Hellraisers Journal: “Women The Worst” -Easily Led by Mother Jones to “Riot and Revolution”

Never mind if you are not lady like,
you are woman-like.
God Almighty made the woman and
the Rockefeller gang of thieves made the ladies.
-Mother Jones

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hellraisers Journal: Sunday October 8, 1916
New York, New York – Mother Jones Blamed for Thursday’s “Riot”

Mother Jones, UMWJ, Feb 10, 1916

When a few of the wives of striking street carmen, out of the 500 in attendance Thursday afternoon at Mozart Hall, left the meeting and proceeded to attack a scab-run railway car, the kept press of New York City decided that this constituted a “riot” and put the blame for the disturbance on the “wild talk” of Mother Jones. There will be no apology forthcoming from Mother Jones who told reporters yesterday:

Let the working women realize what they can do and they will join with the men, and industrial troubles will soon be over.

From the New York Evening World of October 6, 1916:

WOMEN THE WORST

THE rioting women responsible for the disgraceful scenes at Eighty-sixth Street and Third Avenue yesterday afternoon furnish an example of the peculiar danger of letting professional agitators practice upon female audiences.

Even the most militant male advocates have failed to incite the striking car men to any such concerted acts of violence as those indulged in by these hundreds of women after listening to wild talk from Mother Jones.

Women are more easily persuaded to riot and revolution than men. Respect for law restrains them less, and beyond a certain pitch of excitement fear of consequences restrains them not at all.

There is no reason to believe that yesterday’s disturbance, though serious, was any thing more than sporadic. There is little real violence left in a strike which from the first has been most effectively and admirably handled by the police.

But for the sake of order and decency “Mother” Jones and others of her class should be cared for, until the strike is wholly a thing of the past, in some retreat where they can disturb nobody’s peace but their own.

———-

From The New York Times of October 7, 1916:

‘MOTHER’ JONES SAYS SHE APPROVES RIOT;
—–
Has No Apology to Offer for Thursday’s Outbreak,
She Says in a Speech.
—–
ADDRESSES 5,000 STRIKERS
—–

Those who expected still greater thrills yesterday from the infusion of the fighting personality of “Mother” Jones into the transit strike situation were disappointed.

“Mother” talked to reporters; she stirred 5,000 strikers to near-frenzy with one of her picturesque speeches; she furnished the police with her temporary street address here, and asserted her willingness to add the Tombs to her already long list of “jails I have known.”

But the police, though they followed the Western woman’s movements closely, showed no inclination to arrest her, and the strikers issued from the meeting at which she had harangued them, surveyed overwhelming details of police, and went home.

Police Commissioner Woods announced that a police matron who had attended a meeting of women on Thursday, which was followed by a riot, had reported that the speaker said nothing of an inflammatory nature. The report will be presented to a Magistrate.

With all the skill of a practiced orator, “Mother” Jones swayed the gathering of strikers in Harlem River Casino, talking for the most part in modulated tones, but sending her voice to a shrill scream when it suited her purposes. she described the police as “uniformed murderers,” adding:

I’m not afraid of Police Commissioner Woods or God Almighty. We build the jails and we are not afraid to go into them. I’ll raise as much hell in jail as I would out of it.

She threatened to organize an army of women in other States and bring them here to stop police outrages if New York women didn’t stop them, and then denounced the newspapers for having taken the strike stories off the front pages.

[She continued:]

They say I started the riot. Well, I’m not going to say whether I did or not. Anyway, I’m not going to make any apology. If the police are organized to shed our blood we are going to organize to shed the other side’s blood.

Tell the Mayor and your Councilmen and Police Commissioner that if they want to hang me, let them hang me, but when I am on the scaffold I’ll cry “Freedom for the working classes!” and when I meet God Almighty I’ll have him damn them.

The strikebreakers are rats; I’d know what to do if they came and took bread from my house.

Several men, union leaders, addressed the meeting, blaming the police for the rioting and denying the traction heads’ assertions of victory.

“Mother” Jones shook hands with a police captain as she emerged from the hall and admonished him: “Don’t you dare hurt my boys.”

[She said to reporters:]

Organized labor has not yet learned the lesson of lining up its women. The plutocrats have learned it. They give their women suffrage, prohibition, and other fads to keep their minds busy. Labor must get its women thinking of getting bread and other necessities. Let the working women realize what they can do and they will join with the men, and industrial troubles will soon be over.

…Several women accused of strike disorder during the riot of Thursday were held for the Grand Jury yesterday.