Tag: Appeal to Reason

Hellraisers Journal: From the Appeal to Reason: “Girl Slaves of Milwaukee Breweries” by Mother Jones

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones, Mlk Girl Slaves n Virtue, AtR p2, Apr 9, 1910———-

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday April 14, 1910
Milwaukee, Wisconsin – Mother Jones on Girl Slaves of Brewery Plutocrats

From the Appeal to Reason of April 9, 1910:

Mother Jones HdLn Girl Slaves Mlk, AtR p2, Apr 9, 1910

Mother Jones, Dem Bnr Mt V OH p7, Apr 5, 1910

It is the same old story, as pitiful as old, as true as pitiful.

When the whistle blows in the morning, it calls the girl slaves of the bottle washing department of the breweries, to don their wet shoes and rags, and hustle to the bastile to serve out their sentences.

It is indeed true, they are sentenced to hard, brutal labor, labor that gives no cheer, brings no recompense. Condemned for life to drudge daily in the wash-room with wet shoes and wet clothes, surrounded with foul mouthed, brutal foremen, whose orders and language would not look well in print, and would surely shock over-sensitive ears, or delicate nerves!

And their crime? Involuntary poverty. It is hereditary. They are no more to blame for it than a horse is, for having the glanders. It is the accident of birth. This accident that throws so many girl workers into the urging, seething mass, known as the working class, is what forces them out of the cradle into servitude-to be willing (?)slaves of the mill, factory, department store, hell or bottling shop in Milwaukee’s colossal breweries.

Here they create wealth for the brewery barons, that they may own palaces, theaters, automobiles, blooded stock, farms, banks and heaven knows what all, while the poor girls slave on, all day, in the vile smell of sour beer, lifting cases of empty and full bottles, weighing from 100 to 150 pounds, while wearing wet shoes and rags; for God knows they can not buy clothes on the miserable pittance doled out to them by their soulless master class.

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Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts & Doings of Mother Jones for March 1900: “For many years she has devoted her life to the downtrodden.” -J. A. Wayland

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote JA Wayland, Mother Jones, AtR p1, Mar 17, 1900———-

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday April 10, 1900
Mother Jones News Round-Up for March 1900
Found Receiving Tributes from J. A. Wayland and Arnot Miners

From Appeal to Reason from March 17, 1900:

AtR p1, JA Wayland, Mar 17, 1900

Mother Jones, Title, AtR p1, Mar 17, 1900

[by J. A. Wayland]

WHEN the history of these times, shall be written by people living under a state of industrial harmony and peace, in the years to come, the name of “Mother” Mary Jones will occupy a prominent place. For many years she has devoted her life to the downtrodden, and is known to every railroad man and miner who is intelligent enough to be called a man. She was my guest during the winter and early spring of 1898-9, and I learned to love her great heart and gray hairs. For many months she has been working among the striking miners of Pennsylvania, encouraging the men and advising them not only absent the tactics necessary to win the industrial battle, but teaching them the lessons of brotherhood and the rights of the working people to have the full results of their labor. Writing to “Grit,” a correspondent recites the tribute paid Mother Jones at the ending of the long struggle as follows:

Blossburg, Feb. 23.–A most appropriate finale to the long struggle between operaters and miners in this section, and a just tribute of love, honor, and respect to one of the most active participants in the whole affair, was the immense parade of men, women, and children, which marched from Arnot to Blossburg, a distance of five miles, on Saturday night, Feb. 17, one of the roughest and coldest nights of this winter, to pay their last heartfelt tribute to one, who, while her labors in this county are ended, and she may never return to this locality again, bears away with her the most sincere gratitude of the mining portion of Tioga county-Mrs. Mary Jones. As they had marched to Blossburg at critical times during the strike to hear words of encouragement from her, and to feel strengthened by her presence, so they marched on that last night of her stay, through a gale of wind and snow, to proclaim their fealty to her, and their true appreciation of her labor.

On Saturday night Mrs. Jones made her last speech and the “striking” portion of Arnot, together with the citizens of Blossburg, turned out in full farce to do honor to the old lady who is generally credited with having won the strike.

