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Hellraisers Journal – Thursday October 26, 1911
Mother Jones News Round-Up for August 1911, Part I
John O’Neill, Editor of Miner’s Magazine, Speaks in Defense of Mother Jones
From Proceedings of W. F. M. Convention, Butte, August 2, 1911:
[Excerpt from Address of John O’Neill
-Editor of Miners Magazine]
We [the W. F. M. executive board and the John O’Neill] have been arraigned by the Wallace committee because the editor deemed that he was justified to train the editorial guns of the Magazine on the dishonesty, immorality and drunkenness of J. Mahlon Barnes, the national secretary of the Socialist party. For some time the editor has known that the office of the Socialist party at Chicago could not be classed as a place fit for the inmates of a Sunday school, and in editorials of a general character, attempted to arouse the membership of the Socialist party to the fact that “something was rotten in Denmark,” and suggested that there should be a house–cleaning. Editorials of a general character are not feared by criminals, and it is only when an editor becomes specific and points out the crime and the criminal that there is heard a howl of indignation from men and women who realize that lightning is striking close to where they live. The editor who informs the people of a city that the community is infested with criminals, does not arouse the antipathy of the criminals, but when an editor brands John Jones as a burglar, Sam Brown as a foot–pad, and Jim Smith as a porch climber, such an editor, by striking close, is making it tropical for criminals. To say that the Socialist party needed fumigation officially or to declare that the Western Federation of Miners has a number of Pinkertons in its member ship, would arouse but little excitement; but when an editor points the finger of accusation at the culprits and names the crimes of which they are guilty, their masks of righteousness are pulled on and some people exclaim, “The editor has a personal grudge.”
The editor has no personal grudge against the secretary of the Socialist party, but when the report of an investigating committee which white–washed Barnes reveals the fact that twelve empty whiskey bottles were found in the office of Barnes, when the report of that committee shows that a stenographer of the gentler sex is found at hotels until long after midnight taking dictation from male members of the national committee of the Socialist party, and that when that report discloses that Barnes did not hold in his possession one single shred of positive evidence that he had liquidated the financial obligation that existed between himself and “Mother” Jones until he was forced to pay the obligation through a threat of an action in court, and when a quintet of conspirators who voted for themselves to serve on a committee, give angelic virtues to a “booze–fighter,” a blackmailer, and “ free–lover, ” the editor of the Miners’ Magazine concluded that it was time that members of the Western Federation of Miners who are socialists and pay per capita tax, should know something of the official conduct of the leading official of the Socialist party of America.
Had the report of the investigating committee which white–washed Barnes, cast no reflection on the honor of that silvery–haired woman who has been crowned the “Queen of the Miners,” the editor of the Miners’ Magazine might have refrained from using his pen to hold up to the arclight some of the frailties that affect the Socialist party officially, but when Barnes and his white-washing committee herald through a document published in the official bulletin of the Socialist party, that “Mother” Jones is a black–mailer, then no power on earth can restrain the editor of the Miners’ Magazine from denouncing such an infamy and defending the woman who has given the best years of her life to lift laboring humanity to a higher plane of civilization. That report of the investigating committee branded “Mother” Jones as a black mailer,” and gave credentials of honor and integrity to the libel on manhood who had used his ingenuity in an attempt to bilk her out of the sum of $200.
I cannot forget that when the storm raged in Colorado, that when the members of the Western Federation of Miners in Cripple Creek and Telluride were torn from their homes, that when the wails of wives and the cries of children could be heard as they saw husbands and fathers brutally slugged by the hired thugs of the mine owners and driven at the point of the bayonet to bull–pens and freight trains, that “Mother” Jones, the woman blackmailed by Barnes and a subsidized committee, sent $500.00 to the Western Federation of Miners to help feed the women and children whose protectors were driven beyond the borders of the state by the brutal power of armed Hessians farmed out to a Mine Owners’ Association.
Will the committee of Wallace Miners’ Union and Globe Miners’ Union, tell me that the editor of the Miners’ Magazine shall remain mute and silent in the defense of a woman who has faced the injunctions of courts, been thrown into bull–pens and pest houses, and who never flinched or faltered before the rifles of State militia or federal troops in her loyalty to the cause of unionism? Shall the Wallace committee and Globe Miners’ Union tell me that I shall not wield my pen or raise my voice in resenting the aspersions cast upon the tried and true woman, who, for thirty years, has stood beneath the folds of labor’s flag to give the best that was in her to combat the machinations of corporate despotism and to lead men on labor’s battlefield closer to the goal of economic liberty? The editor is not an ingrate. Within his memory is treasured the history of the struggles and sacrifices of the dauntless woman, who even now in her 78th year, as her eyes are growing dim and her step faltering, is still fighting the cause of suffering humanity, and the editor refuses to shackle his pen or imprison his tongue and permit this woman to be maligned by a “booze fighter,” blackmailer and “free lover,” who has been Loramerized by a quintet of white–washers who voted for themselves to serve on an investigating committee .
[Photograph added.]
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