Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones, Joseph and Laura Cannon Speak to Striking Miners and Families in Michigan Copper Country

9th August 202310th August 2023 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Quote Mother Jones My Life Work, Cton Gz June 11, 1912, ISR p648, Mar 1913 —————

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday August 9, 1913
Michigan’s Copper Country – “Fiery” Mother Jones and the Cannons on the Scene

From the Escanaba Morning Press of August 8, 1913:

COPPERDOM IN DREAD
CRISIS IS IMPENDING
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Houghton, Mich., Aug 7.-The general impression in the district affected by the copper mine workers’ strike is that a crisis impending through the presence of Mother Jones and Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Cannon, three fiery orators of the Western Federation of Miners. Persons who have had an opportunity in other strikes to see these people in action say they likely to inflame the strikers and their families to such a pitch of enthusiasm as may result in a reoccurrence of the of the first week of the strike.

The leaders of the strike here, Messrs. Mahoney, Miller and Lowney, have counselled peace in all their recent speeches, have the strikers to preserve law and order and to wait with determination because they are going to win.

But the speeches made by Cannon and his wife [Laura Gregg Cannon] at the Kansankoti hall, Hancock, Tuesday night were certainly not pacific. They aroused more enthusiasm than any speakers previously heard here since the strike opened and gave a good forecast of the result of their later speeches.

The strikers are for the most part phlegmatic Huns, Croatians and Finns, members of races not given to vociferous outbursts. If the Jones and the Cannons of the strike forces can stir these people up something more exciting than has been seen in the past week may be expected.

Mother Jones and Mrs. Cannon have reputations for exciting the women of strike districts to a point of frenzy resulting in rioting. Something of this sort is feared.

An example of the dangerous potentiality in Mother Jones can be seen in the interview given out by her at Calumet Tuesday afternoon [August 5th]. She said:

I’m a socialist, Why shouldn’t I be? That is the party that stands ready to help the working man.

I can’t see the need for the militia. Take a plumber and make him a major and he swells up like a toad and seems to forget that he is a workingman. The struggle is between the employer and employee and the state ought to let them fight it out. The strikers don’t believe in damaging property or the destruction of lives and I always impress on the men that they shouldn’t do damage.

They threw me into the bull pen in West Virginia, but before then, I went with 16 representatives of the miners to see the governor. When they heard I was coming, the governor wired for the fire department and the police and the legislators crawled under their desks and cried, “Is she coming?” The firemen came running up the streets without their socks. I had the devil scared out of the whole bunch of sewer rats. An old woman like me, over 80 years old. They thought I was coming to murder them, I guess.

What do you think the charge was they arrested me on. Stealing a field gun, my dears, and the damn fools were looking for it in the hills for months.

Ah, boys this is a terrible thing to go through. I hope you don’t see the like here. I saw my brave boys, who I know would not commit a crime, taken from their homes to far-away jails while their wives and babies screamed for their husbands. I raised my hand to heaven and prayed for their safe return.

And they talk about the red flag, bless you. Why, don’t they know the red flag was the first flag hoisted at Lexington, that a farmer who didn’t have time to put his shirt on went into the ranks of the bloody Sassenachs [English persons] and waved his red shirt in the air to cheer his comrades. Don’t they know the red bar is the first on the flag, signifying that blood was shed for the union?

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Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones Arrives in Michigan’s Copper Country to Support WFM Strikers, Greeted by Great Throng

8th August 20239th August 2023 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Quote Mother Jones My Life Work, Cton Gz June 11, 1912, ISR p648, Mar 1913 —————

Hellraisers Journal – Friday August 8, 1913
Copper Country, Keweenaw Peninsula, Michigan – Mother Jones Arrives

From The Calumet News of August 5, 1913:

[……]

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Hellraisers Journal: International Socialist Review: John Murray on Unity of Japanese and Mexican Workers at Oxnard, Part III

7th August 20238th August 2023 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Quote June 8, Lizarraras to Gompers re Unity of Japanese n Mexicans at Oxnard CA, ISR p78, Aug 1903 —————

Hellraisers Journal – Friday August 7, 1903
Oxnard, California – J. Murray on Unity of Japanese and Mexican Laborers, Part III

From The International Socialist Review of August 1903

A Foretaste of the Orient

[-by John Murray Jr.]

