Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts & Doings of Mother Jones for February 1918: Found in Chicago Supporting Packers at Alschuler Arbitration Hearings

15th March 201822nd October 2022 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Quote Mother Jones, Drive Out Bloodsuckers, OR Dly Jr, Feb 27, 1918

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Hellraisers Journal, Friday March 15, 1918
Mother Jones News for February 1918: Found at Hearings in Chicago

Towards the end of February, we found Mother in attendance at the Alschuler Hearings in Chicago. Federal Judge Samuel B. Alschuler was appointed by President Wilson to arbitrate differences between Packinghouse Workers, now in the midst of a massive organizing campaign, and the Stockyard Employers. The Alschuler Hearings were held in Chicago from February 11th until March 7th and a ruling is expect soon.

From the Oregon Daily Journal of February 27, 1918:

Mother Jones Fire Eater, Lg Crpd, St L Str, Aug 23, 1917

Chicago, Feb 27.-(I. N. S.)…..

Like a clap of thunder from a clear sky. “Mother” Jones of labor strike fame, came into the midst of representatives of the packers Tuesday during a five-minute recess in the hearing.

“Why am I here-why?” she exclaimed in a high pitched voice that penetrated the courtroom.

I’m here to tell you bloodsuckers where you get off at. I’m here to help drive out you crooks. I’ll not let up-I’ll not let up.

She directed her attack against John E. O’Hern, general superintendent of Armour & Co. plants, and others. Louis F. Swift, standing back some distance, heard her fiery statements.

A fist fight was threatened when Frank P. Walsh, counsel for the workers, read a series of letters indicating the packers sought to spike corrective legislation in various states.

———-

[Photograph added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: From the Appeal to Reason: A Shameful Picture of Poverty in “The Greatest Country in the World”

14th March 2018 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Plea for Justice, Not Charity, Quote Mother Jones

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Hellraisers Journal, Monday March 14, 1898
From the Salvation Army: A Picture of Poverty in America

From the Appeal to Reason of March 12, 1898:

A SHAMEFUL PICTURE.

Comrade Booth, of the Salvation Army gives us some facts that ought to make the “greatest country in the world” ashamed of itself. Read this and wonder no longer why socialism is growing:

The pauper world-there’s a world for you! A world with starvation. Then the vicious world, the gambler and the harlot. Last the criminal world-why, in this country alone there are 80,000 men and women who are behind bars. These are the three worlds in which our work lies. We have 415 different institutions, ninety of which are at work in the United States. We feed 250,000 hungry men, women and children every night and shelter 13,000 ragged men and women, of which 4,500 are in the United States. On cold nights the figures sometimes double. We give them hot and cold water with which to wash, and if the person is afflicted with those strange little pests-unknown, of course, in Denver-we furnish crematories for them. While the poor fellow is taking a bath we bake his garments, so that if he comes in 20,000 strong he goes out one single personality. In addition to this we furnish him with a rousing salvation meeting and give him something to think about. If a man falls we offer a hand to help him onto his feet again. We have sixty-nine institutions for the rescue of young girls. Talk of pity! Am I not talking to a people who are sending pity to that island Cuba? Yet in their midst they have objects of pity.

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Hellraisers Journal: From The Ohio Socialist: “Negro Comrades Establish Magazine” -The Messenger

13th March 2018 Janet RayeA. Philip Randolph

Nothing counts but pressure, pressure, more pressure,
and still more pressure through broad,
organized, aggressive mass action.
-A. Philip Randolph

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Hellraisers Journal, Wednesday March 13, 1918
New York, New York – Announcing a New Socialist Magazine

From The Ohio Socialist of March 10, 1918:

NEGRO COMRADES ESTABLISH MAGAZINE

A journal that will fill a long felt want is now published in New York. It is “The Messenger,” a Socialist monthly. Brilliantly edited by our colored comrades in New York city, A. Philip Randolph and Chadler [Chandler] Owen. The negroes of America are to be congratulated in having such able men in charge of their first revolutionary journal.

We predict a great success for them in their noble work. They have a vast field to themselves to cultivate, and there is no doubt that under their able leadership the negroes of America will soon take their rightful place in the ranks of the revolutionary army.

One dollar for eight months, $1.50 a year. Published at 230 William street, New York city.-Arizona Bulletin.

