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Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday June 22, 1920
Williamson, West Virginia – Mother Jones Speaks at Public Meeting, Part I
From the Tuscaloosa News of June 21, 1920:
THE GRAND JURY IS INVESTIGATING
THE MATEWAN SHOOTING
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“Mother Jones” in West Virginia Coal Fields
Making Speeches to Excite Miners
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(By Associated” Press)
WILLIAMSON, W. Va., June 21.-Investigation of the fight between Baldwin-Felts detectives and citizens at Matewan, May 19, in which ten persons were killed, was commenced here today by a special grand jury. Deliberations of the jury will be behind closed doors, and nothing be known of its work until its report is made to the court.
Fifty men of the state constabulary were on duty here following a meeting last night in front of the court house at which “Mother” Jones was the principal speaker. Announcement was made that she would speak tonight at Matewan.
[Photograph and emphasis added.]
Williamson, West Virginia – Sunday Evening June 20, 1920
-Mother Jones Speaks at Public Meeting in Front of Courthouse.
[SPEECH OF MOTHER JONES at WILLIAMSON, PART I.]
[The Pagan Agitator]
The old condition is passing away. The new dawn of another civilized nation is breaking into the lives of the human race.
Away back, eighteen hundred years ago, two hundred years after the world’s savior was hung there arose an agitation. The Roman lords got uneasy about it, and they said, “We have got to stop this agitation and this education. If we don’t they will get the best of us. That won’t do.” They sent down and brought up all those they could get together to come in a hurry to Rome. They either sold them into slavery or held them, and among those that was brought in was a young man. When he came into the Roman court to get his decision the Judge said, “Who are you?”
“I am a man, and a member of the human family.”
“Then why do you carry on this agitation?”
“Because I belong to a class that all down the ages have been robbed, murdered, maligned, crucified, deluded, and because I belong to that class I think it is my duty to be with that class and to put a stop to these crimes.”
I wish I could convey that same spirit that possessed this pagan slave eighteen hundred years ago to every working man in my hearing today. If he possessed that spirit of manhood the other fellow would come and ask us for the right to eat instead of asking him for the right to eat. But we haven’t come to that spirit yet, because all down the ages the system has been going on to enslave us. This pagan slave was not a Christian. By no means. He was a pagan in those days, but he was teaching real Christianity. He was teaching Christ’s Christianity, that an injury to one working man is an injury to all. But they called him a pagan.
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