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Hellraisers Journal – Saturday October 23, 1920
Mother Jones News for September 1920, Part I
“Famous Woman Leader of Miners” Found in Missouri and Illinois
From the United Mine Workers Journal of September 1, 1920:
Labor Day Speakers
Notice of the following assignments of speakers for celebrations of the United Mine Workers of America on Labor Day have been received at the office of the Journal:
Philip Murray, International Vice President, New Kensington, Pa .
William Green, International Secretary Treasurer, Cambridge, Ohio.
Ellis Searles, Editor of the United Mine Workers Journal, Ernest, Pa.
Samuel Pascoe, President of District 30, Novinger, Mo.
Andrew Steele, International Board Member from District 25, South Fork, Pa.
William Turnblazer, International Organizer, Spadra, Ark.
Mother Jones, Kirksville, Mo.
William Feeney, International Organizer, Midland, Ark[Photograph added.]
From Missouri’s La Plata Home Press of September 2, 1920:
From the Springfield Illinois State Journal of September 3, 1920:
MOTHER JONES WILL SPEAK HERE TONIGHT
——-Mrs. Mary Jones, known in labor circles as “Mother” Jones. Will address the Springfield Federation of Labor tonight, at its meeting in the Odd Fellows’ temple, on conditions in the West Virginia coal fields. Her talk also will embrace questions dealing with profiteering.
John H. Walker, president of the Illinois State federation of Labor, also will speak at the meeting. His subject will be “The Co-Operative Movement in Illinois.”
The meeting will be open to the public. It will begin at 8 o’clock.
“Mother” Jones arrived in this city late yesterday afternoon. She was met by President Walker of the State Federation of Labor, and other labor leaders. While in the city, she is a guest at Mr. Walker’s home in South Walnut street. After her address this evening, she will continue on her western trip.
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From the Salem (Oregon) Capital Journal of September 6, 1920:
“Mother Jones” Speaks.
Kirksville, Mo., Sept, 6.-‘Mother’ Jones, famous woman leader of miners, is scheduled to deliver the principal address at the Labor day celebration here to day. Other speakers include R. T. Wood, president of the Missouri State Federation of Labor and Arch Helm of the Missouri district of the United Mine Workers of America.
From the Pittsburg (Kansas) Workers Chronicle of September 17, 1920:
MOTHER JONES SPEAKS.
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Describes Struggles of Mine Workers In West Virginia.
——-Mother Jones, on her way from W. Virginia to Kirksville, Mo., (where she was to deliver the principle Labor Day address at that place), dropped off at Springfield, Illinois, and on Friday night, September 3rd, spoke at an open mass meeting gotten up under the auspices of the Trades and Labor Council. It was the best attended I mass meeting that the Springfield Central Body has had in years.
Mother Jones was at her best and kept the audience interested for over an hour while she described the struggles of the Mine Workers in West Virginia. She told of her experiences in connection with the fight of labor during her connection with it. She related her experiences in the Utah miners’ strike when she was deported after having been incarcerated in a military prison. She told the story of the Ludlow massacre by the Baldwin-Feltz gunmen some of them acting under the guize of militia men for the state of Colorado, which state government was completely controlled by the John D. Rockefeller Standard Oil, non-union, labor-hating, labor-crushing interests. How she was incarcerated in the military prison there.
She spoke of the struggle in West Virginia in 1904 in Cabin Creek, when in order to speak at a meeting of the miners, she had to wade the creek for three quarters of a mile, in cold water, up to her waist, the roads running in the bed of the creek, and the Baldwin-Feltz gunmen refusing to permit her to cross over the company property to the railroad. She also was incarcerated for about a month in a military prison there.
She spoke of the injunctions issued by Judge Jackson of West Virginia, against her; of being put in jail for violating those injunctions, and her trials by Judge Jackson. She told of the sacrifice and privation by the men and women who laid the foundation for the present movement; how they not only were willing to go to jail, but they stood for being shot and killed, and in some instances hung as well, so that the conditions of children to come might be made better.
A burley coal miner was heard to exclaim, “if some of the cowardly yellow hounds that are officers now, had the courage of the men and women of the past, we would not have gotten the deal from Injunction Judge Anderson that we got-our wives and children would be better off than they are today.”
She also spoke of the inhuman and brutal action of the Pennsylvania Constabulary in brutally beating up and murdering men and women during the steel strike. She said it was impossible to describe the awful things they did-either by tongue or pen, in a way that would convey their actual fiendishness. (This is the kind of constabulary these same interests want to establish in Illinois.)
She appealed to the workers to read, think, organize, stand together and fight as never before. She said there were two roads ahead of us. One leads to a worse form or slavery than that of the dark ages of feudalism, and the other led to freedom, justice and liberty and liberty of the people-that it depends on the men and women of labor, and the organizations of labor more than all other influences on earth which one of these conditions would obtain in the future.