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Hellraisers Journal: From The Ohio Socialist: “Prison Song” and a “Picture with a Story…The Man Behind the Bars”

12th March 2018 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

For Freedom laughs at prison bars;
Her voice re-echoes from the stars,
Proclaiming with the tempest’s breath
A cause beyond the reach of death!
-Ralph Chaplin

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Hellraisers Journal, Tuesday March 12, 1918
From the Cook County Jail: “Prison Song” by Ralph Chaplin

From The Ohio Socialist of March 10, 1918:

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Hellraisers Journal: From the Socialist Montana News: “Waifs,” a Poem by Annie Q. Carter

10th March 2018 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

And hark! An echo from the past
Rings Down through all eternity-
“Ye did it not to these my lambs,
And so ye did it not to Me!”
-Annie Q. Carter

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Hellraisers Journal, Wednesday March 11, 1908
The Waif and the Petted Poodle by Annie Q. Carter

From the Socialist Montana News of March 5, 1908:

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Hellraisers Journal: From The Liberator: “The Peril of Tom Mooney” by Robert Minor -“Will You Let Them Do It?”

10th March 2018 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

There are no limits to which
powers of privilege will not go
to keep the workers in slavery.
-Mother Jones

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Hellraisers Journal, Sunday March 10, 1918
From San Francisco to Petrograd, Workers Fight for Life of Tom Mooney

From The Liberator of March 1918:

The Peril of Tom Mooney

By Robert Minor

THE story of the manner in which Tom Mooney’s death sentence was procured is stock conversation in American working-class homes. It has gone as far as the trenches of the European armies. There is hardly a Russian village where the name of “Tom Muni” has not been heard. Actually, the names of the witnesses in the case are spoken in Siberian villages, and a certain California district attorney is regularly cursed around the samovar.

The only evidence against Tom Mooney that a sensible man would listen to, was that of an Oregon cattleman, Frank C. Oxman, who came into the trial at the last moment, took the stand like a breeze from the prairie, swore that he was a country gentleman, loved his wife, and had seen Israel Weinberg drive Tom Mooney, Mrs. Mooney, Billings and an unidentified man to the scene of the crime in Israel Weinberg’s jitney bus, of the number of which car he had made a note on a telegraph envelope which he had in his pocket at that moment. He never made a mistake in his life in the identity of a person, as he was used to identifying cattle on the range….Mooney was condemned to die on the gallows.

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Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for February 1908-Part 2, Found at Girard, Kansas, at Third District Convention of Socialists

9th March 2018 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Quote Mother Jones, Palaces and Jails, AtR, Feb 29, 1908

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Hellraisers Journal, Monday March 9, 1908
-Mother Jones News Round-Up for February 1908, Part 2:
–Found Speaking at Girard, Kansas, at Socialist District Convention

Mother Jones, Mar 11, 1905, AtR

After February 19th, Mother Jones was found in the state of Kansas where she gave speeches in her usual rousing style on behalf of the Socialist Party. She was a special guest of the Appeal to Reason in Girard where she attended the Third District Convention and gave a speech which “aroused the audience to the wildest enthusiasm.”

The Dallas Morning News reported on February 28th that Mother had entered the state of Texas and was engaged to speak in Longview and in Dallas.

From the Appeal to Reason of February 29, 1908:

A GALA DAY FOR SOCIALISM
—–
The Third District Convention Stirs Things up in Girard
-Old Party Politicians Puzzled and Worried.
—–

Last Saturday, in the Girard court house, delegates from the Third district of Kansas met in convention and placed in nomination for congress Comrade Ben Wilson. Under the new primary law this nomination is merely an informal expression of the party’s desire and his name will necessarily have to be voted on at the regular primary in August. In the meantime a vigorous campaign will be carried on.

There were seventy-six regular delegates present, representing nearly every county in the district. There were several hundred out-of-town visitors at both afternoon and evening sessions, and the court house was crowded to the doors. Two years ago there were eleven delegates at our congressional convention in Parsons. The old party politicians viewed the assemblage with surprised wonder. They’ll be more surprised this fall.

The feature of the night session was a stirring address by Mother Jones. As usual, her clear, resonant voice, her earnest face, in its frame of silver hair, aroused the audience to the wildest enthusiasm. The air seemed electrified with the spirit of the revolution. Turning suddenly, as she pointed to Ben Wilson, she declared:

I’m coming back to the Third district this summer and fall and I’m going to help you fellows elect the first Socialist congressman. Then I’m going down to Washington, and when Ben and I get there you’ll see something doing.

