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Hellraisers Journal – Friday October 31, 1919
Mother Jones News for September 1919, Part III
Her Home? “Wherever there is a good fight for freedom going on.”
From The Pittsburgh Post of September 24, 1919:
‘Mother’ Jones Heard
in Labor Trial
—–“Mother” Jones, aged organizer for the United Mine Workers, appearing yesterday as a witness before Judge Richard H. Kennedy, gave her address as “wherever there is a good fight for freedom going on.”
She testified in the hearing of a large number of appeals from fines imposed by Mayor James S. Crawford in connection with a meeting held in Duquesne last September 7.
After leaving the stand “Mother” Jones declared that had been her first experience as a witness in “a regular court trial.” She was one of the organizers arrested, but was not fined. That was the first time, she said, that she had been placed behind bars, although she had been arrested more than once.
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[Photograph added.]
From The Pittsburgh Press of September 24, 1919:
“MOTHER” JONES FREED FOR LABOR ACTIVITY.
—–“Mother” Jones was freed today following her arrest in the steel mill districts Sept. 7. She came before Judge Kennedy and was permitted to go without a fine.
“What is your age?” queried the court.
“Ninety on the first day of next May.”
“Where is your home?”
“Wherever there is a good fight for freedom going on,” replied the old lady, vigorously.
“You may go.”
From The Pittsburgh Post of September 25, 1919:
SENATE STRIKE COMMITTEE TO BE “STARTLED”
BY DISCLOSURE UNION HINTS
—–
Fitzpatrick Leaves for Washington Hearing Today.
—–MORE PLANTS CLOSING, CLAIM
—–Labor leaders, at the close of yesterday’s conference of National strike officials at the Monongahela House, declared that the conference had reached a determination by the revelation of which Chairman John Fitzpatrick will be able “to startle” when he appears before the Senate investigating committee today…..
SEEK U. S. INTERVENTION.
Fitzpatrick announced, just after the meeting, that he was on the point of leaving for Washington, and his prime purpose in going, he indicated, was to bring about some official restriction of the use of the state constabulary and to force some branch of the Federal Government to intervene to the end that the strikers be allowed to meet. He goes to Washington at the direct behest of the Senate committee appointed for the investigation of the steel strike, and he said he has hopes that the unions will be able to win many of their points through the Senate committee. It is now, he said, the only branch of the Federal Government to which the strikers can logically make claims.
It became even more obvious yesterday that the use of state constabulary in the strike will be made the real issue if the union leaders can force that point. After yesterday’s conference, a telegram was dispatched to Frank P. Walsh, former joint chairman of the the labor board, asking him to come to Pittsburgh to lead the fight against the actions which the strike leaders say are constitutional. He is said to have agreed to this…..
“MOTHER”JONES HERE.
“Mother” Jones made her appearance here yesterday, when she arrived at the Monongahela House, just at the close of the meeting, and her complaint was also of the use of the state constabulary…..
From the Canton Evening Repository of September 29, 1919:
MOTHER JONES IN TALK FLAYS GARY
AND STEEL CHIEFS
—–
Says She’s Bolsheviki If That
Will Drive Him Out.
—–HELP POLICE KEEP ORDER, HER ADVICE
—–
“Only Some Women, Hollering For Jesus,
Satisfied,” She Declares.America was founded on agitation, I told the bosses who came to see me while I was in jail in Pittsburg. I don’t want to meet a man or woman on this earth who is satisfied,. When people are satisfied, then I am suspicious of that person. Of course there may be some cat of a woman who is satisfied, who is hollering for Jesus. There are always a lot of them. They murdered him when they had him here.
That was the declaration made Sunday afternoon by Mother Jones, to a crowd estimated at 5,000 men and women, many of them strikers, at an open air meeting held in Nimisilla park.
[She said:]
If Bolshevism would made the world better, then I am a Bolsheviki, if it will drive Gary out. We’ll clean the constabulary. No Hessian law will stand on the statue books of America.
The speaker confined her attacks principally to Gary, Schwab, and other heads of the big steel companies.
Mother Jones declared that “the war is on,” and that the railroads will be tied up and that the operators will stop work. She did not say how soon she thought this would materialize.
Sees New Point of View.
[She said:]
The world is in the throes of a new birth. There is a new civilization breaking in and the man today has a new point of view. The war has made changes and this is one of them. The man today doesn’t think as he did a few years ago.
