Tag: American Federation of Labor

Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for December 1909, Part II: Found in Philadelphia Speaking to Shirtwaist Makers

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones to Philly Shirtwaist Makers Dec 19, NY Call Dec 21, 1909———-

Hellraisers Journal – Monday January 10, 1910
Mother Jones News Round-Up for December 1909, Part II:
-Found in Philadelphia Speaking to Shirtwaist Makers

On Sunday evening, December 19th, Mother Jones spoke to shirtwaist makers of Philadelphia at meetings held at the Labor Lyceum and Mercantile Hall. By unanimous vote and to deafening cheers, a strike was declared and set to begin at 9 a. m. on December 20th.

From The New York Call of December 21, 1909:

[Mother Jones Speaks.]

Mother Jones, Elkhart IN Dly Rv p2, Crpd, July 19, 1909

The action of Director Clay in forbidding the holding of a meeting in the Arch Street Theater, last night, to declare the strike was severely criticised by Mother Jones, in her speeches. She denounced the city administration as roundly as she denounced the bosses, who, she declared, had become wealthy through the toil of the girls before her.

[She said:]

They have an Independence Hall down here on Chestnut street; I wonder what it means to those who, for some deep political purpose, prevented you from having independence in the way of having a meeting to assert your rights? Tomorrow morning I hope every girl in this hall will walk out of the shops and let the employers make the waists themselves. Walk out at 9 o’clock, and don’t wear your Sunday-go-to-meetings clothes.

Let the people see you. Let them see that you are going to strike the shackles of slavery off your body. Get the spirit of revolt and be a woman. It’s not a Mrs. Belmont or an Anne Morgan that we want, but independent workers who will assert their rights.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for December 1909, Part II: Found in Philadelphia Speaking to Shirtwaist Makers” →

Hellraisers Journal: International Socialist Review: “The Shame of Spokane” by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Part II

Janet RayeElizabeth Gurley Flynn
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Quote EGF, re Spk FSF, ISR p618, Jan 1910———-

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday January 2, 1910
Spokane, Washington – The Story of Joseph Thompson, Courageous Newsboy

From the International Socialist Review of January 1910:

The Shame of Spokane
—–

By Elizabeth Gurley Flynn.
—–

[Part II of II.]

IWW Spk FSF, Newsboy Joseph Thompson, ISR p615, Jan 1910

This same Judge Hinkle had made himself infamous in connection with the juvenile cases. Perhaps the most disgraceful affair of many connected with the Spokane free-speech fight was the raid on the hall December 1st, resulting in the arrest of eight little newsboys. Simple on the surface, it is a subtle attempt to undermine the right of a parent to teach a child ideas different from the established order. The children were taken to the chief’s office and put through a severe cross examination, after which they were locked up for the night.

“The third degree” on youngsters ranging in years from eight to sixteen is quite a credit to the Spokane detective force. Couldn’t you get evidence from grown-ups, Captain Burns, throwing light on the “secrets” and “conspiracy” of the I. W. W. without scaring it out of a lot of little boys? “The I. W. W. hall is no fit place for them,” said Prosecuting Attorney Pugh of these poor, ragged, little urchins who trudge the streets in their thin little shoes going in and out of saloons and cheap resorts all hours of the day and night. The parents of the boys with that innate respect for law came in fear and trembling to say that they had not sanctioned the children joining. One woman said she was too poor to buy her boy a necktie so let him wear the red one that a man gave him. The parents knew nothing of the I. W. W. and the little youngsters were rather deserted by the very ones who ought to know what’s wrong with conditions that force them to send their little ones on the streets this frosty weather.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: International Socialist Review: “The Shame of Spokane” by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Part II” →

Hellraisers Journal: “We can keep up the fight all winter.” -Elizabeth Gurley Flynn Reports from Spokane Free Speech Fight

Janet RayeElizabeth Gurley Flynn
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Quote EGF, Compliment IWW, IW p1, Nov 17, 1909———-

Hellraisers Journal – Friday December 3, 1909
Spokane, Washington – Elizabeth Gurley Flynn Reports from Scene of Battle

From the International Socialist Review of December 1909:

ISR IWW FSF, p483, Dec 1909

[Part I-Report from Spokane by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn]

Letter T, ISR p483, Dec 1909HE working class of Spokane are engaged in a terrific conflict, one of the most vital of the local class struggles. It is a fight for more than free speech. It is to prevent the free press and labor’s right to organize from being throttled. The writers of the associated press newspapers have lied about us systematically and unscrupulously. It is only through the medium of the Socialist and labor press that we can hope to reach the ear of the public.

The struggle was precipitated by the I. W. W. and it is still doing the active fighting, namely, going to jail. But the principles for which we are fighting have been endorsed by the Socialist Party and the Central Labor Council of the A. F. of L.

