Hellraisers Journal – Sunday October 24, 1920
Mother Jones News for September 1920, Part II Found in Stone Cutters’ Journal: Los Angeles Speech of March 7th
From The Stone Cutters’ Journal of September 1920:
Mother Jones Speaks in Los Angeles.
Los Angeles Times March 11, 1920
Mother Jones spoke to the workers in the Labor Temple in Los Angeles recently. She said in part:
Fellow Workers:-I came here to rest, but I never allow rest to interfere with an opportunity to spread my religion among the workers. First of all, I want to say to you secret service men, get out your books and pencils and come right up here on the platform, and listen closely to every word I say. You might learn something for your own good-some new ideas might percolate through your thick skulls, and you might form a desire to lead a cleaner, better, more useful life.
Fellow workers, you are today in a most critical position. You are either facing liberty and emancipation or else if you don’t wake u , you are going into the blackest, most abject slavery ever known by man in the history of this world.
We whipped the Kaiser abroad and all his autocrats; now, let’s clean ’em up at home.
The inhuman way in which the workers were dealt with in, the steel strike is a fair example of the Prussianism of big business. They tell you that the steel strike was lost, but I say to you that the steel strike was one of the greatest victories ever won by labor in this country—great, because 350,000 workers of all nationalities, and different tongues, stood shoulder to shoulder, and demonstrated what “solidarity” means. They paralyzed one of our strongest industries, and the supply of steel will not be normal for six months yet.
There’s a great cry going up now to Americanize these foreigners—that’s the trouble with them now, they are Americanized. Most of them were imported here 20 years ago or more by those patriotic profiteers, Carnegie, and Gary, to act as scabs during the Homestead strikes— they scabbed then, and broke that strike, but they’re Americanized now and there’s no scabs in their families any more. You can bet on that.
They have learned what true “Americanism” means, and they want it; they want freedom and decent working conditions and they’ll get it some day.
They’ve been slaving 12 and 14 hours a day, with a 24-hour shift every other Sunday. That’s not Americanism, and that’s why they struck. They are not machinery or animals; they’re human beings and they want a square deal.
First, a committee was sent to Judge Gary, but Gary wouldn’t meet them, so they had to strike . If I had been the President of the United States I would have sent a pair of United States marshals up to go get that Kaiser gang, and make him meet the committee. But I wasn’t the President, so a strike was the only way out.
I never monkey with these cheap, fool Governors. I jumped a train and went to the department at Washington. I told them a few things. I said this strike was not caused by the I. W. W., nor the bolsheviks, nor the syndicalists, nor the anarchists. It’s caused by your damned parasitic Garys and the likes o’ him.
Mass meetings were held night and day wherever we could get a chance. Men and women attended in throngs,
These foreigners arose as American citizens should arise.
I wish every worker had that same spirit. I wish I could speak as well of you fellows as I can those “foreign Americans.”
And their women were most noble through it all—they stuck and some starved, but they didn’t holler. You society pussycats, bow down on your knees and pay tribute to these devoted mothers who yet weave cloth to make homespun clothes for their men and children, who yet make rugs to furnish their shanties with. These are the mothers and wives of “Americans,” fearlessly standing, without flinching, to make a better world to live in. You are not good enough to lave their feet.
The steel strike was a disgrace to American history. Men and women were clubbed and beaten and killed by the gun men and the State constabulary-the Cossacks.
Men were handcuffed to posts and pulled down with weights, and tortured for refusing to scab. I know one man who was locked in a room by these uniformed rats, handcuffed and needles were stuck way down deep in the ends of his fingers, to make him return to work. He was a “Bohunk,” but he wouldn’t scab. ( She held the same needles up for exhibition.)
But we had a fine Y. M. C. A. and fine churches in that town, where the uplift of Jesus went on every day.
One night we got a soap box and the first three men who attempted to speak were arrested. I got up and said to the crowd, ” Men, stand like the boys of ’76.” I got arrested, too. A fellow standing on the curb says: “What are they doing? Jailing old gray-haired women?” So they arrested him. He was jailed for 36 hours without food and fined $25.
While I was in jail a committee of steel operators called on me. One of them said, in a weak, little Sunday school voice: “Mother Jones, you could do a lot of good if you stopped this agitation and radicalism. “I said: “You pay tribute to Christ and he was the first great agitator; Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, Abe Lincoln were radicals; Columbus, Newton, Edison and all your inventor’s were radicals. I’m 90 years old the first of May, 1920 , and I’m too old for you to teach me any new tricks; so you fellows clear out of here.”