They said we would have democracy after we cleaned up the kaiser. We cleaned up the kaiser and bleached the soil of France, and if it is necessary to clear up the soil of the city of Canton and to clean up Gary and his gang, by God then we are going to do it. We will tie up ever industry in this country to beat Gary.
I wasn’t you people to know that I don’t belong to your damn Sunday school gang. This nation was bought on the blood of man,and the emblem of justice and liberty which it gave us is not going to be dragged down by dollars.
Gary and Schwab and that gang of murderers are the only foreigners in this country. These other men are not foreigners. They can’t speak our language but they will learn.
“Will Tie Up Everything.”
Gary, don’t you think that we can’t clean up the kaisers here at home. The railroads will be tied up. The telegraph operators will stop work and Gary will beg us to dig him up something to eat. We will tie up every industry in this country to beat Gary.
These are stormy days. The world in all its history never went through such days. It is no Sunday school fight. The war abroad was never anything like it. There is going to be something doing and it won’t be all in the steel mills.
If they are going to shoot you with the bullets that you make, by God we will take the bullets we make and shoot them.
Schwab, the great American patriot told Uncle Sam he would scab for him at a $1 a year and all the time he was doing this, he was robbing Uncle Sam of thousands of dollars.
After reading the profits made by the various companies, she said,
These pirates were robbing the nation while you working men were helping bring victory.
Stand up and say that not a wheel will turn in the country, until Gary, Schwab and the others step down and out and return every penny of that money to the United States treasury.
I love my country and I want to see it the way that Washington established it, and the time is coming when it will be. I want you men to help your city police and your sheriff to keep order. There are no mere law abiding citizens in the country than the working men.
Urges Women to Help.
The gunmen will leave America. We are going to put every mounted Hessian out of America and every woman should get down and help in the fight. Stop gossiping over the back fence, get out of your Sunday school and get down where the disease is.
Bert Evey, organizer for the American Federation of Labor, defended William Z. Foster, secretary of the national committee, who is being attacked because of I. W. W. beliefs. Evey said that no steel was being produced in any part of the country.
Organizer Smith of boiler makers who also made a short address, declared that it was the men in the mills themselves who asked to be organized and that they themselves appealed to American Federation.
The speaker denied reports from mill owners in various parts of the country that the men were returning this week.
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From Ohio’s New Philadelphia Daily Times of September 29, 1919:
LABOR MEN HEAR TALK OF WOMAN
—–
Mother Jones Addresses Crowd Here
—–GARY IS BRANDED
—–
Says Steel Chief Leader of Robbers
—–Declaring that there are kaiser at home that need to be cleaned up, Mother Jones, 89, labor speaker Sunday night, on the court house steps, calls on her hearers to help win the fight which she said meant the dawn of a new day.
Eight hundred that lined the steps and stood in the square in front, applauded the speaker when she made her most telling thrusts at E. H. Gary, president of the United States Steel Corporation, whom she called the chief of a band of robbers.
Other points of wit and sarcasm, received similar demonstrations, the audience giving her its best attention. No disorder marked the meeting.
She predicted that the next 25 years would see the end of capitalism. Now, she said social justice and industrial freedom for which the fathers fought on American soil, is gone. She said that the world is in the throes of of a new birth, and that everywhere the agony of the change is being felt.
She said she owned a share in America, and that she was here to fight for it, and that she would help take America from “Gary and his gang of robbers,” and turn it back to Uncle Sam.
She said the issue is whether “Gary and his robbers” own America, or the 110,000,000 living here.
Mother Jones as she has been known in labor circles in the nation for the past 60 years, talked for an hour and a half. Despite her great age, 90 next May, she is a marvel of strength. Her voice never broke and her oratory had the pitch and the quality of a much younger woman.
Her hearers marveled when Mother Jones recalled the long life she had lived, she recalling that 84 years of her life were spent in America. It is said that Mrs. Jones was born in Ireland, Scotch and Irish mingling in her veins.
Her quips at the expense of the newspapers and the preachers drew the laughter of her audience. She said the press was controlled by capital, and that their reports of the strike are not reliable.
Pity was expressed for the editors by the speaker who said they had to make a living, and lied like the devil were after them.
She defied the pulpit, saying ministers spoke the voice of capital, “I’m on to their game,” she said.
She predicted the railroads would join the strike.