IWW Spk FSF JP Thompson, ISR p483, Dec 1909

The I. W. W. in Spokane is composed of “floaters,” men who drift from harvest fields to lumber camps from east to west. They are men without families and are fearless in defense of their rights but as they are not the “home guard” with permanent jobs, they are the type upon whom the employment agents prey. With alluring signs detailing what short hours and high wages men can get in various sections, usually far away, these leeches induce the floater to buy a job, paying exorbitant rates, after which they are shipped out a thousand miles from nowhere. The working man finds no such job as he expected but one of a few days’ duration until he is fired to make way for the next “easy mark.”

The I. W. W. since its inception in the northwest has carried on a determined, relentless fight on the employment sharks and as a result the business of the latter has been seriously impaired. Judge Mann in the court a few days ago remarked: “I believe all this trouble is due to the employment agencies,” and he certainly struck the nail on the head. “The I. W. W. must go,” the sharks decreed last winter and a willing city council passed an ordinance forbidding all street meetings within the fire limits. This was practically a suppression of free speech because it stopped the I. W. W. from holding street meetings in the only districts where working men congregate. In August the Council modified their decision to allow religious bodies to speak on the streets, thus frankly admitting their discrimination against the I. W. W.

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Hellraisers Journal: Clara Lemlich, Young Garment Worker, Calls for General Strike at Mass Meeting at Cooper Union Hall

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Clara Lemlich, Cooper Un Nov 22 re Uprising, NY Call p2, Nov 23, 1909———-

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday November 25, 1909
New York, New York – Clara Lemlich Calls for General Strike of Waist Makers

Clara Lemlich, ab 1910, Wiki
Clara Lemlich
“I want to say a few words.”

On Monday evening, November 22nd a mass meeting was held at Cooper Union Hall to consider the plight of New York’s waist makers, 70% of them young immigrant women. After listening through the long-winded speeches of the union leaders, a young garment worker arose from the crowd and demanded the opportunity to speak her mind. The New York Call of November 23rd describes the scene:

Clara Lemlich, who was badly beaten up by thugs during the strike in the shop of Louis Leiserson, interrupted Jacob Panken just as he started to speak, saying:

I want to say a few words.

Cries came from all parts of the hall, “Get up on the platform!” Wilting hands lifted the frail little girl, with flashing black eyes, to the stage, and she said simply:

I have listened to all the speakers. I would not have further patience for talk, as I am one of those who feels and suffers from the things pictured. I move that we go on a general strike!

As the tremulous voice of the girl died away, the audience rose en masse and cheered her to the echo. A grim sea of faces, with high purpose and resolve, they shouted and cheered the deliberation of war for living conditions hoarsely.

When Chairman Feigenbaum put Miss Lemlich’s motion to a vote there was a resounding roar of a yes throughout the hall, and once again the vast crowd broke into roars of applause. The demonstration lasted several minutes.

[Emphasis added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: The Nation: Mary Heaton Vorse on Civil Liberty, Steel Strikers and Pennsylvania Cossacks

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote MHV Immigrants Fight for Freedom, Quarry Jr p2, Nov 1, 1919———-

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday November 18, 1919
Pennsylvania Cossacks, Steel Strikers, and Civil Liberty

From The Nation of November 15, 1919:

Civil Liberty in the Steel Strike

By MARY HEATON VORSE

GSS, PA Cossacks in Clairton, Lt Dg p10, Oct 4, 1919

THE steel strike has been marked by the orderliness of the strikers on the one hand, and on the other by the sweeping denial of their civil rights, and by the brutality of that extraordinary body of men, the State Constabulary of Pennsylvania. When one states that in Homestead, for example, there was a reign of terror, that men were beaten for no cause and chased down the street into strange houses; that men and women were arrested and fined for no cause and their fines remitted under promise that they would go back to work; and that posters fomenting race hatred are even now in current circulation in the steel mills, the statements sound fantastic. Let the documents, however, speak for themselves. One may choose almost at random from a wealth of material. The cases cited are not isolated; town after town had its own story of terrorism to tell.

In spite of Judge Gary’s statement to the contrary, men were persecuted and dismissed for union activities.

Not only were such methods used to discourage the men from organizing, but the rights of free speech and free assembly were denied them. No meetings were allowed in Farrell, Monessen, and Donora. In McKeesport people were arrested while attending a meeting and fined excessively. Rabbi Wise was refused a permit to hold a meeting in Duquesne, the burgess of this town remarking with naive truth: “Jesus Christ couldn’t hold a meeting in Duquesne.” Since September 22 [the date the Steel Strike began] no meetings have been allowed in Pittsburgh except at the Labor Temple. The strike in that city is unpopular with the authorities. Because the sheriff does not like Mr. Foster, he arbitrarily takes away the workers’ civil liberties, though at no time has there been even a suggestion of disorder in Pittsburgh.

