going to do. But at the home of Frank Flaherty, 2759 Marengo street, where “Mother” is staying, it was announced that she would leave tonight…
During her stay in this city, “Mother” Jones has had only one opportunity to talk. Last Sunday [March 7th] she addressed a few union laborites at the Labor Temple…..
“July 1897-She visits President McKinley to advocate on behalf of S.D. Worden in connection to his murder conviction [and death sentence] during the Pullman Strikes.” See:
“Appeal For Worden”
The Salt Lake Herald (Salt Lake City, UT),
July 26, 1897, Page 1, Image 1, col. 6. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85058130/1897-07-26/ed-1/seq-1/#words=appeal+Mary
Yours of April 27th received and glad to hear from you. Am very sorry I was unable to get to see you the last two times you were by this way going through Chicago, but in each case I had arrangements made for meetings sometime ahead; everything had been procided for and you know how disappointed they are when they make arrangements of that kind and you fail them at the last moment,—and that little bunch about Byesville, Ohio seem to be a decent little bunch of fellows and they are having a devil of a struggle. There is something over there that don’t seem to be just right, and I wanted to encourage them the best I could.
I can understand your situation in Kanawha [W. V.],—that is about the same situation everywhere. If the organizers were only honest they would develop the knowledge and experience to do the job properly, but under the present administration in our union, I doubt very much that they would want an honest organizer or that they would permit one to work for them any length of time, if they felt safe to discharge them. It seems to be a worse situation now than it ever was. A. R. Hamilton [Pittsburgh industrialist, publisher of Coal Trade Bulletin] has gotten complete control. [Edward] Nockels [Secretary of Chicago Federation of Labor] was showing me a telegram from Schmidty’s sister [Katherine Schmidt, sister of Mathew Schmidt, convicted in connection with 1910 bombing of Los Angele Times] in which she said that you were, while perhaps not as strong or rugged physically as you had been, still in pretty good health, I was pretty glad to hear of it.
I wish I could go out there and spend a month or six weeks with you. We are moving from Danville to Springfield. Everything is torn up and my wife and girl are stopping at her mothers in South Danville. They will get over here when Esther finishes the school term sometime next month.
If you can possibly do it, the first time you are through this way again, write or wire a couple of weeks ahead. In the meantime, will try and arrange for a meeting sometime where we can be together. I have twenty meetings arranged now and other work until it makes your eyes dance in your head.
Am feeling pretty good physically, but between working and riding on trains, losing sleep, I get sometimes rather tired myself.
With love and best wishes I am,
Yours very truly,
[John H. Walker]
[Emphasis added.]
Note: re “”Hamilton has gotten complete control” most likely refers to charges by Walker, and other opponents of UMWA President John L. Lewis, that Lewis had investments in Hamilton’s publications and received income from same.
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Solidarity Forever – Utah Phillips
Lyrics by Ralph Chaplin
They have taken untold millions that they never toiled to earn,
But without our brain and muscle, not a single wheel would turn.
We can break their haughty power, gain our freedom when we learn
That the union makes us strong.
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