Both Mr. Wilson and Mrs. Jones addressed the people, but interest was mainly centered on “Mother” that night, and her bright beaming face told how happy she was at the miner’s success. She spoke at length on the strike and its results, and cited it as a repetition of the Civil war on a small scale. She addressed the women feelingly, and ended by advising the men to be always peaceful, and to bury the hatchet, to forget all little animosities, to be careful in the future at the polls, and to be sure and pay those men who had stood by them, if only a dollar a month. The speaking ended about 11 o’clock and the procession quickly formed and started homeward. The settlement includes the restoration to their houses of the evicted miners, but as Mr. Lincoln is away none have been able to move back as yet. The men of Arnot and Landrus are to be provided with work first, and the mine foremen are offering to put on three shifts of eight hours each in order to more speedily open the north drift headings and to employ as many men as possible.

———-

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Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones Speaks to Delegates at United Mine Workers Special Convention in Cincinnati

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones, Young Again, Special UMWC Cinc OH p62, Mar 24, 1910———-

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday March 27, 1910
Cincinnati, Ohio-Speech of Mother Jones at Miners’ Special Convention

From The Topeka State Journal of March 24, 1910:

SOUNDS CALL TO ARMS.
—–
“Mother Jones” Arouses Coal Miners
to Great Enthusiasm.
—–

Mother Jones, Dnv Pst p2, July 19, 1908

Cincinnati. O., March 24.-Bituminous coal operators and miners of Ohio, Indiana and Pennsylvania, entered their subscale meeting this afternoon with almost certainty that a disagreement would be reported to the joint committee, that the joint conference would reach a like disagreement before tomorrow noon and that the International Convention of United Mine Workers would then be asked to say whether it should be industrial peace or war after April 1.

Operators of the three states immediately concerned, held a secret conference all morning and at the conclusion announced that the vote had been unanimous to resist all of the miners’ demand. The attitude of the miners in the international convention was shown during an address by “Mother” Jones when she declared:

If the operators force a fight we are all in trim to give them the hottest fight they ever had in their lives.

The convention was almost stampeded and the cheering did not cease for several minutes.

[She shouted:]

Line up, we are ready for war.

———-

[Photograph and emphasis added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: From the Social Democratic Herald: Acceptance Speech of Eugene Victor Debs, March 9, 1900

Janet RayeEugene Victor Debs
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Quote EVD, Proud Socialists SDP Conv, SF Cls Strgl p4, Mar 17, 1900———-

Hellraisers Journal – Monday March 26, 1900
Indianapolis, Indiana – Eugene Debs Accepts Nomination for President

From the Social Democratic Herald of March 24, 1900:

DEBS’ SPEECH OF ACCEPTANCE

[Social Democratic Party Convention
Indianapolis, March 9th]

SDP Campaign, EVD n Job Harriman, SF Call p2, Mar 9, 1900—–

Mr. Chairman and Comrades:— A few moments ago your committee advised me of the great honor conferred upon me by this convention in making me one of the standard-bearers of the party in the great campaign upon which we are now entering. Never in all of my life was I so profoundly impressed with the conviction that there is a divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will. Yesterday [March 8th, Third Day of Convention] I left this hall under the solemn belief that I could not, under any possible circumstances, accept the nomination tendered me with such enthusiastic unanimity. But with your united voices ringing in my ears, and your impassioned appeals burning and glowing in my breast, and your eyes searching the very depths of my soul, I was soon brought to realize that in your voice in behalf of socialism there was the supreme command of Duty—that I could not disregard it and decline the nomination without proving myself wholly unworthy of the confidence which inspired it.

I felt that I could not decline the nomination, tendered me under such circumstances, without being guilty of treason to the cause we all love so well; and so I come to you this afternoon, obedient to the call voice by your committee, to say that I accept your nomination, and with it all of the responsibilities that the great trust imposes; and with my heart trembling upon my lips, I thank the comrades, one and all, for the great honor your have conferred upon me. I also thank you for having nominated as my associate and colleague so true a socialist, so manly a man as Comrade Job Harriman, and let me assure you that we will stand together, side by side, in the true spirit of socialism, and joining hands, will bear aloft the conquering banner of the Social Democratic Party of America.

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Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for February 1910, Part I: Found Fighting for Working Women

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones, Ladies Women, NYT p3, May 23, 1914———-

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday March 12, 1910
Mother Jones News Round-Up for February 1910, Part I:
-Found Fighting for Working Women of Philadelphia and Milwaukee

From the International Socialist Review of February 1910:

Fighting to Live
—–

By Tom A. Price.
—–

* * *

[Mother Jones in Philadelphia.]