She urged them to join the Trade Union Movement-the Co-operative Movement-and to vote for representatives from their own ranks-to make laws-to interpret them, and to enforce them. The audience gave her a great ovation. Mother Jones was ninety years old the first of May, 1920.
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[Paragraph break added.]
From The Butte Daily Bulletin of September 21, 1920:
ORGANIZERS WILL STAY ON JOB IN W. VA.
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“Mother” Jones Gives Vent to Feelings [About]
Labor War in Mountain Coal Mining District.
——-(By the Federated Press.)
Chicago, Sept. 21.-“We organizers will stay on the job in the West Virginia coal fields, no matter what the odds,” declared Mother Jones, who stopped here on her way there from a western speaking tour. “
It’s a great pity that the organization work in the steel industry is being postponed until next year. Now’s the time to act.
When I went to West Virginia more than 20 years ago I told the boys I’d stick with them as long as they needed me and I mean to keep my promise. We’re not going to leave the field clear for the lies of the coal barons. The miners must know that their union is always on the job.
Mother Jones expressed regret that Judge Damron was not to preside at the trial of Sid Hatfield and the other Matewan citizens arrested in connection with the death of Baldwin-Feltz gunmen and natives of Matewan when the gunmen tried to evict miners from their homes.
But no matter what judge hears the case, I am sure the coal companies will not be able to railroad Hatfield and the rest of the lawabiding men under arrest.
The people everywhere in West Virginia are in a nervous condition. A death sentence on these innocent men would inflame the populace to an extent that even the coal company will not dare to try to bring it about.
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Note: Emphasis added throughout.
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SOURCES
Quote Mother Jones, Williamson WV, June 20, 1920, Speeches Steel p213
https://books.google.com/books?id=vI-xAAAAIAAJ
https://digital.library.pitt.edu/islandora/object/pitt%3A31735035254105/viewer#page/1/mode/2up
United Mine Workers Journal, Volume 31
(Indianapolis, Indiana)
-Jan 1-Dec 15, 1920
Official Publication of the United Mine Workers of America
https://books.google.com/books?id=2hg5AQAAMAAJ
https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/012261589
UMWJ – Sept 1, 1920
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=2hg5AQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.RA16-PA1
-page 5 – “Labor Day Speakers” (365 of 562)
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=2hg5AQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&pg=GBS.RA16-PA5
La Plata Home Press
(La Plata, Macon County, Missouri)
-Sept 2, 1920
https://www.newspapers.com/image/82324271/
The Illinois State Journal
(Springfield, Illinois)
-Sept 3, 1920, page 17
https://www.genealogybank.com/
Capital Journal
(Salem, Oregon)
-Sept 6, 1920
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn90066132/1920-09-06/ed-1/seq-3/
The Workers Chronicle
“The Official Organ of District No. 14, United Mine Workers of America”
(Pittsburg, Kansas)
-Sept 17, 1920
https://www.newspapers.com/image/484386045
The Butte Daily Bulletin
(Butte, Montana)
-Sept 21, 1920
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045085/1920-09-21/ed-1/seq-5/
IMAGE
Mother Jones IN Dly Tx p1, July 15, 1920
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85047611/1920-07-15/ed-1/seq-1/
See also:
Note: Despite much searching, unable to verify that Mother Jones fulfilled her speaking engagement at Kirksville MO on Labor Day. More research needed.
Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts & Doings of Mother Jones for August 1920, Part I:
Found Speaking at Princeton, West Virginia, Near Baldwin-Felts HQ
Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts & Doings of Mother Jones for August 1920, Part II:
Found Opining on Women, the Ballot, and “the Stormy Course of Labor”
For more on “Injunction Judge Anderson,” see:
Hellraisers Journal – Monday December 29, 1919
Mother Jones News for November 1919, Part II
Found in Washington, D. C., Not Afraid of Judge Anderson
For more on events covered during speech at Springfield IL, see:
The Autobiography of Mother Jones
CH Kerr, 1925
https://archive.iww.org/history/library/MotherJones/autobiography/
The Correspondence of Mother Jones
-ed by Edward M. Steel
University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985
https://books.google.com/books?id=EZ2xAAAAIAAJ
Sept 21, 1920-Page 212 (265 of 416)
https://digital.library.pitt.edu/islandora/object/pitt%3A31735057897435/viewer#page/264/mode/2up
Correspondence-Sept 21, 1920
Mother Jones at Charleston WV
-to Ryan Walker of New York Call
Mother states that she was in Kansas City on Sept 13th. She regrets that so few “old timers” remain. She visited with Snyders and states: “It is only a remnant of the old timers, are keeping it [Socialist Movement] going and they are all going over to the Labor party.”.
Re WV she states: “We have a terrific fight in the southern end of the state.”
She asks RW to send her The Call, stating: “we don’t get it here nowhere on the stand.”
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Gene Autry Sings “The Death of Mother Jones” 1931