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Hellraisers Journal – Thursday October 30, 1919
Mother Jones News for September 1919, Part II
Cleveland, Ohio – Mother Speaks at Convention of United Mine Workers
From the New York Tribune of September 17, 1919:
Mine Workers Urged To Aid Steel Strike
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Appeals Made to Convention by Fitzpatrick
and “Mother” Jones, Who Oppose Delay
CLEVELAND, Sept. 16.-John Fitzpatrick, chairman of the national committee for organizing the iron and steel workers, and “Mother” Jones, the aged mine worker representative, appealed to-day to the convention of the United Mine Workers of America to support the steel workers in the projected steel strike. “Mother” Jones argued openly against any postponement, telling the miners to pay no attention to contrary reports, because the strike would come off as arranged next Monday. Rescinding of the strike call, she declared, would wreck the confidence of the steel workers in their organization.
Fitzpatrick refrained from mentioning the question of possible postponement, except indirectly, in his speech, but in conversations with delegates he declared himself firmly opposed to postponement of the walkout beyond Monday as weakening the chances of success.
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[Photograph added.]
From the New York Tribune of September 18, 1919:
Miners Turn Attention To Steel Situation;
“Mother” Jones TalksCLEVELAND, O., Sept. 17.-Interest of the United Mine Workers’ delegates to-day was turned to Pittsburgh, where the decision of the national organizing committee on the proposed steel strike Monday will effect large numbers of organized and unorganized miners in steel corporation enterprises.
“Mother” Jones, the veteran organizer of the miners, appeared again before the convention to say farewell before returning to Pennsylvania to participate in the work of the strike which she regards as certain to break out Monday. She appealed to the delegates to drop their factional struggles in the face of the common enemy.
The session of the convention, however, and devoted again largely to the contest with the radical elements in the organization which were again completely routed on resolutions submitted by a Montana local union, indorsing the “one big union” and demanding withdrawal from the American Federation of Labor.
This afternoon Mrs. Thomas Mooney appeared before the convention to present the case of her husband and to ask the miners to support the proposed general strike on October 8 to effect his liberation.
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From Hellraisers Journal of September 17, 1919:
-Both speeches, made by Mother Jones at the U. M. W. A. Convention, were published by the Hellraisers Journal. The following are excerpts from Part I of the September 16th speech.
For the last four weeks I have been with the steel workers. If you want to see brutal autocracy, come with me to the steel centers and I will show it to you. The world does not dream of the conditions that exist there.
I was in Monessen last Sunday and 18,000 men came to a meeting. Some of them were worn out, some had hopes for another day. Some had their backs bent with the burden of years and the whip of the master. But they all came believing there was a new message for them.
One chap said to them: “You know we are going to have a strike. Now you must be peaceful, we must have peace.” Imagine what a statement to make to men who were going on strike! I wonder if Washington was peaceful when he was cleaning hell out of King George’s men. I wonder if Lincoln was peaceful. I wonder if President Wilson was. And then this gentleman gets up and tells us we must be peaceful! When he sat down I said: “I want to take issue with you”—an old fossilized thing that hadn’t worked for twenty years, but he drew his salary—“I want to tell you we’re not going to have peace, we’re going to have hell! Strikes are not peace. We are striking for bread, for justice, for what belongs to us.”
Then [the steel trust lap dog] said that the people there were all foreigners. “That is the very reason we want to organize them,” I told him. “We want them to understand what American institutions stand for, and if they do not understand the language they can not understand the institutions.”
“But they are all contented,” he told me. “Then they are very dangerous citizens,” said I, “because an American citizen is never contented; he sees a civilization beyond, and beyond that he is going to aim at and go after. We are going to organize them all anyhow, and you can jail us all you want to. We build the jails. Now when we get brains enough we will put you in jail.”
From Hellraisers Journal of September 18, 1919:
-The following are excerpts from Part II of the September 16th speech
by Mother Jones at Mine Workers’ Convention.