Mother Jones. This little woman whose heart is as big as the nation and beats wholly for humanity, came to Philadelphia while the trumpet was still reverberating after the call to arms had been sounded. Under her bold leadership the fighters were organized before the manufacturers had fairly realized that their workers had at last been stung to revolt by the same lash which had so often driven them to slavery.

Mother Jones, ISR Cover crpd p673 ed, Feb 1910

In impassioned speech after impassioned speech Mother Jones urged the girls on to battle. Shaking her gray locks in defiance she pictured the scab in such a light that workers still shudder when they think of what she would have considered them had they remained in the slave pens of the manufacturers. Every man and woman and child who heard her poignantly regrets the fact that her almost ceaseless labors at last drove her to her bed where she now lies ill.

But she had instilled into the minds of her followers the spirit which prompted her to cross a continent to help them. That spirit remains and is holding in place the standard which she raised. It is leading the girls to every device possible to help the cause. Many of them are selling papers on the street that they may earn money to contribute to the union which they love.

* * *

[Photograph from cover of February Review.]

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Hellraisers Journal: “White Landlords, Robbing Negro Tenants, Let Loose Arkansas Reign of Terror” -Part II

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Claude McKay, Fighting Back, Messenger p4, Sept 1919———-

Hellraisers Journal – Friday February 20, 1920
Phillips County, Arkansas – White Landlords Terrorize Negro Tenants, Part II

From the Appeal to Reason of February 14, 1920:

White Landlords, Robbing Negro Tenants,
Let Loose Arkansas Reign of Terror

[Part II of II.]

Arkansas Elaine Massacre, 12 Union Men Condemned to Die, IB Wells Barnett p2, 1920

Early in 1919, some of the young negroes who had returned from the army began an organization of the negro share croppers, under the name of “Farmers’ and Householders’ Progressive Union of America,” for the purpose of getting relief from the abuses their people were made to suffer. The charter and constitution of the organization was drawn up by two prominent white lawyers at Winchester, Ark. The organization was looked upon with much disfavor from the start by the land owners. So the plans of the organization had to be carried on in secret, but it met with instantaneous approval of the negro laborers. The organization arranged that friendly and trustworthy counsel was furnished the negroes who would bring suit and force the land owners to make a settlement with the negroes and in many instances they were forced to pay back to them hundreds, and some instances, thousands of dollars that they were stealing from their tenants.

These negroes had grown a bumper crop this season, some families making as much as fifty bales of cotton, twenty-five of which was theirs. Cotton this season in this locality was selling at from fifty to seventy-five cents per pound, or $250 to $300 per five hundred pound bale, or over $5,000 for the tenant’s share of the crop, while everything they purchased at the land owner’s store was sold at 50 to 100 per cent higher than at cash stores in nearby towns. These negro tenants were due to have several thousand dollars as their share of the crop for their work. This the land owners could not allow for various reasons. If the negroes got out of debt, they might leave the farm, then they would not trade at their stores if they had the cash to buy from mail order houses or the cash stores in the towns.

The land owners began to make arrangements to again ship the negro’s cotton without asking his consent or rendering him a statement of his store account. The negroes went to their organization for aid and counsel. A representative of their organization went to a prominent white attorney for counsel [Ulysses S. Bratton], who they knew was a friend to all labor organizations. This attorney was not in his office at the time the delegation called, but his son [O. S. Bratton], who was in charge of the office in his father’s absence, advised the delegation to get their members together and he would come out and meet them, and investigate their claims. The representatives of the negroes returned and called a meeting in one of their churches, to advise their members.

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Hellraisers Journal: “White Landlords, Robbing Negro Tenants, Let Loose Arkansas Reign of Terror” -Part I

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Claude McKay, Fighting Back, Messenger p4, Sept 1919———-

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday February 19, 1920
Phillips County, Arkansas – White Landlords Terrorize Negro Tenants, Part I

From the Appeal to Reason of February 14, 1920:

White Landlords, Robbing Negro Tenants,
Let Loose Arkansas Reign of Terror

[Part I of II.]

WNF Elaine Massacre, HdLn AR Gz p1, Oct 3, 1919, wiki
Headline from Arkansas Gazette of October 3, 1919

Repeated and strenuous strenuous efforts have been made to extradite Robert L Hill, a negro from the state of Kansas to Arkansas, where he is indicted for murder. He has not been delivered up to the Arkansas authorities, and his extradition would be a deep and shameful stain upon the state of Kansas. For Hill’s is no common murder case. The question of his fate is linked with the larger question of economic justice to an exploited race. It isn’t for murder, really, that Hill would be tried if he were sent back to Arkansas; the real charge against him is that he was active in helping to organize the negro tenant farmers of southern Arkansas that they might remove some of the burdens of landlordism and virtual slavery from which they have cruelly suffered.