Before the strike was actually in progress, the State Constabulary was called in and an extra police force of 5,000 was deputized in Allegheny County alone. Among these deputies were Negro strike breakers—in the towns of Donora and Monessen—and this during a time when an epidemic of race riots had swept the country.

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Hellraisers Journal: “Closed Towns” by S. Adele Shaw for The Survey: Pittsburgh Steel District Contrasted with Ohio

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones, Strikes are not peace Clv UMWC p537, Sept 16, 1919———-

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday November 13, 1919
Intimidation in Pittsburg Steel District Contrasted with Ohio

From The Survey of November 8, 1919:

Closed Towns

Intimidation as It is Practised in the Pittsburgh
Steel District:—the Contrast in Ohio

By S. Adele Shaw

[Parts III-V of V]

GSS, Mother Jones, WZF, Organizers, Survey p64, Nov 8, 1919

III

THIS interlocking of mill and town officials explains not only the ease with which normal civil rights have been shelved, but the ease with which, under the guise of law enforcement, deputies and troopers get away with reckless action in the streets and alleys, and with which the petty courts turn trumped-up grounds for the arrest of labor organizers and strikers into denials of justice.

In Allegheny county Sheriff Haddock had, according to his own statement on October first, deputized 300 men for service under control of his central office and 5,000 mill deputies. Newspapers placed the figure early in the strike at 10,000. The mill police who in ordinary times are sworn in under the state provision for coal and iron police for duty in the mills only, are, since the strike, sworn in by the sheriff at the request of the companies. They have power to act anywhere in the county. They are under the direction of the mill authorities. Companies are required to file a bond of $2,000 for each man so deputized and are responsible for his actions.

It is the state constabulary, however, who have set the pace for the work of intimidation in the mill towns of Allegheny county. Responsibility for calling them in is difficult to fix. Since last February squads had been stationed at Dravosburg within easy reach of the steel towns; and the Saturday before the strike patrols were brought down into them. The sheriff denies that he called on the state for the troopers. The burgess of Braddock and the chiefs of police in Homestead and Munhall professed ignorance of the responsibility for their coming.

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Hellraisers Journal: “Closed Towns” by S. Adele Shaw for The Survey: Intimidation in Pittsburgh Steel District

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones, Strikes are not peace Clv UMWC p537, Sept 16, 1919———-

Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday November 12, 1919
Intimidation as Practiced in the Pittsburgh Steel District

From The Survey of November 8, 1919:

GSS Arrests at Homestead, Survey p58, Nov 8, 1919

Closed Towns

Intimidation as It is Practised in the Pittsburgh
Steel District:—the Contrast in Ohio

By S. Adele Shaw

[Miss Shaw spent the first two weeks of the strike in the Pittsburgh district for the SURVEY, and then crossed from Pennsylvania to the steel centers of Ohio, where civil liberties are preserved in the midst of the industrial conflict. A native of Pittsburgh, member of the staff of the Pittsburgh Survey, Miss Shaw brings experience as a social worker and as a journalist to her task of interpretation. The first draft of her article was submitted for criticism to public officials, strike leaders and mill executives. Facts were then checked up and incidents carried to their sources, and her narrative can be depended upon as the findings of a trained observer.—EDITOR.]

[Parts I-II of V]

I ARRIVED in Pittsburgh the evening of the third day of the steel strike [September 24th]. Through a gate to one side of me, as I stood in the Union Station, a line of foreigners perhaps twenty-five in number, Slavs and Poles, dressed in their dark “best” clothes, with mustaches brushed, their faces shining, passed to the New York emigrant train. Each man carried a large new leather suitcase, or occasionally the painted tin suitcase—a veritable trunk—appeared in the line. And there, not quite concealed by its wrapping, was the unmistakable portrait which one could picture in its setting over the mantle in the boarding-house just left. Men and baggage were leaving, as every night they leave from that station on that same train for New York and the “old country.”

Scarcely had the gate closed on the emigrant workers when a guard threw open an entrance gate through which marched, erect and brisk, a squad of state constabulary “Cossacks” they are called in the mill towns. Young men they were in perfect training—men with great projection of jaw developed, it almost seemed, to hold the black leather straps of their helmets firmly in place.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: “Closed Towns” by S. Adele Shaw for The Survey: Intimidation in Pittsburgh Steel District” →

Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts & Doings of Mother Jones for September 1919, Part III: Found Wherever a Good Fight For Freedom Is Going On

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones, Home Good Fight Going On, Ptt Prs p17, Sept 24, 1919———-

Hellraisers Journal – Friday October 31, 1919
Mother Jones News for September 1919, Part III
Her Home? “Wherever there is a good fight for freedom going on.”