One time in the West Virginia coal strike I waded three quarters of a mile across a river with 35 miners to hold a meeting. When we got across there were two machine guns trained on us. I walked right up to those machine gunners and told them these striking miners are not fighting you—they’re fighting the men who rob them to pay you.
Well, we held the meeting, talking on a soap box; a policeman came up and said I’d have to stop. I told him: “God Almighty has never yet made a man who could keep a woman from talking,” and I’ll scrape the gutter for bread before I’ll bow to the paid hirelings of the interests. I was arrested and 8,000 miners gathered around the jail. Finally I was turned loose. I stepped up into an automobile and said, “Boys, three cheers for Uncle Sam, three cheers for America; not Carnegies or Garys—but Lincolns and Jeffersons. They cheered, too, with leather lungs.
This is the most insane, most brutal most stupid age in all history—but you don’t realize it.
Women wept and children screamed at Ellis Island, just to kiss their daddy good-bye—but, no, their daddy was too dangerous; their daddy belonged to that handful of radicals who might over power 110 million people, and he must be deported quick.
When these foreigners arrived they came here with confidence in their hearts; at last they were in the land of their dreams; this was the day they had longed for; they pointed out the Statue of Liberty to their little children; they told them of this country’s democracy. Their bosoms swelled with pride; they breathed the air of freedom. The spirit of real brotherhood was in their souls. They were happy. But, how those dreams have been shattered, and how they have been crucified.
Why are you afraid of being called a bolshevik or an I. W. W. The I. W. W. is a working man’s labor union, and while I may not agree with him on everything, still he is a working man in the hands of the common enemy, and I’m with him, and that’s where you ought to be.
They say they’re trying to reform the country. Watch out for these reform workers–they are dangerous and treacherous.
Keep the reformers out of your labor unions–no limelight hunters to tell us what to do, and we don’t need the ministers, the lawyers or the doctors to tell us how to do it.
I never had a pill peddler, a jack-leg or a sky pilot, and when I die I don’t want any social parasites coming up to defend me, I’ll take a chance without you.
If you really want to help someone, there’s 92 wobblies in the pen, sent up from Chicago for five to twenty years for nothing.
I knew many of them; they were good Americans, and never did anything wrong in their lives. One of them left a wife and 6 kids; the wife had to go to work for $ 5 a week in a 10c store.
The little kids cried for their daddy and for enough food, but they couldn’t be had at $5 a week.
Yet these lady reformers back fallen women. You are the fallen women, for you are the cause of fallen women.
I’m not a lady; I’m a woman. God Almighty made the woman, but He never heard of a lady.
The United Mine Workers served loyally through the war; they bought nine Million dollars worth of Liberty Bonds and Stamps , and out of the uniformed miners who went overseas three thousand five hundred paid the supreme sacrifice for their country, and yet a Federal judge listened to his master’s voice and turned traitor to these men.
We build the jails and we pay the courts, the juries and the judges to jail US-serves us right if we haven’t any letter sense.
But we will have justice some day and you can’t stop it, Mr. Secret Service Man. (Put that down in your book.) I’m not a club lady—I don’t live in parlors. I live with the workers. I’ve got my ear to the ground and I know what I’m talking about.
My friends, the true history of the world’s labor movement has never yet been touched by human pen, but when it is written it will end the conflicts of nations.
Never again will men bow to royalty, and the divine right of tyrants has gone, too.
Revolution? Terrible condition. No, I never think of revolution. This government is all right. The American government is the greatest government in the world-it’s the politicians. Bring back the real America, the true America which was founded in blood by our liberty-loving forefathers-not the grafters.
Don’t fear jails; be Americans. America shall not perish on the altar of dollars.
Use the force of law-not the law of force. Organize and use the ballot-put your working men on the bench; put men in office who will stand for American institutions, and not for Wall Street.
Arise my brothers, be a true American, stand for human principles, stand for freedom, and in the days to come your children can look back and say, “My dad never scabbed on me.”
Note: Sadly, the International Oil Worker, from which this article was taken, cannot be found online, thus far. Most likely taken from April or May, 1920, editions. More research needed.
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