[III of III]

The San Francisco Call
March 28, 1903

Frightened at the turn [the strike] had now taken, Major Driffel, of the Beet Sugar Company, asked for a joint meeting of committees from the unions, the farmers and the company. The first day’s conference came to nothing, but at the second meeting the employers realized that they were facing a labor trust that had cornered all the available labor power in the valley, and so the men’s scale of prices was agreed to, with an additional pledge that all the idle union men would be immediately employed.

Twice, after this, the company tried to import a carload of scabs from Los Angeles-even going so far as to lock the last shipment in its car and receive them at the station with armed guards-but each time the new men joined the union as soon as they reached Oxnard-the last lot escaping from the car windows.

At this juncture, the Los Angeles County Council of Labor passed resolutions favoring the organization of all Asiatics now in California. This was done upon the recommendation of Comrade F. C. Wheeler, organizer for the A. F. of L. in Southern California, who had visited Oxnard, organized the two unions, and was much impressed by their fighting qualities.

So far everything was well with the beet thinners, the company whipped in the first battle of the local class-war and the field hands unionized. But a most unexpected and disheartening blow capped the climax of their struggles-a blow from behind. Samuel Gompers, while granting the Mexicans all rights and privileges, refused to grant the Japanese union a charter, and in his letter to Secretary Lizarraras made the following remarkable statement:

It is further understood that in issuing this charter to your union, it will under no circumstance accept membership of any Chinese or Japanese. The laws of our country prohibit Chinese workmen or laborers from entering the United States, and propositions for the extension of the exclusion laws to the Japanese have been made on several occasions.

In making such an extraordinary ruling, President Gompers has violated the expressed principles of the A. F. of L., which states that race, color, religion or nationality, shall be no bar to fellowship in the American Federation of Labor.

California, alone, contains over forty thousand Japanese who, if unorganized, will be a continuous menace to union men.

“Better go to hell with your family than to heaven by your self,” said the speaker whose stirring words decided the Mexican union to send back its charter to President Gompers, along with the following letter:

Oxnard, Cal.,
June 8, 1903.

Mr. Samuel Gompers,
Pres. American Federation of Labor,
Washington, D. C.
Dear Sir: Your letter of May 13, in which you say: “The admission with us of the Japanese Sugar Beet & Farm Laborers into the American Federation of Labor cannot be considered,” is received.
We beg to say in reply that our Japanese brothers, here, were the first to recognize the importance of co-operating and uniting in demanding a fair wage scale.
They are composed mostly of men without families, unlike the Mexicans in this respect.
They were not only just with us, but they were generous. When one of our men was murdered by hired assassins of the oppressors of labor, they gave expression of their sympathy in a very substantial form.
In the past we have counciled, fought and lived on very short rations with our Japanese brothers, and toiled with them in the fields, and they have been uniformly kind and considerate. We would be false to them and to ourselves and to the cause of Unionism if we, now, accepted privileges for ourselves which are not accorded to them. We are going to stand by men who stood by us in the long, hard fight which ended in a victory over the enemy. We therefore respectfully petition the A. F. of L. to grant us a charter under which we can unite all the Sugar Beet & Field Laborers of Oxnard, without regard to their color or race. We will refuse any other kind of charter, except one which will wipe out race prejudices and recognize our fellow workers as being as good as ourselves.
“I am ordered by the Mexican union to write this letter to you and they fully approve its words.

J. M. Lizarraras,
Sec’y S. B. & F. L. Union, Oxnard.

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Hellraisers Journal: International Socialist Review: John Murray on Unity of Japanese and Mexican Workers at Oxnard, Part II

6th August 20238th August 2023 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Quote June 8, Lizarraras to Gompers re Unity of Japanese n Mexicans at Oxnard CA, ISR p78, Aug 1903 —————

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday August 6, 1903
Oxnard, California – J. Murray on Unity of Japanese and Mexican Laborers, Part II

From The International Socialist Review of August 1903

A Foretaste of the Orient

[-by John Murray Jr.]

[II of III]

The San Francisco Call
March 27, 1903

[After the murder of Louis Vasquez] the unarmed union men were horrified but not frightened. They pursued and captured the fleeing Arnold, and, after disarming him, handed him over to the police. Sheriff McMartin himself told me that if it were not for the protection afforded by the union leaders, Arnold would have been hung on the spot. In twenty minutes the whole affair was over. No arrests were made, because none but “strike breakers” were guilty of assault, and the next day the daily press all over the country broke out with scare heads telling of the “Riot in Oxnard.”