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Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for February 1908-Part 1, Found Speaking to the Unemployed in Cincinnati

8th March 2018 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Quote Mother Jones, Over produce and UE, Cnc Pst p3, Feb 3, 1908

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Hellraisers Journal, Sunday March 8, 1908
-Mother Jones News Round-Up for February 1908, Part 1:
–Found Speaking to Unemployed in Cincinnati, Fort Wayne & Racine

On March 2nd Mother Jones was found speaking to the unemployed in Cincinnati, where, it was reported, she was met by an enthusiastic audience.

From the Cincinnati Post of February 3, 1908:

MOTHER JONES STIRS HEARERS
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Have you ever stopped to think that for the $12, $15 or $18 you have been earning each week for the past five or ten years, you have been producing for the man who employed you four or five times that sum?

-was the question asked an enthusiastic audience of 1500 at Central Turner Hall Sunday [March 2nd] by “Mother” Jones, Socialist worker.

Did you know that he has been stocking up for years the overplus of your production, so that he can make a clean profit from it without the expense of paying you wages?

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[Photograph added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: From the Appeal to Reason: “Labor Conditions in Steel Trust,” Seven-Day Work-Week Continues

7th March 2018 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Quote, Mary Heaton Vorse, Day and Night, Steel 1920
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Hellraisers Journal, Thursday March 7, 1918
Steel Town, U. S. A. – Some Improvements Yet Long Hours Continue

From the Appeal to Reason of March 2, 1918:

Labor Conditions in Steel Trust.

There has been some improvement in the conditions of labor in the steel mills, as the figures show, but it is an exceedingly slight improvement. The Steel Trust investigation of 1911-12, made by the Stanley committee of the House of Representatives, revealed an almost unbelievable state of exploitation, of long hours, of low wages and generally servile conditions. Those revelations were subsequently confirmed by the report of the Federal Labor Bureau, then under the direction of Charles P. Neill. Thereupon a committee of the more humane stockholders of the trust (the Cabot committee) insisted upon certain changes in conditions, and some of these changes have since been slowly under way. By 1913 there had been a slight reduction in hours. There has also been some increase in wages, but the increases have not kept pace with the rise in food prices.

Bulletin 218 of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, published last October, gave a detailed study of wages and hours in this industry to June, 1915. It is shown that in the blast furnaces 59 per cent, of the employes in 1915 worked seven days a week, as against 80 per cent, in 1911. In 1909 no one in the blast furnaces on full time was working less than 60 hours per week, while 26 per cent, were working form 60 to 83 hours, and 74 per cent, were working a full 84 hours. In 1915 6 per cent, were working under 60 hours, 53 per cent. from 60 to 83 hours and 41 per cent, a full 84 hours. Even with the reduction made, these still remain inhumanly long hours.

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Hellraisers Journal: Eugene V. Debs Opines on Religious Laws, Religious Liberty & the Sabbatarian Penitentiary

6th March 2018 Janet RayeEugene Victor Debs

Quote Debs Religious Bigots, Terre Haute Tb, Mar 1, 1908

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Hellraisers Journal, Friday March 6, 1908
Terre Haute, Indiana – Eugene V. Debs on Legislated Sabbatarianism

From the Terre Haute Tribune of March 1, 1908:

Progress by Prohibition

by Eugene V. Debs

Some well-meaning but deluded people think that all wickedness can be overcome and the millennium ushered in by prohibition. Anything they do not happen to like is bad, according to their ethics, and forthwith is put upon their prohibition list. These people strain at gnats and swallow camels. They throw a fit over a man taking a drink at 11:30 or playing a game of cards, but they are not concerned about wage-slavery, or child-sweating, which have a thousand victims where the saloon has one.

These people are not satisfied to be permitted to spend their Sundays as they choose, but they must see to it that others spend their Sundays in the same way. According to these fanatics, practically everything in town is to be closed Sunday except the churches. This means that Terre Haute is to be converted into a sabbatarian penitentiary. The gospel of gloom will then be triumphant and the spirit of bigotry and intolerance will seek other fields to conquer.

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A SHAMEFUL PICTURE.

NEGRO COMRADES ESTABLISH MAGAZINE

The Peril of Tom Mooney

A GALA DAY FOR SOCIALISM —– The Third District Convention Stirs Things up in Girard -Old Party Politicians Puzzled and Worried. —–

Labor Conditions in Steel Trust.

Progress by Prohibition

A GALA DAY FOR SOCIALISM
—–
The Third District Convention Stirs Things up in Girard
-Old Party Politicians Puzzled and Worried.
—–