From The Pittsburgh Post of September 24, 1919:

Mother Jones, crpd, Chg Tb p120, Oct 26, 1919

‘Mother’ Jones Heard
in Labor Trial
—–

“Mother” Jones, aged organizer for the United Mine Workers, appearing yesterday as a witness before Judge Richard H. Kennedy, gave her address as “wherever there is a good fight for freedom going on.”

She testified in the hearing of a large number of appeals from fines imposed by Mayor James S. Crawford in connection with a meeting held in Duquesne last September 7.

After leaving the stand “Mother” Jones declared that had been her first experience as a witness in “a regular court trial.” She was one of the organizers arrested, but was not fined. That was the first time, she said, that she had been placed behind bars, although she had been arrested more than once.

———-

[Photograph added.]

From The Pittsburgh Press of September 24, 1919:

“MOTHER” JONES FREED FOR LABOR ACTIVITY.
—–

“Mother” Jones was freed today following her arrest in the steel mill districts Sept. 7. She came before Judge Kennedy and was permitted to go without a fine.

“What is your age?” queried the court.

“Ninety on the first day of next May.”

“Where is your home?”

“Wherever there is a good fight for freedom going on,” replied the old lady, vigorously.

“You may go.”

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts & Doings of Mother Jones for September 1919, Part III: Found Wherever a Good Fight For Freedom Is Going On” →

Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts & Doings of Mother Jones for September 1919, Part II: Found in Cleveland Addressing Mine Workers’ Convention

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones, Strikes are not peace Clv UMWC p537, Sept 16, 1919———-

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday October 30, 1919
Mother Jones News for September 1919, Part II
Cleveland, Ohio – Mother Speaks at Convention of United Mine Workers 

From the New York Tribune of September 17, 1919:

Mine Workers Urged To Aid Steel Strike
—–
Appeals Made to Convention by Fitzpatrick
and “Mother” Jones, Who Oppose Delay

Mother Jones Crpd Women in Industry, Eve Ns Hburg PA p2, Jan 6, 1919

CLEVELAND, Sept. 16.-John Fitzpatrick, chairman of the national committee for organizing the iron and steel workers, and “Mother” Jones, the aged mine worker representative, appealed to-day to the convention of the United Mine Workers of America to support the steel workers in the projected steel strike. “Mother” Jones argued openly against any postponement, telling the miners to pay no attention to contrary reports, because the strike would come off as arranged next Monday. Rescinding of the strike call, she declared, would wreck the confidence of the steel workers in their organization.

Fitzpatrick refrained from mentioning the question of possible postponement, except indirectly, in his speech, but in conversations with delegates he declared himself firmly opposed to postponement of the walkout beyond Monday as weakening the chances of success.

———-

[Photograph added.]

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts & Doings of Mother Jones for September 1919, Part II: Found in Cleveland Addressing Mine Workers’ Convention” →

Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts & Doings of Mother Jones for September 1919, Part I: Arrested for Organizing Steel Workers at Duquesne, Pennsylvania

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones, Kaiser n Steel Barons, Clairton PA Aug 10, Ptt KS Wkrs Chc p5, Sept 5, 1919———-

Hellraisers Journal –Wednesday October 29, 1919
Mother Jones News for September 1919, Part I
Duquesne, Pennsylvania – Mother Jones Arrested for Organizing Steel Workers

From the New York Sun of September 8, 1919:

RAID ENDS MEETING OF STEEL WORKERS
—–
Mother Jones and Other Organizers
Seized in Duquesne.
—–

Special Dispatch to THE SUN.

PITTSBURG, Sept. 7.-Duquesne was the scene of much excitement on the part of the police and union organizers this afternoon when Police Chief Thomas Flynn and a squad of patrolmen appeared at an open air meeting at Linden and River avenues, where more than 1,000 steel workers had assembled, and arrested four labor organizers, including “Mother” Jones, the veteran organizer, and forty steel workers. The organizers were charged with holding a public meeting without a permit and the workmen were charged with illegal congregating. After staying in the Duquesne police station four hours they were released on forfeits for a hearing to-morrow.

Mother Jones n WZF Couple of Reds, Chg Tb p120, Oct 26, 1919
Mother Jones with William Z. Foster

The organizers arrested besides “Mother” Jones were William Z. Foster, secretary of the national committee for organizing iron and steel workers; J. L. Beaghen, president of the Pittsburg Bricklayers Union, and an American Federation of Labor organizer, and J. M. Patterson, vice-president of the Brotherhood of Railway Car Men.

The organizers said the meeting was being held on a vacant lot, the owner of which had given permission.

———-

[Photograph added.]

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts & Doings of Mother Jones for September 1919, Part I: Arrested for Organizing Steel Workers at Duquesne, Pennsylvania” →