Proof of the complicity of the town and county officials was quick to follow. The place of holding the inquest was twice changed from one town to another-making the summoning of witnesses a most difficult feat-and the dead man’s body hurriedly given to the unions on two hours notice in such a decayed condition that immediate burial was necessary, thereby attempting to prevent the public demonstration of a big funeral. But in spite of this most vile scheme, nearly a thousand men escorted the body to its grave. Japanese and Mexicans, side by side, dumb through lack of a common speech, yet eloquent in expressions of fraternity, marched with uncovered heads through the streets of Oxnard. On the hearse was a strange symbol to Western eyes, a huge lotus flower-an offering from the Japanese union.

From the highest to the lowest, the officials of the county acted as one man in their attempts to suppress public investigation, the final proof of which culminated in the act of the district attorney, Selby, who refused to hold a preliminary examination of Deputy Constable Arnold, although nearly a dozen witnesses testified, at the inquest, that Arnold shot an unresisting union man in the neck and precipitated the killing.

The worth of the Japanese and Mexicans as labor organizers was now put to proof. At the Japanese headquarters there was system like that of a railroad office or an army in the field. They had a well-trained corps of officers-secretaries, interpreters, captains of squads, messengers, and most complete system of information. A map of the valley hung on the wall, with the location of the different camps of beet thinners plainly marked. Yards upon yards of brown paper placards were constantly being tacked up, giving in picturesque Japanese lettering the latest bulletins, directions or orders.

Meetings of the executive committees from the two unions were constantly being held for agreement as to mutual action. I was intensely interested at the manner in which they got over the difficulties of language at the conferences. The joint committees would gather around a long table-at opposite ends sat the respective presidents, secretaries and interpreters-and first the question to be discussed would be started in English, then each nationality in turn would listen to an explanation of the affair in its own language and come to the conclusion; then the results would be again stated in English and the final agreement recorded by the secretaries. Respect for order was a marked feature of these meetings, each nationality keeping politely silent while the other had the matter before it for discussion and decision. The innate courtesy, which is always found in Spanish blood, was fully equaled by the decorum of the Japanese.

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Hellraisers Journal: International Socialist Review: John Murray on Unity of Japanese and Mexican Workers at Oxnard, Part I

5th August 20237th August 2023 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Quote June 8, Lizarraras to Gompers re Unity of Japanese n Mexicans at Oxnard CA, ISR p78, Aug 1903 —————-

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday August 5, 1903
Oxnard, California – J. Murray on Unity of Japanese and Mexican Laborers, Part I

From The International Socialist Review of August 1903

A Foretaste of the Orient

[-by John Murray Jr.]

[I of III]

The San Francisco Call
March 25, 1903

The town of Oxnard is in Ventura county, about sixty miles north of Los Angeles, and was founded by the American Beet Sugar Company, in which Henry T. Oxnard is the central figure. On the evening of March 24, of the present year, the Associated Press dispatches announced that there was “riot” in Oxnard — that the Japanese and Mexican unions were terrorizing the town, shooting and killing peaceable non-union men, whose only desire was to exercise the right of American citizens and work for any wage they chose.

Being within a few hours’ ride of the place, the next morning’s train carried me to the gates of the sugar factory. My only companions on the car were a parcel of drummers, who were quite naturally anxious to know just how peaceful a state the town might now be in. To this end anyone who might know, and especially the conductor, was cross-questioned in a most thorough manner:

“How many men were killed-could the sheriff control the situation-was it safe for a traveling man to go about his business on the streets?” were some of the queries that received apparently confusing replies.

“Yes, there was a man killed and four others wounded-all union men-and the town is now quiet.”

“How’s that,” said a salesman for a wholesale hardware firm, “union men start a riot and only union men shot? Something queer about that! I know a house that shipped revolvers here last week-who bought ’em, that’s what I’d like to know. Couldn’t have been the unions if all the dead men are on the other side,”-which was without doubt a common sense conclusion from a purely business point of view.

Certainly the town seemed quiet, as I walked up from the station, the only noticeable thing being a little squad of Japanese union pickets that met the train and were easily recognized by their white buttons labeled “J. M. L. A.” (Japanese-Mexican Labor Association) over the insignia of a rising sun and clasped hands. Oxnard was full of those white buttons-and when the first thousand of them had been distributed, and no more obtainable, hundreds of beet thinners put red buttons in their button holes to show that they were union men.

On the presentation of my blue card, I was warmly welcomed at headquarters by J. M. Lizarraras and Y. Yamagachi, secretaries of the Mexican and Japanese unions. They had a plain tale to tell, and one which I found was fully borne out by facts known to all the towns folk-for even the petty merchants, strange to say, freely acknowledged that the men had been bullied, swindled and shot down, without reason or provocation.