She denounced Gary for his refusal to meet at conference when asked, she said, first by the President and then by a representative of the President, it is time to put them out of power, she said.
Referring to West Virginia, she ridiculed the requests of Governor Cornwall to Governor Cox, asking that no men be allowed to go over there from Ohio.
[Shouted Mother Jones:]
We will show them if we want to raise hell in West Virginia. We did it before.
[She said:]
Wherever men fight for liberty, there I am ready to go and raise hell, to protect and to cheer them.
Resenting the charge of Bolshevism she said was applied to labor movements, Mother Jones declared that if being a Bolshevik meant lifting burdens from the back, then she was a Bolshevik.
She said a Bolshevik could not enter from Europe, “but a pack of royalty can come and go when they please.”
She said royalty and imperialism soon will be at an end.
She said workers to get into the fight, and not let others win their battles for them. With a sneering tone, she exclaimed, “you will say after it is all over, I told you so.”
“Wake up, women, don’t live with scabs,” she said, appealing to women to aid m bringing their husbands into the strike.
Mother Jones came here from Canton where for an hour and a half she held the close attention of a large crowd at Nimisilla park.
She said she was going to Pittsburg Monday morning.
Mother Jones said that two weeks ago for the first time in her life, she was put behind prison bars at Duquesne. She said that she had been arrested many times, but never put behind the bar before. She said she was released.
She was introduced by Councilman A. J. McMillen, deputy for Tuscarawas county of the American Federation of Labor, who spoke of her as “the Angel of the Miners, Mother Jones of America.”
She said this world has no angels. “The world beyond has angels, and I question whether there are many there.”
Bert Evey, Canton, organizer for the Federation of Labor, said that the strike had gained 500 per cent in men that have walked out since the strike began. She charged newspapers with distorting the truth. She said there had been no vote taken anywhere to go back to work and that men are not returning to work. He said Youngstown and Cleveland wore closed and that four mills in Canton and two in Massillon are down.
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From the Buffalo Evening News of September 30, 1919:
Mother Jones Coming.
Mother Jones, who has figured in strikes of miners for the last 25 years, will come to Buffalo Thursday night to address steel workers, it was announced by Harry C. Thompson, member of the steel strike committee which has charge of the securing of speakers. Mr. Thompson said he had received a telegram direct from William Z. Foster, secretary of the national strike committee, saying that Mother Jones would come here.
An effort will be made to have National Organizer Tetloe [Tetlow] of Pittsburgh of the Mine Workers’ union speak at the meeting Thursday night, Mr. Thompson said. The strikers will try to secure the Broadway auditorium for the meeting.
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Note: Emphasis added throughout.
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SOURCES
The Pittsburgh Post
(Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania)
-Sept 24, 1919
https://www.newspapers.com/image/86509026
-Sept 25, 1919
https://www.newspapers.com/image/86509046/
The Pittsburg Press
(Pittsburg, Pennsylvania)
-Sept 24, 1919
https://www.newspapers.com/image/144827159
The Evening Repository
(Canton, Ohio)
-Sept 29, 1919, pages 1 & 10
https://www.genealogybank.com/]
The Daily Times
(New Philadelphia, Ohio)
-Sept 29, 1919
https://www.newspapers.com/image/81698163
https://www.newspapers.com/image/81698178/
Buffalo Evening News
(Buffalo, New York)
-Sept 30, 1919
https://www.newspapers.com/image/352621806
IMAGE
Mother Jones, Chg Tb p120, Oct 26, 1919
https://www.newspapers.com/image/355273232/
See also:
Hellraisers Journal –Wednesday October 29, 1919
Mother Jones News for September 1919, Part I
Duquesne, Pennsylvania – Mother Jones Arrested for Organizing Steel Workers
Hellraisers Journal – Thursday October 30, 1919
Mother Jones News for September 1919, Part II
Cleveland, Ohio – Mother Speaks at Convention of United Mine Workers
Tag: Great Steel Strike of 1919
https://weneverforget.org/tag/great-steel-strike-of-1919/
Investigation of Strike in Steel Industries
Hearings Before the Committee on Education and Labor,
United States Senate, Sixty-sixth Congress, First Session,
Pursuant to S. Res. 202…..
-United States Senate, Committee on Education and Labor
U.S. Government Printing Office, 1919
https://books.google.com/books?id=vV4Fcdkmps4C
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Homestead Strike Song – Carrie Nation & the Speakeasy