Hill is the president and organizer of the Farmers’ and Householders’ Progressive Union of America—a union negro tenant farmers. The story this union and of the present effort to extradite Hill into Arkansas cannot be understood without explaining the general situation existing in Arkansas.

First let us recall the lurid excitement that prevailed in Phillips county, Arkansas, of which Helena is the county seat, in October, 1919. It will be recalled that the Associated Press sent out to the rest of the country stories of a formidable negro plot to terrify and exterminate the white race in Arkansas, with the news that negroes in Phillips county had uprisen and wantonly killed 21 white men. For several days Arkansas was crimsonly featured in riot stories, and the patriotic fashion in which the white men of Phillips county suppressed the uprising and upheld law and order was dramatically chronicled.

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Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts & Doings of Mother Jones for 1899, Part I: Found in Girard, Kansas, Visiting with J. A. Wayland of the Appeal to Reason

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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Quote Mother Jones, Powers of Privilege ed, Ab Chp III———-

Hellraisers Journal – Monday January 22, 1900
Mother Jones News Round-Up for the Year 1899
-Part I: Found in Girard, Kansas, and Cleveland, Ohio

From the Western World (Girard, Kansas) of January 5, 1899:

Mother Jones ed, St L Rpb p2, Feb 5, 1898

Mother Jones is a guest of the Wayland household this week. And she is a distinguished guest, too. No woman in America or in any other country has more genuine admirers among the toiling classes than Mother Jones. She is known to every laborer in the world who cares to ascertain who is a loyal true, friend to him. In all the great strikes of the past, when suffering has run riot, Mother Jones has been one of the first to appear on the scene and render such service as was in her power. As a lecturer she has no superior, being thoroughly posted in everything bearing upon the economical conditions of the age, and she is welcomed by the thousands everywhere. That she is one of the most popular workers in the fight for a better condition on earth, need not be said.

———-

[Photograph added.]

From the Western World of February 23, 1899:

Mother Jones delivered an address from her wagon, which was drawn up on the north side of the square, last Saturday afternoon. A large crowd was in town, and many seemed greatly interested in her eloquent and forcible argument for socialism.

———-

From The Independent News (Girard, Kansas) of February 23, 1899:

Mother Jones, a Socialist teacher, made a two hours speech on the north side of the square Saturday afternoon. Mother Jones is well known over nearly all parts of the country where there are large number of laborers. She starts for Cleveland this week and from there goes into the mining country of Pittsburg, Pa.

From the Western World of March 9, 1899:

Mother Jones, the noted Socialist lecturess, who has been spending the winter with the family of J. A. Wayland, left Saturday for Chicago, to visit for a time before commencing her summer lecture tour.

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Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts & Doings of Mother Jones for December 1919: “I hope that when I die, that I will not go where Judge Gary will be.”

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

Hellraisers Journal – Friday January 16, 1920
-Mother Jones News for December 1919
Found Lambasting Judge Gary and Standing with Striking Steel Workers

From The Blacksmiths Journal of December 1919:
-Report of International Representative W. A. McArthur

-Gets Well Acquainted with Kaiserism at
the Buffalo Plant of Williams & Co.
-Meets Mother Jones at Lackawanna
Where a Monster Crowd Heard one of
Her Characteristic Talks.
Takes a Fling at Judge Gary.

Cambridge, Mass., Nov. 20, 1919.

Editor Journal:

Mother Jones, Crpd Lg, Chg Tb p120, Oct 26, 1919

In company with Brother Carey we have tried our best to make the J. H. Williams Company, Buffalo, see their error in discriminating against our men and as this matter has been reported by Brother Carey and I have previously dwelt upon it will not make any further report. I sincerely hope that the Kaiser of the plant will be made to abdicate.

From Buffalo I went to Lackawanna and addressed the steel workers in that place and while there had the pleasure of meeting Mother Jones. This grand old lady of 86 years’ experience, was also there and delivered one of her famous characteristic talks. She thrilled the crowd repeatedly and at one time caused a tremendous outburst of applause, when she said,

Judge Gary will never make slaves out of Americans, or any foreigners who come to America to make this their home, if I can help it. I hope that when I die, that I will not go where Judge Gary will be.

[…..]

[Photograph added.]

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