The Beet Sugar Company had fostered the organization of a scab contracting company-known as the Western Agricultural Contracting Company-whose double purpose was to reduce the price of thinning beets from five to as low as four and a quarter dollars an acre, and at the same time undermine and destroy the unions. Not content with the lowering of wages, they also forced the men to accept store orders instead of cash payments, with its usual accompaniment of extortionate prices for the merchandise sold. These tricks, of course, are as old as the hills, and consequently when the men rebelled there was a great surprise among the labor skinners, who had no idea that Japanese and Mexicans would ever have wit enough to unite for mutual protection, or that if they did temporarily unite, their organization could possibly last for any length of time, with the obstacles of different tongues, temperaments and social environments to bring speedy wreck to such a union. But the men did organize, did hang together-in spite of the rain of bullets which were poured down upon them — and finally whipped Oxnard’s beet sugar company, with its backing of millions.

To Socialists it is needless to point out that to whip a capitalist to-day means nothing more than that you must fight him again to-morrow, but the significance of this particular skirmish, in the great class war, lies in the fact that workers from the Occident and Orient, strangers in tongues, manners and customs, gathered together in a little western village, should so clearly see their class interest rise above all racial feelings of distrust.

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Hellraisers Journal: Paterson Textile Strikers’ Reply to the Silk Manufacturers: “We Won’t Scab Under the Flag”

4th August 20236th August 2023 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

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Hellraisers Journal – Monday August 4, 1913
Paterson Strikers Won’t Scab Under Flag; Quinlan Goes to Prison

From The Progressive Woman of August 1913:

From the Appeal to Reason of July 26, 1913

-Patrick Quinlan Taken to State Penitentiary at Trenton by Ryan Walker:

-Quinlan’s Own Story of the Paterson Strike:

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Hellraisers Journal: From The Comrade: “Child Slaves of Philadelphia” by John Spargo-Textile Mills Enslave Children

3rd August 20236th August 2023 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

Quote Mother Jones , March of Mill Children, fr whom Wall Street Squeezes Its Wealth, Lbr Wld p6, July 18, 1903 —————

Hellraisers Journal – Monday August 3, 1903
“Child slavery’s awful curse eats at the vitals of the nation.”

From The Comrade of August 1903:

Child Slaves of Philadelphia

By J. Spargo

CHILD slavery’s awful curse eats at the vitals of the nation. But nowhere to a more alarming extent than in the City of Philadelphia. The great textile industries rest upon the enslavement of children and women. Not even in the South are conditions worse than here. At present the majority of the mills are idle owing to a strike for shorter hours of labor, and the children, or those of them who have not been cowed into submission, being on strike they are free to enjoy the fresh air. But when the mills are working the boys and girls are caged up for sixty hours a week in the unhealthy atmosphere common to these industrial hells.

The present strike in an effort on the part of the textile workers to obtain a reduction of the working hours to fifty- five per week. Although wages are miserably low they are willing to forfeit five hours’ pay if only they can obtain the desired reduction of hours.

In 1892, the year of the great panic, wages in the textile industry fell enormously. The Dingley Tariff of 1894 was to restore wages and improve conditions all round. So the workers voted for “Protection.” They continue to vote for “Protection” despite the fact that wages are still lower than in 1892, and that women and children-especially children-are employed in ever increasing numbers.

The law fixes the minimum age at which children may be employed in factories at thirteen years. The cold, calculating brutality of men deliberately passing a law permitting boys and girls of thirteen to be employed sixty hours a week is even more disgraceful than neglect of the question altogether would be. It is certain, however, that the law has very little effect so far as maintaining even the minimum is concerned.

There are said to be sixteen thousand children at work in the textile industries of Philadelphia, and it is certain that thousands of these are below the legal age. Factory inspection is of the most perfunctory kind: false certificates are not difficult to obtain, and it is easy to use certificates of older children to cover any “suspects.” Moreover, the parents themselves are, in too many cases, ignorant enough-or poor enough-to swear falsely as to the ages of their children. In thousands of cases this is exactly what happens. No one who knows anything whatever about the subject doubts that there are thousands of children between the ages of ten and twelve employed in the textile industries of this city in normal times.

