Hellraisers Journal – Sunday May 3, 1914 After Speech by Mother Jones, Kansas Miners Donate Treasury
April 30, 1914, Pittsburg, Kansas -Mother Jones Addresses Convention of District 14, U. M. W. A.
Mother Jones gave a long speech Thursday, April 30th, in Pittsburg, Kansas, at the Convention of District 14, United Mine workers of America. She came seeking donations for the striking miners of Colorado, and, in the end, the miners of Kansas gave her all that she asked for.
MOTHER JONES INTRODUCED TO THE MINERS OF KANSAS
Chairman [John P.] White: Now, this morning I know that I voice the sentiments of this convention when I say that we appreciate the presence here of our great old organizer, Mother Jones. (Applause.)
Yesterday I gave you a pretty strong bump about Colorado, and what you were going to do about the money that you had loaned the national organization, that I plead guilty to being responsible for, so God help you for I put you in the hands of Mother Jones now. (Loud applause.)
A Delegate: I think the brothers ought to put up their pipes, put them in their pockets.
Mother Jones: You should join John D. Rockefeller, you are getting so nice…
The Colorado Coal War
[Mother Jones continued]: You see, my brothers, the trouble with us all is we don’t feel the pains of our fellow beings in the great struggle. I wonder if the nation felt horror of that affair at Ludlow? Why, if that happened in Mexico we would go down to clean up Mexico, and it happened here at home and there is very little said about it, when every man should shoulder his gun and start to Colorado to stop the war there. (Applause.)
Louie Tikas with the Flag of Ludlow
…No time in modern history has there been anything so horrible as this trouble in Colorado. I know those men in Colorado pretty well. No state in the Union has truer, better fellows; they have made a great fight against the men in power. There is no question about it. The poor fellow that got killed, this Greek [Louie Tikas], when I went to Ludlow, when the battle first started, the tears came streaming down his face, and he said, “Mother, they jumped at me to go war, and I got away and let the capitalists fight their own battle. I am here now, and this is my battle, the battle of right for the class that I belong to.” That summed up the whole philosophy of the labor movement. In other words, it was a battle for freedom for the class that he belonged to. And he said, “Mother, I need a gun.” I said, “You will have one, Louie, if Mother has to take her hat off and sell it, you will get the gun.” (Applause.)
Now, those brave men were the ones brought over, most of them, after the last strike that we had in Colorado; Rockefeller sent his agents to Europe and brought those fellows over. He has been able to crush them, rob them, persecute them until he has made his millions out of their precious blood, and then he goes into church on Sunday and is hallowed by the people of this great nation.
Hellraisers Journal – Thursday May 19, 1910
Mother Jones News Round-Up for April 1910, Part I:
-Found in the Thick of the Fight on Behalf of Working Class Men and Women
From the Mt. Vernon, Ohio, Democratic Banner of April 5, 1910:
DROP THEIR PICKS AT STROKE OF TWELVE.
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Coal Miners’ Strike Is a Reality.
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200,000 MEN ARE IDLE
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D. H. Sullivan Falls Heir
to Ohio Situation.
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THINKS SETTLEMENT IN SIGHT
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General Belief Is That Suspension
Will Be of Short Duration and That
Country Will Experience No
Serious Result From Shutdown
-Pittsburg Operators Anxious to Sign.
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Columbus, O., April 1- Dennis H. Sullivan of Coshocton today assumed his duties as president of the Ohio miners’ union, and made the announcement that nearly every union miner in the state is now idle, work at all mines having been suspended in response to the general order to quit work until new agreements are signed between the operators and officials of the union, in accordance with the 5-cent increase demanded as an ultimatum by the miners present at the Cincinnati conference.
Mr. Sullivan said:
The miners of Ohio stopped work at midnight, but this is in accord with an understanding with the operators. Every miner in the state went out, with the exception of cases in which there has been special permission granted for them to run.
Some mines are run to furnish coal for some specific purpose. For instance, there will be a mine whose entire output is taken by certain locomotives or by a furnace. Here is a contract [picking one from his desk] signed by an eastern Ohio operating company. A furnace is absolutely dependent on these mines, and if they were closed the business would so to some other mine, outside the state, or the furnace would close. We’re not driving business from the state; we’re for Ohio. So in all these cases privilege is given to continue work, pending adjustment of local differences at some later time.
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday May 15, 1910
Milwaukee, Wisconsin – Brewers Stung by True Talks of Mother Jones
From the Duluth Labor World of May 14, 1910:
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CHICAGO, Ill., May 13.—”Mother Jones” told too much truth about the conditions under which the girls employed in the Milwaukee breweries work and the brewery interests think she has gone far enough. So they are calling to their aid detectives in an effort to suppress the printed matter which is being prepared in pamphlet form.
There was such a demand for the articles exposing the conditions in Milwaukee that it was decided to publish the material in pamphlet form.
Acting through a detective agency by the name of Mooney & Boland, the Northwestern Printing Company, which had the contract to print the article, were intimidated into turning over all the pamphlets.
William Vorsatz, who had charge of the distribution of the pamphlets, immediately complained to the postmaster, Daniel Campbell. Apparently the postal officials were more interested in the power of the brewery combine than the weakness of the girl slaves, and charged that “Mother Jones'” article was “obscene.” They especially referred to a paragraph telling about the treatment of the girls by the brutal foremen.
Twenty thousand copies of the pamphlet were printed and the question of sending them out regardless of the postal ruling is being considered.
In substantiation of “Mother Jones'” story of the breweries a delegation from the Women’s Trade Union League of Chicago visited Milwaukee and verified the statements made.
Hellraisers Journal – Friday April 15, 1910
Mother Jones News Round-Up for March 1910:
-Found Visiting Girard, Kansas, and Speaking to Miners at Cincinnati
From The Pittsburg Daily Headlight of March 11, 1910:
Mother Jones the prominent Socialist lecturer has been in Girard this week.
From Hellraisers Journal of 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.
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“Mother Jones” Arouses Coal Miners
to Great Enthusiasm.
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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.
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:
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.
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.
—–
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.
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
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By Tom A. Price.
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* * *
[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.
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.
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CHICAGO, Ill., May 13.—”Mother Jones” told too much truth about the conditions under which the girls employed in the Milwaukee breweries work and the brewery interests think she has gone far enough. So they are calling to their aid detectives in an effort to suppress the printed matter which is being prepared in pamphlet form.
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