The steel workers have taken a strike vote and decided to strike. You men must stand behind them. Never mind what anybody says, that strike will come off next Monday. The miners and all the other working men of the nation must stand with them in that strike, because it is the crucial test of the labor movement of America. You are the basic industry. They didn’t win the war with generals, and the President didn’t win the war. They could have sent all the soldiers abroad, but if you hadn’t dug the coal to furnish the materials to fight with, what could they have done? You miners at home won the war digging coal. You have been able to clean up the kaisers abroad, now join with us and clean up the kaisers at home.
Gary said: “I will tell you what we can do—we can give them a cup of rice and that will quiet them.” I want to tell Judge Gary to be careful or he may have to eat the rice himself before this thing is over.
A woman was murdered in Pennsylvania the other day (Mrs. Fannie Sellins). You fellows didn’t amount to a row of pins! You ought to have lined up fifty thousand men and women and gone there and cleaned up that gang that murdered that woman in cold blood.
[Remembering the Stanaford Mountain Massacre] I don’t live in the parlor, I am not a Sunday school teacher, I am right down in the trenches and I see the horrors.
President Keeney, of District 17) at one o’clock in the morning. It was in 1912. He came to me with tears in his eyes and said nobody would come to them. He asked if I would come.
I was thinking it was time to break in there anyhow, so I said I would go. He said, “But they might kill you.” I said I was not afraid, that I could meet no more glorious death than fighting those thieves and robbers.
It is only the working man that gets clubbed. He finds the stuff to make the guns and the clubs, he hires the policemen—the other fellow does-puts the club and the gun in his hands and he goes out and gets you. Did you ever see a man with five million dollars in the penitentiary? No, of course not. Then why don’t you build a jail and have a court that will put them in and put you out?
From Hellraisers Journal of September 19, 1919:
-The following are excerpts from the September 17th speech by Mother Jones at Mine Workers’ Convention.
In an hour or so I will leave for the steel strike in Pittsburgh.
This movement was founded on the blood of men who tramped the weary pathway at night, often hungry and cold, to carry the message of a better day to you.
I beg of you for the sake of the heroes that are going to break into the war Monday for a better civilization, to bury the hatchet and come together, regardless of what may happen. Let the enemy see that we are a solidified army and ready for the war if they want it.
I learned ten months ago that a tremendous fund had been raised to destroy the United Mine Workers from within. They cannot succeed from the outside, but they are playing the game from within. I want you to get up and tell those pirates that they cannot destroy this organization, for it it founded on too solid a foundation and it is going on until we win.
From Hellraisers Journal of September 20, 1919:
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania – Mother Jones Arrives to “Raise Hell”
From the Fairmont West Virginian of September 18, 1919:
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“I’ve Come to Raise Hell!”
Mother Jones AnnouncesFamous Labor Worker is
in Pittsburgh for the
Steel Strike.
—–By LEE J. SMITS.
N. E. A. Staff Correspondent.
PITTSBURGH, Pa., Sept. 18.-The chief of police in a steel town said: “I’d rather see a mob of armed strikers marching down Main street than have that old lady arrive on the scene.”
He meant Mother Jones.
From mine fields of West Virginia and Colorado; from every field where labor and capital have battled, come the tales of this white-haired warrior, who has been in jail more times than she can remember, who is called a demon by her foes and an angel by her friends.
She says she is 89 years old, but her voice rings out like a bugle call and she expects to see labor triumphant, not only in the steel strike, but in every industry in the United States.
“I came here to raise hell,” said Mother Jones, as she looked up from her sewing to welcome me.
She looks as though she should be occupying a front seat in a prayer meeting, instead of pleading with a throng of smoke-blackened men on being dragged off to jail by policemen.
Mother Jones is given credit for holding the first union meeting in Homestead since the riots of 1892.
Union organizers had been working in the town for 11 months, but the authorities had been successful in preventing any speeches. So the unions brought in Mother Jones.
She was arrested, bat a mob trailed after her. It was in an ugly mood.
She was freed, and told the steel workers to disperse; that she was unharmed and would stick with them.
She called for three cheers for Uncle Sam before the throng broke up.
Since then Homestead is on the regular speech-making program.
Mother Jones is oratorical and patriotic.
“I’ve been strong for squabbles ever since I was a little girl,” she said. “I come of revolutionary stock and agree with Thomas Jefferson that it s the duty of true citizens to be always discontented.”