On the morning before “Mother” Jones started to march to New York with her little “army of crusaders” from the Kensington Labor Lyceum, early in July, I saw a number of such children of both sexes. Whenever “Mother” or myself asked one of them his or her age we got the stereotyped reply “Thirteen!” But even if one could believe they spoke the truth, the fact remains that not a few of them had been employed for periods ranging from a few months to two years or even more. One little fellow told me how, in the factory where he worked, when the inspector came round, the smallest of them were either hidden or sent out to play. In not a few cases the “inspection” of the factory all takes place in the employer’s office as every intelligent mill worker knows.

One of the effects of child labor, the illiteracy of adults, I have observed here and in the surrounding towns and villages to a much greater extent than anywhere else in this country. It is by no means an uncommon thing to meet native born Americans of twenty-five years of age, or over, unable to read or write even their own names! What a terrible price to pay for the folly and crime of child labor!

Of course, the first break in the ranks of the strikers took place among the children. Poor children! they entered upon the strike with light hearts. To them it meant a chance to rest; to straighten their little backs. But they were in most cases easily browbeaten by the brutal bosses or their agents. I heard of several cases where mothers took their children-literally dragged them-to the mill gates and forced them inside to “scab.” One little fellow I heard of was dragged and beaten by his mother right up to the mill door when he was roughly pulled inside by a bully of a foreman who hurled a volley of curses at the cowering child. And the burden of the little fellow’s cry was “Don’t make me scab! I’ll die first! Don’t make me scab!”

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Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones Holds Another Street Meeting in New York City and Pens Letter to President Roosevelt

2nd August 20235th August 2023 Janet RayeHellraisers Journal

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Hellraisers Journal – Sunday August 2, 1903
New York, New York – Mother Jones Holds Street Meeting, Pens Letter to President

From the Brooklyn Standard Union of July 31, 1903:

From the Philadelphia North American of July 31, 1903
-letter from Mother Jones to President Theodore Roosevelt:

New York,
July 30.

The Hon. Theodore Roosevelt
President of the United States
Oyster Bay, Long Island

Your Excellency-

Twice before have I written to you requesting an audience, that I might lay my mission before you and have your advice in a matter which bears upon the welfare of the whole nation.

I speak of the emancipation from the mills and factories of the hundreds of thousands of young children who are yielding up their lives for the commercial supremacy of the nation.

Failing to receive a reply to either of the letters, I went yesterday to Oyster Bay, taking with me three of these children that they might plead to you personally. Secretary Barnes informed us that before we might hope for an interview with you we must ﬁrst lay the whole matter before you in a letter. He assured me of its delivery to you personally, and also that it would receive your attention.

I have espoused the cause of the laboring class in general, and of suffering childhood in particular. It was for them that our march of principle was begun. We sought to draw the attention of the public to these little ones, so that sentiment would be aroused and ultimately the children freed from the workshop and sent to schools. I know of no question of to-day that demands from those who have at heart the perpetuity of this republic more attention.

The child of to-day is the man or woman of to-morrow, the one the citizen and the other the mother of still future citizens. I ask, Mr. President, what kind of citizen will be the child who toils twelve hours a day in an unsanitary atmosphere, stunted mentally and physically, and surrounded with often immoral inﬂuences. Denied education, he cannot assume the duties of true citizenship, and enfeebled physically he falls a ready victim to the perverting inﬂuences which our present economic conditions have created.

I grant you, Mr. President, that there are State laws which should regulate these matters, but results have proved that they are inadequate. In my little band are three boys, the eldest 11 years of age, who have worked in the mills a year or more, without interference from the authorities. All efforts to bring about reform have failed.

I have been moved to this, Mr. President, because of actual experience in the mills. I have seen little children without the ﬁrst rudiments of education and no prospect of acquiring any. I have seen little children with hands, ﬁngers and other parts of their bodies mutilated because of their childish ignorance of machinery.

I feel that no nation can be truly great while such conditions exist without attempted remedy.

It is to be hoped that our crusade on behalf of enslaved childhood will stir up a general sentiment and secure the enforcement of the present laws.

But that is not sufﬁcient as this is not alone a question of separate States, but of the whole nation. We come to you as the chief representative of that nation. I believe Federal laws should be passed and enforced governing this evil and including a penalty for violation.

If this is practicable, and I believe you will agree that it is, surely you can advise me of the necessary steps to pursue.

I have with me three children who have walked one hundred miles, serving as living proof of the truth of what I say.

If you decide to see these children, I will bring them before you at any time you may set.

Secretary Barnes has assured me on an early reply, and this should be sent care of the Ashland House, New York City.

Very respectfully yours,
Mother Jones

[Emphasis added.]