Mother Jones wins the admiration, if not the affection, of those who attempt to restrain her. The other Sunday she sat in a cell at Duquesne and tried to convert the mayor to trades unionism!
From the Lebanon Evening Report of September 23, 1919:
PITTSBURGH, Pa., Sept. 23.-The steel strike is costing the iron and steel workers of the country approximately $3,000,000 a day in wages alone. These figures are based upon the payrolls of the United States Steel Corporation, which controls about 50 per cent of the steel output in the United States, and the independent concerns which control the balance.
It is estimated that the strike is costing the steel interests more than $1,250,000 a day in earnings.
If industries allied with the steel and iron business were forced to suspend because of lack of materials with which to work, the cost of the nation wide struggle between capital and labor will reach appalling figures.
PITTSBURGH, Pa Sept. 23.-Attended by sporadic outbreak of disorder, the big steel strike swung into the second phase today with the iron and steel industries partly paralysed.
Returns from the affected districts showed that while the immediate Pittsburgh district continued operations, other centers were seriously crippled and in many cases forced to shut down completely by the walkouts of the laborers. Pittsburgh forms the backbone of the United States Steel Corporation’s holdings, and here the wheels of the great mills continued to turn as they did at Homestead, Braddock, Duquesne and other cities.
Despite the continuance of operations here, headquarters of the strikers today showed a jubilant bunch of leaders.
“Before the week is over,” said William Z. Foster, secretary of the steel men’s union and directing head of the strike in the east, “every man in the steel and iron industry will be on strike. Every mill will be closed down by Saturday.
“All over the country our reports show that the tie up is complete. Our Birmingham headquarters wired us that out side of a few men working, the mills there are closed down.”
[…..]
With the battle well begun, both sides apparently settled down today for a finish fight. At strikers’ headquarters it was asserted that the figures on the number of strikers on the first day have been greatly increased.
The operators maintained their usual silence, but all of the mills which opened on the first day continued operations. Opinions as to the probable duration of the strike varied here today, William Z. Foster asserted that the strike would last “until Elbert H. Gary agreed to meet representatives of the workers in conference,”
In steel circles today it was predicted that the strike would last a month-and that the operators would win the strike in the last week of that month.
But little change in the operating situation was apparent today. The operators stronghold at Homestead, Duquesne, in Pittsburgh proper, opened for business with the usual shifts.
“Mother” Jones, the fiery old godmother to all strikers, who has been in evidence in every big industrial dispute for nearly half a century, is here. Due to advancing age, however, she is not as active as in years gone by, although she still addresses meetings and gives counsel to “her boys.”
Note: Emphasis added throughout.
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SOURCES & IMAGES
New York Tribune
(New York, New York)
-Sept 17, 1919
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030214/1919-09-17/ed-1/seq-1/
-Sept 18, 1919
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030214/1919-09-18/ed-1/seq-2/
Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday September 17, 1919
Mother Jones Speaks to UMWA Convention on Sept 16th, Part I:
Cleveland, Ohio – Mother Jones Speaks at U. M. W. A. Convention, Part I
Hellraisers Journal – Thursday September 18, 1919
Mother Jones Speaks to UMWA Convention on Sept 16th, Part II:
Cleveland, Ohio – Mother Jones Speaks at U. M. W. A. Convention, Part II
Hellraisers Journal – Friday September 19, 1919
-Mother Jones Speaks to UMWA Convention on Sept 17th
Cleveland, Ohio – Mother Jones Speaks at U. M. W. A. Convention, Part III
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday September 20, 1919
Steel Strike Begins Monday; Mother Jones Back in Pittsburgh: “I CAME HERE TO RAISE HELL!”
Evening Report
(Lebanon, Pennsylvania)
-Sept 23, 1919
https://www.newspapers.com/image/89209313
https://www.newspapers.com/image/89209376
IMAGE
Mother Jones Crpd Women in Industry, Eve Ns Hburg PA p2, Jan 6, 1919
https://www.newspapers.com/image/57884211
See also:
Hellraisers Journal –Wednesday October 29, 1919
Mother Jones News for September 1919, Part I
Tag: Great Steel Strike of 1919
https://weneverforget.org/tag/great-steel-strike-of-1919/
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They’ll Never Keep Us Down – Hazel Dickens